Sayonara: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Softly, with the mention of Eileen’s name, that first dreamy summer flooded back to me here in Kobe and I said, “I never really understood, Father. I guess it must have been that bachelor party.”

  “What party?” he asked suspiciously. “What’ja do?”

  “Not what you mean. Remember when General Hay-ward’s son was marrying Delia Crane?”

  “You mean Harry Crane’s girl?”

  “Yes. Her father had been killed at the Bulge.…”

  “Damned brave man. We could use a few men like Harry Crane in Korea.”

  “So Mark Webster’s wife was more or less arranging the wedding. Very formal. But the night before a gang of us younger officers took Charley Hayward out and got him so drunk he was fifteen minutes late for the wedding. Everybody thought it was very funny except Mrs. Webster. After the wedding she gave us a terrible tongue-lashing. It wasn’t that we’d spoiled Delia and Charley’s wedding. It was that we’d spoiled her plans. I’ve always been afraid of Eileen since then.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Well, sort of. After the ceremony the four of us who had gotten Harry drunk drove out to Randolph Field. Nobody said anything and we drove very fast and once when a Ford truck almost socked us one of the men said, ‘That would be the second truck that mowed us down today,’ and we all laughed and got drunk again and for the rest of that summer I never really seriously thought about marrying Eileen. Then Korea came along.”

  “But you have thought about marrying Madame Butterfly?”

  “No,” I said.

  “A son doesn’t bust his father, Lloyd, unless he’s thinking pretty deeply about something. Look, son. Suppose you do marry this yellow girl. I’m on the selection board and your name comes up. I’d pass you by and if I wasn’t on the board I’d advise the others to pass you by. We don’t want officers with yellow wives. And where would you live in America? None of our friends will want you hanging around with a yellow wife. What about your children? Y’can’t send half-Jap boys to the Point.”

  I thought it was very like my father to assume that all his grandchildren would be boys who would naturally attend the Point. I was going to say something about this, but he kept talking.

  “Son, Mark Webster was blustering. I’ve talked him into forgetting your court-martial. When I was sore I asked him to cut orders sending you back to Korea. Even yet it’s a great temptation for me to approve those orders and tell you to get back there and fight this thing out. But you’ve had Korea. Say, how are those Russian jets?”

  I said they were good and he asked, ‘Y’think that Russian pilots man those planes?”

  I said I thought so but we hadn’t captured any.

  “Those Russians are bastards,” he said. “Real bastards.”

  I said, “We’ve been able to handle them so far.”

  He banged the chair and said, “Son, don’t take sex too seriously.”

  I said, “What should you take seriously?”

  He said, “A whole life.” He chewed his gum furiously and said, “A whole, well-rounded life.”

  I said, “Promotions and place in society and things like that?”

  He looked at me quizzically and said, “You pulling my leg, son?”

  I said, “Like the way you married a general’s daughter?”

  He said very calmly, “I ought to clout you. I just don’t understand you sometimes. In ten years you’ll be fighting the Japs again.”

  “Maybe. But I won’t be fighting Hana-ogi.”

  “How can an officer get mixed up with a Japanese girl and take it seriously?”

  I said, “Look, Pop. This gag worked once. This man-to-man …”

  He looked half amused and asked, “What do you mean?”

  I said, “Remember St. Leonard’s when I thought I wanted to skip the Point and study English or something like that?”

  “Long time ago, I’d forgotten.”

  “No you didn’t, Pop. All the way out here from the Presidio you tried to remember what trick it was that convinced me then to do what you wanted me to do.”

  He blustered a moment, and said, “Son, let’s not obscure the facts. I’m here because you’re my son and I’m very proud of you. Believe it or not I’m even proud that you had the guts to ignore Mark Webster’s stupid order and find yourself a house in Osaka. But I don’t want to see a decent American kid like you waste his life. Son, I’ve watched our men marry German girls and French girls and even Russian girls. Invariably, if you know the man, it’s a sign of weakness. They’re all pantywaists. Strong men have the guts to marry the girls who grew up next door. Such marriages fit into the community. They make the nation strong. In your case and mine such marriages fit into military service. Leave it to the poets and painters and people who turn their back on America because they’re afraid of it to go chasing after foreign girls.”

  He chomped his gum and said, much more slowly, “I ever tell you about Charley Scales? Resigned his commission and joined General Motors. Said he’d make a lot of money and he did. Some years later he came to proposition me about joining him. Lloyd, that was in 1933 when the Army was the garbage can of democracy but I didn’t even think twice. I’ve been tempted in my life but never by Charley Scales. Right now!” He snapped his fingers and said, “Who’d you rather be, Charley Scales or me?”

  It was a childish trick but it had a great effect on me. In my mind’s eye I could see Charley Scales, a big, happy man of some distinction in Detroit and the world. But to compare him with my father was ridiculous.

  Father said, “You talk this over with your Madame Butterfly. You’ll find she agrees with me.”

  I said, “I will.”

  He said, “By the way, where’d she learn English?”

  I said she didn’t speak English and he cried, “You mean you’ve learned Japanese?”

  I said, “No.”

  He stopped chewing his gum and looked at me. “You mean—you have no common language? French, maybe?”

  I said, “Well, you see …”

  “You mean you can’t talk together?”

  “Well, on a really intricate problem she …” I was going to explain that she danced the words for me, but I felt that Father wouldn’t understand. But he surprised me.

  When he realized that we shared no language he became unusually gentle. I cannot recall his ever having been quite as he was at that moment. He put his arm about my shoulder and said reassuringly, “Son, you’ll work this thing out.”

  He called for General Webster and said gruffly, “Mark, I was wrong. I’m tearing up these orders for Korea. This kid doesn’t need Korea. His problem is right here.”

  General Webster said, “That’s what I told him and look how …”

  “Mark, don’t blow your top at this kid.”

  “Why not? Disobeying an order, breaking his word, striking a superior …”

  Father laughed and said, “Now you and I know, Mark, that it was completely silly to issue such an order to a bunch of healthy young men surrounded by pretty girls. But that’s beside the point. Don’t get sore at Lloyd.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s going to be your son-in-law.”

  “He’s what?”

  “He doesn’t know it yet, and Eileen doesn’t know it yet but if you want to do something constructive, keep real-estate salesmen away from your daughter. Because sooner or later she’s going to be my daughter, too.”

  The two generals stamped out of the barracks and in three hours my father was on his way back to the Presidio.

  WATANABE-SAN: “You pull this lever and the steel ball shoots up there and falls back down.”

  If father thought that the tricks which had defeated me in prep school would still work he was misled, for now I knew my mind. I had met a delectable woman, one whom I could love forever, and I simply wasn’t worried about fathers and generals and Air Force rules. Here on this earth I had found Hana-ogi and by the time my father arrived back in California she and
I had things worked out. We made a deal with Joe and Katsumi whereby we took one corner of their house and here we established a life as warm and loving as two human beings have ever known.

  I would come home from the airfield to find Joe and Katsumi preparing the evening meal. They would tell me what had happened that day and I would exchange military gossip with Joe, but it would be a nervous time, for I would be watching the door and finally we would hear Hana-ogi’s soft steps coming up the alley and Katsumi and Joe would slip away for a moment to gather wood or buy things at the store. The door would open and there would be Hana-ogi, a glimmer of perspiration on her soft golden cheeks. Like all Japanese she carried her books and bundles wrapped in a bright silk shawl tied cross cornered, and when I think of her at the sliding door of that little house I see her kick off her saddle shoes, drop the silken bundle, run her hand through her hair and hurry across the tatami to kiss me. At such times I would catch her in my arms, swing her into the air and drop her behind the screen that cut off our portion of the room. There she would swiftly slip off her Western clothes and slowly fold herself into a brocaded kimono. She was lovely; beyond words she was lovely.

  But I must not imply that the warmth and wonder of that house came solely from Hana-ogi, beautiful and complete as she was, for I think that I have never seen a more satisfactory wife than Katsumi Kelly. She organized her house to perfection and kept it immaculate, even though Hana-ogi and I were apt to be careless. She could cook, she could sew, she could talk on many subjects and as her pregnancy advanced she gave promise of being an even finer mother than she was a wife.

  Sometimes I used to watch her and I recalled with embarrassment that once in the consul’s office I had almost refused to kiss her because she seemed so clodden and repugnant with her giggling and her big gold tooth. Now she seemed to me one of the most perfect women I had ever known, for she had obviously studied her man and had worked out every item of the day’s work so that the end result would be a happy husband and a peaceful home. I asked Joe about this once and he said, “Ten years from now in America there’ll be a club. Us fellows who married Japanese girls. Our password will be a suppressed giggle. Because we won’t want them other lugs down the street to discover what gold mines we got.”

  I asked, “Are all Japanese wives as good as Katsumi?”

  He said, “I admit I got somethin’ special. But you don’t hear the other boys kickin’.” We wrapped our kimonos around our legs and sat back to enjoy one of the sweetest moments of the day. The girls were preparing supper and we listened to them talking Japanese. Katsumi spoke rapidly—the day’s gossip, no doubt—and Hana-ogi, washing our rice, said over and over at least two dozen times, “Hai! Hai!” The phrase always shot out of her mouth with such force that it seemed to have come from the very bottom of her stomach, a cry of primeval terror. Actually it was merely the Japanese way of saying yes. But in addition to this machine-gun hai she kept nodding her head and chanting mournfully, “Ah, so desu-ka! Ah, so desu-ka!” To hear the girls in any trivial conversation would convince you that some sublime tragedy had overtaken us all.

  Joe finally asked, “What are you sayin’?”

  Katsumi looked up startled and explained, “I speak Hanako-san about a fish my father catch one day.”

  I started to laugh but Joe asked quietly, “Was it a big fish?”

  “More big than this one,” Katsumi said proudly. “Hanako-san say she never see such a fish.” I liked Katsumi’s name for Hana-ogi. Japanese girls often take their names from feminine or poetic words to which they generally add -ko or -yo. Thus at Takarazuka most girls had names like “Misty Snow” or “Spring Blossom” or “Starry Night.” And their names usually ended in -ko. For myself, I preferred the other form, Hanayo, and once Hana-ogi told me, “Hanako more Japanese but Hanayo more sweet.”

  The longer I lived with Joe Kelly, reared in an orphanage and rejected by his foster parents, the more astonished I was that he could adjust so perfectly to married life. He was a considerate husband, a happy clown around the house and the kind of relaxed and happy family man you see in the advertisements of the Saturday Evening Post.

  Speaking of the Post, it helped me understand a little better what married life is. On May 30th the girls were all whispers and at dinner they sprang the big surprise! It was an American holiday, so they had pumpkin pie. Where they had finagled the pumpkin we never knew, but the pie was something out of this world, for they had used the pumpkin as you would apples or cherries and had baked it just as it came out of the can and it was really dreadful. I took one look at it and started to say, “What …” but Joe cut me short and tasted his piece.

  “It’s good,” he said laconically.

  The girls bit into their pieces and you could see them sort of look at each other as if to say, “Americans must be crazy. To eat something like this on holidays.” We finished the disgusting dessert in silence and four days later Katsumi, leafing through an old copy of the Post saw a picture of real pumpkin pie. She waited till I got home and surreptitiously asked me if that was pumpkin pie. I said yes and she asked me how it stayed so thick and so soft and I told her how you made pumpkin custard and she started to cry and when Joe came home she hugged him and kissed him and told him how ashamed she was and since Hana-ogi wasn’t home yet I sat glumly in my corner and thought about the time I had laughed at Hana-ogi for her sentence, “Lo, the postillion has been struck by lightning,” and I concluded that Joe’s way was better and I wondered how a kid from an orphanage could understand a problem like that while I hadn’t had the slightest glimmer.

  However, I must not imply that all Japanese women are perfect wives. A trip along our alley would convince anyone that Japanese homes contained every problem to be found in American homes; plus some very special ones. In the narrow house next us lived the Shibatas. He was a minor business official who received practically no pay but had an enviable expense account from which he drew on most nights of the week for expensive geisha parties. He siphoned off part of the expense account to support one of the pretty young geishas on the side. It was rumored that he kept her in a second home near the center of Osaka and traditionally his wife should have accepted such an arrangement with philosophical indifference, but Mrs. Shibata was not traditional. She was modern and tried to stab her husband with a knife. At three in the morning when black-coated little Shibata-san came creeping home we could catch a moment of silence as the door to his house opened, followed by an explosion from his wife who used to chase him with a club. She was notoriously shrewish, and Katsumi and Hana-ogi apologized for her. “Japanese wife expected to understand men like geisha,” they said.

  Nor were most Japanese wives the patient silent creatures I had been told. When Sato-san, a railroad employee, took his wife shopping she trailed a respectful three feet behind and never spoke a word unless spoken to by her immediate friends. But at home she was a tyrant and rebuked Sato-san contemptuously for not earning more money. As I came to know the wives of Japan I had to conclude that they were exactly like the wives of America: some were gentle mothers, some were curtain dictators and some few were lucky charms who brought their men one good thing after another. I decided that which kind a man found for himself was pretty much a matter of chance, but whenever I looked at Hana-ogi I had an increasingly sure feeling that I had stumbled upon one of the real lucky charms.

  Across the alley lived the window Fukada and her twenty-year-old daughter Masako, who had had a G.I. baby without being married. Sometimes at night we could hear the grandmother screaming at Masako that she was a slut, and other women in the alley agreed. The American baby was not wanted and was not allowed to play with pure Japanese babies, and although everyone in the alley loved Joe Kelly and Katsumi and although they were proud to have a great Takarazuka actress living among them with her American flier, there was deep resentment against Masako Fukada, who had disgraced the blood of Japan.

  Down the alley were the hilarious Watanabes. His wife was almost
as broad as he was tall. They got along together fine except that Watanabe-san had a mistress even more compelling than a geisha: he was mad-crazy to play pachinko. He spent all his money at pachinko and all his spare hours at the pachinko parlor. When the police dosed the parlor each night at eleven he would reluctantly come home and we would hear fat Mrs. Watanabe shouting derisively, “Here comes Pachinkosan! Dead broke!”

  The pachinko parlor stood on the corner nearest the canal, an amazing single room lined with upright pinball games. For a few yen Watanabe-san would be handed seven steel balls, which he would shoot up to the top of the pinball machine and watch agonizingly as they fell down to the bottom, almost always missing the holes which paid the big prizes. The pachinko parlor on our alley was filled from morning till night and everyone was bitten by the pachinko bug, including Hana-ogi and me, and it was a curious fact that my friendship with the pachinko players in that crowded parlor would later save my life.

  Across the alley from the pachinko room was the flower shop. You would have thought there could not be in that entire alley one rusty yen for flowers, but almost everyone who lived along our narrow gutters stopped into the flower shop for some solitary spray of blooms which was carried reverently home for the alcove where the gods lived. I cannot recall a moment when there were not flowers in our alcove and I—who had never known a violet from a daisy—came to love them.

  The next shop is difficult to describe. In fact, it is impossible because in all the rest of the world there are no shops quite like these in Japan. It was a sex shop where husbands and wives could purchase tricky devices with which to overcome nature’s mistakes and short changings. To satisfy our curiosity Katsumi-san took Joe and me there one day. The shy owner listened as we laughed at his amazing collection of sex machines. Then he said in Japanese, “Go ahead, laugh. Young Japanese men laugh, too. But when they’re married and reach forty they come to me for help.” Katsumi translated and then broke into an uncontrolled giggle. I asked her what she had said and she explained, “I tell him Joe no need help.” The shy owner smiled nervously and replied, “At twenty nobody needs help.”