“Oh?”
“Libby, please,” he pleaded persuasively.
Libby glanced at her companions, who had started packing up their gear for the trip home, and at Darlene’s worried expression, and at Kojiro.
“Coming, Libby?” Darlene asked, but she knew Libby had already made up her mind to go with the major; she could tell by the way they were looking at one another — as if they were the only two people in Hirosaki Park. Kojiro’s hand had relaxed on Libby’s arm and, without even seeming to, she had moved closer, so that she was actually leaning against him for support.
“I will see she does not come to any harm,” Kojiro said to reassure Darlene.
“I bet,” she replied as she watched them disappear into the crowd.
They stopped on the bridge to look up at the castle. Kojiro put his arm tentatively around Libby’s waist but she moved away, just out of reach. The three-storied donjon, with its tiers of tiled roofs, soared on a massive stone foundation over the park. At night, it was illuminated by floodlights. But the downpour had obscured the view, so all they could see was a chaste outline of the building superimposed by sheets of slanting rain.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Libby said. “Why didn’t you get married?”
Kojiro stared down at the water, as if the answer lay in the dark, turgid depths of the moat. “I intended to,” he said slowly. “I believed I had no choice. If it was not for your accident, I would be married now.”
“I don’t understand,” she interrupted. How could the accident have had anything to do with Kojiro’s marriage?
“It was only after I almost lost you, I, I realized I could not marry Motoko. It would have dishonored the love I feel for you.”
“But … .”
Kojiro reached over and put his finger to her lips. Libby flinched and pulled away. She was in danger of falling in love with him all over again, of having her reason and commonsense overruled by her treacherous heart. Despite the cold rain, when he touched her she could feel the delicious warmth, stealing like a thief, through her body, robbing her of her resolution and will.
“I went to the hospital,” he continued. “I had to make sure you were all right. I believed I could still go through with the marriage. People in Japan do not get married with the same expectations as Westerners. Motoko and I, we would have … . How do you say it in English? Managed? To go through life together and raise a family … . But it did not turn out the way I expected.
“They would not let me see you. I told them General Sato had sent me, but it did not do any good. The American nurses could not be bullied by a Japanese officer.”
Libby smiled in spite of herself, at the image of the lordly Kojiro trying to pull rank on the hospital staff. Americans did not take too kindly to people who flaunted their rank or tried to enlarge on their association with their superior officers. “Then how were you able … ?”
“The flowers. I pretended I was delivering them to your room.”
“And no one tried to stop you?” She asked, surprised that Kojiro had been able to waltz right into the hospital and find her room. “You don’t exactly look like a delivery boy.”
Kojiro smiled. “I wandered around the halls, opening every door. I finally had to ask someone where to find you. Even then … . I, I did not intend to go in, Libby. I knew you would not want to see me. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Just one look, leave the flowers, and go. The wedding was a week away … .”
Kojiro edged a little closer. Libby’s hands gripped the railing on the bridge but at least she didn’t move out of reach. “Motoko bought a gown from Paris to wear at the reception. We had tickets to Australia for the honeymoon.”
“But you came in. I saw you,” Libby murmured. “You said my name.”
“Hai,” Kojiro answered, his voice thick with emotion.
“The next morning I went to Kyoto and broke the engagement. Everyone was shocked. Angry. My parents are not speaking to me. I am not sure they will ever forgive me, they are so ashamed.”
“What about … Motoko?” Libby asked. What he had done to Motoko was as reprehensible as what he had done to her, canceling the wedding a week before the ceremony. The young woman must have been devastated.
Kojiro was reluctant to discuss his fiancée. Not enough time had elapsed to mitigate his embarrassment. “She will be all right. She was, she was angry. But her parents will find a new husband.” He hesitated, “one who will be more worthy than I am. She could not face her friends, after what happened. Her parents sent her to Hawaii for a holiday.”
“You told everyone but me,” Libby said accusingly.
“I did not feel worthy of your love. I did not think you could ever forgive me. And I thought, you and Charlie McKay … . It was always in my mind, that you belonged to him.”
Libby sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you, Kojiro? Charlie and I were just friends. Friends. I love him like a brother. Not like I … .” She was about to say: ‘love you.’ But she couldn’t trust herself to say it without crying. And she was determined not to make a spectacle out of herself in the middle of Hirosaki Park or to let on that she still felt any affection for him.
Libby had her pride. He hadn’t been able to take that away from her.
Kojiro covered her hand with his, lacing his fingers between hers. “I did not tell you because I did not believe it was possible for the two of us to have a future together. We come from such different backgrounds … .”
Libby turned and looked at him, trying to fathom what he was trying to say. It was hard concentrating with so many people milling around, bustling back and forth over the bridge, laughing and talking. “And you think it is possible now?”
“I do not know, Libby,” Kojiro said slowly. “But I am willing to try.” He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “If you are. Because I cannot imagine my life without you.”
Libby didn’t know what to say. Her head was spinning from the alcohol and she was finding it increasingly difficult trying to maintain her composure and keep a safe distance between them when all she really wanted to do was take refuge in his arms. But she was not about to let down her guard. The wounds he had inflicted were too raw, too sensitive to be forgotten so easily.
“If you never want to see me again, I will understand.” Apparently Kojiro took her reticence for rejection. “You have every reason to despise me.”
“I don’t despise you, Kojiro. I … I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I tried,” she admitted. “I even thought I had succeeded. But I guess I wasn’t very good at it.”
“Then you will consider what I said?” Kojiro sounded more optimistic than he looked. There were shadows under his eyes, accentuating their distinctive shape and dark color, a sallow, jaundiced tinge to his complexion.
The crowd was beginning to thin out. They could hear singing in the distance and the heavy raindrops striking the water in the moat below. Libby gazed up at the towering wall of the castle.
“I’m not sure I know just what you want me to consider,” she said at last. “We can’t go back and take up where we left off, if … if that’s what you had in mind. It wouldn’t be the same, for either one of us. We’re different people now, Kojiro, than we were a few months ago.”
Kojiro cleared his throat. “That is not what I had in mind,” he said in his most officious voice. “I was … I was … .” There was something to be said after all, for the assistance of a go-between, Kojiro thought wistfully, as he racked his brain for the English words that would convey his worthy sentiments in the time-honored and appropriate fashion. He cleared his throat again.
“I am asking you to consider, to be … to consider becoming my wife!”
“Wife?” Overcome by shock, and the insidious effect of the alcohol, Libby burst out laughing. “Wife?” She repeated.
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Kojiro was not unsympathetic — he knew he should have waited for a more propitious moment, as well as more felicitous surroundings, to declare his intentions. Libby, shivering from the cold rain and swaying unsteadily, was clearly in no condition to make such a serious decision, but her reaction was a stinging blow to his male pride. He had hoped she would appreciate the courage it took for him to break his engagement, realize the risks he was taking for her. But she appeared indifferent to his suffering or worse, amused.
The stricken look on Kojiro’s face was a sobering reminder of how much Libby had lost and she had to steel herself against the temptation to answer in the affirmative. If nothing else, all that she had been through the last few months had honed her instincts for self-preservation.
“There was a time when I would have given anything to hear you propose marriage,” Libby said slowly. She was struggling to find the right words to try to make him understand, but her authority and assurance were being undermined by her physical distress. When she spoke, her words sounded tentative, fuzzy. “I’m not sure I ever really believed you wanted to marry me. Everyone from my commander to my sensei warned me that I would end up getting hurt. I guess I expected it would eventually end, but not … . Oh, there’s no point in talking about it, Kojiro. I won’t marry you.”
“But Libby … .”
“I’ve changed. Discovered all kinds of things about myself the last few months. I had my trial by fire and came through unscathed; and not just because of luck. I am a first-rate officer, Kojiro, an excellent fighter pilot. It shouldn’t have taken an accident for me to find that out, but I didn’t really believe it until I was tested. Any more than I believed I would ever fall in love or want to get married and, and have children. You made me believe it was possible. You made me want those things, every time we made love.”
“Then why … ?” Kojiro tightened his grip on her hand, but she wrenched it away suddenly and moved out of reach. Insulted by the afternoon’s indulgence — the greasy chicken, alcohol, grilled squid — her stomach roiled and she thought she was going to be sick.
The weather had defeated all but the most intrepid revelers. Rain had destroyed the fragile cherry blossoms. The lanterns glowed eerily on denuded branches, like thousands of colored spangles scattered among the trees. The paths through the park were deserted. The vendors had packed up and gone home.
“I had a miscarriage,” Libby said.
Her voice was so quiet, Kojiro had to ask her to repeat what she had just said.
“A miscarriage.” It sounded like an accusation of some sort but Kojiro wasn’t familiar with the English word.
“I don’t understand, a miscarriage? What do you mean?”
“It means I was pregnant. I assume you know what that means?”
Kojiro nodded. “But you are not, anymore? Pregnant? You did not do anything … ?”
Libby shook her head. “The accident. The flight surgeon said the accident was probably to blame.”
“You should have told me,” he said.
“Would you have cared?”
“Of course.” Kojiro’s response was automatic. He was too stunned by the revelation to analyze his feelings. He loved Libby. He wanted to marry her. But if he were honest, he had never thought of her as a mother of his children. And yet, she had just admitted that she had been carrying his child, his son perhaps, the long-awaited male who would carry on the family name, conceived that night at the hot springs when they had come together in such harmony.
Kojiro bowed his head in shame. “I am sorry, Libby, for what you suffered alone. I am sorry that I was not there when you needed me. I am sorry you lost … our child.” He hesitated before continuing, afraid she would misunderstand his morbid interest in the details of what must have been, for her, a humiliating and distressful episode. “Was it … .do you know, was the child a girl or a boy?”
“I don’t know. The miscarriage happened in conjunction with the accident. Ben, Major Segal, took care of everything. He didn’t say and I didn’t ask him. I didn’t want to know.”
“Not knowing is for the best. You are right,” Kojiro reluctantly conceded, but he didn’t sound as if he believed it.
His instinct was to go to Libby and console her but he wasn’t certain she would welcome his sympathy or even if she regretted losing the baby. Her words were spoken without feeling and her body language, which Kojiro had prided himself on being able to interpret, was inscrutable.
In his excitement at seeing her again, he had not taken the time to look at Libby closely. He had been too preoccupied trying to articulate, in a foreign language, his own position to notice the subtle changes in her appearance. Libby was still an imposing figure, even in the gimcrack rain cape she had devised from a plastic bag. She carried herself with the same poise and confidence. But she was much thinner. Her seductive curves pared down to sinew and bone. She looked older too, wary. The girlish softness in her cheeks, the smooth, unlined brow furrowed with suspicion and regret.
Kojiro loved Libby. But his love had been based on a lie and had focused solely on possession. If he had told her in the beginning about his engagement to Motoko, she would never have dated him, never allowed herself to fall in love. There would have been no weekend in Sapparo or romantic interlude at the hot springs, no tangible reminder of his betrayal. Was it any wonder she didn’t want any more to do with someone so selfish?
Kojiro’s love had matured. Libby’s accident had forced him to change, to venture beyond his narrow, self-seeking universe and to discover new and more profound dimensions of human love. He still wanted her. But he wanted something more than mere physical possession. He wanted her happiness. Even if that meant having to let her go.
“There is a word in Japanese for a child who is lost before birth. Mizuko. It means ‘water child.’ It is difficult for me to explain,” Kojiro said, shaking his head. “The ‘water child’ is not alive like we are alive. But it lives, in a world apart from ours, between the living and the dead. The Buddhist god Jizo watches over all the mizuko until they find a new pathway to our world.”
Libby knew about mizuko. She had seen the rows of stone statues at Osorezon, like legions of miniature soldiers standing at attention in those absurd crimson bonnets. She didn’t want to hear anymore, was sorry she had mentioned the pregnancy. A child, even an unintended one, a dead one, was a bond between the man and the woman.
“I know it is difficult for Westerners to understand. I am not sure I believe it myself. But for Japanese women, it is a comfort to go to the temple and make an offering, or light a candle. It is a comfort to believe what is lost will, one day, return to the world and live a full and rewarding life.”
There was nothing more to be said. They were both exhausted, too emotionally and physically depleted to think coherently, let alone carry on a further conversation. The relentless rain had succeeded in extinguishing the passion and anger that had flared briefly between Kojiro and Libby, damping the embers of forgiveness and hope.
Kojiro steered an unprotesting Libby out of the park and through the maze of narrow streets to his car. Assailed by the cloying scent of the air freshner Kojiro used to mask the smell of cigarettes when he opened the door, she clapped her hand over her mouth and tried to will herself not to be sick. It was so undignified. In public no less. In front of Kojiro. It couldn’t be helped.
Kojiro put a protective arm around her waist and shielded her from the onlookers who stared curiously at the bedraggled gaijin heaving the contents of her stomach into the gutter like a salary man.
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered as he handed her a tissue. Heedless of the immaculate white seat covers, he buckled her into the front seat and covered her shivering frame with a blanket.
Libby closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, lest Kojiro take advantage of their seclusion and want to continue their conversation, bu
t he appeared to be as disinclined to converse as she. He turned on the radio and above the hum of the motor, she was eventually lulled to sleep by the mournful voice of some woman singing about her lost love. Westerners liked happy endings. The Japanese were more realistic.
Libby didn’t wake up until Kojiro pulled into the parking lot of the BOQ. She awoke with a start when he turned off the engine, dazed and disorientated by the unfamiliar surroundings. Her head was throbbing and she had a cramp in her neck from the way she had been sleeping, with her head pressed against the window, as far away from Kojiro as she could manage in the compact car.
“How do you feel?” Kojiro glanced briefly in her direction.
“Much better,” she lied.
“A hot shower. A good night’s sleep. That is the best remedy for a hangover.”
“I don’t hold my liquor very well, obviously. Please accept my apologies for embarrassing you in public.”
“You did not embarrass me. I should have realized you were not feeling well and taken you home earlier. It was not a good time to talk to you or such a good place. The weather … ” Kojiro indicated the rain, still drumming steadily on the windscreen. “I was afraid I would not have another chance to speak with you, if I waited. I wanted to explain, to ask you to forgive me.”
“Kojiro.” He tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
“If I had to do it over again, I would not have gone to Hirosaki Park … .”
“Please, I have to go in.”
Kojiro scrambled out of the car to open her door but she let herself out before he reached her, brushed past him and dashed toward the entrance of the BOQ.
“I understand,” he called after her. “You need more time. You cannot make plans for the future when you are still grieving over the past.”
Libby, overcome with another wave of nausea, was too intent on reaching her apartment to pay any attention to his parting words. It was only after she had recovered sufficiently from her hangover, that she remembered.
Heart to Heart Page 90