Chapter Text
It was just a job to me. At first, it was just a job. I didn’t realize. Not until later. I graduated from college and I needed a job and I applied to every job I could find and I took the first one that accepted me, because I needed a job. How was I supposed to know they were actually evil?
The thing was, I needed the money. Maybe that sounds selfish. Because we all pretend that life is supposed to be more than money. but the reality is you can’t live without money. You can’t. Look, I had a girlfriend. We wanted to start a family. Let me show you a photo. See? There we are – when we went down to Mexico a few summers ago. My wife. My kids. So grown-up now, huh? Kids are such blessings. But the costs pile on, is what I’m saying. Those little rugrats are always growing. Gotta buy new clothes all the time when they’re young. And then they get older and they get smarter and it’s just so amazing the things they can do. So you have to pay for the soccer lessons and the horse-back riding lessons and the dance classes and all the other damn things they want to try. Tap shoes and jazz shoes and recital outfits – hundreds of dollars down the drain. Then suddenly we’ve got to buy a new minivan to shuttle them and their sticky-pawed friends to practices, and then a new one when that one inevitably breaks down. And that costs money. The wife wants to renovate the kitchen. That costs money. Mother-in-law gets sick. Hospital bills to pay. That costs money. It all costs money.
So what do you do? You go to work and you lower your head and get the job done and you bring in the dough.
It wasn’t all evil stuff you know. We did legitimate research. Have you heard of AD-9? It’s an experimental drug for Alzheimers. The research hospital that developed it worked off some of our previous studies. It’s still in the test phase right now but can you imagine? A cure for Alzheimers. That’s huge. Thanks, in part, to our work. Thanks to you, in a way. We did a lot of stuff with your cells. Good stuff, you know? It’s miraculous.
But it’s not like they advertise it. That they’re HYDRA, I mean. Those first years I was there, I had no idea, I was just fetching coffee and cleaning out the rat cages for the senior scientists, the real scientists. God I wanted to be them so bad. Do real work, you know? Something meaningful. And I worked my butt off because I wanted to get there. They were always telling you how you had to prove yourself. So I tried to prove myself. And that means you do your work quietly and competently and you don’t think about any of the weird stuff. And yeah, there was weird stuff. Things that didn’t quite add up. But I didn’t question it. You assume someone above you knows better, you assume someone above you knows what they’re doing. You’re not the one who makes decisions and if you want to be a person who makes decision you’ve got to keep your mouth shut and do your job. So I kept my mouth shut and did my job. Because I didn’t want to spend my whole life cleaning rat shit, you know? Is that so wrong?
Then when they finally tell you you’re in too deep. You’ve dedicated years of your life to this company. So much sweat and elbow grease. Years of keeping your head down and doing exactly what they’ve told you and here at last is your reward. The responsibilities you’ve always wanted. A great salary. All the money you’ve dreamed of. It’s just. Things aren’t quite like you expected. Some things don’t quite sit well with you. But you’ve got your family to think about. You’ve become accustomed to a certain level of living. So you keep going, you do what they say… And before you know it you’re in too deep. You can’t escape even if you wanted to. Frogs in a boiling pot. I don’t know. Maybe I should have… But by then all that shit was normal. It all seemed normal.
And I guess… I guess I didn’t realize. It never really sunk in. Until I saw you the other day. Yeah. No, not here – the store down the street. Months ago, actually. I nearly… I nearly dropped my bagel. What the hell, I thought, that’s him, isn’t it. Ordering a bagel. It didn’t seem real. I mean, they said… I mean, looking at the brain scans even. There wasn’t anything there. Maybe you remember… no, what am I talking about. But you looked… your eyes were just like the rats in the cage, there wasn’t anything in it.
Okay, okay. Don’t look at me like that. I get it, I get it. I get how awful that sounds. Believe me, I feel like shit now. But what was I supposed to do? You know how they work better than anyone. They would have punished me too, if I said anything. You have to understand that. I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. You’ve got to understand. You know that just as well as I do. Really, the only difference between you and me is that you were special. You were the one-of-the-kind custom-made asset but me? I was replaceable. I was nothing but a cog in the machine. You think I could have made some grand ethical stand? They would have killed me. Replaced me in an instance. Chop down one head and two more grows in its place. It wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing I did would have mattered. But it keeps haunting me. God! Where did it all go wrong? Ever since I saw you again it all keeps running through my head. I’ve been hoping… I don’t know what made me keep coming back here. I guess you grew up here, huh? I still can’t believe that – Oh, nevermind. None of this is what I’m trying to say. I just – It’s really hard to, to - Alright. Okay.
What I’m trying to say is I’m sorry.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot. And I wanted you to know… I know it might not be worth much, coming from me, but... I am sorry.
We shouldn’t have treated you that way.
What they did to you – what I did to you - it was wrong.
I should have done something. To try and stop it. I don’t know what. I don’t know if there’s anything I could have done. But I should have at least tried.
I should have – I should have done a lot of things.
I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.
That’s all I wanted to say.
---
He’s trembling when he gets home. He can’t quite get the key into the lock. Like Yori’s son in his nightmares. Except that wasn’t a nightmare; it had really happened. God, he’s never going to wake up from this nightmare. Finally he opens the door. The little white room where he lives suddenly in front of him. He paces up and down the floor. The walls seem to close in on him, leering over the couch and the gray blankets on the floor. He replays the whole interaction in his head. That’s something he can do now: remember things. The way that man had looked at him. Clammy hands on his bare chest. Teeth grinding into the bit in his mouth. Faces swimming over him, always over him. The sanctimonious expression as he had sat there, leaning forward over the table saying “Well?” The napkins in the container on the table blowing slightly in the breeze of the air vent above them. He hadn’t been able to say anything. He should have said something, instead of just sitting there gaping. Like... Like he had always done back then. Like nothing had even changed. He hated it. He hates it. He thinks: I used to be so eloquent. He had used to be somebody.
He’s so angry. Why is he angry? He wants to punch the wall. But he can’t do that. The neighbours would hear it. This guy, he’s so violent, they would say, he’s a danger to society. Like they say all the time on TV. But he’s not violent, he has never ever wanted to be violent. He wants to get black-out drunk. But he can’t do that either. He wants to go back in time and… But he can’t do that either – or anyways, he’s missed his chance. He can smoke, at least. That’s one vice that has not yet been denied to him. He fishes out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He manages to light one and raises it to his mouth with trembling hands. He leans against the wall and falls, more than anything, to the floor.
The thing that surprised him, he reflects distantly, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall and a cigarette drooping from his fingers, was the anger. After all, the guy had apologized to him. He should be grateful. Shouldn’t he? Or... happy? Or..or something? It was more than he had ever expected, really. It had honestly never occurred to him, that anyone might think to apologize. So he should be grateful. But he hadn’t really felt anything, except that he kind of wanted to kill the guy. He had hated that man, at that moment, with an intensity that shocked him. He wanted to – as he had done, many times before – to lunge at him and strangle him and kill him, to listen to his dying gurgles as he chokes beneath his hands.
This worries him a little. He flexes the metal arm. The fingers open and shut. He isn’t supposed to be thinking things like that anymore. He didn’t do those kind of things anymore. It’s dangerous for him to be angry and really he has no right to be this angry anyways. Because the guy had apologized. He tries to find in himself some other sort of feeling. Relief?Peace? But all he can find is anger.
He’s so very angry.
He tosses the cigarette butt into a glass jar already filled with ashes and sits there, furious. Research on his cells applied to a cure for Alzheimers. That had to be a joke, right? Is he supposed to feel proud of that or something? Did they include him as co-author? You’ve got to be kidding me.
He looks up at the blank white walls of his stupid white apartment. The walls leering over him. This stupid white apartment. He can’t stand another minute of it. He stands up and flees down the stairs out into the streets of Brooklyn and looks up at the wide-open sky streaked with clouds. Breathes in the fumes of the city and looks at the skyline so different than that of his youth. The tall apartment blocks rising in the distance that had never been there before. They had been built some time in the 70s, someone had told him, in a craze of city planning and redevelopment. They had torn down everything that had been there before. The corner store where he and Steve had gone to buy candy – gone. The elevated lines – gone. The place where he had grown up – gone. His old school – gone.
But somehow the apartment he had shared with Steve before the war is still there. Go figure because even back then the building should have been condemned. There’s a plaque in front of it now. “Captain America lived here!” it proudly declares. He’s walked by there a few times. Like it was the 1940s and he’d just gotten off work. His feet would just carry him there automatically. He’d be walking somewhere else not thinking and suddenly he’s standing there, in front of that damn apartment. He hates that – not being in control. When he had first come to Brooklyn, just after DC, that’s where he had gone. He had not really understood anything then but this he had known: the way home. A turn here and a turn there, body memory as deep as how to kill, then the stoop and the door and the hallway and the dark banister of the staircase against his palm and the steep steep stairs and he would be there; he could burst through the door saying “Can you believe this shit? I deserve co-author, Steve, AT LEAST, don’t you think?” and Steve would say, “Yeah, what the hell?” and offer to beat up the guy for him and Bucky would say “Aw, it ain’t worth all that” and Steve would say… well, he doesn’t really know what Steve would say. Anymore.
So he is careful not to walk in the direction of the old apartment. He goes the other way instead. Past brownhouses and the tall 70s high rises and the streets with cars parked on the side of the road. Sirens screaming in the distant. He walks and walks. Scenery blurs by. Orange pylons and grafitti. Grand Army Plaza past the arch into Prospect Park. Out onto the streets again across from a Wendy’s, the apartment building where Ebbett’s Field used to be rising in the distance. There’s a plaque there too – saying that this is where Ebbett’s Field used to be. Except that now it’s an apartment. He goes farther and farther still. A sunny spring day but the clouds in the sky are tall and foreboding and the wind whips through the streets and overturns bins and chases paper into the sky. For one block it begins to rain, a thin drizzle that cools upon his skin, then it is sunny again. Trees are blooming with white flowers.
He focuses on the rhythm of his feet against the pavement. He walks at a steady pace. His heart has slowed to a steady beat. He walks for a long time. Then he stops. He looks around. Rows of houses with small green yards. He can no longer remember what had made him so angry – or rather, that man does not seem so important now, here in this far off street full of townhouses with flowers wafting through the air. He runs a hand through his hair then turns around. He needs to go grocery shopping. He’s almost out of oatmeal.
This made him think of the man again, who had apparently been so shocked to see him ordering a bagel. Who had watched him in that coffee shop like he couldn’t believe Bucky knew how to navigate modern society, casting a funny glance at Bucky’s clothes like he couldn’t believe he knew how to dress himself. Eyes blank like a rat, the man had said. And whose fault was that? Pure and helpless rage again quivering in his belly. The past hour of walking hadn’t mattered at all. Whose fault was that? Raindrops start to fall, slowly, then violently.
He stands there, the rain falling on him. The rain runs through his hair and down his face. A few blocks away, he can hear a man and a women shouting. “Quickly, quickly,” they say, as they hurry out of the rain. “Ooh, I’m getting soaked!” A door slams – they made it home. A car drives by in a crash of water, its headlights bright in the darkness. It turns the corner and then it gone. It’s going home too, apparently. Nobody wants to be out here, in the fierce and heavy downpour. The sun has disappeared. It’s dark. Lights glow from the windows. People inside, sitting on their sofas. Reading a book. Drawing in a sketchbook. Little girls kicking their feet and looking out the window singing “Rain rain, go away” like his little sister used to do. People actually live here. Until this moment, it had been just a street. But it’s somebody’s home. Where is his home? That little white apartment. He doesn’t turn around. His feet slosh against the rippling water running down the pavement. He should keep going to Highland Park. Brooklyn the borough of cemeteries. Streaks of rain obscure the world, misty like a veil of tears. He’s so angry. Is he still angry? He isn’t sure anymore. He’s wet. He’s cold. That’s how it had been back then too – registering only the physical facts. Pain. Hunger. If even that. He should get out of the rain at least. Take shelter in a shop or something. Go to the drugstore. Buy a strawberry phosphate. Except they don’t sell those anymore. Okay, then he can go to a coffee shop and shoot the shit with some cute barista. Invite her out and they can dance all night long. Wasn’t that something he used to do? Wasn’t that the kind of person he once had been? He wants to drown in the music of a 5 piece band. The night he learned he had been drafted he had gone out with some girl he can’t remember her name and danced and drank and danced, in Brooklyn, in Harlem, anywhere he could find, as long as it was full of people. He had stayed out so late and so frequently that eventually Steve had confronted him about it. “What’s the matter with you?” said Steve, when Bucky tumbled in at some ungodly hour in the morning. “Nothing’s the matter,” said Bucky and he doesn’t remember the specifics of their conversation but what Bucky remembers is that at one point Steve said something really funny which was: “Don’t you know there’s a war going on?” And Bucky had laughed and laughed and said “That’s right Stevie. Then I guess I’ll join the army!”
Maybe he should have told him then: how afraid he was. How absolutely scared shitless he was, of war, of dying, of killing, and so he had tried to forget all about it and didn’t he do such a good job of that? He had forgotten everything in the end. Maybe he should have told this to Steve before he left: how afraid he was. Don’t leave me, he should have said, instead of what he had said, which was “Yes, of course, go!”. But Steve was always the brave one, the one who flung himself fearlessly into the unknown and so Bucky had tried so hard to be brave too, to smile and say “Good luck” but for what? What good had his courage ever done for him? What good had all the dancing done and the drinking done, for that matter– except for one crucial thing. Which was that when he went home, Steve had been there, waiting.
But he had told Steve to go and for some reason Steve had believed him and now Steve was gone. And Bucky could dance and drink all he wanted, who cares, Steve wouldn’t stay up all night worrying about him anymore. Wasn’t that swell? There wasn’t anyone waiting up on him. He was free. Nobody except his goddamn therapist who was waiting to call the cops on him the second he didn’t show up to her precious state-mandated appointments, and also maybe Sam who kept texting him for some reason.
And Yori, he thinks suddenly.
It’s Wednesday. He and Yori always go to Izzy’s on Wednesday.
He almost turns around. He almost walks straight there.
But then he remembers.
---
1 week ago
---
I... have to tell you something. About your son.
He was murdered; by the Winter Soldier.
And that... was me.
I…
...
On January 12, 200X, HYDRA sent the Winter Soldier to kill a man named Mikhail Iliavitch Chernov. The target was staying at a hotel in Prague. Hotel Inessa, it was called. The Winter Soldier… No, that’s…Me. It was me. I entered the hotel at XX:00 hours. The target was escorted by 6 bodyguards. I... dispatched... the first two guards. The target was already heading down the stairs. His guards started firing their guns and I jumped off the second floor landing on the stairs. I finished off the guards. Killed them, I mean. What am I saying. I killed them, all of them and after they were dead the target was standing by door and I grabbed him by the throat and carried him through the door, into another hallway. I lifted him into the air, my hand around his throat and he couldn’t breath and we stood like that until he stopped breathing. Dead. Mission successful.
And your son he… He was just… standing there. In the hallway. When I… After I… His hands were shaking. He was trying to get the key into the lock but his hands were shaking too much. But even if… He wouldn’t have been able to - It was too late. He’d seen it. Me. So.
I shot him.
I had to shoot him.
….
...
I didn’t have a choice. The orders were - They told me - I had to do what they –
See, HYDRA wanted to make the perfect soldier. Like Captain America, only… Theirs. Completely theirs. Someone who would do whatever they said, no matter what. That’s what HYDRA was. That’s the kind of world they were trying to build. A world of complete obedience. Perfect order. I was… a prototype of that, I think. Anything that I was they tried to carve out of me, and it worked, I guess, because I didn’t… But I mean, I wasn’t completely, I was still - I mean...It’s hard to explain.
Okay. Okay okay. I should… start from the beginning.
…
My name, my full name, is James Buchanan Barnes.
I was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 10th, 1917. Yeah. 1917.
In December 1941 the United States declared war on Germany. I was drafted into the United States army. 107th Infantry, 1st Battalion, C Company, 1st Division. One day we engaged the enemy in a battle outside Azzano, Italy. We lost. Those of us who were still alive were taken prisoner. We were taken to a work camp in Austria. We were assembling ammunition. They kept us in cages. Sometimes they would take people from the cages and we would never see them again. Nobody knew what they were doing to them. Only that it was bad. You’d hear rumours. It was – They had this machine – I don’t know. They put these things in me and, and… I don’t know, I was – I was sick when they took me, I had a fever, I was half-delusional, I didn’t understand what was happening. Sometimes I felt like I’d died on that table and everything after was a dream. Then suddenly Steve was there and -
I was rescued from the camp. I could have gone home then. They offered me an honourable discharge. I could have gone home. But I didn’t. I wanted to make those bastards pay, I guess, and I couldn’t leave Ste – Well, it wasn’t any use because they got me again in the end anyways. Blasted me straight off a train in the mountains and I probably fell a thousand feet. That’s when I lost the arm. The Soviets, or somebody, they found me and they took me and they put me on this – I was transported to this – this stupid camp in the middle of nowhere – froze my ass off – and they started – they did all these – experiments, I guess - the arm – and -
God, what am I talking about. Why am I talking about myself. You want my measurements too? Should I tell you the weather conditions the day I was born? How long my mother was in labour? Geez.
...
On January 12, 200X, the CEO of PolyMetal Ltd, Anatoly Denisovitch Chernov, entered the Inessa Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. He was a multi-millionare who profited, like so many others, from the time after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The so-called ogligarchs. He was originally from a small village in Eastern Russia. Humble beginnings. He worked as a surveyor in a mining company during the Soviet era and when the USSR fell apart he managed to corner the market on certain rare earth metals. Ferroniobium, or something like that. It’s used to create high-strength low-alloy steel. They use it in armour plates on tanks and airplanes and things. And roller coasters. Go figure. Well, he became a pretty big shot. He had a lot of different fingers in a lot of different pies. Not all of it legal. They say that’s why he was in Prague. He was there to meet some mob leader, or something like that. I don’t know. They didn’t tell me the details. I learned this all later. According to the Russian papers it was the mob who killed him.
But that’s not true. HYDRA wanted him dead because he had been looking a little too closely at one of his mining operations in Siberia. It was an old HYDRA-operated mine, and there was a base nearby where they would process the metals and they used it to make weapons and things. Supplied a lot of different HYDRA operations across the world. But Chernov was wondering why he wasn’t seeing the profits. He refused to see the bigger picture. For that, he had to die.
I learned all this later too. From the reports. They didn’t tell me this. They never told me why they wanted someone dead, just that I was supposed to kill them. They told me… Actually, they didn’t even tell me his name. They used codenames. He was “Reindeer”. Don’t know who the hell came up with that one. It’s so stupid. I didn’t even know I was in Prague, at the time. I’d always wake up and I’d be in this… completely different place. Or sometimes the same place but it was always different. It was so… I don’t know how to describe it. Like looking at every 10th image of a film reel. It was all disjointed. Like in normal life there’s a… a flow to things, you know? One thing proceeds from another, this happens and then that happens, because of this or that. But it wasn’t like that. Everything happened because… because that’s what was happening at the moment. There wasn’t any reason to it. There must have been though, I just couldn’t see it. I couldn’t remember anything. I didn’t even know who I was. They wiped my memory, every time. I’d wake up and they’d tell me to do this or that and I didn’t know any better, it was like… Okay, I downloaded one of those mobile games recently, for your phone, and it has this little monkey in a ball and you’re on top of this… ramp or whatever and you have to roll down and collect the bananas and you win points if you collect a lot of bananas and get to the bottom without falling off. Then they put you on top of a new ramp. Every time you win: a new ramp. And when you think about it, it doesn’t really make any sense. Who build this ramp? How did you get there? Why do you need to collect the fucking bananas? But when you’re playing the game you don’t think about that. You’re put on the top of the hill and every time you roll down and collect the bananas. Because that’s the game. You know that’s what you’re supposed to do and you don’t question it because there isn’t anything else to do. There isn’t anything else you can do. God, I’m explaining this so badly. A game. It wasn’t a fucking game. I know it wasn’t.
I guess he wasn’t really... a good person. Chernov. A lot of the things he was doing, it hurt people. He was a terrible man. A criminal. Maybe I should feel guilty about killing him too but I’m not sure I do. I guess someone out there must have loved him though. And the guards… I know all their names. I found out all their names. At least they had some idea of what they were getting in to. But RJ… That’s… He had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. That’s what’s… unforgivable.
It was quick, at least. A single shot to the head. Pistol. Clean. It was over right away. He didn’t suffer. He was just afraid.
They took his body with the others. They had a van outside and… I loaded all the bodies into the van. I think… But I don’t know. The place where the kept me, I know it had an incinerator. But this was Prague so. So I don’t know what happened to him. The police reports say they never found the body. They didn’t even know if he died in the hotel, they think he got assaulted in the streets or something. But no, it was at the hotel. I shot him. I don’t… I don’t know why he was there, really. He just appeared there, in the hall. But that’s what happened. That’s how he died. He was in the wrong place in the wrong time.
I thought you deserved to know.
...
Yori. Are you - ?
I’m… I’m sorry. I -
I’m sorry.
---
He wished, afterwards, that he could take it all back. It was wrong, of course, not to tell Yori. That he had not told Yori. He should have told Yori ages ago. It was wrong – of course it was wrong. He recognized that he had been behaving unjustly. And yet, now that he had finally done it, now that this wrong had finally been righted – why did he wish for the clock to reverse, for time to go back, to hang on to that moment where they had been friends of a sort, him and Yori, why was he being so very selfish? But he is selfish – he wants to go to Izzy’s and drink sake with Yori and eat sushi and pour over the newspaper together and complain about how kids these days never read the newspaper anymore, man, the world’s gone completely to shit. Ain’t that the truth. He wants to help Yori with his groceries and stop him from getting into ridiculous fights with the neighbours and to take care of him, to listen to his grumbling and -
But there was no going back to the past – at least, not for him. He is here in the present and he is standing in the rain. The wind is pushing the rain diagonal and strafing him like bullets and he is cold and soaking wet in some god-forsaken corner of Brooklyn. And he has done all those things and there is no going back.
---
But he does go back, to his little white apartment, because there is nowhere else to go.
He cuts into the back alley before he goes inside.After the great garbage bin debacle it has become a habit, somehow, to check on the trashbefore he goes into the apartment, lest someone profane the sanctity of Yori’s bin. Everything is in its proper place. He leans against the wall and pulls out a cigarette. Cigarettes will kill you, people say. If only he could be so lucky. Besides it brings back memories: rising smoke and the spark of matches like fireflies over the rolling hills of Italy, smokey bars and dance halls, music blaring, leaning over the fire escape. It passes the time at any rate, he thinks, as the flame burns down to the tips of his fingers. And what else does he have now but time. There’s an old newspaper sticking out of someone’s trash and he picks it up and flips through it idly, cigarette dangling. The Metsare doing well this season, he notes. He can picture the old man gloating about it, the Mets success – see, what did I tell you, the rookie came through - before he remembers he can never talk to Yori again.
Except that there is one more conversation that they will have to have. Hewilltell Yori that he is leaving. Because it’s impossible, he realizes, for him to stay a moment more. He has to leave this place. He has to let the old man live in peace.
So he snubs out his cigarette purposely between metal fingers and heads into the apartment, intending to go directly to his landlord to arrange all this but when he opens the stairwell door to his floor Yori is there in front of Bucky’s door and a moment he is stupefied – like by thinking about Yori, he had summoned him. Then he thinks – maybe it’s a hallucination, because that had happened sometimes, he would think ‘Steve, where are you, I can’t take this anymore’ and then Steve would be there, in front of him, and he’d feel so ridiculously relieved but then it all turned out to be a dream, except for the one time it had been real.
But Yori was really there, in the same dull hallway Bucky had walked through for months now, with its musty smell and ugly brown carpet and Yori is standing in front of Bucky’s door. Like he had just knocked, and has been waiting for Bucky to answer. He didn’t seem surprised to see Bucky coming out of the stairwell. He didn’t seem angry, either. He just stares at Bucky with a mild curiosity.
“I went to Izzy’s,” Yori says, “You were not there. Do you not know what day it is?”
“It’s Wednesday,” says Bucky.
“That’s right. Have you already eaten?”
“No.”
“Good. Let’s go. Today will be my treat.”
Yori walks to the elevator without looking to see if Bucky would follow. Bucky does follow – bewildered, he trails after him. The elevator dings in the heavy silence and they walk in and they stand there looking away from each other.
“What I told you,” says Bucky tentatively, “Last week.”
“Eat first,” says Yori, briskly, “Eat first.”
So Bucky falls silent and when they walk outside it is to the same scene of only a few moments earlier: the sky with rolling clouds and the tall apartment blocks rising in the distance that had not existed in his childhood. What does Yori want to talk about? he wonders nervously. And he thinks helplessly of long hallways in long-forgotten facilities. They would lead him down the long hall, silently, like this, not speaking. Why would anyone want to speak to him? Yori marches ahead and he trails behind him, with a building, atavistic dread. It is the same scene of so many other walks to Izzy’s with Yori at his side, the same sidewalk and the same line of stores spilling out along the street and the same sun and it will be the same the next day too, and the next, but by then he won’t be around to see it. Because Yori’s taking him out back to be shot. No, of course not, what is he thinking? But why not? Doesn’t he deserve it? He thinks again of Yori the night he had told him – the way his face had contorted. Get out! he had yelled, Get out of my room!
Then I’ll get out, he thinks desperately, right now and all he has to do is stop walking. Vanish into the crowd and Yori will never see him again. But he can’t. He’s pulled along like a dog on a leash. Always so wonderfully obedient. He couldn’t leave even if he wanted to. Punishment is inevitable and the only way out is through.
The door to Izzy’s jingles as it opens. He goes through.
“Irasshaimase!" calls Leah from the back. Leah, who he still hasn’t spoken to since that disastrous date. She hates his guts too now, probably. And why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t anyone? God what a mess. He fixes his eyes on the table in front of him. Yori sits down imperiously in his usual seat.
“Leah – some sake please!”
“You got it,” says Leah and her gaze lingers on Bucky for a moment. For a moment she seems happy to see him. For a moment, she smiles. – or did he imagine it?
“Hey,” she says.
“The sake, Leah,” Yori interrupts, “We are not paying you for chit-chat.”
“Of course, Mr. Nakajima,” she says, and looks at Bucky with the same exasperated comradery she had used with him before whenever Yori was being over-bearing. But that sort of unity of understanding can no longer exist between them. He does not meet her eyes.
“And don’t forget- “ says Yori, but Leah is already pulling out the newspaper before he can finish asking for it. She goes off to warm up the sake and Yori spreads out his newspaper on the table as usual.
“6 letter word for a type of soup.” says Yori, looking at the crossword. They sit there and think about a 6 letter word for a type of soup.
“Cambell?” suggests Bucky.
“Hmmm.”
“No, sorry, sorry, that’s seven. Um. Carrot.”
“Could be carrot.”
He writes it into the crossword.
“Yori,” pleads Bucky.
Yori drops the pencil he had been using to scribble on the page. He rubs his face and sighs, then places one hand over the other. He looks about to speak, then instead he rearranges his hands, placing one hand over the other. It is not until Leah bring the sake, and he takes a long draught, that he begins to speak.
---
I’m no good at this.
…
I…
...
My wife told me, again and again – you must tell him, if you say nothing, he will not know.
Now I wonder – did he know?
Back home, in Japan, I worked very hard. I never went to college. I went north, to work in construction. Our country being rebuilt. Construction, everywhere. I worked very hard. Very hard. Never have I worked so hard. Physical labour. All day long. No thinking. You cannot think. Only work work work until you collapse in a heap. Pure drudgery. It’s no good, not being able to think. I wanted my son to become doctor, or engineer – a thinking job. Everything, I do for him. For my son.
My father, he died when I was very young. I never knew my father. He died in the war. You say you fought in the war, that same war. Ha! Imagine – instead of Europe, you come fight in Japan. Then, you would have killed my father, instead of my son! Ha ha!
No, maybe not. I think…
I will ask you something. During the Occupation I would run after the American soldiers. I would beg them for chocolate and cigarettes. So let me ask you – do you have a cigarette? Yes, give it here, thank you. See – imagine how different it would have been, if you had come to Japan.
I admired them. The soldiers. They were tall. Confident. They seemed to have everything. We had nothing. We were the losers. We lost everything. I wanted to be in the country of the winners.
My son Reiji, I never told him this. About my loser country. About where we come from. How hard my mother worked, to take care of three kids with no father. How hard I worked to get here, all the construction and the drudgery. Those troubles, he has no idea. His life was easy. American life so easy. He went to college, like I always dreamed. He could have become doctor, engineer! But no.. He took stupid job instead – ‘business consultant’. Business consultant means: he gives advice to rich pricks. I work and work – and what for? For the sake of this useless son who helps a bunch of rich pricks make more money they don’t need. And his name! In high school suddenly he says we must call him RJ, not Reiji. RJ! What sort of name is that? Alphabet soup, not a name. I was so angry. We did not talk for long time. I -
And I…
He phoned us in Prague. There for some conference, I don’t know. My wife answered the phone. ‘It’s RJ,” she told me, “You want to say hello?”. I said no. I said no. Why? Why? I could have… I should have… But I said no.
“Goodbye,” she said at the end. And before she hung up she said to him: “I love you.” And she said, she told him, before she hung up: “And don’t forget, your father, he loves you too.”
Why did she say that? Did she believe it? Did he believe it? I would not fault him if he did not. I never… I never… But still, I… I am so grateful. She said what I could not say. I could never say anything properly. Not even to her. My wife was a very quiet woman. She worked very hard and never complained. When I told Reiji – get out of our house! - she said nothing. She did not complain. She just brought him food later when I was not looking. Mochi, his favourite. She was always making food for people. She cooked meals for me every day. I never thought about it. One day, she mentioned a pain in her side. I said – ‘it’s probably nothing.’ and so she kept working. She didn’t complain anymore. Until one day she collapsed. The pain was too great. I brought her to hospital. She died. And I -
I am an old man now. No use to anyone at all.
You know, they never found the body. For a long time after I would think about that. No body. So that means, maybe… ? Maybe? Could he possibly be alive? I hoped and yet I was terrified because… Because if he is not dead, maybe he decided – enough. Enough of his stupid father. Enough of this stupid family. Already he changed his name from Reiji to RJ. Maybe he wanted to leave behind Nakajima too. Become somebody new. Live a new live, in Europe somewhere far away. Never talk to us again. So… So… At least now I know. He’s dead. He’s really dead.
I’m fine, Leah, don’t worry, just give us the food. Leave us alone, we’re talking.
It is good food here, don’t you think? When my wife was alive we never went to restaurants. She always did the cooking. I think… I should have taken her out for dinner every now and then. If she was here… If she was alive… I would take her out to dinner every week. She did so much for me – why couldn’t I do that one thing for her? She was a good woman. I wish I was a better man, a good man. I should have brought my son mochi balls, but instead I brought him only anger. And because of that I lost my chance to speak to him one last time before he died. I should have… I should have forgiven him. I should have told him that I loved him. I should have done so many things.
Leah, bring us some mochi.
Here – it is for you.