This Scorching Earth

by Donald Richie

  "Chuo?" he shouted at the train boy, who nodded. As he stepped into the train, the doors slammed shut.

  A dozen soldiers were in the car and a couple of civilians. In one corner three Nisei soldiers were pointing out the sights to each other, and in another two very young buck privates were lost in dozens of comic books. He shoved his bag into an overhead rack and sat down beside an older soldier who was looking out the window. The train curved out of the station, above the buildings, toward Kanda.

  The older soldier looked at him. He had a large bulbous nose, pitted like a raspberry. "Boy, you just made it, didn't you? One more minute and you'd have been real left out."

  "I ran all the way." He looked out the window at the receding platform, still thinking of the MP.

  The older soldier laughed indulgently. "Do it all the time myself, out after a shack-up job and run like hell to get in. You got to be in by noon?"

  "I'm supposed to be now. I work this morning." He looked at his wrinkled uniform and felt his day-old beard.

  The soldier with the big nose nodded sympathetically, then asked: "You going to Shinjuku?"

  He was answered with a nod.

  "You with the Engineers out there?"

  The younger soldier shook his head no. He turned away and looked out of the window. He wanted to think, not talk with some old Regular Army gasser. You could tell them a mile away. It seemed he hadn't thought for weeks, and he had lots to think about. One never seemed to have time to think in the Army, or in any event it certainly wasn't encouraged. And he must think now. In a week he might be married. Or well on his way toward it. But there was no reason to feel so continually surprised. He might have seen it coming a year ago.

  Even his first letters home had shown some indication of what might happen. Those letters must have sounded pretty enthusiastic, all filled with discoveries he took for granted now. That the people weren't yellow after all, that their eyes didn't slant, that it wasn't a small country, and that the Japanese weren't midgets.

  The letters from his parents said they were glad that he liked it over there and that he was enjoying himself. He must remember to dress warmly enough because his mother had heard on the radio that it was a cold winter. And his father hoped he was enjoying himself and wasn't letting his enjoying himself interfere with being a good soldier which was, after all, the reason he was there. They'd apparently thought Japan was like a new bicycle or an electric train.

  Half a year later he'd tried to tell them how he felt. He'd used phrases such as "I feel I really belong here ..." This had inspired letters, by return mail, in which his mother asked about his health and was he sure he was dressing warmly enough, and his father seriously asked if he were learning Japanese and, jokingly, if he had a Japanese girl.

  As a matter of fact, he was learning Japanese, in the Army school, but he hadn't met the girl yet. It wasn't until three months later that he met her. He'd gotten tired of wandering around Tokyo on a rainy Saturday afternoon and had gone to the Servicemen's Center for a free cup of coffee. In the next room a flower-arrangement lesson was going on. He stood in back of the officers' wives and WAC's and saw her for the first time. She was bending an iris so deftly that it seemed to have grown around the pine branch.

  Afterwards he'd elbowed his way through the WAC's and used his best Japanese to ask questions about flower arranging. She'd answered, her eyes lowered, one hand holding a spray of wisteria, for all the world like one of the girls in the old prints he'd seen and liked. After the others had left he asked if she would give him lessons, and she, pleased and flattered, said she would. She was very pretty.

  In Haruko he had found personified what he liked about Japan. He watched her cut a camellia and put it near a rock, and the rock became beautiful. It was like those farm houses he had seen which were built around a tree or a boulder. The farmers, unwilling to sacrifice the natural surroundings, had fitted the houses to the landscape.

  When he tried to learn to do the same thing and, disillusioned, stood back regarding the sprays of iris all going one way, the magnolias the other, she complimented him on supposed beauties of construction which he knew did not exist in his arrangement but which she created with deft touches, apparently mere caresses of admiration, until, after the last admiring pat, the arrangement was just right. It was never necessary to admit he was clumsy and unskilful, just as it was never made apparent that he could be wrong. One week they had changed the time of the lessons, and he had forgotten. She came an hour later and, when she saw him, understood at once and could not often enough remind him of her tardiness.

  And just as she was sensitive to flowers, so was she sensitive to all beautiful things. Occasionally she recited Japanese poetry to him and taught him how the haiku and the tanka were constructed. One day she looked at him for a long time, then wrote a haiku. She lived naturally with beauty, he liked to think, and used it daily as other women use the mirror....

  "Pretty hot place, Shinjuku?" It was the old soldier with the nose. He moved closer and said: "Wouldn't know myself. I'm out Tachikawa way."

  "Then you're on the wrong train."

  "Aw, hell, I got the whole day. I'm not on my way back. Ginza's dead. I'm gonna go over Shinjuku way and try it out. Hell, I'm gonna have myself a real time today."

  "Oh, you'll probably find Shinjuku pretty dead too then. It all depends on what you want to do."

  The old soldier shrugged his shoulders. "You know—usual stuff—get a few souvenirs, get laid. Can't get drunk around here—that saké rots your guts right out of you. Go to the EM Club and you blow your dough in five minutes. Jesus, prices are high here, you know."

  The younger soldier turned back toward the window and said shortly: "I don't know about Shinjuku. I don't spend much time there."

  "Well, guess I'll just have to find out for myself then. I hear tell the gook girls'll lay faster there than any place else though." He paused and the asked: "What do you think?"

  The younger soldier didn't answer. He was allergic to the word "gook."

  "Course," the old soldier continued, "I always say that any gook girl'll spread her legs if you ask her the right way—and get her away from mama." He laughed heartily and blew his raspberry nose before continuing: "Hell, man, why I don't know when I had so much fun as with some of these little gook girls. Why, I know one ..."

  He continued on and on, talking into the younger soldier's ear while train boy carefully swept the cigarette butts from between the passenger's feet and entered the small compartment at the end of the car with his dust pan.

  Past the door at the opposite end of the car was the next coach. There was no glass in the door, and the people were pressed tightly against each other. A student, in his high-collared uniform and cap, was pressed against one corner of the door-frame. Beside him was a short little man with a bow tie and a derby hat. The student seemed to be staring at the younger soldier, who looked back once and then turned toward the window again. Since he'd met her he didn't much like institutions like the Allied car.

  Beside him the old soldier talked on. The Army was full of men like him. That was what armies were for apparently, to provide homes for otherwise homeless men like this one. The younger soldier wondered what would happen if he were to turn around and hit him. Nothing probably. Yet it was strange that while he himself wouldn't hesitate to talk back to an MP just doing his duty, still he wouldn't—couldn't—push around men like this one.

  His barracks were full of them. He had to live with them. His flower-arranging lessons had been their delight once they had discovered them. But, come to think of it, they had been more approving than otherwise. They sanctioned any method which worked toward the given, the approved end, no matter how devious. But when they discovered that this wasn't what he was after, their attitude changed.

  They no longer kidded him, and if he mentioned her, there was a depressing silence. They could somehow detect the difference between lust and love, and they behaved accordingly. And when they saw him
being friendly to their Japanese janitor, they found a name for him.

  Eventually the lessons were held at her house. He was surprised to find that hers was a wealthy family and that she had been sent to the Servicemen's Center, not to earn money, but to overcome a natural shyness which her parents thought excessive. They were quite delighted when she brought home an American. He usually bought presents at the PX for them, and they insisted he spend Saturdays and Sundays with them. She acted as an occasional interpreter or helped him with his Japanese lessons or just sat beside him while he, his shoes off, lying on his stomach on the tatami, looked through her photograph albums and decided he had never been happier. It seemed inevitable that he fall love with her.

  When he wrote his parents about his feelings, his mother hadn't even answered, and his father, refusing to believe his son was serious, attempted a joke, asking if it really went sidewise. He'd written back angrily, and there had been no more letters for a time. In the barracks for several months now he'd been known as a gook-lover.

  This disapproval of his parents and the soldiers he lived with had only made him the more determined in his belief in her and his love. Last night her parents had gone to Atami, and after the servants had gone to bed, he had scratched at the shoji, and she had let him in.

  "... and so I went to the PX and I got the prettiest little dress you ever saw." The older soldier was still talking, leaning confidentially toward the other. "And, boy, you ought to seen those eyes light up like Christmas trees when I give it to her. I said, 'Baby, you done earned this,' and laughed my fool head off. And then, you know, first day she wore it outside, one of these god-damn snoopy Jap policemen stopped her and took her to the station. Thought she stole it, you know. Made her give up the dress and sent her home with just her coat over her underwear. Told her she wouldn't get it back until whoever gave her the dress showed up and said he had. So she came to me, all tears, you know." He stopped and blew his nose.

  "What did you do? asked the younger soldier, interested.

  "Me? Why, I never went near the little bitch again, of course. She knew where I was though and used to ride those damn crowded gook trains out Tachikawa way every day. I never let her see me after the first time, though. Jesus, you'll get into trouble, you know. You're not supposed to let PX stuff get to the Japs—black market. I don't mind the black market, of course, but you got to watch it and make clean business—this messing around with the Jap police could put me right in the stockade. So, if I hadn't been smart and tossed her on her big fat can, I'd of wound up with all sorts of trouble on the deal. See what I mean?"

  "Yeah, I see what you mean."

  This poor girl probably loved that raspberry-nosed bastard too. Japanese girls all seemed anxious to love and to trust. He closed his eyes and turned his back on the older soldier. The very thought of something like this happening to Haruko made him cold all over.

  He remembered how she'd looked last night when he'd scratched on the shoji and she'd opened it. She'd been sleeping in a light-blue summer yukata dyed with a pattern of cranes. Her face was pink, and she rubbed her eyes as though she could not believe it possible that he was there.

  "Why?" she asked softly, in English, looking over her shoulder, afraid the old servant might hear. "Go back. Do not do this," she continued in Japanese. She didn't seem afraid, merely concerned for his sake. "When they discover you, you'll be punished."

  She was so sincere, and looked so much like a little girl as she knelt by the shoji with one hand delicately on its frame, that he could not help smiling as he said:

  "I came to ask you to marry me."

  "Marry you?" she asked, and her hand dropped into her lap as she knelt by the shoji. She had apparently never thought of this. "Do you want to be married. To me?"

  He nodded.

  The moon came from behind a willow, and her face was white.

  He stood in the shadow, black, unable to speak.

  Somewhere behind her a clock struck one. "Come in," she said softly.

  He sat on the edge of the sill and took off his shoes, then swung his feet around and sat inside. She pulled the shoji closed behind him. He looked around him. It was the first time he had ever been in her room.

  It was perfectly plain and rather small—six tatami in size. During the day the doors were opened and it became a part of the house. He had often seen it from the main room. This was where her mother knelt, sewing, during his visits—near enough to be seen, far enough away not to appear to be chaperoning them. At night, however, the doors were slid to and it became Haruko's room.

  In the tokonoma, below the scroll picture, were some chrysanthemums, arranged in a flat, square bowl, their stems cut very short. There were chrysanthemums in the garden too. House and garden flowed one into the other, separated only by the paper doors, doors so insubstantial that they seemed to Michael more symbolic than actual, symbolizing a barrier that he had just crossed.

  She knelt before him. "I could bring you tea. But it might wake the servant. Her room is very near."

  He shook his head and looked at the futon where she had been sleeping. Her pallet was very narrow and looked small lying there on the tatami, reminding him of a child's bed. The pillow was small, round, and probably hard. It was still slightly dented from where her neck had laid against it. He put his hand under the padded coverings on the bed. It was warm inside.

  "Are you cold? I could bring in the hibachi, but it might wake her. And in the morning too she would wonder. It is too early in the year for me to want a hibachi. Shall I bring it?"

  He shook his head again. There was nothing in the room that showed it was hers except the high chest that held her clothes, and her few possessions on top of it. There was a tiny wristwatch and a small statue of Beethoven. Next to them was a small plastic wallet containing her identification card, some pictures taken on a school picnic almost five years before, and her monthly train pass. There was also a rather large French doll in the shape of a brown-satin negress with golden hair. Beside it there was a child's bank, which was made to resemble a Swiss chalet with painted snow on the roof. These, and the clothes in the closet, and a few books—mostly translated German and French novels—were her only belongings. They looked so fragile, these few possessions—one swing of the arm could break them all. Michael, thinking he had never seen anything so lovable, so unbearably sad as the top of that chest, turned quickly away.

  "Are you hungry?" she began again. "I could—"

  "No, I'm not hungry. Nor thirsty. Nor cold. I came to ask you to marry me."

  She was silent for a moment. Then, suddenly, in English: "No, me promised."

  He had noticed before that whenever he wanted to say anything serious, to say anything that mattered to either of them, she always insisted on English, as though it put what they were talking of farther away from her—and as though that was what she wanted.

  "Let's speak Japanese," said Michael. "My Japanese is better than your English."

  "All right, we'll speak Japanese. English is so difficult. I've studied since I was a little girl and I'll never be able to speak well. The words are so long and so hard to pronounce and each one has so many meanings. When I was in high school—"

  "Haruko! I came to ask you to marry me."

  "Oh."

  "Will you marry me?"

  "Me promised," she said in English.

  "All right, we'll talk in English if you want. In English, now: Will—you—marry—me?"

  "I understand. I good understand. Me promised."

  "I am promised," he corrected. "Is that what you mean—engaged?"

  "Yes, I engaged," she repeated. Then she continued: "Young man, same age."

  Michael had known this for some time. On his first visit her father, with great delicacy, had hinted until there could be no doubt that he was understood. She was to marry the son of an important man in one of Japan's largest entertainment combines. It was really a merger of the two families and would supposedly benefit both.


  "Tomorrow I see," said Haruko. "At opera—at, how you say ...?"

  "At the theater," said Michael. For some weeks he had also known that the official meeting would take place at the Imperial Theatre. Both Haruko and the boy had known each other almost all their lives, but tradition must be observed, and everyone would pretend that this formal, ceremonial meeting was the first time they'd ever seen each other. Michael had seen these meetings before, at the Kabuki, in the cherry groves at Ueno during the spring, in fashionable restaurants. Both the boy and the girl would avoid each other so far as possible. She would exclaim constantly upon the beauty of the blossoms, while he would examine his shoes or his hat. Up until this very moment Michael he had always thought such meetings both ludicrous and amusing.

  "That's why I came, Haruko. I want you to marry me. I love you." It sounded strange in English, and then he realized that he'd always thought these words in Japanese.

  She looked away. There was no light, and the moon shone through the paper, filling the room with an almost luminous glow. She reflectively ran her finger along the pattern cast by the shoji.

  "I love you," she said, but it was only the repetition of an unfamiliar phrase. Then she looked up and said: "I love you too—I think."

  "You think? Don't you know?

  She laughed. "How I know? Japanese girl no know anything. I know Papa-san and Mama-san no want I love you much. They know you love me. But I love you? I no know." She smiled, as though it were a joke between them. .. .

  The train jerked to a stop and the doors opened. An old lady, looking straight ahead, tried to board the car while the train boy, pushing her away, kept pointing in the direction of the Japanese cars. Understanding at last, she was still running awkwardly along the train when the doors slammed to and the train pulled past her and out of the station.

  The older soldier was still talking: "Yessir, lot's of trouble if you're not smart enough to watch out for it. You got to understand these folks, got to understand their psychology. And, course, they ain't got good sense and that makes things more difficult. Now just look at them, like a bunch of animals."