The Emperor of Any Place Read Online Free PDF

pick up the story of my life at the moment when it looked as if it was most likely to come to an end. It was the day after the invasion of Tinian. 1
    I remember little of the fighting. At one point it was all around me, the loudest thing in the world. And I was part of the noise, but my rifle did all the talking for me! Then there was a very loud whooshing sound, a wall of heat, and everything went dark. Time passed with no help from me to count the minutes or the hours.
    The next thing I remember was pain. How strange it was to not be able to really see or hear or think at all but only feel this searing pain all over. I rolled onto my back, breathing heavily from the effort and gritting my teeth. I opened my eyes and lay there several minutes sucking in air, greedily, while the dizzy sky swirled above me. Then I raised myself onto my elbow and, dreading what I would see, I looked down at my body. Yellow pus oozed from my left flank, discoloring my torn uniform, which was already brown with dried blood. I had been scorched. I shuddered and shook. My heart was racing. Septicemia was setting in. I wiped the sweat off my face, knuckled it out of my eyes, looked up, looked around. My rifle lay a few feet away, as scorched as I was, broken. The chrysanthemum etched into the stock was filled with dirt. Everywhere was quiet. Dead quiet.
    Rolling onto my front, I dragged myself painfully forward on my elbows toward a stand of new bamboo. I parted the culms with my hand. I blinked. Blinked again, for what I saw could not be. What insanity was this?
    Amidst the smoke, a terrible battle was being fought in utter silence.
    By puppets!
    Bunraku
puppets shot at one another with bright-blue rifles or slashed with yellow swords. This one held a red dagger in his polished wooden fist, which came down repeatedly on the inflated torso of another puppet, who twisted and turned this way and that, throwing up its hands, its clever glass eyes rolling in its wooden head. Over there, another puppet twirled around and around, shooting a green handgun, out of the barrel of which rained a silvery cascade of confetti.
    Parts of soldiers flew off, this way and that.
    The puppets were elaborately dressed: on one side, brave samurai warriors in orange-colored armor with ferocious grins; and on the other side, grotesque ogres, pale with white noses as long as daikon radishes.
    For every puppet there were three puppeteers, one to operate the feet and legs, the other to operate the left hand, and one — the master puppeteer — to operate the right hand and the head. The puppeteers were all but invisible. I squinted to see them at all, for they were dressed in black from head to toe, with black hoods over their heads as if they were death’s own helpers. What Dancers they were — blind Dancers under the blazing sun. War Dancers holding aloft warriors with child-bright weapons, and hungry mouths open to reveal the whitest of chompers and the pinkest of tongues.
    Now this one’s head flew off and rolled toward me, so that when it stopped I could see the worn handhold in the hollowed-out neck. This was a puppet that had fought in many battles. Had he lost his head every time?
    There was something terribly wrong with the performance, but I was so delirious it took me a while to realize what it was. Ah, yes! There was no chanter to tell the story. There were no musicians: no one to pluck the
shamisen,
to drum on the
taiko,
or to blow on the
shakuhachi.
    There was no noise at all, and what is a battle without noise?
    My grandfather had taken me to see
Bunraku
when I was a child. Did I ever tell you that, Hisako? No, I mostly complained about my father, didn’t I. Ah, but my grandfather — how I miss him. I remembered him explaining how the chanter always held up the text before the play and bowed to it, promising the audience that he would follow the author’s story, faithfully. So this was a performance without sound, and without an author or a story. And how