Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Page 0,124

in Kauai. She rented a car at the Avis counter and went straight to the police station nearby. There, she told them she had just come from Tokyo after having received word that her son was killed by a shark in Hanalei Bay. A graying police officer with glasses took her to the morgue, which was like a cold-storage warehouse, and showed her the body of her son with one leg torn off. Everything from just above the right knee was gone, and a ghastly white bone protruded from the stump. This was her son—there could no longer be any doubt. His face carried no hint of an expression; he looked as he always did when sound asleep. She could hardly believe he was dead. Someone must have arranged his features like this. He looked as though, if you gave his shoulder a hard shake, he would wake up complaining the way he always did in the morning.

In another room, Sachi signed a document certifying that the body was that of her son. The policeman asked her what she planned to do with it. “I don’t know,” she said. “What do people normally do?” They most often cremate it and take the ashes home, he told her. She could also transport the body to Japan, but this required some difficult arrangements and would be far more expensive. Another possibility would be to bury her son on Kauai.

“Please cremate him,” she said. “I’ll take the ashes with me to Tokyo.” Her son was dead, after all. There was no hope of bringing him back to life. What difference did it make whether he was ashes or bones or a corpse? She signed the document authorizing cremation and paid the necessary fee.

“I only have American Express,” she said.

“That will be fine,” the officer said.

Here I am, paying the fee to have my son cremated with an American Express card, Sachi thought. It felt unreal to her, as unreal as her son’s having been killed by a shark. The cremation would take place the next morning, the policeman told her.

“Your English is very good,” the officer said as he put the documents in order. He was a Japanese American by the name of Sakata.

“I lived in the States for a while when I was young,” Sachi said.

“No wonder,” the officer said. Then he gave Sachi her son’s belongings: clothes, passport, return ticket, wallet, Walkman, magazines, sunglasses, shaving kit. They all fit into a small Boston bag. Sachi had to sign a receipt listing these meager possessions.

“Do you have any other children?” the officer asked.

“No, he was my only child,” Sachi replied.

“Your husband couldn’t make the trip?”

“My husband died a long time ago.”

The policeman released a deep sigh. “I’m sorry to hear that. Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could tell me how to get to the place where my son died. And where he was staying. I suppose there’ll be a hotel bill to pay. And I need to get in touch with the Japanese consulate in Honolulu. Could I use your phone?”

He brought her a map and used a felt-tip marker to indicate where her son had been surfing and the location of the hotel where he had been staying. She slept that night in a little hotel in Lihue that the policeman recommended.

As Sachi was leaving the police station, the middle-aged Officer Sakata said to her, “I have a personal favor to ask of you. Nature takes a human life every now and then here on Kauai. You see how beautiful it is on this island, but sometimes, too, it can be wild and deadly. We live here with that potential. I’m very sorry about your son. I really feel for you. But I hope you won’t let this make you hate our island. This may sound self-serving to you after everything you’ve been through, but I really mean it. From the heart.”

Sachi nodded to him.

“You know, ma’am, my brother died in the war in 1944. In Belgium, near the German border. He was a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team made up of all Japanese American volunteers. They were there to rescue a Texas battalion surrounded by the Nazis when they took a direct hit and he was killed. There was nothing left but his dog tags and a few chunks of flesh scattered in the snow. My mother loved him so much, they tell me she was