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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

SEASONS IN THE EAST
Stories of Modern Japan

presented by

John Hanson Roegner

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

M.A. degree in ART

 

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Date 11‘15-91

 

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SEASONS IN THE EAST
Stories of Modern Japan
BY

John Hanson Roegner

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English
1991

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ABSTRACT
SEASONS IN THE EAST
Stories of Modern Japan
BY

John Hanson Roegner

The Orient’s mystical allure has always seduced Western
consciousness. There is something in the East that draws
us, some promise of spiritual fulfillment, and each year
thousands make their way to the Japanese islands to find it.
Many of these people see Japan’s enduring traditions as an
anomaly in the Modern Era, a bastion of special, essential
knowledge carefully guarded for millenniums.

These are stories about Westerners in harmony and in
conflict with fantastically foreign people and places,
stories concerned with knowing and not knowing, with growth,

with defeat, with the experience of the East.

FOR MY MOTHER AND MY FATHER

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Professor Albert Drake
for his valuable help and understanding.

iv

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTUMN ..... A Small Matter of Measurements l

 

The Night Temple 13
WINTER ..... The January Game 46
The Drum of Heaven 62
SPRING ..... The Ugly Spring Cherry Blossom Shock 77
Bonsai Thief 92
SUMMER ..... Asian Fever 125
Go East to Find Your Inner Country 133

 

A Small Matter of Measurements

Somewhere I read this:
Not long after the Portuguese dropped anchor off
the port city of Kobe, Japanese men, for the first
time, became concerned about the length of their
penises. "The barbarians may be bigger, des pg,"

they would assure themselves and very carefully
explain to their women, "but we are harder."

I’ve been told the only way to really know Japan and
the Japanese is to boil oneself communally in their
traditional hot bath, the ggggg, and so one early autumn
morning we drove west from Kyoto through the sharp, green
mountains toward the sea. My host was a new student, Katsu,
twenty-eight, a chubby chemist a few years older than me. I
had been in Japan teaching English for half a year and knew
well the art of taking advantage of Japanese hospitality: I
was happy to let him pay for the tolls and the gas (Katsu
seemed politely puzzled) though we’d verbally agreed to
split the cost of the overnight at the gnsgg on the coast.

We followed the cliffs, sometimes stopping for the
view. The Noto Peninsula points into the Sea of Japan and
is a shattered, rocky place. Volcanic fires heat the same
stone-lined pools of mineral rich water that Samurai
warriors once used to bathe and heal their wounds.

We stopped briefly for liquor in the little concrete

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town, paid the obscene price for a bottle of Suntory whiskey
and drove up the hill and pulled into the parking lot of the
Ryokan, the country inn. It was an old wooden inn set into
a rocky hill shaded by pines. A tiny lady in a whispering
blue kimono and wearing eta, wooden shoes on little stilts,
gave us cotton robes and wash cloths and hurried us into our
room. The floor was made of woven straw mats. We left our
shoes in the well by the door.

I walked to the window and saw, where the cliff dropped
away, a small slice of the sea. There was an afternoon mist
floating down through the forest of pines.

"A (dlink)?" asked Katsu. He had the top off the
whiskey and was pouring a glass. He set the bottle on the
table and watched me with a quiet, almost formal
expectation.

"Absolutely," I said. I picked up the bottle and
filled his glass.

Katsu smiled. "The man who pours his own (dlink) is a
(dlunkard)," he quoted the saying. "What should we (dlink)
to?" His English was good but he had the common Japanese
difficulty with 1’s and r's.

"I don't know, to getting nicely baked."

"Cooked," he said, taking me literally, "cooked, a
yudedako."

I did not understand the word.

"A boiled octopus," he explained. "You turn red, see?

In the hot-bath. Like a cooked octopus." He grinned. His

3
black hair glistened under the lamp light.

"To udedako, then," I said. "Compari!"

"Compari,IStuart:§gn!" Katsu toasted and we clicked and
tipped. "Wait until you have the dinner," Katsu said wiping
his mouth. "Qgsgg dinners are (berry) famous. There is a
great selection of dishes."

"Good, I’m starved." I refilled his glass and set the
bottle down on the low table. We had another round.

"But, Stuart-sag, (fust) we should try hot bath. It is
(berry) good before the famous dinner. You must change into
yukata." He pointed to the cloth robes the old woman had
given us.

"Great," I said. "Ready when you are." I went over
and picked up the stuff. I took off my shirt and was
dropping my pants when I felt Katsu staring at me. I felt
it though I was facing the wall. I turned around and he was
staring at me, all right. I didn’t like the look on his
face. I had the suspicion something unfortunate was about
to happen. There was going to be some awful
misunderstanding.

"Hey. What are you looking at?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said quickly. He looked away. Then he
looked back. He licked his lips, deciding something. "That
is," he began slowly, with much embarrassment, "you’re
not...not a...gay American?"

I just about burst out laughing. "No!" I said. I

thought he was probably just nervous about sharing a room

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with a foreigner. "And you, you’re not, are you?"

"No!" he said, "not me," and he gave a strained nervous
chuckle. "I thought maybe...I don’t know, maybe you were."

"And I thought maybe you were. Just for a second. But
you’re not. Right?"

"No."

"Good. Well. We’d better have another drink then."

fflai." He seemed relieved and after a few drinks, we
dressed without discomfort.

We left the room and walked down the hall. The place
seemed pretty empty. We went through a doorway and a
hanging red cloth banner. Now I could smell the Qgggn, a
faintly metallic wisp of sulfur and warm wetness.

Katsu picked up a little plastic stool and handed it to
me. "You sit on this and wash," he explained.

We went downstairs into the shower room, putting our
robes in a numbered basket. There were shower heads set
into the tiled wall a foot and a half from the floor. There
were men under them, squatting on tiny stools, lathering
themselves up. Steam clouds drifted through the room.

There was the patter of water. Everything down here looked
modern, though above, the inn looked very old.

No one seemed to notice me. We sat sat down. I turned
the shower on, then I took the bar of soap and washed
myself.

"You have to (rleally) do it," Katsu said. He was

scrubbing himself with the wash cloth. His hair was

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smothered in soap. His whole body was covered with it. He
was scrubbing himself as if he what he really wanted to do
was take off layers of skin. I looked around. The other
men were doing the same. But now they had noticed me and
they were curious. They were peeking at my crotch. I felt
a little like a strange and possibly dangerous zoo animal.

Katsu said: "(Rlinse) off, then we go to first pool.
Make (berry) certain all the soap is off." We left our
stools by the wall and stepped into the water. It wasn’t
too hot; it was relaxing. After a while, I followed Katsu
to a much hotter pool. I could feel peOple watching me as I
walked, and I heard them talking but I could not understand
exactly what they said.

After the hot water, we jumped into an icy plunge pool
that nearly stopped my heart. We went back to the hot pools
and did the whole thing again and again. The heat and the
cold seemed to make us drunker. Katsu kept laughing.

"Your English is deteriorating," I said. "Getting
worse."

"I am getting (dwunker), Stuart-sag," he said.
"(Dwunkest). Ha ha."

"You're turning red, too."

He looked at himself. His chubby skin was scarlet.
"I’m red octopus!" he shouted. It was funny that he seemed
so serious. The water plastered down his hair. "Yudedako!"
He pointed at me. "Yudedako!" His eyes were wide. "You

too!" It was true. I was a boiled octopus.

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There was a pool we hadn't gone in. "What’s that one?"
I asked.
"It’s for (berry)...strong bodies," Katsu said. "It

has electric current in it...through it."

"You’re joking," I said. I put my finger in the water
and felt a real jolt. I couldn't believe anyone would get
into it voluntarily. It seemed crazy anyone would soak in a
pool plugged into a socket.

"It’s good for your heart," Katsu said.

This I seriously doubted.

"Should we try the open-air pool?" Through a window, I
could see steam rising outside from what looked like a small
lake. A delicate garden of carefully placed trees and rocks
surrounded the waters. It all looked very inviting.

"After dinner," Katsu said. "We should be having soon,
too. We should finish here for now."

We back to the room. My skin tingled under the soft
cotton robe. While we were gone, they had set the long low
table. There were tiny brown ceramic dishes with fish and
colorful vegetables on them. Some things looked like they
were wrapped in seaweed. Little burners heated other
dishes. There were some cold crab legs that looked plump
and delicious. I was pretty hungry.

A young kimonoed woman knocked and entered, bowing
deeply, saying "Sumimasen, sumimasen (excuse me, excuse
me)." Katsu spoke sternly to her, and bowing again, she

left. "I ordered some beer," he said grinning, "and a little

7
sake, O. K.? Katsu had these pudgy cheeks. They puffed
when he spoke.
"Yeah," I said. "Let’s eat already."
"Now," said Katsu with delight, "this is a local fish,

(berry) delicious and this is una i, sea eel, and this, ah-

ummm, yes, this is...."

We had dinner. Each dish was like eating a tiny piece
of art. The waitress brought lots of Ashahi beer. Katsu
was no longer so formal and we had gotten to the point where
it was all right to pour your own glass. He seemed to be
having quite a time. He was telling jokes I couldn’t
Innderstand and laughing so that his chubbiness shook happily
iIl the folds of his robe. The beer was cold and refreshing
after the heat of the baths.

After dinner, Katsu lit up Marlboros and we smoked with
tile balcony window open. We could smell the sea as the sun
dropped away.

"Well," he said, reclining with a cigarette in his
Huauth and sipping from a glass of whiskey on ice, "what
th)u...do you...think of Japanese hot bath?"

"I think it's pretty great."

He smiled and then became serious, as though thinking
'tllrough some complex chemical equation. "We Japanese come
for reasons, Stuart-fl. It is said the waters cure many
tsicknesses. All sicknesses. But there is also a philosophy
Of the gnsgn. It is a place where people can forget, where

they can...can revive, that is it, they can revive

 

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themselves...from the city...and its stress. Here we can be
ourselves, without masks. But I come, I think, because I
find the bath so...how you say it?"

"I don’t know. How would you?"

He was silent a moment. "I would say peaceful. That’s
it. Peaceful. And I'll show you." He dabbed out his
cigarette and
stood up. "Ready for rotemburo, open-aired bath?"

"Sure. Lead the way."

Downstairs, we went through the scrubbing ritual again.
lJripping and holding a cloth square over our nakedness, we
walked outside and followed a little path to the edge of the
Exaol. A raked stone garden, its white pebbles smooth and
nuilky, swirled around trees and rocks and bright green moss.
Tfiaere was no one around. The air was cool above the waters,
armd sinking into the heat felt absolutely marvelous, like
Casting off everything worth getting rid of.

It was the very beginning of autumn, and the tiny five
FKDinted leaves of Momisa, the Japanese Maple, fluttered down
't<> the steaming pool, where they curled. I could just see,
'UID the slope of the hill, how the groomed garden cleverly
kfilended away into natural forest. A rocky cliff rose above
‘tlle level of the trees and beyond was the depth of the sky.
1\ pale, heavy moon drifted gently in the coming night.

Katsu splashed and sighed. "Peaceful, gg§_gg," he said

lazily. "But we need more whiskey."

 

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Late that evening, after Katsu had passed out, I

returned alone to the pool. The air was cold and the moon,

now small and sharp and high above, silvered the tops of the

trees and the rocks. There was a soft glow on the pebbles

in the garden. There were long shadows in the forest.

I had just settled into the waters when I realized I

was not alone. There was someone else enjoying the night.

He emerged from the dark end of the pool, a middle-aged

Japanese, probably a business man on vacation, and he swam

clumsily toward the place

where I rested.

W__;.§Q deg ggL" he said grinning and pointing.

"Gaijin des." Gaijin means anyone not Japanese; it is

.really their way of marking outsiders. I smiled back at him

and he moved closer. He was pretty scrawny and when he

grinned I saw his teeth were bad. There were brown stains

from smoking and the tops of his teeth, where they met his

gtuns, were rotten nearly through. He had little bristles on

his chin. He looked drunk.

"American-jin deska?" he asked grinning, showing those

tflaeeth.
"Hai," I said. "Watashi w; American-jin des. (Yes,

I'nn American)."
"Ohhhaahh," he said grinning, pointing. "American-jin

1%, so des _n_e_." Then he said a lot of things I couldn't

 

 

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10
understand. He slurred his words. He seemed strange and I
was sure he was drunk. He kept moving closer and I could
smell his breath. I never wanted to smell anything like it
again. Like rotten fish soaked in tequila.

He looked around at the pool, the trees, the stars, and
made some remark, I supposed, that was in praise of night
time bathing. I said mg" and he looked at me even more
strangely. His eyes were cloudy.

VAEEEQ g§.gkii desks?" he asked grinning. I knew what
he asked but I did not understand what he meant.

"Okiihgggkg?" he asked again, laying his hand on my
shoulder. Am I big, I thought. What the hell.

"ggya," I said. "No."

He Said something else and fluttered his hand. He
wanted me to stand up.

flggyg," I said. "Witashi E2.2£ii.flé§2£ (I’m not
tall)." I thought: what the hell’s this guy want anyway?

He motioned for me to stand. 0. K., I'll stand. I
Stood up with the cloth covering me and his eyes dropped to
the cloth and he smiled oddly.

"Okii deskaaaa?" he said again, "Are you big?" and he

 

POinted at the cloth. So it was this measurement thing, I
‘thought. To show him that there was really no difference, I
PUlled away the cloth, feeling pretty stupid standing in the
P001 late at night with a drunk guy grinning at my crotch.
Then he tried to reach for me and I knew he wanted something

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I knocked away his hand, scowled at him, and floated to
another end of the pool.

He followed with those teeth riding just above the
water and.I thought: this is sick. He glided up next to me
and it seemed for a moment he was going to apologize that it
had all been some drunken mistake but then he tried to reach
for me again under the water.

I punched him hard in the arm and his little head
shook. I got out of the pool, dripping, and snarled down at
him: "m w_a gig 53g (You are a pig) ." That seemed to
sober him up some and he started screaming curses at me. He
was pretty upset.

"Thanks for ruining my bath, Bozo," I said in English.
I walked back up the moonlit path. I could hear him
Shouting "Gaijin" this and that, really ugly stuff, but now
that.I was out of the pool it all seemed pretty funny.

In the room, it was dark, and I did not want to wake
Katsu. I could hear him snoring. He seemed like he was a
1£Hz of fun and I thought we would probably be good friends.
I wanted to tell him what happened in the pool and explain
tKMfl silly all of this American-Japanese comparison nonsense

was. Instead I went to sleep.

III

In the morning when I awoke a young girl was setting

the table. The whisky bottle, empty on the straw mat,

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12
pointed ominously at my head. I had a little cold from
being in the water so much, but when I smelled what we were
having for breakfast, I felt even worse. There was
something in a heated dish that curdled in that awful smell:
old fish rot.

I saw Katsu stir and sit up on his futgg. His hair was
sticking out like the branches of a tree and he clutched a
blanket around his waist.

"What is that?" I said. "What is that smell?"

Katsu tried to lick his lips but they looked dry. He
sniffed. "That," he cleared his throat, "is a kind of fish
custard."

"How can you eat this stuff for breakfast?" I demanded.

"You kidding?" he said contemptuously. "I never eat
that." "What then?"

"Rice Krispies, we eat Rice Krispies," he said
Pronouncing his r’s correctly for the first time, as if I
were a stupid, hopeless gaijin who would really never

Inuierstand a single thing about Japan. Then he went back to

Sleep.

The Night Temple

Allyson Moore came to Kyoto nine months ago with the
mar) she had planned to marry. All that was finished now;

It; was the classic shock. She had arrived home from work at
tflme college unexpectedly early; Nick was in bed, actually,
cu) the ggggg, with a whisper-thin Japanese beauty of
rmineteen or twenty. Allyson was brutally surprised. For
Inaurs afterward she walked alone through the evening hills
irx a sort of horrified daze.

Allyson Moore was not superstitious, she believed the
fates and the furies were merely products of Greek
iJnagination, and yet at first she thought she had done
something to deserve this tragedy. Later she realized Nick
was just a jerk. She made him move out. Unfortunately,
HKDSt of things in the tiny apartment were his, such as the
stereo, the short Japanese table they sat cross-legged
around when they ate or played backgammon, the irritating
014d cuckoo clock and even the dishes. The §2§22_they bought
together but Allyson insisted he take it.

That was three weeks ago. Now the apartment was empty.
Autumn bloomed full in the hills and the air had an October
excitement, a promise of sweaters and windy-leaved days.

Allyson kept herself busy. She did research on

Japanese swords for an American professor at Kyoto

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Japanese swords for an American professor at Kyoto
University. She was considered a promising scholar and she
was working towards publication. The thing was, she really
loved the old swords. Their intrinsic duality was
:fiascinating: beautiful works of art that functioned as
precision instruments of death. Of course, now they were
tuarmless museum pieces. But sometimes she wondered about
tfliem. A sword in a glass case was as sad as an airplane
tliat never flew.

She kept busy but she was lonely at night. She had
amide the mistake of having the same friends as Nick, that is
tc> say, making Nick's friends her friends, and most of them
had sided with him. The only one she really liked anyway
was Stuart Ryder. He was still nice to her even after she
ij_cked.Nick out of the apartment. She wondered if he might
come out for a drink tonight. She dialed his number but on
ttle eighth ring she hung up.

Allyson's apartment had a small balcony that looked
O‘Ker the Eastern Mountains of Kyoto and she slid open the
Sczreen door. Above Mt. Rokujo, there was a moon that
Si.lvered everything, a cliche moon that bathed the streets
and cooled the roofs of the houses and the apartments.
Somewhere in the hills the sound of bells drifted. She was

Strangely excited; she really wanted to g2 something.

Allyson had lovely brown eyes that were like cognac by

‘the firelight but her mouth had a sad downward line to it

and boys often interpreted this as evidence of snottiness.

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She had kind of thick eyebrows but she thought that was
O.K.: they drew attention to her eyes. Her hair was wheat—
gold and incredibly full and silky when she wanted it to be.
Usually, though, she just pulled it back with a colorful
skrunchy and let it ride along on her shoulders in a loose,
pretty clump. She was petite but sweetly curvy and if she
wanted to, she could get another guy like. . .THAT! . . .she
snapped her fingers.

But she didn’t want anybody right now, she was sick of
the whole business and she was beginning to wonder how long
she would go on in Kyoto. Then she flushed with anger,
thinking why the hell should _s_t_1_e_ leave? M was the ass.
But she was lonely tonight.

Without any firm plans, she put on her red CB wind
breaker, locked her door and went down the outside stairs to
the street. It was a clean night. The wooden village
Stores along her street were closed and dark. Somewhere a
train rankled the tracks and she heard laughter scatter from
a Robata aki, an eating and drinking bar that businessmen
filled after work.

She threaded aimlessly up the narrowing streets. The
hOmes had stone walls and hidden gardens and she glowed
briefly in the squares of house light that fell across her
Way. She saw people in them, families watching T.V.,
Sitting on tatami mats, sitting around tables. And h_er_
familyf-her life with Nick, was nothing--over. She shook

her head--she wouldn't think about it. She wished Stuart-—

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16
anyone--was with her. She just felt like talking.

Allyson turned a corner and noticed, tucked against a
house, one of the marvels of Japanese technology: a vending
machine. It was twenty feet long and served everything from
beer and ice cream to hot soup. She wanted the beer. She
fed it bills and selected a mini-keg--a full quart--why not?
Whenever she bought beer from machines she smiled, imagining
them in the States--how impossible!--every Friday night
hoards of teenagers would knock the beer out of them with
baseball bats.

Allyson went beneath an enormous wooden gate and she
knew she was near a temple. Now the city fell away. There
were no lights, only stars that flared above the hills. The
Slope of the road became steeper and the trees broadened
With darkness. She stopped for a moment, pulled the plastic
plug from the beer, and drank.

It was quiet and lonely. She shivered. She felt
Strange tonight. She was not frightened, that wasn’t it:
crime in Japan was practically non existent. It was more
like - ..a tingling, an odd excitement. Well, she had felt it
all evening. She took another deep swig.

Ahead, Allyson caught a glimpse of a sweeping roof-
line - She knew Tofukuji temple was close by. This might be
m, but had she really walked that far? She didn’t
think so. There were so many temples it was hard to keep
them straight.

Another wooden gate marked the end of the paved road;

 

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before her, a smooth plain of white gravel spread out like
flowing milk under the moon. God it was bright! She could
read a book if she wanted to. She held out her hand and a
shadow stretched across the pebbles. She set the beer down,
turned her back to the moon and tried a raunchy belly dance.
Her Allyson-shadow mimicked her moves. She laughed, feeling
a bit silly, took another drink and looked for a place to
sit-

The old temple reclined elegantly in a far corner of
the garden. She liked the up-curved corners of the roof--
they were wings that might shortly lift into the darkness of
the sky. She laughed at this--really, she was getting too
Poetic. Or maybe too drunk? She laughed again.

She sat on the mossy bank with her feet gently scraping
over the stones. Long shadows and quiet eddies of moon-glow
delicately merged into rivers around the temple. She lifted
the beer for another drink when she saw the movement.

Near the temple, yes, something had moved. She fought
an impulse to run. Visitors were allowed to walk the
grounds in the day, but at night? On top of everything
318e, she did not want to be arrested.

There, again. She saw a man in a m hurrying
around the shadows of the temple. A priest? He was
carrying something in his arms, a bundle of dark silk. It
t°°k her a moment to realize what it was. She knew exactly.

A 8Word wrapped in silk. More curious then afraid, she

Si“‘ply sat and watched.

 

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The man was secretive but purposeful, as though he were
evading an unseen enemy. He used the shadows of the temple
for cover, then he struck out across the stones, fast as a
crab, to the deep tree shadows. His eyes searched the
grounds to be sure the way was clear. Suddenly, to
Allyson's horror, he turned and ran directly towards her.
She stood up to speak, to say ’good evening' or maybe 'I’m
sorry, I'm lost,’ but the man went right past without a word
or even a look. His head was shaved Sm-style and
dressed with the traditional topknot. He was so close she
could clearly see the crests on his kimono and the tassels
that jiggled from the end of the wrapped sword. He leapt up
onto the bank and noiselessly slipped through a tight
cluster of bushes. Fascinated, she followed.

He was crouching in a moon—lit clearing, almost hidden
behind a large boulder. She could see him on his knees. He
had a short knife and he was methodically slicing a hole in
the soft, mossy ground. He made the hole just large enough
f°r the sword. Then he opened the silk as though to take
one last look. The long sword was in its black lacquer
case . Beside it, Allyson could see a companion dagger, the
Short sword, in an identical case. The man carefully folded
and smoothed the silk closed. He lifted the swords above
his head for a moment in a curious way, then he lay them
into the hole. He covered them and patted down the moss.
Taking his knife, he quickly cut a triangular notch in the

baSe of the nearest tree. He stood up, spun to look

 

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fiercely at Allyson, to look fiercely thgggh her, and then
he turned and melted into the darkness.

She didn’t move for perhaps thirty full seconds. Then
she was off, running wildly, she was through the gate and
down the streets. She ran all the way home without
stopping. She locked her door, sat down, then stood, then
paced. She opened the screen door and stepped outside.
After a second she came back in and plopped onto her new
futon. She tried to calm down, to make her breathing
nornnal. But the look in his eyes kept coming back to her.
Terrzible, she thought. Like he wanted to carve me up.

Should she call the police? But he hadn't really
threatened her and, well, she as trespassing. She decided
there probably wasn’t much she could do. At least she was
safe . She laughed, thinking 'that was the strangest damn
thing....’ She shrugged, got a beer out of the fridge,
found a trashy novel and started to read. Bored after a few
Pages, she turned off the light.

She wished she could sleep but something was bothering
heIT- Her eyes traveled the ceiling. A bit of moon rippled
s0151:.ly across a section of her tatami mat. She pictured the
max) in the garden, the way he ran at her, then past her.
something was very wrong about that. Suddenly she became
very frightened. It was his shadow, she thought. That was

it~ He ran right by me and he didn't have a shadow.

In the morning she could barely wait to call Stuart.

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When his gravelly voice came through the phone she was
already speaking excitedly.

"Stu. Listen. I saw something last night. Something
really weird and I need to talk to you. Can you meet me up
at Higashiojo and Schichijo?

"Allyson? Is that you?" She could tell she woke him
up. She looked at her watch and thought ’uh-oh.’ It was
7:30. His voice sounded mildly irritated.

"Stu. I'm sorry. I didn’t realize it was so early."

"Where?"

"Near the Park Hotel. It’s only three bus stops from
your house. "

“O.K., O.K., but why?"

"I'll tell you when you get here."

"Are you all right? You sound funny."

"Pl-l-lease, Stuart! Just come. I'll be there at ten-

thirty. "

“Fine. I’ll be there at twelve."

"Stuart, I'm telling you, this is really important."

"Allyson, give me a break, 0. K.? I got stuff to do.

I'lJl see you there at twelve. Seriously. I can’t get away

bfifere that . "

She was early. The sun warmed her bench and she kicked
at. a: traffic pole with her Birkenstock sandals. She wore a
l(308e, bulky rag-wool sweater and had to constantly push its

Sleeves up her slender arms. When buses came by the stop,

 

 

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21
she stood to see if Stuart would get off. Finally he did.
He jumped down the steps with a war-whoop. She broke into a
smile. Stuart Ryder was a good looking guy. She’d always
thought so. She suddenly wondered if there was a chance,
now that Nick was history.. .well, maybe, who knows? Anyway,
she was glad to see him.

"Allyson!" he kissed her neatly.

"Hi, Stuart. Thanks for meeting me."

"O.K., you look great and all, but of course I expected
that." He grinned. One of his teeth was chipped. She
noticed his hands moved restlessly while he talked. Those
hands seemed musical to her, and interesting. "Now what's
the deal? You woke my ass outta bed; this better be good."

She gave him a playful little slap. "Come on, get a
sense of adventure. I want to show you something and it
just better still be there."

They started up toward the temple, retracing the
night's route, and Allyson explained what she had done and
seen. When she got to the part about the man’s shadow,
though, she suddenly decided to skip over it. She wasn't
really sure what it meant anyway; maybe she’d just imagined
it and well, she didn't want Stuart to think she was
completely crazy.

"So we've got a sword buried under a tree marked with a
triangle? Buried next to an old boulder? Treasure Island,
right? We dig it up and we sell it. Make a million. Then

we 90 on a long trip to Thailand and India and live like

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22
kings."

Allyson laughed at the thought.

"You're the expert," Stuart continued, "any idea how
old the thing is, how much it's worth?"

"I’d give it to a museum,“ Allyson said dryly.

"Well, O.K.," Stuart said. She could tell he was
excited. "But I know you. The thought at least crossed
yorzz: mind. How much?"

She tilted her head and slipped her hair around and
dovvru over her right breast. Her fingers smoothed out
lit:t:le knots. "Well, this doesn’t make a bit of make sense,
but:....first I saw the crests on the guy’s kimono, right?
Therese linked paulownia leaves in a circle. I recognized the

mon, the family seal, of the Tokugawa clan. That’s the

 

Sh<>§runate family that ended a couple hundred years of feudal
civil war and united Japan under military rule, O.K.? In
16(>(). igggt Why would he be wearing that kimono now? Then
there are the swords. I saw them when he opened the square
0f asiikfl The sword scabbards were black lacquer and they
haC1 ‘the same gold Tokugawa Egg inlays. If they're real, I
mean my God, they’re priceless."

"So why bury them?"

"Who knows? But the temples around here are very old.
TheY've got all kinds of incredible things lying around in
StOrage. Maybe he's some nutty priest and he stole 'em."

"If he had, you really think you’d be standing here?

He couldn't afford to let you go."

 

 

 

 

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She shrugged. "Who knows? But Stu, if I did find a

sword like that, identified it as Tokugawa Ieyasu's or even

one of his sons and I published a description,

be. - -."

I’d...I’d

"Famous?" Stuart grinned again.

She blushed, embarrassed. "Well, it’d help my career,
that's for sure."

They passed the vending machine and she pointed it out

"C>-IK., we're close now. That’s where I got the mini-keg."

"Ahh--ha." Stuart grinned suggestively.

Allyson laughed. "On our way back, maybe with the

sword." She let her thick eyebrows bob playfully.

ce 1 ebrate . "

"We'll
They walked under the wooden gate and started

up the paved slope. Then her smile wavered.

"What is it?" Stuart said.
"Well...that's weird...it's not right...."
"What isn’t right?"

She was looking at the end of the paved street.
Evfizrything looked the same up until the wall, a solid wall

"hfaJoe the second gate was supposed to be. But the road

cofltzinued around, as though miraculously diverted during the
niSJIIt, and a few hundred yards further on, she saw what

loOked like a different entrance to the temple.
confused.

She was

She stopped, frowned, and looked back down the street

to be sure this was the way she had come. The vending

machine confirmed it. While Stuart watched, she walked up

24
tc> the wall and inspected it, almost looking for seams that
wcnild.prove fresh work blocked the way she had come last
riigjht. But the wall was obviously old, very old. She
turned to him, bewildered.

”What?" he asked.

"I don’t know. I'm pretty sure this is where I went

into the temple last night."

"Here? What do you mean? You climbed over the wall?"

She shrugged. "I must...I don’t know. I feel a little
disoriented. I guess I must have gone in...down there, at
that entrance."

"O.K., well, let’s check it out."

They hurried down the street and went in through the
931:€e. Allyson's head felt suddenly strange and she
exIDerienced first a crippling deflation, then something
c«'l-Ose to panic. Her mouth felt dry. She made herself keep
walking.

There were two large temples and a squat five-roofed
Eééasagg just inside the gate. Maple leaves, curled red from
the sun, brightened the tiny pond they fell in. There was a
Stlbrie field, all right, but it was rigidly cut into the
shape of a rectangle. Last night’s garden, Allyson knew,
was a different style entirely, it seemed to flow
organically inside the irregular shape of the mossy bank.
Stleh should know, damn it--she sat on it. Where was that
bank now? What were these two temples doing here? The

W? And the pond? This was not the right place.

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25
Allyson became aware of heat; she peeled off her sweater.
frhey walked the perimeter of the stone field in
silence. Tourists chattered quietly around them, snapping
pictures, admiring the trees and the way the sun fell
through them.

Finally Stuart spoke. "So? The sword. Think you
remember where our stupid priest buried it?"

"Oh, I don't know!" she cried. "This somehow...this
isn”t the right place. I know that sounds crazy...it was
allidifferent last night. But I mean 339w we're at the
right place, I know I walked up this way. But...shit! Now
I’m so confused. I feel so stupid." She stamped her foot
dis911stedly and rubbed her face. Then she dropped her hands
by her side and stared at nothing.

Stuart watched her awhile. Then he said "Well, Al,
maybe it's something else."

“Hmm? What do you mean something else?"

"Well, you look sorta tired and stuff and...you know.
What; happened between you and Nick might have...everyone
knows what you've been going through."

"What's this got to do with Nick? And what do you mean
'everyone knows?’ What business is it of anyone else?"

"No one’s, no one's. I'm just saying that maybe you're
a little worked up from it, that’s all."

'VLook, Stu, Nick hurt me all right, so what, I won’t

deny it. But it doesn’t bother me at all. I'm over that

DOW."

 

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26

"That's just what I’m saying. Maybe you're not over
it, maybe you're...projecting...all of that emotion
into. . .uh. . .seeing things. . .like this guy with the kimono.

I mean A1, a samurai in the 1990's? It just doesn't
happen."

"Well, Mr. Ryder. Who the hell made you an amateur
psychologist? I know what I saw and I am not crazy or
hallucinating or anything else. I saw exactly what I said I
did. I just can’t explain it right now. Maybe we're at the
wrong temple or something."

"But isn’t it equally possible," Stuart began, "that
you imagined you saw those things. That temple at night,
the bright moon, shadows everywhere. Hell, I’d see things
mYself. And you w drinking."

Allyson's lip tightened. "Oh for Christ's sake,
Stuart. I thought you were my friend."

"I am your friend. That’s why I’m worried about you."
He kicked at the pebbles, then cleared his throat. "Another
thing. Nick asked me to talk to you. He wants you to know
he's really sorry about what happened and he wants to talk
to you, See you."

"Forget it, Stuart. Nobody can pull that shit on me
and tlhen expect to make up."

“But he wants to. He really misses you. And it might
be 900d for you."

"If you’re going to play. middle man for Nick, then

there: 3 no way you can be my friend too. If you’re not

27

going to help me, then, I just don't know what to say.
Look, you know me. I’m not nuts. Something weird happened
here last night and I’m going to find out what it was. If
you don’t want to help, fine." She turned and walked to the
gate - Then she swung around and faced him. "And you can
tell Nick to go to hell!" She started down the street and
turned again. Now she was angry. "And I am 2121.; imagining
things. I say! what I said I saw."

Then she was gone. Stuart blew a soft whistle, clapped
his musical hands for no good reason, and looked around.
The stunned Japanese tourists were politely pretending they

hadn’t listened to every word.

Allyson spent the rest of the day at the university.
Her office overlooked a noisy quad that reminded her a
J--'i-‘l:‘tle of Cornell. It was hard to believe she had graduated
a Year ago. Dr. Wagner had suggested she might want to come
and work for him in Kyoto. She grabbed the chance and was
happy when Nick said he wouldn’t mind putting off grad
S‘-‘—11<>ol for a year to see the East with her.

Everything seemed fine until three weeks ago. She
wot‘1<1ered how she could have missed with Nick what must have
been obvious signs. After what happened last night, maybe
She had to agree that Stuart was partly right. Maybe she
“\s upset, a little, without even knowing it.. .she wasn’t
Cra.zy and she wasn’t seeing things, but a man with no

Shalclow, well, it was possible, at night, in a creepy place,

28
that she had imagined M much of it.

There was a long table against one wall where she
examined the swords that she catalogued for professor
Wagner. Three swords had been donated to the school a few
days before and she was busy disassembling them for
inspection. She popped off the bronze gm, the end cap,
from the first one and removed the ornate handle. These
wooden handles were always covered with knotty ray skin that

provided excellent grip. Next she slipped off the tsuba, or

 

iron hand guard. J‘s—ubg came in an astonishing number of
Styles that reflected the various schools of the smiths that
made them. They could be elaborate or simple, but many
contained the crests of the one person the samurai had sworn
to give up his life for: his lord. This t_s_t_igg was circular
and featured two dragons entwined around a bamboo grove. It
was not signed, but turning it in her hands, she felt
ceI‘tain, without even checking the books, that it was from
the Sunagawa school. She mentally dated it 1750.

m were important and often beautiful, but they
Pal ed beside the swords themselves. This one was
magnificent. She measured it at 62 c.m., about average
1eltlgth. She ran her hand down the blade and over the
grooves. Many people erroneously imagined these were blood
gr<>oves that enabled swordsmen to pull the blade more easily
from the victim's wound. Actually, the grooves lessened the
Weight of the katana, or single blade sword, giving it

greater striking ability. This was necessary because the

 

29

katana was a slashing weapon, very different from the

 

European foil that was designed to perforate the body. The

katana was wielded with two hands, and the method was as

 

simple as it was direct: hack your opponent in two.

Just how effective they could be was sometimes recorded
along with the maker’s name, school and date on the mg, or
rough metal mounting section of the sword. Allyson never
failed to get a shiver when she thought of it: the smith
would test the sword's quality out on living men--criminals,
usually. She remembered translating the characters on one
tang: two and one half men. That meant it had out
completely through three men standing together like slicing
paper with a razor. Well, almost completely through three.
Coasting her finger down the cutting edge, she had pictured
trieeir last moments, huddled together, awaiting the
tremendous swing of the blade that would sever their bone

and muscle and organs with incredible ease. How horrible!

And yet fascinating.

Now she checked the m on the new sword. She was
just starting to translate the characters when Dr. Wagner
POked his head in. "Allyson, you’ll never believe this, my
little billy goat," he said, "but I've finally wrangled one
Of those invitations after damn near nine years of begging."
Dr- Wagner was always excited about something, and as usual,
Alleon had no idea what he was talking about.

"Invitation to what?"

"’To what?’ ’To what?’ To Shoso—In, forgetful

 

 

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Japanese treasures."

Allyson laughed, as she did whenever he adopted his
steereotypical Japanese accent. "Oh, right," she remembered.
"Tine imperial treasure room in Nara."

"Kee-rect!" Dr. Wagner exclaimed. "One’s invitation
has; got to come from the damned Imperial Household itself.
Evrery fall, for two weeks only, they unseal the old building
(811d I mean old, the thing has survived twelve centuries of
war intact) and they let a bunch of us geezers stick our

noses into musty chests full of armor and saddles and
1x3t2ting kimonos and...guess what else?"

"Swords!“ said Allyson.

"Swords indeed, you clever monkey. Not just any

svwc>rds, either. They've got Emperor Shumo’s, for one."

"That’s so exciting."

"Absolutely. Now. What have got here?" He walked
aneer to the table and picked up the sword guard Allyson had
remnoved. Then he lifted the sword and studied the gggg.
'Wmnunm," he said after a minute, "probably Sunagawa school,
miti eighteenth century." Allyson felt a little thrill that
she had correctly identified and dated the sword.

"No flaws immediately discernable, " Dr. Wagner
Containued slowly, automatically, "...black rust on ngg
wou1d seem to corroborate a 200 to 400 year age range...."

"Dr. Wagner," Allyson said, choosing her words

Carefully, "have you ever had the opportunity to examine any

 

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31
of Tokugawa’s swords?"

"Hmmm? You mean the first Tokugawa? Ieyasu, the
Shogun?"

"That’s right."

”Well. There are only a few authenticated sets of
Tokugawa clan katana and wakizashi, long and short swords,
ix! sexistence. I’ve seen them on exhibit but have never
actually examined any. Why?"

"How would you be be able to...authenticate...his
swc>zrds, the shogun’s, beyond a shadow of a doubt if a set
just arrived here. . .anonymously?"

Dr. Wagner rolled his eyes comically, as if to say
'dfilrl't we wish.’ What he said was "it would be very

diffificult to prove without some kind of documentation."

"Even if the swords had the paulownia leaf mpg on
them?"

"That would help, but remember, the Ashikaga and other
ClEiIlS used the paulownia leaf motif as well as the
TOkugawa."

"Oh," Allyson said. "Right. I should have remembered
the:t;,«

When she got home from the university in the late
afternoon her answering machine had a message from Stuart on
it: ”I found something out about what you saw last night
that might, well, make some sense. Be sure and give me a
jingle as soon as you get in."

She dialed his number. "Stu. What have you got?"

 

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32

Stuart sounded excited again. "Well, you made me feel
kinda bad today, thank you very much. I’m sorry about what
I said. So. I made a couple phone calls to some friends
and they gave me the number of an apprentice priest at your
temple. Nice guy, actually went to school at Lafayette in
Pennsylvania, speaks great English. Well, trying to be
super casual, I told him I was writing an article and asked
him if anything strange ever happened up there and he said
’what do you mean by strange?’ and so I said do temple
artifacts ever get stolen and he said ’thefts are pretty
rare now, but sure, over the centuries, there were lots of
wars in Kyoto when priests took up arms against each other
and looted and burned religious retreats.’

"Basically, he told me temples then were almost feudal
war camps that owed allegiance to a daim 0, right?, the
vassals of the emperor. But the daimyo were always at war
With one another in their attempt to curry favor with the
em}'§>eror.

"So I asked him if his temple ever owed allegiance to
any da_imyp and he said yeah, his temple was sacked in 1614
beC=ause it supported Tokugawa Ieyasu in his final bid for
absolute power. Right then I thought bin 0, t_:_h_i§ _i_§ pretty
W. It’s at least possible the swords you said you saw
had a good reason for being up there."

Allyson felt warm relief. "What else did he say?"

"That he knew quite a lot about the history of the

place and if I wanted to, I could speak with him in person.

33
He enridently thought I was quite the reporter. Actually, he
was raretty friendly."
"Maybe he just wants to practice his English."
"Hey! Give me a break, all right?"
Allyson laughed. "Just kidding. Did he say when we
could meet him?"
"We?"
"Damn right, we!"
This time Stuart laughed. "He’s got some kind of duty
this evening, sweeping the grounds or something. If you
waritz, I'll call him and tell him we’re coming. He said we

could meet him there at eight."

Allyson and Stuart made their way back to the temple a
lit:t:le before eight. The falling sun colored the eastern
hiJLJ1.s with warm hues and long shadows moved through the
stzreeets. An Eggg man, with bowls of soup stacked five high
on. <>ne arm, weaved expertly through the early evening crowd.
"It:' s incredible," Stuart said, "they never drop them."

When they got to the gate, a young-looking Japanese
Priest in a dark kimono was waiting. He wore round tortoise
Shell glasses and carried himself with quiet composure. He
bowed formally, then shook Stuart’s hand.

"Hello, you must be Mr. Ryder."

"Hi, Toshihiro. Toshihiro, this is my friend Allyson
Moore . She's a scholar at Kyoto University."

“Hello Ms. Moore, I’m very pleased to meet you."

34

"Just call me Allyson. Your English is perfect,
Toshihiro."

"Thank you very much. We Japanese study English for
many years in school, but I had the opportunity to live in
America and go to one of your colleges. I really loved
it - " Toshihiro almost seemed to blush at this personal
disclosure. He added quickly: "Would you like a tour of the
temple grounds?"

"Thanks, that’d be great," Stuart said. Inside, it was
quiet and empty. The five—tiered pagoda cast a long shadow
across the field of stones. They stopped for a moment by
the small pond. Brilliant carp cruised beneath the last
bars of sun that gently wavered across the surface.
Toshihiro took a bag of feed pellets from a wooden box and
gave it to Allyson. She threw fistfuls in, and the carp
rose open-mouthed to thrash the water, a miniature shark
frenzy.

The unsettling sensation that she was in the wrong
Place, the wrong place but the EM place, was with her
again. It was damn depressing. She crossed arms over her
bulky sweater, hugging herself.

Toshihiro said "What is your interest at Kyoto
University?"

"My interest?"

"Yes, the kind of work you do."

"Oh, I do research on katana for an American professor.

M081: 1y I just prepare swords for museums and that sort of

35

thing. "
"She’s being modest," Stuart said. "She’s an expert on

everything there is to know about Japanese swords and she’s
practically in charge of arranging sales and trades to

museums in the states."
"Oh, Stuart."
"How fascinating," Toshihiro said, but he was unable to

keep the surprise out of his voice. Allyson knew most

Japanese men scoffed at the thought of women exercising

competence in positions of power. It was unthinkable in

Japan .
"In fact," Stuart continued, "Allyson would be

interested in seeing any swords you might have at your

temple here. "

They stopped walking. Allyson gave Stuart an

exasperated look. In Japan, requests, especially of

Strangers, were made in a round-about, circular manner that
ensured both parties leeway to back out or agree without

erht>arrassment. Stuart was unforgivably blunt.

"Well," Toshihiro said with reluctance, "yes, we have

Swords here, but . . . . "

"I’m sorry," said Allyson. "What Stuart meant was, is

there anything you can tell me about a special kind of sword

tihat your temple might have. A Tokugawa sword."

“Ah, §_Q des 9;, a Tokugawa sword, I see. So that is

why You asked me on the phone, Stuart. On behalf of Ms.

M°<>re ." Allyson listened for anger in his voice and was

36
glad when she didn't hear any. "Well, I can tell you our
swords are very old but not so old as Tokugawa. I believe
the oldest we have is early 19th century. I am sorry I

cannot help you."

"Oh, of course," said Allyson, feeling both silly and

depressed.

"But," Toshihiro said, "I am quite certain our temple
once had Tokugawa clan swords."

Allyson almost jumped. "What do you mean?"

"There is a temple legend."

"What legend?"
"It is interesting. Supposedly, in 1614, the year of

‘tluee final battle for Osaka Castle, one of Tokugawa Ieyasu's
Sfiaeecial...body guards, I suppose you would say, brought to
Cyril: temple a set of Ieyasu’s personal effects to keep safe
if! case he should need them. I thought at first this was
only a myth the old ones tell, you see, but in my studies of
ttlfia “temple literature I have come across a description of
SVWc>ers, armor and other personal effects--horse trappings
and such, that would seem to corroborate the story."

"What happened to them?" Allyson and Stuart spoke at
the same time.

"Our temple was attacked by a group of priests loyal to
Hideyori, Ieyasu’s opponent, and the temple buildings were
INJrileed to the ground. Many priests were killed and temple
treasures desecrated." I

”That’s all?" asked Stuart.

37

"Not quite. According to my teacher, a priest
entxrmisted with Ieyasu’s swords managed to hide them
somewhere on the temple grounds just before the attack.
Unfortunately, this priest was slain. The swords were never
recovered."

"Never recovered..." Allyson repeated.

Toshihiro nodded. "You alone can appreciate, Allyson,
tiles enormous responsibility and honor connected with
guarding a lord’s personal katana and wakizashi. Losing
tflieemn would be a great shame. And so it was, apparently, for
this priest.

Toshihiro licked his lips. "Now, this is the strange
Part; you may laugh if you wish. I certainly have trouble
believing it myself but I suppose you could say it is part
Of' (Iapanese folklore. It is said on certain nights over the
loiis; years the spirit of this priest has been seen searching
for his lost swords, hoping to bring them to his master
IeYasu."

Both Allyson and Stuart stared at each other. Allyson
f81:t; a tingle along the back of her neck.

"You’re joking," Stuart said.

"Of course it is only a myth, what you would call
a-~t-ghost story." He stood with his hands tucked delicately
in the folds of his dark kimono.

"Of course," said Allyson weakly. Her head felt
StraI‘Age. A M story.

"Allyson...", Stuart began.

 

 

.
A

.-

ll)

‘3'

 

38
Allyson put her hand up. "Wait a second, Stu." To
Toshihiro she said: "It happened here, right here, at these

temples, this pogoda?"

Toshihiro appeared puzzled for a moment. "Here...?
Oh, no, not r_igpt; here. The temples you see are relatively
new - They were built in 1738, the pagoda some years
afterward. The story of the priest took place at the old
temple site. All the buildings there were razed during the
attack and never rebuilt."

"Old site?" Allyson said. "What old site? Where?"

Toshihiro frowned. He looked slowly around. Allyson

fellowed his gaze. The sun was almost gone. Soon night

w(Inald close. She could tell he was deciding whether or not

She was worth his time. She felt certain if she left now,
She would not get a second chance. She turned back to him,
determined. "Listen, Toshihiro," she said, "now you’ve g_o_t_
to take me there. It’s very important to the research of,
Of uhh, of Cornell University, an Ivy League school in
America. Please understand. It could also be very
significant for the preservation of Japanese culture, too."
She didn’t know what she was saying and she didn’t care, so
long as Toshihiro brought her to the site.

Toshihiro hesitated. It was obvious to Allyson he
Wasn’t accustomed to any kind of aggression from women. He
eVern took a step backwards. "Toshihiro, look, there may
very well be an archeological find of incredible importance

here at your temple. I’m qualified to make that

39
determination. All I ask is that you bring me to see the
place where the temples were burned."
Hgi, very well," he said, slightly confused. "It is
not far."

"Thank you," Allyson said primly.

Now it was twilight. They walked quickly in the
gathering stillness. Birds darted silently above and
vanished in trees that looked like fairyland sculptures.
Allyson was nervous. She meant what she had just said to
Toshihiro but the whole thing, when she even just thought
about it, was so preposterous that if it hadn’t happened to
her, she really would think she was nuts. She was supposed
to be a scientist, damn it! She wasn’t trained to chase
three hundred year old ghosts through gardens. She was
suddenly very angry with herself. Was she drunk that night?
Did she just imagine the whole thing? No. The coincidences
were too strange. Toshihiro’s story matched too closely
with her own experience. But then again, wasn’t it possible
she had picked the legend up from somewhere else? She must
have read thousands of journals having to do with swords
during her undergraduate years. She read them even now.
There were often attempts to cross reference oral or written
accounts with actual physical evidence. She couldn’t rule
out the chance that she’d simply filed a particularly
interesting story away in her head. She hated to admit it,
but like Stuart had said, maybe she was just emotionally

overcharged from her break up with Nick. Now she’d probably

40
make a fool of herself and have to apologize to Stuart and
Toshihiro for wasting their time.

They walked by the smooth, dark surface of a pond. A
soft path rolled on through a bamboo forest, a place of
spider web shadows and odd, dropping noises. When they
finally left it, they found themselves on the spongy mat of
a mossy bank. The bank enclosed open space.

Suddenly, Allyson put her hand to her mouth and she let
her fingers slide across her chin and down her throat. The
anxiety of last day fell away. She wasn’t crazy. She could
see her empty mini-keg lying on the opposite edge of the
bank where she had dropped it the night before. "Here," she
said. "It's here, isn’t it?"

"Yes, yes, you’re right." Toshihiro stopped and looked
at her. "How did you know, Miss Moore?"

"I know,” she said. It was the same but not the same.
The night temple was gone and before them was a field of
short, dry summer weeds that sprouted through sparse white
pebbles. But the outline of the ancient garden was clear.
The same indistinct, undulating pattern that she had seen
before. It was all there last night, a dream from another
century. Except, she almost laughed, the beer keg made it
real. It was proof that she was here when she saw the
priest with the swords. "Tell me, Toshihiro," she said
excitedly, "was there once another entrance to your temple?
There, to the west?" She pointed to the perimeter wall in

the twilight distance.

41

Toshihiro laughed. "I see you have done your research
carefully. Yes, for many years the entrance was there. It
was destroyed after the attack. A decision was made to
relocate the gate to its present site."

Allyson picked up a small round stone and with wild
yelp of exhilaration, she winged it across the dead field
and into the trees where she knew the swords were buried.

It was crazy and it went against everything she thought she
once believed, but she knew the swords would be there. She
knew it.

"Come on, Stuart!" she cried, taking him by the hand.
She pulled him down the bank and made him run. She kicked
at the white pebbles like a little girl and plumes of dust
rose on the still air. Toshihiro stepped carefully down the
bank and followed then to the other side, to the trees.

It was darker in the grove and difficult to see. After
ten minutes of examining the trunks of trees for the
triangular sword mark, Allyson was getting frustrated.

Three or four times now, she had gone back out to the bank
to try to get her bearings, to try to remember exactly where
the kimoned priest had entered the trees. She was sure this
was the right place. Then she realized how three hundred
years of growth and decay could alter the appearance of a
forest. What was the life span of a tree? Weren’t they all
different? She had heard of trees living three hundred
years, even longer, but what were the chances that pp; tree

had survived? It had probably died and rotted long ago,

 

evidence is
from th ‘5
thing seer

"Como

Vvu-v

against a

l r'-
to s.t. .
watching t

Stuart. '1
Sdid_ "SC

muSical he

42
taking its incredible clue with it. She would have to
return with a metal detector to find anything. But after
dragging Toshihiro out here so unprofessionally, without any
evidence whatsoever, she knew she would never get permission
from the temple to conduct a thorough search. The whole
thing seemed hopeless again, and she felt tired and weak.

"Come on and have a seat," Stuart said. He was leaning
against a large rock. His hand patted a flat place for her
to sit. Toshihiro was standing a few feet away, patiently
watching them. She knew in a moment he would ask them to
leave and then the whole silly story would be over. Except
that she didn't think her imagination would ever let her
rest.

Sighing, she walked over to the rock and sat next to
Stuart. The forest seemed to close on them. "Well," Stuart
Said. "Sorry, Al, but. .. ." He patted the boulder with his
musical hand. She hypnotically watched his fingers tap a
rhythm. It was somehow comforting to watch his hands.

"Wait a minute!" Allyson shouted, jumping off the
boulder. "Just wait a minute. God, I’m so stupid. It’s
right here. This is the boulder he hid behind. This is it!
It's got to be."

"What?" called Toshihiro.

"Here?" said Stuart.

"Yes! Yes! Right here." She raced around the
boulder, practically tripping over herself. "So, let’s see.

He was crouched down about here. . . ." She pointed to the

43

soft forest floor. "And...." She got down on her hands and
knees and crawled forward toward a thick tree. "Annnnnd, he
must have started digging....about...here!"

The tree in front of her was massive and thick. She
instinctively let her eyes float up the trunk. About forty
feet above her, hands of the dying sun broke through the
leafy canopy and flooded over the bark of the trees. She
(could see something up there. A black mark, stretched and
pnackered. Stretched by growth and time and weather. Yet it
still held the vague outline of a hastily cut triangle.

"I was right!" Allyson said. "Look, the triangle mark.
Of'course, how stupid can I be? It would have risen as the
tzree grew taller. But there it is, all right. It’s true.

It’s all true!"

"What is true?" Toshihiro asked. "What are you
talking about? What is there?"

"The swords!" both Allyson and Stuart yelled, laughing.

In a moment, they were digging into the soft soil with
their hands, laughing, throwing clumps behind them like
dogs. Caught up in the excitement, Toshihiro couldn’t stop
hiJnself from joining them.

"Tokugawa’s lost swords," Allyson explained. "They’re
b1Jried here. Here! I’m absolutely certain of it!"

But she could hardly believe it herself. Not even when
She had pulled a dirty silk bulk from the earth and placed
it: carefully on the rock. Not when she had opened what had

been folded shut three hundred years before on a desperate

44

night of fire and death. She couldn’t believe it, even when

she saw the black lacquer cases resting together, remarkably

undamaged after their long journey through time.
But when she lifted the long sword above her head in a
(nariously stylized way, grasped the ray skin handle, and

brought Tokugawa Ieyasu’s gleaming silver blade out again

iJTtO the nighttime world, she believed.

 

The January Game

You can hardly believe it has come to this, but here
you are, slinking along the Osaka wharf at dawn on a mission
doctors of the criminal mind would follow with great
interest. Your plan is foolproof--you’re crazy, of course,
but not enough to be tried for murder in Japan. Still, the
realization that you are actually initiating steps rewound
and played a million times over in your dreams forces an
unwelcome little intrusion of sanity. Stop now, a voice
gently urges, you don’t belong in Japan, take the plane
home, see your family again, work things out.

But you have come too far to turn back. You are going
to make an important morning purchase as planned.

Already the boats are unloading their cargo and a
bidding ritual has begun. You decide these frenzied men are
immune to winter. In the frozen blue light, they seem to
relish haggling over the quality of huge tuna corpses bound
for expensive restaurants in the cities. There is oriental
shouting and the sound of sawing as tunes are packed for
tranSport.

You are here for a different kind of fish. You find it
in a cluttered alley that has the sinister look of a movie
set from the thirties where the hero barely escapes getting

Shanghaied by devils with Fu Manchu mustaches. Ordinarily

46

47
you would like this movie analogy, you often see yourself
acting out roles that seem to be written by someone else,
except now you realize you are not the hero but one of the
devils. You are even wearing a phoney mustache.

The fish you buy is, appropriately, one of the ugliest
you have ever seen. It is the Japanese puffer, known, when
eaten, as a bizarre delicacy called gggg. It lies spiked
and shriveled with a few others in a tray on ice, its eyes
smoked with death. The fish lady does not appear to have
any concerns selling it to you--she might, the chefs that
serve fugu must complete years of training and obtain a
special license. Maybe she simply doesn’t care if a gaijin
stupidly kills himself with her merchandise. Until you met
Kamiya, you honestly felt as though most Japanese regarded
you as an odd curiosity, a strange barbarian whose only
value was your ability to teach English, the universal
Language of success. In any case, you do not believe this
fish lady will remember you.

You have transferred your package to a plastic bag
thoughtfully brought along from one of the underground
clothing shops in Uppg. You know you will appear to be just
another inconspicuous customer in this land of eternal
consumption. It is now 5:45 and you board the express to
KYOtt> where you have lived for the last year. On the right,
Y0“ glide by the soft morning outline of Osaka Castle. You
remember registering disappointment when you discovered it

had been rebuilt with prefab cement, not wood and stone,

48
after the war. Much of Japan reminds you of Disney World.

Looking around your car, you are pleased to see your
few fellow passengers are mostly night time travelers--
businessmen in three piece suits who were too drunk to make
their last trains home. They are all passed out. One has
splattered his tie and the front of his shirt with what
looks like dried yellow plastic imbedded with shrimp. His
head bobs with the sway of the train. He may well be the
reason you found this car so empty. You’re very glad you
can’t smell him. You pull your Tigers baseball cap down
further over your eyes for the fifty-two minutes it takes to
get to your station.

In your shallow sleep you see Kamiya as she was the
first evening she crossed the floor of the night club to
introduce herself to you. She wore black in the spring.
.She had a gentle elegance that would forever after
cflmaracterize your highest ideal of the Eastern woman. You
nyved the natural confidence in the movements of her hands
arud mouth. What was surprising was her eagerness to be with

YCHJ.

"You look like movie star," she said with a charming

difficulty between her 1's and r’s.
"Oh, come on, really," you had said, although secretly
YOU! were flattered. "Which one,“ you couldn’t help asking.
"A young Lee Marvin, my favorite actor in the world."
Lee Marvin? You could not tell if she was serious.

StiJll, something in her cunning determination to give you

49
all of her attention suggested she was. You could not keep
your eyes off each other, and you found yourselves laughing
at simply nothing at all much of that first perfect evening
you were together.

There were many evenings after that. Days too, spent
wandering among the temples or going for long drives in the
Arashiyama mountains that ringed Kyoto to the west. You saw
her nearly ever day. You were ludicrously happy. You
couldn’t resist showing her off to all of your friends and
fellow teachers. Their shameless envy made you feel
important.

Then late in the summer, you made what you now realize
falls under the heading of "A Modest Proposal." It was
August 16, the Buddhist festival night of Diamonji. Great
Character-shaped bonfires were lit in the dark mountains to
guide home the spirits of the dead and taking her hand, you
aSked her to marry you. You did not get the response you
had anticipated. She burst out crying, and between much
Coughing and tear wiping and carrying on you gathered the
Problem was not merely a cold war between East-West
relations. You wished it 1a_s only a matter of diplomacy.

No, you learned she had fallen for one of the friends
You had showed her off to, in fact, your best friend.

You wake within two stops of your station and rearrange
Your sagging mustache. Although you are certain buying the
w in Osaka rather than Kyoto was a wise precaution, you

now feel the mustache was a flight of exuberance. At the

50
time you got the thing, though, it appealed to your sense of
theatrics. You tear it off your lip and stuff it in your
pocket.

A massive billboard cruises by the window. You cannot
tell what the product being sold is, but the five-foot face
that sells it, a slightly stupid looking blue-eyed western
model, implores you to ’Live the Life Free, Happy go-Luck,
Super Style.’ It is in English, like so many Japanese
advertisements. You know gaijin models are the staple sexy
sales gimmick here, but you wonder, not for the first time,
just what the Japanese infatuation with America means.
‘Western movies are big business. Anything with New York on
it may as well be put in the living room shrine. James Dean
and Marilyn Monroe are deities. You hope Kamiya’s interest
in you was not generated by this blatant Anglo worship. You
hope you were more than last month’s American flavor. The
:fiact that she has thrown you over for another American does
not reassure you.

The train pulls into the station and you shuffle down
the aisle on your way to the doors. The tie-splattered
shrimp man sleeps on, oblivious to disgusted stares. No one
is lxaoking at the moment, though, so you carefully place
Your leaseball cap crookedly on his head. He will think it
is a sgift from the gaijin baseball god of Detroit.

(Dutside it is cold. You turn your lapels against your
face and bury your chin in your neck. Wet snow, black from

traffixz, slithers in the gutter. The sky is gray although

51
the sun peeks a little through a soft underbelly of clouds
swelling just above the mountains. You are not far from
your apartment on Jujo-dori street and you walk along in the
cold, thinking of Kamiya again and now Tim, who stole her
away from you.

Many months have passed since the summer and he thinks
you have forgiven him. He tells you he did not mean
anything to happen, but he couldn't help his feelings toward
Kamiya the moment he was introduced. He was hit by
lightning, he marveled in his cliche, although that is
probably how you would describe your first sight of her.

You imagine them together often, you imagine his mouth
eagerly gliding along the smooth blades of her hips. She
loved this. You hear her little bird-like urgings, her
sharp cries. You see them moving together, pounding,
panting, all the while her eyes glazed with pleasure. You
iJnagine her doing everything with him she once did with you.

Tim thinks you have forgiven him but the rage you felt
last summer has not dissipated, you have only succeeded in
re-channeling it. You are very good at hiding your
feelings. There are no better grounds for revenge than
betrayal and you have made this long morning journey in
order to exact it.

‘Ybu walk up the stairs to where you live above the food
store:. The Japanese use an English word to describe this
tYPe (bf apartment: mansion. It’s smaller than a room in

the Hilliday Inn. It has a bathroom that is molded entirely

52

from one piece of plastic; when you shower, water runs to
the center of the floor and finds a drain. But the balcony
makes it cool in the summer and every day there is the view
of the Yamashina mountains.

You take the puffer out of its bag and unwrap it.
While you slice it open, you think over the months that have
passed since Kamiya left you. All of your friends have
drifted away, puzzled by the change in your personality.
Your last good one, Stuart Ryder, cannot understand why you
refuse to return his calls. It’s difficult to admit, but
you realize you have lost the continuity of days and nights.
You would never have guessed another person could so
completely determine the state of your well-being. You have
tried to console yourself with the usual platitudes: You’ll
get over her, there are many fish in the sea; but you have
come to understand that only once in a man’s life, the woman
meant for him briefly passes within reach. The agony of the
last few months has proven that you are unwilling to let her
go. By eliminating Tim, you rationalize, you will be there
to help her through the tragic crisis. It is an old plan,
but a sound one. She will turn to you for support. After a
suitable mourning period, things will naturally run their
course. She will be yours again.

You open the fish in search of its liver. This is the
‘poison that figgg chefs are taught to avoid. Something like
an average of fifteen people die every year from careless

Chefs. The interesting thing is, even the safe flesh of the

53
puffer is slightly toxic. It numbs the tongue, a kind of
flirtation with the eternal.

You chop the liver into tiny bits and take a glass vial
out of the cabinet. With the edge of the knife, you scrape
liver into the vial. You put the vial back in the cabinet,
re-wrap the fish, and throw it in the garbage. Later, you
will bring the evidence to the dump, properly disposing of
it.

Now you lay back on your gppgp and think ahead to the
evening. You have arranged to meet Tim at a small fggg
restaurant on a back street in Kyoto. A wonderful calm
rushes over you when you realize it will all be over soon.
You know Tim’s drinking habits well, you are counting on the
fact that he has a weak bladder. When he goes to the
bathroom it will be a simple thing to sprinkle his plate
with poison. You will even comfort him during his last
moments.

There are slight misgivings, though, that you wish you
could banish from your mind. For example, Tim was your
first friend in Japan. You worked together at the same
language school in Osaka. You liked him. He helped you get
private tutoring jobs. You make a good chunk of your
monthly wages from them. Tim helped you find your
apartment. One of the interests you share is Japanese food.
'Pogether you combed the restaurants of Osaka and Kyoto,
sampling tako aki, octopus, pppg, cold buckwheat noodles,

S!£L.ggg£i, shrimp brought to the table still twitching from.

54
the tank. Those were excellent times. Your mutual love of
food initially gave you the idea for this perfect crime and
you knew Tim could not refuse this most daring of dishes.
Japanese food was one of the the reasons you became friends;
it seemed an appropriate way of ending your relationship.

The day passes quickly and night comes. You slip the
vial into your pocket and leave your apartment. You arrive
at the fpgp_bar early. Like most Japanese restaurants, this
one specializes in only one dish. There is a painted sign
above the door: a puffer fish with a smiling face childishly
beckons customers. You wonder if victims remember that
smile as the poison slowly switches off their important
organs.

You enter. You are thrilled to see the room is almost
empty. This will make things much easier. The hostess
greets you, calling out a loud irasshaimasse! and you inform
her you are expecting someone else to join you. You order
an American beer, take a seat opposite the door and wait for
him.

You are a little shocked to see Tim when he comes into
the restaurant. It has been months since you last met and
he has lost weight. His hair is dull and needs cutting.
There is something listless in the way he carries himself.
.You.expected to see him robust, cocky, flushed with the aura
of'Kamiya and her love. Instead, he seems out of it,
beaten. His handsome face is pale and his lips tremble

Slightly. You promised yourself you would have no mercy

55
when the time came to finally remove this irritant from your
life, but now you cannot help but feel concern at his
appearance.

You rise when he makes his way to the table. "Tim,
what’s happened to you? You sick or something?"

"Nothing, nothing’s wrong. It’s great to see you
again. Been too damn long." You shake hands as you sit.

He seems tired but manages a weak smile. "A beer would be
great right about now, buddy."

"Sure thing." You order Budweisers as he pulls the
chopsticks out of their paper sleeve and plays aimlessly
with them. "Compari," he says when he gets his beer. You
lift your glasses and click them together. He smiles with a
kind of hurt wince, as though he were stifling great pain
for your benefit alone. You do not like the way things are
going.

When the waitress comes to the table, you order the
plate of £pgp_without conviction.

"Well, old man," Tim says quietly. "We're finally
trying gpgp, food of heroes. I re-read a pgigg when you
called before. Listen to this:

fpgg and poetry

last night, we laughed together.

Today, I bury you.

.Sweet, don’t you think? Only in Japan would people be crazy
enough to eat poison fish for fun."

You are uncomfortable with his clairvoyance. "Well,

YOu say, "Here’s to fugu," you say lifting your glass again.

56
"And crazy Japanese women."

Tim coughs, spraying the table with beer. His whole
body shakes in a coughing fit. You get up and slap his
back. He seems to be on the verge of crying.

"Look, Tim, something’s wrong. What's the matter with
you?"

His face trembles. "Oh god, it’s Kamiya," he says
unloading himself. His elbows are on the table; he’s
rubbing his face. "God did I love her. Enough to marry.
Well, she's getting married, all right. But to someone
else!" He breaks into a coughing, sobbing mess. You are
aware that the hostess is watching him lose control.

"Come on Tim," you say. "Here, get a hold of
yourself."

"She said she could never marry a gaijin, don’t you
see? Her parents wouldn’t allow it. She said she was just
curious to know what foreigners were like. That’s why she
dated us. She never intended anything serious. She was
even laughing about it. It was all a game to her!"

At that moment you realize you too have been playing a
game all along, a January game in which you methodically
plan the murder of your enemy and win the woman of your
dreams. But it is only a game, a mental exorcism designed
to banish your distress, your bitterness. You never
intended to cash in your chips. And there is no enemy, you
tell yourself, only a rather pitiful friend who is suffering

even more than you did.

57

"If I had known what this was like," Tim says, "I
swear, I never would have let myself get swept away with
her. I wouldn’t have. You’ve got to believe me. It was
like some kind of crazy madness."

"All right," you say, "don’t worry, buddy, I believe
you. Let’s get some more beer, 0. K.? We’ll talk.
Sumimasen!" you call to the hostess, "Nippon pppg,.gggg,
Budweiser."

"Hgi, gpgp," she says, and hurries to get them.

"I’m going to the can," you tell Tim. The vial in your
pocket has made you feel paranoid. You want to flush it
down the toilet. As you rise from the table, the hostess
calls out a greeting toward the door. You automatically
look to see who is coming in. You are surprised and slowly
take your seat again.

"She’s here," you tell Tim urgently. "Kammy’s here at
the restaurant."

Tim just manages to stop himself from whipping his head
around. "Shit! I told her we were meeting for dinner. I
don’t want to see her. No way. Not now." You first watch
Kamiya as she spots you, smiles and heads toward the table,
then you watch Tim frantically wipe his eyes to try to hide
his tears. You don't think he’s going to make it.

"Hello boys," Kamiya purrs softly. It comes out as
'lney-ro.’ But she’s got this smoky voice. There is
something so alluring in her walk that you feel the old

attraction immediately. You have forgotten how very

58
beautiful she really is. Christ, she’s sexy!

She sits without being asked. Her perfume nails you.
You see her engagement ring, a big fiery rock. She is
waving it in the air for everyone to notice. She speaks
rapidly, decisively, to the hostess. "A Meyers and O.J.,"
she says to you with a supremely bored sigh, "I do so love
them." The love sounds like ’wuv.’ You notice a New Age
crystal dangles between the thick, black ridges of her
leather biker jacket. You wonder where the hell she picked
up this bit of trendy affectation.

"So, how are my favorite boys doing, hmmm?" You do not
appreciate this new attitude at all. She is like a
'victorious general inspecting the haggard troops of the
defeated army. She is enjoying herself superbly. Tim has
been unable to make eye contact. His head lists to one side
and his tongue keeps passing over his lips as though they’re
(as cracked and dry as the moon.

“Well," she says to you, wagging her finger cheerfully,
"you’re certainly not being very friendly."

"It’s just that I haven’t seen you in a long time,
Kammy," you murmur stupidly.

The fpgg arrives. Delicate salmon colored wafers of
iiish are arranged in the form of a heron crossing a stream.
Some kind of vegetable makes the eye. It looks too good to
suit.

nggg!" Kamiya says, clapping her hands in delight.

Youhand pick up your chopsticks and circle them above the

59
plate. You realize the whole mystique of eating this fish
has been ruined. You shove a piece in your mouth and chew
it. It tastes like any other ppppi you’ve had. Tim
mechanically eats. Kammy searches the corners of the
restaurant as if she finds your company an unpleasant
necessity.

”Aren’t you going to say anything, Tim?" she asks
looking straight at you. Tim is silent. Her drink arrives
with another set of chopsticks. "Do you mind?" she says but
she is already eating, poking at the eye of the heron.
TEpg_, Delicious, isn’t it?" Then, with the same blase
tone: "Hasn’t Tim told you yet I'm getting married? Do you
‘want to hear about it?" Her cruelty appalls you. You drink
in silence, getting angry.

Tim coughs. You turn to look at him. He is violently
lmacking. You think something must be stuck in his throat.
TYou.get up from the table and run around to his side. His
face is red. You slap his back.

Then Kammy coughs. Both of them are coughing now so
tJIat the hostess casts a worried look across the bar. Tim
Can’t stop but it’s suddenly clear he’s only crying again,
Uncontrollably, sobbing and coughing.

Kammy looks worse. She’s gagging. Veins pop around
luer neck and sprout on her forehead. You slap pp;_back now.
Kammy's eyes are getting bigger and bigger, darker by the
Ininute. She looks scared. All at once you realize she’s

INDisoned. How horrible! She’s going to die right in front

60
of you!

You slap her back hard. A huge piece of the vegetable
eye shoots from her mouth and splatters Tim's hand.
Disgusted, Tim flings it back and catches Kammy across the
nose. Both cut the coughing. For maybe thirty seconds they
stare at each other, pure hate. Then, shaking, Kamiya rises
from her chair, knocking it to the floor. A bottle of beer
skids off her hip, soaking her in the most embarrassing
place possible. The piece of vegetable falls from her nose
and tumbles a little trail of slime down the front of her
white shirt. It drapes her New Age crystal and stays there.
How ludicrous she looks! And she knows it. Tim’s laughing
.nowy laughing harder than he was crying. It’s a terrific
show! Kamiya opens her mouth to say something nasty but
'there’s only this little wounded gurgle of frustration.
liinally, her face contorts into a grimacing mask, she stamps
her feet, and bolts from the restaurant.

"Well," Tim says when he’s forced himself quiet, "I’m
feeling much better now. Much better."

"I thought she was poisoned for a second," you say.

“A damn shame she wasn't, don’t you think?"

"You still hungry?"

"A little. But I think I’ve had quite enough of this
ilumg shit.“

"Relax," you hear yourself say wisely, holding up your
Ehadweiser, "think of all the hops and barley sealed up in

tilis little bottle. Think of the vitamins packed into each

61

delicately golden grain. There’s a sandwich in every beer.

Drink enough of these, why, you might never have to eat

again. "

"An intelligent idea," Tim says grinning, "Why don’t we

just drink the rest of our dinner then?"

The Drum of Heaven

Joyce came to my apartment above the pottery shop one
night with a bottle of Meyers rum. I let her in and she
seemed sort of m glad to see me, which is kind of strange to
say because at the time I didn’t know her well enough to tell
if that was the way she greeted everyone she met. Later she
asked to take a shower. I guess I should have figured what
was coming but I mean how the hell was I supposed to know she
wanted to get me into bed? Joyce was like fifteen years older
and married.

And why a shower, anyway? It was damn cold out that
night and the last thing you’d think anybody’d want to do is
drip wet all around my apartment. It was always really cold
in Kyoto during the winter.

It was cold but on the street, at night, you could hear
the potato man singing " a-ki-mo, ya-ki-mo," long into the
frozen night and the old ladies would go out into the street
and buy the gorgeous, buttery, baked sweet potatoes that he
sOld coal-hot from his small cart. Every night the potato
man's singing was like a softly unwinding watch that told you
it was time to sleep and remember what summer would be like
Wl'len it was warm again.

But now summer was still a long way off and I had Joyce

in my apartment with a bottle of rum, her nose red from the

62

63
cold, snow dusting the heavy folds of the weird winter jacket
that she said came from Nepal, holding up the bottle and
smiling uncomfortably with a look somewhere between sex and
tears.

"Meyers is your favorite, isn’t it?" she asked.

I agreed that it was.

"I knew it. That last time at Rub-A-Dub you ordered it
and you said then it was your favorite. You drank three or
four of them, I think, and then you said that."

Rub-A-Dub was mostly a foreign bar, meaning us, the
foreigners, hung out there. Kyoto was small enough so that
you got to know a lot of the people around but I’d only met
Joyce and her husband a few times before. They had a big
party at their home in the hills below Mt. Rokujo and we all
had a pretty good time. Still, I couldn’t remember giving
Joyce my address.

She was nervous holding the bottle just inside the small
kitchen and I didn’t know what to say so we sort of gravitated
into the living room with its six shiny tatami mat rectangles.

She went on: "Since I met you I’ve had it a few times
and I really like it, the way it relaxes you, not at all like
VOdka and certainly not like tequila, which makes you kinda
Crazy, I mean phi_s stuff makes you feel really mellow, you
l“10W?" She laughed a silly, charming laugh for no reason at
all and then added: "You seem so mature for a twenty-four year
°1d~ .And God, really, you’re still just a baby, you know? I

think I could get to like you!"

64

I was embarrassed at this sudden outburst, embarrassed
for her, which is the worst kind of embarrassment there is.
I said "I’ve got O.J. in the fridge; let’s have some drinks."

"And I thought you’d ppyg; get around to making them."
She sort of batted her eyes and smiled like she was being
super coy and sophisticated.

I took the bottle, went into the tiny kitchen and opened
the refrigerator. I looked back into the room and Joyce was
studying my Grateful Dead poster on the wall like she was in
a museum or something. An elbow was locked into one of her
hands and the other hand was spread over her face and stroking
her chin.

Joyce wasn’t too pretty. You could tell she kind of knew
that too, and tried to act real cosmo and sophisticated and
wore wild clothes to make up for it. Her hair was a reddish

blond and might have been pretty if she hadn’t hacked it short
like a boy. She had a kind of light bulb for a nose, round
With little lumps on the bridge like the part that screws into
the socket. Her eyebrows were so whispy-thin you almost
couldn't see them and that made her whole face seem smooth and
C>Pen and sort of dumb looking. But she wasn't dumb. Not at
all. Somehow, it seemed to me like she realized she was
h01'!!er at a very early age and knew she’d have to be smart and
tricky to get the things other girls got with their good
looks.

Like her husband Pokey. I don’t even know his real name.

65

We called him Pokey. I guess he was a pretty good looking guy
and a lot of people wondered how Joyce ever landed him. It
wasn’t much of a mystery to me. I could tell the first time
I saw them together that she spoiled him. She put up with
stuff that most women would never deal with. She cut his
hair, did his laundry, cooked his food and allowed him to
sleep with other women and I found out even boys whenever he
wanted to. I didn’t know any of this until the night she came
to me with the bottle of Meyers but anyone with eyes could
tell she was close to some kind of breaking point.

I got the O.J. out of the fridge and made two strong
drinks. Meyers turns O.J. a lovely muddy brown and it’s a
good drink to order at a bar you’ve never been to before
because you can always tell how heavy a hand the bartender has
just by the color.

I brought them into the room and Joyce was staring out
the sliding door window at the sullen winter view of Kyoto.
She turned with this kind of sexy movie look that would have
been comical if I couldn’t tell she was so damn serious.

I handed her drink and she took a deep sip and then she
aSked me: "Is it all right if I take a shower?" A shower!
In the middle of winter and she didn’t even know me! Well, I
Couldn’t think of anything to say. Her lips were trembling,
but she was trying to be blase like she just discretely asked
t0 use the toilet or something. I wondered if maybe she’d
been drinking before she popped by. I decided she probably

had been. So I just said fine, O.K., go right

66
ahead.

"You’re sure you don’t mind?"

"Nah, not at all. Absolutely not. I think there's a
clean towel hanging on the door."

"Oh, great, thanks so much, Stuart," she said and walked
slowly towards the bathroom, letting her jacket slip off her
body like honey while sort of merging her eyes soulfully with
mine until she pulled the door behind her so sharply it
banged.

I took a few sips, bent down to turn on the tape box and
thought: what the fuck is she doing in my shower? I put in
The Red Hot Chili Peppers but remembered to keep it low. The
guy next door used to pound on the wall and bark guttural
Japanese when I cranked music too loud. I took another sip
and opened the sliding glass window.

It was snowing in the mountains. I could see the dark
glide of snow, like a sheet of tarnished metal, when the moon
Slipped out from behind the clouds. It was comfortable and
exciting to stand inside in the warmth while the snow showered
the temples and the city. It made me feel suddenly happy to
be in Japan, in my snug apartment with only a touch of cold on
my face, knowing tomorrow I would have work that I really
liked, thinking that soon I would have enough money saved to
tlake a trip to the north island, Hokaido, where I had never
been, and where the land was supposed to be smoke-blue in the

winter time, open, wild and uncrowded. Japan wasn't bad in the

67
winter. Every season wherever you were had something to
offer, and I decided to enjoy winter for what it was and not
think about spring until it came around again on its own.

I was just stepping out over the threshold to really feel
the night when behind me I heard Joyce’s coquettish voice:
"Stuart, you know you’re going to catch cold if you go out
there. You don't want to be _c_o_l_d_, do you?"

I turned around. Joyce had my towel tied low over her
small breasts and her hair was brushed straight back off her
head so that it looked like she was sticking her face out the
window of a moving car. Her cheeks and her light bulb nose
were mottled and flushed from the heat of the water. Her eyes
seemed glazed. Now I was sure she was drunk.

She was leaning with one pale arm raised against the door
frame. Her other hand held a drink that sweated in its glass.

"Come on back in," she said huskily.

I knew what was coming next and I dreaded it. I shut the
glass door, went quickly into the room, sat on the m mat
and slipped my feet under the blanket of the winter table.
The table had a heater built into it and the blanket draped
down to the floor and trapped the warmth in. I gulped my rum
before noticing she had turned the lights low.

Joyce took a clumsy, theatrical step towards me, roughly
loosened the towel where it was tied across her breasts, and
let it drop.

She kept herself in good shape. Her small breasts were

firm and sharp and I couldn’t stop my eyes from traveling

68
along the taut lines of her stomach to the triangle, softly
red and inviting in the dim light, and down the curves of her
thighs to her calves that looked sweetly chiseled with slender
muscle.

She stumbled as she crossed the space between us and said
in a pathetically timid voice that somehow managed to ripple
with desire: "I really think we should make love now, Stuart,
don't you?"

There is something unfortunate about an older woman’s
nervous attempts at seduction. Still, if I wasn’t afraid she
was cracking to pieces in front of me, I might have taken up
her offer. Instead I took her hand, sat her next to me and
said "I don't really think this is such a great idea, do you,
Joyce?"

Her lips actually quivered, she breathed out deeply and
I felt terrible.

"Don’t you want me?" she asked tearfully. "No, don’t
answer that; I didn’t think so. God, I’m making such a fool
0f myself." She focused on the dark corners of the room as
though she wished she could escape to them.

"You’re not making a fool of yourself," I tried to assure
her. "What’s wrong? I mean it’s pretty obvious something’s
bothering you. I don’t know you too well but I can sure tell
that much."

She looked at me with an intense sadness and I realized
1501‘ the first time that her eyes were very beautiful. They

held something in them, an almost desperate appeal, that made

69
her seem somehow tiny, like a trapped, wounded forest
creature.

I stood, walked over to the dropped towel and picked it
up. I came back and handed it to her. She rose slowly,
looking at me the whole time with those sorrowfully beautiful
eyes, wrapped the towel around her with dignity, and went into
the bathroom. When she came back, a few long minutes later,
she was wearing her clothes.

"Stuart, I'm really very sorry to bother you," she said
with a kind of composed formality, "I’d better just leave
now."

"No, don’t," I said. "Why don’t we just sit a minute,
finish off these drinks?"

She looked at me, trying to make up her mind, so I handed
her a drink and then she sat like an obedient child (which is

how I like to think of her now, sitting there at the warming
table as though she were apologizing for spilling chocolate
milk) and she seemed relieved to be able to sit without
Worrying about her game of seduction. I flipped the tape and
Put something mellow on.

We drank nearly the whole bottle that night. She started
tElling me about her husband, she said, because there was no
one else she could talk to. Pokey, she had discovered after
Years of marriage, of faithful dotage, of cutting hair and
Cooking dinners, was impossible to live with.

"I'm not enough for him any more," she said quietly.

uHe’s got...people that he stays with. I found out a few

70
months ago some of them are men. Boys, really. He'll just
tell me he's not going to be home for a few days, and that’s
that. I don't see him for a week. I hate him for it, knowing
what he’s doing while I sit home all alone. Or maybe it’s
worse knowing what he is doing."

So that's why she was here. She was trying to get back
at her husband by sleeping with me. Still, I could see how
that drove her. "That’s rough as hell," I said.

She nodded thoughtfully and then she turned.those eyes on
me again. "It makes me feel dirty, later, when I'm with him,
you know, in bed, fucking him. Knowing he fucks boys.
Wondering if he’s different with them. Wondering what that's
like."

I nodded. The shower, as strange as it seemed at first,
suddenly made sense. It must have been some sort of compulsive
cleansing, a way of physically ridding herself of Pokey.

She said: "And I feel so trapped. He does anything he
wants, he doesn't care or even think about the way he's
humiliating me. I know all our friends talk like I’m this
poor, homely cheated-on wife. They laugh at me and.I hate it.
I hate the whole thing. And there’s nothing I can do about
it."

"It’s noneeof my business but if it's that bad, why don’t
you leave him?"

"Ha! You really have no idea, do you? It’s not done
here. Wives are goddamn slaves in Japan. Only a few years

ago, they actually walked two steps behind their husbands."

71

"But you're an American citizen," I protested.

"Not when you live here. It's different. They expect
things from you when you've been in their country for so many
years. Especially when you’re married to someone like Pokey.
He knows s9 many people." She laughed unpleasantly.

I could never understand why women stay with men they no

longer love, and then I realized she still did love him,
despite what she said about him and despite all the sordid
things. Maybe she even liked being tormented. She would
never leave him and I felt a disgust, not a moral disgust or
superiority but revulsion and fear, yes a fear that living
with someone you both hated and at the same time loved was the
hideous trap that most people everywhere had somehow managed
to sew themselves into. I thought my conception of marrying,
of living together with someone, of loving even, suddenly,
utterly obsolete. It was as though coming up for air in a
dark pool, you found out (to your horror) that there was no
surface to break, no air at all, ever. I decided to quickly
change the subject. "If you don't mind me asking, what's
Pokey do?"

I remembered.the party and their old, well-kept house and
its beautiful stone garden. I remembered thinking it was an
incredibly nice place for foreigners to live and how lucky
they were (I thought) and now I wondered again what it would
take to own a house like that in Japan.

"Pool sticks," she said with a soft chuckle.

"Hmm?"

72

"He imports pool sticks. From the Philippines. The
labor’s very cheap."

"Really."

"Oh, yes. Pokey’s made himself into the gaijin pool
stick king of Kyoto. He’s sort of minor celebrity, the
Japanese proof that Americans can make it in Japan. But you
know it wasn’t very easy. When he first started, they all
ganged up on him."

"'They?'"

"All of his competitors. The other guys in the.business.
You see, even though they all hated each other, they hated
Americans more. So they ganged up on him and drove us out of
business. It happened twice. Pokey wanted to pack up and go
on home. But I thought we could make it if only we stuck it
out. And you know we did. We learned to speak Japanese
fluently and we learned their markets. They respect us now.
They even like us. It's funny about the Japanese.

"And thinking back, you know, that was the most exciting
time, working together here to build up the business as though
nothing else mattered."

Joyce smiled for a moment, remembering. "Besides, I had
nothing to go home to. Did I tell you we're from Bay City,
Michigan? If you’ve been there, You know what I mean." Then
she laughed, a suddenly happy, girlish laugh. "No, home was
definitely out of the question. Once you've lived in a
foreign culture and felt the internal...movement of the place,

well, you get hooked. I don't regret a moment here. I just

73
love waking up every morning to the freshness of it all--the
people, the things to see, I never tire of it. I haven't been
back home for more than...my God, it’s been more than ten
years now."

I realized how completely she had changed from only an
hour before and I was very confused. Pokey and Joyce seemed
so much older, but older in a crazy way. I listened to her
steady, meaningless murmur ramble on and on about Pokey and
how happy they had been before and I saw at last she hoped
with everything she had that they would be happy again. She
may have even believed they would be. The whole thing seemed
impossibly mysterious to me.

I made more drinks; Joyce lit a candle and put it on the
table. The winter wind rattled the sliding glass door. I
handed.her a fresh drink and walked up to the door and slid it
open. The candle flickered orange light and shadows in my
small room.

"Beautiful out, isn't it?" I mumbled more to myself than
to Joyce. II stepped out onto the little balcony that was
crusted with old snow and a light swelling of fresh snow. It
was sharply cold on my bare feet. There was my chair and some
old bonsai pots and other things, indistinct shapes, muffled
in a coat of snow, waiting for spring.

I felt Joyce come up behind me but she stayed in the
doorway.

"It must be difficult to live with someone like Pokey,"

I said, not really knowing why I was bringing it up again.

74
Maybe it was simply because it was all so inexplicable to me.
"I mean the way he treats you," I went on. "The uncertainty
of the whole thing. Never knowing. It all seems so
fragmentary, so ephemeral." I realized I must have sounded
idiotic. Well, I was pretty drunk.

But Joyce simply sighed. "Oh, you get used it. We all
make compromises when we get older, you’ll see soon enough."

We watched the play of the wind and the snow. After a
while, I felt Joyce kiss me lightly and I turned, surprised.

"Don’t worry," she said, her hand on my shoulder. "I’m
just leaving." She was smiling. "Thanks for talking with.me.
I really needed it. I hope we can be friends, and that you
won't mind me stopping in sometimes."

I watched her sad, sincere eyes. We might be friends, I
thought, but I would be her friend against her husband. I
didn't like the idea of being her conspirator. I didn't like
the idea of being forced into a small part of her little drama
with her unfaithful husband. "It was fun," I lied. "Swing by
whenever you feel like it. Thanks for bringing over the
Meyers."

"You’re welcome."

I made no move to leave the balcony, not even realizing
I was being rude. Or perhaps I did realize it.

"I’ll let myself out," Joyce said. "But don't stand in
the cold too long, you’ll get sick."

"I won’t," I said.

After she left, I closed the sliding door and was alone

75
on the balcony. It was very late and everything was
absolutely still except for the silky motion of the falling
snow. I tried to trace the way I usually walked up into the
mountains where the great temples were but it was dark and too
hard for my eyes to follow the streets.

Then I heard the rich sound of a temple bell drift down
to the city, steady and persistent as a heart beat. I closed
my eyes and imagined a priest in his dark kimono out in the
night snow, standing solemnly beneath the curved wooden roof
of an open-air bell house, drawing back the huge, hanging
wooden mallet and striking the bronze bell again and again as
though he were beating a war drum in an ageless rhythm that
soared to some pure land far above the heavy clouds. And the
thought that the sound of the bell would forever dissolve
itself into the night’s restless winter enormity finally made
me feel, for once, part of something great and complete and

lasting.

The Ugly Spring Cherry Shock

Alan Keeler lifted his head. An explosive flood of
dizziness, sudden and overwhelming, came charging into his
.skull. Smelling his breath, he felt his stomach and bowels
:sputter uncontrollably. Gagging, coughing, he leaned over
.and.thought he was going to puke into a little stone drain
‘Mhere blurred, pinkish-white shapes were drowning.

It took minutes to register that he was lying soaked to
11is bones in a wet street with cherry blossoms plastered to
11is face and he had absolutely no idea where he was or how
tzo get home. It was even impossible to decide which
(iirection to start walking.

Alan sat up, too quickly, and his brains shifted like
1>allast in his head. He squinted around. It was a cold,
Gearly spring morning and mist marbled the little blue—roofed
CIapanese houses and their pine gardens and the morning was
ssilent and strange and finally completely unreal in the
nnist. From rows of wet-bark cherry trees, blossoms steadily
ciropped along the street. He was covered with them. He
Ilever realized blossoms fell away from their trees the
nnoment they bloomed.

Alan leaned over again and dry heaved. He was sure he
vvas poisoned; he thought he was going to die. How absurd to
Clie alone and drunk in the rain on a foreign street beneath

‘tlle silent dropping of cherry blossoms.

77

78

He touched his face and realized it was cut. He'd
taken a header somewhere. He felt a mushy lump just above
his eyebrow and his fingers came away with blood on them.

.He let his chin bounce on his collar bone and he looked down
at his limp tie. It was stretched and ruined. He was
‘puzzled by his shirt. Why was it ripped and blood spackled?
.His knees winked through holes in his pants and he was
actually missing a shoe. The foot was skinned and filthy.
‘What was he doing in this street, in the middle of nowhere?
lHe couldn’t remember a thing. And then he did remember. At
first there were only dim fragments but they grew steadily
.into grinning images of shame.

He had been at a party thrown by the owner of the
lEnglish language school where he was going to teach on a
‘trial basis. If he did well, he understood the position
‘nould be permanent. Alan's college friend Stuart Ryder had
laeen teaching in Kyoto for a year, long enough to arrange
the job while Alan was still in the states. Alan had
earrived only yesterday, rumpled and jet-lagged from the
1:edious flight. He had barely dropped off his bags when
Stuart told him to get ready for a party:

"You’re lucky to meet the boss," Stuart said. "Mike
£3akura's a pretty decent guy. He went to school in the
Estates. Just be yourself," Stuart had assured him, "and
1may--don't look so worried, you'll make a great impression."

”I'm not worried," he had said, "I’m dead tired."

Supposedly it was very rare for foreigners to be

79

invited into the homes of the Japanese. They took a

bewildering series of trains deep into the sprawling suburbs

of Osaka, and when they finally arrived, there were

interesting people from all over, from New Zealand and

lEurope and India and everyone had a sort of avante-garde,

(ex-patriate, world weary charm. Alan felt intimidated. He

(decided the best thing to be was as outgoing and as friendly

aas possible.
Introduced quickly around, Alan received almost

zaffectedly disinterested hellos and head nods. Mr. Sakura

‘nas young-looking and he drank whiskey. Alan asked for one

t:oo, hoping it would make him seem sophisticated. He wanted

t:o be witty and interesting, but he was nervous and drained

luis drinks compulsively. Before he knew it, the alchohol

peas talking for him.

He lectured an antique dealer from England on the

iJnequalities of heriditary rule and poked the guy’s chest to

underscore each point. He cornered a pretty Australian

women with some slurred babble about the right of American

Illaclear ships to dock in Sydney harbor and then he playfully

Ii<3ked about sleeping with her. She was shocked and turned

Ei‘vay. He was loud. He cracked crude jokes. He was

Eizrgumentative, abrasive; he was convinced everyone wanted

his opinion.
And then: tripping over the low table carefully set
with tiny, clever dishes of shabu shabu and seafood and

glasses of beer and sake. He remembered trying to help

80
clean up. Instead he dropped a stack of expensive looking
handmade ceramics, breaking them. He stained the tatami mat
floor with a spilled drink. He seemed to recall walking
into a door. The messes he made, his half-baked apologies.

Later, with a swaggering hostility, he challenged Mr.
Sakura to a drinking contest. They had to cut him off. He
:ruined the party. The last shadowy thing he could remember
*was something completely unlike him: he had tried,
jokingly, to grab the breasts of...who was it? The hostess?
It didn't matter. Christ, he hated himself. There was no
point in thinking about it anymore.

Alan struggled to his feet. He was soaked and his wet
hair dumped across his eyes. He started to walk but his
:right knee didn’t seem to work anymore. He felt slow,
.lifeless. His foot was cold and puckered. He needed water.
‘Mhen he swallowed, his throat felt like there was a rusty
razor in it.

The sun fell through the fog to the street in strange
tLranslucent pools and as he watched, the mist slowly folded
away. He tried to figure out where he was but he had no
idea how far he had come from the party. He didn’t remember
leaving. The house had to be somewhere nearby. . .but now
they all looked the same. He wouldn't know it even if he
Saw it. Anyway, he was far too ashamed of himself show up

at; their door.

He was lost. He desperately tried to remember the walk

fJi‘cam the station to the house but everything about the night

81

was impossibly vague. Only the houses, the streets and the

gardens took on a brutal, unforgiving sharpness. He thought

he heard a train far away and headed without conviction

toward the sound.

At last he understood he was in serious trouble. He

J<new very little Japanese. He was utterly alone in a

:foreign country. Yesterday he had a home and a job and a

<:ertainty of things to come and now, now he was a fragile

1:hread cut away from everything predictable.
The cold had worked its way inside him and he was a

:shivering mess. He had lost his Brooks Brothers jacket

:somewhere. With sudden panic, he slapped the pockets of his
ssoiled khakis, afraid he had lost his wallet too. He almost

<:ried when he found it. At least he had credit cards and

vvith them he could get money.
Then another thought hit him. Stu’s number! Was he

tuoo stupid to write it down? He pulled out his wallet and

tJaank God, yes, tucked between his Discover card and his

Visa, was a shred of paper with a number. Things were

1 ooking up .
It was important to get to a station, to find a phone.

Iiee turned off the residential street and found a wide

t><>ulevard where cars were hurrying to work. He tucked his

SlOppy shirt in and straightened his tie but it was no use.

He knew he looked ridiculous. To the Japanese he probably

looked crazy.

82
He was thinking about hitch-hiking when a bright sporty
car slowed down, passed him and stopped. Alan hobbled up to
it. A young Japanese rolled the window down a sliver. He
looked as though he wanted to be friendly but also very
[careful about what he was getting himself into. "What is

laappen to you?" he said. "You American?"

”Please,” Alan said. "Please. I need to find the

train station."

"You go to hospital?"

"No, if you could please, please just put me on the
1:rain back to Kyoto." He croaked out the words.

"Ah, §QHQ§§ pg, Kyoto." The young man nodded his head
laut did not seem to understand. For a moment he simply
astared at Alan’s face with interest. Finally he said: "You
laave berry bad...." The kid brushed his hand over his own
<:heek and.pointed to his forehead. "You no want hospital?"

"No! No hospital. Station. Train station. Toot
tuoot." Like every American abroad, Alan thought baby talk
would make himself better understood.

"But I think you looka hurt. But O.K., please to get

JLI). Doso."

 

Alan opened the door and slipped into the sporty bucket

£3<eat. It was warm in the car and The Rolling Stones’ latest

album softly filled his ears. Alan felt a wild happiness.

He felt as though he'd been rescued from drowning. He was

$0 grateful he almost cried.

83

The car smoothly accelerated into the fast morning
traffic and they began weaving through other commuters.
Evidently, Alan’s driver was concerned with making a good
impression. Alan studied him. He had a spikey punk haircut
and.slick clothes and his collar was buttoned up all the way
‘to the top. He concentrated on the road but couldn’t help
‘taking quick puzzled looks at his passenger.

"What a happen to you?" he finally said. "You in a
:fight? You looka bad."

"Oh, I’ve had a bad time...I’m sick. I’m...." Alan
<didn’t want to talk about the night. "Thank you so much for
Ipicking me up."

Alan caught himself in the rearview mirror. The deep,
tagly cut on his cheek might actually need stiches. It was
<:rusted with blood. His lip was only scratched but the gray
Ilump on his forehead made the whole right side of his face
JJopsided. He already had a huge black eye and he felt
Siluggish and dizzy. He looked like hell and he could only
blame himself .

He wondered again what had actually happened. A fight?
fies didn't think so. He could just remember being led out of
tllue house but after that, blackness. It was somehow
fleerrible, daunting, to realize he would probably never know.
There would always be this string of missing hours cut from
1“15.8 memory like a sinister operation. Then...something

returned. He remembered it was late, very late. He was

84
running and falling, running from someone. There was a
little man in a black kimono and laughter. A horrible
little man. Alan kept falling on his face, getting up
again, running. It seemed important to keep getting up

again.

That was all. The rest was gone. An alcoholic

lobatomy.

The Japanese kid turned to him and smiled. "I have

:never met American before."

"Well, I’m American all right." I'm your first? Alan

'thought. How do you like them?

"California. McDonald's. Jack Nickolas." The young
Iman grinned proudly.

"Right, O. K., sure." Alan was thinking of other
‘things. He was wondering why he ever decided to come to
.Japan.

They traveled in silence for a few minutes. Alan
rmoticed his driver seemed suddenly quiet. He wondered if he
Vmasn’t measuring up to some image the kid had pulled from a
movie and then he decided that under the circumstances, that
was damn understandable. "Look," he said. "I'm sure you’re
<:14rious about America and stuff and I'm sorry I’m not
'thalking a whole lot. It's just that I feel really terrible
today. Is there anything you'd like to ask me?"

The Japanese breathed out in relief. "Hag, please.

Where is your..." he pointed to Alan's feet. "Where is your

85
shoe?"

The young man dropped him at a station and explained
which trains to take back to Kyoto. Alan could call Stuart
again for directions back to the house. He boarded the
train and collapsed on the seat.

Alan carefully moved his hair back away from his
bruised forehead and watched the concrete towns and the rice
fields and the sharp emerald hills cruise smoothly past the
windows. Was it really possible he'd been in Japan less the
twenty-four hours? It was difficult, now, to understand the
sense of.. .how could he put it?. . .the absolute euphoria that
he had felt only yesterday.

He had walked briefly through the city before taking
the train to Stuart’s and everything he saw was new and
Inysterious and incredibly engaging. Osaka was a sprawling
gray jumble of confusing noise but that was no matter--it
had undeniable energy and sudden secret spots of beauty.
Temples were hidden within secret bamboo curtains or even
nestled between modern buildings. Azaleas and other spring
flowers flourished in careful gardens. Bright orange .s_1;i_nt_:_o_
Shrines were tucked into quiet corners and people clapped in
front of them to awaken the god that was sleeping inside.

He remembered a massive 3.92.1.1. gate that guarded the
entrance to an almost sensually luxurious park. Children
giggled and called him " ai ’in," foreigner, and the women

were elegantly silent and watchful and with their cool

86
lusterous eyes and hair, darkly beautiful. Everyone was
friendly and people went out of their way to explain
directions and sights to him.

Alan felt lifted with the thought that he was gaining
keys to culture, keys to people. For once he would live
something great rather than merely read about something
<great. It was the difference between knowing and merely
‘thinking you knew. He imagined himself learning things,
lessons, that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
'Then, looking around in the park with the children laughing,
<everything seemed fresh and imminently attainable.

And now. How could he have done this to himself? He
let his head flop into his hands and rock with the sway of
‘the train. He tried not to think. But the ugly images of
‘the night returned. He wanted to squeeze them out, destroy
‘them, He was cautiously touching his cheek with a tentative
cdrowziness when he felt the stares.

His eyes swung quickly around the car. As if by
éirrangement, the women in the train had quietly gathered
tiheir children around them and moved away. They were
Staring at him with a palpable hostility.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say he’d had an
Eiccident, that he knew he looked terrible, but really, he
“mas friendly and harmless, a college graduate from a nice
family. He wanted to shout all of this but nothing came out

because at that moment, he understood, in one of those rare,

87
absolutely crystalline glimpses into human motivation, that
the mothers were instinctively protecting their children
from him.

In an instant, he saw himself as a freak, a monster
that frightened children. The women looked at him as though
at any moment he might tear the limbs off little their
Ibabies. He knew what the deformed know and what it meant to
Ibe distrusted, hated even, on sight. It was a terrible,
.numbing realization. The fact they were all of a different
race made it even more shocking, more ostracizing.

And when the people slowly turned their backs, he was
jpathetically grateful.

It was a long ride to Kyoto. At the station, Alan took
out the number from his wallet with a shaking hand and

dialed.

Stuart answered. "Alan! Where the hell you been?
LI've been pretty damn worried."

"Look, I’m in trouble, okay? I...I’ve had an accident.
EKeally bad, too. Jesus, I’m all smashed up." After the
tzrain, the stares, it was all he could do to keep his voice
from cracking .

"Where are you?"

"Kyoto Station. I just got here," he added

E>ointlessly.

”O. K., stay there. I’ll come get you. Give me

fi fteen minutes . "

88

"Thanks a hell of a lot, Stu," Alan said.

Alan was sitting alone on a bench when Stuart found
him. "Holy shit," Stuart said, "this is one for the books."
He laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. "Where the
hell's your shoe?"

"Not now, Stu, come on. I need some fucking aspirin."

"What happened? We looked everywhere. You get hit by
a bus or something?"

"I know it sounds stupid but...I can't really
remember."

”Can't remember?" Geoff frowned. "Wow. That’s bad."

"I know, I know."

"You took off and we couldn’t find you anywhere. I was
hoping you picked someone up. You know you were pretty
wasted last night."

”Don’t you think I know that!"

"O.K., take it easy. Let’s get out of here already."

They walked out of the station. The sun seemed to burn
Alan’s eyes.

Stuart laughed. "I’ve never seen anyone plow through a
rice paper door. How's your face?"

"Oh, how the hell do I know? It hurts."

Geoff laughed good naturedly. "Don't worry, you'll be
fine.“

They walked on through the narrow, bricked streets.

89
Stu said “Listen, I’ve got to go to work. I’ll just drop
you off. There's stuff to eat if you’re hungry. Tylenol is
in the bathroom."

"Okay but do something for me? Ask about, well, about
the job."

Stuart’s look said ’you must be joking.’

"I mean, I just want to know if I've completely ruined
my chances or what."

"Well, Al, I mean seriously, Mike Sakura was 22; too
impressed with the way you acted. You must know that. To
tell you the truth, I was pretty embarrassed for you.
You’ve got to be more careful when you booze. You were
hitting on the girls like, well, you were really obnoxious.
You can’t act that way here."

"Don't lecture me, Stu. I remember carrying you home a
hundred times at school."

"Yeah, well, were not in college anymore, are we pal?"

Alan shuddered, knowing Stuart was right. "So the job
is pretty much out, is that it?"

"O.K., the Japanese give a lot of leeway for drinking
and all but I don’t know...." Stuart raised his eyebrows
sympathetically.

"I didn’t think so," Alan said quickly and swallowed.
"I’m sorry if I screwed anything up for you."

"Listen, don't worry about it. There are plenty of

teaching jobs in Osaka. Once you get back on your

90
feet...you can start looking. Don’t worry, you can stay
with me as long as you need to."

Alan breathed out and closed his eyes tightly.

They stopped in front of an apartment that opened over
a small, pleasant park. O.K.," Stuart said handing over a
set of keys, "I should be back around nine tonight."

"Thanks for everything, Alan said sheepishly.

"No prob. But listen, take a shower or something." He
smiled. "You really reek of booze."

Alan left his one shoe in the well inside the door. He
went into the tatami mat room where his bags were and it
seemed like months since he last saw them. He stripped off
his clothes, almost losing balance when he got out of his
pants. He put on a pair of fresh boxer shorts. He unpacked
his kit and pulled out his toothbrush. Then he went into
the bathroom and urinated. He found a bottle of Tylenol,
gulped down four and drank from the faucet until he was
full.

He stood in front of the mirror and gingerly washed his
face. When the blood came away he could see the damage
clearly. He would probably scar. Ashamed of himself, he
slapped the mirror and then pressed his fingers to his
temple to try and stop the pounding in his head. He
carefully brushed his teeth and went back into the room.

Outside the window, growing from the gardens of the

neighbor’s homes, he could see cherry blossom trees. The

91
white petals fluttered to the ground. He wondered how long
the damn things would keep dropping. He wanted to see
healthy green leaves, the sign that summer was coming. He
felt sure he would be all right by the summer. He shut the
window, unrolled his futon and crawled onto it. He was very
stiff and in pain and it took him a long time to fall

alseep.

Bonsai Thief

During the first warm nights of May, Randall Pym, age
28, found himself stealing bonsai trees again. Randall knew
all the wealthy streets in Kyoto and he would hoist his
heavy little body over fences and stone walls and drift
alone through the tranquil, shadowy gardens where the
miniature trees flowered in their dusky urns. Barky,
twisted maples and pines had an eerie likeness to age-bent
human figures and Randall often lingered for hours caressing
the buds and the tiny, wizened branches. A few of the trees
bloomed wildly at night, giving off scents far sweeter than
anything he had ever smelled and sometimes, haunted by a
peculiar longing, Randall would get on his hands and knees
and dart his tongue along the smooth edge of the glazed dish
and into the moist, mossy soil. On these nights he almost
always ended up furiously masturbating, spilling himself
onto the trunks of the trees, splattering the soil they grew
from.

At any moment someone might look out their window and
discover him there in the moonlight. But no one ever had.
.And since he imagined himself as a connoisseur of bonsai
trees, an expert, he only vaguely acknowledged the fact that
breaking the law in a foreign country could have severe
repercussions. And Randall preferred to completely ignore
analyzing the bizarre attraction these trees held over him.

.A.long time ago, he had decided everyone had their own

92

93
perversions and he was no more deviant than anyone else.

His apartment was the usual claustrophobic Japanese
living space, but it was overflowing with stolen bonsai
plants. He had more than thirty of them arranged on the
tatami mat floor or sunning out on his balcony and the
mingling smells of black pine, Hinoki cypress and flowering
azalea were delightful.

Randall didn't like to think of himself as a common
thief, the idea was repugnant to him, and he was careful to
tell friends who visited that his students brought the trees
as gifts. When students came for English lessons, he
reversed himself: now they were gifts from friends.

He knew some had their suspicions, especially the
Japanese students.

"How very pretty," they might say. "Bonsai are
difficult to keep so beautifully."

"Thank you. You know I really enjoy caring for them."

"They look so professional; they are so expensive to
buy. And you keep getting new ones."

Randall wondered if this could be a sly accusation.
Everyone knew that an English teacher, after all, was not a
rich man.

Some would ask "My father has bonsai. Where did you
buy such perfect trees?"

And Randall would answer vaguely "Oh, friends get them
for me; they know how much I like them."

Randall was aware this was a lame answer. All the

94

trees’ ceramic containers had the unmistakable look of long,
outdoor wear. They didn’t seem as though they were recently
purchased from a store. They looked exactly like what they
were: old pots from someone else’s garden. But since no one
had accused him outright, Randall felt safe. Secretly, he
even delighted in the lying game. Not only did the trees
make him appear more popular, more eccentric, with either
his students or his friends, but the same sexual impulse
that drove him to steal was complimented by his ability to
later lie with a casual, even pleasant face. The whole
system of identifying, stalking, stealing and later lying
was enormously intoxicating.

It was probably inevitable that Randall would run into
trouble. This is the way it happened.

One afternoon, Randall was serving green tea to his
teaching colleague Stuart Ryder. Stuart mentioned something

he had read in the Asahi Times, an article about a rash of

 

bicycle thefts in the Gian entertainment district, two train
stops from where Randall lived.

"I’m sure they’re just drunk college students," Stuart
said. "You know, fraternity pranksters, that kind of
thing." The sharp angles of Stuart’s face were touched by
light that came in through the sliding window.

"It’s possible sgmg of the thefts can be accounted for
by drunk students," Randall said, setting down his cup and
crossing his plump legs on the straw mat floor. “But don’t

be so sure about the rest. There could more to it than you

95
might think."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, take the ideal thief. He’s a very special sort
of person. I would almost venture that he's a different
animal entirely from the usual sort you meet on the street."

"I don’t get you. Thieves that rip off bicycles do it
to sell them later for profit. If you’re saying a thief is
cunning by nature, fine, okay, but beyond that, I don't find
much appealing about him."

The sausage-like fingers of Randall's hands patiently
intertwined, forming a soft steeple on his lap. "I’ll grant
you there are common thieves, and yes, I agree, they aren't
very interesting. But there's a higher category of thief.
This one steals for the same reason a painter paints or a
sculpture finds himself drawn each evening to the block of
marble in his work shed. It's a compulsive need. A need
that can't be denied. And my analogy isn't at all
inappropriate. The thief I'm thinking of visualizes his
work as a kind of art too, the art of stealing, if you
will."

"Bullshit, Randall. The thief you're talking about
doesn’t produce anything. All artists produce something.
Your thief just takes stuff from one location and puts it in
another. Stuff that isn't his."

"My answer is that there are intangible arts, arts that
don't necessarily produce anything. The art of

conversation, for example. Or thinkers who don’t write

96
anything. That these people have attained great skill is
unquestionable. And isn’t art fine skill? Simply because
my thief works at night and alone doesn't mean he isn’t a
master. Think of the preparation and the challenges, the
special problems each new theft presents! Also, take into
consideration the fact that my thief doesn't sell the
objects he steals. He may take works of art, for example,
with no other end than to enjoy them in the seclusion of his
own home."

Randall couldn't help giving his own collection a
satisfied glance. He stole only the best specimens, and
these might easily be a hundred years old. The trunk must
have the classic bend, giving it the appearance of great
age, of a lifetime of battling the elements. Also important
was the tree's relationship to the ceramic dish it grew in.
There were many different dish styles, rectangular, oval,
ornate or simple, but all were designed to achieve the
illusion of an actual landscape in nature. This union, the
weathered, age-bent tree and its mottled dish filled with a
bumpy, mossy soil took years of training to reach what
Randall thought of as a kind of spiritual perfection. The
trees were symbols of endurance, of triumph against
adversity.

Randall remembered again the moment, now years in his
past, when he first came across a book of Qgggai. His
childhood had been a terrible and endless parade of

humiliation and loneliness and the pictures of the tiny

97
Japanese trees spoke to him with an eloquence that he alone
understood. He had felt as tormented and as dwarfed as the
branches and trunks of the trees. His own body was as ugly
as a bonsai, disgusting, incapable of love. And in his
strangled attempts to somehow love himself, he discovered
his strange attraction for the trees. They excited him in a
way that women, who invariably rejected and mocked him,
could not. No, the trees were there for him always, like
one of those blow up dolls advertised in dirty magazines.
Of course Randall would never allow himself to conceptualize
his need for bonsai in such base terms, his was a higher
plane than mere lust and yet, even now, just thinking about
them, he was forced to cover the sudden swelling in his

pants with one of fat hands.

Stuart didn’t seem to notice. "Your thief sounds
pretty dangerous to me," he said. "Like some kind of a
psycho."

The look in Randall's eyes turned to a watery anger.
"No, no. Not dangerous. My thief is discriminating. He
would never steal, for example, from a friend. That’s where
he would draw the line."

Stuart laughed. "How the hell do you know so much
about it? I can almost believe you’re talking about
yourself! Sometimes I wonder why I hang out with you."

"My answer to tttt is simple. We've all stolen
something in our lives, even if the last time we did was

when we were children. By all means, deny it if you want

98

to. What one knows in one’s cheating heart and what one
says are two entirely different things!" Randall's voice
had risen suddenly to a quivering pitch and he now tried to
control himself. "Actually, it’s not at all difficult to
imagine what it would be like to steal, professionally that
is. Once you've done it as a child," he added quietly.

"Well, don’t ask me," Stuart said. Robbers may be
romantic in 122; book. Try selling that to guys who’ve had
their shit ripped off. Anyway, the paper said something
about the police cracking down on those college kids. I
doubt we'll hear about stolen bicycles much longer."

Randall snorted. "Bicycles. Child’s play. Anyone
could pedal a bike home. No one ever even locks them up
around here. A real thief could do that a hundred times
without getting caught."

"0. K., O. K., whatever." Stuart stood up to leave.
"I’m off. Got any plans tonight?"

"Tonight? No, not really. You?

"Oh, I’ll probably swing by Rub-A—Dub later on. Feel
up to it?"

"What time are you going to be there?"

"After eleven. I've got some some work to do between
now and then.“

"Fine. Probably see you there."

That evening Randall took the local towards Gion.

Beside the tracks, the Kamo river ran smooth and dark,

99
enclosed within its filthy cement banks. Randall watched
the tile roofs of homes glitter by in the street lights.
The closer he got to thg, the more traditional the
buildings became. It was the entertainment district and
many places were designed to look like old Japan. Most of
the fine restaurants were in gigg. Private bars occupied
floors above shops and there were geisha girls, he knew,
closed away with their whispery kimonos in the silent rooms
along dark streets.

The train bumped and swayed. Lost with the window—
sweep of strange buildings and people, Randall wondered
again what it was that drew him to Japan. He could never
adequately explain, even to himself. For one thing, it was
impossible to ever feel at home in Japan. The Japanese did
that to you. They were always eager enough to learn
English, but the moment you tried to practice Japanese, they
looked at you as though you were articulating Obscenities.

Randall remembered going to a sushi bar with a friend who

 

spoke polished, absolutely flawless Japanese. This was a
small bar on a back street run by a grim, sweaty, thick-
necked man, and when Randall’s friend placed the order in
Japanese so perfect it must have sounded like English with a
Cambridge accent, the barman barked back.at them, making no
attempt to conceal his disgust. "Eh, gaijin? Wat you
wanta? Eh? Speaka English, gaijin. No try Japanese."

It was then that Randall realized the place of

foreigners in Japan. When a gaijin was fluent, it meant he

100

had lived long enough in Japan to understand the rules. And
the rules were simple: foreigners were barbarians, lower
even than the dirtiest peasant or criminal. Gaijin served a
purpose: to educate Japanese in the language of the world,
which, only by chance and bad luck, happened to be English.
Gaijin could remain in Japan as long as there were Japanese
to teach. Soon, however, it was understood, Japanese would
master English and there would be no more need for gaijin
language teachers. Randall had little doubt that on that
day, all work visas would be revoked. It was depressing
thinking such thoughts. But he knew they were true.

Soon the train slowed and coasted into the station.
The doors opened and Randall went through to the street.

gtgt was busy in the spring night and Randall
remembered it was Friday. The Japanese flitted like dark,
interesting sparrows through the shops and the cafes. He
crossed a stone bridge. There were fishermen below with
bamboo rods casting into the water. In a restaurant’s
large, bright windows, he could see families and couples
sitting cross-legged at low tables. Along the Kama river,
tiny paper lanterns glowed red, blue and yellow like
twilight flowers. Somewhere beneath the bridge, an old man
was singing.

He turned right and headed up Kawamarachi street,
looking for Rub-A-Dub. It was always hard to find because
he was often drunk before he got there, and he was always

drunk after he left. Stairs leading below some kind of

101
tourist shop seemed familiar. He took them. Halfway down
he heard the reggae pulse. It was Rub-A-Dub, lovely dark, a
tiny basement fire trap, with its shanty style tin roof
built awkwardly above the bar, its potent tropical drinks
and the island music that vibrated seductively from an
expensive reel to reel stereo system.

The room was cramped with a tight swaying mass of
Japanese who were pretending, for the night, to be dancing
Rastafarians. Many of them had Jamaican style shirts and
caps. Two or three had twisted their hair into dreadlocks.
Randall often denounced the Japanese ability to mimic other
cultures as a sign of their utter lack of individuality.
"Ridiculous," he said loudly enough for the dancers to hear,
"Absolutely perverse."

Stuart pushed through the crowd to meet him. "Holy
shit," Stuart said. "You're actually early."

"Yes. I needed a drink."

"Well, what’ll you have? I'll get the first round."

"You know well enough. Meyers and O.J. with a splash
of pineapple."

"Right, O.K., your usual," Stuart said.

"Just look at them," Randall said pointing to the
dancers. "Their fervent need to copy everything is
absolutely preposterous. No, it's insane. They remind me
of a disturbed ant nest."

Stuart shrugged and went to get the drinks. Randall

listened to Jimmy Cliff croon the lyrics "Many rivers to

102
cro-o-oss, and I can’t seem to find, my way over." He
watched the dancers in the green shadows move more slowly
now, hoping rhythmically to bring a reggae expression to the
words with their bodies. Randall wanted to laugh at them.
Always assimilating other cultures. How typical of the
Japanese. He looked around without enthusiasm. There
weren’t any interesting people. There hardly ever were. He
spotted only a few gaijin and no one that he recognized.

Stuart brought the rum and Randall took a deep drink,
letting the dark Meyers swirl on his tongue before
swallowing. Such a pleasant taste! He took another.

Meyers was his favorite.

"So," Stuart started good-naturedly, "see any thieves
in this bunch?"

Someone, a Japanese, waved to Randall from the crowd
but he couldn’t tell who it was. "Thieves?" he said. "No,
not here. Actually these people are what you might call the
sheep the thief steals from."

"Randall, you’re starting to worry me. I never knew
you were so into the politics of stealing."

A very pretty Japanese girl walked through them,
yawning. Randall scowled at her. "All I’m saying is there
are thieves and then there are thieves. It’s just something
to consider. When you think about it, like every
profession, like everything else for that matter, there’s a
hierarchy, a sort of class structure. Ever see It Takes A

Thief or that famous flick with Cary Grant as the cat

103
burglar? That's what I'm talking about. Class. Almost
like an aristocracy of the robber world." Randall laughed a
natural, hearty laugh and finished off his drink, the ice
cubes knocking against his teeth as he drained the glass.
"Let’s get another round of these," he said, walking with

his chubby sway up to the bar.

Three and a half hours later he stumbled drunkenly
towards home. He had missed the last train and was unable
to find a taxi. Now he was forced to walk the mile or so
back to his apartment. The streets were gloomy. The closed
doors and the darkened windows of the wooden houses he
passed seemed to him shuttered and oppressive. Through the
black alleys, he could see the Kgmg_river off to his right.
There was a soft moon-glint on the water but everything was
silent and the river looked sluggish and eerie. "Disgusting
soup of slop," he muttered. The knowledge that he was
living in an utterly alien land came again forcefully to his
mind; he sometimes forgot how strange and different Japan
really was from everything he had ever known.

His feet hurt. He hated to walk. Even small distances
brought a thin line of sweat under his puffy chin. He felt
his underarms let loose prickly drops that needled the
fleshy cottage cheese folds of his hips. He cursed himself
for missing the train. He really had to stop drinking so
much, if only to cut down on exactly this kind of late night

buffoonery.

 

104

Ahead, under a solitary cone of light, Randall noticed
a large bicycle with glittering silver wheels leaning up
against what looked like a warehouse. It was a delivery
bike, from the look of it, the kind noodle men use. Randall
snickered when he remembered the afternoon’s talk about
drunken fraternity boys who preyed on precisely these kinds
of bicycles and drove them around until they were caught.
How childish.

As a rule, Randall detested any sort of physical labor.
He took trains everywhere. But walking was far worse than
riding. Maybe a little late night borrowing wasn’t so
childish after all. What was the point in walking home when
a ride presented itself?

He crept along in the shadows of a building, his fat
fingers tentatively tracing the wall. He knew he'd have no
trouble taking it. They never locked things in Japan.
Everyone trusted everyone else. He clumsily mounted the
bicycle and for a moment he was brightly illuminated beneath
the street light. Then he pedaled off, wobbling down the
street.

After a few hundred yards, he got the feel of the stiff
handle bars and the heavy, sturdy frame and he glided
happily past faceless windows and doors. He was very
pleased with his ingenuity. It had been years since he had
ridden a bicycle and he felt a wild freedom. He pedaled
hard and then coasted as long as possible, swerving just a

little. Once, he let his thick legs swing straight out and

105
away in an expression of joy.

He was utterly unprepared, then, when he rounded a
curve in the street and nearly ran over two policemen on
foot patrol. They shone their lights in his face and
shouted for him to stop. Randall, unused to the brakes and
very surprised, skidded badly. His foot slipped off one of
the pedals and the handle bars jerked out of his hands. He
tumbled. The bicycle clattered to the street. Randall gave
a short, agonized screech when he felt his plump knees tear
open on the pavement. Then the lights were in his eyes
again and he felt his arms being lifted. They were helping
him up, asking him questions. Randall didn't understand.
He was in a daze. He frantically shook his head. He
wanted to escape; he considered running. But he knew at
once he would never get away. He was still too drunk.

One of the policemen, a skinny guy with sharp, fox-like
features, was talking into a walkie-talkie. Randall heard
the word "gaijin" over and over. That was him. He was the
gaijin.

"American jin-deska?" the skinny officer asked him.
"Are you American?"

fggt," Randall answered.

"Ah, Gai'in," the officer said, "you have passport?
Gaijin card?"

Randall shook his head violently. He never carried
those things. He looked down at his bleeding knees. He

wanted the officers to see them. Maybe they’d take pity and

106
let him go.

"Where you get?" the skinny officer pointed to the
bicycle. The other officer had picked it up and was
checking it, Randall supposed, for registration numbers.

The cops were dressed in crisp, dark uniforms. They
reminded him of gestapo suits. Randall felt something
bubble and burn in his intestines. He wondered if he was
about to shake to pieces.

"Where?" the officer demanded. Randall could only
shake his head in disbelief. He would like to have toughed
out the skinny, fox-faced cop and told him whatever he felt
like doing was his business but he was too miserable to do
anything but softly whimper. Of course they know I stole
it, Randall thought. No one but idiotic noodle men ride
those things.

The skinny cop watched him for a moment, pursed his
lips and spoke briefly and rapidly to the other officer, who
laughed. Then he used the walkie-talkie again. He heard
"gaijin" a few more times.

Randall fought the impulse to run. He was trapped.

His mind wandered, hoping to detach itself from his body and
scurry away down one of the alleys to freedom. Noticing the
houses on the street for the first time, he felt a shudder.
There were bonsai trees lined up on a high wall in the half
shadows caused by street lamps. He had been on this street
before. He was certain of it. He had stolen a plant, a

little sushi kaido, a crab apple with charming pink

 

107
blossoms, not three weeks ago from the house behind the
other officer and the bicycle. He had not had the time
to...release...himse1f, not that night, because he had heard
voices from the house and he was afraid of being seen. But
he had wanted to, very, very badly.

Was there any way at all, he tried to reason, that the
cops....could they...possibly suspect him for the bonsai
crimes? He dismissed the idea immediately as paranoid.
Still, why did they keep using the walkie-talkies? Were
they cross checking reports, notices? Was there a warrant
out for a gaijin matching his description? He squeezed his
fingers together nervously. No, he told himself. Don’t
over react. They couldn’t possibly know anything. I was
far too careful. Wasn’t I?

"Okay, ai'in, you come with us now," the skinny
officer said, turning to Randall. "You come." There was
nothing friendly in his tone. Randall followed meekly,
experiencing a vague premonition of disaster he supposed
cattle feel when led away to the slaughter house. He
couldn’t believe what was happening to him.

They seemed to walk for miles and Randall’s knees hurt
him terribly. He was perspiring again, this time as much
from fear as from exertion. The skinny officer walked next
to Randall and the other policeman wheeled the bicycle along
a few steps behind. Their flashlights played over the
pavement and the shrouded homes. Every once in a while they

spoke to each other. Otherwise, the night was unnaturally

108
quiet and Randall realized Japan had never seemed more
depressing, more sinister.

The three turned down a long maze of dark streets lined
with blank windows. They passed a little shinto shrine
tucked between two buildings. Randall wished he could crawl
inside and hide. Maybe die.

Finally, ahead, Randall saw a solitary light shining
down across cement steps. The steps led up to a weathered,
crumbling gray structure. The skinny officer pointed to it
and nodded vigorously. "O.K., O.K.," he said.

There was a large policeman waiting against the wall of
the building. Randall could see the little blaze of his
cigarette. He guessed he was at a precinct. The reality of
his predicament struck home. I’m being arrested, he
thought. Dragged down to the station for booking! It was
horrible, unbelievable. Again Randall drastically
considered bolting. But the large man had detached himself
from the wall and was heading toward them with a confidence
that made Randall very afraid. Any drunkenness he might
have felt before immediately evaporated.

"You, gaijin," the big man said with a tight smile. He
was impossibly large for a Japanese. He stood above Randall
and glowered. "Where did you steal this from, gaijin?" His
English was guttural and he spoke it like he was telling a
dirty joke, but Randall understood the meaning. The
audacity! The confidence. They tag! I've stolen it.

They’re not even going to waste time with pleasantries.

109
They're treating me like a crook already.

They led him up the steps and into a dismally
bureaucratic clam-broth colored room. They sat him on a
chair. The incriminating bicycle was wheeled in and set up
against a wall next to him . He didn’t want to look at it.
Another officer came into the room with a clip board and
seemed to be checking for clues to its owner.

The big officer settled into a creaky chair behind a
table. His face was huge, dark and imposing. His large
hands moved slowly over folders stacked on the desk. "Now,"
he said. "I ask you again. Where did you steal this
bicycle from?" Randall withered under the officer’s gaze.
Beneath the table, his fat little legs shook. And then he
did something that came naturally to him: he lied.

"I found it," he said.

"Found it? What do you mean by ’found it?’"

"In the river." Randall let his head flop. He wanted
to seem as drunk as possible. "I $22!,it was stupid but
I’ve had too much to drink, and, well, I was walking home
and I saw it there thrown into the river and, uh, well, I
fished it out rode it."

Randall had often seen bicycles in the river. He knew
they were stolen and then dumped by drunk fraternity
brothers. He quickly reasoned he wouldn’t seem as guilty if
he pulled an already stolen bicycle from the river. He was
just picking up something that was lying around. Yes, he

was foolish and drunk, how could they say he was a thief if

110
he stuck to his story? It was a sound plan. He began to
feel better in spite of himself.

The big officer said nothing for thirty seconds. His
dark eyes merely searched Randall's frightened ones. "You
found it in river?" he asked, finally.

"Yes, yes, I found it in the river."

More silence. Randall could hear the other officers
talking behind him. He heard "gaijin" again and again. The
cop looked at him unpleasantly. "Where is your gaijin card?
You are required to carry at all times. Why do you not?"

He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke across the table into
Randall’s face.

"I--usually do. Tonight, I just forgot."

"When you enter Japan it is made very clear to you that
gaijin cards are required of all aliens."

"I'm sorry, 1...."

"Where in river you find bicycle?" he asked harshly.

Randall tried to act drunk. "I--I can't remember very
well. Somewhere between 9222 and that place where
they...stopped me." Randall looked down at his knees,
remembering his spill. He was ridiculous, absurd. But now
he had to think himself out of this jam. "It was in the
river," he continued plaintively, "I swear, and I was drunk
coming home and I saw it down there. I didn’t want to just
leave it there, I wanted to rescue it and bring it home.

And fix it up." '

The officer turned his eyes to the bicycle. Randall

111

turuied too, knowing it didn’t look at all as though it had
beeai in any river. The officer pulled a large district map
frcnn his desk drawer. "Show me." Randall hadn’t expected
tfluis. He scanned the map, found the train stops, located
.Qisu1. He let his eyes flutter. "I--I don't really know.
Somewhere between here and there, I would guess. I’m drunk
so I...can't really tell you for sure." His hand waved
vaguely over an area that he hoped covered a mile or so.

The big officer glowered with disgust. "And where do
you live?" he asked.

"Gojo—dori."

"Hmm. Gojo-dori." He spoke rapidly to the other
officers, then he turned back to Randall. "Let me see some
kirud of identification. I already know you have broken the
law by losing your gaijin card. Do not disappoint me
again."

Randall took out his wallet and handed over his
.American license. The officer looked it over carefully.
Randall wanted to act submissive, cooperative.

"Why do you drink so much?" the officer asked.

Randall was startled and then annoyed by the question.
'Were they baiting with him? Who did they think they were,
anyway? But what he said was: "I--I almost never drink.
That's why I’m so sick now, why I did this stupid thing.
Usually I’m never drunk. I wouldn’t ever do anything like

this if I wasn't."

"Hmm," the large policeman grunted. It sounded like a

112
disaproval. "What you doing in Japan?"

"I teach. I teach English."

"Where?"

"In Qggta."

"Where in Qggtg? The name of the school." Randall
realized he was in trouble. He didn’t want to tell them
anything if he couldn't help it but if he lied and they
caught him....

He told them. "Nichibei English Service. "Are they
your guarantor?"

"My guaran...what?" Randall tried to act puzzled but
he knew what they meant. His head reeled, looking for some
way out. Every gaijin who lived in Japan had a ’guarantor,’
a Japanese citizen who claimed responsibility for him.
Usually a gaijin’s guarantor was his employer. At Nichibei,
Mike Sakura, the owner of the school, acted as guarantor for
all the teachers.

"Yes, yes, your guarantor," the officer pressed
contemptuously. Randall looked at his tormentor across the
desk and tried to keep any traces of resentment off his
face. How odious, Randall thought, and impossibly fat. But
his arms were big and cruel. His face was long and brutish,
like a baboon's. Randall could tell this fat, horrible man
was enjoying the interrogation.

"Well? Who is you guarantor?"

"Uh, the owner of the school."

"Name?"

113

"Mike Sakura, Nichibei English service. He’s my
guarantor."

"He’s the one? Good. You will have to call him, you
know."

Randall felt his insides droop. The last thing in the
world he wanted to do was tell this grotesque cop where and
who he worked for. He had no doubt that the Japanese
bureaucracy, with its infinite foresight, had anticipated
just this situation: humiliating a gaijin by making him call
his protector as though he were a child calling home. And
yet, he wag guilty, wasn’t he? He was a thief. A thief of
the most common type. And he’d been caught.

Suddenly he felt a terrible squeeze of fear. What
if...with the evidence of the bicycle sitting across from
him...what if...here in Japan, that was enough, somehow...to
search his home? He was a gaijin-~in all probability he had
no rights at all. He tried to keep the corners of his mouth
from twitching and failed. What if they went to his
apartment and found the bonsai trees? What if they demanded
receipts? Could they know he was the one who had been
stealing them? It was horrible to imagine they would
finally solve the case because he’d been drunk and stupid
enough to rip off a silly old noodle bicycle. What shitty
luck! It might even make the papers. He’d be paraded
around, laughed at. With an exhausted resignation, Randall
realized he would probably go to jail. His head whirled

with the awful possibilities.

114

And there, grinning across the table, leering, was the
fat cop, the Big Cop, the Big disgusting Cop. Randall
loathed him. Big Cop’s teeth were clacking together,
forming words in English he had no right to make. He was
saying something: "...number of the school in anta...."

"What?" Randall demanded.

"What is number of the school in Qggta?"

"No. No, I don’t know that."

"What is number of the owner of the school?"

"I wouldn’t know that at all."

Big Cop spoke sharply to another officer who then
leafed through a phone book. He lit a cigarette and simply
stared, with his black, lifeless eyes, until Randall felt he
was being devoured by them. After a minute, the officer had
found the number. Big cop leaned over the desk. "We will
speak to your guarantor, and then we will allow 29g to speak
with him." He pulled the phone into the center of the desk.

"You're...what? Calling him now? At this hour?"
Randall looked at his watch. It was nearly three. ”You're
calling him now?"

Big cop smiled in his terrible way. "Of course. We
must be sure you are what you say."

The number was dialed and Big Cop spoke into the phone
with a calm, even voice. Every few seconds, Big Cop looked
over at Randall and nodded slightly, wisely, as if Mike
Sakura, on the other end of the phone, were meticulously

confirming all his suspicions as to the basic worthlessness

115
of American gaijin. Finally he said "Sakura-san would like
to speak with you now." He handed over the phone.

"Uh, hello, Mike?" Randall said sheepishly.

"Tell me, Randall, please. What is going on? I am at
a loss to understand. I almost can't believe it. The
officer tells me you are drunk, that you stole a bicycle."

Randall tried to picture Mike Sakura in his home,
sleepy but still young-looking and successful, with the
brown stains between his lower teeth from smoking too much
and working too hard, and Randall felt ashamed and terrible
for waking him up with this ridiculous story of stupidity.
Mike, with his good English learned at Arizona State, and
his concerned and careful manner at the school. Randall
felt lousy.

"Mike, the thing is, it's all so absurd. I had too
much to drink, like an idiot, and I found this bicycle in
the river and I drove it home and they stopped me. It
sounds pathetic, I know, the whole thing's just
unbelievable. But that’s the truth. I found the stupid
thing. I didn't steal it. But I don't think they believe
me." Even now, Randall found it necessary to lie. But he
didn't feel smart doing it. He felt humiliated.

"O. K., listen. It's not a big deal. People, mostly

kids, Randall, steal bikes all the time around Gion and ride

 

them. They are not going to do anything as long as I can
assure them that you will not try something like this again.

In addition, you are a gaijin, and that makes it a little

116
more difficult to...to punish you. I have told them you are
a reliable teacher and that I would keep an eye on you but,
well, I simply wouldn’t have expected something like this
from you. I'm naturally very disappointed, Randall."

"God yes, Mike! I know you must be. And I can’t
believe I did it and had them call you this late and wake
you up for this stupid reason."

"Don’t worry about that. Go home now and get some
sleep. Please."

"Thanks, Mike, I'll try. I’ll talk to you tomorrow."

"O.K., now good night."

Randall handed the phone over and Big Cop spoke into it
for a few more minutes. Then he hung up.

"So,“ Big Cop said, "Sakura-san has told me you are
good teacher. That Japanese students like you. Well, I
will tell you something about Japanese. You are guest here.
You have been asked to teach English to Japanese, but we can
ask you to leave at anytime. You are here to provide
service to Japanese people, nothing else. Now you have
committed crime and I could make you leave if I chose to.
You would not be allowed to come to Japan again."

Randall realized he was supposed to grovel, to beg and
humiliate himself before this fat slug and that afterwards
he would be allowed to go home. So he did, he told them he
was foolish and dumb, he was drunk and wrong to take
anything that didn’t belong to him, that America hadn’t

taught him even one half the respect that every Japanese

 

117
child knew and it seemed to go on for an hour and he had
never felt so ashamed in all his life.

Finally, Big Cop leaned across the desk again as though
he intended to smother Randall. "And one more thing,
gaijin. You have been caught breaking law in my district.
Now you my responsibility. This upsets me. Your face
upsets me. Do not give me reason ever to see you again.
Ever. You understand?"

Randall nodded vigorously.

"You may leave now."

The walk home was tiring and painful, both mentally and
physically. Randall’s head was throbbing and he was very
hungry. He was exhausted but relieved. At least he was
free. Still, he worried that Mike would tell the rest of
the school and it would get around that he was a thief. He
couldn’t bear that sort of scandal. He prayed Mike wouldn’t
say anything about it.

Walking on, he saw it was deserted along the streets
and there were stars above the silent homes. It had been an
awful night. He shivered, trying to put it all out of his
mind.

When he reached his block, his eyes caught sudden
movement up the street. He had just barely noticed an
officer jerk his head back behind the corner of a building.
Randall felt his heart blast into tachycardia. They
followed me, he thought, and they’re going to search my room

after all. The stupid bonsai trees! They'll find them.

118
They'll find them and I’ll get carted off to jail for real
this time!

Breathing hard, trying to keep himself from running, he
crossed the street. He strained his eyes in order to see
where the officer was without making himself obvious. He
resisted the urge to look wildly about for other cops.

Sweat poured from his body. He made himself mount the
stairs to his apartment with an excruciating slowness. He
fit the key into the lock all the while expecting to hear
Big Cop shouting "Gaijin! This is police!" from somewhere
below.

He opened the door, stepped in and closed it quickly
behind him. The smell of the bonsai trees hit him like a
baseball bat. He had to get rid of them before they broke
in the door.

He moved quickly for such a fat little man. He flicked
on the kitchen light, yanked a garbage bag from the cabinet
and flew into the living room, grabbing the trunks of trees,
snapping them, stuffing them into the bag. Ceramic dishes
scattered to the floor. Soil fell everywhere. He snatched
up an A5; Mgtgt, a red pine with sticky branches. Its
weathered trunk and its soft sculptured needles, patiently
pruned for nearly a hundred years, were broken to twigs in
two seconds and jammed into the bag. He destroyed a
flowering Wisteria. Purple petals fluttered across the
straw tatami mat. A dogwood went next and now small yellow

flowers littered the floor. Then he was outside, on the

119
balcony. One by one the ancient trees disappeared. Sweat
poured from Randall's forehead and stained his shirt. The
snapping, crunching, breaking went on for five minutes.

When the last tree was stuffed away, his hands were
shaking. He left the bag on the balcony, went back into the
apartment and found the broom. He swept the tatami mat
furiously, moving the pile of soil and petals and needles to
one corner. He brushed them into a pan and dumped them in
the garbage under the sink. He ran through the room,
collecting the ceramic dishes. He brought them to the
balcony and placed them in the bag with the trees.

He was breathing hard, dripping wet. He looked around
to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. He sighed deeply and
smiled. Everything was fine. The evidence was gone.

Almost gone, he corrected himself. He went back out to the
balcony and picked up the bag. It was heavy. The dishes
clinked softly.

He opened the front door a crack. Everything was
silent. He decided to first leave the bag inside and look
around to be sure the police weren't waiting for him. He
walked down the hall and halfway down the cement stairs,
hoping every second they weren't crouched behind each next
turn. He looked out over the street. There were two foot
patrolmen down on the corner. One of them was speaking into
a walkie-talkie. Then he saw Big Cop cross the street and
Randall's heart exploded with fear again. How much time did

he have before they broke down the door? A minute? Two?

 

120
He could distinctly hear Big Cop’s voice and then his laugh.
It was horrible. He couldn't face that laugh, that mocking
baboon mask, ever again. He couldn’t stand the humiliation.

He ducked back up the stairs to his room, picked up the
bag, and scurried to the balcony. Even though he was only
three stories up, the view of the drop into darkness made
him dizzy. He squeezed his eyes together. Couldn't he just
throw the bag? No. He couldn't risk having it land in one'
of the small cement yards below his apartment. The dishes
would shatter. There would be noise; no, it was impossible,
he couldn't allow it.

He realized he had to climb down. He groaned, cursed
his stupidity for the fifteenth time, swung a fat leg over
the rail, and started his descent. With the bag swinging
across his back, pulling him to the right, then to the left,
it was a miracle he didn’t break his neck. He was panting
when he dropped the last three feet to the yard and rolled
across the cement. Somehow none of the dishes broke.

He was up quickly, speeding for the block wall that
enclosed the yard. He pulled the bag over his shoulder.
Almost tripping, he flung himself up onto a table and
straddled the wall, looking, for a moment, like a grotesque
parody of Santa Claus. He dropped to the other side and
crept into the very first alley he could find. It was too
dark to see anything. He picked his way along until he
plowed into a large metal drum that turned out to be a

dumpster reeking of fish. He lifted the cover and gently

121
placed the bag inside. He reversed direction and felt his
way over odd, squishy, smelly things until he made it out to
the sidewalk.

Randall emerged from the alley wearing his most
innocent face and was just relaxing when the electronic
squawk of a siren sent his heart into orbit again. An
ambulance flew by and pulled over down the block where he
had seen Big Cop and his men. For Christ’s sake! Now he
understood. They weren’t after him. Someone probably had
some sort of accident and Big Cop was investigating. Hadn’t
Big Cop said this was his district?

Randall tried to let his pulse deflate to normal. He
turned onto a narrow, house-lined street, feeling at last
that he was absolutely free. Almost immediately the old
arrogance flared up again. Despicable Nazis, he thought.
How dare they subject my heart to such lunacy. I should go
straight to the embassy this moment and report them all.

His defiance gave way to jubilance. He was impressed
with himself again. The police were insect-minded. He had
easily outwitted them. He felt triumphant and wanted to
jump with happiness. He started to skip a little jig and
instantly felt a sharpness in his legs. "Owwww!" he yelled.
He sagged against a wall and carefully touched his knees.
There was fresh blood beneath the knotty scabs. "See! I
need medical attention," he protested. Then he laughed. So
he would have battle scars from this night. That was fine.

He'd come out on top, hadn't he? Of course. Could anyone

122
ever have doubted it?

His knees forgotten, Randall pushed off from the wall
and started along the quiet street. A house across from him
slowly materialized out of the darkness and something
deliciously familiar beside the door caught his eye. It was
a bonsai, large and gracefully twisted, with long gnarled
branches and tiny flowering pink blossoms that he could
smell from five feet away. He stood before it, deeply
inhaling as he moved his fingers over the branches and the
blossoms.

It was intoxicating, mesmerizing, to feel such
exquisite formations. Such beauty. Such perfection. He
was suddenly, insistently aroused. Without thinking, he
tugged open his pants and pushed them down around his shoes.
Blubber jiggled as he pulled himself free. His chubby fist
squeezed his penis, moving it back and forth. He worked
himself slowly at first, then with abandon, finally with
oblivion. His whole body shook and his breathing turned
hoarse and loud. A strangled animal-cry rose from his
throat. His mind surged in a thrilling, mounting wave of
triumph and beauty. He wanted to scream the perfect
thoughts spinning like a kaleidoscope in his head: So
pretty! So pretty! I love myself! I love myself!

Then flashlights fell over him and there was a shout of
surprise. He felt everything wither at once. The

unmistakable boom of Big Cop’s voice filled the night behind

 

123
him: "Gaijin! What you think you do there? Gaijin!

Answer me. Now!"

 

 

Asian Fever

It was a warm evening and after work I went on to the
crowded little bar at the end of Shichijo street for
something to drink. Schichijo throbbed with sharp voices
and neon reds and blues. Businessmen hurried from the train
that had just fled the station and the bright McDonald’s on
the corner, looking oddly familiar, was packed with Japanese
teenagers. The face of an American cover girl plastered
across a billboard smiled down with high fashion contempt.

It was good to remember at the end of the street was
Sanjusangendo, the nine hundred year old temple where they
hold the archery contest. I knew, too, the hills above the
city were sprinkled with shrines and ancient gardens and it
was really in the hills that things seemed forever
changeless.

I passed San'usan endo, silent and darkly powerful
behind its high walls and near this was the bar that I often
went to after work. Breckenshire was there, at his regular
table under the window and when he saw me come in, he waved
me over.

"Sit down and have yourself a beer, Stuart,"
Breckenshire said. "I’m going to treat you, my young
American friend, to yet another of my dirty little chillers.

And I know you'll appreciate this one. It’s not simply the

125

126
usual case of cheap, juicy lust."

There were empty ceramic dishes and splotches of food
and sauce on his table. There were half a dozen ggtg
bottles. Breckenshire was an Oxford man and was always
eating and drinking. I never knew anyone who liked to eat
as much as he did, although he was so tall and so gaunt you
could see his skeleton poking out. It was also too bad he
liked to eat so much--he had really lousy table manners.
Usually this kind of thing wouldn’t bother me but
Breckenshire splashed food into his mouth, on his clothes,
all over the place. It was like sitting in a slaughter
house. I couldn’t eat with him and enjoy myself, although
he always told good stories about gaijin getting into
trouble in Japan. They were a kind of malicious specialty,
these stories. He called them his ’chillers.’ I was glad
he had finished eating though.

I sat down and the waiter came. I said."_ppgt_tgtt,
‘Asatt," and when he went off to get my beer, Breckenshire
leaned eagerly in and asked "Do you happen to remember a
Larry Knox from Sydney? Been working at Nichibei on and off
for a half year or so?"

I did remember him. He was a sturdy-built sandy haired
Australian, maybe thirty-five, with deep worry lines in his
face. When he needed money, he showed up at flittitgt, the
English language school where we all worked as teachers and
he taught a few classes. It seemed like he was always in

some kind of a crisis. "So what’d he do now?"

127

"Fell in love with one of his students, absolutely head
over heels, madly obsessed. Asian Fever, that’s what we
call it."

"So? Sounds nice."

"Well, the short of it is, he’s been deported. Kicked
clear out of the country." Breckenshire sat back, the
better to see how this zinger would hit me.

"You’re kidding. Why?"

"It’s already the buzz around the school. You know how
Nichibei guarantees its teachers will behave themselves.
They are not very pleased about all this."

"So what happened?"

Breckenshire's tongue shot across his lips. He paused
for a moment while the waiter set my beer down. "Well, this
student, Miyuki something-or-other, a charming girl and very
attractive, happens to be the daughter of some big shot who
owns close to half of Japan. Mr. Sanyo, for all I know. In
any case, Knox was her teacher and it wasn’t long before he
was seeing her. It was all very secret. At first, anyway.
You know what I mean."

I did know. At Nichibei, we taught students one-on-one
in these little cubicles. It was an expensive school, and
many of the students were the sons and daughters of wealthy
Japanese. We were not expected to ’fraternize' with them.
That’s what it said in the Nichibei English teacher’s
handbook: 'fraternize.’

It was a fad then, and I believe it still is, to take

 

128
English classes from foreigners. But the students were not
so much interested in English as they were in American rock
and roll, California and Porsches and Mercedes. They were
curious about anything that was imported. They were crazy
about things from the West, and that included the teachers
that worked at the school. Romances were common enough, but
as I’ve said, they were frowned on by the administration.
We weren't supposed to date our students.

"Right," Breckenshire continued. "Well, the girl,
Miyuki, is nineteen. Knox must be nearly twice her age. I
suppose she was curious about him; you know how curious
Japanese girls can be." Breckenshire gave me a salacious
grin. He was joking about the usual female speculation on
the size of gaijin anatomy.

"For Christ's sake, maybe she just liked him,
Breckenshire," I said.

"Why on earth would anyone like Knox?"

”Go on, what happened?“

"Well. I suppose it began innocently enough. They met
in love hotels in Kyoto."

Love hotels. Discrete meeting places for cheating
husbands and their mistresses, teenagers who can't wait for
their parents to go on vacation, the casually curious.
Separate entrances for men and women. Inside, heart shaped
bubble baths, rotating beds with mirrors, that sort of
thing.

"If she’s so rich,“ I asked, "why not go to her

129
parents’ summer cottage or whatever they've got?"

"You see that’s the amusing trouble in this sordid
little story. Her father absolutely forbade her to see any
gaijin.

"Well," I said, thinking of the McDonald’s and the
American models and all the constant bombardment of Western
culture, "no wonder she’s intrigued. She has no choice.

Take a look at all those damn advertisements telling them to

 

be exactly like Westerners."

Breckenshire frowned. I could tell I merely sounded
idiotic. "You know how the old boys can be,” he said. "No
mixing of the races, very big loss of face, shame the
ancestors and all that rot. We're heathens to them,
untouchables. Miyuki’s father told her if she ever saw
Western men she'd be disinherited. She couldn't take a
chance on being recognized at any of the fine hotels in
town, her father's somewhat famous you see, and she
certainly couldn’t risk bringing him to her own apartment.
Knox’s little hovel was out as well. He lives on a street
full of gossipy old mamaeggtg who have nothing better to do
then speculate on the comings and goings of a beautiful,
rich-looking girl driving a Mercedes roadster around the
neighborhood. They were damn well likely to call the school
and inquire."

"Wait a minute. How do you know all this?"

"Have some faith," he whispered slyly from the corner

of his mouth. “Knox told me the whole story just before he

130

left." Breckenshire tippled his ggtg down with a shaky
hand. His fingers were so long they looked like spider legs
holding the tiny ggtg cup.

"What happened next?"

"The predictable thing. Her father found out."

"How?"

"Someone saw them together. Apparently, the old man's

got eyes and ears everywhere."

 

"So that ended it?"

"Not exactly. Of course, she told him it was
impossible, they could no longer carry on. But by this
time, Knox, you understand, had caught Asian Fever. It had
nothing to do with her money. He was mad for her. And he
began to do some very foolish, inexplicable things."

"Such as?"

Breckenshire picked something gray from between his
teeth and wiped it on the table. "He kept coming to her
apartment at all hours. First he left flowers and presents
and touching little love notes. Later, when that didn’t
work, he was pounding on her door with ’Miyuki I love you, I
need you’ and all that. He wouldn’t leave her alone. She
called the police twice and they had to drag him off to the
pokey. They told him to keep away from her. Miyuki’s
father threatened he’d get someone to break his legs. But
it didn’t do any good. The poor boy was besotted. Well,
one day, he finally wigged out all together. He stole a

car, he actually stole a car and drove it to her father’s

131
home where she was staying. He jumped out, got through the
gate somehow and ran up to the house."

"He must be crazy."

"Well, yes. Crazy with the Fever. Anyway, he gets to
the door but by now they’ve got wind of him. They send the
family body guard after this appalling gaijin intruder. But
you know Knox, a big fellow, he takes care of this gitjg
chap with a couple of Australian boxing punches, and the
whole family’s standing there in the door, the mother, the
father, the youngest daughter and Miyuki, standing there
shocked green while Knox, this insane ai'in, actually poses
with his foot on the gtgjg like he’s just conquered a wild
bull or something, and then he rips open his shirt, and
beats his hairy blond chest, screaming 'Miyuki, I love you,
marry me, please! Come away with me, marry me!’"

"I can hardly believe it. It’s a nightmare."

"Precisely," Breckenshire said. "The police come and
they’ve got to subdue old Knox with sticks. They break his
front tooth and beat him up badly. Well, of course, after
this escapade, there’s nothing to do but get rid of him.
He’s stolen a car, trespassed, assaulted a body guard. He’s
brought shame on dear old Nichibei English school for hiring
such a lout in the the first place. And finally, of course,
this wicked Australian has harrassed a young lady of
reputable family to tears. His deportation papers were
ready in a few hours."

"Incredible," I said. "At least Miyuki’s finally free

132
of Knox."
"Not at all," Breckenshire laughed. "She changed her

mind at the last minute and ran away with him."

Go East To Find Your Inner Country

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
-- Horace

"So, Kelly," Stuart Ryder said to me, "what made you
decide on Japan? I always like to hear people’s reasons.
Everybody seems to have some damn weird reason for leaving
everything behind and coming here to live in the land of the
rising yen." Stuart laughed. It was cool the way his eyes
crinkled at their corners. "I think half of us are running
from something," he said, "and the other half’s running t9
something. You’ll see--it’s funny how people take up these
causes--yoga, meditation, flower arrangement, stuff like
like that."

Stuart was a new friend. He’d been teaching in Japan
for something like two years. I’d just arrived and was
hoping to break into teaching, too. Anyway, I’d heard that
was about all they'd let you do here. We had just sat down
at a little coffee bar and I was full of the new smells and
the new noise and the warm, foreign strangeness of Osaka in
summer.

"So why you?" he asked again. It seemed important for
him to know.

I leaned back in my chair and decided Stuart would

think I was crazy if I told him. I sure didn’t want that.

133

 

134
I had feeling I would be spending time with him. I knew I
was going to like him. But inside I was thinking, why
Japan? Okay, because when I was still at school at Penn, I
suspected Mogdahl, the guy down the hall, was a coward.

My landlady first got me thinking that, the crazy old
bitch, although she was also pretty careful to tell me he
paid his bills on time. Licking her fat sweaty lips,
relishing the role of conspirator, she said: He’s from
Iraq, don’t you know it honey, and I hear he probably should
have served in that war, you know, the Iran-Iraq war, but
he’s been here five years already getting his masters and it
looks like he'll be another five on his Ph.d. Convenient,
don’t ’cha think? Not that I care. It’s just that he’s
strange, that one is, too timid, you know. I drove him to
the mall once and he wouldn’t let me go over forty. Got
panicky, nervous. He’s hiding something, you ask me. Then
her gray oyster eyes wobbled like two warning fingers. But
he pays his bills on time, young lady, she said to me, he
pays his bills.

I pretty much paid my bills. I don’t why I did. The
windows stayed broken, the dishwasher didn’t work and in the
winter she let us freeze. I hated the idea of keeping her
fat and happy while I froze. But anyway, it seemed to fit,
about the guy down the hall.

He 3;; pretty odd. He slept all day so I almost never
saw him. Once, hearing his boots in the hall, I opened my

door a sliver and framed him: a pathetic picture of a large

135
man stepping carefully along the corridor as though afraid
of crushing ants. In the bathroom we shared, his toothbrush
was old and the soggy bristles mushroomed out--a sure sign
of sentimentality.

Sometimes, standing outside his door late in the night,
fiddling with his keys, I thought I heard him weeping. What
did he fear? Coward’s dreams? And he drank-—bottles of
ouzo bloated his trash. I was pretty curious and I thought
maybe my landlady was right. What was he hiding? His
shame?

Thinking about shame bothered me. I had possibly been
reading too much Horace for a class and was very interested
in honor. I wanted to know certain things. I wanted to
know how ILQ act. I wanted to know if honor was doled out
like cards at birth or whether you could somehow learn it,
like learning to swim.

I wanted to know about him. About cowards. I was sure
.1 would defend my country. It was a contract you made with
yourself, a duty you understood. I believed it was fair
that you owed the country you lived in something more than
April taxes.

One Friday evening when I was sure he was home, I
decided to knock on his door. I spent a long time in front
of the mirror wondering how I should look. I read that Iraq
had funny views about women. Then I thought yeah, but he’s
been in America six years. I decided to dress simply. I

would be business-like, a neighbor offering a long overdue

136
welcome. I would bring ouzo even though I hated the stuff.
I rehearsed what I would say while I slipped on a pair of
khakis and pulled my hair back into a knot. A nice gray
sweater, a little make-up, light lip-stick, no jewelry.
Armed with the bottle of ouzo, I took one last look at
myself and realized I seemed tgg business-like, tgg_severe.
I didn’t want to look like a prosecutor. I was going to let
down my hair but finally didn’t. I selected some earrings
instead, long looped and golden.

I knocked on his door and after a second I heard him
shout who is! who is! and I said Kelly from down the hall
and he said who? but didn’t open the door. I said Kelly
from down the hall and he said who? but this time I heard
him shuffling around in there and then he opened the door.

I think he was very surprised to see me, or maybe he
was surprised to see a woman. Who? he said. His eyes were
dark and strong. Kelly, I said, I’m your neighbor and we
share the bathroom. I understand you’re from Iraq and I’m
writing a paper on Baghdad, a travel article, and it would
be just fantastic if I could talk to you about your lovely
city and get some ideas about your favorite places to go
there and besides, maybe you would like a little drink of
ouzo, I happen to know it’s your favorite, so I got a
bottle. I like it too, would you like to share a
toast with me? By the way, I’m Kelly, it’s nice to meet
you, what’s your name? I gave him my killer smile.

I am not from Baghdad, he said gravely and for a moment

137
I was pretty sorry I had dreamt the whole thing up. He was
large, really tall and dark haired, with thin lips and the
traces of old white scars across his nose and above one eye
and on his forehead. His shirt hung out over his pants,
there was a big dumpling where his stomach was supposed to
be, but the whole package wasn’t too bad. He was actually
sort of good looking.

He said I am from Ninava in Iraq, near mountains, far
from Baghdad. He looked down at me. Then he smiled. But I
have been many times to Baghdad. I am Mogdahl, Miss Kelly,
please to come in? I forgot his name as soon as he said it.
His voice was a whisper like water over rocks.

The room wasn’t much. A huge poster of a Japanese rock
garden was the only thing he’d hung on the wall. Text books
overflowed the bookcase and were stacked up on the floor in
piles.

He asked me to sit and so I plopped on his worn couch
and set the ouzo on the low table in front of me. He said
do you like ice? and I said sure and somewhere from the
counter he brought two large paper cups with ice and water.
I opened the bottle and handed it to him. When he poured
the clear ouzo into the water, it turned milky, cloudy,
dense. I had never seen that before; it was like some kind
of alchemy.

So, he said. Baghdad. You wish to go? I sure do, I
said, I’ve read all about it and I'd love to go there if it

wasn’t for the war and all. He said the war makes nothing,

 

138
you can travel there, they are no longer shelling Baghdad.
I watched his eyes but they stayed guiltless. He lifted his
cup. Here, to cheers. Cheers, I said.

I sipped the ouzo and didn’t feel sick. It was a
little like licorice. He said Mextecal, a good brand.
Thank you so much for bringing it to drink. I am sorry not
to meet you before this time, I have been very, very busy
these weeks. I am preparing for defense of thesis. It is
so hard, the work. Very busy. I said what do you study?
and he said engineering, to make foundation for tall
building. Oh, that’s nice I said like an idiot.

Mogdahl leaned back in his chair and drank. He
absently picked a book up from the floor and said do you
like to read? This is good book. He handed it to me and I
looked it over. It was called it; Tiger’s Qty; by a ggt_
master named Hakuin.

A very good book, he said. It teaches discipline of
mind. It teaches very real things. I myself would like to
go very much to Japan someday. I believe there are many
things I could learn there. He smiled and the white scars
on his forehead wrinkled. His eyes were dark. But, he
said. It is Baghdad you are interested in. I only hope I
can help, it has been many years since I was home, you see.
I have not been home since the war. Oh, I said pretty
tactlessly, you were in the war? Yes, yes, he said softly.

Then, taking a deep drink, his eyes suddenly went

somewhere far away. He mumbled God bless everyone, God

139
bless everyone. Then he stood up and went to the counter.
He seemed to be trying to control himself.

Another drink? he asked. Sure, I said. He suddenly
swung his head around, and looking at me, he said you cannot
know what it was like. You cannot really know.

Something inside me understood then that this was the
truth, that I should turn away and leave this man alone,
that I had already gotten what I’d come for. There was an
atmosphere about him that was elemental, frightening. I
felt the old fear again, the time I was five, swimming alone
in the deep part of the lake for the first time, and
suddenly realizing I was too far out, and below me
everything was dark and cold and unknowable. I should have
left then. I should have left. Instead, as if I couldn’t
control my mouth, I asked him: what Eéé it like? Will you
tell me?

He brought the cups and stood over me. There was a
light behind him, and his shadow fell across my chest. I
couldn’t see his face. He handed me the drink and I nearly
drained it. I began to feel the ouzo creeping up behind me.
I had a vague suspicion and then the absolute conviction
that the ouzo was changing the room. I didn’t feel
confident anymore. I didn’t feel in control. Somehow, I
didn’t care.

Funny thing is, he said, we were all waiting to come to

America. Every day, we look in the mail. It is to see if

we are accepted in American university. Once we are

140
accepted we leave the army. We come to America. We wait
every day; waiting, you see, that was the worst.

I was five days without shower. At the front. It was
very hot. All the time, shells falling. Shells falling!
We stayed in a hole in mud with shells falling at once. Ba-
waam! Ba—waam! all the time. You never knew when. You
could not move. The shells came.

I could not stand it anymore. I thought I would go
crazy waiting for shells. When I thought I really was
crazy, my friend, very rich, he send telegram. He is very
rich, he say he get us pass away from front. Three day
pass! It is like from heaven. I say yes, of course. God
of course! We are given passes, me and another guy with me,
and we try to get where my rich friend is.

We walk. We cannot get ride. Trucks pass on the road,
we try to get with them, no one picks us up. I can’t
believe how we walk! In the dust. The heat. It was crazy.
We walk whole day, wasting the pass time. So we are tired.
Unbelievable tired, you see? A nightmare. But we finally
get to the place. It is quiet valley with hospital and
small army many miles from the front and we are safe.

We meet my friend. He is one so gifted. He is very
rich, educated, from good family. He has everything and he
is so very kind. He says take showers and I have surprise
for you. Miss Kelly, I never felt anything so good as that
shower. I stayed in very long time and scrubbed away the

war and breathed in the steam of the water. My rich friend

141
gave us clean things and we wore them soft against the skin.

Then he brings us to his tent and we smell the food.

It is his surprise for us. We eat, oh! how we eat, Miss
Kelly. Lamb dishes and rice and sweet curries with lots to
drink. Delicious. My rich friend could get anything and he
was very generous. We eat until we are full to stomach.
Then we smoke, lying there on the pillows in his tent where
it is cool.

We talk about things, mostly getting away, about
leaving to go to America. I tell my rich friend that
American university in Philadelphia, very good one, will not
let me go because I did not fill something out right. So
stupid! I tell him I send application back, and now I am
waiting again. Always waiting. He tells me he is waiting
but that he thinks he will get in soon. We drink toasts to
that. Many drinks. Then we are quiet for a while, each of
us, I know, thinking about leaving. No one wants to go back
to the front. Then my rich friend tells us to stay and
relax, that he has something to do, and that he will bring
back another surprise for us. I tell him enough! Please
enough! But he tells me quiet! I will be back with
something special. I smile and hold up my hands, what could
I do? He is so kind and smiling. So we sit back and the
wind from the mountains freshens the tent.

I remember feeling so good and clean then, Miss Kelly.
I was reaching for a fruit when I heard a sound like the

wild roaring of a train and I knew it was the shells. There

142
was the ba-waam! ba-waam! ba-waam! and I was up running,
running for the shelter. Pieces of the earth flew in my face
and I fell and got up again and ran and I jumped into the
dark of the shelter, all the time hearing the ba-waam! of
the shells and I was feeling the earth shake and I was
screaming.

I was in the door of the shelter and someone was blown
up in front of me. He was holding his arm on. Holding it
together. He begged me to help but I could not move. He
begged me but I shut my eyes to scream. The shells were
falling outside the shelter. My face was warm and I touched
it. There was blood in my hands. I looked outside.
Someone, a medic, came and took the begging man away, took
him on his back. I could not believe anyone could go out
into the shells.

Then it was quiet. The shells stopped. I heard a
whistle. We were to form lines. To see who was left. We
went out into the sun and many were dead. We made lines and
they called off names. My rich friend was missing. We
looked everywhere. We looked for two hours. Then we found
him in the woods. He was not to run to woods. To the
shelter, we were taught. To the shelter, not woods. But
that was where we found him, cut in half, Miss Kelly. Do
you know what the surprise was? The surprise he went to get
us? Mickey Mouse dolls. He was holding two Mickey Mouse
dolls.

Mogdahl had finished his drink and he was shaking when

143
he went to get another. I had had enough. I didn’t know
what to say, so I said to Mogdahl, I’m sorry.

He turned and said do you know what happened the next
day?

I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear anymore. But
Mogdahl persisted. The next day, in the mail, came his
letter. My rich friend was accepted to university. Only
now he was blown up to bits in the woods. Mogdahl wavered
above me. We are bones and flesh, Miss Kelly, he said. We
go back to the earth. It is a great circle, like the rings
in your ears. Only it is not so golden. My friends are all
gone now, all gone back to the earth. When I saw them in
the woods and the fields though, I can tell you, the earth
did not want them.

I remember saying good-bye although I’m sure he didn’t
hear me. I left him with his bottle. His head was in hands
and his fingers spread out over his white scars, as if that
would cover and silence them. On my way out the door, I saw
his stack of books again and for a moment, I looked closely
at them. They were books on how to lay foundations in the
sand. I imagined they would be deep, strong foundations.
For buildings, for hospitals, for schools.

And sprinkled like little polished stones between these
textbooks were Z_er; works--'_I‘_1_;_e_ PM 9_f_ fig; _'I_‘_h_e_ §Li_r_it _t _Z__e_t;
something by Abbot Obora; §9t9_§gt_by Rosen Takashina. I
looked up at the serene poster of the rock garden and

suddenly understood Mogdahl’s life now was a rigorous search

144
for simplicity. For some sort of pureness the war had
destroyed. I wanted to be part of that search, to know what
it meant to deny everything inessential; I wanted to learn
from people who had lived in winter caves on scraps of fish
and rice and studied books by candlelight into the hours of
dawn. I wanted to know what these people had found. In
that instant, closing Mogdahl’s door slowly behind me, I

decided to leave for Japan.

 

"I11111111111ES