Song of the Exile [antikvár]

Rabaul New Britain, 1942 ". . . Soon the 'iwa bird will fly. Huge mammal waves will breach and boom. It will be Makahiki time. Autumn in my islands She sits up quickly in the dark, taking her body by surprise. Her fingers roam her face, a face once nearly flawless. She drags her knuckles down her cheeks. Outside, electrified barbed wire hums. She feels such wrenching thirst, she sucks sweat coursing down her arm. Then carefully she rises, gliding like algae through humid air. She listens for the sea. For that is what she longs for—waves cataracting, corroding her to crystals. From somewhere, gurgling latrines. Even their sound is comforting. A kerosene lamp is steered into the dark. Sunny watches as dreamily it floats, comes down. A soldier's hand, the hand of memory, places it on the floor, revealing a yeasty, torn mosquito net. Inside, a young girl on a narrow bed, so still she could be dead. In watchtowers surrounding the women's compound—twenty Quon-set huts, within each, forty women—guards yawn and stroke their rifles. One of them half dozes, dreamily composing an impeccable letter to his family in Osaka. "Mother, we are winning The Imperial Japanese Army will prevail!" He is growing thin.