Sayonara (7 page)

“You were wonderful!” he cried. “But I'll bet if you'd put that show on while MacArthur was here he'd have thrown you all in jail.”

I asked why and Fumiko said—I can't explain how she talked or exactly what she did with English and Japanese gestures, but she made me understand—“
Swing Butterfly
make fun of American sailors who falling in love with Japanese girls. But Butterfly not commit hara-kiri.” Here she grabbed a butter knife and performed the ritual. “If you like laugh, if you not too proud, you enjoy
Swing Butterfly,
I think.”

“Did you like it?” I asked Mike.

“Anything this babe's in, I like,” he drooled.

“What's she play?”

“I geisha,” Fumiko explained. “I fight off whole shipload American sailors.”

With a deft twist of her shoulders she demonstrated how she played the role and Makino and two men in the restaurant roared and suddenly I didn't like being in that little upstairs room. I didn't appreciate having a fat cook laugh at Americans. I didn't like being hidden away in a corner with a Japanese girl, no matter how pretty, who ridiculed our men. In fact, I didn't like anything I'd seen happening in Japan since General MacArthur left and I didn't want to be a part of it. I found to my surprise that I was pretty much on the side of Mrs. Webster. After all, who did win the war, anyway? I said to Mike, “You probably want to be alone. I'll blow.”

He got very excited and cried, “Hey, you can't, Ace.”

I stumbled awkwardly to my feet but he pulled me back down. “Ace,” he said. “If any Takarazuka snoopers broke in here and caught Fumiko alone with me. Much trouble.”

“What good do I do?” I grumbled.

“You are in the way,” Mike admitted, “but it would be a lot easier on Fumiko if it looked like an innocent dinner for three, wouldn't it, lady?” I turned to see if Fumiko agreed and saw to my astonishment that she had turned pale and was trembling.

For at the entrance to the room stood three Takarazuka girls, tall and shatteringly beautiful. Two of them wore the Takarazuka green-skirted costume but the girl in the middle did not. She wore gray slacks, a blue-gray sweater, white shirt and tie and slate-gray cap. She was obviously disgusted at catching Fumiko-san seated with two Americans.

In three decisive steps she stood over us and spoke harshly to Fumiko-san who scrambled away in disgrace. I remember looking up at the strong face of this intruder. She was extraordinarily beautiful, yet strangely cold. I felt curiously insulted by her and cried, “Are you the boss of this outfit?” but she spoke no English and snapped at me in Japanese. Then brusquely she turned away and led Fumiko-san to a table where the four actresses ignored us.

I started to get up but Makino, the cook, grabbed my arm and translated, “She not angry. Only she say very dangerous Fumiko-san walk with Americans.”

“She wasn't walking,” I cried. “She was sitting here.”

“Please!” Makino protested. “I not speak good. Trouble too much.”

Now Mike started to join the Takarazuka girls but Makino pleaded with him, “Soon you leave Japan, Mike-san. I got to stay. Please, no trouble.” He whisked away the dishes from which Fumikosan had been eating and Mike and I sat glumly staring at our mess of tempura. It galled me to be sitting on the floor, Japanese style, while the Takarazuka girls, by whom we had been rebuked, sat at a table, American style. I said, “Let's get out of here,” but before we could leave, the leader of the girls—the one in slacks—came over, looked me gently in the eye and spoke softly.

Makino translated, “She have no English. She most sorry but Fumiko-san young girl from famous family in Japan. Suppose she get fired Takarazuka, everybody lose face.”

The lovely actress looked at me beseechingly and said, in Makino's interpretation, “Very difficult to be Takarazuka girl. We got to protect one another.”

She smiled at me, bowed graciously and returned to her table. I felt lots better but now Mike began to boil. “What in hell am I?” he
demanded. “A man or a mouse?” He pushed Makino's restraining hand away, strode over to the table, reached down, grabbed Fumikosan by the chin and kissed her until she had to struggle for breath. Then he bowed politely to the girl in slacks and said, “I'm mighty sorry, too. But us boys also have to protect one another.”

Then we left, but at the door we looked back to see the four Takarazuka girls sitting primly on the chairs, staring at their plates.

When we got back to the barracks Mike said, “I don't blame the girls. They're under strict rules. If they get caught with an American soldier they're fired. But that snippy babe in slacks sort of got my goat.”

I asked, “Why do you bother with them, if you can't date them?”

He put down his towel and looked at me in amazement. “Since when does a man have to have reasons for chasing a pretty girl?”

“But you can't even talk with her!”

“Son!” Mike cried. “Didn't you read when you was young? Didn't you stumble upon them there fairy tales? Where the prince fights his way through the wall of fire? The more rules they put up against you the more fun it is.”

“But she's a Japanese girl.”

“Drop the adjective, son. She's a girl.”

“When you kissed her…It looked as if you could really go for her.”

“Son, when I come to any country I want to do three things. Eat the food of that country, in this case sukiyaki which is horrible. Drink the liquor which is also horrible. And make love to the girls, which in the case of Fumiko-san would be delirious.”

“Even though there's no chance?”

“I hate to be stuffy about this, son, but you Air Force men wouldn't understand. When you're a Marine there's always a chance.”

“Even with those girls?”

“Son, when I was in New Zealand in the last war, waiting to hit Tarawa, there was a pretty barmaid in town and all the boys tried to make her. I didn't bother because there was also a very wealthy and famous gal who lived on a hill and you'll find as you grow older and wiser in the ways of the world that they're the gals to go for. Because they got everything: power, position, the mad acclaim of the world…” He dragged his hand back through his hair. “But there's one thing they ain't got—l'amour.”

I started to ask why he was so sure they were lacking l'amour but
he interrupted me and said, “Same with the Takarazuka girls. They got fame, wealth, their name in the bright lights…” He started to sob and concluded, “But it's all like ashes because they ain't got l'amour. And you watch, son! Takarazuka girls ain't none different from that there gal in old New Zealand. And I'm the guy who can bring l'amour into even the drabbest life.”

We went down to the shower room and while Mike was yammering away I had the stifling premonition that I ought to get out of Japan. When we returned to the hall Mike headed for his own room but I said, “Come on in a second,” and we talked for a long time. I said, “I had the strangest feeling just now. I wanted to get out of Japan. I was scared, I think.” I started to tell him about my bad luck with Eileen and he interrupted.

“Don't tell me! The general's wife started to throw her hooks into you. I sized her up when she tossed a girl like Fumiko-san out of her third-rate club…” He shook my hand warmly and said, “Son, when you escaped Mrs. General Webster, you escaped horrors worse than death.”

“But I didn't want to escape,” I said. “I wanted to marry Eileen and have a wife I could be proud of and a home somewhere and a good life in the Air Force. Everything was arranged and I liked it all.”

“So now what?”

“I had the craziest feeling, Mike, that I was back in St. Leonard's.”

“Where's that?”

“Prep school. I went to St. Leonard's. I was all set to take the exams for West Point, but there was a teacher there who loved English literature and he got me a part in the school play. It was by a Hungarian called Molnar, and all of a sudden I didn't want to go to West Point. I didn't want any part of it and my mother, who's written a couple of damned fine stories for the
Atlantic,
came to school and said, ‘We've always expected you would go to the Point, like your father and his father.' I said, ‘Suddenly I feel as if I'd had a vision of a completely different world.' At that she started to cry and talked pretty incoherently, but what I got was that if you ever once experienced that vision don't let anything stop you. She wouldn't come right out and say I shouldn't go to the Point, because her own father went there and became a pretty famous general. But I could see that that's what she meant.

“For the next two weeks I went through hell. Everybody at the
school was just swell. They didn't rave at me and say I was ruining my life if I gave up the appointment to West Point, and the English teacher wouldn't say that if I did go to the Point I was selling out. But then Father flew up from Texas and he was like a breath of sea air in a Kansas drought.”

“He put you straight, eh?”

“No. Father never rants.”

“He's a general, isn't he? Then he rants.”

“You Marines get the wrong idea sometimes. Just because a couple of generals fouled up Koje-do, you take it for granted all Army generals are horses' necks.”

“Right animal, wrong anatomy.”

“If you ever meet my father you'll meet the man who justifies having generals. He looked at me that day and said, ‘If you don't want to go to the Point, Lloyd, don't. Unhappiest men I know are those who've been forced into something they have no inner aptitude for.' ”

“That was a noble start,” Mike said, “but what did he use for the clincher?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did he apply the screws? How did he force you to go to the Point?”

“He didn't. We just talked and he flew back to Texas and I went on to the Point. And up to this very night I've never once been sorry. But tonight that old sick feeling came over me and I had the distinct impression that maybe I didn't want to stay in the Air Force and buck for a star. Maybe I didn't want to marry Eileen and mess around with her silly old man and cantankerous mother.” I put my hand against my forehead and said, “Maybe I felt my whole world crumbling under me.”

Mike grew serious and said, “Boy, do I know! I watched my old man go through the depression. I watched a world really crumble. That's why I don't put much stock in the permanent security of worlds—of any kind. But what hit you? You don't just decide a thing like that for the hell of it.”

“Well…I'm almost ashamed to tell you what hit me.”

Mike had a very quick mind and he said loudly, “Fumiko-san! You took a good look at Fumiko-san close up. Well, son, she'd put anyone off his rocker—anyone, that is, but an old hand at l'amour like me.”

I laughed and said, “I wish it were so simple. I could duel you for
Fumiko-san in F-86's at 40,000 feet. But the other day I was best man at a marriage between a G.I. and a Japanese girl. Boy, she was no Fumiko-san, but she impressed me powerfully. Like a chunk of earth in the middle of a cheese soufflé. And tonight, seeing that other part of Japan I wondered…” Suddenly I clammed up and couldn't say it.

“You wondered what?” Mike asked. “You certainly don't want to snatch the enlisted man's wife.”

“This sounds silly but I flew down here ready to marry Eileen. When she and I started to hesitate about that, I started to wonder about everything else—even about staying in the Air Force. I know it's ridiculous but that G.I. and his dumpy Japanese girl…”

Mike stared at me in slack-jawed horror and asked in a hushed voice, “You mean you're ponderin' life?” He mussed his hair down over his eyes and sobbed, “Oh, what does it all mean—the eternal struggle—sex—the New York Yankees!”

“All right, louse it up. But suddenly I felt as if I were in a world of swirling darkness where the only reality was this earth—this earth of Japan.”

“My God!” Mike cried, clutching his head. “A new Sigmund Freud!”

I had to laugh, and while Mike phoned down for some cold beer I asked, “Don't you ever get crazy ideas like that?”

“A million of 'em. They never hurt anybody.”

“But to have an idea like that suddenly bust open your whole world…I thought I was back in prep school again.”

“I think it's easy to explain,” Mike said after his second bottle of beer, which gave him added authority. “You've been fighting like crazy up in Korea and you get this big idea about comin' down to Japan and getting married…”

“She didn't even tell me she was coming to Japan.”

“Don't let details mess up my theory. Then when you see the battle-axe her mother is…”

“She's not really a battle-axe.”

“Who threw me out of the Club with Fumiko-san?” The question awakened all of Mike's animosities and launched him into a tirade against generals' wives and he never did finish his explanation.

But next night we were at the Bitchi-bashi watching the stately procession of Takarazuka girls as they approached us through the evening dusk to vanish into the deep shadows. I was deeply moved by the passage of these quiet figures and they appeared to me as
members of a military group dedicated to their rituals and promotions the way I was tied to mine. They lived and acted with a sense of their military responsibility while I was conditioned by the rules of my army. They were not free and I was not free, for I believe that no man who flies a plane against the enemy or steers a ship into enemy waters is a free man. He is bound by certain convictions and restraints that other men never know.

I was pondering this when Fumiko-san came by. She was accompanied by the actress in men's clothes who had reprimanded us the night before and when the bobby soxers on the Bitchi-bashi saw this tall girl they made a wild dash to surround her and demand autographs. The actress coolly shoved them away but other little girls took their places.