Heart to Heart

by Meline Nadeau

  “When did you say you got here, ma’am?” He asked again. She could have just met the guy in some bar, he thought. But that was not the impression he got when he saw them together. Anyway, he couldn’t quite picture the captain bar-hopping in the bustling Susukino district.

  “I arrived yesterday,” she said, glancing over at Kojiro. Sergeant Vogel had seen them together. She couldn’t very well pretend she was alone in hopes that he wouldn’t mention having run into her when he returned to Misawa. She wasn’t anxious for news to get around that she was spending the weekend with Kojiro but she wasn’t sorry she had come and she wasn’t ashamed of him or of their relationship. Of course, Kojiro wasn’t any more anxious than she to have their friendship gossiped about and if General Sato got wind of it, the repercussions would probably be more serious for him than for her. But if they cared for one another, they would have to face the consequences of their behavior. They couldn’t continue seeing each other in secret. It made what they were doing seem shameful. And that was not the way it was.

  “I flew up to meet a friend and to see the ice festival.”

  “Kojiro,” Libby called. She saw him flinch when she said his name, but after finishing paying for some souvenirs, he joined her and the sergeant. “Major Yoshida, I’d like you to meet Sergeant Vogel. He’s one of our favorite crew chiefs,” she said.

  “How do you do?” Kojiro’s formal reply and stiff handshake precluded further conversation and Sergeant Vogel soon bade Libby a hurried good-bye and rejoined his companions.

  “That was a surprise,” Libby said, as she watched the Americans disappear down the boulevard. “I didn’t expect to run into anyone I know in this enormous city.” But Kojiro, who hadn’t bothered to hide his displeasure at meeting the sergeant, ignored her remark and taking her by the arm steered her through the crowd, toward the subway.

  “It is definitely time we went back to the hotel,” he laughed as they squeezed aboard the train. The car was packed with revelers and they stood crushed together, swaying in rhythm as the train sped along the tracks.

  “Crowded trains in Japan are notorious,” Kojiro said, smiling. “Unscrupulous men are known to take advantage when no one can possibly see what they are doing or identify who is doing it. The women are always complaining to the authorities … .”

  Libby shook her head. It wasn’t hard to see how it could happen and yet despite their suffocating proximity, the passengers all seemed indifferent to one another. She would have sworn the man standing to her right, and whose briefcase was jabbing into her ribs, was sound asleep. Every time the train stopped he awoke with a start, but as soon as the doors closed, he nodded off.

  “It would take a lot of dexterity,” she said. “Under the circumstances.”

  “It would.” Two teenage girls were staring at Libby and giggling and making comments about her height and blonde hair. Kojiro frowned at them and they giggled and looked away.

  Libby managed to undo the zipper part way on her coat. “It’s so warm,” she said. “I feel like I’m on fire.” The train lurched to a stop and Kojiro was shoved so close she could hardly breathe. She could feel his legs pressed against hers, his chest crushed against her breasts. And then his hand — at least she hoped it was his hand — stealing under her sweater.

  She bit her lip, and tried to assume the same impassive expression as the other passengers but with great difficulty. Every time Kojiro squeezed her breast her body shuddered with pleasure.

  “I see what you mean about unscrupulous men,” she breathed. “Taking advantage of unsuspecting … ah, women.”

  Kojiro’s face was flushed and beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. “It is shameful,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “How much farther to the hotel?”

  “One more stop.”

  ALAS! the blush upon my cheek,

  Conceal it as I may,

  Proclaims to all that I’m in love,

  Till people smile and say —

  ‘Where are thy thoughts to-day?’

  Taira No Kanemori

  Chapter Seven

  Libby returned to Misawa the next afternoon. The gray, gloomy weather matched her mood as she let herself into her apartment. She turned on all the lights to try to cheer herself up but the empty rooms aggravated her loneliness.

  It was only natural, she told herself, to feel let down after such an extraordinary weekend. She was emotionally drained, physically exhausted, and ravenously hungry. They had been too preoccupied to eat properly and subsisted the entire two days on junk food and snacks Kojiro had smuggled into the hotel. It was too much trouble to get dressed and go out. They didn’t have time to waste at fancy restaurants when all they wanted to do was to be together. How many times had they made love? Surely Kojiro must have set some kind of endurance record, she thought. His energy was indefatigable.

  She had held her own pretty well. All her worries about making love to Kojiro had vanished the minute he took her in his arms. Not only did their looks complement one another, but so did their intimate feelings, their desires. She knew instinctively how to please him. And he in turn, his passion, his tenderness was such a transforming emotional experience, Libby doubted that she would ever be the same.

  So why was she feeling so miserable, if everything had been as wonderful as she recalled? Because although Kojiro never stopped telling her how much he wanted her, he had never mentioned love, that was why. Never referred to the future. She thought it odd, even at the time, that he hadn’t commented one way or the other about meeting Sergeant Vogel. But she had dismissed her misgivings in her eagerness to get back to the hotel and assumed that they would talk about it later and decide what to do. But the subject never came up again. When he put her on the airplane, he bowed and shook her hand and told her he would be in Tokyo for several days and would call when he got back to Misawa.

  An hour before, they had been locked in a passionate embrace on the floor in her hotel room. He had cried out her name when he climaxed. But no one observing them in the airport would have guessed that they were anything more than casual acquaintances. Perhaps it was just as well.

  Libby sighed. Kojiro said he would call when he got back. She would have to be patient.

  Work was a great distraction. Flying was an even better one. There was a welcome break in the weather and the squadron resumed its flying mission. Airplanes took off around the clock in a concerted effort to make up all the wasted hours spent on the ground watching the snow blowing across the runway. Libby was so busy she hardly had time to think about Kojiro and, as she had not had occasion to see Sergeant Vogel, had completely forgotten about running into him in Sapporo. Until Charlie happened to mention it.

  She had just settled down for a mindless hour in front of the television set watching a rerun of Mad Men on the Armed Forces Network when Charlie knocked on the door.

  “Libby-san?” For some reason it annoyed her when he called her that and she was tempted to say she was too busy or too tired for company, but she hadn’t had a chance to talk to Charlie lately and she missed him. He was still her best friend. The feelings she had for Kojiro had not changed that.

  She got up and let him in and offered to fix him a bowl of vegetable soup but he had already had dinner at the club. He looked tired. Not his usual happy-go-lucky self. His signature smile, which he flashed when she opened the door, looked artificial.

  Libby cleared her Japanese workbooks off the end of the sofa and made a place for him.

  “Sit down and put your feet up. You look bushed.”

  “Yeah. It’s been a grueling week. The winters are long, up here in Michinoku,” he said as he retrieved one of the workbooks off the coffee table and thumbed absently through the pages.

  “You’re still taking Japanese lessons, I see.”

  Libby nodded.

&nbs
p; “So you can talk to your boyfriend I guess.”

  She made a silly face to try to deflect the comment but Charlie was not about to let her off so easily.

  “The one in Sapporo.”

  “He speaks English,” she said evenly.

  “That must make it easier then.”

  “My Japanese is very rudimentary. We’d have a very difficult time communicating if he didn’t.”

  “And from what I gather, the two of you don’t have any trouble on that score,” he said.

  Libby glanced at the television screen. It was preferable to looking at the agonizing expression on Charlie’s face. She switched off the set with the remote control.

  “Apparently Sergeant Vogel didn’t waste any time filling you in with all the gory details.”

  “He thought I should know.”

  “Know what? That I was taking a walk in the park with a Japanese man, admiring the ice sculptures.”

  “You went up there to meet him, didn’t you, Libby? You spent the weekend with him.” Charlie didn’t wait for her answer, he was too agitated. He got up and started pacing back and forth in front of the television. “How could you, Libby? How could you go off with a … ” He was too polite to articulate the ethnic slur that came to mind. “With a, a foreigner?” It didn’t have quite the impact that he intended but Libby didn’t seem to appreciate the distinction. “What’s his name? How did you meet him, for Christ’s sake?”

  “His name is Kojiro Yoshida. He’s a major in the Samurai Squadron,” she said. “I met him the day I flew with Colonel Long and General Sato.”

  “But I love you, Libby,” he said, as if his declaration would make everything all right and restore the normal order of things.

  “You just think you love me,” she said. “You’ve been telling yourself that for so long you believe it, Charlie. But for love to thrive and to grow, it has to be reciprocated.”

  “Do you love this, this Yoshida fellow? Does he love you?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  Charlie slumped down on the sofa and buried his head in his hands. “Did you sleep with him?” He asked. He didn’t really want to know, didn’t think he could bear the thought of the two of them making love when Libby had successfully eluded him for so long, but he couldn’t prevent himself from asking.

  Libby had never lied to Charlie before and she wasn’t about to begin now, but she didn’t want to hurt him any more than she already had. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” she said coldly.

  “Of course not.” He tried to sound like he meant it, but he failed miserably. He had his answer.

  Charlie reached out, took her hand, and cradled it in his. “Well at least he’s a fighter pilot,” he said. “I’d have never forgiven you if you’d fallen for a ground-pounder.”

  “Oh, Charlie,” she sighed.

  Kojiro was tempted to call Libby while he was in Tokyo. He longed to hear her voice, to reassure himself that nothing had changed since she returned to Misawa. When he thought about the tempestuous weekend they had spent together, sometimes he couldn’t believe it had actually happened — that he had had the nerve to ask her, and that she had actually accepted, or that she had given herself to him so freely and unconditionally. He felt like he was living in some kind of dream — a surreal world, the boundaries of which were the walls of the hotel room where he and Libby had made love.

  It wasn’t that Kojiro didn’t have enough to do in Tokyo to keep him busy but he found it hard to concentrate on all the details required of a general’s aide. General Sato was on the go from morning until late at night attending one meeting or reception after another. Kojiro had lost count of how many boring speeches he had had to sit through, or interminable dinner parties.

  The general attributed Kojiro’s inattentiveness to anxiety over his impending marriage. “It’s only natural,” he laughed. “Once you’re married, your life will return to normal. Just think how nice it will be to go home at night to a tasty supper and have your wife draw your bath and warm your bed.” But Kojiro could not imagine his life ever returning to normal again, let alone sharing it with a woman he did not want to marry. And yet he continued to make plans for just such an eventuality. On a romantic impulse, Kojiro scribbled a poem by Hitomaro on a note card and dropped it in the post to Libby.

  Long is the mountain pheasant’s tail

  That curves down in its flight;

  But longer still, it seems to me,

  Left in my lonely plight,

  Is this unending night.

  But he did not call her. He rang Motoko twice, and when she suggested she could meet him in Tokyo, he agreed to see her. “I don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble getting up here. I’m tied up most of the time.”

  “It’s no trouble,” she said. “We’ve so much to talk about.”

  He took her to dinner at the Imperial Hotel and they spent the evening discussing the plans for the wedding, all of which were moving along smoothly and swiftly, much to Kojiro’s dismay. The limousine had been hired, photographer engaged, wedding finery rented and hotel reserved for the reception. The ceremony itself, was to take place at the Shinto shrine Kojiro and his fiancée had visited on New Year’s. There the couple, Motoko dressed in a traditional white kimono and elaborate headdress, Kojiro in formal black, would exchange vows before their immediate families.

  Following the brief service, the newlyweds would repair to the hotel, where Motoko would change into another magnificent kimono before being ushered into the banquet hall to the strains of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

  Their parents, inordinately pleased with the match, had spared no expense. The wedding promised to be as ostentatious as it was costly. After being feted by guests with speeches and songs, a third costume change was in order before they could cut the towering cake. Motoko had chosen a western style gown, complete with a train and trailing net veil. Kojiro would do the honors in his dress uniform.

  “I had another fitting today, for my dress,” she informed him over dessert. She had ordered it at a designer shop in the Ginza specializing in finery from Paris and London.

  Arrangements for the honeymoon had been taken care of by Kojiro’s father. They were going to Australia. Motoko collected Koala bears — the stuffed kind — and her best friend, who had also happened to spend her honeymoon “down under,” told her about the great buy on black opals. When they weren’t busy sight-seeing, she planned to shop. She had already made out the list of people who would be anticipating a gift upon their return. When she showed Kojiro the itinerary, he wondered when they would have a chance to be alone. There were tours and activities scheduled every day from morning until late at night.

  “I’m so excited,” she said. “I can hardly sleep.”

  Kojiro got the impression that she was more excited about the prospect of the trip to Australia than she was in the essential business of the honeymoon but perhaps he was being unfair and projecting his own apprehensions on to Motoko. Or what was more likely was that she expected to get all of that over with before they set off. It was obvious she had come to Tokyo with that in mind, and when he took her back to her hotel, she invited him up to her room. If she was disappointed when he declined the offer — he said he had to prepare a report to present to the general in the morning — she did not let on.

  “I promise we’ll have some time together, when you come to Misawa,” he said. She had insisted on flying up before the wedding and Kojiro had reluctantly agreed. Maybe once she saw the place, she would change her mind.

  After her Japanese lesson the next Saturday, Libby was invited to stay for lunch with Nakane-san and his wife. They sat around the kotatsu — an elaborate foot warmer — bundled up in heavy quilts trying to keep the freezing temperature at bay in the drafty old house. Outside, the miniature garden was buried i
n a foot of snow.

  “I wonder if the winter will ever end,” Libby sighed.

  “Some years it lasts longer than others. But before you know it the cherry trees will be blossoming and you’ll forget the cold winter.

  “By the way, you didn’t tell us about your trip to Sapporo,” Nakane-san said. “How did you enjoy the ice festival?”

  Libby felt her face get hot at the mention of the ice festival and she turned away, to look through the frosted glass at a dwarf pine, its branches protected from the heavy snow by a mantle of straw.

  “The sculptures were very impressive. It was terribly crowded, of course.”

  “You should go to Hokkaido in the summer. There’s much more to see when the weather is mild. There is a museum about the indigenous people on the island, the Ainu.”

  “I met a friend in Sapporo, a Japanese gentleman.” Libby said. If they were surprised or disapproving, they didn’t let on.

  “Then you must have been able to practice your Japanese,” Nakane-san said cheerfully.

  “He speaks English.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “Sight-seeing is always more enjoyable when you do it with a friend,” Mrs. Nakane chimed in.

  Libby nodded in agreement. She certainly had no intention of revealing the nature of her relationship with Kojiro to her sensei, but she wanted to talk about him to someone, anyone, who would not be aghast at the idea that she found a Japanese man attractive and interesting.

  “I met Major Yoshida in Misawa. He’s a pilot in the Samurai Squadron.”

  “Then you must have a lot in common.”

  Libby looked imploringly at the old man and his wife. “Do you think it is possible for an American woman and a Japanese man to have a lot in common?” She asked.

  Nakane-san deliberated for a long moment in silence, before answering. He liked Americans, their openness and generosity. Over the years, he had befriended the men and women who had struggled in his classes trying to learn Japanese. Most of them never succeeded. But occasionally someone like Libby came along who had, in addition to the interest and application, the spirit. The inner resourcefulness necessary to learn the language and to be transformed by it.