9.Map of Storms - Duncan McGibbon (13 inch ebook reader txt) 📗

/> and black kimono,
slim as an aspen,
her long necked head
was crowned
with bobbed black hair
and three exquisite combs
one red and two,
on either temple, white.
Her eyes were bright,
though her lips wer pale.

August Twelfth

Going back to the hospital I took a short cut. The bridge over Urakami had broken and I could not cross. As I crossed by a dislodged girder I saw the bodies of people in the water. They must have gone to the river to drink. They were all naked, as if stripped of their clothes. There were corpses crowded by the river’s edge. When I got there the Professor’s condition had worsened. He wanted to tell me about his father as if it was an urgent message.

"She told him You are a giant of a man
and I am small in every part"
She said, remembering how his boots
had scuffed the dense floor.
Passing them long and shiny over the bed
she made love vigorously
and he loved her smooth firm muscular legs.”

I was saddened that this was the only matter he could discuss. The Professor was known to be a sensuous man and had many affairs.

The house we lived in was four kilometers northwest of the hypocentre from which it was hidden by a hill. From the porch you could see a paddy field, a little stream in a valley opposite the hill. At the moment of the explosion. I was in my office in the university hospital.My youngest son must have been at a lecture in the medical school. my mother was working in thevestibule. My wife, Sumiko was in the tatami room.Choko and Reiko were sitting on th porch chatting with their legs dangling over the edge.


My son lies in the tatami room. His face is growing darker, but his wounds are second degree without pus. He wants me to go on reading.

One day
when he came
back from
the woods,
Kutaro said,
"You work all day
in the paddy fields
and the woods
and all you get
is a handful of rice
and an armload
of timber,
I am a good weaver,
stay at home
and let me
earn us a living
She took down
her bundle,
painfully,
for her shoulder
often hurt her
and sent
Chutaro
to town to
buy a loom.”

August Thirteenth

Back in the University, the Professor’s condition caused us alarm. He was convulsing. I gave him an injection. It was anti- tetanus serum. I noticed the nurses used glowing charcoal and a tin of boiling water to sterilise it. I gave half intravenously and half subcutaneously. If anything it made him more delirious.

She was the one who asked
"Can I help in any way"
realising he was a spy.

“I have been here since daybreak.”

At home that night my son is breathing heavily.
I read though I do not know whether he hears me or not.

When Chutaro
brought these
things back from town,
Kamachi wove
from morning
until the evening
This she did for
three long years
and grew pale,
and thin, wan,
wearied and limp
with the feat,
on the last day
of the third year,

Faithful Komachi
carried down the cloth…

I tiptoe out of the room.

August Fourteenth

The professor continuously
requests liquor.

Do you know that rogue
wrote cheques on the Service Organ's
"plot fund" and sent her to learn English
He could tell by the wanton
unfocused look in her eyes
that he was not her only lover.

My son’s lower parts escaped injury but with a sharp demarcation between his burnt back and his legs. He is getting no better. In a low hoarse voice he apologises for letting me down. I tell him not to worry. He smiles and whispers “Komachi.”

“One evening,
at the end of the third year
she carried down
a tinted length of cloth
from the attic.
Chutaro and
his parents
were astounded
yet Kumachi
could hardly stand,
so tired in fact
that she had
to lie down.”

It wearies him to listen. Have I lost both my sons?

August Fifteenth

The direction of the wind has changed. A fresh breeze blows up the mountain. The terrain was full of wounded trying to shelter from the shower. In the konan south garden, I came acroos a man with a gash from a Nihonto blade. It seems he had been involved in a row about rice rations. Today the police were trying to move us on, as they said the Americans had
landed. I had to treat him.Then I made my way to the university.

The professor was dying. His face was dark red. This did not stop him going on.

It was that professor
Itagake, of house ghosts.
who summoned him to Muckden,
all he could think of brooding on dismissal for fraud
on the luxurious train.
"We want to use the boy emperor
as a puppet head of state in Manchukuo:
a facade of independence” he later explained
to Tanaka in the ante room at the palace.
“Buy me Chinese agitators
to distract the league from Manchukuo.”

At home my son was causing concern to my daughter and my family. His burn wounds are giving out a black secretion. He was anxious to know his family was there. I took the book and read to the whole family.

In a weak voice she asked
Chutaro for her
leather purse
and took two yen
from it.
"Go now and
don't stop travelling
until
you have spent
both these coins. Only
then sell the cloth.
In that way
you will get
the most money."
Chutaro was sorry
to leave
his ill wife.
He journeyed
for a long time,
but had not
even spent
the first coin
when he showed
the cloth
in a distant market.
"It is as
warm
as a living thing"
the merchant
exclaimed
but Chutaro
made his excuses
and went on his way.
In the next town
he was offered
four thousand
pieces of gold,
but he still had
one gold piece left
At the next town
a merchant offered
eight thousand pieces
At the next
he was greeted
by servants who
took him
to their master
who examined the cloth
and offered 10,000.
Chataro refused,
then the merchant
offered 20.000.
He still had
one piece left
Yet this time
Chutaro gave in
and returned
from the town
burdened
with the weight
of gold

My daughers began to cry. I stopped them so as not to upset the eldest son.

August Sixteenth

I took the splintered, trash-scattered path through ruined buildings that was usual commuter journey to my work. Inside I treated a nurse who had a gash on her face. I sutured it carefully. Then I went into the Professor’s room. I knew the Professor was a drinker. I wanted to reduce his pain, but there had been more thefts from the clinic and there was no more morphene. I gave him diluted alcohol, but he spasmed when he drank it. The same happened when I used a tube. He pulled it out. “Thanks, but it won’t work. I must tell you this.”

Given money to clear his debts
Tanaka gave the girl six thousand dollars
she went into the night
disguised as a thug half
to bribe the Chinese working for
the Three Friends Factory
and half to her favourite street gang.

In the narrow. misty creek,
two Nichiren priests and three disciples
of the Tayoko Buddhist temple
banging gongs and shouting the Sutra
when they were set upon by thugs.
So badly that the priests died.

At home, my son lay in a weaker state. He was sorry to have died so young. He told me if he was reincarnated he would be avenged on the Americans. In time of war the death of civilians must be seen as like that of soldiers.

I read on and he smiled.

After a difficult journey
he was welcomed
by Komachi and showed her
a large coffer.
In there are
20,000 pieces of gold
I have counted
every one of them."
The old couple
were astounded
at the sum
Kumachi
looked disappointed
and said
"You still had
one gold piece
before you
sold the cloth?"
If you h d
spent it first,
you would have
had more
Then she shrugged
her shoulders
and said
"Oh well it's enough
to last us for ever"

Chutaro soon
became a rich merchant
with a big house in Nagasaki.
Komachi looked after
the old couple
and Chutaro's son.
Both worked hard
and lived happily
Yet the old mother
kept nagging Komachi
"If you were a good wife
you would weave
another length of cloth,"
but Komachi was
fearful,
"We do not need
the money"
"You’re idle, that's all”
snapped her mother-in-law.
At length,
Komachi agreed,
though Chutaro
tried to disuade her.

Again the loom was set up,
"Three years shall
pass said Kamachi,
"leave me when I weave
And so every day,
she went to the attic
where the loom
had been set up
carefully
closed the door
and stayed
until nightfall
Immediately
her face
became haggard
her body thin
and her cheeks pale

The old woman
accused her of
starving on purpose
"No other weaver
makes such
a mystery of it"

One summer morning
she crept up the stairs
to the room
from which
the sound of the loom
could be heard
and knelt at the door.
quietly
she slid it back ,
through
the crack
she could see the loom.
A great white crane
stood before it
plucking feathers
from its beautiful arms
as it wove.
The crane
spotted the old woman
uttered a cry of pain
and flew out of the window.
He saw a brilliant flash.

Chutaro heard the cry
and came running
and that evening
laid a white crane in
a deep grave in the garden.

I do not know at what point my son died, but it was not long after noon, when his voice weakened and his cyanitic face grew completely still. A neighbour let me cremate his body on a nearby hill. An orderly carried his body on his back. As he burned, I grieved for his short life.

August Seventeenth

I kept the Professor under close observation. He was breathing irregularly and eventually died that evening. It seems he had stood to say goodbye to his staff, then collapsed. An orderly told me how the dying man had asked him to write down the nonsense he was ranting about.

A Japanese attack
burnt down the factory
when the Chinese parties arrived.