The boats put out to sea again in a long row. They turned to the left as the bay turns until they were hidden by a rocky point, upon which stood by accident the figure of a man, solitary and unknown, looking toward the horizon. What beauty! It is enough for this day. I thank God, and may I see beauty all my life as clear as this!
I went back in grateful silence, I remember, and had my bath and dinner. The bathroom was big and two small windows, opaquely glazed, opened to the pool outside. I could hear the swimmers shouting and laughing while I bathed. Floor and walls of white tile, and the tub was a square of tiled cement four feet square and as deep, one end raised to make a seat and so keep my head above water. It was always full of hot mineral water, soothing to the skin. But why do I talk of the tub? I knew better than to step into it without the proper preparation, which was to fill a small wooden tub with water, sit upon a small bamboo stool in the middle of the tiled floor with the little tub before me, soap myself thoroughly, and pour water over myself. Only then was I fit for the big tub. When I stepped out of it every ache and touch of fatigue was gone. I was mended, and I was renewed.
That evening I sat by my window, I remember, dressed in a cool yukata, and heard the swimmers in the pool outside plunge and shout and laugh. I had that day been steeped in beauty, and now it was unbearable because I could not tell him about it. Perhaps he knew—but if he could not communicate his awareness to me, how was I to be comforted? I had, I thought, been doing so well and suddenly I knew I had not.
“It does not get better,” a widowed friend had warned me. “It gets worse.”
What does worse mean? How could it be worse than this? I wanted suddenly to wipe away all remembrance of beauty, and yet I am one who cannot live without beauty—and I do not allow myself to weep. I thought I had been doing well. I felt he must be proud of me, if he were watching somewhere, afar off. Now I needed help again and badly. Where to find it? Beauty had undone me, had made me weak with longing. Strangers must again be my refuge. I took off the yukata, slipped into my own dress and went to wandering on the streets again, alone.
Not far from the back door of the hotel, down a narrow cobbled street, I discovered the motion picture theater. It was the only one in town, and a very good one, the stage spacious, the seats comfortable. As a courtesy, the owner had sent word that we were to enter without tickets so long as we were in Obama, and as the days passed I grew into the habit of slipping across the street in the cool of the night, and choosing a seat beside a red-lacquered pillar. Around me were the Japanese crowd, mostly men, since there were no bars in Obama and this was perhaps their only relief from crying children and over-burdened wives. True, there were three old geisha in the city but they were more or less honorary and had become respectable members of the community now that they had retired from active business. Certainly they could not be considered sources of relaxation for tired business men.
The pictures were revelatory. The mildest and most artistic films in Japan, I fear, are those sent abroad for foreign consumption. The real stuff is kept at home and especially for the remoter areas, of which we in Obama were certainly one. Emotions on the screen were violent, primitive, repetitive and for me highly amusing. Everything was over-colored, literally as well as symbolically. The reds were the color of blood, the greens poisonous, the blues sulphurous. Equally extreme was the action. One rape was never enough for a single film. I sat through evenings when the same girl was raped two and three times by one man or by various men. Gun shooting, obviously copied from our wild-western shows, was far more wild. Everybody shot everybody until only one man remained and then he shot himself. A good evening’s entertainment seemed to be when all the women were raped and all the men killed. The audience then gave a sigh of happiness and rose in a state of dream to return to their wives and children. Yet these same men were always delicately courteous to a stranger and gently polite to one another. The Japanese nature is not so much complex as simply contradictory.
Reflecting upon the raw emotions I observed without sharing, it seemed to me that jealousy was the predominant passion, with rape and murder the inevitable result. I would laugh at this, except that I now recall an incident in my own household, known as the Affair of the Wooden Plate.
We went to Scandinavia one year, he and I, on a combined pleasure and business trip and stopped in Copenhagen to visit some friends. At dinner on our first night I admired some beautiful wooden plates and expressed a desire to purchase a dozen for our Pennsylvania home. This I did, the very next morning, and had them sent off direct. When we reached home the twelve wooden plates were already there, unpacked and waiting, and they were even more beautiful than I had remembered, and we used them at our first breakfast. The children had got up earlier that morning and had breakfasted with their nurse, since we had arrived late the night before. There were only the two of us then, he and I.
For years after that breakfast my children, my housekeeper, and other odd persons persisted in asking me why there were only eleven wooden plates and for years I was vague in my replies. Eleven plates? Were they sure there were only eleven plates? I must count them myself—et cetera.
The truth is that I knew there were only eleven wooden plates. When he and I began breakfast that morning there were twelve but when we finished there were eleven. This is how it happened—and I begin by saying that it is wonderful and by the grace of God that a fault in one’s beloved is no impediment to true love. Thus I acknowledge that this was his only fault—or nearly his only one, except that, as I have said he could not hammer a nail without banging his thumb black and blue, so that he sensibly followed my advice and gave up hammers entirely. This only fault then, was jealousy! At first it made me laugh, since I have never understood jealousy. If he, for example, had fallen in love with someone other than me, or had simply been temporarily attracted, I cannot imagine myself being jealous. If the beloved can find something better than he already possesses, how can one have the heart to deprive him of that joy? As for temporary attraction—well, one can always think about something else while it goes on and there are many enjoyable pursuits for which life provides all too little time. Music can fill twenty-four hours a day, so can sculpture and gardening, especially roses and camellias—so can reading and writing and improving the looks of one’s house and walking through the woods and motoring and flying and swimming and sailing in ships and, above all, conversation with interesting persons.
Alas, it was the last occupation which caused the trouble. I cannot resist interesting persons and some of these are men, though whether they be men or women is not the point with me. A good mind is equally fascinating whether the containing skull box be male or female. Not so with him. He, the calmest and coolest and wisest of men, could be absurdly jealous if the brain that attracted me were in the skull of a man. I say absurd, for that is how it appeared to me at first. I had no intention of limiting conversation to women and said so. I made a joke of the whole thing, but he did not laugh. This astonished me and then annoyed me, but I concealed my annoyance as gracefully as I could.
During our journey in Europe he had been better than usual, and I had talked with many interesting people without thinking of consequences. On that particular first morning home we talked as we ate, laughed over certain past events, and enjoyed ourselves as usual. It was a lovely morning, the sun shone on our breakfast table, the bowl of roses spread their fragrance, and we had our own fresh eggs and homemade bacon. I had just admired the effect of the bacon and eggs on our Chinese blue plates under which were the wooden plates we had bought in Copenhagen, whereupon that dear and usually predictable man looked at me across the table and stopped laughing. I looked at him, surprised, and saw his heavenly blue eyes begin to turn green.
“What is wrong?” I exclaimed.
“These plates,” he said. “They remind me of that day in Copenhagen.”
“So why—” I began and was stopped.
His voice was steel cold. “The way you talked to—the
way you smiled at—”
Now I stopped him, but not by words, I was far too furious for that. I am not an angry woman, nor a contentious one, nor argumentative. I am called soft-spoken, I believe, by newspaper reporters. They are right. I am soft-spoken and even gentle, in a tough sort of way. Also I was trained in the Confucian tradition that a superior person never speaks or acts in anger. That morning, however, and at that moment, I forgot all about Confucius and superior persons. True, I did not speak in anger because I was too angry to speak at all. I went blind and dumb with anger and purely by instinct I lifted the wooden plate with blue china plate, and my bacon and eggs upon it, and smashed it on the floor. The destruction was total, for our dining room has a brick floor. Then I walked out of the house and across the meadows and down into the woods. There I sat on a log by the brook. I sat there for three hours and thought over my whole life, examined my marriage, and weighed the advantages and disadvantages of being in love. By that time all anger had departed, I could laugh, and was fit to live with again. I walked back home refreshed and hungry, since I had not eaten my breakfast before anger. I found him sitting grimly at his desk, trying to work, and I could see clearly enough that he had been exhausted by not coming to find me. We flew into each other’s arms, he stammering something about forgiveness, but I would have none of that. When we were calm again, he said so humbly that my heart half broke, for humility was never a part of his nature,
“Shall I write to—”
“Don’t mention his name,” I said in sympathy.
“But shan’t I order another wooden plate?” he asked, still humble.
“No,” I said. “Let there be eleven wooden plates forevermore. Because if you should, just once, forget, I’ll count the plates out loud for you to hear—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—eleven!”
The end of this story is that we lived happily ever after and I never had to count the plates again, not even once. And I have continued all interesting conversations everywhere in the world and with anyone.
The day we changed location to the mansion that was Old Gentleman’s house was one of the perfect days. Sometime after midnight I woke to a new air. The heavy heat of the land wind was changed suddenly by a west wind from the sea. This air was crisp and clean and meant sunshine in the morning. To such a morning we woke. The mountains were free of mists, the sun was shining, the world was new. We climbed into waiting cars, sharply on time, and drove along the cliffs to Old Gentleman’s house. Far below us, as we made the big curve, fishing boats were drawing in the nets, a circle of white dots pulling closer and closer. I say the big curve, for the road seemed always to overhang the cliffs. Just at the point of the curve there was a shrine, and upon the shrine there stood a little stone god, a warning to careless drivers, someone to plead and protect. I passed him every morning and if it was not dark, then every evening, too.
Old Gentleman’s house was near the town of Issahaya, a busy small city, very clean as all Japanese cities are, and with many prosperous-looking small town shops. There were more than a few pottery shops, for the famous Arita ware is made near here, but neither town nor shops engaged our attention at that moment. Just ahead was the house, its tiled roofs shining with dew under the morning sun. It was a stately house, surrounded by a wall, and the entrance gate was imposing, two great wooden doors fastened with iron hasps and hinges, and to the right a small wicket gate barely wide enough to admit one person.
The gates were open, for our crew had already arrived, and when we entered we found the western furniture put away and only the beautiful old Japanese things ready for our picture. The master of the house was at home today, a sturdy man in a dark kimono. With him was his wife and they greeted us kindly and warmly. With them were the two daughters, one in her twenties and another in her teens. They too were welcoming and warm.
Nevertheless I wondered if the family knew what it was in for. Our amazingly efficient crew had simply moved in, carpenters and electricians and make-up men and whatnot, and in a moment what had been a peaceful old-fashioned elegant home had become a sort of factory, in spite of the care the men took in doing no damage. Sheets of matting were laid over the fine tatami, and under the clasps that fixed the electric klieg lights to the ceilings the crew put a protection of soft paper. The ceilings of the house were beautiful, a copper-colored wood with a satin-soft finish. But everything was beautiful. Between the rooms and along the verandas fine bamboo curtains bound with satin provided decoration as well as screen. In each room the tokonoma alcove had its special scroll and flower arrangement. The table and utensils for the tea ceremony stood in a special room and panels in the wall opened to reveal a Buddhist shrine shining in gold leaf. The gardens outside were not large but they were well-landscaped and the big flat stones of the walks were arranged with skill and artistry. Our men were busily putting seaweed moss along the edges and in the cracks of the front walk, and they did such a good job that I thought the seaweed was real moss until I was told it was not.
When we were ready, we all sat and waited for our star to arrive, our Old Gentleman, Sessue Hayakawa. He had dined with us the night before and, in western dress had looked like a handsome young man of fifty. We had discussed old age and he told us he practiced yoga and expected to live to be a hundred. Whether yoga has anything to do with it I do not know, but his family do live to be over a hundred—it is a tradition with them, it seems, and they feel cheated if they die before they complete a century. Sessue Hayakawa said his grandmother had died when she was only ninety-nine and her relatives felt she had let the family down. Having gone so far, they thought she should have braced up and finished the century as her forbears had.
Sessue Hayakawa was soon ready to perform, and looked stunningly handsome in the garb of an old-fashioned conservative Japanese gentleman. We examined his make-up, and pointed out to the make-up man a hair out of place in his beard and that the edge of his mustache had come slightly unglued. Sessue’s secretary-maid, or maid-secretary, fanned him all the while, lighted his cigar or cigarette, gave him tea, and generally consoled him. She was young and efficient and took care of him as though he were a nice old baby, which perhaps he was. Whatever he was, he was also a professional actor and a star and it was a joy to see him at work. He gave himself to his part, and gained stature as the day went on. After lunch his aide fetched cushions for him and a pillow and he stripped to his undergarments, all white silk, and lay down and slept in yoga calm while the crew milled about him.
We were without our two boys that day, I remember—Yukio and Toru. They had gone to Nagasaki the day before, had drunk Japanese beer and eaten Chinese food, which is not a good combination. Hence they were ill in the night, and could not appear on the set in the morning, whereupon our star complained that he could not act without them and for a moment the day looked bleak. Then he relented and said that if he had a young girl from the cast to inspire him, he could act. So we lent him our little Transistor girl until the boys arrived, and she sat at the foot of the camera and looked appealing and pretty and he proceeded with relish and gusto.
I remember that entire day as pure joy. The air was light and cool, the sun brilliant. We were all in a state of euphoria, I think, sharing the pleasure of the beautiful surroundings and the smooth grace with which the work went on. Old Gentleman was growing before our eyes. It was like watching a great artist paint a portrait. Yes, I see, as though the scene were here and now before my eyes, the spacious Japanese room, the shoji open to the lovely garden. There before the window Old Gentleman in his white silken robes, scholar and aristocrat, poet and prophet, is sitting upon a cushion before a low table. He is brushing upon a wide sheet of paper the letters of a poem.
The children of God
Are very dear,
Very nice, but very narrow.
Before him kneel the two children. He reads the poem aloud and asks them what it means. They do not know, and he explains slowly and with a grave dignity.
; The dialogue is in English and his English is not perfect, but he is able to convey the meaning and the atmosphere of his own soul. The children respond to the illusion of reality. I go smiling all day after that. The evening approaches and I am filled with content and expectation. The high point in the story now has arrived, the hour when Old Gentleman knows that the tidal wave is near. He orders the big bell to be rung and the torches outside the gate to be lit, the final warning to the people to come up the mountain to his house so that they may be saved, they and their children. He fears—he all but knows—that they will not heed, but it may be that a few will come.
It was dark when we assembled for this final scene and I live it again as I write, and let me continue to use the present tense. A great crowd has gathered from the villages and countryside. The day is over and people are free to come and watch what is happening on the hill. A platform has been built across the road at a suitable distance for the camera, and facing gate and house. On either side of the gate great torches are laid ready to be lit. The company manager, a burly fellow with a trumpeting voice, comes out and addresses the crowd, adjuring them to make no noise. It is the big scene, he tells them. There must not be a cough or a cry. The crowd shouts back promises and continues to wait. Endless time passes somehow while last touches are made. The make-up man is frantic, Old Gentleman has to wear a high ancient hat, his beard must be fast so the wind cannot blow away a hair. Even the servant must be made-up with care.
A Bridge for Passing: A Meditation on Love, Loss, and Faith Page 17