The Phoenix Tree. Jon Cleary
stock of himself: there was no point in taking stock of his surroundings, since he couldn’t see any more than thirty yards in any direction. Behind him were the trees and in front of him, across the road, was a dark abyss. Black night, with the stars hidden by cloud, makes a joke of maps.
There was no turning back now: that was the first thing that had to be accepted. Agents dropped into Europe always had, dangerous though it might be, a landline to safety, to Switzerland or Spain or Sweden; it was Irvine who had pointed out the comparison. If he had to run he had virtually nowhere to run to but to continue circling within Japan itself. Rebellious as he had been, he had never practised philosophical resignation; but he had to practise it now. He was here to stay, probably till the end of the war. He shut out the thought that his own death might come first.
Abruptly he was exhausted; the tension of the last few days and hours caught up with him. He shivered with nerves; then the tension slipped out of him as if faucets had been opened in him. He lay back on the frozen ground and fell asleep. He stirred during the night with the cold, but better that than nightmares.
When he woke the clouds had gone and the sun was shining. He lay for a moment, wondering if his body was still alive: from the neck down he felt as if he was inhabiting an iron frame. Then, as if it had been waiting for him to wake, the sun began to warm him; he looked up into it and accepted it as another omen. At last he sat up, feeling like an old man; then got painfully to his feet, walked a few stiff paces and relieved himself. At least, he thought, I can piss like a young man.
He opened suitcase. It contained a change of clothing, a faded blue kimono, a second pair of shoes, a cheap overcoat, and a battered cap: the wardrobe of a working man. There were also a thick wallet of yen notes, a package of sandwiches, a Japanese thermos of coffee, a map and a pair of Japanese binoculars he had picked up on Saipan. While he ate the sandwiches and drank the coffee, he studied the map, comparing its contours with what he could now see of the landscape.
The black abyss of last night on the other side of the road was now a valley; pine trees covered the upper half of the slopes like a green-black shawl, but the lower slopes were terraced. The snow-covered terraces were like giant steps of ice that caught the sun and flung it back up out of the valley in a white glare. A solitary peasant climbed like an ant up through the terraces; far below him stood two oxen, still as dark rocks. The valley was utterly silent and Okada, his mind straying for the moment, wondered where the war was.
When he had finished breakfast he took the parachute and the flying suit and boots further up into the timber. The ground was too hard to break, so he buried the ’chute, the flying gear and his map in the snow; by the time the snow melted he would be long gone and a long way away. Then he went back to the road, put on the overcoat and cap, hung the suitcase over his shoulder by a strap and set off down towards the valley floor. He had a rough idea where he now was, an hour or two’s walk from the railroad that would take him to Tokyo.
By the time he reached the railroad line, following it north along the road that ran beside it, he had come down into the floor of the valley. He had passed through several hamlets and two large villages and no one had stopped him or, in most cases, even glanced at him. His apprehension, which had begun to rise as he had approached the first hamlet, had subsided; the people he had passed took him for one of themselves, he looked no different except that he was a little taller than most of them. Then he was coming into a town, larger than any of the villages he had passed through, and he began to feel apprehensive again. Here there would be police and military personnel; already he had been passed on the road by a dozen or more military vehicles, trucks and cars. He looked for a good omen, but saw none, so settled for some forced optimism, an American trait he had never shown at home.
The town was a light industrial one; evidently not an important one, because he saw no evidence of bomb damage. He walked through the factory area on the outskirts, aware more of the soldiers he saw than of the factories and other buildings he passed. There had to be a major military camp around here, but Embury and Irvine had given him no intelligence on that: he had to find his own hurdles and negotiate them. They were not interested in what happened to him before he got to Tokyo, only that he should survive and reach the city.
He saw very few private trucks or cars and those that were in the town had gas-bags or tanks fitted to their roofs or on the boots. He could not tell whether the people looked well-fed or hungry; as he remembered them, most Japanese had never run to plumpness. Very few were smiling or even relaxed-looking, but he could not remember if they had looked like that in 1929 or even 1937: boys of thirteen and even young men of twenty-one were not sociologically-minded in those days. The world was to be enjoyed, not studied, and the passing parade was only something that impeded one on the way to a movie or a ball-game or a date with a girl. Still, the people in this town, and even the soldiers he passed, did not have the buoyancy he had seen amongst the Americans on the bases at San Diego and Corpus Christi.
He had no firm idea where the railroad station was, but he knew it must be somewhere on his right. He turned a corner and two soldiers stood in his path. They were both young and had that arrogance that a uniform gives to some men, young and old.
‘Where’s the railroad station?’ one of them demanded.
Each of them was shorter than Okada by at least five inches; they were twin dwarves of aggression, trying to intimidate him by horizontal merger. Though nervous, he wanted to laugh at them; but in Japan, the insult had less currency than in America. Especially so since this was enemy territory. He gestured down the street. ‘I think it’s down that way.’
‘You don’t know?’ One of them was the spokesman; the other, shorter one stood quiet. ‘You’re a civilian, you ought to know where your town’s railroad station is.’
Why don’t you hand me a white feather? Okada thought. ‘I’m a farm worker from out of town. Someone has to grow the food to feed you soldiers.’
His tone was curter than it should have been; he would have to learn more courtesy. The spokesman looked at his companion, then back at Okada. ‘You ought to have more respect for our uniform.’
Oh, come off it! Then again he realized he was not at home. ‘I apologize. I was not disrespectful of your uniform.’
He bowed his head and went to step past the two soldiers. But the shorter of the two, the quiet one, stepped in front of him. He was thin and wizened and had a soul to match; though he did not admit to a soul. He had also been drinking, an indulgence that had kept him quiet up till now. He came out of a fog of saké. ‘Someone as big and healthy as you should be wearing a uniform. Let the women and the old men work the farms.’
‘There are no old men on our farm and my mother is too sick to work in the fields. The authorities decided I should stay and work the farm.’
Okada Wanted to brush the two soldiers out of his way and escape towards the station. Passers-by were looking at them, though so far no crowd had gathered; Okada was grateful for Japanese politeness. Then he saw the two soldiers in helmets coining down the street, long sticks in their right hands; he could smell military police fifty yards away. He began to sweat and hoped it wasn’t showing on his face.
He decided there was nothing to do but attack: ‘Here come two military police. Perhaps you’d like to call them and have them arrest me? They’d appreciate a drunken soldier calling on them for help.’
The taller of the two soldiers looked over his shoulder, then grabbed his companion’s arm and hustled him down the street. The half-drunken soldier snapped an obscenity at Okada, but allowed himself to be led away. Okada looked after them, pleased at how his attack had worked; then he turned to walk on and found the two military police coming towards him. One of them held up his stick to bar Okada’s path.
‘Were those two soldiers annoying you?’ It was difficult to tell whether the man who had spoken, a corporal, was being courteous or sarcastic.
‘They were just asking the way, corporal,’ said Okada. ‘They were not annoying me, not at all.’
‘Where are you from? You have a different accent from the people around here.’
His