It is spring in Sydney, and I am visiting the Botanical Gardens with my friend Henry. There is a Japanese garden here and the cherry trees are in bloom. There is a wedding, a bride in a dress which might be white but which I think is the palest, palest pink. A groom, with a rose pinned to his lapel. They are smiling and laughing. There is no confetti – Henry tells me it is banned here, because it is not conducive to the welfare of the plants they cultivate – but it is not needed anyway, because the warm spring breeze is lifting the blossoms from the cherry trees and depositing them gently, randomly on the bridal party. The couple look into one another’s eyes, and laugh.
They are beautiful, Kiyoko, the couple and the cherry blossoms both. It reminds me of the day we visited your aunt in Yokohama. It was shortly after you had agreed to marry me, when we still glanced shyly at one another and your aunt was a determined chaperone. But we accidentally “lost” your aunt in the park and were ambling lazily through the gardens when an unexpected gust of wind lifted the flowers and filled our hair and clothes with soft, pink petals. Do you remember, Kiyoko, how your aunt scowled at us when she found us, laughing and decorated with cherry-blossom petals. She must have thought that we had engaged in some terrible, unseemly behaviour and that I was quite unsuitable.
Of course, the war came and spoiled it all. One day, when I had marched twenty miles through jungle so dense I could not see the sky, I slept in a dry river bed and dreamed of you, as the tracer bullets crackled like fireworks above my head. I dreamt I was standing in a clearing on the edge of a wooded valley, a place where loquat trees grow. It is a sunny day, although in the distance I saw dark, beautiful storms. I look behind me at the storm, a study in darkness and light. And there you are, Kiyoko, standing on the path wearing your favourite white kimono. You smile at me. You have a flower in your hair, a beautiful cherry blossom, white with pale pink curling at the edges of the petals. You remove the flower and hand it to me. I accept your offering of the flower and hold it in my palms. I run the silky petals between my thumb and forefinger, releasing their delicate fragrance. I begin to eat the petals. It seems the right thing to do. They taste bitter. You watch me as I eat. When I have chewed and swallowed the last petal, you turn and disappear into a forest of loquat trees. It begins to rain. Unnaturally large raindrops fall in slow motion. I turn my mouth up to the rain, to rinse away the bitter taste of the petals. The rain turns to petals, which flutter down on me like confetti and my mouth fills once again with that bitter taste. I don’t remember waking up. After that, the war was just one long bad dream. We crossed a river, holding our bayonets high above our heads to keep them dry.
Here in the Botanical Gardens, Henry touches my elbow, asks me if I am unwell. I was thinking of the war, I tell him. Of my wife. Henry looks down, embarrassed. His father was a bomber pilot during the war. It could even have been him who dropped the bomb that killed you. I watch the bridal party frolic in a cloud of petals, like tiny pink butterfly wings.
Kiyoko, I wish you were here, dancing with me in a rain of confetti. But you are not here and in my mouth is that bitter taste again.
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.