A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding Read Online Free PDF Page B

gone. A boy dressed in the uniform of the Student Patriotic Corps asked if I needed help. What can a grandmother do when she knows her grandchild tobe dead? She does what she must do: she believes that he is still alive.
    â€˜I can’t find my grandson.’
    He pulled out a notepad. ‘What’s his name? I’ll put him on the list. We’re looking for survivors.’
    â€˜Hideo Watanabe. He’s seven.’ I watched the boy write on paper smeared with dust and blood. How could this one young boy find my lost one? When would Hideo be looked for? Where could he have gone? Desperation made me hope that Yuko had decided not to meet me but had stayed at work. ‘The medical college hospital?’ ‘Gone,’ he said. ‘Try Michinoo train station. They’re taking the injured there.’ I started to head off. ‘Mitsubishi?’ He didn’t know. Some of the factories had tunnels and if Kenzo had made it to them, he might be safe. I knew if he had survived, he would also be looking.
    On the ruined streets that led to the station more wounded, so many, were making their way along the tracks to the station office. Some had wrapped crude bandages around their cuts and burns and broken limbs. The more seriously injured were carried in sheets, or on planks or carts. Despite the numbers, after the roar of the bomb and the screams of its victims, all was quiet. Footsteps, cartwheels, babies made no sound. The sky turned an impossible colour, a morning light or the shadows of dusk, I could not tell. I looked for the birds that soar above the city but there were none. Where had they gone? And then I understood the sky must have swallowed them. Later I saw a black kite alive on the ground, its feathers burned away, scalded wings flapping as it tried to take flight.
    At the station, noise returned. People begged the defence corps troops or medics who passed them, ‘Take my son, help my wife, save me.’ They grabbed at the too few doctors as they tried to tend the wounded. Nurses tore strips of cloth and smeared castor oil on exposed burns. One young woman, her uniform wet with blood, stood up, turned away and fainted. I wished death on some of the people I saw to end their suffering. I could not tell if they were man or woman; I could not make out eyes from ears or mouths; so many cried out for water until their moans of pain became whimpers followed by nothing. At some point, there was a screech of iron and a train arrived, its carriage doors flung open. The doctors began to point to people to load up first, presumably the ones more likely to survive. I don’t know how long I searched, but when I could no longer stand the sight of all those bodies I made my way back through the streets, past those too injured to move from the spreading fires, until I reached home. I sat in our kitchen and waited, hoping someone, anyone, would walk through the door.
    Darkness had fallen when I heard the crunch of gravel on our garden path. I waited, my blood racing, and a ghost walked into the room. Kenzo was white from head to foot. His hair and suit were covered in plaster dust, his eyes bruised, his fingernails were bleeding as if he had been scraping away at the walls. I ran to him. ‘It’s you?’ He nodded and held me in his arms. He checked me over. ‘You’re safe? Are you hurt?’ I told him I was unharmed. He glanced to the shadows of the rest of our house. ‘Are they asleep?’ I could not speak, I could notsay the words. He slumped against the sink, his back to me, his hands grasping the stone rim.
    I touched his shoulder, felt the warmth of him. ‘Did you go to the school?’ He said nothing. ‘Yuko was at the cathedral. I was on my way to meet her.’ He gripped the sink tighter. ‘What do we do now?’
    He closed his eyes, defeated by the question. ‘We need to rest. We’ll look again when it’s