Please Enjoy Your Happiness (18 page)

It was 24 July, the day after my twentieth birthday and the day after the
Shangri-La
left Yokosuka and headed into an approaching typhoon. I could see the storm advancing across a violent sea of bottle green. With every hour the gale intensified. The wind sounded as if it were a chorus of scalded devils. Black clouds swarmed above us, and the rain slashed down through the air in ice-cold squalls.

I went below deck to get shelter. I took the seat in front of my desk in the cramped
News Horizon
office. Warnings came over the intercom to tie down aircraft and machinery, and I wanted to make sure the large typewriter there was firmly secured. The ship was groaning and grinding, and every now
and then there would be a huge thud and then a shudder as a giant wave crashed over the bow.

Red Downs and Jim Fowler were quizzing me about my friendship with you, Yuki. I was trying to maintain a low profile, because so many things had been happening to me that were confusing and threatening. I had not announced I was having a birthday. I did not even tell you on which day it would occur because it did not seem to me to have any significance at all in a summer during which typhoons of another kind pushed me to the limits of understanding.

Jim, who had a gorgeous black-eyed girlfriend named Connie back in Kansas, whose eight-by-ten-inch photo stood watch over him on his desk, did not probe too hard. He liked you. He liked women. Sometimes I would catch him whispering things to Connie’s photograph. He often sat in the White Rose to watch you talking, a smile on his pale Midwestern face.

One day, he told me after looking at you that he was ‘entranced’. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You, of all people, should know what I mean. If you don’t know, maybe it is because you haven’t slept with a girl before . . . have you?’

Red could not believe that you and I had not even kissed. He could not understand why, if you and I were close, there was no sex and no one was attempting seduction. If I had tried to tell him about the effect on me of a single bead of sweat running down your neck, he would have laughed in my face. ‘You ever been with a girl before?’ he asked aggressively in his deep Mississippi drawl. ‘What are you doing when you go ashore? Why are you even in the navy? You got that fine woman back in Yokosuka writing you that she loves you. How did you get a woman to do that, if you haven’t slept with her? I just
don’t get it. You want me to show you how to chat up a woman – you know, kissing, squeezing, hugging – until she gives it up?’

‘Gives it up? What do you mean?’

Red rolled his eyes and laughed. ‘Man,’ he said. ‘In Mississippi that girl would be having my babies!’

I was too embarrassed to engage in this kind of conversation. I certainly would never have never dared to tell you what Red said. If I gave even a hint of what was going on between us – the drama, the poetry, history lessons, the cops, the boyfriend, the executioner, Commander Crockett – I knew it would circulate like a jet-fuel fire through the ranks of Division X, which included me, Red, and Jim, and the guys who worked in the print shop, in photography, and in the administrative ranks. If they knew I was still a virgin, and that I was actually not on a mission to cease being a virgin, they would be merciless. They would drag me to the nearest Wan Chai bordello in our next port of call, Hong Kong, to experience an important moment of truth; they would probably bribe a Suzie Wong girl who really knew how to wriggle to do whatever women do in the cribs in the darkened rooms above the bar.

Red continued to probe. He was enjoying it. I stood my ground. There was no way I was going to answer his constant question – ‘Are you are in love with her?’ – because it was a secret and, to be truthful, like the witnesses to rape and murder in the film
Rashomon
, I did not know.

Then we heard a sailor running down the all-steel corridor linking the various offices. Soon other crew members were running. They were banging on the metal. There were some rebel yells. What was this, I wondered? Red stuck his head out through the opening left by the watertight door and asked what was going on. Was it a fire drill? One of the planes had crashed
on the deck? There was a fight? A mutiny? What?

‘Sweet Jesus and glory be to God,’ Red said. He lifted his hands up to a sky we could not see, in a gesture of salutation.

‘A Japanese girl has just won Miss Universe!’

His brown eyes were somehow bigger. He had a grin that went from ear to ear.

I grabbed Jim’s arm. Red grabbed me. We jumped up and down, without really knowing why. You would have liked seeing us enjoying our happiness, Yuki-chan.

Then the squawk box on the captain’s bridge came to life. ‘Now hear this! Now hear this!’ someone announced. Then a high-pitched boatswain’s whistle blew, which was usual when there was an important announcement such as, ‘Comnavforjapan departing’ (the admiral commanding US naval forces in Japan leaving the ship).

‘Attention! Attention!’ an official voice barked. To me, it was a familiar bark. ‘We have just been advised that a young woman from Tokyo, Akiko Kojima, was selected over four other finalists, including Miss USA and Miss Brazil and Miss England and Miss Norway, for the Miss Universe title in Long Beach, California.’

There was a pause, and a cough.

The voice resumed. ‘According to press reports, when asked what she wanted to do with her life, Miss Kojima said, “I want to be a lovely wife.”’ There was another pause and another cough. ‘So, if we can get this cruise to Hong Kong out of the way and keep everything shipshape and keep our noses clean, maybe . . . maybe . . . one of you goddamn swab jockeys [vernacular for “sailor”] can get lucky when we return to Japan and make Miss Kojima your blushing bride.’ Silence.
Cough
.
Cough
.

We three friends shot glances at each other. I mouthed the name ‘Crockett’.

Cheering erupted up and down the corridor. It occurred to me that all this joy indicated that many members of the crew were in love. Their hearts had been stolen, somewhere, by someone, some sweetheart, back in Yokosuka. I had a sweetheart too, and what a sweetheart! No one was as special as Yuki. I wanted to jump up and down as well, but I was cautious. Were you my girlfriend? Well, not exactly. Had you stolen my heart? How wild and dramatic that sounded. But there was no doubt that the selection of Kojima Akiko was vindication to those among the crew who had an ‘only’ (a girlfriend ashore); it meant they had made a good choice, and maybe even their mothers would approve now if they brought a Japanese bride back home. I knew, however, that my mother, who cherished her complete set of cruel and dark novels by Charles Dickens bound in green and gilt gold, would never approve. I had written to tell her, happily, that I had made an ‘important’ woman friend in Yokosuka, and she had written me back quickly, and curtly, to tell me that I was being an ‘idiot’. Yes, an idiot. At least she did not call me a gnat!

The jubilation was continuing aboard ship. Some men began comparing love letters. Those lucky enough to get a red lipstick kiss on the paper flashed that around in triumph. We were all about eighteen to twenty years old. Evidently, we had all been severely bitten by spiders.

I wondered if there was equal excitement in Yokosuka. I imagined a scene in Honcho with hundreds of bar hostesses in their cocktail gowns running out onto the streets in a near riot. And you, you . . . you would be reading a book, no doubt. Maybe you were reading the
Selected Poems of Rainer Maria
Rilke
, which I had purchased across the street from the White Rose in Japanese translation, spending an entire week’s salary, because you had told me that elements of your most intimate dreams could be found in Rilke’s verse. For example:

THE COURTESAN

Yes, you would be reading, I thought. If there was a celebration you would be shaking your head dismissively and telling Reiko-chan that she would be foolish to believe that Japanese girls were only now being looked at as the most desirable women on earth. ‘Of course we are,’ I knew you would be saying. ‘I already knew that! Japanese women are the best. But we should be
appreciated for our minds and our loyalty and dedication, Reiko, and not for our bodies and our teeth, as if we were horses.’

The typhoon was mostly gone when I woke up, groggy, in my bunk, from an intermittently sleepless night. I showered and got into my dungarees and had a breakfast of stale scrambled eggs, cold French toast, and maple syrup that had the consistency of carpenter’s glue. This came with obligatory slabs of Dole pineapple that were a startlingly bright yellow. I also had two cups of scalding hot coffee that did nothing at all to wake me up, unlike those tiny shots of super-sweet espresso served with such gusto by Mr Ito at the Mozart café.

I headed straight for the office. I wanted to see if anyone had been able to beg, borrow, or steal a photograph of Kojima Akiko.

Chaplain Peeples was sitting on my chair with his feet up on my desk, scanning the several copies of
China Reconstructs
– the monthly picture magazine published in Peking by America’s ‘Red Chinese enemies’ – I had acquired the last time we were in Hong Kong.

He put his left hand up in the air, with his index finger pointed straight up. His gesture stopped me in my tracks.

‘To tell you the truth, Rogers,’ he said, ‘I am not convinced that you are an appropriate person to be working for the
News Horizon
. I found this photograph of Akiko Kojima on your desk this morning. I hope you are not planning to use it in the next issue of the newspaper.’ He continued, clearly alarmed, ‘I am going to have to report that you are reading Communist publications. We don’t do that in the United States. SEAMAN ROGERS!’ he shouted, his voice suddenly loud. ‘I know you are English – or is it British? But that is not an excuse.’

‘An excuse?’ I asked politely, but insincerely.

‘Yes, England – Britain – is full of Communists. Marxists. Socialists. Free-thinkers. Radicals. Freemasons. Spiritualists. Gypsies. Fortune-tellers. Homosexuals. Fakirs. Feminists. Fu Manchu. Eccentrics too, I suppose. They are all really bad, unfortunate people who want to destroy our way of life. Do you want to destroy the American way of life, Rogers?’

I have often wondered how Chaplain Peeples got that way. I never really made an attempt to probe further during that summer because he was a senior officer and I was nothing, although he did take a peevish interest in me. Whenever he and I talked, he was angry at me, or upset, or anxious, or offended, and he always laced his words with a strange kind of venom. I could never decide whether this was the way he really was, and he really believed what he was declaring, or whether he was doing this for effect. If it was all play-acting, it did not make me falter. Commander Crockett was different. He too had taken an interest in me. The only time he addressed me was when he was upset also. I was not accustomed then to barrages of four-letter words. But he gave me glimpses of a Texas-size humanity that always caused me to look at him as a hero and a guardian. But Peeples was a living myth, a caricature created by himself and not created, I have always thought, by a merciful God.

‘You have been to England?’ I asked the chaplain, trying hard not to say that with a sneer or smirk.

‘Of course not!’ he said loudly. ‘I am a Baptist!’

‘Oh,’ I said, not knowing what a Baptist was. ‘I see.’

‘Why is this photograph of Miss Japan on your desk?’ Chaplain Peeples demanded.

‘Umm, she is now Miss Universe,’ I said.

‘Are you trying to correct me?’ There was a hint of outrage
there. I could sense he was trying to lay a trap. Maybe he would accuse me of insubordination or something devilish like that.

‘Oh no, sir,’ I said respectfully. ‘It is obvious that you know she has been selected by the judges as the most beautiful woman in the world.’

There was a silence as cold as a severe frost clamping down on the earth, the kind of frost that froze the surface of the goldfish pond in my Auntie Nancy’s garden back in England every year, leaving the fish under the ice motionless, as their life-support systems closed down to almost zero.

The chaplain picked up the photo of Kojima Akiko. I got a quick glimpse of her – such elegance. He inserted the photo into one of my copies of
China Reconstructs
– the one with a pretty girl on the cover wearing an olive drab cap with a red star on it and a dazzling smile on her face designed to corrupt young male Americans, no doubt. He rolled up the magazine and tucked it under his arm. He looked back at me with some hostility.

‘Come with me, Rogers,’ he said, as if he had divine power that could move Heaven and Earth. ‘There is something sinister about you, young man.’

I followed him into the officer’s quarters, where there was a lot more mahogany panelling than there was grim grey metal. Two funny fliers I knew passed by. They gave me a thumbs-up. ‘It must be time for prayers,’ one of the fliers remarked. Chaplain Peeples unlocked the door to his office. It was full of toys and boxes of playthings he had been collecting in Hawaii and California to hand out to poor Chinese and Filipino children on behalf of the US Navy under what he called ‘Operation Handclasp’. We often ran photos of the tall, severe Peeples shaking hands with various small Asian gentlemen in suits, who
looked both embarrassed and intimidated by the sheer size of
Shangri-La
generosity, backed up by nuclear weapons.