The Translation of Love

by Lynne Kutsukake

  He picked up the arms of the rickshaw and began walking alongside her. She kept her eyes fixed on the road, well aware that he was leering at her. She thought she could even hear him smack his lips. By now she was supposed to be accustomed to the ogling—it was part of her job after all—but it wasn’t something you could ever get used to, and it made her angry and disgusted and most of all afraid. Every so often she passed a streetlamp and caught a glimpse of the man’s arms, which were like hard knotted ropes. He was thin and sinewy, but he also looked as strong as a wild boar.

  She deliberately walked past the corner where she would normally have turned for her dormitory because she didn’t want him to know where she lived.

  “Hey, no need to walk on those sore feet. You look like you’ve had a long night. I’ll help you out. Ha, ha. I know how hard you girls have to work.”

  She walked to the third lamplight, turned at the tobacco shop on the corner and continued down a lane so narrow the man could no longer pull his rickshaw beside her. He was forced to walk behind her, and she thought this would make him give up, turn around and leave, but he was undeterred. She’d reached the limits of the main Ginza district, and was entering an area of empty lots and open fields overgrown with weeds and strewn with garbage. If she kept on going, eventually she would reach Bar Lucky.

  The rickshaw driver tried again. “Tell you what, there’s no charge for a ride tonight. You don’t have to pay me. Well, not in cash anyway.” He laughed.

  It wasn’t until she was right outside Wada’s bar, standing in front of the navy blue noren, the curtain that hung over the doorway, that she finally had the nerve to face the driver. “Go away. Leave me alone.”

  The man sneered at her. “Panpan like you think you’re too good for us Japanese men, don’t you. You only want that white meat. Well, I won’t forget you. Someday you’ll be sorry, and I’ll be there watching.”

  Sumiko didn’t wait to see what the driver would do next. She ducked her head under the Bar Lucky noren and entered Wada’s bar.

  “Sumiko! Good to see you. Come in. We’re just finishing up here.”

  Wada was standing in his usual spot behind the counter, and another man stood in front. This man turned around to look at her before returning to his conversation with Wada.

  “So what do you say? Is it a deal?”

  “Too expensive,” Wada said.

  “But this is good stuff. Got it from a special source. Once your customers get a taste of this, they’ll be willing to pay a little more.”

  Wada held a bottle up to the single lightbulb that dangled from a cord overhead. It had no label but was clearly recycled from an American whiskey bottle. The liquid glowed a clear pale amber, like spun gold.

  “Look, I’ve sold to all the bars in this area. You don’t want to be the only one left out, do you?”

  The man took the bottle back and unscrewed the cap. “This one’s pure. It’s a secret formula. Give me a glass, would you? No, make that two.” He poured a small amount into each glass. “Try it, but first take a long sniff. That’s the way you can tell this is good stuff. It doesn’t stink like that other kasutori crap.”

  The man demonstrated by bringing one of the glasses up to his nose and inhaling deeply. He didn’t drink but set his glass down on the counter. Wada picked up the other glass and sniffed.

  “Not bad.”

  “Not bad! This is the best you can get.”

  Wada reached into his cash box and tossed a few crumpled yen bills onto the counter. “That’s all I’ve got. Take it or leave it.”

  The man wrinkled his brow and drummed his fingers on the counter. Then he scooped up the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “That’ll do. I’ll bring more next week.”

  After the man left, Wada turned to Sumiko and shrugged his shoulders. “Everybody’s trying to make money any way they can. Say, are you hungry? You want something to eat?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  He carefully wiped the counter and set out two pair of chopsticks, two small bowls of cold rice, and a plate of cabbage pickles. “Here’s something else you’ll like,” he said, putting a large ripe tomato on the counter and resting his knife next to it. “Doesn’t this look good? I’ll slice it up and we can share it.”

  He pushed one of the glasses toward Sumiko. “We shouldn’t let this go to waste.”

  She smiled but shook her head.

  “Come on now,” Wada said, raising his glass. “I can’t enjoy it unless you keep me company. Kanpai!”

  She picked up the shot glass and clinked it against Wada’s. “Kanpai!” She was just about to take a sip when she saw Wada freeze, his glass halfway to his lips. She quickly turned around.

  The American in the doorway was so still he looked like a statue. She wondered how long he had been there and whether he had been watching them since the other man had left. Although he was not as big as some of the GIs she’d met, he was still much taller and bulkier than Wada. The only part of him that moved were his eyes. They were wide and wild, and they darted all around the tiny enclosure, back and forth between Sumiko and Wada.

  He was filthy. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he had walked in off a battlefield in the jungle. His hair was uncombed and his face was covered with a thick black stubble, his uniform dirty and stained with dark blotches. There was a particularly large stain on his left thigh, and something dark and viscous was dripping from it.

  The silence was broken by Wada.

  “Sumimasen, no money.” Wada tried valiantly. “So sorry.”

  As if this were his cue, the man rushed forward, snatched the knife from the counter and clamped his arm around Sumiko’s neck, all in what seemed like a single smooth, uninterrupted motion. His chokehold was so tight, she could hardly breathe. Just under her jawbone, she felt the sharp warning prickle of the knife tip, forcing her to keep her head erect. She thought about what they always said in the dance hall—don’t resist, don’t resist. But she couldn’t have resisted if she’d wanted to.

  “Kane ga nai. No money.” Wada was whimpering now. “So sorry.”

  The man didn’t seem to hear or comprehend. Just as suddenly as he had grabbed Sumiko, he released her by slamming her hard against the counter. He held the knife in front of him, slashing at the empty air and jerking it recklessly back and forth between Sumiko and Wada. Then, with his free hand, he picked up one of the bowls of rice from the counter and shoved his face into it, eating from the bowl like a dog. He did the same with the second bowl. He bit into the ripe tomato, heedless of the juice spilling down his chin, and after he had devoured it, he picked up the Japanese pickles with his fingers and pushed them one by one into his mouth. At the first sour bite, he made a face, but he continued to chew with a fierce determination until everything on the plate was gone. Sumiko had never seen a white man eat like that; she’d never seen a white person who was so hungry. After the man had devoured everything before him, he downed the contents of the two shot glasses one after the other, and then picked up the bottle and brought it directly to his lips. He choked on his first large gulp, but after he recovered, he took another swig. And another and another. Each subsequent swallow seemed to be easier. As he drank, he pointed the knife at them, holding it straight out like an extension of his arm as if to demonstrate he meant business.

  Sumiko watched the man’s every move but she couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t even scream. It was like a bad dream in which her throat had been stuffed with seaweed. Wada seemed similarly paralyzed.

  After finishing almost half the bottle, the man set it down on the counter and turned his head toward Sumiko. He began staring at her in a way that was different from the way he’d looked at her before. She tried averting her eyes but he stared so hard and so fixedly that eventually she felt compelled to return his gaze. He’d lowered the knife, and his eyes had stilled, all their wildness completely gone. Now they were glazed and unfocused, filled
with a morose puzzlement and confusion, as if the man were scanning her face, searching for something just out of reach. His eyes were, in fact, large and quite striking, a startling shade of blue fringed with dark lashes as long as a girl’s. In another circumstance, she might even have said they looked pretty. What struck her now was how mournful they were, like the eyes of some sad frightened animal.

  “Keiko, I’m sorry,” he began speaking for the first time. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He seemed to think she was someone else. To Sumiko’s astonishment, he started to blubber. Rubbing one big hand over his dirty face, he began sobbing like a small boy. It was so unexpected and even embarrassing that Sumiko’s first reaction was pity. Then she came to her senses. He’d let the knife slip out of his grasp, and she dropped to the floor to grab it.

  That was what she remembered most clearly, the feel of the knife in her hand. The smooth wooden handle had a comfortable grip and the knife itself was small and light. She had just wrapped her fingers securely around the handle when she turned her head to see a blur of movement. A dark mass hurtled toward her, smashing into her so hard it knocked the wind out of her lungs. When she came to, she was lying on her back and the man’s body was on top of her. Wada was standing over them. In his hand he held the neck of a broken bottle.

  “I knocked him out. Don’t worry, Sumiko, it’s over,” Wada said. He got down on his knees and rolled the GI off her. Then his face turned ashen.

  Even before looking, somehow she already knew. Somehow she was aware that her hand was empty and that the knife was gone. When she saw the man on the floor, her first impression was that he seemed much smaller lying down than he had standing up. The knife sticking out of his side looked bigger now.

  She touched her hair and pricked her finger on a splinter of glass.

  It’s over, Wada had said. The words now had a different meaning. A man was dead. Not just any man, but an American. Sumiko bit her lip hard to make sure she wouldn’t scream.

  Wada grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “We have to get out of here. You understand, don’t you? This is my place, so I’m in more trouble than you, but you…you, too…” He glanced at the body, and she followed his gaze to the knife.

  “The police,” she finally managed to say. “We have to go to the police.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “It was self-defense. It was an accident.”

  “The Japanese police can’t help us. We have to run. We have to take care of ourselves.”

  Wada emptied his cash box, wrapped the framed pictures of his wife and son in a tea towel, and shoved his belongings into a small bag. “When they find this dead guy, there’s going to be hell to pay. The Americans won the war. They’re in charge, and they can do anything they want to us.”

  “But what about your bar?” she said. “After you worked so hard for it.”

  Wada looked her straight in the eye. “Don’t you know that everything you have can be taken away from you in an instant?”

  32

  They spent the night hiding among the crowds of homeless who filled the underground passageway at Ueno train station. They were exhausted but unable to sleep. It wasn’t just the sheer terror of what had happened that kept Sumiko awake. She was cold and wet and aching all over. Before they left the bar, she’d hastily tried to wash the blood off the front of her blouse. “Don’t bother,” Wada said. “We have to hurry.” But she’d insisted because the blood had been sticky and warm and it felt like a part of the man was still plastered to her. The most she’d been able to do, though, was wipe her blouse with a dishrag that she had dampened with water. Now as she sat on the concrete floor in the underground passageway, she was convinced that the smell of his blood was all over her. It had seeped into her skin, a raw rank odor that she could never get rid of. The blood mixed with other smells—her sweat and the cloying sweetness of the perfume she’d put on earlier in the evening—but worst of all was the powerful smell of fear. It was the scent thrown off by a wounded animal hiding in its lair, and it came from her and from Wada. She listened to his shallow irregular breathing and sensed his constantly shifting movements by her side.

  As soon as the trains started running in the morning, Wada insisted they had to flee. “Let’s go to Hokkaido, as far north as we can go. It’s big up there. The Americans will never find us.”

  It sounded so far away, almost like another country.

  “I need some time to think,” she pleaded.

  “We have no time. Don’t you understand? It’s not safe to stay here. A dead Japanese, who cares? But a dead American! They’ll be coming after us.”

  She covered her face with her hands and the image of the man’s body with the knife in his side came back to her.

  “You know me by now,” Wada said. “I’m a good man. I’ll always take care of you. I’ll protect you.”

  By evening, she’d made up her mind. He was a good man, probably better than most, but she knew instinctively that it wouldn’t work. The dead GI would always be between them. We killed an American would someday turn into you killed him. He’d hit the man over the head, but she had been the one holding the knife. No, she would have to take care of herself. She had to, she wanted to. It was better this way.

  She told him to go alone.

  Wada was shocked. “How can you manage by yourself? You’re a woman. There’s only one thing you can do to survive. Do you want to end up doing that?” He kept shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe her stubbornness. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it, but you better be careful. Get away from Tokyo.”

  He slipped into the fast-moving throng of people headed toward the platforms to board night trains.

  Sumiko sank back against the wall in the passageway and, to her surprise, almost immediately fell asleep. She woke after a few hours in the middle of the night. The passageway was pitch-black, and perhaps because she was now alone without Wada, the darkness felt thicker and denser than the night before. Yet though it was dark, it was not quiet. All around her, there was sighing, sniffling, wheezing, snoring. A child whimpered and was hushed. A man coughed and spat. From somewhere in the passageway Sumiko heard a low moan that was repeated every few minutes. She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, young or old, or even if it was human.

  Later, when it grew quieter, Sumiko pricked up her ears again, and this time she detected scuttling sounds. Instantly she felt her scalp tighten. The scuttling was faint, the telltale tiny taps of small sharp claws running across a hard surface. Sumiko hated rats. From that point on, whenever anyone brushed against her body in the overcrowded passageway, Sumiko couldn’t help imagining a swarm of rodents coming to get her.

  Wada had given her a little money before they parted company. “Get a train,” he urged. “Go anywhere.” She’d put the money in her shoe so she could feel the uncomfortable bulge under the ball of her foot, so she would know for sure where it was at all times. But although her shoes were tight and she did not take them off, she woke up one morning to find the money gone. Not only had the thief skillfully removed her shoe without disturbing her, he had somehow also managed to put it back on her foot.

  She sat in her spot in the station and spent her days watching people hurry past. The longer she sat, the less need there was for movement. She was convinced she was so still that the people who rushed by didn’t see her at all. Then it came to her: Here was a solution. If she remained still enough, for long enough, eventually she could simply dissolve into thin air. It seemed like a fitting resolution. A man was dead and she would will herself to melt away. She didn’t think of it as starvation. It was more like evaporating.

  With each day that she did not eat, she felt a little lighter. Each hour without water, she grew lighter yet. She stopped needing to go to the bathroom. She stopped needing to move. Even her breathing was transformed into the rapid quivering of a tiny bird.

  She lost all sense of time. Then one afternoon a squad of Japanese policemen arrived at the st
ation and as passengers got off the train and passed through the exit turnstile, they began frisking them.

  “Up against the wall. Random inspection.”

  Sumiko felt her chest turn to ice. This was the end, the worst thing that could happen—the police had arrived and they would arrest her for sure. She wasn’t invisible to them. With every ounce of her depleted flesh she wanted to run, but she didn’t think she had the strength to even stand.

  The police seemed especially intent on targeting women. Any woman wearing baggy clothing, regardless of age, was made to lift up her top and show her belly, then turn around and show her bottom.

  “Come on, you’re not all pregnant. Let’s see what’s strapped under those monpe. There, look at that. A clear violation. That’s well in excess of your ration allotment.”

  “They’re checking for rice smuggling,” the woman next to Sumiko muttered. “But everyone knows the rations are ridiculous.”

  As if he’d heard what she just said, one of the policemen pointed at the woman and the other homeless people, including Sumiko. “All of you, stand up! Now!”

  Sumiko struggled to get to her feet.

  “Stand up!”

  She clutched the pant legs of the person next to her, desperately hoping somehow to haul herself up, when a woman in a wide black robe rushed over.

  “Hazukashiku nai! You should be ashamed of yourself,” the woman snapped at the policeman. “Can’t you see how weak she is?”

  “But everyone has to—”

  “Look at her clothes. It’s obvious she isn’t hiding any rice.”

  “Well, but everyone—”

  “Just look at her! She is clearly a victim of society. You men have done this.”

  Then the woman tapped the front of her gown with authority, and Sumiko realized the black robe was a nun’s habit. “This is a fallen woman and she is my charge. I’ll take care of her.”

  The policeman backed off.

  The nun helped Sumiko to another area of the station away from the inspection. She reached into the folds of her robe and produced a baby bottle, unscrewed the top, and held the bottle to Sumiko’s lips. “Drink this. It’s sugar water.” Then she gave her a slightly squashed bean-paste bun that she pulled from another hidden pocket. While Sumiko slowly chewed on the bun, the nun studied her in silence.