Brazil-Maru

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  “Well, maybe I can do something to help.”

  Mama Miyasaka smiled and left. When Natsuko entered the room, she seemed so much younger than I remembered her. Perhaps it was because the strange elegance of her features were happily embarrassed. “It is an incredible dream,” she beamed. “I am forever indebted to you.”

  “Yes, now I will insist that you learn to play,” I teased.

  Natsuko was not sure. “I will try,” she hesitated.

  I smiled, “You will need a teacher. If you find a teacher, I will pay for your lessons.”

  “Oh,” she gasped.

  “We will talk about that later. First you must hear what a piano can sound like. Tonight at the Teatro Municipal. A piano concert. I will come for you at eight,” I announced.

  When I came for Natsuko, I was surprised by her transformation. Her dress was quite simple, but everything seemed to hang about her with an elegant sophistication, a studied look of refinement. She seemed to me beautiful and graceful as no woman I had ever known. As she was youthful, she also seemed wise. All the young girls on my farm had a kind of innocence that would never end, but Natsuko seemed both innocent and knowing. And it was true what Sawada had said; Natsuko was a reader. After the concert, we passed the evening talking about books we had both read. I suggested this book or that book to read. I would find and buy her a copy. I suggested that when I came again, we would see another concert. I would get her a phonograph to listen to records. She could take singing lessons as well as piano lessons. We would see a play together. The opera. The ballet. Later, I could take her traveling. She could see the world, study voice in Italy, music in Germany. My altruism was boundless; I was saving a human being, creating a new woman. I was impassioned with an idea that Natsuko would become a model for others to follow. I had never seen such possibilities in another woman. I was impassioned.

  I bought Natsuko a house for her shiny cherrywood upright and her phonograph, the books and records, her new concert clothing and shoes. I let Natsuko choose and furnish the house herself. It seemed natural to provide for Natsuko in the same way I provided for my people at home in Esperança. I was creating a way to link rural life to city life. Soon there would be a beaten path between two ideals, the simplicity of country life and the cultured sophistication of the city. I would bring the youth from New World to the city, and Natsuko would be their teacher. I would create a new nucleus in the city itself.

  I admit that I did not succeed in my plan. As time went on, I could not see who Natsuko might really be. My idea became confused with my passion. I created a vision of a woman who did not fully exist. Perhaps it has been a great failing of mine, but I have been unable to stir the same passion I have felt in the women I have loved. In the end, they did not know what my passion could mean; they felt afraid and distant from my vision. Perhaps I wanted more than they could give. I could not control my great desire, and as time went on, I knew that my life in the city and with Natsuko was only my own, a separate world, distant from Esperança. No one back there knew of my city life. Even Ichiro Terada, traveling back and forth with egg shipments, had never seen the house in the city and probably didn’t suspect anything for a long time.

  I knew that Akiko Yōgu had long since become a woman, but it was not until she rode with us to São Paulo that Ichiro must have been helplessly struck with this thought. Akiko had inherited none of her father’s old wildness and all of her mother Kimi’s delicate elegance. Yet unlike her educated mother, Akiko had the innocent naïveté of a farm girl. Akiko was like the other girls in the commune, my daughters included, who spent carefree and happy days feeding the chickens and gathering eggs.

  I announced one day that I needed a housekeeper for my place in São Paulo, and Akiko was of course my natural choice, as she was the oldest among the girls. Kimi and I discussed this. Someone suggested that we depended greatly on Akiko to care for and watch over her father, but Kimi insisted that Yōgu was getting better. It was true that since his run-in with that Brazilian brute, he seemed to be much more prudent and less apt to wander off toward the slightest curiosity. Every day Yōgu seemed to relieve his redeveloping conscience of some new discovery. Some wondered what Akiko would do all day by herself in a house in the city. I waved these questions away. I would arrange all that. Piano lessons, I suggested. French, I suggested foolishly. For a girl who spoke but little Portuguese, the suggestion that she should learn French seemed rather odd, but for some reason, no one questioned this. So Akiko left for São Paulo, tearfully waving goodbye to her mother, her seven brothers and sisters, and all the girls who shared her chores in the chicken pens.

  Akiko sat between Ichiro and me in the front of the truck. Ichiro must have been aware of the smell of her hair and her weeping, but he did not know how to comfort her. Akiko wept for a long time until the farms, pastures and forest along the road were no longer recognizable as Esperança. “Everything will be all right,” I reassured her. “You’ll see. You’ll like my house in São Paulo.”

  Akiko nodded but did not respond. Perhaps she drew closer to Ichiro. I did not notice. Certainly he must have felt the soft touch of her shoulder rocking against his own. She stared down the undulating road, heat rising in an astigmatic mirage, until dizzy with sleep, she laid her head upon his shoulder. Long wisps of her hair were brushed by the warm wind against his neck and cheek. Her breathing was long and deep and soft, and for the first time, Ichiro must have wished that the road stretching out before us might never end. I saw Ichiro’s confused look of sadness as he left her behind with me in the city. She was dressed in something Haru had sewn for her, her very best dress, yet it had the quaint stamp of the country all about it. I had been struck by how pretty Akiko seemed in that dress as she lifted herself into the truck between us to leave Esperança. But now, in the city, the dress had no charm; like Ichiro, Akiko was one more awkward rural waif in the big sophisticated city. Akiko in her braided pigtails, with her little bundle of belongings, looked small and lost.

  So Akiko came to live with Natsuko in my city house. We gave her a bed in the maid’s quarters, and she was kept busy every day following Natsuko’s instructions about cleaning house, cooking meals, shopping at the weekly fair, washing and ironing our clothing. Natsuko was very precise about her desires, and she patiently taught Akiko. Akiko, under the rough tutelage of such as my wife, had had a very different education about housekeeping on a commune. Food was cooked in enormous batches for hundreds of people. Washing clothing was not much different. Farm clothing was treated with vigor, scrubbed relentlessly and laid out in the sun to bleach. Cleaning house amounted to sweeping out the floors of our simple cottages, wiping the long dining tables after meals, or washing out the kitchen floor with a hose. There were no windows to wash, glass cabinets or credenzas with bibelots to dust, brass knobs or fine wood furniture or floors to polish, white walls to wash, pantries or linen closets to arrange. Everything, from the finely crocheted doilies on the arms of the sofa to Natsuko’s delicate collection of African violets, was new to Akiko. This perhaps was the world that had once been meant for Akiko’s mother. I thought often how odd it was that Akiko should finally, even for a short time, encounter the small luxuries lost to her mother forever.

  Between Natsuko and Akiko, my city house became a picture of urban domestic tranquility. I would call from the warehouse as soon as I arrived in São Paulo, and Natsuko would have a special dinner prepared, an array of delicate china, crystal, and tableware arranged on a white tablecloth with cloth napkins carefully ironed by Akiko. For dessert, I sipped tea while Akiko was called to join Natsuko in a simple duet on the piano. Then Akiko was sent to polish my country boots, to prepare my bath and a change of clothing. Natsuko usually had plans for the evening—the theater, an opera at the Teatro Municipal, a movie in the Liberdade, a soiree of friends in a private room at Miyasaka’s. After several weeks of puttering around the house, following Akiko as she did her housekeeping, an occasional shopping spree, her weekly piano lesso
n, her weekly flower-arranging lesson, visiting friends, putting aside the books of Tolstoy that I insisted she must read, visiting her hairdresser and painting her nails, Natsuko was always ready to enjoy the life of the city.

  After years on a commune, where everything I did or said was most likely observed by someone, where all of us ate, slept, worked, and even bathed together, I found the private seclusion of my city life a refreshing change. Then, too, there were the attractions of the city, dabbling in cultural events, the opening of a famous art collection, the symphony, a concert. Unknown to my family and comrades hidden away in the deep interior, Natsuko and I were seen everywhere, chauffeured in fancy cars—Natsuko dressed fashionably in haute couture gowns, jewelry and extravagant hats—accompanied by a varied crowd of friends and stragglers who were sure to be treated by my generous purse. I wanted all of it to the fullest, and I did not spare any expense.

  Some people blame Natsuko for all of this, but after all, Natsuko had a very different view of what life should be and what she should receive from it. She had come from nowhere with nothing but her beauty and her flair for choosing the fashionable. She had observed the wealthy Brazilian women dressed in fine clothing escorted by handsome gentlemen and chauffeured in expensive cars to the Teatro Municipal. She would be such a woman. She would find the right man, a man with intelligence and charm and the exuberance to offer her a piano.

  But it was Akiko, I know, who always insisted that Natsuko was a good person, a woman with a kind heart. Akiko was not much younger than Natsuko, and the two women, isolated in their separate ways, became close as perhaps a handmaiden to her mistress. No matter what people later said, Akiko was always firm in her belief that Natsuko had been unfairly judged. “All lies,” Akiko would defend Natsuko. “Natsuko loved Kantaro. She gave up everything because she loved Kantaro.”

  I was in my early forties when I met Natsuko, who could not have been more than twenty-one or -two then. I was the father of five children, famous in Esperança for the stories of how I courted Haru inexhaustibly. Haru, still the stubborn strong-minded woman of her youth, had become physically strong from lifting children, hoeing fields, and cooking in giant pots. She was no longer the vied-for beauty of Esperança, but she was a faithful companion and a hard worker. It was true that Haru and I had never been quite alone to enjoy our married life. Someone—Tsuruta, Befu, eventually a whole troop—was always there to join us for supper. It was not long before all my companions moved onto my place, but Haru did not complain. This was the life she had chosen, and if she had not loved me in the beginning, other things like children and a multitude of responsibilities seemed to suffice.

  Twice in my lifetime I have been fortunate to have lived great love, and from that love I derived my tremendous energy to create. Now in my old age, I can say this. Other men would never admit such a thing, but perhaps other men have never felt such passion or have had such opportunity to pursue their dreams. Even in those days I spoke of my passion as the fuel to drive my activities. Whenever someone asked me how I could maintain a wife and a mistress, I jokingly said that Haru was like the gas for a car and that Natsuko was the ignition. Perhaps I placed a great onus on both of these women. Certainly, Natsuko became a woman marked for life because of her relationship to me. For ever after, people would point to her and say that she was Kantaro’s woman. Other men of my status and position certainly had mistresses, but perhaps they were scandalized or jealous by the way I flaunted what they considered to be a privilege. No one of them spent or lived their passion with such generosity or flamboyance. Anyone who recalls my days in the city will say that only Kantaro knew how to live in a big way.

  It was about this time that I met Takashi Inagaki, a friend of the publisher Shigeshi Kasai. Takashi Inagaki was an artist. He had left São Paulo with a little money and some charcoal in his pockets and made his way to Rio de Janeiro drawing portraits of people and selling sketches of colonial churches. In Rio, he had entered the School of Fine Arts. With the war, Inagaki was forced away from the coast and returned to São Paulo. When Kasai, with a little help from me, was able to start up the old Brazil Shimpo again, Inagaki went to work for Kasai on pen-and-ink illustrations and cartoons. When I met him, Inagaki was struggling to survive by drawing charcoal portraits of passersby on street corners. Inagaki, despite his emaciated appearance, was a man of tremendous vitality and inner resources. He spent all of his money to buy art materials, brushes, canvas and paints, and lived on whatever was left over. A man with such single-minded determination was the sort that I was always impressed with. It reminded me of my old baseball days. That a Japanese immigrant, even one with his extraordinary talent, thought he could shatter the Brazilian art world, such as it was in those days, was about as absurd as my idea about playing baseball in a country that embraced soccer. The two of us immediately got along. Inagaki, Kasai, and I were a threesome about town.

  In those days, I returned regularly to Esperança with an oil painting or a charcoal by Inagaki, each of which was proudly displayed in our large dining hall. Everyone thought that these paintings were gifts to the commune, but in reality, they were Inagaki’s way of paying me back for the rented art studio in the Liberdade, for the canvas and paint, the brushes, and even the models that posed for him. “This is one of my best,” Inagaki would promise me. “I give you my word. One of these days, this will be worth a fortune.” Then there were those expensive dinners and evenings at Miyasaka’s, when Inagaki brought along his artist friends to fill their starving frames and drink the discouragement of being unknown and undiscovered into a temporary but sweet oblivion. My comrades back home did not know it at the time, but they paid for all of this. In return, we got Takashi Inagaki’s paintings, and for a while, we got him as well.

  Many artists—all of them friends and acquaintances of Inagaki’s—came to New World, but Inagaki’s stay was the most extended. Ours was a place of refuge, a place with a free bed, a bath, and three square meals. No one ever insisted that anyone who visited New World should work for his or her keep. This was simply an understanding about life on a commune. Sooner or later, even an honored guest begins to understand that everyone must contribute to keep things going. It was understandable that a friend or relative might come to visit and pass the time for a few days; certainly the work of so many was able to absorb the leisure of one or two. Still, I know the fact that Inagaki and his artist friends contributed nothing in the form of physical sweat irritated many people. True, the artists came every Christmas and organized plays with large painted scenic backdrops, which were well attended in Esperança in those days. But to farming people, it seemed odd (although sometimes flattering) that Inagaki and others could spend their entire days in front of their easels propped up in places of mundane interest—an old barn, the laundry area strung with clothing drying in the sun, the old mango groves, a vegetable patch. It was a curious thing to all. No doubt it was the pride of being Esperança people, those eccentric intellectuals who thought farming could be mixed with art and culture, that allowed them to accept Inagaki and his friends. All of those artists, Inagaki included, are gone away now, some of them famous, some destined for permanent obscurity. Left behind in Esperança are the odd remnants of their artistry, impressionistic oils of our chicken ranching, studies of Haru at work in the kitchen, portraits of Befu and me, romantic and passionate, precise and blurred, memories of a past lost forever.

  Takashi Inagaki, I acknowledge, was a man of energetic and single-minded opinions. He was always talking about an idea that he considered extremely radical and innovative, which he convinced me should be experimented with at our commune. This idea had its basis in some self-experimentation, some of it experienced on his long trek to Rio from São Paulo. There was mixed in a certain asceticism and spiritual Zen, none of which was understood. When Inagaki discussed his ideas with others in the commune, I saw people smile politely and leave to go back to their work. Only Befu seemed enthusiastic about Inagaki’s talk and gave up his o
nly son, my nine-year-old nephew, Genji Befu, for Inagaki’s experiment.

  Inagaki’s idea was that anyone could be taught to draw and paint. It was a matter of physical and spiritual focus and careful training. Inagaki had worked through a series of artistic sessions in which he elaborated the artistic process and the philosophical basis for his procedures. The opportunity to teach a child with no prior experience and no special aptitude for art was an enormous opportunity to prove his theories. So Inagaki came to live with us for several years. During the day, he taught Genji to draw and finally to paint in oil. I generously supplied both Inagaki and little Genji with art materials, and their production was prodigious. In the beginning, Inagaki spent the evenings expounding his theories to Befu and anyone else who would listen. One or two other people tried their hand at drawing for a short period of time, but only Genji remained faithful to his apprenticeship. I, like everyone else, was amazed to see the progress in Genji’s artwork. In a short period of time, Inagaki had taught Genji to paint in oils. This news about a nine-year-old child who could paint soon spread all over Esperança and beyond.

  Genji quickly became the focus of an unusual amount of attention. Visitors came to see our artistic marvel. We ourselves sauntered over to see the young artist and his teacher peacefully seated at their easels in front of a scene of our rugged dining hall, large jaca and flowering paineira trees to one side and the tower of our water reservoir to the other. Genji and Inagaki would always choose different perspectives—making it difficult to compare the teacher to the student, but very soon there seemed to be little difference in style or skill. Inagaki had taught Genji to paint in a French impressionistic style, much in vogue in those days, but most of us had no basis for distinguishing styles. We all liked the soft strokes of the brush, the play of light and colors, the romantic presence of a scene we regarded as ordinary. All of this Genji and Inagaki brought, not to life, but to art. When I look back at the paintings that remain of this period, I am reminded of my Carl Zeiss box camera. Both the camera and Genji’s paintings became for us the vision through which we saw ourselves at particular times. When I see the photographs and the paintings of this period, I am struck by their romantic and idyllic nature. Perhaps it was because those were the days when all of us were still in love.