by Ben Byrne
No. What I truly aspired to was a good, sturdy pair of Western shoes. Enviously, I had observed an American civilian on the tram a few weeks previously wearing precisely the style I desired. A smart pair of burnished Oxford brogues, reddish brown, aglow with heathery tints. A thick lock of coffee-coloured hair fell over the man’s angular brow; he bore a striking resemblance to the Hollywood actor Gary Cooper. A neat, moulded camera case was slung over his shoulder as he sat, elbow on knee, chin perched on hand, newspaper raised by a spray of fingers. One leg casually dangled over the other, a neat Argyll sock clasping the ankle beneath. Below that was the beautiful shoe, rocking faintly back and forth to the rhythm of the tram.
I stared, racked by a sudden, violent desire. When he alighted near Yurakucho Station, I pressed my face to the window. I pictured myself casually clipping along the street, as he did now, pausing to glance in the window of the occasional bookshop. Well, I thought. There at least goes a serious man.
Perhaps, as a man with real shoes, I might feel like a human being once more, after years of being nothing but a soldier and subject. Perhaps the stopped clock of my life might start ticking once again — as a man of purpose, striding boldly into the future. Rather than just another faceless non-entity in a city of pinched, weary men, our service caps pulled over our eyes, our shoulders sparring with the wind as we trudged the disconsolate streets.
I hoarded every penny like a miser, denying myself tobacco, even shochu. I avoided the temptations of Kanda, and busied myself instead with my third edition of ERO. To my delight and good fortune, it met with considerable success. Struck by the popularity of the feature in our last issue, “The Dish I Most Lament,” I decided this time to expand it to encompass the entire panoply of frustrated desires hidden in our citizens’ souls that winter. Once more I circumnavigated the Yamanote Line, stopping passersby and asking them to describe their heart’s most secret desire. They were hesitant at first, unsure of how to respond. Then, the words began to spill out like a flowing river of dreams, as tears welled up in their eyes:
“My wife.”
“My son.”
“A good, long Noh play.”
“Pickled plums.”
“The knowledge that all of us Japanese were on the same side.”
“A real coat.”
“A working watch.”
For me, though, it was always the shoes. I had taken to leaving my boots in the street at night now, plugged with newspaper to contain their rotten smell of fermenting soybeans. The cowhide was crinkled and frosty by morning, and I had to rotate the boots over the brazier to thaw them out. But even outside, they haunted my sleep. I would dream they were calling to me, that they might somehow slip back into the building, hop up the stairs and lace themselves back onto my feet while I slept.
I was in Shinjuku one afternoon when I saw a man wearing a sandwich board. When I read it, I thought that heaven must be smiling upon me at last. A shoe shop was opening that very day, not half a mile distant. I rushed over to the place, and urgently scanned the window display.
There, in pride of place, was my heart’s desire. A stout pair of russet Oxford brogues, stitched on each side with bronze thread. Barely worn, looking to be more or less my size. I darted in, demanding to try them on. The shopkeeper eyed me suspiciously while I wrestled them onto my feet. A perfect fit, snug and tight. I asked the man to tell me how much they cost.
The price was absurd. But I barely gave it a thought, and told him I would return directly. I hurried home to fetch all of my hoarded savings. Walking back to the shop, I became suddenly nervous, wracked by the thought that someone else might have purchased them in my absence. But when I arrived, they were still there. I thrust the money into the man’s hands and tore my old army boots from my feet. I took the Oxfords in my hands and inhaled the cedary fragrance of the dappled leather, turning them to admire their subtle, coppery tints. Then I slipped them onto my feet, and firmly laced them up.
“Should I wrap these old boots in newspaper, sir?” asked the shopkeeper.
I glanced at them with loathing.
“Please dispose of them as you see fit, sir,” I said. “I have no wish to see them again.”
I turned on my heel and left the shop, feeling as if I were walking on air.
I made my way along the street, pausing every now and again to glance down. The leather pinched a little; I told myself it would take a while for my feet to become used to real shoes again. On the tram, I even crossed one leg over the other as I had seen the Westerner do, but quickly realized that it was an uncomfortable, constricting position. Several of the passengers, I was sure, took sidelong glances at me. I casually extended my legs, rotating my feet from side to side in order to impress upon them the dazzle and flash of the shoes’ superb leather.
So absorbed was I that I entirely missed my stop. I was now some way from home. My feet were quite painful now; though of course, this was only to be expected at first; this was simply how it was with proper shoes. An alley led off from the main avenue, and I was surprised to see the lantern of a public bathhouse halfway along it. This was an unexpected treat. Most of the sentos had been badly damaged during the bombings and those that remained had little fuel available to heat the pipes. For a people who so valued cleanliness, this was a considerable discomfort. I hadn’t had a chance to bathe for several months, myself. The thought of taking off my shoes and immersing myself in a hot pool of water filled me with exquisite pleasure.
It was a rundown tenement area and two children were tormenting a cat outside the building. As I approached, they looked up. The cat went mewling away and the children slunk off, glancing, I noticed with helpless pleasure, at my bronze beauties as I ducked underneath the curtain.
The place must have been old fashioned even before the war. Against the wall of the entrance hall was a row of wooden compartments with slotted hatches in which to store one’s valuables. A scrawny woman dozed away in a booth, her neck a mass of chicken skin. I unlaced my Oxfords, with some relief now, admittedly, and placed them in a compartment. I rapped a ten-sen piece on the counter and the woman yawned and waved me over to the male changing room.
The place was deserted but for the trickling sound of water. A faint mould was growing over an engraved relief of furiously bayonetting soldiers along the wall. As I peeled off my clothes, I was appalled by the odour of my body. I piled my coat, shirt, and underclothes into a basket. Covering my nether regions with a hand towel, I slid open the door to the bathroom.
The air was dank and there was a chemical smell. But steam rose appealingly from the main pool and I shivered in anticipation at the thought of climbing in. I took a wooden bucket, filled it from the tap, and then, on my low stool, began to soap and rinse myself with the deliciously hot water. The hue of the bubbles that ran off down the drain was disturbingly grey. My body was speckled with a patchwork of sores and bites from legions of ticks and fleas and the rampages of bedbugs. I was horrified. I made a solemn vow to myself that I would track down one of the American trucks that were criss-crossing the city blasting out insecticide, and subject myself to a frosting.
Eventually, I seemed more or less clean enough, and I slipped into the big, steaming pool. I moaned with pleasure — it was utterly divine. I placed my hand towel on my head, and submerged my body in the hot water. After a minute, I opened my eyes.
What a startling sight. Somehow, I hadn’t noticed how pale and shrunken my body had truly become. My skin was as white as tofu and my ribcage seemed to have sunk entirely into my chest. What a transformation had occurred since I had been called to the front. What an old man the war had made of me.
I sighed and sank back into the water. I mustn’t feel sorry for myself, I thought, picturing Mrs. Shimamura’s face with affection. After all, didn’t it seem now as if things might finally be on the up? The magazine went from strength to strength; it kept at least some flesh adher
ed to my bones. Perhaps I could fatten myself up a little. Cut back on my daily doses of shochu and Philopon, regain some of my prior sturdiness . . .
My thoughts drifted to Satsuko Takara, and I felt an acute sense of lonely shame. The last time I had gone to the Ginza in the hope of glimpsing her outside her cabaret, she had not appeared, though I waited, shivering, until dawn. Perhaps she was dead now, I thought. Perhaps those visions of her on the street had been heaven-sent driftwood, a lifebuoy to which I should have tightly clung. Pride again — always pride. I thought of the night when I had taken her to the anarchic revue at the Moulin Rouge, when she had laughed along as heartily as the students, even though she was just a shop girl by trade.
A shop girl. What did it matter, in any case? The war hadn’t cared much for class, had it? That careful social gradation my mother had ruthlessly applied to every facet of her universe, from the pattern of a kimono belt to the arrangement of a teacup, proved worthless. What a mockery death had made of it all. Of rank, of ancestry. As if our blood type had mattered as it poured from our veins; as if the bone fragments of a lowly private were distinguishable from a general’s as they’d sluiced into the sinking mud of that tropical hell.
And if Satsuko Takara was a fallen woman, wasn’t it I who was to blame? The man who had taken her virginity, as if it were a prize, the day before going to war?
I needed to find her again, I thought. I would seek her out, wherever she was in the city. I had no hope that we might rekindle our lost love, such as it had been. The war had slaughtered my romantic capacities after all. Yet, perhaps, I might apologize to her for my failings. Make some small recompense.
I emerged from the bath feeling entirely cleansed. I dressed in my clothes, overwhelmed by their tarry stench of cigarette smoke and sour sweat. I vowed that I would make a bonfire, burn them all up in a great blaze. I’d buy myself a new set entirely, before going on my search for Takara-san.
I stood in front of the mirror; combed my hair; gave my teeth a quick scrub with my finger. I might even visit a teahouse on the way home, I thought. I felt more refreshed that I had in years.
As I emerged from the changing room, a sudden panic came upon me. The scrawny old woman in the vestibule was asleep, her head tilted backward, a line of drool dangling from her mouth. The door to the compartment where I had left my shoes was open. I rushed over. The latch was up. The compartment was empty.
I seized the woman and shook her violently. She stared at me in dull incomprehension.
“Where are my shoes?” I demanded. “Why have you moved them?”
“I haven’t moved them anywhere, sir,” she complained, “Why should I?” She’d been right there, she said, keeping an eye on things all this time.
I had a sudden vision of the two boys outside. With choking trepidation, I darted out. The street was empty. Back inside, the woman was looking vexed, sucking at her lips and shaking her head.
“Oh sir!” she moaned. “Those two dirty children! They were playing right outside! They must have noticed sir’s handsome shoes, and taken it into their heads . . . ”
Oh, it was wicked, sir! Those dirty, wretched, evil little shrimps. Scampering about right by the entrance, she had told them to clear off, but she must have just dozed away for just a second. Oh sir! Whatever must the honourable gentleman think? Such evil little urchins. What a wicked place Japan had become, that two innocent little children could do such a shameful thing!
Methodically, I opened every other compartment as she ranted away, praying that I had somehow been mistaken, that I would open a wooden hatch to see amber contours glinting calmly back at me.
It was to no avail. They were all empty. I felt a hard lump in my throat, an intense sensation of loss, as if someone close to me had died. Wretchedly, I went back outside and looked up and down the street. It was no use. The area was deserted. The shoes were gone.
~ ~ ~
I shuffled from the bathhouse with bales of newspaper wrapped around my bare feet. They grew sodden and bitty as I negotiated the puddles, and soon threatened to disintegrate altogether. People went by me with smiles on their faces.
I stubbornly filed a complaint at the police box. The officer on duty rolled his eyes as he wrote out a form. He suggested that I go down to the nearby black market and search for them there — that was where most of the stolen goods in the area ended up, he said.
If he knew that, I asked myself sullenly, as I prowled up and down the aisles at the market, then why didn’t he do something about it? Icy water had risen up the legs of my breeches now, and my feet were almost naked. It was dark by the time I found a stall selling shoes on the very edge of the market. It was just as the officer had suspected. My Oxfords were sitting there, in pride of place upon the trestle table.
I pointed at them. “Those are mine.”
The stunted stallholder squinted up at me.
“Four hundred,” he said. He glanced down at my naked feet. “Perfect for a gentleman like you.”
“Four hundred? What are you talking about? I paid three for them just this afternoon.”
He shrugged. “Take it or leave it.”
“But they’re mine!” I shouted. “They were stolen from me this afternoon.”
The man came a little closer. “So I’m a thief, am I? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes, yes, you are,” I said. “They were stolen from me this afternoon by two urchins, no doubt paid by you —”
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder and twisted me around. Beneath a felt fedora, glittering little black eyes stared at me — the sharp yakuza boss who ran the place.
“What’s the problem here?”
I stuttered, acutely aware of the pincer-like grip around my arm, the bulging muscles beneath the man’s pale silk jacket.
“Those are my shoes,” I managed to say. “This man has stolen them from me.”
“Oh yeah?” he slurred, picking them up and looking at them with a bored expression. “Well, they look like a pretty common style to me. There must be thousands like them in Tokyo. Don’t you think you’ve made a mistake?”
“I should hardly think so. I had them on my feet not two hours ago.”
He rubbed his forehead with a pained expression. “Look, mister, I think you’ve made a mistake. There’s no need to be making wild accusations in public.”
“But it’s true,” I said, frantically. “Two children stole them from me this afternoon!”
“Look, mister,” he said, squaring up. “You’ve made a mistake, now calm down.”
“But they’re mine!”
There was a piercing pain in the socket of my right eye, as his knuckle crunched against bone. I collapsed onto the ground, my vision black on one side, my head ringing.
“You’ve made a mistake, mister,” said the tough, looming above me. “So forget about it now. Either buy something or push off.”
He strolled away, wringing out his fist.
I slowly picked myself up. My glasses were dangling from my ears, smashed and useless. I could still see the dim, reflective red glow of my shoes upon the table, the man standing over them protectively.
“Alright then, damn you,” I said. “I’ll buy them back. But look. I can only afford a hundred.”
I took out all the money I had left from my pocket, and laid it in a pile on the table. The man straightened up, as if I had offended him.
“One hundred!” he said, haughtily. “Outrageous. Don’t you know these are Oxford brogues — they’re made in London! I couldn’t take anything less than three.”
I almost started to sob as I looked helplessly down at my numb feet. The last of the newspaper clung to them in soggy strips, and my toes were raw and shrivelled.
The man grew more sympathetic.
“Look,” he said. “A pair of these wouldn’t suit you anyway, sir. They’re far too f
ancy. But I’ll tell you what I can do. I can sell you a good pair of boots for fifty yen.”
Good heavens no, I thought, not boots again, not after all this time.
He reached beneath the table to pull out a hulking pair of army boots and laid them heavily down upon the table.
I recognized the smell straight away — the rancid odour of rotten soybeans. I picked one up and held it in front of my face, fingering the chafed cowhide, poking my finger through the familiar holes. Wearily, I pushed fifty yen in coins across the table to the man, who pocketed it neatly. I bent down and tugged the boots back onto my feet.
“Look!” the man said cheerily. “A perfect fit. You see, you’re lucky after all.”
Wordlessly, I strode away from the market as the darkness and rain fell about me. As I trudged back home along the mucky street in my old, detested army boots, I had the curious feeling that they had somehow magically engineered the whole affair, that they possessed some supernatural power. That now, reunited with me again, they were content, and were smiling in secret triumph.
22
THE YOSHIWARA
(SATSUKO TAKARA)
It was shivering cold on the ward, yet the women insisted on opening up the tall, cracked windows late in the afternoon to clamber up on the sills and look down at the street below. It was like the cinema for them, I thought, as they hung there, screeching like vultures. They saved their loudest chorus for any passing American soldiers, who waved back in salute even as the girls made vulgar gestures at them.