The Age of Dreaming (15 page)

It
was
early—only 10:30 a.m.—but this didn’t seem to deter the comedian. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his coat—which barely closed over his soft, bulky frame—and said, “I’m boiling, sport. Need a spot of something cool. Now be a good boy and rustle up some beer.”

At this, Elizabeth, who’d kicked her shoes off and crossed her legs on the seat, said, “One for me too, David, if it’s not too much of a bother.”

I tried to give her a look, but she avoided my eyes. Then I turned to Snyder, who shrugged. Unconcerned, he lit a cigarette and gazed out the window. When I glanced at David, though, he was pressing his lips together and furrowing his brow. He must have decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of fighting, because he left and came back with the beers.

Despite this beginning, there was a general sense of excitement about the trip. The distributors and theater owners kept knocking on our door, wanting to meet us, and Rosenberg would shoo them away. The train’s service staff would come in with our food, trembling with excitement, and then we’d all read their descriptions in the next day’s papers of our clothes and eating habits.

At our first stop, in Phoenix, we held a rally at a football field, led by a contingent that included the mayor and the U.S. senator from Arizona. One by one, we climbed up on the stage to yell through megaphones on behalf of Liberty Bonds.

“Every bond you buy will help save a soldier’s life!” shouted Snyder.

“Every bond you buy is a hammer in the Kaiser’s coffin!” called out Elizabeth.

Figgins and I expanded on these general themes, as did everyone else who took to the stage.

After we’d finished exhorting the crowd, we each retreated to our booth to sell bonds. All proceeded smoothly until a young redhead reached into my booth and threw her arms around me. I returned her embrace briefly, but when I attempted to pull away, she tightened her grip around the back of my neck. Three policemen appeared, and after their repeated commands to let go of me went unheeded, they had to pry her loose. “Jun, Jun, I love you!” she sobbed, as the police began to pull her away. Before they succeeded, she took something out of her pocket and threw it at me. It was a pair of lacy underwear, and all the men grinned as I plucked it off my shoulder. Figgins, from the next booth, shook his head in amazement. “Normandy
told
me you were popular with women. But jeez, I had no idea.”

Each official stop was a variation of the first—large crowds that grew as we progressed across the country, smiling politicians, fans crushing through police lines to get to us. We each had our own particular brand of followers. Elizabeth, of course, was loved by all the men—some of them shyly passed her fiowers or love letters; more than one asked her to marry him, and a man in Cleveland paid $10,000 in cash for a clump of her chestnut hair. Young women loved her too—not society girls, but girls in waitress outfits and mothers old before their years, women who knew where Elizabeth had come from and who believed her success gave them hope for their own lives. Figgins’ fans were portly or scrawny boys and their adult equivalents, people who yearned not for heroic figures but for reflections of themselves. The working men were drawn to Buck Snyder, who was the archetypal Western hero. The men who liked me were the sophisticates, the urban men who liked elegant clothing and good cigars; who cared about culture and literature. Both Snyder and I were loved by the women. And there were thousands of women.

One day, somewhere on the great Western plains, the train came to an unexpected halt. Rosenberg, who’d been napping on one of the bench seats in our car, was awakened by the screech of the brakes. He yawned and said, “It must be a whistle stop. No need to get up.”

But then someone else from Perennial—a teenager who was probably somebody’s son—stuck his head in the door. “Gentlemen, would you mind coming back to the rear platform? There’s a crowd out there waiting to see you.”

We had not been expecting to make a stop that day, and Figgins was still in his nightshirt. Snyder was asleep in his upper bunk, with one boot hanging over the side, snores audible even with the noise of the train. I was dressed, as always, in a jacket and tie, but even I had been looking forward to a day with no public appearances. Elizabeth, David told me after he had spoken to her maid, was getting a massage.

“Can’t we skip it?” asked Figgins. “I’m in the middle of something.” What he was in the middle of was a fiask of whiskey; it seemed to be his most treasured possession.

“Better not,” said Rosenberg. “It looks like you’ve got several hundred people out there. The town’s mayor declared a holiday today.”

Figgins groaned and began to arrange his body to stand, which would take him several minutes. David went and shook Snyder’s dangling leg; in a moment the actor, looking sleepy, had jumped down from his bunk and pressed his cowboy hat to his head. Then Elizabeth burst into the car wearing a simple cotton dress, her hair tied up in a bun. “David, I’m just about through with this shit,” she said. But by the time we all marched to the back of the train, she had composed her features into a smile.

The teenager had not been exaggerating. Surrounding the rear car was a large, excited crowd, against the back-drop of land so golden and fiat it seemed to go on forever. As soon as we appeared, a high school band in full uniform struck up a cheerful song. The four of us stood against the railing and smiled for the cameras, while hundreds of children waved miniature flags.

“Elizabeth, Elizabeth!” the young girls squealed. “Let us see your new hairstyle!”

“Buck, did you bring your horse on the train? Show us your gun! Dontcha got your gun?”

“Tuggy, do the shell game!” a large man yelled, referring to one of Figgins’ gags.

And then, directed at me, mostly by the children: “Mr. Jap! Talk Japanese to us! Swing your samurai sword, Mr. Jap!”

None of us fulfilled these specific requests, but we waved and smiled and talked to the crowd. We stayed out on the platform and posed for pictures—Snyder placing his hat on Elizabeth’s head; Figgins imitating a film diva applying her makeup; I pretending to engage Snyder in a duel, our pointed fingers serving as guns—until David Rosenberg gave us a nod and we made our way back inside. As we disappeared we heard the crowd yelling, “Bye!” and, “We love you!” And although none of us had wanted to go outside, we all felt considerably cheered.

During the long nights, when the train made most of its progress, we entertained ourselves as best we could. Elizabeth, Snyder, and I would make our way to the rear cars and play poker with the theater owners and distributors—something that the studio executives enjoyed, because the better these men liked us, the more willing they’d be to buy the new slate of pictures that included our latest titles. Figgins would not join in on these games—he said he didn’t know how to play poker, although the truth was that he was more interested in the company of his fiask and that, despite his jocular image, he was rather solitary. But the rest of us had no such problems. Buck Snyder, not surprisingly, had a marvelous poker face, his laconic visage foiling us time after time as he gradually accumulated wins. I did fairly well, although not as well as Snyder, and the distributors seemed amazed that a Japanese man could speak English and hold his own at a game of cards. And Elizabeth. I still see Elizabeth clearly, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, taking swigs of whiskey straight from the bottle as she squinted at her hand, and cursing like a sailor—to the delight of all the men—whenever she had to fold.

Sometimes the four of us would avoid the rear cars altogether and engage in what Figgins called a “bunk crawl.” We would enlist some of the studio men like Rosenberg as well—after they’d sworn not to tell their bosses. In each man’s bunk, and in Elizabeth’s car, there would be a different drink—beer in Buck Snyder’s bunk, martinis in mine, gin and tonics in Elizabeth’s, and so on. All of us—and at its height, the group grew to fourteen—had to fit into the bunk together before we could take a drink, a tangle of arms and legs, heads resting on shoulders, giggles that caught like sneezes in the overstuffed compartments as we all struggled to swig our drinks without spilling. In David’s bunk, which was dominated by his own bulky presence, I was folded into a corner with Elizabeth pressed against me, and the feel of her skin against my arms, the smell of her hair, affected me more strongly than the liquor.

On more than one occasion, the evening ended with Snyder having company in his bunk. There were three young maids on board—Elizabeth’s, and two who were traveling with the studio men—and each of them, at some point, found her way into the cowboy’s bed. Twice, women came on board at one of the whistle stops, traveling with the train and keeping Snyder company until the next stop, when she disembarked and made her way back home. Figgins, whose bunk was directly across from Snyder’s, slept through these assignations. But I was kept awake by the giggling and clinking glasses—and then later in the night, the loud and steady moans.

It was a singular trip, magical, separate from time, as only an excursion removed from everyday life can be. We were our own little society, with its own norms and rules, self-contained, and never to be duplicated. I remember sitting with Elizabeth on those quiet afternoons, staring out the window at the changing scenery—the majestic mountains, endless plains, the countryside which was so varied and yet somehow all connected, the vistas of this endless land, America. I remember thinking, now that I had time to reflect, about the magnitude of my good fortune. Here I was, as famous and accomplished as a man could be, in a country not even my own. Two cars down from me were executives who wished me to sign a new, more lucrative contract. Across from me sat a beautiful and desirable woman. And I was finally, by my actions here, doing something I had never done—using my fame for a good purpose, helping America, and, in turn, helping my fellow Japanese.

And we did, indeed, use our fame for a good purpose. In every city where we stopped, there was a tremendous rally, and the crowds, swept up by the powerful combination of patriotism and celebrity, opened their pocketbooks and wallets to buy. With each rally the four of us grew more effective with our speaking, whipping the crowds up into such a state of excitement that I thought half of them might run off and enlist. I waved my hat, Buck Snyder struck shooting poses, Figgins worked an invisible baton as if conducting the crowd, and Elizabeth waved her fist in the air in a gesture both inspiring and adorable. Bands broke out into patriotic songs and babies were dressed up in colors of the fiag. In Denver, Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, every record for the sale of government bonds was broken. Our studio bosses were beside themselves—not because of the success of the war bond sales, but because this trip had made them realize the scope of our popularity. The size and enthusiasm of the crowds was overwhelming, and thrilling, and boded well for the future of motion pictures.

In retrospect, it is incredible how naïve we all were. Perhaps because none of us had witnessed war in our life-time, we thought of it primarily as a battle of ideas, a struggle against evil that was essentially bloodless, or that only involved bloodletting by the enemy. We were like cheerleaders exhorting our team to victory. There was a gaiety in the air, in the crowds, that had no relation whatsoever to the reality of what was happening in Europe. Even the small pockets of Japanese who came to the rallies, yelling my name and waving American flags, were caught up in the excitement. Little did they know of the suffering that was enveloping the world. And little did they know what awaited them two decades hence, when the country was pulled into an even larger conflagration.

After a rally, the whole party of travelers would be enlivened—government men, studio men, and actors alike. The train itself would seem excited, its whistles more hearty, its engine chugging along with renewed vigor. Eventually David would chase the others away and escort us actors back to our cars. There, he’d arrange for meals—the cars were specially out?tted with dining tables so we could eat in privacy—and bottles of wine and beer. And we’d slowly wind down, talking of the particulars of that day’s crowd, marveling at our own successful efforts.

It was on one of those nights that I escaped my bunk and made my way to Elizabeth’s car. Snyder had enticed another woman on board in Pittsburgh, a big-bosomed brunette with too much makeup and cheap perfume, and I’d prepared for another long night of sleeping with pillows against my ears. But then, around midnight, I felt someone slip into my bed. My heart skipped—for a moment, I thought my dreams had come true—but when I turned over, I smelled the strong, stale scent of the Pittsburgh woman. She was naked—her fieshy breasts slapped against my face—and she breathed, “Take me, samurai soldier, brutalize me!”

I grasped her around the waist—her whole body shivered in response—and heaved her over to the other side of the bed. Then I slipped down out of the bunk and threw on a robe and fied to Elizabeth’s car.

She came to the door in her nightgown—it was clear she’d been asleep—but she turned on the lamps and invited me inside. After I told her what had just transpired— which caused her much amusement—she arranged for someone to bring us a pot of tea. She led me over to the facing seats by the window, where we talked about that day’s rally. Then we were still for a while. As the movement of the train rocked us gently, we looked out into the night at the gathering of lights that marked each little settlement we passed. Elizabeth took a puff of her cigarette and said, “These small towns, all the people who’ll never travel more than ten miles from where they were born, they remind me of the place I grew up in.”

I smiled, for although I’d come from a completely different land, I knew precisely what she meant. “But
you
left,” I remarked.

“I know. I never belonged there. I realized there was something bigger. It was like my life didn’t really start until I turned fifteen and ran away to Hollywood.”

She told me of her girlhood—the departure of her father when she was seven years old, her mother’s daily trips to St. Louis to mend clothes and clean houses; the whiskey-soaked men her mother sometimes brought home; the bruises she woke up with in the morning. “She always picked the roughest, meanest ones,” Elizabeth said, the lights from outside the window fiickering across her face. “And then one night one of them came into my room. He put his hand under my nightgown, and when I screamed, my mother came in and started yelling at
me
for trying to seduce him. I left in the morning and went to my uncle’s house to borrow some money. Then I caught the next train to California.”