by Ben Byrne
“On house,” she announced, proudly. She called out in sharp command, and in the kitchen behind her, from where wisps of steam were emerging, an answering voice sang out with a long, high-pitched, “Hai!”
She turned to me maternally. “You like room?”
“Yes. I sure do.”
“You welcome.”
A girl came out from the kitchen with a steaming plate of small dumplings, which she set in front of me with an incline of her head.
“Lynch-san,” Mrs. Ishino said. “This is Satsuko-chan. My new favourite girl.”
The girl looked at me. She had the darkest eyes I’d ever seen. They were almost entirely black from the pupil to the iris, and her face formed a smooth oval, the wide lips parted slightly to show small, regular teeth. Her pale skin was flushed from the heat of the kitchen and there was a faint perspiration on her brow. She wore a blue cloth tied around her forehead, which gave her a vaguely boyish, piratical air.
“Well. Here’s to her,” I said, raising my glass.
Hands tight against the sides of her apron, she bowed. Mrs. Ishino gave another sharp command. With another obedient “Hai!” the girl hurried back to the kitchen.
“Satsuko-chan . . . ” Mrs. Ishino began, but just then, a couple of officers wearing rain capes emerged through the curtain with Japanese dates on their arms. They held up hands in greeting, as if they knew the place well. Mrs. Ishino led them over to a table. I sat there alone at the bar for a while, sipping my drink and feeling almost absurdly content.
The girl bustled in and out from the kitchen several more times that night, bringing small plates of chipped potatoes and sandwiches for the men. Before long, I realized I was drunk. The place filled up, and, at one point, I helped Mrs. Ishino move the tables aside to make a space for dancing. There was none of the wild jitterbugging of the Ginza clubs here — the men were stately and senior, and moved their partners gracefully back and forth like ballroom dancers, hands on backs, chins on heads, swaying expertly to the music. Others played cards while the girls poured their beer, and a soft haze enveloped the place as Saturday evening toppled gently into the arms of Saturday night.
Later on, the girl came out. She’d removed her head-gear and had made up her face now, a simple brush of powder and a crimson curve of lipstick. She wore a green flower-print dress, and a red, plastic peony in her hair. She came over to me, eyes downcast, and placed a light hand upon mine.
“You sit with me?” she asked.
Her hand was cool, the impression of skin smooth upon my wrist.
“Let me tell your fortune,” I said, turning her palm over. She suddenly resisted, and I dropped her hand, afraid that I’d offended her. But then, with a curious look in her eyes, she relented, and held out her hand in front of me.
There were no lines on her palm, just a smooth, shiny surface, like polished marble. I had a sudden recollection of Eugene, in the Oasis that night, the girl pouring out his beer. Hal, meet Primrose. She’s a swell sort!
I glanced at her. It was the same girl, I was certain.
I felt a strange collision of emotions as I looked into her candid, coal-black eyes. Curiosity. Admiration. What kind of life had she lived? I wondered. What bleak adventures had she witnessed since the last time we met . . . I felt a frank, swelling attraction as I glanced at the curve of her chest, the pale skin taut across her breastbones.
There was a sudden thickness in my throat, a roaring sound in my ears.
Her smooth palm was touching my cheek, holding my head steady. She looked into my eyes with an expression of concern.
“You tired, I think?”
The roaring faded. The music from the gramophone and the sound of conversation gradually reasserted itself.
“Yes,” I stammered. “Yes I am.”
She patted the side of my face.
“You go sleep,” she said, before walking to a table in the corner of the bar. As I sat there, brooding over my drink, I noticed her throwing me occasional darting glances. Finally, I stood up to approach her again, but just then, another Western man — a civilian — entered the bar and walked over to her table. They talked for a short while, and then she stood up and took his hand. She led him away through a low door at the back of the bar and I caught a glimpse of her bare arm as she pulled the door shut. I didn’t want to see them emerge. Into my mind’s eye came an unwelcome glimpse of his scratchy white legs, the red peony askew amidst stray strands of her black hair. I threw back my drink; said goodnight to no one in particular. Then I clomped up the stairs to my new abode, took a long drink of water from the jug, and passed out on my new bed.
~ ~ ~
In the lobby of the press club, correspondents hammered out copy with typewriters on their knees. The long-distance booths were jammed, urgent stories being dictated into the glossy black telephones. The Asahi Shimbun was dominated by stories of the unrest sweeping steadily across the country in the wake of the crop failures. The first reports of starvation were already emerging; there’d been rice riots in the north and strikes at the coal mines and here at one of the Tokyo newspapers. A leading communist had been welcomed home from China that week like a movie star. Philip Cochrane from the Baltimore Sun told me that mobs had greeted the man at the station, the whole place a sea of red flags.
Mark Ward had an inch of beard on his face and a glitter in his eye when we sat down for drinks in the bar later on that evening with Sally Harper of TIME.
“Welcome home, Ward. How was the Snow Country?”
As we drank our raw Japanese whisky, he regaled us with stories of evenings spent in sharecroppers’ huts, peasants gathered around fires with padded blankets on their knees, spilling tales of despair as the oxen moved about in the mulch and the snow fell thick on the ground outside.
“This country’s a tinderbox, my friends. Believe me. The place is just waiting to explode.”
“You’re a true believer, Ward,” I said.
“I was.” His eyes narrowed. “G2 pulled me in yesterday.”
“G2? Are you serious?” Sally said, her eyes wide with concern. G2 was Intelligence, the most muscular and secretive of the Occupation divisions, presided over by General Charles A. Willoughby — MacArthur’s chief of intelligence, and Ward’s nemesis.
“How was the interview?”
“They asked why I was writing a piece on Japanese union organizers. Whether or not I sympathized with them.”
“Do you?”
“I told them that people were starving to death because our land reform directive was taking so long to draft, and that you could bet your bottom dollar that I sympathized with them.”
As I looked at him, I strongly recalled a painting I’d once seen in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Chagall: an old bearded man in a thick overcoat, a sack slung over his back, floating across a dream landscape of snow and yellow baroque architecture.
“What did they say to that?” Sally asked.
His voice fell in surly imitation. “They said: ‘Listen Ward. Things have changed since we arrived. We’re at war with the Russkies now. Whose side are you on?’”
He shook his big head, his voice sour. “You know they just slung out two of your friends? Brown and Christopher?”
I vaguely remembered the demure, grey-haired Californian and the effeminate New Yorker, both of whom had been working at the Stars and Stripes when I’d arrived.
“You’re kidding? For what?”
Ward waved his meaty hands in the air. “‘Communistic leanings!’”
I laughed. They’d been poring over baseball statistics when I’d first met them, apparently more concerned with sports than politics.
“They’re Reds?”
“Sure! They’ve been sprinkling the whole paper with subversion.”
“What’s happening to them?”
“They’re sending them
to Okinawa. To keep them out of trouble.”
“That’s real tough for them.”
He glanced at me sharply.
“You don’t understand, Lynch.”
I noticed the wattle of skin beneath his jowls as he shook his head sullenly.
“Are you in some kind of trouble, Mark?” I asked.
He stared at me, mildly incredulous. “Don’t you get it, Lynch? I’m next on their goddamned list!”
Sally left us, and Ward and I went out to get a snack at a low noodle place bustling with GIs and their dates. We drank lukewarm beer and slurped at our noodles in the Japanese fashion. Ward began to pluck at his plate of fried dumplings with his chopsticks.
“And how about you, Lynch?” he asked, absently. “The Stars and Stripes send you anywhere interesting?”
“They fired me,” I said.
The chopsticks paused in mid air. “What happened?”
“I went to Hiroshima.”
The chopsticks clattered onto the table as an incredulous expression suffused Ward’s face. “You actually did it?”
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
The edges of his wide lips curled up.
“How did it look?”
“More or less the same. Oh, and by the way, Disease X is real.”
The jowls lowered and the inevitable cigar appeared. I told him of the long walk across the red fields, the pulverized city centre, the victims I’d met at the hospital. He clutched my hand, steam beading on his brow from the billowing stockpots.
“Did you take photographs, Hal? Please tell me you took photographs.”
I nodded.
“Where are they?”
“Safe. Most of them. The prints got lost.”
“How? By whom? Got a name?”
“SCAP. Public relations.” I realized that I hardly knew. “They raked me over the coals when I got back, anyhow.”
His eyes narrowed behind a cloud of fragrant smoke. “Who’s the pigeon?”
“Does it matter?”
I’d been so tired that night. Eugene’s face the next day had been grey and artless, though that could just as well have been his daily hangover. It could have been anybody in the newsroom, I thought. I couldn’t even remember if I’d shut my drawer.
Ward’s face was animated now, the glow of the restaurant lanterns reflecting in the wide lenses of his spectacles.
“How are you going to play it, Lynch? I can help you. We could file the story here, overseas line. But what about the pictures? They’ll never make it out. And the pictures are the story.”
“I know that, Ward.”
He frowned, puffing at the cigar, releasing several big clouds of smoke. Finally he spoke again. “There’s only one way I can see it, Hal. You’ve got to get back to the States. Take the negatives with you. Or have someone else go for you. Then pound on some doors until they’re published.”
I pictured a ship, somewhere mid-Pacific, sapphire waves crashing against the hull. An editor’s office in New York, overlooking the Hudson. Snowflakes touching the glass, shivering away to nothing.
“They won’t let me back in, Ward.”
“Probably not.”
He considered the glowing end of his cigar. “Anything special keeping you in Japan, Hal?”
I pictured my drafty room in Nihonbashi. My mess of blankets, the typewriter on the battered desk. Mrs. Ishino leaning over the bar and pouring me another glass. The serving girl, Primrose — Satsuko — at a side table, a red plastic peony in her hair.
“I guess not.”
He suddenly grinned, shaking his head.
“My goodness, Hal. You really are a dark horse. You know that? A real dark horse.”
He rested his big paw on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eye.
“Just remember me when you get your Pulitzer, okay?”
~ ~ ~
I took the long walk home along the river, past dark, ruined fields. As I ducked past the curtain, I saw the place was busy. Satsuko-san wandered over as soon as I sat down, just as if she happened to be passing. She opened up a beer and poured it into two glasses.
“Cheers,” she pronounced, smiling at me.
“Cheers,” I replied.
We exchanged pleasant banalities for a while, the familiar patter about food in Japan and back in America. She gave little gasps of surprise and admiration as I regaled her with the exotic dishes I had tried in her country. There was a lull in the conversation. Her lips moved, silently, as if she were phrasing a question. She looked back up at me with a very serious expression. Slowly, she asked: “Do you have pet?”
I laughed.
“Well, yes I do. Or rather, I did once . . . ” I found myself telling her about Finn, the adored, glossy red Irish setter I’d had as a boy.
“When I was young, I used to sleep with my head on his fur. Like it was a pillow. You know — pillow?”
She looked startled. “You go sleep?” she asked, mimicking slumber.
“No, no. Not yet.”
Finn had gone lame as I’d gotten older. One winter morning, just after my twelfth birthday, I was awakened by a distant noise. My breath billowed in the air as I came downstairs. The glass door of my father’s gun cabinet hung open, one of the rifles missing. I creaked open the door and touched the smooth metal barrel of its twin. At that moment, my father came tramping back, holding shotgun and shovel. There was sweat on his head, a frail scent of sulphur.
“You have any pets, Satsuko-san? A dog?”
She smiled.
“Cat,” she pronounced with a look of satisfaction. “We feed —” She slithered her hand through the air.
“Eels?” I asked, in a moment of inspiration.
“So.” She made a snapping movement with her mouth. “Eel head.”
A great wave of warmth and sympathy coursed through me, a curious sense of privilege to have this fragmentary glimpse into her past, her life before all of this began.
I laughed and she looked at me in surprise. Then, slowly, to my delight, she began to laugh too. Not the tittering laugh of a whore, eager to please, but the genuine laugh of a live woman, a woman with a childhood and a past, who considers her reflection in the mirror, and nods with wistful acceptance.
Finally I stood up, fully intending to head upstairs.
“You sleep now?” she asked.
“I’m going to try.”
She placed her cool hand on my wrist. Her eyes were candid.
“You want take me?”
I hesitated. I felt the delicate pressure of her fingers upon my skin.
“Maybe another time.”
The corners of her lips turned down sulkily. She crossed her arms.
“Well,” I said. “Goodnight.”
I lay fully clothed on my bed, cursing myself as I pictured the inevitable events unfolding below. Men arriving, the gramophone playing, couples swaying back and forth. Satsuko leading another man to the back room. I pictured her smooth, slim body as she pulled her dress over her head, a glimmer of light in her jet black eyes. I almost got up and headed right back downstairs to ask her to come up after all. But before I knew it, I had fallen dead asleep.
25
MRS. ISHINO’S SPECIAL EATING & DRINKING SHOP
(SATSUKO TAKARA)
The water was just coming to a boil as I dropped the scrubbed potatoes into the pan. From the crates piled up in the narrow kitchen, I took cans of spiced meat for sandwiches, tins of dried egg to mix bowls of gluey omelette for the night ahead — those simple snacks that the Americans seemed to find so delicious. They kissed their fingers and applauded as I set bowls of chipped potatoes and greasy fried egg sandwiches in front of them. A far cry from eel liver soup and unagi-don!
As I was pouring the water into the sink, Mrs. Ishino sidled into the kit
chen through a big cloud of steam.
“Well?” she asked, pinching my arm. “What did you think?”
I frowned, concentrating on the potatoes as they tumbled into the draining basket.
“What did I think of what, Mrs. Ishino?”
“What did you think of the Westerner, of course!”
The American who slept in the attic room upstairs had taken me to the cinema that afternoon.
I shrugged. “I’m sure I don’t know, Mrs. Ishino,” I replied. “Does he really seem that different to the rest of them?”
Mrs. Ishino frowned as she considered the question. “Don’t you think, Satsuko? More, the ‘sensitive type,’ I thought.”
“Really, Mrs. Ishino?” I said, pouring oil into the pan. “Do you think any of them are sensitive?”
Mrs. Ishino let out an exasperated noise.
“Why not find out, Satsuko?” she said, stamping out of the kitchen. “It might not be such a bad idea to have a foreigner looking after you these days!”
I spluttered with laughter as she marched out. As I slid the potatoes into the spattering oil, I pictured the American sitting beside me in the cinema earlier that day, gazing up, bemused, at the screen.
Men in short sleeves had been bustling around the cinemas on the Rokku as we stepped down from the tram in Asakusa that afternoon. Several of the theatres had reopened along the wide avenue now, though their brickwork was still stained by black smoke. Banners for new shops fluttered on bamboo poles in the brisk spring wind, and cinema posters were mounted on billboards above the street, showing Western men with stern jaws and cowboy hats and women with blonde hair and large bosoms.
Just past the old Paradise Picture House, I glanced up. On the side of the wall was a big painted sign advertising a new Japanese film. I froze. Then I grasped hold of the arm of my American. Up there, larger than life, was a picture of Michiko.
My jaw fell. The resemblance was unmistakable. The American misunderstood my expression, and he walked straight up to the booth to buy two tickets. Still stunned, I tried to explain that the film would be in Japanese, that he wouldn’t understand a thing. But he just shrugged and smiled, took my hand and led me inside.