It was a sunny afternoon, the air warm against Barbara's face. It was a relief to be away from the papers she'd been grading. She hadn't seen the wildflowers along the canal before—a profusion of miniature iris and some smaller pale blue flowers. The water was high, with a strong current. Rie must be a good swimmer. She imagined her clawing her way back up the bank.
“How did you get out of the river?” Barbara called ahead to her.
“I met with a large tree root,” Rie said, glancing back over her shoulder, “I am very lucky, I think.”
They passed the fox shrine, then rode through the wheat fields and began to climb the hill towards Takanodai. Rie leaned forward to pedal; Barbara had to stand, the bicycle wobbling back and forth. Finally she got off and pushed. At the top of the hill she got back on and glided behind Rie to the main street of Takanodai. Rie looked back at her with a strange little smile. For a moment Barbara was afraid Rie was going to head toward Seiji's house but she turned left and they rode away from the village.
They passed a farmhouse with a low thatched roof. The road wound through the fields. Rie pointed out the crops, sweet potatoes, buckwheat, daikon radish. In the distance was the thunder of an airplane taking off: Tachikawa Air Force Base.
“Is this the road you take to your work?” Barbara asked.
“Usually I go straight through Takanodai. I can go this way but much longer. Shall we stop to refresh ourselves?” She nodded toward a grassy spot at the edge of a field.
They laid their bicycles beside the road and sat on the grass. Tachikawa was behind them. They had a view of a farmhouse on a hill, a woman in kimono hanging out clothes on a line.
“One more thing I will tell you about my job, Sensei.” Rie said. She pulled up a stalk of grass and studied it. “Maybe you have heard of Eta class, untouchable caste in Japan. The reason for being untouchable is that Eta take care of the dead bodies. This is perhaps one idea of sin for Japanese, being unclean in this way.” She glanced up at Barbara. “So I do not tell others of my work.”
“I understand. I won't mention it to anyone.” She felt a surge of affection for Rie, looking at her bent head, her thick black hair glistening in the sun. “Your work must be . . . I can't imagine how hard.”
“Yes but I must do it. Buddhist priest may say this is my fate because of poor karma in previous life. But I am glad to do. My father is not well, so I may help in this way. Americans pay me good salary. Sometime when I am working I think how ironical is this new meaning of saving face—saving face of American soldier. To tell you the truth, Sensei, I am not always so angry as I wrote. Sometimes I think of mother who will see her child. This is human experience, ne, not American or Japanese?”
Barbara nodded, but could not speak.
“Shall I describe my work? Can you bear it?”
“Yes.”
“There is cold room—body of soldier . . .” With her hands she described a table. “He is ready for burial, except for face. Maybe his ear is gone, or mouth.” She touched her ear, then her mouth. “I can make new part . . . any part I can make from wax, like a sculptor.”
Barbara thought of the American soldiers she'd met on the train. Jim and Coleman. They might be dead by now.
“Even if part of face is missing, I can fix. First I sew with strong thread and curved needle to sew back and forth between flesh which is remaining.” With one hand she made a sewing motion. “This makes foundation. Can you understand me?”
“Yes.” She was shivering; she rubbed her arms. “Do you know their names?”
“No—I do not know his name. After foundation is complete, I fill hole in face with melted wax or Paris plaster. Then put on cosmetic to match color of flesh for white or black man. I must use very fine brush to make look like pore in skin. Americans say I am artist in repair of faces.” She paused. “Can you guess, Sensei, where I first began to learn my art?”
“In some kind of special school?”
“Yes, but first from Okada sensei. He was my teacher in ceramic.”
“Do you mean . . . Okada Seiji?
“Hai. Okada Seiji.”
“But he doesn't do—mortuary work, does he?”
“No, only bowl, plate, haniwa object, sometimes a piece of sculpture. Shaping clay is not so different from making a form in wax. . . . You are surprised, ne? I think you know Okada sensei rather well.”
“I've been studying with him too,” she said.
“Ah so?”
“Yes—how to make bowls—and plates.” Her face was burning. “I'm not very good at it,” she added.
Rie looked away from her, down at her hands, then into the distance.
“Maybe we all have some secret life,” Barbara said.
Rie met her eyes. “Don't worry, Sensei,” she said. “We will be silent together, desho?”
24
The rainy season began in early June, days of gentle soaking rains. Barbara woke to the sound of it on the tile roof and to the odors of wet earth and leaves that blew in through the open window of the three-mat room. Remembering that Michi's mother had called these the plum rains, she went several times to the plum grove where the golden fruits grew larger every week.
At the edge of Michi's garden, and elsewhere on the campus, there were hydrangeas in bloom, delicate masses of blue. Barbara picked armfuls of the flowers and buried her face in them, their heavy wetness luxuriant against her skin. She put vases of hydrangeas in every room of her apartment; their sensuous presence made her long for Seiji.
After their visit to Boso, she and Seiji had seen each other only a few times, and when they were together, he seemed nervous and remote. His aunt had reestablished her presence in the teahouse, so most of their meetings were furtive encounters in the small room next to the pottery. One day Seiji said he was looking for another place they could meet, “somewhere we may be private together and continue to make our translation.”
“I hope it will be soon,” she said, putting her arms around him.
“Very soon,” he promised.
The first couple of weeks in June, Seiji was busy working on new pots and delivering them to Mashiko; this was fine, she told herself, there were papers to grade and the end of semester exams to prepare. They would be together during the summer holiday, perhaps afterwards as well. Meanwhile, she had her Japanese to work on.
She was proud of how well the lessons were going, though Mr. Wada said she needed to take more patience in learning the written characters. He complimented her on her improved speaking ability, but she was discouraged by conversations she tried out on the train; often her comments to fellow passengers set off a torrent of language she could not understand.
One night Barbara went to the main building to call her mother.
“Bobbie?” came her sleepy voice.
“I'm sorry, I called too early.”
“Usually I'd be up by now, you know me. But lately I've just been so busy that I'm in a state of total exhaustion.” Barbara leaned against the wall while her mother talked about her writing, the bridge club luncheon she'd hosted, staying up until the wee hours cutting the edges off watercress sandwiches.
“I'm in love,” Barbara blurted out.
“What? Now this is something worth waking up for. Is it someone at the consulate? Or that Fulbright man you mentioned?”
“Mr. McCann?” Barbara laughed. “No. He's Japanese. His name is Seiji Okada.”
“A Japanese?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Well—it never occurred to me, somehow. Japanese men are so—short,” her mother said with a laugh.
“They've grown since the war.”
“They have?”
“Better nutrition.”
“Well, that's good.” Both of them began to laugh. “Oh, me.” Barbara could imagine her mother wiping her eyes. “What does this man do?”
“He's a potter, an artist, wonderfully talented. And he's just great—so sensitive and funny.”
“Be careful, Bobbie, you don't want t
o get yourself into a mess.”
“What kind of mess?”
“You know what I mean. Rushing into something you'll regret, like I did.”
There was a long silence. “I've got to go, Mother,” she said. “I'm late for dinner at Miss Ota's.
“Miss who's?”
“Ota.”
“Well, you don't need to snap my head off.”
“I'm sorry, Mother. Goodbye.”
She walked back to Sango-kan, and went to her apartment to brush her teeth and comb her hair before going to Miss Ota's. Regret had always been her mother's theme. She'd heard the story many times, how her mother had gotten married too quickly, swept off her feet, she said, by her father's disarming ways. By the time she realized she'd made a mistake, it was too late, she was pregnant. She'd never added, Barbara realized, that she had no regret about having her. Leaning close to the mirror she thought of the Zen koan to “describe the face you had before you were born.” She held to the edge of the sink, looking into her eyes until the face around them was gone.
Miss Ota served tinned corned beef, bok choy, rice, and, for dessert, some shortbread an acquaintance had recently sent from England. An East-West meal, she called it. “I had some hope it might make you feel at home. Though I am afraid I am not so skilled as Nakamoto was in putting our American guests at ease.”
“But I do feel at ease. Especially with you. Thank you so much, Miss Ota.”
“You are most certainly welcome, my dear.”
For a few moments they concentrated on their food. Then Barbara said, “You mentioned in your talk that Nakamoto was doing some research in California. What was it about?”
“Commodore Perry and his opening of Japan to the West—the nineteenth-century American view of him.”
“I was wondering—was she also looking for some relatives?”
Miss Ota raised her eyebrows. “How did you happen to know of this?”
“There was a reference . . . in that writing I told you about.”
“I see.” Miss Ota laid down her knife and fork. “It is true, she made some search for relatives. I tried to make some assistance at a particular archive where we hoped to find information about Japanese-Americans during the war. There was much displacement during that time.”
“Did she find her relatives?”
“Not in the year that I was present. I must confess I did not make inquiry about these efforts when she returned. She was in state of distress over Ume and other matters and we talked only of those things.”
The next time Barbara went to see Mr. Wada for a Japanese lesson she was tempted to take the next California paper with her. She considered asking him to just skim through it, she wouldn't write it down. But she couldn't, she decided, she'd feel too guilty.
She called Seiji when she got home. “I really want to get back to translating. I've got to have someone read these papers for me.”
There was silence.
“Don't you miss me?” she said.
“Very much I am missing you. In summer we will have our own place.”
“It's already summer!”
“Meanwhile, there is problem of where to meet.”
A little while later he called back to say his aunt would be out the following Saturday, and please to come then.
They met in the teahouse and did the first translation of Michi's papers since their trip to Boso Peninsula. Seiji's reading of the 1950 paper was halting; she wondered if he was worried about coming across something he'd want to censor, like the final section of the 1949 papers. The content was uneventful: the weather at New Year's, the declining health of Michi's father, Ume's slow growth.
“I'm surprised she didn't mention you,” Barbara said, when he had finished. “Wasn't she visiting you in Fukuyama during that time?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“You're sure you didn't accidentally skip over something?”
“No,” he said, giving her a sharp glance, “I have not skipped.”
They went through the pottery shed into the small room. “Do you think of me when you're in Mashiko?” she said as they lay down on the small cot. “Very much,” he whispered, “especially I think of you in Mashiko.”
As they were getting dressed she said, “There must be somewhere else we can go temporarily, until we find a place of our own. How about a hotel?”
“This will be too expensive, I think.”
“Well there's no hurry.” She stepped into her shoes. “I'm really busy right now with my classes. And Japanese lessons. My teacher is quite fascinating,” she added, as he followed her out the door. “He's showed me his translations of Noh plays.”
“Ah so?” Seiji frowned. “Who is your teacher's name?”
“Mr. . . .” She felt a stab of fear as she met his eyes. “Wada—or Ueda, I believe.”
There was an air of studious quiet on the campus as the girls wrote their final papers and studied for end of term exams. The rain seemed appropriate, it made the world serious. Barbara spent hours lying on her futon reading. After several days of rain the odors of wood were more prominent inside the apartment building. The camphor in the tansu seemed more pungent too, and it was that scent, more than anything else, that made her lay down her book and close her eyes, her desire for Seiji so intense she thought she could not bear it.
The student papers, which came in at the end of the month, showed progress. They were learning, she realized; she was reaching them. The best papers were short stories from the composition class. Junko read hers aloud, a love story about a couple who'd been forced to marry other people. They vowed to meet once a year, July 7, on the Feast of Tanabata, the night when two lovers enshrined in the stars—the Weaving Maiden and the Herd Boy—have their annual meeting. The rest of the year, Junko's heroine was, like the weaving maiden, both glad and sorry because she both loves and suffers and this is better than her former state, when she “neither loved nor suffered.” At the end, the class sat silent. Barbara didn't know what to say; the piece seemed strongly autobiographical. Finally Sumi rescued her with, “We are too poignant to speak.”
Barbara read Rie's story to the class. The title was “The Enemy;” it took place in Vietnam, from the point of view of an American soldier named Smith. Smith found he could not tell who was the enemy. North and South Vietnamese looked alike and anyone, even an innocent-looking child or woman, might be carrying a landmine or could be a spy. His unit destroyed a village that was thought to be Communist. They killed everyone, including women and children. Smith watched, unable to move, as Jones, his friend, cut off the ear of a Vietnamese man who'd tried to defend his village. Jones ripped the shirt from the body of a pretty young woman “and made some crude comment. Smith hit Jones with his angry fist. Then Jones raised his gun and shot Smith in his face. The captain listed Smith as ‘killed by enemy action.”’
At the end there was a wary silence. No one met Barbara's eyes.
“It's an important story,” she said. “An act of imagination and sympathy.”
Rie shook her head. “It is true story, Sensei, told me by a medical worker, an American I happened to meet in Tokyo.”
A couple of days later, Barbara's mother called. “I tell you what,” she said in a chipper voice. “Why don't I just fly on over there this summer? I could meet this young man of yours and see Japan again. Wouldn't that be fun?”
“Well, it would, but it looks like I'm going to be really busy this summer.”
“You have a vacation—didn't you say something like two months?”
“It turns out not to be that long. I'll be busy catching up with all kinds of things, and people have already asked me to visit. And I promised to help someone with a project.”
“I see,” her mother said.
“By the way, I'm thinking about the war in a new way,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I think we're interfering—maybe we shouldn't be there.”
“You need to read a little h
istory along with all those novels,” her mother snapped. “Hitler nearly took over the world, and the Japanese came damn close.”
“What's going on in Vietnam is a civil war.”
“If South Vietnam falls, the communists will be all over Asia, and beyond.”
There was a tense silence.
“What was it like, to live here right before the war?” Barbara asked.
“The Japanese were very polite, of course. Up to a point. My camera was confiscated when I took an innocent street scene in some little town. I knew what we were in for when I saw hundreds of warships in the Inland Sea near Hiroshima. Of course I couldn't write about it. Every night my room was searched.”
Plum Wine: A Novel (Library of American Fiction) Page 22