The China Lover (29 page)

   26   

S
OME COUPLES THRIVE
on frequent separations; absence sharpens their passion. Others can’t bear to spend even one night apart. Myself, I wouldn’t know. I’m just an observer. I can’t say I’ve ever really been in love. I’ve been in lust many times, of course. In Japan, that is my normal state. But love, living with a person to the exclusion of others, having a soulmate who shares my bed, making love to my most intimate friend, that is something I’ve never experienced, nor ever wished to. In love, the self of one person is transformed into another self, a collective one, the self of the couple. In lust, I too lose myself, but, satisfied after possession of the other, I like to have myself back again. So I have lovers, and I have friends. I am content to observe how others attempt to become couples and fail, only to attempt the same thing all over again with new partners. I admire their fortitude, or should I say, foolhardiness. I have learned to live without illusions myself, but cherish them in others.

An added complication is the particular nature of my lust. In Ohio, I could be arrested for what I like to do. In Tokyo, I am free to do as I please. Not that I didn’t arrive with all the baggage of my American Puritan past. Since that glorious first day in ruined Yokohama, I’ve managed to throw some of that overboard, but not all of it. I sometimes wish I could be like those married couples, happy as cows grazing in the fields. And sometimes I wish I were Japanese, taking my
Japaneseness for granted, soaking in the huge warm communal bath of my collective self, along with millions of others who look and talk and think just like me. That, too, is a way of losing oneself.

But I’m not Japanese and not a happy breeder. One of the great blessings of living in Japan is that the sexual deviant is not placed in a neat little box. There are certain obligations, to be sure. But as long as a Japanese acquires a wife and starts a family, how he finds his sexual pleasure is his own business. As a foreigner, there are no boxes, except for one very large one that is very clearly marked:
gaijin
.

In the case of Isamu and Yoshiko, I could see the end of their happy coupledom approaching some time before it actually occurred. The plastic sandals incident already revealed cracks that would soon widen to serious rifts. Isamu’s notion of the perfect Japanese life was a fantasy that Yoshiko could never have shared for long. She was a movie star. She needed more than one role. The one Isamu had written for her couldn’t hold her forever. Broadway and Hollywood still beckoned. It was time for her to move on from the Land of Dreams. Some couples drift apart, like two rivers parting ways. With Isamu and Yoshiko, the break was more like the culmination of a series of storms that brought the crumbling edifice of their marriage down in a heap of rubble. The night of the biggest storm was also the last time I visited the house in Kamakura.

A Hollywood producer named Norman Waterman had come to Tokyo. He was considering Yoshiko for a possible role in a movie, something about GI wives. Yoshiko had invited him down for dinner in Kamakura without asking Isamu first. I was to accompany him.

Waterman was not exactly my type. A small, compact man with a loud voice, and a taste for expensive shoes, he half expected me to match him up with a local “cutie.” Girls were very much his thing. He didn’t actually use the phrase “kimono girls” (he said “cutie”), but that was what he was looking for. I put him in a taxi with the address
of a well-known massage parlor scribbled on a piece of paper. Tokyo taxi drivers have to be given precise instructions to get to most places. Not this place, however. Everyone knew it. Waterman came back with a wide smile on his neat little face, like a frisky dog wagging his tail after having had a nice juicy bone to chew on.

But Waterman wasn’t so bad, really. We shared a taste for Preston Sturges movies, especially
The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend
, in which Waterman had played a minor part as assistant to the assistant of the producer. As long as we stayed off the subject of “cuties” and talked about the movies, we got along fine.

It was a sultry night. The last of the cicadas were crying lazily under a starlit sky. Isamu, who had no interest in Preston Sturges, or movies, or Yoshiko’s prospects of a Hollywood career, hated Waterman on sight. He barely acknowledged his presence, as Yoshiko told stories about her good friends Charlie Chaplin, Yul Brynner, King Vidor, Ed Sullivan, and so on. Waterman was charmed. “You’ll love working in L.A.,” he said, his voice booming all the way across the rice field to Nambetsu’s house, where the sensei was cutting our sashimi. “I hope you like our Japanese food,” said Yoshiko. “Like?” said Waterman. “I love it! Sukiyaki, tempura!” Isamu stared at him as though he were a wild ape.

Nambetsu, to my relief and, it must be said, surprise, behaved well for once, even when Waterman mispronounced his name. Nambetsu just smiled, exuding benevolence, in the manner of a grown-up at a children’s party. Waterman was the kind of American Japanese know how to handle, not like those crazy foreigners who try to be just like them. Waterman actually behaved like a foreigner. There were no surprises there. Nambetsu, like all Japanese, cherished predictability. He poured saké into Waterman’s cup. Waterman protested mildly: “I’m not much of a drinking man, Mr. Nambis. If you keep pouring like that, I’ll get bombed in no time.”

“Bombed?”

I explained the meaning. Nambetsu waved his hand. “Oh, no,” he said, “all foreigners are strong. Have more.”

Waterman’s face soon became alarmingly red, as though he were overheating. And his voice grew even louder. Like many people not used to drinking, he drank too fast, prompting Nambetsu to pour more saké into his cup. Isamu, just to be difficult, refused to speak English, so that Yoshiko and I were obliged to translate what little he said in his broken Japanese. Not as insensitive as his booming voice might have suggested, Waterman was quite aware of Isamu’s hostility and tried, in his American way, to defuse the tension: “Hey, Isamu, lighten up. I hear you’re a famous artist. Have you had any recent shows in the States?”

Isamu’s face darkened. There was an awkward pause, filled by the tired-sounding cicadas. “That’s just what I’ve been telling him, Norman,” said Yoshiko, making an effort to sound bright. “He’s getting so stuck here in Japan.”

Nambetsu was in the kitchen, preparing the next course. The smell of grilled mackerel wafted into the room. “I’ll go to the house,” said Yoshiko brightly, “and get a catalogue of Isamu-san’s last show in Tokyo.” Isamu told her to stay right where she was. Waterman said he’d love to see it. Sensing another storm brewing, I said nothing. I knew when to keep my head down. Yoshiko left the room and stumbled into her sandals in the dark.

“So, when are you coming back to the States, Isamu?” insisted Waterman. “I mean, it’s great here, beautiful, but you can’t bury yourself in the boonies like this forever. You’ve got to have a show in New York, L.A. That’s where the action is. Look at Yoshiko. She knows the score.”

Isamu looked at him aghast. “What do you know about art? You’re nothing but a vulgar, money-grubbing idiot. You’re the reason anything
of value in America gets swamped by junk. Junk culture, that’s you. You’re a peddler of junk, a rubbish merchant, an enemy of art.”

“Take it easy, fellow!” shouted Waterman, his face the color of beetroot. “You may not rate my movies—”

“I’ve never seen your lousy movies, and I doubt I ever will!”

“I produce quality products—”

“Products?”

“Listen here, you damned snob, I work my ass off to produce art for real people, while you . . . you just sit here in your little cave in Japan, thinking you’re too good to get your hands dirty in the only place that counts, where the public decides what’s good and what’s lousy. You talk about art. I know about art, pal. This is the way it’s always been, in Renaissance Italy as much as in Hollywood, USA. Michelangelo didn’t sit around jerking off in Rome. He made . . .”

It happened in a flash. Waterman was howling, as the scalding tea from Isamu’s cup streamed down his face. This was the moment Yoshiko chose to return from the house, carrying the catalogue of Isamu’s Tokyo show. Waterman was whimpering on the floor, covering his face with a napkin. “Ice!” he cried. “For Chrissake get me some ice!” I was just sitting there, numb with shock. Yoshiko slammed the book on the floor and shouted at her husband in Japanese: “What’s going on? What have you done?”

She looked at me, but I didn’t know what to say. In a fury I had never seen before, Yoshiko screamed: “I can’t believe what’s happening here. You’ve assaulted my guest!” Isamu told her to shut up. The man had insulted his intelligence. Nambetsu, quietly serving the fish, nodded his head in agreement.

“Insulted your intelligence? Who do you think you are? He’s our guest!”

“Shut up, woman,” said Isamu, replying in English to her Japanese.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve already insulted me by bringing this vulgar Hollywood shyster into my home!”

“Shyster? What do you mean shyster. I . . .”

Isamu had picked up an ashtray and hurled it at his wife, only just missing her face. It crashed through Nambetsu’s sliding door of the finest Shikoku paper, and thudded into the cypresswood wall, making a nasty crack. I was hardly aware of what I was doing. I was still a numbed observer, but this time a mad impulse jerked me out of my passive state. I did what one should never do, intervene in a conjugal fight. Absurdly, I lurched to my feet, the knight in shining armor, the protector of the gentle sex, and shouted the first thing that came into my mind: “Don’t you dare throw things at a lady!” Isamu’s eyes, hot with rage, swiveled my way. Even Yoshiko, the object of my chivalry, looked shocked. I had deflected the storm by turning it toward myself. Waterman had stumbled to a tap, splashing water on his face, with quick frantic movements, as though he were on fire. Nambetsu looked at me with contempt, perhaps even loathing. I will never forget his words: “You’re just an ordinary foreigner after all.”

   27   

I
SAW YOSHIKO
only once before she left for America. We had coffee at our usual table in the Imperial Hotel. The Waterman incident was left unmentioned. But she did say that her marriage with Isamu was over. She had been foolish to think that she could live with a foreigner, she said. The cultural differences made it impossible. “Isamu thinks he knows Japan, but he’s a typical American. He never even learned to speak proper Japanese. You are different, Sid-san. But Isamu lives in a world of his own imagination. I admire his purity as an artist. But I can’t sacrifice myself for his art.”

The breakup must have been hard on her. When she removed her sunglasses to rub her eyes, I could see that she had been crying. “Divorce is a terrible thing,” I said, sounding fatuous even to myself. “But you’ll soon get over it. Time is a great healer. Think of all the movies you’ll make in America, and the Broadway show.”

“It’s not that,” she said with a slight air of irritation. “Believe me, getting divorced is a relief. I just had some distressing news today, but it’s okay. There’s nothing to be done about it.”

When I insisted, as her friend and confidant, that she tell me the bad news, she shook her head. The fey-looking waiter came over and asked if we would be needing anything further. I ordered another coffee, and settled into my seat. A young woman in an evening gown was tinkling away on a white piano. Yoshiko began talking about her father.
He had always been a feckless type, she said, a gambler, incapable of taking care of his family. But he had been a good man in China, a true idealist. He had genuinely loved the Chinese. China was his world, his reason to exist. But after the war, back in Japan, he couldn’t cope with life. He was barely able even to take care of himself, let alone his family. It was as if there were nothing left to live for. So he became a bum, stealing his own daughter’s money, only to gamble it away. At first Yoshiko felt sorry for him. He too, she felt, had been a victim of that terrible war. But enough’s enough. Though she continued to bear his name, she wanted nothing more to do with him.

Again I offered my sympathy. It must be very hard to lose a father like that. No, she said, it wasn’t that either. So what was it? She looked so helpless as she cast those big dark eyes up at me. A solitary tear rolled down her cheek. “Sid-san,” she said softly, “do you remember that man who came up to me after the wedding?” I thought back for a moment, and said, yes, of course I did. Well, his name was Sato, Sato Daisuke. He had been more of a father to her in China than her real one, always looking out for her, helping her when she was in trouble. Sato had loved China as intensely as her father had. To be sure, he had a weakness for Chinese girls, and was always getting into scrapes, but he had a good heart. Here she paused, dabbing at her eyes with a silk handkerchief. “He deserved better,” she sobbed. What happened to him? Who was Sato?

I received only fragments of information: how he had worked for the Japanese army, and been lucky to have escaped arrest by the Russians after the war. But, Yoshiko said, perhaps there was a fate even worse than dying in a Siberian slave camp. Back in his own country, Sato had no more reason to live. His world, like her father’s, had vanished. So he drifted like a ghost, appearing from time to time without warning. She had given him money. He promised to stay away. But he couldn’t carry on, and committed suicide. His headless corpse was discovered
by a farmer in Yamanashi Prefecture. He had tied himself to a tree, after taking an overdose of sleeping tablets. It was at the height of summer. A red mountain dog must have found him several days later and made off with his head. The dog was spotted by a local girl just as it was gnawing on its prize in an abandoned shed.

As I was listening to this horrifying story, my mind drifted back to my first glimpses of Japan, in those cinemas in the east side of the city. Dimly perceived story lines came back to me of shabby figures arriving at ruined homes they no longer recognized, finding their wives living with other men. The pianist in the evening gown was playing a Cole Porter song, skillfully and devoid of any human feeling.

“Well,” said Yoshiko, smiling through her tears, “there is no point dwelling on the past, is there? There is nothing we can do about it anymore. You remember that song that everyone sung a year ago?” She sang the words: “
Que sera sera
, whatever will be, will be . . .” Still smiling, she said: “I believe in that. The world is sure to become a better place one day. That’s what I want to dedicate my life to. You know that, don’t you, Sid?”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. “Dedicate it to what, darling?”

She softly squeezed my arm. “To peace, of course,” she said.

And so Yoshiko went off to the United States, where a glittering future awaited her, or so she hoped. Isamu went off on some tour of the world, paid for by a big American foundation, to investigate art and religion, or perhaps it was culture and spirituality. Nambetsu went on, without my help, to have a big commercial success in New York. The Japan Society organized a huge exhibition of his works, and one of the Rockefellers bought all his paintings.

Shangri-La
got off to a decent start. Reviews in Boston and Baltimore were respectful, though not exactly effusive. Still, there was time for improvements. The costumes were much praised and Sam Jaffe, older and even more like a wizened old grandma than in the movie,
was said to be terrific as the Grand Lama. Yoshiko certainly looked the part, from what I heard. “Pretty as a tropical flower,” declared the
Baltimore Sun
. Yoshiko gave an interview to
Time
magazine, reflecting with proper modesty on her role as an Oriental ambassadress. Her photograph, showing her dressed in a Tibetan-style costume, was published as a full spread in
Life
. She was consulted on
The Ed Sullivan Show
about the spiritual wisdom of Buddhism. Bob Ryan came round to see her backstage in Philadelphia. He assured her she would be a triumph on Broadway. Tables at Sardi’s were booked for the opening night. Flowers were ordered, stars invited, crates of champagne stacked up high. All of New York would be there.

And it failed. Not just failed, it bombed. The costumes were praised once more, and Sam Jaffe was again lauded as a superb Grand Lama. Yoshiko looked “as pretty as a peony,” declared the
New York Times
critic. But the music stank and, as the
New York Herald Tribune
put it, “the story was as soggy as a piece of cardboard left in the rain.”
Shangri-La
limped on gamely for three weeks. Party invitations were canceled, lunches postponed. Yoshiko was suddenly in the big city all alone.

She never heard from Waterman again. But the doors of Hollywood had not yet entirely closed in her face. Yoshiko was cast in a comedy called
Navy Wife
, directed by a fellow named Ed Bernds, who started off as a soundman for Mr. Capra, and went on to have some success with the Three Stooges. I never saw
Shangri-La
, but it must have been a masterpiece compared to this mawkish little confection. Joan Bennett is the wife of a U.S. Navy commander based in Japan (and the actual wife of the film’s producer, Walter Wanger, hence her appearance; I can’t think of any other reason why she would have bothered). Her name is Judy, or something, and the Navy man is Bud, or Bob, or Jack—I can’t recall. The point, if there is one, is that a Japanese housewife, played by Yoshiko, observes how Judy, or Debbie, or
whatever, bosses Bud or Jack around, and not just in the house. So Yoshiko wants “equal rights” too, just like the American wife. It all comes to a head at a military Christmas party, a scene that is supposed to be humorous but is in fact deeply depressing.

Since the movie was assumed to be of special interest to the expatriate community in Tokyo, I was compelled to review it. I wrote: “Too talented to be in this turkey, Shirley Yamaguchi’s beauty is still worth the price of a ticket. Given the severe limitations of the script, she makes the most of a part that is so ludicrous it isn’t even funny.” Not the most stylish piece of writing, I know, but I too had to struggle with unpromising material. My charming editor, Cecil Shiratori, had adored the film and asked me why I had to be so “b-b-bloody negative.” I don’t think the movie played for more than a week in Japan. The Japanese critics politely ignored it.

It can’t have been long after her appearance in
Navy Wife
that Yoshiko announced to the world that she was retiring as a movie actress, and would marry a promising young Japanese diplomat. I was stunned. A failure on Broadway and one dud movie shouldn’t have fazed her, let alone sink a budding international career. She was still Japan’s best hope. Perhaps it was “true love” that prompted this mad, impulsive act. If so, it confirms my doubts about true love. I fear the promising young diplomat made his move when she was feeling most vulnerable. Alas, however, by marrying an older actress with a somewhat checkered past, he ensured that his youthful promise would go unfulfilled. He wasn’t exactly fired from the Foreign Ministry, just sent to Rangoon. What the hell Yoshiko would do in Rangoon was anybody’s guess. I felt caught in a tangle of emotions: abandonment, loss, even a certain sense of betrayal. A great legend had died before her time. A bright star had suddenly gone dark. It felt as if I had been yanked roughly out of a wonderful dream.

I still adored Yoshiko, of course, and had hoped to resume my role
as mother confessor as soon as she came back to Tokyo. Surely her husband wouldn’t mind me. He must have heard that I was no threat. I was dying to hear all about her adventures in New York and Hollywood. She did call me once, from her husband’s apartment. We gossiped and laughed, just like old times, and then I made my fatal mistake. The subject of
Navy Wife
came up and we happily agreed that it was an awful picture. She said: “And let’s face it, I wasn’t much good in it either, was I?” “Truthfully, darling, you were not.” I heard a sharp click as she put the receiver down. I’ve not heard from Yoshiko since.