Butterfly's Child (28 page)

“That's what I thought at first,” Keast said. After a pause he asked, “Where's your mother?”

“Out. Good Lord, don't tell her.”

Keast shifted in the chair. “We have to have a plan for the children.”

Frank took another long drink.

Keast put a hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy, friend.” He glanced at the whiskey. “Can I get you some coffee?”

Frank pulled away and stood, looking for a moment at his desk—the scattered papers, the ship in the bottle, the ledger with its doodles in it. He snatched up the program, slid the flask into his back pocket, and shoved past Keast. Keast followed him downstairs, but he waved him off.

Outdoors, Frank crossed the road and climbed through the pasture to the copse of trees where the cows took shelter from the hot sun in summertime. It had always been the place where he could think. He'd made his decision to go to sea sitting beneath this bur oak.

He sat on an outcrop, looking away from the house. The downward tilt of the meadow in front of him made him think of the sea, the ship at the base of a wave.

He opened the program and made himself read through the summary of the first act of the opera. It hadn't been like that, this wasn't true. There had been no wedding, no relatives, no talk of conversion to Christianity. He felt a splinter of relief.

But Suzuki. Sharpless. That was uncanny. And Butterfly, for God's sake.

Someone had stolen his life. He was being persecuted. What had he done to deserve this? As if the photograph wasn't enough.

He thought of Benji escaping on his horse. Benji had known his mother's name—he'd told him in a weak moment—and he remembered Suzuki. When he was young he had often spoken of her. Likely he remembered Sharpless. That must be it. When Benji showed that photograph to the suffragist, he must have told her everything he knew. Then the suffragist—God damn her hide—had passed on the story. Maybe in Italy. She had bragged about her world travels, all the snoots she knew.

Rage boiled up in him. He imagined lashing Benji with a cat-o'-nine-tails, wrapping it around his neck, and tearing off that suffragist's clothes and making her march through town naked. In the saloon, the men would take turns with her. Aimee Moore too—she was in on this.

He was suddenly very tired, as though he'd been knocked in the skull by a jib coming around too fast. He closed his eyes and pitched forward, facedown in the grass.

San Francisco was
a cacophony of hammers, saws, and the smash of wrecking balls against concrete. There were few street signs, so Mr. Matsumoto's map was little help as Benji made his way in heavy fog from the train station toward what a large X on the crumpled paper designated as
Japantown in the Western Settlement
. Miracles had been accomplished in rebuilding the city, a porter on the train had told him, but there were still hulking skeletons of buildings, materializing eerily in the mist, and heaps of rubble in the side streets.

He passed a house pitched halfway onto a sidewalk, then went into a café with bright flowers in a window box. “No Japs!” a skinny blond waitress said, and a man pushed him out the door. He bit his tongue as he stumbled, cursing, down the steps. The taste of iron. His face burned; he shouldn't have colored his hair with shoe polish. But Mr. Matsumoto had said that San Francisco was becoming prosperous for Japanese.

He kept walking toward what seemed to be west. People shook their heads or pointed in different directions when he asked for the western settlement. He kept going, his feet hurting in his cheap new shoes. Finally a young woman with sweet brown eyes led him several blocks and told him to walk about a mile until he came to a tree lying across a road, turn left, then right at a church, and he would be there.

Suddenly the streets were full of Japanese men, laborers working on buildings and holes in the streets. There were shops with signs in Japanese. He asked an elderly woman at a vegetable stand if she knew Yasunari Matsumoto. “Ah, Matsumoto-sama,” she said with a deep bow, and led him through a park and down a leafy street.

Mr. Matsumoto lived in a large clapboard house in need of paint. He was writing at a table in the kitchen; he leapt up and bowed when Benji entered, full of apologies for not having met him at the station. “I am doing urgent work,” he said, gesturing toward the table. “Just now I am composing letters to President Roosevelt and officials in Japan. The mayor wants to put Japanese children in separate schools. We cannot allow this!”

Mr. Matsumoto's mission had enlivened him. He look tanned and healthy, moving spryly through the house and up the stairs, showing Benji rooms crammed with pallets and cots for Japanese refuges who had lost their homes during the earthquake. Most were out doing construction work in their new neighborhood, he said. “Although we have lost everything in the fire, Japanese gained in one way—we have swelled in this part of the city called Japantown.”

His own room was sparsely furnished: two mattresses on the floor, a small battered chest, a desk heaped with papers. “Even I lost my ancestor shrine,” he said. “If my assistant Ueda-san had lived, I believe he would have rescued it for me, along with my little dog.”

He turned to Benji. “I have prepared this place for you.” He gestured toward one of the mattresses. “You please be my assistant now.”

Benji stared at the mattress. “Thank you,” he said. Mr. Matsumoto must not remember that he was on his way to Japan.

“Someday we will return to import/export business,” Mr. Matsumoto said. “But now we must help our fellow Japanese. Most of them speak no English. You can help them with nighttime lessons and, during the day, there are many, many things to be accomplished. Please excuse me now, and make yourself at home in this humble place.”

Benji lit a cigarette and went to stand by the window. The fog had lifted. In the yard were rows of lettuce and a maple tree. He remembered the maple tree in the yard of the house in Nagasaki, the red leaves floating on the pond in autumn. He was going to find that tree and that pond. How could Mr. Matsumoto have forgotten?

They went to the public bath together, where Benji met the refugees staying at the house. Mr. Matsumoto showed him the Japanese way of bathing, washing off first with soap and water from a bucket, then stepping into a hot pool of water.

“You look a strong man,” Mr. Matsumoto said.

Benji laughed. “Growing up on a farm will do that,” he said.

“You can assist us well, I think.”

“For a while, before I go to Japan,” Benji said, but Mr. Matsumoto, leaning back in the water, seemed not to hear.

At dinner that night, the men sat crowded around the table, eating noodle soup and drinking sake, their faces flushed from the bath. Mr. Matsumoto told Benji that anti-Japanese sentiment, which had increased since the end of the Russo-Japanese war, had grown more intense since the earthquake. “Now there is more building work, labor unions and the newspapers say more feverishly that Japanese continue to take the white man's job. There are riots against Japanese. This is why you must assist me,” he said, pouring more sake into Benji's cup. “You supervise the men while I continue my work helping Japanese obtain American birth certificates. Since all their possessions are destroyed in the fire, no one can say they have no certificates. So we obtain new ones, and the men can become citizens and own property of their own. This is only fair in the great democracy of America, ne?”

Benji shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It was selfish of him to be thinking of leaving. “Yes,” he said. “Your work is very important.”

For the next few days, Benji tried to supervise the construction of the new Japanese YMCA, but communication was difficult. The men showed him what to do as they raised the wall and roof. Benji had helped at several barn raisings, so the work was familiar and much more gratifying, to be laboring with his fellow countrymen. In the evenings, he gave English lessons to the men after dinner, but they were all too tired to make much progress.

And he kept thinking of Japan. One afternoon he walked to the Embarcadero on the bay, to see the ships at dock. An ocean liner, the SS
Minnesota
, was preparing for departure to Japan. Maybe they would take him on to swab decks or help in the kitchen. He could be in Nagasaki in three weeks.

That night, as he and Mr. Matsumoto lay in their beds in the dark, Benji's words tumbled out before he lost his courage. “I'm sorry, but I must go to Japan soon. All my life I've been yearning for it. From Nagasaki I'll help you however I can—and I'll send things for the shop when the time comes.”

There was a silence, no sound but that of the rain against the window.

“San Francisco is not your home,” Mr. Matsumoto said at last. “And if you had not helped me, I would not be here to help others. Therefore, I cannot refuse you.”

“Thank you—I'm very grateful.”

Mr. Matsumoto turned on his side, away from him. There was another long silence, then Mr. Matsumoto said in a cool voice, “A gentleman should have a passport, and for a passport you need a birth certificate. I will help you.”

Benji thanked him again, but there was no answer.

A few days later, Mr. Matsumoto took him downtown to the records office. A ferret-faced man in glasses—Mr. Purcell, according to the nameplate—was at the window marked
Vital Records
.

When the man looked up, Mr. Matsumoto said, “We have come to see Mr. Smithson, if you please.”

“Mr. Smithson has been reassigned. I am in charge of this division now.” He arranged his glasses higher on his nose. “May I assist you?”

“I am Yasunari Matsumoto, a leader in the Japanese community. We have come to acquire a birth certificate for this young man, whose records perished in the fire.”

Mr. Purcell shook his head. “Too many new birth certificates have been issued. There will be no more without proof.”

Mr. Matsumoto laid his hat upon the counter. “Perhaps you do not understand, as you are a novice to this position. The entire Chinatown burned, so all papers were lost.”

“My orders are to issue no further birth certificates without proof. And you have no proof.”

“No proof was required previously.”

“Now proof is required,” Mr. Purcell said, looking through some papers on his desk. “It's the new law.”

“I am his proof.” Mr. Matsumoto cleared his throat and straightened. “I am his father. He was born here, on Delancey Street, above my shop, Matsumoto Finest Wares, well known over San Francisco and beyond.”

Benji didn't dare look at Mr. Matsumoto. He felt his face growing red as Mr. Purcell looked back and forth between them.

“Can your wife vouch for this as well?” Mr. Purcell asked with a little smile.

“Ah, my poor wife died in the flames.” Mr. Matsumoto looked down at his hands. “Now my only consolation will be that our son, born on American soil, has his rights restored as an American. My son, Benjamin Matsumoto.” He put his hand on Benji's shoulder.

Mr. Purcell rose and left the room. While he was gone, Benji and Mr. Matsumoto stood without looking at each other. Mr. Purcell returned with a form. “This is the last one, Matsumoto,” he said, and disappeared into another room.

Mr. Matsumoto filled out the sheet in his spiky script—
Benjamin Matsumoto, born 819 Delancey Street, August 19, 1890; Yasunari Matsumoto, father, born Kyoto, Japan, 1846; mother Fumiko Matsumoto, born Kyoto, 1853
.

“In Japan,” Mr. Matsumoto told Benji, “I am Matsumoto Yasunari and you will be Matsumoto Benjamin, with the honorable family name primary. This is my first lesson for you.”

After Mr. Purcell collected the form, Mr. Matsumoto and Benji walked in silence down two flights of stairs and out the door. The sidewalk was buckled in places; they had to walk in the street. All around them were the sounds of sledgehammers and pikes.

“Is that my name now, then?” Benji said, shouting to be heard above the noise.

“If you like.”

“Do you have other sons this way?”

“You are the only one. You saved my life, so you are the son of my heart.”

Benji couldn't think what to say. He studied the cracked sidewalk.

“Don't be doleful,” Mr. Matsumoto said. “You have gained American citizenship and extra father in one swoop. To tell you the truth, you may not need passport, but I need a son.”

“A son.” Benji thought of Frank across from him on the train: I am not your father. His eyes watered.

“Matsumoto and Son.” Mr. Matsumoto waved his arm. “Can you see the sign above the shop? Yes, you will be the junior partner, sending me goods from Japan. In the meantime, you will work for our mission,
ne
?”