This Scorching Earth (9 page)

His barracks were full of them. He had to live with them. His flower-arranging lessons had been their delight once they had discovered them. But, come to think of it, they had been more approving than otherwise. They sanctioned any method which worked toward the given, the approved end, no matter how devious. But when they discovered that this wasn't what he was after, their attitude changed.

They no longer kidded him, and if he mentioned her, there was a depressing silence. They could somehow detect the difference between lust and love, and they behaved accordingly. And when they saw him being friendly to their Japanese janitor, they found a name for him.

Eventually the lessons were held at her house. He was surprised to find that hers was a wealthy family and that she had been sent to the Servicemen's Center, not to earn money, but to overcome a natural shyness which her parents thought excessive. They were quite delighted when she brought home an American. He usually bought presents at the PX for them, and they insisted he spend Saturdays and Sundays with them. She acted as an occasional interpreter or helped him with his Japanese lessons or just sat beside him while he, his shoes off, lying on his stomach on the tatami, looked through her photograph albums and decided he had never been happier. It seemed inevitable that he fall love with her.

When he wrote his parents about his feelings, his mother hadn't even answered, and his father, refusing to believe his son was serious, attempted a joke, asking if it really went sidewise. He'd written back angrily, and there had been no more letters for a time. In the barracks for several months now he'd been known as a gook-lover.

This disapproval of his parents and the soldiers he lived with had only made him the more determined in his belief in her and his love. Last night her parents had gone to Atami, and after the servants had gone to bed, he had scratched at the shoji, and she had let him in.

"... and so I went to the PX and I got the prettiest little dress you ever saw." The older soldier was still talking, leaning confidentially toward the other. "And, boy, you ought to seen those eyes light up like Christmas trees when I give it to her. I said, 'Baby, you done earned this,' and laughed my fool head off. And then, you know, first day she wore it outside, one of these god-damn snoopy Jap policemen stopped her and took her to the station. Thought she stole it, you know. Made her give up the dress and sent her home with just her coat over her underwear. Told her she wouldn't get it back until whoever gave her the dress showed up and said he had. So she came to me, all tears, you know." He stopped and blew his nose.

"What did you do? asked the younger soldier, interested.

"Me? Why, I never went near the little bitch again, of course. She knew where I was though and used to ride those damn crowded gook trains out Tachikawa way every day. I never let her see me after the first time, though. Jesus, you'll get into trouble, you know. You're not supposed to let PX stuff get to the Japs—black market. I don't mind the black market, of course, but you got to watch it and make clean business—this messing around with the Jap police could put me right in the stockade. So, if I hadn't been smart and tossed her on her big fat can, I'd of wound up with all sorts of trouble on the deal. See what I mean?"

"Yeah, I see what you mean."

This poor girl probably loved that raspberry-nosed bastard too. Japanese girls all seemed anxious to love and to trust. He closed his eyes and turned his back on the older soldier. The very thought of something like this happening to Haruko made him cold all over.

He remembered how she'd looked last night when he'd scratched on the shoji and she'd opened it. She'd been sleeping in a light-blue summer yukata dyed with a pattern of cranes. Her face was pink, and she rubbed her eyes as though she could not believe it possible that he was there.

"Why?" she asked softly, in English, looking over her shoulder, afraid the old servant might hear. "Go back. Do not do this," she continued in Japanese. She didn't seem afraid, merely concerned for his sake. "When they discover you, you'll be punished."

She was so sincere, and looked so much like a little girl as she knelt by the shoji with one hand delicately on its frame, that he could not help smiling as he said:

"I came to ask you to marry me."

"Marry you?" she asked, and her hand dropped into her lap as she knelt by the shoji. She had apparently never thought of this. "Do you want to be married. To me?"

He nodded.

The moon came from behind a willow, and her face was white.

He stood in the shadow, black, unable to speak.

Somewhere behind her a clock struck one. "Come in," she said softly.

He sat on the edge of the sill and took off his shoes, then swung his feet around and sat inside. She pulled the shoji closed behind him. He looked around him. It was the first time he had ever been in her room.

It was perfectly plain and rather small—six tatami in size. During the day the doors were opened and it became a part of the house. He had often seen it from the main room. This was where her mother knelt, sewing, during his visits—near enough to be seen, far enough away not to appear to be chaperoning them. At night, however, the doors were slid to and it became Haruko's room.

In the tokonoma, below the scroll picture, were some chrysanthemums, arranged in a flat, square bowl, their stems cut very short. There were chrysanthemums in the garden too. House and garden flowed one into the other, separated only by the paper doors, doors so insubstantial that they seemed to Michael more symbolic than actual, symbolizing a barrier that he had just crossed.

She knelt before him. "I could bring you tea. But it might wake the servant. Her room is very near."

He shook his head and looked at the futon where she had been sleeping. Her pallet was very narrow and looked small lying there on the tatami, reminding him of a child's bed. The pillow was small, round, and probably hard. It was still slightly dented from where her neck had laid against it. He put his hand under the padded coverings on the bed. It was warm inside.

"Are you cold? I could bring in the hibachi, but it might wake her. And in the morning too she would wonder. It is too early in the year for me to want a hibachi. Shall I bring it?"

He shook his head again. There was nothing in the room that showed it was hers except the high chest that held her clothes, and her few possessions on top of it. There was a tiny wristwatch and a small statue of Beethoven. Next to them was a small plastic wallet containing her identification card, some pictures taken on a school picnic almost five years before, and her monthly train pass. There was also a rather large French doll in the shape of a brown-satin negress with golden hair. Beside it there was a child's bank, which was made to resemble a Swiss chalet with painted snow on the roof. These, and the clothes in the closet, and a few books—mostly translated German and French novels—were her only belongings. They looked so fragile, these few possessions—one swing of the arm could break them all. Michael, thinking he had never seen anything so lovable, so unbearably sad as the top of that chest, turned quickly away.

"Are you hungry?" she began again. "I could—"

"No, I'm not hungry. Nor thirsty. Nor cold. I came to ask you to marry me."

She was silent for a moment. Then, suddenly, in English: "No, me promised."

He had noticed before that whenever he wanted to say anything serious, to say anything that mattered to either of them, she always insisted on English, as though it put what they were talking of farther away from her—and as though that was what she wanted.

"Let's speak Japanese," said Michael. "My Japanese is better than your English."

"All right, we'll speak Japanese. English is so difficult. I've studied since I was a little girl and I'll never be able to speak well. The words are so long and so hard to pronounce and each one has so many meanings. When I was in high school—"

"Haruko! I came to ask you to marry me."

"Oh."

"Will you marry me?"

"Me promised," she said in English.

"All right, we'll talk in English if you want. In English, now: Will—you—marry—me?"

"I understand. I good understand. Me promised."

"I am promised," he corrected. "Is that what you mean—engaged?"

"Yes, I engaged," she repeated. Then she continued: "Young man, same age."

Michael had known this for some time. On his first visit her father, with great delicacy, had hinted until there could be no doubt that he was understood. She was to marry the son of an important man in one of Japan's largest entertainment combines. It was really a merger of the two families and would supposedly benefit both.

"Tomorrow I see," said Haruko. "At opera—at, how you say ...?"

"At the theater," said Michael. For some weeks he had also known that the official meeting would take place at the Imperial Theatre. Both Haruko and the boy had known each other almost all their lives, but tradition must be observed, and everyone would pretend that this formal, ceremonial meeting was the first time they'd ever seen each other. Michael had seen these meetings before, at the Kabuki, in the cherry groves at Ueno during the spring, in fashionable restaurants. Both the boy and the girl would avoid each other so far as possible. She would exclaim constantly upon the beauty of the blossoms, while he would examine his shoes or his hat. Up until this very moment Michael he had always thought such meetings both ludicrous and amusing.

"That's why I came, Haruko. I want you to marry
me.
I love you." It sounded strange in English, and then he realized that he'd always thought these words in Japanese.

She looked away. There was no light, and the moon shone through the paper, filling the room with an almost luminous glow. She reflectively ran her finger along the pattern cast by the shoji.

"I love you," she said, but it was only the repetition of an unfamiliar phrase. Then she looked up and said: "I love you too—I think."

"You think? Don't you know?

She laughed. "How I know? Japanese girl no know anything. I know Papa-san and Mama-san no want I love you much. They know you love me. But I love you? I no know." She smiled, as though it were a joke between them. .. .

The train jerked to a stop and the doors opened. An old lady, looking straight ahead, tried to board the car while the train boy, pushing her away, kept pointing in the direction of the Japanese cars. Understanding at last, she was still running awkwardly along the train when the doors slammed to and the train pulled past her and out of the station.

The older soldier was still talking: "Yessir, lot's of trouble if you're not smart enough to watch out for it. You got to understand these folks, got to understand their psychology. And, course, they ain't got good sense and that makes things more difficult. Now just look at them, like a bunch of animals."

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the next coach, and the student stared at the younger soldier, whose eyes had inadvertently followed the other soldier's thumb. The old soldier stuck out his underlip, then suddenly smiled expansively and dug the other in the ribs with his elbow.

"But—we should worry, huh? We never had it so good." He laughed good-naturedly and blew his nose.

Michael did not turn away this time. He looked steadily at the nose and the good-natured eyes for a second. For some time he had known that just as he had come to love Haruko as a personification of Japan, so had he come to despise representatives of America like this soldier. What happened to Americans abroad? They changed somehow. This fellow in the fields of Arkansas or the hills of Tennessee would have been a nice guy. But here he became a kind of monster. Was this what came from being a native of the richest, most powerful country in the world? Or was this what came from being a conqueror? Or was it both?

He didn't know, but he did know that one either went the way of this bastard or else went the way he himself had gone. No one ever felt lukewarm about Japan—you either loved it or hated it. It brought out a strong emotion in any case. The only difficulty was that either way it also changed your opinion of your own country. It made men like this think America was best because it was richest. And it made men like himself critical of America, just because it was the richest, most powerful, and because it could create sons of bitches like this one. He shook his head and turned away.

The soldier leaned forward and touched Michael's shoulder.

Michael moved his shoulder quickly. She had touched his shoulder last night. She had bent forward and said: "If I love, I love Michael." He shook his head, wondering how it was possible not to be certain whether one loved or not. You either did or you didn't.

He had looked so unhappy that she had laughed again, the way Japanese always laugh when they are about to tell you something particularly sad.

"Michael," she said, "come sit. More close." She pointed to her narrow futon. "We talk."

They talked until the moon had long faded and the first sunshine turned the panes of the paper shoji a faint pink. She argued that marriage was impossible. She could not leave home. She could not disappoint her parents. He said that if she loved him as much as he loved her she wouldn't even think of reasons like those. Surprisingly, she agreed with him and seemed to feel sad that it was so. Frightened, he explained to her that she did indeed love him very much. She appeared to believe it and was happy again. He told her how he would take her home and how his parents would love her as though she were their own daughter and how happy they would all be. She said nothing, merely sighed.