The Remembering (7 page)

• • •

Once we were off the train and walking the streets of Osaka, it became much easier to go unnoticed. The great city had been devastated in several areas from heavy incendiary bombing, and after the Emperor’s speech many people seemed almost in a state of shock. We did see a few patrols and truckloads of drunken soldiers driving wildly through downtown, crashing liquor bottles in the street and screaming that the war would go on. Most people simply watched them, unmoved and unaffected. Finally, just after dark, we found the address Sailor had been seeking. The house was on the south side of the Dotonbori Canal in the Minami section. Sailor said we were looking for a man named Katsuo Gidayu, the last in a long line of masters in the art of Bunraku, or traditional puppet theater.

“Do you know this man?” I asked.

“No,” Sailor replied.

“I don’t understand. Then why are we here?”

“Do you remember the dinner we had many years ago in St. Louis, Zianno, when Solomon and I recalled our first meeting in Macao?”

“Yes, of course. Solomon said you were ‘too easily found.’ ”

“Well, what can I say? He may have been right. The point is, I told you I was waiting for someone.”

“I assumed it was Solomon.”

“It was not Solomon for whom I was waiting. I was waiting for Takeda Gidayu, Katsuo’s father. The Gidayu family has, how shall I say,
assisted
the Meq on several occasions throughout the last three centuries. Takeda and Geaxi were especially good friends.” Sailor paused, removing his odd straw hat and surveying the crowded street. “I am hoping he told his son about us. If so, we can be assured he will help us.”

“What if he didn’t?”

Sailor ignored my comment and knocked softly on the door.

After several moments the door opened and all three of us were looking into the beautiful dark eyes of a girl exactly our height. She gazed back at us, glancing at Sailor and me, then staring at Susheela the Ninth. I was certain she had never seen black skin before.

In Japanese, Sailor asked, “Is your father here?”

The girl focused on Sailor. “No,” she answered. “My father is dead. He was a soldier.”

Sailor waited a heartbeat. “I see,” he said. “Are you alone? Is there no one else?”

The girl paused and looked hard at Susheela the Ninth again. “My grandfather is here.”

“Is his name Katsuo?”

Suddenly, from somewhere inside the house, a booming male voice asked, “Who wishes to know?”

“I do,” Sailor said.

A middle-aged man appeared behind the girl. He was tall, well over six feet. “Who are you, boy?” the man asked. His hands and long fingers were resting on the girl’s shoulders.

Sailor then did something unique and unexpected. He had not been wearing his star sapphire because the ring would have drawn attention to us. Instead, he had kept it hidden inside his pants pocket. Never losing eye contact with the man, Sailor held his index finger, his ring finger, out to his side. Then, using his “ability” of telekinesis, Sailor made the ring move slowly out of his pocket. Silently, magically, the ring traveled into the air and over to his hand, where it slid down gently and into place on his finger.
“Egibizirik bilatu,”
Sailor said. “I am Umla-Meq, a friend of Takeda Gidayu.”

The big man’s eyes widened and so did the girl’s. He backed away a pace or two and bowed deeply from the waist three times. It was a formal, courtly gesture and the girl seemed confused. She watched her grandfather with an open mouth, as if she had never seen him do such a thing. “I am Katsuo Gidayu,” the man said, “Takeda Gidayu’s son.” He looked once at Susheela the Ninth and me, then back to Sailor, and I knew he knew we were Meq. “I am honored by your presence,” he said. “How may I serve you?”

Sailor smiled slightly. “We need shelter.”

“It shall be our pleasure … for as long as you need it, sir.”

“Please, formalities are unnecessary, Katsuo. You may call me ‘Sailor.’ ”

“Yes, sir, if you so desire.”

The girl was pulling on her grandfather’s arm. He bent over so she could whisper something to him, which she did. When he straightened up he told Sailor his granddaughter, Ikuko, was foolish and unsophisticated, but if it would not offend, she had a question for the black girl.

Speaking flawless Japanese, Susheela the Ninth responded to the man herself, saying, “Yes, most certainly, and it would not offend.” She looked directly at the girl, who was still clinging to her grandfather’s arm. “You may ask me anything, Ikuko, anything at all. What do you wish to know?”

The girl relaxed a little and said, “Are you from Africa?”

Susheela the Ninth smiled wide and laughed, reminding me again of Opari. “Yes … yes I am,” she said. “Have you ever heard of a land named Ethiopia?”

Ikuko glanced up at her grandfather, shy and unsure what to do or say. Katsuo simply nodded his head and told her to answer. She stared back at Susheela the Ninth. “Yes,” she said in a tiny voice. “I think so.”

Sailor and I laughed and Katsuo welcomed us all into his home. Immediately I could smell wonderful scents and aromas emanating from the kitchen and closed my eyes to breathe them and taste them. Katsuo must have seen me.
“Takoyaki,”
he said. “Octopus dumplings and udon with ginger.”

Sailor gave me a wink with his “ghost eye,” which was still clear. I knew he loved octopus. In English, he whispered, “Heaven.”

The meal was delicious. Katsuo and Ikuko shared everything with us, even though it was apparent they had been living a spare and harsh existence. Katsuo told us his only son, who was the father of Ikuko, was killed in combat and her mother had died during a bombing raid on Kobe. He said he had to close the family’s puppet theater in 1942, and since then he and Ikuko had been living by their wits, scrounging what they could however they could. Luckily, Katsuo said, he knew many people and had many friends. He thought the entire war was a mistake from the beginning and Japan had been insane to attack the United States. He talked at length about the Emperor’s speech, the surrender, and the vague future of Japan. Oddly, he never said a word about Hiroshima or Nagasaki. None of us mentioned the horrors we had witnessed in Nagasaki. Several times Katsuo said he wanted to reopen his theater, but admitted it would be extremely difficult for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was financing. “The people need the puppets,” he said, “they need to lighten their hearts from all the losses they have suffered.”

Soon after our meal, we were led to an unoccupied room with windows on three sides, and each of us was offered a tatami mat on which to sleep. Ikuko had already become fast friends with Susheela the Ninth and gave her some of her own clothes to wear, including a pair of shoes and clean pajamas. In return, Susheela the Ninth told Ikuko to call her “Sheela” and then gave her two ancient loop earrings made of ivory, gold, and lapis lazuli, which she had quickly shoved into her pajama pockets as we were leaving the Fleur-du-Mal’s castle. Ikuko was barely able to speak. I think she wore them to bed that night, much to Katsuo’s amusement. He told Sailor he hadn’t seen her smile in over a year.

At last, the long and complicated day was coming to an end. I felt bone-tired and longed for sleep. I still had questions, but my curiosity was outweighed by my fatigue. As Sailor and I were stretching out on our tatami mats, Susheela the Ninth, without any inhibitions, began removing her black pajamas and putting on the clean pair given to her by Ikuko. Instinctively, I averted my eyes. Sailor saw me look away and asked, “What is the matter, Zianno? Have you never seen a girl naked? After all, she is only in the body of a child.”

Before I could respond, Susheela the Ninth laughed and said, “A very old child, I might add.”

I was embarrassed and tried to cover it up with a question. “Exactly how old are you, Sheela?”

“ ‘Sheela’?”
Sailor interjected. “You address her as ‘Sheela’?”

“Yes. I was told to do so.”

“That is correct,” she said, buttoning her pajama top and sitting down cross-legged on her mat. “I informed Z he should call me by my childhood name, and so should you … Umla-Meq.” Sailor nodded once, but said nothing and Sheela turned to me. “I am older than the earrings, much older.”

“The earrings?” I asked.

“Yes, the earrings I gave to Ikuko. They were presented to me three thousand two hundred eighty-eight years ago in Amarna by a handmaiden of Queen Nefertiti. By that year, I had experienced one thousand seven hundred eighteen birthdays, including my first eleven. This year, in your month of October, I will have my next.”

At first, I was dumbfounded and blinked rapidly several times, trying to calculate the numbers in my mind. “That would mean you are going to be …”

With no trace of wonder or emotion, Susheela the Ninth said, “I will be five thousand and six years old on the day you Americans call ‘Halloween.’ ”

I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t even conceive of a life that long, particularly without the aid of the Stones. Sailor said calmly, “Trumoi-Meq and Zeru-Meq would be impressed.”

“Would they?” she asked, looking directly at Sailor. Her voice had a slight edge of irony and melancholy. “It has not been easy, Umla-Meq … and it has been lonely.”

I thought of Mama and Papa and their endless journeys, and I realized their travels and travails were nothing compared to what Susheela the Ninth must have seen and done in order to survive so long. I now had many more questions for her; however, I was simply too tired to ask them. Outside, a light rain began to fall. Sailor turned off the single lamp in the room and we all lay down on our mats to wait for sleep. For some reason, I recalled a poem Zeru-Meq had carved into a tree years earlier when we were searching for him in China. It was titled “The Quiet Rain” and went like this:

In the back of our lives, steady and soft, a rain falls
.
We sleep through it, then wake at the sound of a distant train
.
Just in time to hear the quiet rain
.
Behind that, deep in darkness
,
The grinding crickets
.

When I awoke in the morning I was alone in the room. After rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I found Sailor standing in the kitchen brewing tea. Katsuo, Ikuko, and Susheela the Ninth were not in the house.

Sailor had his back to me, but felt my presence. “I have a plan,” he said.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I said quickly. “Not yet. I want you to tell me what happened in Nagasaki. How did you survive, and what about Zuriaa?”

Sailor sighed and poured tea for both of us, then turned to face me. “Very well, Zianno, though I have already told you it was sheer luck. Sit down and I shall give you the facts.” I sat down and Sailor stirred his tea before beginning. “By the evening of August 8, after leaving you and Shutratek that morning, Sak and I had found the Fleur-du-Mal’s
shiro
with little difficulty. The old castle was tucked away in a crowded neighborhood along the Nakashima River, not far from the harbor. The building itself was somewhat dilapidated and seemed abandoned. However, I knew this could be a ruse; the Fleur-du-Mal has used such deceptions in the past. Sak and I decided to wait and observe the castle through the night. No one entered or exited, nor did we see any signs of life within. By mid-morning of August 9, just as we were about to seek a way inside, Zuriaa suddenly appeared at the gate, paused a moment to look in every direction, and began walking briskly to the north. Sak turned to me and said, “I will follow her.” There was no forethought or plan, Zianno. I could have said the same thing to him. I told Sak I would stay at the
shiro
and discover what was inside. I watched him walk away, keeping his distance behind Zuriaa. I never saw either of them again. Twenty-five minutes later, the bomb exploded.”

“Where were you?”

“Three stories below ground. I assumed an earthquake had occurred. The entire structure shook violently. Within seconds my only exit had been blocked completely by fallen stone and I was left in total darkness in a subterranean dungeon. The dropping of an atomic bomb never crossed my mind.” Sailor paused and took several sips of tea.

“What did you do next?” I asked.

“Once my eyes had adjusted as best they could, I explored the large space of the room. Even in darkness, it became apparent Zuriaa, or someone, had been living in these quarters. Eventually I located matches and an oil lamp. In the dim light, I saw countless sculptures, paintings, manuscripts, and maps strewn throughout the room. I expected another tremor at any moment and carefully examined the walls and ceiling of the structure itself. The
shiro
was old, indeed, but well constructed and I felt relatively safe. I then decided to investigate the various artifacts and wait for the earth to settle. Also, I knew instinctively Susheela the Ninth, or ‘Sheela’ as you call her, was nowhere to be found, although I did feel the residue of her presence.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“This is difficult to explain. It is a phenomenon and I am still struggling with it.” Sailor poured more tea for himself, took another sip, and continued. “Approximately two days later I emerged from the dungeon of the
shiro
only to be confronted by the total annihilation of everything around me. It was then I realized there had been no earthquake and something much more destructive and demonic had occurred—an atomic bomb.”

“But how did you escape? I thought you said your exit was entirely blocked with fallen stone.”

“Yes … it was,” he said, then glanced at the pot of tea on the table in front of us. Without warning, the pot rose by itself into the air and sort of danced in a circle, then settled down gently on the table.

I looked at Sailor. I said nothing, but understood immediately. Sailor smiled faintly, rubbing his star sapphire with his thumb. The mystical and astonishing power of telekinesis! “Have I never told you how I came to wear this ring, Zianno?” Sailor asked, slipping the brilliant blue star sapphire from his finger and holding it to the light, staring, admiring the six separate shafts of color that shot in all directions from its heart.