by Cory Taylor
I was still drunk. The thought of meeting Stanley again sent a surge of warmth through me, starting at my knees and reaching all the way to the back of my eyes. I thought I was going to cry.
‘It’s very strange,’ I said. ‘The last time I saw Stanley was at the ship. The soldiers shoot. Bang bang. He jump in the water.’
It must have been the wrong thing to say because Mariko-san quickened her pace and I had to hurry to keep up with her. At the end of the alleyway we came to a wider road where a line of taxis was parked. She waved to the driver of the first one and he swung around to where we were standing.
‘Oyasumi,’ she said. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Oyasumi,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you for dinner.’
And as soon as I was in the taxi she scuttled away as if she was pleased to be rid of me.
I slept badly and woke with a headache. When I opened the curtains the sun streamed into the room making the dust motes swirl and circle like sparks. I slid the windows open and sat on the narrow verandah overlooking the garden, breathing in the fragrance of pine sap and moss. I daydreamed about the possibility of staying in Japan for a while longer. There was so much here that appealed to me for reasons I would never fathom in a week. And of course there was my craving for Stanley, undiminished after all these years. As soon as I’d landed in Tokyo I’d felt a redoubled longing to be near him, to be his favoured companion.
I showered and dressed, trembling with terror at what the day held in store. My biggest fear was that I might be an embarrassment to Stanley after all this time. I already suspected that his mother disapproved of my visit, that she’d been forced to play the go-between against her better judgment. In the meantime I had three hours to fill in before our twelve o’clock meeting.
I packed my bags and went to the front desk to check out.
‘You leave?’ said the desk clerk.
‘Five-fifteen train,’ I said.
I glanced at my watch. It was just past nine.
I explained to the desk clerk that I planned to take my bags with me to lunch and head to the station from there.
‘Lunch?’ he said. ‘Now?’
‘No. Twelve o’clock. Now I walk.’
‘Hot. Many hills. You drive.’
It seemed useless to argue with him.
Within ten minutes he was waving me off in a taxi.
‘Back here twelve o’clock,’ I said to the driver. I leaned forward and showed him on my watch-face, then I held up one finger on one hand and two fingers on the other. He nodded and said nothing.
We drove in silence through the city, down to the harbour, up the slopes where the churches were and all the time I fretted and fidgeted like an over-anxious kid on his way to an exam. Two or three times the driver stopped the car so I get could out and walk around, but I never took him up on the suggestion. I remained in my seat and pointed at my watch to indicate we were on a schedule. At the A-bomb memorial I finally agreed to leave the car. I spent an hour inside and came out so troubled and confused that I decided to pay off the driver and walk back along the main road to the hotel. It started to rain again, not that I really noticed. It was as if my thoughts had jammed from seeing all the photographs of shadow people, and the bits of twisted, melted objects in glass cases, the scorched clothing.
Stanley’s mother was waiting for me when I returned. She and the desk clerk were standing in the lobby beside my bags. They both bowed as I walked in and then the desk clerk offered me a handtowel to dry my jacket and my hair. Out in the street a long white Cadillac sat with its engine running. Stanley’s mother took charge, bundling me inside the car and supervising the desk clerk while he loaded my luggage into the boot. She lowered her umbrella and climbed in after me, settling herself on the leather seat in a huffy kind of way, as if I’d somehow ruined her morning.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I wasn’t sure why I was apologising, except that now she seemed to command deference. I’d noticed it the night before in the noodle shop, where we were served ahead of customers who’d been there before we came in.
When she didn’t reply I sat back in my deep seat and surveyed the car’s luxurious interior. I’d never ridden in a Cadillac before. I wasn’t prepared for the queasy sensation of floating along above the road, only coming into contact with it again when we slowed down at corners or pulled up at lights. My tremors from the morning returned and I was fearful I might faint or be sick. My headache hadn’t left me either. I could feel it in my teeth. I remembered back to my first wedding, how I’d been so paralysed with nerves I’d failed to remember my lines and had to be prompted. I do. How ridiculous I must have seemed back then, and here I was again, as giddy as a bride. I didn’t bother asking where we were going. I just sat and listened to the hum of the engine, which seemed to be coming from a long way off.
Stanley’s mother left me at the front door of the restaurant, delivering me there like a parcel. Out on the footpath she handed me over to a waiter who was expecting me. Wet and not remotely hungry, I followed him up some stairs and into a private room where Stanley was waiting for me. I knew him immediately, of course, the same feline head, the same golden eyes with their shards of green. His skin had coarsened a little and his hair had lost some of its lustre, but apart from that he was unchanged.
‘Arthur,’ he said, his voice setting off a fit of the shakes in my knees. ‘Come.’
He was standing by the window, surveying the rain-soaked town as if he owned it. In his sky-blue suit and gold-rimmed glasses he looked like a pimp.
‘It’s better at night,’ he said.
And then he put his arm around my shoulder and I smelled the Camel cigarettes on his breath and it was like I’d come home after a journey lasting years.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said.
‘I hardly know,’ I said.
He gave me a choice of drinks, indicating the bottles on the table. ‘Beer, whisky, or the local vodka?’
‘Whatever you’re having.’
‘All three then.’
He gestured for me to sit down at the table.
‘We’re having a Nagasaki-style lunch,’ he explained, sounding like a tour guide. ‘The most famous local dish is Nagasaki champon.’
He poured two beers then sat down opposite me.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, lifting my glass. ‘Whatever it is.’
Stanley noticed my trembling hand and smiled. ‘It’s not Japanese or Chinese or Portuguese,’ he said, ‘It’s all three mixed up. A trader’s dish.’
‘Is that what you do? Trade?’
I gestured to the lavish table-setting and the private room and the view.
‘I do many things,’ he said, launching into a long speech about how he was riding a wave, how the future belonged to Asia because the West was all about might is right while the East was about gaman, which I knew meant some special blend of patience and endurance.
‘I want to invite you to the Olympics next year,’ he said. ‘The whole world will come and see how we’ve lifted this country out of the rubble.’
There was something strained in the way he talked, as if his sole aim was to impress me with his rise in the world. He hadn’t actually looked at me since I’d entered the room.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Do I call you Saburo now, or Stanley?’
‘Either. To my American friends I’m Stanley, to the rest I’m Saburo.’
I watched him gulp down his beer and stare forlornly into his empty glass. And then he looked up at me at last and I saw how tired he was, not just in a physical sense, but in some permanent way, as if he’d seen too much of life before he was ready.
‘How did you find me?’ he said.
‘McMaster tracked you down.’
‘I never expected to see you again,’ he said, sounding almost angry.
He took a pair of clean glasses and poured us each a shot of Japanese liquor out of a stoneware jar. At that moment a waiter appeared with two steaming d
ishes of noodles in soup and placed them in front of us.
After the waiter left the room Stanley watched me sip my drink. It burned as it went down.
‘How long can you stay?’ he said.
‘I leave this afternoon.’
‘Pity. I wanted to show you around.’
‘I did a tour this morning. I went to the A-bomb memorial.’
Stanley nodded. ‘What did you think?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Sad.’
He smiled at me. ‘You were born sad, Arthur.’
He picked up his chopsticks and started to eat noisily. I did the same. The noodles were thick and served in a creamy soup made from vegetables and fresh seafood.
‘Very good,’ I said.
Stanley said nothing. He poured us some more liquor and we drank.
‘What happened to your uncle?’ I said.
Stanley was quiet for a moment as if he was trying to decide how much to tell me, given that I knew nothing.
‘He died on the boat,’ he said. ‘The crew were stealing our rations and he complained.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,’ I said. ‘I did try. That’s what I was doing on the docks that day.’
Stanley looked at me across the table and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ I said.
‘You talk like a boy scout.’
There was a hint of the old mockery in his voice, which made me strangely gleeful. It was a sign that at least I still had the power to irritate him.
He finished his lunch and wiped his mouth on his serviette. Then he felt in his pocket and found his cigarettes. I watched him light one, then toss the packet in my direction like we were still teenagers.
‘So how do you like my restaurant?’ he said, holding his breath momentarily then exhaling with extra force.
‘Not bad,’ I said, laughing. ‘I should have guessed.’
‘I own seven bars and three restaurants. Not bad for a kid who arrived here with nothing but a suitcase and a mad mother.’
‘Your mother seems fine now.’
‘She is. We’re all fine.’
‘And your father?’
‘The last time I heard he was in South America,’ he said.
He pushed his hair back off his forehead with the gesture I remembered from Tatura. My heart fluttered like a startled bird.
‘So what do you want to do after lunch?’ he said.
‘I don’t really have a plan,’ I said. ‘If you’re busy just say so.’
He slowly raised himself out of his chair and went to stand by the window again with his back to me. For a moment he swayed as if he’d had a blow to the head, then he put his hand on the sill to steady himself.
‘Are you in Japan for your work?’ he said.
‘Yes. I buy and sell engine parts.’
There was a silence after that. I put my chopsticks down and left my lunch unfinished.
‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he said, turning around. He leaned back, resting his head on the glass.
‘Why not?’ I said.
He stared at me, looking less than friendly. I could tell he’d stopped enjoying himself. I don’t mean that afternoon but, at some point in the past, things had ceased to please him. I wanted to think it was at around the same time as I’d left Tatura and abandoned him, although far worse things had no doubt happened to him since.
‘I wanted to see you,’ I said.
‘What for?’ he said, surprised.
I paused for a moment, as if I wasn’t sure where to start.
‘I wanted a re-match,’ I said.
I’d hoped to make him laugh but instead he suddenly appeared to deflate, like a balloon with a slow leak, and all of his puffed-up pride seemed to desert him. He walked towards me and stopped when he reached the back of my chair. The next moment I felt his hand on my shoulder, then the back of his fingers on the base of my neck at my hairline. It was only for an instant but it was enough to send all of my senses rushing to the spot like starved things.
‘I have something for you,’ he said. He was sitting down again by then. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small package. ‘Open it when you’re on the train.’
He pushed the package across the table towards me. I picked it up and shook it to see if it rattled.
Stanley was not amused. ‘Would you like to see my latest project?’
‘Depends what it is,’ I said, slipping the package into my pocket.
‘I’m building a Western-style restaurant,’ he said. ‘Down near Dejima.’
‘Where the foreign traders lived,’ I said. I’d read about Dejima in the hotel brochure.
‘You’ve been doing your homework.’
‘I’m interested.’
‘Arthur the schoolteacher.’
I asked him if he still liked to write.
He shook his head. ‘No time.’ He stared down at his hands and sighed. ‘You always had the wrong idea about me Arthur.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You always thought I was good.’
‘You were,’ I said. ‘You were the best, bravest person I ever knew.’ I blushed. This was the nearest I’d ever been to declaring my love for him. A better man would have rushed to Stanley and embraced him at that moment, but I sat numbly in my chair and stared at the floor.
‘You should forget about the past,’ he said. ‘None of it matters any more.’
The waiter reappeared at the door and bowed. Stanley broke off and said something to him in Japanese, after which the waiter started to clear away our glasses and drinks.
I excused myself and went to the bathroom. I stared at myself in the oval-shaped mirror and tried to understand what had just taken place. It had only been a gesture, that hand on the back of my neck, but immediately I was seventeen again and Stanley was leaning over to kiss me in Matron Conlon’s infirmary. I stood before the mirror and raised my hands to my flushed face. My skin seemed to be giving off waves of heat. Of course it was the drinking I’d done all through lunch to steady my nerves, but there was also was a wild hopefulness I hadn’t experienced since my youth.
Naturally it couldn’t last. By the time we were back in the car Stanley’s mood had soured. I wasn’t sure if he’d decided not to like me again, or if it was something his driver had said. They’d argued briefly after we’d set out from the restaurant. Now both of them sat sulking while the Cadillac ferried us, almost independently it seemed, across the darkening town.
The driver waited in the car while Stanley and I wandered around outside the new restaurant and watched the carpenters at work. We crossed the road to Dejima, trying to dodge the rain. There wasn’t much to see, just a tiny area in between two major roads, where a couple of big wooden, barn-like structures had been erected to house the exhibits. Inside there was little logic to the exhibition and very few English signs. Stanley did not even pretend to be interested until we reached the last glass case, which contained a scroll painting of the design for Dejima with all of its modest dimensions duly noted.
‘This land is worth a small fortune,’ he said. ‘It’s a wonder they haven’t built a department store on it.’
‘Why did they lock the foreigners away here?’ I said. ‘What were they scared of?’
‘The same reason they locked us away,’ said Stanley. It was the first time he’d referred to Tatura directly in the whole time we’d been together. ‘Fear, suspicion, ignorance.’
It occurred to me then that this might be the cause of his anger: that my coming here to see him had stirred up all kinds of resentment and regret.
‘I thought you’d forgotten the past,’ I said, trying to humour him or, failing that, to provoke another unguarded moment, a glance or a smile that would tell me I was forgiven. But Stanley just walked out ahead of me into the rain without saying another word and I came to the unspeakably desolate conclusion that I had made a fool of myself showing up here, that Stanley was not going to offer me any of the consolation I was
seeking.
Once we were back in the car he suggested we stop on the way to the station for a last drink at chikago naito.
‘One for the road,’ he said.
‘I’m already drunk.’
‘Not drunk enough,’ he said. ‘You can’t leave Kyushu until you’ve tasted imojochu from Miyazaki.’
And so we went to the bar and stayed for forty minutes listening to Miles Davis. At least I stayed there, while Stanley went off to take a phone call and came back just in time to drive me to the station. While I waited, Mr Ikeda poured me drinks and politely answered all my questions about Stanley without telling me very much at all.
‘Is he happy?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Ikeda. ‘Very happy.’
‘Why didn’t he marry?’ I said, not expecting an honest reply.
‘Too busy working. And you? Are you happy?’ He smiled at me kindly.
‘I am now. Now that I’ve seen my friend again.’ At which my eyes filled up with stupid tears and I had to wipe them away while Mr Ikeda stared down at his hands and pretended not to notice.
Stanley came with me onto the platform, leaving the driver down in the car park with the Cadillac. He even carried my suitcase for me.
‘You don’t have to wait,’ I said. ‘I know you’re busy.’
But he ignored me and we sat down together on a bench under cover and watched the rain troop across the platform in ghostly squadrons.
‘Look at them all,’ he said, gesturing at the passengers waiting on the platform. ‘Like mental patients. No idea where they’ve been, no idea where they’re going.’
I laughed.
‘You think I’m joking?’ he said. ‘Why did you always think I was joking?’
‘That’s not true. I took everything you said very seriously. I even memorised your best lines.’
‘Like what? What did I say?’
‘That any man who doesn’t know the difference between a curveball and a slider doesn’t deserve to live,’ I said, in the best version of his accent that I could manage.
‘You remember that?’
‘Like it was yesterday. The past has a hold over me I can’t explain. That’s why I’m here. I never forgot you. Not for a single day. I wanted you to know that.’ I stopped and stared at him.
