The fears within

A man sat on an ancient chair in an old quarter of Kokura, Japan. His weary, brown features bore the marks of clawing and victory. He and part of his unit had managed to flee the British generals who had forced them to fight for a cause that had begun to feel imaginary to him — a dream of liberating his homeland that now seemed out of reach. That dream had taken him away from his family, leaving behind younger brothers, an elderly father, and a fiancée he had promised to return to and marry. His father’s words about the impossibility of his illusions had become a reality he now had to accept, whether he liked it or not. He mocked his own insistence on fighting for the colonizer while abandoning his country, and he mocked the colonizer itself; Britain and its allies had plunged into a massive war that began in 1939 with Hitler’s occupation of Poland, and nations had spent roughly ten years trading advances and retreats. Yes — ten years — years during which he left his family and the fiancée he had believed he would soon return to. He felt as if he were living another dream, so he spread his thoughts apart and adjusted his seat. He thought: yes, the war went on for ages and it seemed it would go on even longer. Rumors even spread that America was brandishing a new weapon unlike anything before, capable of wiping a city out in a second. He scoffed at that; it didn’t seem such a weapon could appear soon. Even after Hitler made the foolish move of attacking one of his main allies, the Soviet Union, he still seemed to possess solid judgment. He had managed to control the white man’s continent and subdue the great powers there, except for Britain, which still staggered. Ten years had passed since the war began and he was now thirty-five; he had spent his youth in a war that meant nothing to him, and it seemed he would simply move from being subject to one country to another. He decided to spend his remaining days in a quiet city far from the fighting. He closed his eyes to dream the dream that would make him regret his actions and decisions, to lament the foolish pride that had brought him here. Thus he spent most of his days in that city, waiting for news of Germany’s victory and his own transfer to it.

But he was partly wrong. A faint glimmer of hope appeared: Germany began to retreat on several fronts, especially after repeated unrest in France and Italy’s shameful decline. December 1948 gnawed at the troops sent to the Soviet Union; they needed supplies and reinforcements even though they had been deployed to provide them. It seemed the United States had managed to penetrate Italy with the help of the Mafia, coinciding with their announcement that their supposed weapon — the so-called atomic bomb — was complete. He assumed it was mere propaganda aimed at intimidating the Nazis’ allies. He mocked them in every conversation with a friend or comrade; even if such a weapon existed, it wouldn’t be used where people lived. He believed this despite the leaflets being circulated in every direction and the mounting dread tucked away in a corner of his mind, folded away from other thoughts: what if the weapon were real?

He didn’t need an answer then; the Nazi empire began to collapse, leaking like an old faucet. Allied forces in Europe regained control of their lands and colonies. German forces fell back toward Germany and defended themselves fiercely, while Japan continued to skirmish with the Allies despite suffering heavy losses for more than four years. A soldier told one of his friends who had fled with him that the supposed magical weapon would never be used and mocked the United States, as usual, but his friend met him with doubt. Yes, the war was ending, but Japan still fought on no matter how wounded or stabbed. The Nazis had been besieged for about eight months without an apparent breach, and the Allied forces that had once been held by the Nazis were themselves beginning to waver. Both men questioned each other’s opinions but left the matter to time and fate to decide which was more likely.

One rainy day his friend came and they sat under a wooden awning, inhaling the heavy scent of rain and filling their lungs with it. The soldier began one of his favorite pointless arguments: “What do you make of the latest warnings?” His friend smiled and said, “It seems my view hasn’t changed you. I know full well we’ll sink into a long useless debate.” He raised his eyes and smiled sarcastically, then continued: “But I’ll enter this clash with you. I think you haven’t read well this time. It has been manufactured and tested, and these warnings are official this time — not rumors or such. Leaflets have been distributed to civilians and soldiers alike. They speak with absolute confidence about their weapon, and they warned Japan before Germany. That shows they are furious since Pearl Harbor was destroyed.” The soldier replied, “You haven’t swayed me at all. I still think it’s military PR to secure an easier victory. Even Hitler himself wasn’t convinced and didn’t enter some silly race with them or waste resources building it. So he remains entrenched in Berlin, neither budging nor surrendering nor negotiating.” Then the soldier changed the subject; his friend sensed the soldier’s unease about the weapon because he didn’t press the argument. They talked about their dreams and what they would do if they returned; they discovered the similarity in both wanting to marry when things settled down. After a while, the friend had to leave for a city called Fukuoka. The soldier felt a little lonely and increasingly hollow, lacking ambitions and waiting for death in haste, perhaps as a relief. A cloud of dark thoughts made him silently sob; he felt a strong urge to vomit, so he invoked God and took out a small, precious Qur’an his father had bought him as a gift for his school excellence. He mocked that notion of his excellence: he realized he had merely been better off than his peers, not truly smart or anything. He invoked God again and drove the thoughts away. He would read the Qur’an whenever he was out of sight and felt it a refuge from the torrent of thoughts pouring over him. Reading calmed him, but his restlessness returned when he stopped. He watched cooking fires and stared at them, feeling as if he were burning his suicidal thoughts in them. He developed a strange habit: starting fires and watching them, or seeking them out to sit in a terrible silence and stare at them with a hollow, frozen face. He wondered what his friend would be doing in that time, guessing he would compose himself because he always knew how to lift his mood with a smile and ridicule his gloomy thoughts. He wanted to write him a letter; one July night he took a pen with enthusiasm that soon faded. He didn’t know where he lived or his exact whereabouts. All he knew was that he was in a small town called Fukuoka, 150 kilometers north of the industrial center of Nagasaki. Then he laughed, telling himself he would only mock him and that there was no need to be so earnest, and fell asleep. His days did not change much after that.

August arrived; he remembered he was born on the sixth of that month. He would turn thirty-six! He laughed, thinking he would become a perfect square. He wanted to put to use the simple bits of knowledge he had learned in school and applied them on a whim. He awaited that day to tell himself the joke, unaware of what lay ahead.