Snow Hunters: A Novel (2 page)

—Repatriation, they called it.

He declined their offer. From the camp he was the only one.

So he stayed a while longer, helping the doctors with the ones who were too sick to travel and would not last long. He held the young men’s hands if they wanted him to or sat beside them and described the fields and the trees and the clouds, and the young men smiled and thought of their mothers, unable to open their eyes or move their heads. And some wept and said that they were sorry, so very sorry, and he wondered what they were
sorry for, but it was all right because in their eyes he could see that they were not looking at him but someone else in the last of their dreams.

And then some time later a man visited.

—From the United Nations, he said, and they gathered around a table under a tent with the nurses and the missionaries.

There was an agreement with Brazil, the man said, and Yohan remained silent. He had never heard that word before. If he wanted to, the man said, for the camp would soon be gone.

—The sun, the nurse beside him said, looking far away where the snow from the trees had begun to scatter. I bet there’s so much sun.

And he thought of a place where there would be no more nights.

—Brazil, Yohan said, and the man nodded and the nurse smiled and so he did, too.

There was a tailor there. A Japanese man. Kiyoshi was his name. Yohan would be the tailor’s apprentice because he had mended clothes at the camp. He was good at it, the nurse said, and Yohan looked down at his hands, forgetting that when the UN man appeared he had been stooped over the table, under the tent, mending the
clothes that had been taken, during that war, from the dead.

It was now 1954. He stood on the sidewalk, holding the blue umbrella.

The rain continued to fall. It fell on the rooftops on the slopes of the hill and in the narrow streets and the alleyways and on the windows of the tailor’s shop, blurring the image of his body. The morning was gray and the color of rust. All the sounds of the waking city seemed to rise toward the sky, dissipating as the rain fell.

A puddle began to form on the sidewalk where he stood; the toes of his shoes had grown wet and dark.

He regained his strength. He adjusted his hat and then his rucksack. From his jacket pocket he took out the letter. He crossed the street and knocked once on the glass door. Waiting there, opposite his reflection, his hands shook and he stilled them.

•  •  •

From where he stood outside he could now see the shop in its entirety: a single long room with a dark wood floor, worn pale by footsteps and the legs of chairs and tables; fabrics piled on shelves and leaning against walls stained by cigarette smoke; sewing machines on worktables;
wooden boxes filled with scissors and sewing needles and spools of thread. A portable radio. An old fan with a single lightbulb hanging from the low ceiling.

He leaned closer to the glass. In the back there was a heavy red curtain covering a doorway, framed by a dim light.

It was from there that a man appeared, pushing the curtain to the side. He was short and walked with a stoop. He was wearing an undershirt and a vest and his hair was gray and long, tied in the back with a piece of thread. As the man approached, his slippers hit the floor in a slow rhythm, like the soft pattern of rain against the dome of the umbrella Yohan held.

The man lifted his hand.

—It’s open, he called, in Japanese, but continued to approach and, with effort, opened the door himself.

Yohan had not spoken Japanese in some time and he struggled to respond, reaching for a language that seemed to float in a far memory.

—Come in, come in, the man said, and Yohan entered, leaving the umbrella outside by one of the shop windows.

There was no longer the sound of rain, or it had faded, and his ears adjusted now to the low hum of the
radio and the ceiling fan. He could smell a broth of some kind, and tea, and he remembered then that he had not eaten since the day before, a small meal with the crew, mindful of their sharing. He was suddenly struck with hunger.

But he remained still. They stood facing each other at the front of the shop, silent until the man’s eyes focused on Yohan’s suit. The man reached for him and pinched the fabric on each shoulder.

—I see the problem, the tailor said.

Yohan took out the letter and bowed. The man slipped on a pair of reading glasses that he kept in his vest pocket.

While he read, Yohan studied the man’s face: his calm eyes, his thick lips, the old and dark skin that had spent years under the sun.

This was Kiyoshi, in his expression a patience and also a steadiness Yohan would grow accustomed to over the years.

The tailor folded the letter and slipped it into his vest pocket along with his reading glasses. He lit a cigarette. He took Yohan’s hand. Kiyoshi’s fingers were warm and rough.

—Welcome, he said, continuing to speak in Japanese.

He reached for the rucksack, attempted to lift it, but
changed his mind and tapped Yohan on the shoulder, motioning for him to follow.

They headed to the back of the room, passing through the curtain, into a kitchen. A teakettle and a pot of soup were on the stove. Beyond the kitchen there was a door ajar, revealing the corner of a small room: a nightstand, the spine of a book, slippers, and an ashtray, the edge of a cot that reminded him of the field hospital in the camp, the gray light of the morning extending onto the floor.

But they did not go there. They turned and climbed a set of narrow stairs that creaked with each step. They went slowly, Kiyoshi leading and holding on to the handrail, his cigarette smoke lifting toward the dim lights in a slow whirl.

There had been no electricity at the camp, though there was at the military base; and in the evenings when it grew dark and the buildings vanished, a line of electric light appeared beyond the fences, these rows of square shapes in the sky glowing every night. And the dying, who lay in their cots under the tents, would stare out across that distance as though waiting for something else to appear while the doctors made their rounds with lanterns. And Yohan in the cabin thinking of nights in the
town wearing his father’s coat and watching a lit stage, the long shadows of actors.

There were two small rooms on the second floor, connected by a short hallway. One was used for storage. The tailor brought Yohan to the other one, stopping beside the doorway.

The room was above the shop. The ceiling was sloped so that one wall was taller than the other. A single window looked out onto the street. In the far corner there was a mattress on the floor. Closer to the door, along the high wall, there was a bureau, a chair, and a small desk. Again, there was a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. That was all.

It had not occurred to him until now that he had been silent since entering the shop. But before he could speak Kiyoshi left. He listened to the old man descend the stairs. He walked across the room, settled his rucksack beside the mattress, and opened the window.

From here he could see broken glass glued onto the rooftops descending the slope of the town; the occasional television antenna; birds on clotheslines, the clothes drenched from the rain, their colors dulled. In the far distance there were the ships in port and the winding
streets he had followed to get here, the wet cobblestones and the damp awnings of shops and restaurants.

The girl on the bicycle returned. He leaned out the window and watched her approach. Directly across the street was an apartment building. Beside that were two stores: a bakery and a pastry shop. Without pausing the girl dipped her hand into her shoulder bag and threw. He listened to the impact of the newspaper on each door and the rain in the bicycle wheels.

A moment later Kiyoshi stepped outside, reaching for the paper and for the blue umbrella, too. A group of boys ran by, kicking a rubber ball in the rain, and an old woman, with her head covered in a bright shawl, waited under the awning of the pharmacy.

He took off his suit jacket. He left the window and stood under the lightbulb, examining it. He flipped the switch and it began to flicker and he turned it off. He reached up to tighten it into the socket and tried it again. Then he sat on the mattress. It was hard and a corner was torn. His shirt stank of seawater and fish. Or perhaps it was his skin or his hair.

His tiredness returned to him and he settled into the bed. He shut his eyes. Through the open window he could hear the tapping of the rain and voices and a car and then
a ship’s horn. A single chime of a church bell. A door opening. A song on the radio. The steady punches of a sewing machine. He heard aircraft and the dust spraying from trucks and the wind against the tents but it was faint and calm and he did not mind. He was riding a bicycle. He felt a hand on the small of his back. Someone familiar spoke to him and he said, —I can go a little longer, and he lifted a shovel and sank it into the earth. A group of children whistled and clapped. And then he was running his hands through a girl’s hair and she took his wrist and they moved through a corridor where rows of dresses hung from the ceiling. Those dresses turned into the sea.

When he woke it was dark. The lights from the town had entered the room, the furniture casting shadows. In the far corner, beside the door, a man sat on the desk chair, facing him.

Yohan froze, startled. Then his eyes adjusted and he saw that it was his suit jacket. He did not remember placing it there. He rose, smelling the bowl of soup that was still warm on the desk. Beside it lay an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes.

The fluorescent lights of a store began to blink and the room lit bright and then dimmed. He watched his shadow on the wall behind him appear and fade. The
room was thick with warmth. A breeze came and he took off his shirt.

He was not yet used to the heat of this country. It was summer here and he wondered if there existed a different season for every corner of this world in this moment and the moments to come. Whether if you traveled fast and far enough you could witness a year passing in a single journey.

Across the street, a woman stood on a second-floor balcony, looking down. She wore a pale dress that revealed her thin arms, and her dark hair hung down across her shoulders. A motorbike paused below her, its engine running. The man was looking up. Together they spoke in a language Yohan did not yet know but would learn and he concentrated on the soft cadence, again trying to remember the words and phrases the sailors had taught him.

And then his eyes scanned the landscape, consuming it.

He would learn the streets and the buildings of this hill town that resembled the old shell of some creature. And he would know the people who moved within it.

He lifted his suit jacket, examining the shoulders and
the sleeves. He tried it on. It was no longer too large for him; the shoulders had been altered, the sleeves, too.

The beam of the lighthouse swept across the harbor. In the sea there were stars. Millions of them, reflected in the water’s surface. The rain had stopped.

F
rom that day on he woke early. Kiyoshi waited for him in the kitchen, where he boiled water for tea. Then they took their cups and the teapot and passed through the curtain into the shop.

The tailor had moved the worktables toward each wall so that they worked with their backs facing each other. At the camp Yohan had used a machine with a hand crank; in the shop there were treadles and he was at first unaccustomed to the movement of his foot.

Kiyoshi gave him fabric to practice on. He spent those first days adjusting his body to that foreign rhythm, his foot in constant motion as his hands pushed the cloth
forward. On occasion Kiyoshi stood behind him, peering over his shoulder, though Yohan did not look up.

On the wall in front of him, on a shelf, there were packages wrapped in tan paper and twine. The tailor reached for one and placed it on his own table until the bell above the door chimed and a customer entered. They talked for a moment, pleasantries, and then Kiyoshi handed the person the package.

Yohan would not know until later that they were unlabeled and he would be impressed by the tailor’s memory of who wore what.

In the town they lived on the outskirts of a Japanese community. Most of their customers were their neighbors and the diplomats who visited from Tokyo, ordering their suits every season or bringing in their old ones for them to mend and widen.

Every so often a man appeared from elsewhere in the town, lured by Kiyoshi’s prices, a lawyer or landowners or men who worked in the government offices. They talked often, unused to keeping still, and Yohan would remain silent, unable to understand them, catching only a few words as the tailor measured them.

He always stood to the side: measuring tapes draped over his neck and a pencil and a notepad in his shirt
pocket. Sometimes children pressed their foreheads against the windows and watched. They made faces and waved and Yohan waved back.

Other days the farmers came, asking Kiyoshi to mend a shirt or a pair of trousers, paying with grains and vegetables. There were also wives who came for dresses, women who, upon meeting Yohan for the first time, said, —Oh my, where did you find him? And they flirted with him and asked if he could measure them, lifting their arms and tilting their waists.

He blushed as Kiyoshi translated for him and laughed, lighting the women’s cigarettes. They liked him even more because Yohan did not answer them when they asked about his crooked nose and the thin scar across the bridge.

They were not always in the shop. The tailor took him to the port where twice a season a ship arrived from Japan with fabrics and silks. Some days he found the crew who had brought him here, and it made him happy to see them. The older one asked about the umbrella and grinned. Yohan still had it, still used it, and the sailor laughed because it was a lady’s umbrella, he said.

The crew placed the fabrics on a dolly, and they said their good-byes and Yohan pushed the dolly over the
cobblestone and up the hill as Kiyoshi walked behind him, pausing at times to view the displays of a shop window.