Excerpt of Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
(Page 5 of 5)
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It was one of those friendships which quickly came to seem inevitable,
and unbreakable. And then in a conversation of less than a
minute, it ended.
They come increasingly to check on me, Konrad. My mother’s family name
was Fuller. You know what that means. I can’t give them any other reason to
think I have divided loyalties. Until the war ends, I’m staying away from all
the Westerners in Nagasaki. But only until the war ends. After, after, Konrad,
things will be as before.
If you had been in Germany, Joshua, you’d say to your Jewish friends: I’m
sorry I can’t hide you in my attic, but come over for dinner when the Nazi
government falls.
“Why are you here?”
Yoshi looks up from the fan of cards in his hand.
“I was at home when the sirens started. This is the nearest shelter.”
At Konrad’s raised eyebrow he adds, “I know. I’ve been going to the
school house’s shelter these last few weeks. But with this New
Bomb . . . I didn’t want to risk the extra minutes out in the open.”
“So there are risks in the world greater than being associated with
a German? That’s comforting. What New Bomb?”
Yoshi puts down his cards.
“You haven’t heard? About Hiroshima? Three days ago?”
“Three days? No one’s spoken to me in three days.”
In the shelter at Urakami, Hiroko is packed in so tightly between her
neighbours she cannot even raise a hand to wipe the sweat damping
her hairline. It hasn’t been so crowded in here since the early days of
the air- raid sirens. What could have provoked the Chairman of the
Neighbourhood Association into such a frenzy about rounding up
everyone in his path and ordering them to the shelter? She exhales
through her mouth and turns her head slightly towards the Chairman’s
wife, who responds by turning quickly away from Hiroko. It is
impossible to know if this is guilt or disdain.
The Chairman’s wife had been a close friend of Hiroko’s mother -
she recalls the two of them giggling together over the newest edition
of Sutairu, in the days before war brought an end to the magazine: no
place in war time Japan for a publication that advised women on the etiquette
of wearing underwear with Western dresses. As she was dying,
Hiroko’s mother had called the Chairman’s wife to her bedside with a
single request: protect my husband against himself. There was even
less place in war time Japan for an iconoclastic artist than for magazines
about modern girls. For a long time, the Chairman’s wife had carried
out her promise, persuading her husband to regard Matsui Tanaka’s
outbursts against the military and the Emperor as a symbol of a husband’s
mourning that was so profound it had unhinged him. But in the
spring, Matsui Tanaka had been walking past a neighbourhood house
and saw the cherry blossom festooning it to commemorate the sacrifice
of the fifteen- year- old boy who had died in a kamikaze attack. Without
saying a word to Hiroko who was walking silently beside him Matsui
Tanaka darted forward, pulling out a book of matches from the pocket
of his trousers, and set fire to the cherry blossom.
Seconds later he lay bloodied on the ground, the dead boy’s father
struggling against the neighbourhood men who had finally decided to
restrain him, and Hiroko, bending down over her father, found herself
pulled up by the Chairman’s wife.
Excerpted from Burnt Shadows
by Kamila Shamsie. Copyright © 2009 by Kamila Shamsie. Excerpted by
permission of Picador, a division of Macmillan. All rights
reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
