The white emperor, the pink barbarian, the Old Lord, this Ka Haku Makua—by whatever name he was called—still, he did not appear. The men sat in their hunched positions, each against his own warehouse wall. Nishikaichi, himself hunched now, his military bearing softening under the heat, wondered if this was a good or a bad thing. After the adrenaline of the initial crash, alertness had given way to bafflement at how to proceed. He had never made his own decisions before, he realized. Always, he had been guided: by his parents, his military superiors, the Senjinkun. He was given orders and he followed them with the exactness of a tailor, as if the orders were measurements and he the scissors with which to cut a fine coat; for this he was considered a good Japanese man and a gifted pilot. But now he was on his own. What would he do if the pink barbarian, this White Emperor Robinson-san, arrived and knew all about Pearl Harbor? If he was combative and cruel, unlike these islanders? Nishikaichi accepted, even welcomed, death, but not the capture of his plane and papers. There was little time now: he must convince the Japanese man to destroy the plane and papers with or even without him. He would need the nervous man’s help, no matter what, that one thing was clear.
The pilot watched his hosts from half-closed lids. For a while he focused on the native man, wondering where he might have hidden the papers, how to effect their return without arousing more ire or suspicion. It seemed useless to keep insisting directly, because the man acted as he thought his emperor would want him to, and a strange intruder would not change that. Nishikaichi understood, even admired this. He also admired the way the man smiled so heartily, despite his awful teeth, and moved with compressed excitement, as if the world was constantly new and interesting to him. True, he spoke too much, thought Nishikaichi, but the melody of his strange language was beautiful, and brought to mind birds soaring on the flanks of Mount Fuji, or sometimes, when the man was really excited, the pillowy building of a thunder cloud. Nishikaichi didn’t need to know the words. The curve and bend of them, the way they swung in the air, reminded him of haiku. It was, he thought, close to the sound of his love for the fishmonger’s daughter, if he dared to make that sound out loud: lyrical, joyous, never ending.
Finally Nishikaichi flickered his eyes to the Japanese man. Harada-san was larger than anyone he knew back home, as if American excesses puffed and elongated a normal Asian body. The man had broad shoulders and long fingers which, Nishikaichi noticed, held his legs as if he worried they would collapse into a pile of bones and tendons otherwise. At first glance he had the lifted chin and direct gaze of a military man, but his habit of squeezing his hands together nervously betrayed the fact that he was not a soldier. Nishikaichi puzzled over what his next move would be with Harada-san. He knew that he couldn’t get the papers back without some assistance. Worse, without gasoline on the island, it would be difficult to destroy his plane. He needed him, and it was best if he could convince Harada-san that this need was reciprocal. He had clearly become unnerved when Nishikaichi had convincingly agreed that the Japanese military were coming, and this, thought Nishikaichi, was good. Disorienting a man was the first step toward his pliability, something Nishikaichi knew from the old boastings of a drunken military officer who, with enough rice wine, would tell lengthy and gruesome anecdotes of interrogations. Nishikaichi had never liked these stories and dismissed the most horrific of them as tall tales, impossible, against the tenets of Bushido, not the doings of the emperor’s people. Still, he’d gleaned that a man’s greatest vulnerability was his mind, not his body. Hadn’t he been overwhelmed by it himself as he tried to sacrifice his plane and himself to the ocean? He winced again at the memory. If he had acted like a true son of Japan, he would not be here, in a hot, dark warehouse, with a slice of the brilliant day bleeding in through a tilted wooden door, and his eyes fixed on that opening as if it were a last meal, or the doorway through which the Son of Heaven himself would step. He would instead be dead, and the letter announcing this sacrifice would soon be opened slowly by his parents, and read with commingled joy and sadness.
-Harada-san, he called out, his voice raspy.
Yoshio did not move.
-Harada-san, he said more loudly.
The man’s head jerked up as if he had been stung by a bee. Howard looked over with interest.
-Harada-san, my bladder is bursting.
Yoshio blinked as if not understanding.
-I have to pee, repeated the pilot.
Still, Yoshio did not react.
-Should I go out on my own?
-No, no, said Yoshio hurriedly. He put up his hand and began to speak to Howard.
-You come, interrupted the pilot. We need to talk. About the soldiers.
Howard was beginning to rise, brushing off his denim pants, pulling his sweated shirt from his chest.
-I know you’re acting calm on the outside for the sake of your neighbor here, insisted the pilot. But inside you’re shaking because you know the terribleness of what I’m saying. Our soldiers are angry and determined. It’s time to talk, really.
Howard was stretching his arms.
-I can make sure that the commander knows—
Yoshio scrambled to his own feet suddenly.
-Be quiet, he said to the pilot sharply. Then he addressed Howard, who shrugged and sat back down against the wall.
-Well, make sure he has a good, long piss. And try to get him to take off that gosh-darn flight suit, Mr. Harada. I don’t want a dead guest when the Old Lord arrives.
Yoshio flinched at the word “dead” and then forced himself to smile.
-A good piss it’ll be, Mr. Kaleohano, he said.
They walked to the scrub behind the beach and stood in silence. The pilot unzipped the angulated fly of his flight suit and Yoshio took a few steps back. The pilot urinated without a word, letting Yoshio’s tension build, in no hurry to speak first. Feeling the man’s anxious presence just a few feet away, he casually cased his surroundings in full, looking one way and the other, taking in the beach in its entirety. When he was done he zipped and turned, surveying the inland flats. Scrubby trees he did not recognize fizzed from hard, red soil. The land rose and fell gently, like a line of easy waves. It was then that the pilot realized he no longer thought of the island as desolate and ugly. The sparse simplicity moved him, the hues of brown against the blue sky lifted his heart. It was, in a distinctly Japanese way, beautiful.
He looked at Yoshio. He bowed slightly.
-Harada-san, you are the elder of us. You know the ways of the world with far more intelligence than I. But I know the ways of the military. Things will go better if you help. There’s a sub looking for me and angry Japanese warriors on the way. I’ll make sure no harm comes to any of you on this island; I can talk to the commanders who land. Should I even tell you what China looked like after we were through with her? No, I won’t, it was a terrible thing.
-If you’ll just get in it and row away quietly, Yoshio responded roughly, I’ll see what I can do about a boat. But I can’t help you with your papers and your plane.
Nishikaichi stared at him.
-Those must be destroyed, he said. You understand. I am a warrior for the emperor and I have a duty. It is my imperial on. Don’t you understand on?
-Then we are at an impasse. Yoshio turned away.
The pilot sighed and shook his head.
-Harada-san, he said. You’re more Japanese than you admit. Your loyalty to your neighbors, your concern for your family. You understand on perfectly. Perhaps you’ll think about this for a while and we’ll talk later. For now, thank you for accompanying me.
He bowed again, nodded solemnly, and without another word began to walk back to the warehouse.
-And what of your submarine, Nishikaichi-san? Yoshio called out.
Nishikaichi stopped.
-She’ll come.
-Then you won’t need me.
-But then it will be too late for the island. If you don’t help me now…
The pilot let the sentence trail off.
Yoshio shook his head, and followed the pilot.