The Translation of Love

by Lynne Kutsukake

  The other two secretaries were Japanese: an older woman named Yoshiko, whose short graying hair and angular face gave her an air of efficiency and competence that belied her meager output; and Mariko, a young woman who could type like the wind without making mistakes, without jamming her keys, without getting her paper twisted, without fear. Not only was she fast and accurate, she had no problem reading everyone’s distinctive handwriting. Nobody in the office knew where she had learned how to type like this, a feat all the more remarkable given that her spoken English was often impossible to understand.

  Matt wrote out a more legible copy of his translation on foolscap and deposited it in the wire basket. It would be the first thing the typists saw on Monday morning, when the cycle started up again. He thought about whether to get supper in the mess hall, but he wasn’t really hungry. Should he start working on another letter, he wondered, or could he kill time some other way? The guys would be getting ready to go out, the showers full of steam and locker-room banter. If he stayed here a little longer, he could avoid them entirely. Last week they’d teased him mercilessly.

  “Matsumoto, how come you never want to come with us? How come you never want to have any fun?”

  “You’ve danced with a girl before, haven’t you?”

  “Hey, leave him alone, maybe he’s never—”

  “What do you do by yourself all the time?”

  “Hey, he reads. Books and stuff. Isn’t that right, Matt?”

  “Ah, give me a dame over a book any night.”

  Eddie Takagi was the worst, he simply wouldn’t let up.

  “Come on. You want all those girls to go to the white guys? Have some pride.” Eddie was the same age as Matt, but he liked to act as if he were a lot older and more worldly.

  Then Jimmy Shikaze and Alan Horiya had joined Eddie, and the three of them had cornered Matt in the shower, white towels wrapped around their smooth hairless torsos. The cloying scent of too much army-issue aftershave made him dizzy.

  “Just do what we do. It’s easy to pick up a girl here. Cheap, too. And they like us. When was the last time you found a Nipponjin girl who’d go all the way? Where I come from none of them did.”

  “Ah, c’mon guys. We’d better leave him alone.”

  Matt sat down at Mariko’s typewriter and removed the snug-fitting gray cover. Feeding his plain blue aerogram into the Underwood’s roller, he adjusted the carriage until the sheet was even and centered. The keys were perfect round circles, tiny white saucers of black letters, and he set his fingers into position and began to type.

  Dear Diane,

  How are Mom and Dad? You’re taking good care of them, I don’t doubt that. And how about you? Is the job okay? You won’t have to be a housekeeper forever, you know. Just be patient and you can go back to school, get a degree.

  He typed quickly and easily without looking at the keys because Diane had taught him how to touch-type. Instead of hunting for each letter, he could watch the words form before his very eyes. He loved to see the keys bite into the paper—thwack, thwack, thwack—metal shapes that pressed their weight with such urgency onto the page. Those were his words being forged in front of him. Wordsmith. Oh, he liked that image. That’s what he wanted to be.

  I’m getting the hang of my new work assignment. I like it better than the Press section I was in before. There’s a lot of demand for translators and interpreters here. The Occupation really needs us. But if you’re not in the military, it’s pretty hard to get decent chow, so I wouldn’t recommend it without Uncle Sam’s meal ticket.

  I’ve got lots of buddies here. The guys are friendly.

  He realized he didn’t have much more to say to his sister. Diane claimed that she looked forward to his letters, but he wondered if she really meant it. When she wrote, her letters were always chatty and full of light gossip about relatives and friends. She avoided saying too much about their parents, but Matt knew that his father was severely depressed. Funny, all those years when they’d had the farm, his father had cursed it day in and day out. Stupid strawberry patch. No good. No good fruit. No good soil. But when it was taken away, it was like a limb had been cut off. He wanted it back, all the weeds, all the rocks, all the backbreaking labor. After the war was over and their family was finally allowed to return home, though, it was clear that the people who now farmed their land had no intention of relinquishing it.

  Say hi to everyone. I’ll write again soon.

  He loosened the spring on the roller and pulled out the aerogram. No, there was no easy way to squeeze all of a man’s thoughts onto a thin blue rectangle of paper. It was just as well there was no more space left. He’d run out of words.

  When Diane had insisted on bringing her typewriter to the internment camp, their mother had been furious. They were allowed only what they could carry. She should have filled her suitcase with dishes and blankets and more clothes, not a useless machine. But Diane had been in secretarial school when the war broke out. When they were shipped to the desert, she’d only been two months away from graduation. She said she needed to practice so she would be ready to work as soon as they got out. How long can they keep us locked up, she said. They’ve got to realize it’s a mistake—we’re Americans! But she got tired of practicing and tired of waiting, tired of futile dreaming. When she abandoned her typewriter, Matt decided to take it. He didn’t really have anything to say but he liked to punch the keys with his index fingers the way he imagined a hard-bitten journalist or an alcohol-fueled novelist might.

  “For Pete’s sake,” Diane said when she caught him, “if you’re going to do it, do it right.” And she showed him what she’d learned, how to type with his head erect and eyes looking forward, fingers lightly poised above the middle row of letters, baby fingers crooked.

  He put the gray cover back on Mariko’s typewriter. After he turned off the lights, he was drawn to the big plate-glass windows that overlooked the main avenue. The sun had just set and thin wisps of cloud were turning pink, then fiery red, then dark maroon right before his eyes. From his office’s fourth-floor vantage point, the view was almost panoramic. His building and MacArthur’s headquarters—the Dai-Ichi Building—were both six stories high, which made them among the tallest buildings still standing in Tokyo.

  To his right, Matt could see the broad marching plaza that was directly across the street from General Headquarters. Beyond the plaza stretched the vast Imperial Palace grounds. The forest that covered the grounds was now shrouded in a dense, impenetrable darkness. Only the broad skirt of massive white stones that formed the palace moat was visible, reflecting the last rays of the remaining early-evening light. Somewhere inside the palace was the emperor. And somewhere just beyond the palace grounds was a flattened city, piles of rubble and jerry-built shacks, a landscape still filled with ruins. It was crawling with a desperate humanity. But for the time being all evidence of the wartime destruction was obscured by the encroaching night.

  In the growing darkness, the city looked beautiful.

  5

  Fumi was not naturally a loner, but lately all she wanted was to be by herself. Home no longer felt right without her sister living with them, and she didn’t like the way her mother and father tried to pretend that Sumiko no longer existed. She didn’t like being with Akiko or her other friends from school, either, in part because she feared being asked about her family. It wasn’t easy to find a private hideout in the crowded backstreets where she lived, but she had discovered two good spots: one was on the grounds of Shotoku Temple, at the back near the tiny cemetery, and the other was the bombed-out ruins of the former local library. Only one wall of the library was still standing—the rest was rubble—but there was a nice sunny spot among these ruins that was hidden from view. This was where Fumi liked to sit. It was a good place to think, to empty her mind of its troubles and let it slowly fill up with ideas and solutions. It didn’t always work, but at least for a short period, she felt better.

  Fumi unbuttoned her blouse col
lar and spread it wide so that as much sun as possible could reach her neck and nape. She hoped the sun and its heat would help her think, to puzzle out something that she’d seen a week ago, something that had been bothering her ever since. She was convinced she had been given a sign. The question was how to interpret it. The sign was in the newspaper her father had left open one day after breakfast. The breeze had scattered the pages across the tatami, and as Fumi bent over to pick up the loose sheets of newsprint one of the headlines had caught her eye: GHQ SWAMPED BY LETTER-WRITING FRENZY.

  “Everyone is writing to General MacArthur, so I did too,” war veteran Hiroyuki Nishio was quoted as saying while he proudly showed off his new American eyeglasses. Fed up with trying to get help from the Japanese health authorities, he had written directly to MacArthur. “I never expected anything to come of it, but this is what democracy means! If you have a problem, write a letter,” Nishio advised. “You never know what might happen.”

  Fumi puzzled over what she had read. The war veteran’s problem didn’t seem all that serious to her. What was a pair of spectacles compared to bringing her sister home? If a letter could help someone get something as trivial as a pair of glasses, how much more helpful it would surely be in a really important situation. Maybe this was the solution she’d been seeking. But she realized that she didn’t know how to even begin writing such a letter, never mind where she should send it or how she could obtain good paper and a decent envelope. She would not, could not, ask her parents. They would disapprove. It was something she would have to do on her own. And yet how?

  Before her sister left home, Fumi liked to open the bottom drawer of the dark wooden tansu they shared and finger the things Sumiko had hidden under her thick cotton leggings and baggy pantaloon-style monpe. She would let her fingers grope through the piles of clothes until they found what she was seeking: something so soft and light it was like stroking moths’ wings. Fumi didn’t dare pull the stockings out, afraid she might tear them, or worse, that they would evaporate if she exposed them to the sunlight. Not many things were soft anymore.

  Fumi remembered her mother’s many beautiful silk kimono. They were gone, all of them, sold long ago, one by one, in exchange for shoyu and rice, dried mushrooms and miso. The beautiful stiff wide obi with its intricate design of peonies had been one of the first things to go. They had hoped it would fetch a good price, but when their father took it to market, he didn’t get much. The farmers said they already had lots of brocade, and they pointed to the piles of clothing in their carts. In exchange for the obi they gave him a sack of mountain potatoes and some salted fish that later proved to be rotten.

  Sumiko, not their mother, was the one who cried each time they sold a kimono. “They’re so pretty,” she’d said. “Do you have to?”

  “They’re useless to me, better they bring in something to eat.”

  Fumi had watched as Sumiko traced her finger over the embossed shape of a heron’s wing stitched in glossy braided thread. It was the last kimono they sold. The heron seemed poised to take flight, to tear itself away from the very material of which it was made. Sumiko had followed the wing back to the bird’s body and up to the shiny knot of black material that formed its eye. She pressed the tip of her finger into it.

  “I wanted a chance to wear this. I always thought you would pass it down to me.”

  “Sumi-chan, this is no time to be sentimental. What choice do we have? Everyone is selling off their things. Farmers never had it so good.” Their mother reached for the kimono. She and Sumiko stood in the entranceway, mother and daughter looking almost identical in their baggy cotton pants and coarsely woven jackets. It was the first time Fumi had noticed that Sumiko was taller than their mother.

  What Fumi remembered most about her sister was the scent of her back and her hair. It was a sometimes sour, mostly sweet odor that was uniquely hers, a combination of perspiration and soap and the natural oils in her scalp. When their mother was busy working in the family bookstore, it fell to Sumiko, who was ten years older, to take care of Fumi. From early in the morning, Fumi was strapped to Sumiko’s back, her tiny nose buried in her sister’s clothing and hair, and there she stayed for most of the day while Sumiko aired the futon, went to school, shopped in the market, helped with the cooking. Fumi was bound with thick bands of cotton that crisscrossed her torso so tightly that, except for her legs which dangled in the air, she could hardly move. It was the most secure place in the world, and she hated to give it up at night when they had to go to bed. Even now, she longed for that sense of protection and warmth. Yet she’d never stopped to wonder if Sumiko had minded the heavy weight she’d had to carry around, whether her back hurt or her legs got sore.

  What had once seemed so constant had changed dramatically during and after the war. Their father had lost everything when the bookstore was destroyed in the firebombings and their mother’s health was so poor she was unable to leave the house. Fumi herself had suffered a serious case of beriberi and required expensive injections of vitamin B. When Sumiko said she had found a good job that would take care of the bills and bring them food, it seemed like a miracle. Sumiko moved out of the house and into a dormitory in the entertainment district of the Ginza. Gradually she came home less and less frequently, and sometimes Fumi’s only clue that her sister had been back was the special American food that suddenly appeared. Lately, though, Sumiko hadn’t come home at all. Fumi hadn’t seen her in months.

  Fumi knew her parents were trying to protect her, trying to hide their fear for her sister. She heard them late at night when they thought she was asleep. Words like Amerikajin and butterfly and onrii—a GI’s only one. Her mother would make a funny choking noise that Fumi recognized as the muffled sound of her weeping.

  Fumi fingered her chest pocket and felt for Sumiko’s photograph. She preferred to keep it with her rather than risk having it discovered while she was out, and she also liked the idea of having Sumiko so close by, in her pocket, right over her heart. “Nechan,” she whispered. “Why did you go away? When are you coming back home?”

  In the midst of her daydreaming, Akiko’s younger brother suddenly leaped out from behind a pile of broken bricks.

  “Want to see what I’ve got?”

  Fumi sat up with a start and clutched the collar of her blouse. “I didn’t see you,” she snapped. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hiding.” Masatomi grinned. There were dark brown streaks on either side of his mouth. He stuck out his tongue. It looked dark brown, too.

  “Well, you shouldn’t hide here,” she said crossly.

  “Why not? You do. You come here all the time.”

  “How do you know?”

  Masatomi shrugged. He was wearing only an undershirt and when he moved his thin bony shoulders she noticed just how dirty and full of holes it was. He looked every bit the street urchin he could so easily have become.

  “Want to see something?” he persisted. He brought a closed fist up to Fumi’s face, close enough to make her go cross-eyed. She swung her head back.

  “What is it?”

  Masatomi opened his fist and in the middle of his small grubby palm lay a twisted clump of dark pink. It was covered with bits of gray fluff.

  “What’s that?” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Chewing gum,” Masatomi said triumphantly. “I saved it. I’ll give you half, okay?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “It’s good. It’s from the GI-san.”

  “When did you get that?”

  “Yesterday. No, day before yesterday. I let Akiko chew it yesterday.” Masatomi grinned again. “You can borrow it, but you have to give it back.”

  “Go away.”

  “I have chocoretto, too,” he continued undaunted. “But I ate it up. If I get more, I’ll give you some, okay?”

  “I can get my own.”

  “No, you can’t. You’re stupid. You don’t know how.” Masatomi rolled his eyes skyward. “Hey, I have a surprise. Close your e
yes.”

  “What?”

  “You have to close your eyes.”

  “What if I don’t want to.”

  “Close your eyes!”

  Fumi decided to play along. If she wanted him to go away, this would be the fastest way to get rid of him. She felt his hot breath on her face as he inspected her to make sure her eyes were closed.

  “No peeking,” he said sternly. “Okay, now bend forward.”

  She leaned forward slightly.

  “More!” Masatomi commanded.

  She obliged by letting her head fall forward even more and felt her hair brush against her cheeks. She opened her right eye just a crack. She could see her dark blue pants and her toes sticking out between the thongs of her wooden geta. At her feet she saw the gravel and broken pieces of brick. The sun felt hot on her nape and the back of her head. It was a nice kind of cleansing heat.

  She felt Masatomi’s fingers awkwardly brushing her hair off her neck, parting it in the middle, pushing one half of her hair to one side, the other half to the other side.