The Moonflower

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You’ve won,” she said. “I’m going to take Laurie home as soon as it can be arranged.”

  Jerome sat at his desk across the room, and the bright intense look that had lately grown familiar mocked her words. “You mean, my dear, that your undying love for me has at length subsided.”

  She answered his mockery softly. “You told me the truth when I first came. The man I fell in love with disappeared a long time ago. You are someone I don’t know.”

  He pushed aside the papers before him and came across the room.

  “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. It has been somewhat awkward having you here, I’ll admit. But I couldn’t very well put you out in the manner of a Victorian husband. However, your decision comes a breath too late on one score. You may go home, of course. I shan’t stand in your way. But Laurie is my daughter and I’d like to bring her up myself. I want to see her educated realistically so she will be able to deal with life as it is. When you go, Laurie stays.”

  She heard him without believing. “But that’s ridiculous! Of course Laurie will go home with me. How could you possibly hold her here?”

  The dark brilliance glowed in his face. “She is already mine. More mine than yours. Ask her, if you don’t believe me.”

  The expression on his face was frightening. It was difficult to speak quietly, but somehow she managed to keep her voice low and steady.

  “You can’t possibly hold her. Laurie will go with me.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders, and she would have drawn back from his touch, but his fingers tightened and held her cruelly in their grasp.

  “Make no mistake about it. I’ll keep her,” he said. “And I’ll smash anything that gets in my way. Try to take her away from this house, and I’ll bring her back in a way you won’t like.”

  He let her go and she turned and ran into the hall and back to her own room. She was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. Jerome lived in a world of his own where only his “truth” prevailed and the real truth had no meaning.

  16.

  It was no longer raining, but Marcia awoke to a misty day. Gray light seeped into the room and she lay still, listening. Laurie breathed lightly in the next bed. From the rest of the house she could hear the sounds of Jerome’s rising and breakfasting, and she lay tense and still through it all. She waited until he had left the house, then she got up and dressed quietly.

  Sumie-san had placed Alan’s moonflower plant in the dining room. Marcia saw it there and carried it upstairs to her favorite place on the upper veranda overlooking the garden. Since it had grown warm enough, she sat there often, where she could see garden and mountains, and the gray roofs of Kyoto.

  She put the plant down near the rail where it could get whatever sun there was. How tall and green and strong it looked. When she searched among the leaves she could see the tiny nubs that would grow into the buds of moon-flowers. The plant was tangible evidence of Alan’s friendship. She wished she might talk to him.

  Today she must talk to someone. Nan, perhaps? Nan had known Jerome for a long time. Nan might know how to deal with these dark aberrations as his wife did not. And Nan had seemed sympathetic lately. But first she must sound out Laurie.

  When she returned to the bedroom, the little girl was up and dressing. Marcia brushed and combed her hair gently, braided the fine brown strands into long plaits.

  “I think we will go home very soon now,” she told her daughter. “As soon as we can get places on a plane. Will you be glad to see your friends again?”

  Laurie swung about, jerking the braid from her hands. “Home? But home is here. Daddy says he needs me. He says I’m never, never to leave him again. In the fall he’s going to start me to school here.”

  So he had gone as far as that with Laurie?

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Marcia said. “Besides, you’ll surely want to go back to your school in Berkeley where all your friends are.”

  “No!” Laurie’s face had gone white in alarm. “I’m never going to leave my father again. If he wants me to, I’m going to stay in Japan with him always.”

  “But I am going home,” Marcia said.

  Laurie’s face puckered and her lips trembled, but she held back from her mother. “I can’t go home with you, Mommy. I have to stay here. I have to!”

  Marcia kissed her cheek, and held the small, frightened face against her own for a moment, smoothing Laurie’s hair back from a forehead suddenly damp with perspiration.

  “Don’t worry about it, darling. We’ll work it out somehow. Let’s have breakfast now.”

  But her casual words hid her inner fear. She could not forget the look in Jerome’s eyes last night, or the sound of his voice raised in threatening abuse.

  After breakfast Tomiko came to play and Marcia told Sumie-san to keep an eye on the children until she came home. Then she went up the hill to Nan’s house.

  Nan’s small car was out in front and Marcia found her sitting on the entryway ledge putting on her shoes.

  “Hi!” Nan called cheerfully as Marcia came through the gate. “You’re abroad early. Anything I can do for you?”

  Marcia hesitated. “I only wanted to talk to you. If you’re going out, it can wait.”

  Nan tossed her shoe horn aside and stood up, looking vigorous and solid in her gray skirt and tailored pongee blouse. She studied Marcia’s face for a moment and then picked up the handbag from the step beside her.

  “Come along with me and we’ll talk on the way. I’m going out to a miniature tree nursery to choose a tree for an American client. You may be interested and it will do you good to get away from that house. Where’s Laurie? Want to bring her along?”

  “No.” Marcia shook her head. “I want to talk to you about Laurie.”

  “Trouble? Well, come on and we’ll get started. Then you can tell me.”

  Nan could drive in Japanese traffic and listen at the same time, doing fair justice to both. As they followed narrow lanes toward a main road, Marcia related what had happened yesterday when Chiyo and Ichiro had come to the house. Their coming had been the prelude to Jerome’s anger.

  “I felt sorry for Minato-san,” Marcia admitted. “I always thought the Japanese were an unemotional people. But there was plenty of feeling in Minato-san yesterday.”

  “We get that idea because of the training they have from childhood,” Nan said. “There’s not much suppression until they are five or six, and then the lid is clamped down. After that, it’s bad manners to show emotion. If your mother is dying you smile. If you hate your mother-in-law you bow to her meekly and do her bidding. All this makes the Japanese seem a cheerful, happy people on the surface and it’s certainly civilized to live with. No voices raised, no shouting in the streets. But watch them weep at a Kabuki play where they can let go a little. Watch them let down the bars on one cup of saké. And watch the emotions explode in unforeseen ways when steam builds up too long. I’d say Minato-san is a good example of emotions too long suppressed. He is thoroughly mixed up because of his indoctrination as a soldier in his youth, and then having the whole thing proved wrong from scratch. I hope he takes this job and goes to Kobe.”

  “Why doesn’t Chiyo go to Kobe with her husband?” Marcia asked guardedly. “I should think she’d be delighted at the fact that he wants to sober up and get a job.”

  Nan drove for a block in silence. “It’s not a simple matter. There’s Madame Setsu, for one thing.”

  “We always come back to Madame Setsu. What is her illness? Why can’t someone else care for her?”

  Nan raised one hand from the wheel in a gesture of impatience. “I’ll confess that I’m getting tired of all this hush-hush to protect Haruka Setsu. Personally, I think you should have been told her story from the beginning. I’ve bowed to the wishes of others, but I’ve done that long enough.”

  “Then you’ll tell me?”

  “I’ll tell you part of it, anyway,” Nan agreed. “During the war she saved Chi
yo’s life. Chiyo feels her life belongs to this older cousin, for as long as she is needed. Haruka’s sickness is a complete withdrawal from life. She goes nowhere, sees no one except those in her family. And at times I gather she has moments of being scarcely sane. Then she has to be watched.”

  They were passing a great red torii, the entrance to a shrine in the heart of Kyoto. Nan beeped her horn at a tofu vendor who chose that moment to step out in front of the car with his hand-drawn cart.

  Marcia remembered the time when she had wakened to find Haruka standing beside her bed. She could no longer believe that had been a dream.

  Nan turned out of the crowded street they were following and brought the car to a stop outside a bamboo gate. “Here we are. Can you hop out on your side? Cars aren’t really a good idea in Japan because there’s so little space for parking.”

  A bell tinkled as they opened the gate and walked into a spacious garden filled with row after row of long wooden tables on which miniature trees were growing in decorative pots.

  “Here’s where you learn about bonsai,” Nan said. “That’s what the Japanese call the art of raising miniature trees. Kato-san is a real artist, so be very respectful.”

  Kato-san was a miniature like his trees, small and wiry, with thin fingers strong enough to bend nature to his bidding. He bowed to them both and he and Nan exchanged courtesies in Japanese. Nan presented Marcia and he greeted her in English. Then he led them through the rows of trees to his house at the back, its entire side open to the garden. There they sat down for the inevitable cups of hot green tea, and Nan spoke about the tree she was searching for. Kato-san thought he had exactly the thing, but perhaps she would like to show her American friend the other trees first?

  When they had finished their tea Nan and Marcia walked the aisles between the tables, admiring and commenting. There were trees and shrubs of every description—plum and willow and maple, azalea, wisteria. But the pine trees appealed to Marcia most. Such perfect replicas they were of their grownup counterparts, but with each branch wired when young to grow gracefully in the most delicate patterns. The slant of the trunk, the balance of the branches, the thickness of the foliage, all were controlled by a master hand. When the tree had been properly bent and trained in its youth, and the budding needles pinched back to proper thickness, the wires were removed and with care the tree would live to a great age in the small pot that contained it.

  Kato-san left them to explore to their satisfaction and went to meet another visitor who had just come through the gate. As if there had been no interruption, Nan picked up the subject of Haruka Setsu where they had left it.

  “The trouble is that she sometimes has the curious notion that she is no longer part of the world of the living. She has the conviction that she belongs to the spirit world and she tries to run away in order to seek the place where her family’s ashes rest. She has to be carefully watched, lest she come to real harm.”

  With a faint shiver Marcia remembered the curious fold of the white kimono—right side over left in the manner of death. And she recalled Nan’s words the first time she had met her.

  “This happens when the moon is full?” she asked.

  “As a rule,” Nan said. “Sometimes Chiyo isn’t able to control her and Jerry has to go over and help. She will listen to him. Male authority, I suppose. But the rest of the time Chiyo is her main companion, her nurse, maid, everything. I suppose Ichiro would like to get his wife away from this if he could. But I think Chiyo will never leave her cousin as long as she is needed.”

  Nan reached out to touch the prickly needles of a small pine tree, her face sad and thoughtful. “It might be better for everyone if Haruka would die. Herself included. But I’ve hoped for that for too many years to have much confidence in its happening. She’ll probably outlive us all. One of nature’s little jokes, I suppose.”

  “Yet she writes those lovely poems,” Marcia said, and remembered that Jerome had published a volume of them—for Chiyo’s sake.

  Nan shrugged. “Another withdrawal from life. Her writing is all melancholy, all beauty and death.” She turned abruptly from the subject of Haruka. “You’ve talked to Chiyo, haven’t you? Your children are friends. Why don’t you urge her to go with Minato? She could make her home in Kobe and leave this unnatural life she has bound herself to.”

  Marcia stared at Nan, startled. “But then perhaps Haruka would die, and Chiyo would blame herself—”

  “Oh, let her die! Let her!” Nan cried with unexpected passion. “Wouldn’t that be better for Chiyo in the long run?”

  She seemed bitter and angry in a way Marcia could not understand. “But if …” it was hard to bring herself to say it, but she must. “If Chiyo cares for Jerome …”

  Nan’s deep-set eyes turned their blaze upon her in sudden impatience. “I only wish it were as simple as that.”

  Kato-san’s visitor had gone and he came toward them again, bowing his apologies for leaving them. Now he would show them the treasure they had come to see. This way, please.

  Marcia walked at Nan’s side, but her mind was no longer on miniature pines. No doubt the little tree before which Kato-san paused in profound delight was perfect in every sense with its tiny cones and five needled tufts. But she could not pay attention while Nan discussed its virtues and possible faults and arranged for its delivery.

  What had Nan meant? That in some way Jerome’s hold on Chiyo was not through her love for him? That Jerome loved her, but held her to him by other means? Marcia was impatient now to return to the car where she could push her questions farther. When Nan got in behind the wheel, however, she would tell her nothing more.

  “I’ve talked too much,” she said a little crossly. “Anyway, I don’t think all this is why you came to me today. There’s something else worrying you. Something newer than the setup next door. Might as well get it out.”

  So on the way home Marcia told her of her decision to leave and of the way Jerome had met that decision—with a threat to hold Laurie. Nan, for once, was clearly angry with Jerome.

  “In the beginning I thought you might help Jerry by staying, but I’m afraid I was wrong,” she said. “When a person has been too long in the Orient, he finds it hard to go home. That’s the way it is with Jerry. And with me too. But the time has certainly come for you to take Laurie and get away from Kyoto. She mustn’t be submitted to his influence, nor you to his threats.”

  “What if Jerome tries to stop me? He sounded so wild and threatening that I was frightened.”

  “I know,” Nan agreed soberly. “He can be dangerously determined when he’s really stirred up. Don’t do anything right away. For the moment you’re safer right there in his house than you are anywhere else. Give me time to think of something. One trouble is that you’re not very good at taking brutal action. And in the end brutal action may be exactly what’s needed.”

  “I’ll take it if I have to,” Marcia said. “But he’s changed so much that I hardly know him any more. You met him when he first came to Japan. What made him change?”

  Nan answered indirectly. “You were a child when you fell in love with him. What did you know then about what he was like?”

  “I married him,” Marcia said.

  “Sure, sure. And I didn’t. Though goodness knows I tried hard enough before I realized it was no use.”

  Marcia looked at her in dismay. Somehow she had not imagined this. Not since her first doubtful meeting with Nan. Nan as a loyal friend to Jerome, yes. Nan as someone to lean on, or to seek out for advice, or—

  Nan broke in on her thoughts with a dry laugh. “Go ahead and say it. You didn’t take me for the romantic type that goes in for unrequited love? Is that it? Well, relax. I’m not. All that’s over long ago. But tell me what you think Jerry was like before he came out to Japan.”

  “He was a dedicated sort of person,” she recalled. “Wrapped up in his work and devoted to my father. He couldn’t see anything outside of his work.”

  �
�To what purpose? I mean where was his work going?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Of course he was working on various secret projects for the government, but I don’t think that was the purpose that held him. I think he always looked beyond the nearest test tube for the effects of what he was doing. I mean the use of his work for long-range purposes.”

  Nan said, “Look, here’s a stretch of park. Let’s get out and sit on a bench and talk this through. I’m tired of splitting my attention.”

  Marcia was willing. Nan parked the car nearby and they found an empty wooden bench near a pond where lily pads floated languidly. They could turn their back upon the gray city and look up at the green Kyoto hillside.

  “I met him in Hiroshima, as you know,” Nan said. “He’d had his first look at the results of the bomb by that time. It hit him pretty hard.”

  Marcia nodded. “I knew he had changed when he came home from Japan that first time, but I didn’t dream how much.”

  “During the first years I knew him, he began to lose touch with everything good in the human race,” Nan said. “When the news came of your father’s death, I was afraid of what might happen.”

  “What do you mean?” Marcia asked.

  “That’s another story. It doesn’t matter now. The immediate problem before us is what to do about you and Laurie.”

  “I suppose we could go to Tokyo,” Marcia said, “and get aboard the first plane we could take for the States.”

  Nan shook her head. “Too obvious. That’s exactly what he’d expect.”

  “Could he really stop me?”

  “He could follow you if he chose and I wouldn’t want to face him when he gets into one of his wild moods. The consequences don’t matter to him then. You can’t apply ordinary rules of reasoning to a man who is using another set of rules.”

  Marcia thought of the moment when Jerome had tried to choke Ichiro and could only agree.

  On a street nearby a school had let out for the day and children began to pour through the park past them; a flood of boys and girls in the summer uniform, white blouse and dark skirt, white shirt and dark trousers. They moved downhill decorously, gay enough, but with none of the racing and screaming which American children indulged in when they got out of school. Some wore shoes and socks, but many of them clapped along on geta.