“What are they doing?” Hugh whispered.
“Turn the cup three times counterclockwise, then drink it in a few sips. It’s going to be bitter. But don’t worry—they’re giving everyone a sweet cookie to eat first.”
“It’s like taking Communion,” Hugh said, sounding more confident.
He was right. Tea ceremony was a form of a purification ritual; originally Buddhist priests had made the tea, not ladies who studied it as an art. I looked at the women, wondering who they were—no doubt longtime devotees of a tea school, perhaps many of them Morita wives. It would have seemed more natural for me to chat with the women than the men, but I guessed that their husbands kept all their business dealings from them; I probably wouldn’t learn much.
“You are English?” a voice came suddenly from behind.
Hugh and I turned as one to look at a Japanese man, close to him in height, with a hawkish nose and thick, straight black hair mixed with gray. The man, who looked somewhere in his fifties, was wearing a good-quality black wool suit. Now I understood that this was the proper men’s color for the event. Hugh had worn a wool-and-silk blended suit the color of macha—the thick, sludgy green tea that we would soon be drinking. I’d thought he looked very handsome an hour ago, but now I saw that he stuck out like a green thumb.
“Not quite,” Hugh said, looking at the man and smiling. “I’m from Scotland. My name is Hugh Glendinning. “
“I apologize for the error,” the man replied, inclining his head slightly.
“Sir. You are?” Hugh’s voice was confident, but I felt suddenly weak and embarrassed. It was too blunt to demand a person’s name like that.
“Hamazaki,” the man said, wrinkling the intense nose as he spoke.
“Oh, you are the managing director!” Hugh said, with a half-smile. I recovered from my embarrassment.
“Ah, yes.” Mr. Hamazaki stared in obvious surprise at Hugh. “But we don’t know each other.”
“We have a meeting scheduled. I represent an American law firm.”
There was a sudden stillness in the line around us. I imagined that everyone was wondering what the business was about.
“I’m Rei Shimura,” I said, to break the silence. “Hugh’s—uh—friend.”
“Rei, my wife to be, is a journalist who has written for a magazine—the Gaijin Times. I’m very proud of her for all those exposés—”
“Enough,” I said, blushing as I thought of the how-to pieces I’d written on fixing up antique furniture. “I’m currently working on a project on Japanese history.”
Mr. Hamazaki’s nostrils flared again. “Well, the invitation here is for you to enjoy tea, not to do business. That is, if you actually received an invitation?”
“The invitation was in fact passed on to me by a friend at the British Embassy who had to send his regrets.”
“Ah so desu ka. Have you ever experienced a Japanese tea ceremony?” Mr. Hamazaki’s innocuous question seemed to be a detour from the tension—but I felt an undercurrent of mockery in it.
“No, but I’m looking forward to it.” Hugh shot a glance at me, obviously seeking some kind of interruption.
“I have done it many times. My aunt is a member of the Urasenke Tea Society.” It was true, though I had never taken the time to study.
“Very good. I hope you will find our tea adequate—and congratulations on your upcoming nuptials. It looks as if it’s time for you to go in. Please enjoy.”
He was gone, and we were pushed into the tea ceremony room before either of us had a chance to catch our breath.
“That went brilliantly,” Hugh muttered in my ear as we kneeled down in a line amidst the others.
“You’ve got to be joking,” I said, shaking my head as I watched Mr. Hamazaki move through the room, giving tight half-bows to various guests.
“He knows we’re not here to play. That’s what I wanted.”
“Shh, others can understand,” I mouthed at him. I was watching one of the tea ceremony servers, a woman my aunt’s age in a beautiful green kimono decorated with a design of tall grasses. It seemed as if Mr. Hamazaki was indicating Hugh and me to her with a slight hand movement, because she glanced at us, then back at him.
“Did you learn from your friend at the embassy who the ladies serving the tea are?” I whispered as the woman in green went to the room’s altar and poured hot water from a kettle sitting on an ancient brazier into a bowl.
“No, I didn’t. But I’m sure they’re too old to be Morita office ladies.”
I thought some more. “They must be members of a tea society to be doing this, but I imagine some of the society members are also Morita corporate wives. Tea ceremony is a valued skill among upper-middle-class wives.”
“Really? Are you telling me what you’re going to spend the next ten years doing?”
I would have kicked him, but we were being ushered by another woman to step onto the tatami square, where tea was being served. I watched the woman in green tap tea powder into the bowl and mix it into a froth. Actually, she was too far away for me to see exactly what she was doing, but I’d been to enough tea ceremonies to know the ritual. Her role was to start the ceremony by bringing a cup to the highest-ranking person seated on the tatami. If Mr. Hamazaki had been seated, it would have gone to him; but since he had vanished back into the waiting crowd, the highest-ranking person would be someone else.
I bit my lip when the woman in green brought a tray with two cups on it to Hugh and me. In a fluid movement, she kneeled down, placed the tray on the tatami, and bowed her head.
Hugh bowed in return—too slightly, in my opinion, but he was a real novice. He took the cup, but didn’t sip, just looked at me. Great. He was expecting me to go first.
The woman in green then placed a cup before me. I made a big show of bowing lower than Hugh, and then turned the cup three times in my hands. As I turned, I looked into the pea green depths and inhaled the aroma. Then I stopped.
I’d caught a glimpse of something white rearing itself from under the foam. White. What in the world was something white doing in a cup of green tea? I turned the cup again, and I didn’t see it anymore. Either it had dissolved or I’d been seeing things.
I brought the cup to my nose and sniffed the aroma again. It didn’t smell like the type of tea I’d had at the Urasenke Society. Perhaps the blend was different.
I began to sweat under the kimono, and glanced nervously at Hugh. He hadn’t drunk his tea either, but was watching me for guidance.
I shook my head at him.
“What?” he whispered.
“Don’t,” I mouthed, and shook my head again. I avoided saying that I was scared because I realized that Mr. Hamazaki might have given instructions to the woman standing right before our eyes. Did potassium chloride have a color? I knew it was supposed to be quite salty—would the natural bitterness of green tea mask it?
“What’s wrong?” Hugh asked, his eyes boring into me.
Unable to answer without being overheard, I placed my teacup down on the tatami mat in front of me. After a second’s hesitation, Hugh followed my lead. By now, the two people to our right had been served; they drank their tea without delay. The tea service went on, almost interminably; at every moment, I was aware of the full cup before me, and the apparent strangeness of my action.
The women came around again and took the cups from everyone; at us, they paused, as if they thought we were waiting to drink.
“Please,” the woman whispered. The command she’d used was one of hospitality, but it sounded desperate. Please drink. Was it because she wanted to save the ceremony, or because Mr. Hamazaki had told her to make certain we drained our cups?
“Allergies,” I said quietly in Japanese. “So sorry. My fiancé and I both suffer.”
“Oh, I am sorry.” She added our cups to her tray.
Everyone was looking at us. My face burned, and I realized that in all my years in Japan, this was the most heinous etiquette violation I’d ev
er committed. Not to take tea with the others—not to follow the ritual—and then to come up with such an unbelievably lame excuse…oh, it was too embarrassing. Aunt Norie had been worried about Hugh embarrassing the family, but I’d done the job entirely on my own.
We hit the street five minutes later. It wasn’t that we’d been thrown out of Morita headquarters, but it was clear that nobody wanted to talk to us after the tea-drinking debacle. We’d become larger than life—the foreigner who had been blunt with the company president, and his Japanese-American mistress. I knew that’s what people thought, because I caught whispers of it behind my back.
“So what was in the tea?” Hugh asked as he raised a halfhearted arm to flag down a taxi. They were all passing us by, and it had started to rain. I pulled the light kimono coat over me, hoping that neither it nor my vintage robe would be ruined.
“I thought I saw something white in it. It could have been nothing but foam, but with the poisonings of Rosa and Ramon, I felt I just couldn’t drink. And I didn’t want you to risk drinking it, either.”
“But Ramon wasn’t poisoned,” Hugh said.
“Oh, will we ever know?” I paused, trying to fight back tears. “I’m sorry. Probably there was nothing in the tea, but I just had an ominous feeling.”
“Better safe than sorry, I guess.”
“But it’s so embarrassing! Do you know what I overheard someone calling us? The bizarre foreigner and the nisei whore who thinks she’s too good to drink Japanese tea.”
Hugh laughed. “And I thought this event was all about manners. Well, live and learn. And I’m hungry—how about you? Why don’t we get supper somewhere?”
“Whatever. But I can’t believe you can think of food at a time like this,” I said as we headed back to Kawasaki Station.
“Just because I’m sensible enough to want supper doesn’t mean I’m not concerned. Hey, I was attempting to launch a powerful image that’s been sadly deflated. Now they’ll all think the negotiator from the U.S. is too squeamish to even drink tea.”
“But at least you’re still alive,” I said. “Think about it that way.”
“All right,” Hugh said softly. “I will.”
Sleep. It was what I really wanted, after the long trip back from Kawasaki. Hugh had brought take-out Chinese food from the train station, and while it had tasted good at first, I’d gotten kicked in the stomach by its high MSG count. I had Hugh unwrap me as quickly as possible from the constrictive bindings of the kimono, and then I lay down on my futon, knees curled to my chest. I sank into an exhausted slumber just after midnight, but then the telephone shrilled.
“Take it, Mr. Energy,” I muttered to Hugh, who was still reading by torchlight on the other side of the futon.
“It’s for you,” he said, not moving.
The phone trilled again.
“The phone’s closer to you,” I pointed out.
“Darling, every time I pick up the phone and answer, people ring off. It happened earlier today three times. Go ahead, give it your best.” Hugh grabbed the receiver, pressed “On,” and put it to the side of my head.
“Moshi-moshi,” I muttered.
“Moshi-moshi, this is Okada…” On the other end was a woman’s voice, sounding tentative. But I’d woken up fully. Okada was Manami’s family name. Maybe her parents had called me back about her whereabouts. Although the timing was inconvenient, I was glad I’d have the chance to learn what happened to my parents’ missing houseguest.
“Yes, thank you for calling!” I said in a bright voice. “Is it about Manami-san?”
“Yes. I mean, I am Manami Okada. I hope to speak with Shimada-san?”
“This is Shimada,” I said, sitting upright and shooting Hugh a significant glance. Her father had passed along my messsage—and my fictitious name—to her. Manami’s voice sounded just the same as always, but I couldn’t be myself; I’d have to playact a bit to get the information I needed. “Okada-san, where are you calling from?”
“From America,” Manami said. “However, I’m very eager to return to Japan.”
“I understand,” I said, not believing her for a minute. She’d probably been in Kobe for a while, but was putting on a proper face with me, to show she wasn’t a quitter.
“As you must have heard, I was taking advanced studies in pathology in the United States. I would prefer to finish my course of study in Japan, as I will practice here someday.”
“Was there something that didn’t please you with the program in San Francisco?” I asked, playing the interviewer.
“Well, the pathology department at the University of California at San Francisco is excellent, but culturally, the city and people are not so nice. I heard people say that one never really understands what it is to be Japanese until one has been on the outside, living with foreigners.”
This was the girl I’d thought was my only real Japanese friend in America. I swallowed my hurt and asked, “And how are the foreigners? Can you describe them?”
“Well, my host family tried to be kind, but they were just so…strange. It was a half-and-half family, to be honest. Their manners were different than ours. You wouldn’t believe the behavior of their daughter, too—so wild, with this foreign boyfriend, right in her parents’ house! I guess it’s the custom with American girls. Let me assure you that I am not like that; I am a regular Japanese and a hard worker. I am ready to work hard at any hospital. I didn’t catch the name of the hospital you represent, by the way?”
I had moved from embarrassment to rage. “The hospital of the sick and disillusioned.”
“What place is that?” Manami asked, sounding innocent.
“It’s a hospital where people go who’ve learned the hard way about opening their hearts and homes to strangers. Think about the efforts your host family made to include you in holidays, to feed you, to comfort you when you were sad! And that badly behaved daughter, who tried to teach you English slang because she thought you were genuinely interested—”
A gasp. “You—you aren’t—”
“I’m not a Shimada, I’m a Shimura.” I said it with anger and pride. “My name is Rei Shimura. My mother, the one who made lunches for you, is Catherine. And my father—you know him as Kenji—is on the verge of going to the San Francisco police about you! He knew you were troubled all along, but you’re so much worse than I thought.”
“Rei-san, I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to—”
“You say the words, but you don’t mean them. It’s all lies.”
I heard Manami gasp. Then she spoke in a voice that was in an entirely different register. “You shouldn’t have played a trick to get me to call you. It isn’t right.”
“It’s not Japanese manners, is it?” I was still on my rampage. “Well, excuse me. And one last thing: I don’t expect you to do this, but what you really should do is go back and face up to what you did. Tell people the truth. For once.”
I was sick of Manami. I clicked the receiver and threw it down on the quilt.
There was a moment of silence. Then Hugh spoke.
“I don’t need to ask who your caller was, but as for your reaction, darling…maybe you were too frank—”
“Well, it’s too late now.” I groped around the quilt to recover the telephone receiver. I wanted to see if the Caller ID function would show me if Manami was in Japan or the United States. The phone she had used, however, couldn’t easily be tracked; NO DATA SENT was the message that appeared in the window when I clicked back. I had no idea where she’d called from. But I was mad enough that I still wanted to talk to my father, and I dialed overseas to my home number.
The telephone rang endlessly. One of my parents was probably online. I decided to try again the next day. I was tired and cranky and needed sleep.
“Will it bother you if I stay up a while longer?” Hugh asked, tucking the covers around me.
“No. What are you doing, work on the class action?”
“Actually, I’m reading your great-grandfather
’s book. Tom sent more pages.”
As I drifted off, I reflected that reading that book was supposed to be my job, not Hugh’s.
It seemed like only a few hours later that sunlight was streaming into my eyes. I felt the space next to me on the futon, and it was empty. At 6 A.M., I still craved sleep; but since Hugh was up, I wanted to know what he was working on.
I pulled on a hip-length wool sweater over my Japanese long underwear, since I was now back in the land of no central heating, and opened the door.
Hugh was hunched over the tea table, still reading. “Guess who came to the door about half an hour ago? The courier. I’ve got my documents from San Francisco.”
“Great,” I said, settling myself next to him. “So what are the answers to the questions?”
“No answers, really. The paralegal sent a transcript, but no actual tape from the interview that Eric and I did. She included a note saying that she’s trying to locate the tape and will send it on when it’s recovered. But I bet it’s gone for good, don’t you?”
“Probably. What does Eric’s transcript say, though?” I sunk my head onto his shoulder.
“Well, I’ve read it through a few times and haven’t noticed any mention of ingots or gold or tunnels. The most significant things recorded are Rosa’s memories of abuse, and her claim that she saw Japanese officers order soldiers to bury some of the Asian laborers alive. That’s stuff he translated for me, verbatim, during the interview, so I have a feeling it was spontaneous and true.”
“I agree. She brought up the burial again when I visited her.” I shuddered at the memory. “About the gold, though—we can’t be sure. The tape we have is quite hard to understand. We didn’t come up with the theory until we listened to it many times. We might be wrong.”
Hugh pulled away and looked at me. “I’m not about to order an excavation of the Philippine jungle, you know. I never said the gold was a sure thing.”
“But you’d like it to be. If it turns out that Eric and Charles have dirty dealings, they could be ousted from being part of the class action, couldn’t they? You could be a hero at Andrews and Cheyne.”
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