The Sun Gods

by Jay Rubin

  Mitsuko’s eyes were fixed on his, but when she neared him, she lowered her gaze and knelt beside the bed. He could see that she had been planning this moment, carefully preparing the words she would speak to him.

  “I gave my heart to you long ago,” she said in a voice little more than a whisper. “Tonight I give myself completely. Please love me as I love you.”

  Again she raised her eyes to his, and as she stood, she loosened the sash that held her kimono together. He could not take his eyes from her, dreading the inevitable moment when, like Sarah, she would ask him to extinguish the light. Instead, the sash fell away, the edges of the silk robe fell open slightly of their own weight, and still the words did not come.

  She sat upon the edge of the bed, and the opening widened, and now he could see that the tawny gold of her skin lay just beyond the borders of the robe. Her hands began to move, slowly, gracefully, upward. She wore her hair up, as always after the bath, but in profile now he saw that its folds and twists were more elaborate, held in place by combs with sparkling edges. First one, then another she removed, and the shining black strands of her hair fell past her shoulders.

  His eyes began to ache, and the thought of extinguishing the light himself momentarily flashed through his mind, to be followed immediately by the fear that the sight would actually vanish.

  He reached up and touched her cheek, then pulled her face down toward his. This time when their lips met, she was with him, and her whole body began to glide toward him, slipping under the covers. He closed his eyes tightly.

  Now her robe was open wide, and he felt her working at the knot that held his sash together. His hands moved down, inside her robe, and he felt her shoulders shift to help him slip the silk from her body. Here, in this golden twilight, all he could think of were the dark gropings he had known with Sarah, who had made him struggle every time for each square inch of flesh. The unashamed luxury of this woman was overwhelming, almost frightening. He knew that he could look at her, and that she would let him, but he was not sure he had the strength to look.

  His lips caressed her cheek, her ear, her neck, and she softly moaned with pleasure through parted lips. She pressed against him tightly, willingly offering the warm, soft mounds of her breasts. He had longed for and dreaded this moment ever since that shocking night in spring when he had seen her with Billy. He had kept that frightening image of her locked away in some remote corner of his heart. But now he had to see, to behold the flesh his hands and lips had discovered before his eyes dared to learn the truth.

  He drew back to survey the glowing skin, the dark V below, and he felt that he was seeing a woman for the first time in his life. She was real. She was here. And now, she was his.

  They joined together in the light. Her body clung to his, and sunlight seemed to flow from her, darting and streaming inside his flesh, flowing out again through him to her, then back again, a long, shuddering, frightening spasm. He would not relent, he would not relent, he would not give his eternal soul to this, he would not plunge into the darkness beyond, he would not, he would not.

  He heard a slap that drew him out of the darkness.

  Mitsuko stood at the window, facing the morning light, her hands seemingly clasped in prayer. But then he saw the elbows of her robe move, and the sound came again.

  “Mitsuko, what are you doing?”

  She turned, her palms pressed together, lips in a gentle smile.

  “Praying,” she said. “Praying that the sun will give us as wonderful a day today as he did yesterday.”

  The simple beauty of this woman standing before him stirred his soul to the depths.

  “The sun?” he asked. “You mean Our Lord God Almighty?”

  “The sun is God’s sun,” she said, slipping under the covers again and looking into his eyes.

  There was danger here. He would have to teach her soon. But now he wanted only to hold her close again.

  10

  THE WEATHER WAS GLORIOUS again this year for the spring outing to Jefferson Park. Everything else was the same as well—the families, food, races, prizes and prayers—and yet, for Tom, the world was a whole new place. Not only was it the first year of the forties, it was a new age with a new wife by his side.

  The day after the picnic, a cable arrived from Japan. Mitsuko’s brother Jiro would be coming to spend the month of June with them as the family’s “official representative.”

  As stiff as the words sounded, Jiro turned out to be even stiffer. When his ship docked in Seattle, he walked down the gangplank in a tight-fitting suit, looking as if he had a steel rod for a spine. He bowed to his elder sister, Yoshiko, to Yoshiko’s husband, Goro, to his younger sister, Mitsuko, and finally to Tom. His thick, black eyebrows and grim face gave him a forbidding air. He seemed to have left his youth in a far more remote past than should have been possible for a man of thirty-two. To Billy, however, he offered a limp hand in what he apparently conceived of as an American handshake, and he came close to smiling.

  On the way to the Nomuras’ house, where Jiro was staying, Tom felt like a chauffeur. The hushed conversation was entirely in Japanese, and no one ventured to translate for him. If he turned to look at the others, he could see them, and they could see him, but he might just as well have been on the other side of a thick pane of glass.

  When they were alone later, Mitsuko explained to Tom that her family had taken some time to decide what to do about her marriage to an American. Yoshiko’s letters had helped to soften the initial shock, and of course her parents had been partially mollified by Tom’s being a minister. But Ichiro, the eldest, was still feeling bitter, and Jiro was at best ambivalent. He had married a non-Christian woman and was indifferent to religious matters. Finally, they had decided to send this younger brother to investigate.

  Jiro lived in Tokyo, far from the family’s rural home, where he worked as an engineer. The family decided that he could take off from his job more easily than Ichiro could be spared from overseeing the tenants who worked their farmland, and since Tokyo was so convenient to the port of Yokohama, Jiro was the logical one to make the two-week crossing. He had surprisingly little trouble obtaining a leave of absence and travel documents.

  “Why was that surprising?” asked Tom.

  “I am not sure I understand exactly,” replied Mitsuko, fidgeting with the doily on the arm of the sofa. “He needed permission from the Army.”

  “Is he in the reserves?”

  “I don’t think so. It has something to do with his age. He can be … what do you call it …?”

  “Drafted?”

  “Yes, that is it.”

  “His company was willing to let him go just like that?”

  “I think so. I am not really sure.”

  Tom had little opportunity to find out more about Jiro, who seemed to have remarkably little interest in his newly married sister and her family. He spent most of his time on his own, touring the area by bus and cab, though he apparently visited none of the usual tourist spots.

  Tom again played the chauffeur when Jiro suggested they drive down to nearby Tacoma. They drove with windows closed in spite of the warm weather because of the foul-smelling industrial flats on the south side of Seattle. Near the Boeing plant, Mitsuko said that Jiro wanted him to stop the car.

  “Here?” Tom protested.

  Yes, Mitsuko said after checking with Jiro, there was no mistake. As soon as Tom pulled up to the curb, Jiro leaped out and stood clinging to the chain-link fence by the sidewalk, surveying the vast empty spaces surrounding the plant. He had never shown half as much interest in Mount Rainier or the Olympics as in this bleak stretch of concrete.

  “I think my brother is only interested in his work,” Mitsuko said to Tom that evening.

  “I should think so,” replied Tom, “if factories excite him that much. What kind of engineer is he, anyway?”

  “He works for an airplane company.”

  “So this was a real busman’s holiday for him,” Tom rem
arked.

  “No, he does not drive a bus,” Mitsuko said.

  Tom laughed out loud and explained to her the meaning of the expression.

  Tom was far from laughing when he saw the headlines that Thursday. The Japanese air force had bombed Chungking, the remote site of the Chinese government, which had fled there from its temporary refuge at Hankow, keeping just ahead of the Japanese invaders. Most of the people had taken refuge in the rock caves beneath the city, but the vicious attack had destroyed the homes of 150,000 people.

  “What kind of planes does your brother Jiro’s company make?” Tom asked Mitsuko at dinner in the Nomuras’ house.

  “I am not sure,” she said without looking at Tom.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” he pressed.

  There followed a good deal of Japanese buzzing, after which Mitsuko told him that Jiro’s company made small planes.

  “Are they the kind of ‘small’ planes that just bombed Chungking?” Tom asked, staring at Jiro, whose dark brows hung over his eyes like two storm clouds.

  Jiro spoke in Japanese, his eyes never wavering from Tom’s.

  No one translated.

  “Well?” asked Tom, his eyes still fixed on Jiro’s. “What does he say?” Mitsuko, Yoshiko and Goro discussed this with a perceptible note of tension.

  Goro was the first to speak. “I am sorry, Pastor Tom, but Jiro is a very proud man. He says he cannot tell you about his planes, but they are the best in the world, much better than the planes that Boeing makes in Seattle.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me in the least,” said Tom, gritting his teeth. “Tell him that Boeing’s planes are made for transportation, not for killing.”

  “Please, Pastor Tom—”

  “Tell him, Goro. Tell him for me.”

  Still Goro said nothing. Mitsuko began to speak, slowly, in Japanese. As her words filled the small dining room, Jiro’s black brows seemed to bristle, and his face was distorted into a horrible grin. No sooner had Mitsuko finished speaking than Jiro’s mouth opened wide, the red gash in his face reverberating with a hard, derisive noise that sounded more like rusty farm machinery than human laughter.

  “Let’s go, Mitsuko,” said Tom. “I don’t think I want to stay in the same house with your brother.”

  “But Tom—”

  “Now!”

  Mitsuko rose slowly from the table, mumbling apologies to the others. Gathering Billy’s toys, she took her little blond son by the hand and followed Tom out. Jiro was speaking angrily as they stepped into the fading summer light.

  Yoshiko called two days later to say that Jiro had decided to return to Japan early. Tom felt some satisfaction at that news, but the reports that came in the paper each day were increasingly harder for him to deal with.

  At the end of June, the Japanese foreign minister proclaimed his country’s wish to unite all East Asia and the South Seas under Japanese control. A few days later President Roosevelt declared that no American soldiers would be sent to war, which sounded more like wishful thinking than an unshakable commitment. A new Japanese cabinet was formed in July vowing to “enhance” the spirit of the empire. On August 15, all political parties but the Japanese militarists’ ruling party were dissolved, and on the twenty-second, Japan recalled most of its diplomats serving in the United States. By mid-September, Roosevelt signed a bill authorizing a military draft. Less than a week later Japanese troops crossed the northern border to attack the French defenders of Indo-China.

  None of this found its way directly into Tom’s sermons, but there was a new intensity each time he spoke, a new sense of urgency, as if he had to help his flock understand more clearly than ever the gospel of Christ. Only he, standing in the pulpit, could insulate them from the evil influence of their yellow brothers in Asia. Only he, stretching forth his protective embrace, could shield them from the rising tide of resentment here at home. Carried along on the current of his own words, he felt the truth of his mission with absolute certainty.

  If only he could find a way to make this feeling last outside the walls of the church! If only he could find a way to forget that his wife was the sister of a man whose very hands might have worked on the planes that were raining down the manna of hell upon the heads of the helpless Chinese!

  The wind was tearing Seattle apart on Thursday morning, November 7, but Tom found the thought of staying home all day unbearable. Increasingly, his little office at the church had become a refuge for him. He loved his wife, of that he was certain, but the sight of her, the touch of her, the sweet ecstasy she gave him with her flesh, seemed to undermine everything he had always been. He stood at the window, watching the rain sweeping horizontally past, the wind carrying with it tree branches and sheets of newsprint, shreds of hay, tumbling signboards and umbrellas and hats.

  “Why don’t you stay home today?” Mitsuko said, coming up behind him. He had been thinking the same thing, but the caressing, velvety sound of her voice convinced him almost instantaneously that he must do exactly the opposite. With hardly a word to her or Billy, he left the apartment.

  The wind turned out to be less devastating than it had at first appeared to be, though traffic was slowed by horses pulling their tarpaulin-covered loads with heads drooping.

  Once he had closed himself in his office, Tom continued doing what he had been doing at home, standing at the window, watching the storm. He had needed desperately to get away, and now that he was away he needed just as desperately to go back.

  Shortly before noon, the power failed, and Tom wondered if everything was all right at the apartment. He lifted his phone, but it was dead.

  The streets were strewn with sodden pine branches as he made his way back, and in the short run from the car to the front entrance of his building, his coat became drenched.

  “Daddy! We’re having a picnic!” Billy squeaked when Tom walked in. His mouth was ringed with rice grains, and he clutched a glob of rice in both hands.

  Mitsuko had shaped her leftover rice into triangular lumps topped with the flaky dried seaweed that had almost choked Tom the first and only time he had tried it.

  “Do you have to feed him that stuff?” Tom grumbled.

  Mitsuko explained that she had been unable to shop because of the weather.

  “Well, you could have found something else … peanut butter and jelly …”

  “But he likes o-nigiri,” she replied.

  “I know, maybe he likes it too much. Don’t feed him so much Japanese food. It’s not good for him. It’s not good for anybody.”

  “Tom, what is wrong … ?”

  “Have I made myself clear? I don’t want to see that stuff around here anymore.”

  Billy was crying, and Tom realized he had allowed his voice to rise to a near shout. He had been looking forward to joining them for the afternoon, and now he felt there was no place for him here in his own home. He spun on his heel and stomped to the front door, where he had thrown his wet overcoat on a chair.

  “Tom! Where are you going?” Mitsuko cried, hurrying after him.

  “Out,” he muttered between clenched teeth. “Just out.” He slammed the door behind him.

  Tom spent the rest of the afternoon in his church office, going through his files and filling several waste baskets with useless papers. After a while, he could no longer concentrate on even this busy work, and when the power was restored he switched on the radio for the latest news. With professional calm, the announcer reported that the new Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge, the world’s third longest span, had collapsed that morning. The winds had reached no more than forty miles per hour, but the bridge’s oscillations became so wild and powerful the bridge ripped itself apart and plunged into the tossing waters far below.

  Tom was still not ready to go home when dinner time came. He could only drive up and down the streets at random, staring at store windows and the big, round headlights of oncoming cars. The air was filled with clouds of exhaust that flowed and shifted each time a car plunged thro
ugh.

  Suddenly, the glowing marquee of the Roosevelt Theater lit the night. Little Nellie Kelly with Judy Garland was playing. Now he was sorry he had not thought to check the show time of Gone with the Wind before he left the office. It had first appeared about the time he met Mitsuko and won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1939. A year and a half later, it was still playing to packed theaters. He hadn’t seen a movie since before Sarah became pregnant, and at this rate he wasn’t going to be able to go out with Mitsuko until the Japanese were pushed out of China. A movie alone was exactly what he needed.

  Parking near the Roosevelt on a Thursday night was easy enough. He paid his thirty cents at the box office and had time for a hot dog and Coke before Little Nellie Kelly started. He was not really in the mood for such silly shenanigans now, though, and he hoped the second feature would be better.

  First there was an intermission to sit through, and previews, and finally newsreels. The first news story showed representatives of Germany, Italy and Japan signing a 10-year military-economic-alliance pact in Berlin. Then came the drawing of the first numbers in the new national military draft followed by President Roosevelt promising not to send “our boys” to war. Another Roosevelt clip showed him denouncing the Republican National Committee Chairman for inciting a whispering campaign that he intended to commit an act of war against Japan immediately after election day. There was some respite from the subject of war with “Grieving Dog Flown to Master” and “Beauties on Display,” but then came Interior Secretary Ickes intoning solemnly into a microphone, “We should supply instruments of war to those who are fighting for our Christian civilization.” Next were shots of Japanese troops marching into French Indo-China and capturing several thousand French legionnaires. This was followed by a cartoon titled “Jap in the Box,” which showed a hand labeled “Hitler” pressing the button on a box from which popped a bespectacled, mustachioed, buck-toothed Japanese face wearing an officer’s cap.