The Secret of the Nightingale Palace (23 page)

It was Goldie who, after five or ten minutes, suddenly broke the silence that had settled between them. Despite her assertions, she, too, seemed to have been mulling over the past. “I know what it's like to lose a husband,” she said. “You think you can't love again, but you're young. You probably haven't even met the love of your life.”

Anna glanced away from the road to look at her grandmother. Here was Goldie, speaking as a true principal of the Corporation: 80 percent practicality, 20 percent emotion. But in order to contemplate the future, did you have to discount the past completely? “I don't see why you can't have two loves of your life. Or maybe even more.”

Goldie shook her head. “They don't call it ‘the loves of your life.' They call it ‘the
love
of your life.' ”

“It's not that simple. There's nothing to say you can't have two. Or ten.”

“You can't,” Goldie said.

“Then who was the love of your life?” Anna asked. “Poppy or Marvin Feld?”

Goldie slapped her hand against her purse. “For heaven's sake. Can you just stop? This conversation is giving me a headache.”

“Fine,” Anna said. The land was desolate here, and she couldn't see another car in either direction. The road curved up over a hill, slid around a bend, and brought them down into a valley. On a far ridge, a line of windmills held up their arms like people rooting for the universe.

Part Four

14

The Nightingale Floors

G
oldie would remember the kiss on Marvin Feld's yacht as one of the most romantic moments of her life. She discovered almost immediately, however, that it didn't help to resolve her situation in any way.

Goldie was young, inexperienced, and ignorant of social complexities. Once she and Henry had declared their affection for each other, she presumed that they would marry. Granted, during her hungry journey across the country, hunched in a club chair staring out at the churning landscape, Goldie had pictured a future husband who didn't look like him at all. Now that she loved Henry, though, he seemed the perfect match. He had an education, ran his own promising business, dressed well, and showed good manners. On top of that, she found him kind, charming, and so extremely handsome that she couldn't understand how she had failed to see him that way before. Of course she'd marry him.

Henry, though, knew better. It was the summer of 1941. The United States had not yet entered the war, but national sentiment ran against the Japanese. Henry caught the audible mutterings of “Jap” when he passed the white chess players at the cable-car turnaround near his office. He saw the rigid intensity on his father's face when the old man read the Japanese-language papers. He recognized the urgency with which his mother worked her friendships in order to complete “good Nisei matches” for her daughter and son. Life for the Japanese had never been easy in America, but it seemed to be growing more difficult every day. How could Goldie be a part of that?

Late one afternoon, Henry appeared at the perfume counter and invited her out for a soda after work. As they walked up the block, Goldie chattered nonstop about sales for Pioneer perfume, less because she cared about the fragrance than because she needed to fill the space between herself and Henry. She felt nervous to be alone with him again, but also full of happy anticipation. In the next few minutes, she believed, she would experience the light touch of his hand under the table, a bump of their knees, a declaration of love. Instead, Henry ordered two Coca-Colas and immediately launched into an explanation of why, despite their feelings, the situation between them could not continue.

“Is it because I'm a Jew?” Goldie asked.

“A Jew?” he responded. He started to laugh, but he didn't want to upset her more.

“Yes, a Jew,” she said. Her tone had turned icy. People hated the Jews, but she had expected more of Henry.

“Of course not,” he said, defensive now.

“I know how people feel about Jews,” she told him with a toss of her head. Growing up, Goldie had learned that the world looked down on two specific groups, the Negroes and the Jews. Her only consideration of Negroes was the relief she felt that she wasn't one herself. The only discrimination she'd actually experienced was not from gentiles but from wealthier Jewish people, who had developed their own rigid caste system. Goldie was the wrong kind of Jew—not the well-off German kind (the Feld kind) who lived at the tops of the hills, owned fashionable stores, and sailed on yachts. She came from the poorer class, the scarf wearers with their shtetl accents, tattered shoes, and smelly kitchens. Henry was an outsider, though. He couldn't know about all that.

The Coca-Colas arrived, and Henry slid one across the table toward Goldie. “This has nothing to do with you being Jewish,” he told her. “I'm Japanese. You're not Japanese. That's the issue.”

“I don't care that you're Japanese,” Goldie told him. She loved everything about him now—his steady gaze, his ivory skin, the impossible slowness of his smile. She spoke honestly, but she had an uncomfortable sense that she was cajoling him. In her relations with men, Goldie prided herself on her finesse. She might entice, but she never chased. Now, perhaps to counteract the sound of pleading in her voice, she added, “Maybe, normally, I don't like Japanese. But I don't see those things in you. Or your family.” She leaned forward and pertly sipped her cola through the straw.

Henry stiffened. “What things?”

Actually, Goldie had no idea what kinds of accusations people made against the Japanese, so she mined her knowledge of what people said about her own people. “You know. Dirty, greedy, conniving,” she said, then added, for good measure, the things she'd heard about the Negroes as well: “Lazy. Stupid. Ignorant. That sort of thing.”

For a moment, Henry just stared at her, stunned, but then he realized that she was bluffing. He began to laugh. “You don't even know what you're talking about,” he told her.

Goldie picked up her napkin and patted her lips, looking at him over the top of the folded fabric. Over the past few days, she had felt her future finally solidify into something manageable and bright. Now, though, his laughter seemed to mock her. Had he been playing with her all along? Despite her varied experiences of dating, Goldie had never felt this kind of wound. Henry might not love her. Even worse, she saw now that his scorn could cause her physical pain, which gave her a sense of absolute remorse that she had ever cared about him at all. And then, like a cornered animal, she flashed her teeth and fought back. “I most certainly do,” she said, squeezing the napkin into a ball in her hand. “You can't even walk down the street in Japantown without a Jap snatching your jewelry and running away with it.”

Henry froze. He heard the words coming out of her mouth, but he saw, as well, that she was flailing. Some other lover, more confident and suave, might have known exactly how to defuse such a situation, but Henry was young, equally inexperienced, and too surprised to move. At the next table, two young men stopped eating to watch. A waitress looked up from the table she was wiping. Goldie announced, “Around here, nobody likes Japs.”

Everything fell silent then. Perhaps, on the other side of the room, customers continued to talk over their burgers and sundaes, but the air around Goldie and Henry became more difficult to breathe. She would not have been surprised if he had simply walked out then. But happily for both of them, Henry's mind suddenly cleared. He stood up, pulled some money out of his pocket, and dropped it on the table. “Let's go,” he said.

Once outside, he headed up the block, walking so quickly that she almost had to run to keep up with him. She no longer felt angry. Rather, she felt that same sense of dread that she had experienced as a child when she flattened Rochelle with a particularly effective kick to the groin: pride in her accomplishment but worry over what would come next. In that case, Rochelle, who had four years on Goldie, had retaliated by pressing her sister's face into the gravel lot, and Goldie had run home with shards of pebble embedded in her cheek.

But what now?

She followed Henry into the Hearst Building. Goldie knew that he had his office and storerooms here, but she had never visited. Silently they rode up the elevator with its fine woodwork and filigrees. Henry stared at the numbers above the door as, one by one, they lit up. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. They heard a ping, and the elevator opened onto a hallway. The lower half of the walls was plaster. Frosted glass covered the distance to the ceiling, emitting a dim blue light, which was coming through the windows of the offices on the other side. She followed Henry to the last door at the end of the hall and waited while he unlocked it. The door opened onto two connected rooms, both lined with windows. The space was bright, simply furnished with the kinds of beautiful things that Henry supplied now to Feld's and other shops across the city: a matching pair of leather armchairs, a mahogany table serving as a desk, a lampshade covered in Chinese silk, and an oriental carpet patterned with birds and flowers in bursts of red and gold and blue. An interior door opened onto another room, that one stacked floor to ceiling with boxes. From where she stood, Goldie could read some of the labels: Indonesia. Hong Kong. New Zealand. Morocco. Many bore stamps in languages she couldn't read. She had heard Henry complain about his difficulties getting new shipments into the country because of the war. These days he concentrated his trade on antiques already available within the United States. Maybe these boxes had been shipped before the war even started. She couldn't tell.

Henry opened a corner cabinet and pulled out two highball glasses and a bottle of Scotch. He poured them each a shot, then walked to a sink in the corner and added some water. Goldie hadn't moved from her spot by the door, but she accepted the drink when he handed it to her.

“You can sit down,” he said. His tone was chilly.

Goldie walked across the room and lowered herself into an armchair. She sat primly, resting her glass on her knee and putting her pocketbook on the windowsill beside her. Henry stood by the window looking out. From where she was sitting, she could not see the cars below, but even in the afternoon light she could observe the activity in the offices across the street. A secretary sat at her desk typing. Two men bent over a table looking at some papers. Goldie took a sip of her drink. She had tasted Scotch once or twice, and it no longer bothered her to feel the burn of it sliding down her throat, but she remained a cautious drinker.

Still he said nothing. A clock on the wall showed that it was nearly six. Goldie would have to catch the six thirty-seven bus to be home by seven, and then she'd have to hear Rochelle complain that Goldie had failed again to help with dinner. Her awareness of the time, though, didn't trouble her as much as the need to keep silent. Talking always soothed her.

It took Henry a long time to finish his drink. When he finally did, he put his glass on the windowsill, then sat down on the armchair next to Goldie's. She set her glass beside her purse. The expression on his face was less angry than distraught, and his eyes focused on his hands, which lay clutched together in his lap. “Do you remember the day I first met you, when my mother performed the tea ceremony for all of us?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Do you remember how Mayumi called our house ‘the Nightingale Palace'?”

How could she forget such a thing? “I thought it was the most beautiful name I'd ever heard.”

A look of annoyance crossed Henry's face. “My sister could use a few lessons in discretion,” he said, but his tone was surprisingly tender. “Anyway, we never actually explained what we meant then. My parents have never even heard that name. Mayumi and I just made it up.”

“Why?” Goldie asked.

Below, on Market Street, a car screeched to a stop, and from farther away they could hear the blast of a drill engaged in some kind of destruction. For a moment Henry seemed to concentrate on these distractions, then he said, “We were frustrated with them. I don't know if this will make sense to you, but the name relates to the Ninomaru Palace in Kyoto, which dates back to the time when Shogun rulers controlled Japan. It's very elegant and has some extraordinary artwork, but the most interesting thing about it is the ingenious methods the architects devised to protect the Shogun and his family.” Briefly Henry raised his eyes to Goldie, but he quickly looked away again. “In the family quarters, where the Shogun lived, they put in wooden floors that had metal plates beneath them. When anyone walked on the floors, the plates rubbed together and made a beautiful sound, like birds singing. They called them ‘Nightingale Floors.' If an enemy entered the castle, the singing of these ‘birds' would alert the guards to protect the ruler and his family.”

“How interesting,” said Goldie, who had no idea how a security system in Japan related to her.

Henry continued. “Mayumi and I started calling our house ‘the Nightingale Palace' because our parents are like that. They gave up everything in order to leave Japan, but this beautiful life that they've created here is completely focused on protecting our family, protecting our culture.”

“I see,” said Goldie, but she didn't, really.

At this point Henry lifted his gaze again. The effort seemed terrible, as if he had to muster every ounce of energy to raise his chin and look at her. “My mother made a match for me,” he said.

Now it was Goldie who turned her eyes away. She knew what “a match” meant, of course, but the pieces didn't fall together in a way that made sense to her. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I'm going to marry a Japanese girl from Stockton.”

In an office in the building across the street, a young woman in a purple suit was offering a sheaf of papers to a man at a desk. The woman laughed. The man leaned back, raised his arms to the back of his head, and watched her with what looked to Goldie like admiration. It was one thing for Henry to reveal his mother's plans, but something else entirely to express his own willingness to go along with them. Goldie felt like he'd hit her in the stomach, but she also recalled again her childhood bouts with Rochelle. After years spent wailing and screaming, she had discovered that complete indifference would drive her sister mad. “Oh?” she asked Henry. “What's her name?” The words were intended to show nonchalance, but her voice sounded unsteady.

Henry didn't notice any of Goldie's reactions. “Akemi,” he said, staring at his hands again.

“Is she pretty?”

He shrugged a shoulder, completely dismissive. “Yes. I guess. Her looks mean nothing to me.”

“Does she have good manners? Is she elegant?” With each word, Goldie felt as if she were slapping her own face, but she couldn't stop.

He slumped deeper into his chair. “She's elegant enough. She's very shy. I've hardly talked to her. We had one meeting, at my house, when she and her family came up to visit. I barely paid attention.”

Amid the predictable pain caused by this revelation, Goldie also felt a surprising, and equally intense, emotion of jealousy toward Henry at that moment. She could imagine the scene so clearly. The mothers in their fine clothes, with their dainty teacups and tasteless sweets. The young man, distracted but polite. The girl with her intricate hair and fingernails painted that morning, no doubt, by her mother. Her eyes would be gentle and kind, her pretty face pampered. The fathers would have understood each other perfectly. The light filtering down through the tea garden trees would have settled on the scene at just the right angle. Goldie wondered how it would feel to have parents who would go to such trouble for her.