Sayonara (19 page)

I
t seems strange, but I can remember each of the trivial things that filled this lovely Japanese day. When I entered our alley I passed the pachinko parlor and stuck my head in to thank the men who had helped me in my brawl with the communists, but most of them were so engrossed in their pinball games that they scarcely looked up. I then crossed the alley to the flower shop and indicated that I wanted a bouquet for our house. The little man—I keep using that word because these men were really so very small—started a cascade of Japanese, then went to the street and shouted till a boy came. Always, in Japan, there is someone who knows English. This boy explained that since I must soon go back to America, the flower man wanted to give me three most special flowers. When the shopkeeper handed them to me they looked like the ordinary flowers that American girls wear to football games. I had often bought them for Eileen Webster but now the boy said, sucking in his breath in astonishment, “Very unusual, chrysanthemum blooming in July.” He added that this was the national flower of Japan and looked with absolute covetousness as I took them from the flower man.

Thinking little of the gift I carried the flowers to our house, but as soon as the girls saw them they sucked in their breath just as the boy had done, and Katsumi ran into the street to announce that we had
chrysanthemums in July. Soon our little room was filled with neighbors who sat upon their ankles staring at the three wonderful blooms. From time to time new men would arrive, bow to Hana-ogi, sit upon the floor and contemplate this miraculous accomplishment. Even Watanabe-san left his pachinko to see. The boy who had been my translator joined us and explained this strange thing: “On the road to Kobe a florist has a big glass house in which he grows these flowers. In one section there are cloth blinds to keep out the sun. With an almanac to guide him, this clever man causes the sun to set earlier each day so that within the space of three weeks it seems to run the course of four months. The flowers are fooled. They think that autumn is upon them and they bloom.” The men sucked in their breath in admiration.

Now Katsumi suddenly felt the first life in her womb and fell slightly forward. Hana-ogi washed her forehead in cold water and Joe, faced by the necessity of leaving his pregnant wife behind in Japan, said loudly, “I hope just one thing. I hope Colonel Craford goes home and buys himself a new Buick, light blue, and I hope he's drivin' it down the avenue when I'm comin' up the other way with a Mack truck.”

I was about to caution Joe against taking a pass at Craford when I looked up to see Hana-ogi arranging her kimono. It was blue and white, very soft for summer wear. With it she wore two undergarments of thinnest cloth: pink silk and white cotton. I thought I had never seen her so lovely. Unmindful of me she experimented with the sheer lines of her garments until she brought them into a pattern which made her more beautiful than the picture I had bought. I was about to share this with her when she raised both hands and combed down the hair about her face so that it rested in the Japanese style. Studying herself in the mirror, she nodded approval. Then she heard me laugh and quickly knelt beside me. “Rroyd-san,” she said. “I got to be this way. I Japanese.” I think she expected me to be hurt, but I unrolled the print and as soon as she saw the bold characters in the upper corner she cried, “Hana-ogi! Rroyd-san, you buy?” When we had studied the picture for a moment she went to Katsumi's trunk and returned with a drawing brush and an ink stone. Using the firm Chinese characters long ago adopted for Japanese writing, she added a fresh column of print at the picture's side: “Hana-ogi of Takarazuka-za loved an American.” I caught her in my arms and kissed her but in so doing I destroyed the arrangement of color and cloth at her throat so she stood and fixed the kimonos once more.

For women in love there could be no garment more entrancing than the kimono. As I watched Hana-ogi I knew that in the future, when even the memory of our occupation has grown dim, a quarter of a million American men will love all women more for having tenderly watched some golden-skinned girl fold herself into the shimmering beauty of a kimono. In memory of her feminine grace all women will forever seem more feminine.

When Hana-ogi was finally dressed, she and Katsumi sprang their surprise! They were taking Joe and me to see the puppets of Osaka. Boldly, for we no longer cared who saw us upon the streets, we walked through the lovely summer's dusk to an ancient theater, small and off to one side, where for many generations the famous puppets of Japan had been exhibited. The girls, resplendent in their kimonos, bought our tickets for a few yen and ushered us proudly into cramped seats, where we witnessed a remarkable performance.

The stage was small and peopled with many men dressed in black. In their hands they carried four-foot puppets of strangely human quality who acted out one of Japan's classical tragedies. At first it was impossible for me to accept the illusion, for it took three grown men to operate each puppet and the men were constantly and completely visible. If the heroine were to walk across the stage, one of the towering black men openly manipulated the puppet's kimono to simulate walking, another worked her left arm and kept her clothing arranged, while a distinguished old man, dressed in a shimmering kimono and formal winglike jacket operated the puppet's head and right arm. It seemed ridiculous to have six human arms so busy in vitalizing one doll, but before I was aware of the change, I had completely accepted the convention. Curiously, the towering black men did indeed become invisible, like spirits from another world organizing human life, and I became truly engrossed in the tragedy of these dolls.

We were watching one of the many classical plays in which two lovers commit suicide. In this one a married man fell in love with a beautiful Yoshiwara girl, whom Hana-ogi identified for me in the dark as “just like old-time Hana-ogi.” I don't imagine any American has ever really understood the ins and outs of a Japanese tragedy but I did get the impression of two people caught in an increasingly unbearable set of pressures. Just what these pressures were I never grasped but Hana-ogi and Katsumi wept softly and when I asked what about they said, “It's so sad. People talking about this man.”

But what I did understand was the musicians. For the mysterious
men in black never spoke. The dialogue was sung by an amazing man accompanied by four musicians playing samisens. Maybe
sung
isn't the right word, for I have never heard more eerie sounds. The singer was a fat, bald-headed man in his late sixties who sat on his haunches, and as tragedy on the puppet stage deepened he would lean forward and scream in unbelievable fury until his round face became purple and the veins stood out in his neck. During love passages he would narrate the scene in a quivering feminine wail and as the remorseless pressure of society bore down on the lovers he would make his voice rough and horrible like a broken saw against a rusted nail. To hear this man was a terrifying experience for I had not known the human voice to be capable of such overpowering emotion. I would defy anyone not to be unnerved by that stupefying voice.

Now, as the hounded lovers approached the historic scene at Amijima where they would commit suicide together, the mysterious black figures on the stage whirled about in what seemed like a confusion of fates, the wooden dolls marched stiffly to their doom and the inspired storyteller shrieked in positive terror while the muted samisens played doleful music. There was another sound in this remarkable tragedy, but this I wasn't aware of until the curtain had closed: all the women near me were weeping and as I looked away from the epileptic singer, his face at last relaxed as if he had gone suddenly dead, I saw lovely Hana-ogi sitting with her hands folded in her kimono, sobbing desperately. She was so bereft that tears might have come to my eyes, too, but when I turned her face toward mine I saw that she was in no way unhappy. A look of ecstasy had captured her wonderful face and her eyes glowed. I was astonished and whispered, “What's the matter, Hanayo-chan?”

“It was so beautiful,” she said.

“What? The singing?”

“No,” she replied softly, taking my hand. “The double suicide. It was so tender.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

The women around me were rising now and on each face I saw this same look of ecstatic satisfaction. Apparently the double suicide had inspired them even more than it had Hana-ogi. I was not surprised, therefore, when she made no attempt to explain this mystery, but when I looked at Katsumi and saw on her tear-stained face the same look of rapture I had to acknowledge that for the Japanese audience this double suicide had provided a vitally satisfying experience.

“What's it all about?” I asked Katsumi, indicating the weeping women.

“The lovers,” she said quietly, pointing to the now barren stage. “At last they found happiness.”

“They're dead,” Joe said.

As we walked through the broad, clean streets of Osaka back to our canal I became hurtingly aware that there would always be many parts of Japan that Joe Kelly and I could never penetrate. “What happened back there?” I asked Joe. “All I saw was a bunch of dolls and a man shouting.”

The little guy laughed as if he hadn't anything to worry about and said, “Every three weeks Katsumi-san breaks down into sobbin' fits. You'd think her heart had broken. Used to scare me sick. Then I found out what was cookin'. First time it was an ex-army general who shot himself because he was charged with stealin' government money. Katsumi said it was so beautiful she had to cry. Next time it was a geisha from Kyoto. Cut her throat. That was especially lovely.”

Hana-ogi heard me laugh and turned sharply. I expected her to upbraid me but instead she took my hand and sniffled. “You not understand,” she said. “To have courage. To have honor. Is very beautiful.”

As we entered the pathway leading to our canal, conversation was broken by a substantial commotion. We heard voices crying and hurried to our own alley in time to see the launching of a magnificent display of fireworks. “Ah!” Hana-ogi whispered. “I forget. Tanabata!” And long after the fireworks had ceased the people of our alley stood staring up at the stars. In Japanese Hana-ogi explained: “Vega, the princess star, fell in love with Altair, the herdboy star. Unlike American fairy stories, the herdboy married the princess without any trouble; then like our stories, he loved his wife so much that he allowed his sheep to stray so that the king threw him onto the other side of the Milky Way river. Once each year in July he swims the river and makes love with his princess. For the people of Japan this Tanabata is the night of love.”

But Hana-ogi and I as we spread our bedroll reasoned that we had two more nights to spend together, so we left the lovemaking to the princess and her shepherd while we lay side by side listening to the exquisite sounds of the Japanese night. The old blind man who massaged sore muscles and burned moxa powder on nerves to make them well passed along our alley, sounding his melancholy flute and
tapping with his gnarled cane. For a while there was silence. Then we could hear Watanabe-san coming home from his pachinko game with his wife snapping at his heels. Hana-ogi snuggled close to me and said, “All time we never fight,” but I touched the trivial scar beneath her sideburns and asked, “What about the time I wanted you to become American?” Then she grew somber and said, “Because I know you, now I better Japanese. You better American.” Then I almost broke down. I wanted to lose myself in her love and confess, “I can't live without you, Hanayo-chan. God, I cannot face the lonely world without your tenderness.” But I knew that we had two more nights to spend together and I was afraid that if I allowed myself full sorrow now the next nights might be unbearable. I choked once and buried my face against hers, feeling her Japanese eyes against my lips, her black Japanese hair against my face. “Oh, darling,” I whispered, “why can't you marry me?” She clasped her arms about me as she had done that first night in the woods by the Shinto shrine and said, “Some people never love anyone.” (She said it: “Rots peopre nebber rub nobody.”) “Oh, Rroyd-san, I love you till my feet are old for dancing—till my teeth break off same like Hana-ogi's.”

I thought I could not bear this but then came the sweetest night sound I have ever heard, the soft passage of the noodle vendor, pushing his belled cart while he played a rhythmic melody upon his flute. All through the night the noodle men passed through the streets of Osaka sounding their lovely melody. Some used five running notes ending in a faint call. Others played a minor tune. Some played random notes and a few, whom you came to remember and cherish, played songs that might have been termed love songs, for they seemed always to come by when you were sleeping with the girl who shared your bedroll on the tatami.

For the rest of this night, as I recall, Hana-ogi didn't even place her arm across my body and although it seems ridiculous this is what we said. I asked, “Don't you think we ought to take Joe and Katsumi to dinner tomorrow?”

She replied, “No, I think we should.”

“Damn it, Hanayo, will you explain once more why you say, ‘No, we should,' and ‘Yes, we shouldn't.' ”

Patiently she went over it again. “In Japanese polite to say that way. If you speak no to me, I say no to agree with you.”

“I still don't get it.”

“Ask me a question.”

“Don't you want to marry me?”

“Yes, I not marry you.”

“But what I asked was, ‘Don't you want to?' ”

The game stopped for she whispered, “No, no, Rroyd-san. I do want to.”

I grumbled, “I can't understand either your grammar or your heart.”

She placed my hand upon her heart and the delicate golden warmth of her slim body swept over me and she said, “My heart for you takusan, takusan. Remember when you say me that?”