After Grandmother died, our life gradually resumed its normal course. The Japanese appointed a new mayor, the barricades disappeared, enemy flags flew above the roofs, Japanese shops opened and, in restaurants, the traditional white-cotton door blind was replaced with one printed with Japanese writing. Japanese women with their tall, glossy, lacquered chignons walked along our streets. Constrained by their narrow kimonos, they took tiny little steps, clacking their clogs on the cobblestones.

We had to build a new house, but inflation had made us poor. Mother dismissed her chambermaids, and kept only the cook and one maid. The ruined aristocracy was replaced by the nouveaux riches, who brought a sort of pompous gaiety to the town. Hotels, luxurious shops and elegant restaurants opened-the avenues of our town had never been so prosperous.

My parents each found their own way of escaping reality: Father toiled over the translation of an anthology of English poetry; Mother busied herself copying out his manuscript, replacing his over-hurried words with her careful calligraphy.

Mother sealed her overseas memories in a chest. When she is away I take the opportunity to steal the key, which she keeps in a vase. Photographs, clothes, letters and printed fabrics in extraordinary designs that exude a bewitching smell… not musk, or cedar, or sandalwood; not the flowers we have in our garden, the trees we have in our towns; but a perfume that transports me to another world.

Dreaming only deepens my sadness.

14

At last! After a month of arduous tracking through the mountains, we have trapped the terrorists. We have cornered them on the edge of a precipice, with no escape unless they can fly.