The Moonflower

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “What are you up to, Jerry?” she asked pointedly.

  But Jerome only laughed without mirth and gave her no answer.

  15.

  Before Sunday and Alan’s coming, Marcia tried to find out from Laurie just what it was that Jerome had said to her. But the little girl only repeated that Daddy said Alan was a bad person. Then she burst into tears and was so upset that Marcia did not question her further. Yet when she tried to reassure Laurie about Alan, she sensed a stiffening, a resisting, so that her words did not truly reach the child.

  The long Japanese rainy season had set in and while it did not rain all the time, the skies were often gray and mists hung low over the mountains. The temperature rose and as it grew warmer, the humidity increased until there were days when one felt as if the air was wholly liquid and moving about was like swimming in a dim and murky aquarium. It was not an atmosphere conducive to optimism.

  Yet in the rain Japan lost none of its beauty. Indeed, it took on a new dimension, a new charm. In the garden a wet rock might have a satin gleam it lacked on a sunny day, and the sound of rain on tiled roofs made melancholy music. Pine trees shone brightly green when wet and in the bamboo grove beyond the fence the rain fell with a soft and murmurous rustling. Less romantic, perhaps, was the mud of unpaved streets, and the necessity for geta, which kept their wearers above the mud, became evident.

  On Sunday it rained again; not hard, but steadily. Marcia lit every old-fashioned lamp in the drawing room and tried to brighten it with sprays of azalea and stalks of iris in vases.

  Jerome looked in on her arrangements and cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “Why all the preparations? I thought this was business on Cobb’s part?”

  “Perhaps we can have tea when you’re through,” Marcia suggested mildly. “I’ll stay away if you prefer, while you’re talking about Alan’s book.”

  “No need for that,” he said. “In fact, I’d rather have you there. If it all gets too thick, I’ll find an excuse and skip out. Then you can get rid of him.”

  Marcia turned away so he wouldn’t see her distress. She had begun to count on this interview with Alan, hoping somehow that he would get through to Jerome. Alan, with his vigorous convictions, his concern for broader horizons than those of this house, might be able to reach him if anyone could. But Jerome’s casual dismissal of Alan in advance did not bode well for her hope.

  That afternoon Nan had dropped in to take Laurie away to tea at the Miyako Hotel. She was meeting some people from home, a couple who had a daughter about Laurie’s age. Marcia was glad to have Laurie gone. She did not want Alan to glimpse the strange new distrust of him Jerome had planted in the child.

  When the bell on the gate sounded, Sumie-san caught up the Japanese umbrella of oiled paper that stood handy near the front door and ran out to bring Alan dry through the garden. He carried a tall, paper-covered parcel and Sumie-san had to hop along beside him with the umbrella at full stretch to cover both Alan and the parcel.

  “Brought you a presento,” he told Marcia as she came to greet him, and set his burden down on the veranda edge. “I saw it in a flower shop and it reminded me of my boyhood in Manila. My mother had several of these and they always fascinated me. Besides, it’s a flower arrangement you won’t have to struggle with.”

  As Alan took off his shoes, she cut the string around the tower of paper and lifted off the covering to find a tall green plant in a handsome jar of Kyoto pottery. The dark green leaves were large and broad, and grew from tendrils that clung vinelike to a trellis of split bamboo sticks.

  “There will be flowers later,” Alan said, coming to stand beside her. “Do you know what it is?”

  Marcia touched a green leaf with pleasure. “I don’t, but I like it already.”

  “‘Ghost white spirit flower …’” Alan quoted, smiling. “It’s a moonflower. I can remember watching the flowers on my mother’s plants open at night. Though I’m afraid I was never around early enough in the morning to see them close. You’ll like the perfume. It’s quite haunting.”

  She wanted to thank him for more than the plant, but there was so little she could put into words. “It’s a lovely gift,” she told him. “I know how much I’ll enjoy it.” She gave the plant to Sumie-san to take into the house and led Alan into the drawing room.

  As they came in together, Jerome rose to shake hands with his guest. He was taller than Alan, but not as broad, and his darkness of hair and complexion, his somberness of manner, contrasted with Alan’s sandy head, fair skin, and air of easy cheerfulness.

  Lucifer and the Archangel, Marcia thought and smiled at her own whimsy.

  The two men took chairs near a window open upon the rainy garden, while Marcia drew a little apart and sat near the cold hearth where she might listen without intruding. Her thoughts were still busy with the contrast between Jerome and Alan and she did not pay much attention to their words.

  There was, it seemed to her, a sureness about Alan that was lacking in Jerome. She had the feeling that a moment of danger would not easily defeat him. With Jerome it was never possible to tell what he might do in any critical circumstance. He might stay and laugh at danger. He might turn his back and walk out as though it didn’t exist. Or he might battle with shadows and waste his energy on demons of his own imagination.

  How strange to see Jerome so clearly, she thought, startled by her own musing.

  Her husband’s voice drew her back from her reverie.

  “I can see the sort of thing you want for your Japanese chapter,” he was saying. “There are of course hundreds of individuals in Japan who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even whole families. But the ashes have been combed fine since the war. Survivors are tired of telling their stories to the curious. There comes a day when a man shuts his door and says ‘no more.’ These people have their own lives to live.”

  “I understand that,” Alan said. “And I don’t want to force myself on anyone. But I’ve found that my purpose interests some of the people I’ve talked to. Interests them enough so that they want others to understand what they have been through, and how they’ve made new lives afterwards.”

  Jerome’s laugh was dry. “Americans are great on self-help these days. How to face your dentist with equanimity. How to be married four times and find the courage to take on a fifth. How to meet disaster and come out a hero.”

  Alan did not ruffle easily. He ignored Jerome’s tone and answered him quietly. “There’s a lot in what you say. But understanding is very different from a superficial recipe for quick success. There’s something to the phoenix out of the ashes business. I’m sure you’ve seen exactly what I’m talking about since you came to Japan after the war. Just as I saw it at Santo Tomas. What makes the phoenix struggle to rise when every count’s against him? That’s the thing that intrigues me.”

  Jerome sighed and began tamping tobacco into his pipe. “Yes, I know the cliché. The thing which distinguishes us from the animals. The magnificent, amazing, unquenchable human spirit. That’s what you mean?”

  “Why not? Maybe it’s all we’ve got between us and the stars.” Alan’s smile was easy. “By the way, I ran into an old friend of yours the other day. A Japanese physicist named Ogawa, who worked with you on some experimental project when you first came to Kyoto. He sent you his regards.”

  Jerome said nothing at all. Casually Alan went on, though Marcia knew, as Jerome must know, that his words were far from casual.

  “Ogawa sounded sincerely regretful because you’d turned to other lines of research. Lesser lines, he seemed to feel. Apparently he had a high regard for the work you were doing with isotopes. He said scientists have only begun to tap the peacetime possibilities.”

  Jerome made an angry sound of repudiation, but Alan continued as if he were musing aloud to himself.

  “Ogawa put me to shame by quoting Eisenhower a lot better than I could on the Atoms for Peace project. Let’s see—how do the words go? ‘My country’s purpose is to help us move out of th
e dark chamber of horrors into the light, to find a way by which the minds of men everywhere can move forward …’”

  “The minds of men!” Jerome broke in harshly. “Spare me that at least.” He turned to Marcia so suddenly that she was startled. “Will you fetch me something from my room? There’s a carved mask on the wall above my bed. It will come off the hook easily. Please bring it here.”

  She went for the mask reluctantly. It was out of reach and she stepped out of her slippers and climbed upon the bed. At that level she came eye to eye with the fearful thing.

  “I hate you,” she said. “And I don’t believe in you. You’re nothing but a hobgoblin and you won’t scare Alan Cobb.” She tugged disrespectfully at the black chin whiskers and lifted the mask from the wall. But she turned it face down as she carried it back to Jerome. She did not like to look at the thing any more than she had to.

  Jerome took it from her and held it up to the gray daylight of the window so that Alan could see the detail of the carving.

  “It’s a fine piece,” Jerome said. “A copy of a famous original, but good in itself. What do you think?”

  Alan took the mask from him and turned it about in his hands. “It’s more than a carving. It’s fairly alive. I don’t think I’d care to meet the fellow who posed for this.”

  “You’ve met him,” Jerome said. “You can see him wherever you look. The inner man. The fundamental core of all of us. The faces we show to each other are the true masks. I wouldn’t give an old-fashioned Japanese sen for your magnificent human spirit. The mind of man! Test it in the clinches and this is what you find. I doubt that it’s moving forward.”

  “That’s not true!” Marcia cried, willing to listen no longer.

  “Of course it’s not true,” Alan said calmly and smiled at her. He gave the mask back to Jerome. “I don’t feel that I have to beat anyone else into agreeing with me. I gather that you prefer not to put me in touch with any of these people you might know?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Jerome set the mask on a table beside him. “It’s every man to his own poison. I’ll fix you up with an interview with Chiyo Minato, if you like. Since she’s a Nisei, she can talk to you without an interpreter. And she’s been through plenty of horrors in the war.”

  “I’d thought of her,” Alan said. “That would be fine.”

  Marcia was not sure that it would be fine. If Chiyo was so completely under Jerome’s influence it was likely that she would give Alan only what Jerome chose to have her give. An interview with her was hardly likely to be spontaneous and from the heart. But there would be little use in saying this before Jerome.

  She was about to ring a bell and ask for tea, when Sumie-san came hurriedly to the door, apologizing and bowing, and right on her heels came Chiyo herself.

  “Please excuse me,” Chiyo said formally to Marcia, and then spoke directly to Jerome.

  “Ichiro will come here when he finds I’m gone. I had to speak to you first.”

  Marcia would have risen to leave them alone, but Jerome stopped her. “Don’t go. This may be an example of the very thing I was talking about. The inner man as illustrated by our friend Minato-san. What’s wrong, Chiyo?”

  She went on breathlessly. “Ichiro is going to work for a shipbuilding company in Kobe. He wants to take me there to live!”

  Jerome’s face darkened. “There are many things against your going. Your children have a good home here. And what would your cousin do without you?”

  “Ichiro says Haruka must come with us. He says he will be responsible for her.”

  “I can hardly see him being responsible for anyone,” Jerome said.

  Chiyo bowed her head and stared unhappily at the floor. Turning his back on her, Jerome walked to the window, where he stood looking into the wet garden.

  “What do you mean to do?” he asked Chiyo over his shoulder.

  “Haruka cannot be moved from her home,” Chiyo said forlornly. “She is too easily upset. I must stay with her, of course. I have already told Ichiro that. He is angry and wishes to treat me like an old-fashioned Japanese wife.”

  With the stating of Chiyo’s intent, a moment of crisis seemed to pass. Jerome turned, his eyes bright in his dark face. “Of course you must stay with Haruka. Don’t worry about Ichiro. I’ll handle him.”

  “Be careful …” Chiyo began and broke off because they could hear Minato’s voice at the front of the house. He had not run through the side garden as Chiyo had done, but was making a proper entrance by way of the front door and in a moment Sumie-san brought him into the drawing room. Today he was informally dressed in a dark blue and white yukata, the cotton kimono everyone relaxed in during the summer.

  He seemed sober enough and he was being stiffly polite in a somewhat military manner. His feet were bare, but he walked like a soldier and clicked his heels together, as if the very assumption of a familiar role might lend him the confidence to deal with his problem. He bowed stiffly to Marcia and to Alan and then addressed Jerome in Japanese. For his wife he had only a quick look of displeasure.

  Jerome’s Japanese was not as good as Nan’s, but he seemed to understand the gist of Minato’s remarks. “If you take this job in Kobe, you go alone,” Jerome replied in English. “Your family must stay here. You could have work in Kyoto, if you wanted it.”

  Apparently Minato understood English better than he spoke it. He shook his head, his feet squarely planted on the floor, his air that of a man who did not mean to budge until he had what he wanted.

  Jerome looked him over coldly, but Marcia knew that he restrained himself with difficulty. “Your wife doesn’t wish to move to Kobe. If you bother her about this, or threaten her in any way, I’ll turn you over to the police. That’s all I have to say to you.”

  Minato’s face had flushed a dark red, but he stood his ground, unmoved by Jerome’s words.

  “Soon I go Kobe,” he repeated stubbornly. “Chiyo go Kobe.”

  Something seemed to snap into violence in Jerome. He jerked Minato to him by the front of his yukata and shook him like a spaniel. He was choking him when Alan thrust himself between the two. Under Alan’s grip, Jerome’s hands loosened and he let Minato go, turning his attention angrily to the American.

  “This is no business of yours, Cobb. Get out of my way!”

  Alan stepped aside, but Minato had taken the moment’s respite to make his escape. Yet his exit was not so much a retreat as it was the dramatic departure of a samurai. He turned stiffly and marched out of the room with the exaggerated stride of a Kabuki actor.

  Chiyo wept softly into her hands, but Alan paid no attention to her, or to the scowling Jerome. He turned directly to Marcia.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’ll go along now.”

  She went with him to the door, shaken by what had happened.

  “I didn’t expect to find myself on Minato’s side,” he said. “But that’s where my sympathies seem to lie. I’m sorry I’ve been able to manage so little today. Perhaps I’ve made everything worse.”

  Marcia shook her head vehemently. “No! There must be something that will make Jerome face the future.”

  “He needs to face himself first,” Alan said.

  She looked at him anxiously. “What did this man Ogawa mean about Jerome giving his time to lesser research? I know he doesn’t go regularly to the laboratory any more.”

  “I’m not sure and there’s no use guessing about it now,” Alan said.

  “You’ll tell me if you learn anything more?”

  “I’ll tell you,” he promised. “In the meantime I don’t like to see you living under this roof.”

  She tried to smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.”

  “Whistle if you need me.” His voice was light, but his eyes remained grave.

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  “Take care,” he said and turned away without touching her, though the very sound of his words was a light caress.

  The rain had
nearly stopped and she watched him following the stepping stones to the gate, a straight broad figure in his transparent slicker. Then she went back to the drawing room door.

  Chiyo was weeping softly in Jerome’s arms and he was comforting her. Marcia slipped away before they saw her.

  She had come to the end of her endurance. It was time to face the fact that there was no longer any love in her for this man she had once cherished. There was nothing she could ever do for Jerome. There was no marriage left to save. Strangely, she could no longer feel jealousy of Chiyo, or resentment against Jerome. She was more concerned now for the loss to the world of the man Jerome had been than she was for his loss to herself.

  Perhaps this was only a moment of vacuum, and pain would return later, but now she was moved only by a desire to get away from this house and from a Jerome who shocked and frightened her. Certainly he did not need her, and it was possible that she no longer needed him.

  This was a thought too new to be accepted quickly in its full import. It left her drained and empty.

  She stayed in her room until dinnertime, when Laurie came home from her visit with Nan. Then she faced the ordeal of sitting down at the table with her husband. Fortunately, it was Laurie who did most of the talking.

  She was excited about the Miyako Hotel, with its many levels climbing up a steep hill, its gardens and grottoes and Japanese cottages. To say nothing of the pool, where Laurie and the visiting American girl had gone swimming.

  “And what was this girl like?” Jerome asked, interested now, as he never used to be in Laurie’s doings.

  Laurie pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well, she was sort of homely, with freckles and red hair. And she wasn’t very smart. I could tell her anything and she’d believe it.”

  Marcia listened in silence, while Laurie, the loving and lovable, made unkind remarks about the people she had met that afternoon. Her father attended approvingly and added his own comments to encourage her.

  Marcia waited until Laurie was in bed and then she went to Jerome’s room and knocked on the door. When he called, “Come in,” she stood quietly in the doorway and spoke to him, without entering.