Free Fireflies by Ben Byrne Page A

mulled this over for a few moments.
    â€œWell,” I remarked, philosophically. “The emperor himself has told us that we must endure the unendurable, after all.”
    I politely inquired whether Nakamura was still producing illustrations for Manga . He gave a ghastly grin, showing many broken teeth, and called to Mrs. Shimamura to pour us two glasses of the house spirit, in order to welcome me home. I thanked him politely and poured the drink into my mouth.
    For a moment, I thought my throat was going to explode. I somehow managed to swallow the poisonous stuff, and promptly felt as if my eyes were bleeding. I tugged at Nakamura’s sleeve to see what he was drawing. He tried to hide the pad, but I gripped hold of it until the paper tore.
    My, my. What an evolution. No foreign barbarians here: instead, a Japanese soldier (who bore a remarkable likeness to Nakamura himself) bowing down in thanks to a titanic American with a colossal pair of scissors, who was triumphantly snipping the man free of the chains that tied him to a pile of tanks and bombs. I laughed long and hard at this, and told Mrs. Shimamura that we’d better have two more glasses of her awful liquor to celebrate Nakamura-san’s new career. I banged my glass against his.
    â€œWell, Nakamura,” I said, “‘ À l’oeuvre on reconnaît l’artisan .” I poured the horrid stuff into my throat, and instantly slid from the chair.
    ~ ~ ~
    Painful waves beat relentlessly against the quick of my brain. A sensation of helplessness — paralysis.
    Someone was pounding on the door. I was no longer in a stockade cell on a poisonous island, I realized, nor in the dark bowels of an oceangoing ship. I was somewhere I knew well, somewhere as intimately familiar as the womb. Slowly, it dawned on me, with exquisite relief. The room above Mrs. Shimamura’s shop, reserved for customers to sleep off their night’s excesses. The banging came again, and my panic rose as the door opened.
    Mrs. Shimamura poked her head through the door.
    â€œTime to go, sensei. I’ve laid out your breakfast.”
    The thought of the crowds swelling around Tokyo Station stabbed my heart with fear.
    â€œObasan, perhaps I could ask you . . . ”
    â€œDon’t be a pain, sensei —”
    â€œPlease, obasan —”
    Disgusted with myself, I broke into sobs. “For just a few days, obasan. Please. I beg you.”
    Mrs. Shimamura’s face crinkled as I knelt before her. She hesitated for a moment. I sensed victory.
    Kind and noble obasan. She would let me stay — for just a few days. I was expected to carry out several duties in the bar. I was not expected to sit around the place pickling myself in saké lees.
    I carried on kneeling in gratitude as she strode from the room, then sunk back into the soft blankets and closed my eyes.
    I thought of the crowds at the station, the waves of refugees casting about and crashing against each other. They were far away now. Here, I was safe, hidden upon my lifeboat, bobbing about on a quiet inland sea. The sky was flowing with the stars of the Milky Way.
    ~ ~ ~
    The artists who had survived the war were emerging now from the cracks, crawling like valiant cockroaches to the refuge of Mrs. Shimamura’s saloon. Every night, around the hour of the dog, the bar filled up with the various writers, journalists, and assorted poets I had known before the war, as well as the usual students and hangers-on.
    My greatest need now was for money. I was one of the few of them who had no private income of my own. I discussed the matter with Nakamura and Mrs. Shimamura one afternoon. What was the role of a writer in a world that had collapsed so entirely? How should he respond to such devastation? And how, I thought gloomily, was he ever to scratch a living? Every crevice had been swept already, it seemed, the dust rolled out into dough.
    The following morning in Kanda, I was browsing Mr.