11.(4-7) Hospital - Mrs Tojo's Final Apology

Slim Novel 11 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage


4. Hospital

By the Tsukiji station, a big, open, wholesale market fronts the Sumida River and on this weekday it is wholesaling newly caught fish and fresh vegetables since 3 AM. 
   Kimi gets off a trolley onto the street and walks north.

   Downtown! Ugh, a stench! A awful lot a offal! Olga’s English punning gets evoked in Kimi by smells! Who said Tokyo is without slum?

  She sees the inhabitants, darkened skin les miserables of Low Town, with wicker baskets on backs, heading towards the day's labor – picking among refuse and trash for wartime valuables. Kimi, a child of clean North Island fishing life is not used to these sights or smells. Those who live here are Eta – untouchables of Japan -, dark southerner, Malaysian in origin who long ago and faraway got conquered by warlike mongoloid immigrant from Asia.

   Several blocks ahead she sees Hospital, 5 floors higher than surrounding shacks. It stands along the wide road through the Low Town which otherwise is crisscrossed by numberless, nameless alleys and flowing water little more than splashing sewers. Approaching she sees the entrance. It is in a courtyard which, from its rotting tomato and carrot and radish gone to seed, is a War Garden. Passing the courtyard gate she notes Hospital's large double-door entrance twice human height and shaped like the clay tablet Moses is said to have brought down from Mt. Sinai. And transcribed on it – in classical Chinese-character Japanese – The Ten Commandments.

  Christian hospital! She steps up into the vestibule slipping off her wood clogs, gets into a pair of tattered straw slippers and walks along a scrubbed clean wood-board floor past empty desks and student chairs. From ahead comes sound of organ and mix of human voices. Turning corner and following ear she comes upon open French doors. From inside, “Let us gather in the chapel …”

5. Charismatic Eyes

On wood benches are hospital workers and patients, each patient in ankle-length white cotton bed robe held in place by a black band. Rows of 10-seat benches are in each row and the people sit each one with lap and legs warmed by a blanket. Kimi takes aisle seat. Along left wall, is a red & blue mosaic window centered with white cross that transmits morning sun which lights the chapel. Up front is a white-haired woman sitting, playing an organ. On front wall two gilt-edge pictures hang, On wall left is Jesus as Byzantine Christ Pantocrator

(Ruler of All) an expertly copied painting of an AD 1100 original that pictured Jesus as hag-ridden awesome Jewish prophet. The music stops but the people on the benches go on meditating. A woman steps up to the front platform. She is in black dress that outlines her lean body. Gray hair pulled back from her forehead suggests an age around 60 and she has the most beautiful eyes Kimi has ever seen. Charismatic would be the word for them!

6. Two Big Words (No quote marks but speaker indicated)

Charismatic Eyes starts to speak. The tinkling quality of voice identifies a female yet the intonation and rhythm suggest authority unusual for a woman. Her words are pure Japanese unmixed with Chinese alternatives that infected spoken Japanese and which over-educated persons cultivate to sound superior. Yet despite the language the speaker appears anything but uneducated, and Kimi guesses her speech a technique to get her message across to less educated folk.

   Kimi listens with growing interest to Speaker's idea on Science, Human Behavior and the Jesus Doctrine of Love: Science is faithless, the Speaker observes, its biblical personification is Doubting Thomas. Science tolerates no permanent beliefs; all conclusions are provisional, pending observational data and experimental proof. Thus, Ptolemy’s hypothesis of Earth centrality gives way to an Earth-circles-Sun observational deduction. The Laws of Science require no legislation or policing; they are eternal, self-enforcing and fundamentally fair, tolerating no exception and affecting all equally. Everyone from a toddler learns to obey the Law of Gravity or die.

   The Speaker continues. Science is not a creation of human thought. Rather human thought is a creation of Science. The Laws of Science existed before human thought and will exist after all humans cease. We creatures, Homo sapiens, are alive now because atoms collided in accord with the Laws of Science and the products of the collisions eventually evolved into Universe which includes us. What is most impressive about Science is how greatly thousands of disinterested moral lives of women and men lie buried in its foundations! What patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into the metaphoric stones and mortar that make Science, how absolutely impersonal Science stands in its vast augustness! And, comparing to Science, how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes along blowing his voluntary smoke wreaths and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream that more often turns into our nightmare!

   Kimi feels a thrill inside at the phrase ‘vast augustness.’ The speaker goes on to explain that the Laws of Science govern human behavior. If one looks deeply and honestly into self, it is seen that one's today action is consequent on one's past behaviors having been either rewarded or punished in varying degrees. One's present behavior is a try at maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments.

   Human behavior comes from environment influence, asserts the beautiful, magnetic, charismatic Speaker. That being so, how can we morally blame or credit persons for what they do to or for us. To say X is good because he helps us and Y is bad because he harms is like demeaning the moral reputation of a falling rock into whose way our head intrudes. Persons who help or harm us, like rising steam or falling rocks are doing what they must in accordance with the Laws of Science.

   The Speaker now comments on Jesus's Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.: Jesus discovered that controlling how we are influenced by others liberates us from our own anger. His forgive them, they know not what they do expresses this. Anger may be useful in lower animal, in savage, in front-line soldier or in manipulating a mob. But in Science Civilization – Kimi suddenly becomes hyper alert; those 2 big words – anger will make us pawns of those with cool, controlling interests and leadership agendas. Let Enemy be the angry one. But You! Fill your heart with tranquil good fellow-feeling and you will surely win.

   Speaker's next words electrify Kimi's consciousness.

  And lest the old fashioned ones think we Science Civilization persons are helpless do-gooders who can be taken advantage of because we do not become angry at those who offer harm, behold Lord B – Science's avenger!

   Kimi looks over right shoulder toward door expecting Thought Police. But none interrupt and the Speaker continues. Minutes later she finishes and after a moment of quiet meditation the people stand to leave.

 7. Good Cog in Bad Machine

The Speaker heads down corridor and into an office whose door has Direktor on it. Kimi knocks and enters on command, bowing to the austere woman sitting behind brown wood desk. “I am answering newspaper ad for live-in work at hospital.” 
   Deep, dark eyes look her up and down. “Show me your profile.” Kimi turns, putting right side on view. “And back.” She complies. “That will do – Sit.” Direktor's voice assumes softer tone. “Pregnant, four-month, where is the father?”

   “Dead.”

   “In the War?”

   “Yes.”

   “Are you bitter?”

   “I am happy to live carrying future.”

   “Well said. Welcome to our enclave. I am Sanya Matsuda and in public you say ‘Honorable Madam’ while in private just an informal ‘You’ will do.

So it begins. Sanya instructs her to report next day, 6 AM. Arrangement will be made for sleeping quarters. All that remains is her belongings.

   She spends morning at Little Blue House bundling her few things then she leaves a note ‘I am going home to Village’ and says sayonara to the blue house and hurries to the Tojos. Mrs. T. is at the kitchen table reading. Kimi says she must go to her Grandma who is ill. Mrs. is sorry but understands family obligation. She bids Kimi sit awhile and pours tea. “When the Americans come they will arrest my husband and put him on trial before world as criminal. He has been a kind, considerate man to family, has fathered seven children who will be credit to New Japan, has buried but not forgot parents. His quality no one but I shall recall while most foreigners will remember the Asiatic Hitler who led Japan into losing war, and it does not matter you and I know my husband's are not the shoulders for that. The victors will want to preserve the Emperor and the System to clothe its rule and occupation with His authority but I would be satisfied if one other person carries the idea that my husband was the thing I say he is: Good cog in bad machine.”

   She dabs eyes with kerchief then straightens, pats Kimi on shoulder, and says ‘Good luck'.
   To read on, now, click 11.(8-14) Fascinating Hospital