Medina Azahara

Chapter 5: Lisbon/Al-Ishbunah

"As the rising sun melts thinly frozen ice, so the Japanese Army is overcoming Chinese troops."

-Hata Shunroku, 1943

It has been a few months since Hiroshi left us. Every few days I would go out to the shrine and spend a few minutes alone with my boy. Even if he was nothing but a pile of white ash hidden underneath a stone crypt, he would still be with me. The bond between mothers and their children was something only mothers would understand. Sometimes I would sit by the stone bench and found myself in deep reflection. What else could a lonely mother do?

I had never even spent a minute with my boy, yet the loss already felt like a part of me had died. What about those mothers who sent their sons off to war? Eighteen years of love and care, only to be reciprocated with a cold, heartless notice. A 'regretful' apology issued by the officer or whoever that was in charge of their ward. Regret. Not even remorse that they had taken someone's son, someone's baby from a helpless mother's arms and tossed it into the tumultuous sea.

The weather was getting colder, but it didn't really bother me. I tried to busy myself with doing household chores or reading books, but every day in the afternoon I found myself dragging my feet to the little shrine.

There I thought about what could have been. How I would've nestled him tightly every night as I rocked him to sleep. How I would teach him the names of anything his curious eyes laid on. How I'd celebrate Boy's Day with him and his father, as a joyous family. But that would never happen now. I smiled in melancholy at the thought of that faraway dream that once seemed so near, so attainable, now crushed and destroyed even before they began. I've slowly come to accept it.

I was in my husband's study helping him sort out through old books, a chore I took over from Setsuko. The Viscount was out lecturing at the university, though his classes were getting less frequent as of late. So he spent the free time he had reading in the study. I was never one to be so amused by histories or philosophy and dabbling in the thoughts of great men, but what was I to say. I was merely his wife.

I usually let my thoughts consume me as I busied myself with whatever chores I could do to help around the house. The previous week, my husband and I sent off a visiting relative from Tokyo Station. I've always liked visiting the building, built in its unique western style. It almost felt like I was in Amsterdam whenever I see the red brick façade and the domed roofs of the magnificent building. As we waved at my husband's aunt as the train towards Osaka departed from the platform, I couldn't help but feel like I was in the times of old romance, where loved ones bid farewell from the platform with smiles, and maybe an occasional tear in their eyes, as the train slowly chugged away. It almost made me forget about the war going on, and brought me back to the world of my novels. A world of relative peace and safety. I'd take any chance I could to forget about the war, to forget about the growing uneasiness that doom will befall us, to distract me from the slow decay of the castle built on lies.

Yet, as I turned around, I was quickly dragged back to the reality of it all.

On the far platform was a train headed for the rural north. Schoolchildren, with their bright young faces and shiny school uniforms stepped onto the train carriage one by one, their little arms held tightly by their teacher as she guided them across the platform gap. The ones already seated popped their heads out of the windows, all smiles as they waved to the crowd of mothers. I watched as the women, the slight breeze sending the sleeves of their kimono and the hems of their dresses fluttering bidding farewell. All smiles on their faces. Forced smiles on their carefully manicured lips.

Stoicism in the face of danger, the pale featureless masks we wear on our faces hiding the restlessness and anxiety in our bleeding hearts. All of us women in that station with our bulwark of powdered cheeks and besmirched lips, putting the thought of our total destruction far in the backs of our minds while the flames of war creep closer and closer, to our cities of tinder and wood. It's so fragile this illusion we live in, and all it takes is just a lone match to shatter this façade.

It was then, as I dusted the cover of a copy of The Golden Bull of 1356, that Setsuko appeared in the doorway of the study. I only smiled at her, thinking nothing of it at first, given that she was often in the study when she did her daily chores. But her sweet young face was grim, her lips unsmiling.

"What's wrong?" I asked her, standing up from my seat.

"Oku-sama," she said sombrely as she walked up to me, hands clasped in front of her chest. "We received a phone call from the Tanokura household."

"Well what is it?" I asked, putting the book away.

"Mistress Tanokura is dead," the young girl said at last.

I fell silent as I swallowed the grim news. Mistress Tanokura, the jovial woman cheering her son off to war. The lively chatter at her party. The bright smile on her lips. Now she was dead. Just like my son. Just like Lady Konoe.

"It's her son isn't it?" I asked.

Somehow, deep in my heart, I knew. It had to be. There was no other explanation.

"They received the letter that their son was killed in the Philippines," Setsuko explained. "They thought she took the news well. . .but a few days later she jumped into the Sumida."

I thanked her and she returned to her duties. I sat there alone, in my husband's study full of books, the silence absolutely crushing me. The Princess Konoe was right, the faint odour was in the air, and its hungry jaws are wide open, prepared to devour us all.

I spent the rest of the afternoon arranging flowers in the parlour, but I found myself wandering. If even I, who spent only a few months carrying my child, and holding him only for those few precious moments felt the devastation of his death, then I couldn't imagine what these mothers had to go through. Perhaps if I too were like Lady Konoe or Mistress Tanokura, maybe I would have done the same. For fate to be so cruel, letting a mother shower her love on her child as he grows up only to snatch him away in the jaws of war, for what sin were we being punished for? For our decadence? For our alienation from the truth? But whatever it was, it doesn't seem like it was worth it to bring a child, a son into this tragic travesty.

As I remembered my son, my dear boy Hiroshi, I couldn't help but think:

Perhaps it was for the best.