Please Enjoy Your Happiness (16 page)

I wondered where our chat was going. I was piling hope upon hope that you, Yukiko, would not enter the Mozart.

So I summoned up courage and said, ‘Thank you for your help at the train station the other day.’

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes. You are a lucky boy.’

‘Thank you also for your help at the suicide scene.’

Again, he said slowly, ‘Yes . . . Yes. She is lucky you were there.’

‘Can you tell me about the man at the station?’

‘You are lucky he did not have his sword,’ the detective said.

‘Sword!’ I exclaimed, in a high octave, not believing what I had just been told.

‘Yes. That man was a minor gangster. Gangsters often carry a sword. If they carry a briefcase, they have a short sword – a
tanto
– inside. It is a matter of honour, as well as a good means of defence. If it
is
a matter of honour, they can use it to kill.’

‘Really!’ I was stumbling to express myself. ‘
Really?
’

‘Yes. I will explain. English is not a problem for me, by the way. I was educated in Manchuria. Like your friend, Miss Kaji, I was repatriated at the end of the war. It is not a problem for me to speak with foreigners. I rather enjoy it, in fact . . . I even enjoy talking with foreigners who are trouble.’

My face turned red again. The palms of my hands started sweating.

Detective Nazaka was in total control. I had no power, no cards to play, other than the odd fact that I was a British kid in the American Navy, which must have caused the worldly Nazaka to take a small amount of interest in me and my fate.

‘You should remember that man’s name,’ the detective said. ‘It is Shinoda Yusuke. Do not go near him. I don’t know if your friend, Miss Kaji, told you this, but Shinoda is her boyfriend.’

‘Her boyfriend?’ I said loudly. My hand holding the tiny coffee cup was trembling.

‘Her boyfriend,’ the detective said again. ‘We Japanese call that kind of man a yakuza. He is a gangster. He is an
aniki
[‘big brother’ or leader of a small squad of gangsters]. We know all about him. The police know everything.’

‘I don’t understand. She never mentioned him.’ I looked alarmed, maybe even annoyed or jealous.

‘Well, you see, Miss Kaji left Mr Shinoda. He had beaten her with his fists. She ran away. When she arrived in Japan from Manchuria she settled in Hiroshima. Most of the city was destroyed by the
genshibakudan
[the atomic bomb]. There was a lot of open space there. Lots of refugees built shacks or put up tents. There were many guns in Hiroshima because the Japanese military had many warehouses and depots around the edges of the city. Many bad men got hold of those guns. That is where the yakuza criminal culture of my country began. With those
guns they controlled all the thousands of black markets set up in Japan after the war.’

I was saying, ‘Yes . . . Yes,’ over and over again. I was struggling hard to accept this information. My understanding of things Japanese was limited to the occasional glimpses of the small magic kingdom of fantastic emotions ruled by you, Yukiko, who had trapped me there for reasons known only unto yourself. Like a spider, I thought in a moment of terrifying inspiration, like the spider feared even by an authentic American hero, Commander Crockett.

The detective gave me a minute to absorb the shock. After I blinked, and rubbed my eyes, he began again, but carefully, as if he were torturing me.

‘I have given you warnings,’ he said. ‘I am interested in you. I am interested in the history of Miss Kaji because as Japanese born in Manchuria we are both strangers in Japan. We were both educated in Manchuria too. I don’t know much yet about Miss Kaji’s history in Japan, but she is clearly an educated woman. I am still trying to understand why she took such an interest in you.’

‘Yes,’ I said, remembering her letters. ‘I think she just needed someone to talk to.’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was for reasons only known to a woman. I am no expert. I have never been married. I am a man who likes to drink . . . excuse me: I am a man who has to drink. The only women I know, I know from the bars. They are good, strong women . . . survivors, I suppose. Strength of character too! Admirable, in fact.’

Suddenly, I was able to see Nazaka not as a policeman, but as a man. He was looking at me closely too. I think at that moment
he saw me not as a puny military juvenile, but as a very young man.

‘You should know,’ he said, ‘that from our police records we know that Mr Shinoda violently assaulted Miss Kaji when she was a young person in Hiroshima. In this country it happens sometimes that when a young woman is attacked she will demand that her attacker should marry her. No one will want her, you see, because her honour has been taken. In this case, Shinoda’s big boss did not order him to marry her. So she lived with him. She was his woman. He treated her very badly. I am sorry I have to tell you all about this, but for several weeks I have been feeling that you should know.’

I tried to say thank you. But the words would not come. I stayed silent. It was as if I had been hit by a bomb blast.

‘Also,’ the detective said, ‘we had to let Mr Shinoda go. He did not have his sword or any other weapon. He came to Yokosuka to look for Miss Kaji and take her back to Hiroshima. He found her by accident. You were there. Mr Shinoda did not know what to do, because you were there. But he is still in the city, we believe. Please be careful. I have already told Miss Kaji to be careful too, but she said she has the means to protect herself.’

‘What kind of means?’ I asked.

The detective’s face became grim. Before it became grim he had looked a little like a schoolmaster counselling a schoolboy. But now he tugged at the collar of his rumpled white shirt. He pulled at the knot of his ultra-narrow brown and gold tie. He brushed the tobacco ashes from his raincoat. His teeth were bad. His eyes were bloodshot. He pulled a floppy hat of the kind usually worn by children out of his pocket and planted it firmly on his head. He looked at me closely again, as if he were
sizing me up, as if he were measuring how much backbone existed, to the exact millimetre, in a British kid’s spine. He sucked in his breath and said, ‘
Saaaaaaaaa
.’ This is the expression, I came to know later, that Japanese often use when they don’t know, or don’t want to know, or don’t want to explain. ‘
Saaaaaaaa
,’ he said again. And then he was silent.

The manager came over to ask if I wanted more coffee. I looked at my watch. You would be arriving soon.

The detective got to his feet. ‘I am not going to say anything to the US Navy liaison officer about this conversation,’ he said finally. ‘This conversation is not official. In fact, it never happened.’

With a nod first to me, and then to the manager, who bowed deeply, the detective headed to the door and quickly vanished, leaving me in state of confusion, the like of which has never been equalled. If you had not shown up that day to continue my ‘education’, as you put it, I probably would have accepted that as the best thing, under the circumstances.

But suddenly there you were, with a smile on your face that caused me to gulp several times. It was as if the sun itself was smiling on the first day of spring. Maybe it wasn’t the smile. Maybe it was my reaction to a combination of this new glimpse of your past and the realization that you were so happy to see me, and that life would go on and on, no matter what. You studied the look on my face, and I could see from your lips that you liked what you saw when I was so happy to see you again.

I thought at that moment of a fragment of verse by the impossibly handsome British poet Rupert Brooke, who my mother once told me she wished had been her lover. He died at the age of twenty-eight during the First World War, killed of all things by an infected mosquito bite.

‘Come on!’ you said with an impatient delight. ‘Come on! Come with me!’

You tucked your hand under my arm, got a firm grip, and marched me to the door.

The manager beamed, and even discreetly clapped his hands, so I could get just a hint of applause.

The uniformed schoolgirls dropped their French studies again and twittered like so many busy finches. I could hear their voices, their wonderment, at the sight of Anthony Perkins leaving the Mozart in the company of a mysterious woman.

‘Who was she?’ I am sure they were asking each other. ‘Are they lovers? Are they friends?’

12

Yukiko’s List

You were taking me to see
Rashomon
. This was the first film you and I saw together. It was screened in a small, damp theatre, the odour of which replicated the smell of a dark English forest, but with added Japanese touches of burnt tobacco, dried fish, and
umeboshi
, the sour pickled plums you nibbled with teenage abandon.

‘
Umeboshi
. Very good!’ you said with extraordinary enthusiasm. ‘
Umeboshi
keeps you young.
Umeboshi
keeps you strong. Do you know that long ago samurai ate
umeboshi
to stay strong in battle? You are a military man. You should know that!
Umeboshi
are good to eat when you need to fight. Also,
many famous poets and writers eat
umeboshi
too, because the sour taste stimulates the imagination . . . Yes! Yes! You must eat
umeboshi
too. You must eat right now!’

‘But I am already young. I am already strong,’ I protested. ‘Also, I am not really a “military man” at all.’

‘Yes. Yes. I know that. But you will need to fight. It is natural, you know, for young men. It is not good to spend all your time in thought. Sometimes there has to be action. You have to act. Sometimes you have to act and fail. But you will probably mostly succeed. I believe that with all my heart . . . Please have an
umeboshi
. They are
supai
[sour]. You will suffer, but that is a natural part of being man too. Women know those kind of things, by the way. Please respect that. Women raise their sons to suffer, and to die. It is very, very sad, but you must accept that truth. If you accept truth, then you can be happy, happy! Also, women raise their daughters to give life. Yes, give life. But
not
to suffer.’

I understood immediately when I bit into one of those salted plums that you needed to be very brave indeed to be able to love them as much as you did. Maybe it was you who was anticipating a fight. Maybe you were thinking about the future. For the moment, I had decided not to tell you about my encounter with Detective Nazaka. I wanted to see whether you would tell me more about the man who growled like a bear, and whether you would specify how you would defend yourself if he attacked again.

‘What is this film –
Rashomon
– about?’ I asked, unaware that asking the question would prompt you to launch into fifteen minutes of feverish explanations marked by hand waving, finger pointing, exaggerated facial expressions, much biting into
umeboshi
to stimulate the imagination, frantic
questions (‘Are you sure you understand me?’), and such statements as, ‘Please open your mind and try not to be stupid . . . oh, I am sorry, I forgot. There are no subtitles.’

We saw at least nine films that summer. Sometimes we saw two and even three films in one day. I know now – thanks to the availability of vintage films on DVD – that I had a front-row seat to what has become known as the golden age of Japanese cinema. I also know now that you bought tickets for both of us, resolutely pushing my hand away if I offered to pay, because you were determined that I should know something about cinematic art. You were also trying to show me the totality of post-war Japan – including the often desperate plight of its women – by insisting that I watch films with a strong social or political context, especially those that dealt with devastation caused by war.

Rashomon
was the first of these films. You said in reply to my question about the meaning of the film, ‘No one knows what this film is about . . . Some say it is about truth, or the relative lack of truth.’

I stared at you, not understanding. The only films I had seen to date were at the so-called Saturday Morning Pictures for children at the Odeon Theatre on the banks of the River Thames in Staines, England, and B movies at drive-in theatres in Freeport, Illinois. In England:
The Cisco Kid
,
Hopalong Cassidy
, Gene Autry flicks. In the United States:
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
,
Teenage Monster
,
Teenage Cave Man
.

Also, I was in the navy, where everything had to have meaning. There were manuals and diagrams and charts and rules for everything, all outlined in excruciating gibberish. There were, of course, those training films on venereal diseases illustrating in great detail the meaning of voluminous amounts
of pus, hideous sores, spots, rashes, itches, and painful swelling of the testicles. Everything was labelled on the
Shangri-La
:

Urinal

Men’s

Aim (not on deck)

Flush

Button
⁵

‘But, how can that be?’ I said of the plot of
Rashomon
. ‘How can there be any doubt about truth? Man bites dog. Dog bites man. That’s a story, right?’