A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding (21 page)

Kando: In the Edo period when the family system was wholly patriarchal, the parent could disinherit a disobedient, prodigal, or delinquent son. The disinherited son was to be dressed in a kimono made of paper (kamiko) and turned out of the house. Kando generally involved a moral as well as an economic sanction, for the disinherited son was branded as a disgrace to the family and cut off from it.

During those six months I spent with Sato, Karin had found her own companion, a politician from City Hall. He had not visited the bar for some weeks. I asked her why one morning after our shift as we walked through the deserted streets. Karin broke down in tears and confessed his vanishing act was a response to her predicament. She told me she had already made up her mind about what she would do. She was too young to be a mother, and too poor. Would I go with her?

Perhaps I had been more fortunate than Karin. Not long after that first night with the captain, he sent me to a doctor, who explained he was going to fit me with an object that would help stop pregnancy. He called it a womb veil. Karin would cajole her politician into buying condoms but often he refused to open up his pack of Heart Beauty. Instead, she would devour pomegranate seeds after one of the girls spoke of their contraceptive
qualities. We would talk about other methods at the bathhouses. But the truth was abortion, despite being illegal, was often the chosen method of birth control among the girls, even if they risked prison and their health. When Karin realised what was wrong she tried home remedies: sponges soaked in alcohol, an aloe purgative, water so hot it was near boiling, but in the end she found a retired midwife, who ran her illegal business in a part of town the city officials tended to avoid.

We held hands as we made our way down cobbled paths, past houses made of little more than sheets of rotting wood and blackened metal. Children playing in the dirt, old women throwing cooking water into streets and a blond gaijin on a creaking bicycle looked up as if they knew what we were doing. Even cloaked, we stood out as girls from Maruyama. We carried the scent of the bars and rooms for rent. The house when we arrived was no different from the shacks that had lined our journey. A girl of seven or eight answered our knocks. Inside, the room had a low ceiling with a sunken hearth in the middle and an oil lamp placed on a wooden stool. The girl disappeared into a back room and returned with an elderly woman, dressed in a grey apron. Karin clung to me and then followed the woman and the door closed behind them. I took off my shawl and sat beside the girl as she played with a rag doll, soiled with grease.

When the operation was over, Karin winced as we made our way back to her lodgings. By the time I helped her onto the futon, she was feverish and bleeding. I stroked her damp hair and placed a cool towel around
the back of her neck and every so often I would glance underneath the blanket. She told me the woman had said to expect some blood. When the bleeding did not stop, I said we had to call the bar's doctor. She tried to sit up and reached for my hand. ‘Please, no, no. Mama-san will throw me out.' Come morning, she was barely conscious. I had no choice. Sato had told me in an emergency he could be contacted at the medical hospital and so I wrote a note and paid a boy to deliver my request. If he was angry when he arrived, he did not show it. He examined Karin, told me she had an infection and explained what medicines were needed. He would wait with her until I returned.

‘I'm sorry, Jomei. I didn't know who else to ask. If Mama-san found out, Karin would be gone. And she has nowhere to go.'

‘Why can't the man who did this look after her?'

‘Hostess girls are only here to entertain. We're not paid to be an inconvenience.'

When I returned he stayed until Karin's fever broke and then I walked with him to the exit of her lodgings. The landlady peered out of her room but I shooed the witch away as I opened the door. The last of the afternoon sun bled into the hallway and we stood bathed in the orange light. I told him how grateful I was, how I could never repay him this kindness. He raised his hand as if he were about to touch me but seemed to think better of it. ‘Sometimes I can almost forget what you do, what you are, what I am to you.' He looked back to Karin's door. ‘And then I remember.'

I watched him leave and said nothing. I should have
spoken. I should have told him he was more than a customer, so much more.
I love you, Jomei Sato
. Why were those words so hard to say? Why did I hesitate? Would the sincerity of those words have mattered?

The metallic smell of bloody rags clogged the air when I returned to Karin's room. She was sitting up. ‘Will Sato say anything?'

‘You can trust him.'

Tears were in her eyes. ‘I wish he'd never touched me. He told me he cared for me but he wouldn't like me all fat. Said he wasn't sure the baby was his.' Karin stared up at the ceiling. ‘I told him I'd be thin again. He said the problem wasn't his, I should have been more careful. Some joke, huh?'

Karin scraped her fingers along her scalp and I came and knelt by her futon. ‘What will you do?'

She shook her head but we both knew the answer. We bribed the landlady not to mention Sato's visit and we continued as before. She was back working in the bar a couple of days later, her absence explained by a stomach illness. Karin smiled and laughed and showed no discomfort, but some events leave a mark, even if they cannot be seen. Whereas before she had been a butterfly, lying her bright wings flat in the sun, now she held them close to her so that the customers could not see her colours within. She talked often of that lost foetus, her water child, she called it. She bought small statues, dressed them in red bibs and caps and took them to temples. Sometimes, rather than the figurines, she left round polished stones instead. She thought these offerings would ease her sadness but they did not. Her
water child left its mark on me too but I don't blame Karin for what happened. I chose to ask for Sato's help. I chose to show him my life as it was, not how I wanted it to be, some room filled with roses and pictures of horses and herons. In the days that followed his visit to Karin, I waited at the bar, I visited the apartment and parks, I sent notes to his work, but Sato had disappeared. He was a conjuror's trick, one minute there, the next gone. I told myself he just needed time to adjust to this truer version of me and he would return. I did not have to wait too long. I saw him two or three weeks later, on the night of Shoro-Nagashi, August 15, 1919.

Mama-san had given Karin and me a couple of hours off work, knowing the bars would be empty while thousands of people gathered in the streets. The festival is unlike any other in Japan. Families welcome back their deceased from the spirit world or send them on their way. Joy and sorrow march side by side as drums bang and incense burns. We stood among the throng and watched the procession of bamboo and grass boats built for the dead, some as big as real ships. Men wrapped in white sheets were carrying the vessels festooned with lanterns down to the water to be lowered into the sea and pushed off into the darkness. Those glowing boats floated off while the bereaved placed gifts of fruit on mats and sent them also into the night. The city was a flare of colour, dragon dances and men drunk on rice wine. The shouting, the high-pitched calls to the spirits, the fireworks, the crackers, the gongs, the noise is loud enough to scare off the
wild cats and wake up the dead. Our departed cannot rest. They cannot ignore us. They must leave or return to us. We are too loud to ignore.

Karin and I jostled among the people to find a good spot next to a stall selling grilled caramel. The smell of burnt sugar filled the air along with sulphur from the fire crackers. One of the men from the procession, his hand bleeding, his face dripping sweat, stumbled up to Karin and shouted at her, ‘Hey, beautiful, marry me,' before offering her a bottle of opened plum wine. We moved away from him, and that was the moment, with the streets vibrating with music and voices and the air filled with smoke, when I saw him. Not the ghost of his face reflected in another, but him. What joy, that jolt of recognition, mixed with surprise. He was heading toward us and then I saw that he was not alone. A girl, taller than me and perhaps a little older, was holding his arm. Without thinking, I went to raise my hand in greeting and he looked up. Instead of a smile, he seemed furious. Karin must have seen him too. She pulled at my arm to move away but I was paralysed by that expression of anger and then disgust. I did not know what to do or where to go. There was no room among the crowds to slip past them. Instead the mass of people were pushing me directly into their path. He was only a step or two away when he whispered something in the girl's ear. She laughed and just seconds before they reached me they disappeared between two food stalls and joined the parade. Karin asked if I was OK and searched for a handkerchief in her purse, worried that I might cry, but I was too shocked for tears. I looked down and saw
myself as he must have done. Too gaudy, too bright, too cheap. How to describe that moment of humiliation? How to paint the pain of his rejection? After all those months, after all that I had risked for him and hoped of him, I did not even merit an acknowledgement. That is Jomei Sato.

Ronin: In feudal times it often happened that samurai warriors would lose their lord in a war or social upheaval. These lordless samurai warriors were called ronin. Because they were poor, they had to work. Many taught children reading and writing. Thanks to their contribution, it is said, the literacy in Japan at the time was considerably higher than in Europe.

I am suspicious of nostalgia, pliable as it can be to our moods or needs, but sometimes I allowed the memories, however dubious, to take me to the bar before Sato, when the glow of the lamps was the only sign of time passing, or energy spent, or old jokes shared not just to fill the silence. The doctor had done a cruel thing; he brought light into this black hole of survival and then, just as easily, he withdrew into the shadows. Sakamoto was another absent face from the bar, much to Mama-san's displeasure. She never asked why he vanished but learned from a rival bar owner that he had set up camp two doors down. I thought Mama-san would blame me for the loss of his custom and send me away. The thought was not unappealing; too much had happened, too many opportunities lost, too many tears of self-pity shed when alone at night, but all I knew how to be was a hostess. Like Karin, I had nowhere else to go. I did not want to end up like Kimiko or the other women down by the
wharves offering themselves for coins, a warm meal, brief shelter.

With Sato and Sakamoto gone, other admirers began to sniff around. Basho Arai was not so bad. He had a large head, small chin and skinny fingers, yes, but he was not without charm. He liked to talk politics, his eyelids half shut, one hand waving a cigarette as a conductor might, drunk on the music. His subject that September night was the Paris Peace Conference earlier in the year and the Treaty of Versailles. ‘We've got the German Islands, Shantung, Jiaozhou. America and China might not be happy but they're ours. Do you know what all this means, Amaterasu? We're a first-class nation now. Good, eh?'

I smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘Tokyo, I tell you, is the place where you need to be.'

‘Why, sweet thing?'

‘That's where the action is, my friend.'

‘Not here?'

‘Here?' I lit my cigarette, my voice dismissive. ‘Don't be silly.'

He touched my knee. ‘I'll go to Tokyo if you come with me. You can be my assistant. Think of the stories we will write together.'

I pretended to type on the table with my cigarette hanging out of my mouth. ‘Like this?'

‘Perfect. Why not? Now get me some stew. I need to sober up. I have a story to file.'

I stood up, dizzy from the drink, and as I neared the kitchen I saw Mama-san talking to someone by the entrance. I was surprised to see him, another lost customer.
He walked toward me, self-conscious. ‘How delightful to see you, Kenzo.'

He bowed, smoothed down his hair. ‘Hello, Amaterasu, it's been too long.'

‘It has.' I gestured at the nearest banquette. ‘Please, sit. You've been missed.'

He considered this. ‘Work is busy. We have so many orders for ships, soon we will have more ships than people. You should come down to the docks. I can show you around.'

‘Your boss would allow that?'

He smiled. ‘Well, I'm my own boss and I give myself permission.'

I laughed and he seemed pleased by my reaction. But then he cleared his throat and looked embarrassed. ‘Jomei sends his regards.' Hearing his name felt like a knife wound in my chest. I could not speak. ‘We need not talk of him if you would prefer?'

‘Please, do not trouble yourself.'

He studied my face. ‘Amaterasu, you need not hide your disappointment. Jomei is discreet but we are good friends.'

My cheeks burned at the thought of them talking about me. Akiko placed two glasses and a sake bottle on our table. ‘Here, let me serve you. Please tell Sato that I am fine.'

He watched me pour the drinks. I think my hands did not shake. ‘I am glad, Amaterasu. I would not like you to be sad.' I offered him a cigarette but he declined. ‘Jomei is my friend and so I don't say this easily, but he is not a serious man when it comes to women.' He took a drink.
‘Perhaps his marriage will change all that.' My face must have betrayed my shock. Kenzo looked abashed. ‘I'm sorry. I thought you knew?'

I lifted my hand as if the news were nothing. ‘When?'

‘A few weeks ago. A daughter of a surgeon at the hospital.' I did the calculations: his gift of the key must have coincided with the start of their courtship. Had his plan been to keep me as some unofficial mistress? For how long? Karin's pregnancy must have caused him to weigh up the dangers. He couldn't risk the same predicament with me.

‘Forgive me, Amaterasu. You should not have heard that from me.' He seemed to wrestle with something, and almost as if in confession, he said, ‘I know how charming Jomei can seem but I don't think he would have made you happy.' I drank to this and he moved a little closer. ‘Sometimes it is easy to overlook what will make you happy.' He took hold of my hand. ‘Perhaps you need to open your eyes, Amaterasu, to other possibilities, ones that have been there from the start.' He smiled and for the first time I paid proper attention to Kenzo Takahashi. And he held my wounded heart softly in his hands.

We married a month later. Neither of us wanted to wait. He wanted me to invite Mother to the ceremony but I would not. I had expected objections or tears when I told her but she shrugged off any hurt or anger. I needed to leave the past behind. I could not take her with me. I paid her off with cash saved from my earnings. I told her there would be more payments if she left me alone. Her voice was low as she looked at the box of money on
her lap. ‘I did the best for you, Amaterasu.' She shook her head, resigned maybe. ‘I did what I could.'

‘I was a child, Mother.'

‘And look at you now. The bride of a respected engineer. You have me to thank for that.'