The Year of Rice and Salt

Gen regarded him. 'There are more of us in the central valley than there are Chinese. Think about it. It may not be so obvious, because the Chinese are the only ones allowed to own land, and so they run the rice paddies, especially where you came from, over east side. But up valley, down valley – it's mostly Japanese at the ends, and in the foothills, the coastal range, even more so. We were here first, you understand? Now comes this big flood, people are driven away, flooded out, starving. The bureaucrats are thinking, when it's over and the land reemerges, assuming it will some day, if most of the Japanese and natives have died of hunger, then new immigrants can be sent in to take over the valley. And they'll all be Chinese.'

Kiyoaki didn't know what to say to this.

Gen stared at him curiously. He seemed to like what he saw: 'So, you know, Tagomi has been trying to organize private relief, and we've been taking it inland on the flood. But it isn't going well, and it's been expensive, and so the old man is getting testy. His poor workers are paying for it.' Gen laughed.

'But you rescued those Chinese stuck in the trees.'

'Yeah, yeah. Our job. Our duty. Good must result from good, eh? That's what the old woman boarding you says. Of course she's always getting taken.'

They regarded a new tongue of fog licking into the strait. Rain clouds on the horizon looked like a great treasure fleet arriving. A black broom of rain already swept the desolate southern peninsula.

Gen clapped him on the shoulder in a friendly way. 'Come on, I have to get her some stuff at the store.'

He led Kiyoaki up to a tram station, and they got on the next tram that ran up the western side of the city, overlooking the ocean. Up streets and down, past shady residential districts, then another government district, high on the slopes overlooking the stained ocean, wide esplanades lined with cherry trees; then another fortress. The hilly neighbourhoods north of these guns held many of the city's richest mansions, Gen said. They gazed at some of them from the tram as it squeaked past. From the tops of the precipitous streets they could see the temples on the summit of Mount Tamalpi. Then down into a valley, off that tram, and east on another one, across the peninsula and back to Japantown, with bags of food from a market for the proprietress of the boarding house.

Kiyoaki looked in the women's wing to see how Peng ti and her baby were doing. She was sitting in a window embrasure holding the child, looking blank and desolate. She had not gone to find any Chinese relatives, or to seek help from the Chinese authorities, not that there appeared to be much help from that direction; but she seemed not at all interested. Staying with the Japanese, as if in hiding. But she spoke no Japanese, and that was all they used here, unless they thought to speak to her directly in Chinese.

'Come out with me,' he said to her in Chinese. 'I have some money from Gen for the tram, we can see the Gold Gate.'

She hesitated, then agreed. Kiyoaki led her onto the tram system he had just learned, and they went down to the park overlooking the strait. The fog had almost burned off, and the next line of storm clouds were not yet arrived, and the spectacle of the city and the bay shone in wet blinking sunlight. The brown flood continued to pour out to sea, the scraps and lines of foam showing how fast the current was; it must have been ebb tide. That was every rice paddy in the central valley, scoured away and flushed out into the big ocean. Inland everything would have to be built anew. Kiyoaki said something to this effect, and a flash of anger crossed Peng ti's face, quickly suppressed.

'Good,' she said. 'I never want to see that place again.'

Kiyoaki regarded ber, shocked. She could not have been more than about sixteen. What about her parents, her family? She wasn't saying, and he was too polite to ask.

Instead they sat in the rare sun, watching the bay. The babe whimpered, and unobtrusively Peng ti nursed it. Kiyoaki watched her face and the tidal race in the Gold Gate, thinking about the Chinese, their implacable bureaucracy, their huge cities, their rule of Japan, Korea, Mindanao, Aozhou, Yingzhou and Inka.

'What's your baby's name?' Kiyoaki said.

'Hu Die,' the girl said. 'It means '

'Butterfly,' Kiyoaki said, in Japanese. 'I know.' He fluttered with a hand, and she smiled and nodded.

Clouds obscured the sun again, and it cooled rapidly in the onshore breeze. They took the tram back to Japantown.

At the boarding house Peng ti went to the women's wing, and as the men's wing was empty, Kiyoaki entered the chandlery next door, thinking to inquire about a job. The shop on the first floor was deserted, and he heard voices on the second floor, so he went up the stairs.