The Moonflower

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Did the trouble next door clear up?” he asked, when Marcia was settled in the cab and Yoji had been introduced.

  She did not look at him. “I don’t know. Jerome didn’t talk about it when he came home.”

  “Nan wouldn’t talk either,” he said cheerfully. “I tried to pump her when I took her home that evening.”

  She was not deceived by his casual air. “Why are you so interested in my husband?” she asked him directly.

  “The answer to that isn’t altogether simple,” he said. “I could give you several reasons. My book. Mark Brewster’s interest in him. My own knowledge of his work.” He seemed to hesitate.

  “There’s still another reason, isn’t there?” she prompted.

  “Perhaps an adding up of all these,” he said and turned from the subject to draw Yoji out, encouraging him to talk.

  Yoji’s “l’s”—that nonexistent letter in the Japanese vocabulary—gave him trouble when he tried to express his longing for knowledge about America. He turned around in the front seat and fixed Marcia with an interested look.

  “Prease you rive in San Francisco?” he asked.

  Marcia explained that she lived just across the bay in Berkeley, and Yoji sighed in vast yearning. It was clear that he wanted, more than anything else in the world, to visit America. Alan said most of the boys in his class had wistful dreams along this line.

  “There’s not much opportunity for a boy like Yoji in Japan light now,” Alan said. “I suppose there are a hundred college graduates for every job, and the pay is low. It’s hard for them to make any except arranged marriages. Yet our notions about love are becoming popular in Japan, thanks to books and the movies. There have been a lot of hopeless romances, even suicides.”

  Yoji listened earnestly, but Marcia suspected that he had caught little of this.

  The day was bright and not too cold and the streets of Kyoto thronged with people. Mostly one saw western dress, the young women looking trim and smart as any Tokyo girl in their American-style skirts and sweaters.

  Laurie loved the little open-front shops, with all the goods displayed on traylike shelves that tilted toward the street, so that the passer-by could see the merchandise at a glance. The shops were wonderfully neat in their arrangement of goods, but you often had to step over mud puddles to enter them. Dust was clearly a problem and the owners of small stands and shops were constantly dousing the ground thereabout with pails of water.

  Marcia could see the upward curving tiled roofs and white towers of Nijo Castle rising above lower buildings before the cab pulled up at the main gate. A moat still barred the way to high, slanting stone walls surrounding the castle, and tiled eaves rose in sharp points against the sky. Alan purchased their tickets and Laurie was delighted with the delicate drawing of Nijo Castle printed in pale green on her souvenir stub.

  As they walked over the bridge and through the gateway, Yoji took upon himself the duties of a guide, telling them about the castle. Across the courtyard rose a great inner palace with elaborately carved and decorated eaves, and Yoji led the way toward it.

  Laurie, never having been near a castle of any description before, kept Yoji busy with her questions. Others were visiting the castles today as well, and Marcia glimpsed a few American faces.

  They left their shoes at the entrance and stepped into the slippers provided. The floors were of the beautiful, unvarnished wood that was usual in Japan, always polished to a soft luster.

  Wide corridors led past the palace rooms. Without any furnishings, these rooms seemed surprisingly bare to the western eye, and after a time monotonous. But the sliding screens that formed their walls were handsomely painted with scenes of mountains and sea, cherry blossoms and pine trees, and the ceilings were lavishly designed and often painted in gold leaf. All about Marcia sensed serenity and beauty. One could understand the formality of Japan in such a setting, where ritual was everything and no man must break the pattern. In ritual lay security and little need to think for oneself. It was probably a good thing that the new Japan was breaking away from stultifying form to some extent. Yet the old had the dignity of beauty and assurance.

  Laurie tried tiptoeing along the “nightingale floor” of a corridor that led to the shogun’s rooms, and it squeaked beneath her feet, meant to warn of the approach of one who came stealthily and therefore could have no good intent.

  Released from the depressing atmosphere of Jerome’s house, Marcia felt almost gay. Despair was for those who accepted its rule and today she would have none of it. She sensed that Alan watched her with a questioning look, but she did not know what he questioned, nor particularly care. It was enough to be lighthearted for the moment and free of any immediate strain.

  In the main room of the castle life-size figures of the shogun and his attendant lords had been set up, looking startlingly alive in their elaborate silk robes. They were placed in the positions they might have taken for some important function—the shogun on the slightly raised platform at the back, the others in descending rank leading away from him.

  Yoji, with the typical Japanese affection for children, had become Laurie’s willing companion, and when she drew him away to view the garden paralleling a corridor, Marcia stood beside Alan, studying the room and figures.

  “I keep noticing the differences between Japan and the Philippines,” Alan said. “Here you never get away from a sense of history behind everything you see. A civilized sort of history that’s missing in the jungle past of the Philippines.”

  She glanced at him, a little curious. “I remember you said during the trip that you’d lived in the Orient as a child. Was your father stationed in the Philippines?”

  He nodded. “Manila, most of the time. We lived on Military Plaza and I went to the American School in Manila as a boy.”

  “What was it like in Manila?” she asked as they walked on to view the next room.

  A slow smile curved his mouth. “What I remember is made up of bits and pieces. The papaya trees with their big, fingered leaves. The heat. The houseboy who went barefoot because he had only recently come down from the mountains. The American public library inside the Spanish walled city, and how hot the cement sidewalks were when I walked there in the afternoon to get books to read. And of course I remember Manila Bay and the sunsets over Corregidor.”

  “Have you ever gone back?” she asked. “I mean since the war ended?”

  For an instant he hesitated, then shook his head. “So much of what I remember has been bombed out of existence. I’m not sure I want to go back.”

  She sensed something behind his words that held her off—a turning away, the same sort of withdrawal she had felt in him before.

  They walked on toward the place where Yoji and Laurie stood gazing out at the lovely garden.

  The sudden swaying movement of the floor beneath her feet startled Marcia. All about them the doors and screens of the palace rattled and shook. A nearby American woman gave a nervous squeal and clutched at her husband. In the garden the leaves of an ancient camphor tree rustled as if shaken by a mighty hand. Marcia, as a girl from the San Francisco Bay area, knew what had happened.

  “Earthquake,” Alan said, and took her arm lightly. “Not a bad one, I think.”

  It had lasted no more than seconds before the earth was quiet again. Yoji had taken Laurie by the hand and turned back to join them. He was grinning as if something funny had occurred and Laurie’s eyes were dancing with excitement.

  “That was a Japanese earthquake!” she cried. “Did you see the way the tree out there shook all its leaves?”

  “Very smarr size eart’-quake,” Yoji said apologetically. “Catfish moving whiskers.”

  He explained the legend of the huge catfish which lived at the core of the earth. When it twitched its whiskers the land felt a tremor. But when it really wriggled its tail then a great earthquake shook Japan.

  “It’s when the ground goes up and down that you’d better start running,” Alan said. “I gat
her that a slight sideways movement isn’t considered serious.”

  When they had completed their tour of the castle, Yoji left them at the gate, having promised to do an errand for his mother. Alan suggested that they take a cab downtown and walk through the shopping section. Marcia was happy to agree. She had no desire to hurry back to the dark Japanese villa that was becoming for her a haunted place filled with unanswered questions and the presence of a man who had turned into a stranger.

  They got out of the cab at Sanjo Bridge—bridge number three—and walked along a narrow sidewalk on Kawaramachi, a shopping and theater street. Laurie paused in delight before the windows of a doll shop, where Japanese court ladies and gentlemen in samurai costume posed, cunningly executed and dressed to the last detail. Inside were glass show cases and wall cases filled with dolls of every description. Laurie led the way in and stopped entranced before a group of character dolls representing a Japanese family. A little girl doll, with the plump rosy cheeks and solemn dark eyes that one saw everywhere in Japan, seemed to hold out her arms to Laurie.

  “This one looks just like Tomiko!” Laurie cried. “Oh, Mommy—”

  “My treat,” Alan said, smiling, and raised a finger toward the store attendant.

  Marcia tried to protest, for the dolls were expensive, but Alan paid no attention.

  “I can’t think of any better way to spend some of my Japanese royalties,” he said. “Are you sure that’s the one you want, Laurie?”

  There was no need to ask. Girl and doll appeared to have fallen in love with each other.

  The doll was carried away and packed in a box, tied handsomely in figured tissue and colored paper ribbon. Since this was intended as a presento, the little paper fish symbol was again tucked beneath the string.

  Laurie hugged the box to her in delight as the store keeper bowed them politely to the door.

  Alan looked as pleased as Laurie over the purchase and shook his head smilingly at Marcia.

  “Bachelor’s prerogative,” he said.

  They wandered on past camera stores, tiny eating shops where congealed-looking plastic imitations in glass cases showed the food that was being served inside. There were American type drugstores, and amazingly beautiful Japanese candy stores, where the confections within were like something freshly picked from a flower garden.

  The next store to draw them inside was Maruzen Bookstore, which had the look from the doorway of any big American bookshop. It was a busy place, with Japanese at every counter, some of them merely reading, as if this were a library. For the most part the Japanese books were bound in paper, with colorful pictures on the covers.

  Laurie found a table of books for children and began to leaf through those which had pictures in them, while Alan paused to examine a standing row of volumes, suddenly exclaiming as he drew out a book printed in Japanese characters.

  “My book,” he said dryly to Marcia. “I didn’t expect they’d still have it around.”

  The cover picture on the paper volume arrested Marcia’s attention. It showed a fierce looking Japanese soldier in modern uniform, with a long curved sword dangling from his belt. In the background rose the tower of a building that looked Spanish, and there were a few palm trees nearby. That Spanish architecture, the tropical foliage, the Japanese soldier—did they stand for Manila? she wondered.

  She looked at the man beside her, startled. “You weren’t able to leave the Philippines before the war, were you?”

  “No,” he said quietly, “we were caught. My father died in the fighting there and my mother and I didn’t get out in time.”

  Marcia touched the pictured Spanish tower with her finger. “Santo Tomas?” she said.

  He nodded. “I was interned there for four years.”

  He made the statement simply and she offered no sympathetic response, sensing that he would reject it. “This is the story of your imprisonment, then? What did you call it?”

  “It’s not a title I’m proud of, any more than I’m proud of the book. It’s called The Tin Sword. That’s a phrase that grew up in Japan among those who disliked Bushido, the way of the samurai, and didn’t want to see modern Japanese carrying the sword of the warrior. It’s an angry title, I’m afraid, just as it’s an angry book.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be angry?” Marcia asked. “You must have had plenty of reason.”

  “It was the wrong kind of anger.” Alan was almost curt. “It was against the wrong thing.”

  There were questions she wanted to ask. Why, under such circumstances, had he wished to come to Japan? And how did he feel now about the country and the people? But Laurie returned just then and Marcia postponed her questions.’

  “Would you mind if I bought your book?” she asked Alan.

  “I won’t object,” he said, but he did not look altogether pleased as she made the purchase.

  As they went out to the street again, there seemed a certain restraint upon him, as if finding the book had turned his thoughts to matters he wanted to forget.

  9.

  When she got home Marcia took Alan’s book into her room and put it away in a drawer. Somehow she did not want Jerome to see it. If it had been written in a vein of which Alan himself no longer approved, she did not want Jerome scoffing at it, or perhaps even growing indignant over the title. Perhaps she would show it to Nan Horner and ask her to translate a little of it.

  At dinner that night Jerome seemed unusually cheerful and pleasant. The feeling of well-being and release which the afternoon had engendered continued in Marcia. Jerome showed more interest in Laurie than he had done since her arrival, and when she brought the doll she had named “Tomi” after Tomiko, to the table to show her father, he admired it and listened to the account she gave him of their day.

  “I’m glad you’re getting around a bit,” he told Marcia. “It would be a shame to leave Japan without seeing more of it. You must arrange a trip to Nara, and to some of the other beauty spots of Japan.”

  She agreed that she would like to see some of these places, and did not argue with his assurance that all was settled and she would shortly go home to the States.

  Basking in the light of her father’s rare attention, Laurie told him about Nijo Castle, and now, inevitably, the fact came out that Alan Cobb had spent the years of the war in a Japanese prison camp in Manila.

  “Santo Tomas?” Jerome’s brows went up in surprise. “I wonder why he didn’t mention it when he was here the other night?”

  “I don’t think he likes to talk about it,” Marcia said.

  Jerome’s interest in the subject of Alan apparently lapsed quickly and he did not pursue the matter. After dinner, he sent Laurie off to the bedroom to play with her new doll and asked Marcia almost formally to come into the drawing room for a talk.

  The big room seemed gloomier than ever tonight. The wind had risen, blowing down from the mountains, and it seemed to circle the house, setting its ancient joints to creaking. Jerome closed the door and came to stand beside the fireplace. Superficially, his manner was pleasant, as it had been all through dinner, but it seemed to Marcia that his eyes were a little wary. Her feeling of gentle gaiety which had persisted from the afternoon began to ebb in the face of his watchful attention.

  “Have you done the thinking I asked you to?” he said. “Have you decided how soon you can return to the States?”

  She curled herself into the worn leather chair and clasped her hands about her knees. Only the firelight moved in the room, sending wavering shadows up the walls. This was the moment when she must let him know clearly that she could not accept his decision to send her home. How much easier it would be, she thought with longing, if she could talk to him with her head against his shoulder in the old way.

  “Sit down here,” she pleaded, gesturing to the hassock near her chair.

  For a moment his eyes softened and he looked as if he might do as she asked. Then he stiffened, suddenly alert and listening. His attention had shifted to something outside the r
oom. To the wind, perhaps, whining at the windows, whispering around the eaves. Upstairs something creaked as if there were someone there who tiptoed stealthily.

  “So we have nightingale floors like Nijo Castle?” she said, keeping her tone light.

  “Listen!” Jerome said and tensed to the furtive sound.

  The soft, stealthy creaking began again. It might be footsteps, or it might be only the wind blowing about an old wooden house. Marcia held her breath in suddenly fearful listening. Jerome strode to the hall door and opened it softly, then stood listening again. He went toward the stairs.

  The room seemed vast and empty without him, filled with dark corners and recesses and shadowy movement. The clock on the mantel was running now and it spoke loudly in the silence, as she waited for Jerome to return. For a little while she could hear him moving about upstairs, then he came down again.

  “This house has played tricks like that on me before,” he said ruefully. “Of course no one can come through from the other half of the house. I’m the only one who holds a key.”

  “Why should anyone want to?” Marcia asked. The softening in him had vanished and he was far away from her again.

  “I don’t trust Minato any farther than I can see him,” he told her. “He is a leftover from the war and a misfit. He drinks too much and he has developed a grudge against me.”

  He drummed idly on the marble mantel, while Marcia waited for him to go on. What lay behind such a grudge, she wondered. Chiyo, perhaps? If Jerome were interested in Chiyo—that would surely disturb Ichiro. Marcia turned in quick revulsion from the thought. Jerome had never been a person whose motives were simply understood. There were complexities in him and this might be something far less simple than Chiyo’s possible attraction for him.