Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms (15 page)

Hiroshi nods then asks, ‘What does this certificate do?'

‘If you get the certificate, it means you do not have to live under the Act or the rules that most Aboriginal people live by.' Mary is not completely sure she understands the policy herself and she certainly doesn't know why it exists. She is trying to remember all the details her father and her Uncle Kevin and the other Uncles have shared around the kitchen table when they have their meetings, or when they are just there yarning and drinking tea.

‘What can you do that's different if you have this certificate?'

‘With the certificate you can vote, you can drink alcohol legally and you can go wherever you like. You can talk and socialise with other people.'

‘You can't do that now?' Hiroshi can't imagine any people not being free to live in Australia as they choose.

‘No, most of us here can't do that as freely as we'd like to. Some of the old people say we are like prisoners in our own home. We have a lot of people here now, we are strong and can be united against the Manager, but at the end of the day, he still has control over our lives.'

‘But the certificate sounds good then?'

‘No,' Mary says, ‘it also means you cannot see your family, you have to leave the mission and if you get caught socialising with other Aboriginal people who don't have the certificate, you can go to jail.'

‘Is that true? The laws say that?' Hiroshi's eyes are wide.

‘One woman from here got the certificate and went to Sydney to work and when she wanted to come home for a funeral she had to get written permission from the Manager to do so. But this is her home, Hiroshi, and all her family live here, and she needed permission to come home. This is just wrong, wrong.' Mary stands as if she is about to leave. Hiroshi stands too.

‘I don't understand how a piece of paper can make you be something else? How can it change your life so much?'

Mary begins to pace, explaining to Hiroshi the reality of her own existence, of the existence of all the people in her world that has made her agitated. ‘If you get the certificate you can get a pension, and an allowance when you are pregnant. Black people don't get these things. We should get the same things as the other people in town.'

Hiroshi shakes his head in disbelief. ‘This can't be true! I believe you, of course, but how is this true?'

‘It's true,' she says. ‘There's even separate toilets at the theatre.' She stops short of telling him that the goonans are only segregated until they hit the main pipe and then they integrate into the sewerage system. She wonders what the white people might think about their poo mixing with the Black people's poo, but she doesn't really think that much about it, and she certainly doesn't want to share that thought with Hiroshi.

‘This is crazy,' he says, confused that a country that treated him so well at the camp could treat its own people so badly. ‘This paper changes all that? Changes the way people treat you, and how you can behave? But you are still Aboriginal. A piece of paper can't change that.'

Mary sighs. ‘We still look the same, think the same, know the same and understand the same history that has led us to where we are today. And that is what makes us
still
Aboriginal.' She takes a deep breath, exhausted by what feels like schooling. None of the talking will change anything about her lot, other than the man she has feelings for coming to a better understanding of who she is and the life she leads.

‘This certificate system is ridiculous then,' Hiroshi says.

‘Yes, it is. But if you get the paper, it means that you are free of some discrimination. And that's why some Aboriginal people get it. It makes life easier for them.'

‘Will you get this paper?' Hiroshi wants his food angel to have an easier life than she appears to have with the Smiths.

‘No! My parents will
never
let us have dog tags,' she says sharply, then sees the confusion on Hiroshi's face. ‘Most Blacks call the certificate “dog tags”, which is not a very nice phrase; some people call them “dog licences”, because having the certificate is like being a pet who must be registered. But my parents say you can never trade your identity for anything. And my dad says if it means you have to cut ties with your family and forget who you are, then he will never get it. That if we have to give up who we are as Aboriginal people to get jobs then we will just not work. I want to go back to school and learn more, and I want to work, Hiroshi, but not if getting the certificate to do so means I have to say I am not Aboriginal.'

Banjo is at work but it's just him and Fat Bobbo alone, early in the morning. The sun is high and Banjo is swinging his hammer, dripping with sweat. Fat Bobbo is nursing a hangover and hasn't picked up a tool yet.

‘The Japs are crazy, they'll do anything,' Fat Bobbo begins, launching into a rant. ‘Kill the enemy, kill each other and kill themselves.'

Banjo can't help but look up and ask, ‘What the hell are you on about?' He just wants to work today, finish the job, get paid and get away from the laziest man he's ever known.

‘When the Allies invaded Saipan, the Japs reckon thousands threw themselves off high cliffs. They call it a mass suicide. That's just crazy, they're all crazy, we can't have that kind of crazy yellow peril here.'

Banjo hopes the conversation is over because it's taking his concentration and he has to finish the barn by the end of the day or he won't get paid. But before he gets to even plane down a piece of wood, Fat Bobbo is off again.

‘You know they ate some of our soldiers too.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Banjo says, thinking back to what Kevin had said the day they found Hiroshi, or the day he found them.

Fat Bobbo is adamant. ‘It's the truth. Everyone knows the Japs ate the dead Australian soldiers at Kokoda, and then they started eating their own.'

Banjo shakes his head. ‘I don't believe it! I never saw it in the paper – where'd you hear it?'

‘Listen. Their government never sent them food, they were fighting the war
and
for food and when they killed our
men they ate them cos they were hungry! We can't have Jap cannibals here in Australia.
We're
not cannibals.' Fat Bobbo has broken a sweat and is red-faced.

‘The fact is, Japs, Chinks, Gooks, they're all the same. Asiatics, that's what they call them. Doesn't matter, they're all a threat and we must fight against them. The yellow peril is real.'

‘I've got work to do, even if
you
don't.' Banjo ends the conversation but he feels trapped, thinking about Kevin's comments again and how everyone had dismissed him.

‘Joan, did you hear?' Marj is at the door as Joan is scrubbing the floors.

‘Hear what?' she says, standing up and holding onto her aching back.

‘June was hanging out the washing and her youngest gootha was crying and crying and making a hell of a racket, but June, you know, she just wanted to get the linen on the line quickly. And then all of a sudden the littl'un stopped and when she went to have a look, well, Lord, strike me dead if I tell a lie, she said a Jap was rocking the pram.'

Joan immediately wonders if he is the fella they are looking after. But surely not? She thinks fast, trying not to show any reaction, but camouflaging her emotions has never been a strength of hers. ‘So, what happened then?'

‘Well, all the screaming drew attention – I don't know how you didn't hear it, Joan.' Marj looks at her with squinty eyes.

‘I was working,' she says. ‘Go on.'

‘People were running from left and right, then King Billie appeared, of course, and that was it. The Jap was tackled to the ground and they took him back to the camp.'

Joan's heart is racing. It had to be Hiroshi. There's been no other Japanese soldier around. She feels bile rise in her throat.

‘Was he in a uniform?' she asks. The last clothes Joan sent down to Hiroshi were brown pants and a white shirt turned grey over time. He wasn't dressed like a soldier.

‘I don't know. Why?' Marj looks at her suspiciously.

‘No reason, just wondered.'

‘You're acting very strange, Joan Williams. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were up to something.'

‘Mary!' Joan exclaims as her daughter walks through the door. ‘Don't be silly,' Joan says to Marj as she puts her arm around her daughter's waist. ‘You're always looking for some news, aren't you?'

‘Mary, did you hear about the Japanese soldier here at Erambie?'

‘No, Aunt,' Mary says, worry in her eyes as she looks at her mother. ‘But maybe Uncle Fred knows something.' She points in the direction of her Uncle, walking into his own hut.

‘Yes, and if he doesn't know, I better tell him,' Marj says, turning and walking as fast as her stocky legs will take her.

‘I was so worried,' Mary says. ‘I thought the soldier they were talking about
had
to be you. It sounds like there's another one on the run. Or was – they took him back to camp.'

Mary doesn't notice Hiroshi's distress, too busy with her own relief. But he is reminded of his friends, his fellow soldiers still in the compound and possibly still on the run. The captured soldier may have been Masao. He stands there motionless, eyes glazed over, looking at Mary but transported back to the night of the breakout in his mind. He wonders who the other soldier might have been, momentarily pleased that another had managed to remain on the run for so long.

29 September 1944

Cherry blossom smile,

Benika I miss you so . . .

‘No, no.' Hiroshi is framing poetry out loud. Walking out the Haiku beat – five, seven, five – Benika on his mind and his lips.
But is she in my heart?
he asks himself.
What about Mary? Mary my food angel.
Hiroshi has taken to answering his own questions, desperate for conversation and the sound of something other than silence.

Mother please forgive

A soldier's heart so homesick

For his family

Hiroshi's thoughts are chaotic but all lead to his life back home. He collapses to the ground.
I want to go home
.
I want to go home.

He sits and breathes in the musty scent of the rotting wooden beams keeping the dirt walls and the roof in place. The smell of his waste lingers constantly in his nostrils, even though he empties his bucket every night. With the lantern off to save kerosene, he has nothing but his senses of smell and sound to focus on. He sniffs his armpits and is disgusted. At least at the camp he was clean. His clothes are ratty, dirty, worn, and the soles of his feet are rough. He can taste the dirt under his fingernails as he bites each one, trying to make them short again. He spits dirt from his mouth but the taste of filth remains.

‘Benika,' he says out loud. ‘Where are you? Would you love me again, would you love me like this?' He puts his head in his hands and weeps.
Love
, he thinks to himself. What love did he feel when his father sent him to war? What love can his mother feel for a man who is so cold?