Please Enjoy Your Happiness (33 page)
Read Please Enjoy Your Happiness Online
Authors: Paul Brinkley-Rogers
Night was approaching. Commander Crockett came by the office to ask me whether I was going ashore. I gave him a quick explanation of what had happened at your house and I told him I did not have a gift for you. ‘What young man would have such a gift?’ he asked with a snort. He told me to wait a few minutes, and then he returned with a record that included Lena Horne’s 1941 recording of the Rodgers and Hart song ‘Where or When’.
‘Son,’ he said, ‘I do believe from what I know about your lady friend that she would appreciate this. You are a very fortunate young man.’ And then he gave me one of his big Texas grins and exited quickly, disappearing before I could even give him a salute or say thank you.
I clicked on the power to the record player, and I listened. I listened again, and then again. I realized that all those inexplicable emotions I was feeling at that moment, which
were almost halting my beating heart, were happening because, suddenly, I was no longer a boy. I was a man.
It seems we’ve stood and talked like this before
We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can’t remember where or when.
The clothes you’re wearing are the clothes you wore
The smile you are smiling, you were smiling then
But I can’t remember where or when.
Some things that happened for the first time
Seem to be happening again.
And so it seems that we have met before,
And laughed before and loved before,
But who knows where or when?
Some things that happened for the first time
Seem to be happening again . . .
So it seems that we have met before,
And laughed before, and loved before,
But who knows where or when?
There was a notice attached to the door of the White Rose. It read: ‘We Close Tonight 2000 to 2200 Hours. We Are Very Sorry.’
I had a moment of panic. I looked at my wristwatch. It was almost eight o’clock. Twenty hundred hours in navy-speak meant eight p.m., but why was the White Rose closed? I approached the door and then noticed Mama’s nose and eyes peeking through a little sliding hatch, head-high to the average Japanese.
I stuck my nose forward to where it was almost touching Mama’s nose, and she let out a series of giggles. I heard her
voice. ‘Mr Anthony Perkins is here.’ She unlocked the door and slowly pulled it open. She was dressed in her customary white apron and baggy pants and sandals but she had newly permed her hair and she did something she had never done before: She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek.
I heard the excited voices of the hostesses inside the bar.
Suddenly all the lights came on. I could see you waving wildly in the background. Reiko was skipping towards me with her country-girl laugh and her rosy cheeks aflame. Everyone was shouting, ‘
Irasshai! Irasshai!
’ [‘Welcome! Welcome!’] That scene and that cry now so familiar to me was one of the many reasons I have always had a special place in my heart for things Japanese.
Inside the bar, attached to the pillars, the mirrors, the balconies, the booths, and even around the doorway to the
benjo
[toilet], someone had hung scores of bright pink balloons, each one of which bore the words ‘Happy. Happy.’ Nowadays, I suppose, balloons like that would have smiley faces.
I especially liked the large, crudely painted silhouette of the
Shangri-La
hanging over the cash register. Whoever had done the work had painted the ship pink and on the hull of the ship, which everyone knew had a cache of nuclear weapons, had spelled out, in deep red, the word
Happiness
.
The girls were clapping. And then they joined in a spirited Japanese-language rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which I realized was more familiar to the Japanese than it was to me, followed by a chorus of affectionate exclamations and smiles so sentimental I had to gulp to keep from bursting into tears. The jukebox was not playing country and western: It was loaded with Japanese pop tunes for dancing. It was slowly dawning on
me that this was a goodbye party that you and Mama and Reiko had organized. But for me? Just for me?
I placed myself in front of you and I gave you the record with the cut of ‘Where or When’.
‘Oh, déjà vu!’ you exclaimed. ‘I love that song that you and I never heard together.’
We stared at each other for a long, long time. ‘Yuki,’ I said. ‘When I am gone and you listen to that song, remember me.’
There were tears in your eyes, but you did not weep. The tears made your eyes flash. You were more
ron-pari
than ever before. You were wearing a tight black dress with a pattern of small sequins that glittered as your body slowly moved to the rhythm of the music. Long black hair. Eyes the colour of coal. Scarlet lipstick. Black high heels. I was dressed in my white US Navy uniform, which emphasized the thinness of my frame and my youth. You took me by the hand and led me to the dance floor while everyone clapped. You nestled your head into my chest as we slow danced to
enka
blues that as far as I was concerned had been written especially for sweetheart moments like this.
Reiko watched, a hand clutching her heart. There were tears – when I think back now, they were happy tears – trickling down her cheeks. Mama was blowing her nose, and several of the hostesses ran to her to give comfort. The dancing, the applause, the weeping and sobbing: all of it continued until Reiko came forward to lead you and me to one of the booths.
We sat there, a spotlight over our heads, our bodies touching.
You reached out, straightened the little finger of my right hand as if doing that was the most normal thing in the world, and
without offering an explanation you tied a length of red string to that finger before connecting the other end to the little finger of your left hand.
The girls, even gayer now, were dancing with each other. It seemed as if we had exchanged only a couple of dozen words since the evening began. And then you untied the string and shook my hand, smiling in a way that I had never seen before, as if tears would give you comfort but smiles would break your heart. You shot a quick look at me and then you faded into the background, slowly moving from one table to another until shadows hid you from me.
It took me several minutes to realize that you had not gone to get drinks. You had gone. You were completely gone and I had not had a chance to say goodbye. I leaped up in alarm and started for the door, but Reiko blocked my path.
‘Mr Paul,’ she said. ‘Sit down with me, please. Yuki-chan gave me this letter. It is for you. She said it is only for you. She told me to tell you, “Be happy.”’
Dear Paul,
Now that you are almost gone like a shadow disappearing from my life, it is appropriate for me to say I love you. I am writing this letter inside my house. It is the night before the party. It is dark in my room. I have been watching a beam of moonlight retreating slowly, so slowly from my bed to the window. At the moment that moon ray vanished I thought, I love you. There will be no other.
I am not afraid to send you my love, sailor boy, knowing that there will be silence. I know that you
will not come back. You will not reply and I am so happy. I am proud to be telling you this, beautiful young man, because you have grown up. You loved me too, I think. It is true, isn’t it? You don’t have to tell me. I know it is true. How wonderful and precious that feeling is for me to know that I can love again.
You have seen and heard many things this summer. Those were things that most people cannot imagine. Now you will live a long and adult life. You see clearly. Your mind is like a sharp sword. You have strong opinions. You have good judgment. Because you know what a lie is, you know how to use truth.
When you are old you can look back through all the events this summer when you helped me with your innocence to be free. Remember that you so kindly gave me the embrace of a lifetime? That embrace will sustain me until I die. That one strong embrace so gentle and yet so strong that made me a happy woman again instead of a desperate and unhappy creature with no one to love. I will remember you.
Forgive me for disappearing, Paul-san. One day I believe you will understand why I shook your hand before I vanished. I hope you can understand this very bad written letter. I worked many hours with my dictionary. I made many cups of tea. What I want to say is that we are brother and sister. We are like mother and son. We are like man and woman bound together by their love and charity. We are from opposite ends of the world, but we will be together for eternity even in this existence where love
affairs amount to nothing more than frost on the ground in late spring.
A Chinese poet from the T’ang Dynasty once told his beloved when he was losing her: “Promise that at the end of every summer when I look up at the inexhaustible night and watch the seasons change, you will be a star looking down at me . . . and if I die before you die, I will wait for you in Paradise.”
Loving You Forever,
Yukiko
Many, many years later (fifty-four years later, in fact), I finally understood. When I typed the words ‘red string’ into my computer’s Web browser, a virtual meteor shot across the sky as I looked at what Wikipedia had to say.
The red string of fate, also referred to as the red thread of destiny, red thread of fate, and other variants, is an East Asian belief originating from Chinese legend and is also used in Japanese legend. According to this myth, the gods tie a red cord around the ankles of those that are to meet one another in a certain situation or help each other in a certain way. Often, in Japanese culture, it is thought to be tied around the little finger. According to Chinese legend, the deity in charge of ‘the red thread’ is believed to be Yuè Xià Lăo (
, often abbreviated to ‘Yuèlăo’ [
]), the old lunar matchmaker god who is also in charge of marriages.
The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break.
I know why you never gave me an explanation. It was a goodbye and yet not a goodbye. As far as you were concerned, we would be linked until the end of time.
Please enjoy your happiness.
25
Can You Find It in Your Heart?
What the finer nature of the Japanese woman is, no man has told. It would be too much like writing of the sweetness of one’s own sister or mother. One must leave it in sacred silence with a prayer to all the gods.
LAFCADIO HEARN
,
FROM
SOME NEW LETTERS AND WRITINGS
10
It was mid-September 1959. We were back in San Diego. At the dock, ecstatic families were waiting to greet the
Shangri-La
. There was no one there for me, of course. I was single and uncomplicated, not single and complicated as I am now. Three thousand four hundred and forty-eight of us stood at attention in our navy blues in formation on the vast flight deck led by Davy Crockett and Charlie Peeples. Only the chaplain marched nervously around and around and up and down, searching for someone – his wife, maybe – in the shrieking and leaping crowd of women with kids in tow on the quay far below.
