The Sun Gods

by Jay Rubin

“You heard me!”

  Wavering, Mineko sent Bill a terrified glance.

  “You know this man, don’t you?” Mr. Fukai shouted. “What has he been telling you?”

  “Nothing, just that—”

  “Go to your room now!”

  Wilting before his eyes, Mineko turned and ran down the hallway. A woman came out of the shadows and followed her. Not until a door slammed somewhere in the back of the house did Jiro face Bill again.

  “You’re one of the American devils who murdered my family.”

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Fukai, I loved Mitsuko like a mother, and I’m convinced that she loved me more than—”

  “Don’t talk to me about love! You’re as much of a hypocrite as that father of yours, claiming to love Mitsuko. You look just like him.”

  “You met my father?”

  “Yes, I met him, that holy man of God. And I saw you, too. I visited your wonderful city of Seattle where they build the bombers.”

  “You’re absolutely right. My father is the one to blame. I only want to make up for some of the pain.”

  “What do you know about pain? Have you ever run for your life from a sky full of American bombers? Have you ever seen a pile of black ash on the earth that just might be your whole family?”

  “No, I haven’t experienced that kind of pain myself. But I have seen Aunt Yoshiko, and it broke my heart.”

  “You’ve been to Itsuki?” Mr. Fukai’s face became distorted with rage, and he began trembling all over. He went back into the house, striding heavily on the glossy wood. A second later, he was back. He flung the still-wrapped tin of rice crackers at Bill’s feet, hurling the crumpled calling card after it.

  Bill bent down, picked up the mess, then turned and stepped out of the house.

  On the street again, he walked slowly, hoping Mineko would come after him. At each corner he passed on his way to the station, he stopped, looking back, but there was no one. He dropped the mangled gift and card into a waste receptacle.

  On the platform, he let two inbound trains go by before admitting to himself that he was alone. But she still had his card, and she could call him when the storm had passed.

  He went home and waited in his room. No call came. When Mrs. Niiyama asked if he would be joining them for dinner, he accepted so as not to be out of the house if Mineko called.

  But Mineko did not call, neither that evening nor the following day.

  He missed another seminar and Keiichi called to ask if he was sick. Bill thanked him for his concern and cut the conversation short. Whenever Mrs. Niiyama was on the phone, he circled his room like a caged animal.

  Tuesday morning, he joined the streams of workers filtering out of the houses in Ogikubo, flowing into ever-broader tributaries, and converging in a torrent on the station. Before the rapids could sweep him toward the center of the city, he extricated himself and boarded a less crowded train headed in the opposite direction, toward Koganei. One stop past Musashi-Koganei, Mineko’s station, he transferred to the Seibu-Kokubunji Line and stayed on the rickety, little train for two stops, exiting at Taka-no-dai with hundreds of women students. He hurried to the gate ahead of the crowd, surrendered his ticket, then stood there watching every face that passed through.

  He had arrived before eight, as he had planned, but obviously she could have come through here long before. After the students from this train had passed through, he found a slightly less exposed position behind a post.

  Wave after wave came, none of them bearing Mineko. Between waves, the uniformed ticket-taker would stare off into space, humming to himself. Next to him, the man punching the tickets of boarding passengers kept up an incessant rhythmic clicking with his metal punch, which he barely interrupted each time a rider without a monthly pass held out a little cardboard rectangle in the vicinity of the clicking jaws.

  When the morning rush slowed, the ticket-taker got down from his stool and ambled over to a door in the brick wall of the station. Bill heard water running, after which the man emerged with a watering can. He dribbled water on the area inside the wicket. When the can was empty, he systematically scrubbed the whole area with a push broom. Bill watched him accumulate little, black piles of moistened dust and scoop them up with a dustpan. All the while, the other uniformed attendant remained on his stool, punch clicking as if the hand holding it belonged to a robot.

  The trains came at longer intervals now, each disgorging fewer passengers. At 10:30 Bill used one lull between trains for a quick trip to the men’s room. As he stepped outside again, a policeman approached him.

  “Do you have some business here?” the officer asked, his eyes nearly hidden beneath the brim of his hat.

  “I’m waiting for a friend,” Bill said.

  “Let me see your passport, please.”

  “I’m not a tourist,” Bill said.

  “Then your Alien Registration Certificate, please.”

  Bill patted the pockets of his sport coat and thrust his hands in his pants pockets, knowing that he was not going to find the little, blue booklet that he had carried so dutifully during his first few months in the country. Foreigners were never supposed to be without their Gaijin Torokusho, but the damned thing was not only useless, it was too big to put into a wallet and too small to keep track of as it bounced from pocket to pocket. The other foreigners he knew left theirs at home, where it was safe, since loss of it was threatened with all sorts of dire consequences.

  “I’m sorry, officer, I seem to have left it in my room,” he said at last.

  “Then you’ll have to come with me.”

  “I have these other things,” he started to say, reaching for his wallet, when he heard footsteps coming down the station stairway. A few paces behind a woman in a yellow dress was Mineko.

  “Here,” Bill said, looking back and forth between his wallet and the station gate, “my business card.”

  “That’s not good enough,” the policeman said. “Anyone can have one of those printed.”

  Mineko was through the gate. Her eyes were downcast, and even if she had looked up, she probably would not have seen him here off to one side behind a post.

  Bill pulled out his University of Tokyo student identification card and the National Railways pass he used to commute to campus.

  The officer looked at them, grumbling to himself. Bill craned his neck to watch Mineko emerge from the other side of his post and approach the curb.

  “Mineko!” he shouted.

  The police officer looked startled, then angry.

  Bill said, “That’s my friend. She’ll vouch for me.” But when Mineko saw him, she stepped down into the street and started to run.

  “Mineko! Come back!”

  On the other side of the street, she stopped and whirled around, vigorously shaking her head, then she continued walking off swiftly across a broad lawn. Bill started to run in her direction.

  “Stop!” bellowed the policeman behind him. When Bill reached the curb, he felt the policeman’s hand on his shoulder. “You’re under arrest.”

  Mineko turned to look at Bill standing on the curb with his arms in the air. She clutched her briefcase in front of her as if in protection.

  The officer pushed Bill toward a police box near the front of the train station. Mineko took one or two tentative steps in this direction, then began walking swiftly to the police box.

  The police kept them for nearly an hour, interrogating him, examining his identification and Mineko’s. After Bill gave repeated promises never to flee from the police again or to leave the house without the all-important Alien Registration Certificate, they were allowed to leave the police box. They walked in silence until they had reached the middle of the grassy field.

  “Why did you run away from me?” he asked.

  “Don’t you know? After what happened on Sunday? You lied to me. I heard what my father said to you. He knew exactly who you are. You’re not just someone who was ‘taken care of’ by my Aunt Mitsuko. Your father
did something awful to her.”

  “Don’t you know? Didn’t he tell you?”

  “My father has never told me anything. All I know is what I heard before he sent me to my room. I was so disappointed in you!” Her eyes filled with tears, and her voice caught in her throat.

  “But I didn’t lie to you. I explained my connection with Mitsuko the way I explain it to everybody, out of habit. The truth is something I am not very proud of.”

  A group of students stared at them while passing by.

  Bill asked, “Is there somewhere quiet we can go?”

  Mineko looked at her watch. “I’m missing my Shakespeare class. It started at eleven.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you have any other classes today?”

  “English history, at three.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you since a quarter to eight, and I’m starved.”

  She took him to a little café nearby full of carved wooden bears and salmon and other objects made by the Ainu people of Hokkaido. Bill hoped to find unusual dishes on the menu, but there were only sandwiches and other unremarkable fare. He ordered pork cutlet with curry on rice, and Mineko had a cucumber sandwich.

  Bill said, “I’m sorry I didn’t explain more about your aunt. I suppose your father was right. My father did kill her in a way. I’m only finding out now what really happened.”

  Bill told her of his longing for Mitsuko and of his shame for what his father and his country had done to her and her sister.

  Mineko said, “I know my father has tried to protect me from all that. I had never seen him so angry before. There is so much locked up inside of him and my mother from the war, things they never talk about. I do know that I am lucky to be alive. The house where we were living was bombed when I was seven months old. When I was born, they had almost no medical supplies. I think my mother had trouble giving birth. She was never able to have children again.”

  “I suppose that’s another reason why they’re so protective,” he said.

  “I know that’s it. I sometimes think I’m lucky to have such a wonderful mother and father, but other times I want to tell them to calm down, to let me live my life and grow. One thing is certain, though,” she added, looking at him intently, “I never want to do anything to hurt them.”

  34

  MINEKO’S DETERMINATION TO spare her parents any pain made it difficult for Bill to see her. Nighttime dates were out of the question, and departures from her college schedule were difficult to manage. The best they could do was lunch once a week in the Ainu café, and on weekends they would take in a movie or stroll through a park. He could not write to her, and she had to be the one to initiate telephone calls.

  In the middle of June, the rains came. Day after day, the heavens drummed on Bill’s thin metal roof. The only quiet was to be had when the downpour turned into a blanket of thick mist. He complained to Mrs. Niiyama that his leather shoes in the entryway were turning green and hairy with mold. She laughed and assured him that the annual ordeal would come to an end by mid- or late July. There would be a single, huge clap of thunder, the skies would clear, and then he would be sorry that the rainy season had given way to scorching heat.

  Without classes to keep him busy, the wait to see Mineko could be unbearable. He was almost gruff with her when she called on Friday after one week of rain to suggest that they meet in Ikebukuro for a revival of “Summertime” with Katharine Hepburn.

  After the movie, they went to a café and ordered tall glasses of iced coffee. “I really enjoyed the Venice crowd scenes,” she said. “Did you notice one American soldier with round glasses moving past the camera?”

  He had barely taken note of the actions of the main characters, let alone such minor details. He hardly spoke while they drank their coffees. When they stood again in the dark under the dripping eaves at the edge of Koganei Station, he embraced her fiercely.

  “I love you, Mineko,” he said, his voice nearly lost in the pounding of the rain. “You’re all I can think of. I want you with me all the time. I want to marry you.”

  “You mustn’t say that,” she pleaded. “There are others to keep in mind. We have to control ourselves.”

  “Is that what you were doing today? Controlling yourself?”

  “Must I blurt it out?”

  “Just tell me: do you love me?”

  “Yes, you know I do,” she moaned, pressing against him. “But I’m afraid. My parents would never allow me to marry an American. They think they will have their little girl with them until I finish college, at least. And I was never expecting anything like this to happen. I don’t want to grow up so quickly.”

  “You have no choice,” he said. “Don’t you feel it?”

  She raised her face to his, her dark eyes deeper than the surrounding blackness. The rain tore into the earth, sealing them off from the rest of the world. Again their lips met, the moisture of the steaming night sealing their bodies against each other.

  “I will tell them tonight,” she whispered when their lips had parted.

  “No, I want to be there with you.”

  “But that would only make things worse.”

  “I’m afraid of what your father might do to you.”

  “I am not afraid for myself, only for them. They will be devastated.”

  “Then let’s try our best to do it right. I don’t want to tear you away from your parents, but we have to be prepared for that.”

  She hung her head and tightened her arms around him.

  “I’ll come to your house on Sunday morning the way I did the first time. Together, we’ll bow down to your father, we’ll do anything it takes to convince him that we love each other and want to be together.”

  “He’ll never agree to it. He’ll tell us to wait until I have graduated.”

  “If that’s what it takes, I am willing to wait.”

  “Can you wait for me for three more years?”

  “I don’t want to, but I can. I’ll find a way to stay here and make a living. But let’s not worry about that now. The important thing is to be ready for Sunday. What you have to do is pack a bag in the meantime and hide it someplace convenient. Because if this backfires, you’re going to leave with me right then and there.”

  He opened his umbrella and walked her to the nearest waiting cab, then stood amid the downpour watching the car’s tail lights pull away.

  The sheer joy of knowing she was his welled up inside him. Here he was, standing in the rain with an umbrella in his hand, on this narrow Japanese street with bar signs written in exotic characters and shops offering hot noodles and cool sushi, and damned if he wasn’t some kind of absurd Far Eastern Gene Kelly ready to kick up his heels and tap dance his way through the sparkling puddles past policemen and startled onlookers! The mere thought of it released a wild laugh from him that reverberated against the stained stucco walls lining the street.

  Mineko, Mineko, Mineko: the music of her name played in his ears as he sat in the dark on the edge of his bed near the open window. Dressed in a light yukata, he breathed in the cool, damp night air as the fragile house vibrated in the steady downpour. Against the roar of the rain, mere physical sound was helpless. The music had to come from within.

  The headlights of a car cut through the rain on the tiny back street below his window. The roof of a cab with its lighted masthead edged past the Niiyamas’ gate. Then it stopped and backed up until it was directly in front of the gate. He had seen Mr. Niiyama’s shoes in the entryway, which meant that the master of the house was already at home, and it was unlikely the family would be having callers at this time of night. The light went on inside the cab, spilling onto the whitewashed cinder-block wall on the other side of the lane, and after a few minutes the back door opened. Someone seemed to be getting out, but no umbrella popped up, and after the door closed and the car drove off, he wondered if the passenger had thought better about stepping into the downpour.

  Bill peered at the space above the front gate where the cab’s
roof had been. There was something there. If it was alive, it did not move. He had the uncanny feeling that a person was standing there, staring at the house. Straining to keep his gaze locked precisely on the spot, he edged toward the head of the bed and picked up the small reading lamp by the pillow. His hands turned the round shade toward the front yard and snapped on the light.

  There were four fingers clutching the top of the gate. He waved in their direction, and the fingers let go. Now a small palm was waving in the feeble rays spilling out from his window. “Mineko?” he said aloud, but she couldn’t possibly have heard.

  He bolted down the stairs in the darkness, stepping into the entryway where his shoes were waiting. A second later, he was through the door and into the rain, splashing along the front walk to the gate, where he lifted the bar. Mineko threw herself into his arms, shivering.

  “My God, Mineko, what happened?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he took her by the shoulders—she was wearing only the one thin dress he had last seen her in at the station—and guided her to the door.

  They stood in the entryway, letting the rainwater drip onto the concrete. Then he helped her out of her shoes and led her to the stairway on the right, guiding her up the steep ascent toward the faint glow cast by his reading lamp.

  On the landing, he turned to look at her. Still neatly parted down the center, Mineko’s hair was plastered against her cheeks, and her cotton dress clung to her, the skirts heavy and sticking to her legs. Opening the paper doors of his closet, he found his spare yukata of blue and white for her and dry clothes for himself. Hanging the yukata and its sash on a hook by the wash basin, he gave her his towel and started back down the stairs.

  “Go in there when you’re through,” he said, pointing to the wood-floored bedroom to the left. “Get under the covers.”

  In the downstairs bathroom, he stripped off his own sodden yukata, threw it on the drain board by the Niiyamas’ bathtub, and dried himself with a new towel from the linen closet. He felt himself stir when the towel’s rough fabric caught him between the legs. He put on dry underwear, a white shirt and cotton twill pants.