by H. K. Bush
Our eyes locked, some hundred feet separating us, across the open lot. I called out to her, waving with both arms now, again, acting like a true American. The gesture caught the attention of the older lady, and they both looked at me and bowed, almost as if it were in tandem. I got up, walked across the pavement, and bowed myself.
“Mika-san, what a pleasure to see you again. O-hisashi-buri.” I bowed again, knowing I needed to be formal, given her elderly companion.
There was some embarrassment, and finally she spoke. “Jack-san, O-hisashi-buri.” She gestured toward the now rather stern looking woman. “This is my friend from Tokyo, Toda Setsuko.” More bowing. “Hajimemashite,” we both said. “Oba-san, Springs-sensei desu.” We chatted briefly, then I abruptly asked, “Mika, can I speak with you a moment?” I looked at her companion, my eyes imploring her for permission to speak alone with Mika. Getting no sympathy, I proceeded anyway and guided Mika gently away, with a hand on her arm. The tiniest frown worked its way over Setsuko’s crusty demeanor as we strolled across the street together, out of earshot.
“I’ve been hoping to run into you, Mika. Actually, well, our lunch together meant very much to me.”
She waited a moment. “Yes, Jack-san. I truly enjoyed our time together. And I hope you liked my choice of restaurant. I’ll never forget the look on your face as you tried the crab brains. You were very sweet, pretending to enjoy it!” This memory made us both laugh.
Suddenly she grew more serious. “Perhaps you have heard, but I am back in town to look after my uncle.”
I hadn’t heard, of course. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Jack-san, he is not well. He is quite ill, in fact. Since you have left, he seems to be doing more poorly than for many years.” She hesitated. It was awkward trying to talk to her, with the older companion hovering hawk-like a short distance away. “I’m sure he thinks of you often.”
Three years in Japan, but the local nuance of sentences like these still danced around me like gypsies. “Perhaps now is the right time to contact him, then? It would be a pleasure to visit him again.”
She shook her head. “No, that would not work, I’m afraid. He is ill, but still very … self-important. He is … too proud.” She had a plaintive look in her eyes and she looked up directly into mine.
A sudden, almost incomprehensible sadness gripped me at that moment, standing amidst the chaos of a noonday street scene as the sun disappeared behind some dark clouds, and a light drizzle began falling gently. We moved under the awning of a pharmacy, and I did manage to find the resolve to take her hand.
“Mika, can we see each other, again? Can we meet, maybe have dinner sometime? Like I said, I owe you a meal.”
Immediately her eyes broke free from my gaze and she looked down. For the briefest moment she allowed me to hold her hand, then gently removed it from my grasp, both of us absolutely aware of the continuing gaze of her friend, Setsuko. Over the din of the marketplace, she spoke the fateful words that, for all practical purposes, brought my tenure in Japan to a close.
“Jack.” They were seemingly as hard for her to say as they would become for me to swallow. “I am engaged. I am to be married in the springtime.” With this announcement she looked up again to my eyes, smiling in that feeble way suggesting that such a smile is not genuine. Then she looked back across the way toward her older companion, smiling all the more. “In fact, you have met me at a rather awkward moment. You see, Setsuko is my nakodo—the woman whom my father has enlisted to find my husband. And she has found me a wonderful man, one of the young executives in one of my father’s businesses. His family is very prosperous, with an old samurai lineage.” She waited and smiled again. “I believe you Americans would call someone like my Hiroshi a ‘go-getter.’ My father calls him one of his young tigers. He and his parents live near my father, in Setagaya, up in Tokyo.”
I was stunned by all of this, of course. “But I thought you told me that you could never allow yourself to do such a thing for your father? What about all that talk about falling in love?”
“But I do love him, Jack-san.” It did not ring true, however. A moment passed. “He is a good man. And my father assured me that this time, if I did not comply with his wishes … well, I can only say that there was some damaging information that he was willing to release in case I continued to be rebellious.” Now she looked me in the eye again, this time with some terror, it seemed to me. “He simply cannot come to terms with the idea of his daughter remaining unmarried and childless, well into her thirties. And he demands a grandson.” She was staring straight down at the ground.
“What damaging information? You mean about you?”
“No, Jack-san. About my uncle. And his … services to the government, during the war. And some later, dubious business dealings. It would involve much disgrace for him, as well as a substantial part of his share of the family fortune. My father can be quite ruthless, as you must know by now. I have no choice, you see.”
More hesitation.
“And of course, I’m sure you realize. He would never agree to any marriage to someone … who does not meet his specifications.” She straightened up. “That would include an American,” She told me. “Even an American of great wealth.” Then she looked me directly in the eye. “Certainly not a professor.”
That last sentence was like a sharpened dart. “But Mika, don’t you have a choice? Our lives are all choices. Look at you,” I said, gesturing toward her American outfit, though this time it was not quite as brash as the cowboy costume. “Is that something a traditional Japanese woman would wear to the market on a Saturday morning?” I actually laughed at my own little tease. But she only smiled wanly.
“This clothing? Well, I wish to wear it for now, because in just a few months, I may never be allowed to wear it again, at least not in public.” She explained this to me with an utter sadness. She even laughed a little, though it was one of those laughs of despair that signal our resignations in life. “I am sure you can never truly understand all of this, Jack. But I also know what I must do. My uncle … ” She caught herself, and for just a moment it seemed she might sob. “Well … he needs me to do this for him, and so I must obey my father. I will be leaving Kobe at the end of December, to be back in Tokyo for the New Year and to begin preparations for the wedding.”
I was deep in shock, of course. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Setsuko continued keeping watch over our conversation. Lamely, I asked, “So that’s it?”
She looked up, tears actually welling. She brushed them aside, and stood erect. “Yes, sensei. That’s it.”
The conversation was over, but I tried to keep it going. “Well, we can at least meet sometime for tea, or just to talk, right?”
“No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Anyway,” and here she glanced back toward Setsuko, “my movements are now being … observed. My father has many enemies, and the idea of a scandal would make some of them very happy indeed.” The image of Endo rubbing his hands together, eager to cast me down a stairwell, flashed through my mind.
I understood, so I said after a moment, “Right. So I guess we should say our goodbyes.” Another long, painful locking of eyes. “Well, thanks for all that great tea and sembei!” I even managed to guffaw at this, and she also allowed herself to giggle precociously into her hand. And then I took her hand, freshly giggled into, and held it one last time. “You meant a lot to me here in Japan. Much more than you’ll ever know, I’m sure. But I want you to know that, and I give my best wishes to you, Mika. I hope you find happiness.” With that, I turned, shooting a look of animosity in the direction of Setsuko, and walked away down the street.
A few seconds later, I heard her voice for the last time. “Goodbye Jack-san. I also wish for you to find happiness!”
I turned, myself on the verge of tears, but instead made a little joke, throwing up my hands, and shouting “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!” Three times for good luck. It brought a smile to her face. But then, as I
headed off back down the road, the laughter turned to loneliness, and turning the corner, I understood that my effulgent hope of romancing a beautiful Japanese woman had been dashed to pieces, and as I continued down the busy sidewalk, it vanished into a distant past. I never saw Mika again.
Days poured into weeks, like rainwater through a downspout. It was the end of 1994, and the soggy holidays came and went, but the lifeless holiday season in Japan, where most people work until New Year’s, seemed secular and very bland to me. But the end of the school year was nearing, and I had officially told the powers that be that I would leave Japan as soon after the holidays as was allowable. Technically, the school year would not end until late February, and it would be best, they informed me, if I could remain until then. I was in a compromising mood, so I booked a flight for the final day of February and contemplated what my life would be like back in the States. But in my heart, I was ready to get on the plane already.
I had no job lined up for fall of 1995 and no real plan to get one. In fact, I hadn’t sent a single job application letter. My flight would take me back to Indianapolis, through Detroit, and at least temporarily to the house of my youth. I would begin my re-entry into America in the large, mildewed basement room I occupied during high school. Like Mika, I was another thirty-something returning to the ancestral home. It was vaguely troubling, if not quite shameful, when I pictured myself eating a Midwestern meat loaf dinner with my aging parents, watching college basketball’s “March Madness” with Dad as he slowly rocked away in his chair, reading the Indianapolis Star. The family dog Caliban, now overweight and arthritic, would be lying on the rug beside us, asleep. Most irritating of all was the thought of calmly making my bed each morning, rather than facing the grim reproaches of an angered mother. Making the bed was a big deal for Mom.
Going back to Indy would relieve the immediate pressures of not having a clue where I would end up in life. But I also knew that I couldn’t possibly handle my parents for very long. So in those waning days after the holidays, I finally began the task of searching for a position for the next fall. I had already missed the major feeding frenzy of job applications that commences in October and November. So that opportunity was long gone. Nevertheless, I hunted through the job listings and sent out a couple dozen halfhearted letters for positions not interviewing at the MLA Convention, already past. Many of those were either one- or two- year temporary jobs, or sometimes post-docs designed for brand new doctoral grads. Or they were heavy-teaching positions at what appeared to be substandard institutions, either at tiny liberal arts colleges in states I had never visited, or at regional state universities with directions in their names—often, multiple directions, like “Northwest” or “Southeast.” I can’t say any of them excited my interest particularly, especially after a decade at elite institutions like Yale and Kobe U. But my savings would not last forever, and you have to pay the bills. So I sent out my letters and waited.
Meanwhile, I began auctioning off my own possessions through the notorious enterprise of the sayonara-sale, like all the other gaijin before me. By the beginning of January most everything of value had been spoken for. I packed up the many books I had acquired and shipped them home to Indianapolis. The only major item left was the neat and clean Nissan that I had bought from Richard. I assumed that I would be able to unload it for a couple grand just prior to my own departure, just as he did. But it didn’t turn out that way.
Pretty much everything else was in place, and I began waiting out the final few weeks of my Japanese sojourn. I was ready to head home, parents’ basement or not. My colleagues at the department held a year-end enkai, a dinner party to bring closure and drunkenness to the group as a whole. As a result, I was essentially liberated from any further duties, or social events, with the school. There remained only one unresolved issue in Japan, but I tended to try my hardest to sweep it under the rug: The failed relationship with Sensei. Try as I might, it nagged at me like an old mule. Despite Mika’s advice that I should not try to contact him, and her implication that I should never visit him without an invitation, the thought certainly did cross my mind. In fact, by the first part of January, only about six weeks before my scheduled departure, I had essentially decided that I must attempt a final visit, Japanese protocols be damned.
And I did make a final visit. But it didn’t happen the way I envisioned. The visit was the defining moment of my life, but I had no way of knowing it at the time. Even now, as I begin to recount that fateful day, I get antsy. A tingling sensation starts deep down in my gut and radiates out toward my extremities. It’s not exactly queasiness. And oddly enough, it’s not remorse—although I freely admit it should be. But it is otherworldly, creepy, maybe something akin to deadness, and it still lives as some sort of hideous presence lurking at the core of my being, a thing that is ultimately unnamable. And the more I dwell on it, a visceral and psychological horror comes rushing back, as it has now as I sit here and prepare to record it.
I look back over that last paragraph and see how lame my sentences sound. Show, don’t tell, is the old writer’s adage. So now, all that’s left is to spin the tale and try to put words to this unnamable something. As a friend once told me, we almost never realize the decisive events of our lives at the moments we are living through them. Realizing comes later—if at all.
So much crucial data in this chapter gets lost upon first reading, I fear. The sadness of losing Mika is palpable, of course—but it coincides with the related, perhaps greater sadness of leaving Sensei behind in the Land of the Rising Sun, which became far more intense, I now surmise. But you are not yet fully acquainted with the reasons for that great sadness, dear reader.
Perhaps it is most appropriate to have our narrator admit that it has in fact required—lo, these many years—even for him to “realize” the meaning of all these interrelated events and personalities. Jack’s use of the phrase “Realizing comes later— if at all” is quite telling. It will remind scholars of the verb’s usage in nineteenth-century America as a marker for what later, post-Freudian psychologists would term “latency”: an inability among the grieving and the traumatized to latch onto the “reality” of a particular loss. Time is required to make death “real.”
Now, rereading this chapter with its references to horror and the inability to “realize” what did, in fact, happen, reminds me of a quote that Jack hid in plain view, for all to see, in his preliminary letter to me, the letter that initiated this entire, lengthy process of recovery wherein he describes his own anguished memories as “the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available.”
A wounded lover, I might add—as are we all, to some extent—or will be, by and by …
CHAPTER 11
I was sound asleep early on a Tuesday morning when I had the strangest sensation, mid-dream, of being flipped a few inches into the air. I had been up very late the night before, during which I had had many beers and sakes and almost nothing to eat. So being flipped into the air might have been a fantasy attributable to a very bad hangover. That sounds uncanny to begin with, but I still have the non-negotiable memory of being both awake, asleep, and airborne, all at the same time, if even for the slightest moment. I hit the mattress and then was tossed up over and over, like a child bouncing on a trampoline.
Meanwhile, there was general havoc all around me. Furniture began moving all to one side of the bedroom, books came flying out of bookshelves, a clock fell off the wall and bounced along the floorboards. The sound was like a huge wave in a sea-cove, splashing onto ancient rocks, just before a storm hits. But the storm in this case was hitting me, and pretty hard, too. Above, a map of the world was torn from the wall and came floating down, gently covering one of my feet. It was all in slow motion, and seemed to go on and on and on.
The largest bookcase fell over with a heavy crash. A bottle of Chianti broke into shards of glass, spilling its blood-like contents onto the r
ug. And the building rumbled on. I fell out of bed—or was, rather, tossed—and found myself sprawled on the floor, face down. The wreckage and sheer insanity of it all continued, the building still rumbling on as if someone was trying to turn on a reluctant car engine. It seemed to last for many minutes, not mere seconds.
Finally the initial disaster began to settle down. Wearing only my pajama bottoms, I covered my head with both arms and lay prostrate and fearful, face to the floor. The initial shock waves gradually subsided into powerful vibrations punctured by occasional outbursts of Mother Earth’s anger. But nothing else fell down, at least not onto me. I did hear something fall in the dining area. Then I heard one tremendous explosion from outside, followed by a number of smaller crashes.