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She got to climb things and go on ferries.
To her dismay, the Academy teachers were just as scathing about her academic
performance as the teachers in Sapporo had been. She remained convinced she
had actually learned vast amounts throughout her life, and they were just
asking the wrong questions.
She came top in English, about average in her cello class, close to bottom in
everything else.
Hokkaido was clean and clear and empty after Tokyo, on her first vacation, and
fairly deserted and unspoiled even compared to the countryside west of Tokyo.
Her mother took her walking in the woods, like in the old days. Once, the two
of them sat beneath some pine trees overlooking a broad valley, watching the
warm wind stroke slow patterns across wide fields of golden grain beneath
them, and the tiny dots of cattle moving on the green swell of a hill on the
far side. Her mother told her how she'd cried the night Hisako had left for
Tokyo, but that really, she was sure, they were tears of happiness. Hisako
felt ashamed. She hugged her mother, and put her head in her lap, though she
did not cry.
She coped with Tokyo, she mourned for Hokkaido. Sundays were still her
favourite days.
Sometimes a group of them was allowed to go out without a teacher. They said
they were going to museums but they really went to Harajuku to watch the boys.
They strolled down
Omote-Sando Boulevard, trying to look mature and sophisticated. Hisako's
command of
English began to be admired. She still came top in that, and her other grades
were improving (not that that would have been difficult, as all the teachers
pointed out), and she won a prize in the Academy's cello competition. She'd
never won a prize in anything before, and enjoyed the experience. She wanted
to use the small amount of money involved to buy
some new clothes, but her mother's last letter had talked about a part-time
job in a bar, so she sent the money home instead.
Another year; another too brief visit home to Hokkaido. The pace of Tokyo
life, the urge to do as well in exams as any other child but to be a musical
prodigy as well, even the regularity of the seasons; cold, mild, hot, stormy,
warm; Fuji invisible for weeks then suddenly there, floating on a sea of
cloud, a flurry of cherry blossom lasting hardly longer than a pink snowstorm
... all seemed to conspire to sweep her life away from under her. Her grades
went on improving, but the teachers seemed to make a special effort to remind
her how important they were. She read novels in English; book in one hand,
dictionary in another. She won all the Academy's cello prizes. She spent some
on clothes, sent the rest home. She was getting used to the remarks about
having a cello between her legs.
The Academy offered her a bursary for another three years; somehow she'd
expected they would, but she didn't know whether to take it or not. Her mother
said she must; Mr
Kawamitsu said she must; the Academy said she must. So she supposed she had
to.
Philippe had hoped there might be fish in the lake that would be attracted to
their lights, as well as simply desiring the novelty of diving at night. So
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far, in their day-time dives, they had seen hardly any fish. The aquatic life
in Gatún Lake had suffered twice over. First there had been a series of algae
blooms caused by fertilisers washed down from the distant hills around Madden
Lake and the far western shores of Gatún itself; then the fish and plants had
been affected recently by deforestation chemicals used in the early stages of
the war. The scientific station on Barro Colorado said the lake was safe to
swim in again, but the plant community and fish stocks were recovering very
slowly.
Philippe's blue flippers waved back at her. The lake felt warmer than it did
during the day, which surprised her. Perhaps it wasn't really any warmer;
perhaps it just seemed so because she expected the dark depths to be cold.
The sense of placelessness, of being contained and cut off yet somehow free as
well, was intensified by the darkness. With the day's silvery surface removed,
the limit of visibility became what their lights could illuminate, and the
lake felt both tinier and greater than it had before; tinier because at any
moment they could see only a short distance around them, and so could have
been swimming in some small pool, but greater because there was no immediate
way of telling the surface was not far above, and the floor not far beneath.
Using the lights, the lake waters became like some swirling and disturbed
version of space; in the white beams of their lamps a galaxy of minute
particles was revealed, each mote glowing against the darkness like a swiftly
passed star. Colours were more vivid, too, though there was little enough to
see; just the blue of Philippe's stroking flippers and the bright orange of
the line he was paying out behind them, to lead them back to the Gemini.
She pointed her lights straight down, and saw the floor of the lake gliding
greyly by, smooth and ghostly and quiet.
The National Guard reported there had been a venceristas bombardment of
Escobal and
Cuipo, followed by a retaliatory strike by Panamanian Air Force jets. This was
the official explanation for the fireworks on the night of the
Nadia's party. The incident made the
Channel 8 news, briefly. Reading between the lines, it appeared as though
whatever had first happened hadn't warranted the pyrotechnics they'd seen
unleashed.
'Bullshit,' Broekman said, leaning against the
Nakodo
's rail. He had come up from the engine room for a cigar, and met Hisako
sitting near the stern on a deck chair, reading. She joined him at the rail,
looking out to the heat-wavering line of green hills; the bombardment
had taken place somewhere behind them.
'You don't believe that?' she said.
Broekman spat the stub of the cigar down to the waters of the lake, and
watched it drift slowly under the stern. 'Ah, it all sounds very plausible ...
more plausible than what we saw, perhaps ... but it wasn't what we saw. It all
started at once, and I didn't hear any jets. The
PAF wouldn't get everything that coordinated anyway; God help us, they'd
probably have bombed us if they had been around.'
'I thought that was why we keep all our lights on.'
'Yes, good theory, isn't it?' Broekman laughed, clasped his hands over the
rail. 'Never convinced me.' He spat into the water, as if aiming for the cigar
stub. 'First time any terrs take to the water at night, and the Guard call up
air support ... we'll get clobbered. You watch. Excitable bastards; just as
well the Yanks don't let them fly at night.'
The last two days had been peaceful. The only unusual activity they'd noticed
had been a couple of National Guard patrol boats, venturing out from Gatún and
Frijoles to disturb the peace with their droning outboards. Broekman had
watched the inflatables with binoculars, claiming he half-expected them to be
towing water-skiers.
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Hisako had ventured out on deck after lunch. Her cello practice took up about
two hours each day, but that was what she thought of as her 'tick-over' rate;
it would take the prospect of a proper master class or a concert in the near
future for her to summon up the enthusiasm to practise more thoroughly. She
did some keep-fit in her cabin; her own mixture of Canadian Air Force
exercises and aikido movements. But that could only hold her interest for
about an hour, so she still had a lot of time left to fill each day, and got
bored watching television in the passengers' lounge or the officers' mess. Mr
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