Butterfly's Shadow (6 page)

Cho-Cho welcomed his visits; he was a link with her father, with life as it had once been, and with Pinkerton. He trod warily, conscious of his privileged status, careful never to overstep the mark. He was behaving, he hoped, in a properly Japanese way. At least on the surface. But then, to the Japanese, he reminded himself, the surface was the reality. He felt reassured.

One day, as he was complimenting Cho-Cho on the precocious intelligence of her child, she committed the social indiscretion of cutting in, her voice barely above a whisper; attempting English, as she often did with him, for practice.

‘Sharpless-san, where is my husband?’

Where was Pinkerton? He had no idea, but he attempted a vague explanation of the difficulties of maritime life. The lieutenant could be anywhere.

‘Ah. So I will wait.’

Sharpless learned to be devious. Back in town, he quietly arranged to extend again the lease of the house, telling the landlord that the money had been sent from America.

The marriage broker had been biding his time, keeping an eye on the house above the harbour. One morning he came knocking, all smiles, to tell Cho-Cho he had a proposition, a customer. She slid the
shoji
door closed without a word.

‘Be realistic!’ he called. Pinkerton was gone, swallowed into the ocean as far as they were all concerned.

‘Luckily there are plenty more fish where he came from, you can pick and choose.’

But for Cho-Cho there was only Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton; she already had a husband.

‘Obstinacy is not a virtue in a woman!’ the broker exclaimed, exasperated.

He was heading for the road when the door opened and Cho-Cho called to him. Beaming, he hurried back.

‘I have some good offers for you.’

But it was she who had an offer, for him.

‘Young women in Nagasaki who “marry”
gaijin
will be more valued if they can speak a few words of English.’

She could give them lessons for a small fee. She could also teach them about American culture, which would please their temporary husbands.

The marriage broker felt he could be frank: vocabulary and culture were not uppermost in the minds of visiting foreign customers. Passing on social skills to other young potential ‘wives’ would not necessarily increase their charms. On the other hand, the charms she had to offer . . .

Cho-Cho closed the door.

Even when he returned a few days later to tell her a respectable elderly gentleman, a local merchant in need of an heir, was prepared to offer her a genuine marriage, a permanent arrangement, Cho-Cho remained unmoved. On his next visit Sharpless gently suggested she might consider this latest offer: the security was surely preferable to a future alone?

She turned to the window and looked out over the harbour. She gazed fiercely at the empty sea, as though through the force of her will she could create a ship, forge metal from water and draw it towards her over the curve of the horizon. And she repeated the familiar words: she knew her husband would return.

‘One day, when the swallows nest again, his ship will be there in the harbour. He said so.’

As an act of faith she had held back one narrow strip of earth in the garden simply for decoration – ‘my American flower bed!’ Surrounded by the closely planted edible greenery the orange and pink blooms sang out, a banner of gaudy vividness.

But as time passed, as humid months gave way to fog and snow, as she warmed her hands at the little charcoal stove
under the table; and the dark filigree of the swallows twice more filled the sky without his ship steaming into harbour, she grew thinner, and the flowers, untended, withered. The bright petals shrivelled, dying back into the dark soil.

When Pinkerton called at the consulate, Sharpless was not in his office.

Leaving a message to say he would look in again later, Pinkerton set off across town with a junior lieutenant on his first trip away from home, Pinkerton acting as guide and mentor to Jensen, just as Eddie had for him, three years before. Moving speedily through the pungent market district, Pinkerton remarked on signs of modernisation since his first visit:

‘They got themselves a fire-truck! In my day it was a guy with a pole and a red paper lantern running ahead of a hose reel.’

He saw that some of the streets had been paved, some shops enlarged. But the stall where he had bought a bracelet one day as he passed was still as he remembered it. He glanced over silver and enamel jewellery spread out on a white cloth:
cloisonné
. She had taught him the name for it.

He drew the young officer to a stall selling sweetmeats. ‘Jensen, you should try this: Nagasaki castella, sort of a Portuguese cake.’

Pinkerton was not given to self-searching: in his experience you took what life handed out, knocks included, and moved on. But as they wandered through the turmoil of the little town he felt unsettled; he felt stirrings: he realised with a shock of surprise that he had been happy here.

He wondered, with a twinge of guilt, how things had worked out for Cho-Cho. Not that he had anything to reproach himself
with: she was a tea-house girl, it had been a commercial arrangement, but she was a sweet kid and he hoped she had found other protectors as generous as he had been. The existence of a child lurked at the back of his mind, but as a dim ghost of a thought; he pictured for a moment a sort of infant Cho-Cho, a tiny Japanese girl in a cute kimono such as he had seen in the market. There was little reality to the picture, and certainly he felt no sense of connection. The image that retained a hold on him was of Cho-Cho herself, clad in silk, a porcelain doll, the gentleness accompanied by a surprising passion. (Though, there again, he wondered whether ‘passion’ was something they taught the girls, a tool of their trade; a classy way to turn a trick.)

‘It’s a great place for a visit,’ he told the new boy, and threw in a few facts: the system of the temporary wife, the house, ‘home comforts’.

It was this mood of easy nostalgia that led him to the road round the harbour and up the hill, to take a look at the wood and paper house – if it still existed – where he had enjoyed sweet nights of pleasure on the futon, and learned to eat raw fish.

He was explaining the curious concept of a Japanese yard – ‘a bunch of rocks, gravel and moss, basically’ – as they rounded the last bend and came in sight of the house. To his surprise, the area around the house appeared to be filled edge to edge with green plants; vegetables, by the look of it. At the far end chickens pecked and clucked. The door of the house was open, and standing in the entrance they saw a small figure, thin, very upright, in a plain blue kimono. She called out, her voice clear and firm.

‘Pinker-ton!
O-kaeri nasai!
Wel-u-come home!’

Sub-Lieutenant Jensen was confused: surely the so-called marriage had been a temporary affair? He glanced at his senior officer who was staring, aghast, at the woman in the doorway.

‘I saw the ship,’ she called, ‘with your telescope. I knew it was you.’

She spoke English, surprising both men. Pinkerton was not often at a loss; he reckoned he knew how to handle a difficult situation. The problem here was that he was uncertain what situation he was confronting. Maybe the girl had prospered, had stayed on in the house, and was merely pleased to see an old client back in town. That must be it.

Then, almost invisible behind Cho-Cho, clutching at her knee, he saw the child; blue eyes fixed on his, blond hair bright in the dimness of the room. He was wearing a sailor suit. A living doll. And from the blurred jumble of images that occupied the inside of Pinkerton’s head, one sharp memory emerged: himself as a child, posing for a snapshot, holding his mother’s hand, on a visit to the State Fair. Staring at the child now, it all flooded back: the grinding music of the carousel, the crowd, the smell of hot dogs and the taste of cotton candy. The great treat, he recalled, had been for your dad to win a stuffed animal or a doll at the shooting range. A doll as big as a real live child. He recalled the snapshot, mounted in a leather-bound album rubbed at the corners, put away in some drawer. He had been wearing a sailor suit.

Cho-Cho drew the boy close and stood waiting, her hands on his shoulders, as the men approached.

‘Here is your son. He is called Joy.’

Then, as the child darted forward and flung his arms round Pinkerton’s knees, Cho-Cho knelt, touching her forehead to the ground. She rose to her feet, smiling.

‘You can talk to him. He will understand. He is an American boy.’

Jensen saved the occasion. He stepped forward and introduced himself. The words flowed: he had heard so much about Japan, Lieutenant Pinkerton had told him what a great place Nagasaki was . . . He talked on, the soft Southern vowels filling the silence.

Years later, in command of his own ship, under enemy fire,
Jensen recalled that occasion as the moment he recognised he possessed qualities of leadership. At the time, he was aware only that Pinkerton seemed frozen, incapable of speech.

Within the house, out of sight, Suzuki was about to leave for the late factory shift. She hovered by the window and noted that an ocean liner was anchored in the harbour. She picked up Cho-Cho’s telescope and looked more closely at the ship: the funnel, gleaming brass and pale deck. Leaning on the rail was a young woman wearing a yellow dress that ended at her knees, revealing legs in flesh-coloured stockings. Her hair too was yellow; cut short, barely visible beneath a tight hat that covered her head like a cooking basin. As Suzuki watched, a man climbed from a small boat on to the deck and approached the young woman. They embraced. The man was Sharpless-san.

For a few minutes, in the state of turbulence following his first sight of the boy, Pinkerton was incapable of anything more than a shocked recognition of paternity. He listened with astonishment as the child recited greetings, first in Japanese, then English.

Suzuki, emerging from the house, eyes downcast, mortified to be seen in her work clothes, did her best to remain invisible as she skirted the group. But Pinkerton called out, ‘Hey, Suzuki! You’re still here!’

She paused and bowed, still without looking up, trying to keep her factory-scarred hands out of sight, tucked into her sleeves. But Pinkerton, desperately seeking diversions from the calamity of this encounter, drew her aside and muttered that he needed a present for the boy – for Joey, as his Western ear had heard the name.

‘You understand what I’m saying?’

Suzuki, who understood quite well what he was saying, cast a frantic glance in Cho-Cho’s direction.

‘Suzuki has work she must attend to—’

‘Sure, just as soon as she’s got me a little something for Joey, okay?’

He pressed bills into Suzuki’s hand and pushed her cheerfully towards the path.

‘I should be going,’ Jensen said. ‘I can find my own way back to the ship.’

Pinkerton, aware this would leave him stranded alone with Cho-Cho, waved away the suggestion:

‘Heck no, you’ll just get yourself lost. Enjoy the view, sniff that clean air.’

But the young lieutenant proved obstinate and set off to catch up with Suzuki, who could point out to him the best way back to the harbour.

On board the liner Sharpless greeted his niece affectionately.

‘My dear Nancy, welcome to Japan!’

Mary was his favourite sister, and the girl had her mother’s looks, the same way of wrinkling her nose when she laughed, a mannerism he found endearing. He smiled, taking pleasure in the look of her, the shiny hair, the quick smile, the sense she brought him of an outside world where people were open and direct and said what they thought. He had grown to love this complicated, unfathomable, coiled society; there was a poetry to social intercourse here that turned humdrum exchange into an art form, but just occasionally he yearned for simplicity, the calling of a spade a spade. The American world.

As they rode through town he made plans for her brief visit.

‘You’ll stay at the Methodist mission house, with Mrs Sinclair.’

Disappointed, Nancy murmured, ‘Not with you?’

He shook his head, smiling.

‘My quarters are hardly suitable. I think I should warn you: Nagasaki has made some progress – look at the paved streets – but conditions are unlikely to match American expectations.’

He did not add that it had been his own decision to choose a traditional Japanese house rather than westernised accommodation.

He asked for news from home, but as they rattled along the road he kept breaking in to point out an unusual building, or a view worth noting. She saw with some surprise the affection, even pride, with which he regarded this malodorous, primitive place.

Only when she was seated across the desk from him did he enquire why she had so suddenly decided to join the ship which brought her to Nagasaki. She gave a small, gleeful jiggle of the shoulders.

‘I thought you’d never ask! The trip’s horribly expensive, but Daddy said he never gave me a proper twenty-first birthday present, so this is it.’

An excited laugh and a wrinkling of her nose. ‘My fiancé is here and it seemed a cute thing to do, to give him a surprise!’

‘You’re engaged! I didn’t know—’

‘It happened quite quickly.’ She laughed again. ‘He swept me off my feet!’

‘And he’s here in Nagasaki?’

A tray with tea and refreshments edged its way round the half-open door, followed by a young servant. He bowed and placed a small salver with a scribbled note on the desk. Sharpless read it and glanced up at the youth: ‘Lieutenant Pinkerton was here?’

He heard Nancy cry out in surprise and at once he understood everything. He felt a deadening sense of inevitability: he was about to watch a disaster take place, unable to influence or avert it.

‘You are engaged to Lieutenant Pinkerton.’

She blushed. Sharpless was astonished that in this modern day American girls could still blush, but then he remembered that, despite the flapper dress and cloche hat he was familiar with from the American newspapers, Nancy was not a modern girl. She was the granddaughter of missionaries, the daughter of churchgoing folk, herself trained to be a teacher. She would, of course, have a sense of duty, he thought, and was not comforted.