This Scorching Earth

by Donald Richie

  Always talking about MacArthur, thought Gloria. How terrible to be in charge of something like an Occupation.

  "Don't get lost in the carpet," she called, taking her hand from the Major's.

  In the elevator he said: "Which floor's the restaurant?"

  "I don't know. Ask the boy."

  But the boy had already stopped at the third floor; opening the door, he stood waiting.

  "Officious little bastard," said the Major, then begged Gloria's pardon.

  "Watch out for the carpet," called Gloria.

  They walked slowly down the wide hall, looking into various rooms.

  "What do these signs mean? asked the Major, reading: "Miss Gramboult. Lt. and Mrs. Schwartz. And look at that one over there: Mary Patsy Snied, daughter of Colonel and Captain Snied. What goes on there?"

  "Maybe they're brothers."

  "Let's go see," said the Major and peered past the door into the room.

  There were a number of children, not yet of school age, sitting on chairs talking with each other. Two or three regarded the Major and then turned back to their companions.

  "Hi, kids!" called the Major.

  None of the children answered. They all turned to stare, and then resumed their conversations. The youngest rose and shut the door.

  "Officious little bastards," said the Major. But Gloria was no longer there. "Miss Wilson! Where are you, Miss Wilson?" he shouted.

  Then he caught sight of her, just entering the room marked Miss Gramboult.

  "Oh, there you are," she called to the Major. "Well, don't just stand there. Heavens, you'd think you weren't invited."

  Cautiously, he entered the room, passed the small portable bar, behind which two boys were working, and looked around. Dozens of people were standing or sitting, all with drinks in their hands. The air was blue with smoke.

  "Darling," said Gloria to the lady with whom she was talking, "this is Major—. What was your name, dear? Oh, yes—Major Cowhand. And Major Cowhand, Miss Gramboult. Pudding, Alice. Alice, Pudding.... Well, darling, as I was saying, I thought we'd never make it at all, and then suddenly I decided, headache or no headache, Berle Gramboult is one of my oldest friends. And so I just dropped everything." She lowered her voice: "Though one thing I couldn't drop was this Texas idiot, but I trust you'll understand."

  Miss Gramboult steadied herself at the bar. "Of course, dear. Though actually this"—she helplessly indicated the room—"was just going to be a little intimate gathering." She make some attempt to pull herself together. "But I understand perfectly, and I'm thrilled to death you could come, for after all"—she looked at Gloria and wrinkled her brow—"there's just no one I'd rather see—I think."

  "A drink!" cried Gloria and moved to the bar.

  The Major followed her. "You know my name isn't Cowhand."

  "It is now. Don't fight life. Make the best of it!"

  "Do you know that woman?"

  "Never saw her before in my life and hope I never do again—as soon, that is, as we've made an appreciable dent in her liquor supply."

  "I don't think all of this is quite right. And it's only afternoon. Isn't it sort of early for a cocktail party?"

  "Oh, we civilians live dangerously. This has become the fashionable hour. Besides, would you like to be spending your—ha-ha—hard-earned money?"

  "What do you mean?" said the Major brutally.

  "I simply mean: What would you like to drink?" Gloria pointed to the almost empty remaining bottle of Scotch, and the boy emptied it for her. "Besides Scotch, that is," she added.

  Glass in hand, not waiting for the Major, she turned to see if she knew anyone at the party. She didn't, but the Major did.

  "Why, Sam, how the hell are you? Billy! I sure didn't expect to see you here. Why, Frankie, you old son-of-a-gun. Hey, there's Willy!"

  Gloria moved slowly away.

  "Hello there, Colonel Watkins, sir, nice seeing you," continued the Major. "And, for Christ's sake, there's Phil. Sure didn't expect to see you this morning—or is it afternoon?"

  Gloria moved further away.

  "Well, here's Bobby. What do you know?" the Major shouted.

  And Gloria moved completely away. She looked out of the window. The sun was surprisingly low; it was, somehow, late afternoon. The moat, the Palace, and the streets were gray. Beneath her were patches of color as crowds passed the plaza; further away, they became a uniform gray themselves, like the street. In the distance the Diet Building was white.

  "Look at Fuji," said someone behind her, and a finger was pointed past her face.

  "It's the Diet," said Gloria, not turning around.

  "Oh, you old spoil sport, and I was so anxious to see Fuji just now."

  Gloria turned around and confronted a familiar looking elderly lady who held a long cigarette holder in one hand and a dark-brown drink in the other.

  "As I said in my column the other day, Fuji is never so beautiful as when half-hidden by rains. And now you tell me you can't even see Fuji."

  "In any event," said Gloria, "you can't see Fuji from here on any day."

  "But, honey, this is where I do all my writing." She pursed her mouth with annoyance and almost turned her back; then suddenly she swung again in Gloria's direction. "But we don't know each other, do we? I'm Mrs. Swenson—Hilda Swenson. You know!"

  "I thought your face was familiar, but how did you get up here so fast?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I said: I read your stuff in the Japan Times."

  "Oh, not really." She seemed genuinely delighted. "How most interesting to find one who knows one. Did you read yesterday's?"

  "Unfortunately not."

  "Oh, it was quite fine," Mrs. Swenson said, with an attempt at impartiality. "It was all about birth control. Both my husband—New York Tribune, you know—and myself are all for it."

  "Need you be?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Nothing. I was just saying that I'm one of your most devoted followers. I'm the one called 'Just an Observer'."

  "Really?" she gasped. "Why, only last week I printed a simply extraordinary letter of yours. Only I thought it was from a Japanese—most of them are, you know."

  "Yes, I read it."

  "All about temple reconstruction. It is so needed, don't you think?"

  "No, it was about the pedestrian problem."

  "Oh, you're so right. And what you said just echoed my own views so. I just printed it as was with just a few teeny changes—grammar and things, you know. But, oh, the Japanese feeling was there, my dear, it was there! You obviously have the Gift."

  "What's that?" asked Gloria.

  But Mrs. Swenson was motioning toward a crowd of men in another corner. "Dearest, dearest," she called. "I've found the most amazing person I didn't even know—or rather, I knew but actually didn't. Come here." She paused, and then shouted: "Come here!"

  Mr. Swenson moved toward them, holding himself and his drink erect, his classic profile toward them as he addressed amenities to those he passed.

  "Darling," said his wife, "this is 'Just an Observer.'"

  "I'm delighted to meet you," said Mr. Swenson, extending a hand to Gloria, who curtsied.

  "Isn't this a divine party! One meets such fabulous people. And, dear, she has the Gift. She writes just like a Japanese."

  "Yes," said Gloria shyly, "me pray for the General's coming erection."

  Mrs. Swenson giggled nervously. "Yes, I saw the sign too. You know, dear," she said to her husband, "that sign written by some Japanese—that billboard, you know." And since he still seemed thoroughly confused: "The age-old difficulty Our Friends have with the l's and r's and their differences."

  "Oh, I see," said Mr. Swenson. "Election—oh, quite good! Very amusing. Keen sense of humor, these Japanese."

  Mrs. Swenson forgot herself to the extent of throwing a hopeless shrug of the shoulders to Gloria before she ran across the room and threw herself into the arms of another elderly lady who had just entered.
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  "Lady Briton. Darling!" she cried.

  Mr. Swenson turned to Gloria. "I suppose you're a great fan, shall we say, of my wife's?"

  "Let's be daring and say it. Yes, I wouldn't miss an installment."

  He nodded his head and pursed his lips. "Yes, that girl has talent. Real Talent. I was afraid for a time that it might be dulled by the newspaper grind."

  "I'm sure it's not been."

  He looked at her with appreciation. "You know—I don't think it has been. There's always some talk around the house as to which is the best"—he paused and laughed—"she or I. But then a comparison would be quite invidious. After all, she explains the West to the Japanese, and I explain the Japanese to the West. It's a nice arrangement."

  "I understand."

  "You know," said Mr. Swenson as he was pulled away by his wife, who had unexpectedly returned, "I think you do."

  "Darling, it's Lady Briton," said Mrs. Swenson, sweeping her husband grandly into the great lady's presence.

  "Dear Lady Briton," said Mr. Swenson and kissed the tips of the fingers which were extended to him. "Dear Sacred Protector, as says Tennyson, of Our Dumb Friends."

  "Our 'dumb friends' had just better toe the mark or it will be jolly well up with them," snarled Lady Briton. She was Australian and most outspoken.

  "No, no, no," tittered Mrs. Swenson, hovering between Lady Briton and her husband. "My husband means the animals, not the Japanese."

  "Oh, well, whyn't you say so? Awfully sorry. But really, Swenson, if you'd just been through what I have, you'd be a bit upset yourself."

  "Whatever?" asked Mrs. Swenson, her eyes round. What indeed could so upset the Lady Briton who was, after all, Royalty. Or almost.

  "Well," the Lady began with a sigh, "we were motoring with General Hughes and his wife. And we were in the midst of this really divine countryside when, all of a sudden, coming around a bend, what did we see but one of these—these people most inhumanely beating his animal. Which, by the by, wasn't much to look at. But still, it was a horse." She stopped and with glittering eyes surveyed her almost entirely American court.

  Actually she wasn't too strong for horses. Dogs were her strong point. She always felt slightly ill when she realized that hundreds of big, virile but gentle-eyed dogs were being starved, beaten, and maimed every day of the week around her. To be sure, she had never seen any of this, but she knew it occurred with frightening regularity. Dogs, after all—unlike people—were the same the world over. She remembered those fine, upstanding, military-looking Australian dogs and, as always, felt a little tug at her heartstrings. Randolph—that was Lord Briton—liked dogs too, and that helped.

  To be sure, even the dog kingdom had its slackers—like those utterly nasty little beasts which had bitten Mrs. Colonel Butternut on the thigh when she was being the head of John the Baptist during charades. But then—and this was telling—they had not been Australian animals. They were some mongrel Japanese variety. ... But her audience was waiting.

  "Well, the reason this poor animal was being punished was because he had stopped in the middle of the road, and the reason he had stopped was obvious to everyone but the little man who owned him. He was overburdened. Dreadfully so. That little cart was piled to the skies, and that little man was standing there using a long, cruel switch on the animal. Just in the manner of these appalling night-soil collectors—how do you call them? Honey carts? Yes, that's it—most amusing—honey carts it is!"

  She continued: "Naturally, it made my blood simply boil. We stopped the car. The chauffeur's native too, of course, so you'd expect him to side with his countryman, which is just what he did. And I walked over to that little man, all dressed up in his own fashion—a rag here, a rag there, actually rather picturesque, but filthy, of course. Well, I told the little blighter to stop. He didn't; he merely took off a rag from his bead, as though it were a fedora, and went right on beating the animal with the other hand. So, with a self-possession which I must say Randolph later admired—dear Randolph—I stepped right up to him and took his switch away. Then I deliberately broke it over one knee." She glanced down at her beaded cocktail dress. "And it wasn't too easy in this dress which, after all, is just about as comfortable as a straightjacket."

  "No, no, Lady Briton, it is lovely," came several voices at once. "So smart. So chic. Just a dream."

  She held up a hand. "But I was successful. The whip broke!"

  She paused to reap her reward of compliments and smiles, and then went on: "So, using our native as interpreter, we discovered that this fellow thought it was important for him to get somewhere or other with a funny name before nightfall. I asked, through the native, if it were important at the expense of the horse's life. And, after a great show of thought and much smiling, the little beggar said that yes, he thought it was."

  In the general consternation that followed, Lady Briton had to use both hands to reestablish her authority. "Well, infuriated, and with jolly good reason, I—with these two hands, and at the risk of this silly little gown I have on, which came, by the way from Melbourne, so you can see we 'Aussies' aren't quite so far behind you 'Yanks' as some would like to think—well, so at its risk (though, as a matter of fact, it didn't hurt it at all) I began unloading that despicable little cart, while Mrs. General Hughes tried to comfort the poor animal. To be sure, it is a bit unfortunate that the good woman doesn't know much about horses. She put her fingers in his nostrils, and, naturally, he bit her."

  Wasting no time over the plight of Mrs. General Hughes, she went on immediately she had taken breath: "Well, when the load was down to a decent weight, we told the man to go on. But the beggar wouldn't. He just kept pointing to his stuff on the road and the rest of it in the cart, and finally he started crying. Well, that was too much. These people never show much grit and determination as it is—but tears! Well, as I say, it was just utterly too much. One can only tolerate so much, and I picked up that broken switch, and I swung it back with such purpose that that little blighter was only too happy to pull the horse away and start off down the road."

  There was general laughter and some scattered applause, but she silenced it again with a held-up hand and an impassive face. "Well, we naturally all enjoyed a merry laugh, and Randolph, I must say, who is not usually particularly emotional, rather surprised me by putting his arm around the back of my seat—that is, the seat in which I was sitting. And so, all in all, as they say, it ended happily ever after and was responsible for my seeing that, indeed, Tokyo is not the only place in Japan that has need of our Society. Now, I think that traveling stations of workers, visiting farms and the like, could ..."

  But the majority of her audience had melted away. She always put in a plug for her organization. Only Mrs. Swenson, Miss Gramboult, and a few other ladies remained faithful and looked up at her, their eyes shining. They had known of Joan on the walls of Orleans—or was it Arc?—the queen of Naples defending her ramparts, Barbara Fritchie and her old gray head, and Queen Elizabeth, or somebody, with her arm through the door sockets. But the spectacle of Lady Briton at bay in the Japanese countryside surpassed them all.

  "My god," said Gloria to herself, "she makes Major Calloway look like Albert Schweitzer."

  "Talking about me?" said the Major, unexpectedly circling around with another drink in his hand. "Say, you're right up there."

  "Up where?"

  "You know what I mean—up there with the VIP's. Lady Briton, Swenson of the Tribune—just had him pointed out to me. I didn't know you knew him."

  "He was Papa's best friend—stood at his wedding and became my very own godfather at my christening. I wore the most adorable little white—"

  "Well, what do you know? Say, suppose you introduce me. They say he's a good man to know."

  "What man isn't? But, no, you'd have to ask Mrs. Swenson about that.... No, on second thought, don't."

  "Liquor's running out. Liquor's running out," cried Miss Gramboult, running from one guest to the other.

  "Go g
et another," said Gloria, and the Major slowly moved in the direction of the bar. Sipping her drink, she again looked from the window. It had begun to rain, and now the streets and sidewalks were spotted with large, yellow, oiled-paper umbrellas.

  Two women were talking behind her. "Well, I'm Berle's roommate, and I should know. Listen. She gets up every morning and walks around the room stark naked, and believe you me, that's no treat. Scares the poor room girls half to death—big naked American, all hair, parading around. Then she starts washing. Says she's too shy to use the big bathroom. Shy, my foot! And so she has this poor girl—Sococoa or Sonoco or something like that—get her a big pan of hot water right in the middle of our only table. Then she washes her armpits and her crotch—believe me, this is quite true. Then, since she never takes off her make-up, she just dabs her face here and there—afterwards, mind you. Then she brushes her teeth—she's so proud of them—and slobbers in the big pan. She must brush those teeth of hers five minutes, dipping her toothbrush back in the water and everything. Then—and only then—she combs her hair. That hideous upsweep, you know—never wears anything else. And—would you believe it—she dips her comb in the same water, all gummy with toothpaste and god knows what else, and puts up her upsweep—literally sticks it there. Then she dips her little fingers in the mess and smooths her eyebrows. Then, still naked as a jaybird, she looks at herself in the big mirror and hollers for the girl to come and take away the pan. Every day—it's simply revolting!"

  "I didn't know Berle was that way," said the other.

  "Listen, you should live with her," said the first. "I can hardly eat breakfast after that exhibition. Hair! I never saw a woman with so much—like a fur coat—and that's not all—"

  "Here she comes!"

  "And that's not all," continued the first. "She has the most divine shoes. And as for taste—well, just no one has the really good taste our Berle does in clothes. Now, that wonderful black—Oh, Berle darling, I didn't know you were there. My, I bet your ears were burning. But, after all, they should have burned nice."

  "Nice," said Miss Gramboult, who, at this point, would not have noticed had her ears been burned entirely off her head. "So—nice. Such a nice party. Such lovely people. My friends." And she began to weep. But soon she forgot about that too and wheeled slowly among the guests, saying: "Sorry the drinks are all gone. Awful sorry." She paused from time to time, delivering a smile of exceptional whiteness, one hand smoothing her upsweep.