Butterfly (20 page)

After our engagement, Kate and I slipped back into our former intimacy, with the difference that we now appeared in society as an affianced couple and consequently led a double life. I found the constant switching of roles strenuous, but it evidently amused Kate; gradually the strain diminished, however, and in time I became adept at changing identities at an instant's notice.

I felt uncomfortable writing to the vice-consul at Nagasaki to warn him of our arrival, for not long before I had received a letter brimming with indignation: he had pressed me to write to Butterfly, and I had declined.

63

(Text of the definitive contract.)

The undersigned Henry Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, being of sound mind and body, hereby declares himself for the remainder of his natural life slave to the undersigned Kathleen Hamilton, who consents to proprietorship on the following conditions:

1
·
Mr. Pinkerton will relinquish autonomy over all mental, moral, and physical faculties in favor of Miss Hamilton; he shall at all times and in all eventualities be subject to her will and solely to her will. In obeying her, he shall disregard all other consideration of whatever nature, be it social, legal, moral, religious, or personal.

2
·
Mr. Pinkerton will forswear all familial, conjugal, social, and spiritual allegiance.

3
·
The person and property of Mr. Pinkerton will be put entirely at the disposal of Miss Hamilton. Her rights over these will be unconditional; they will include the right to mutilate, alienate, and destroy Mr. Pinkerton's person and property, or any part thereof, in any and every manner or form.

4
·
Mr. Pinkerton's condition of slavery will be absolute, permanent, and irrevocable; it will not be subject to abrogation by the will of the undersigned, singly or jointly. Mr. Pinkerton will enjoy no rights or claims of any kind.

5
·
Miss Hamilton will privately acknowledge Mr. Pinkerton as her slave; beyond this she will have no obligation whatsoever toward or regarding Mr. Pinkerton.

64

[Editor's note: The following is taken from an interview I had in October 1978 with Mrs. Milly Davenport, widow to David Sharpless, a grandson of the one-time vice-consul at Nagasaki. Her account comprises not only memories of conversations but portions of dialogues and commentary recorded in the elder Sharpless's diary, which she had practically memorized verbatim through repeated reading. The first of the two pertinent volumes of that diary contains the entries reproduced above; the second was destroyed in 1976, when Mrs. Davenport lent it to a friend whose Irish setter, attracted by the leather binding, chewed it beyond restoration. The contents, however, have largely survived thanks to Mrs. Davenport's excellent memory.]

M.D.:
Oh, Dada was riled all right when he got that letter—it wasn't even a letter, just a note, with no reasons given, nothing. And he was troubled, too, because what was he going to do now? Here he'd been writing those letters to her waiting for the day that Pinkerton feller's letter gets there, just filling in the time, kind of, and now Pinkerton says he won't write. Pretty fix, isn't it? Well, the first thing Dada did was to sit himself down and write to Pinkerton to tear a strip off him.

P.L.
: Pardon? Tear a what?

M.D.
: Tear a strip off him—it means to tell someone off real good.
(Laughs.)
Sorry about that. It's because your English is so good I wasn't payin’ attention. I'll try to talk more properly.

P.L.
: Oh, don't worry about that, I'm always happy to learn new expressions. But please go on with your story.

M.D.
: Where was I? Oh yes, Dada's letter. Well, writing took a load off his chest, but it didn't get him out of the jam. He used to
tell me it was the worst fix he'd ever gotten into in his life. There he was writing love letters to a married woman under her own husband's name—'cause love letters are what they were, no matter what he thought they were when he wrote them—writing them to a foreigner and him with a wife and family. ‘Did you ever think of runnin’ away with her, Dada?’ I'd tease him. I wasn't much more than a girl then, and 1 was something of a hell-raiser in my time. He'd just smile, and you knew that the thought had been in his head, only he wouldn't say. Oh, he'd never have gone through with it, of course; he was a fine man, a gentleman like they used to make them, and not the kind to run out on his family.

“Well, supposing you hadn't had a family,” I'd say, you know, just to prod him.

And he'd sigh and reply in that deep steady voice of his: “I dare say I might've done just that, Milly.”

“Then you'd be sitting on a verandah someplace in Japan this very moment,” I'd say, “talking Japanese to a Japanese grand-daughter-in-law.”

And he'd get this misty look in his eyes and after a while he'd say, “Yes, I guess I would.”

We'd had this same conversation I don't know how many times, because I loved to hear him talk about Japan—that was his great adventure, you know—and in those days we were alone a lot, the two of us. Dave and I'd moved into the house when we got married because Grandma Charlotte had died the year before and it was pretty lonesome for Dada to have that whole house to himself—it was too big even for the two of them, him and Grandma Charlotte. And then when Dave—”

P.L.
: Excuse me, what year was that when all this happened?

M.D.
: Let's see, we got married in the spring of thirty-seven, so Grandma Charlotte must have died in ‘thirty-six, in the fall.

P.L.
: How old was your husband's grandfather then do you know?

M.D.
: Well, Dada was eighty-seven when he died and that was 1940, just before Pearl Harbor. I'm glad he didn't live to see that, because with the soft spot he had for Japan, it would've broken him up. But the Lord was merciful, though I didn't think so at the time. I thought he'd have lived to be a hundred—but then he'd have been there to see Dave get killed. Another grandson, Dave's cousin Billy, also died in the war, but Billy was a pilot and you kind of expected it, but a doctor like Dave … Dada was born in 1853, if I recall properly.

P.L.:
I didn't mean to interrupt your story.

M.D.:
Oh, that's all right. Go ahead and ask all the questions you like, while I'm still here to answer them.
(Laughs.)
Anyhow getting back to what I was saying, Dada and I had ourselves some real good times talking. I liked to tease him, but I didn't push it too far, because it'd been a painful time for him and some of the pain was still there even after all those years. But one time—I remember we'd been drinking some cherry brandy he'd made and maybe I was just a little high on it-I asked him straight out what he felt.

“ ‘Bout what?” he says innocent as can be, but I could tell he was just stalling.

So I looked him right in the eye and said, “About Butterfly. And about Grandma Charlotte.”

He didn't say anything for a long time. I remember the way he spoke though when he finally did, even if the words are maybe not the identical ones he used: “Strange,” he said—he drew out the word so that you really felt he was still caught up in the mystery of it after all that time. “Strange how a man can live with a woman for years without ever doubting he loves her, without ever looking at anyone else, and then one day in the blinking of
an eye, before he's even had time to notice, everything's changed and there's not a thing he can do about it any more.” He shook his head and sighed lamentingly. “Poor Charlotte.”

To keep him from breaking off I said, “So you stopped loving Grandma Charlotte?” I remember feeling self-conscious saying it.

But he didn't seem to mind me, and I wondered if he'd even heard. But after a while he said, “I felt old when I was with her, Milly, I felt like an old man. The thing was that I never noticed until . . .” He couldn't finish the sentence, I recall, but then he picked up and said how it was like dreaming you're somewhere and then waking up to find yourself at that exact same spot, except everything's different. Now, Grandma Charlotte hadn't changed, not since the day before or the one before that, but all of a sudden Dada saw the fifteen years she'd put on since he had himself his last good look—it wasn't just looks either, he explained, it was the way she talked, the way she moved, the way her head sat stiff as a candied apple on those shoulders she kept hunched-up all the time. Maybe she'd always been that way and he just never noticed. But once he did, he started noticing all the time, like he couldn't help it. It made him feel funny. Old and gray. Had he really gotten so old? he'd wonder. Told me he felt like Rip van Winkle—scared to look in a mirror for fear he'd find he'd grown a long white beard.

I can also recollect asking him about Butterfly. Took my breath away just doing that. I guess there was a romantic girl in me waiting for him to say how beautiful she was, or something deep or heartfelt that would send a thrill up my spine. But he didn't, never did, just as he never declared his love for her. I remember the way his eyes went kind of blank. “Ah, Butterfly,” he said, soft as a sigh; and that was all. But the next day he handed me those two volumes of his diary.

65

(The last of Sharpless's counterfeit letters to Butterfly and the only one to have survived)

January 15, 1898

Dear Butterfly,

It is with more regret that I can express that I inform you of a decision that will cause you great pain. Nothing, I know, can justify my behavior in your eyes, and I do not ask you to pardon what I myself could not; it would, however, be a great comfort to me if you can at least understand that my action is not born of disloyalty or caprice.

For a long time, I resisted the pressure put upon me by family and friends to take an American wife, but as I began to play a more active part in our society, I realized to my distress that their views were not unfounded. I still hold that they are wrong morally, but they are not wrong in their assessment of the realities of our society. I had sincerely believed that we could live together as man and wife, in America no less than in Japan, but the past months have convinced me that this will not be possible. To play the part I have been assigned by birth, it is necessary to be an integral member of our society, and that society at the present time is not ready to assimilate a foreign element in matters of alliance and lineage. The temptation was great to throw over everything and return to spend the rest of my life with you and Etsuko in Japan, and believe me, I was more than once on the point of yielding to it. But what would have become of my family? Our family has a long
tradition of eminence that I feel it my duty to maintain. For myself, I should not hesitate to abandon all for your love, but I cannot abandon the family that has a prior claim to my allegiance and to which I am responsible against my will. As you know, I have no brother who could replace me in my given role. It is my destiny and I cannot cast it off, not even for what I hold dearest in life.

In taking my leave of you, Butterfly, I want to tell you once more that you are the best thing that I have known. Nothing and no one can replace you in my heart. In abandoning you, I am abandoning my own happiness; yet I shall continue to draw comfort from my memories of the happiness I have had, which was greater than I deserved or could have hoped for. The time I spent at your side will remain with me; in my heart you will always be my wife. You will continue to be a vision and an inspiration; your beauty and goodness will forever haunt me like the exquisite and melancholic strains from your
koto.

What I wouldn't give to see you once more! But I dare not, for fear that I shall never be able to tear myself from your side again. And for you, too, it is perhaps better that our separation should be allowed gently to take its course.

I can understand what you feel in reading this, I can feel your pain, for I know how you love me. In spite of this I must urge you to take another husband, even as I shall, with equal reluctance, take an American wife. You are young and still have a lifetime ahead of you which you must not let go to waste. I know that I have no right to give such advice and, furthermore, that it will hurt you to hear it from me, but I do care deeply about you and what
you do with your life. Please be reasonable, Butterfly, for my sake as well as for your own; remember that whatever direction you may take, I shall be accompanying you in my thoughts.

Yours always,

H
ENRY

66

(From the editor's interview with Mrs. Milly Davenport)

When you came right down to it, there was only one thing Dada could do: if Pinkerton wouldn't write his own letter, Dada would have to do it for him. And that was hard. It was especially hard because he'd have liked to keep on writing those letters, and knowing Dada, he could've kept it up forever. Don't think he wasn't tempted either—he admitted that there were moments when he was ready to say “To hell with it!” and simply go on playing Pinkerton for good. But his better self won out in the end. He hadn't any business hiding the truth from her. She needed to know about Pinkerton, that he wasn't going to come back, so she could start getting on with her life.

Now, just how she might do that was a problem. Was she going to go back to being what she was before? Or marry someone else? It kept Dada awake nights, but to his way of thinking, loving her didn't give him the right to butt into her life. He was trusting though that she'd be sensible and maybe accept that marriage offer she'd had.

Now, I couldn't understand that; romantic as I was back then, I was scandalized. “Marrying someone she didn't love, that your
idea of what was best for her?” I asked Dada. “Is that what you really wanted for her?”

“No, Milly,” I remember him answering real serious, and there was such a pain in his eyes that made me wish I'd kept my mouth shut. I'd have changed the subject, but he wouldn't let me. “What do we ever want for those we love?” he asked me back. “Do you know, Milly?” That pulled me up, and I don't know what I'd have replied if he hadn't gone on himself. “If you ask me today,” he said, “I think I might have an idea or two, but back then, well, I just wanted Butterfly to have what she wanted—God knows she more than deserved it—but since she couldn't have
that
...” Dada's right, there, what could he want for her if there's nothing she wanted for herself anymore? About the best anybody could wish for her would be, like he says, a secure life with maybe the possibility of being happy with someone else. And that's why he'd have liked to see her take that marriage offer, or at least give it a closer look. He'd also been thinking of her little girl, who needed a father; she needed some considering too.