The Yellow Houses

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Is that its name in Japanese?’

  ‘Yes, Haiku. Eighteen syll-ables (oh what a word!) Not quite correct in my translation. Has only sixteen. Must work on it. Difficult to translate. Correct in Japanese.’ He repeated it, then his face came alight. He turned to her.

  ‘It is for you, Mairly. A present.’

  ‘Oh! Oh thank you, Yasu. I’ve never had––’

  What would any boy in Torford think of this present? And a poem not even about herself! Yet so beautiful. ‘I like it very much, truly,’ she said, almost inarticulate with embarrassment.

  Then he said, gazing not at her but up at the great dome fading into the dark blue of the sky –

  ‘The beauty we have lost is floating

  In the air like dust of gold, darling.’

  He turned to her, smiling.

  ‘Darling. English word meaning sweet one. Consoles the heart for loss of beautiful old buildings. And now has eighteen English syllables. Come, Mairly, go, coffee.’

  But when they were seated in the café, with full cups of coffee and food (over which Yasuhiro raised his eyebrows) in front of them, he broke what was for Mary an entranced silence by saying thoughtfully, ‘Doesn’t sound correct, the “darling”. Feeling correct, shape correct, sound not quite correct in English. W. H. Auden would say not correct. I will work on that. Not proper.’

  ‘It’s “right”, Yasu. Not “proper”,’ Mary said resignedly.

  She would have preferred the haiku to remain uncorrected.

  22

  Shock!

  It never occurred to Mary that Mrs Cadman had been noticing the evening visits to the basement.

  But one evening, as she was making her way downstairs about half past eight to the usual coffee-drinking, she saw Mrs Cadman poised in the hall. (Poised, not loitering; all her movements were quick.) Mrs Cadman glanced up, and a smile came over her pretty-mouse’s face.

  ‘There you are, dear,’ she said softly. ‘I want a word with you. Come in here a minute.’

  She opened the door of the large front room, a place of gloomy furniture and dark wallpaper, lit by a feeble bulb because it was never used except when some casual visitor, recommended by a lodger in the house, passed a night on the Kumfi-Slepe.

  Mary followed, thinking blow, and resenting every second that kept her from Yasuhiro.

  She looked at Mrs Cadman enquiringly.

  ‘I shan’t keep you a minute, dear . . . you know, your dad told me, over the phone that evening, that your mother had passed over. There’s just the two of you now . . .’

  Mary nodded, looking calm. Dad had been enlisting Mrs Cadman’s interest in case of Trouble. Well, there wasn’t going to be any.

  ‘It’s just this –’ Mrs Cadman went on quickly. ‘That boy downstairs comes from a rich family. Mr Grant saw something in one of those business supplements (I can’t be bothered with them but you know what men are with their newspapers). It mentioned the names of the ten largest firms in Japan, and that boy belongs to one of them. I remembered the name from the Embassy’s letter. Now, just you remember that money’s always useful. You young people all do so well nowadays. But it wasn’t always like that, you know. I was on the stage in the ’30s, and we used to be scared stiff of being sacked. Everyone was.’

  Oh Lord, thought Mary. Here we go. Hamburg, only in England this time.

  ‘. . . but it did teach us the value of money . . . Now I’ve nearly said my say,’ detecting slight signs of impatience, and dropping a cold little paw for a second on Mary’s wrist. ‘You play your cards right, dear, and MARRY him. It’s a wonderful chance, and he seems a nice boy, too, so far as I can see. Good luck. That’s all I wanted to say.’

  She nodded, her small face all kindness and conspiracy, in the dim light from the economical bulb.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Cadman.’ The blush seemed to rise from Mary’s very heart, scarlet as her blood, but her tone was calm. ‘It’s – nice of you to be so interested . . . I’ll remember.’ She was not going to say any more. Not one single word.

  ‘And remember too – nothing . . . much . . . before you’re married,’ Mrs Cadman nodded and whispered rapidly as Mary made for the door. ‘Oh, I know all about the permissive society, but boys don’t change that much and they all try it on.’

  Mary nodded, and smiled, and fairly scampered down the stairs.

  Yasuhiro had left the door ajar. He was kneeling before the coffee tray, and as she entered he looked up.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mary, and paused.

  ‘Yes, yes. I put this on. I wear it,’ he said. His expression was solemn and melancholy; she could read changes in his face now. He bent again over the cups, sifting coffee into the pot.

  ‘It’s super,’ she said, coming closer to look at the dark blue robe embroidered with silvery storks and large-petalled flowers.

  ‘My great-grandfather gave me. Is a ceremonial robe. Traditional,’ and he sighed. ‘Sit down, Mairly, sit down please.’

  Mary sat down. She decided against asking him why he was wearing the robe; it would probably be Mishima’s birthday or something – if Mishima had ever done anything so cheerful and ordinary as celebrate his birthday.

  Yasuhiro, however, explained at once.

  ‘I have a letter this morning.’ He slowly raised his lids, and looked at her. ‘From Great-grandfather. That is why I wear his present. When the coffee is made, I shall show it to you. I mean the letter.’

  ‘Oh . . . thanks . . . you know, your English really is improving, Yasu. It’s heaps better.’

  ‘Heaps? It doesn’t matter that my English is improving.’

  ‘Of course it matters . . .’ (What could be up?) ‘Er . . . does he write in Japanese?’

  ‘Of course of course he writes in Japanese,’ Yasuhiro said drearily. ‘Is very great at using the brush. Very fine letters. Mairly, please put the kettle on the gas fire. My heart is sad.’

  ‘(Gas-ring. The fire is what we sit by.) All right.’

  She did so, while reciting in a cheerful tone the old rhyme about Polly doing the same thing, feeling that an effort must be made to lighten the atmosphere.

  An evening spent in glooming about Great-grandfather or prosing about Mishima would be an evening wasted – and they had been getting along so nicely! Though it was true that the golden evening by St Paul’s had ended, tamely enough, in a taxi ride back to Rowena Road, with Yasuhiro and Mary seated decorously opposite one another practising Yasuhiro’s vowel sounds.

  ‘Polly,’ he repeated, sitting back on his heels. ‘Polly. What is that little song? Is a haiku for English children?’

  ‘Sort of. Yes, I suppose so. We call it a nursery rhyme.’

  ‘A song for British peasants,’ he said contemptuously. ‘In Japan, the tea ceremony important yet. Takes the pride of the heart away, then calms the heart.’

  Mary poured milk into her cup in silence.

  ‘Why is your heart sad, Yasu?’ she asked quietly at last, looking at him over the rim of her cup.

  ‘Because . . .’ he did not look up, ‘Great-grandfather writes to me in his letter that I must think to marry.’

  He took particular care with his accent; she noticed, even through the stunning shock, and her only thought was that she must keep quiet, and show no more than friendly interest.

  ‘I know why it be.’

  ‘Is,’ she corrected steadily. ‘Yes?’

  ‘He is very ancient – old. (I know why it is.) Seen the blossom come ninety-three times. Imagine, Mairly.’

  ‘Born in 1876,’ she said faintly.

  ‘Yes.’ He got up, in one graceful movement. ‘I show you his letter.’

  He took a folded sheet of dark paper from his sash. ‘Excellently fine writing. Study.’ He held the paper out to her.

  She studied. The ink was very black; the marks so sharp, and so significant-seeming, even to a foreigner, that they suggested tiny drawings rather than letters.

  ‘They’re . . . like queer-shaped animals,’ s
he said at last. It was not precisely what she meant, but she was finding it difficult to think clearly.

  ‘Ancient tradition tells that certain letters are – were – so beautiful they came up from paper and talked to scholars . . . why are you amuse, Mairly? It is not a joke,’ as she broke into a little laugh.

  ‘Because I like it . . . Come on, Yasu! Your coffee’s getting cold . . . you were going to tell me why –’ she steadied her voice, ‘why your great-grandfather wants you to marry.’

  He nodded.

  ‘He is so ancient,’ he said at last, ‘he feels that he could die and go to the ancestors, without – yes, without – to see my wife and my son, my first son. That is why he writes.’

  She drank some coffee, thinking that she must be very, very careful what she said.

  Which Yasu was this? The alien young god (Mary did not use those words to herself), the boy laughing with his eyes who made her heart turn over, her pupil whose mistakes seemed to her childish and endearing? . . . None of them. She had not met this pensive, subdued young man before.

  ‘Understand, Mairly –’ he lifted his head and looked at her sadly. ‘In Japan the parents choosing the wife. Keep a –’ he paused, uttered a Japanese word, then shook his head, and thought – ‘ah yes, a list. They have a list. Of suitable girls. Not all parents do this. But still in honourable families. Not like in “the West of wonder”.’ He gave a mocking smile. ‘Here, you choose your own girl.’ He knelt again before the coffee tray.

  Mary swallowed. ‘And have your parents got a list for you?’

  Her heart felt as if it were dying. (And what an idea! Of course, over here some people’s mums might say a boy would do nicely for someone, but a list!)

  Yasuhiro nodded. ‘Oh yes. Some sweet girls, make a good wife. Have sons. Healthy.’ He ended on a note of indescribable – could it be boredom? Mary felt the merest shadow of comfort. ‘Pretty as first flowers.’ He glanced round the room. ‘Since I come here, my – taste? Yes, taste, go to live with those dogs.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘You must know those dogs, Mairly. English idiom. They live in a disgraceful place, I suppose . . . In Japan we have one vase and arrange flowers very, very careful and correct. Visitors bow to that vase before the host when they come to the house. I know how to put a few – little flowers, at home. But here . . .’ He suddenly seemed to cast his body sideways, as if forced by a storm working in his breast. ‘I am so angry, and London is so ugly – and I am so – so – I do not know – human feelings going over me like that wave in the Old Man’s picture . . .’

  His voice was so low, now, and the English sounds so mangled, that she could hardly distinguish what he was saying. ‘And giri fight all the time with human feelings and I buy more flowers than is wanted to look correct. Yes, that’s right.’ He broke off, and she could see his chest heaving under the embroidered robe. ‘Must have flowers. Comfort,’ he ended.

  ‘What Old Man?’ Mary picked upon two of the words in his rush of speech that she could distinguish.

  ‘Hokusai. It is a picture of a tremendous wave. And boat. Wave will fall on the boat, perhaps. Is only called “The Wave”. Yes! Is enough that name. So is here with me, Mairly.’ He stopped. She could see the beating of his heart shaking the embroidery on the breast of his robe.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel so bad . . .’ she ventured at last.

  Up came his head, his eyes gleaming.

  ‘I’m not bad, Mairly,’ with an angry stare. ‘These are human feelings. They go against giri, national honour.’

  ‘I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . . I meant, I’m . . . I’m sorry your heart is so sad.’

  ‘It is the only work of a woman, to calm the heart of the warrior,’ he pronounced, and then quenched Mary’s instant indignation, adding, ‘Darling. Sweet one. Good real name for you, Mairly.’

  She looked down. There was a silence. Now, if he were English . . . she was thinking. But he did not move. And the next thing that she heard, sounding calmly on the quiet air, was a familiar name.

  ‘But Mishima . . .’ (I cannot stand any more about Mishima, thought Mary, grinding her teeth together) ‘prefer not to marry. He . . .’ here something seemed to occur to Yasuhiro, and he paused, glanced at her oddly, then hurried on, ‘only have his man friends, and the Tate No Kai. (You call it Shield Society.) And why should I marry if Mishima never marry?’

  ‘Can’t you please yourself, Yasu? You don’t have to do everything Mishima did, do you?’

  ‘Prefer to give his life for Japan,’ said Yasuhiro gloomily.

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ Mary, seeking rather desperately for a more calming subject than enforced marriage or patriotic death, blundered on – ‘that’s . . . just it, you know, I’m afraid I didn’t really take in what you were saying the other evening about him and that Society . . . I was rather sleepy . . .’

  ‘Asleep, Mairly? You are asleep when I tell you about Mishima make seppuku? Is like a woman, to go to sleep in such a moment.’

  ‘Well, what else do you expect?’ she said tartly, stung by this second contemptuous reference in a few minutes. ‘And I said sleepy, not asleep. It’s different.’

  ‘No,’ said Yasuhiro. ‘Not. Almost the same.’

  ‘Oh well . . . I’m sorry, anyway. You tell me. It’ll cheer you up,’ she ended quite wildly – tossed between the shock of hearing about the list, and seeing his alarming agitation, and wanting to comfort him, and trying to keep calm herself.

  But, at the end of nearly twenty minutes, she was sitting with her mouth open, gaping at Yasuhiro standing in the middle of the room with his skin almost green and his eyes flashing fixed on some appalling vision in his own mind. She heard with rising horror how his hero had four times made the attempt to disembowel himself in front of a thousand soldiers of the Defence Corps, and four times failed – tried; failed; tried; failed; tried; failed; tried; failed – Mary’s hands flew to her ears, but dropped again. Then – then – something stood up slowly within herself, from somewhere very deep, and it said: This must stop.

  Those were its words. It was a voice, speaking within her. She heard its words, and she felt strong and calm and she broke in loudly across the other’s unfaltering, sleepwalking voice.

  ‘Yes, and then what happened?’

  ‘His friend cut off his head,’ Yasuhiro said.

  Then, suddenly, up shot his own head, and from somewhere that was terribly not his lungs, there issued a sound, not loud, not a shout, but a fearful cry. It was the most frightening sound she had ever heard, because it was as if something apart from Yasuhiro, yet living, had cried out from inside him. She sat as if mesmerized, staring at the stranger in the ceremonial robes of Japan, a group of islands at the other side of the world.

  ‘What? What did you say, Mairly?’ he asked dazedly, in a moment, standing with the sweat bright on his forehead and slowly turning to look at her.

  ‘I said, “then what happened?” And you told me,’ she said hoarsely. ‘What – what an awful thing to do. Did Mishima – ask him to?’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes. He also was member of the Shield Society.’

  ‘What an awful thing to ask anyone,’ she babbled.

  ‘It was his duty. His duty. And also giri.’ He came across to the coffee table and knelt beside it, coiling his body as if it were a steel spring, without tremor or sway. ‘You heard that sound, Mairly?’

  ‘I heard you – make an awful noise, Yasu.’ She shuddered suddenly, as if overwhelmed by a vision of all the mangled and bloodied dead, in all the wars of her century, sweeping into her small cosy world.

  ‘Awful, yes it is awful. I see you shake, Mairly,’ with a glance of approval. ‘That is what is the sound to do, make to shake. Said that the sound, in the war, could call back spirit into the body of Japanese soldiers. I learn that sound . . .’ He stopped and swallowed some cold coffee.

  ‘So,’ he lifted his arm and let it fall downwards in one sweep, like a dark blue wave fallin
g, to his side. ‘End of Mishima. Gone to his ancestors. Finish.’

  Yasu went to the middle of the room under the light where he had uttered the dreadful cry, and took out the letter again from his sash.

  He had forgotten to pull the curtains, and now Mary was conscious that every passer-by could see down into the brightly lit room. She was certain that Yasuhiro would not give a thought to passing peasants, but she did; and she got up, and drew the curtains.

  ‘Sit quiet, Mairly,’ he commanded.

  ‘Sorry.’ She flew back to her seat with a suppressed hysterical giggle, and he looked up.

  ‘Oh yes. I remember – “Sit!” I am sorry. It was rude. Please sit, Mairly. Great-grandfather must be – must have – honour, even in his letter.’

  ‘Dearest One, Today I have spoken with – the – the –’ he hesitated. ‘I don’t know the English word – the nakodo. (That is the one who arrange the marriage, Mairly.) And I have instructed him to let me have the – the details (yes, details) about –’ and Yasuhiro paused, and uttered a Japanese sound. ‘That is – the – name,’ he said in a low tone, with lowered eyes.

  ‘Whose name?’ Mary said, automatically, because the sound of the utterly foreign syllables had struck her with yet another shock. That girl belonged to Yasu’s Japanese life.

  ‘The one taken from the list that Great-grandfather has – keeps.’

  ‘Don’t your parents have anything to do with it?’

  ‘In our family, no. Great-grandfather is almost all. So ancient, and a samurai – I have told you how he fight – influence?’

  ‘That’s right, yes. Go on, Yasu.’

  ‘Then he says, this is the year of the Tiger, so this year I must not marry. Bad fortune. But soon is the year of the Dragon. So . . . he . . . has . . . told the – the nakodo . . . to begin . . . the negotiations.’