The two sailors climbed slowly back into their patrol boat and the lieutenant walked numbly toward the bow and pointed with a weak finger in the direction of the port of Yuzhno-Kurilsk. In minutes, the patrol boat was over the horizon and Isipo headed the trawler south to Hokkaido. He and Sak never said a word about what they’d witnessed. They both seemed to have
We said farewell to Isipo from the docks in Kushiro. He was going to return to Petropavlovsk and spend a few weeks, depending on the weather, and eventually sail home to Alaska and the Seward Peninsula. Sailor thanked him in Ainu and in Meq. Isipo nodded and shook our hands. His hands were strong and sinewy as rope. He told Sak to come home in one piece, then said good-bye.
We turned and disappeared fast. We had no legitimate identification, and wouldn’t have until we reached Sapporo and the home of Sak’s sister, Shutratek. It helped that Sak was an Ainu and he and Sailor spoke Japanese, but none of us were legal. We decided in case we were asked for identification, Sailor and I would pose as Portuguese orphans abandoned in Macao and rescued by Sak. Luckily, we had no confrontations because the story would never hold up to someone like the naval lieutenant we had encountered at sea. Neither Sailor nor I wanted to use the Stones again unless absolutely necessary.
We followed several lonely, wintry roads to Obihiro, catching short rides where we could. There weren’t many. Along the way, we exchanged our Western clothes, piece by piece, until we were indistinguishable in a crowd. In Obihiro, we obtained seats on the only bus traveling through the mountains to Sapporo. It was a long, beautiful, treacherous journey, and cold. Sailor seemed to doze and sleep often on the trip, much more than usual. Every time he woke he muttered a name under his breath. He said the name slowly, with his eyes closed and a faint smile on his lips. In a low whisper, he breathed, “Su…shee…la.” He said it with such quiet reverence, I could think of only one thing. I knew it didn’t make sense, but it sounded as if he was in love.
As we approached the outskirts of Sapporo, Sak seemed bewildered by how much the city had changed and grown since he’d last seen it. I asked how long it had been and he paused before answering. He was anxious and agitated. I knew something or someone had driven him from Sapporo and his family years earlier, but he’d never given a reason and I’d never asked. Sak said, “Thirty years next month.” His anxiety was understandable. He also had no gift to give his sister, and this seemed to upset him more than anything else. Sailor solved the problem by removing the piece of onyx hanging on the tassle of the small braid behind his ear. “This should suffice,” Sailor said. “It is very old and from very far away—Ethiopia.” He handed Sak the polished black stone. Sak accepted it humbly and thanked Sailor for saving him profound embarrassment.
Shutratek lived in a large complex of houses and buildings, all clinging to and around the sides of a steep hill. A wide veranda circled the house on three sides and made the view even better. Birch trees and scrub pine crowded the hillside. Falling snow kept the neighborhood quiet and traffic was light. Sak knocked once on the door.
When their eyes met Shutratek and Sak both began to cry. Neither made a sound. He presented her the stone and they held each other in silence and let the tears roll down their faces. Shutratek was in her mid-sixties; a short, stout woman with steel gray eyes and silver hair pulled back and tied in a bun at the back of her head. “My brother,” she said finally in Ainu. She looked once at Sailor, then over to me and smiled. I wondered if she remembered. “You have very old eyes for one so young,” she said. I laughed then, recalling what her father, Sangea, had told her to tell me on the train.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d remember,” I said.
Shutratek laughed along with me, a big hearty laugh for such a small woman. “Nineteen-oh-four,” she said. “Seems like yesterday.”
Shutratek served us a delicious fish and onion soup with noodles and she warmed her best sake. She smiled each time she looked in Sak’s eyes, but their reunion was bittersweet. Sak learned their father and his older brother, Nozomi, had been murdered only three years after Sak left Sapporo. He also learned his eldest brother, Bikki, the one who remained in the United States at the conclusion of the World’s Fair, had never come home. Shutratek and Sak were now each other’s last living relative. When Shutratek learned our purpose and the reason for Sak’s return was to find Xanti Otso and his fortress/prison, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.
“This one you seek,” she said, “he have green eyes, wear ruby earrings?”
“Yes!” Sailor interrupted. “Yes, he does.”
Shutratek turned and put both hands on her brother’s face. “This is same one who kill father and Nozomi,” she said. Waiting a moment, then speaking in Ainu, she said, “He carve roses in their backs, Tomizo.”
Sak was shocked, but I wasn’t, nor was Sailor. It made perfect sense in the Fleur-du-Mal’s mind to eliminate anyone who had assisted him in finding his fortress, then leave his grotesque signature and calling card behind for much darker reasons.
“Shutratek,” Sailor said, “do you know the location of this place?”
“No,” she answered. Shutratek saw the disappointment spread across Sailor’s face. “I never learn…they never tell,” she said.
I looked over at Sailor and he looked at me. His “ghost eye” clouded over and swirled. We were in Japan all right, but it felt like we were back at the beginning.
“We’ll find it, Sailor,” I said. “And we’ll find
“I will go with you,” Sak said. There was a fury in his eyes I understood well.
“And so I,” Shutratek said, taking Sak’s hand in hers.
By April, our search was under way. We traveled together posing as grandparents and grandchildren. Sak and Shutratek played their parts well. Sailor and I darkened our faces and all of us dressed simply. We were rarely stopped and both Sak and Shutratek could ask our questions and make our inquiries. We used buses and trains, crisscrossing the landscape and following whatever information we could uncover, which was little or none. The hardest part of the puzzle was in knowing and defining exactly what we were seeking. The medieval castle of Japan is called a
That first summer and fall, Sailor remained patient in our search, although his dreams continued nightly. He didn’t talk about them, but gradually his eyes showed concern, frustration, and alarm. The military presence and increasing numbers of soldiers everywhere, combined with the fanatic actions, attitudes, and speeches of their leaders, made him feel certain war with the West was imminent. Sailor said he agreed with Zeru-Meq, who loved all of Japan and Japanese culture, but hated the Japanese Empire.
We pushed on through the winter and spring and into the following summer. The fall of 1941 found us in and around the ancient capital of Nara. By December, we had moved to Kyoto and were staying as guests of a Sumi-e master Sailor and Sak had befriended. On the eighth of December, Shutratek and I awoke early and walked down to the open market. As we entered, the smell of daikon was everywhere, overpowering and masking the other fresh scents in the market. Music was blaring through a loudspeaker directly above the daikon stand. At seven o’clock, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation began their first news broadcast of the day. The local population usually paid little attention to the radio, but that morning they all stopped precisely where they were standing and every one of them acted stunned by what they heard. I asked Shutratek what the man had said. She blinked once, as if waking herself, then translated literally: “The Army and Navy divisions of Imperial Headquarters jointly announced at six o’clock this morning, December 8, that the Imperial Army and Navy forces have begun hostilities against the American and British forces in the Pacific at dawn today.” World War II had finally erupted. From that moment on, I
