Please Enjoy Your Happiness (31 page)

‘You were gone for three weeks. The week after your ship left there was an incident. During the night, a certain Japanese man who was drunk attempted to attack Miss Kaji. He threatened to kill her if she refused to go with him. Do you understand?’

I did not understand. I saw that he could tell from the look on my face that I was incapable of visualizing scenes of violence, even after I had witnessed Nazaka’s struggle with Shinoda Yusuke, the bear of a man on the train station platform.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, coughing. He banged his fist against his
heart. ‘Excuse me, please. My doctors tell me that every day I am practising the art of dying.’

Then he cleared his lungs with more spitting and he said, ‘You will never understand this explanation I give you, even when you are an old man and you have had much experience with life. But I have to tell you this because you are a nice young man. This is Japan. Remember, Miss Kaji and I are both Manchurian Japanese, and it is true that because of that we are different. But we are still Japanese even if we can speak English and we like classical music and Western literature and philosophy. You know, I like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and Betty Boop. At the cinema, they make me laugh, and it is unusual for me to laugh at anything. I do not have children of my own and I am a bachelor, you know. When I hear children laughing at those cartoons it makes me sad, so I have to laugh.’

I was astonished by these revelations. I am sure that I must have looked on that sensually warm afternoon as if I had just stepped on a nail. I looked on anxiously at Nazaka Goro, Kanagawa Prefectural Police detective, who was having another coughing and spitting fit. Was he ever going to tell me the truth about what happened to Kaji Yukiko while I was experimenting with being a feral male in Hong Kong?

‘There is an ocean of misunderstanding between us, Mr Paul,’ he said after regaining his composure. ‘You call it the Pacific Ocean. But for we Japanese, it is not “pacific”. It is not a peaceful ocean. You send your ships of war and your aircraft with nuclear weapons across that ocean. You come across that ocean from far away like children, playing with your toys that kill. Do you know that in two nights in 1945 your bombers firebombed Tokyo, and one hundred thousand men, women, and children were burned alive? Your country is drunk with the sensation of power. That
makes it the Dangerous Ocean – the
abunai
ocean – dangerous.’ There was a pause while he scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘Oh, my apologies,’ he said. ‘Of course, you are a British citizen. You are English. You are a “gentleman”. I am sure all the girls at the White Rose tell you that. You are a
shinshi
!’

‘Excuse me,’ I said, producing my notebook. ‘I am a
shishi
?’

‘No.
Shishi
means lion.
Shinshi
means you are a proper gentleman. We Japanese believe that all Englishmen are gentlemen. They are noble!’

‘Like a lion they are noble?’ I suggested.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I see your intelligence that Miss Kaji appreciates.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said with desperation. ‘But what about this attempted attack? The
Shangri-La
is leaving soon for the United States. I will be so worried about my friend. She says she has a sword. I can’t imagine what she would do with it if she felt threatened.’

‘Ah, Mr Paul,’ the detective said, with some amusement. ‘When that man stood at the bottom of the steps leading to Miss Kaji’s house he shouted up at her in a very loud voice. He demanded that she come with him. One of our patrolmen who lives nearby was playing mah-jongg with his friends. He heard the commotion even over the sound of the tiles. He heard the man saying he would kill your friend if she did not come down. But Miss Kaji stood at the top of the stairs with that sword in her hand and said nothing. She was wearing a yukata. It was one of those days . . . hot, hot, hot and very humid. She rolled up her sleeves and she stared down at the man in the moonlight. Our patrolman could see the moonlight reflecting off her sword in a very dignified manner.’

I could not believe this. It was 1959, not 1859. Surely such
things could not happen. I told the detective that it seemed too fantastic.

But he said it all worked out for the best. The patrolman arrested Shinoda because the police had already warned him against making more trouble. Nazaka contacted the man’s big gangster boss, the
oyabun
, back in Hiroshima and told him to release Shinoda from his obligation to bring you back so that you could resume your duties as a favourite of elite patrons. The police and the yakuza organizations communicate regularly, Nazaka said, especially if gangsters behave violently in public and without honour, and if their crimes become headlines. He reminded the boss that publicity would be embarrassing. Both Shinoda and the
oyabun
would lose face. How could they live with stories in newspapers read by millions of people that told how a woman they had enslaved as a prostitute had escaped their clutches and had faced them defiantly and successfully, armed with a sword, from her castle on the mountain? The
oyabun
had thought about that for a while, Nazaka said, and then he agreed to call off the mission that had brought Shinoda to Yokosuka.

In fact, the boss had acknowledged his admiration for your discretion and your demeanour, Yukiko, and he had confessed that he had always had respect for you.

‘She has the Yamato spirit,’ the boss said, using the proud term for ancient Japan. As for Shinoda, the
oyabun
said he would deal with him privately.

‘Miss Kaji is, in effect, free,’ the detective said with a grimace that could also have been a smile. ‘Please enjoy your friendship.’

23

The Garden of Grand Vision

I fled from Detective Nazaka after he pointed the way up the mountain in a sudden gesture as if I were going to leap up the 101 steps like an Olympian. This is going to be the last time I ascend the steps, I thought. I knew that if I paused on the steps on the way up, I would gulp and then I would cry. So I ran all the way to the top, two steps at a time, not knowing what lay ahead.

You said we should meet at your house, but there was no set
time. That was normal. There was never any set time when we encountered each other. Time was set in terms of afternoons and evenings. They were concepts that made a mockery of schedules aboard the
Shangri-La
, which were set to the exact hour and minute, very much like the timing mechanism, I suppose, that would cause the nuclear weapons on the ship to detonate if we ever dropped them on Paul Feng’s friends and family in China. You told me how much you hated having to start work at exactly seven in the evening and how you dreaded watching the minute hand move round the face of your wind-up alarm clock with the dual bells on top that scared the crows in the trees outside your house when the little hammer hit them,
clang
,
clang
,
clang
.

But three-quarters of the way up the steps, which were now slick with lichens and moss because of the summer rains, I heard your alarm clock ringing. And then, when I reached the top, I heard the cursing of a sleepy woman and the sound of the alarm clock tumbling across the floor after you slapped it. At the doorway to your house I heard you muttering to yourself, as if you were cross or annoyed. You sounded as if you were murmuring a song without even realizing it, which you often did when you were preoccupied with greeting me or gathering your favourite books around you for what you called ‘a delightful afternoon in the Garden of Grand Vision’.

When you first told me that, I remember saying, ‘But I thought this place was your castle on the mountain.’

‘If I was a man, this would be my castle,’ you said. ‘If you want to look at it as my castle or my fortress that is understandable . . . after all, you are almost a man.’ You laughed as if you had just said the most wicked thing in the world.

‘But I am a woman,’ you said. ‘This is the Garden of Grand
Vision. I have decreed that this is my pleasure dome.

‘Read Samuel Taylor Coleridge, sailor boy. Learn about Xanadu. Xanadu was no Shangri-La. It was a refuge for drug addicts and dreamers. I am a constant dreamer.’

You were pouring the green tea now. A look of pleasure came across your face as you inhaled the fragrance of the brew.

‘Intelligent people know that Xanadu was a vision from a dream . . . “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree . . .” I don’t mean to be cruel, and I don’t want to be critical of you, Paul-san, and I especially don’t want to offend Mr Coleridge by stating that opium made him have that dream. None of us know if that is true. But get an education for heaven’s sake!’

You gave me a big mug of tea. I reminded you that I still had to do three years of my enlistment in the navy. College would have to wait.

You waved your finger at me slowly.

‘No! No! No!’ you said. ‘Read! Read! Read! Listen! Listen! Listen! Question! Question! Question! Think! Think! Think! I work in a bar and I read. I work in a bar and I write. I work in a bar and I have to listen to stupid men talking to me in pidgin English as if I was a baby. And then I ask them to buy me a drink because I earn money from that, and they always do, of course. But I would never ask you to buy me a drink. Oh, no. Do you know why? It is because from the first day we met you talked to me as if I was a woman.’

Oh! I remember now how spectacular you looked when you first woke up after a profound afternoon nap awakened not by kisses but by a wind-up alarm clock manufactured in the People’s Republic of China! The clock face was a picture of a woman People’s Liberation Army soldier hoisting a rifle in one
hand and clenching her fist with the other. ‘Be happy, happy!’ you sometimes teased, addressing the stern-faced soldier.

Your hair hung down over your face and your eyes were swimming in what you called ‘wake-up water’. You are one of the few women I have known who looked far better without make-up. Without it your face showed so much of your history, at least I thought it did when I looked at you closely. The faint web of lines around your eyes and mouth were like faint images of a road map. There was no hint of white powder on your face, and no vermilion touches.

You never minded me looking that way at you. In fact, you usually stared right back.

It was humid, which meant that your yukata – maybe the one you were wearing when you defied Shinoda Yusuke – was damp with sweat. It clung to the outline of your body. You told me once that the Japanese typically wear nothing under a yukata. That did not surprise me because you also told me that Japanese men and women loved to go to community hot baths together to soak in unbearably hot water where they gossiped naked and without shame.

You began searching in the gloom of your kitchen for the tin container in which you kept your precious green tea leaves. I heard you speaking by name to obstacles getting in the way of your search: ‘Shoo, Mr Tea Cup. Shoo, Mr Radish. Shoo, Big Fat Coffee Maker . . . Shoo . . . Out of my way!’

You suddenly realized that I was standing just inside your wide open door, studying you dealing with disorder. ‘Shoo!’ you said sharply. ‘You too, sailor boy!’

But when I turned away as if I was going to leave, you came running.

‘Wait! Wait! Wait,’ you demanded. ‘This is the Garden of
Grand Vision. I didn’t give you permission to leave. You don’t have my permission to go, even if you want to go. Do you understand, sailor boy?’

I laughed and I saw a wonderful smile break across your face. You were standing about three feet away. ‘Oh, oh, Yuki-chan,’ you said. ‘Is this thin young creature really the man you love?’ And then you laughed again because you knew you had hurt my feelings and because you also knew that I was not going to hold it against you because I loved you too.

‘I am really happy to see you,’ I said. My face was earnest, I am sure. You took my hand and let me pull you towards me. I could smell the special smell of your body after you had been dreaming and making tea. You looked up at me. I brushed those strands of hair out of your eyes. You leaned your head far back as if we were a couple dancing tango.

‘How nice,’ you said. ‘How nice you are to me!’

Your little brass-tinted kettle was belching steam again. It was time for another cup of
ocha
. After you had poured the scalding water over the leaves, we went outside to sit with our hips touching on one of the steps to your porch. We stared at the sun, as if it were something to worship. You draped an arm round my shoulder and rocked me a little. You were murmuring again. It was the plaintive, simple, sad folk song ‘Itsuki no komoriuta’ [‘Lullaby of Itsuki’]. It is a song traditionally sung by very young female descendants of the Heike clan, which fought a bitter war for supremacy in the twelfth century and lost, prompting many Heike warriors to throw themselves into the sea rather than surrender. These girls were now living in poverty and earning money as babysitters among the descendants of their victorious rivals. When the Bon festival, commemorating those deaths, occurs each July, the babysitters are
given a few days off to return to the poverty of their home villages in the distant mountains. It is a lullaby dipped in sadness that in 1959 every Japanese mother knew.