American Stories

by Nagai Kafu

  I was one of them and had become a scorer at one of the ball-rolling shops, for no particular reason other than that I wanted to work at whatever was available in order to get money together for a trip to Europe. My pay was twelve dollars a week. The boss told me something like this: other shops might give you fifteen or sixteen dollars, but there you’d have to pay for your own meals, whereas at his place, it’s twelve dollars plus three meals, and besides, you can sleep in the shop if you like; in other words, you don’t have to spend a penny out of your salary, so work hard.

  As soon as I was hired, I stood there, like the others, by the ball-rolling table installed at the storefront, waiting for customers to come, but till after three or four o’clock, the sightseeing crowd was rather thin and the wooden roof of the large beer hall across from us shone brilliantly with the light of the hot, hot summer’s setting sun. To the right of the beer garden was a shooting gallery where a woman with a face completely covered with white powder looked in our direction from time to time, yawning with a mouthful of food, and to our left was a large show place with a billboard proclaiming FLYING TRIP AROUND THE WORLD. Sitting in a chair on a raised platform at the entrance was a buxom young woman, her face likewise plastered with powder, counting tickets and small change since there were very few customers. By her side a vulgar-looking man wearing gaudy patterned clothes was constantly calling out, “Come in, come in,” in a loud voice two or three times even when no potential customer was passing by and then, just as frequently, eyeing and whispering to the female ticket vendor.

  It was probably around five o’clock that electric lights came on everywhere. The sky was still blue, and the summer sun would not go down for a while yet, but the atmosphere in the area somehow grew livelier. Various sounds played from gramophones and shouts of barkers began to echo here and there, and in the beer hall across from us they were showing movies at a spot visible from the street. Somewhere nearby, there must have been a vaudeville theater or a dance hall, for you could hear a band playing the drum as well as a young women’s chorus. From this time on, male and female visitors steadily increased like an ocean tide, and during the peak hours between eight and twelve o’clock, the streets became jammed with people and little space was left for walking. It was two o’clock in the morning when the shop’s owner, noting the gradually quieting streets, finally declared, “OK, how about closing the doors.” By the time we washed our sweaty faces at a roadside water faucet and lit cigarettes, it was already nearly three o’clock.

  The oldest of the hired men, about forty years old and looking every inch a peasant, said with a Tôhoku [northeast] accent, “Well, I’m going to go to bed. I won’t last if I try to keep up with you. You young fellows go ahead and enjoy yourselves all you like. The night is still young. . . .” He then brought out a blanket that had been shoved away under the ball-rolling table, spread it out, and flopped down on it, spread-eagled on the table, wearing only a grimy shirt.

  A man who looked like a student, with his hair neatly parted, then responded, “Are you going to sleep on the ball-rolling table again tonight? Do you think you will have nice dreams that way?”

  “The bed in the back room is infested with bugs. You’d better practice sleeping on a wooden board a little. Every night, you seem to be thinking of nothing but sneaking into a woman’s bed.”

  “Don’t forget I am still young,” said the student, followed by one of his companions who asked, as if to help out, “Hey you, old man, what are you going to do with the money you are saving? Don’t tell me you have children or grandchildren back home.”

  “Oh, sure. I’ve got a sixteen-year-old mistress waiting for me there. I don’t understand why you guys let whores in America fool you and cheat you out of the money you’ve earned with your sweat. Just think about it. If you take home the money you are throwing away in one night here, you’ll be able to have as much fun as a lord till the morning sun shines on the folding screens. . . .”

  The student workers, apparently thinking it was no longer fun teasing him, went outside, complaining about the heat. I too went out, from the side door, in part because the house did indeed become unbearably hot with its doors shut, in part because I didn’t know where to sleep, having just today been hired. I found the hired hands gathered in a cool spot under the eaves, chatting.

  All around, it is strangely, almost eerily quiet, considering the hustle and bustle a mere hour ago. Now that the lights from the illuminations have been turned off, the multitiered buildings for large-scale shows are just standing there, soaring like white clouds floating in the sky. The rather narrow street is almost pitch dark, dimly lit here and there by electric lights. In this dark shadow, like a dream, like phantoms, strange white-powdered women pop in and out of shuttered show places. A man wearing only a shirt with the sleeves rolled up goes after them up and down the street, followed by a woman’s scolding voice, sounding like, “What the hell are you trying to do?” and by some screaming, laughing voices. They are all people who had been shouting and dancing in the show places and now, for the first time, have come out in order to breathe freely in some fresh air.

  From the wide beach at the end of the street, with an indescribably chilly wind, the sound of waves reached one’s ears, beating against the shore as quietly as rain—what a tired, lonesome sound. It must have been because I was not accustomed to staying up late and was dead tired that I felt as though this desolation after a night’s noisy and frenzied merrymaking, this lonely, tired sound of the waves, were piercing deeply into my heart. As I gazed unconsciously at the stars vanishing one by one, far away in the summer night’s faded-gray sky, I could not help wondering at the way some people lived, like those women of dubious character who had been making intermittent sounds of flirting and frolicking. It was as if I were confronted with life’s mysterious puzzle.

  The hired hands at the ball-rolling place were busy sizing up or commenting on the women passing by right in front of them.

  “Hey, what are we going to do? Let’s not just stand here forever. If we want to go, let’s go right away.”

  “Where are we going? It’s almost daybreak.”

  “Let’s try the bar at the corner. Many women from the evening shows go there to drink.”

  “How much? Can you do it for two dollars or so?”

  “Depends on the woman.”

  “If they are charging two dollars, we should go to Chinatown instead where it will be cheaper.”

  “Speaking of Chinatown, do you remember that plump girl with dark eyes who used to be on Seventeenth Street . . . Julia? That Julia is now working at the dance hall of the beer hall. She may be having a drink at the corner bar.”

  “Forget it, she already has a guy.”

  “A Japanese?”

  “Yeah, a magician from Brooklyn, and she is like his wife.”

  “Who cares if she is a wife or a daughter. She’d be yours if you paid her.”

  “It’d be so businesslike. . . .”

  “Don’t be so choosy. Remember, this is America.”

  “What about America? Who says they won’t fall for a Japanese? A Japanese may be too good for them.”

  “But I don’t like the idea of having fun for money.”

  “Then you might as well rape somebody.”

  “I’m not that desperate yet. I’ll wait for the right moment.”

  “So you’re discouraged.”

  “No, not discouraged. Wait till I make you envy me.”

  “Don’t get caught by the police loitering in the park or some- where, muddying Japanese reputation.”

  Just then, two dubious-looking women who had been constantly walking passed us and, seeing we were Japanese, said “Hello,” half teasingly.

  “There they come!”

  “Not bad.”

  “But they are skinny.”

  “That’s because they are for summer use.”

  “Follow them!”

  Two or three of the group went after the women. The
rest watched the scene, quite amused, saying, “Those good-for-nothings. They would make their parents and siblings back home cry.”

  “It’s lucky for all of us that there’s a big ocean called the Pacific. You know, we didn’t come to America at first expecting to end up like this.”

  “Look! They are turning toward the sea. Are there still people at the swimming place?”

  “Just go and look now. There’ll be dubious characters all over on the beach.”

  “Let’s not just hang around here. Let’s stroll over and bother them.”

  “Nonsense! Don’t be jealous.”

  “But the sea breeze’d be good for you.”

  “What are you talking about? If you stay up every night like this, nothing’s going to do you any good, medicine or no medicine.”

  “Well, it looks like we’re going to do the usual things somewhere. We’d better go to Chinatown; we know it better, and we wouldn’t have a chance at the beach.”

  The company divided into two. One group left for the swimming area by the sea, the other for the train stop, as the trains were running all night. I was left alone; I didn’t want to go back and sleep on the ball-rolling table, but I had nowhere else to go.

  The stars have disappeared altogether, but the evening sky before daybreak is of an indescribably gloomy color as if entirely covered by a light fog. It is a sign that tomorrow will be terribly hot and humid.

  I crouched under the eaves and dozed off before I knew it, but then I came to, hearing someone calling me close by; it must have been one of the guys who had gone away toward the sea. A young man, about my age and looking like a student, was standing with a cigar in his mouth.

  “What happened? If you want to sleep, there’s a bed in the store,” he said, looking down at my face. But then he seemed to recall something and added, putting the cigar back in his mouth, “You don’t seem to have gotten used to this sort of life, have you?”

  “What happened to everyone?” I said, deliberately rubbing my eyes to hide my embarrassment a little.

  “Just as always, they are looking for whores and other women of dubious character.”

  He crouched down beside me, appearing very tired, looked at my face close by, and said, “Don’t you think we are leading a really corrupt life?”

  I did not answer and just smiled faintly.

  “When did you come to the United States? Have you been here a long time?”

  “Oh, about two years. How about you?” I asked in turn.

  “It’ll be exactly five years come winter. It’s been like a dream.” “Where do you go to school? Of course, right now, you must not be going anywhere because of the summer recess. . . .”

  “That’s right. At least for the first two years, I took schooling seriously. Besides, at that time my education was being paid for by the folks at home.”

  “So you are not exactly a penniless student working for a living.” “I may not look like it, but at home I am something of the young master.” He smiled sadly.

  Indeed, his whole appearance, from the smiling mouth to the intensely gazing eyes, does suggest something fragile and gentle, not like the other young men who used to be doormen, freeloaders, student servants, or in other such circumstances before coming to the United States. He seems physically quite strong, with stout, muscular arms underneath the rolled-up sleeves of his summer shirt, but even this may just indicate that his body, rather than having been strengthened by hard work, has been carefully nurtured through sports and gymnastics, which cost both money and time. He may have been a [rowing] champion once on the Sumida River.

  “Where did you go to school in Japan?” I asked.

  “I attended higher school once.”

  “‘The First’?”

  “No, I tried Tokyo [First Higher School] twice but didn’t make it. So I had to go to Kanazawa [Fourth Higher School] the third year and barely got in. But then I was kicked out in no time.”

  “Why?”

  “I got sick during my second year and had to repeat the same grade. The year after that, I again couldn’t advance to the next grade because I flunked the math course. . . . The rules in those days said you couldn’t stay in the same grade for more than two years, so I was expelled.”

  “That’s why you came to America?”

  “Not right away. After I got kicked out, I hung around the house for about two years, doing nothing. I learned every naughty trick then, like chasing a female gidayû [ballad narrator] or crashing in Yoshiwara [a pleasure quarter in Tokyo].

  “My mother cried, my father was angry. But they couldn’t just let me be, so they decided to send me to the United States to study.” “Did you come to New York right away?”

  “No, I went to a school in Massachusetts. I worked really hard for two years or so. Don’t think I am a total playboy. It’s true that when I flunked the entrance exam for higher school or, later, got expelled, I thought I was finished, but once I set my mind to studying, I found out that I wasn’t that inferior to the others.”

  “Of course.”

  “At the school in Massachusetts, there were three students from Japan, but I was the best, at least in language. . . .”

  “Did you graduate?”

  “No, I quit in the middle.”

  “That’s too bad. Why?”

  “That’s how it is. I can’t cry over spilled milk. And I am not about to.

  “You may think I am hopeless. But I quit school because I came to a certain decision. I don’t think I’ll ever open another book for the rest of my life.”

  I stared at his face.

  “It wasn’t that I had any great idea, but it’s simply more fun to hang around in a place like this rather than working for a degree or getting some sort of a titled position.”

  “You may be right in a way.”

  “You could say I was possessed by some evil spirit, if you believe in superstition. It was through a chance event that I became like this.” “Tell me about it!”

  “It was during the second summer after I entered school. I took advantage of the summer vacation and came to New York to look around . . . so far so good, but when fall came and it was time to go back to school, for some reason the money I was supposed to receive for my education didn’t arrive. I was really stuck. I waited day and night for it, and was soon short of money not only for the return trip to school but even for lodging, if I lingered much longer. I had never earned a living through my own work. I didn’t know how to support myself. So no money was going to come from home . . . well, it would come sooner or later, but it felt as though it were never going to arrive. I couldn’t even sleep at night. I felt terribly hungry. Kept dreaming that I had become a beggar.”

  “No wonder.”

  “I didn’t have much choice but to pay my bills at the boarding house with the money I still had and moved to a cheaper inn run by a Japanese. Waited there for two weeks, but still no money came. I said to myself, this is it. I’ve got to think of alternatives. . . . But what could I do in America where I had no friend, nobody to consult, nothing like that? Finally, I made up my mind to become a live-in servant at a Westerner’s home.”

  “To do housework?”

  “Yeah. Folks staying at the inn were all people like that, so I gained some idea of the situation while talking to them every day. It didn’t seem like as much hard work as I had imagined, so I thought things might work out somehow. . . . I was half desperate, but I managed to gather myself much more than previously. First, as you might know, I went to the Herald office, as people do in such circumstances, and placed an ad saying something like: Japanese student, very trust worthy [sic], wants position in familly [sic], as valet, butler, moderate wages.

  “In two or three days, there were already two, three responses. But I had no idea which house to choose, so went to one of them for no particular reason and decided to work there for thirty dollars; that’s the amount they mentioned. It amazed me that in America you could be paid as much as thirty d
ollars a month for doing domestic service like a maid.”

  “How could you take it? You told me your family used to send you money for schooling, so you must be one of those so-called greenhorns. . . .”

  “Well, think of it as a reaction. Precisely because I was a greenhorn, I was able to take it. Not only that, I even came to enjoy it. You may not understand. It’s a little hard to explain . . . but I am going to tell you why. But first of all, I’ll have to tell you about my family.”

  “What does your father do?”

  “He is a scholar, head of the — School. As my parent, as a gentleman, he is almost impeccable socially or personally, but things can be too perfect for their own good. Clear water is avoided by fish, as they say. . . . Because I grew up in too wholesome a family, corruption set in rather unexpectedly.”