Sayonara (4 page)

I stood at attention, waiting for the tall library doors to open, and I remember saying to myself, “Now look, squarehead, you've got to act surprised.” But I didn't need the coaching, for Eileen appeared unexpectedly from the hallway and she was twice as lovely as I had remembered. “Wow!” I cried, hurrying to her, and I noticed that she was more what you might call curved, more lovely when she smiled.

She hurried to meet me and we kissed and I said, “Wow! what a wonderful way to bring a man back from Korea!” and she said, “I wanted to cable you the minute the Army said I could come, but Mother said, ‘We'll surprise him.' ”

Mrs. Webster interrupted, “We didn't want to take your mind off your flying,” she said.

Eileen asked, “Was it pretty rough this time?”

“They've got the first team playing.”

I held her two hands tightly and stepped back to study her. “Hair fixed differently, eh? Oh, that beautiful blond hair when everyone out here has black. And your dress…It seems to go in and out a lot—nice.”

“It's meant to go in and out.” Eileen laughed. “I go in and out.”

General Webster coughed and I said, “You're much prettier than any photograph you sent me—except maybe that special one in the bathing suit. Boy, did that one go in and out!”

Eileen said, “That one was all out. I weighed eight pounds more that summer!”

General Webster said, “Do you suppose we could go down and eat?”

But Mrs. Webster was enjoying the romantic scene she had arranged and said, “First we'll drink to the young lovers.” She produced a set of shimmering wine glasses and explained, “From the P.X. The little Japanese salesclerk said they were made right here in Kobe.”

General Webster poured the sherry and declaimed dramatically, “To the lovers!” Then he looked at his wife and complained, “What an ugly phrase! Aren't lovers French people who live in an attic and never get married?”

“No!” Eileen cried. “Lovers are people in an English movie who live in a grass cottage and the vicar's wife condemns them.”

“Very unpleasant word, anyway.” He poured fresh sherry and said, “To Major Lloyd Gruver and Eileen Webster, United States Air Force. That sounds a damned sight more American and a damned sight more healthy.”

Mrs. Webster laughed. “You're right, Mark, but
lovers
has another perfectly good meaning too. Average American people whatever their ages who love each other—even when they've been married twenty-six years.” She went over and kissed the general warmly.

My own father and mother had never gotten along together too well and from about ten on I realized that no matter what great advancements my father received and no matter how ordinary Mark Webster's career turned out, my parents envied the Websters because Mark and Nancy were in love while my father and mother were not. Sometimes Father would betray his contempt for Mark Webster's willingness to be pushed around by his wife, and my mother, who came from a famous German family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, usually stayed there with her circle of friends and spoke sadly of Nancy Webster, “chasing about the world like a camp follower.”

At this moment in Kobe, when the senior Websters were kissing, I shared my parents' feelings and for the first time I realized with a certain degree of shock that when I married their daughter Eileen I would more likely resemble my father than become a second Mark Webster. There would always be some restraint upon me; yet standing there before Eileen and seeing her so radiantly lovely I concluded that I was deeply in love—in my way and my father's way, and I
thought in that hesitating moment that my partial love, as you might term it, could lead to the creation of a solid family like Father's, to my promotion in the Air Force like his promotion in the Army, and to a substantial position in society like the one my mother enjoyed in Lancaster. I said to myself, “This is a soldier's way of loving.”

But I think Mrs. Webster, who knew my parents well, must have sensed my thoughts, for she cried, over her husband's shoulder, “Kiss the girl, Lloyd.”

I did and the general begged, “Now can we eat?”

We went down to the dining room, where the Japanese headwaiter had arranged a pretty dazzling table with flowers and a church carved out of ice. Three Japanese waiters held our chairs and a three-piece Japanese orchestra hammered out a jive version of “Here Comes the Bride.” The officers at nearby tables rose and applauded, but the luncheon was spoiled because right next to our table sat the Marine lieutenant with his beautiful Japanese girl, while next to the orchestra were the fat major and his window-shopping girl.

Mrs. Webster fidgeted with her napkin and said, “If I knew it wouldn't humiliate you I'd leave. Who won the war, anyway?”

Eileen grasped her mother's arm and whispered, “They're fine girls. Please don't create a scene.” Mrs. Webster subsided and started to splash her spoon in her cup but soon stopped.

“I simply have no appetite,” she said firmly.

The luncheon was a calamity and as soon as he could decently do so General Webster dragged me back to his office where he shouted at his aide, “Go out and haul in Major Bartlett.” Then he called his secretary and dictated a sharp note: “Effective immediately no Japanese nationals shall participate in any functions of the Kobe Officers Club, including specifically but not exclusively eating in the Club dining room.”

“Post it conspicuously!” he said, and as the secretary started to leave the general boomed out, “Be especially sure there's one in every elevator.”

When Major Bartlett appeared the general really ate him out. The fat major, one of those particularly exasperating civilians who won't take military life seriously, didn't even bother to snap to attention.

“Your behavior is a disgrace.”

“I understand.”

“You can't understand, or you wouldn't go lollygagging down a public street holding hands with a Japanese girl.”

“I understand.”

“Damn it all, these people were our enemies a short time ago.”

“Not mine. I fought in Germany.”

“Well, your country's. You ought to respect your nation's responsibilities.”

“I understand,” the major droned in an unusually offensive way.

“You understand that you're not to bring that girl into the Club again?”

“I understand.”

This infuriated the general, who said sharply, “And you're not to be seen on the public streets with her.”

The major looked at me, raised his eyebrows and said, “I understand.”

This was too much for the general. He said sharply, “Major Bartlett, I've been ordered to send a levy to Korea. You'd better go along.”

“Certainly.”

Now I'd had enough. I cried, “Certainly,
sir.
You know there's such a charge as insolence through manner.”

“Certainly, sir,” the fat man said to me, nodding slightly.

“Stay out of this, Gruver,” the general commanded. “Bartlett, the levy moves out tomorrow.”

“Certainly, sir!” he said with the greatest military precision, throwing us each an extra-snappy salute.

When he had left the general said, “The perpetual civilian. Well, there's no use court-martialing a man like that. Maybe Korea'll knock some sense into him.”

“I wish you'd let me handle him,” I said.

“You'll learn that the Army gains more in the long run by taking civilian nonsense. But, by God, you don't have to take it at meals.”

That evening when we returned to the Club and entered the elevator, the general noted with satisfaction that his memorandum had been posted, but when he read to the bottom of the typed sheet he turned a bright purple, for someone had scrawled in pencil, “Signed, Mrs. Mark Webster.”

“Who did that?” the general shouted.

The Japanese girl who ran the elevator could not read English and had no idea of what the general was enraged about. He pointed at the penciled signature and demanded, “Who do this?”

“Me no see,” she whispered, cowering in the corner.

In her confusion the elevator stormed past the general's floor
and by the time the frightened little girl could get it back under control, General Webster had ripped down the announcement. Then he dragged the girl into his suite and rang furiously for the hotel manager, who established the fact that Major Bartlett had ridden in the elevator that afternoon. But it was impossible to prove anything and by mealtime every officer in the hotel knew about the incident, for civilian officers are like schoolboys—always giggling with delight when something embarrasses the headmaster.

Dinner that evening was a chilly affair. Eileen and I sat in silence and absorbed the hateful stares of the officers who normally brought Japanese girls in to dinner. Major Bartlett appeared, bowed my way and sat right where the general would have to see him, chatting happily with some cronies and telling dirty stories. But the principal target of the icy stares that night was Mrs. Webster, who didn't seem to mind at all. She had been through many Army crises with her husband—some, like this, which she had precipitated—and she had never wilted under criticism. My father did not approve of her meddling in Army life but once said, “If you ever get into trouble, Lloyd, be like Nancy Webster. Stick your chin out and take it.”

Now she brazenly pointed at a table where three American schoolteachers were dining with some civilian men employed by the Army to run the gasoline-supply system. In a voice just loud enough to be heard by eavesdroppers she said, “Isn't it charming to see those pretty American girls at that table?”

Somebody had to say something, so I offered, “After you've been in Korea, it's wonderful to see an American girl.”

I realized immediately that this sounded pretty awful, and I was sure of it when Major Bartlett suddenly picked up his spoon and started polishing it like mad. I glared at him but he simply looked at the spoon, breathed on it the way you do when you're polishing apples and polished some more.

Any trouble between me and the fat major was averted by the appearance of the young Marine lieutenant and his lovely Japanese girl. He had apparently not seen the notice, for he headed toward a vacant table and everyone in the room looked up to see what would happen.

The headwaiter pounced on the couple, explained the situation to the girl in rifle-hot Japanese and the obviously well-bred girl turned away in an agony of embarrassment. The Marine wouldn't take this. Calmly he grabbed his beautiful girl by the hand and led her against her will to the table. The headwaiter was furious. He hissed instructions
at the girl and he had the bad luck to use some words which the Marine understood, for the American let go the chair he was holding for the girl, hauled his fist back and launched a haymaker.

Another Marine anticipated this and deftly caught his friend's hand. Then he explained the new rule and joshed the troublemaker into leaving, but the first Marine now realized that General Webster and his party were in the room. He was aghast. Quickly he shooed the slim Japanese girl out the door and came over to our table and said briskly, “I'm extremely sorry, sir. I thought they were kidding me.”

“It's all right,” the general laughed.

“I'm extremely sorry, Mrs. Webster.”

She was most gracious and the general felt good. He said, “Lieutenant Bailey, may I introduce Major Gruver. He joins your board next week.”

The Marine said, “We've heard about you. Seven MIGs?”

I winked and he said, “We could use you.” He bowed and left and the general said, “Somehow or other you've got to respect the Marines. They're publicity hounds but they know what discipline means.”

Mrs. Webster said, “It's not that I dislike Japanese. Goodness, they're wonderful people. So clever and all that. Even in the short time I've been here they've shown me unusual courtesies. But a conquering army must retain its dignity.”

“I agree,” the general said, “but those yokels in Washington say we've got to woo them now. Nancy, you ought to read the directives I get!”

“I approve one hundred percent!” Mrs. Webster insisted. “Japan is now a free country. We must woo them to our side but we must also remember our position. And be firm.” Ignoring the fat major, she proceeded to eat her dinner with relish.

O
n Friday Mrs. Webster gave striking proof that she really did like the Japanese—if they kept their place. She and Eileen called for me about noon and drove me a short distance out into the country in the black Cadillac. Mrs. Webster said, “I have a real treat for you, Lloyd. We're going to Takarazuka.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Takarazuka,” she repeated slowly.

“What's that?”

“For one thing it's a village with a delightful zoo. But it's also something especially Japanese.”

“For instance?”

“You'll be amazed!”

In a few minutes we entered the Japanese village of Takarazuka. At the head of an extremely narrow lane we got out and walked into a kind of fairyland. For it was now mid-April and the path ahead of us was lined with cherry trees and I had never seen such trees before. The blossoms were extraordinarily profuse, a kind of grayish, sandy purple, rich and delicate. Laden branches dipped down over us and the blue sky of spring showed through. The walk was filled with people hurrying beneath the blossoms to some destination I couldn't see.
There were women in kimonos, young girls in bobbysocks, old men in black, babies in bright clothes and half a dozen brilliantly beautiful girls in a kind of green dress that swirled about their ankles as they walked.

“Who are they?” I gasped.

“Those are the Takarazuka girls,” Mrs. Webster explained.

“What's that mean?”

“The most famous collection of girls in Japan.”

“What do they do?”

“That's the big surprise.”

But I wasn't to find out for some time because she led us down the flowered lane past scores of little shops that sold mementoes of the village, past old trees that offered shade and past minute restaurants at whose doors women stood offering cheap food. We were in the heart of Japan and Mrs. Webster was enjoying herself as much as any Japanese.

We had gone only a short distance when a thin young man in black joined us and bowed very low, drawing breath in through his teeth. “Many, many pardons,” he said. “I was waiting for you at the main office.” He took us to the zoo, where there were beautiful lakes and flower beds and charming benches on which you could sit beneath the cherry blossoms and watch children play.

The young man asked in good English, “Are you the pilot who shot down seven MIGs?” He was impressed and said, “I used to be a flier. Now I work here.”

“What is this place?” I asked in a low whisper.

“You don't know?”

“Never heard of it.”

Mrs. Webster saw us talking and cried, “Oh, Lloyd! Don't spoil the fun!”

“I hate mysteries,” I said.

“All right, well go.”

She and the thin young man took us out of the zoo and up to an enormous building which looked like an armory in Kansas City. It was a theater. We went to our special seats in the very first row and there we faced one of the largest stages in the world on which was enacted the most amazing performance I had ever seen.

I can't say I understood the play. It was called, the young man said,
Sarutobi Sasuke,
meaning
Little Monkey Sasuke,
and Sasuke is
a boy's name. It dealt with some children who accidentally conjure up a wizard who helps them save a castle from the enemy. Who the enemy was or what the castle I never understood because at Takarazuka it wasn't the story that counted. It was the overwhelming effect of size.

The play started at one and ran till six. It had thirty-four different scenes, each the biggest and most lavish you could imagine. I never saw a Ziegfeld show, but Mrs. Webster said that any Takarazuka scene outdid the best Ziegfeld ever put on. There was music, there was dancing, there were songs. In fact, there was everything. In this one show there were two gorillas, a jeep, two live pigs, a wizard, three different trios singing three different kinds of songs, a ballet, a football game, a live goat, a motion-picture sequence showing the wizard at work, a passage from an opera and a cave whose trees moved about. But most of all there were girls.

There were more than a hundred girls on stage, and they were all real dazzlers. I thought to myself, “And you were the guy who said he'd never seen a good-looking Japanese girl! Wow!” But at the same time there was something ridiculous about this excess of beauty, for there were no men actors. The most striking girls played men's roles, and I whispered to Eileen, “This show could use a few Clark Gables.”

Mrs. Webster heard me and laughed. “In Tokyo there's another theater which has no women. There men play all the parts.”

“Doesn't sound sensible,” I said.

“It's Japanese,” she explained.

I soon tired of the show—one enormous set after another and beautiful girls making believe they were men. I said I was willing to leave whenever the others had had enough. Eileen said, “I'm ready,” and as we walked up the darkened aisle I began to appreciate the enormous size of this theater. It must have seated more than 3,000 people. I asked our guide, “Is it always filled this way?” for there wasn't a vacant seat. He sucked his breath in proudly and said, “Every day in the year. Twice on Saturday and Sunday.” I didn't tell him so, but I figured there must be something in a Takarazuka show no American could understand because I was bored by this one and so were Eileen and her mother. But the Japanese loved it. They sat on the edges of their seats, their round faces transfixed with intense pleasure.

We started to return to our car but the guide stopped us and said, “The Supervisor has invited you to attend a special rehearsal of our next month's show.”

“Have you two companies?” Eileen asked, a bit bedazzled by the 115 girls she had just seen.

“We have four,” the guide said proudly. “One plays here, one in Tokyo, one tours, and one is in rehearsal.”

He led us to a huge empty stage where some young girls in green skirts were walking through an intricate dance, while a man at the piano hammered out a tune that sounded like Schubert. In another empty room another man played a song that sounded like Gershwin for a trio of young girls, also in green skirts. “They wear the Takarazuka costume,” the guide explained.

Then suddenly he came to attention and the girls at the piano stopped singing. Everyone looked at the door where an elderly man with a white beard stood for a moment, discovered Mrs. Webster and hastened toward her, bowing very low and saying, “Mrs. General Webster! It is a superb honor.” He waved his hand deprecatingly and said, “Rehearsal only.”

As he turned he disclosed behind him a most lovely slender actress in a plaid skirt, brown vest, and cocky green tam o'shanter set saucily over one eye. I did a sort of double take and whispered to Eileen, “That's the girl who was with the Marine lieutenant.” Eileen studied her and said, “Of course it is.”

The Supervisor saw us staring at the remarkable girl and said, “Mrs. General Webster and honored guests, may I present Fumikosan, one of our finest actresses?” Although I am certain the girl recognized us, she did not betray that fact but stepped sedately forward and bowed low before Mrs. Webster. When she reached me I held out my hand, but she started to bow again, whereupon I withdrew my hand and saw that she was looking up at me with immense gratitude for my not having recognized her in front of the Supervisor. Eileen saw this too and had the presence of mind to say, “We did not see you on stage, did we?” The girl replied in a soft voice, “I not play this week. I…Moon…Troupe.”

Hastily the guide explained, “The four troupes each have a name. Moon, Star, Snow and Flower. You would say that Miss Fumiko is one of the best stars of the Moon Troupe.” I was about to say that I had already seen Miss Fumiko when a distinct glance from her begged me to remain silent.

With extraordinary grace Miss Fumiko walked over to a piano, but I didn't hear her sing, for just as she began we left for the flower path leading back to our Cadillac. As we walked beneath the swaying
cherry blossoms I noticed that each of the shops we had seen earlier had on display large glossy photographs of the principal Takarazuka actresses. As we passed slowly along, the pictures of the beautiful girls, half of them dressed as men, had a mesmerizing effect, but while I was studying them Eileen discovered one of the real phenomena of Japan. “Oh, look!” she cried.

The play
Sarutobi Sasuke
had ended and from the dressing-room doors the Takarazuka girls were entering the flower walk. The youngest were dressed in formal green skirts and about them pressed an adoring crush of people trying to touch them, trying to lay hands on the green skirts or press a letter or a gift upon the actresses. When a particularly famous girl appeared the crowd would utter a little cry and fall back and the actress would move on in a kind of courtly grandeur.

The Takarazuka girls passed along the flower walk, their green skirts swaying softly beneath the cherry blossoms, and I could hear a sigh go up from the crowd as the girls turned the corner, entered upon a bridge and crossed the river to the other side, where I was told they lived like nuns in a secluded dormitory. When they were gone the crowd at the dressing-room doors looked about idly as if now there was nothing to do, and for the first time I realized that every person in the milling mob was a young girl. There were no Stage-door Johnnies. They were all Stage-door Jills.

Mrs. Webster said, “The young girls of Japan idolize these actresses.”

Eileen said, “No wonder! The actresses are so beautiful.”

“And the girls outside are so ugly,” Mrs. Webster said. “Have you ever seen so many round, red faces? Such dumpy little creatures?”

“I don't know,” Eileen said. “America has its share. When I was thirteen I would stare in the mirror and pray God that I might grow up to look like Myrna Loy.”

“Ah, but you were never a square-beamed little urchin! Lloyd, this child was always beautiful.” Then she played her trump card. “I'm having dinner with the Supervisor—that sweet old man with the beard. He's very important. You two drive along home.”

And she looked at me with that perfectly frank stare as if to say, “You're twenty-eight, Lloyd. You should have married Eileen four years ago. Grow up.” And she was, as always, 100 percent right. Even though she herself had prevented the marriage that first year—she hadn't been aware of the fact—and even though I could use the
Korean war as an added excuse, I had never been able to explain to myself honestly why Eileen and I were not married. We had fallen completely in love, she had risked a lot of public trouble by riding a bus down to a remote Texas air base for a crazy week with me, but we both knew that whenever the big moment of actually getting married approached I shied away. With jet airplanes I was comfortable. With women I wasn't. I guess that watching Mrs. Webster and my mother had made me gun-shy.

One night I heard one of our medical doctors talking in a bar. He'd been a big shot in civilian life and he was saying, “We find that if a man comes from a broken home he's apt not to marry early. It's as if he had to be introduced to love. If he doesn't meet love in his own family he could, conceivably, go through an entire life without ever meeting it. Of course,” he had added, “at any time almost any girl could provide the introduction if she wanted to take the trouble. But spoiled men who don't marry before they're forty—the men who have never been introduced to love—are hardly worth any girl's trouble. So we can say that some men actually do pass through an entire lifetime without ever meeting so simple a thing as love. No one bothered to introduce them.” I often recalled the doctor's words but I was satisfied I wasn't like that, not in all respects. True, my parents had failed to introduce me either to their own love or to the idea of having a home with some girl's love as the central pillar. I think that explains why I was twenty-eight and vaguely in love with Eileen and unmarried. And I think Mrs. Webster knew it and now she was pushing us together.

“I'll see you in the hotel,” she cried and left us, towering a good four inches over the little Japanese man who was leading her back to the Supervisor.

I had been hoping for a chance to talk with Eileen alone and as soon as Mrs. Webster left I pulled her into a corner of the Cadillac and gave her a big kiss. She said, “All the way out on the plane I dreamed of meeting you in a romantic spot like this.” She pointed out of the car to where we were passing little rice fields pressed close to the road and tiny houses set back among the trees. There was a sweet heaviness of spring in the air and as we watched the little workmen of Japan trudging along the footpaths at dusk we felt very much a part of this strange country.

Eileen whispered, “I didn't want to leave America. The idea of…” she hesitated, then added, “getting married in a foreign land didn't appeal. But now…”

I pretended not to have heard her remark about marriage and said, “I was proud of you today.”

“About what?”

“That girl.”

“The actress?”

“Yes. You knew she was the one your father threw out of the dining room. But you didn't embarrass her.”

“Why should I? She came to the Club as a guest and she seemed a very pleasant girl.”

“But your mother…”

“Mother's all right. She just has to feel that she's running everything.”

I asked, “Would she be frightfully sore if we didn't show up at the Club dinner?”

“She knows we're courting.”

“What a quaint word for a Vassar girl!”

“I'm not always a Vassar girl. Don't let the tag fool you. Pardner, I been a-livin' in Tulsa, where folks go a-courtin'.”

“Let's court.”

“What had you in mind?”

“A Japanese nightclub.”