Statistical analysis is still dull.

   Very preliminary and incomplete. Comments welcome.

--
Paul Corrigan
corrig11@pilot.msu.edu

---

   I haven't lived through a war. Or fought in one. I've only seen pictures on
TV, like they were pics fom the latest action movie. How the hell would I
_know_ that it was hell? How would Dad? When he said he was going to the rally
he seemed all cheerful, like he was going to a party. Reliving his youth, when
the revolution was at hand and he could feel he was living through a great
adventure.

   Of course in school they told us about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and fed us
the "no more Hiroshimas" mantra. Of course, I've got nothing against that line,
but it meant nothing to me when I was little. Actually, when I'd ask Grandma
Hirano--my Mom's mother--about when she was a little girl, she made the Pacific
 War sound like a bit of a lark. Me and Kyo used to spend summers at her place
in Nagasaki, in the Urakami district near the Cathedral. We're pretty close to
her side of the family, not so much to Dad's. (Dad doesn't like his family very
much, and they don't like him.) I'd ask her about when she was a little girl,
and she'd tell me about her seventh birthday party and her pretty red dress,
and about her father who was a colonel in the army, and wore a grand uniform
and looked very fine, and about her mother, who was young then, and wore
beautiful kimono. You know, the usual sort of stuff people'll tell you about
the old days, when the men were good-looking and the women were strong (or was
it the other way around?) and the kids were all above average.

   I remember though that we'd go down there and she'd never have the TV on at
her place. I'd complain, but she'd be like, "Good little children shouldn't
watch too much TV. It's bad for their eyes."

   "Don't you watch TV, grandma?" I asked her once.

   "I don't watch TV in August," she said.

   Then I tried to ask her why, but she wouldn't answer, and asked me instead
if I'd like a snack, and I liked snacks, so I said yes and she gave me a snack
and then she asked if I wouldn't like to read a storybook, and I liked stories,
so she gave me a book to read, and it was really cool and I forgot all about
TV. I devoured any book I could get my hands on even then. I can't remember a
time when I couldn't read. Mom says I was reading the Asahi Shimbun when I was
three years old, but I don't remember it myself. I might have just been looking
at the pictures.

   When me and Kyo got older and Mom didn't need us to be babysat as much (not
to mention Grandma wasn't as strong as she'd been), she'd come up to Kawasaki
to see us instead, in August. I can shop with the best of them, but I used to
wonder, how many consecutive days do you have to go into Tokyo to windowshop?

   Of course, on August 9 I suspect grandma'd have rather been anywhere but
Nagasaki.

   In August, of course, we're on summer vacation. One year, late in the school
year--in my last year of junior high--we had a project on the Pacific War. We
were assigned topics, and by pure coincidence, I got the Nagasaki bombing. It
never really occurred to me until I thought about it that grandma Hirano would
have been a bomb survivor. You saw bomb survivors on TV, going on and on about
how there should be no more Hiroshimas. Well, duh. They didn't seem to have any
trouble talking about it, so I asked Mom if I could call Grandma and ask her
about the A-bombing.

   "No. Absolutely not."

   "But Mom--"

   "No! She won't be able to help you."

   "Why not? She was there, right?"

   "Yes, she was there."

   "So--didn't you ever ask her?"

   "When I was small I had a friend whose grandmother lived with them. I asked
Mammy if I had a grandmother, and she said no, and I asked her why not, and she
told me, your grandmother died during the war, Fumiko. She died? I said. I was
small. I didn't know what dying really meant. She said, yes, God took her to
heaven. And she told me that her mother was sick, and went to morning Mass
every day to pray to God, so she'd get better. And one day, while your
grandmother was at work in a factory--her mother couldn't work, and her father
was off fighting in the war--the Americans dropped a big bomb on the city. One
bang and the city was destroyed. And the big cathedral where her mother was
praying to God was destroyed, and her mother who was praying to God went right
to heaven, and she who was working in the factory, where they made bullets to
shoot people with, she was the one God decided had to stay on earth. And then
she began to cry, and then I cried too, because Mammy was crying and...oh, it
was awful, Aya.

   "Don't, honey, okay? It might be too much for her. She's not what she was
after her heart attack. I don't want anything to happen..."

   "What about her dad? Your granddad? She showed me a photo of him once. She
said he was dead, of course, but..."

   "I never met him. Killed in the war, I suppose. She mightn't know the
details herself. You probably know as much as I do about your
great-grandfather. Lookit," Mom said, suddenly angry, "will you leave me and
your poor grandmother be about the bomb, Aya? Go research it at the library
like everyone else does! You practically live there anyway!" She stormed out of
my room, slamming the door behind her. Mom's dialect tends to come back when
she's pissed off, so when she stops talking like a Tokyo gal, you know she
means it.

   (Come to think of it, she sounds pretty dumb when she talks like a Tokyo
gal. Forty-five going on fifteen. Who's she trying to kid?)

   Of course, the budding journalist within me (goaded by the self-centered
bitch) wasn't going to let herself be so intimdated. She knew a cover up when
she saw it. Anyway, I wasn't going to be content with looking up the same books
as everybody else! I wanted a scoop! And all I had to do was call Grandma when
Mom was out! Probably be thrilled her favorite granddaughter called out of the
blue!

   Of course, I called using a calling card, so it wouldn't show up on the
bill.

   "Hello, Hirano's?"

   "Grandma? This is Aya."

   "Oh hello, Aya!" She seemed pleased to hear from me. A bit surprised,
though. "How are you doing, pet?"

   "I'm okay. Got an article printed."

   "Oh, very good. Is your book finished yet?"

   I hadn't talked to her in a while. "Long ago. Got accepted. Coming out next
month, I think. THey're supposed to send me a few copies, so I'll get you one,
okay?"

   "Oh, that's lovely! Your mam must be proud..."

   "Yeah. She won't talk to the neighbors about much of anything else. So
how're you doing, Grandma?"

   "Oh, I'm grand, pet. How's your mam?"

   "She's no worse, I guess."

   She chuckled. "Worse than what, Aya?"

   "Than Dad."

   She laughed a bit louder. I'd figured out long ago she never liked Dad
either. "Is your mam there, Aya?"

   "Actually, no. She's out."

   "Oh. All right."

   "Yeah. Um. She actually didn't want me calling you, so..."

   "And why not? What's so important that you can't call your grandmother to
say hello?"

   "Well--I had a project for school, and--"

   "You want help with your homework?" She laughed. "And you ten times smarter
than me? That's marvelous!"

   "Well, it was kind of a project about the Pacific War, and I wondered if--"

   "You could ask me about it?" On her guard. "What about the war?"

   "Well...Mom said that you said her grandmother was killed when Nagasaki was
bombed, and I wanted to ask you..."

   "If it was true, Aya? Who in God's name would make something like that up?"

   "I didn't think you were lying, Grandma! I just..."

   "Aya. Is that really the only reason you called me up? To ask me about how
my mother was killed by the bomb? So you could dig up your great-grandmother's
bones and show them off to your teacher?"

   "No, Grandma! I wanted to know..."

   "You weren't there. How could you know? I pray to God you never do know."

   "That's why I'm asking you..."

   "What? I was there, so you want me to tell you about how horrible it was?
Well, I don't want to talk about how horrible it was. If you want somebody to
talk about that, why don't you ask all those people on the television who were
there and never want to talk about anything else but how horrible it was? You
should be ashamed of yourself. Goodbye."

   "Grandma--!"

   Click.

   Nobody said anything about it afterwards. I was afraid for a while Grandma
would tell Mom about it. Mom would have killed me. But the whole point was to
keep that can of worms firmly canned, I guess, so I suspect she didn't. I
never dared ask Grandma about the bomb again.

   In the end I went to the library, like everybody else, and read the same
books as everybody else. I learned the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
was only a few hundred metres from the hypocenter. Turned out they actually
didn't plan to drop the bomb there. The Cathedral's in the Urakami
neighborhood, and they meant to drop it downtown. The biggest Shinto shrine in
town, the Suwajinja, is downtown. It wasn't even scratched. They didn't rebuild
the cathedral until 1959.

   Grandma used to take me and Kyo to Mass to the new cathedral on Sundays,
during the summers we stayed with her. Even then I found Mass rather boring,
but I loved the church. It was the biggest one I'd ever seen, much nicer than
the one Mom took us to in Tokyo, and with a huge organ. I told Grandma once,
before Mass--I couldn't have been more than seven--that "her" church was really
pretty.

   "It was prettier before the war," she said, a bit sadly.

   I couldn't imagine that was even possible, and I said at the top of my
lungs, "Really?"

   "Shush," said Grandma. "Don't talk so loud in the church. People are trying
to pray." So I tried to pray the few prayers I knew without squirming too much,
and she, I imagine, said a prayer for the soul of my great-grandmother.

---

   I don't know how I'm able to write anything at all. I lead a very boring
existence. I go to school, study, read good books and articles, write crappy
books and articles. And I hang out with Rika Sena. Nothing ever happens to me.

   Then again, I'm not sure I could write anything at all if anything ever had
happened to me.

---
[Amy will go here anon. For now:]
---

   Sweet and innocent. Good at heart. Pure. Childlike. They will never enter
the kingdom of heaven who do not approach it like a child. Like Rika. I knew
her in kindergarten. She still lives just a few doors down from me. She decided
when we were in kindergarten that I was cool for some reason, so she stuck to
me like glue, and insisted I share her lunch, and she always had nicer lunches
than me, so I shared.

[More Rika to go here]

   She still believes in unicorns. Crazy about the things. Up in her room, she
has bunches of pictures of the things. We met outside Cinecitta once, before a
movie, and she was reading some fantasy book that she was begging me to read.
Some post-apocalyptic world where this unicorn is the hero's companion--until
the end when he gets the girl. Then the unicorn runs off.

   Or so Rika told me. I didn't look at it all that carefully myself. She made
me read a couple of pages, so I did, but it wasn't my thing. It was rubbish
really, but I knew better than to say so. I mean, my stuff's probably worse.
But it wasn't my thing. I prefer Harlan Ellison. Ursula LeGuin's okay too, but
I wouldn't try copying her. I want to be an author, not an "author of feminist
literature." I'd like people to actually read my stuff.

   "It's all right," I lied, handing it back.

   Suddenly she looked very intense and said, "I don't believe it."

   "Believe what?"

   "I believe...that to be able to see a unicorn, one need only be pure of
heart, not neceassarily body."

   "As opposed to actually being a virgin? Never having slept with a guy and
stuff?"

   "Yes! I mean...I don't believe it! Why can't you see a unicorn any more,
just because you fall in love? That's so sad..."

   I couldn't help thinking, what if you hadn't fallen in love, and you still
couldn't see one? I'd read about them in storybooks, sure, but I'd never
actually believed in unicorns or fairies or anything like that. Living with a
Marxist'll do that to you.

   "I guess..." Like a fool, trying to explain it rationally. "I guess it's
like...believing in fairies or Santa Claus or something. Unicorns are animals
from fairy tales, you know? So you believe in fairies and unicorns and stuff
when you're a kid, but when you grow up, you get married and have kids, you
don't believe in them any more..."

   "I believe in them!" Rika said firmly.

   And I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I said, "Really?" But not too
 loud. Not like I was trying to tell her off or anything...

   "Yes, really, Aya," she said, suddenly smiling. There's these times when she
smiles and I think I'm looking at an angel.

   I must have been looking at her a bit too long, because she suddenly
said, "All right, let's go or we'll miss the movie." Couldn't argue with
that. I'd dragged her out there after all.

   The next day at school, out of the blue, I asked Tsubasa Shibahime, when
Rika was out of earshot, if she still believed in unicorns.

   And she looked at me like I was out of my mind and said, "Uh. No. This some
kind of joke?"

   "Why wouldn't you? You remember the Santa incident?" put in Tsubaki, who
didn't know what I meant either but did think it was a great joke.

   "That was different. Santa brought me toys. No unicorn ever brought me a
goddamn thing," said Tsubasa, and she went back to demolishing her lunch.

   "Aya," Yukino asked me, "why'd you ask Tsubasa that just now?"

   "Forget it," I said. I should have known it was a waste of time asking
Tsubasa. I knew Tsubasa's story. Tsubasa's never been a child.


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