1940 Part II

Aleks looked up from his drawing at the front page as soon as Trn sat beside him. He pointed. His short feet dangled in their little slippers off the couch into the air.

Why is he in the newspaper?

This man? Because the Germans and Japan have signed a treaty. An agreement between two nations about certain things.

What do they agree on?

Just about everything.

He’s the fuhrer of Japan.

Yes. The emperor.

The Japanese believe he is a god.

That’s right. Where did you learn that?

From you.

Oh.

Together they stared at the emperor in a tasseled shako, long black coat with its tails parted neatly and trailing over the haunches of the white horse he sat.

Do you know his name?

Aleks shook his head. I don’t remember. It’s too hard.

Hirohito.

That’s funny to say.

It is, isn’t it? Trn began to read, Aleks still looking over his arm at the picture.

Daddy?

Yes?

Do the Japanese never wonder why god needs glasses?

***

Through Miroslav’s magnifying glass he examined the photographs, leafed back several pages to stare at a string of six men reined together at the neck, crossed wrists bound before them. A warrior stood to the side, chin lifted, his spear and proud shield. Only he looked into the magic box. The others gazed each at a different patch of ground and waited for the word of the latest master. The legend read, Captives of the Slave Trade. Under the glass the gray and grainy day of their humiliation. What looked like a gash on the left shoulder of the second man. Wound sustained in a losing cause. You could not see them with a magnifier but flies gathered there, crawling to the shore of the blood to sip, the flesh crawling away in defense. You could see the tattoos, the striations of scarified cheeks. The chronicle of their tribe. Now ended. Neighbor plunders neighbor and the spoils of war go under the hammer. In Rome the market bustled and in Africa it goes on still. And here. Let us not forget that. It continued.

Sir?

The clerk smiled with her mouthful of teeth.

Sir. We can’t locate that other volume.

He smiled in return. It’s all right. Teeth jutting as in the American cartoons they used to show. Poor girl.