White Cranes
Kenneth you bastard, I saw you save Mrs. Awazaki last night. She was standing in that zen-garden yard she keeps, under the cherry closest to the streetlight. I’m dying, Kenneth my son, but it’s the eyes that will go last; the Pacific made a guard of me forever.
You tell me they leave their feet well enough alone now, but I say Okinawa forced her mind to lilies, however trouble bound it. Ten years across the street, and we’ve hardly spoke a word to one another-hobbled by whatever went on. I told you I helped her once, remember? When the gutters came loose. It was late spring, and they were full of cherry blossoms the rain had packed down and pooled upon, until the weight was too much to carry.
Kenneth, I saw you last night. You thought I was sleeping, the way dying men ought to when the doctors send them home for good. The liver’s beyond saving; there was liquor for memory. I chose to take this sofa for the bay window it faces. The last thing I see will be the weather, and Mrs. Awazaki on her front porch, sipping tea like it’s something she’s forgotten; all dignity, the old woman. That’s all I’ll see, I swear it, and I’ll be gone forever.
You put on my army jacket, but it didn’t hide you from me. There were white blossoms all around, and the white circle the streetlight throws down-you were the only dark thing. I’ll tell you what she was wearing, Kenneth my son-it was that old pink kimono with the fans and hummingbirds, and green bedroom slippers, and her hair was coming loose. If you’d left me here with the curtains closed, I could have told you just as well. Ten years across the street, and I’ve been watching her like she’d come specially for me, like I was the object of all that dignity.
They’d kept the sword hidden by wrapping it in straw; there was straw enough about. The husband was dead already; I’d shot him, or someone else had, caught in the many of it; the day was so full of unalterable things. All along the woman was in the doorway, very still. She just stood there with a cup of tea, I swear it, like we were each somebody she knew well. I tell you, she had dressed up just for our arrival-the clothes were old, maybe her grandmother’s, a pink kimono, a black cloak so long she might have been barefoot underneath, just waiting for our notice. Her husband had been holding the straw bundle in his arms, trying to rip it open, and he turned to yell something at her, maybe get back inside, or take off the damn cloak and run, or to hell with your honor, get out, get out, or just goodbye, like he was off to buy fish or cabbages-whatever it was she wanted from him. Then somebody killed him; his mouth was still full of last words. After that, the whole place was silent.
All at once she ran and tripped and fell, but got a hand on one end of that straw bundle; then I had a hand on the other, and it was the hilt-end. She pulled and I pulled, and then the katana was mine, and she was holding the sheath still wrapped in straw. Nobody fired. Everything was stunned, stilled, and she was on her knees in the cold wet, in that pink kimono, the cloak spread out wide behind her. The world was so quiet, and she was so still. Then I understood they were waiting for me. I stepped aside, and they fired like she’d killed me, until she fell over-to the right, the way the ground sloped. The teacup was lying in the dirt, and someone shot that too, so that only the katana wasn’t broken, and I wrapped it in a piece of her black cloak. The sheath and the straw I left for her.
Kenneth, you bastard, I saw you save Mrs. Awazaki last night. You thought I didn’t know how she’d been wandering. It’s been a month since you came home from Canada to watch me die; you know nothing of what I know. You dodged your jungle war-you think it was principle that made you do it? No, you were afraid of me, you were afraid of what it might do to you. That’s all. You think I don’t know she’d been wandering? I’ve been watching it happen for years, all the time you were away, the way she sometimes stopped midway to the mailbox in the morning, unable to remember why she’d come outside. She’d walk around the trees, searching the ground like she’d dropped something precious, pulling branches down toward her face from time to time, as if the trees could tell her what she’d lost.
And there she was last night, out in the road between us, starting across and turning back and starting across again. I saw you hurry to her, say whatever-you’ll get hit, go back inside, forget what you’re looking for, the dark’s not worth searching. She wouldn’t be still, kept moving forward; her eyes were toward my window. You put your hands lightly against her collarbones; I saw how she struggled to keep moving forward. You thought it would kill me even quicker, to know how age was working on Mrs. Awazaki-as though that terrible dignity of hers was only tea sipped from a small white cup.
Under this sofa there’s a bundle of black fabric, and the long sword inside it. Have you ever felt shark-skin in your hand? You haven’t. The handle’s crisscrossed by black strips of it. Even now I sometimes feel the cool grip it gave-I tell you the katana is too fine to ever put down for good, that Mrs. Awazaki was coming to free me from it, to tell me that whatever went on was beyond us, that even the many of it can be let go. You guided her back to her front door-you saved her, Kenneth my son, and I am lost.
(c) 2005
You tell me they leave their feet well enough alone now, but I say Okinawa forced her mind to lilies, however trouble bound it. Ten years across the street, and we’ve hardly spoke a word to one another-hobbled by whatever went on. I told you I helped her once, remember? When the gutters came loose. It was late spring, and they were full of cherry blossoms the rain had packed down and pooled upon, until the weight was too much to carry.
Kenneth, I saw you last night. You thought I was sleeping, the way dying men ought to when the doctors send them home for good. The liver’s beyond saving; there was liquor for memory. I chose to take this sofa for the bay window it faces. The last thing I see will be the weather, and Mrs. Awazaki on her front porch, sipping tea like it’s something she’s forgotten; all dignity, the old woman. That’s all I’ll see, I swear it, and I’ll be gone forever.
You put on my army jacket, but it didn’t hide you from me. There were white blossoms all around, and the white circle the streetlight throws down-you were the only dark thing. I’ll tell you what she was wearing, Kenneth my son-it was that old pink kimono with the fans and hummingbirds, and green bedroom slippers, and her hair was coming loose. If you’d left me here with the curtains closed, I could have told you just as well. Ten years across the street, and I’ve been watching her like she’d come specially for me, like I was the object of all that dignity.
They’d kept the sword hidden by wrapping it in straw; there was straw enough about. The husband was dead already; I’d shot him, or someone else had, caught in the many of it; the day was so full of unalterable things. All along the woman was in the doorway, very still. She just stood there with a cup of tea, I swear it, like we were each somebody she knew well. I tell you, she had dressed up just for our arrival-the clothes were old, maybe her grandmother’s, a pink kimono, a black cloak so long she might have been barefoot underneath, just waiting for our notice. Her husband had been holding the straw bundle in his arms, trying to rip it open, and he turned to yell something at her, maybe get back inside, or take off the damn cloak and run, or to hell with your honor, get out, get out, or just goodbye, like he was off to buy fish or cabbages-whatever it was she wanted from him. Then somebody killed him; his mouth was still full of last words. After that, the whole place was silent.
All at once she ran and tripped and fell, but got a hand on one end of that straw bundle; then I had a hand on the other, and it was the hilt-end. She pulled and I pulled, and then the katana was mine, and she was holding the sheath still wrapped in straw. Nobody fired. Everything was stunned, stilled, and she was on her knees in the cold wet, in that pink kimono, the cloak spread out wide behind her. The world was so quiet, and she was so still. Then I understood they were waiting for me. I stepped aside, and they fired like she’d killed me, until she fell over-to the right, the way the ground sloped. The teacup was lying in the dirt, and someone shot that too, so that only the katana wasn’t broken, and I wrapped it in a piece of her black cloak. The sheath and the straw I left for her.
Kenneth, you bastard, I saw you save Mrs. Awazaki last night. You thought I didn’t know how she’d been wandering. It’s been a month since you came home from Canada to watch me die; you know nothing of what I know. You dodged your jungle war-you think it was principle that made you do it? No, you were afraid of me, you were afraid of what it might do to you. That’s all. You think I don’t know she’d been wandering? I’ve been watching it happen for years, all the time you were away, the way she sometimes stopped midway to the mailbox in the morning, unable to remember why she’d come outside. She’d walk around the trees, searching the ground like she’d dropped something precious, pulling branches down toward her face from time to time, as if the trees could tell her what she’d lost.
And there she was last night, out in the road between us, starting across and turning back and starting across again. I saw you hurry to her, say whatever-you’ll get hit, go back inside, forget what you’re looking for, the dark’s not worth searching. She wouldn’t be still, kept moving forward; her eyes were toward my window. You put your hands lightly against her collarbones; I saw how she struggled to keep moving forward. You thought it would kill me even quicker, to know how age was working on Mrs. Awazaki-as though that terrible dignity of hers was only tea sipped from a small white cup.
Under this sofa there’s a bundle of black fabric, and the long sword inside it. Have you ever felt shark-skin in your hand? You haven’t. The handle’s crisscrossed by black strips of it. Even now I sometimes feel the cool grip it gave-I tell you the katana is too fine to ever put down for good, that Mrs. Awazaki was coming to free me from it, to tell me that whatever went on was beyond us, that even the many of it can be let go. You guided her back to her front door-you saved her, Kenneth my son, and I am lost.
(c) 2005