Sins As Scarlet Read online

  Nicolás Obregón

  * * *

  SINS AS SCARLET

  Contents

  Mexico–United States Border

  Part One: FOUR YEARS LATER

  1. Gold Coins to a Cat

  2. A Sad Business

  3. The Best of Luck

  Tokyo – 1975

  4. Thirty-Five Thousand Choices

  5. The Shrimp that Sleeps

  6. To the Pure, All Things Pure

  7. City Beautiful

  Tokyo – 1975

  8. Sorry

  9. Hope Heaven Feels Good

  10. Same Circles

  11. Home

  12. The Real You

  Tokyo – 1975

  13. Los Angeles Dreams

  14. Flesh and Blood

  Part Two

  15. Clean Work

  16. Looking under Rocks

  17. We Are Watching

  1975 – Tokyo

  18. The Material

  19. Amongst Friends and Colleagues

  20. Obligate Carnivores

  1975 – Tokyo

  21. Sleep with the Angels

  22. A Free Country

  23. Good News

  24. Scorpion

  25. Huxley, Arizona

  26. Nightlight

  27. Sins as Scarlet

  28. Night Flight

  29. Beside You

  30. Sunset

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  By the same author

  Blue Light Yokohama

  To Camille

  ‘For where the river runs through,

  people will drink.’

  – Ed Vulliamy

  Mexico–United States Border

  The woman was running – half naked, one shoe missing, blood slick down her thighs. She was going as fast as she could, wheezing on the cold air, but the baby inside her weighed so much now. The truck was gaining on her, the sound of the engine deafening.

  There was meant to be a river, that’s what Adelmo had said. When we cross it, we’ll be safer. She begged the desert for water, for higher ground, for anything that would stop the truck. She saw only emptiness.

  The woman couldn’t stop herself from looking over her shoulder. Her foot snagged between two rocks, her ankle twisted, she landed hard on her side. In that moment she knew it was over. All she could do was lie there, trembling.

  There was dogbane and Indian paintbrush on the wind, the smells no different than in her own country, less than a mile away. But in her fear it was as if she were smelling them for the first time, a perfume she realized now she had always taken for granted.

  The truck was almost on her, dust billowing out behind it like a coming tornado. She knew she had to get up but her body simply wouldn’t respond – there was too much pain, too much cold, too much exhaustion. It was numb except for a torn burning in her vagina and a disturbing pain in her ankle.

  Headlights blanched the earth white. The little stones around her looked like eyes unblinking. With a quivering whisper, the woman closed her eyes and began to pray in Spanish. ‘Most sacred heart of Jesus, I accept from your hands whatever death may please you to send me this night –’

  The truck stopped at her feet, the engine still snarling. A door opened and footsteps crunched towards her.

  ‘– with all its pains, penalties and sorrows, in reparation for all my sins, for the souls in Purgatory, for all those who will die today, and your greater glory. Amen.’

  ‘A–men!’ The man was tall, his voice jolly, an ordinary face beneath his cap. The patch on his shirt read: COUSINS. He smiled. ‘You thought you got away, huh?’

  A second man got out of the truck. He was short and, despite the thinning black hair and sparse moustache, he had a baby face. His patch read: ORTEGA. Ignoring the woman, he shone his flashlight into the darkness. ‘Can’t see shit out there.’ He smoothed down his moustache. ‘Ask her.’

  Cousins crouched down beside the woman. ‘Okay, honey: husband, boyfriend, Mr Invisible. ¿Dónde está?’

  The woman kept her eyes on the dirt with petrified defiance.

  ‘You know, I don’t believe she likes me,’ said Cousins.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Ortega scanned the shadows irately. ‘I wouldn’t like you either.’

  Cousins flipped her over and laughed as he batted away the rock she was trying, weakly, to hit him with. ‘Aw, now come on, pumpkin. Y’all ran away before our business was concluded.’ He ripped off her jacket and flung it away.

  ‘Cousins, we’re going to lose him.’

  ‘Okay – okay. You’re in some mood tonight, you know that?’ He gave the woman’s breasts a squeeze but stopped when he felt wetness. ‘The fuck is this …?’

  Ortega shone his flashlight down at the woman’s massive belly. ‘Pregnant.’

  Cousins got up and brushed himself off. ‘Didn’t notice.’

  ‘Quit fucking around and ask her.’

  ‘You know what your problem is, Theo? You got no sense of serenity.’ Cousins gently patted the woman’s shoulder, as if it had just been a misunderstanding. ‘Ma’am? I’m sorry about before, all right? I didn’t realize your, ah, condition. Now, my name is Agent Craig Cousins and that feller right over there is Supervisory Agent Ortega. We’re with the United States Border Patrol. You understand that?’

  The woman didn’t reply. She was crying.

  ‘I want you to know that you’re not in any trouble, okay? We just wanna let you go on your way. We have the authority to do that. But listen, we do need to find the man you were with. So come on now, pumpkin. Help us help you. Which way’d he go?’

  The woman’s eyes were closed in shivering repugnance, tears slicing through her dust-coated cheeks like oil, her teeth chattering.

  Sighing, Ortega picked up her jacket from the sand and took out a Top Cat wallet from the pocket. The ID card told him her name was Evelyn Olivera. She was twenty-three years old. He tossed it over.

  ‘Evelyn? That’s a pretty name you got there.’ Cousins smiled approvingly. ‘Lemme ask you something, Evelyn. Is this man the daddy of your baby? I’m asking cos it’s colder than shit out here. If you do care about him, you gotta tell us which way he went. Else he’s in big trouble, pumpkin. Look around you.’

  Evelyn looked. There were only miles of empty desert, the wind roving through its silent cambers. She wondered if Adelmo Contreras was still out there, if he could see her. She hoped not. She hoped he was miles away.

  And then she saw it. In the distance, between her tears, the river. It glittered silver like an arcade coin-pusher. She chose to believe Adelmo had crossed it. He’d made it.

  The sky above yawed between black and purple, galaxies long extinguished. Evelyn Olivera knew she was going to die. She wondered if she could adjust to death. Maybe it would be like eyes getting used to the dark. And if God was there, maybe He would be able to forgive her.

  ‘Last chance, chiquita.’ Cousins patted her on the calf.

  She looked both men in the eye, then spat. ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Well, that sure is a shame.’ Cousins tutted then turned to his partner. ‘Come on, man. It’s not my turn.’

  Ortega shrugged. He took out his gun, pointed it at Evelyn’s face and fired twice.

  She made small sounds, like a broken radio trying to find a frequency. When that stopped, her leg twitched several times, then she was still.

  A few hundred feet away there was a scream – a figure standing next to a mesquite tree.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’ Ortega licked his lips, took aim and fired.

  The figure broke into a run towards the river.

  Another three shots hit nothing. ‘Fuck, I’m out. Cousins, give me yours.
’

  ‘My gun’s still in the truck.’

  ‘Then go fucking get it!’

  ‘Theo, he’s running north. He’s finished.’

  ‘We can’t afford any stragglers.’

  ‘Partner, he’s gone. He’s got no drinking water. Look at him, he’s running for the river and it’s already freezing. The fucker’s heading straight into a black hole.’

  Ortega re-holstered. He squinted into the distance and saw the figure running – almost at the river now – tiny in the darkness.

  Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Theodore Ortega spoke in a whisper. ‘Welcome to America.’

  Part One

  * * *

  FOUR YEARS LATER

  1. Gold Coins to a Cat

  Kosuke Iwata was pushing a shopping trolley along the aisles of Mitsuwa Marketplace. It was busy for a Monday. Akiko Nakamura was singing ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)’, the verses in Japanese, the chorus in English.

  Iwata passed by Cosmetics and the woman behind the counter waved. They made small talk and she told him his mother seemed to be doing well. He knew the woman didn’t mean anything by it, but the implication was that he wouldn’t know how his own mother was. He thanked her and pushed his cart towards the pickle aisle, where he picked up ginger, daikon and plums.

  For the better part of an hour Iwata deliberated over baby abalone, their shells pearlescent in the bright lights. He weighed up fresh yellowtail steaks, gleaming ballet-pink against the dark, woody flesh of bluefin tuna. There was no shopping list; the tradition had always been that he would buy ingredients that jumped out at him and his mother would interpret them as she saw fit.

  When his cart was finally full Iwata made his way to the checkout. The cashier bagged his goods, gave him his change on a plastic platter and bowed. Outside, he loaded his shopping into the trunk of a moss-green Ford Bronco almost as old as he was. As he did so he listened to two elderly Japanese men chatting about the coming snow – the kind that really accumulates.

  Iwata looked up. The sky was sharp blue, the sun tingling on his shoulders. Palm trees shushed in the breeze. Across the road, McDonald’s was open twenty-four hours a day, the American flag flying outside it. An inactive neon sign above the parking lot read:

  BILLIONS SERVED

  It was still winter, but there would be no snow here. This was Torrance. Yet the old men were not discussing the weather in California. Iwata took them for nisei, second generation, born in a new land to Japanese immigrants – issei, first generation. He listened to the way they spoke about America, as though their lives here were temporary, little more than a quaint reverie. For them, it was Japan where the weather mattered; the Torrance palm trees merely likable props.

  Iwata understood the importance of heritage, he just didn’t much care about home or where it could be found; he’d done without for the better part of forty years. Here in California he was Japanese. In Japan, he was an outsider. And so, for him, the weather was simply whatever was happening over his head.

  Kosuke Iwata’s mother, Nozomi, had abandoned him in a rural bus station when he was a child. Down the years, there had been the odd phone call and a few strangely worded letters, as though Iwata were on some well-planned journey, but he did not see his mother for the better part of a decade.

  The summer before she came back for him had been a torrid one for Iwata. His only friend, Kei, had disappeared from the orphanage, the police able to do little more than shrug shoulders. After that he had become lost in a silent, miserable rage, expecting nothing from anyone.

  And so, although Nozomi had repeatedly promised that she would collect him, he was shocked to see her standing at the gates one day. By then, he was a head taller than her. To his surprise, there was a man by her side, a tall American in military uniform. Gerry Kaminsky, his new father, clapped him on the back. Let’s get you out of here, pal.

  Iwata remembered the flight clearly. Gerry explained that, due to the time zones, their arrival at LAX would be earlier than their departure from Narita. Like travelling back in time.

  Seeing Los Angeles for the first time, he thought it looked like a city trying to disguise itself as a greener place, the scorched browns and greys in some kind of tropical drag. Within a few days, Iwata was enrolled in a new school and speaking a new language. Almost immediately, Japan and the orphanage faded away, as though none of it had ever happened.

  Gerry thought Torrance would be perfect for his new wife and son. There had been a large Japanese community there for decades. It was home to major Japanese corporations, Japanese schools, Japanese restaurants, Japanese banks. Some even called it ‘Japan’s 48th Prefecture’. Gerry put down the deposit on a house and booked the Toyota Meeting Hall for his wedding to Nozomi. He figured the Japanese hotels would come in handy for relatives visiting from Japan. None ever came.

  As he grew up Iwata understood the logic in his stepfather’s choice. But to him, Torrance would only ever feel like a place he happened to be staying in – never home. As soon as he was able to he escaped to Los Angeles.

  917 Beech Avenue was an agreeable ranch-style house, dappled in the shade of a tall sycamore. Iwata parked outside and crossed the lawn, seeds crunching underfoot, the glass wind chimes tinkling in welcome. The TV was loud. He opened the door and took off his shoes in the genkan. Some of Gerry’s were still there.

  Iwata sighed and drank in the smell of the house, a mess of sweetness that had never changed – clove with star anise. He paused to look at the photos hanging on the wall, something he rarely did.

  Iwata saw himself as a teenager, in his school’s baseball uniform, a grudge match against North Torrance. Though he was pale with fear, he was expressionless, looking to camera, the bat hanging by his side. He remembered that day. He had struck out.

  The choice of high school for her son had been a no-brainer for Nozomi. Almost half of the students enrolled were of Asian descent. She had seen no reason why her son wouldn’t be able to make friends, get good grades and fit in. In the end, she had been right about the grades.

  In the next photograph Iwata was holding his college diploma, a half-smile on his skinny face. In the dim hallway he saw his reflection. It was still a slender face, his stubble darker. His hair was longer and greying, a stubborn clump of frozen grass on some tundra. His skin was a mellow tan with some small wrinkles at the eyes. Cleo had once compared him to Hiroyuki Sanada, though he hadn’t seen it himself.

  And there she was in the final photograph, grinning to camera. Cleo. Her hair was dark blonde – she wore it in a pageboy style back then – her dusky blue eyes narrowed, as if suspicious at happiness itself. She was wearing one of Iwata’s shirts over paint-spattered dungarees and covering her smile with a hand. Iwata was next to her, caught mid-blink, holding Nina. Her little eyes were closed, one fist clenched as if about to choose rock, paper or scissors. On her pudgy forearm there was a chestnut of a birthmark. Iwata was smiling too, facing the horizon, not realizing the picture was being taken.

  Only their upper halves were visible. He wondered whether there were any photographs in the world left of Cleo’s feet. Seeing them for the first time, large and monkeyish, he had laughed, and Cleo had swatted his arm. When Nina was born, scarcely able to take in her face, he had looked at her feet instead. They were pink and chalky, but tiny replicas of his wife’s.

  In the photograph there were mountains, a hazy Californian sunset beyond them. Somewhere in the Angeles Forest, he thought. Pacifico Mountain, maybe. Or was it Mount Williamson? Either way, it would have been Cleo’s idea; the hike would have been a homage to one of their early dates, as if returning victoriously to an old battlefield, now with a husband and an infant to show for it.

  Cleo always spoke of their early days with a zealous passion. It was an intensity Iwata was never able to outwardly match. Something had always hindered him, some numb embarrassment. Even on their first meeting Iwata had known they were very different people. Cleo always fou
nd great significance in small details – weather, dates, names; he found significance in very little. Iwata labelled things coincidence while Cleo would smile with enigmatic satisfaction, as though the cosmic designer had just tipped its hand and she’d been quick enough to glimpse it.

  For Iwata, those differences had not seemed so significant. He asked her out on their second meeting, some pretext about listening to a record she had coming into her shop. They had gone for a picnic, he was almost certain, and there were absolutely strawberries, that was inarguable. But much else was gone. He wondered how strawberries could be clearer than entire conversations. Perhaps their simple red flesh was easier to grasp than the tide of inflections and subtleties that constituted human interaction.

  Or else the mind was, Kosuke Iwata concluded, an unsentimental curator. It clutched stubbornly to the insignificant yet dispensed with the meaningful in great clods.

  He consoled himself with the fact that details were less important than feelings. Up in those hills, high above Los Angeles and feeling much further away from the city than they were, they had walked together. Through a never-ending parade of Californian walnut trees, along dusty ridges enveloped in chaparral and succulents, he half expected to see cowboys galloping over the horizon.

  Long after the sun had set, in the true dark of mountains, she had lain on his chest, the feel of her like warm lead. Though they were less than an hour’s drive from the city, hidden deep in their swale, the small fire had been the only light either could see.

  For Iwata, the sound of that fire was categorically clear to this day. It was a soft rustling. It was Christmas wrapping paper. It was a quiet snapping, like dreams. It was the singing of his ghosts.

  He opened his eyes. Cleo and Nina were both gone. Iwata wondered if he could ask his mother to take the photographs down. She had only met his wife and child on a few occasions and never once displayed any kind of approval. She had been affectionate with the baby and sent gifts through the mail but he had sensed her discomfort even in her brief letters. And she had barely spoken to him as his life disintegrated through the winter of 2009, as though it were better to let him spiral than try to pilot the crash landing.