The Japanese Lover (27 page)

When Alma saw him by the light filtering in through the torn curtains of their motel room, she once again felt guilt tearing at her innards. For a split second she hated this man forcing her to confront her most despicable side, only to be instantly overwhelmed by the huge wave of love and desire she always felt when he was with her. Ichimei, standing by the window waiting for her, with his unshakable inner strength, his lack of vanity, his tenderness and delicacy, his serene expression; Ichi, with his body like teak, stiff hair, green fingers, affectionate eyes, his belly laugh, his way of making love as if it were always the last time. She couldn't look him in the face and pretended she was having a coughing fit to conceal the anxiety burning her up.

“What's wrong, Alma?” asked Ichimei, without touching her.

It was then that she launched into the speech she had prepared with all the care of a legal clerk, about how she loved him and would do so for the rest of her life, but that their love had no future, was impossible, how family and friends were starting to become suspicious and ask questions, how they came from very different worlds and had to fulfill their own destinies, how she had decided to continue her art studies in London, and so they would have to part.

Ichimei received this battering with the resoluteness of someone prepared for an attack. After Alma's declaration there was a prolonged silence, during which she imagined they could make love desperately one last time, in an ardent farewell, a final gift of the senses before they finally cut the thread of hope they had been weaving since their first fumbled caresses as children in the Sea Cliff garden. She began to unbutton her blouse, but Ichimei stopped her with a gesture.

“I understand, Alma,” he said.

“Forgive me, Ichimei. I've had a thousand mad thoughts about how we could continue to be together, to have a hideaway where we could make love rather than this disgusting motel, but I know it's not possible. I can't keep this secret any longer, it's destroying me. We have to say good-bye forever.”

“Forever is a long time, Alma. I think we'll meet again in happier circumstances, or other lives,” said Ichimei. He tried hard to remain calm, but an icy sadness was filling his heart and strangled his voice.

They embraced desolately, the orphans of love. Alma's knees buckled, and she was on the verge of collapsing against her lover's strong chest and confessing everything, even the darkest corners of her shame, begging that they get married and live in a shack, bring up mixed-race children, promising him she would be a submissive wife and would give up her silk-screening and her comfortable life at Sea Cliff and the splendid future that was her birthright, abandon this and much more just for him and the extraordinary love that bound them together. Ichimei might have had an inkling of all this, and was considerate enough to prevent her humiliating herself in this way by closing her mouth with a chaste, fleeting kiss. Still holding her close, he led her to the door and from there to her car. Kissing her on the forehead one last time, he walked to his gardening van without so much as a backward glance.

July 11, 1969

Our love is inevitable, Alma. I always knew it, although for years I struggled against it and tried to tear you from my mind, knowing I could not do so from my heart. When you left me without giving any reason I could not understand it. I felt cheated, but during my first trip to Japan I had time to calm down and eventually accepted I had lost you in this life. I stopped making pointless conjectures as to what had happened between us. I had no hope that destiny would reunite us. Now, after fourteen years apart, every day of which I have thought of you, I understand we will never be husband and wife, but also that we cannot renounce everything we feel so intensely. I invite you to live our love in a bubble, protected from the thorns of life and preserved intact for the rest of our lives, and beyond death. It is up to us to preserve our love forever.

Ichi

A
lma Mendel and Nathaniel Belasco were married in a private ceremony on the terrace at Sea Cliff, on a day that started out warm and sunny but that turned colder and darker, with unexpected storm clouds that reflected the bride and groom's state of mind. Alma had purple shadows under her eyes from spending a sleepless night tossing and turning on a sea of doubts. As soon as she saw the rabbi she ran to the bathroom, stomach heaving, but Nathaniel shut himself in with her, made her splash herself with cold water, and urged her to control herself and put a brave face on it.

“You're not alone in this, Alma. I'm with you, and always will be,” he promised.

The rabbi, who had at first been against the marriage because they were cousins, had to accept the situation once Isaac Belasco, the most prominent member of his congregation, explained that in view of Alma's condition there was no choice but to marry them. Isaac told him that the young couple had loved each other since childhood, and their affection had turned to passion upon Alma's return from Boston; that these accidents happen; that it was the way of the world, and faced with the facts all that remained was to give them their blessing.

Martha and Sarah had the idea that they could spread a story to silence any gossip—for example, that Alma had been adopted in Poland by the Mendel family and therefore was not a blood relative—but Isaac was against it. There was no point adding such an obvious lie to a mistake already made. Deep down, he was happy to see the union of the two people he loved most in the world apart from his wife. He preferred a thousand times that Alma marry Nathaniel and stay closely tied to his family than for her to wed a stranger and leave him. Lillian reminded him that incestuous relations produced mentally deficient offspring, but he assured her this was nothing but a popular superstition that only had scientific grounding in enclosed communities, where the inbreeding had taken place over several generations. That was not the case for Nathaniel and Alma.

Following the ceremony, attended only by the immediate family, the law firm's accountant, and the household staff, a formal dinner was served for them all in the mansion's great dining room, reserved for grand occasions. The cook, her assistant, the maids, and the chauffeur took to the table shyly with their employers; they were served by two waiters from Ernie's, the city's most refined restaurant, which provided the food. This idea had occurred to Isaac in order to officially establish that from this day on Alma and Nathaniel were man and wife. The domestic staff, who knew them as members of the same family, would not find it easy to become accustomed to the change; in fact, one of the maids who had been working for the Belasco family for four years still thought they were brother and sister, because no one had ever told her before that they were cousins. The meal began in a funereal silence, with everyone staring down at their plates in embarrassment, but things livened up as the wine started to flow and Isaac obliged his guests to toast the couple. Happy, talkative, filling his own and everyone else's glasses, Isaac was like the healthy, youthful version of the old man he had turned into in recent years. Fearful he might have a heart attack, a worried Lillian kept tugging at his trousers under the table to calm him down. Finally, the bride and groom cut a marzipan and cream cake with the same silver knife Isaac had used at his own wedding many years before. They left the house in a taxi, as the family chauffeur had drunk so much he was sobbing tearfully in his seat while muttering in Gaelic, his mother tongue.

They spent their first night as a married couple in the bridal suite at the Palace Hotel, where Alma had once had to suffer the debutantes' balls, surrounded by champagne, sweets, and flowers. The next day they flew to New York, and from there to Europe for a two-week honeymoon that Isaac had insisted they take even though neither of them wanted it. Nathaniel was busy with several legal cases and did not want to leave the office, but his father bought the tickets, stuffed them in his pocket, and convinced him to go with the argument that a honeymoon was a traditional obligation; there were enough rumors going around already about this hasty marriage between cousins to want to avoid any further speculation. Alma undressed in the bathroom and returned wearing the silk and lace nightgown Lillian had bought hurriedly as part of an improvised trousseau. She twirled around in front of Nathaniel, who was waiting for her fully dressed, sitting on a stool at the foot of the bed.

“Take a good look, Nat, because you won't have another opportunity to admire me. The gown is already tight around my waist. I don't think I'll be able to wear it again.”

Her husband noticed how her voice was trembling despite her attempt to charm him, and patted the seat beside him. Alma sat down.

“I don't have any illusions, Alma. I know you love Ichimei.”

“I also love you, Nat. I don't know how to explain it. There must be a dozen women in your life; I don't know why you've never introduced me to any of them. You once told me that when you fell in love I'd be the first to know. As soon as the baby is born we can get divorced, and you'll be free.”

“I haven't renounced any great love for you, Alma, and I think it's in very bad taste for you to talk about divorce on our wedding night.”

“Don't laugh, Nat. Tell me the truth: do I attract you in any way? As a woman, I mean.”

“Until now I've always regarded you as my younger sister, but that could change when we live together. Would you like that?”

“I don't know. I'm confused, sad, angry; I have a chaos in my head and a child in my belly. You got a dreadful deal marrying me.”

“That remains to be seen, but I want you to know I'll be a good father to the child, boy or girl.”

“He or she will have Asian features, Nat. How are we going to explain that?”

“We won't, and no one will dare ask, Alma. Heads held high and lips sealed is the best way. The only person with the right to ask is Ichimei Fukuda.”

“I'll never see him again, Nat. Thank you a thousand times for what you're doing for me. You're the noblest person in the world, and I'll try to make you a worthy wife. A few days ago I thought I would die without Ichimei, but now I think that with your help, I'll survive. I won't fail you. I'll always be faithful, I swear.”

“Sshh, Alma. Let's not make promises we might not be able to keep. We're going to travel this path together, step by step, day by day, with the best of intentions. That's all we can promise one another.”

Isaac Belasco had rejected outright the idea that the newlyweds have their own home. There was more than enough room at Sea Cliff, and the intention behind building such an enormous house had always been that several generations of the family would live under the same roof. Besides, Alma had to look after herself, and would need Lillian and her female cousins' help and company; he declared that to set up and manage a new house would take far too much effort. As a clinching argument he used emotional blackmail: he wanted to spend what little time he had left with them, and they could then keep Lillian company when she was widowed. Nathaniel and Alma accepted the patriarch's decision; she continued to sleep in her blue room, where the only change was to replace her bed with two new ones, separated by a night table. Nathaniel put his penthouse up for sale and returned to the family home. In his former bedroom he installed a study, his books and music, and a sofa. Everybody was aware that the couple's daily routines did not exactly encourage intimacy: Alma got up at noon and went to bed early; he worked like a galley slave, came back home late from the office, shut himself away with his books and classical records, went to bed after midnight, slept very little, and left before she was awake. On the weekend he played tennis, jogged up Mount Tamalpais, went sailing around the bay in his boat, and came back sunburned, sweaty, and relaxed. It was also obvious that he usually slept on the sofa in his study, but this was put down to his wife's need to rest. Nathaniel was so attentive to Alma, she depended so much on him, and there was so much trust and good humor between them that only Lillian suspected anything was amiss.