Sayonara: A Novel Page 7

  The formal procession of the Takarazuka goddesses was ended, but on the far end of the bridge appeared one last girl in a soft white stole, gray kimono and rippling green skirt. She had been delayed and was hurrying to overtake her friends. Her green zori tapped out a gentle rhythm as she hastened pin-toed toward us, her body leaning forward in unstated urgency. Her face was flushed and extraordinarily beautiful. She seemed more like a country girl than the others, less sophisticated in her precious green uniform and when she passed she looked at me in surprise and smiled. I saw that her face was unusually animated and that her teeth were dazzling white and even. I never saw this girl again; I never even discovered her name. She may have been only a beginner of no consequence, but as I watched her soft disappearance into the spring night I felt as if I had been brushed across the eyes by some terrible essence of beauty, something of whose existence I had never before been aware. I desired to run after that strange, lovely girl but she was gone forever.

  Mike Bailey tugged at my arm and said, “Well, let’s get down to the restaurant.”

  “What restaurant?” I asked.

  “Makino’s,” he said, and he led me through a jungle of thin and winding streets and I felt that I had never before really seen a Japanese town: the crowded life, the tiny shops, the paper doors with small lights shining through, the people in all kinds of costumes from spectacular kimonos to drab business suits, the varying faces, the multitudes of children, and the police boxes on the corner. At times I felt like a whale swimming upstream against a flood of minnows for I towered over the people and no matter how far or how fast we walked the same number of Japanese seemed to press in upon us.

  We came at last to an extremely narrow alley and ducked into a restaurant doorway hung with red and white streamers that brushed our faces as we passed. Inside were many Japanese crowded at small tables eating fish, which I have never liked. A Japanese woman greeted us with three low bows, a little maid fell to her knees and took our shoes and two powdered make-believe geishas showed us up a flight of narrow stairs.

  We entered onto a top floor where three couples sat quietly at small tables. I keep using the words little and tiny because it’s a pretty powerful experience for a fellow six-foot-two to travel in Japan. For one thing, you’re always ducking your head to keep from bashing your brains in on door jambs and everything you see seems to have been constructed for midgets.

  In a corner, imprisoned by a quarter-circle of a rounded table, stood a fine-looking chunky Japanese man of sixty, watching over a charcoal stove on which bubbled a large deep pan of fat, into which he tossed chunks of fish, swishing them around with long metal chopsticks. This was Makino-san. The après-guerre geishas told us that we were to sit on the floor at the quarter-circle table that cut Makino off from the rest of the room.

  Mike said, “This is the best tempura restaurant in Japan.”

  “What’s tempura?” I asked.

  “Look.” He pointed to a menu painted on the wall in Japanese and English. Makino-san had twenty-nine varieties of fish from lobster to eel, including squid, octopus, shrimp, sardines and the excellent Japanese fish, tai. He also served about the same number of vegetables, especially ginko nuts, Japanese beans and shallots.

  “This is living, son,” Bailey cried, putting his arm about one of the make-believe geishas, who laughed and called him “Mike-san.” The other geisha started to arrange my dishes for the meal but Mike said, “All right, girls, beat it.” They nodded obediently and went downstairs. I must have looked disappointed, for he said, “It’s silly to keep geishas at your table when you have a girl joining you.”

  “I didn’t know a girl was eating with us.”

  “Didn’t you see Fumiko-san say she’d be here?”

  “The girl on the bridge?”

  “Yeah. Fumiko-san. She gave me the high sign as she passed on the Bitchi-bashi.”

  “What’s this Bitchi-bashi?”

  “Bashi’s Japanese for bridge. We call the one where the girls pass the Bitchi-bashi because there is so much lovely stuff there and you can’t touch the merchandise.”

  “Look, Mike,” I said. “I don’t get this special approach. You know the girl. Why don’t you just go up and ask her for a date?”

  Bailey’s jaw fell and he said, “A Takarazuka girl isn’t allowed to have dates.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, in the old days theaters had a lousy reputation in. Japan, so the railroad decided to keep Takarazuka what you might call impeccable.”

  “What railroad?” I asked.

  “This whole resort grew up as a place for excursion trains from Osaka and Kyoto and Kobe. Started with a hot springs, then a zoo and finally some genius thought up these girl shows.”

  “You mean a railroad still runs this?”

  “Sure. They don’t make a nickel on the town or the theater, but they do a fabulous business on the railroad. Everybody comes out to see the show. Fifty lavish scenes, a hundred beautiful girls—gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.”

  “And none of those girls has dates?”

  “Immediate dismissal. The railroad combs Japan for these kids, spends a lot of dough training them. They’ve got to behave.”

  I considered this for a moment and asked, “But if the girls can’t have dates, how come you’re dating one of them?”

  “Like I told President Truman, ‘Harry, you was wrong when you sold the Marines short.’ ” He started to jab me with his long finger when he stopped suddenly, scrambled to his feet and hurried to the door. “Fumiko!” he cried with real emotion.

  The delicate actress seemed entirely changed from when we had seen her shortly before on the Bitchi-bashi. Now she wore a kimono and hurried toward Mike in little running pin-toed steps that made her exquisitely charming. Her kimono was a powdery blue and at her neck at least five undergarments showed, each folded meticulously upon the next so as to form a handsome frame for her golden face. Her hair was not fixed in the antique Japanese manner but hung nearly to her shoulders, thus forming the rest of the frame for her slender and expressive face. She wore white tabi socks, white cork zori instead of shoes and an enormous sash tied in a flowing knot in back. When I rose and extended my hand she barely touched it with her own, which seemed impossibly gentle, and I was amazed at how graceful she seemed, how young.

  Mike Bailey had passed the point of amazement. He was drooling and arranged her cushions and plates as if he were a French headwaiter. Then he pinched her ivory-colored cheek and said, “It’s murder trying to see you, baby.” She laughed at this and her voice was high and tinkling like that of a child playing with dolls.

  When she sat with us the tiny restaurant seemed to thrust back its walls, our talk grew more expansive and Makino, tucked away in his corner, started to fry the fish. Mike said generously, “This American is Ace Gruver. Seven MIGs.” He showed her how jets fight and when she started to admire me perhaps a little too much he tried to change the subject, but she said, “I meet Gruver-san already.”

  Mike did a double take and Fumiko-san laughed again. “How you like me in Swing Butterfly?” she asked him.

  “You were wonderful!” he cried. “But I’ll bet if you’d put that show on while MacArthur was here he’d have thrown you all in jail.”

  I asked why and Fumiko said—I can’t explain how she talked or exactly what she did with English and Japanese gestures, but she made me understand—“Swing Butterfly make fun of American sailors who falling in love with Japanese girls. But Butterfly not commit hara-kiri.” Here she grabbed a butter knife and performed the ritual. “If you like laugh, if you not too proud, you enjoy Swing Butterfly, I think.”

  “Did you like it?” I asked Mike.

  “Anything this babe’s in, I like,” he drooled.

  “What’s she play?”

  “I geisha,” Fumiko explained. “I fight off whole shipload American sailors.”

  With a deft twist of her shoulders she demonstrated how she played the role and Mak
ino and two men in the restaurant roared and suddenly I didn’t like being in that little upstairs room. I didn’t appreciate having a fat cook laugh at Americans. I didn’t like being hidden away in a corner with a Japanese girl, no matter how pretty, who ridiculed our men. In fact, I didn’t like anything I’d seen happening in Japan since General MacArthur left and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I found to my surprise that I was pretty much on the side of Mrs. Webster. After all, who did win the war, anyway? I said to Mike, “You probably want to be alone. I’ll blow.”

  He got very excited and cried, “Hey, you can’t, Ace.”

  I stumbled awkwardly to my feet but he pulled me back down. “Ace,” he said. “If any Takarazuka snoopers broke in here and caught Fumiko alone with me. Much trouble.”

  “What good do I do?” I grumbled.

  “You are in the way,” Mike admitted, “but it would be a lot easier on Fumiko if it looked like an innocent dinner for three, wouldn’t it, lady?” I turned to see if Fumiko agreed and saw to my astonishment that she had turned pale and was trembling.

  For at the entrance to the room stood three Takarazuka girls, tall and shatteringly beautiful. Two of them wore the Takarazuka green-skirted costume but the girl in the middle did not. She wore gray slacks, a blue-gray sweater, white shirt and tie and slate-gray cap. She was obviously disgusted at catching Fumiko-san seated with two Americans.

  In three decisive steps she stood over us and spoke harshly to Fumiko-san who scrambled away in disgrace. I remember looking up at the strong face of this intruder. She was extraordinarily beautiful, yet strangely cold. I felt curiously insulted by her and cried, “Are you the boss of this outfit?” but she spoke no English and snapped at me in Japanese. Then brusquely she turned away and led Fumiko-san to a table where the four actresses ignored us.

  I started to get up but Makino, the cook, grabbed my arm and translated, “She not angry. Only she say very dangerous Fumiko-san walk with Americans.”

  “She wasn’t walking,” I cried. “She was sitting here.”

  “Please!” Makino protested. “I not speak good. Trouble too much.”

  Now Mike started to join the Takarazuka girls but Makino pleaded with him, “Soon you leave Japan, Mike-san. I got to stay. Please, no trouble.” He whisked away the dishes from which Fumiko-san had been eating and Mike and I sat glumly staring at our mess of tempura. It galled me to be sitting on the floor, Japanese style, while the Takarazuka girls, by whom we had been rebuked, sat at a table, American style. I said, “Let’s get out of here,” but before we could leave, the leader of the girls—the one in slacks—came over, looked me gently in the eye and spoke softly.

  Makino translated, “She have no English. She most sorry but Fumiko-san young girl from famous family in Japan. Suppose she get fired Takarazuka, everybody lose face.”

  The lovely actress looked at me beseechingly and said, in Makino’s interpretation, “Very difficult to be Takarazuka girl. We got to protect one another.”

  She smiled at me, bowed graciously and returned to her table. I felt lots better but now Mike began to boil. “What in hell am I?” he demanded. “A man or a mouse?” He pushed Makino’s restraining hand away, strode over to the table, reached down, grabbed Fumiko-san by the chin and kissed her until she had to struggle for breath. Then he bowed politely to the girl in slacks and said, “I’m mighty sorry, too. But us boys also have to protect one another.”

  Then we left, but at the door we looked back to see the four Takarazuka girls sitting primly on the chairs, staring at their plates.

  When we got back to the barracks Mike said, “I don’t blame the girls. They’re under strict rules. If they get caught with an American soldier they’re fired. But that snippy babe in slacks sort of got my goat.”

  I asked, “Why do you bother with them, if you can’t date them?”

  He put down his towel and looked at me in amazement. “Since when does a man have to have reasons for chasing a pretty girl?”

  “But you can’t even talk with her!”

  “Son!” Mike cried. “Didn’t you read when you was young? Didn’t you stumble upon them there fairy tales? Where the prince fights his way through the wall of fire? The more rules they put up against you the more fun it is.”

  “But she’s a Japanese girl.”

  “Drop the adjective, son. She’s a girl.”

  “When you kissed her … It looked as if you could really go for her.”

  “Son, when I come to any country I want to do three things. Eat the food of that country, in this case sukiyaki which is horrible. Drink the liquor which is also horrible. And make love to the girls, which in the case of Fumiko-san would be delirious.”

  “Even though there’s no chance?”

  “I hate to be stuffy about this, son, but you Air Force men wouldn’t understand. When you’re a Marine there’s always a chance.”

  “Even with those girls?”

  “Son, when I was in New Zealand in the last war, waiting to hit Tarawa, there was a pretty barmaid in town and all the boys tried to make her. I didn’t bother because there was also a very wealthy and famous gal who lived on a hill and you’ll find as you grow older and wiser in the ways of the world that they’re the gals to go for. Because they got everything: power, position, the mad acclaim of the world …” He dragged his hand back through his hair. “But there’s one thing they ain’t got—l’amour.”

  I started to ask why he was so sure they were lacking l’amour but he interrupted me and said, “Same with the Takarazuka girls. They got fame, wealth, their name in the bright lights …” He started to sob and concluded, “But it’s all like ashes because they ain’t got l’amour. And you watch, son! Takarazuka girls ain’t none different from that there gal in old New Zealand. And I’m the guy who can bring l’amour into even the drabbest life.”

  We went down to the shower room and while Mike was yammering away I had the stifling premonition that I ought to get out of Japan. When we returned to the hall Mike headed for his own room but I said, “Come on in a second,” and we talked for a long time. I said, “I had the strangest feeling just now. I wanted to get out of Japan. I was scared, I think.” I started to tell him about my bad luck with Eileen and he interrupted.

  “Don’t tell me! The general’s wife started to throw her hooks into you. I sized her up when she tossed a girl like Fumiko-san out of her third-rate club …” He shook my hand warmly and said, “Son, when you escaped Mrs. General Webster, you escaped horrors worse than death.”

  “But I didn’t want to escape,” I said. “I wanted to marry Eileen and have a wife I could be proud of and a home somewhere and a good life in the Air Force. Everything was arranged and I liked it all.”

  “So now what?”

  “I had the craziest feeling, Mike, that I was back in St. Leonard’s.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Prep school. I went to St. Leonard’s. I was all set to take the exams for West Point, but there was a teacher there who loved English literature and he got me a part in the school play. It was by a Hungarian called Molnar, and all of a sudden I didn’t want to go to West Point. I didn’t want any part of it and my mother, who’s written a couple of damned fine stories for the Atlantic, came to school and said, ‘We’ve always expected you would go to the Point, like your father and his father.’ I said, ‘Suddenly I feel as if I’d had a vision of a completely different world.’ At that she started to cry and talked pretty incoherently, but what I got was that if you ever once experienced that vision don’t let anything stop you. She wouldn’t come right out and say I shouldn’t go to the Point, because her own father went there and became a pretty famous general. But I could see that that’s what she meant.

  “For the next two weeks I went through hell. Everybody at the school was just swell. They didn’t rave at me and say I was ruining my life if I gave up the appointment to West Point, and the English teacher wouldn’t say that if I did go to the Point I was selling out. But
then Father flew up from Texas and he was like a breath of sea air in a Kansas drought.”

  “He put you straight, eh?”

  “No. Father never rants.”

  “He’s a general isn’t he? Then he rants.”

  “You Marines get the wrong idea sometimes. Just because a couple of generals fouled up Koje-do, you take it for granted all Army generals are horses’ necks.”

  “Right animal, wrong anatomy.”

  “If you ever meet my father you’ll meet the man who justifies having generals. He looked at me that day and said, ‘If you don’t want to go to the Point, Lloyd, don’t. Unhappiest men I know are those who’ve been forced into something they have no inner aptitude for.’ ”

  “That was a noble start,” Mike said, “but what did he use for the clincher?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did he apply the screws? How did he force you to go to the Point?”

  “He didn’t. We just talked and he flew back to Texas and I went on to the Point. And up to this very night I’ve never once been sorry. But tonight that old sick feeling came over me and I had the distinct impression that maybe I didn’t want to stay in the Air Force and buck for a star. Maybe I didn’t want to marry Eileen and mess around with her silly old man and cantankerous mother.” I put my hand against my forehead and said, “Maybe I felt my whole world crumbling under me.”

  Mike grew serious and said, “Boy, do I know! I watched my old man go through the depression. I watched a world really crumble. That’s why I don’t put much stock in the permanent security of worlds—of any kind. But what hit you? You don’t just decide a thing like that for the hell of it.”

  “Well … I’m almost ashamed to tell you what hit me.”

  Mike had a very quick mind and he said loudly, “Fumiko-san! You took a good look at Fumiko-san close up. Well, son, she’d put anyone off his rocker—anyone, that is, but an old hand at l’amour like me.”

  I laughed and said, “I wish it were so simple. I could duel you for Fumiko-san in F-86’s at 40,000 feet. But the other day I was best man at a marriage between a G.I. and a Japanese girl. Boy, she was no Fumiko-san, but she impressed me powerfully. Like a chunk of earth in the middle of a cheese soufflé. And tonight, seeing that other part of Japan I wondered …” Suddenly I clammed up and couldn’t say it.