by Ben Byrne
San Francisco seemed almost Japan-like, I thought, as I studied the photographs in the magazine for the hundredth time. Brightly painted wooden houses stood up on the hills and fishing boats were docked at the bustling wharves. There were forests and mountains in the distance, you could see that, and Mrs. Ishino had once told me that other Japanese people lived there too, so I might still be able to buy miso and katsuobushi whenever I had a craving for Japanese food, or felt homesick for Toyko.
Not that there seemed much chance of that. The magazines were so glossy and the colours so startlingly rich that I wondered if the sun might somehow be brighter in America than it was in Japan. The pages were packed with pictures of healthy-looking men playing baseball and tennis and golf, lounging by swimming pools and smoking cigarettes, whilst neat, smiling housewives in bright calico dresses stood next to refrigerators laden with meat, churned yellow butter, and glass bottles of orange juice. There were advertisements for everything and anything, from syrup to stockings, spectacles to hats. Silk gloves, leather shoes, bedsheets, perfume, whisky and wedding rings. Everyone was happy, and judging from the way America looked in the magazines, that was hardly surprising.
I sighed and placed the magazine down. I walked over to the open doorway. The sky was grey and the street outside was full of churned mud. Children ran half-naked past the shanty houses, and a toothless man walked slowly past with hollow eyes, his clothes loose upon his body.
~ ~ ~
The idea that I might go to America had started as a joke. One evening, as we sat at the counter, Hal-san was telling me about his old college in New York, which sounded quite similar to the castle-like buildings of the Imperial University. Just at that moment, he caught my eye.
“Would you like to live in America someday, Satsuko?” he said.
My heart rose to my throat. For a moment, I had thought he had actually asked me to go away with him, just as casually as he might ask me to the cinema. I started to stammer. Then my cheeks flushed as it dawned on me, that, of course, he had just been asking a general kind of question.
I pretended to laugh. America certainly sounded wonderful, I said, but I couldn’t speak English very well, and of course, I’d miss all of my friends. He put his hand on my wrist and stroked it gently. I wondered if he wasn’t a little bit drunk.
“We could find you a teacher,” he murmured.
I laughed again, more cynically this time. Teaching you English was something they all promised to do.
“Cat, sat, mat,” I muttered. “How are you? How do you do?”
It was a stupid thing for him to have asked, and I felt annoyed at him for suggesting it.
But then I saw that he was looking at me quite seriously. For a moment, I let myself imagine what it might be like, living far away in a foreign country. A house beside a shady park that stretched all the way to the ocean. I could grow daikon and burdock in the garden. The days would come and go. Hal went off to work at his newspaper every morning, and I would visit the beach, and listen to the seagulls, as our children played around me in the sunshine.
~ ~ ~
Posters were appearing all over Tokyo with Michiko’s beautiful face upon them. Everyone was looking forward to her new film. The cinema magazines reported that the action was to take place in the burned-out streets of the city itself, and I found myself watching out for the film crew whenever I visited the market.
For weeks, I had been convincing myself that I should write to Michiko and tell her where I was living. But as I pictured her, lounging in her glamorous apartment, surrounded by clothes and magazines, I wondered if she would even open a letter from me. She might fling it from her in terror when she saw my name, repelled by the thought of contact with this spider from her past.
But finally one afternoon, I sat down to write in any case, intending to keep the note brief and to the point. I wrote out my address, and told her that I was working in a restaurant again, that I had several warm-hearted companions and that life was full of possibilities.
“I was so thrilled to see you on the screen last month, Michiko,” I wrote, “when my American and I visited the cinema together.”
I stared at the words I had just written. My American? My heart started to patter, as I picked up the pen once more.
“Yes, Michiko, it’s true. I too have found an ‘only-one,’ as you yourself did last year. I very much hope that you will have the chance to visit us soon. Please do not be too embarrassed to come. I admit that I was upset when you moved away, but I know now that it was all for the best. After all, you were simply choosing to live, Michiko, in the only way you knew how. Just as we must all try to live.”
I started to feel quite emotional. It was at this point I got carried away. “I hope, in any case, you will be able to come soon, though I know how busy you must be with your cinema activities. Because very soon, Michiko, my American will be taking me away from Japan. We will be going to live in San Francisco, and I may not return for a long time. So you see, Michiko, it is not only film stars like you that can have exciting romantic adventures!”
My heart was in my mouth as I sealed the note and hurried to the post office. I quickly copied out the address of Michiko’s studio from the back of a film magazine and handed the letter to the postmaster. As I did so, I felt as if the flimsy note was a votive plaque that I was hanging at a shrine, a hopeless prayer that I dreamed might somehow come true.
~ ~ ~
When Hal came back to Mrs. Ishino’s that evening, he seemed worried and drew his fingers through his thick hair. My stomach tightened as I went to make him a sandwich. I poured him a drink. After a while, he seemed to relax.
Later on, casually, I took down Mrs. Ishino’s atlas, and opened it up to the map of America. His eyes lit up and he laughed. Taking my hand beneath his own, he drew my finger to the eastern side of the country.
“New York,” he said, pointing at himself. “The Empire State.”
I smiled and shook my head. I drew his hand back to the other side of the map again.
“No empire. San Francisco,” I said.
He started to laugh again, the glorious, warm laugh that poured from his chest.
“You want to live in San Francisco, Satsuko?” he said.
I smiled. “Yes. You take me.”
“You want me to take you to San Francisco?” he said, sweeping his fingers through his hair. “Sure! Why not? Let’s go to San Francisco. We’ll take the next boat.”
I couldn’t quite tell if he was joking or not. He shook his head with a faraway smile. He gazed at me for a second, then looked away, rubbing my hand over and over again.
We went up to his room soon after. His body was strong and taut and I felt a great, piercing sense of relief sweep through me. In the middle of the night, I woke up and gazed at his smooth, white skin, his chest moving softly up and down. I wondered whether I should slip downstairs to my room, but the nest of blankets was so cozy, and there was such a gentle warmth emanating from his body, that I just lay beside him, clasping my hands around his broad chest, and fell away into a deep sleep.
When I woke in the morning he was already getting ready to leave. I lay there dozing for a while, taking pleasure in the sound of him washing and getting dressed. Just before he left, he leaned down over the futon and kissed me on the forehead. For a moment I could smell the musky scent of his cologne on his smooth cheeks. Then the door closed and I lay there in a shaft of spring sunlight, breathing in the scent of the sheets, watching the motes of dust dance in the air. I thought that I should probably get up and go on with my work quite soon, but then I told myself I should stay for a little while longer, that I deserved to be happy, just for this short time. And so I lay there, smiling secretly to myself, stretched out on the bed like a satisfied cat.
29
THE YAKUZA
(HIROSHI TAKARA)
From the top of
the old railway bridge, I scanned the market through the sight of my sniper rifle.
Captain Takara — deep behind enemy lines.
Slowly, I swept from side to side, as the huge American flag flicked on its pole, casting a shadow over the GIs who were ambling amongst the stalls below. Easy targets, I thought. One bullet left. Aim for the heart —
There was a flash of colour over by the station as three girls flounced toward the market. I fumbled with the aperture of my Leica and urgently twisted the rangefinder. Through the lens, I focused on the stocky one in the middle, the one they called Yotchan.
I could almost make out the shadow that curved between her breasts. Fire!
I pressed the shutter and the flutter lens closed. Bull’s eye!
A hand cuffed me on the back of the head and I spun around to see Mr. Suzuki, laughing at me, hands on his hips. The shoulder holster of his pistol showed beneath his grey silk jacket.
“Getting some cute pictures up here, are you, little shit?” he said. “No wonder you spend so much time up here.”
My cheeks began to throb.
“Put your dick away. It’s lunch time.”
Mr. Suzuki wasn’t a man to argue with. The market boss had almost killed me two weeks before, when I’d been at the station, trying to drum up portrait business. I’d spotted him at the mouth of the market, looking up and down the road as if he was waiting for someone. The grey felt fedora was pulled low over his forehead, and a white silk handkerchief ruffled from his breast pocket.
I ran over and held up my Leica in question.
“Sir —”
I didn’t get a chance to finish.
“You want me to break that thing in your fucking face?” he snarled.
I backed off right away — I got the message all right. He glared at me, and I noticed a faint squint in his eye. Suddenly, a memory came to me, of an afternoon long ago, years before the Pacific War had even broken out.
Back in the days when our shop had been open, my mother had sometimes asked me to deliver box lunches to especially important customers in the neighbourhood. One afternoon in July, a huge order had arrived just after midday. It was the very busiest time of the year — the real dog days when the line snaked all the way down the alley, with everyone desperate to eat their fill of unagi-don to revive their flagging spirits.
My father glanced at the name card, then raised his eyebrows and wiped the sweat from his brow. Politely, he told the customers out front that there would be a short delay in serving them, and he tightened the cloth around his head. He piled up charcoal on the grill, and started brushing the sizzling strips of eel with sauce from his pot as fast he could, calling to my mother to pile them onto rice in our best lacquered boxes.
As she loaded the parcels into the carriage of my delivery bicycle, she grasped my arm and wiped my face with her sleeve. “Go as quick as you can,” she said. “And keep a civil tongue in your head!”
When I reached the address on the card, up in the tenements near Sengen Shrine, I thought I was lost. There was nothing but an abandoned house with broken shutters, stray cats stretched out asleep on the roof. Then from inside, I heard faint voices shouting out numbers, rattling and slamming noises. Nervously, I tapped on the door. A moment later, a half-naked man slid it open, waving a silk fan against his upper body. He squinted down at me. The rippling torso was completely inked over with colourful tattoos.
Mr. Suzuki stepped toward me.
“Do I know you?” he said. His voice was slurred like a proper yakuza.
I bowed my head. There was no way he could remember me, I thought, not a chance.
“What the fuck happened to your face?”
I stared at him, hardly able to believe it.
“I got burned, sir,” I murmured.
“You don’t say.”
He peered at the camera around my neck. “You know how to use that thing?”
I nodded.
“So come over here.”
On the other side of the station, a huge sign was hoisted up alongside the overground train track, made of high-powered electric light bulbs that spelled out the name of the market, so that people could see it from miles around. Mr. Suzuki stood underneath it, and tipped his hat over his eye, almost daintily.
“Be sure you get the sign in the picture,” he said, jerking his thumb into the air.
As I twisted the lens, his blunt face came into focus. A ribbed, crescent shaped scar dimpled one of his cheeks.
“And make it a good one, kid,” he called. “I might not be here so long.”
I stifled a grin. This was exactly the kind of thing that gangsters were supposed to say! I held up my hand in a professional manner, and pressed the shutter firmly. He strode back over and roughly pulled the camera from around my neck, grunting as he turned it about in his clumsy hands.
“You really know how to use this?”
“It’s not so hard.”
He stared at me for a moment. Then he draped the camera back around my neck.
“Hungry?”
My eyes lit up as he jerked his head toward a stall just inside the market. Clouds of fragrant steam were billowing from the pots and my mouth started to water. The spry old chef welcomed us in like royalty: he hurried out to wipe down our stools and poured a frothing bottle of beer that he set on the counter in front of Mr. Suzuki.
“Make yourselves at home, young sirs,” he said as he bustled around his pots and pans. “You’re very welcome!”
“What filthy soup are you using today, granddad?” Mr. Suzuki drawled.
“Dog and crow, sir.” The man giggled and stirred the big metal vat on his makeshift stove with a long ladle. Mr. Suzuki grunted.
“Two of those, then, granddad. Extra chives, extra jewels, hard-boiled egg.”
“Coming right up!”
As I shovelled the almost unbearably delicious noodles into my mouth, I wondered what the man could possibly want with me. I didn’t want to be any part of the yakuza, I thought, even if I had stolen the camera. My father would have been ashamed of me. But even so, it was pretty exciting to be sitting next to a real live gangster. People going past glanced at me with interest, and I cocked my head casually, as if eating with Mr. Suzuki was something I did every day of the week.
“Where do I remember you from, kid?” he said, taking a sip of his beer.
“My father used to own a food shop, sir. Not far from your old office.”
He grinned, as if remembering far-off, sunlit days. “Takara Eels?”
My heart almost burst with pride — my dad’s shop!
“Fucking great,” he said. “Shame it closed down. All dead now, I guess?”
A pit opened in my stomach. I bowed my head. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Even that cute girl? She your sister?”
I suddenly glowered at him. Mr. Suzuki raised his eyebrows and held up his hands in apology.
“Alright, little shit — don’t go upsetting yourself. Where’d you get that contraption from in any case?”
He pointed at the camera, and I drew it closer to my chest, fingering the knot in the leather strap.
“Steal it?” he smirked.
I stayed silent.
“Suit yourself.”
He drew a big pile of noodles onto his chopsticks and gazed at the steam that came off.
“No family left at all?” he asked, stuffing the noodles into his mouth.
I shook my head.
“That makes two of us.”
He slurped down the last of the soup, then lit a cigarette.
“Want to take some pictures for me?” he asked as he squinted through the smoke.
“Photographs, sir?”
“I could use someone with sharp eyes.”
There was something about him that made me
nod straight away.
“Good boy,” he said. “Work hard for me and I’ll see you’re treated right.”
There were little wrinkles on his forehead. As I stared at his blunt features, I realized that he was older than he looked. He snapped his fingers in front of my face.
“See?” he said with a grin. I found myself grinning back at him. “Now you’ve got a friend in the world.”
~ ~ ~
I had left the inn soon after the children had gone away. It felt too lonely after that, the paper screens torn, the tatami littered with dead moths and butterflies. The grass was waist high in the garden when I went, the cracked statue of the tanuki still lying grinning on the threshold.
Now that the weather was warmer, I slept in Ueno Park, beneath a tarpaulin stretched from a tree not far from the shogun’s graveyard. The lotus plants in the pond were leafy again, and green and black ducks dabbled in the water. I hung around the clapboard bars in Yurakucho where the Americans drank at night, and held up the camera as they lurched out. They drunkenly posed for me, arm in arm with their friends, or hoisting Japanese girls up on their shoulders. They scribbled their names and their billet in my exercise book, and I circled the number showing on the exposure counter. An old chemist developed the film for me at the back of his tiny studio in Kanda, and I delivered the prints to the Americans a week later and collected my fee. I stood in the marble lobbies as they flipped through the shots, trying to smile as they patted me on the head and I waited for my money.
~ ~ ~
Mr. Suzuki gave me a ninety-millimetre screw-mount lens for my camera and a big pair of field binoculars that must have belonged to some officer during the war. At the top of the old railway bridge, he showed me a series of flags to run down a wire stretched over the market if there was ever a sign of trouble — white for American military police, red for Koreans or Formosans. I stood there watching every day from dawn until noon.
For the rest of the afternoon, I was free to roam wherever I wanted. The market turned into my personal cinema, as I squinted through the rangefinder of my camera, the cool, heavy frame a comforting weight against my face. I took pictures of the traders laying out piles of old boots, the drunken ex-students who ran the liquor stall. Then, there were the pan-pan girls, who strutted through the market as if they owned the place, shrieking like vixens and calling out insults. They grabbed any man that they fancied by the arm, or by the crotch, and dragged him away to the wasteground beneath the railway arches.