The Japanese Lover (32 page)

The three women bowed. Alma could feel her stomach churn and a choking sensation in her chest as she openly examined Delphine. Fortunately the other woman did not notice, as she kept her eyes fixed on the ground as a sign of respect. She was young, pretty, and fresh looking, not wearing fashionable heavy makeup, and dressed in a pearl-gray suit with a short skirt and round pillbox hat in Jackie Kennedy's style, and with the same hairstyle as the First Lady. Her outfit was so American that her Asian face seemed incongruous.

“Thank you for coming,” Alma managed to blurt out when she was able to breathe once more.

“Isaac Belasco was our benefactor; we shall always be grateful to him. It was thanks to him we could return to California. He financed our nursery and helped us succeed,” said Megumi sadly.

Alma had already been told as much by Nathaniel and Ichimei, but the Fukuda family's solemn gratitude reinforced her certainty that her father-in-law must have been an exceptional man. She loved him more than she would have loved her own father if the war had not robbed her of him. Isaac Belasco was the opposite of Baruj Mendel—he was kind, tolerant, and always ready to give. She was suddenly struck by the pain of losing him, something she had not truly felt until that moment as she had been going around stunned like the entire Belasco family. Tears welled in her eyes, but she choked them back as well as the sobs that had been fighting to find a way out for days now. She realized Delphine was now examining her as closely as she had done in reverse a few minutes earlier. Alma thought she saw in her clear eyes an expression of knowing curiosity, as if she knew exactly what role she had played in Ichimei's past. She felt exposed and slightly ridiculous.

“Our sincere condolences, Mrs. Belasco,” said Ichimei as he took his mother's arm to move away.

“Alma. I'm still Alma,” she murmured.

“Good-bye, Alma,” he said.

She waited two weeks for Ichimei to get in touch with her. She scrutinized the mail carefully and jumped every time the telephone rang, imagining a thousand reasons for his silence apart from the obvious one: he was married. She refused to think about small, slender Delphine, who was younger and prettier than she was, with her inquisitive look and her gloved hand on Ichimei's arm. One Saturday she drove to Martinez, wearing a pair of big sunglasses and a head scarf, but although she passed by the Fukuda nursery three times, she did not have the courage to get out. On the second Monday she could not bear the torment of desire any longer, and so called the number that, from seeing it so often in the phone book, she had learned by heart.

“Fukuda Flowers and Houseplants, how may we help you?”

It was a woman's voice, and Alma had no doubt it belonged to Delphine, even though she had not said a word on the only occasion they had met. Alma hung up. She called again several times, praying that Ichimei would answer, but it was always Delphine's friendly voice that came on the line, and she hung up each time.

On one of these calls the two women remained silent on the line for almost a minute, until Delphine inquired gently: “How may I help you, Mrs. Belasco?” Horrified, Alma slammed down the telephone and swore she would never again try to get in touch with Ichimei. Three days later a letter arrived bearing Ichimei's handwriting in black ink. She shut herself in her room, clutching the envelope to her breast and trembling with anguish and hope.

In his letter, Ichimei once more expressed his condolences for Isaac Belasco, and spoke of his emotion at seeing her again after so many years, even though he was aware of her success in her work and her philanthropy and had often seen her photograph in the papers. He told her that Megumi was a wife and mother, married to Boyd Anderson with one son, Charles, and that Heideko had visited Japan a couple of times, where she had learned the art of
ikebana
. In the final paragraph he wrote that he had married Delphine Akimura, a second-generation Japanese-American like him. Delphine was a year old when her family was interned at Topaz, but he did not remember seeing her there, and they only got to know each other much later on. She was a primary school teacher, but had left her job to manage the nursery, which had prospered as a result; they were soon going to open a branch in San Francisco. He said farewell without raising the possibility that they might meet or that he was expecting her to reply. He made no reference to the past they had shared. It was a formal, informative letter, with none of the poetic turns of phrase or philosophical speculation of others she had received during the brief period of their love. It didn't even include one of the drawings he often used to send with his missives. The only relief Alma felt on reading it was that there was no mention of her phone calls, which Delphine must have told him about. She took the letter for what it was: a farewell and a tacit warning that Ichimei wanted no further contact.

The next seven years went by in a life of routine that contained no great highlights for Alma. Her interesting and frequent trips became fused in her memory as one single Marco Polo adventure, as Nathaniel called them without the slightest hint of resentment at his wife's absences. They felt as viscerally comfortable with one another as Siamese twins who have never been separated. They could intuit each other's thoughts, states of mind, and wishes, could each finish the sentence the other had begun. Their affection was beyond question; it was so much taken for granted that it did not even bear talking about, as was their extraordinary friendship. They shared the family's social commitments; a taste for art and music, the refinement of good restaurants, and the wine cellar they gradually built up; as well as the pleasure of family vacations with Larry.

The little boy had turned out so docile and affectionate that his parents sometimes wondered whether he was completely normal. When they were not in the presence of Lillian, who would not tolerate the slightest criticism of her grandson, they joked that one day Larry was going to give them a ghastly shock by joining a cult or murdering someone; it was impossible for him to glide through life without any turmoil at all, like a satisfied porpoise. As soon as Larry was old enough to appreciate it, they took him to see the world on unforgettable annual excursions. They went to the Galápagos Islands, the Amazon, on various African safaris; Larry was later to do the same with his own children. Among the most magical moments of his childhood was giving a giraffe something to eat from his hand in a Kenyan game reserve: its long, blue, rough tongue, its gentle eyes with their operatic eyelashes, its intense smell of newly mown grass.

Nathaniel and Alma had their own space in the Sea Cliff mansion, and lived there carefree as though in a luxury hotel, because Lillian took care to keep the domestic machinery well oiled. She continued to pry into their private lives, regularly asking them if they were in love by any chance, but they regarded this odd insistence as charming rather than annoying. If Alma was in San Francisco, they saw to it that they spent some of the evening together for drinks and to recount the day's events to one another. They celebrated their mutual successes, and neither of them asked any more questions than the strictly necessary, as if they sensed that an inappropriate comment could bring the delicate balance of their relationship crashing down in an instant. They willingly accepted that each of them had their own secret world and private times, which they were under no obligation to account for. Omissions were not lies.

Since lovemaking between them was so infrequent as to be almost nonexistent, Alma imagined her husband must have had other women, because the idea that he lived a life of chastity was absurd; Nathaniel however had respected the agreement to be discreet and avoid humiliating her. For her part, Alma had allowed herself a few flings on her travels, where opportunities always arose. It was a matter of giving a signal, and generally finding it was accepted, and yet these moments of release not only gave her less pleasure than she hoped but left her confused. She was of an age to enjoy an active sex life, she thought, and that was as important for her well-being and health as exercise and a balanced diet: she shouldn't let her body dry up. But considered like that, sexuality became just another chore rather than a gift for the senses. For her, eroticism needed time and trust, which were not easy to come by in a night of fake or stiffly awkward romance with someone she would never see again. In the midst of the sexual revolution, in the time of free love, when in California couples were swapped and half the world slept with the other half, Alma still could not get Ichimei out of her mind. She asked herself more than once if this was not simply an excuse to disguise her frigidity, but when at last she encountered Ichimei once more she no longer posed herself that question, nor sought comfort in the arms of strangers.

September 12, 1978

You explained to me that inspiration is born of stillness, and creativity comes from movement. Painting is movement, Alma: that's why I like your recent designs so much. They seem effortless, although I know how much stillness is needed to control the brush as you do. I especially like your autumn trees, gracefully letting their leaves fall. That is how I would like to shed my own leaves in this autumn of life, easily and elegantly. Why be so attached to what we are bound to lose anyway? I suppose I mean youth, which has been so present in our conversations. On Thursday I prepared a bath for you with the salts and seaweed I was sent from Japan.

Ichi

A
lma and Samuel Mendel met up in Paris in spring 1967. For Alma it was the penultimate stage in a two-month journey to Kyoto, where she studied
sumi-e
painting, using obsidian ink on white paper, under the strict supervision of a master calligrapher who made her repeat the same line a thousand times over until she achieved the perfect combination of lightness and strength. Only then could she move on to the next stroke. She had been to Japan a number of times. The country fascinated her, above all Kyoto and some of the local mountain villages, where she found traces of Ichimei everywhere. The free, fluid lines of
sumi-e
, painted with the brush held vertically, allowed her to express herself with great economy and originality, omitting detail, focusing purely on the essential, a style Vera Neumann had already developed into birds, butterflies, flowers, and abstract drawings. By this time Vera had an international business, selling millions and employing hundreds of artists. Art galleries bore her name, and twenty thousand shops all around the world offered her clothing, as well as decorative and domestic objects. Such mass production was not Alma's intention; she remained faithful to her choice of exclusivity. After two months of black brushstrokes, she was preparing to return to San Francisco to experiment in color.

It was the first time her brother, Samuel, had returned to Paris since the war. In her voluminous baggage, Alma carried a trunk containing her scrolled drawings and hundreds of slides of calligraphy and painting to act as inspiration. Samuel's luggage was minimal. He arrived from Israel wearing camouflage pants, a leather jacket, and army boots, together with a small knapsack containing two changes of clothes. Even at the age of forty-five he went on living like a soldier, with his shaven head and a complexion so toughened by the sun it was as hard as leather. For both brother and sister this was an excursion into the past. They had cultivated their friendship over a period of time thanks to the frequent exchange of letters they found themselves inspired to write. Alma had practice from childhood, when she used to completely confide her thoughts to her diary. Samuel, however taciturn and suspicious in person, was often voluble and friendly on the page.

In Paris they rented a car and Samuel drove to the village where he had died for the first time, guided by Alma, who had never forgotten the route she had taken with her aunt and uncle in the 1950s. Since then Europe had risen from the ashes, and it was hard to recognize the place, once a mass of ruins and rubble, now completely rebuilt and surrounded by vineyards and lavender fields, glorious in this most beautifully radiant season of the year. Even the cemetery was enjoying a new prosperity, with marble angels and headstones, wrought-iron crucifixes and railings, shady trees and sparrows, doves, and silence. The caretaker, a friendly young woman, led them along narrow paths between the graves searching for the memorial plaque placed there by the Belascos many years before. It was still intact:
Samuel Mendel, 1922–1944, pilot in the Royal Air Force
. Below it was a smaller plaque, also made of bronze:
Died in combat for France and freedom.
Samuel removed his beret and scratched his head with amusement.