Radiance (16 page)

Post-surgery:
As agreed, the long-term importance of this project lies less in the reconstructive surgery than in comprehending the mindset of an atomic-bomb victim.
Given the proliferation of atomic weapons, and the anticipation of their future use, understanding the psychological responses in a civilian population is vital to national security.

Three analytic sessions have followed the subject’s surgery. These have taken place in her private room. I sit near her in a chair while she lies comfortably in her hospital bed.

I had made every effort to acquaint myself with the subject’s background, to the limited extent possible. The grandfather was remarkable not only for his business skills (a manager at Ujina Shipping), but for his studies of folklore. Grandmother deceased,
1922
. The mother, Sumiko Kitigawa, had received a degree of education unusual for a Japanese woman, attending Tokyo University, where she majored in languages. After Keiko’s father, Kenji Kitigawa, enlisted in the Imperial Army, she and Keiko took up residence in Hiroshima, living with the subject’s paternal grandfather. Also residing in the grandfather’s house at the time of the blast were the subject’s uncle, Taro Kitigawa and Taro’s wife, Yoshiko.

To open the first session, I tested the subject to ensure that her mind was clear from the morphine, which, though a useful pain inhibitor, can cause confusion. When I had assured myself that her cognitive faculties were intact, I reminded the subject of aspects of her story of survival. In Hiroshima she had mentioned a fox shrine near a bridge within a short distance from her grandfather’s home. Obviously this shrine and the superstitions attached to it had had a great impact on the girl. To open the session, I had leafed through
Yanagita Kunio’s little book
The Tales of Fox,
and I took it upon myself to read aloud a short story from the Hiroshima Prefecture. I then invited the subject to elaborate on its meaning. She immediately exhibited signs of alarm, and answered my questions evasively. For instance, she claimed to know personally all the characters in the small story—including the fox woman and the old man described. This sort of playful deception, masking the truth (even, to some extent, from oneself), may well be considered a primary aspect of the A-bomb temperament. The victim displays an obsessive desire for secrecy.

I find this aspect of her neurosis particularly fascinating. It is quite possible that Keiko’s complex is typical of A-bomb neuroses, but a more lengthy study will be necessary to reveal the many layers of the mindset.

I must now speak of an unfortunate incident.

My attempt to bridge the divided aspects of her self caused a temporary heightening of the neurosis. On May
18
^th
,
4
:
00
in the morning, after a particularly long evening session, Miss Kitigawa attempted to escape Mount Sinai Hospital. A nurse on duty spotted her as she made her way into the elevator. At first we were sure she had left the building, and, as you know, we spent several hours searching the neighbouring environment. In the end we found the subject in the basement of the hospital asleep beside the furnace. It appears from her own accounts (she remembers nothing of the incident) that she may in fact have performed these actions unconsciously; i.e., the subject may well have been “walking in her sleep.”

T
HERE IS SPEECH
, and there is silence.

There is day, and there is night.

A long time ago there was the bomb blast, and then there were shadows lifting themselves from the wreckage, surging upwards. She can see what flickers between the burnt buildings, inside the flames. They are the souls of the dead, Mother and Grandfather and Mr. Takahura’s daughter—but she can also see the flight of the household gods from their shelves in the burnt houses, the fleeing of the twin foxes from the Inari shrine beside the Ota River, the rising of the mountain
kami
from the pine groves on Miyajima. She wants to tell these spirits that she’s sorry for everything. Sorry to have stolen Yoshiko’s lipstick. Sorry because she had kept going, past the ones who begged for water. To the burnt woman on the bridge she had murmured,
I must find my mother.

“I am sorry,” she says. “Forgive me.”

But it is too late. Everything that dwells in shadow has risen up, dislodged by the twelve-kiloton blast of uranium and plutonium. For a moment the flock of spirits hovers above the city.

Then they float free.

M
ISS
D
AY IS THERE
. Dr. Carney is there. One evening, for a long time, the red-haired man is in the room. He stands by
the window, not feeling that he should sit, not until he is asked.

“You gave me a watch.”

He cannot say a word. But this must be what he has waited for, because he sits down in the orange chair. She closes her eyes and then opens them again because she feels waves of heat coming from his body. He bends his head and she puts out her hand and touches his red hair. It is surprisingly full and springy against her fingertips.

This is the story Dr. Carney wants her to tell.

Harder to forget than to remember, in the end.

Here it is, she thinks. Here it is.

All night she lies in bed and tells herself the story. It is long and elaborate and involves her grandfather’s foxes, and travelling north.
I left Hiroshima on April 1,
she says in the low, authoritative voice of her Ojii-chan.
All the plum trees were in blossom, but as I went north they were only in bud, and then eventually they were closed. When I reached the middle of Hokkaido—following the very road Basho took—the plum trees were covered in snow. At the edge of the orchard was a small village. Darkness had settled on this land.

This is an interesting story, and she would like to tell it all the way through, but people keep interrupting her. Yoshiko is there, rebuking her as she tries to sleep.
Because of you, your mother went downtown. She said she had to give Ojii-chan his lunch box. But you could have delivered that lunch box yourself. And where is my lipstick?

Kitsune-chan,
her mother whispers. Fox child, little fox child.

In the night, her grandfather takes her on his knee.
There are so many stories,
he says.
Why do you keep coming back to this one?

They want to know about the blast.

Let them tell it to themselves then.

This is so true she wants to cry.
Just tell me one story,
she begs him.
About going north, the plum trees—then the fox in the graveyard.

You always ask for the same one. Yet I know a thousand. In Hiroshima, there are a thousand stories.

This is true—there are a thousand, or more. Stories people have told him, because he is the expert. They tell him strange stories about the foxes that live under the bridge, about badgers in the graveyard. Always these animals change faces, from animal to human. And then, just when they seem human, they turn into ghosts.

Tell me about the fox under the bridge.

And have your mother know I have frightened you? Don’t think I am so foolish. I am in enough trouble with the womenfolk.

But you always tell me a story before I sleep.

Then it cannot be a frightening one.

She settles on his knee and he speaks. It is nice to be there: she can hear his voice both coming from his mouth and the rumbling of it in his chest. He will tell her the story of how all the animals got started. All the animals and the hills of Hiroshima. Long ago.

You know, he says, people say there was a time when there weren’t any mountains here, or any rivers. The Ota River, huge as it seems to us, was just a drop of water on the ground, and not one of its seven branches existed.

But then the goddess Amaterasu came. She created the land and the rivers and filled the sky with sun. But no sooner was she done than a host of spirits swarmed up from the river and down from the mountains, claiming their right to control what she had made.

This is a story Keiko knows.

A huge battle ensued, but neither side could win. And at last they all sat down in the mud flats, out of breath. There is no way to win this, they said, and so it seemed, but at last a spirit suggested that whoever could first glimpse the sun on the following
morning would reign supreme. A contest, the others cried. Yes, that was a fair way to decide how things should go.

All the spirits went to the water to wait for the sun, and every single one of them faced east, as it was only natural to do. All but the fox. He was the only one who turned his back towards the Inland Sea. The others taunted him, but he hummed a song.

“Did he ignore them?”

“He ignored them.”

And just before dawn the fox, speaking softly and politely, said, “There it is, my friends. The sun.”

The others turned, ready to taunt him further, but there it was: the first rays of the sun were reflected from a high peak of snow.

“And that is why,” her grandfather said, “the fox guards the delta of Hiroshima.”

“He was the smartest animal.”

“He was the smartest.”

Now that is a true story, Keiko thinks, coming out of sleep, trying to remember where she has seen the orange chair, the small rectangle of window, the thousand lights beyond.

“
HOW LONG HAVE
I
BEEN SLEEPING
?”

“The operation was ten days ago. You are healing wonderfully. And you haven’t been sleeping all this time. Don’t you remember?”

“Where are the others?”

“Your scar is gone, Keiko.” And then, after a while: “Can you speak?”

“A little.”

“Do you want to sit up?”

“Yes, please.”

“August
6
. You were speaking of August
6
in our last session. The minutes before the bomb fell. You checked the hibachi.”

“I was worried I would set the house on fire.”

“Yes. You said that.”

“Can I tell about the oyster boat?”

Behind her grandfather’s garden, she can hear the sound of the oyster sellers rowing upstream in the morning.

She waits for Dr. Carney to write this down. She hears his pen moving, and she continues. She has decided to tell about the crickets—the
semi.
There are three kinds of
semi
that she hunts for in Ojii-chan’s garden, including the fat ones with wrinkled wings, the
suzumushi,
that come out at dusk and ring like bells when you cup them in your hands.

The doctor wants her to focus on August 6, 1945. Eight-fifteen in the morning.

“Tell me about Hiroshima,” he says. As though Hiroshima meant the bomb, the wind-lashed landscape full of the others crying out for water. She wants to tell him that Mr. Takahura next door grooms his pink and orange azalea bushes with scissors. He is fonder of his bushes than of his daughter. This is what Keiko hears Yoshi saying, and for once she thinks Yoshi has said something smart.

The year is 1945, the doctor reminds her.

It is the morning of August 6.

She can hear the plashing of the oyster sellers’ oars. The veranda of her grandfather’s house sits on stilts over blue pebbles that she imagines are the Ota River. The river itself is only a hundred yards away, beyond the mossy wall topped with broken tile. Here is where they live: Keiko’s grandfather, her Uncle Taro and Aunt Yoshiko and Mama. Keiko’s father ought to be with them as well, but he was drafted into the Imperial Army and died in Manchukuo.

At night Keiko and her mother walk over the bridge to the bathhouse. They watch the pleasure boats cruising up and down, breaking the tiered reflection of the castle into long shards, fins and eyes. By day the peddlers row upriver, selling wares from their bows.

Lying on the veranda in the afternoon, Keiko hears cars and hand-drawn carts thumping over the wooden bridge, a steady thud of tires, like a relative’s voice, so familiar.

Her grandfather shows her the worn stone steps leading to the grotto of the Inari shrine where the foxes live. This is interesting. Leaning over the bridge, staring down at the dried mud and thick grasses, she asks him questions, all of which he takes seriously.

Why is four bad luck?

How many foxes live under the bridge, and what will they do if they catch us?

“He knew all about such things.”

“What things?”

“Ghosts.
Kami.”

“Tell me about August
6
.”

Her mother is sewing a button onto her blouse. The heft of the thread—too thick for the cotton. The pearly button, two holes drilled in the centre.

“I don’t mean the button.”

He wants her to speak of later.

“Later I worried I had left the hibachi burning.”

He writes this down.

One day her grandfather took Keiko by train north into the mountains of Chūgoku, collecting old stories. This was his interest, his vocation. The stories were disappearing, he said, like the old shrines, which were being knocked down every day to make way for the official Shinto shrines to the one sun deity, Amaterasu, an ancestor of the emperor.

Keiko clutched her grandfather’s tattered briefcase while he slept, his head bumping against the window. Outside, graveyards flashed by on raked hillsides, green and yellow bamboo, a forest of water.

Hiroshima is a place of many stories.

During his lifetime, Ojii-chan collected
146
stories from around Hiroshima Prefecture. His proudest possession was a letter from Yanagita Kunio, to whom he sent these stories. In it, the famous folklorist thanked him kindly for his pains.

“Tell me about Hiroshima.”

But she is. She is. It is a map she carries in her body, where north holds the hills and, beneath them, the wide suburban avenues, the streetcar rails dusted with snow. South is full of winding cobbled streets, smelling of fish. East beyond the castle is a flat plain that reminds her of her father. Here soldiers practice their drills and formations, carrying black bayonets. Once, a soldier gave Keiko a purple flower, a river flower, very common. He leant down and called her a pretty girl, and she felt ashamed.