The Phoenix Tree. Jon Cleary

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      The town was a light industrial one; evidently not an important one, because he saw no evidence of bomb damage. He walked through the factory area on the outskirts, aware more of the soldiers he saw than of the factories and other buildings he passed. There had to be a major military camp around here, but Embury and Irvine had given him no intelligence on that: he had to find his own hurdles and negotiate them. They were not interested in what happened to him before he got to Tokyo, only that he should survive and reach the city.

      He saw very few private trucks or cars and those that were in the town had gas-bags or tanks fitted to their roofs or on the boots. He could not tell whether the people looked well-fed or hungry; as he remembered them, most Japanese had never run to plumpness. Very few were smiling or even relaxed-looking, but he could not remember if they had looked like that in 1929 or even 1937: boys of thirteen and even young men of twenty-one were not sociologically-minded in those days. The world was to be enjoyed, not studied, and the passing parade was only something that impeded one on the way to a movie or a ball-game or a date with a girl. Still, the people in this town, and even the soldiers he passed, did not have the buoyancy he had seen amongst the Americans on the bases at San Diego and Corpus Christi.

      He had no firm idea where the railroad station was, but he knew it must be somewhere on his right. He turned a corner and two soldiers stood in his path. They were both young and had that arrogance that a uniform gives to some men, young and old.

      ‘Where’s the railroad station?’ one of them demanded.

      Each of them was shorter than Okada by at least five inches; they were twin dwarves of aggression, trying to intimidate him by horizontal merger. Though nervous, he wanted to laugh at them; but in Japan, the insult had less currency than in America. Especially so since this was enemy territory. He gestured down the street. ‘I think it’s down that way.’

      ‘You don’t know?’ One of them was the spokesman; the other, shorter one stood quiet. ‘You’re a civilian, you ought to know where your town’s railroad station is.’

      Why don’t you hand me a white feather? Okada thought. ‘I’m a farm worker from out of town. Someone has to grow the food to feed you soldiers.’

      His tone was curter than it should have been; he would have to learn more courtesy. The spokesman looked at his companion, then back at Okada. ‘You ought to have more respect for our uniform.’

      Oh, come off it! Then again he realized he was not at home. ‘I apologize. I was not disrespectful of your uniform.’

      He bowed his head and went to step past the two soldiers. But the shorter of the two, the quiet one, stepped in front of him. He was thin and wizened and had a soul to match; though he did not admit to a soul. He had also been drinking, an indulgence that had kept him quiet up till now. He came out of a fog of saké. ‘Someone as big and healthy as you should be wearing a uniform. Let the women and the old men work the farms.’

      ‘There are no old men on our farm and my mother is too sick to work in the fields. The authorities decided I should stay and work the farm.’

      Okada Wanted to brush the two soldiers out of his way and escape towards the station. Passers-by were looking at them, though so far no crowd had gathered; Okada was grateful for Japanese politeness. Then he saw the two soldiers in helmets coining down the street, long sticks in their right hands; he could smell military police fifty yards away. He began to sweat and hoped it wasn’t showing on his face.

      He decided there was nothing to do but attack: ‘Here come two military police. Perhaps you’d like to call them and have them arrest me? They’d appreciate a drunken soldier calling on them for help.’

      The taller of the two soldiers looked over his shoulder, then grabbed his companion’s arm and hustled him down the street. The half-drunken soldier snapped an obscenity at Okada, but allowed himself to be led away. Okada looked after them, pleased at how his attack had worked; then he turned to walk on and found the two military police coming towards him. One of them held up his stick to bar Okada’s path.

      ‘Were those two soldiers annoying you?’ It was difficult to tell whether the man who had spoken, a corporal, was being courteous or sarcastic.

      ‘They were just asking the way, corporal,’ said Okada. ‘They were not annoying me, not at all.’

      ‘Where are you from? You have a different accent from the people around here.’

      His own accent was middle class and Okada wondered if there was a different system for recruitment of Japanese military police. He decided now was as good a time as any to take the plunge. ‘I am from Saipan. I escaped from there in September.’

      ‘You ran away?’ The corporal was as tall as Okada, met him eye to eye.

      ‘Yes,’ said Okada. ‘I saw ten thousand die for the Emperor, but the Americans weren’t impressed.’

      It was a dangerous statement to make: he was still not thinking Japanese. But the corporal’s expression didn’t change. ‘One doesn’t die to impress the enemy. But maybe you Saipanese think differently. You may find it very difficult back here in the homeland.’

      ‘I do,’ said Okada with heartfelt emphasis.

      Then the corporal unexpectedly smiled. ‘You’ll survive. How is the war going down there?’

      You’re losing it, just as you’re losing it everywhere else. ‘Not well. But all isn’t lost yet.’

      ‘Of course not.’ But the corporal’s smile suggested he might be thinking otherwise. He nodded to his partner and the two of them, acknowledging Okada’s bow of the head with upraised sticks, moved on down the street. Okada, aware of the now not-so-polite stares of the passersby, moved quickly on his way towards the station, which he could now see at the end of the street.

      He had cleared his first hurdle, but it was no more than a low brush fence in what might prove to be a marathon steeplechase, where the hurdles would get higher, would be topped with thorns and have deep ditches on the far side. He remembered a Hearst Metrotone newsreel of the English Grand National and the frightening jumps that the horses had had to negotiate. The horses had had it easy.

      When he got into the station he found it was crowded. A hospital train must have just come and gone; wounded soldiers lay on stretchers in neat rows like packing-house carcases. Civilians would occasionally stop by one or two of the more conscious wounded and say a word, but no fuss was made; Okada could imagine the bright-smiled activity of Red Cross volunteers if these were American wounded coming home. He saw a few medics hovering near the men on the stretchers, but there did not appear to be any doctors. He had heard stories in the field of how Japanese doctors had neglected the wounded, as if the latter had shirked their duty as soldiers, by getting in the way of a bullet or a piece of shrapnel.

      He pushed his way through the crowd, joined a queue at the single ticket office. Twenty minutes passed before he reached the window. He asked for a ticket to Nayora.

      ‘Where’s your pass?’ The clerk was old and tired and had a voice that sounded like a rusty-edged saw.

      Okada had the quick wit not to say ‘What pass?’ He had seen the man in front of him push across a piece of paper, but he had thought it was some fare concession certificate. Now he realized that, for all their thoroughness in briefing him, Embury and the others had missed out on some small details; СКАЧАТЬ