When the Emperor Was Divine Read Online Free PDF

up the handkerchief and put it away. “That’s a nice scarf you’ve got on.”
    â€œMy father gave it to me. He used to travel a lot. He bought it for me the last time he went to Paris. I asked him to bring me a bottle of perfume but he forgot. He brought me this scarf instead. It’s very plain, isn’t it?”
    He did not answer her.
    â€œHe bought himself a pair of shoes while he was over there, too. Fancy ones with little holes punched into the leather. And wooden shoe trees to put inside of them at night.” She looked down at her scarf again. The edges were frayed and worn. “The thing is, I already
had
a blue scarf. He bought me one the
last
time he went to Paris.” She sighed. “This isn’t what I really wanted.”
    Ted Ishimoto took off his glasses and held them up to the window. “Someday it might be,” he said. He blew on the lenses and then wiped them on his shirt sleeve. “Is your father with you on the train?”
    â€œNo,” said the girl. “They sent him away. He was in Missoula for a while and then he was at Fort Sam Houston. Now he’s in Lordsburg, New Mexico. He said there were no trees there.”
    â€œNo trees!” said the man and then he shook his head sadly, as though this were a strange and terrible thing. “Does he write to you?”
    The door to the lavatory opened and a woman came out and smiled at the girl. “Your turn,” she said.
    The girl looked at Ted Ishimoto. “Don’t go away,” she said. She went inside and stared at her face in the mirror above the basin and knew what she saw: a plain girl in a plain blue scarf. She turned on the faucet but the faucet was dry. She tilted her head back and said, “Aaaah,” and then she smiled, but only just a little, and only at the corners of her mouth. She didn’t look like herself when she did that. She looked like her mother, only not as mysterious.
    When she came out she held the door open. “My father never writes to me,” she said, even though this was not true. He had written to her every week since his arrest last December and she had saved every single one of his postcards.
    â€œThat’s a shame,” said Ted Ishimoto. He reached for the door but she did not let go of it just yet. She pointed down the aisle. “Do you see that lady over there?”
    He nodded.
    â€œDo you think she’s pretty?”
    â€œShe’s lovely.”
    â€œShe’s my mother.
    â€œYour mother is a very beautiful woman.”
    â€œI know. Everyone says that. She’s watching us.”
    â€œThat’s her job,” he said. “She’s tired. I can see it in her eyes. Tell her everything will be all right.” He bowed quickly and stepped into the lavatory. “You’ll have to excuse me now.”
    The girl let the door go and walked slowly back to her seat. In the middle of the aisle a young girl of five or six was playing with a dirty doll on the floor. The doll had curly yellow hair and big china eyes that opened and closed.
    â€œWhat’s your doll’s name?”
    â€œMiss Shirley.” The young girl held the doll up shyly. “Mama bought her for me from the Sears catalog.”
    â€œShe’s beautiful.”
    â€œYou can’t have her.”
    â€œThat’s all right.” The girl continued down the aisle. She walked past several snoring passengers and a man who had fallen asleep with a newspaper folded over his face. She saw a young woman reading
Burma Surgeon
and an older man reading the
Webster’s Dictionary
and underlining words with a red pencil. She saw two boys fighting for a window seat and a pair of middle-aged women sitting quietly side by side knitting identical pairs of thick woolen socks in preparation for the bitter winter months yet to come.
    When the girl found her seat and sat down the old man in front of her turned around and said something to her