This Scorching Earth

by Donald Richie

  "Yes, I know," said Dottie. "They do act that way, don't they?" She was anxious lest it seem she didn't know as much about the Japanese as Gloria, and was at the added disadvantage of not having read a book through since finishing high school.

  Directly at the billet entrance was an Army sedan, the young Japanese driver leaning against its shining fender. He stood away from the car as they came out and made a tentative motion toward the handle of the rear door, his black hair shining in the sun.

  Gloria wondered whom the sedan was for. You never saw them waiting in front of the billet except very late, when the field-grade officers were saying good-night to their girls. The hotel was for lower-rated civilian girls, who never got to use anything better than a jeep. Only the upper grades rated sedans. She found herself wondering about Dottie, who could get a sedan on the strength of her husband's high civilian rank. So, then, whose transportation could this be but Dottie's? But she'd said she'd come in her own car. Then Gloria remembered that the Ainsleys didn't own a car.

  Gloria glanced at Dottie, who was squinting in the early-morning sun. Such a poor liar. This was certainly her transportation, ready and waiting, yet she couldn't take it because she'd already told Gloria about the car. And she needn't have lied either. Lots of wives used sedans to go to the Commissary.

  While Dottie hesitated on the hotel steps, Gloria swiftly reconstructed the events of the night before. Dorothy had probably left her husband rather late, pleading relatives or something. Then the adulterous meeting, perhaps at his billet. She'd probably sneaked out in the cold, dark morning when it was too early to go home. Perhaps she'd tried to hail a passing jeep. Then the sudden determination to have breakfast. It was probably a combination of hunger and the perverse desire to expose her own position. Now the finale—home in the sedan which she had probably called just before going in to breakfast. But Gloria's presence had spoiled this last touch.

  "Well," said Dottie briskly, "I parked the car around the corner—past the station as a matter of fact. Thought I'd just walk to the Commissary. Exercise, you know," she concluded brightly.

  "Yes, it's only halfway across town."

  "What? Oh, yes. Well, one can't get too much exercise." Then, anxious not to seem to be avoiding the obvious, she said: "These poor drivers!"

  "Why poor?"

  "Oh, I don't know. It's in their eyes—that lovely melted-chocolate color, you know. And then, Japanese men are always sad looking anyway, like dogs left in the rain. Breaks your heart." Dottie was not without her sensitive side.

  "The women look comparatively dry," said Gloria.

  "Oh, them! Isn't it strange—the men look just like dogs, and the women look just like cats. You know—cute little triangle faces, button noses, and those lovely slanting eyes. It's really the animal kingdom."

  "Maybe that's why Lady Briton likes it so much over here."

  "Yes," giggled Dorothy, "someone should start a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Japanese."

  Someone really ought, thought Gloria. It wasn't that the glorious Occupiers were cruel. They were merely thoughtless. There was something about having plenty in the midst of famine that made people thoughtlessly cruel. When she was good and drunk Gloria always felt like apologizing to beggars. So far she had restrained herself. She didn't like Dottie's saying what had so often occurred to her; so she asked if Dottie was going to the opera.

  "Well, if you call it an opera, yes. It's good business, you know."

  "You don't like Madame Butterfly?" asked Gloria.

  "Oh, adore it! Simply adore it! But that soprano! Know the girl. A nice voice, though a shade overly cultivated—that is, when you realize that she had nothing to cultivate in the first place. Can't hear her except in the first three rows. Bad breathing, that's what Mme. Schmidt says. You know her, dear? My old sensei—that means teacher, you know. From Vienna and just the sweetest old lady ever. Poor thing—half-starving now. Whenever I take my lesson I go to the PX and just load up—crackers, cheese, sardines, that sort of thing, you know. I suppose they have a banquet after I go. Awfully odd position she's in—white, natch, and yet can't use the PX or, well, any of the Army things. Can't even ride Army busses, or the Allied cars on the railroad. Doesn't go out much—no shoes! Of course, she was here all during the war, and I suppose that's why. And the CIC is always investigating her—as though she cared about Hitler or Mussolini or anything but music. She'll be at the opera tonight probably—I'll bet she's off borrowing a pair of shoes right now. That soprano is another pupil of hers."

  "I guess I'll be going," said Gloria. "Some major or other from the office asked me."

  Dorothy looked at her intently for just a second, the look of a person who is trying to decide whether or not to tell a woman that her lipstick is smeared, that an eyelash has fallen to her cheek, that her nose needs blowing. Finally she said: "Oh, really? What's his name?"

  "Calloway. Why?"

  "Oh, nothing. Just thought Davie or I might know him. We know scads of people in Special Services—I used to be USO, you know, and of course Davie is on the paper. Guess we don't."

  "Guess not," said Gloria, wishing that Americans had a custom like bowing. It made difficult things like parting between two people who didn't like each other so much easier.

  "Well, dear, I must run," said Dorothy, her eyes still intent on Gloria. "Perhaps I'll see you there tonight." She smiled briefly.

  "Hope so," said Gloria and turned quickly away. She rather wanted to know just who Dorothy's officer was. In all likelihood someone she herself had known, would know, or was knowing. There were only so many officers. Well, bless the grapevine. She probably would know before the day was over. Really, Tokyo was Muncie all over again—such a small world after all. Muncie all over again, but different.

  She drew a deep breath of the cool autumnal morning air and, for no reason, felt better. She breathed and smiled, realizing that, absurdly enough, she felt happy.

  It was being in Japan that did it, she guessed. Here she seemed to weigh less, her body had a suppleness and dexterity that surprised her. The sun shone directly into her face, and she felt tall, beautiful, and altogether different from what she knew herself to be.

  Often she had seen other Americans here smile for no apparent reason as they walked in the sunlight. Was it because they were conquerors? She doubted it. It was because they were free. Free from their families, their homes, their culture—free even from themselves. They had left one way of living behind them and did not find it necessary to learn another. Nothing they'd ever been taught could be used in understanding the Japanese, and most of them didn't want to anyway. It was too much fun being away from home, in a country famed for exoticism, in a city where every day was an adventure and you never knew what was going to happen tomorrow.

  Actually, thought Gloria, there was something paradoxically reassuring about being in this country where the ground might shake at any moment, where the distant, snow-covered mountain might, for all one knew, blow the whole island to pieces. You could almost feel yourself living. At any moment the ground might crack beneath your feet and you'd find yourself face to face with eternity. It was quite different from safe, dull Muncie where habit very soon cut you from life, and Gloria was inclined to prefer Japan.

  The gold-spotted leaves fell at her feet, and the cool air brushed her ankles. There was a clarity here—so different from the foggy, rainy island she had expected—a dryness, a precision in the atmosphere which made the most ordinary occurrence—a walk to the station for example—something joyous, as though a carnival were just around the corner.

  There was another kind of clarity too. She felt herself a part of something larger, something benevolent, like god, engaged in kind works and noble edifices. And she could see enormous distances. Her own country—the United States, Indiana, Muncie—like an arranged vista, fell perfectly into place. She understood it; she understood her place in it and even that of her parents. It was as adorable as an illuminated Easter egg
.

  And here, all around her, was freedom, even license. The ruins were one huge playground where everything forbidden was now allowed and clandestine meetings were held under the noonday sun. The destruction, evident everywhere she looked, contributed to or perhaps caused this. She felt like a looter, outside society. Society no longer existed.

  Here she was free, here in this destructive country where autos collided as though by clockwork, where sudden death was always a possibility, and where dogs went mad in the sun, casting their long, barking shadows behind them. More than at any other place she had been in her life, Gloria felt alive in Japan.

  Two university students, black in their caps and high-collared uniforms, were walking toward her. They stopped talking to stare. When she passed them they both stood respectfully to one side of the sidewalk, their eyes never leaving her. As she walked beyond them she heard their conversation, suddenly animated, bright with words she would never understand. They were talking about her.

  She turned to look behind her. Both of the students were walking backwards, gazing after her. Gloria read only appreciation in their faces. They saw her looking, blushed, and turned around.

  Japan was like that. You could walk down the street and be admired. A visiting deity, deigning to step upon the common pavements. All the men would look at a white woman as though she were some rare, incalculably expensive and probably breakable object. At least, so Gloria believed.

  She turned around again, but the students were gone. If she had smiled at them she might have assured for herself a kind of immortality. The handsome youngsters would reckon time from the day the American lady smiled at them. They would excitedly recall to each other just what she looked like; they would vie with each other in flattering descriptions. At least, so Gloria believed.

  The next two men were middle-aged businessmen, and they didn't look at her at all. This did not disturb Gloria's illusion, however, for she considered them quite ugly. A man whom Gloria could not imagine as a bed companion simply didn't exist for her. But, in the next moment, a young carpenter on a bicycle turned to gaze so long that he almost ran into a taxi. Gloria turned around to look. Just to make sure he hadn't hurt himself. He was very handsome.

  She realized she was smiling. Just before she passed through the Allied free entrance to the trains, she turned to look at the plaza before her, at the great city spreading beyond it. She saw the sedan and the driver still waiting back at the hotel, small and distant in the morning sun. He seemed to be looking at her. She couldn't remember whether he was good looking or not. Oh, well, it didn't make any difference. He seemed to touch his hat, but she couldn't be sure. It was this typical gesture which reminded her that he was Japanese. Really, Gloria, she giggled to herself, your standards are getting lower—or higher, as the case may be.

  Still smiling, she nodded at the boy taking tickets at the wicket for Japanese and, feeling delightfully like Babylon herself, swept through the free Allied entrance to the trains.

  When Tadashi first saw the tall American coming toward him in the fur coat he thought she must be his passenger. But then she and the shorter lady with her walked on toward Tokyo Station. Tadashi shifted his weight to the other leg and went on waiting. Straightening his cap, he watched the MP on duty at the billet entrance. The uniform was nice—sharp creases, boots like mirrors, immaculate gloves.

  Tadashi remembered his own war-time uniform with something approaching nostalgia, then turned his own cap over one ear, slouched against the fender of the sedan, and deliberately scuffed his already broken and dusty boots on the tire. The military now sickened him as much as it had once attracted him.

  He remembered when he had been a lieutenant. It had been the same then. Affection and loathing. He had both loved and despised the Army. Now that Japan had vowed never to fight again this was one responsibility that was no longer his.

  But one less among so many didn't make much difference. There was his wife, his child, and the uncle who now lived with them. There was his job, so precious and so coveted by others that he had to fight daily for it. And there was his poverty—so extreme it seemed almost like a joke. He had never been poor before the war and now, after it, could scarcely remember being anything else.

  He smiled reflectively. This was far different from the war days, when his sole responsibilities were toward Emperor and country. Those times had been holidays. Even in the face of certain destruction—perhaps because of it—he had felt it was eternally New Year's, a joyous time filled with gifts and pleasures, extraordinary occurrences and freedom.

  Pulling a crushed Lucky Strike from his jacket pocket, he lighted it. It had been given him by his last passenger. Now he was dependent even for his few pleasures—and he saluted privates and corporals. At the Motor Pool he bowed to the lieutenant in charge.

  He looked again at the trip ticket. His departure from the Pool was penciled in one corner, and when his passenger released him he was supposed to pencil in the hour and the minute. There was not supposed to be too much of an interval between the two.

  Tadashi saw that the time of departure was seven-thirty, half an hour ago. If the lady didn't come soon, he would be in danger of a delinquency report. But if he went away without her and she made a complaint, that too might mean a report. Under the new officer a driver was discharged who accumulated three reports. He'd already gotten one, on the first day, because he'd stopped to watch a baseball game.

  That was very typical of the military of any land. There was no consideration for the individual. He found it ironic that the American Army, enforcing democracy, should be so undemocratic. On the surface, of course, it made a great show of democracy, which had amazed the Japanese—the non-coms didn't slap their men around, and officers were actually seen talking affably with their subordinates—but basically it too was undemocratic. Any army was like this of course, but he had felt somehow that the American Army would be different. But it wasn't. Except that it would say that it would do one thing, for one reason, and would then do something entirely different, for another reason, whereas the Japanese Army had been almost monomaniacal in its adherence to established ways. But, whatever the difference in approach, all armies were alike in being convinced that the way they did things was absolutely the right way.

  Such thoughts no longer disturbed Tadashi, for he was through with armies—forever. He might be forced to work for one, but he would not obey its rules. He would be a person and would triumph over it. His friends called this sentimentality, but that was what he believed.

  He was nodding his head shortly and sagely in complete agreement with himself when he happened to see the fur-coated lady standing in front of the large entrance of Tokyo Station, outlined against the white sign of the Allied entrance. She appeared to be smiling at him—he couldn't be certain. But, just in case, he smiled and, standing up straight, touched his cap, though they were blocks from each other. There was nothing servile in his gesture, it was more a thank-you for the smile she'd given him earlier. She hesitated, then disappeared.

  Perhaps she had been smiling at him, and perhaps she hadn't. At any rate, with the Americans there was always the possibility that they would, and this made him feel good. Americans were actually notoriously friendly when they let themselves be. Perhaps she was simply more friendly than most. It would be so nice being around them were it not for the military.

  It wasn't specifically the American military that Tadashi hated; it was the military of all nations. He even had a theory about it. It was the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps of any nation that was responsible for that nation's difficulties. And they were so lethal that even owning one guaranteed trouble. If a country had an army, it was going to use it and could always find some excuse to do so. Japan was a perfect example.

  Since the war Tadashi had become what his friends called a militant pacifist. This was very important to him, as important even as his job as sedan driver, for, in a way, his new ideas insured his dignity, his individuality—the lat
ter concept was none the less precious to him because it was new—and made it possible for him to give a sort of allegiance to his job, if not to his uniformed bosses.

  How ironically appropriate it had been that Japan should be destroyed by the forces she herself had used. The punishment had been terrible—and just. He was happy that there would never be another Japanese Army. The new Constitution had forbidden it. Maybe it was all General MacArthur's idea as they said, but it was the Japanese Constitution. And he—as valiant a crusader for peace as he had ever been for war—would never comply with the wishes of any army—American or otherwise.

  Of course, this was all after the fact. For Japan had been destroyed—destroyed in that particularly terrifying, physical way that armies always choose. Perhaps it was the memory of the destruction that made his hatred of all armies burn as fiercely as had the fires of Tokyo. He could never forget it, and even now, years later, he relived it nightly.

  He looked at the MP, at his own torn uniform, threw away the Lucky Strike butt, and again remembered what he could never forget—the destruction of Tokyo.

  He remembered the day perfectly. It was in a cool, sunny, and unseasonably windy March. The children who had them still wore their furs. His two sisters, dressed alike in little fur hoods with cat's heads embroidered on them, were sent off to school, and his father went off to work next door at his lumberyard. His younger brother left for his classes at Chuo University, across the city, and he was left alone with his mother.

  It was the third day of a leave from the Army. He had a new lieutenant's uniform. His mother wanted him to stay near home and call on the neighbors. He wanted to walk around the city and show off his new uniform. As she began the housework his mother smiled, told him to do what he wanted, and asked only that he come home early because his uncle was calling on them that evening. He told her he would, gave her a mock salute at the door, and went into the street.