Requiem

old turntable our last year in British Columbia. And records, one at a time, as he could afford them—usually secondhand. All the while, he was salting money away so that we could move east, where he could teach and send me to art school. It was one of those nights in the chicken coop when I heard a recording of Beethoven for the first time. The light was fading around us. I felt the music enter my soul, I swear. We listened under that low ceiling, in a building that should have been condemned …”

“Please don’t talk about the chicken coop,” Lena said. “I can’t bear it, not tonight. Here. I’m going to play the last one. Ready? This will be difficult. Focus. Identify.”

Her hands, resting on my skin, all fingertips. Slowly, slowly, floating, one side to the other. Pressure, even pressure on my back. Pause. Into the skin, all fingers again, forward and back. Pause. So many pauses. My body reaching to meet the silhouette of melody, the music shaped by rhythm. And then, the fingers of her right hand, only the right, slowly picked out, slowly. Disjointed taps. What? What? I feel as if she’s swaying now. And I.

The rage, Okuma-san said. We cannot allow the rage. If we allow it, it will also consume.

As it consumed First Father. As it broke Auntie Aya after the burning of Baby Taro. As it left its marks, forever, on me.

“You have to concentrate,” she said. “I’ll start again, from the beginning.”

Slow floating fingers across my skin, the pauses.

The beauty of the music in my head. The powerful surge of realization. The unmatchable creation that would always be there for every race, for every generation, for all time.

“Adagio. Second movement. Emperor,” I said, so softly I didn’t know if she had heard. It had been the first Beethoven recording I had ever listened to.

I turned to face her again. We fell asleep, clinging to each other. The music was in my body. I was clinging to life itself.

CHAPTER 27

1997

“You’re driving straight through?”

“That’ll work out best, I think.”

Kay has picked up the phone as if she had her hand out, waiting for it to ring. She’s not happy about this new plan of mine. I don’t tell her I’m already on the other side of Edmonton.

“I’ll be stopping at your place on the way back,” I tell her.

“Hugh went out to get extra groceries,” she says, as if this will change my mind. “And I told Henry I’d call him when I knew which day you were arriving. He’s planning to join us for dinner. I’m making teriyaki chicken. Henry has a serious friend, I don’t know if he told you. I haven’t met her yet. Someone he met after he sold his restaurant. Or maybe he met her while he still owned it. Anyway, they were friends before. She’s Japanese. He’s on the pension now, you know. The first of the three of us. Next year, it will be my turn. Aren’t you glad you’re the baby of the family?” She laughs. “Henry has taken up weightlifting, too,” she adds. “At his age.”

“Impressive,” I say. “But look, I’m sorry for the delay. All it means is that I’ll be arriving four or five days later, something like that.”

“I had no idea how far you’d be driving each day. I didn’t even know if you had my work number. Though the academic year is winding down and I’m not at the office so much. You could get one of those cell phones,” she says drily. “Then we could get in touch with you when we need to.”

It’s always about need with Kay. Her needs, Hugh’s needs, my needs. And of course, First Father’s.

“What is it that you’re looking for?” she says, changing tactics. “Searching, searching, you travel around the world, but for what? You don’t light long enough to find whatever it is.”

Ah, I wasn’t expecting this. But that’s her job. Identify the problem.

“Your room is ready. And what about Basil? I thought you wanted to drop him off with us while you went on to the camp.”

I look through the wall of the phone booth and see Basil watching for my next move. Big, sloppy, happy Basil. He’s drooling against the car window as I speak. And he does love the company of other dogs, even Diva; he’s more sociable than I am and can fit into any existing hierarchy. Though a few years ago, when he was younger and we were visiting Kay, Diva, after two days, had had her fill of the interloper. She dragged Basil’s bed out to the yard and dumped it on the grass.

The real truth is, I’m not ready to face sister, brother-in-law, brother or his new friend. My own silence has been exactly right throughout this trip, and I need to protect it a bit longer. Well, there it is, what I need.

“What about Kamloops?” she says suddenly. “You have to pass through there to get to the camp, or very close by. I’ve already warned Father that you’ll be driving to B.C. after you leave Edmonton. He’ll be sitting in his chair, staring at the door as always, but this time he thinks it’s you who will be walking in.”

A man who won’t leave the province. Another who won’t enter. Until now. I imagine a painting, panels, a diptych maybe, some sort of split canvas. If I were in it, I’d paint myself out.

“I don’t know why you did that, Kay. I haven’t decided about that.”

A long sigh.

“You never knew,” she says. “Well, how could you? No one ever told you. After we left the camp, while we were on the move from one town to the next, some nights after Henry and I were in bed, Father mourned because he had given you away. It was terrible. He keened, a high-pitched wail. My God, it was terrible.”

Did I hear correctly? Did she say keened? First Father, keening.

“There was no keeping him quiet,” she said. “It was disturbing to all of us, but to Mother especially. Her grief was quiet and contained. But just as terrible all the same. There were other people around, too. In the mill towns. Other Japanese families, just a few. We lived in such close quarters; everyone knew everyone else’s business. No one was happy about the noise.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Kay?”

“How do you think Henry and I felt? You were his favourite. You always were. He had hopes for you. The biggest hopes. He loved you so much. Can’t you see that? He always loved you best.” She sounds like a child as it spills out of her. “Why do you think he gave you to Okuma-san? My God, Bin, figure it out. You’re not a stupid man. He wanted more for you. What he couldn’t give. A future. Any future at all. But he missed you. He even said, several times, that he was going to go after you and bring you back. Long after you and Okuma-san left British Columbia.”

I swallow hard at this. I’m the target of the ambush: words coming at me from all sides.

“But he didn’t come after me, did he. If he’d wanted me, he wouldn’t have given me away in the first place. Anyway, by then he’d have lost face—if he’d tried to take me back. Okuma-san did legally adopt me, you know. He was my father.”

I haven’t intended anger, but there it is.

“I know all that,” she says sadly, and I suddenly understand that what she’s telling me is probably true. Every bit of it.

Why didn’t he let Mother visit me when I was a child? I don’t ask. Okuma-san and I were living far away from them, in the south of the province. Even before we moved to Ontario, there wouldn’t have been enough money. A trip would have been unthinkable.

All the emotions withheld. First Father, having made his decision, would have had to banish any thought of changing his mind and trying to get me back.

All the feelings concealed.

All the stories never told. Fifty-one years of stories. Fifty-one years since Ying’s truck drove my first family across the bridge and dropped them at the bus station on the other side of the river. I have no idea, I realize, how they lived their lives. I know only how Okuma-san and I lived ours. I received Mother’s letters, and Kay’s, but did the letters reveal anything? They never wrote about the details: how much my sister and brother had grown in a year; if they had to wear tight shoes; what they endured at their schools; if their hand-me-downs were ridiculed; if