In his limited English, Shige described as best he could the women he was seeking, but the hotel clerk shook his head, said he’d never heard of them. The clerk then helped him order a rental car and gave him a local map on which he marked the roads to the old hydro-electric plant.
After turning inland just before the bridge, the landscape began to look familiar. Shige stopped along the road where he thought the house used to be, right on the river. But he found nothing except what appeared to be a homemade monument of sorts, a cairn of rocks.
The next day, from the hotel veranda, Shige watched as an old man stooped to insert cuttings in the rain-sodden ground beyond the walkway. The island was rife with hibiscus hedges, an easy plant to propagate. Shige called a greeting and the old man responded in kind – not surprising that the old ones still spoke some Japanese.
What color will they be? Shige asked.
Red, the old man answered, then twisted his eyes up toward the sky. Soon will be rain, he said.
Shige laughed. Yes, always. Soon will be rain, he replied, remembering from his childhood the uncountable gray days and the thundering noise of rain on the metal roof. And more: he remembered the myriad hues of green that make up a jungle landscape, the vast cloud-laden sky on non-rainy days, and that here there were more stars in the night sky than anywhere else in the world.
Shige was born on this island during Japanese colonial times. He left during the war, over 30 years ago, entrusted to the care of other evacuees during their voyage to Japan’s home islands. Shige’s father, who was in charge of the colony’s hydro-electric plant, remained behind – they were reunited at war’s end. But Shige always kept the memories of the day of leaving: the tearful good-byes, everyone weighted with leis and mwaramwars – and how for days the sweet scent of flowers filled the ship’s corridors and rooms.
The visit Shige has now made to the island was prompted by his father’s death and what Shige learned during the gloomy task of sorting through his father’s papers, of finding a ledger detailing money sent to support what appeared to be a child left behind. His father had never told Shige about any such child. There was also a notebook with the name Mieko on the cover and, inside, the journal of a woman who had come to the island as a brothel worker.
In the journal’s pages Shige was surprised to find a description of himself and his father making their farewells at the dock that day, and that his father appeared often in the later pages, not by name, but certainly recognizable as “the engineer.” The journal ended on first day of the bombings and suggested a small group – the journal keeper, along with another woman who was the manager of the brothel, the governor general of the South Sea Government and his driver, a young corporal – had made plans to go to the house on the river. The house where Shige was born and raised. Again, his father had never spoken of any of these people.
With a nod to the elderly gardener’s wisdom, Shige borrowed one of the hotel umbrellas and started off on foot, headed toward Waterfront Road. On the way he passed the locations of the primary school and of the religious shrine, now only a few worn concrete steps remained. Yesterday, after his drive to the river, Shige had walked as far as the old Nambo Department store which appeared to be one of the few remaining structures from Japanese times. The hulk of the building was now being used as a storeroom and as some kind of mechanical shop. He remembered the Nambo, and also that the roof was mentioned in Mieko’s journal as a popular gathering place in the evenings.
On his walk Shige passed the Protestant Church built during Japanese times. He noted it still hosted services, and the churchyard was filled with fine old jacaranda trees. He studied all the various shops along the road, and could not help comparing them to Japanese times when similar establishments on this same road seemed more prosperous. The road then was called Kaigan-dori.
Taking a different route back to his hotel he discovered a small building on the main street that housed the tourist bureau. There, he was relieved to find the young woman behind the counter spoke Japanese, and he began describing the women he was seeking: Armina, the young woman who had been his nanny and her unknown daughter, who would be a grown woman herself now, and who he believed was his sister.
The young woman started laughing, held up her hands and would not let him continue. Wait, wait, she said, let me get my supervisor. Her supervisor did not speak Japanese but she translated: Shige learned the supervisor was the husband of his long-lost sister. His new-found brother-in-law whisked him into a car and drove the half a dozen blocks to where Maria was working.
Although his father’s bookkeeping did not state explicitly that the child he was sending money for was his own, when they met Shige knew instantly that they shared the same father. The hands, mostly. And the gestures, that certain tilt of the head, and each shared a dimple only on the left side of the face. But the first meeting was awkward; Maria seemed discomforted by being caught dressed as a scrub-woman, with a kerchief tied around her hair. She was busy with the final cleaning of her newly renovated lunchroom. Fortunately, her Japanese was more fluent than Shige’s English, and when she learned he would only be on-island one more day, she graciously invited him to dinner that night at her home. Her husband obliged with marking the directions on Shige’s tourist map.
The evening started well. Maria was an excellent cook and hostess. The house was tastefully furnished, and the two young daughters were well behaved. Helen, the older of the two girls, even spoke a passable Japanese and acted as a translator for her father. Shige suspected, though, from the girl’s fair coloring, that Valerio was not her true father. But all in all, it was a pleasant evening. Except for Armina, the woman who had been his nanny and who was his sister’s mother.
She had worn red. A long red dress with a high, ruffled neckline. Her face was dusted pale with powder, her dark hair piled high in an elaborate knot, held there with ornate hairsticks. She was haughty and dismissive, so different from the lively young woman he remembered. She denied knowing any of the people mentioned in Mieko’s diary, and all but accused him of fabricating the story. When Shige had tried to tell her about the small piece of writing at the end of the notebook in his father’s hand, Armina left the table. The evening ended with embarrassment and apologies.
* * *
Ten years since that last visit: Shige takes one of the hotel umbrellas from the rack before setting off in the hired car for his sister’s house. This time Armina has asked to see him and he has flown here for that purpose. Maria has told him her mother is not well.
The maid answers the door and shows him in. He leaves off his zori and enters barefoot. No slippers are provided but the tile floor is clean and delightfully cool underfoot. She shows him into the living room and, through gestures, offers to bring him coffee. As a child, Shige had (only learned to speak a few words of the local language) never learned any but a few words in the local language – the usual hello, goodbye, thank you, etc. He declines, with a small bow.
A large aquarium stands against one wall – small, iridescent blue fish, a miniature school of them flit back and forth, darting into a large clump of white coral. Against another wall is a bookcase with small framed photographs along the top: formal portraits of the two daughters, Shige’s nieces. Helen the older of the two is now a student in Hawaii and from whom Shige has received brief letters and holiday cards. Then a photo of Maria and her husband with what appears to be the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. And then one of a young woman, slightly out of focus. She’s wearing a white dress, such as a maid or a nurse might wear, and the face of a small child peers out from behind her skirts – Armina and Maria.
Ten years ago, on his last visit, Shige learned about their life together after the war, of Armina working as a maid for the Americans, of their living with an old uncle and auntie at the house on the river – most likely Gustof and Santa, the servants Shige remembers so well and fondly.
When Maria came of school age they all moved into town, into what had once been a ryokan, or small inn, just below Waterfront Road. A good part of the buildinghad survived the war bombings but Maria said her mother has somehow managed to make the place habitable. There, with the help of Santa and Gustof, Armina had established a carry-out lunch business for workers who commuted into town.
Maria has told him all this, and about her schooling and the confusion of English in the classroom, the native language on the playground, and Japanese at home. And he, in turn, has told her about how he was evacuated with the women and children colonists, and how the ship did not deliver them to the home islands, as promised. All passengers were off-loaded at Saipan. There, the citizens of Garapan, the island’s main town, were required to accommodate these uninvited visitors. Shige was assigned to a carpenter and his family.
The carpentry shop occupied the main floor, living quarters above, and Shige’s bed was placed in the bottom of a cabinet. The family was not stingy, merely pressed for space as they had three children – all girls. Still, the carpenter was pleased to have a pseudo-son to teach, and for over a year Shige was pleased to play the role of that son.
In the summer of 1944 the bombardment of Saipan began. The screams of terrified neighborhood women were almost louder than the sounds of the bombing.
Quickly, Shige’s host family packed what they could carry, and fled. Shige chose to hide. He crept into his sleeping cabinet, pulled the door shut and in the chaos he was not missed by his fleeing family.
After the bombardment, when the American soldiers drove their jeeps into Garapan and offered sweets to the children, Shige was among them and remembers that the chocolate bars, in such a hot climate, were melted and sticky – they licked the dark sweet off the paper. His host family was never found – like the others who fled they jumped from the Saipan cliffs into the rocks and sea below.
Now Shige hears the maid singing to herself in the kitchen. He goes to the sliding glass door and looks out into the garden, and across the estuary to the town of Kolonia. He slides the door open and steps down onto the matted floor of a covered patio. Not tatami, of course, but a native weaving of palm or pandanus.
Maria has told him that her mother says she now remembers there was a general and his corporal who came to live with them at the house on the river. Maria, of course, was only a tiny child and remembers nothing of that time. She was too young to have any memory of their father, just as Shige has no memory of his real mother.
At the sound of the sliding glass door, Shige turns to see the maid helping Armina down the step. Quickly, he goes to take her other arm and together they lead her to one of the patio chairs. Her hair, no longer black, is twisted into a scanty topknot. She’s wearing a white Chinese-style tunic, gray trousers, and embroidered slippers. Seated she says something to the maid, and then motions for Shige to pull a chair close to hers.
Shige sits, and then half rises from his chair to bow. His greeting sticks in his throat.
Armina waves her hand as if brushing aside a mosquito or an annoying fly. What did you expect, Shige-chan? Old women do nothing but get older. Her voice is harsh, but Shige is relieved to see the hint of a smile.
The maid returns and hands Armina a fan, and the scarf Shige had sent, one of those absurdly expensive, colorless silk scarves scribbled over and over with the designers’s signature. Armina brings it to her nose, sniffs, then drapes it over her shoulders. A very nice present, she says, and opens the fan.
Shige begins a proper protest, an apology for such a humble gift. . .
Armina hushes him with a wave of the fan. I tire quickly, she says.
Shige sits back. Amina fans herself slowly. Again, the glass door slides open and the maid brings a tray with iced drinks. Limeade, Armina says, and motions for the maid to set the tray on the low table nearby.
Now, she says when the maid leaves, I will tell you about the governor general and the boy. You must understand that I did not remember them before because they were with us such a short time. They came after the first bombing. I saw the boy once or twice in the garden.
Yet you never met these people?
Armina fans herself furiously. Is it usual, she says, to present a pregnant wife to guests? Your father was a proper gentleman, and the household was a proper Japanese household.
Shige nods.
Now, she says, listen, and do not interrupt. They came, as I said, after the first bombing. The governor general died during a later bombing. A heart attack, your father said. And the boy, the corporal? He left to rejoin the other soldiers.
Shige interrupts: and there were no women?
Armina snaps the fan shut and shakes it at Shige. I tell you, she says, there was only the governor general and his corporal.
I have been to where the house was, Shige says, I have seen there some stones that perhaps mark a grave.
Yes, Armina says, the governor general’s grave. She reopens the fan. The glasses of limeade sit sweating and untouched.
* * *
Shige has taken a window seat. When the plane banks he can see the rooftops of Kolonia, and across the estuary, the area where his sister lives. Then, the wings level out and he sees the dark mountain tops, and then: only ocean and sky. When the stewardess stops her trolley in the aisle, Shige asks for a scotch and water.
Armina had acknowledged two of the people from the diary but not the woman who wrote it. Why had she asked him to come all this way for something that could be written in a letter? Shige and his niece Helen had worked out a system. When he met Maria’s girls ten years ago, Helen spoke a bit of Japanese. She said her grandmother had taught her, that it was the “at home” language when she was small. But she could not write it, so she wrote in English and Shige had a friend translate and take his dictation for the return letters.
On the way to see Armina, and to kill time as he was early, Shige had stopped at a place on Waterfront Road that sold ice cream – he needed something cooling. The lady behind the counter who handed him the cone was Western, and Shige recalled the Belgian girls and their family who had been interned during the war. Perhaps she was one of three Belgian sisters. Had Shige’s English been better, he might have be able to decipher her accent – surely English speakers have as many different dialects and accents as are found in Japan?
Another sip of scotch and Shige nearly chokes when he realizes what was so odd about Armina: she was more fluent than she should have been and she did not have a Tokyo accent, such as he and his father. Why had she asked him to come all this way and then told him nothing?
The fragment of writing he had found at the end of the notebook, in his father’s hand, proved that the keeper of the journal had also been at the house on the river. The fragment was such an odd piece, meandering between past and present – as if someone were writing about a dream:
I made a fire of sticks and some embers from the kitchen. When she came from the house, she knelt near the fire and sat back on her heels.
I asked if she’d changed her mind. She shook her head and handed me two notebooks with papers spilling out.
I took them and sifted out the loose papers. One was a photograph of two boys in school uniforms.
My brothers, she said, and took it and the loose pages from me and tossed them on the fire. Tear the pages out, she said, they will burn better that way.
Instead, I opened one of the notebooks and began to read. She grabbed for it but I held it out of her reach. Burn it, she said.
No, I will keep it as a memento.
Don’t be foolish. It’s nothing.
Still, I would like to keep it.
Will you promise to never read it?
Now, who would make a promise like that?
You won’t find it very interesting, she said. She took the other notebook and began ripping out pages. She leaned forward and placed them on the fire. Now, she said, I’m dead. Good riddance.
We watched the fire consume the paper.
The light was fading. At the river’s edge I undress and place my clothing on a dry stone, the notebook and my glasses on top. I kneel and she soaps me, then pours water from a bucket over my shoulders. I wade into the shallows and find my usual small boulder, a comfortable perch chest-high in the water. After she washes herself, she settles on a nearby boulder.
Under the canopy of trees, the light was going too fast, and I remember the water felt colder than usual.
She said she wanted to wash the smell of smoke from her hair, but complained it was too late, that it would not dry.
I agreed. It was too late, too late for everything, for anything.
Now you are being an odd person, she tells me.
She loosens her hair and lowers herself into the water until completely submerged, then springs up, her body half out of the water and twisting, the spray from her hair flying in an arc. Without my glasses, I see only a pale blur. Already she is a ghost.
