Please Enjoy Your Happiness (10 page)

You shivered. You had apparently just remembered something.

‘I . . . am . . . a . . . ghost,’ you said, very carefully and slowly, making me wobble over the chasm again. ‘At one time in my life I . . .’ But you did not complete the thought.

It was just after nine in the morning. You told me this was
the beginning, according to the Chinese zodiac, of the hour of the serpent, so named because it is when the sun warms the earth and snakes slither forth. My British brain was declining to comprehend, even though my spirit was willing. How could I accept ‘hours’ that were two hours long and were named after animals? I was born in the late afternoon hour of the monkey and therefore I would always be irreverent and mischievous, you told me. ‘Take a look at yourself, sailor boy,’ you said. ‘Maybe then you will understand that there are truths even in ancient things.’

We were waiting. We were talking. We were laughing. The train, which had come down from Tokyo, rattled and whirred to a halt. A loudspeaker was announcing the identity of the station. This happens every day, all across Japan. If I close my eyes I can remember, ‘
Yoh-kooo-skah! Yoh-kooo-skah! Yoh-kooo-skah!
’

Sleepy people rubbing their eyes tumbled out of the train into the daylight. Some of them were drunk or looked drunk or looked as if they had hangovers. I felt your hand grip me even tighter.

One of the passengers getting off the train was a heavyset man in his early forties with very short hair. He was wearing an undershirt with sleeves, a kind of heavy tan woollen belly warmer round his middle, and grey slacks cut tight round the ankles. On his bare feet were stiff
zori
sandals. He stood in front of us, his legs apart and rooted to the ground. There was no expression on his face at first. He looked at you. He looked at me. He looked at you again. And then he reached out and seized hold of your shoulder with a grip so powerful that he pulled you off balance. This was so unexpected I was frozen in place. He began dragging you to one of the exits. You looked
at me with an expression I had not seen on your face before. It was an expression of complete hopelessness and submission. Passengers began running. I started to move towards him, and he growled at me like a bear, swung his other arm out towards me, and began saying something to me in the crude language of the streets – the language, in fact, of the yakuza, the violent gangsters whose code of honour governed murder, drug trafficking, black marketeering, gambling, smuggling, running nightclubs and massage parlours, pornography, and prostitution, in addition to making lavish ‘donations’ to corrupt politicians.

I know about the yakuza now. But I did not know about them in 1959. To me, this snarling character, who had grabbed you as if you were a runaway, was an unknown force of evil. I followed for a while. He never took his eyes off me. I had no idea what was happening.

‘Yuki! Yuki!’ I shouted. I had a bad case of the jitters. I could barely speak.

‘No,’ you cried. ‘
No!
Go away! Go away!’

But even then I did not believe you wanted me to go away. I made another move. He growled again, louder. Even the uniformed station workers were scattering. He let out another stream of threats, or obscenities, or maybe even something worse. You screamed. You screamed again. Your shoes fell off.

I actually tripped over myself, sprawled on the concrete surface of the station platform, and skinned both knees.

Out of nowhere, just as suddenly as the gangster had appeared, came the same police detective who two months earlier had investigated your suicide attempt and who had told me, like a father talking to his son, to leave and go back to the ship. He was wearing the same trench coat and black beret he wore when he came into that shabby hotel room where you were
stretched out on the floor, blood everywhere. He skidded across the platform and wrenched the man’s hand from your shoulder. They spun round and round in circles – his hands round the man’s neck and the man’s hands round his neck – until both men stood panting and shaking and cursing, facing each other. You leaned against the wall, crying and sobbing. Some station hands came up to help the cop. Out came a pair of handcuffs. The growls continued. I was convinced the man was telling me he would kill me if he ever saw me again.

‘You!’ the cop said loudly to me. ‘You!’

You were too badly bruised and shaken to go to the beach. My confidence and sense of well-being were totally upended. This time I had not come to the rescue. I was no hero. I had a glimpse of the consequences of yet another of your secrets. I got a taxi, and took you to the foot of the hill where you lived. I felt that the friendship with you was suddenly over. You waved me away as you started climbing the hill. You did not even look back at me.

But then, halfway up the steps to your house, you stopped, and in a small voice said, ‘Come back tomorrow. I will explain. I told you I was a very bad woman, but you were too young to know I was telling you the truth.’

7

Spider Woman

I could hear your voice above me on the hill. You did not sound like a little bird in a tree. You were rehearsing something.

‘Dayne-jerrr-oooos! No, no, no!
Abunai!

‘
Dayne-jerrr-oooos! Nooooooo. Abunai! . . . Yes! . . . Abunai!

‘Day-uhhhhn-jerrr-oooos!

‘I hate English,’ you said angrily, after you became aware that I was there. ‘I hate it. It is a stupid language. By the time you shout “dayne-jerrr-oooos” you are dead.
Abunai
is a wonderful Japanese word.
Abunai
. It is quick. Like danger. It is like ripping a page from a book when you shout,
ABUNAI!
’

It was the morning of the day after the incident at the train station. It was the day after the danger. You were outside your room, sitting on a ledge in the bright sun. Your black eyes looked deep violet. You looked devious. You looked different.
You looked like a showgirl. Your hair was tied up behind your head in a ponytail. You were wearing a brand-new pale blue cotton dress with a flared skirt over pale blue high heels. You leaned back and put your feet up on a rock. Your lipstick was thick and scarlet. You wore red plastic earrings shaped like hearts and a red plastic necklace. You looked almost like a teenager, and I, after climbing the hill, was wheezing like an old man.

‘Look,’ you said, without even a hello. ‘See. This is me, wicked woman.’ You kicked off your high heels and wiggled your toes. ‘Come here, Mr Poet. Come here! I am dayne-jerrrr-oooos.’ You laughed not very convincingly.

‘This is a joke,’ you said. ‘This is very funny.’ You pouted. ‘I am a Hollywood girl. You supposed to bust out laughing. But no. So serious. So serious you are, young man. Why you no laughing at me?’

And then you stopped the teasing, or the make-believe, or the deception – if that is what you were doing. There must have been something in the way I reacted. I was as startled and fearful as a chicken about to have its neck broken. I think I probably looked annoyed. I had expected a serious Yukiko. I had expected a big mug of hot green tea, and then a solemn, unfolding, engulfing, and maybe even bewitching story. I had expected an explanation so that I could understand the violent actions of the man who became a bear.

‘Well, I will tell you almost everything,’ you said nervously. ‘I can’t tell you everything. If I told you everything, some of it would be lies. Some of it I have had to paint on a canvas so that when I look at that self-portrait I can see what I want to see. I can live comfortably, like a nice woman, like Doris Day. Happy, happy, like a big bath of bubbles, with a nice husband, Mr
Rock Hudson, so . . . so . . . so very handsome. So you will get the almost-truth, and then you will have to use your imagination. Imagine you were reading my life as if it was written by Franz Kafka. He is my favourite writer. Do you think it is strange that a bar girl would read Kafka? If you had to deal with what I deal with at the White Rose, Kafka is like a medicine. What he writes is surreal. Do you understand? But in his surreal creations is a reality . . . the truth . . . my reality in which there is no Doris Day. If you had lived my life from Manchuria and Japan and Hiroshima and then Tokyo, all bombed and life lived in chaos, you could understand. Do you know that when we were finally repatriated and we landed in Japan, there was a sign greeting us, which said, “Thank you very much for your hardship”?

‘But you can never understand. You are too much of a nice boy. You are a golden boy. You are like the four seasons, but the longest of your four seasons is spring. The sun always rises on your world. The moon is always there. The stars keep you company. Your sunsets are always painted for you by Heaven . . . But me . . . I already lived my life. I have lived all of it, to the end. And now, there is Hell. Dancing devils are chasing me, courting me, tempting me. If I have to fight, I will use my
tanto
– my sword.

‘Oh, no! Oh, no! I forgot,’ you said urgently and abruptly, derailing your presentation. You looked as if someone had slapped you. ‘First . . . First . . . What happened after you left me at the bottom of the hill? Where did you go? What did you do? . . . Oh, yes. Oh, yes! Tell me, Paul. Tell me! You will not be cruel if you tell me the truth. Do you hate me now? Do you belong to me?’

You started crying as if life consisted of nothing more than endless ‘battles without honour and humanity’ (to quote the
post-war Japanese novelist and filmmaker Fukasaku Kinji), battles ‘without meaning’, battles for the sake of battles, battles without mercy, without a soul, without a thought, quickly dismissed with a shrug, forgotten after convenient funerals with everyone in formal dress, stone-faced, betraying no conscience and no purpose except to go on living.

I sat down beside you. We looked out at the bay. The flight deck of the
Shangri-La
was glistening with aircraft that had their wings folded. The ship was pointed out to sea, as if ready to make a quick getaway. In a few days we would be gone again, and then you would be waiting. I felt as if
I
had committed an unpardonable wrong. I was desperate to put things right.

But why? You should have been the desperate one. But then, of course, I was merely flustered and you
were
the desperate one.

Is that why you played Miss Hollywood? I started talking in my stupid English – my stupid English that I spoke with an English accent. At least I could spell, you told me once. That is how I ended up on the ship’s newspaper. I could spell ‘seaman apprentice’, which was my rank, a rank comparable to that of a worker ant or, better yet, a termite hidden from the light. Eighty per cent of newcomers to the ship could not spell
apprentice
, the personnel clerk told me when I first came aboard. I could spell
apprentice
, and they did not know at first what to do with me. So they put me to work cleaning the brass and chrome toilets and showers used by sixty men who lived in the same vault-like ‘compartment’ as me, until someone said, ‘Hey. That weird British kid who can spell
apprentice
. The ship’s newspaper needs a writer. Where the hell is he?’

In fact, I told you the work I had done on the
Shangri-La
’s monthly
News Horizon
had impressed the ship’s brand-new
number two, the executive officer – Commander Davy Crockett – born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He was a former fighter pilot with an exceedingly square jaw and eyes the colour of ball bearings.

After I left you at the foot of the hill on the day of the danger, I retreated to the ship. I was obviously upset. I was also angry. I also understood absolutely nothing at all. Red and Jim asked me what had happened. I told them as much as I knew. The next thing that occurred was that the meek little ensign who was in charge of us three seamen apprentices found out about it and informed a more senior officer, who in turn informed Commander Crockett.

I was told to report to Crockett’s office IMMEDIATELY!

I walked in, expecting a red-hot blast of uncomprehending rage from Crockett. He was well known for being the human equivalent of a battleship. But, strangely, he greeted me calmly, with a boyish grin. He put down his copy of
Playboy
magazine with a wink. He looked up at me from his chair, and said, ‘Son. What you are doing is dangerous. Dangerous!’

I gulped.

‘It is dangerous out there in those alleys of goddamn Yokosuka. There are whores and thieves and bandits and murderers, not to mention goddamn Soviet spies! Goddamn it! You are just a goddamn kid. Are you even fuckin’ shaving yet, seaman? . . . Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez. Mother of God, have mercy! The goddamn thing that saves yer ass is that you have talent. But you know what? If Satan himself came around the corner in the light of day, you would not recognize him.’ He leaned back in his chair again to study the effect of his broadside on my pimpled face.

‘Now look, son,’ he said, ‘I am just trying to scare you. This
is not a disciplinary hearing. I am going to give you some advice. Japanese women. God love them! You gotta love them. They are loyal. They have honour. They will never, never, never divorce you, even if you are a hard-drinking, panty-chasing, son of a bitch! They are as sweet as sugar candy and every man aboard this ship should take one back home to introduce to his mother! But Japanese women . . . they see a young American, and they spin a silken spider’s web. They sit there like a spider, waiting to catch gnats and flies. You are a gnat, Rogers! A gnat. But you are a smart gnat. So if I tell you that all of those girls working in the bars have a history that would scare you to death if you knew just ten per cent of it, what would you say?’