Sophie and the Rising Sun Read Online Free PDF Page A

befriended him, so it would seem to be ungrateful as well. And besides, he was only a gardener. So it wasn’t his place to say anything like that.
    But the trees know. And so do I.
    He knew because of his father’s small garden behind the house in California, where he had grown up. So that from the time when he was very young, his father had taught him how to work with the soil and the plants and to create something that would be beautiful to gaze upon. How could he ever forget the beautiful little pool right in the garden’s center, and the few, beautiful goldfish in it? Then he imagined Sophie’s face—solitary in his mind against a background of sheer emptiness—his having finally found someone whose face was worthy of that shrine within his being. Someone incredibly beautiful—but found too late in his life. And a woman unattainable to him anyway.
    That’s what was on his mind when he pushed the wheelbarrow into Miss Anne’s back garden, and he was so intent upon his vision of Sophie’s face that when he looked up and saw a great crane of Japan standing there, it took more than a few moments for him to realize exactly what was right there before his very eyes, standing just as still as a statue at the very back of the garden, its feathers as motionless as if they had been painted onto the backdrop of the black-green camellia leaves.
    Mr. Oto staggered to a stop and gazed at it, while the full realization of what he was really seeing came very slowly, along with the memory of his father’s voice, speaking very long ago, saying: “When I was just a child, my father took me once to the island of Hokkaido. And there, I saw the great cranes of Japan dancing in the snow.”
    He blinked several times, as if to clear his vision, and then he began arguing against the very existence of that distinct, clear, and majestic creature.
    It could be a blue heron, perhaps—a larger one than I have ever seen before. Or
    maybe an egret with very strange plumage. But not a great crane of Japan. Impossible!
    Indeed, herons and egrets sometimes came into the gardens and yards of the houses in that small town so close to the salt marshes—great blue herons and snowy egrets came, but never a great crane, such as Mr. Oto had never seen, but that his father had described to him in great detail.
    But the crane still stood in his direct view—absolutely real, to the denial of all other possibilities. So that finally, he knew that he was not dreaming. It was real. A great crane of his father’s homeland. The slender neck and the unmistakable red spot on the white head and the gash of black feathers against the neck and along the tail.
    And the sheer size of it! At least five feet tall, Mr. Oto guessed. Exactly as tall as Mr. Oto himself.
    “Mr. Oto? Mr. Oto?” Miss Anne’s voice called his name not once, but twice—as always. So that no matter how close he was, he never had time to answer her until she had called him a second time.
    Behind him, the screen door slammed and Miss Anne’s gardening boots clumped noisily on the wooden steps. She was coming to give him minutely detailed instructions about where she wanted him to plant the dogwoods, and how deep she wanted him to dig the holes, and how often he must water them.
    And the crane, hearing the noise, looked once more directly at Mr. Oto for a long moment before it moved slowly in and among the camellia bushes until he could see it no longer.
    “Mr. Oto? Mr. Oto?” Miss Anne called again from the bottom of the steps.
    “I am here, Miss Anne,” he finally said in a voice too low for her to hear. “I am here. But I am not here.”
    I am with my father when he was a child in faraway Japan, a place where I have never been; and with my father’s father, whom I have never met; and watching the great cranes—which I have never seen—dancing in the snow.
    “What on earth are you doing, Mr. Oto?” Miss Anne came to stand directly in front of him and to lean forward, studying