Please Enjoy Your Happiness

by Paul Brinkley-Rogers

  I didn’t know this sorrow,

  I didn’t know this, it was not part of me.

  My dear dead daughter. And now I so much miss you,

  So much were cared of.

  I cannot write this way. No! I cannot.

  He is gone . . .

  Perhaps, any more, we may meet, I may send,

  I may call for his ship to come to the mountain.

  The radio say for tomorrow, GASHUIN . . . Oh. I mean Gershwin. Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin wrote that for me because I am a blue woman. You are young, but I think you know that. Blue women live only for the next available rhapsody, young man. Please never forget that. I started writing this letter at 3:30 PM. My dictionary is burning because I use it so much. My heart is in flames. Do you remember me?

  Yukiko

  Your letter reached me on the Shangri-La. When it arrived, we were somewhere on the ocean, somewhere near the island of Guam. At sea you are always somewhere. Where I was exactly, I never knew. I would stare out at the sea all the way to the horizon. If my gaze went all the way to where the sky met the sea and then beyond . . . that is where reality began and I knew where I was, like I did when I was with you. There was a typhoon that tossed the ship around as if it were a toy. They made an announcement from the bridge telling everyone to stay below. But I knew a secret passageway and ladder up to the crow’s nest at the very top of the vessel, and I took your letter up there to read it again and again. The envelope blew away. But I held on to the two pages of paper. And after I read and read your poems I realized there was nothing I could do to make the ship come back to you. It would all happen in its own sweet time, as they say. I would come back and look for you and I would find you and I would ask you to tell me more.

  I am the sort of person who needs to know. I was reading yesterday that Japanese is the most imprecise language in the world because it is so poetic. There are so many ways of interpreting each kanji – those Chinese characters you use – and nothing is said with direct intent. Things are suggested. You told me once that there are a basic 1,246 kanji in daily use, but the actual number of kanji known to exist may be as many as five thousand, although some of them were used only once or twice in obscure and ancient imperial court poetry written mostly by noblewomen and concubines coping with the long absences of lovers who may or may not have been killed or wounded on distant battlegrounds. Important things are only hinted at. Your country is a floating world, a place of dreams and mists and mirrors, not to mention the frequent tears. Somehow you came out of Manchuria wearing death as a shroud and with no purpose to live – or at least no purpose after your daughter died. Do you see how horribly direct and analytical my way of thinking is because I am from the West?

  You would never frame your thoughts this way. The big heart-shaped leaves would be falling from the beautiful paulownia with its masses of blue trumpets in front of your house, and you would watch them silently, thoughtfully, as if they were a highly appropriate part of your loneliness. How am I ever going to be able to communicate with you? How am I going to be able to know you? Those were my questions. Those were my thoughts when we came back to Yokosuka and I found you at the Mozart coffee shop. I saw your instant of ecstasy. I saw you raised up. I saw you yearning to be joyful, to be happy, to be free.

  Do you understand this? Do you know that in 2011, when the sea invaded northern Japan and those images of certain death swirled around the world, the first thought that leaped in my mind was: Are you safe? Where are you? Are you alive? I thought that, even though I had not thought of you for years.

  Do you remember me? Where is the Japan that I knew fifty years ago? Where are the tiny bars, with stools for no more than six people, where I spent so many hours writing down words and phrases spoken to me with such care by so many good people: working men with bruised hands, lawyers in white shirts with their briefcases, the single gorgeous woman behind the bar pouring sake and flirting with me entirely in Japanese. Do those places still exist, or is everything now befouled by Kentucky Fried Chicken and Starbucks? Do you know that by the time I finally left Tokyo in late 1962 my command of street Japanese was so good that I was able to date Japanese girls my own age who did not speak English? And that is all really because of you and the effort you put into making sure I was learning your language every day. You called me ‘Teacher’ because I sent back corrected copies of your letters. Hah!

  You said to me soon after we met, ‘We Japanese use three different written languages.’ There is kanji. Each character can be read with both a Japanese sound and a Chinese sound. For example, the Japanese word atarashi, which means ‘new’, can also be read as shin, which is the Chinese sound. There are many hundreds of words like that; scholars call them pictographs because each kanji originated as a tiny picture of something. But then there are also two written languages using characters that are entirely phonetic and are not a picture of anything. Those are hiragana, which sometimes appear alongside complicated kanji to indicate their sound and meaning, and also katakana, which is usually used to approximate the sounds of foreign words in everyday use in Japan, such as basu, which means ‘bus’, or kissu, which means ‘kiss’.

  When I first started learning Japanese, I was not sitting in a classroom. Your life was my classroom. You were not my student. I was your student and your sweetheart. I am so lucky to still have your letters. ‘Fancy and actuality’ – it sounds so Japanese. Dreams and reality: you understood that both happen in a love affair.

  Yes, I can hear your voice. I can hear you singing your favourite song, done as a duet by the torch singer Matsuo Kazuko and the male singer Wada Hiroshi: ‘Dare yori mo, kimi wo aisu’ [‘More Than Anyone Else, I Love You’]. You are still a little bird singing in the tree. It is a slow song. It is moody and flirtatious, sung by a worldly man and a worldly woman slyly tempting each other.

  [Man]

  Don’t tell anyone

  We swore to each other

  If you love this trifle of a thing, let’s also forget.

  Ahh-ah . . . Not a dream, just a wish

  More than anyone, more than anyone else, I love you.

  [Woman]

  From the time I loved, the suffering began

  Since the time of being loved, I have waited for the separation.

  Ahh-ah . . . Still, when life is over,

  More than anyone, more than anyone else, I love you.

  [Man and Woman together]

  Without you I don’t live at all

  Because you are there, tomorrow I can live

  As time goes on, without change

  More than anyone, more than anyone else, I love you.

  Every time I hear that song I want to write to you again. More than anyone. More than anyone else, I still love you.

  In conversations with close friends about those days I have often struggled to explain why a mature woman would become involved with a young man who was so shy and inexperienced. My experiences with girls who were not yet women had been so limited. But here was a woman who, with great tenderness, accepted that shyness as if it were a strength, not a weakness. It took a while to become a man. But I was being groomed. ‘Oh,’ you said one day, flashing me a sudden glance over your shoulder in a way that made you even more beautiful. ‘You will make many women happy. I will teach you. But first you must learn how to smile, like me.’

  Of course, in later years, I was equipped with a smile but I was still too shy to dance. The girls I met were now women. If I trace relationships I have had back to 1959, often there is a common thread: a kind of quest for a Yukiko. This was especially true of Japanese women I knew later on. They were not my mentors in the arts. But those friendships were evidence, at least, that I had become a man. I had experiences, the details of which I could share with male friends as young men do. But I never was awed as I was when I was close to you.

  4

  A Certain Girl

  The Great Imperial Concubine was utterly indifferent to the charms of the young rakes wh
o flocked about the Court and of the handsome noblemen who came her way. The physical attributes of men no longer meant anything to her. Her only concern was to find a man who could give her the strongest and deepest possible love. A woman with such aspirations is a truly terrifying creature.

  MISHIMA YUKIO, FROM ‘THE PRIEST OF SHIGA TEMPLE AND HIS LOVE’, DEATH IN MIDSUMMER AND OTHER STORIES

  Dear Yukiko,

  How many ‘dears’ do I dare put in front of your name? If you are dead, am I addressing a grave, or maybe your ashes? You had no living relatives, as far as I know. Did you marry after I was gone? Did you find some happiness? Were you able to become a wife and have more children? Somehow, sadly, I don’t think that was the case.

  I think you were one of those people who startled those around her – like a gorgeous short-lived rose – and then dropped her petals. We could not have had a life together anyway, don’t you agree? Sweetheart was a good role for me. It was what you needed. Despite my youth, I was capable of being that, at least. But I will tell you a new secret: in old age, I would be that way too.

  You once told me that after you fled Manchuria no one had ever loved you. You had not allowed it. You grew up loving books and art and music and the idea of romance without the drama of actually making love with someone. I may have been a child but now I think that I knew this about you. After you met me, you wanted a sweetheart, a kind of courtly lover.

  Do you remember when we took the train south to Kamakura and we stood in front of the enormous Daibutsu, that thirty-foot-high bronze statue of the Buddha made in the year 1250? You were so merry on the train. I had the lyrics to ‘Who’s That Knocking’ by the Genies on my mind, and as the train rocked I was singing, ‘Who’s that knocking . . . On my door . . . doo doo doo-wah, bang bang bang . . . all night long.’ The other passengers watched, with solemn, confused faces, as I came down the aisle towards you, snapping my fingers. You were astonished. ‘No, no, no,’ you said, with some force. ‘You are the poet.’ I think that was the moment when you realized that I was really just a young man who insisted that ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ was poetry, ‘Stagger Lee’ was revolutionary, and Frankie Avalon’s ‘Venus’ should have been dedicated to you.

  Soon we were standing in front of the Daibutsu, side by side, our heads bowed. You prayed for your daughter and your lost family and the snow country in Manchuria where your childhood was obliterated by war.

  ‘What did your father do there?’ I asked, trying to visualize a place I would never see. You shook your head, reluctant at first. You said, ‘He played piano.’

  I said, ‘I mean, what about his work?’

  I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask. Kamakura probably now has a McDonald’s, and people undoubtedly use smartphones to communicate instead of gossiping in sake bars and greeting each other in the street with a quick bow and a stream of exquisite pleasantries. Am I correct, Yuki? But I remember Kamakura in those days as a small town by the ocean, where muffled temple bells could be heard, not like pealing church bells, but booming slowly, majestically, as if they were heartbeats, as if every day had a funeral. We were walking to the Engaku-ji Zen Buddhist temple, and you were trying to explain to me the significance of the massive sanmon gate, which I now know represents the three gates to spiritual emancipation. You told me you often came to Engaku-ji because it was built to honour those who lost their lives in war. ‘It is said,’ you began, ‘that this gate frees one of various obsessions and brings about enlightenment . . . Pass through the gate with a pure mind, Paul. Come with me, and I will tell you another secret.’

  So, I stepped through the gate, puzzled. You looked at me intently and you said, ‘My father was an executioner. He was a policeman. I am afraid to say this because I know he would be sad to hear the truth, but he was not a good man. He killed many Chinese. Bang, bang, bang.’ I looked at you and I could tell that this was such a burden, still, even though a dozen years had passed since your family was forced to start walking south, through the ice, hundreds of miles to the Chinese port of Dairen.

  ‘He was a really talented pianist. He played the piano because his life was so brutal, so terrible. He was so strict. He hurt my mother. His favourite pieces were by Satie. Do you know his Vexations, his six Gnossiennes, his Trois Gymnopédies? I know them all, by heart. In a way, they are like bells ringing for those who are in mourning. When I dream, they are the rhythm of my heart. But when I wake up, my face is wet and I know I have been crying in my sleep. I remember that none of us was allowed to move – not even a little bit – while he played. He would not open his eyes. It was as if he was living in another land. This was his ecstasy.’

  You were sobbing into the sleeve of your gorgeous kimono, silk the colour of slate, with its undergarments in three different shades of grey. In Japan, grey in all its shades – from charcoal to silver – is one of three colours that express sadness, especially in kimonos. White is the second colour. Black is the third. A single tear mixed with mascara, so that it looked as if black lacquer cut a line down one side of your face to the corner of your lips. You pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a match, something you never did at the White Rose bar. You inhaled deeply, as if you were a very tough woman, a gangster’s woman maybe.

  ‘Look, Paul,’ you said, your voice brittle and harsh, ‘you probably hate me now.’ You looked up at me as if I was going to walk away, forever. But I was young enough during an age when empathy was still possible. I was no cynic. I had not yet lived and lost, loved and lost, as you had. I gulped and choked. ‘Yuki,’ I said, ‘you were just a little girl. And now . . .’

  I could not finish the sentence. What were you now? I did not know. You poured drinks at a bar where the music was country and western, and then . . . ?

  I reached out. It seemed as if I were reaching across time, and I pulled you so close to me that you gasped, and the crowd of sightseers and pilgrims stopped in its tracks and stared at us.

  You said, ‘All my life I have been waiting for that embrace.’

  On the way back to Yokosuka, you sang and hummed those moody enka songs that Japanese loved to sing when they were drinking sake. Both of us loved the songs of the singer Misora Hibari. The ‘Little Lark’, you called her. You probably remember that the following week we took the train north to Tokyo to hear Misora Hibari sing at the Nichigeki Theatre. You gripped my hand. People were whispering about us. I felt uncomfortable. I did not want you to be hurt; I didn’t think you could take it. But I was wrong. As the looks grew more intense, you held my hand even tighter and pulled me towards you so our bodies were touching, and you told me – you whispered to me, and I remember your lips were wet against my ear – ‘You are my love, and I am your love. I don’t care if they look.’

  We sat that way for the entire performance. I looked down at your wrists. The scars were there, white, like cords of cotton lain across your skin. And when Misora Hibari had finished singing ‘Ringo oiwake’ [‘Apple Folksong’], and the crowd, which was almost entirely women, was on its feet shouting her name and pleading for autographs, do you remember how she came down from the stage and looked at you with an appreciative smile? Now that I think about it, it was as if she could sense the bond between us. She was already famous, already bruised by her affairs, already capable of singing about the sorrows of a woman in a way that moved you and millions of other women to joy and to tears.

  I remember saying, ‘Yuki. Did you see that? She noticed.’

  And you said, ‘It was a blessing. Things are changing. I feel as if I am drunk with happiness.’ There was a tear running down your cheek and you brushed away an identical tear next to my nose with the back of your finger and said, ‘Thank you so much for allowing me to feel your love and friendship.’

  Your fourth letter came when I was in Manila. I can’t remember what I did there. My sailor friends got drunk and paid for tattoos – that I know. I did not do any of that because I am me. I am not a member of the herd. You taught me that. You said, ‘Be you
rself. Be strong, no matter what. There is no other way. In my country there is a saying: “When a nail sticks up, it must be hammered down.” It means you must be part of a group. You must not be different. You must conform. I don’t like that saying. Don’t ever let it happen to you. Do not let them hammer you.’ You also said, ‘Remember this: in this life, all men reach and fall. It is not so true about women, Paul. When women fall it is not because they have reached. Why do you think that is, Paul? You should know. Or maybe you do not know, because you are so young. I will let you think about it. When you become older, you will know.’

  Dear Paul.

  Are you still stay in Manila? If so I sympathize for you because the ink became red it got that much hot. But you so clever. You used the red color in your last letter to me so that I would think hot. How about next time you send me the nice smell of Chinese food from Hong Kong? This Yokosuka is not yet hot. It is almost the same when you were here.

  I received your letter yesterday. Before I open the envelope, I ran around the room laughing. I was waving your letter. So happy. Thank you for a very nice letter and also my letter which you corrected and sent back to me. I got very much pleasure out of reading it. I don’t like ever, ever, feeling that I can remember even few and fewer things about you. I HAVE TO know you. All of you. You are far, far away, Paul-san. First you steal my heart and now you steal my memories. You know some secrets. Do you remember me?

  I wish I could be writing like you so that I could think many things. I must study harder to be a writer. You must go to college so that can I read your book. Maybe you will write something that make me cry so happy even when I am a very old woman, a very old and still a wicked woman. But for now, your letter I put under my pillow. I want to dream about my happiness. I don’t want to dream about my life and wake up with a pillow soaked with tears.

  Now I am look at the calendar. This month almost finish, but more many days, many weeks. The next month is raining season in Japan and to think that makes me gloomy. But I can spend time (Not WAIT!!! Remember! I do not like that word!) for to talk to you in my letters even though many miles away from you until then. I will wear my gray kimono. Do you remember? It was the kimono of my mother. We carried it on our backs all the way from Manchuria and why was that? It was because my mother wore that kimono on her first date with my father, and my father told her, simply, “You are beautiful when you wear gray.” That is all he said. Just that. But she never forgot it because it was the first time in her life she was beautiful.