“Really?” said Ernst. “Is your mother nearly dead?”
“I can try,” said Kenji, interrupting them. “But you,” he said, motioning to Emi, “have to make sure I have time.”
Emi nodded reluctantly and moved quietly through the thick larch trees to the perch she’d discovered in April. Behind a large grouping of rocks, slick with moss, she was totally covered but still able to hear the Germans’ conversation. There were unfortunately three guards out that night, as it was one of the warmest nights they’d had all year.
Emi waited for one of the guards to finish walking the periphery of the property, which he did quickly, then returned to the other men to continue a conversation about the Soviet troops, who, Emi knew from Evgeni and his diplomatic connections, were winning the war against Germany.
The conversation quickly became heated and Emi motioned to Ernst that it was time to send Kenji to the fence.
She watched as the little boy came out from the cover of the trees, dropped to his stomach, and slithered to the metal wires. He put his hand out between the lowest rung, food on his palm, and waited for the pigs to come.
None of the stubborn animals moved close enough to Kenji before one of the German guards started to do his rounds. Emi motioned to Ernst to get him back and he ran and picked up Kenji from the ground, getting them both behind the tree line in time.
An hour passed before they were able to try again. This time Kenji put his head and arms all the way through the fence, Ernst watching him and Emi watching the guards. None of the pigs were coming close and Emi was sure she would have to signal to Ernst to pull him back again. She was about to, as the German guards’ conversation had hit a lull, when she saw Kenji crawl under the fence and into the farm, running several yards. He grabbed one of the smaller pigs and it let out a loud squeal. Despite the noise, he dragged it to the fence, where Ernst had run up to meet him.
Not knowing if she should stay by the guards or help them, Emi went back to the trees and ran to where the boys were. She saw that Kenji had made his way back through the fence but was struggling to get the animal between the wires, the little pig much fatter than a half-starved Japanese boy.
Ernst leaned in and pulled the pig by the tail. “Both of you get to the trees,” he hissed at them as he worked. “When I have it through the fence, come back.”
“It’s too loud,” said Kenji, worriedly. “Look at him!” he hissed. He moved to the edge of the trees, and was about to go to Ernst when they heard a shout, so strong that it sounded like a foghorn piercing the silence of the mountain town.
A light went on and Emi saw that it was a flashlight in the hand of a German guard who had run out of the barn. Suddenly, with his shout, the three in the front of the barn ran toward them, too.
“Leave!” Ernst yelled in Japanese, dropping the pig but not moving back or turning around to face the woods where Emi and Kenji were hiding. “Leave right now, take the car, and don’t talk to anyone!”
Emi started to move toward Ernst, but Kenji pulled her back, his little hand in hers. “No,” he said firmly. “We need to leave. We need to take the car and leave. Right now. If the guards don’t understand Japanese, then we could be all right.”
“But Ernst!” said Emi, pulling her hand away, terrified for him.
“They have him now. And he’s a gaijin,” said Kenji, anxiously. “Even if he ran now, they would find him.”
Emi thought for a second, hearing the men with their lights coming closer, turned, and ran away with Kenji, driving the truck back toward town at dangerous speeds. Not knowing what to do with it when they got close, they left it, with the keys in the ignition, by the side of the road near the shrine just north of the Mampei Hotel.
Emi no longer had a watch, but she could tell from the sky that dawn was only an hour out.
“What do we do?” asked Kenji, once they were past the shrine.
“I don’t know,” said Emi. “Do as Ernst said, I suppose. Don’t talk to anyone. I’ll see what I can do on my end and I’ll find you when I have any semblance of a plan. Until then, stay quiet.”
She patted him on the head, feeling his fear, and watched as he ran toward his house, one she knew was filled with his newly widowed mother and four siblings, all trying to stay alive.
Instead of going home, where the Moris did very little to keep tabs on her, she went to the main street and sat in front of Evgeni’s store, waiting for him. She agreed with Ernst that Kenji shouldn’t talk to anybody, but she had to. She held her knees to her chest as she thought of the soldiers running at Ernst. Had it been her fault? Had the soldiers ever mentioned another man inside? She shook her head hard, trying not to think about it. She had to focus on keeping Ernst alive, not the moments that had just passed.
Three hours later, the sun was up and it was nearly nine, the hour when the shops opened. She looked down the road for Evgeni, sure he would be one of the first in town.
When she saw a foreigner coming her way, after a smattering of older Japanese women, she stood up, sure it was Evgeni, and had to stop herself from screaming when she saw it was Ernst. His hands were clean and he was in different clothes.
“They took me home,” he said in passing, not slowing down. He was heading toward the path that ended at the Christian church hidden deep in the woods. “Then they took my father. They wanted him instead of me.” He didn’t wait for Emi to reply; he just kept walking and soon was out of sight.
Word got around town very quickly that Oskar Abrus had been removed from his home by German soldiers, but it was said just a few weeks later that they had handed him over to the Kempeitai.
When he hadn’t returned for a month, Ernst passed by Emi near the Mampei Hotel one afternoon and said, “See what you can do,” before continuing on toward the boys’ Catholic school.
To free a gaijin from the Kempeitai? What could she do?
After school, she stopped Kenji and told him what Ernst had said.
“Are you going to give us up?” said Kenji after they’d walked silently together. Hidden away near the Shiraito waterfall north of the machi, he started to cry. “It’s not going to save Ernst’s father if you do. They will just kill us, too. Or they will kill my mother. She can’t die. My father already died!” he said, growing hysterical. “They can kill anyone they want. Don’t you know that?”
Emi walked through the woods with Kenji until he was calm, assuring him that she was not going to turn herself or him in. When they were back on the street, she took him with her to Evgeni’s store.
“I need to tell my father,” said Emi to Evgeni, whom she had confided in weeks ago. “Don’t you think? He could do something.”