Read Online Fire Flowers by Ben Byrne - Free Book Online Page A

I remembered her from the bus on the first day—she’d worn a yellow dress with a bow in her hair and had stared at the floor with her hands clasped tight. Mrs. Abe had forgotten to tell her to go home and the Americans had just kept on coming for hours on end. She was only seventeen. Later on that night she threw herself under a train at Omori.
    I began to wonder if I might do the same. The rails stretched out at the station at night, glittery and smooth, and I wondered whether it would hurt much, or whether you would faint right away before the wheels went over you . . .
    Michiko was already home when I got back that evening. She had a look of glee on her face as she knelt down and took my hands in hers.
    â€œSatsuko,” she said. “You’ll never guess, but I’ve fixed it.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I stammered.
    She clutched my hands. “I’ve fixed it so that we don’t ever have to go back to the Palace!”
    I stared at her in disbelief. “Please say it’s true, Michiko,” I moaned. “Please don’t say it’s one of your jokes.”
    â€œListen,” she said. “I spoke with that fat pig of a boss and he’s agreed to transfer us to another comfort station. It’s a high-class place, up on the Ginza. Reserved for American officers.”
    My heart sank.
Another comfort station.
    â€œWill that really make such a difference, Michiko?” I asked. “Really?”
    She stared at me. “Are you mad? Of course it will. We won’t have to go with those common types any more. We’ll be just like real consorts now, Satsuko.”
    She squeezed my hand, and I saw the old starstruck look in her eyes.
    â€œModern-day Okichis!” she whispered.
    Â 
    Jeeps were driving up and down the Ginza, taxis going past with acrid smoke pouring from their charcoal-run engines.
    American soldiers and sailors strode along the street in wide groups, and I flinched as one raised his cap to me. His friends all guffawed, and he held out his palms to them in offended complaint.
    We hunted about for the address up near the tall, sooty shopfront of the Matsuzakaya department store. The window were shuttered now and the doors barred. I felt a stab of guilt. My mother had brought me here four years ago, on my sixteenth birthday, to buy my first real kimono. It was woven from beautiful green silk, embroidered with golden peonies. I’d had to sell the kimono to buy rice back in June.
    Next door to the Matsuzakaya was a low, white building that had clearly once been a communal bomb shelter. A large sign hung outside, English words freshly painted in pink and white.
    â€œThere it is, Satsuko!”
    Michiko traced the letters in the air with her finger. “Oasis—of—Ginza,” she pronounced. “We’re here!”
    Down a flight of dingy steps, the underground shelter had been transformed into a cheap cabaret. There was a little wooden stage and a small dance floor with chairs and tables set off to one side. Red streamers and paper lanterns adorned the cracked earthen walls, American and British flags tacked up at jaunty angles.
    â€œVery nice,” said Michiko, nodding approvingly. A scratchy jazz record was playing on the gramophone, and a very tall and solemn-looking American man was turning slowly around in the middle of the room. A tiny girl appeared, clinging onto him—she could barely clasp her arms around his back.
    Mr. Shiga’s office was an old storage cupboard piled high with buckets. As we stepped inside, he looked at us haughtily over the rims of his spectacles, and told us how lucky we both were.
    â€œOnly the best kind of girls get to work here,” he said. “This place has got class.” He coughed heavily and spat into his handkerchief. “So you’d better keep all our foreign guests happy. And you’re not just here to spread your legs, either.”
    Aside from the usual