The Future Is Japanese (33 page)

I feel like a cannibal when I say it, but the pull of the forbidden and the secret is way too strong. Although it won’t be secret for long—I will probably blog about it, because this is just how it is.

“Sure,” says Yumi, the old woman my father keeps calling “Aunt” even though the degree of their relatedness is nowhere that close. “Would you like some
toro
too?”

The word is unfamiliar to me, but my father tenses and lights up. “It’s legal here?”

Then I remember that toro is the belly of a kind of tuna, bluefin, now a globally protected species with even the Japanese unable to harvest it. When the law first went into effect, Mom and I were already living in the US, and her decision to give up national affectations apparently included tuna as well—at least, I don’t remember her saying much about it.

“Yes,” his dubious aunt says. “It’s farm-grown.”

My father sighs. “Does it taste the same?”

“You’ll see,” Aunt Yumi says slyly.

Sakhalin is severe and beautiful, and I take picture after picture every day: steaming ground and rounded hills, evidence of silent geothermal activity everywhere. In fact, Russians are building a power station nearby, run entirely on geothermal power. When it is finished, it’ll supply power to fully one quarter of Sakhalin. I take notes for my blog. My father leaves in the morning—on business, he tells me very seriously. Our relatives have jobs and things to do, so I’m left to entertain myself.

I spend my days wandering about taking pictures and speculating about my father’s secret mission. Perhaps, I think, the fisherman was killed as revenge for a dead whale. Or maybe he was not a fisherman but an industrial spy, trying to find out secrets of geothermal technology—although I’m guessing it’s not like nuclear power, and there’re probably not many secrets. Still, it is fun to pretend.

I return home by supper, which takes place about eight o’clock, just as the sun is beginning to set. I forget how long summer nights are so far north, and even now they’re dwindling. For supper, we eat rice, steaming in round bowls, and dumplings, and thin slices of locally grown toro. My father loves it, clearly, even though he does say that it’s not the same as wild-caught fish. But he puts it away as if his life depends on it. I try not to think of bioaccumulation as I eat it too—and it is delicious.

The whale proves to be a disappointment though: it turns gray when cooked and smells sour, and it tastes like fish but has a confusing beef texture to it. It tastes like the ocean tinged with blood. It tastes like sin.

I call my mom three days in because she is probably wondering why I haven’t emailed her. Roaming charges here are ridiculous, but I can afford a phone call, so I do.

“Sakhalin?” she says. “Have you heard about the whale?”

It’s as if she can see my soul, and I blanch and feel grateful that there’s no one but yellow larches and the pale, lemon meringue sun to see me here. “What whale?

“The one that Japanese whaling ship harpooned off the coast. They said it was the last representative of the species—what was it, a sperm whale?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I haven’t heard—I can’t read the newspapers, they’re all in Russian.”

“Everyone’s talking about that,” she says. “Be careful.”

I hang up, and my stomach feels hollow. I cannot understand how they manage to protect tuna and not whales, and familiar rationalizations pop up: whales are the only source of whale oil, and there are many species of tuna, and whaling is traditional, and I cannot understand it at all.

That night, after dinner, I tug at my dad’s arm as if I were a child, and he looks up at me as if startled from slumber. Our hosts’ house is small but somehow it feels spacious, with such small, spare furniture and a tiny TV permanently tuned to some backwater Japanese channel—the only one that reaches all the way here into the Russian territory. It seems to air mostly variety shows and an occasional vintage eating contest. I try not to develop too much affection for Kobayashi.

“What’s the matter?” he asks.

“I want to go for a walk,” I say. “Come with me.”

He does, and we stroll along the main street, a dirt path already frozen—it freezes after dark but thaws again in the morning—flanked by rows of the ubiquitous larches, to the shore. The oceanic susurrus is ever present, and I grow oblivious to it and then aware again all the way from the village.

There are flashlights bouncing along the shore and disappearing around the bend one by one by one. “Have you found anything?” I say, watching the disembodied lights. “About the dead fisherman?”

My father shakes his head. “Even the Japanese don’t know, and the Russians wouldn’t even speak to me. There are rumors of another Japanese repatriation, and everyone knows better than to say anything. Even if they know nothing and have nothing to hide.”

“It’s about the Kurils?” I ask.

“It’s … it’s hard to explain. They used to be ours, and after the war … they weren’t won, see. They were a toy your parents gave away to punish you. No one wants to be treated like a child.”

“Do you think we’ll be leaving soon?”

“Yumi doesn’t want me to go. And she wants me to tell her that it’ll be okay.”

“Just tell her that Japan is a thousand times better than this backwater.” As I say it, I realize it’s stupid because there is no better or worse when it comes to things like this; I too might think that Japan is better, but New Jersey is where it’s at.

“Let’s see what they’re doing there,” my father says diplomatically. “I think this is where they have those tuna pens.”

The lights have all disappeared and it’s growing darker, and the moon is full and is reflected in the oily black water. “Russians call it the moon road.” My father points at the ladder of moonlight running across the lazily sloshing ocean.

“Do they raise tuna like this in Japan?” I ask.

He nods. “It’s not the same though. Young people like it, but those who remember the real thing … everything is different.”

“You like the toro here.”

He smiles. “Here, I can pretend to be something else.”

We round the bend, and the moon road breaks into crescents and vortices of light, churning. We come upon the same groups of fishermen as before, and the one who speaks English smiles at me.

“Late walk,” he says.

“This is my father,” I say, and they shake hands gingerly. Other men watch, neither interested nor impatient.

“You’re working late,” my father says politely.

“It’s beautiful at night.” The man points at the churning water and follows his gesture with the beam of his flashlight. I see bulky dark sides rubbing against each other with a slight metallic whisper, as the enclosure by the shore comes alive with fish—they crowd together, every one at least as long as me, and the sharp ridges of their gill covers flash silver. The beam snatches their reddish eyes as they meet mine, and their maws open with a soft kissing sound as they swallow air. The men toss buckets of small herring at them, and the water boils white. “Have to feed them all the time now, so they get fat enough for winter,” the man says. “Then, we move the pens away from the shore, into the deeper water for the winter. Protect from the storms.”

“Does it get really cold here?” I ask.

He nods. “Very cold. Cold is not bad though. It’s the winter—when you know you’re alone in the world. Here … very alone.”

The dorsal fins of the fish slash the water like knives, drag traces of moonlight behind them. I think of the dead fisherman and whether he knew he was going to die alone. I watch my father watching the jostling fish, his face narrow and suddenly old in the moonlight, and I wonder if he ever expected to find out anything here, or if it was his way of being something else, alone, among the yellow larches when the winter is coming. Most of all, I wonder if I’ll ever manage to forget how this night feels, with thrashing giant fish in the black water and the taste of dead leaves in the moonlight. In my knotted stomach, the last whale begins to sing.

The launch platform was a five-minute walk past the graveyard. Kanaan wondered why a platform was necessary in the first place.

You could fly from just about anywhere as long as you strapped on a glider. Kanaan’s first flight had been off a bluff in the west, and his father’s from atop a stone wall in the east.

Though they’d just finished breakfast, the children had already taken to the skies.

The largest group, in their crimson uniforms, was from Ararat.

The platform here was about the same elevation as Ararat’s summit, so the visiting children must have found the steep drop to be a challenge.

The green-uniformed children from Anyemaqen, who were but blurs in the distance, appeared to be getting used to the current here. There were several instructors accompanying them as the children flew in a steady formation, but Kanaan disapproved of their technique. They were never going to master the current around Everest flying like that.

The children of Everest also visited Anyemaqen and the Matterhorn, but fewer than one in a hundred learned to ride the currents in those parts.

Kanaan looked up.

Puffy cumulus clouds dotted the ultramarine sky.
Maybe now’s my chance
, Kanaan thought.

“Hey down there!”

A figure wearing a sky-colored uniform swooped down from above. Kanaan instantly recognized Domino’s smiling face.

With a slight tug of his hands, the young man applied just the right amount of drag to the white membranous wings stretched between his wrists and ankles and brought himself to a full stop in midair. As effortless as hovering looked, it was a maneuver that only veteran gliders could execute.

“Don’t do it, Kanaan,” said Domino. “Your job is to protect the village. You can think about going up later.”

“Leave me alone. Then
you
go.”

“Not on your life. Being an instructor suits me just fine. I don’t want anything to do with Lascaux’s nonsense about how we were born to fly higher. I just don’t want to lose our best hunter, is all.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Kanaan grimaced in an effort to hide his shock that Domino had read his mind.

Domino dropped his right shoulder, tilted slightly to the right, and glided several meters in that direction.

“I’ll catch you later,” said Domino. “The mornings are just too crowded with students. I know the current here is perfect for lessons and all, but it’s a little annoying.”

And with that, Domino dropped like a stone out of sight.

“Careful you don’t fall in the ocean!” Kanaan shouted and then went back to take in the view before him.

The mountains, shrouded in patchy clouds, resembled mortar bowls set atop cylinders. Seen from above, the mountains measured about a hundred kilometers in diameter. Several settlements were scattered about the emerald green forest; river threads cascaded down, turning into waterfalls at the lips of the bowls. The water glistened like gold in the morning sun, and it was this scene that children liked to draw most at school. Penetrating those waterfalls tumbling into the void below was apparently considered a feat even among the children.

In fact, there had been plans to connect the mountains and waterfalls with a suspension bridge, but they had come to nothing. It was far easier to fly than to build the bridge and traverse the fifty-kilometer distance on foot.

Kanaan went up to the edge of the launch platform and looked down into the ocean, when, suddenly, an old man wearing a silver uniform ascended from below and glided to a halt just three meters above Kanaan’s head. Behind him were several security guards, all of whom Kanaan recognized.

“You scared me,” Kanaan said to Tsukua, the village chief. “Is something the matter?”

“There’s been an intruder.” Tsukua’s silver beard quivered as he spoke. His voice came down upon Kanaan like a proclamation.

“Aron spotted someone during his morning patrol in the graveyard north of the village,” Tsukua continued, pointing over his shoulder at one of the guards. “The intruder slipped into a crevice when Aron tried to approach him. If you find anyone suspicious, you are to notify me immediately.”

“I understand, Chief Tsukua,” Kanaan said, a bit overly formal.

The old man glared. Barking “Let’s go” to the guards behind him, he paddled the air with one swift breaststroke and disappeared into the clouds.

“That makes six,” Kanaan muttered to himself.

He had heard about four through legend, and the fifth had come when he was four years old. Had this intruder come from above like the others?

“Kanaan!” Someone called out from behind.

He recognized the voice without turning around. “What is it, Benes?”

“Are you busy?”

“I was about to go for a glide.”

“Pretty crowded up there today.” The teen girl shifted her gaze upward before Kanaan’s eyes could find hers. Framed by her short-cropped hair, her round eyes sparkled, their brilliance at times obscured by the silver shadows gliding above.

“I hear we had an intruder.”

“From where?”

“From above, of course. Below us is the ocean.”

“The ocean …”

Kanaan detected a change in Benes’s voice when—

“Kanaan, look!”

Benes pointed to a dark patch of sky.

An ominous black swarm descended toward them. The siren from the observatory blared.

“Sky sharks! Get inside!”

The wail of another siren nearly drowned out Kanaan’s voice. The guard in the watchtower had discovered the threat, but too late. The devil worked faster than even the heightened senses of the guards.

Kanaan turned to the long sword affixed to the side of the launch platform. He unchained the sword with the hunter’s key fastened to the tip of his index finger, gripped the hilt and leapt off the platform. In an instant, the thick white mist below filled his field of vision—the ocean.

The guards and adults would protect the children. It was the young man’s job, the hunter’s job, to turn back the threat.

After Kanaan plunged his sword into three of the monsters’ flanks, the villagers joined the aerial battle and soon the sky sharks fell into a retreat.

All told, ten sky sharks went down in a spectacular spray of blood, three escaped, and the rest were captured and sent to the factory for processing. The villagers of Everest would not go hungry for at least five days. Ararat and Anyemaqen would likely ask for a share of the catch, but Chief Tsukua, ever the crafty one, would no doubt ably dodge their requests.

Shortly before noon, Kanaan paid a visit to Old Man Lascaux. Extolled as the greatest hunter before Kanaan’s father’s time, the old man had been furnished with a house in retirement.

“Benes told me,” said the old man. “You are a fine hunter, Kanaan. Took down three sky sharks all by yourself and not a scratch on you. You’re more skilled than your father and I ever were.”

Kanaan shrugged. He didn’t know how else to respond.

“How many did we lose?” the old man asked.

“Eight. None of them children, thankfully.”

“Anyone from the other mountains?”

“Two.”

“They were killed in our airspace. We’ll hear about it later.”

“I know it,” Kanaan replied a bit sullenly.

Lascaux grimaced but quickly regained his usual kindly expression. “Looking at you just now … I see so much of the old man in you.”

“Yeah?” Kanaan quickly changed the subject. “Brought you some lunch.” He took out rations of bread and ham from his satchel and set them on the table.

“I’m much obliged, Kanaan. But this is your share.”

“Forget it. There’s a woman at the factory who always slides me a little extra. Besides, I still have a ton of things I want to ask you.”

“Just like your old man,” said Lascaux, after giving the boy a long look. “Kanaan, don’t you want to go up?”

“… No. Domino was going on about the same thing earlier. Why’re you asking?”

“Because your old man wanted to go. He was about your age when he first attempted it.”

“Not me. Chief Tsukua said there’s nothing up there anyway.”

“That’s because he can’t afford to lose you. Not when you’re finally becoming useful to the village.”

“So I’m finally old enough that they can work me to the bone. That’s understandable, I guess. There’s sky sharks, balloon whales, air octopi, wind spiders—plenty of nasty monsters to fend off and not enough hunters to fight them.”

Then the old man uttered something completely unexpected.

“Just so you know—the only way isn’t up.”

There was a moment’s pause before Kanaan could respond. “What did you say?”

“Thanks for lunch,” said the old man, squeezing the boy’s hand with both hands. “Now go. There’ll be trouble if they find out you’ve been sharing your meals with me.”

“Let’s go.”

Urged on by the instructor’s voice, a tiny uniformed figure leapt off the bluff.

After plummeting halfway down the twenty-meter drop, the student spread both arms. The membranous wings gave a bit against the force of the wind. After falling another five meters, the figure began to rise with the instructor trailing behind.

They were not alone.

One after the next, students accompanied by their instructors jumped off the edge of the bluff toward the one-kilometer-wide crater below. Although all of the children were trained at this site, the shadows soaring the skies now were mostly those of adults. It was evidence of how few children there were in the village.

Kanaan let out a sigh and lay down in the grass. This was Kanaan’s favorite place to go for a little peace and quiet.

The ultramarine sky filled his vision. Soon it would take on a purple tint, and the world would be shrouded in darkness with only the stars flickering in protest.

A swirl of emotions welled up inside Kanaan.

That’s where I want to go.

I want to know what lies beyond that blue sky.

Even if it turns out there’s nothing.

Memories of his father crowded in on him.

Kanaan’s father had been a hunter; he’d been lauded as having no equal in the region. He had retired after destroying both wings in a deadly fight against a swarm of sky sharks. The village, however, did not consider his past achievements when distributing rations. The family managed to eke out a living from the meager pay Kanaan’s mother earned at the factory and from the discreet support of fellow hunters.

A year after his retirement—the morning after Kanaan’s first flight—his father disappeared.

“Your father was a weak man.”

Kanaan recalled the words of his unbending mother.

“That’s why he threw himself in the ocean.”

“No,” said Kanaan. “Father went up to heaven.”

“How would a child like you know that?” his mother scoffed.

Kanaan explained.

Years ago—the night six houses near the southern ridge had been swept up into the void—Kanaan had watched his father by the fireplace listening to the wind howl.

“A good wind,” his father had said. “How I’ve longed to be swept up in that wind. It is a wind that goes up to heaven. The villagers swept away in that current have all glimpsed heaven. I couldn’t attempt it when I was a hunter. The village and your mother and you have no use for me now, and for that, I am glad. Now I am free to go.”