The Sun Gods

by Jay Rubin

  “Please, Dean Foster, it’s nothing as crass as that. I’m just not sure what I want to do anymore.”

  The next day, Bill submitted his application for graduate study in the university’s Department of Far Eastern and Slavic Languages and Literature. When he gave the news to Professor Tatsumi in the hall afterward, the professor let out a loud “Yes!” that echoed up and down the marble-floored corridor of Thomson Hall and brought him startled glances.

  “Too bad you didn’t decide sooner,” the Professor said afterward. “We could have gotten you a fellowship.”

  When Bill took his final exam in Biblical Theology on June 9, workmen were beginning to erect the tent framework in front of Bander Hall for the graduation ceremonies on Saturday. Some of the other students came dangerously close to violating the college rule against dancing in public when they witnessed the hubbub.

  At Maneki, the boss’s wife, Kumiko, chattered endlessly about the “great future” he had in store.

  When graduation day came, the sight of the red-and-white candy-striped tent in the morning sunshine meant only that he would have to endure a few more hours with his family, who were seated inside. He watched his father shake hands with Dean Foster and introduce Lucy and their sons Kevin and Mark, both of whom had inherited Lucy’s bright red hair.

  He spotted Clare standing with her friends jabbering away. She never once looked in his direction.

  Precisely at ten o’clock the processional music started, and the faculty began to file into the tent. When it came time for him to march down the center aisle, he noticed a small, dark-haired woman in the audience. After he had taken one or two more strides ahead, he glanced back to make sure. Yes, it was Kumiko, her eyes shining in his direction, looking as proud as any mother in the assembly. For the first time, he experienced the sense of fulfillment he imagined the others in the graduating class to be feeling.

  President Shelton climbed to the podium. “Welcome to the sixty-sixth annual commencement on this glorious eleventh day of June 1960. This has been another wonderful year in the history of our college. Academically, we have seen definite enrichment of the curriculum and increased interest on the part of both faculty and students in genuine scholarship, research, and world service. Along with this growth has been equal progress as a Christian institution.”

  At that point, the air began to rumble, and President Shelton looked up, smiling sheepishly, as a huge silver plane without propellers thundered across the sky. It was one of Boeing’s new jet planes on a test flight. The audience waited patiently for the roaring to die down and the speech to resume.

  “Society, everywhere, needs the penetration of the spirit of anointed Christians. God has a program for each of you, our graduating seniors. How you react to His divine call will finally constitute your biography. And now, when the words ‘under God’ have been added to our national Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, it is all the more incumbent upon us, as representatives of the Northwest’s only evangelical Christian liberal arts college, to respond to the world’s need for Christian leaders. Let us join in renewed dedication of heart, mind and energy, under God, in making Cascade-Pacific College throughout the years ahead a dynamic influence in the lives of increasing thousands of young people to the end that they, too, shall accomplish God’s will for them. To one and all I say, ‘Fare-you-well.’”

  Had Bill graduated a year ago, the president’s remarks would have fit in perfectly with the benevolent rhetoric he grew up hearing and might have remained immersed in for life. Now, he was standing outside it, wondering what it meant, wondering what it really and truly meant for him. More than anyone else, his father had represented the unquestionable reality of this world. If a man so wholly dedicated to these comforting words was capable of harboring such a terrible secret, how much could they mean to anyone?

  The same doubts assailed him as he listened to Colin Ashwood, the Houston Memorial speaker. Bill wondered how he himself could possibly have stood up there speaking of “the inspiration of the Scriptures,”

  “the efficacy of Atonement,” or “the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

  After the ceremony, the Morton men—Tom, Bill, the fourteen-year-old Kevin, and Mark, twelve—posed together in the spring sunlight as Lucy aimed the camera at them. Tom grumbled to Bill, “That could have been you up there. Dean Foster told me.”

  Before Bill had a chance to answer, he heard an all-too-familiar voice. “Here, let me, Mrs. Morton. You get in the photo too.” Clare, in the black, red, gold and white of academic dress, her long, blond tresses released from the mortarboard now, practically snatched the Brownie Hawkeye from Lucy.

  Looking down into the box camera’s viewfinder, Clare called out, “Say ‘cheese,’ everybody!”

  “Cheese!” cried the others obediently, but still she did not press the shutter.

  “Come on, Bill, smile!” said Clare. “I see your Japanese girlfriend came to watch you graduate!” She swung the camera in Kumiko’s direction. “She’s right over there!” Her thumb came down on the shutter button with a loud click.

  Kumiko stiffened when the entire Morton family turned their gazes on her. She slipped behind a row of arborvitae.

  Bill broke from the ranks and strode toward the gloating Clare, yanking the black box from her grasp. “I never meant to hurt you, Clare. That was uncalled for.”

  Without looking back, he lunged through the crowd in search of Kumiko, but she had disappeared.

  “What was that all about?” his father demanded when Bill returned with the camera.

  “Never mind,” Bill muttered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “What about the picture?” cried Mark.

  “Forget it,” said Bill, but when Lucy and Mark insisted, he resumed the unwelcome pose.

  “I want a full explanation at home,” muttered Tom when they were standing side by side again.

  “There’s nothing to explain.”

  “Come on, now!” cried Lucy. “Where are those smiles?”

  They drove to Magnolia in a two-car caravan. Bill wanted to have his car available. Lucy rode with Bill.

  “I only pray,” she said to him when they were alone in the front seat, “that today you and your father can put behind you whatever it is that has made things so difficult over the past year.”

  He glanced at her. The last few times he had seen her, she had been wearing large curlers, but today, with her face framed in soft, red waves, she looked lovely—if a little sad.

  “I’d like to straighten things out with him, too, but I don’t have high hopes.”

  “That’s a terrible attitude,” she said.

  “I’m afraid it’s the only one I have right now.” He could see from the corner of his eye that she was looking at him, but he refused to take his eyes from the road.

  “And who was that blond girl?” she asked.

  “She … we used to see a lot of each other. She didn’t take it well when we broke up at the beginning of the school year.”

  “Well, why did you break up? She’s a very pretty girl. Did it have something to do with that … that Japanese woman?”

  “Indirectly, I suppose. Not really.”

  “She was acting like a jealous woman. I hope there was nothing to that remark of hers about her being your ‘Japanese girlfriend.’”

  Bill paused. “It’s a complicated story,” he said finally.

  “Oh, Bill! I’ve tried so hard to be a mother to you, but you’ve never let me!” Her voice cracked, and her questioning stopped. Before long, they pulled up to the house on the bluff.

  Bill felt as if he had not seen the place in years. He could hardly believe that he had actually lived behind those dark walls. Inside, Lucy stripped sheets of wax paper from the platters arranged on the dining room table, revealing a spread that seemed too lavish to be in his honor. No one else seemed to notice his presence, either, at first. He might just as well have been at some convention where strangers mill around the hors
d’oeuvres, trying not to look at each other’s bulging mouths.

  The boys immediately grabbed handfuls of chocolate chip cookies and Lucy brought in refrigerated platters to fill the few bare spots on the table. Bill put a deviled egg and a small mound of tuna salad on his plate, then stood staring out through the patio door. He could hear his father munching on celery sticks, but neither said a word.

  Lucy joined the glum, little gathering, “Let’s have a toast!”

  She poured lemonade into the glasses lined up on the table and held one out for him and one for his father. They were forced to approach each other in taking the drinks from her, and she raised her own in salute.

  “Congratulations, Bill,” she said. “We’re proud of you.”

  The three clinked glasses. Both men looked down at the small, nervous redhead, and then, at long last, faced each other. Only now did Bill realize that his father had aged, his leathery skin become worn and wrinkled. Bill found it impossible to smile, but Tom managed to say, “Yes. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you both,” Bill said and sipped his lemonade. His parents looked at him, waiting for him to say something else. He wished that he could slip out unnoticed, as one does at a church function that has gone on too long. Unfortunately, though, he was the guest of honor and he had to be here to respond when his step-mother remarked how fortunate they had been to have had such nice weather for the ceremony, and weren’t the floral displays beautiful, and the girls looked so lovely and the men so handsome all decked out in their academic robes and singing so fervently. She had noticed little groups of girls afterward, hugging each other and crying, and it had reminded her of her own high school graduation.

  It dawned on Bill that if he could keep the conversation confined to the graduation ceremony or to highlights of his college career, avoiding any talk of the future, everything would be all right. He mentioned Dr. Sweeney, the scholar with whom he had studied medieval history, and how pleased he had been to see the dear, old man at the ceremony today in his robes, whiskers fluttering in the breeze. “He pretends to be such an old curmudgeon,” he noted, “but I saw tears in his eyes today.”

  While he spoke, Bill saw Kevin glancing at him from across the room. Fourteen now, Kevin was taller than his mother, his body slim and wiry.

  “Why don’t you join us, fellas?” Bill called to Kevin and Mark, realizing that they, too, could provide topics for conversation that would fill the time until he could decently excuse himself. Even the twelve-year-old Mark might have something to say about his own coming graduation from elementary school.

  “Looking forward to going to McClure next year?” Bill asked with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

  “Kind of,” said Mark, scratching his nose.

  Bill wondered what to say to Kevin. The freckled redhead always became sullen when his elder half-brother was around. He still had a scar above his right eye from a fall over the bluff across the street. Bill had tried to grab him at the last moment, but had succeeded only in accelerating his fall. Bill could never convince Kevin that it had been an accident.

  Lucy excused herself to heat some pastry. As soon as she was gone, Tom looked at Bill and said, “Come into my study.”

  The boys glanced at each other, and Mark, hunching his shoulders, muttered, “Uh-oh!” Bill followed his father across the living room to the heavy, dark-brown door that he had always tried to avoid passing through.

  “I was going to ask you what that little scene on campus was all about, but the more I think about it, the less I want to know,” Tom said as soon as the door had closed behind Bill.

  “I’m sorry about—”

  Tom held up his hand to cut him short. “I have paid over a thousand dollars this year so that you could finish college, and I would like to know what I am getting for my money. You haven’t said a word about what you plan to do with your life. Well, now I want to hear it.”

  Bill’s eyes wandered over the holy books that lined his father’s shelves, grazed the sacred images upon the wall, then settled on the burning blue eyes that could be avoided no longer.

  “I’ll be entering graduate school at the U.W. this fall. I’ll be studying Japanese.”

  “I told you, you’ll be wasting your time. Any mission to Japan is doomed to failure.”

  “I won’t be going as a missionary.”

  “I don’t understand,” Tom said.

  “I’m not ready to commit myself to the ministry.”

  “You mean to tell me that after four years of study, you’re not even going to enter the ministry?” His voice rose with each word.

  “Not yet. There are too many questions in my life that need answering.” Bill struggled to remain calm, but his hands were beginning to tremble.

  “Questions? You know as well as I do where all the answers to all the questions are to be found.”

  “No,” Bill said, his voice struggling to escape his parched throat. “The Bible says nothing about a woman named Mitsuko.”

  Tom sagged back against a tall bookcase.

  “She was your wife, wasn’t she?”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “I have no reason to lie,” said Bill. “Just tell me the truth. That’s all I’ve ever asked of you.”

  There was a tentative knock on the door, and Lucy poked her head inside. With a strained smile, she said, “It’s not very polite to disappear from—”

  “Leave us alone!” Tom shouted, blasting her out of the room.

  “Shall I tell you what I know?” Bill said.

  “I don’t want to hear the filth that others have been telling you.”

  “I want to hear the truth from my father’s own lips!”

  “I wouldn’t profane myself with this evil.”

  Lucy burst into the room. “What is happening with you two?” she wailed.

  “Lucy, stay out of this room!” Tom shouted, but she stood her ground.

  “Coward!” shouted Bill. “You’re afraid of the truth! Doesn’t ‘atonement’ mean anything to you? How can you live with yourself?”

  Suddenly Bill was slammed up against the wall, the wind knocked out of him. He fell to the floor with Kevin’s knees on his chest. “Take it back! Take it back!” Kevin screamed, pounding Bill’s face and body with his bony fists. Bill shielded his face, but the boy kept flailing wildly, and his knuckles stung. Lucy tried to restrain Kevin from behind, and Bill grabbed the boy’s wrists. The scar over Kevin’s right eye was bright red. “I hate you!” he screamed. “Get out of our house!”

  With Lucy’s help, Bill managed to drag himself from underneath the squirming Kevin. He stumbled out through the door of the study, nudging past Mark, who stood there frozen, and made his way across the living room. Throwing open the front door, he lunged into the warm spring sunlight.

  28

  c/o Niiyama

  Ogikubo 1-124

  Suginami-ku

  Tokyo, Japan

  November 15, 1962

  Dear Frank,

  You are probably wondering if the earth has opened up and swallowed me since I left Seattle almost two months ago. Let me assure you first of all that everything went off as scheduled. The Fulbright people met a planeload of us at Haneda Airport, brought us in to a fancy hotel called the New Japan, and proceeded to “orient” us to the Orient for three solid days under hermetically sealed conditions. The only indication I had that I was in a new country came the first day when I noticed that the whole building was swaying. It was my first earthquake and it came as quite a shock (no pun intended). There have been several since, and now I take them very calmly.

  Perhaps I ought to mention one other little shock I received during orientation. By the second day, I was thoroughly fed up with seminars and hotel food and I decided to launch out on my own. I left the hotel and walked down a narrow street to a main thoroughfare clutching an old Occupation Army map of Tokyo in my hand. (It did me no good whatever, and I have since discovered that the only way to find your way ar
ound is with Japanese maps printed in booklet form with each spread showing a particular ward of the city.) In contrast to the artificial calm surrounding the hotel, the main street had trolley cars screeching back and forth and motor scooters and tiny cars roaring past, kicking up clouds of dust. There was a seedy, little restaurant facing the street, with plastic models of food displayed behind its dusty windows. I immediately recognized katsudon from Maneki and went in and ordered a bowl. I was glad to find that the Japanese I learned in Seattle really does work, though the “real thing” is still something of a shock. (I keep writing about these “shocks” I’ve been getting, but, if anything, I’m not using the word enough. This shock is not the shock I said I was going to tell you about. That comes in the next paragraph.)

  So, anyway, I left the restaurant, feeling at last that I had arrived in Japan, and the feeling only increased when I climbed a green embankment running parallel to the narrow street I had taken from the hotel. I followed a dirt path on the embankment that was lined with little pine trees twisted into all sorts of interesting forms, as if walking through a life-size bonsai tray or through some of the Sesshu landscapes I had seen in Professor Fleming’s art history class. Down at the far end of the path, I saw a man who looked as if he had been standing there since the Meiji period. He wore nineteenth-century Japanese clothing top and bottom--which means he was in skirts and had a cape on his shoulders. He was somewhat bent over and leaning on a cane and when I drew closer, I could see that the felt hat he had on was old and battered, though not at all shabby. He looked like Nagai Kafu or one of those other great Meiji writers who had been to the West but returned to find their Japanese roots. I knew for sure that I was in Japan, and I was filled with an overwhelming desire to talk to him and thus to commune with the Japanese past. Still holding my Occupation map, I approached him and, in the most exquisitely polite Japanese I could muster, said, “Excuse me, sir, but could you please be so kind as to tell me the name of the street down there below the embankment?”

  He looked up at me through his old-fashioned, round wire-frame glasses and said, in equally exquisite Americanese, “Hey, Mister, you from the States? I used to sell peanuts on Coney Island.” And he went on to tell me how, for decades, he had traveled up and down the East Coast selling peanuts and popcorn on beaches and in amusement parks. He was a dear, old fellow, but I doubt if he had even heard of Nagai Kafu. And he never did tell me the name of that street.