This Scorching Earth (22 page)

"You know that newspaperman you're staring at?" asked the Major, leaning toward Gloria,

"Of course. His name is Pygmalion."

"It's not either, begging your pardon, Miss Wilson. It's Dave Ainsley."

"Wrong again. And he's talking to Lafcadio Hearn."

The Major smiled slowly. "Oh, that name's familiar. What outfit's he with?"

Mr. Swenson took a deep breath. That meant he was going to explain something. "The differences between the two races, theirs and ours, are almost as profound as the similarities are startling."

Mr. Swenson's life was devoted to the Japanese, and he was the Authority speaking. Dave involuntarily yawned, but changed it into a cough, then into a monosyllable of interest.

"Now," continued Mr. Swenson, coughing professionally, "take this curious matter. We are proud to say that we owe no man nothing—"

"Anything," corrected Mrs. Swenson.

"But they are proud to owe everyone something," he continued, ignoring his wife completely. "Emperor, father, on and on."

"Yeah, ancestor worship," said Dave.

The baby-blue eyes of Mr. Swenson looked offended and he bent over Dave with a mixture of pity and gentleness. "Oh, no. That's Chinese."

"Sorry," said Dave.

"No, with the Japanese it is different. It is nothing that localized, shall we say? Rather, the entire people have a national debt to the past. Look around you." He indicated the flower shop, which displayed orchids flown from Brazil; the bar, its chromium from Pittsburg; the Harris tweed and Dior-fashioned clothing standing near the windows or sitting in the chairs. "You see, for them there is no present and little future. That is why the country is a living museum, why we can see a man using a 12th-century hammer and a woman wearing an obi which has not changed its style since the late Tokugawa. That is why a battle cry of one of the Yorimitsu clans of the eighth century is still used as a common salutation on the street. Why, even the lowly peasant in his field pens the most exquisite haiku, just as did the sages in days gone past."

Dave had never seen one of these peasant-penned poems and doubted there were any. At any rate, he must remember a cute remark he'd just thought up: "For old man Swenson the Noble Savage turns out to have a yellow streak up his back." No, that wouldn't do. He'd have to work on it a while before it could become "one of Dave's."

"A debt to the past," said Mr. Swenson, looking into the Coca-Cola machine as though it were a roaring fireplace. He was bemused for a moment, then recovered himself and added, with a smile: "Consequently, they are more bowed under their obligations than we are under, say, the idea of Original Sin. We feel guilty, it is true. But they—they feel ashamed. It is the same thing. In this way we are alike."

Mrs. Swenson, used to this, nodded sagely, gratefully basking in the rays of wisdom.

He went on: "Except, of course, they don't have sin!" This was a favorite thesis of his. The sinless nation, like Sparta, or better, like Athens under Socrates. "At least," he continued, anxious to give the devil his due, "not as
we
know it. Every man is pure—as in Heraclitus—and all his emotions, be they e'er so base, are good! You see the difference in conception. Now, we feel that every man is sinful—"

"Like in Milton," interrupted Dave.

"Precisely. And that we can obtain the state of grace only by a virtuous life and, shall I say, a propitious death, for which we are suitably rewarded. Now, I think it quite significant that there is no Japanese afterlife." He paused significantly, a half-smile on his lips.

"Ghosts!" said his wife suddenly.

"Nonsense! Poppycock! Peasant superstition!" shouted Mr. Swenson, furious, the shattered remains of a very carefully contrived Golden Age lying at his feet. In despair he began at once reassembling it and even retraced the conversation that he might get a better grip. "Look you. The Japanese condemns nothing he finds within himself, that is, he find all things good. But at the same time he has an obligation. Obligation? What am I saying! He has a million of them. And he must live up to them. Self-indulgence, as such, is unknown."

He smiled in reminiscence. Cold baths under waterfalls at two in the morning, when the gods are bathing; beautiful young priests kept awake for a week; golden youths wrestling nude for honor in the palestra .. . the scourging of the flesh!

"I suppose," he continued, more mildly, "you've noticed the prevalence of the suicide theme in their literature."

"Sure," said Dave. "Hara-kiri."

Mr. Swenson pursed his handsome lips. "Oh, no, do forgive an obvious pedantry, but the word, like jujitsu, is just not Japanese. They themselves never use it."

"I know," said Dave angrily. "Judo!"

"Well, my dear fellow," said Mr. Swenson, attempting to mollify and correct at the same time, "in the same way, not hara-kiri, but seppuku."

Dave made a show of shrugging his shoulders. Actually he tucked the thought carefully away, just as he had previously carefully folded up the idea that it was permissible to like Puccini. Thus did he change his opinions and add new thoughts.

"Well, as I was saying, the suicide theme is very common in Japanese literature. In literature, I say, because it has come to my attention that the rate of actual self-destruction is much higher in Scandinavia, of alI places, than it is here and, for all I know, always has been."

Dorothy returned and sat down again. She had heard the last sentence and, after turning it over a moment in her mind, said: "That sounds like something I read in a book not long ago."

"I'm not surprised that someone wrote it up—finally," said Mr. Swenson.

"What book, I wonder?" She turned a petulant profile toward Dave. "You must remember, Dave. It was that one all about the Jap-an-ese. Could it have been
The Rose and the Sword
or something like that?"

Dave looked at his wife, unable to decide whether she was being witty or had just forgotten. He decided the latter. It didn't make any difference, for the Swensons hadn't read a word on Japan—except their own articles—since they'd come out, twenty years ago.

"The Ring and the Book
?" asked Mrs. Swenson anxiously.

"My wife's such a Browning addict," said Mr. Swenson, and Dave went into private convulsions.

"But no, my dear," continued Mr. Swenson, smiling at Dorothy. "We were just discussing suicide."

"Oh? Whose?"

"No, my dear—the institution, or rather, the ideal, since in Japan no one ever really commits it."

"But lots of times, in the newspapers—" Dorothy began.

"Oh, those!" he said, with scorn, then, suddenly disconcerted, looked at Dave and thought of their respective newspapers. He managed to turn his stare into a wink of connivance.

"I guess you're both right," said Dave easily. "After all, to ego-centered people suicide, either the act or the idea, seems attractive."

"Well, if you're going to talk Freud..." said Mr. Swenson smiling, anxious to show himself right up with the times, yet equally anxious to communicate the fact that he didn't for an instant subscribe to these ridiculous notions. Ego-centered. His Japanese. Indeed!

"Yes," said Dottie eagerly, "they're just as ego-centered as anything—like children."

There was a slight pause, then Mrs. Swenson, measuring her words, said slowly: "I suppose that their immaturity is what makes them so appealing. I'm sure that is why so many Americans, for example, like them. It's a—a sort of feeling of kinship."

There was another pause, this one longer. Mrs. Swenson had hit all too close for comfort. "Well, my dear," said Mr. Swenson, "after all, you're a woman."

Mrs. Swenson wisely let this lie, and Dottie, examining her run, hadn't heard.

"Get it fixed?" asked Dave pleasantly. "Took you long enough to get lots of things fixed."

"Yup! Borrowed some nail polish from the girl on duty. Turns out she knew one of my pupils and recognized me. So we chewed the rag for a while. Showed her my tummy, but she doesn't know what it is either. Can't see anything anyway."

Dave laughed uneasily. "My wife's such a tomboy—always running her socks. Keeps me up to my ears in bills. This nylon's expensive."

Mrs. Swenson, who was wearing service-weight, hid her legs as best she could under the love seat.

Mr. Swenson was anxious to reassert his authority on the Subject. "A strange and wonderful people—" he began.

Dave disliked sentimentality. It was part of being a newspaperman: take the bitter with the sweet, and be damned for personal feelings. "A strange and wonderful war they waged too."

"Yes, an oddly warlike race. Primitive, yes. Barbaric in their own way too, I'll agree. Even brutal.. . for I don't pretend that some of those atrocity stories aren't true. But what we tend to forget of course is that they treated their own men just as badly. But, then, with all of that, a sensitivity that is rare in history, in the history of the world, and which is absolutely fantastic in modern times." He liked the sound of the word and bit it out a few more times: "Fantastic, utterly fantastic."

He continued: "And perhaps it is that sensitivity which allows them, when they turn to things Western, to grow impatient. They want to hurry through. They are too swift, too fast. Fast, but not thorough. Not at all."

It was enough to make one hate the Japanese for life, thought David Ainsley, their innocently having a spokesman like Swenson. Then he indulged in a gambit which usually extricated him from his difficulties. "Well," he said, sounding homespun and scratching his Irish nose, "of course I don't pretend to be a literary man—I'm just an old newspaper hack. In fact you might even say I'm a prostitute, because in my work I'm forced to be a lot more whorish than any of the pom-poms at Yuraku-cho."

Mrs. Swenson smiled to indicate that she too was up with the times as well as her husband, that she knew what Yuraku-cho was famous for.

Dave smiled, having discharged half his battery, because he knew himself to be a damn good newspaperman, filled with his own kind of integrity and far more cultured than most. After all, he'd read
Finnegans Wake,
mostly in the bathroom it was true, and he could tell Debussy from Ravel, which was something damn few other people could do.

"But," he continued, "even if I am a hack, still I think that we're not so different in this world. We're all just a bit alike. We're all, as they say," and he laughed hesitantly, "one world, as they say."

"You are so right," said Mrs. Swenson. "One world—I put that in my column every day. One world." And she sighed.

"Basically, yes," said Mr. Swenson, disconcerted at feeling the conversation slip away from him. "But—"

He was interrupted by Dottie, who, ever since "ego-centered," had been engaged in thoughts of her own. "
And
bullheaded!" she said, dimpling. "They'll just never once admit that they're wrong. Never. So, so—defensive. That's what they are—defensive. They get real mad at you too if you tell them they're wrong—which they are." She turned brightly to her husband for approval.

Mr. Swenson smiled briefly. The little silly had played directly into his hands. He looked tolerantly down upon Dorothy and then, sadly, gazed into the distance. "In Japan," he began, very simply, "this 'defensive' quality"—he handled the word at the tips of his fingers, his nose slightly puckered, his lips pursed—"is a virtue." That was a statement of fact, and he stopped long enough for them to become aware of it.

"Likewise, it is a virtue not to inform a person that he or she has committed an error. This is their etiquette but, unlike our Emily-Postian variety, it has a social function. They must, after all, live together." And he spread his arms hopelessly. "They must live together, thousands to the square mile, with no undue friction. And"—his voice became more loud and more sharp—"I say they do it pretty damn well!" This surprise conclusion—it surprised no one more than himself—was barked out, and he looked violently at the other three, as though expecting contradiction.

Dave was again anxious to repair Dottie's damage. "Hence the famous middleman," he said heartily.

"Yes," said Mr. Swenson, feeling bereft of the next link in the forged chain of his argument. "The 'middleman' as you call him. He approaches both parties in case one desires the services of the other or in case they've had an argument. Thus the faces of both are saved, and neither has cause for offense. A nice institution. There is no direct competition."

The others nodded, all except Dottie, who, without a thought in her pretty head, agreed even more enthusiastically. "Exactly. No competition. Why, if I'd stayed back in the States I bet I'd still be just another girl in the chorus."

Conversation stopped abruptly, and even Dottie realized she had scored a direct hit. They sat and looked at each other. She was quite right. There was no direct competition. And that was why Mr. Swenson was an authority on the Japanese, as well as a poet and a famous philosopher, why Mrs. Swenson was a well-known lady columnist, why Dave Ainsley was the very model of a crackerjack newspaperman, and why his wife was the prima donna of the Occupation.