The Sun Gods (26 page)

27

TO BILL, THE UNIVERSITY
of Washington had always seemed a hopelessly large, hopelessly secular institution. It was where the scientists labored to disprove the word of God, where the communists held their secret meetings, where beer-swilling fraternity men tortured and debauched new inductees into their dens of iniquity. He recalled having once driven through the sprawling campus in the back seat of his father's car. They had kept the windows closed tight the whole time.

Since then, he had had no occasion to visit the university. The assumption had always been that he would attend Cascade-Pacific College, and he had gone there without question. Now that he thought of it, it seemed as if his entire life had been spent within walking distance of home. Occasional excursions across the Ballard Bridge to Clare's neighborhood hardly counted. As he pulled into the broad mall of the main entrance on 45th, it struck him that a mere ten-minute drive was all that separated his closed, little world from this unknown territory. The university campus was a cool, green park, filled with drooping pines.

At the registrar's office, he tried to register as a “transient student” in the university's beginning Japanese course but was told he had to be tested before he could be admitted to the course's second term, the winter quarter, which would start after New Year's. He found his way to the office of a Professor Tatsumi, who immediately began speaking to him in Japanese when Bill told him why he had come.

Professor Tatsumi was a soft-spoken man in his early sixties with no more than a few wisps of hair running in straight lines across his shining pate. He wore tortoise-shell glasses that seemed to have trouble clinging to his broad, flat nose. His first question to Bill in Japanese was “What is your name?”

Professor Tatsumi chuckled—in a restrained, courtly sort of way—when Bill gave his name, and by the time Bill had replied to two or three more questions, the professor was shaking with laughter.

“Where did you learn your Japanese?” the professor asked in English.

“Is it really that bad?”

“No, actually it's surprisingly grammatical. And your pronunciation is pretty good, too, which is the main thing we've worked on this quarter. I'm tempted to let you in if you think you can catch up with the others. Buy the textbook and work on it over winter break. We'll bring you up to speed next quarter. One last question, though: why do you want to study Japanese?”

He wanted to answer simply, “I need to go to Japan to search for my mother,” but he was not ready to answer all the questions that would raise. “I'm studying for the ministry at Cascade-Pacific, and I'm thinking of doing missionary work in Japan.”

“That's nice, I guess,” the professor said.

“You guess?”

“You seem so motivated, you'd probably make an excellent graduate student. Let's see how you do next quarter. Our literature program's pretty good, if you're looking for an area of study to apply your Japanese.”

As his senior year went by, Bill began to imagine that he was a kind of Paul Bunyan, trying to gain a foothold in two parts of the city at once. The foot at Cascade-Pacific was planted firmly on hard ground, while the one at the university skipped nimbly from log to log in a gushing river of language that never slowed down.

At Cascade-Pacific, he knew where he was. Sometimes, on the small campus, he had the feeling that he knew all too well where he was, especially when he would bump into Clare or her friends. Gradually, he began spending more time than necessary among the university's anonymous hordes, where the work he did was endlessly exhilarating. Scheduling conflicts made it necessary for him to petition the college dean to excuse him from daily chapel attendance, a privilege rarely granted at Cascade-Pacific.

Toward the second half of winter quarter, his grades in Japanese began to decline somewhat, and nothing he did seemed to remedy the situation. Bill took his worries to Professor Tatsumi.

“Most students would be perfectly satisfied with grades like yours,” he said.

“I'm not just earning grades,” Bill protested. “I want to learn the language inside out.”

“That's very admirable, but you're going about it all wrong.”

“What do you mean? This course is like a monster. It's eating up the time I need to devote to my course work at Cascade-Pacific, and still it's not satisfied.”

“But the difficulties you're having are not language
difficulties,” Professor Tatsumi observed. “Students come to me constantly with the same misconception. They think they can ‘learn the language' as though it were some kind of abstract skill that existed in a vacuum—like learning algebra. Language doesn't work that way. Language is immersed in culture. You just don't know anything about the country and its culture—the ‘background' knowledge that everybody
inside
the culture can safely assume everybody else knows without further explanation. If you really want to learn Japanese ‘inside out,' you're going to have to learn about Japanese culture inside out.”

“But—”

“Now, wait a minute, I was just getting to my pitch.” Professor Tatsumi smiled broadly, his tortoise-shell glasses riding up on the wide bridge of his nose. “You're one of the best students I've had in years. Why don't you apply to do graduate work here?”

“You mentioned that possibility before, but I'm going into the ministry.”

“I remember. But you'd make a first-rate academic.”

“Thanks, Professor. I will think about it.”

Bill had never imagined that a compliment could cause him such distress. He had been taking his calling for granted so long now that the appearance of another alternative was forcing him to question why he was going into the ministry when serving God had dropped to his second priority. The cause that lived closest to his heart was the search into his past, and it was to this that he was now devoting the greatest portion of his energy—not that it was yielding tangible results. But the more he learned, the closer he felt to his memory of Mitsu.

Bill was called into Dean Foster's office at the end of April. He could only imagine that the dean was going to reprimand him for lack of interest in his courses at Cascade-Pacific. Instead, he stared in disbelief when the cherub-faced dean declared that, owing to his outstanding academic record and his avowed goal of missionary service, Bill had been chosen to make the Robert L. Houston Memorial Address at the graduation ceremony this June.

“Thank you, sir … thank you very much. But I can't do it,” he replied, astonished himself to realize the truth and finality of his own words.

Dean Foster's face flushed a bright pink. “Now, see here, Morton, this is a great honor. I've already informed your parents and they're tickled to death.”

“I don't know what to say, sir. I never imagined …”

“I'd say that makes you all the more suited for the honor. A sign of true humility.”

“Believe me, sir, it's not humility. I've changed my plans. I don't think I will be doing missionary work.”

“You don't
think
so? You're not sure, then.”

“No, I'm not going to. I'm definitely not.” He was smiling now, and he felt his heart pounding.

“This is a very serious business, Morton. I do wish you had informed us earlier of your decision.”

“But I couldn't. I made it just now.”

“Do you mind telling me why? I was under the impression you had been studying Japanese at the university specifically to prepare yourself for missionary service.”

“I was.”

“If this is some kind of whim …”

“Call it a flash of insight. Something has happened to my faith over the past year, something I haven't quite worked out for myself. I only know I have lost some of the certainty it takes to make believers out of non-believers.”

“In other words, you've been accepting a 25% ministerial discount on tuition, and now that you're about to graduate—”

“Please, Dean Foster, it's nothing as crass as that. I'm just not sure what I want to do anymore.”

The next day, Bill submitted his application for graduate study in the university's Department of Far Eastern and Slavic Languages and Literature. When he gave the news to Professor Tatsumi in the hall afterward, the professor let out a loud “Yes!” that echoed up and down the marble-floored corridor of Thomson Hall and brought him startled glances.

“Too bad you didn't decide sooner,” the Professor said afterward. “We could have gotten you a fellowship.”

When Bill took his final exam in Biblical Theology on June 9, workmen were beginning to erect the tent framework in front of Bander Hall for the graduation ceremonies on Saturday. Some of the other students came dangerously close to violating the college rule against dancing in public when they witnessed the hubbub.

At Maneki, the boss's wife, Kumiko, chattered endlessly about the “great future” he had in store.

When graduation day came, the sight of the red-and-white candy-striped tent in the morning sunshine meant only that he would have to endure a few more hours with his family, who were seated inside. He watched his father shake hands with Dean Foster and introduce Lucy and their sons Kevin and Mark, both of whom had inherited Lucy's bright red hair.

He spotted Clare standing with her friends jabbering away. She never once looked in his direction.

Precisely at ten o'clock the processional music started, and the faculty began to file into the tent. When it came time for him to march down the center aisle, he noticed a small, dark-haired woman in the audience. After he had taken one or two more strides ahead, he glanced back to make sure. Yes, it was Kumiko, her eyes shining in his direction, looking as proud as any mother in the assembly. For the first time, he experienced the sense of fulfillment he imagined the others in the graduating class to be feeling.

President Shelton climbed to the podium. “Welcome to the sixty-sixth annual commencement on this glorious eleventh day of June 1960. This has been another wonderful year in the history of our college. Academically, we have seen definite enrichment of the curriculum and increased interest on the part of both faculty and students in genuine scholarship, research, and world service. Along with this growth has been equal progress as a Christian institution.”