Riverton Press first found that Anne Kruse is a talented writer at the Italian classes attended with our author Vittoria Pasquini. Anne has written many fantasy mini-fictions over the years while fulfilling homework requirements. The piece we present today is not fantasy, but also has its origins in tasks set for our Italian homework. Anne relates the end of World War II as she lived it.
Harakiri, August 15, 1945, Melbourne, Victoria
by Anne Kruse
The girls were summoned by the school bell to assemble on the Big Lawn. It wasn’t a very big lawn, just the back garden of what had been the largest old house in the street that had become a school for young ‘ladies.’ And they weren’t even embryonic ladies, just a mixed bunch of young girls and only some of them would vividly remember this historic, memorable day. The big lawn, once the site of relays, egg-and-spoon, three-legged and sack races, had been dug into lines of trenches which had never been put to use. Normal life went on around them. The forbidden-to-climb magnolia tree with the great, leathery white flowers was still there from the original garden and the patch of sharp, scratchy sword grass which, if one were captured by Snowy Fowler and her gang, could be a place of torture.
For our first-year primary school girl the ‘war’ was a murky cloud that hung in the air; it was a feeling rather than an understanding. Before the war things had been ‘possible’, things had been ‘available’ things had been ‘better’. Her aunt still talked about the wonderful submarine toy that her son had played with in the bath in the ‘before’ days and her mother had a pottery water jug with matching glasses that had been ‘made in Japan’. This was considered remarkable.
But the girl was mostly aware that she was frightened in the dark because of the blackouts, there were things called ration cards, so it was important not to use too much butter, search lights were on at the local beach after dark, and her father was cross at dinner because he had been made to work for the government. He had gone to that ‘other’ war when he was young but never talked about, although he sometimes wore a khaki uniform because he belonged to a sort of army at home. There was a lot of serious listening to the radio by her mother and father, little entertainment except for the extravagant performances of the neighbour who had become boss of the blackouts and used to knock on the door and shout aggressively if there was a chink of light.
The girl occasionally had nightmares in which she fell down a deep hole and a group of men, gabbling in a foreign language, stared down at her. There had been one unforgettable moment that was puzzling and disturbing. The newspaper arrived one morning and when her parents saw the photo on the front page her mother immediately snatched it away saying to her father, ‘Don’t let her see it.’ But she did. It appeared to be crowd of people looking at a dead man hanging upside down from a large hook. It was nasty and unsettling, and as they sat down to breakfast, she sensed from the atmosphere that it was better not to say anything. But her day-to-day images of Australian soldiers and the Japanese came mostly from Bluey and Curley comics and were humorous rather than frightening or threatening.
This day, the headmistress stood under the magnolia tree to make her announcement. She didn’t use her severe authoritative voice but spoke quietly and gently. She seemed to be saying they could all go home. The war was over.
The girl left to go home alone. Usually she was high spirited, laughing and joking with her friends but that day it didn’t seem right. It seemed necessary to feel sad for she had her own perceptions about this war that was now over. People, usually men, were killed in wars. There was a good side and a bad side. She was part of the ‘good’ side, and the others were ‘enemies’. She knew a bit about that because of the gang in the sword grass. There were things called ‘dog fights’ that had nothing to do with dogs but aeroplanes, and men called fuzzy-wuzzy angels who were on the good side. They carried Australian soldiers on stretchers through the jungle and put a lighted cigarette in their mouths as they were dying. She had seen that on a Newsreel.
As she walked towards the main street, she realised she was stepping on chalk drawings on the pavement. They were some kind of angry message. That she knew. The ugly distorted faces with narrow eyes had strange names scrawled underneath. One name, to her surprise, she recognised. TOJO. She had heard it said over and over again and had thought of it as TOE JOE – such an odd name, but easily remembered.
It was strangely quiet in the shopping street and then she saw a large crowd gathering outside the RSL club. The RSL, in an old Tudor-style house, was little more than a meeting place – only for men – where her father sometimes went after work for a drink with his friends who had been to that ‘other’ war. There had been times when he came home with a spring onion sticking out of his back pocket which seemed to mean he’d had a good time.
She hung back on the edge of the noisy crowd. There was cheering as they made way for a man on a horse. The man, dressed in a peculiar coat stretched tightly over an enormous swollen stomach, was shouting and laughing as he waved a sword over his head. The crowd was excited as was the horse who was being reined in to keep it in control. The man stood high in his stirrups uttering a strange dramatic cry, pointed the blade of the sword at his stomach and ripped the coat open. Strings of sausages and red frankfurts tumbled out falling at the feet of those nearest in the crowd. It was as though his belly had exploded. Shouting ‘Harikari’, he fell forward, stretched over the neck of the frightened horse. The girl was frozen, her heart racing as she watched the crowd, some crying, others screaming, many laughing. Then she ran. She ran past the closed shops, over the railway bridge across the highway lined with flowering gums marking the plaques of remembrance for the fallen Australian soldiers in Gallipoli and as she ran, she thought of the newspaper photo of the crowd staring at the man hanging upside down. She ignored Mrs Bunting, the neighbour, who was jumping up and down in the middle of the street with her dog Skeeta in her arms. Through the back gate she ran bursting into the house which, at first, felt empty and quiet and then she heard a man’s voice from the dining room. Her mother was alone, sitting in a high-backed chair in front of the tall radio listening to the news. She turned to her daughter and attempting to wipe away her tears and sadness she smiled.
‘It’s over’, she said.
*
The girl found out that evening what had been happening while her mother sat alone in front of the radio. Her father was not one of the crowd at the RSL. He had put down his tools and opened a bottle of beer with his work mates. Her older sister had been celebrating in the city streets of Melbourne. There was a photo of her in the paper kissing a sailor.
When she grew up she remembered the painting, Whistler’s Mother, hanging over the teacher’s desk in her classroom. The girls didn’t think much of it; just an old woman staring forward in contemplation. But the image, bleak and still, came back to her when she thought of her mother that night, alone with her thoughts, as she listened to the news.
Later she discovered such things as: agit prop, Bertolt Brecht, street theatre and Fellini. And she never forgot the photo of the upside-down man hanging from a hook or the exploding belly of the man on the horse and the jeers of the crowd.
Note from Anne:
Harakiri, also known as seppuku, is a form of ritual suicide by disembowelment, historically practised by samurai in Japan. It was a way to die with honour, often as an alternative to capture, disgrace, or execution. The term harakiri literally translates to “belly-cutting” in Japanese, while seppuku emphasises the ritualistic aspect of the act.