The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘What?’ she muttered.

  ‘Wishing to talk about you and about me. I also – too––’ he broke off. ‘Many, many thoughts.’ Then he went calmly on: ‘Talking about Mishima because he is a great, great hero. It is my strong wish to follow him. Be like him. Save Japanese old customs, old poetry, old – traditions? – Yes, traditions. And maybe perhaps –’ his voice became quieter, reverent – ‘to die for the Emperor and for Japan. In honourable war.’

  Mary naturally found this incomprehensible.

  Born in the early ’50s and brought up in an atmosphere of prudent and woolly Liberalism, well laced with Labour theories, war, to her, was both unimaginable and inexcusable. She stared at him, unwilling to start an argument, but wondering, made cowardly by the feelings: what on earth could she say that would be acceptable. She said at last:

  ‘Well, I’m sure they’re worth saving – your traditions, I mean. (That word’s quite right, Yasu.) And the old poetry and the old customs. Only some of them weren’t all that good, were they? I mean, the peasants were awfully poor . . .’

  Yasuhiro’s brows came down, his eyes flashed as all his features seemed to change, while Mary gaped, fascinated. Something sprang up in her memory – a picture – a drawing? She knew! It was the picture called simply A Demon, in the old Japanese Room at Lorrimer House.

  ‘Bushido would come back to Japan, then, perhaps,’ Yasuhiro said. ‘If enough people willing to die.’

  ‘You said that word before – I’ve often heard you say it. What does it mean?’

  She would have liked to add when it’s at home, an expression of her paternal grandmother’s when confronted by a long word, but she refrained.

  ‘Ancient way of the samurai, the warriors. I told you, Mairly. This very evening about fifteen moments past eight, I told you. Mishima write an introduction to Hagakure, a book about bushido.’ He paused, looking severe.

  ‘Oh . . . yes . . . I’m sorry. Go on.’

  ‘At this time, Mairly, Japan in dirty hands of politicians – and peasants like only refrigerators and coloured televisions. My own uncle now makes – manufactures them in a large factory –’

  ‘“Big” is better,’ Mary put in mechanically. ‘Sorry – go on.’ At last, she was hearing something about his life at home!

  ‘– a – big factory in Tokyo. Family business. Thousands of pounds a year. We always have money by land. Now have money by business. My uncle arrange – manage – it all. My father inkyo – live in the shade.’

  She looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘In the West you say retire. Go away from active life.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I see. Does he – mind? I mean, does he like it?’

  ‘Yes. But likes pachinko (ball game for peasants like your bingo) too much.’ Yasuhiro laughed suddenly, and looked at her. ‘All day, all day. But sometimes play at chess. So now we are all business men. No honour. No bushido. Great-grandfather fought at second battle of Port Arthur. And my father fight. Oh yes. Marched down to Singapore. And after he march – commanded? – yes, commanded in the jungle. I wish – I want –’ his voice sank, ‘to be a warrior. Like Mishima. Also write books, like he.’

  ‘Write books!’ exclaimed Mary, almost more dismayed at this ambition than by his military one. ‘But you won’t make any money, Yasu, unless you get the story on television. Writing’s a very hard life.’

  ‘Don’t need money,’ was the superb answer. ‘Shall have plenty. Also, samurai despise. (Yes, despise.) Starve, have no home, only take money for fighting sometimes. More usually, fight because like fighting . . . Honourable.’

  Mary felt a strong impulse to shake her head over all this. It opened a wide, misty, dangerous landscape, mountainous and frowning, of which she could not help feeling the lure, because it was Yasuhiro talking. But she also felt it was not a real landscape.

  ‘Have plenty funds, too,’ Yasu added.

  ‘Nice for you,’ she said dryly.

  Memories of economies in her own home returned – and a sensation of being cut off from Yasuhiro’s life came to her as she saw her mother going cheerfully off to work at the Town Hall on biting January mornings. And there he sat, looking smashing, even in snowy shirt and blue jeans: youth’s casual international uniform.

  ‘“Soldiers”, Yasu,’ she corrected sharply, needing to humiliate him. ‘You really must learn to use modern words – “warriors” sounds downright daft.’

  ‘“Warriors,”’ he repeated softly, his voice ductile as the movement of a snake.

  ‘Now look here –’ Mary was beginning. She paused, but only for a few seconds, before going on sedately: ‘Why don’t you join the Army – your Army – then.’

  ‘Army!’ He reared up, this time like the snake poised to strike. ‘Japan have – has no Army!’

  His voice changed, and he recited quickly and with an angry smile: ‘Article nine – aspiring-sincerely-to-an-international-peace-based-on-justice-and-order-the-Japanese-people-forever-renounce-war-as-a-sovereign-right-of-the-nation-and-the-threat-or-use-of-force-as-a-means-of-settling-international-disputes.’

  He paused. ‘So – no more Army, Mairly. No more Pearl Harbor.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I say, no more Pearl Harbor.’

  ‘And a good thing too. So I should hope,’ she said firmly. ‘It was . . . simply awful.’

  ‘Brave. Heroes. Seppuku. Suicide flyers.’

  They stared at each other as if they were strangers. This is awful, thought Mary.

  Afterwards, lying on her bed and thinking about the evening’s talk, she understood that this had been a turning point.

  She had wanted to say, ‘I don’t want to hear about that. Let’s talk about you and me.’ But Yasuhiro’s expression, that of the little boy who wants to describe the dogfight, simply would not let her. She behaved like the ordinary good mother and, smiling, murmured: ‘Of course I want you to tell me – go on.’

  Yasuhiro then disconcerted her by saying approvingly: ‘You show nice manners, Mairly. I know you don’t wish to listen about Shield Society but you say “yes” because polite –’ and he then caused her heart to do its familiar over-turn by adding ‘I show you my human feelings, you understand. If I were with English young men, students, or old peasant Mr Grant upstairs, I agree, and say “Yes, yes, Pearl Harbor a disgrace.” But here down with you I say I think glorious brave flyers. You don’t think it. But to you I can say it, because––’

  He stopped, and apparently went off into a meditation; his face became as impassive as a carved Buddha’s in any of the temples on his home of islands. In a moment, he looked up.

  ‘“Every geisha is always nineteen years old” – Japanese proverb,’ he quoted gaily. ‘Sweet, you know, and polite manners. How old you are, Mairly?’

  ‘Seventeen.’ She revived at the personal question, though she wondered a little if she were being compared to a geisha? The travel books were always so careful to explain that they were not . . . but somehow one was left wondering.

  ‘And I have twenty.’

  He spoke thoughtfully, and did not begin his account of the Shield Society (founded by Mishima with the aim of ‘fostering the military virtues and defending the Emperor’) for nearly a minute, during which he again looked like a Buddha and mused in silence.

  Mary revived still more on receiving this small treasure of information, and was enabled to support half an hour – nearly three quarters, as a surreptitious glance at her watch told her – of secret meetings and sham fights, uniforms, and a great deal more of what seemed to her dangerous nonsense.

  Yasuhiro always broke up their evenings punctually at ten. As she went up the stairs, leaving him bowing and smiling ceremoniously at the door, she was thinking I do know a bit more about him. And he does show me his human feelings. He said so. That’s something. But the worrying thing is that he MEANS all that codswallop about Mishima . . . And he really likes it.

  Mrs Levy had had so much cause to reprove Mary lately for absent
-mindedness, forgetfulness and daydreaming that she was becoming worried.

  She realized, now, when her assistant seemed to be deteriorating, what a treasure she had found: punctual, biddable, clever at sewing and – thrown in as a bonus – a good listener. I didn’t know when I was lucky, Mrs Levy thought bitterly. But I should have known. Mary seemed different, but modern girls are all the same. She braced herself, should she be faced with a sudden giving of notice, to offer a small rise in salary.

  But one morning, about five minutes to one, when she had already peered out through the door and seen, across the road, Mary sedately descending the flight of steps leading from Broad Street station, and had turned to take down from its hook her new astrakhan coat (bought through the good offices of Cousin Maurice, who was in the fur trade) a customer stalked in.

  As if he owned my shop was Mrs Levy’s phrase for this customer’s gait. However, he was Japanese, and they usually had plenty to spend and that overcoat (she thought, staring) can’t have cost a penny less than sixty pounds.

  ‘Good mornink. Can I help you?’she asked.

  ‘No thank you. I will look around,’ said the customer and did so, into what nooks and places of concealment for human beings the shop possessed.

  ‘Of course, please yourself,’ said Mrs Levy, proceeding with the donning of Cousin Maurice’s astrakhan.

  Suddenly suspicion struck her. She glanced sharply at the Japanese man, who was staring haughtily at a display of plastic dolls dressed in tartan kilts. And here was Mary coming across the road, and she was seventeen, and Mrs Levy would shortly be off for the rest of the day.

  Maybe they get up to something, thought Mrs Levy. Her suspicions were given startling confirmation by Mary’s stopping dead at the shop door and almost gasping ‘H-hello!’ at sight of their customer, while he, turning, said calmly, ‘Hullo, Mairly. I come to see where you work.’

  He turned a smiling face on Mrs Levy, and she had to admit that the smile made him look less stuck-up.

  ‘Ach! You know each other!’ she exclaimed, eyes popping, eyebrows rising, every feature expressing surprise and interest.

  ‘Yes, he came in about a month ago.’ Mary’s voice was muffled, as she retired into her nook to take off her coat.

  ‘Twenty-fifth of February,’ put in the Japanese man, still politely smiling. ‘My name is Yasuhiro Tasu. I am here to learn English.’

  ‘Und I suppose you coming here every afternoon since the twenty-fifth of February learning it off of my assistant.’

  ‘This is only the second time. Isn’t it, Yasu?’ Mary turned to him.

  ‘Yes, vell, all right.’ Mrs Levy, seeing by her watch that it was ten past one, decided suddenly to leave the situation to Providence. ‘If you don’t see anythink you fancy, perhaps you better be goink on you way,’ she ended playfully.

  ‘Yes . . . goodbye, Mairly. Good afternoon,’ to Mrs Levy, with a small bow, and he sauntered out.

  Mrs Levy turned to Mary.

  ‘Your face go red,’ she announced. ‘Vy? Und how does he know your name?’ she added. ‘“Mairly”, indeed! He’s your boyfriend?’

  This was what Mary had been dreading. Mrs Levy’s grandmotherly interest.

  ‘He lives in my house,’ she said quietly, beginning to fix cards of earrings onto a velvet-covered board. ‘I’ve had coffee with him, once or twice. I’m helping him with his English.’

  Tell the truth or nearly the truth – it’s easier and it works better.

  Mrs Levy, however, responded in a surprising way. ‘No, no, Mary. You must be pulling my legs! A Japanese in an overcoat costing sixty pounds to live in Gospel Oak! If you tell me he stays at the Dorchester, yes, I believe you. But Gospel Oak – no, no.’

  ‘It isn’t a poor neighbourhood, Mrs Levy, there are some nice houses there. You recommended it,’ she reminded her, and began to steer the conversation into less dangerous waters, ‘though not so nice as the ones in the Garden Suburb, of course.’ (She knew that Helenslea Gardens in Golders Green, where Mrs Levy’s daughter lived, was her employer’s idea of all that was most desirable in house property.)

  ‘Ach! Golders Green, yes. Really nice homes there. Und Bishopsvood Avenue! Between Hampstead and Highgate. Vot houses! Princely. – You go on having coffee with that overcoat, Mary, maybe you end up in Bishopsvood Avenue, who knows? You help him with his English, my dee-ar,’ ended Mrs Levy with a disconcerting cackle.

  As Mary went up the steps to Broad Street that evening, one of the packed climbing crowd of homebound workers under the darkening sky, she was thinking that the next time she saw him, she would ask firmly: Why did you come into the shop on Wednesday? Please don’t do it again. I don’t like it.

  But she had liked it. Too much, in fact.

  ‘Hullo, Mairly,’ and there he was, materializing from behind one of the advertisement hoardings ranged down the middle of the platform.

  ‘Oh h-hullo . . . you again . . . you,’ she stammered. And then, unbelievably, his hand stole out and – among all those people – into her own.

  ‘Oh Mairly,’ he muttered, his English accent gone utterly into chaos. ‘Don’t be crohs. I want so much to see your face. Could not work or read. Come, come go, Mairly. We go away by ourselves somewhere, perhaps look at the River Thames. Come, go.’

  He led her off, and she saw only his serious eyes, looking down into her own. The cherishing manner in which he led her through the throng increased her sense of their being alone together as they made their way down the steps against the mounting crowd.

  ‘Did you go home?’ she asked presently.

  ‘No. Sat in Saint Paul’s. During three hours. Sleep. But perhaps they think I meditate, like a Hindu holyman,’ and he gave a mischievous laugh. ‘Then went, and drank tea. An awful place, Mairly and the tea made by withering English leaves, I think. A disgrace. Why you ask me?’ softly, and bending his head down to her.

  ‘Oh – I was only thinking you must be hungry,’ she said shyly.

  ‘So I am, so I am,’ in a voice of pleased surprise. ‘Both of we hungry, perhaps. Near Saint Paul’s is nice place. Smell of fry, but quiet. No cars. We go there. Look!’ He paused, and gazed upwards. ‘Saint Paul’s.’

  She followed his gaze. Carving and column glowed pale gold in the afterglow, against the deep blue of the sky. The dome, above them, struck the eye with its darkness as a note from one of the place’s own mighty bells could strike the ear.

  ‘I like him now,’ said Yasuhiro. ‘This afternoon he was my bedroom.’

  Mary gave a delighted little laugh.

  ‘You laugh, Mairly,’ said Yasuhiro, smiling. ‘I made a joke? In English I made a joke?’

  ‘It’s the sort of joke Dad – my father – and I think is funny. You know – a bit sort of silly.’

  ‘What is your father working at?’ He looked ahead at the darkening street crowded with hurrying people. ‘Is he a peasant?’

  ‘No. A civil servant,’ she explained, dismissing an extraordinary picture of her father bending over rice fields in a huge straw hat. ‘He’s retired now.’ She swallowed. ‘He – what your people call – “sits in the shade” – inkyo,’ she ended, calmly, but proud of herself.

  ‘You know Japanese word! Oh Mairly, you learn that word!’

  ‘Yes . . . well, I thought if you want to learn some English, it would be handy for me to know some Japanese.’

  She was careful to keep her tone light.

  ‘Handy. What does it mean?’

  ‘Oh – convenient – useful. It’s slang, really.’

  ‘Works for your government – did work. How great he was?’

  ‘Not great at all. We live in a town in . . . in the eastern part of England, and my father worked for our – local council. It was a small job – work – but responsible. He was head of the department that collects the rates.’

  ‘Rates?’

  ‘Every citizen must pay part of the money they earn to the Government and that pays for the things everybody has: s
treet lighting and free schools and public libraries,’ she said quickly and rather desperately. (Oh why must she dish out all this boring stuff when he was beginning to ask her the questions a young man asks a girl when . . .?)

  ‘I understand. Your family is not peasants.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so – no.’ Mary was relieved that the question had not been put to her mother. ‘Middle-class, I suppose,’ she ended vaguely. ‘I never really thought about it.’

  Yasuhiro appeared to dismiss the subject. ‘Here is the place,’ he said gaily, as they approached a low flight of steps leading to a calm expanse of stone, set with shrubs in great jars, ‘up this. I find him this afternoon.’

  ‘Found it, Yasu.’

  ‘Found it. Now up this steps, Mairly. Over here. See! As I said you. No cars, quiet.’

  ‘It’s super,’ she said, looking around.

  The grey stone spaces, wide and silent, stretched before them in the fading afterglow, shut in by featureless modern blocks of offices made inoffensive by the dusk, mere background for the rich gold light pouring out from shops and cafés.

  ‘Super,’ she said again, after a silence.

  Across the precinct, against the background of distant traffic noise, came the sound of footsteps.

  ‘Old sound,’ said Yasuhiro. ‘One of oldest sounds in the world. Hear that sound in Baby-lon.’

  She murmured something.

  ‘What you are saying, Mairly?’

  ‘Oh . . . I only said . . . I like the – the kind of things you say, Yasu.’

  He was silent for a moment. Then, looking up at the great dome, he spoke a few words in Japanese. In the quiet, she heard his voice as if she were listening to the notes of some tropical bird.

  ‘What? Oh tell me what you said . . .’ she almost whispered.

  ‘The beauty we have lost is floating

  In the air like dust of gold,’ he said slowly.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ said Mary, in a moment. ‘Did you just . . . make it up? This minute, I mean?’

  ‘No,’ with his flashing smile. ‘I had many, many thoughts. When I first saw Saint Paul’s the thoughts began. I was jealous – envious? – of him. Because he is so big. I wished for Japan to have the glory of the biggest. I . . .’ – his voice fell – ‘had human feelings that my nation had lost face. Then other thoughts began – came. So few? (Yes, few.) Few beautiful buildings in England. – So I thought . . . and I had feelings . . . and then the poem. A haiku.’