The Moonflower

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  She stood up, but Taro’s yells had brought help from the other house. Before Marcia could move to his aid, Chiyo Minato ran through the gate with her kimono flapping open at the knees in a most un-Japanese and unladylike fashion. She rushed to the two children and pulled Laurie off Taro’s back.

  “What are you doing?” she cried in English, shaking her excitedly. “What are you doing to my son?”

  For just an instant Marcia was too startled to move. That the delicately Japanese Chiyo should suddenly make a western-style dash across the garden with her kimono flying and burst into words in an accent that was completely American, was too astonishing to be grasped.

  But now Laurie was crying too, though more in indignation than anything else, and Marcia went quickly toward the little group.

  11.

  “I’m sorry if Laurie hurt Taro,” Marcia told Chiyo, “but I’m afraid your son was in the wrong. He was rough with his little sister, and he threw their turtles into the fishpond.”

  At the sight of Marcia, Chiyo seemed to freeze into her familiar pattern. She regarded her with a blank lack of understanding, but the mask had been donned too late and the words Chiyo had spoken could not be unsaid.

  “You know English, don’t you, Mrs. Minato?” Marcia said curiously. “And you speak it without the accent of a person who learns it as a foreign language. Are you a Nisei?”

  Chiyo turned away from her, not answering for a moment. She wiped Taro’s tears and comforted the weeping Tomiko. Laurie was brushing herself off indignantly and still muttering. It took a good deal to make the gentle Laurie angry, but when she lost her temper, she did it in a large way.

  “He thinks that because he’s a boy, he can do anything he likes and we girls have to take it,” she cried. “But that’s not the way we do in America. I don’t like boys who tease.”

  Taro threw her a last doubtful look and darted for the safety of his own house.

  “He won’t bother us any more,” Laurie told Tomiko. “Let’s see if we can fish those turtles out of the pond. See, there’s one swimming over to a rock on this side.”

  Chiyo watched the girls go back to their play, and then turned reluctantly to Marcia. “I don’t speak English much any more. Sometimes it comes out when I least expect it.”

  Chiyo’s face was the much-admired melon seed shape, long and oval, her skin very white, her eyes faintly tilted and as dark as any eyes could be. She looked so lovely and delicate, so very Japanese in her gray kimono with the white bamboo pattern, that the words she was speaking seemed all the more incongruous. A hundred questions and doubts were surging up in Marcia’s mind. If this girl spoke English so well, it was even more likely she should interest an American who was a long way from home.

  A painful flare of jealousy swept through Marcia, bringing with it a curiosity that sickened her a little. To want to know … everything. And yet to realize that by knowing she might inflict unbearable pain on herself was a shaking experience. Still she managed to smile at Chiyo. No matter what the result might be, this was an opportunity she could not let pass.

  “Won’t you come in the house for a little while and talk to me?” she said. “The cat’s out of the bag now. You can’t put it back.”

  There was a tremulous look about Chiyo’s mouth, as if she were not far from tears.

  “I—I must not come in—” she began, but Marcia touched one kimono sleeve lightly.

  “Please come. There will be no one there but me. Sumie-san will bring us tea.”

  After another moment of indecision Chiyo allowed herself to be persuaded. She stepped out of her geta at the entrance and moved across the polished floor in the modest pigeon-toed fashion of the proper Japanese lady. Marcia led her into the cozier bedroom, which she used much of the time now as a sitting room, in preference to the huge drawing room.

  “We’ll be more comfortable in here,” she said. “Try this rocker, it’s my favorite chair.”

  Chiyo sat down stiffly, her eyes downcast, her face expressionless. She was far from inner repose, Marcia suspected.

  “You wear a kimono so gracefully,” Marcia said. “So many Japanese have taken to western dress. But you ran just now as though you had grown up accustomed to our sort of clothes.”

  “My husband prefers the old ways,” Chiyo said softly. While her speech was American in accent, it was faintly stilted, as though she had used English seldom in recent years. “I like the kimono,” she added. “It reminds me that I am Japanese.” She looked straight at Marcia. “I want to be only Japanese.”

  There was almost a challenge in her words and Marcia sought to reassure her. “Why not, if that’s the way you prefer it? But you were American once?”

  “American born,” Chiyo said quickly. “A Nisei, with Japanese parents. We lived in San Francisco until I was eleven years old.”

  “I lived across the bay in Berkeley,” Marcia said.

  Chiyo nodded her smooth black head. “Yes, I know.”

  Sumie-san brought tea and set the tray on a low table between the two women. Her face showed nothing of the surprise she must have felt that their neighbor should have been invited into this house. Marcia could imagine what a buzz of discussion would go on in the kitchen when she returned.

  There was silence while Marcia poured the green tea and passed the plate of salted sembi that were like small brown cocktail crackers. For all her outward calm, she felt keyed up, excited, yet wary at the same time. Chiyo must not guess how curious she was about her, how eager to thrust aside the curtain of mystery that hung between the two sides of the house. The unpleasant flare of jealousy she had thrust away. Or so she hoped.

  “Could you speak Japanese when you first came here?” Marcia asked.

  “Yes, of course.” Chiyo sipped her tea. “It is my second language. I grew up speaking both English and Japanese as a child. But it was hard for me when I first came here. I was really an American child then. I didn’t want to be Japanese. My parents had wanted for a long time to visit their homeland and they didn’t want me to be wholly American. A few months before the war started, they brought me to Japan.”

  “It must have been painful to have your two countries at war,” Marcia said.

  “It was. Especially since I was neither all Japanese, nor entirely American. The other children thought I was strange. I could speak the language, and I looked Japanese, but I didn’t know enough about Japanese ways and customs. My parents had become Americanized in many ways, and there was so much they hadn’t taught me. I made mistakes.”

  “What sort of mistakes?”

  Chiyo smiled a little sadly. “I didn’t even know how to open a shoji properly. There is just one place to put your hands, and you must kneel first on one side, then on the other in just the right manner as you slide the door back. There are hundreds of exact customs like that which a Japanese girl must know, or else be considered badly brought up. But those were small things. I learned them in time.”

  With a sudden gesture that was more American than Japanese she set her teacup down.

  “I must go now. I should not be here at all. My—my husband would not like it.”

  “Why should he mind?” Marcia asked directly.

  Chiyo sat in silence, not answering. Though she had come into the house and had talked with only a little hesitation, there was no friendliness in her. She still held herself coolly aloof.

  “Please wait, don’t go so quickly,” Marcia said. “There are so many things about this house that I don’t understand. Why are we forbidden to have anything to do with each other? Why are our children not supposed to play together?”

  Chiyo started to speak, hesitated, lowered her eyes. “You must ask your husband these things.”

  It was clear that direct questions would do Marcia no good if they concerned the life of this house.

  “Then tell me about your first years here,” Marcia said. “I want to understand what it was like.”

  Chiyo did not look at her as she began
to speak. “My father was killed in the fighting in New Guinea, though he did not believe in the war. All the rest died at home—my mother and aunt, my brother and sister. Our home in Tokyo was destroyed. At the end the Japanese people no longer cared about winning or losing. They wanted only for the war to stop. It was so with me—I had no country. I had only suffering and loss.”

  Nothing could be said in the face of Chiyo’s stark words.

  “But you’re happy again now with your husband and children?” Marcia said gently.

  Chiyo bowed her head in silence and Marcia wondered how truly happy she was.

  “What of your cousin?” Marcia asked. “She too has recovered from the war?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Chiyo spoke so softly Marcia could hardly catch the words.

  “My cousin has suffered most of all. She will never recover. My cousin is—is ill.”

  Once more a door had been closed and Marcia sensed that it would not open again on this occasion. Nor had she any wish to prod further in the face of Chiyo’s unhappy account.

  Chiyo rose and bowed in the Japanese fashion. “Arigato gozaimasu. Thank you for the tea. I must go now.” She went silently to the door and Marcia accompanied her into the hall. But before they reached the side veranda, Chiyo turned to her, suddenly earnest.

  “It would be best for you to go home soon, Mrs. Talbot. Best to take your little girl and go back to America.”

  “My husband is here,” Marcia said steadily. “I want to make my home with him.”

  Chiyo’s face was expressionless, but it seemed to Marcia that anguish looked out of her eyes. Her tone was suddenly urgent. “If you stay something terrible may happen. You are not wanted here. You will only hurt the innocent if you remain.”

  For a moment the two women looked at each other and all semblance of friendship was gone. An unspoken enmity had sprung to life between them.

  Chiyo bowed again, formally, stepped into her geta and hurried into the garden. At the fishpond she picked Tomiko up in her arms and bore her away through the gate, shut it firmly behind her.

  Marcia looked after her, feeling a little ill with the mingling of emotions that swept through her. Though Jerome’s name had not been spoken, something had come into the open. It was, Marcia thought, as if Jerome had stood there between them, claimed in some way by each woman, turning wholly to neither.

  Laurie came toward her from the garden. “Why did she take Tomiko away? Is she mad because I pushed Taro down? But he was mean first. Why did he have to tease us and spoil our fun?”

  Gently Marcia smoothed back the locks of hair that strayed loose about Laurie’s forehead. “I suppose he wanted to tease you because a Japanese boy is like any other sort of boy—he thinks it’s fun to tease little girls. Weren’t you ever teased by boys at home?”

  Laurie thought about this solemnly and managed a rueful grin. Marcia pressed her cheek against Laurie’s for a moment. There was an aching in her to give Laurie more than she had, more of what she deserved. But even as she held her, Laurie pushed away.

  “It’s almost time for Daddy to come home. Is it all right if I walk a little way to meet him? He’ll pick me up in the car and bring me back.”

  “Run along,” Marcia said. “But watch out for the batabatas.”

  There were no sidewalks once you got off the main streets of Kyoto and the little three-wheeled trucks, which the Japanese had named for the noise they made, tore down the narrow lanes with their horns blaring and with little care for pedestrians. Strangely enough, no one ever seemed to get run over, and most Japanese walked calmly down the middle of the road unless forced aside by the immediate presence of traffic. Laurie promised to be careful and hurried away.

  The servants always noted what happened around the house, and now Sumie-san was out in the garden with an improvised net attached to a length of bamboo pole that she used for stretching kimonos out to dry. Deftly she scooped and captured the two remaining turtles. She had set a small can of sand near an azalea bush while she fished, and now she drew it out and dropped the turtles into it. As she dried her hands on her apron, something in the garden seemed to catch her eye and she bent to retrieve it from under the bush. She turned it about curiously in her hands, then came across the stepping stones toward Marcia.

  “Berongs Raurie-san,” she said and held it out.

  Marcia thanked her and took the small object, recognizing it at once. It was the little demon mask that Nan Horner had given Laurie when they had first come to Kyoto. Laurie must have carried it into the garden and forgotten it.

  But as Marcia took the mask into the bedroom to put it among Laurie’s things on the mantel, she remembered something. That azalea bush was on the far side of the garden. Laurie had flung something in that direction the other day. It must have been this little mask she had thrown away.

  But why? What had prompted her action? She had loved the amusing little face when Nan gave it to her. Once Marcia had caught her in front of a mirror, puffing out her cheeks and scowling furiously in imitation of the mask and they had laughed together. So why had she changed her mind about it? What had she so wanted to conceal from her mother when she tossed the mask hurriedly away?

  Marcia had a feeling that she should not question Laurie about this. It was better to let the incident fade out of her memory, if that was possible. Perhaps Laurie would accept the mask again and play with it, if her mother said nothing. On the mantelpiece sat the Japanese doll that Alan Cobb had given Laurie. The head with its Dutch cut black hair was propped against a mirror that reflected the doll’s gay red and white kimono. Marcia set the mask beside the doll and left it there for Laurie to find.

  She heard Jerome’s car and a moment later Laurie came in the front door, while her father went to put the car away in the little garage that was set in a corner of the property. Laurie came into the room excitedly, full of news.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday and we’re going to see the cherry blossoms at Kiyomizu Temple!” she cried. “Just the three of us. You and me and Daddy. He’s going to tell you about it at dinner.”

  Determinedly Marcia thrust away the shadow of Chiyo. If Jerome wanted to take them to Kiyomizu, that was a good sign. Whatever had happened in the past could not be undone, but there was still the present to fight for, and the future. Perhaps it was just as well that she and Chiyo had faced each other openly. The Japanese woman would know now that Jerome’s wife did not mean to give up easily.

  She had heard of Kiyomizu. Nan said it was one of the most beautiful and interesting of all the many temples in Kyoto. The cherry blossoms were opening everywhere now in their full glory. It was necessary to see them quickly before they reached the supreme moment of beauty and dropped from the trees full-blown. And to see them with Jerome—that was what she had come to Japan for!

  Laurie noticed the mask on the mantel at once. She did not glance at her mother, but went quickly to pick it up and examine it.

  “Sumie-san found it in the garden,” Marcia said casually.

  It was hard to know whether Laurie heard her or not. As her mother watched, the child took down the doll. Carefully, she fitted the mask over the plump happy face and set the doll back on the mantel. The amusing little demon mask no longer seemed funny, for the innocence of the doll had vanished. The demon had a body now. It could caper about the world in human form. Some inner voice warned Marcia to let the matter alone, to give it no further emphasis by questioning. Laurie’s face was strangely solemn as she turned from the masked doll. She did not look at her mother as she went to get ready for dinner.

  12.

  That night Marcia lay awake for a long time, thinking back through the years. There was no wind tonight and the creakings were only the normal ones heard in an elderly wooden house. Jerome slept in the next room and no sense of menace troubled her.

  How clearly and achingly she could remember him as he had been after her father’s death, when he had come back from Japan for the first time, and for the
first time had seen her as a grown young woman plainly in love with him. For a little while he had turned to her as if the daughter of the man he had worshiped could answer some deep need in him. It was as if, in coming home, he had fled from something in Japan that he wanted never to see again, something he needed to forget. Or perhaps he fled from something in himself that left him fearful and touched with horror. Whatever he had felt, he had turned in those first days of their marriage to Marcia’s eager gift of love as though it could hold away the ominous dark that encroached upon his being.

  Marcia turned restlessly on her pillow, trying to understand, to fathom.

  Chiyo—was it Chiyo?

  Chiyo, the lovely and delicate and delightful. Chiyo, who would surely please the senses of any man. And she was American born, she could speak his own language. Yet Marcia had a feeling that there was something more, something less obvious which held Jerome to Japan. Chiyo, yes, but still something more than Chiyo.

  Ichiro Minato was plainly a malcontent and not a particularly pleasant person. Yet he stayed on in this house. Why? What was the adherent that held these people together under the same roof? What part did the woman in the white kimono play and what was the nature of her illness?

  At length Marcia slept and woke to find spring rain streaking the window panes, soaking the thirsty garden. Laurie was downcast until later in the morning, when the sun broke through and brought blue skies with it to bless the afternoon.

  Sunday was not a day for the closing of business in Japan. A few offices might close, but most shops stayed open. Monday was the more popular closing day throughout the country. Nevertheless, holiday throngs seemed to be out that afternoon, because of the cherry blossoms. Jerome left the car at the foot of Teapot Hill, so they could walk up past the tiny, open-front shops. Kyoto pottery was famous and the shops were endlessly fascinating with their display of everything from tourist trash to the beautiful and unique. There were exquisite tea sets, dishes of every kind, colorful ceramic figures of gods and men and animals, doll shops and souvenir shops. And always, as they climbed the steep bill, the bright red pagoda that fronted the temple buildings rose above them, beckoning like a finger.