Sayonara (6 page)

“Look, Mrs. Webster, it was a guy from our outfit.”

“It wasn't just a guy, Lloyd. It was humiliation to the service and a direct slap in General Webster's face.”

“I didn't approve of it, Mrs. Webster. I argued against it for days.”

“But your very presence signified approval. In this dining room right now half the officers are laughing at me.”

So that was it. She wasn't really concerned about the welfare of the service or the standing of her husband. She was angry that something which she had started—non-fraternization—should have backfired and brought ridicule upon her. She was especially angry that the instrument of this ridicule should have been, in General Webster's words, a member of her own family.

I asked, “How could I have refused to attend the wedding…”

“Don't call it a wedding! It was a mean little surreptitious ceremony on the most sordid level. It was permitted only because some lily-livered idiots in Washington have no courage to face facts.”

“I agree with you, Mrs. Webster.”

She didn't want agreement. She wanted to knock me into shape, once and for all. When I saw her closing in on me, trying to make me apologize for what I had done in good faith, I sensed pretty clearly that she saw herself fighting her daughter's marriage battle. Years before she had taken on young Mark Webster in just such a fight and she had been victorious and the entire Army knew she had won and from that time forth she had molded and marched Mark Webster into a one-star generalship that he could never have attained by himself. Now she was going to teach her daughter how to march me into four or five stars.

She frowned and said, “If you expect to make a name for yourself in service, Lloyd, you can't offend the proprieties. You can't insult generals.”

I got mad and said, “I've made a pretty good name for myself so far. Shooting down MIGs, not worrying about social life.”

She gasped and put her hand to her mouth as if she had been slapped. With profound rage she cried, “You're an insolent little upstart.” Immediately she was ashamed of herself and tried to recover by saying something halfway sensible but fury was upon her and she stormed ahead, “You're like your insufferable father.” I knew that Mark Webster was afraid of my father—he was deathly afraid of anyone who had more stars than he—and I was surprised that Mrs. Webster should have launched an assault on someone who might be in a position to affect her husband's career, but she was trembling mad and didn't care what she said. She added, “You ought to be careful you don't grow up to be a second Harry Gruver.”

She sounded exactly like her daughter and I recalled with a sense of shock that almost every time I had seen Eileen's picture in the society columns of towns where she had lived, she was invariably with her mother. They were like sisters, shoulder to shoulder against the world.

My father had commented on this once and had said he knew there were two kinds of Army marriages, his where the wife stayed home and Mark Webster's where the wife tagged along. He told me he would honestly have preferred the latter, but he observed that it usually did hard things to the wife. “She's always on the move and her children are always on the move. So the women folk band together in tough little cliques. I can honestly say I never feared the Japanese or the Germans but I do fear such cliques of Army women.”

I heard Mrs. Webster saying bitterly, “I should think Eileen would be ashamed and disgusted.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't even say that I was sure she would see to it that Eileen became disgusted. Instead I looked at her very carefully and when I saw her clean, handsome, hard face with not a wrinkle out of place I thought of Joe Kelly's Japanese girl whom I had kissed that morning, and all at once I caught a glimmering of what the American secretary must have meant when she said, “These damned Japanese girls have a secret.” I had an intimation of their secret: they loved somebody—just simply loved him. They weren't going to make him a four-star general or they weren't going to humiliate him over some trivial affair for which he had already apologized. They just got hold of a man and they loved him.

I had now seen two American marriages at close hand: my parents' where people got along together in a respectful truce, and the Websters' where there was an early surrender followed by a peace treaty without vengeance. But I had never witnessed a marriage where two people loved each other on an equal basis and where the man ran his job on the outside and the woman ran her job at home and where those responsibilities were not permitted to interfere with the fundamental love that existed when such things as outside jobs and inside housekeeping were forgotten.

Mrs. Webster said acidly, “Eileen asked me to tell you she'd be at the hairdresser's.”

I thanked her, held her chair as she rose and showed her to the elevator. I think she knew that she had presented a dismal picture during our talk, for she said, “I do hope you won't embarrass the general again.” I promised her that I wouldn't irritate the general and refrained from pointing out that we had been talking about something quite different: my irritating her.

I went down to a lower floor of the hotel where there was a hairdresser for the American girls who worked with our Army in Japan, and there I saw Eileen coming out more brilliant and lovely than I had ever seen her before. She had what
Life
magazine once called the well-scrubbed look and was absolutely adorable with the fresh bright charm that only American girls ever seem to have. I was disgusted with myself for having quarreled with her the night before and suggested that we sit in a corner of the elegant lounge, where a Japanese boy in a bright blue bar-boy's uniform served us drinks.

I said, “If you looked so adorable all the time no one would ever be able to fight with you.”

“We weren't fighting last night,” she teased.

“I'm glad,” I said, “because I've got to keep in the good graces of at least one of the Websters.”

She frowned and asked, “Mum give you a bad time at lunch?”

“Very bad,” I said.

“Mother's a special case, Lloyd. The Army's her whole life. She watches over Father like a mother hen and she's been very good for him. Therefore he's got to trust her and if she says she doesn't like to see American officers with Japanese girls…Frankly, I don't think Father approves of all the orders he's had to issue because traditionally the Army is pretty adult about men and women getting together—any women. But he's learned that in the long run Mother is usually right.”

“Is she?”

“Yes.”

“Now it's my turn to be scared.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're afraid I'll be like my father. I'm really scared you'll be like your mother.”

“What's so bad with that?” she asked.

“I can't stand being pushed around.”

Eileen lifted her glass and made circles on the marble table. She said slowly, “I don't think I'd be bossy the way Mother is because you're much stronger than Father ever was. But mostly I wouldn't hurt you because I love you so much.”

That was what I wanted to hear and I said, “I'm twenty-eight now and I've been going around with too many airplanes. What I want now is a wife and a family.” She sneaked in a kiss and I said, “Whenever I've thought about a family it's with someone like you—a girl with an Army background like my own….”

She became gently irritated and protested. “That's just what I mean. Why do you say, ‘a girl like me'? I'm not a type. I'm me. Damn it all, Lloyd, haven't you ever wanted to just grab me and haul me away to a shack somewhere?”

Now it was my turn to get on edge and I said, “When you're an officer you meet endless problems of enlisted men who just grabbed something and hauled it away. It doesn't appeal to me.”

She said, “Lloyd, a man has to surrender himself sometimes.
You're not so important you have to defend yourself like a fort.”

From the manner in which Eileen spoke I could tell that she was just as tense as I was and it occurred to me that if I married Eileen we would always be a little bit afraid of each other, a little bit on edge always to be ahead of the other person. Mrs. Webster, frankly, had scared the devil out of me and now I could see the same martial tendencies in her daughter. I could see her organizing my life for me solely on the grounds that she loved me, but the definition of what was love would always be her definition; and I thought of Joe Kelly and the girl he had found. Their fight was with the outside world—the Army and State Department and General Webster—but with themselves they were at peace.

Now Eileen had me scared exactly the way her mother had a little while before. I've learned to admit it when I'm scared because it takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid. I remember when I was fighting three Russians up at the Yalu. I didn't see my wingman get shot down, but all of a sudden I thought the world had gotten awful quiet and I got scared as the devil. I started to run like hell and just as the MIGs were closing in for the kill four of our planes turned up in the distance. I didn't care how bad I looked because I was scared. Point is, if I hadn't been frightened silly I wouldn't have started running and my four rescuers would never have reached me in time.

I said, “What you said last night turned up a lot of new ideas.”

“You make it sound very unpleasant.”

“Didn't you intend it that way? Your mother sure intends it when she gives a man hell.”

She got out of her chair and said, “I don't think you want to take me to the dance tonight.”

I didn't want to answer this so I said, “Some of the things you said last night made sense. We ought to think things out.”

“That's fine with me. I suppose you want to do your thinking—tonight—alone?”

I said, “O.K. by me,” and she started walking across the lounge. It was late in the afternoon and the place was empty, so I ran after her and said, “Eileen, what are we fighting about?”

And she replied, “The next fifty years,” and she looked so cold and so much like her mother that I turned and walked away and caught a ride out to Itami air field, where I astonished everybody by reporting for duty two days early.

Y
ou could say that Itami is right in the heart of Japan, for it stands in the triangle formed by the three great cities of the south: Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto. Actually the three are one big city, for you can travel all the way from Kobe to Osaka without ever being in the country, but for some reason they've been kept apart: Osaka crisscrossed with hundreds of canals, Kobe with its big docks, and Kyoto with endless museums and temples. From Itami you can get to any of these places in a few minutes, so that a man stationed there has right at his elbow all aspects of Japanese life, if he were interested.

As soon as I got to Itami that Saturday night I felt better. I was home. Planes, neat airstrips, men I knew. My work there was a dead cinch. General Webster had arranged it as a kind of present to his daughter, so I could be with her. The board I was on met a couple of times a week but the three senior members did all the work and had a bunch of us jet pilots in from Korea for consultation, if needed.

One of these was Lt. Bailey, the Marine who had brought the Japanese actress into the Kobe Officers Club that day. He was a real hotshot jet man, and since we agreed on most problems the older officers were quite satisfied if we missed meetings because they never liked what we had to say. So Mike Bailey and I really had things squared
away and at the end of the first week he said, “We ought to see something of Japan. I finagled it so you can move into the Marine hotel. Proved it was necessary for our consultations. And I promoted a Chevrolet.” He loaded my gear into it and we set out for his quarters.

“We live six miles from the air base,” he explained. “Extra advantage is that we're not hooked into the Itami phones. They don't bother us much. Son, I got us really fixed up.”

He drove so fast that it seemed only a couple of minutes before we came to an interesting town with narrow streets and hundreds of people wandering about. We inched our way down an alley and up a small hill to a big rambling four-story hotel.

“Marine Barracks,” he said proudly. “Look at that Jap kid come to attention.” A bellhop tossed Mike a snappy salute and whispered, “Seven o'clock, Makino's.” Mike gave the kid 100 yen and said to me, “Finest people in the world, the Japanese.”

I said, “I thought you told me you fought them at Tarawa.”

“Who bears a grudge?” He told the boy to show me the room vacated by the Air Force major who had preceded me on the Board and when I got there I found I had an excellent view of the town. Below me was a wide and rocky river which cut the place in half. Up our side of the river came a railroad from Osaka but right below us it cut across to the other side and stopped at the edge of a beautiful park. There were some very large buildings facing me and, as I watched, huge crowds of people left them and started hiking toward the train.

But as I studied these people pressing toward the station I saw another crowd gathering at the rear of the buildings and into this crowd plunged a dozen young girls, arm in arm, each wearing a long green skirt that swished about her ankles.

“Hey, Bailey!” I cried. “What's this town called?”

“Takarazuka,” he yelled.

“These girls in green…”

Mike rushed into my room and looked across the river. He grabbed me by the arm and shouted, “My god! We're missing the show.”

He shoved me out the door and down the steps onto a narrow street along which we hurried to a large and handsome stone bridge bearing the sign in English, MUKO RIVER. CARE PEDESTRIANS. With a long finger Mike pointed across the bridge and said with drooling relish, “Here they come, the pedestrians.”

Then I saw them, the Takarazuka girls coming home to their
dormitory after the day's performance. First came the beginning students whose job it was to crowd the back of the stage in big numbers. They were the fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds, and they walked proudly in their long green skirts and cork zori. Already they considered themselves to be Takarazuka girls. Bailey nudged me as they passed and asked, “Ever see more beautiful kids in your life?”

I had already seen these dazzling children at the rehearsal and I knew they were beautiful but as I watched them disappear into the evening twilight they seemed to drift away from me with extraordinary grace. They walked in a curious way, one foot set carefully before the other so that their long green skirts swayed noiselessly above the dusty streets. They had now passed so far from me that they were becoming haunting ghosts when Mike nudged me and said, “Watch this one! Imagine General Webster tossing her out of the Officers Club that day.”

I looked across the bridge and there came the exquisite girl I had met during my visit to Takarazuka. She was accompanied by two other actresses and they formed such a gracious trio that townspeople who were attending the procession drew back against the sides of the bridge to watch them go by. As they approached us, Mike's girl kept her dark eyes straight ahead.

I asked Bailey, “Aren't you going to say hello?”

“In public?” he cried. “A Takarazuka girl! You must be nuts.”

The three girls were now abreast of us and Bailey's girl, without actually turning her head, gave him ever so slight a nod, which Bailey pretended not to have seen. Then, like green shadows over some field at the end of day, the girls passed down the narrow street.

Now came a lively burst of fifteen or more, all chattering happily among themselves, all making believe they were unaware of the crowds who watched them. They were young, they were pretty, they were graceful. They wore little makeup, spoke in soft voices and kept their eyes straight ahead when the American Marines on the bridge stared at them. They were true Takarazuka girls, probably the most curious and lovely group of women in the world, and as I watched them pass in the strangely warm April twilight I was captivated by the poetic swaying of their long green skirts and the lithe, hidden movements of their beautiful bodies as they passed into darkness.

At last the principal actresses appeared, the ones famous throughout Japan, tall, stately girls whose distinguished and memorable faces advertised all kinds of products in the magazines. They moved with
special authority and were besieged by mobs of young girls seeking autographs. Among these actresses I noticed several who took men's roles on stage and who now dressed like men in public. That is, they wore slacks and sweaters and berets, yet in doing so they managed to look enticingly feminine. They were subjected to special crowding and sometimes grown women would press in upon them demanding a signature across the face of a photograph purchased that day.

The formal procession of the Takarazuka goddesses was ended, but on the far end of the bridge appeared one last girl in a soft white stole, gray kimono and rippling green skirt. She had been delayed and was hurrying to overtake her friends. Her green zori tapped out a gentle rhythm as she hastened pin-toed toward us, her body leaning forward in unstated urgency. Her face was flushed and extraordinarily beautiful. She seemed more like a country girl than the others, less sophisticated in her precious green uniform and when she passed she looked at me in surprise and smiled. I saw that her face was unusually animated and that her teeth were dazzling white and even. I never saw this girl again; I never even discovered her name. She may have been only a beginner of no consequence, but as I watched her soft disappearance into the spring night I felt as if I had been brushed across the eyes by some terrible essence of beauty, something of whose existence I had never before been aware. I desired to run after that strange, lovely girl but she was gone forever.

Mike Bailey tugged at my arm and said, “Well, let's get down to the restaurant.”

“What restaurant?” I asked.

“Makino's,” he said, and he led me through a jungle of thin and winding streets and I felt that I had never before really seen a Japanese town: the crowded life, the tiny shops, the paper doors with small lights shining through, the people in all kinds of costumes from spectacular kimonos to drab business suits, the varying faces, the multitudes of children, and the police boxes on the corner. At times I felt like a whale swimming upstream against a flood of minnows for I towered over the people and no matter how far or how fast we walked the same number of Japanese seemed to press in upon us.

We came at last to an extremely narrow alley and ducked into a restaurant doorway hung with red and white streamers that brushed our faces as we passed. Inside were many Japanese crowded at small tables eating fish, which I have never liked. A Japanese woman greeted us with three low bows, a little maid fell to her knees and
took our shoes and two powdered make-believe geishas showed us up a flight of narrow stairs.

We entered onto a top floor where three couples sat quietly at small tables. I keep using the words
little
and
tiny
because it's a pretty powerful experience for a fellow six-foot-two to travel in Japan. For one thing, you're always ducking your head to keep from bashing your brains in on door jambs and everything you see seems to have been constructed for midgets.

In a corner, imprisoned by a quarter-circle of a rounded table, stood a fine-looking chunky Japanese man of sixty, watching over a charcoal stove on which bubbled a large deep pan of fat, into which he tossed chunks of fish, swishing them around with long metal chopsticks. This was Makino-san. The après-guerre geishas told us that we were to sit on the floor at the quarter-circle table that cut Makino off from the rest of the room.

Mike said, “This is the best tempura restaurant in Japan.”

“What's tempura?” I asked.

“Look.” He pointed to a menu painted on the wall in Japanese and English. Makino-san had twenty-nine varieties of fish from lobster to eel, including squid, octopus, shrimp, sardines and the excellent Japanese fish, tai. He also served about the same number of vegetables, especially gingko nuts, Japanese beans and shallots.

“This is living, son,” Bailey cried, putting his arm about one of the make-believe geishas, who laughed and called him “Mike-san.” The other geisha started to arrange my dishes for the meal but Mike said, “All right, girls, beat it.” They nodded obediently and went downstairs. I must have looked disappointed, for he said, “It's silly to keep geishas at your table when you have a girl joining you.”

“I didn't know a girl was eating with us.”

“Didn't you see Fumiko-san say she'd be here?”

“The girl on the bridge?”

“Yeah. Fumiko-san. She gave me the high sign as she passed on the Bitchi-bashi.”

“What's this Bitchi-bashi?”

“
Bashi
's Japanese for bridge. We call the one where the girls pass the Bitchi-bashi because there is so much lovely stuff there and you can't touch the merchandise.”

“Look, Mike,” I said. “I don't get this special approach. You know the girl. Why don't you just go up and ask her for a date?”

Bailey's jaw fell and he said, “A Takarazuka girl isn't allowed to have dates.”

“Why not?”

“Well, in the old days theaters had a lousy reputation in Japan, so the railroad decided to keep Takarazuka what you might call impeccable.”

“What railroad?” I asked.

“This whole resort grew up as a place for excursion trains from Osaka and Kyoto and Kobe. Started with a hot springs, then a zoo and finally some genius thought up these girl shows.”

“You mean a railroad still runs this?”

“Sure. They don't make a nickel on the town or the theater, but they do a fabulous business on the railroad. Everybody comes out to see the show. Fifty lavish scenes, a hundred beautiful girls—gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.”

“And none of those girls has dates?”

“Immediate dismissal. The railroad combs Japan for these kids, spends a lot of dough training them. They've got to behave.”

I considered this for a moment and asked, “But if the girls can't have dates, how come you're dating one of them?”

“Like I told President Truman, ‘Harry, you was wrong when you sold the Marines short.' ” He started to jab me with his long finger when he stopped suddenly, scrambled to his feet and hurried to the door. “Fumiko!” he cried with real emotion.

The delicate actress seemed entirely changed from when we had seen her shortly before on the Bitchi-bashi. Now she wore a kimono and hurried toward Mike in little running pin-toed steps that made her exquisitely charming. Her kimono was a powdery blue and at her neck at least five undergarments showed, each folded meticulously upon the next so as to form a handsome frame for her golden face. Her hair was not fixed in the antique Japanese manner but hung nearly to her shoulders, thus forming the rest of the frame for her slender and expressive face. She wore white tabi socks, white cork zori instead of shoes and an enormous sash tied in a flowing knot in back. When I rose and extended my hand she barely touched it with her own, which seemed impossibly gentle, and I was amazed at how graceful she seemed, how young.

Mike Bailey had passed the point of amazement. He was drooling and arranged her cushions and plates as if he were a French headwaiter.
Then he pinched her ivory-colored cheek and said, “It's murder trying to see you, baby.” She laughed at this and her voice was high and tinkling like that of a child playing with dolls.

When she sat with us the tiny restaurant seemed to thrust back its walls, our talk grew more expansive and Makino, tucked away in his corner, started to fry the fish. Mike said generously, “This American is Ace Gruver. Seven MIGs.” He showed her how jets fight and when she started to admire me perhaps a little too much he tried to change the subject, but she said, “I meet Gruver-san already.”

Mike did a double take and Fumiko-san laughed again. “How you like me in
Swing Butterfly
?” she asked him.