This Scorching Earth (8 page)

When he saw Fukagawa again he was surprised. People were living there once more. The main business was still lumber. Before the fire there had been over two thousand lumber dealers, but now there were only slightly over a hundred. There were no chemical industries, but the dye-works were open and the canals were green again. The Chinese restaurants were thriving as usual, and even small Korean centers had sprung up. But now their old occupation—opening oysters—had been taken over by Japanese. It was about the only way of making a living.

He no longer liked Fukagawa. Its atmosphere was gone, as was Asakusa's. It was now only the poorest section of the city. Whole families lived in four-and-a-half mat rooms; some lived in U. S. Army packing cases or former air-raid shelters. It was no longer a unique district. It was being rebuilt, like every place else, only it was uglier than most. He hated going there and very rarely had occasion to do so since few Americans ever went there. He never went back to where his house had been, nor to the green canal behind it.

But sometimes, after work, he would take the slow and noisy trolley past Fukagawa to the old Susaki district. It alone remained black and empty, a barren field, with no ruins, no trace of life. Sometimes he stood there for fifteen minutes or so, his head bowed.

The MP walked over.

"Looky, Joe," he said, "you been standing here staring for the last fifteen minutes. Gimme your stub. Trip ticket. That's right."

The soldier took the ticket. "O. K., Joe, she no come. You go." He made waving motions with his hands. "Go on now—hayaku. Your lady-friend's not gonna turn up."

As Tadashi was climbing into the sedan the MP felt in his breast pocket and brought out some cigarettes. He handed half a dozen to Tadashi.

"Here, Jackson, for your trouble," he said and smiled.

That was the second smile he'd received. Tadashi touched his hat gratefully, took the cigarettes and the trip ticket, and smiled back. The MP winked, went back to the entrance, took a parade-rest stance, and held both it and the wink. Tadashi laughed and started his motor.

Just as he was backing out a soldier ran up to him and, in Japanese, said: "Can you please take me to Shinjuku?"

Tadashi was both surprised and embarrassed. If it had been English, he "wouldn't have understood or, at least, could have pretended not to. But the soldier's Japanese was remarkably good. So Tadashi could only shake his head.

"Please," said the soldier. "I'm late for work."

Tadashi put his foot on the accelerator and released the brake. It was against the rules. One must have a trip ticket. An Occupation driver could not drive just anyone who asked him. Those were the rules.

"I sorry," Tadashi said, in English.

The soldier reluctantly pulled out a full pack of Chesterfields. "Please," he said.

Tadashi became frightened. Any infraction of the rules still frightened him. "No," he said shortly, "I sorry." And the car rolled backward.

The soldier took the cigarettes from the window and put them into his pocket.

The MP stepped forward and said: "Hey, what's going on here?"

The soldier turned, looked at him, said: "None of your god-damned business," and began running as fast as he could toward Tokyo Station.

The MP was about to run after him, but then decided he couldn't leave his post to go chase the soldier.

Tadashi by this time had backed the car out and was starting down the street. He passed the soldier in the next block, but he was not thinking of him, nor of the American lady, nor of his own ideals. He was thinking that he was forty-five minutes late and would receive another delinquency report.

The sedan passed the running soldier and was far away by the time he reached the Allied entrance to the trains. He glanced behind him, but the MP was not pursuing. Overhead a train rolled in, and he ran up the steps two at a time, down the length of the waiting train to the last car, which had a broad white line painted along its side.

"Chuo?" he shouted at the train boy, who nodded. As he stepped into the train, the doors slammed shut.

A dozen soldiers were in the car and a couple of civilians. In one corner three Nisei soldiers were pointing out the sights to each other, and in another two very young buck privates were lost in dozens of comic books. He shoved his bag into an overhead rack and sat down beside an older soldier who was looking out the window. The train curved out of the station, above the buildings, toward Kanda.

The older soldier looked at him. He had a large bulbous nose, pitted like a raspberry. "Boy, you just made it, didn't you? One more minute and you'd have been real left out."

"I ran all the way." He looked out the window at the receding platform, still thinking of the MP.

The older soldier laughed indulgently. "Do it all the time myself, out after a shack-up job and run like hell to get in. You got to be in by noon?"

"I'm supposed to be now. I work this morning." He looked at his wrinkled uniform and felt his day-old beard.

The soldier with the big nose nodded sympathetically, then asked: "You going to Shinjuku?"

He was answered with a nod.

"You with the Engineers out there?"

The younger soldier shook his head no. He turned away and looked out of the window. He wanted to think, not talk with some old Regular Army gasser. You could tell them a mile away. It seemed he hadn't thought for weeks, and he had lots to think about. One never seemed to have time to think in the Army, or in any event it certainly wasn't encouraged. And he must think now. In a week he might be married. Or well on his way toward it. But there was no reason to feel so continually surprised. He might have seen it coming a year ago.

Even his first letters home had shown some indication of what might happen. Those letters must have sounded pretty enthusiastic, all filled with discoveries he took for granted now. That the people weren't yellow after all, that their eyes didn't slant, that it wasn't a small country, and that the Japanese weren't midgets.

The letters from his parents said they were glad that he liked it over there and that he was enjoying himself. He must remember to dress warmly enough because his mother had heard on the radio that it was a cold winter. And his father hoped he was enjoying himself and wasn't letting his enjoying himself interfere with being a good soldier which was, after all, the reason he was there. They'd apparently thought Japan was like a new bicycle or an electric train.

Half a year later he'd tried to tell them how he felt. He'd used phrases such as "I feel I really belong here ..." This had inspired letters, by return mail, in which his mother asked about his health and was he sure he was dressing warmly enough, and his father seriously asked if he were learning Japanese and, jokingly, if he had a Japanese girl.

As a matter of fact, he
was
learning Japanese, in the Army school, but he hadn't met the girl yet. It wasn't until three months later that he met her. He'd gotten tired of wandering around Tokyo on a rainy Saturday afternoon and had gone to the Servicemen's Center for a free cup of coffee. In the next room a flower-arrangement lesson was going on. He stood in back of the officers' wives and WAC's and saw her for the first time. She was bending an iris so deftly that it seemed to have grown around the pine branch.

Afterwards he'd elbowed his way through the WAC's and used his best Japanese to ask questions about flower arranging. She'd answered, her eyes lowered, one hand holding a spray of wisteria, for all the world like one of the girls in the old prints he'd seen and liked. After the others had left he asked if she would give him lessons, and she, pleased and flattered, said she would. She was very pretty.

In Haruko he had found personified what he liked about Japan. He watched her cut a camellia and put it near a rock, and the rock became beautiful. It was like those farm houses he had seen which were built around a tree or a boulder. The farmers, unwilling to sacrifice the natural surroundings, had fitted the houses to the landscape.

When he tried to learn to do the same thing and, disillusioned, stood back regarding the sprays of iris all going one way, the magnolias the other, she complimented him on supposed beauties of construction which he knew did not exist in his arrangement but which she created with deft touches, apparently mere caresses of admiration, until, after the last admiring pat, the arrangement was just right. It was never necessary to admit he was clumsy and unskilful, just as it was never made apparent that he could be wrong. One week they had changed the time of the lessons, and he had forgotten. She came an hour later and, when she saw him, understood at once and could not often enough remind him of her tardiness.

And just as she was sensitive to flowers, so was she sensitive to all beautiful things. Occasionally she recited Japanese poetry to him and taught him how the haiku and the tanka were constructed. One day she looked at him for a long time, then wrote a haiku. She lived naturally with beauty, he liked to think, and used it daily as other women use the mirror....

"Pretty hot place, Shinjuku?" It was the old soldier with the nose. He moved closer and said: "Wouldn't know myself. I'm out Tachikawa way."

"Then you're on the wrong train."

"Aw, hell, I got the whole day. I'm not on my way back. Ginza's dead. I'm gonna go over Shinjuku way and try it out. Hell, I'm gonna have myself a real time today."

"Oh, you'll probably find Shinjuku pretty dead too then. It all depends on what you want to do."

The old soldier shrugged his shoulders. "You know—usual stuff—get a few souvenirs, get laid. Can't get drunk around here—that saké rots your guts right out of you. Go to the EM Club and you blow your dough in five minutes. Jesus, prices are high here, you know."

The younger soldier turned back toward the window and said shortly: "I don't know about Shinjuku. I don't spend much time there."

"Well, guess I'll just have to find out for myself then. I hear tell the gook girls'll lay faster there than any place else though." He paused and the asked: "What do you think?"

The younger soldier didn't answer. He was allergic to the word "gook."

"Course," the old soldier continued, "I always say that any gook girl'll spread her legs if you ask her the right way—and get her away from mama." He laughed heartily and blew his raspberry nose before continuing: "Hell, man, why I don't know when I had so much fun as with some of these little gook girls. Why, I know one ..."

He continued on and on, talking into the younger soldier's ear while train boy carefully swept the cigarette butts from between the passenger's feet and entered the small compartment at the end of the car with his dust pan.

Past the door at the opposite end of the car was the next coach. There was no glass in the door, and the people were pressed tightly against each other. A student, in his high-collared uniform and cap, was pressed against one corner of the door-frame. Beside him was a short little man with a bow tie and a derby hat. The student seemed to be staring at the younger soldier, who looked back once and then turned toward the window again. Since he'd met her he didn't much like institutions like the Allied car.

Beside him the old soldier talked on. The Army was full of men like him. That was what armies were for apparently, to provide homes for otherwise homeless men like this one. The younger soldier wondered what would happen if he were to turn around and hit him. Nothing probably. Yet it was strange that while he himself wouldn't hesitate to talk back to an MP just doing his duty, still he wouldn't—couldn't—push around men like this one.