The Emperor of Any Place (9 page)

I will not repeat what I said to it. I used language only soldiers use and never in the company of a lady. But the creature pleaded with me.

“You have it all wrong,” it said, looking at the body at my feet. “It is not really the flesh we crave.”

“Ha!” I said to it. “You expect me to believe that?”

Its head swayed as if the smell of the corpse was making it delirious. “Believe me!” the thing insisted. “It is the
memories
we desire.”

I had never heard of such a thing, and it brought me up short.

“Their memories?”

All the time, the
jikininki
waggled its wretched clawed hands close to its mouth as if it was wafting the odor of the dead man toward its shattered nose, already transporting the rotting flesh to its lipless oral cavity.

“You do not understand,” it said. “You
cannot
understand. We are not the ghosts of the dead, as you think.”

“Then, what are you?”

“The ghosts of those who were never born.”

What a thing to say! But looking at this vile and helpless monster, I could not think that it was trying to trick me.

“That is not what I have heard,” I said.

The fiend threw its arms into the air. “You know
nothing
of us. You know fables and cautionary tales told to children.” It dared to come a step closer, holding up its arms defensively. “We have no memories, you see. Had we lived, we would have memories of our own. But we never lived and so we must depend on the memories of those who have lived.”

You can imagine how startled I was at this odd confession, Hisako.

“So now that you see,” said the
jikininki,
“you will sympathize and share . . . share with us?” Then it crouched and reached out toward the leg of the dead sailor.

I answered by taking a burning stick from the pyre and hurling it at the creature. It hobbled off, hissing and farting and threatening revenge. “You will see,” it cried, its voice like a cattle beast being dragged to slaughter. “You will learn.” It stood twenty yards away in the blowing grass, rubbing its red eyes, moving whenever the smoke blew its way. Then it circled and dared to come toward me once again, upwind. “You wait,” the thing said to me. “I shall eat up your memories when you are gone. All your precious memories shall be mine!”

I lay in my hammock that night thinking of the creature’s threat. The thought of such a thing eating me seemed almost worse than dying. But I was fascinated by what it had said. It was such a strange thought that I had to wonder if there was some morsel of truth to it. Could there be such a thing as the ghosts of those who never had the chance to live? And if so, who were these other ghosts, the ones who hovered near and only wished my company, not to eat me whole for my memories!

I remember I sat up that night in my hammock and stared out into the yard of my encampment. In the dark there was not much to see of the ghost family. The moon picked out the contours of them, two or three, anyway, like patient guards. You will not be surprised to hear me say that this is the strangest of places, Hisako.

The binoculars were a great advantage. I was astonished when I first looked through them at how the world of distance flooded into focus. This was especially true of the island across the water. It was Tinian, I was quite sure, although it was much transformed.

My attention was especially drawn to the north end. The Americans were not wasting any time turning it to their purposes now that they had control. They were busy day and night. Sometimes, when it was very still, I almost thought I could hear the sounds of lorries and graders, the ringing of hammers, the buzzing of industrial machinery. But this is foolish. I could only imagine the sound, a sound I know so well. But the ships that arrived were not concocted by my imagination. Ships came on a regular basis with earthmoving equipment and building materials — more, always more. Many thousands of slaves had been set to the task. This at least was true of what we have heard: slavery in America still exists, and now I could see that it was so with my own eyes through these wonderful glasses.

One night, long after the moon had set, when darkness held me in the deepest reaches of sleep, where there was still a war raging in my bones and in my liver and in my weary brain, another survivor floated onto Kokoro-Jima — this one from the air. I can only say this from hindsight. If I heard the roar of the plane’s engines, the stuttering, and then the whine of too fast a descent, I must have assumed it to be part of the nightmare that I was still in the slow process of escaping. When I try to think about it now, I
must
have heard something. There would have been so much noise: the noise of the jungle screaming its resistance, the earth shaking. There must have been a flash of fire — all part of a great disharmony of noises. But here is the point: the sound of things exploding had become as much a part of me by then as the sound of my own pulse. Did I hear the plane crash? I cannot say for sure, though when I think back, I feel sure that I must have.

This is what I can honestly say that I recall: awaking the next morning to a heavy rainfall and sniffing smoke in the air. Smoke? I sat up enough to see that my cooking station in the compound was thoroughly doused. Indeed, the rain had made a puddle of the fire pit. I sniffed again. Unmistakably smoke.

I stepped outside my hut, hugging myself against the downpour, and scanned the hilltop. Nothing could burn in such conditions. I remember deciding that I would go to my lookout in the coral tree once the rain stopped.

It was mid-September by then, as far as I could reckon, and I had come to think of Kokoro-Jima as my very own island and therefore my responsibility. Perhaps there had been lightning in the night. Dimly I thought I could remember the rumble of thunder. Of course, now I know better, but that morning I recalled thunder. Thunder and lightning made sense. I shuddered and stepped back into my hut. Later I would check.

But the rain persisted and I suppose the smell of smoke must have been washed from the sky. The next day a strong wind wrung the last of it out. So it was several days before I even so much as thought of it again. And it was only the
jikininki
who reminded me.

The rains had passed, but it was overcast. I had gone to the Pond of Sweet Water to fill up an inner tube with potable water, a system I found easier than trying to fill a steel drum and roll it to my hilltop compound. Yes, there were steel drums, some empty and some still filled with oil. Anyway, I could sling the partially filled inner tube over a shoulder, or fill it quite full and roll it along. You see how clever I have become?

I was whistling to myself, walking up the path, when I saw the sambar deer and her youngster grazing not far from the pond. The whistling had gotten their attention. I stopped and waited, and eventually the youth forgot I was there, for he had certainly seen a lot of me. The hind, though, still looked perturbed. Silently, I watched the young one stand on his hind legs to get at some berries growing in a tree. How strong the young deer had grown. I knew it must be the same pair, because when they saw me they did not run. The little one even ventured toward me, while his mother looked on warily.

“I must eat,” I told her in my softest voice, “but I will not eat you.” Then after a moment of deliberation, I added very quietly, “If I can help it.”

The hind suddenly reared her head and her eyes grew wild, as if she had understood my murmured words. She ran off, her young one leaping after her. Which is when I saw
jikininki
— three of them — walking in the shadow of the trees. I was used to seeing them by now, but somehow their pasty forms looked even more ghastly against the vivid green. I turned and saw others heading in the same direction into the deeper jungle. That was odd. And it was then that it came back to me: the smoke and the sounds of thunder that might not have been thunder.

I dropped my empty inner tube by the pond, and, having filled only my canteen, I followed the flesh-eaters into the jungle.

I do not like the jungle. Do not like the insects, the incessant buzzing and shrill birdcalls, the dripping closeness. It was like descending into a green ocean; I found it hard to breathe. With my sword I slashed through the underbrush, keeping the
jikininki
in sight. Were they fully ghosts, they might have been able to glide to their destination over the tops of the undergrowth, but they were stuck in this limbo of limbs, and although they made no rustling sound, they were visibly slowed by the thickness of it, whereas I at least had the benefit of a sharp tool to cut my way through. They yowled at me when they saw what I was doing.

“Go back!” they cried in their awful garbled voices. Some even ventured close enough to try to scare me, swiping at me with their claws from ten yards away, but they dared not get too close, let alone touch me. They were helpless to stop me from following them and not clever enough to try to lead me astray.

My own ghostly family, I noticed, always hovered closer when the
jikininki
got too near. I suppose they sought my protection, though I could not see what they had to fear. By then, I was as used to them as a man who has a pet monkey — used to it sitting on his hip or clambering up to his shoulder. In any case, they stayed very near as we made our way down into the dark lowlands of the island.

However decrepit the
jikininki
were, they had stamina! And whatever was enticing them deeper and deeper into the forest was strong.

After a good solid hour, I found my way to an animal path and reached a clearing looking down upon a deeply forested gully. Below me there was a windfall, a place of broken trees. A cyclone might have touched down creating a pathway, a wide swath. But a tingling in my blood suggested otherwise. I examined this scar on the shadowy jungle floor, a couple hundred feet below. The sun peeped out from behind a cloud and glinted off something metallic. That is when I knew for sure.

The
jikininki
started howling as they plunged down the steep hillside, like bandits descending on a village. I scampered down after them into the valley until at last I stood, sweaty and scratched, in the shattered place. A wound in the earth, a runway — but no, the opposite: for at its end, I saw the wreckage of a cargo plane.

“Get away from there!” I screamed at the flesh-eaters who were pawing at the sides of the plane, smacking the steel with their scabrous palms. There were seven or eight of the creatures already there, but others were coming down from the hills on every side, maybe another twenty or more, and, oh, they set up such a chanting and howling. I rushed at them, but whatever they smelled coming from the plane was powerful enough to make them bold. They snarled and hissed at me. I had to beat them back with my sword, leaving hideous weeping wounds in their wretched bodies. But even then they would try to sidle around me, tripping and falling and crawling to try to get at the fuselage and to what must be inside it. They were hungry and enraged.

What could I do to hold them off?

Aha! I had an idea.

I struggled out of my jacket and hung it over the end of my sword. Then I placed the sword between my knees, fumbled for the matchbox in my pocket, lit a match, and then held it to my jacket until it caught fire.

It only smoked at first, and I had to light it again and again, but the reaction was immediate. The flesh-eaters stumbled away. They backed off, whining and rubbing their faces, shouting curses at me. The smoke stung their viscous glowing eyes. They made horrible heaving noises.

“Ours!” they cried. “Ours!” they insisted. “Ours!”

One of them, braver than the others, strode toward me, despite the smoke. It must have been the one who had talked to me weeks earlier.

“All we want is their stories,” it said pleadingly. Its eyes were leaking as if with tears, but that was only the effect of the smoke. I waved the now-flaming coat at the creature and it stumbled away, throwing up its arms in frustration.

Then gradually they stopped bellowing and cursing and simply gave up. They started to leave, one by one, heading back up the gully, as if they had forgotten why they were there in the first place. It was the smoke, I supposed. It not only hurt their eyes; it seemed to obliterate the scent that had brought them here, the scent of death. By the time the jacket was a charred and smoking rag, the last of them was gone. I draped the smoldering remains of the jacket over a dead bush to ward them off. The last wisps of smoke drifted like incense up into the heavy air. They would come back eventually, I knew, but for now I had the wreckage to myself.

The great silver beast lay on its belly, its wheels buried in the forest floor or snapped off — I couldn’t tell. The stench of fire clung to the metal carcass. Surely this was what I smelled on the morning air, when was it — a week ago? The smoke and then the heaviness of the rain must have held down the scent of what was inside, keeping it from the flesh-eaters for a while. Now it was my job to make sure they never got at the corpses. There had to be corpses.

The windows of the cockpit were smashed, but the snub nose had bucked up as it came to a stop, so I could not look inside. One wing had been severed at the elbow, the other snapped completely off.

I shuddered, though it was not cold. I felt the steel side of the plane, moist with dew. It was over sixty feet long.

I heard something. Were they back already? I peered into the jungle, scanning the undergrowth, crouching. I listened under the birdsong for some deeper sound. Then I heard a scrabbling sound from much nearer by. It was coming from the cockpit! Could someone possibly be alive?

My hand clutched the hilt of my sword; the
jikininki
were drawn to the dead. But as I knew so well myself, they were also drawn to the
almost
dead. I slid along the downed plane to look for the hatchway. My eyes were so busy scanning the forest that I tripped, crashing headlong to the ground. I cried out as I fell, and suddenly the air was filled with screaming and flapping, so that I threw my arms over my head, fearing for my life. From the broken cockpit windows, a black flock burst into the steaming jungle air, flying to the nearest branches, cawing like mad, angry to have been disturbed.