Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa's Deluge Read online

  In the beginning it was no more than slight sarcasm. I could laugh it off with a “Silly me, I can be such an idiot.” I was worried about him and figured it had to do with his work at the branch office for one of the major insurance companies and the demands of meeting sales quotas that the company had set, all breathing down his neck; I figured that accounted for this change in him. I had seen it happen with my own office mates, the changes in personality that followed the increased job pressures; I knew that it could change people this way.

  But my patience for such objectivity was soon exhausted. The language continued to escalate. I don’t have it in me to silently put up with such unreasonableness. I would get furious, angry. And he wasn’t about to stand for my resistance. There were never physical threats, but when the loud voice came my way, I was taken back to childhood fears and my body stiffened. I could no longer even speak. It brought back memories of my father’s voice—my father, who had drunk too much and died young—reverberating throughout the house: “You’re useless, no good for anything. You’re hopeless as a wife. Why are you even alive? I mean, really. You should just quit, this living business. What if you just gave it up. Not as though you get any pleasure out of life, right?”

  His words were ringing in my ears as I sat there, blankly, asking myself, “Why, indeed, why?” “Maybe I should just give up,” I heard myself say from time to time. I was beyond any realization that his words had already crossed a line.

  It was when all this was going on that I first heard about the Fortress of Hope. A Facebook friend had posted something about a farm that refused to kill its irradiated cattle and was continuing to keep them alive. I started looking into whatever books and films I could find that featured the Fortress of Hope. That is when I became aware of Yasuda-san. I was increasingly drawn toward the farm; I even went to Shibuya to hear Sendō speak. I think at that point I had pretty well decided that I wanted to go and see the farm operation. I connected with Yasuda through Facebook and made sure that they were taking volunteers. Given how resistant Kazumasa was to my even stepping out of the house, it took some time to fully decide. The final decision to actually go was made only about three days ago.

  He seemed to be in a relatively good mood, so I blurted out that I wanted to go to the Fortress of Hope. He heard me out, with a strange expression on his face, and began to laugh. “Give it up, give it up. What are you going to do there? You go someplace with that high level of radiation and, you realize, don’t you, that you will never be able to have children.”

  “That’s just not true. That’s the kind of bad science that has caused such pain to the people who live in that region. Think of the people who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when those bombs were dropped: there is no proof that the radiation had any effect on their children.”

  “Is that so? Is it just that it cannot be proven, then? No proof, you say. I bet that this is just stuff you have seen somewhere online. Just believed it. You probably didn’t even research it yourself.”

  “As if you have researched any of this. I mean, why this sudden interest from you anyway? Since when have you wanted children anyway?”

  “Well, okay, that’s true. I hate kids and stuff. But that’s the same as you, right?”

  “Those are your words. I have no memory of ever saying that I hate kids.”

  “And then there’s the fact that you have at least ten more years of birth-giving ability, so why expose yourself to unnecessary risk?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “What do you mean what do I mean? I mean it would be a waste, during the years when you can still give birth, be a full woman and all.”

  Such words: I felt as if I had been doused with ice water. I had goose bumps. It was about all I could take. I was completely unable to speak.

  “What do you mean by that? You mean if I can no longer give birth to children that I am no longer a woman? Is that what you think?”

  My voice was raw; he just snorted a laugh. He didn’t answer. It was that moment, that’s when I decided to go to the farm.

  Heat was beginning to return to my fingers and toes. Last night had been the same: I had been going over the same thoughts and couldn’t sleep, but tonight it felt that I would be able to sleep soundly. Enveloped in the deep folds of sleep, the first time in a long time, my brain filled with an unusual calmness, of the sort available perhaps only to those in the midst of crisis. Anyone camped out in the middle of a forbidden off-limits zone could be called crazy, of course; yet here I was, feeling enveloped in calm while thinking about all these things.

  In that moment just before falling into sleep I remembered a sight from the drive back from the farm, when some wild boarlike animals had appeared in the headlights. Their faces were like oversized mice; I could make them out in the pasture on the other side of the electric fence. They shuffled along, their snouts close to the earth’s surface, concentrating on eating. The sight took me by surprise and I stopped. As soon as I stepped out of the car they became aware of me and in one swift action they all ran off into the darkness just beyond the circle of light …

  “What’s up with you? A smile for me, maybe? Is that so hard? Your husband returns home from work, he’s happy, and you can’t even find a smile for him? What’s with the stony face? You mad about something?”

  “Of course. If you’re going out drinking before coming home, at least send me a message or something. I have been here waiting for you, have held off dinner.”

  “So that’s it? You’re just hungry, are you? You’re hungry, so now testy? Is that it? Well then eat something. I’ll even serve you. Rice? Miso soup? Anything else I can get you? Roast pork? Here you go. Chopsticks too. It’s all on the table. Come sit. Go on.”

  He now stood before me, glaring; I could not move from the table.

  “So what’s the problem now? Go on, eat! You said you’re hungry, right? Get to it! Eat! It’s time to eat!”

  I picked up the soup bowl. My hand was trembling so much that the contents spilled onto the table. I brought it to my mouth, but only the smallest amount made it inside. I picked up the rice bowl; the chopsticks made a dry tapping as they struck the edge. He looked down on me, standing at my side, screamed again, “Eat your dinner!”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

  “Because it’s fun, that’s why,” he responded with a chuckle.

  “Stop talking and eat already, you cow.” He struck me on the head with the soup ladle. It rang high and clear.

  “That hurt!” I screamed in response.

  “A little thing like that? How could that hurt a cow like you?” He struck me again.

  I had become a cow. With the hooves of my front feet I was skillfully holding the chopsticks and the rice bowl. He was getting angrier and louder, shouting, “Eat!” over and over, striking me with the ladle.

  “Eat!” A whack of the ladle. “Eat!” A whack of the ladle. “Eat!” A whack of the ladle. “Eat!” A whack of the ladle.

  “Stop it!” I tried to cry in response, but my voice had become a loud sound that stretched through the apartment: “Moooooo.”

  I parked the car in the same spot as yesterday, opened the gate of the electric fence, and went inside. As expected, the cattle were streaming in from the pasture to gather in the area around the barns. I was not as frightened as yesterday, but just to be safe, whenever I passed between them I clapped my hands in time with shouts of “Hey, hey.” But what actually came out was a weak “Ha—ooouch” because of the pain in my muscles. Every clap of my gloved hands sent metallic shocks through my arms, into my chest, all the way to my spine. I now regretted my failure to ice my muscles with cooling packs or spray before going to bed last night. This morning, as I tried to get up, my body registered its stiffness with creaks and moans. I felt significant pain in my groin, so I was walking gingerly—I looked as though I was carrying a bomb—until I came to a halt in front of one of the cows. It looked the same as yesterday’s cow, the one that
had pushed my hand away as I tried to pet it, but I didn’t know if it was the same one or not. It was small, with bouncy curled bangs, and the same small horns; it had the same long eyelashes and the soft eyes that registered no hint of fear; it had the same cuteness about it. We stood staring at each other until the little thing drew closer to me. I cautiously reached my hand toward its forehead. It lowered its head for me to pet it. I could feel its bulk and volume through my gloves.

  A man in a blue jumpsuit came from the direction of the road. He wore a hat that looked like one of those Russian ones, a wool hat that dangles on both sides and covers both ears; he was white-haired and wore black glasses.

  He cheerily called a “good morning” to me. “We call that one Li’l’ Un; he seems stuck on humans.”

  “That explains why he shows no fear!”

  “He’s already full-grown and never got any bigger; he’s always crowded out by the bigger ones, which take all the food. He stays close to Ichigo, that one over there. They are always together”

  “Ah, so that one’s Ichigo?”

  It had been hanging behind the other cattle so I couldn’t see it, but sure enough, I could now see Ichigo, the Holstein that I was so taken with.

  “So this little one, is that the one I heard about, the one that had been left alone, the lone survivor in a destroyed barn?”

  “That seems to be the story!”

  I had learned about this from the book about Sendō. All the other cattle in the herd had perished, carcasses reduced to mere skin covering bones in the collapsed barn; this little one alone, by who knows what means, had continued to stay alive. When Sendō heard about it he contacted the owner and went and retrieved the animal. They named it Ichigo because it had been born around the time of the disasters of March 15 [combining the word for “one,” ichi, with the word for “five,” go], and it didn’t want to leave the side of its now-dead mother. The mother had suddenly fallen over and lay where she died. There was no milk being produced, but the calf continued suckling on the udder. All the while small insects merrily took up residence inside and increased in number; the calf did not move even as the mother’s body continued to change, enveloped in awful, unknown, smells. All the substance that constituted one large body was being transferred to small bodies; when that chaotic process of death was complete, skin preserved the shape of the bones in the remaining silence. Having watched that process at close range, what would one think? This little creature, completely unfettered and able to go absolutely anywhere it might want, remained rooted next to the body of its mother: it was an image I could not forget.

  “Look how big you’ve gotten!” I took a step closer, and Ichigo, almost twice as big around as Li’l’ Un, stepped back, eyes blinking.

  “He seems big enough, but he is a weak one. With his distinctive patterning he stands out and catches everyone’s eye so always gets enough to eat.”

  In contrast to my sentimental approach, this person, Takizawa was his name, seemed to be looking at them analytically, from one step back. We were talking until the chores began, and it turned out, no surprise, that he was a veterinarian. In fact, he had worked for thirty-five years as a veterinarian in Brazil. There was something singular about him. He had heard about the Fukushima disasters while in Brazil; some months later he returned to Japan, leaving his family behind, and had been volunteering ever since in the disaster areas of Miyagi Prefecture. He was currently operating a clinic in another location and coming to this farm once a week. How many veterinarians were actively associating themselves with these farms? It turns out he is the only one. But even if the only one, it is not hard to imagine how encouraging his existence must be to the farms.

  “Japan is falling apart, it seemed to me. So, I figured, before I die, I would go take care of unfinished business.”

  That is how Takizawa explained his reasons for returning to Japan. Since he had been in Tohoku ever since coming back, I assumed that he was from this region, but it turns out that he was actually born and raised in central Tokyo, in Shibuya. It was when I heard this that I became aware of another fact: of all the people who had come together to work on this farm, most of them were from outside Tohoku. Even Sendō himself, and also Sonoda, his sister, were originally from Chiba Prefecture, where they had grown up. Sendō’s father had acquired this farm, had then passed it on to his brother, and after a number of other turns, it had become Sendō’s possession. As for people who had been born in Tohoku and continued on and were still living in Tohoku, there was Yasuda alone, who was born in Iwate and now lived in Miyagi.

  I felt comfortable talking with Takizawa. He had been kindly and warmly explaining things to me. So, when I told him about this discovery of mine, he laughed in response: “It’s like foreign troops have been brought in! But that’s okay, don’t you think? There’s where the ‘hope’ lies. The ‘hope.’ ”

  This day was a day off for Yasuda and Sonoda. Apparently Yasuda would take the day off when there were large numbers of volunteers. Further, since the commute was costing four thousand yen per day in gas money, staying home was also a way to be most efficient with the contributions. She was probably leaving her house every morning at about five and getting back after nine at night. Trying to keep up that pace without a break would also mean she could not take care of her own house, and, of course, it meant she would not be able to keep up with the first order of business, taking care of her own health. It seemed her husband was also able to come back from his work site in Kawasaki, south of Tokyo, about once a week, but that would leave no time for them to spend together.

  I spent the entire morning just as I had the day before, working to appease the hunger of the cattle and keeping the sweat out of my eyes. There was no place for me to be complaining about the heaviness and pain of my own body in view of the desperation that I was seeing in them.

  Sendō was on his tractor; after he pushed the food scraps to the far end of the central area, he came back to this side of the barn, the whole way in reverse. Among the cows that had gotten up onto the central passageway were some that were so absorbed in their eating that they noticed nothing else. From my vantage point, it seemed Sendō was not paying very close attention either: he drove in reverse, abruptly stopping only a few centimeters before plowing into one of the cows, and then waited until the cow moved out of his way. It also took some precision steering to keep from running over the noses of the cows that were reaching out for the scraps.

  I was waiting by the electric fence in the open area so that the tractor would be able to easily get out. Takizawa stood close by, with a shovel in hand. “He’s quite something, isn’t he?” he said to me. I nodded, “Sure is, impressive. He gets by with only a few centimeters to spare!”

  “The technique of a veteran, no question. Maybe a little rough, though.”

  I laughed without thinking. It was sure true. I had watched him move some of the cows out of the way by pushing them slightly with the backside of the tractor.

  “A little roughness is necessary in extreme times. Otherwise, with so few people to help, there is no way he could care for all these cattle. Even so, with all that, he is taking quite good care of them.”

  Some of the rolls of hay, and surely this was because they had been there ever since the disasters, had begun to decompose and turn spongy. I could make out white specks of what looked like fungus around the outer edges. As Sendō might explain, “It’s not that they are inedible.” Even so, judging from what I could see, and watching to see what the cattle were eating, it seemed clear that they preferred the dried portions. Obviously, there was no hope that there would be the sort of clean fluffy straw to be used for bedding that I remembered from watching Heidi when I was a kid.

  The matted hay was much heavier than expected, and the task of carrying and spreading it was feeling to me, today, like torture. I clenched my teeth and scooped up the hay with both hands only to be overcome by the dust and smell of rotting grass. When I realized that I had forgotten abo
ut my mask, which was now hanging below my chin, I let out a groan but in the end kept working with it hanging that way. I threw myself into it: “It’s not like Yasuda and Sendō, or the cattle for that matter, are wearing masks.”

  Today we gathered again at Sonoda’s house to eat lunch. Takizawa took the initiative and made us miso udon, with instant noodles and vegetables he had found in the freezer. I thought I should help, so said that I would make it, but he just laughed and said, “Don’t worry. I like to cook.” The Matsuos and I set the table with bowls and chopsticks we had found on the shelves. Five servings of udon noodles came out of one pot and were divided equally among us. I was surprised to see broccoli with the mushrooms in the udon, but I also found it to work surprisingly well. There was only one serving of microwave rice, so I decided to supplement with the bread that I had brought along. Then the Matsuos, sitting to the right of me, added the rice balls they had brought from the 7-Eleven. At which point Takizawa, who was standing at the table with Sendō, said, “Let’s divide these up among all of us,” and cut them into halves.

  “We don’t have any meat,” said Sendō. “Bunch of red steers outside; should I bring one in to eat?”

  I laughed at this, as did Takizawa, but the Matsuos looked anything but amused. I saw them exchange glances among themselves.

  Takizawa remonstrated, but in good humor: “Enough, enough. If it gets out that we talk like that, we will never hear the end of it from our committed followers.”

  “Imagine: the rancher who is keeping those cattle alive now eats those same cattle.”

  “Then they’ll start looking around and find that the number of cattle is decreasing. A mystery!”

  “With all the cesium in their systems, I bet they’re surprisingly tasty!”