Steve Cash - The Remembering

The next day began with two sharp knocks on my door, followed by a small voice, “Rice, mister.” I sat up and lit the candle next to my bed, then slipped on my shoes and walked the short distance over to the door. It wasn’t locked because there was no lock. The only doors with locks were the “front” door and the one leading off the great room to the Fleur-du-Mal’s private chambers. I swung the door open and immediately smelled tobacco. Koki’s smiling face was staring back at me. “Good morning, Koki,” I said. The big room was silent and dim behind him. “It is morning, isn’t it?” Koki looked at me, saying nothing, rocking side to side and smiling. He was holding a bowl of steamed rice topped with a few slivers of carrot and mushroom. My question seemed to have no effect. Suddenly he shoved the bowl at me, almost hitting me in the chest. I grabbed the bowl with both hands just before he let go of it. “Hello, mister,” he said, and walked away repeating “hello” over and over. “Koki — wait!” I said, but it was no use. He never turned around. I watched him walking with his odd little gait and realized why Koki probably wouldn’t and couldn’t turn around. Turning around, reacting, was not in the plan, the pattern … the practiced routine. Responding to me would have meant change , an extremely difficult and frightening complication in Koki’s world.

I left the door open and ate the rice and vegetables sitting on my bed, staring through the open doorway into the darkness of the great room. The rice was good, under the circumstances, but it wasn’t enough. I had my appetite back and the rice only made me think of more and better food in a better place. I thought of St. Louis and Carolina and Jack and Star and Caine … in her kitchen … sunlight streaming through the open windows … Ciela is cooking, laughing … the Cardinals are on the radio … Opari is holding my hand … all of us … laughing … her eyes are dancing, laughing … Opari … Opari. In the next moment I had my first thought of escape. I would not wait to find out what the Fleur-du-Mal had in mind. I knew I had to get out of the shiro . I only had to find the means.

The rest of the second day went much the same as the first, as did the third and fourth days. Electricity to the hills in the vicinity of the shiro had not been restored since the bomb dropped. Three stories below ground level, my time was spent keeping the wall lamps lit in the great room, listening to the Fleur-du-Mal continue to expound on everything from consciousness itself to the habits and habitat of the red-cowled cardinal. Often, and without explanation, he would retire to his chambers for hours at a time, then reappear just as suddenly. He constantly dispensed warnings, opinions, and proclamations about the Meq. Some of them were absurd, but all were fascinating and revealing, even confessional. He did most of the talking while Koki and I listened. And we played chess. Over and over and always with the same results — the Fleur-du-Mal beat me and Koki beat both of us.

Without a radio, I had no idea if the Japanese had surrendered or not. If the Fleur-du-Mal had any access to current events, he never mentioned it. For me, the great room became more claustrophobic by the hour. I missed the sunlight and longed to breathe fresh air. The Fleur-du-Mal, however, seemed in no hurry to leave. He was enjoying himself. Every day he wore a different, exquisitely embroidered kimono. He was gracious and generous, a perfect host. He even offered me a complete set of clothes, which I needed badly. They were his own and had never been worn. Smiling, he said, “You might as well take them. They are out-of-date, American, and of marginal taste and quality … precisely your style, I should think, mon petit .” I smiled back and welcomed them, and they fit perfectly. Then, on the fifth day, everything changed quickly, beginning with the simplest event. It was only for a brief period and it was late in the day, but it made all the difference.

Koki and I were in the middle of yet another game of chess. The Fleur-du-Mal was not with us. He had been locked inside his chambers for at least two hours. The game was going the same as all the others. Koki would lean forward in his chair, make his move quickly, then sit back and start rocking, never saying a word and staring down at the chessboard. Occasionally, he would drool out the corner of his mouth, then wipe his chin and adjust his big eyeglasses all in one motion. We were entering the endgame and I only had six pieces still on the board, none of them my queen. Koki had trapped and captured her within his first ten moves. My king was doomed again and I knew it. Just as I started to move, all of the half-dozen hand-wrought Belgian lamps scattered throughout the great room began flickering with light. They were each electric and in seconds the flicker became a solid flood of light. The shiro finally had electricity. Koki expressed no emotion and showed no awareness of the change, or it simply didn’t matter to him. He continued rocking and staring at the chessboard, waiting for me to move.

Then I heard the music. The sound was faint, very faint, and scratchy like a phonograph record. I focused my hyper-hearing and located the source. It was coming from deep within or behind the stone walls, somewhere between the Fleur-du-Mal’s private chambers and Koki’s small apartment.

“Koki,” I said, “Koki, do you hear the music?”

Before he knew what he was doing, Koki raised his head and smiled. I could see every one of his stained teeth and even smell his breath from across the table. “Yes, mister,” Koki said. “She likes the music, hello.” A second later he realized what he had done and it scared him. His smile dropped instantly. He bent his head down and resumed his frozen stare at the chessboard, rocking back and forth and moaning slightly.

“Who is ‘she,’ Koki?” I asked. “You said ‘she.’ Who is ‘she’?” I asked again, but I knew I wasn’t going to get any more responses. Koki had retreated completely into himself and the chessboard.

Somehow, I had to find a way to gain Koki’s conscious awareness of me without frightening him away. I had to become real in his world, not he in mine. As I thought about the problem, I listened closely to the music. I hadn’t heard it in years, but I knew the piece. It was one of Solomon’s favorite symphonies — Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major, the work Mahler himself originally titled Aus dem Leben eines Einsamen , “from the life of a lonely-one.” I thought back to the many times in Carolina’s home when Solomon would play the symphony on the phonograph while we were reading or doing other things, such as playing chess. And then it hit me! There might be a unique way to break through to Koki’s world. It was a long shot, but I remembered something Solomon had shown me one rainy day when we were listening to Mahler and I was beating him soundly in a game of chess. I had him down to six pieces. Solomon slowly surveyed his remaining pieces, laughed to himself, and then proceeded to checkmate me in six lightning-quick, seemingly irrational moves. I asked him how he had done it and he said Emanual Lasker, the great German champion, had shown him a series of moves, an endgame progression that he called the “Davidsstern,” or Star of David. Solomon said the progression would only work in a particular situation and it would probably only work one time against a grandmaster because a grandmaster would never forget the progression once he had seen it. I looked down at the positions of my six remaining pieces on the chessboard. I was in luck. Each piece was in the exact position Solomon’s had been. Six crazy, unlikely moves later, I glanced up at Koki. I cleared my throat and said the magic word—“Checkmate.”