The Moonflower

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  The night sounds were familiar now. She knew the tofu seller’s horn, and the three-note flute melody, haunting and lonely, of the sobaya-san, who carried about his own little soup kitchen and sold hot buckwheat noodles. There was the omnipresent clatter of geta up and down the street—that scraping sound of wooden clogs which would remind her forever of Japan.

  She closed the shutters on their tracks and went idly around the veranda corner to the side of the house overlooking the bamboo fence. The moon was thinning now, but the lights from the house next door fell upon the garden and she stood for a little while looking down upon the ordered formality of shrubbery and stone lantern and fishpond.

  On the far side of the rear garden grew a huge camphor tree, its great roots fantastically exposed above the ground. She had noted the beautiful tree before by daylight, but now something about it puzzled her. Something white stood in its shadow—something she could not place. Not a stone lantern—there was none there. And this outline seemed soft and draped.

  As she watched, puzzled, the object moved, drifting soundlessly across the garden toward the fence. Marcia’s breath caught in her throat. The ghostly movement was scarcely like that of a woman walking, but she realized that the drapery fell in the soft lines of a white kimono, and that a woman did indeed move down there in the garden. Her head too was draped in white that hung about her invisible face like a soft hood.

  There was no reason, of course, why Chiyo should not wander in the garden late at night, yet somehow the woman’s movements seemed odd and strange. As Marcia watched a man came quickly into the garden and she recognized the stocky figure of Minato-san. He went at once to the woman and spoke to her in low tones. She turned obediently at his words and started back across the garden, walking at his side. But before she reached the house, she glanced upward in Marcia’s direction. She must have seen the American woman standing there in the aperture left by the opened shutter, for she halted, the white hood tilted a little as if she stared upward, studying Marcia. Her face still lay in shadow, but Marcia had the unnerving sense of an urgent gaze reaching out to her across the dark garden.

  Minato spoke again, but the woman did not stir. Her entire being seemed frozen into vigilance. Before Marcia could draw back from the strange, penetrating look, she heard a step on the veranda behind her and suddenly Jerome’s hand lay upon her arm, pulling her back into shadow. With his other hand he slid the wooden shutter across, hiding her from the view of the garden.

  “But why—” she began, and his grasp on her arm tightened, silencing her.

  “Hush!” he warned and drew her quietly toward the dark stairs. He struck a match to light her down the upper flight and she saw his face in the flicker of light—tense and white and angry above the silk collar of his dark dressing gown.

  “I’m sorry,” she said unhappily when they reached the lower hall. “But I don’t see why you should worry about Mrs. Minato seeing me.”

  The anger seemed to fall away from him and leave a strange sadness behind.

  “Why can’t you let well enough alone?” he said. “Why don’t you take Laurie and go home?”

  He seemed so disturbed, so weary, that she hardly knew him. When he turned from her and went to the door of his room, she followed him helplessly, longing to offer assurance, to offer anything except her promise to go home. When he did not close the door against her, she followed him tentatively into the room.

  In the lamplight she glanced at the carved cherry wood mask above his bed. The eyes with their rolling eyeballs were as she remembered, the curved mouth as evil. She went closer to the bed, staring at the mask.

  “Why do you keep it there?” she asked. “It’s frighteningly ugly.”

  He propped himself on a corner of his desk, one leg swinging, and gazed sardonically at the mask.

  “It suits my taste,” he said. “I keep it there to remind me of what men are like.”

  “What men are like?” she repeated in bewilderment. “I’ve never known anyone as wicked as that.”

  He raised a dark winged eyebrow. “You, my dear, have always been a romantic. Perhaps it’s time you grew up. My friend up there was carved by an artist who saw into men’s souls. He didn’t create an imitation of pretty exteriors. He drew the inner man. The inner core of—everyman,”

  But she couldn’t accept his cynicism. “Do you think my father was like that?”

  Jerome’s dark face softened a little. “Your father was never like other men. But he couldn’t face what men were doing to the world.”

  She moved toward him quietly, driven by her need to reach past the barrier he set between them. “My father hoped for great things from you. You were the most brilliant of all his bright young men. What are you doing with what he gave you?”

  If she had hoped to touch him on the quick, she saw at once that she had failed. He made a sound of exasperation, as if she were a stupid child.

  “Listen to me carefully,” he said, and his voice was cold. “The man your father knew, the man you knew as a bride, no longer exists. That is the thing you have to face and accept. It’s not something that happened by my own choice. It’s not something I have done purposely to hurt and disappoint you. It has happened. It is. The man I am today is someone you don’t know. If you want a portrait of him, look up there!”

  She would not look at the mask again. Her mouth tightened, and the slender line of her jaw grew firm in the expression he had once called stubborn. He reached out with a quick gesture and turned off the lamp, leaving only the fire to light the room.

  “There,” he said. “That’s the way he shows his colors best Look at him now, Marcia!”

  His will compelled her and she stared reluctantly at the wall above the bed. The high carved cheekbones glinted red in the fire glow, the eyes seemed to glimmer with a wicked light that mocked all mankind.

  But she would not be swayed by a carved bit of wood hung on the wall. She recognized its spell, but she knew spells that were surely stronger.

  “You’re being theatrical,” she said deliberately. “You’ve always had a taste for dramatic trappings. But you can’t frighten me away with stage settings, Jerome. You’re needed at home. I don’t mean just personally by Laurie and me. I mean that your work is needed in your own country. Why must you stay in Japan?”

  He left the desk and ranged restlessly about the darkened room. “You’re as persistent as ever, aren’t you? And as quick as any woman to slide away from the true question. It doesn’t matter where I work or what I do. It’s only a matter of time before that fellow up there comes to the fore and men begin to destroy themselves. We’re already at it.”

  There was a greater sickness in him than she had known. Her arms ached to go out to him, to comfort and heal him. But he did not want her comfort and she could feel her shoulders drooping a little in discouragement and despair. Whatever she said to him led only to a blind alley, to questions he would not answer. Yet there was something more she must ask. The thing she feared most of all because the answer meant finality. The thing she had been pushing away ever since she had come to Japan.

  “Is it because you’ve fallen in love with someone else that you want to be rid of me? Is there someone you care about here in Japan?”

  She could not look at him now, but stood like a child, with her long brown braid hanging over her shoulder and her eyes frightened and downcast, her body stiffened against the blow that might come.

  “The eternal female!” He laughed mockingly and the sound shocked her. “In the end all vast discussions boil themselves down to the personal and particular. He-loves-me-he-loves-me-not. Do you really think it’s as simple as that?”

  She put her hands to her face to hide the tears she knew would come. She had no answer for him now, but stood defenseless with her head bent. She felt his nearness before he touched her braid, put his hands lightly on her shoulders.

  “If you mean do I want to marry someone else, then the answer is no. Marriage is not for me. It
was wrong for me the first time, but I wasn’t honest enough to face up to the fact. It would have been better to hurt you then, instead of now.”

  She tried to turn away, wanting only to escape the pain of his words, wanting only to hide her love and her longing from his eyes. But now his hands held her firmly where she was, his fingers pressing into her shoulders. He shook her, almost roughly, and her head fell back so that she looked up into the dark flame in his eyes.

  “Do you think I’ve forgotten?” he demanded. “Do you think I haven’t been reminded a hundred times of a saner, sweeter life since you’ve been under this roof? Do you think I haven’t been tormented, knowing you were here in the next room and that for your own sake I mustn’t touch you?”

  She stared at him in blank astonishment and suddenly he bent his head and kissed the hollow of her throat in the way she remembered. Now the flame touched her too and she made no effort to resist the sudden importunities of his hands, his body. This was Jerome whom she loved, and nothing else mattered. If he came back to her now, perhaps she could hold him, never let him go again.

  A shower of embers fell in the grate and in the flare of light the face on the wall seemed to smile in abominable mirth.

  She knew at once where she was when she opened her eyes the next morning. She turned eagerly in the bed to seek again the warmth of Jerome’s body lying next to her. But the bed was empty, her husband gone. The coal fire burned in the grate and she knew she must get up and go to Laurie’s room before the child wakened and missed her.

  But a drowsiness and languor held her, and the sweetness of immediate memory. He had not been impervious to her after all. His feeling for her was not dead, and that was all that mattered. Now he would surely let her stay and the strains between them would be lessened, a new life would begin. She did not understand as yet what bonds held him here, but if she stayed and put all her efforts into helping him, perhaps they would weaken and fall away. Perhaps now there would be some healing for him in her arms, in her love.

  She sat up in bed and turned her head to look at the mask. In the cool gray light of early morning, it was only carven wood, its features frozen in the form the artist’s knife had given them. She could put away from her for the moment the knowledge that a man had wielded the knife, a brain had guided the hand; that it was the creation of a man who knew the depths of human evil.

  She pulled her knees up beneath her chin, waking herself slowly, comfortably to action. A moment more and she would hop out of bed and into her robe. She would go to see if Jerome was at breakfast and join him in a cup of coffee. Her arms stretched wide above her head and a tingling ran all through her body. Today she was alive as she had not been for a long while.

  Casually her eyes rested on the Japanese print over the mantel—the picture of the two young lovers, the man dressed in black, the woman in her graceful white robes, the white hood draped over her head. And suddenly she stiffened, remembering. What had happened later had almost wiped out the earlier occurrence. It came back to her sharply now—the moment when she had stood at the gallery rail upstairs and watched that strange, white-garbed figure move softly across the garden.

  She examined the print again, seeking in the pictured figure the woman whom Ichiro Minato had led back into the house last night. Was that why Jerome had chosen this particular picture—because it reminded him, too, of the woman in white? She studied the stylized features of the girl for any resemblance to the lovely Chiyo, but the faces in the print were lifeless, as if individuality of character were something deliberately shunned by the artist.

  What change could have come over Chiyo, causing her to stop and stare in so strange a way? Was she at the root of whatever trouble existed next door? And how deeply was Jerome concerned?

  But with the memory of last night still warm upon her she did not want to think about Chiyo Minato.

  The sound of Jerome’s step in the hallway reached her and she quickly propped a pillow behind her so that she could sit up in bed. Her dark braid swung over her shoulder and she let it stay, remembering how Jerome had once liked the novelty of a girl with long hair. She did not wait for his greeting when he came into the room.

  “Good morning, darling,” she said, not trying to keep the lilt from her voice. “I meant to get up and have coffee with you, but I suppose I’m too late.”

  “I’ve had breakfast,” he said and came gravely toward her across the room.

  She opened her arms to him, free now of all restraint. But he did not come to her in the way she expected. He took her hands in his, not ungently, and sat on the bed beside her, still grave and unsmiling.

  “Marcia,” he said, “you must take Laurie and leave Japan as soon as you can arrange to go.”

  She stared at him in astonishment and dismay. “But, darling—” she began.

  “What happened last night mustn’t be repeated.” His tone was cool and remote. “I don’t particularly like myself for letting it happen.”

  His words cut cruelly into her mood of gaiety. She pulled her hands from his and drew the bed covers high, huddling beneath them, staring at him with wide shocked eyes. He turned from her and went to his desk, picked up his wallet and pipe, made the automatic motions of a man leaving for work. But they were hurried motions that indicated his wish to escape quickly from her wounded look.

  “We’ll talk about details later,” he said. “As soon as you set the day I’ll see about getting your plane ticket” His entire being had closed against her. She let him go without a word. When she heard the sound of the front gate closing, she slipped out of bed and into her robe. She found that her teeth were chattering, though the room was warm, and that she felt almost ill with the shock of her reaction.

  Yet nothing of her resolution had wavered. Her will clung tenaciously to its original purpose.

  “I will not leave,” she told the mask on the wall, as if it were a real thing that could hear her. “I don’t know what you are driving him toward, but you can’t drive me away. He needs me and I love him and I’m going to stay.”

  As she turned from the mask, her eye was caught by the familiar look of a book on the bed table. She picked it up and saw that it was the same volume of Japanese poetry which Mr. Yamada had brought to Nan Horner: The Moonflower. So he had given Jerome a copy too.

  She ruffled through the pages and saw that someone had written English script here and there beneath the Japanese characters in an effort to translate the poetry. Nan Horner, perhaps? The handwriting was not Jerome’s, and while he spoke some Japanese, she did not believe that he could read the characters.

  A few lines drew her attention and she paused to read them.

  “Azalea petals bright in the sun;

  Black as earth

  Beneath the moon.”

  Japanese literature so often took a gloomy turn, delighting in symbols of despair, she thought. Here was another:

  “Searing white light,

  Wild burst of sound,

  The world dies in flame.”

  Bombs had never fallen on Kyoto, but all except the very young remembered the time of the bombs in Japan. This poet had seen them fall. A man or a woman? She must remember to ask Nan Horner sometime. She replaced the book on the table and drew her robe more tightly about her to shut out the unreasonable chill.

  Perhaps a hot bath would help. Sumie-san said the bath was ready and Marcia went into the steaming bathroom to soak neck deep in hot water. She was beginning to feel like the Japanese about hot baths. As she soaked, her resolution not to be driven away strengthened. If anything, Jerome had proved his need of her to a much greater extent than before. He had spoken last night of a sweeter, saner life, which surely meant that he did not find much of satisfaction and sanity in his present pattern of life. Something was tearing at him, destroying him, and she must stay and fight it at his side. By the time she had toweled herself dry, her courage was intact again.

  When the phone rang after breakfast, Sumie-san answered and carried
on the usual “Moshi-moshi” conversation that was the inevitable “hello” in Japan. Then she came to summon Marcia.

  Alan Cobb was on the wire.

  “Something’s come up,” he said. “A young friend has offered to act as guide and take me through Nijo Castle this afternoon. I wondered if Laurie would like to go.”

  “Laurie would love it,” she told him readily. “You’re good to think of her.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Will it be all right if we stop by for her around two?”

  “Yes, of course—” Marcia hesitated. Sitting around this gloomy house waiting for Jerome to come home was a depressing prospect. “Would you mind if I came too?” she asked. “I’d love to see Nijo Castle.”

  He said that of course he would be delighted, and when he’d hung up, she went to the side veranda to tell Laurie about the invitation. The little girl knelt beside the goldfish pond feeding the darting fish some powdered concoction which Yasuko-san had supplied. Beside her stood little Tomiko from next door. The gate between the two gardens was open and the two children were happily absorbed in the goldfish feeding. For once no Japanese woman darted out of the next house to snatch up her child as if Laurie might harm her. Perhaps Chiyo was becoming more accustomed to her new neighbors. Or perhaps she had heard they would soon be leaving.

  8.

  Alan Cobb came for them that afternoon in one of Kyoto’s busy little taxicabs. Yoji, Alan’s guide, proved to be a young student in his teens, friendly and eager to practice his English. He wore dark trousers, buttoned jacket and visored cap that all students wore. Laurie, Marcia and Alan got into the back seat, while Yoji sat up in front beside the driver.

  Once more Marcia was aware of Alan’s relaxed and easy air, which carried about it, nevertheless, a sense of certainty and confidence. Where Jerome had a tendency to flicker like a flame, shifting from brilliance to gloom and back again, Alan seemed to burn with a more even fire, with a steadiness and strength at the core that she found herself responding to, as she had on the trip to Kyoto. He was a man far from easily read, however, for all his smiling, open manner.