Younger
Brother was up before dawn. He helped Mother with the washing,
put on his uniform for school, and ate his meager breakfast.
The thin gruel of fish paste, water, and millet did not
fill his belly, and in fact the poor fare gave his innards
trouble some mornings, but he could not complain. It was
wartime, and the soldiers needed rice to carry on the fight
against the foreign devils. Sometimes, he almost felt that
it was unfair. The government had already taken Mother’s
iron pots to help make tanks and battleships, and now they
left his family with so little to eat. Still, he knew a
good Japanese had to do his duty to the Emperor, and his
was just a very small part. Soon, Elder Brother would go
to war, and Younger Brother would have something to tell
his friends about with pride in his voice. He knew Mother
feared for Elder Brother’s safety, but he was confident
that Elder Brother would come through all right. Japan,
after all, was going to win the war, and they would need
people like Elder Brother when it was over.
Younger
Brother bid his mother a pleasant day, slid the shoji screens
closed against the dust and heat of the rising summer sun,
and went outside. He put on his shoes and walked down the
road to the harbor, gravel crunching under his feet. When
he rounded the bend in the road, he paused as he always
did, to take in the sight and smell of the bay. It lay beneath
him, spread out like a shimmering green cloak, undulating
under the rays of a sun newly reborn for the day. The tang
of the salty sea rose up to him mingling with smells of
fish and petrol. Already a flotilla boats cruised back and
forth between Mishima island and the city. The city’s
harbor, of course, dwarfed that of his island, and teemed
with brooding factories and their complicated fixtures,
each a metallic octopus seen from afar, dipping its tentacles
into the waters and spitting grey clouds from its smokestacks.
Mother
had been saying for quite some time that it was very fortunate
that the bombers had not come here yet. The American air
raids had already ravaged Tokyo, Osaka, and many other cities,
their incendiary bombs reducing countless homes to ash and
cinders, often with families still inside. Elder Brother
muttered that it was only a matter of time until they came
here, but Mother forbade him to speak of his pessimistic
opinions in the house. Younger Brother did not like to think
about the possibility of bombing raids, and as he set off
for school again, his thoughts flew to Elder Brother across
the bay, working on civil defense preparations in the city.
He imagined Elder Brother in a line of proud, sweating workers,
widening the streets and reinforcing old wooden buildings.
Lost
in his reverie, he did not notice the group of other boys
near the school building. He nearly bumped into the biggest
of them, and when he began to form an apologetic bow, he
got a punch in the stomach for his concern. The boy laughed
and pointed to his friends as Younger Brother doubled up
in pain. Younger Brother was still bent over, fighting for
breath, when the other boys noticed the silvery glint of
a plane in the shimmering August sky.
“Look,
Look,” they shouted. They jumped around, pointing
and exclaiming, their fresh black uniforms making them look
like puppets dancing for children. They forgot Younger Brother
as they followed the plane with their outstretched index
fingers, and air raid klaxons began to scream from across
the water of the bay.
“It’s
American, but just a recon plane,” said the biggest
boy, with an authoritative air. “You can tell because
there’s only one,” he added.
The
plane was too high for anti aircraft to reach, and it passed
over the city and continued into the sky with a low buzz,
like a honeybee heading for a distant garden, disappearing
at last in the heat of a summer sky.
The
‘all clear’ signal sounded from across the bay,
and Younger Brother knew there were scores of people emerging
from their shelters of straw and wood. His family had done
the same many times, though Elder Brother hinted darkly
that their flimsy shelter would be of no help if bombs exploded
near their house. Mishima had no strategic importance, no
factories or barracks, but a wayward bomb could still wreak
havoc, and Younger Brother shared the palpable sense of
relief that engulfed the city in the wake of the ‘all-clear’,
despite the pain and humiliation he felt from the other
boys’ abuse.
The
other boys turned on Younger Brother again now, remembering
their sport now that the spectacle of impending danger had
passed. They were rounding on him again when Younger Brother
noticed a second gleam, higher in the sky than the last.
It was another plane, and as it passed, a single white parachute
spread open beneath it, fluttering slowly down like a wounded
moth.
Younger
Brother pointed to it, began to form words to draw their
attention away from himself, when there was a flash like
worlds splitting open.
It rushed across the bay and seemed to sear an image of
the white parachute against the deep blue sky into his retinas.
It made him cry out in shock and fear and drop to his knees.
An instant and an eternity passed and the world swam before
him in torrents of blinding brilliance and abysmal dark.
Suddenly, an unseen force bowled him over like a falling
leaf in a strong breeze, and he tumbled backwards, feeling
the weight of another boy crash on top of him.
A
moment later, his sight began to return. It came back slowly
and allowed him to see what his world had become. He shifted
the other boy’s weight off of him and sat up. All
of his tormentors all lay scattered about, unconscious or
unmoving now. He got to his feet. A cloud of fire towered
over the city. It was as if a curtain of flame had been
lowered over everything, and it spat and crackled and raged
like a demon awakened. Younger Brother did not know, but
the heart of a star had been dumped on his city. The fire
he saw was something from the dawn of universes, and he
felt that if he were looking into the eyes of an unforgiving
God, bent only on revenge, he might see a fraction of the
fury he now saw reflected back at him. The noise was unearthly,
as though a cyclone had been stuffed in a tin can as big
as the city and was trying to fight its way out.
Younger
Brother’s mind struggled to gain some foothold in
reality. He thought of Elder Brother, and suddenly knew,
with chilling certainty, that a part of that cyclone of
noise came from the screams of the dying, and he moaned
at the thought that Elder Brother could be among them.
It
did not take long for the cloud of fire to burn itself out,
but by that time the mouth of the river that joined the
bay was choked with the burned and bloating bodies of the
dead. They bobbed in and out with the gentle waves, a grotesque
tide of misery. The city was a no more than heaps of rubble
punctuated by the humps that remained of larger structures.
The ash from the storm of flames coalesced into clouds,
and soon, a black, poisonous rain began to fall. It mingled
with the tears of Younger Brother, and was carried into
the bay, to soak into the bodies of loved ones who would
never again go home. |
