A couple of months ago, at the end of September, Italy and Japan and Germany signed a big agreement—the Tripartite Pact—and the next week the ambassador went to a huge party at some palace. Oh, the embassy is like a palace, too, but not huge. The ambassador came home smelling of tobacco. For weeks after, important men came to the embassy for dinner, and I folded their chopstick holders. Papà praised me, because the edges were perfectly matched: “You understand Japan. Already. My smart girl.”
The furoshiki in my hands now is frayed and faded, like the others in this stack. But the ones in the second stack are lovely. Hitomi has sorted out this old stack to get rid of.
I smile. I know where Hitomi keeps the needles and thread.
I pick out four tattered furoshiki with patterns that fit well and arrange them in a big square on the table. I sew them together with my tiniest stitches. If I were working beside Nonna, we’d sing. So I sing now. But not an Italian song. That would make me miss her too much. And I won’t sing an ugly marching song. We sing too many of those in school.
I choose a sweet song: “Momotaro-san.” My classmates sing it at recess, and I listen closely and sing in my head. It’s about a woman who is washing clothes in the river when a peach—a momo—floats past. She and her husband take a bite, and—plop—out falls a boy. They’re so happy to have a child. They name him Momotaro. When Momotaro grows up, he goes to an island to kill ogres, and he makes friends with a dog and a monkey and a pheasant. And somehow they help him, so that he winds up rich forever after.
Nonna might like this song. I’ll tell her about it in the letter I’m writing now. I add to that letter each night.
I’m just finishing up when Naoki and Carolina and Botan come in.
“What are you making?” asks Carolina.
“A present.”
“For who?”
Naoki elbows Carolina in the ribs. “You, of course.” His voice is sharp. “You don’t even need it. You’re spoiled, living here. But your sister will make something for you anyway.”
“That’s not so!” We’re not spoiled. I suddenly realize who I’m making this present for. “It’s for you, Naoki.”
Naoki’s face freezes. Then he shakes his head. “That’s not boy cloth. Everyone would laugh at me.”
“You could use it like a blanket,” says Botan.
“No.”
“There must be something,” says Carolina. “Simona sews good.”
“I guess you could make me a horo,” says Naoki.
“What’s that?”
“The old samurai wore them. They’re cloaks like big bags. When the samurai galloped on horses, the bags blew up. That way no one could shoot them with arrows.”
“That sounds funny,” says Carolina.
“Samurai are fierce!” Then Naoki smiles. “Maybe it was sort of funny, too.”
“Wait.” I run to our room and rush back with paper and pencil. “Draw it.”
Naoki sits down and draws. “I’ve always wanted a horo.”
After dinner, I go to the bathing room and roll back a tiny section of the slatted boards that cover the deep tub. I splash myself. Then I stand in the middle of the room and scrub myself with soap so hard, my belly gets red. I dip a wooden bowl into the water and rinse off, watching the dirt and suds swirl down the drain in the floor. Now I roll back more of the slatted boards, enough so that I can climb in. Japanese baths are one of the best things in the world. The coal fire under the tub keeps the water so hot that it hurts, but not bad hurts, and everyone uses the same water over and over. So long as you go in clean, the water stays clean. I ease in and slide down till the water reaches my chin.
This has been the best day in Japan so far. I haven’t made friends at school yet. It’s hard, because the other girls have been together since first grade. And I can’t say half the things I want to say. Aiko still whispers to me now and then, usually to let me know I’m doing something wrong. But she never smiles if anyone else is watching. And she stays away from me at recess. It doesn’t matter, though, because maybe I’m making a friend here at the embassy. When Hitomi told Naoki it was time to go home, he said, “Can I come back next Sunday?”
Usually I spend most of every night practicing writing. I do at least a page of characters. I have to memorize how to draw them and what they mean. And I write lots of words in kana—symbols that stand for sounds. But this next week I won’t do that. I’ll finish sewing Naoki’s horo.
There’s a knock on the door. It opens without anyone waiting for an answer. Carolina and Botan stand there, shy.
“Can we come into the bath?” Carolina uses such charming little-girl Japanese that I want to hug her. But why is Botan still here?
Carolina laughs at my puzzled face. “Botan’s mother is letting her sleep with us tonight. Because of my birthday. So…can we come in?”
I take baths with Carolina all the time, but we’ve never invited anyone else in. It’s a wonderful idea, though. There’s a public bath nearby; people who don’t have a bath at home go daily to soak with others—women in one area, men in another. Carolina and I went once with Hatsu and Botan, just for fun.
But both these girls are small enough that the tub water would go over their nose. That’s why Carolina has a special low tub stool. I point at it now and look at Botan apologetically. “We have only one stool.”
“Botan can have it,” says Carolina.
“Thank you, Karo-chan,” said Botan.
I press my lips together in envy. Chan is what you add to the end of a girl’s name when you like her a lot. Carolina has a real friend, one who calls her Karo-chan. Botan is sweet to Carolina.
But Carolina is sweet to Botan, too. Carolina deserves a friend. “How generous of you,” I whisper in Italian.
“I’ll sit on your lap,” Carolina whispers back in Italian.
I laugh. So she wasn’t sacrificing after all.
We stay in the water till our skins are as wrinkled as the dried salted apricots that Hitomi chops and stuffs into rice balls to eat when you have a cold. Hitomi believes in the values of the Shinto religion, and she makes different kinds of rice balls, each special somehow in helping one be pure and in harmony with nature. The apricot rice balls smell like they taste, stinging and wonderful. I feel almost calm, almost harmonious.
16 DECEMBER 1940, TOKYO, JAPAN
My school lunch is wrapped in a furoshiki that sits on the little table near the servants’ door. I could buy a used bento box at the market, but I like the furoshiki because that’s become my favorite Japanese word. Papà packs me whatever the servants are going to eat each day, and it’s always yummy. He still cooks Italian food for the ambassador and his wife, but he makes Japanese food for the rest of us. Papà learned to cook Japanese style so that he could make everyone happy.