Brazil-Maru

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  “Kawagoe-san, you have more than cleansed your hands, and you have long since cleansed your spirit,” said Kantaro, somehow wise beyond his years.

  Kawagoe continued, “I think that God has spared me, spared me from what is happening out there in the world of money. Men have lost their fortunes in the stock market crash. I read that some have committed suicide, and for what? For money! But I’m alive! Now I sweat, I toil. I’m no longer a young man like you, and my body aches at the end of each day, but I’ll tell you this: I’ve never been so happy. This is the life every man was meant to live.”

  Kinu Kawagoe, huddled in a darkened room with a cup of lukewarm tea, perhaps did not agree with this talk, but her husband and Kantaro were soon gripped in mutual admiration. It soon became apparent that Kantaro was more than a welcomed guest, and the talk began to go around that Kantaro was again in love.

  This conquest seemed easy, as I thought the conquest of a woman by my hero should in fact be, but it did not seem to excite Kantaro in the same way as did his pursuit of Haru. In many ways, Kantaro seemed subdued, perhaps even humbled by the disappearance of Yōgu. Pushing the thought of Yōgu’s betrayal from his mind, Kantaro turned away from baseball.

  The plans for Kantaro’s marriage to Kimi were finally negotiated. Waka Uno went to see Kinu, who sat up weakly in her bed and smiled wanly for the occasion. The two women delicately worked through the details, and a date was set. Now I don’t know, but I suspect that this news must have certainly upset Haru Okumura, who had received no news of Hachiro Yōgu and who must have begun to wonder what this trusting-but-not-promising business could possibly mean. Haru must have heard the gossip, as we all did, that Yōgu had probably run off with Esperança’s money and would never, if he knew what was good for him, show his face again in our part of the world. A great number of aspersions were cast on Yōgu’s name, and no one, except maybe Saburo, thought Yōgu was ever coming back. I thought that, at least for Saburo’s sake, Yōgu should return. I imagined him returning in the dead of night, whispering to Saburo and me and taking us for a last ride through the moonlit countryside. Yōgu began to have for me a sort of dark and confused image. “Sabu,” I would say to Saburo, “maybe Yōgu is dead.”

  “Nobody could kill him,” said Saburo, as if killing Yōgu would be the only way he might die.

  “I had this dream,” I insisted. “It must have been his ghost.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Like Yōgu. He spit all around my bed, then he left.”

  “Emiru, did he have feet?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “If he didn’t have feet, it might have been his ghost. But if he had his feet, it was just a dream.”

  I nodded. Ghost don’t have feet.

  If Yōgu had somehow passed into another world for me, I suppose that he may have simply disappeared for Haru. A kind of desperation seemed to set in. All the fascination and attractive luster about Haru had somehow left with Kantaro. The crowd of young men who had once lounged around Okumura’s porch in the late afternoons after baseball practice were no more.

  It now seemed that it had been Kantaro who had brought the visitors, the charming and gentle Tsuruta and the numerous other comrades who always followed Kantaro. And when Yōgu had also been around, there was that sense of competition, the wonderful opportunity for Haru to flirt with all of them but to scorn Yōgu. I speculate that Kantaro did not know, at the time, of Yōgu’s attraction to Haru. Who could have suspected it from the way she treated him? As I said, Kantaro was wrapped in his own passion; he could not see anything.

  Occasionally, a new young man would appear to make his bid for Haru, but there were none to compare with the bold and insatiable young Kantaro. And certainly Haru would never know another like Hachiro Yōgu. Life became tedious and lonely in Esperança. As long as Kantaro had been there, not just wondering if but assuming that he would conquer her heart, Haru had felt, if not special or the center of attention, at least occupied and entertained. It was more than dull to be passed over for another woman; Haru felt crazy with jealousy. If Yōgu were not coming back, then she would at least get back the attention she deserved. In a manner completely ungraceful and assertive, Haru let it be known that she had changed her mind—Haru would now accept Kantaro’s offer of marriage.

  It was my mother, Sei, who became the go-between in this odd turn of events.

  “Kantaro,” my mother began, unsure of how to approach the subject, “it’s a rather delicate subject since you are already promised to Kimi . . . The date is set I hear?”

  “That’s so,” Kantaro nodded.

  “Of course, Haru spoke to me in confidence—”

  “Haru?”

  The part about Haru speaking in confidence was of course not true, but it just didn’t seem right saying that Haru had pleaded with my mother to convince Kantaro that he was making a terrible mistake in marrying Kimi Kawagoe. My mother marveled at how pushy Haru could really be.

  “Yes,” my mother continued. “I thought you should know. She was quite upset.”

  “Haru? Upset?” Kantaro rose slightly from his seat.

  “Yes.” My mother poured tea quietly.

  “Why? What is it?” Kantaro pressed with some exasperation.

  “Well, confidentially, of course . . . My, my . . .” she paused with some difficulty. “Haru confessed that she made a mistake in turning down your offer. I mean—”

  “She will marry me?” Kantaro stood up in the middle of our kitchen, his face suddenly aglow.

  “But what about Kimi?”

  “A man must marry for love! Excuse me, Terada-san, but . . .” Kantaro could not finish his words; his heart was so completely filled with the thought that Haru had finally said yes. He ran out the door, flung himself upon his horse and flew away at a mad gallop.

  My mother stood in wonder at the door of our house.

  “What was Kantaro doing here?” My father looked down the road as he came in from his work.

  My mother did not answer. She turned from the door in wonder. “But what about Kimi?” she asked herself again.

  The Kawagoes, I heard, were devastated, but they were much too sophisticated to show it. Shinkichi Kawagoe was clearly offended, but he would not speak of it. Kantaro’s decision was in no way intended as a snub; it was simply Kantaro’s way of doing things from the heart. However, a great deal of conjecture and gossip traveled about, and Waka Uno was seen patching up her recently spoiled relationship with Tomi Okumura while relinquishing her frequent tête-à-tête with the sickly Kinu Kawagoe.

  In the meantime, Kimi was talked of as being older than Haru, getting along in years, as if Kantaro might have been her last chance for an appropriate marriage. She was talked of as being too educated and too talented for just any young man, and wasn’t it a shame. People also compared Haru to Kimi and Kimi to Haru, and everyone had their preferences for the best wife for Kantaro. It amazed us that Kantaro had the bravado to choose a wife for love. But on the other hand, it seemed to me that Kimi had really fallen in love with Kantaro, and she was hurt and embarrassed and ashamed to be the center of so much gossip. All of a sudden, the piano was silent and the sweet sound of her voice was no more.

  Waka Uno simply transferred the plans for the wedding to a new bride and went happily about with the arrangements. To add to the excitement, Jiro Uno also announced his engagement to Toshiko, one of the Sato sisters, an arrangement Waka had been working on for months. Jiro would be married on the same day as Kantaro in a double ceremony. Indeed, it was a great triumph for Waka Uno. This was going to be a big event in Esperança. Everyone was invited. A great deal of commotion was raised over this wedding. It was to be done in a manner commensurate with the largess and boldness the Unos were accustomed to. Almost everyone in Esperança had some participation in the details of this wedding. All the young men and baseball team members spent several days at the Uno farm raising a large extending thatched roof to shade the guests. Then tables
and benches had to be arranged or built. Just about every woman in Esperança seemed involved in some aspect of Haru’s dress. My mother was responsible for baking several pieces of the enormous wedding cake, which was somehow to come together as a whole from several different ovens. For a few days before the wedding, my mother, Tomi Okumura, Waka Uno, all the Sato daughters and their mother devoted themselves to pickling vegetables, making sweets, and mixing enormous amounts of rice into sushi. There was a festive air about Esperança. Everyone was talking about the wedding, what they were going to wear, how they were participating. You could hear people practicing the songs they would present to the wedding couples, a man blowing a typically plaintive air on the shakuhachi, a woman going through the steps of a dance. But the sound of the piano and the sweet lilt of the voice that always accompanied it were noticeably absent.

  When the day arrived, I, like everyone else in Esperança, got up early and finished my chores. My brothers and I got spruced up as best we could according to our mother’s satisfaction. We all headed over to the Uno farm. I could see Saburo shuffling uncomfortably near his mother, who was looking very nervous. I noticed that Saburo had on a new cap, but on closer inspection, I realized the old one had been scrubbed and bleached white for the occasion. I sidled over to Saburo, who rolled his eyes with his characteristic disgust over the much-ado about his brother’s wedding.

  Okumura presided over a short marriage ceremony, after which everyone settled down under the open-air roof made for the occasion. All glimpsed with a certain awe the enormous cake to which my mother had contributed. It was one of the biggest wedding cakes I can remember—a gigantic rectangle fifteen centimeters high and perhaps a square meter in size, slathered with white frosting and decorated with pink flowers. My mother was quite proud of this baking achievement, which she claimed required twenty-six dozen eggs and six different ovens. The wedding couples, Kantaro and Haru on one side and Jiro and Toshiko on the other, sat behind the giant cake, oddly dwarfed by its tremendous size. Haru and Toshiko were powdered heavily, awkward in their white headgear and satin dresses; they huddled behind the cake, shyly staring into the pink flowers.

  Naotaro Uno got up to welcome the guests and admitted the pleasure he found in the thought that Kantaro’s marriage would mean that his son would be found at home from now on. Then Okumura got up to make his speech.

  Before Okumura got any further than his opening greeting, Saburo nudged me and pulled me from the table. We ran out of the crowd under the large open-air roof in time to see a figure of a man on a horse galloping at a tremendous speed toward the party. I thought that the man would stop, but he seemed to be speeding up, forcing the horse in our direction, clumps of dirt and dust rising all around him. “It’s Yōgu!” yelled Saburo, taking his clean cap and slamming it into the dirt with obvious pleasure. “He’s back! Emiru, he’s back!”

  So it was. Hachiro Yōgu. He never stopped his horse; the pounding hooves on the dry earth and the sound of gunshots was the only warning. People scattered in every direction, rushed into the open or huddled under and behind fallen tables. There were people screaming and yelling and weeping as Yōgu rammed and pranced the horse about while firing wildly into the air.

  Then as suddenly as it had happened, the gunfire ceased, and Yōgu sat somewhat dazed, looking at the shambles of Kantaro’s wedding all around him. Haru and Toshiko were huddled under the wedding cake, which had miraculously escaped Yōgu’s abuse. Kantaro stood over the cake in bewilderment, saying nothing. At that moment, I saw Haru peek out from under the table to look at Yōgu, her eyes wild with fear. Yōgu took a long look at Haru, her disheveled hair, her headdress askew, searching for the woman behind the facial powder that he had known and loved. He said nothing, spit angrily on the earth and raised the horse onto its hind legs. The horse stood grappling the air before the big cake and came down threateningly.

  I saw my mother, in a protective gesture, suddenly jump up just as the horse reared its muscular hindquarters into that remarkable cake. A cry of dismay parted my mother’s lips, and the horse with its rider pranced off, frosting pasted to its derriere, the tail haughtily flapping the sweet sticky stuff into the heated air.

  CHAPTER 6:

  On the Land

  That evening, hours after the wedding, Saburo threw stones at my window, and as agreed, we crept out into the moonlit night to find Hachiro Yōgu. “Emiru,” said Saburo excitedly when we were a short distance from my house, “I found out. Yōgu’s at the Kawagoes’.”

  I nodded, and we headed quickly down a path cutting across the Uno fields. Along the path, I could make out the shape of Kantaro’s new cottage, built a short distance from the Uno’s main house only recently for Kantaro and his bride Haru. Suddenly, Saburo pushed me into some tall weeds, motioning me to silence. Lying there peeking through the weeds, we could faintly see two figures running in the dark. As they approached us, I could see that they were both naked, the moonlight gliding over their white bodies.

  “Haru!” one of the figures called breathlessly, “Wait! Come back!”

  But Haru ran on, short shudders of panic issuing from her heaving breasts as she raced toward us.

  “Oh no,” Saburo muttered. He pulled his hat, dirty but still white, from his head and stuffed it under his chest. We remained as still as possible, knowing there was nowhere else to hide.

  Haru came so close to us that we could see her full face, black hair matted to her wet cheeks, frightened eyes filled with tears.

  “Haru! Haru!” Kantaro’s body was shiny with sweat, his penis flapping wildly between his legs. He grabbed Haru several times, but she pulled away hysterically, running in one direction and then in another, once coming so close to us that we could have reached up and touched her prancing legs.

  “No! No!” Haru cried as Kantaro caught her suddenly and fell with her. Haru struggled frantically, her legs and arms flinging every which way on the cool earth. “A sin,” she wailed. “A sin!”

  I could feel my own heartbeat quicken and a familiar sensation that I only vaguely remembered as a recent dream pulsate excitedly through my body. I glanced at Saburo, who lay on the earth beside me, his body tense with the same expectations. I could feel Haru’s fingers clawing the earth, her sobs muffled under Kantaro’s muscular body. There was a long moment of silence, all of us panting in quiet unison. Then Kantaro rose to his knees, pulled Haru up from the damp earth and carried her slowly back to their cottage.

  As soon as they had disappeared, Saburo jumped up and broke into a wild run across the fields. I chased Saburo through the woods and down the road toward Esperança’s center, racing until our lungs might burst through our chests, until our legs wobbled precariously beneath us and we fell from exhaustion. Rolling over, I could see a hint of purple light in the east. It would soon be daybreak. “Emiru,” Saburo reminded me. “Come on. It’s not far now.”

  The Kawagoe house was at the end of the main road that ran through Esperança. It was surrounded by a pretty garden with flowers which Kimi had carefully tended. Certainly as houses went in Esperança, it was the most elegant, sporting a large veranda and glass windows with shutters and drapery. We could see lights within. Kawagoe was the first to wire his house for electricity.

  Outside we saw the horse tied to the fence, shifting from leg to leg, and a cart piled precariously high with wooden crates. The Kawagoes had been noticeably absent from Kantaro’s big wedding celebration. It was Kimi’s brother, Heizo Kawagoe, who saw and greeted Yōgu wandering into Esperança on a squeaky horse-drawn cart. Esperança on this day must have seemed a ghost town; everyone was at the Uno farm under the big open-air roof looking forward to generous amounts of food and drink and cake. We paused a distance from the house. “Now what?” I asked my friend.

  Saburo shrugged. “He’s still here.”

  Suddenly Hachiro Yōgu himself appeared. He walked swiftly to the cart and began pushing and tossing the crates onto the ground. Crate after crate fell with a thud. One crate br
oke open, and to our amazement, dozens of white baseballs rolled across Kimi’s garden, into the neat flower beds and out across the dirt road. I was tempted to rush out to collect the balls, but Saburo gripped my shirt, holding me back. One ball rolled within reach, and I grabbed the precious thing with a delight I could hardly suppress. But Saburo stood watching, unimpressed by the treasure rolling to our feet. He seemed to be waiting for his chance. “Emiru. Yōgu’s leaving. I’m going with him.”

  I felt a chill of loneliness. “What?”

  “Don’t tell anyone. Let them figure it out.” Saburo was not inviting me to come.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is my chance, Emiru. You can’t stop me.” Saburo was about to rush forward when a woman appeared in the doorway with a bundle in her arms. It was Kimi Kawagoe. She ran toward Yōgu and threw her belongings into the now empty cart.

  “Please,” Kimi whispered before Saburo could make the same request. “Please, take me with you. It doesn’t matter where. Please. I promise I won’t be a nuisance. Please,” she repeated with determination.

  Yōgu said nothing but hitched the horse to the cart silently. He tugged the horse down the road, kicking at the spill of baseballs, which collided about unpredictably. The horse spooked from side to side, unsure of its step. Kimi followed deftly behind while Yōgu seemed to ignore her. Saburo and I watched, unseen by anyone. When they were some distance down the road, we could see Yōgu stop with some purposeful decision, hoisting himself onto the seat of the cart. Yōgu seemed to nod, and with a gracefulness peculiar only to Kimi, she lifted herself into the cart. Saburo watched them travel away until he could see them no more, but I ran to examine the crates filled with baseball equipment and pretended to be occupied in pocketing another ball or two to spare Saburo the embarrassment of his bitter tears.