Sayonara (15 page)

The two generals stamped out of the barracks and in three hours my father was on his way back to the Presidio.

I
f Father thought that the tricks which had defeated me in prep school would still work he was misled, for now I knew my mind. I had met a delectable woman, one whom I could love forever, and I simply wasn't worried about fathers and generals and Air Force rules. Here on this earth I had found Hana-ogi and by the time my father arrived back in California she and I had things worked out. We made a deal with Joe and Katsumi whereby we took one corner of their house and here we established a life as warm and loving as two human beings have ever known.

I would come home from the airfield to find Joe and Katsumi preparing the evening meal. They would tell me what had happened that day and I would exchange military gossip with Joe, but it would be a nervous time, for I would be watching the door and finally we would hear Hana-ogi's soft steps coming up the alley and Katsumi and Joe would slip away for a moment to gather wood or buy things at the store. The door would open and there would be Hana-ogi, a glimmer of perspiration on her soft golden cheeks. Like all Japanese she carried her books and bundles wrapped in a bright silk shawl tied cross cornered, and when I think of her at the sliding door of that little house I see her kick off her saddle shoes, drop the silken bundle, run her hand through her hair and hurry across the tatami to kiss me.
At such times I would catch her in my arms, swing her into the air and drop her behind the screen that cut off our portion of the room. There she would swiftly slip off her Western clothes and slowly fold herself into a brocaded kimono. She was lovely; beyond words she was lovely.

But I must not imply that the warmth and wonder of that house came solely from Hana-ogi, beautiful and complete as she was, for I think that I have never seen a more satisfactory wife than Katsumi Kelly. She organized her house to perfection and kept it immaculate, even though Hana-ogi and I were apt to be careless. She could cook, she could sew, she could talk on many subjects and as her pregnancy advanced she gave promise of being an even finer mother than she was a wife.

Sometimes I used to watch her and I recalled with embarrassment that once in the consul's office I had almost refused to kiss her because she seemed so clodden and repugnant with her giggling and her big gold tooth. Now she seemed to me one of the most perfect women I had ever known, for she had obviously studied her man and had worked out every item of the day's work so that the end result would be a happy husband and a peaceful home. I asked Joe about this once and he said, “Ten years from now in America there'll be a club. Us fellows who married Japanese girls. Our password will be a suppressed giggle. Because we won't want them other lugs down the street to discover what gold mines we got.”

I asked, “Are all Japanese wives as good as Katsumi?”

He said, “I admit I got somethin' special. But you don't hear the other boys kickin'.” We wrapped our kimonos around our legs and sat back to enjoy one of the sweetest moments of the day. The girls were preparing supper and we listened to them talking Japanese. Katsumi spoke rapidly—the day's gossip, no doubt—and Hana-ogi, washing our rice, said over and over at least two dozen times, “Hai! Hai!” The phrase always shot out of her mouth with such force that it seemed to have come from the very bottom of her stomach, a cry of primeval terror. Actually it was merely the Japanese way of saying
yes.
But in addition to this machine-gun
hai
she kept nodding her head and chanting mournfully, “Ah, so desu-ka! Ah, so desu-ka!” To hear the girls in any trivial conversation would convince you that some sublime tragedy had overtaken us all.

Joe finally asked, “What are you sayin'?”

Katsumi looked up startled and explained, “I speak Hanako-san about a fish my father catch one day.”

I started to laugh but Joe asked quietly, “Was it a big fish?”

“More big than this one,” Katsumi said proudly. “Hanako-san say she never see such a fish.” I liked Katsumi's name for Hana-ogi. Japanese girls often take their names from feminine or poetic words to which they generally add -ko or -yo. Thus at Takarazuka most girls had names like “Misty Snow” or “Spring Blossom” or “Starry Night.” And their names usually ended in -ko. For myself, I preferred the other form, Hanayo, and once Hana-ogi told me, “Hanako more Japanese but Hanayo more sweet.”

The longer I lived with Joe Kelly, reared in an orphanage and rejected by his foster parents, the more astonished I was that he could adjust so perfectly to married life. He was a considerate husband, a happy clown around the house and the kind of relaxed and happy family man you see in the advertisements of the
Saturday Evening Post.

Speaking of the
Post,
it helped me understand a little better what married life is. On May 30th the girls were all whispers and at dinner they sprang the big surprise! It was an American holiday, so they had pumpkin pie. Where they had finagled the pumpkin we never knew, but the pie was something out of this world, for they had used the pumpkin as you would apples or cherries and had baked it just as it came out of the can and it was really dreadful. I took one look at it and started to say, “What…” but Joe cut me short and tasted his piece.

“It's good,” he said laconically.

The girls bit into their pieces and you could see them sort of look at each other as if to say, “Americans must be crazy. To eat something like this on holidays.” We finished the disgusting dessert in silence and four days later Katsumi, leafing through an old copy of the
Post
saw a picture of real pumpkin pie. She waited till I got home and surreptitiously asked me if that was pumpkin pie. I said yes and she asked me how it stayed so thick and so soft and I told her how you made pumpkin custard and she started to cry and when Joe came home she hugged him and kissed him and told him how ashamed she was and since Hana-ogi wasn't home yet I sat glumly in my corner and thought about the time I had laughed at Hana-ogi for her sentence, “Lo, the postillion has been struck by lightning,” and I
concluded that Joe's way was better and I wondered how a kid from an orphanage could understand a problem like that while I hadn't had the slightest glimmer.

However, I must not imply that all Japanese women are perfect wives. A trip along our alley would convince anyone that Japanese homes contained every problem to be found in American homes; plus some very special ones. In the narrow house next us lived the Shibatas. He was a minor business official who received practically no pay but had an enviable expense account from which he drew on most nights of the week for expensive geisha parties. He siphoned off part of the expense account to support one of the pretty young geishas on the side. It was rumored that he kept her in a second home near the center of Osaka and traditionally his wife should have accepted such an arrangement with philosophical indifference, but Mrs. Shibata was not traditional. She was modern and tried to stab her husband with a knife. At three in the morning when black-coated little Shibata-san came creeping home we could catch a moment of silence as the door to his house opened, followed by an explosion from his wife who used to chase him with a club. She was notoriously shrewish, and Katsumi and Hana-ogi apologized for her. “Japanese wife expected to understand men like geisha,” they said.

Nor were most Japanese wives the patient silent creatures I had been told. When Sato-san, a railroad employee, took his wife shopping she trailed a respectful three feet behind and never spoke a word unless spoken to by her immediate friends. But at home she was a tyrant and rebuked Sato-san contemptuously for not earning more money. As I came to know the wives of Japan I had to conclude that they were exactly like the wives of America: some were gentle mothers, some were curtain dictators and some few were lucky charms who brought their men one good thing after another. I decided that which kind a man found for himself was pretty much a matter of chance, but whenever I looked at Hana-ogi I had an increasingly sure feeling that I had stumbled upon one of the real lucky charms.

Across the alley lived the window Fukada and her twenty-year-old daughter Masako, who had had a G.I. baby without being married. Sometimes at night we could hear the grandmother screaming at Masako that she was a slut, and other women in the alley agreed. The American baby was not wanted and was not allowed to play with pure Japanese babies, and although everyone in the alley loved
Joe Kelly and Katsumi and although they were proud to have a great Takarazuka actress living among them with her American flier, there was deep resentment against Masako Fukada, who had disgraced the blood of Japan.

Down the alley were the hilarious Watanabes. His wife was almost as broad as he was tall. They got along together fine except that Watanabe-san had a mistress even more compelling than a geisha: he was mad-crazy to play pachinko. He spent all his money at pachinko and all his spare hours at the pachinko parlor. When the police closed the parlor each night at eleven he would reluctantly come home and we would hear fat Mrs. Watanabe shouting derisively, “Here comes Pachinko-san! Dead broke!”

The pachinko parlor stood on the corner nearest the canal, an amazing single room lined with upright pinball games. For a few yen Watanabe-san would be handed seven steel balls, which he would shoot up to the top of the pinball machine and watch agonizingly as they fell down to the bottom, almost always missing the holes which paid the big prizes. The pachinko parlor on our alley was filled from morning till night and everyone was bitten by the pachinko bug, including Hana-ogi and me, and it was a curious fact that my friendship with the pachinko players in that crowded parlor would later save my life.

Across the alley from the pachinko room was the flower shop. You would have thought there could not be in that entire alley one rusty yen for flowers, but almost everyone who lived along our narrow gutters stopped into the flower shop for some solitary spray of blooms which was carried reverently home for the alcove where the gods lived. I cannot recall a moment when there were not flowers in our alcove and I—who had never known a violet from a daisy—came to love them.

The next shop is difficult to describe. In fact, it is impossible because in all the rest of the world there are no shops quite like these in Japan. It was a sex shop where husbands and wives could purchase tricky devices with which to overcome nature's mistakes and short changings. To satisfy our curiosity Katsumi-san took Joe and me there one day. The shy owner listened as we laughed at his amazing collection of sex machines. Then he said in Japanese, “Go ahead, laugh. Young Japanese men laugh, too. But when they're married and reach forty they come to me for help.” Katsumi translated and
then broke into an uncontrolled giggle. I asked her what she had said and she explained, “I tell him Joe no need help.” The shy owner smiled nervously and replied, “At twenty nobody needs help.”

But the true wonders of our alley were the children. I could neither count them nor forget them. They had round faces, very red cheeks, straight black bangs, fat little legs and boundless joy. I don't think I ever heard a Japanese child cry. Certainly I never saw one struck and I came to believe that the most delectable children I had ever seen were these noisy, hilarious children. Whenever they crowded around me as I came up the alley I loved Hana-ogi more.

Each house in our alley was desperately packed, so that one tiny room often became the equivalent of a full-sized American home and these teeming masses of people lived and worked and had babies and argued politics just like all people across the world. But there was this difference. Not a shred of anything was wasted, not even the human manure which was so patiently gathered each morning and from which sprang the flowers and the food. I recall certain evenings that spring when I entered this narrow alley at close of day and the front of every house would be open and dozens of children would run, black-bobbed, to greet me and from every open room facing the alley the people of Japan would speak with me and I shared a warmth and goodness that I had never known in Lancaster or the camps where I grew up. I was one of the people—one of the millions of people who cling to whatever shred of hope and property they can grab hold of, and from this alley with the myriad children and the brawling and the flowers and the unwanted American-Japanese baby and the pachinko games and the sake drinking I borrowed a strength I had never had before.

I
t expressed itself in an unforeseen way. I was in my office at Itami Air Base when a sergeant appeared to tell me that Lt. Col. Calhoun Craford was outside. The florid colonel stepped in and got right down to business. “You think you're smart” (he said it:
Yawll thank yore smaht
) “gettin' a four-star giniral to come out and save your neck. You accustomed to hidin' behind your pappy's back?” Then he let me have it. “My men been trailin' you, Gruver. We know you and that tramp are holed up in enlisted man's quarters. But we can't touch you because of your pappy. So we're doin' something better. We're sendin' Joe Kelly back to the States.”

“But what'll happen to Katsumi?”

The fat colonel looked at me with disgust. “Who's Kats-what's-his-name?”

“Kelly's wife.”

“The Jap girl. Not up to us to worry what happens to her.”

“You're not breaking up this family?”

“Don't call it a family. The girl's a cheap Jap tramp.”

I said that Katsumi was a decent girl, that she was studying to become a Catholic, like her husband, but apparently Lt. Col. Craford hated Catholics worse than he hated colored people, for he said,
“And when we finish with Kelly we'll figure out some way to handle you. Father or no father.”

He left me and I sat for a long time staring at my desk, contemplating the mess I had made of things. I had proved myself a shoddy officer. I had loused up the life of an enlisted man. I had made Eileen look ridiculous and I hadn't done much better with Hana-ogi. Then I began to weigh what I had accomplished in Japan and things looked brighter. I had come to know what a home meant, an unpretentious home where love was. I had found a beautiful girl filled with tenderness and grace and wit. I had learned at last to share my heart with another human being. And most of all I had discovered the tremendous passion of turning down the bedroll at night and seeing the slim, perfect body of Hana-ogi. I jumped up and cried, “Gruver-san, if you lose that girl you're nuts. Marry her, stupid. Marry her.”

But as soon as I had said the words I began to sweat and I remembered all the predictions my father had made that night in the Marine Barracks. My career gone, my wings and their promise lost, my place in my American world vanished and I with an Asiatic wife. It was then that my newfound courage asserted itself.

I recognized the trick my father had played on me. He had planted those poisonous seeds so that they could flourish at just such a moment, and I decided that it was against such tricks that I was revolting. I did not want to become a general like my father, with his cold cut-offness from the world. I didn't want to be a second General Webster, ruled by Eileen. And I certainly didn't ever want to become a Lt. Col. Craford. I wanted to be one man, standing by myself, sharing whatever world I could make with the woman who had helped me to discover that world. In my moment of resolution and light I knew that I would never waver from my purpose. I was going to marry Hana-ogi.

I called Joe Kelly and asked him to meet me at a tiny bar we knew in Osaka where M.P.'s never came. It's impossible to describe such Japanese bars to Americans. How can you explain a bar so small that it has space for only four customers and two hostesses?

“Joe,” I said in greeting, “can you keep a secret?”

“Sure, Ace.”

“I mean two secrets. Big ones?”

“Hanako havin' a baby?”

“Joe, Blubber-gut is laying for you. He's going to ship you home first chance he gets.”

“That's no secret. He threatened me openly two days ago. I didn't tell anybody. Didn't want to worry you. But he shouted, ‘All you nigger-lovers are goin' home. Soon.' ”

“Joe, I want you to promise me you won't do anything stupid.”

“Me? I should be stupid like him?”

“Look. One night I heard you tell Katsumi you were going to shoot Blubber-gut.”

“Me? I'm no rod man. What's your other secret?”

I ordered another beer and took a big gulp. “Exactly what papers do you have to sign to marry a Japanese girl?”

Joe whistled and said, “Look, Ace. This ain't for you. Suppose Hanako is beggin' you to marry her! It ain't for you.”

“Joe, don't jump to conclusions. I haven't told her yet. But so help me God, I'm going to marry that girl. What are the steps?” He repeated his earlier warning and I asked, “You mean you're sorry you married Katsumi?”

A big grin broke on Joe's face and he said, “One night I told you that bein' married to that Buddha-head was livin'. It ain't. It's somethin' much finer than livin'. It's like you was dead and all the stress and strain was over and all that was left was the very best—and it's the best because it's all wrapped up in her. It ain't livin', Ace. I used to live in Chicago. This is way beyond that.”

I sat with my hands over my face and didn't look up for a moment. Then I said, “I feel exactly that way about Hanayo.”

Joe ignored this and said, “Ace, I don't believe you could take the bad time they give you.”

“What do you mean?”

“They wear you down. Enlisted men get used to bein' worn down but you ain't had the experience of diggin' your heels in real stubborn and resistin'.”

“How do you mean?”

“They give you so many papers. The chaplain prays over you. And everything they do they do with crazy smiles, like you was off your rocker and only they could save you. And what's worse, they ask the girl so many heart-burnin' questions. Hana-ogi won't tell you but some night when you kiss her she'll break down and cry for an hour. I don't think you could take it.”

I said, “Tomorrow morning I'm starting the paperwork.”

He said, “Ace, you're a big man. It would make them look silly to lose you to a Japanese girl. So they'll hit you with big stuff.”

“I'm ready.”

“Ace, they'll hit you with generals and admirals and men who knew your father. The only way you can swing it is to get the help of your Congressman. Who is he?”

“I don't know.”

“Where do you live?”

“I don't have…”

“Well, where do you vote?” “I've never voted.” For the first time I realized that I was completely a military man. The Air Force was my home. I cast my vote with the talking end of an F-86.

Joe studied this and said, “Don't worry. Practically any Congressman would love to fight your battle. You want me to take it up with Shimmark? He loves to get his name in the paper.”

I thanked Joe and said I'd work it out somehow, but that very night they started to throw the big reasons at me, even before I had told Hana-ogi that I was going to give up the Air Force and marry her. It happened a long way off, in Texas, for that night I heard a radio program explaining why the Democrats of Texas were going to support Dwight Eisenhower for President. I had known the general at several different bases and had played with his son. Suddenly, there in the dark streets of Osaka, Eisenhower became the symbol of what a major in the Air Force might become: a man ready for many different kinds of action if his country needed him. For one hellish hour I walked the streets weighing what I was doing and then I found myself at the entrance to my alley, and Skinny Watanabe-san had struck it rich at pachinko and ran out in the street to offer me a beer and I got a rosy glow on, and about eleven Hana-ogi came down to take me home, but I did not tell her then of the great decision I had made.

In the morning I sneaked into Kobe, for I did not want either General Webster or Lt. Col. Craford to see me, and I went to the American consulate. Luck was with me, for Mr. Carstairs, the fuddy consul, was not yet in and I could talk privately with his secretary, the horse-faced girl who had married a G.I.

She recognized me at once and said, “You made my kid brother the hero of his whole block.”

“How do you mean?”

“Your autograph. The kids take Korea seriously, even if grownups don't.”

Although she said this with a smile I noticed that she was eyeing me suspiciously and after I had made a few awkward starts at conversation she put her two hands firmly on her desk and said, “Major Gruver, did you come here to find out about marrying a Japanese girl?”

I gulped and must have blushed, for she added immediately, “I can spot you guys a mile off. What are you ashamed of?”

I asked her what she meant by that and she laughed. “You all think there's some tricky way to get around the red tape. And you're all ashamed to speak to your superior officers.” She looked up at me with such infectious amusement that I had to laugh, whereupon she said, “But you, Ace Gruver. I never thought you'd tumble for a Buddha-head.”

I fumbled a bit and asked, “Just what are the paper requirements?”

“I can't tell you a thing, Major.”

“You work here.”

“Forbidden. You military heroes have to clear everything through your chain of command.”

“You mean it's as tough as that?”

“It's tougher, Major. We don't want men like you marrying Japanese girls. We make it extra tough for men like you.”

“I was only asking,” I said.

“Sure! There hasn't ever been a soldier in here who really intended to get married. They were all only asking!”

“Then you won't help?”

The big girl looked out the door to see if Mr. Carstairs had arrived yet. Satisfying herself on that point she said, “Old Droopy Drawers lives by the book. He'd fire me if he saw me talking with you about legal matters. But I figure if a man can shoot down seven MIGs he's entitled to some help.”

She showed me a completed file on a sailor who had married a Japanese girl. I had heard of the paperwork. I had even seen some of it during Joe Kelly's marriage. But I had not comprehended how repetitious and degrading it was. I began to understand what Joe meant when he said that only an enlisted man, conditioned to standing in line and taking guff, could see a Japanese wedding through.

I said, “Isn't this a pretty tough obstacle course?”

The girl laughed and said, “If I had my way, we'd make it tougher. Men like you oughtn't to grab Jap girls just because they're available.”

“I don't want a lecture,” I protested.

“Look, Major. I'm your big sister. Remember? We just made a study of which Americans were marrying Japanese girls. The findings aren't pleasant.” She riffled some papers and read off the dismal case histories: “Wyskanski, Noel. Orphaned. No education. Had a fistfight with the Catholic priest. Reform school. Merchant, Nicholas. Ran away from home. Been in guardhouse regularly since being drafted. Two court-martials. Threatened the Japanese social worker who proved that the first girl he wanted to marry was a notorious prostitute. Kelly, Joe. Your friend. Worst record in the Air Force in Korea. Constant discipline problem. Accused of murdering a drunk in Chicago but case thrown out of court on technicality. Always on the verge of criminal prosecution. Recommended twice for dismissal from the Air Force.” She tossed Kelly's paper aside and asked bluntly, “How'd you get mixed up with a dead-end mutt like him?”

“He was in my unit.”

“Did you meet your Japanese girl through Kelly?” I hesitated a moment trying to frame an answer but the smart girl understood. She put aside the file and said patiently, “Major Gruver, you're simply not the type. These men—these perpetual failures…” She hammered the file and turned away to blow her nose. At that moment the front door opened and in came prim Mr. Carstairs. In one instantaneous glance he saw me and the marriage file and his secretary wiping her eyes. He stepped precisely into the middle of the doorway and said, “My goodness, Major Gruver isn't thinking of getting married to a Japanese girl, is he?”

The secretary looked up and sniffed. “Yes, damn it all, he is. And I've been telling him he's a complete fool.”

“You are,” Mr. Carstairs said. He passed through our room and said sharply as he left, “But there's nothing to worry about. The Air Force wouldn't let such a stupid thing happen.”

When he was gone the secretary asked, “Has your Jap girl started her part of the paperwork?”

I said, “Well…I haven't…”

With great relief the big girl started to laugh. “I understand! You haven't asked her, have you? Thank God!”

I blushed and said, “Look, we're getting married.”

She ignored this and said, “I feel so much better. Ace, dozens of you men come in here to ask about getting married. But most of you
haven't proposed yet. Then I breathe easy because everything is all right.”

“You have some special way of stopping it?”

“No,” she said surprised. “It's just that first-class Japanese girls won't marry American men. They prefer Japan. Ace, believe me, it's ten-to-one that the kind of girl you deserve won't marry you, and the kind you can get, you wouldn't want.”

I looked at the shabby office and at the pile of marriage reports. Grimly I said, “You can start a new file. ‘Gruver, Lloyd. Well educated. Never in trouble. Best man the Air Force had in Korea. Clean-cut American type. Married a Japanese girl because he loved her.' Show it to your Mr. Carstairs every day.”

In real anger I went over to the village of Takarazuka, where I waited in a vegetable stall near the Bitchi-bashi and toward noon I saw the first Takarazuka girls go by in their swaying green skirts. Then Fumiko-san passed me and I hid in the back of the store until she had disappeared. Finally I saw Hana-ogi approaching and I had that rare experience that a man sometimes knows when he sees the girl he loves picking her way along a crowded lane unaware that he is watching, and at such times—when the girls are not on their good behavior, you might say—they are extraordinarily lovely and ratify doubly all thoughts and decisions of preceding days. Hana-ogi was like that. She wore a gray kimono flecked with silver and gold, and it encased her lovingly, and her feet in light gray zori threaded an intricate pattern through the crowds of noonday shoppers, and as she drew near my vegetable stall I was fluttering like a broken propeller but at last I knew what I wanted. I reached out, grabbed her arm, and drew her in beside me. The man who ran the stall smiled and moved out onto the pavement as if accustomed to having his shop invaded in that manner every day.