The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (18 page)

“There once was a fisherman called Hakuryo who found a brilliant, feathered robe hanging from a tree and wanted to take it home. Only, as he was about to leave with it, a beautiful woman angel appeared out of nowhere and asked for the robe back, or else she wouldn’t be able to return to heaven. At first, the fisherman stubbornly refused, only to relent, making a deal with the woman; if she would dance for him, he would return the robe to her. She in turn told him that she couldn’t dance for him until he returned the robe to her…
” Kenji paused. He had heard enough of his grandparents’ stories to know when to capture a moment.

Hiroshi stared up at the ceiling. “What did the fisherman do?” he asked at last, his voice a thin, dry whisper.

Nervously, Kenji continued.
“When the fisherman finally agreed to return the robe to the woman, she gratefully put it on and became an angel once again. Then she sang and danced for him happily, before she flew away to heaven.”

Kenji stopped and the quiet felt abrupt, leaving a long silence between them. Too soon, he thought. I’ve ended the story too soon. But before he could think of anything else to say, Hiroshi spoke again.

“And they lived happily ever after, just like in all the stories.”

He wasn’t sure whether Hiroshi was being sarcastic, but he didn’t care. His brother had found his voice.

Hiroshi turned to look at Kenji for the first time. “Do you think
Mariko’s become an angel in heaven?” His face was drained of color and his eyes had dark shadows below them.

“Yes,” Kenji answered. “She might have even found her fiancé again.” His answer was surprisingly calm and definite.

“Hai,”
Hiroshi answered, “I hope so.”

“Are you all right?” Kenji asked.

Hiroshi nodded. He shifted his body toward Kenji and winced once more, but this time he didn’t turn away.

The sticky, malodorous heat of August stifled Yanaka during the day, without cooling off in the evenings. It was the breathless heat of decay, trapped and smoldering behind blacked-out windows at night, leaving tempers on edge. The smallest irritation led to sharp words, the low murmur of arguing voices—the suffocating remnants of the day.

Three months after Mariko’s death, while walking home in the thick heat from the mask shop, Kenji saw a crowd gathered at the small park a few blocks from their house. Usually, Kenji would have kept going, but something about the animated faces made him slow down, push his way through the sweaty crowd to see what was happening. Their voices attracted him, voices he recognized from before the war, open and enthusiastic.

Within a circle of rocks, on a makeshift
dohyo
, were two young men stripped of their shirts and shoes, wrestling. It took only a moment for Kenji to realize that Hiroshi was the smaller of the two wrestlers. Kenji pushed closer and watched his brother move slowly around the circle, light and fast, a serious, concentrated look on his face. Kenji saw his wounds as well—the puckered scar on his forehead an angry half-moon, the yellowish bruise of his ribs still visible.

What was Hiroshi doing wrestling at the park? Kenji hadn’t seen Hiroshi fight in almost two years; he’d hardly attended any of his practices before then, or understood the enjoyment his
ojiichan
and brother found in sumo. His grandfather had lamented that word had come from the sumo association that all matches would be halted after the
New Year. But watching Hiroshi now, he saw something akin to a dance as well as a sport. He had never liked the violence of wrestling, but the way his brother moved was another thing, like a Noh actor onstage, each movement meaning more than met the eye.

Kenji’s heart raced as he watched his brother slip out of the other boy’s grasp. The bigger boy had let go of any pretense of a dignified sumo match, and was now street fighting, arms flailing as he tried to punch his opponent. Hiroshi moved quickly out of the way when the boy charged him. Instead of knocking him down, Hiroshi used the other boy’s own momentum to send him toward the edge of the circle.

“Stupid fool!” an older man yelled from the crowd. The boy steadied himself. The crowd surged around Kenji. “If you expect to eat, you had better win,” the man yelled again. The boy glanced his way and Hiroshi made his move, charging at him with all his force and knocking him out of the circle. Cheers from the crowd filled the air, and Kenji felt a sudden joy racing up his body, his cheer joining theirs.

“Enough!” The man’s voice rose above the crowd.

Kenji thought the
kempeitai
had arrived and Hiroshi would be taken away to jail. Instead, it was the same man who had taunted the boy to win. Short and solid, he stepped forward and handed Hiroshi a burlap sack, bowing just enough to pass for respect.

The man pushed the other boy, who stumbled forward. “Come along,” he said. “Look at you. You’re a disgrace to our family name!”

The boy grabbed his shirt and sandals, bowing quickly to Hiroshi before chasing after the older man. Kenji turned to see his brother’s friends Takeo and Mako across the crowd, laughing, grabbing Hiroshi by the neck, and slapping his back in congratulations.

And then Hiroshi saw Kenji in the crowd, gestured for him to come over, and happily told him the story: Tonuki was the name of the boy he was wrestling with. Hiroshi had heard his uncle was the farmer assigned to raise livestock for the
kempeitai
. According to Takeo, Tonuki also liked to gamble, mostly cards and small yard bets. After a fair amount of needling over the past weeks, Tonuki had agreed to fight. It was arranged that they would meet at the park for the match, between the late afternoon and early evening, when the
kempeitai
changed shifts. The prize would be a chicken. If Hiroshi
lost, he would be cleaning their henhouse for a week. Even
obaachan
would be happy. A chicken won fair and square. His words came out in a breathless rush.

Kenji peered into the sack, a spray of brown feathers floating through the air as the chicken fought to get out. A film of dirt like two handprints streaked Hiroshi’s chest where Tonuki had pushed him. He had never been prouder of his brother as they walked home; Hiroshi’s forehead glistened with sweat, his scar still red and intimidating. Kenji knew the scar would fade in time, become invisible to many, but to him it would always be there, never losing its significance.

A cold wind, though not as icy as the week before, blew through the tower. Yoshio’s tobacco was long gone but he still felt solace in holding the pipe, placing the stem between his lips and biting down. He must be regressing in his old age, he thought, needing to suck on an object for security like a child. In the next moment, Yoshio cupped the pipe in his palm and with one violent swing threw it as hard as he could. He didn’t need an empty pipe for security. He imagined it sailing high and far, most certainly landing like an uninvited guest in someone’s courtyard. He leaned forward and listened for the dull thud of its landing but never heard it. What Yoshio heard instead were voices at the front gate. He recognized Okata’s voice from the neighborhood association, followed by two unfamiliar voices, and hurried downstairs to the kitchen.

Yoshio listened as the front door slid open, then Fumiko’s voice, then a rough, disrespectful grunt demanding,
“Go-shujin
, your husband!” No formalities. The two with Okata must be
kempeitai
. He heard Fumiko’s pause, that minute intake of breath before she began to say something, only to be abruptly cut off. Then Yoshio heard Okata’s scheming voice give directions down the hallway, heard the heavy thump of boots as they came directly to the kitchen, where he sat, waiting for them.

The command was hard and terse. “The watchtower in your backyard must come down immediately,” ordered one of the policemen,
his voice coarse, his words laced with a strong country dialect. Yoshio gazed out the window in the direction of the tower and back toward the policeman. Okata didn’t say a word.

Then, as if the policeman thought Yoshio’s silence meant he hadn’t heard or didn’t understand, he repeated, “The tower must come down. There will be no allowances. Some men will be here tomorrow to take it down for you. I’m sure you will donate the wood afterward.”

The only surprise was that Okata hadn’t reported him long before this. Yoshio sat back, looked again out the window and in the direction of the tower. He had built the watchtower with his own hands, and he would be the one to take it down. He refused to waste words on the fools. Yoshio simply turned back to them and nodded.

Then he heard the same heavy thumps down the hall and they were gone. He could still smell remnants of their presence, sweat and cologne and, even worse, the flowery scent of Okata’s hair oil, which made Yoshio sick to his stomach.

After Okata and the
kempeitai
left, Fumiko came into the kitchen and put hot water on to make tea as she did every afternoon, even when there was no tea, only the hot water. Yoshio listened to all the sounds that filled their silence, the hollow kettle being filled, the soft scrape of her slippers against the floor, her quiet sigh.

After a long while, Fumiko asked, “Do you remember the ginkgo tree in my uncle’s yard?”

Yoshio thought back. Hakodate was such a long time ago.

“The one you were sitting under the afternoon I dared to speak to you?” he asked.

“Hai,”
she said, softly.

He heard her fingers scrape the bottom of the tin for a pinch of green tea to put into the hot water.

“So long ago. Do you think it’s still there?” he asked.

She placed a cup in front of him, the steam rising. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? You have always told me that once we have a memory, it never leaves.”

“Hai,”
he answered. Until illness or death, he thought.

She sat down beside him and he leaned toward her warmth. “And so it will be the same with the tower,
neh?”

How could he not love her? In his darkness, he saw the beautiful girl sitting under the ginkgo tree, the young girl dancing with the white flower in her hair, the
step-beat
of his heart once again.

“Hai,”
he whispered.