At a roadblock—a construction zone?—he thought he’d lost her. Then he spotted her, stopped by two MPs, their skin so dark that for a moment Masaharu froze. He’d never seen a black person before, and in a district he’d assumed off-limits to them, based on what he’d learned of his Occupiers, their presence was startling, drawing the attention of the other soldiers, whose pale skin suddenly looked delicate, pink and peeled, like boiled shrimp. The crowd around him bunched and murmured. The MPs seized her.
What had she done? Even in his panic, he knew the question was unimportant. Whatever she had or hadn’t done, there would be no recourse. He squinted at the soldiers. They didn’t seem angry, but what did he know about foreigners? He peered at his wife, her small face minuscule now, her tiny expression creased by what he could only guess was fear. The MPs panned the crowd. Taking her arms, they began escorting her down the street. Masaharu plunged into the crowd.
When he saw them again, two white servicemen had staggered into the street. They were shouting at the MPs, their drunken taunts clearing a ring around them. The crowd stiffened. Several weeks ago, a spat like this had escalated into a riot, killing and injuring hundreds of people caught in the melee. The Occupation had since increased patrols, but nobody was reassured. The MPs kept walking. The white servicemen closed in. Masaharu felt his back bloom.
At the first sound of scuffling boots, he began running. The distance was at most fifteen meters, yet he struggled to traverse it; from every doorway, it seemed soldiers were pouring out. He was less than ten meters away when he heard the first exchange of fists, the heavy thwack ricocheting in his chest; the crowd erupted, hooting and jeering. He clawed on, one human wall after another, until he broke into a band of space several meters wide. The MPs were still fighting, their boots corkscrewing the earth, but he couldn’t see his wife. He bobbed and wove, searching the spaces that winked between the men, but there was no sign of her. As he expanded his sightline, he caught a movement, her familiar shape listing as she slipped down an alley. He started after her, only to be blocked by four huffing soldiers who had momentarily united to halt him.
* * *
—
NEVER HAD Masaharu imagined pacing this alley, slick with vomit and urine, looking for his wife. He exited the alley and rounded the corner for the third time. The same MPs, the same line of jittery GIs, the same closed doors. He glanced up at the grandiose sign. The same cheap brushstrokes coaxed up the same cheap waves, one word ostentatiously scrawled across it: OASIS.
At first he failed to connect the dots, his skittering brain unable to grasp anything. Then he did, and for a moment he stood rooted: the MPs; the line of GIs; the alley into which his wife had disappeared. His body shimmered with a new fear. The front doors swung open. He saw the smiling proprietor; he saw the row of women. Their faces were too far for him to make out, but every one of them had the same short bob he’d enjoyed on his wife. The doors slammed shut. Masaharu rushed forward.
Two pairs of hands clamped down on him: the black MPs. “No Japs.” They pointed at the sign. Their faces were neutral, betraying none of the hostilities of a moment ago, but their grip was firm. Masaharu stared at their hands. No doubt the world’s advances had produced the miracle of bringing them—men from opposite ends of the map—together; yet it was also the madness of those advances that spared them no time to understand each other. What means did he have to explain? He pictured their hands on his wife moments ago; a dim light expanded in his brain. Did they know her? Could they have been protecting her? He looked up at their faces, his meager collection of English words scattering like beads. Behind him, the doors opened again. He twisted around, the English word for “wife” suddenly coming to his mouth. He repeated it, pointing and struggling. The GIs laughed. The MPs shook their heads. The doors closed. “Dah-meh,” they told him, emphasizing each syllable, pushing him away.
Back in the street, Masaharu had no idea what to do. If he’d been a different man, he might have risked the back door and stormed the facility, stripping the curtains to all the cubicles until he found her, sweat-smeared and humiliated. But Masaharu was not a hysterical man; even now, a part of him expected her to emerge, her face lifting with surprise before curling, guessing at his fears. He couldn’t imagine her spread on the bedding, her thin body mounted and speared like a pig.
Circling the streets, Masaharu returned again and again to check the alley and the doors. The shoulder-length bob, the new Sunday hours—why hadn’t he seen it? He pictured the requisitioned building, the barbed-wire fence, the armed checkpoint to which he’d accompanied her on the first day of her typing job. It had angered him then that they’d barred his way; now he was sour with the irony. Unlike Tomita, he’d banked on Japan’s defeat. Every year another year closer to Seiji’s conscription, he’d wished for a different life. When the bombings began, Masaharu, if briefly, felt a fizz of hope. It seemed possible that his son, too old to be evacuated to the countryside, might still escape the draft. He never imagined Seiji, so close to the war’s end, disappearing.
Looking about the squalid glitter, Masaharu marveled at the world, its history of sanctioned violence that insisted on dividing the victorious from the defeated. For centuries, men, first in the name of blood, then in the name of national interest, had done this: plunder and rape, decimating whole continents as if it were their noble right. Now there were planes and bombs rumored to vanish entire cities—how could they go on? He pictured the burning streets, the half-charred bodies, all the pyres he’d lit. In every corner of the world, someone was still doing as he’d done—grieving all that the greed of men, his own country’s too, had helped lay waste to—and the thought filled him with remorse. He looked at the facility, the ever-growing line, his wife’s body opening to take every inch of it. He couldn’t imagine how he could ever get past it.
* * *
—
IT WAS almost midnight by the time he got off the train and walked the fifteen minutes to the intersection from which he could see their boardinghouse, a single square of light illuminating it. Framed there was his wife, arms on the windowsill, face upturned, as if scrying the stars that were abundant here, unlike in Tokyo, whose spoilt sky showed nothing but a dim smear. But Masaharu knew his wife was merely waiting for him, their best dinner of the week covered by a cloth: the rewards of her labor. Despite himself, his stomach gurgled, and he marveled bitterly at the body’s animal will to survive.
Behind him the Kannon’s hill loomed unrealized in a dark that hovered there as if held by a new curfew. It occurred to him that he could run away and vanish as many were doing, but after everything, disappearing, he knew, would be nothing short of an apostasy.
Passing under their window, he looked up and met his wife’s eyes. There was nothing in them to betray her feelings, but he could feel her agitation, the ripple of worry and perhaps anger competing with her will to spare him the inquisition. He rounded the corner and climbed the metal stairs, his footsteps loud in the chilly air. In less than a month, winter would once again dust these steps, freezing off thousands of the sick and starving, but they would not need to worry.