‘Look,’ you said, without even a hello. ‘See. This is me, wicked woman.’ You kicked off your high heels and wiggled your toes. ‘Come here, Mr Poet. Come here! I am dayne-jerrrr-oooos.’ You laughed not very convincingly.
‘This is a joke,’ you said. ‘This is very funny.’ You pouted. ‘I am a Hollywood girl. You supposed to bust out laughing. But no. So serious. So serious you are, young man. Why you no laughing at me?’
And then you stopped the teasing, or the make-believe, or the deception – if that is what you were doing. There must have been something in the way I reacted. I was as startled and fearful as a chicken about to have its neck broken. I think I probably looked annoyed. I had expected a serious Yukiko. I had expected a big mug of hot green tea, and then a solemn, unfolding, engulfing, and maybe even bewitching story. I had expected an explanation so that I could understand the violent actions of the man who became a bear.
‘Well, I will tell you almost everything,’ you said nervously. ‘I can’t tell you everything. If I told you everything, some of it would be lies. Some of it I have had to paint on a canvas so that when I look at that self-portrait I can see what I want to see. I can live comfortably, like a nice woman, like Doris Day. Happy, happy, like a big bath of bubbles, with a nice husband, Mr Rock Hudson, so . . . so . . . so very handsome. So you will get the almost-truth, and then you will have to use your imagination. Imagine you were reading my life as if it was written by Franz Kafka. He is my favourite writer. Do you think it is strange that a bar girl would read Kafka? If you had to deal with what I deal with at the White Rose, Kafka is like a medicine. What he writes is surreal. Do you understand? But in his surreal creations is a reality . . . the truth . . . my reality in which there is no Doris Day. If you had lived my life from Manchuria and Japan and Hiroshima and then Tokyo, all bombed and life lived in chaos, you could understand. Do you know that when we were finally repatriated and we landed in Japan, there was a sign greeting us, which said, “Thank you very much for your hardship”?
‘But you can never understand. You are too much of a nice boy. You are a golden boy. You are like the four seasons, but the longest of your four seasons is spring. The sun always rises on your world. The moon is always there. The stars keep you company. Your sunsets are always painted for you by Heaven . . . But me . . . I already lived my life. I have lived all of it, to the end. And now, there is Hell. Dancing devils are chasing me, courting me, tempting me. If I have to fight, I will use my tanto – my sword.
‘Oh, no! Oh, no! I forgot,’ you said urgently and abruptly, derailing your presentation. You looked as if someone had slapped you. ‘First . . . First . . . What happened after you left me at the bottom of the hill? Where did you go? What did you do? . . . Oh, yes. Oh, yes! Tell me, Paul. Tell me! You will not be cruel if you tell me the truth. Do you hate me now? Do you belong to me?’
You started crying as if life consisted of nothing more than endless ‘battles without honour and humanity’ (to quote the post-war Japanese novelist and filmmaker Fukasaku Kinji), battles ‘without meaning’, battles for the sake of battles, battles without mercy, without a soul, without a thought, quickly dismissed with a shrug, forgotten after convenient funerals with everyone in formal dress, stone-faced, betraying no conscience and no purpose except to go on living.
I sat down beside you. We looked out at the bay. The flight deck of the Shangri-La was glistening with aircraft that had their wings folded. The ship was pointed out to sea, as if ready to make a quick getaway. In a few days we would be gone again, and then you would be waiting. I felt as if I had committed an unpardonable wrong. I was desperate to put things right.
But why? You should have been the desperate one. But then, of course, I was merely flustered and you were the desperate one.
Is that why you played Miss Hollywood? I started talking in my stupid English – my stupid English that I spoke with an English accent. At least I could spell, you told me once. That is how I ended up on the ship’s newspaper. I could spell ‘seaman apprentice’, which was my rank, a rank comparable to that of a worker ant or, better yet, a termite hidden from the light. Eighty per cent of newcomers to the ship could not spell apprentice, the personnel clerk told me when I first came aboard. I could spell apprentice, and they did not know at first what to do with me. So they put me to work cleaning the brass and chrome toilets and showers used by sixty men who lived in the same vault-like ‘compartment’ as me, until someone said, ‘Hey. That weird British kid who can spell apprentice. The ship’s newspaper needs a writer. Where the hell is he?’
In fact, I told you the work I had done on the Shangri-La’s monthly News Horizon had impressed the ship’s brand-new number two, the executive officer – Commander Davy Crockett – born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He was a former fighter pilot with an exceedingly square jaw and eyes the colour of ball bearings.
After I left you at the foot of the hill on the day of the danger, I retreated to the ship. I was obviously upset. I was also angry. I also understood absolutely nothing at all. Red and Jim asked me what had happened. I told them as much as I knew. The next thing that occurred was that the meek little ensign who was in charge of us three seamen apprentices found out about it and informed a more senior officer, who in turn informed Commander Crockett.
I was told to report to Crockett’s office IMMEDIATELY!
I walked in, expecting a red-hot blast of uncomprehending rage from Crockett. He was well known for being the human equivalent of a battleship. But, strangely, he greeted me calmly, with a boyish grin. He put down his copy of Playboy magazine with a wink. He looked up at me from his chair, and said, ‘Son. What you are doing is dangerous. Dangerous!’
I gulped.
‘It is dangerous out there in those alleys of goddamn Yokosuka. There are whores and thieves and bandits and murderers, not to mention goddamn Soviet spies! Goddamn it! You are just a goddamn kid. Are you even fuckin’ shaving yet, seaman? . . . Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez. Mother of God, have mercy! The goddamn thing that saves yer ass is that you have talent. But you know what? If Satan himself came around the corner in the light of day, you would not recognize him.’ He leaned back in his chair again to study the effect of his broadside on my pimpled face.
‘Now look, son,’ he said, ‘I am just trying to scare you. This is not a disciplinary hearing. I am going to give you some advice. Japanese women. God love them! You gotta love them. They are loyal. They have honour. They will never, never, never divorce you, even if you are a hard-drinking, panty-chasing, son of a bitch! They are as sweet as sugar candy and every man aboard this ship should take one back home to introduce to his mother! But Japanese women . . . they see a young American, and they spin a silken spider’s web. They sit there like a spider, waiting to catch gnats and flies. You are a gnat, Rogers! A gnat. But you are a smart gnat. So if I tell you that all of those girls working in the bars have a history that would scare you to death if you knew just ten per cent of it, what would you say?’
‘Uh . . . Um . . . Well, sir,’ I said, ‘I am not actually a “young American”. I am actually a young Englishman. There is an important difference.’
‘I know that, goddamn it,’ Davy Crockett exploded. ‘I know that you are a goddamn foreigner. But you are in the goddamn United States Navy, God love it! You are a goddamn Englishman, and we can’t give you a security clearance even if we wanted to because you are an alien – an alien! – and that means we can’t trust you, and that means if you end up in the arms of a Japanese floozy and she is a Russian agent then you have no loyalties to the United States. Nothing! Nada, goddamn it! . . . Oh, jeez. Jeez Louise! I need a moment. I need to catch my breath . . . I mean, what I am trying to say is that you can write and you can spell and you can go far if you are not eaten up by one of those goddamn Japanese spiders. In other words, we goddamn need you, you bastard!’ He paused for a breath. His face was red. His khaki shirt had been dry and starched when I entered his cabin. Now there were dark circles of sweat under his
armpits. ‘Look,’ he said. His voice dropped several octaves, and there was a tone to it that sounded unexpectedly kind. ‘What are you trying to do, kid? There is a girl involved. I know. There has to be a girl! A goddamn bar girl, and you have lost your mind because she has sweet-talked you like no other woman can. Not even your mother can do that, goddamn it!’
I shook my head, respectfully. ‘Sir . . . There is a girl. She is a woman. She works in a bar. But she knows a lot about literature and classical music and history. I have not had sex with her. She is a very nice person.’
‘Sex! Sex!’ the commander roared. His voice sounded like a saw biting into a very dry log. ‘Good God Almighty, Rogers! That is the worst kind of woman. A real devil! A man-eater! Goddamn! A true spider, I am sure. And you . . . and you . . .’ He looked me up and down, paternally and with pity. ‘You don’t have any idea. Any clue. And she has you wrapped around her little finger, and all of her fingers have very long red fingernails. She’s got ya. Ohhhhh, jeez. Oh, Jesus! Oh, my God! Goddamn! God in Heaven!’
I gulped. I quaked. But I remembered at that moment the tall-masted schooner, The Torment, manoeuvring, escaping a great thundering hunk of steel.
‘Now, look,’ Davy Crockett said, after taking yet another deep breath. ‘You wrote a real nice story. No one else could have written a story like that.’ He was referring to a long piece set to appear in the October edition of the ship’s newspaper, after we sailed away from Japan forever in late September to return to the United States. I knew the senior officers on the ship had read the piece carefully. It was not the typical dull military story full of boring technical terms. No. This story glowed with emotion. The headline had already been written: ‘Shang Bids Sayonara to Japan.’ The layout for the page included a drawing of a Japanese woman in a kimono holding a parasol over her right shoulder and looking out at the ocean from the side of a hill. I had found a magazine illustration of a geisha looking out to sea and had told the seaman who was the ship’s artist to adapt it for the article. He depicted the mighty Shangri-La as nothing but a tiny silhouette disappearing over the horizon. The ship was no larger than a flea. The woman was a hundred times its size, and she had an intelligent profile and a sensual twist to her body as she watched the Shitty Shang sail away.
Our leader, the ensign, was terrified about how all this would be received by his superiors. ‘I just don’t think this is appropriate,’ he whimpered. ‘It creates the wrong impression. We should have an illustration of an American wife waving from the shoreline of the United States, or at least from a beach in Hawaii. And your story: it makes all the men on this ship feel as if they had a love affair in Japan. We print this story, and every man sailing back home is going to feel guilty.’
Guilt? Maybe. Love affairs? Unlikely.
Nonetheless, I had been told that Commander Crockett liked that drawing, and the story, and that he had also approved another piece I had written for the same issue about the marriage in Japan of Lieutenant Junior Grade Pat Bauschka to a beautiful graduate of the University of Hiroshima, Niishi Mieko. I told you that I treated this story in exactly the same way I would have written it if he had married a girl from Texas. Bauschka, a radar controller on AD-5W Skyraider aircraft, was a tall young officer from rural Wisconsin, completely without guile, who fell in love with Miss Niishi on a previous Shangri-La cruise to the western Pacific. There was a lot of grumbling on the ship about this union. Chaplain Peeples strongly opposed the marriage on the grounds that Niishi Mieko was not American and not Christian and also not worthy of being a wife and mother loved by an American commissioned officer.
I interviewed Bauschka for the story, and I could tell his heart was in it. He was truly in love. He became one of my heroes, in fact. During the brief weeks I knew him, he urged me many times to go to college. He also urged me not to reenlist in the navy. ‘You are not quite the right fit,’ he told me. Bauschka went on in life to command several ships. He has passed away. But Mieko, his wife, still lives. I wish so much that I could tell you this in person, Yukiko. You knew all about their marriage. When I told you about it you said ‘Really?’ many times as if this was a reality that would never be yours. You would have loved to know the couple had children.
Recently I exchanged emails with the Bauschkas’ son, Chris, who is an electrical engineer. You would have enjoyed knowing this too. When I asked Chris whether he thought I could interview Mieko about her life with Pat, he replied:
Paul. Wow, this is most interesting. I can almost guarantee that my mom would not be willing to talk. But I have forwarded your message to a couple of my sisters in the hopes [they will try] to help me convince her . . . my reasoning being that since my father passed away when I was quite young (and he was not home much of my life growing up), I have not been able to talk with her about anything related to Pat. Basically, I know very little about my dad. I have small snippets of stories, and some small memories, but that is it. Please don’t feel like a nuisance by continuing to check back with me if you haven’t heard from me in a while.
You would probably recognize, Yukiko, the regret in this email – the regret of a child of a military man who did his duty for the naval service but who was, as a result, seldom home. Regret over a mystery that can never be put right, or understood, at least until old age makes acceptance and comprehension possible. Then there will be peace. At death, this father and son will be reunited. I am sure you would agree.
Commander Crockett? Oh, yes, Yukiko. His talk with me ended, and he waved me away, but not before he attempted to plant horror in my soul. I saluted.
‘Don’t salute me, son,’ he said. ‘You will do well. But keep your nose clean. Stay sharp. Don’t drink too much. Don’t smoke. Don’t kiss strange women. Do kiss your wife if you ever marry. Of course, kiss your mother. Make goddamn sure you always use a rubber. When you get all hot and bothered, remember the training films about your health that we showed you back in boot camp! Be truly scared of non-specific urethritis. You don’t want someone shoving a glass rod up your dick! And be especially scared of chancroids. You don’t want your balls turning black with rot! No more fighting, son. No more contact with the police.’
‘Police?’ I asked, trembling. ‘Police?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The goddamn cops. I had a few words today with a smart-ass detective, who told our liaison that a kid sailor had been involved in two incidents ashore, including one in which a woman almost died.’
Almost died. Yes, you almost died. I could not hold back the tears.
‘Now, now, son,’ Crockett said. ‘Be a man. I know you tried to help her. I know that. You did the right thing. But can you imagine if that got into the local newspapers? I would have the God Almighty US ambassador in a three-piece suit on my neck. The mayor of Yokosuka. The foreign minister of Japan. Maybe even the emperor of Japan. Oh, my God! . . . But . . . Oh, my God! God help us if the captain, and the goddamn admiral, and the chief of naval operations heard about this. God help you, son! God help me if you get into trouble again. Stay away from Japanese women, if you can. Love them and leave them. That’s the navy way.’
‘So,’ you said, Yukiko. ‘Everything is all right, then?’
‘What?’ I exclaimed. ‘What? No! . . . Everything is abunai! Abunai! You understand abunai?’
‘Oh,’ you said. ‘I am sorry . . . so sorry, Paul. I did not know how much trouble I caused.’ You reached out and took my hand, and you would not let go when I pulled away a little, not sure if you were a spider or the woman I hardly knew.
‘Please, let me say “I love this hand”,’ you said. ‘Just this hand. You will let me love just your hand. I can’t say “I love you”, because that is impossible. It is impossible for one hundred reasons, most of which you do not know. It is better if you do not know. You are going to leave me. You will go down the hill and back to the ship and you will never come to the White Rose again.’
You started weeping.
Like a man, I did not know what to say.
‘I am only going to go when the ship sails away in September,’ I said. ‘It is still only July. I am going to have a birthday soon. There is lots of time.’
You shook your head slowly. You looked up at me. ‘There are just a few days left,’ you said. ‘There is not enough time to make everything perfect. There is not enough time for you to know me so that you will never ever forget me.’ The tears came again.
I blurted out, ‘They did not order me to stay away from you. They just told me you are like a spider.’
‘What?’ you said, jumping up. ‘How dare they! How dare they! What an insult that is to a poor Japanese woman. How unkind! How ignorant! How rude! How American! What do they know about anything? What do they know about me? They know nothing!
‘No. No,’ you said, releasing my hand, your face clouded, furious, dangerous. ‘No. No. Take your stupid English and go back down the hill and find some stupid girl you can talk to like a stupid boy. That is what you should do. You don’t want to be with an ugly woman like me, so old, so evil . . . A spider!’
It took me some moments to realize I still knew almost nothing about your past.
8
Nice Simple Boy
Yamaguchi Momoe, raised in Yokosuka by a single mother, had a wildly popular singing career that capitalized on her dark, damaged image. But she retired in 1980 at the age of twenty-one to marry and has not made public appearances since. It was strictly her choice to end her career, she said. Her biggest hit was ‘Hitonatsu no keiken’ [‘Experiences of Summer Youth’], which included the lines, ‘I’ll give you the most precious thing a girl has,’ and, ‘We all experience sweet seduction at least once.’ This prompted salacious questions such as, ‘What is a girl’s most precious thing?’ She replied, ‘Magokoro!’ This translates as ‘a true heart’ or ‘devotion’.
I did not retreat down the hill. I stood on the topmost of the 101 steps that led to your house. The city, the ship, and the train station were all laid out neatly below me in the haze as if they were toys. One lesson I had learned that summer, even in the face of countless sights and sounds I did not understand, was to stand my ground. I would do that in Vietnam and in Cambodia, in Buenos Aires and Caracas – any place there were barricades and rocks, tear gas and bullets. Defiance became my style after we met. You taught me well, Yukiko. I gripped my left wrist with my right hand, leaned slightly to the left, and stood right in front of you – and waited calmly and resolutely for your rage to subside. It was a way of looking and asking a question without words.
Please Enjoy Your Happiness Page 8