Sayonara: A Novel Page 6
“I did try, sir.”
“Carstairs tells me you even kissed the girl!”
“I did. He asked me to.”
“Who, Carstairs?”
“No, Kelly.”
The general was outraged. He banged out of his chair and stood looking at a map. Finally he exploded. “I’m damned if I can understand bow a man like you, brought up in the best traditions of the service, can outrage military propriety in this way. Such marriages are sordid, disgraceful things. We have to tolerate them because Washington says so, but we don’t have to polish our buttons and go down to kiss the bride!”
“I …”
“Nauseating. The whole thing’s nauseating, but it’s especially sickening to have a member of your own staff—you might say your own immediate family …”
The bawling out I got from the general was nothing compared to the one I took from his wife. She was sweet as butter during dinner but after the general and Eileen had left on prearranged signals she said bluntly, “Do I understand, Lloyd, that you actually encouraged a Japanese marriage this morning?”
“One of the men from my outfit.”
“But you surely didn’t attend—not officially?”
“He asked me to help him out.”
“And you went to the consulate, before other Japanese who might know you …”
“Look, Mrs. Webster, it was a guy from our outfit.”
“It wasn’t just a guy, Lloyd. It was humiliation to the service and a direct slap in General Webster’s face.”
“I didn’t approve of it, Mrs. Webster. I argued against it for days.”
“But your very presence signified approval. In this dining room right now half the officers are laughing at me.”
So that was it. She wasn’t really concerned about the welfare of the service nor the standing of her husband. She was angry that something which she had started—non-fraternization—should have backfired and brought ridicule upon her. She was especially angry that the instrument of this ridicule should have been, in General Webster’s words, a member of her own family.
I asked, “How could I have refused to attend the wedding …”
“Don’t call it a wedding! It was a mean little surreptitious ceremony on the most sordid level. It was permitted only because some lily-livered idiots in Washington have no courage to face facts.”
“I agree with you, Mrs. Webster.”
She didn’t want agreement. She wanted to knock me into shape, once and for all. When I saw her closing in on me, trying to make me apologize for what I had done in good faith, I sensed pretty clearly that she saw herself fighting her daughter’s marriage battle. Years before she had taken on young Mark Webster in just such a fight and she had been victorious and the entire Army knew she had won and from that time forth she had molded and marched Mark Webster into a one-star generalship that he could never have attained by himself. Now she was going to teach her daughter how to march me into four or five stars.
She frowned and said, “If you expect to make a name for yourself in service, Lloyd, you can’t offend the proprieties. You can’t insult generals.”
I got mad and said, “I’ve made a pretty good name for myself so far. Shooting down MIGs, not worrying about social life.”
She gasped and put her hand to her mouth as if she had been slapped. With profound rage she cried, “You’re an insolent little upstart.” Immediately she was ashamed of herself and tried to recover by saying something halfway sensible but fury was upon her and she stormed ahead, “You’re like your insufferable father.” I knew that Mark Webster was afraid of my father—he was deathly afraid of anyone who had more stars than he—and I was surprised that Mrs. Webster should have launched an assault on someone who might be in a position to affect her husband’s career, but she was trembling mad and didn’t care what she said. She added, “You ought to be careful you don’t grow up to be a second Harry Gruver.”
She sounded exactly like her daughter and I recalled with a sense of shock that almost every time I had seen Eileen’s picture in the society columns of towns where she had lived, she was invariably with her mother. They were like sisters, shoulder to shoulder against the world.
My father had commented on this once and had said he knew there were two kinds of Army marriages, his where the wife stayed home and Mark Webster’s where the wife tagged along. He told me he would honestly have preferred the latter, but he observed that it usually did hard things to the wife. “She’s always on the move and her children are always on the move. So the women folk band together in tough little cliques. I can honestly say I never feared the Japanese or the Germans but I do fear such cliques of Army women.”
I heard Mrs. Webster saying bitterly, “I should think Eileen would be ashamed and disgusted.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even say that I was sure she would see to it that Eileen became disgusted. Instead I looked at her very carefully and when I saw her clean, handsome, hard face with not a wrinkle out of place I thought of Joe Kelly’s Japanese girl whom I had kissed that morning, and all at once I caught a glimmering of what the American secretary must have meant when she said, “These damned Japanese girls have a secret.” I had an intimation of their secret: they loved somebody—just simply loved him. They weren’t going to make him a four-star general or they weren’t going to humiliate him over some trivial affair for which he had already apologized. They just got hold of a man and they loved him.
I had now seen two American marriages at close hand: my parents’ where people got along together in a respectful truce, and the Websters’ where there was an early surrender followed by a peace treaty without vengeance. But I had never witnessed a marriage where two people loved each other on an equal basis and where the man ran his job on the outside and the woman ran her job at home and where those responsibilities were not permitted to interfere with the fundamental love that existed when such things as outside jobs and inside housekeeping were forgotten.
Mrs. Webster said acidly, “Eileen asked me to tell you she’d be at the hairdresser’s.”
I thanked her, held her chair as she rose and showed her to the elevator. I think she knew that she had presented a dismal picture during our talk, for she said, “I do hope you won’t embarrass the general again.” I promised her that I wouldn’t irritate the general and refrained from pointing out that we had been talking about something quite different: my irritating her.
I went down to a lower floor of the hotel where there was a hairdresser for the American girls who worked with our Army in Japan, and there I saw Eileen coming out more brilliant and lovely than I had ever seen her before. She had what Life magazine once called the well-scrubbed look and was absolutely adorable with the fresh bright charm that only American girls ever seem to have. I was disgusted with myself for having quarreled with her the night before and suggested that we sit in a corner of the elegant lounge, where a Japanese boy in bright blue bar-boy’s uniform served us drinks.
I said, “If you looked so adorable all the time no one would ever be able to fight with you.”
“We weren’t fighting last night,” she teased.
“I’m glad,” I said, “because I’ve got to keep in the good graces of at least one of the Websters.”
She frowned and asked, “Mum give you a bad time at lunch?”
“Very bad,” I said.
“Mother’s a special case, Lloyd. The Army’s her whole life. She watches over father like a mother hen and she’s been very good for him. Therefore he’s got to trust her and if she says she doesn’t like to see American officers with Japanese girls … Frankly, I don’t think Father approves of all the orders he’s had to issue because traditionally the Army is pretty adult about men and women getting together—any women. But he’s learned that in the long run Mother is usually right.”
“Is she?”
“Yes.”
“Now it’s my turn to be scared.”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s so bad with that?” she asked.
“I can’t stand being pushed around.”
Eileen lifted her glass and made circles on the marble table. She said slowly, “I don’t think I’d be bossy the way Mother is because you’re much stronger than Father ever was. But mostly I wouldn’t hurt you because I love you so much.”
That was what I wanted to hear and I said, “I’m twenty-eight now and I’ve been going around with too many airplanes. What I want now is a wife and a family.” She sneaked in a kiss and I said, “Whenever I’ve thought about a family it’s with someone like you—a girl with an Army background like my own.…”
She became gently irritated and protested. “That’s just what I mean. Why do you say, ‘a girl like me’? I’m not a type. I’m me. Damn it all, Lloyd, haven’t you ever wanted to just grab me and haul me away to a shack somewhere?”
Now it was my turn to get on edge and I said, “When you’re an officer you meet endless problems of enlisted men who just grabbed something and hauled it away. It doesn’t appeal to me.”
She said, “Lloyd, a man has to surrender himself sometimes. You’re not so important you have to defend yourself like a fort.”
From the manner in which Eileen spoke I could tell that she was just as tense as I was and it occurred to me that if I married Eileen we would always be a little bit afraid of each other, a little bit on edge always to be ahead of the other person. Mrs. Webster, frankly, had scared the devil out of me and now I could see the same martial tendencies in her daughter. I could see her organizing my life for me solely on the grounds that she loved me, but the definition of what was love would always be her definition; and I thought of Joe Kelly and the girl he had found. Their fight was with the outside world—the Army and State Department and General Webster—but with themselves they were at peace.
Now Eileen had me scared exactly the way her mother had a little while before. I’ve learned to admit it when I’m scared because it takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid. I remember when I was fighting three Russians up at the Yalu. I didn’t see my wingman get shot down, but all of a sudden I thought the world had gotten awful quiet and I got scared as the devil. I started to run like hell and just as the MIGs were closing in for the kill four of our planes turned up in the distance. I didn’t care how bad I looked because I was scared. Point is, if I hadn’t been frightened silly I wouldn’t have started running and my four rescuers would never have reached me in time.
I said, “What you said last night turned up a lot of new ideas.”
“You make it sound very unpleasant.”
“Didn’t you intend it that way? Your mother sure intends it when she gives a man hell.”
She got out of her chair and said, “I don’t think you want to take me to the dance tonight.”
I didn’t want to answer this so I said, “Some of the things you said last night made sense. We ought to think things out.”
“That’s fine with me. I suppose you want to do your thinking—tonight—alone?”
I said, “O.K. by me,” and she started walking across the lounge. It was late in the afternoon and the place was empty, so I ran after her and said, “Eileen, what are we fighting about?”
And she replied, “The next fifty years,” and she looked so cold and so much like her mother that I turned and walked away and caught a ride out to Itami air field, where I astonished everybody by reporting for duty two days early.
MIKE BAILEY: “As a Marine I have certain theories which explain everything.”
You could say that Itami is right in the heart of Japan, for it stands in the triangle formed by the three great cities of the south: Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto. Actually the three are one big city, for you can travel all the way from Kobe to Osaka without ever being in the country, but for some reason they’ve been kept apart: Osaka criss-crossed with hundreds of canals, Kobe with its big docks, and Kyoto with endless museums and temples. From Itami you can get to any of these places in a few minutes, so that a man stationed there has right at his elbow all aspects of Japanese life, if he were interested.
As soon as I got to Itami that Saturday night I felt better. I was home. Planes, neat air strips, men I knew. My work there was a dead cinch. General Webster had arranged it as a kind of present to his daughter, so I could be with her. The board I was on met a couple of times a week but the three senior members did all the work and had a bunch of us jet pilots in from Korea for consultation, if needed.
One of these was Lt. Bailey, the Marine who had brought the Japanese actress into the Kobe Officers Club that day. He was a real hot-shot jet man, and since we agreed on most problems the older officers were quite satisfied if we missed meetings because they never liked what we had to say. So Mike Bailey and I really had things squared away and at the end of the first week he said, “We ought to see something of Japan. I finagled it so you can move into the Marine hotel. Proved it was necessary for our consultations. And I promoted a Chevrolet.” He loaded my gear into it and we set out for his quarters.
“We live six miles from the air base,” he explained. “Extra advantage is that we’re not hooked into the Itami phones. They don’t bother us much. Son, I got us really fixed up.”
He drove so fast that it seemed only a couple of minutes before we came to an interesting town with narrow streets and hundreds of people wandering about. We inched our way down an alley and up a small hill to a big rambling four-story hotel.
“Marine Barracks,” he said proudly. “Look at that Jap kid come to attention.” A bellhop tossed Mike a snappy salute and whispered, “Seven o’clock, Makino’s.” Mike gave the kid 100 yen and said to me, “Finest people in the world, the Japanese.”
I said, “I thought you told me you fought them at Tarawa.”
“Who bears a grudge?” He told the boy to show me the room vacated by the Air Force major who had preceded me on the Board and when I got there I found I had an excellent view of the town. Below me was a wide and rocky river which cut the place in half. Up our side of the river came a railroad from Osaka but right below us it cut across to the other side and stopped at the edge of a beautiful park. There were some very large buildings facing me and, as I watched, huge crowds of people left them and started hiking toward the train.
But as I studied these people pressing toward the station I saw another crowd gathering at the rear of the buildings and into this crowd plunged a dozen young girls, arm in arm, each wearing a long green skirt that swished about her ankles.
“Hey, Bailey!” I cried. “What’s this town called?”
“Takarazuka,” he yelled.
“These girls in green …”
Mike rushed into my room and looked across the river. He grabbed me by the arm and shouted, “My god! We’re missing the show.”
He shoved me out the door and down the steps onto a narrow street along which we hurried to a large and handsome stone bridge bearing the sign in English, MUKO RIVER. CARE PEDESTRIANS. With a long finger Mike pointed across the bridge and said with drooling relish, “Here they come, the pedestrians.”
Then I saw them, the Takarazuka girls coming home to their dormitory after the day’s performance. First came the beginning students whose job it was to crowd the back of the stage in big numbers. They were the fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, and they walked proudly in their long green skirts and cork zori. Already they considered themselves to be Takarazuka girls. Bailey nudged me as they passed and asked, “Ever see more beautiful kids in your life?”
I had already seen these dazzling children at the rehearsal and I knew they were beautiful but as I watched them disappear into the evening twilight they seemed to drift away from me with extraordinary grace. They walked in a curious way, one foot set carefully before the other so that their long green skirts swayed noiselessly above the dusty streets. They had now passed so far from me that
they were becoming haunting ghosts when Mike nudged me and said, “Watch this one! Imagine General Webster tossing her out of the Officers Club that day.”
I looked across the bridge and there came the exquisite girl I had met during my visit to Takarazuka. She was accompanied by two other actresses and they formed such a gracious trio that townspeople who were attending the procession drew back against the sides of the bridge to watch them go by. As they approached us, Mike’s girl kept her dark eyes straight ahead.
I asked Bailey, “Aren’t you going to say hello?”
“In public?” he cried. “A Takarazuka girl! You must be nuts.”
The three girls were now abreast of us and Bailey’s girl, without actually turning her head, gave him ever so slight a nod, which Bailey pretended not to have seen. Then, like green shadows over some field at the end of day, the girls passed down the narrow street.
Now came a lively burst of fifteen or more, all chattering happily among themselves, all making believe they were unaware of the crowds who watched them. They were young, they were pretty, they were graceful. They wore little makeup, spoke in soft voices and kept their eyes straight ahead when the American Marines on the bridge stared at them. They were true Takarazuka girls, probably the most curious and lovely group of women in the world, and as I watched them pass in the strangely warm April twilight I was captivated by the poetic swaying of their long green skirts and the lithe, hidden movements of their beautiful bodies as they passed into darkness.
At last the principal actresses appeared, the ones famous throughout Japan, tall, stately girls whose distinguished and memorable faces advertised all kinds of products in the magazines. They moved with special authority and were besieged by mobs of young girls seeking autographs. Among these actresses I noticed several who took men’s roles on stage and who now dressed like men in public. That is, they wore slacks and sweaters and berets, yet in doing so they managed to look enticingly feminine. They were subjected to special crowding and sometimes grown women would press in upon them demanding a signature across the face of a photograph purchased that day.