CHAPTER 31

HANA

“Hana! You are so lucky!” Sachiko says after we return to the barracks. I have cradled the violin all the way back across the airfield, careful to watch my step on the broken ground. Even with her precious box of chocolates, she can’t leave me be. “Open it! I want to see!”

“No,” I say, but it’s a whisper. Mariko takes over for me.

“Come on,” I hear her say brightly. “These beds will not change themselves.”

“So stingy!” Sachiko says loudly to one of the other girls. “I would share my chocolates with her, but we can’t even have a look at her little love gift.”

Mariko hisses sharply, and Sachiko falls quiet. For a time, there is only the sound of soft sheets tugged from futon and damp pillowcases dropped to the floor, and then the starchier sound of new sheets being tossed, tucked, and folded into place.

All this time, I stand with the violin in my arms.

At last, Kaori-sensei comes to me. “Here, Hana-san. I will put it in the commander’s office for safekeeping. You may have it back when you go home.” She gives me a sympathetic smile and a nod of approval. Only then do I realize I am inside the barracks. Even without the music of Inoguchi Taro’s violin.

Releasing the black case, now warm from my own body, is like giving away a limb. The blood flows back into my cramped arms. I did not intend to hold it so tight. I shake my fingers until they loosen and flex my elbows. My next breath is filled with the rich scent of dirt and the musk of last night’s sleep. A rough green blanket hits me without warning.

“Good,” Mariko says, smiling. “Take that end and help me. I told the other girls we’d handle the rest.”

That explains the silence, the expansive space beneath the peaked roof. The girls have gone to the river to coo over their gifts and share their swooning stories. There are no clothes to mend or meals to serve. We will go home early today by design. It’s allotment day for our mura—when the trucks carrying rations arrive. Government-sanctioned foods and staples will be sorted and doled out by Mrs. Higashi and the ladies of the neighborhood association. As the town tailor, my mother will receive her few bolts of cloth, and a line of people waving their clothing ration tickets will form on our street, each hoping to claim a few yards of cloth for a new shirt or a pair of lightweight monpé for the coming summer.

With only the two of us in the barracks now, my claustrophobia has faded, rising only when I think about it. I focus on the rough scratch of wool and the smooth coolness of the wooden sleeping platforms as our hands glide down the blankets and under the futon.

“Did you know him?” Mariko asks me on the third bed.

“No more than the others,” I confess. “But . . . yesterday, I heard him playing. I listened, and he knew I was there.”

“I didn’t know we had a real musician among us. Though, I suppose Nakamura-san was making fun of him the other day.”

“Was he?” We finish the last bed and stretch our backs. This is always the worst part, the awful silence between units. If we give ourselves time to think, then we know our young friends are dying, like moths in a flame. So we don’t think. We move. Except for now, the frozen moment between one task and the next. Like a breath caught in the throat. An awareness of being alive. The sound of a young man playing the violin.

“Come on,” I say, mimicking Mariko. “These sheets won’t wash themselves.”

“Let them wait,” Sensei says from the doorway. “The truck is here. These will keep until tomorrow.”

After the laundry has been stored away, I take up the black case again. It rests on my knees softly as the truck takes us back into town.

“Oh! Did you hear?” Sachiko pipes up. I can smell the chocolate on her breath. “Miyakawa-san came back last night! Reiko should tell the story, really. Won’t you, Reiko? No? Well, Miyakawa-san was the one who loved to visit Tomiya Shokudo and was always asking Reiko and her mother and sisters to sing for him. He body-crashed yesterday with the morning flight! The night before, he promised Tomihara-san he would return as a hotaru and said, ‘I will come back at sundown. Please sing “Dōki no Sakura” one last time.’ And just like that, last night a giant firefly flew into the garden and entered the dining room, and Tomihara-san took the girls by the hand and they sang to the firefly. Well, what do you think it did? It hovered in the rafters until they were done, then circled overhead and flew back out into the night! Isn’t that sad? Isn’t it beautiful? I’m sure Reiko could tell it better, but she’s grumpy today, so at least now you know.”

Reiko remains silent, her hands clasped, her eyes distant.

Mariko and I stare at each other across the truck, unblinking, daring each other not to scream at Sachiko for being a gossip. “She can’t help herself,” Mariko says. Sachiko frowns.

“It’s her way,” I say back. I sound so much like Kaori-sensei that we both giggle. Sachiko looks at us with flashing eyes.

“You have no hearts and no respect! I think it’s a wonderful thing!”

We cover our mouths until the giggling subsides. She’s right. But she’s also wrong. It was not her story to tell.

Some of the girls start singing “Dōki no Sakura” then, but I do not join them.

I can only hear the name Inoguchi Taro, and the sound of the silent violin.