The Women

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  Frank laughed. And Miriam, despite herself—she detested it when he paid attention to another woman, any woman, as if he were dismissing her publicly, shaming her, shunning her, but the sound of that casual appellation, Mrs. Wrieto-San, was music to her ears—found that she was smiling as well. How adorable, she was thinking. How childlike. How pitiful.

  “ ‘Goddamn’?” Frank repeated, levity lifting his voice, and everyone at the table was watching the wife now—Takako-San—and everyone was smiling in anticipation of the sequel. “Why do you ask? Have you heard this expression often since you’ve arrived in our country?”

  A little pout, a widening of the eyes, and she was very young, Miriam saw, in her teens or early twenties, young and full of grace. And coquetry. But didn’t they teach that in Japan? Wasn’t that what women existed for over there?121 “Oh, yes, Wrieto-San,” the wife said in a diminished little puff of a voice, “every day. All the time. Here tonight. You have said it yourself.”

  And Frank, grinning, flirting—infuriatingly, as if she didn’t exist, as if she weren’t sitting across the table from him with the smile drying on her lips—gave a broad wink for the benefit of the table and for Hayashi-San in particular, no sense in ruffling his feathers, and replied that “goddamn” was a polite adverb meaning “very.” “As in, oh, I don’t know—Paul, help me out here—” But before Paul could answer, he went on, “—it’s a goddamn fine evening. Or this is goddamn fresh butter. After a meal you might thank your host for a goddamn good dinner.”

  Takako-San shifted prettily in her chair, made her eyes big and looked round the table as if she were sitting in the catbird seat—and she was, she was—and chirped, “Then I thank you, Wrieto-San—and Mrs. Wrieto-San—for a goddamn good dinner.”

  Of course everyone laughed—it was a pretty performance—and Frank and Hayashi-San petted her as if she were a dog or monkey granted the power of speech, but Miriam, though she was grinning, felt a stab of hate run through her. Hate that carried over into the living room, where they sat before the fire and Frank paraded out his treasures—the prints in particular—to get Hayashi-San’s studied opinion of them, and then there was the inevitable tour of the house that went on till it was past midnight and Hayashi-San, for all his rigid propriety, began to yawn.

  “Well,” Frank sighed, taking the cue at long last though she’d been signaling him with furious eyes for an hour and more, “you must be all tired out, rail travel can be so enervating, I know—but perhaps we’ll take it up again in the morning. Perhaps you’d like to see something of the house from the grounds. Or from horseback. If you like we can saddle up the horses—or take the motorcar. But please, let me show you to your rooms . . .”

  There were the elaborate good nights, the ritual bowing, Hayashi-San’s eyes all but melting into his head with exhaustion, the two students as silent and impassive as the carven statue of the Amida Buddha in the loggia and the little wife grinning her toothy farewells till finally they were alone in the bedroom and Miriam shut the door behind them and stalked to the closet. Frank had begun to whistle. He stood before the mirror, working loose the knot of his tie, a look of satisfaction on his face, and it was that look that set her off as much as anything. He was so pleased with himself, wasn’t he? Frank Lloyd Wright, the great man, beguiler of foreigners, seducer of women, god of his own universe. The light at the bedside cast a soft glow. Shadows climbed the walls. She was one tick from combustion.

  “That went well enough, don’t you think?” he said, shrugging out of the tunic with the trailing tails and open flapping arms that was like something you’d see on a Barnum & Bailey clown, and who was he to talk of parody? She snapped her neck round to glare at him, at his bare shoulders and the back of his inflated head. Did he actually expect her to reminisce over the evening? Over her own public humiliation? Was he that insensible?

  “Hayashi-San, I mean,” he went on, addressing the wall before him as he balanced first on one foot and then the other to remove his trousers. “He was reserved, of course, but that’s the nature of the Japanese, their natural dignity, but I could see that he was visibly impressed with Taliesin and the beautiful things we’ve collected here . . . Yoshitake-San too, though it’s Hayashi who makes the decisions, you can see that in an instant. No, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t come to a mutual agreement within the next few days. A ten percent commission, of course, and I’ll want travel and accommodation in the old Imperial, for the two of us and three assistants at least. And I’ll want a car and driver too, so that we can explore the countryside on our own, and the shops, of course . . .”

  She made no answer. She turned away, removed her jewelry and set it on the tray, jerked the comb from her hair. Her hands were trembling. The blindness of him, the stupidity! And did he really think she was going to tramp all the way over to the Orient with him to be treated like this?

  “And what did you think of Takako-San? Charming, wasn’t she?” And now it was too late, now the match had been struck, now. She flew at him across the room—he was just pulling the nightshirt over his head, oblivious, full of himself, swaggering, boasting, Lothario incarnate—and before she could think she’d slammed into him, both her hands extended, and he was staggering back against the wall, the garment caught over his head. There was a heavy fleshy thump and he cried out in surprise, working the neck of the nightshirt down over his face even as she shoved him again and he fell awkwardly to the floor. He was so stunned, so totally taken by surprise, that he just sat there staring up at her, not even angry yet, not even defending himself, as if he were the victim of some natural disaster, an earthquake, an avalanche. “What the—?” he stammered. “What are you—?”

  “Your little Cho-Cho-San,” she said, and she was standing over him, her fists clenched. She wanted to kick him like a dog. “Your little whore. Is that why you want to go over there, for your whores? Wrieto-San?”

  “Miriam, damn you, damn you!” He scrambled to his feet, tugging at the folds of the nightgown as if it were a hair shirt, and she backed away from him—was he going to hit her? Well, let him. She didn’t care. She’d show his precious Orientals the bruises in the morning, wear them like battle scars.

  “No,” she shouted, “damn you! But tell me, tell me, Frank, is it really true what the sailors say, because you ought to know, you’re the one who deserted your first wife over there to go whoring with all the little buck-toothed fish-stinking geisha and if you think I’m going to tolerate that—”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Tell me,” she screamed, and she didn’t care if they heard her all the way to Yokohama and back, “is it true? Do they really have their little slits on backwards?”122

  In the light of day she began to see things more clearly. And calmly. She’d gone too far, she could see that now, but she’d been upset, she couldn’t help herself. Still, Frank had been good about it—he was in the wrong, he knew it—and he’d taken her in his arms and held her to him till all the bad blood had flushed out of her and then he’d taken her to bed. And loved her like no man ever had, not even René at his best. She was left drained and she slept the night through without recourse to her pravaz and her dreams were fluid and rich, the bed undulating beneath her like a stateroom on the high seas, and if she couldn’t have the SS Paris then she would have the Empress of China, and if the yokels of Wisconsin treated her like a leper, in Tokyo she would be Mrs. Wrieto-San, the daring and ravishing wife of the great man himself. They would marvel at her, at her style and her carriage and her Parisian manner and perhaps she’d turn back to sculpture, set up her own studio there, the materials cheap as water, and coolies—was that what you called them?—to do the onerous things for practically nothing, for yen, mere scraps of paper. Best of all, she would escape the narrowness of Chicago and the sterility of life in the countryside.

  Edo. Old Edo. She lay in bed through the morning—long past breakfast—and stared at the prints on the walls until she felt she could
enter them, climb into their richly colored depths and live there curled up in a ball of undiluted happiness. And what was all this—Frank’s screens and vases and all the rest—if not preparation for the voyage of her life?

  That night, when they sat down to dinner, she held fast to Frank throughout the meal and she did the talking, or the better part of it, and if Frank could enchant Hayashi-San, well so could she. By the time they retired to the living room to sit before the fire Hayashi-San wouldn’t leave her side. His eyes—so dark they were nearly black—were fixated on her, roaming over her lips, her eyes, her tongue, her ears, her throat, and she recognized the look he trained on her from a hundred nights in the salons of Paris. All the while the little wife sat in the corner like a puppet with its strings cut while Frank lectured the architect and the earnestly nodding students—he barely glanced at the woman; he wouldn’t dare—and his mother, with her bobbing old white-crowned head, served the tea herself. There was a record on the Victrola—strings pouring out of the speaker in pulsing waves of warmth that seemed to float over the room as if the orchestra were there with them. Hayashi-San looked into her eyes. All the beautiful things in the room glowed in the firelight. She took the wrap from her shoulders, leaned back in the chair and let herself relax. She was going to Tokyo. Better yet: she was already on her way.

  CHAPTER 8: DERU KUGI WA UTARERU

  He wasn’t much of a sailor and he’d be the first to admit it. Give him a dingy or a canoe or even a sailboat out on the chop of Lake Mendota and he was fine, but the eternal pitching of the open sea took all the strength out of him. And, of course, leaving at the end of the year,123 some ten months after Hayashi-San had visited Taliesin, only complicated matters. On the first day out of Seattle the ship was overtaken by a storm sweeping down out of the Gulf of Alaska, the decks as slick as a hockey rink, his bunk—which he was unable to crawl out of except in those intervals when he staggered to the head—floating in mid-air like a magic carpet for a giddy moment only to plunge violently as if all the magic had been sucked out of it before it floated up again and then plunged back down. And came up. And down. And up and down and up and down. He couldn’t keep anything on his stomach, not even water, and when he was able to sleep his dreams were clotted with images of the Titanic and the Lusitania listing amid panic and chaos, and he woke, invariably, to the sensation of catapulting over Niagara in a barrel.

  Miriam was a gem. She was as unaffected as a harpooner by the heavy seas, tucking away three hearty meals a day, walking the decks for exercise and lingering late in the first-class lounge, all the while urging him to take a spoonful of broth, China tea, brandy (purely as a digestif, of course), and sitting beside him in his agony for long stretches of time, reading aloud from the jumping pages of a kinetic book. She bathed him. Laid compresses on his brow. Massaged his cored-out muscles. She was at her best and sweetest and most motherly but nothing could awaken in him the slightest pulse of volition or the least tick of energy but the thought of the pier at Yokohama beneath his feet. It had been this way when he’d first come to Japan with Kitty124 and when he’d crossed the Atlantic with Mamah too. He wasn’t a sailor. He would never acquire his sea legs. If only they had transcontinental rail service, he thought, lying there miserably in his bunk, and he envisioned a bridge across the Bering Sea or maybe a tunnel as deep down as the core of the earth itself. Or what of those other Wrights and their airplane? Or a blimp. What about a blimp?

  There were stretches during the two-week voyage in which he was able to sit at the drafting table and at least examine the preliminary plans, but it was impossible even to think of taking up a pencil, not with that infernal bounce and roll. Still, he was able to think things through all over again, the central problem one of engineering against the destructive force of the earthquakes that regularly ravaged the Japanese archipelago, another thing altogether from building on a stable lot in Chicago or Oak Park. He’d talked it over with his son John and Paul Mueller, both of whom had come along in the company of their wives to help set up shop, and with Antonin Raymond, the Czech architect he’d taken on as well, and his thinking was that he’d float the building on a series of piers,125 relying for support on cantilevered beams, much in the way of a waiter balancing a laden tray on the adjustable axis of one hand. The Japanese wanted a new and spectacular hotel to replace the antiquated Imperial the Germans had designed for them in the last century, a structure that would symbolize Japan’s ascent to the forefront of modern nations, and he was going to give it to them—a building that would be the glory of all Japan and stand proudly a hundred years and more even if the city around it was shivered to dust.126

  They were met at the dock by Hayashi-San himself and an entourage of some fifty others, including various dignitaries, members of the Imperial Hotel board, Japanese architects, representatives of the press and any number of beaming young students who looked as if they were about to faint dead away with the anxiety of staring into a white face for what might have been the first time in their lives. A band began to play, something with trumpet fanfares and an erratic drumbeat he didn’t recognize. Bows were exchanged. Gifts. Though there was a lingering chill over the ocean, the sun felt unnaturally hot on his face and he found himself sweating beneath the overcoat he’d slung casually over his shoulders. With Miriam at his side he went down the row of greeters, murmuring “Ohayō gozaimasu” and bowing to each of them in turn, feeling a burst of confidence and enthusiasm like nothing he’d ever known. He was free of it all, free of all the scandals, the bickering and tantrums of his mother and his aunts, the struggle to maintain Taliesin and his practice and keep his head above water financially, and as he bent to the last of the greeters, a white-haired ancient in samurai costume, he caught a single scintillating whiff of Japan on the breeze riding up off Yokohama Bay—an ineffable amalgam of broiled eel, incense and human effluent, and knew he was home at last.

  There followed a succession of dinners (running typically to more than two dozen courses), formal teas and ceremonial meetings with what seemed half the population of Tokyo, the greetings so elaborate and extended in those first heady days he barely had time to think about the hotel and the superhuman effort it would take to see it realized in three dimensions. After the drive in from Yokohama in a spanking new Mitsubishi sedan flying the flag of the rising sun, he and Miriam had been installed in a suite of rooms at the old Imperial, a three-story monstrosity of wood, brick and plaster in the heart of downtown Tokyo that featured neo-Renaissance facades and damp cavernous halls in the elaborate gimcrack style of the Second Empire. It was a molding, fermented sort of place that did no one the least lick of good, but at least their rooms opened out onto the courtyard below so that they would have access to fresh air and sunshine. His first order of business was to make himself comfortable, because, as he explained to Hayashi-San as best he could in the absence of a reliable interpreter, he simply could not work in a state of chaos, and as he always did no matter where he was or how temporary his residence, he quickly transformed the rooms into a flowing and elegant space. Before long, he’d acquired a grand piano (the sine qua non, along with a working fireplace, of any home), half a dozen suitable rugs and a few decent screens and hangings, and he positively haunted the shops of the print dealers.127 Despite the language barrier—Dōmo sumimasen, ukiyo-e arimasu-ka? (Excuse me, do you sell prints?) he asked everyone he met—he was like a child in a candy shop. He’d come to the source and for the first few weeks the hotel seemed almost an afterthought.

  But of course it wasn’t. It was the commission of a lifetime. And once he’d settled in, once he’d made the rounds of the print shops three or four times each and set up an on-site office and got his assistants to work on the drawings, the rounds of dinners and teas began to wear on him.

  One evening, he found himself in yet another teahouse, braced up against the wall on a pristine tatami mat while geisha fluttered about and his host—one of the ubiquitous bankers—made long sake-inflected speeches about matt
ers that were entirely lost on him. He leaned forward over the low rosewood table, putting on his listening face and struggling to ignore the shooting pains in his knees and at the base of his spine, while Miriam, in a kimono and wearing an embroidered Turkish towel wrapped round her head, sat beside him with her back perfectly arched and her legs folded delicately beneath her, all the while nodding and smiling broadly, as if she not only understood but revered each nugget of wisdom with which Tanaka-San was showering them. They were on the sixteenth or seventeenth course, he couldn’t recall which, one morsel of pickled ginger, seaweed and raw fish succeeding the next as if the chef had spent the entire morning combing the beach and breakwaters and was determined to represent every species in Yokohama Bay laid out on a ceramic saucer in its own drizzle of soya. He wanted a steak. Wanted to go back to the hotel and take up his protractor and T-square, wanted a hot bath, a mug of cider instead of the thin green tea, wanted to quarry stone and pour concrete and for Christ’s sake get on with it. He wondered if he looked bored. If he was giving offense. His mind drifted.