Butterfly's Shadow (27 page)

‘No. I lack originality.’

‘That’s Yankee thinking. The old Japanese artists were never expected to be original; they’d have got some funny looks if they tried originality. Follow the masters, was the rule. That’s why I’d be good at the superheroes. Keep faith with the masters!’

‘You need to come out of your shell,’ Taro said as they lined up for a shower. ‘This not talking to people, it’s no help.’

‘I’m not
asking
for help, I just want to be left alone.’

‘There’s a dance tonight,’ Ichir
called from the open concrete shower stall. ‘You should come.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’ll be sorry.’ He towelled himself dry and slipped on his shirt. ‘You wouldn’t want to miss the Café International Cabaret, featuring . . .’ He reached into a pocket, read aloud from a flimsy leaflet, “gaily attired Tri-State girls”. Who could ask for anything more?
Tanoshimi yo!
Let’s party!’

Taro called over: ‘Ever dated a Japanese girl, Joey?’

‘Never met one.’

Kazuo said thoughtfully, ‘I always meant to cross that fence, the word was, American girls are easy –’

‘Easy like a porcupine!’ Ichir
laughed ruefully.

‘– but I never dated an American girl. I never knew how to get through to them. I guess I just don’t understand them.’

Joey said. ‘It’s not easy.’

Girls were a foreign country with their own customs and prohibitions. There were girls in that now remote outside world who gave signals Joey thought he understood, that encouraged border-crossing and exploration. Then, at a certain point, they threw up barriers, became as protective as aboriginal natives fending off unwelcome visitors to sacred sites.

American girls, blondes with June Allyson hairbands or Betty Grable sweaters, college classmates from homes no different from his own, were tricky enough. These Nisei, born in the USA, inhabited a terra incognita criss-crossed with cultural fault lines that could crack open beneath his feet. The old people believed in the old ways, but what of the young females? What did the books say about that? Check the footnotes, look in the index for culture, society and human behaviour. See under: Virgins.

By the time Joey arrived at the dance, Woody Ichihashi’s Downbeats were well into their repertoire of Glenn Miller and Woody Herman. The dance floor was crowded, the music soared, coloured lights hung from the ceiling. As Woody put it: with the Downbeats on board, the mood was upbeat.

Joey wove through the crowd, keeping away from the dancers. Two circuits of the room confirmed what he had suspected: this place was not for him. Points of light glittered off shiny black hair and spectacles; mouths wide in laughter revealed teeth so even and so white his own seemed dull as old tombstones. He was caught in a crossfire of voices, none individually loud, built into a bombardment that almost drowned out the music.

A plump, jolly girl beckoned to him from behind a white-clothed trestle table.

‘Hi, welcome,
irrasshaimase
! I’m Amy.’

He nodded. Offered a half-hearted response.

‘Joey.’

She waved at the table.

‘So, Joey, help yourself: lemonade, cola – we even have ocean cocktail –
sort of
. I used tomato water, soy sauce and a drop of rice vinegar. It’s okay, maybe needs more salt.’

He looked doubtfully at the jug of liquid. ‘What’s that floating on top?’

‘Seaweed. Dehydrated. Not as good as fresh, obviously, but it’s not bad.’

‘Thanks.’ He took a glass of lemonade.

‘Where you from, Joey?’

‘Portland.’

‘My folks are from Washington county.’

‘Ah.’

He moved off, skirting the dance floor, aware of her disappointment, feeling bad but not so bad that he was prepared to extend the conversation. One slow circuit of the room and the lemonade was finished. He placed the glass carefully on a side table and headed for the door.

‘You don’t like the music.’

She wore a pale green dress printed with red flowers and in her hair a barrette on to which she had threaded an artificial crimson flower. Small, delicately built, she looked closely at Joey, her face tilted upwards.

‘My name’s Lily.’

‘Joey.’

‘Hi. So you don’t like the band.’

‘No, I mean yes. I like the music . . . Actually, I can’t really hear it. Too much noise, I guess.’

‘And you don’t like the people.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I can tell.’

He shrugged. ‘I only got here a few minutes ago; that’s pretty quick to draw conclusions.’

‘Not really. You walk around the camp, always alone. You don’t come to the social evenings in the canteen.’

To be made conscious that he had been watched gave Joey a sense of wariness. In the future he would no longer be able to lose himself in solitude; she had taken away his greatest freedom: the ability to act unselfconsciously, and he felt a spurt of anger.

‘I certainly don’t like the idea of being watched – more than we already are, here.’

‘But
you
watch everyone. All the time. That’s okay?’

Suddenly he was part of someone else’s field trip.

‘Leave me out of this, okay? Get yourself another hobby.’

He stepped out into the warm night. Glancing back just before the door clicked shut he saw her face, a flinching whiteness, a recoil as though she had been slapped.

He should go straight back and apologise; he had been needlessly rude. He should go in and say sorry; she was standing right by the door. But as he stood debating with himself, a couple moved past him, murmuring polite phrases, blocking the doorway. A boy was approaching the girl in the green dress; he touched her arm and led her on to the dance floor. The door closed.

Backing away, Joey came in line with the window: the bright room was framed in the darkness like a movie screen – the naked light bulbs, touchingly transformed into glowing orbs with cheap coloured paper; the packed dance floor, bodies moving to a jumping beat. He picked out the girl in the red and green dress, the flower in her hair, smiling at her partner, looking straight into his eyes, no upward tilt.

He stood for a while, then walked on towards his hut, the music still loud in the night air, coming through the thin wood of the dance hall walls. He threaded his way through the barracks, glimpsing in the gaps of half-drawn curtains parents and grandparents sitting on upright chairs in their bleak huts, reading, or staring at the wood-fire while their offspring sang along with ‘a Gal in Kalamazoo,’ and jived away ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas . . .’ The music streamed through his body,
gradually rinsing him clean of gloom and resentment. He reached the hut and stood for a moment, feeling the throb, receiving it through the soles of his feet. He began to sway, to move, then to dance, singing aloud, spinning in the tiny space, swerving to avoid wood-stove, beds, and home-made dresser. Arms flung wide, stomping on the beat, he swung round to find Ichir
standing in the doorway, head cocked, observing him.

‘There’s actually a dance floor just down the way. You’d have more space.’

‘I don’t dance.’

‘So I see.’

Ichir
crossed to his bed, combed his hair and stared at himself critically in the small mirror hanging on the wall. ‘I’ll be back late. Got a date.’

‘A
date
?’ Joey looked sceptical. ‘What? Cocktails? A piano bar? Gourmet dinner –’

‘A date, Joey, does not require that stuff. Just the night sky and a little privacy.’

He was gone, and though the bouncy music still drifted through the darkness, for Joey the beat of life had gone out of it. He dropped on to the narrow cot and sat reviewing the brief, unsatisfactory evening. He found himself, like the old people he had glimpsed, staring blankly at the wood-stove.
Blues in the Night.

A green dress printed with pinky-red blossoms. A crimson flower in her hair. A flower name. Lily. She had smiled, touched his arm, tentatively. He had behaved like an asshole.

He re-ran the scene in his head, changing the dialogue, reaching for a line to make her smile. She was about to laugh: would she throw back her head, American style, wide-mouthed, showing even white teeth, or would she stifle the impulse, cover her mouth with her hand in the traditional way of the old country?

Next time they met he would apologise; tell her he’d been
in a lousy mood. She would forgive him, and they would linger over a canteen meal, cutting the overcooked fish into ever-smaller pieces, no longer aware of taste or texture. In the movie-house of his mind they were dancing; he touched her cheek.

Next day he looked for Lily but it seemed she and her parents had left Tule a couple of hours earlier: the Quakers had found a family to sponsor them in Boston.

That evening in the hut he noticed lying on the table by Ichir
’s bed, next to his watch and some candies wrapped in cellophane, a crumpled red flower. He picked it up.

‘Where did this come from?’

Glancing up from his book Ichir
reached for one of the candies.