We followed the old woman past the counter and through the curtains that separated the store from the living quarters at the back. We walked past the tatami room where the Nakamuras slept, stepping lightly over the small squalor that spilled out into the hallway. We passed a dingy kitchen where they made their food and heated water for tea. Brown, crusted rice lay on the small kitchen table. Bits of it had fallen to the floor and stuck to the soles of our shoes as we passed by. Somehow I had supposed that Nakamura had been successful, that he was affluent. After all, forty years had passed and he had been a school principal before that. I’d thought of him as successful during a time when Ike and Jimmy and I had still been boys.
As we approached the end of the building, the old lady turned and spoke. “He stays in the warehouse on holidays,” she said. “He doesn’t like the inactivity of a day to ourselves.”
Out the back door of the building was a surprisingly large garden which was, in contrast to the rooms we’d just passed through, neat and well manicured. The path we stood upon was made up of hundreds of small round stones and the garden itself contained many shades of fine and cultivated moss. We wanted to fan out, once we had the space, but we stayed on the path. We were soldiers who respected the traditional landscaping of Japan and Nakamura, if in fact he had done the work himself, was truly an expert. His trees were trimmed perfectly and he had devoted a small portion of the garden to a few fine large boulders in a sea of raked gravel. Here was the energy that I had expected would go into his store.
“Father is expecting you,” said the woman. “There. In our warehouse.”
She pointed as she spoke, out the back gate, at a huge building which stood in a field across the narrow alley. What would a pharmacy of such derelict quality need with a warehouse so large? We bowed to the woman and thanked her, but one of the cameramen had knelt by the side of the garden and was focusing his lens deeply into a bed of moss, so we had to wait. Though it was still early in the morning the winter chill had left the air and the sun had risen over the fence that surrounded us. Kazuko and Ike’s wife had moved toward the front of our group, letting the soldiers fall in behind them. Kazuko looked at the woman. “A garden such as yours is so rare these days,” she said. “Who took the time to work at it so finely?”
The woman blushed when Kazuko spoke but said, “My husband and I work at it together. Often we kneel beside each other looking for weeds, for the undesirables that might ruin a garden like our own.”
The soldiers kept nonspecific looks on their faces while the women spoke, but the second cameraman let his camera run, taking in everything the women said or did. The warehouse loomed above us, making me feel small. Finally Nakamura’s wife said, “Please, he will be growing impatient.” She pulled the thin rope that opened the latch on the back gate and we all stepped through into the alley. The warehouse had previously been used for the storage of sake. There were various markings on the walls and there was an old, crippled wagon in the tall grass beside the door. Nakamura’s acumen for gardening did not extend, I could see, so far as the edges of his warehouse. The building itself was made of stone and had a new wooden roof where, cer - tainly, straw had once kept things dry.
“It is a family warehouse,” said Nakamura’s wife. “His grandfather used it long before the war. Of course we don’t need so much space to store our meager drugs. Father uses it as his retreat now. He has it fixed up just the way he likes it and comes here often to relax and meditate.”
Ike and Milo and the others had been suspended in silence all during our walk through the building and out the back and I remembered regular military patrols. Though we expected action at any time it always came as a surprise. The major’s wife pulled a heavy chain on the front of the door, allowing it to swing out until it blocked, partially, the alley between the warehouse and the gate leading to their home. She stood back and bowed in a formal way and spoke once more. “Go now,” she said. “Step inside.”
I had only called the man to insure that he would be home, to insure that he would be present for our questions if not agreeable to answering them. Yet it appeared as though I had given him time to set something up. Was this to be an ambush? Had he his own private army ready to attack us from the rafters?
We passed through the entrance then quickly moved into a crescent, fanning out and crouching. Nakamura’s wife closed the big door. “Father,” she said. “You were right. Guests have arrived.”
The entire warehouse, ceiling, walls, and floor, had been painted stark white and there were dozens of high-wattage light bulbs hanging down on six-foot cords from the thirty-foot-high ceiling. The place was built like a theater. There were crates standing freely here and there, and there was a high platform at the back of the building, a stage on which several chairs had been placed.
I spoke. “My friends and I are not enemies,” I said. “We have come with microphones to document what we say, cameras to show that we mean no harm.”
My voice carried so well within the warehouse. I had not shouted yet could be heard in the farthest corner of the building, I was sure. “We are not military men but wear these clothes only to remind you of the time of which we wish to speak.”
Nakamura was not visible but it did not occur to me to doubt that he was there. I could feel his presence, was quite certain he was standing behind one of the crates waiting to make his entrance. His sense of timing was turning out to be well tuned. We were the entertainers, not this pharmacist, yet he controlled us with his silence.
“Surely,” I said, “you will not deny us an interview. We have not spoken since the war, you and I. There is much we might find to say to one another.”
“No doubt,” said a voice, its words low and carefully spoken.
“I cannot tell where you are standing,” I said. “Show yourself.”
The cameramen held their cameras low and Ike motioned to the others in ways he had perfected during his short weeks as Nakamura’s aide. “Spread out,” he seemed to be saying. “Stay down. Keep your eyes open.”
Nakamura spoke. “My ancestors have always lived here, in and around this building. They were involved with grain once, and then with spirits. Now you and I are involved with spirits of a different sort. Why don’t we let them rest? We are too old to be engaging in such difficulties.”
The light in the warehouse, now that the door had been closed for a while and my eyes had adjusted, was strangely even. Though there were circles of it, the products of the hanging bulbs, there were so many of them that there was a blend. Nakamura’s wife was standing behind me and spoke to Kazuko.
“Father has not been well,” she said. “Had he his health, he would have remained a principal.”
The woman’s voice bothered me so I raised my own. “Major Nakamura, it is Christmas Day,” I said. “Are you dressed as well as your wife?”
“More finely, even, than that,” he said.
Nakamura’s voice, though we had no trouble hearing it, was so low that I got the impression he was involved in some activity, speaking to us with his back turned. I was growing impatient with him and motioned to the others. We all walked forward in an ungainly way. Soldiers, when before a finer presence, have always tended to be clumsy. Still, we walked nearly to the front of the building hoping to force the issue. I began to notice that there were zabuton on the floor all around us.
Suddenly Nakamura stood on the stage, perfectly in view from our new vantage point. He had not moved, I understood, but had been there all along. He had merely come into view in this odd room. Some trick of the lighting had hidden the spot where he stood. When I saw him I felt a chill. Truly Major Nakamura wore a fine holiday kimono but upon his face, covering entirely the look I had anticipated seeing, was a fine, white, even and expressionless Noh mask. He was dead still and staring at us.
“This is not a play,” I said.
“I was cast upon foreign soil as the leader of men,” said Major Nakamura. “This is no less a play than that was.”
> Nakamura moved his body slightly when he spoke, as Noh actors do. He tipped his head so that the light played upon the mask, giving expression to it. There was something to be seen there; the sense of a frown, a smile in moderation.
“The zabuton are for the audience,” he said. “Actors should be on the stage.”
“Come,” I said, but the others were already by my side, the women already sitting upon the large and comfortable looking zabuton. The stage was chest-high, not an easy climb, but before I could say anything Junichi and Milo had hoisted themselves upon it and were giving the rest of us a hand. They lifted the sensei off the floor with delicacy. They reached down for Ike with strong, assured hands. I was the last to be pulled up to the high platform upon which the action would take place and I felt flushed and disoriented. Our host, in his mask, had remained perfectly still. There were five chairs and, without instruction, we all sat down.
Once my senses cleared I noticed that next to Nakamura yet slightly toward the back of the stage was a long table covered with Noh masks. I couldn’t see them well but I could tell that they were of many shades and that their frozen expressions were varied. In a moment Nakamura turned and stepped slowly forward, lifting his arms, in their kimono sleeves, high out from his sides as he did so. Why had I assumed that his life, these forty years, had been a normal one? Clearly he had lived a horrible life all these years. This was his collection, his hobby. What Nakamura had created could only have been the labor of years, could not have been prepared solely for his meeting with us this Christmas Day. Perhaps he had lived all his life, since the war, under Noh masks, in this warehouse of his.
“Major Nakamura…”
“You are all soldiers come to remind me of the war,” he said. He kept still when he spoke, kept his arms raised like that, his kimono sleeves drooping like wings.
“My son and brother -in-law visited you once before,” I said softly. “We come now out of curiosity, out of a need to bury old memories.”
“Do not lie,” said Nakamura.
“Here is my son,” I said. “Here is my brother -in-law. I am not lying.”
I stood up and turned to my left and right and Milo and Ike stood too. We took a step toward the major. We moved in unison, felt the solid construction of his stage floor beneath our feet.
Major Nakamura dropped his arms abruptly then and spoke, from behind his mask, in a normal voice, one I actually recognized from the past. “What is it that you want?” he asked. “I can do nothing for you.”
“We cannot forget what happened to Private Yamamoto,” I said. “I remember the day you shot him. It has stayed with me all of my life ruining my ability to be free.”
“You lay too much blame on Yamamoto,” he said.
Though the major’s voice remained normal, the empty stare of his Noh mask was inhibiting my line of questioning. I stepped closer to him and held out my hand.
“I was there, major,” I said. “I remember the way you raised your arm, the way your pistol came to the side of his head. I remember the way he fell to the ground and died.”
“You are a fool, then,” he said, “to have wasted your life holding that thought. You were a mere observer, a member of the audience like these women here. Would it be their fault if I shot you now?”
Junichi, perhaps hearing the major’s words as a threat, stood and took a careful step forward, but I persisted. “Have you thought about Private Yamamoto over the years?” I asked. “Or is he buried among the relics of your past?”
The major raised his arms again and tipped his mask up toward the light before answering my question. He recited a famous poem.
Tired of cherry,
Tired ofthis whole world,
I sit facing muddy sake
And black rice.
The poem, rendered in the strangest and most wayward of voices, moved the last of us, the ancient sensei, out of his chair.
“I remember that poem,” he said. “It is true. So true.”
Though Nakamura’s presence before us was frightening, the sensei stepped up to him with no hesitation. “I have seen many Noh plays,” he said, “but I have never acted. How is it that you stand? What is it that you do with your hands?” The old teacher walked back to the long table, but waited until he was sure Nakamura would raise no objection before picking up one of the masks. He did not fasten it to his head, as the major had done, but merely held it to his face, peering through it with his ancient eyes. “There is one play I know,” he said. “Recite a little with me.” He held a thin hand out then and began to hum, modulating his voice as the major had. “Oooo,” he said. “I was by your side in youth. Do you not remember me? I have remained in spirit form, dwelling in the furthest reaches of your garden…”
Though I was irritated at my loss of control I was stopped by the voice the sensei had mustered. Could everyone act, then? His words were barely discernible under the mews and brays of his style.
The major remained motionless for a long moment but finally answered the old man, slumping under the weight of his words as he did so.
“I remember you,” he said. “You are the spirit of young Lord Bando, keeper of my master’s hopes, carrier of his name into antiquity. Why do you not rest? Why do you remain in the garden?”
The women, familiar with the lines, crooned their approval from down below the stage and the sensei said, “I have watched my father’s house decaying from my place in the garden … . Yet it is not unrestful.”
The major swung his arms then, so that his kimono sleeves ballooned out in front of him. He took a step toward the edge of the stage and peered out across the warehouse. “I can hear your voice” he said, “but I can see nothing of you. When I am restless and the moon is high I have seen you, though, staring up toward the house.”
“If you can see me I am real,” said the sensei. “If you can hear me I am real of voice. If you can neither see nor hear me then I have gone to my grave, as you wish, to rest.”
The warehouse amplified perfectly the lines from the play. I could not have remembered the lines myself but knew, when I heard them, that they had been spoken correctly. Had Major Nakamura practiced Noh as therapy, then, much as I had haunted the edges of Sachiko’s wounds?
I stepped between the actors. “Enough,” I said. “We have not come to hear Lord Bando but to remember the equally youthful death of Private Yamamoto. His ghost does not wait in the garden at my house. His voice does not echo across the years.” My own voice did, though, across the warehouse when I spoke.
All of a sudden Ike came forward, grim-faced with determination. “We want to know exactly why you shot our friend,” he demanded. “No more talk. You must tell the nation the reasons for your behavior!”
It was clear, when he spoke, that Ike was no longer Japanese. Either that or we were not. He had forgotten the rhythms of things and spoke so much like a World War II soldier that I feared he might actually strike the major. Junichi moved closer to him. No one in Japan spoke like that anymore. Noh plays still moved us but the rhetoric of war did not.
There was a quiet moment then until my son stepped forward and said, “Here. Let’s pretend. Let me take the part and see what I can do with it.” Milo took the Noh mask from the sensei but waited, not raising it to his face. With his hair under his hat he too was a fearful sight and I could tell that Major Nakamura was afraid of Milo, thought we had brought him Jimmy’s ghost to serve our purposes.
“I am the same young man who visited you with my uncle,” Milo said. “We are all modern people wearing stage uniforms. Noh is not popular in Japan anymore. You could remove your mask without risk.”
“It is my only hobby,” said the major. “How could I remove it?”
“We will be gone shortly if you tell us about the day in question,” said my son. “That day when you killed my father’s friend… I am not taking sides, you understand. Tell us the story from your own point of view.”
Milo looked so much like Jimmy, stood so calmly, spo
ke so nicely to the major, that I began to feel the beginning of an unraveling.
Major Nakamura spoke slowly. “There was a prisoner,” he said.
“Yes,” said Milo. “An American.”
“He was not humbled by his defeat, would not act as if defeated.”
“An American still,” said Milo. “That is what they do.”
Junichi, tallest among us, lifted the most foreign-looking of the masks from the table. He held it up and looked defiantly through it, trying to help things along.
“Yes,” said the major. “Like that.”
“But he was your prisoner,” said my son. “His defiant look would not give him any more freedom. He had no weapon, other than that look. You had his freedom under your control.”
“It was the situation,” said the major. “He was defiant before a backdrop of thin and beaten men. He was thin and beaten also but that look denied it. It was a look he had stolen from his captors and I thought it might give the other prisoners something to hope for.”
“He wasn’t facing reality, is that it?” asked Milo.
“Life was tedious then,” answered the major. “I was its administrator.”
Milo turned a moment, to stare out over the warehouse, then he looked back at the major and the rest of us. “O K ,” he said. “Let’s run through it once. Show us where we should stand. Your point of view is coming clear to me but I need things spelled out.”
“It is too painful,” said the major. “The stage is barren, leaving too much to the imagination.”
But Milo took Junichi by the arms and stood him alone at the center of an imaginary circle in the center of the stage. The mask Junichi had chosen was that with the whitest of skin, yet one with the hint of a smile. It was a clown’s face with one eye circled thinly in black. Junichi let his arms hang loosely at his sides and hunched his shoulders up around his neck so that the mask looked perched upon them.
“You see,” said Milo. “He does not elicit sympathy. He looks wild and foreign.” Milo affixed the mask to Junichi’s face and pressed his chauffeur’s arms to his sides once more for emphasis. Then he took the toe of his boot and, dragging it as a cripple might, reinforced the imaginary circle in our minds.
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