The Sun Gods (32 page)

“Since middle school,” she said. Of course. “How long have you been in Japan?”

“Since September.”

“And how long will you stay?”

“My Fulbright ends in June. But I may be able to renew it for another nine months.”

“I'd love to go to America on a Fulbright.”

“Excuse me, I know this is very rude,” he began, but stopped when it became obvious that she was trying not to laugh. “What is it?” he asked.

“You're so formal,” she said. “Men your age don't have to be so formal with girls my age.”

“Now that you bring it up, what is your age?”

“Nineteen. My birthday was yesterday.”

“Happy birthday! Nineteen is such a nice age. I wish I had known, I would have brought you a present.”

She smiled and lowered her eyes for the first time. Maybe he was being too obvious. “How old are
you
?” she asked, looking at him again.

“Twenty-five. My birthday was last December. On the nineteenth.”

“Twenty-five is a nice age, too,” she said with a smile. He liked how she smiled without covering her mouth as most Japanese women did.

They crossed the tracks and continued on north past a row of banks and stores along a busy thoroughfare. They walked with the general flow of pedestrians, but more slowly than the others, who kept passing them.

“You were about to say something before when I interrupted you,” she reminded him.

“When I was being too polite.”

“I'm sorry, my mother is always telling me I have to learn to control myself.”

“No, I appreciate it,” he said. “Most Japanese people are so reluctant to criticize or contradict. I hope you'll always …”

“Yes?”

“No, never mind. I was just going to ask you your age, but we've already talked about that.”

“We're coming to Koganei Bridge now,” she said. “It's the best place for viewing the blossoms.”

Bill could not see a bridge, just a mass of people. Soon, moving with them, he and Mineko came to the center of a short bridge that spanned a narrow canal.

Stretching off endlessly on either side of the bridge were masses of pale white blossoms with just the slightest hint of pink. The branches were thick with blossoms that blotted out the sky. Bill and Mineko stood looking up for a while, then crossed to the other side of the bridge.

He led the way along the green embankment beneath the blossoms, moving farther and farther away from the roar of traffic, where the crowd thinned out to the occasional passerby. Now and then, a breeze would sweep past them, and they would smile at each other through a veil of drifting petals. They walked for long stretches without speaking, hearing only the soft gurgling of the placid water in the canal.

“What an odd, little waterway this is,” he said.

“It's an aqueduct. One of the Tokugawa shoguns dug it hundreds of years ago. It's also famous as the site where the writer Osamu Dazai committed suicide with his lover.”

Just now, Bill could not imagine ever wanting to die.

33

BILL STARED AT THE TIN
of rice crackers resting in the ceremonial alcove in his room. As he and Mineko had walked back toward the station, she had grown pensive and again voiced her doubts that her father would see him. Perhaps the best thing, she suggested, would be to take her father by surprise. If Bill showed up unannounced late Sunday morning, say about eleven, her father would be sure to be in, probably puttering about in the back garden, and would not have a chance to think up an excuse for turning him away.

Even more than the idea itself, Bill was thrilled that Mineko had taken the trouble to think of it. He walked back to the house with her, retrieved his gift from the entryway, and returned to Ogikubo. The one bit of himself he left with her was his card, which she promised to hide. Of course when he came on Sunday, they would pretend they had never met.

David Green stopped by on Friday to ask if Bill had made up his mind yet about appearing on television again in a week or two. Knowing now that Mineko would be watching, he accepted, wishing only that he could somehow peer into the camera and look back at her.

As he thought about looking at her, he began to wonder what it was like for her to look at him. He had seen Japanese paintings of the Portuguese monks and Dutch traders who came to these shores in the sixteenth century, and prints depicting the Americans who came to open the country a hundred years ago, and all of them were grotesque as seen through Japanese eyes: deathly gray skin, monkey-like hair and teeth, bulging eyeballs, enormous beaks for noses. Clare had called him beautiful, but to Mineko, his reddish-blond waves might look like wild flames, and his perfectly ordinary nose a gaping ventilation pipe.

On Sunday morning he left the house carrying the tin of rice crackers, its neat wrapping somewhat rumpled. He considered buying something else to go with it, something more appropriate for Mineko, but he was not even supposed to know that she existed, let alone bring her presents.

It was 10:50 when he walked up to the Fukai house in Koganei and rang the doorbell.

“
Hai!”
Slippered feet flapped toward the door. He slid back the frosted glass-paneled door and came face-to-face with Mineko. She wore a white blouse and a simple, knee-length skirt of gray flannel.

After a quick smile, she said in a loud, clear voice, “
Dochira-sama de gozaimashoh ka”
— “Who might you be, Sir?”

He played along, presented his card, and emphasized in his introduction that he was a University of Tokyo student, which should impress her parents. “I have come to see Mr. Jiro Fukai,” he said, matching her tone of voice.

She took several steps away and glided around a corner into a shadowy passage to the right. The entryway had a slate floor, and there was a large
geta-bako
, the cabinet for footgear to one side. Three umbrellas stood at crazy angles in a wire stand in the corner, and on another rack were a few pairs of slippers for guests. He hoped that one pair would be placed on the glossy wooden floor for him to step into.

His heart had begun to slow when a slim, graying man with heavy eyebrows and rolled-up sleeves rounded the corner clutching his card. The man's sullen expression told him that the time for playing games had ended.

“Yes?” said Mr. Fukai brusquely.

“My name is William Morton,” said Bill, trying to smile.

“I know who you are. You're the son of that American preacher who killed my sister. What incredible nerve you have to walk into my home.”

Mineko stepped out from behind the corner, pale and shaken.

Her father spun around in his stocking feet. “Mineko! Go to your room.”

“Father, I—”

“You heard me!”

Wavering, Mineko sent Bill a terrified glance.

“You know this man, don't you?” Mr. Fukai shouted. “What has he been telling you?”

“Nothing, just that—”

“Go to your room now!”

Wilting before his eyes, Mineko turned and ran down the hallway. A woman came out of the shadows and followed her. Not until a door slammed somewhere in the back of the house did Jiro face Bill again.

“You're one of the American devils who murdered my family.”

“You don't understand, Mr. Fukai, I loved Mitsuko like a mother, and I'm convinced that she loved me more than—”

“Don't talk to me about love! You're as much of a hypocrite as that father of yours, claiming to love Mitsuko. You look just like him.”

“You met my father?”

“Yes, I met him, that holy man of God. And I saw you, too. I visited your wonderful city of Seattle where they build the bombers.”

“You're absolutely right. My father is the one to blame. I only want to make up for some of the pain.”

“What do you know about pain? Have you ever run for your life from a sky full of American bombers? Have you ever seen a pile of black ash on the earth that just might be your whole family?”

“No, I haven't experienced that kind of pain myself. But I have seen Aunt Yoshiko, and it broke my heart.”

“You've been to Itsuki?” Mr. Fukai's face became distorted with rage, and he began trembling all over. He went back into the house, striding heavily on the glossy wood. A second later, he was back. He flung the still-wrapped tin of rice crackers at Bill's feet, hurling the crumpled calling card after it.

Bill bent down, picked up the mess, then turned and stepped out of the house.

On the street again, he walked slowly, hoping Mineko would come after him. At each corner he passed on his way to the station, he stopped, looking back, but there was no one. He dropped the mangled gift and card into a waste receptacle.

On the platform, he let two inbound trains go by before admitting to himself that he was alone. But she still had his card, and she could call him when the storm had passed.

He went home and waited in his room. No call came. When Mrs. Niiyama asked if he would be joining them for dinner, he accepted so as not to be out of the house if Mineko called.

But Mineko did not call, neither that evening nor the following day.

He missed another seminar and Keiichi called to ask if he was sick. Bill thanked him for his concern and cut the conversation short. Whenever Mrs. Niiyama was on the phone, he circled his room like a caged animal.

Tuesday morning, he joined the streams of workers filtering out of the houses in Ogikubo, flowing into ever-broader tributaries, and converging in a torrent on the station. Before the rapids could sweep him toward the center of the city, he extricated himself and boarded a less crowded train headed in the opposite direction, toward Koganei. One stop past Musashi-Koganei, Mineko's station, he transferred to the Seibu-Kokubunji Line and stayed on the rickety, little train for two stops, exiting at Taka-no-dai with hundreds of women students. He hurried to the gate ahead of the crowd, surrendered his ticket, then stood there watching every face that passed through.

He had arrived before eight, as he had planned, but obviously she could have come through here long before. After the students from this train had passed through, he found a slightly less exposed position behind a post.

Wave after wave came, none of them bearing Mineko. Between waves, the uniformed ticket-taker would stare off into space, humming to himself. Next to him, the man punching the tickets of boarding passengers kept up an incessant rhythmic clicking with his metal punch, which he barely interrupted each time a rider without a monthly pass held out a little cardboard rectangle in the vicinity of the clicking jaws.

When the morning rush slowed, the ticket-taker got down from his stool and ambled over to a door in the brick wall of the station. Bill heard water running, after which the man emerged with a watering can. He dribbled water on the area inside the wicket. When the can was empty, he systematically scrubbed the whole area with a push broom. Bill watched him accumulate little, black piles of moistened dust and scoop them up with a dustpan. All the while, the other uniformed attendant remained on his stool, punch clicking as if the hand holding it belonged to a robot.

The trains came at longer intervals now, each disgorging fewer passengers. At 10:30 Bill used one lull between trains for a quick trip to the men's room. As he stepped outside again, a policeman approached him.

“Do you have some business here?” the officer asked, his eyes nearly hidden beneath the brim of his hat.

“I'm waiting for a friend,” Bill said.

“Let me see your passport, please.”

“I'm not a tourist,” Bill said.

“Then your Alien Registration Certificate, please.”

Bill patted the pockets of his sport coat and thrust his hands in his pants pockets, knowing that he was not going to find the little, blue booklet that he had carried so dutifully during his first few months in the country. Foreigners were never supposed to be without their
Gaijin Torokusho
, but the damned thing was not only useless, it was too big to put into a wallet and too small to keep track of as it bounced from pocket to pocket. The other foreigners he knew left theirs at home, where it was safe, since loss of it was threatened with all sorts of dire consequences.

“I'm sorry, officer, I seem to have left it in my room,” he said at last.

“Then you'll have to come with me.”

“I have these other things,” he started to say, reaching for his wallet, when he heard footsteps coming down the station stairway. A few paces behind a woman in a yellow dress was Mineko.

“Here,” Bill said, looking back and forth between his wallet and the station gate, “my business card.”

“That's not good enough,” the policeman said. “Anyone can have one of those printed.”

Mineko was through the gate. Her eyes were downcast, and even if she had looked up, she probably would not have seen him here off to one side behind a post.

Bill pulled out his University of Tokyo student identification card and the National Railways pass he used to commute to campus.

The officer looked at them, grumbling to himself. Bill craned his neck to watch Mineko emerge from the other side of his post and approach the curb.

“Mineko!” he shouted.

The police officer looked startled, then angry.

Bill said, “That's my friend. She'll vouch for me.” But when Mineko saw him, she stepped down into the street and started to run.

“Mineko! Come back!”

On the other side of the street, she stopped and whirled around, vigorously shaking her head, then she continued walking off swiftly across a broad lawn. Bill started to run in her direction.

“Stop!” bellowed the policeman behind him. When Bill reached the curb, he felt the policeman's hand on his shoulder. “You're under arrest.”

Mineko turned to look at Bill standing on the curb with his arms in the air. She clutched her briefcase in front of her as if in protection.

The officer pushed Bill toward a police box near the front of the train station. Mineko took one or two tentative steps in this direction, then began walking swiftly to the police box.

The police kept them for nearly an hour, interrogating him, examining his identification and Mineko's. After Bill gave repeated promises never to flee from the police again or to leave the house without the all-important Alien Registration Certificate, they were allowed to leave the police box. They walked in silence until they had reached the middle of the grassy field.

“Why did you run away from me?” he asked.

“Don't you know? After what happened on Sunday? You lied to me. I heard what my father said to you. He knew exactly who you are. You're not just someone who was ‘taken care of' by my Aunt Mitsuko. Your father did something awful to her.”

“Don't you know? Didn't he tell you?”

“My father has never told me anything. All I know is what I heard before he sent me to my room. I was so disappointed in you!” Her eyes filled with tears, and her voice caught in her throat.

“But I didn't lie to you. I explained my connection with Mitsuko the way I explain it to everybody, out of habit. The truth is something I am not very proud of.”

A group of students stared at them while passing by.

Bill asked, “Is there somewhere quiet we can go?”

Mineko looked at her watch. “I'm missing my Shakespeare class. It started at eleven.”

“I'm sorry. Do you have any other classes today?”

“English history, at three.”

“I've been waiting for you since a quarter to eight, and I'm starved.”

She took him to a little café nearby full of carved wooden bears and salmon and other objects made by the Ainu people of Hokkaido. Bill hoped to find unusual dishes on the menu, but there were only sandwiches and other unremarkable fare. He ordered pork cutlet with curry on rice, and Mineko had a cucumber sandwich.

Bill said, “I'm sorry I didn't explain more about your aunt. I suppose your father was right. My father did kill her in a way. I'm only finding out now what really happened.”