Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  She saw his face and suggested, “You may come this way,” leading him through the kitchen — it had remained the same, the same high cabinets, the yellowed icebox, the stone floor — and through the swinging doors to what had been the library, emptied of books, pale spaces like day-moons on the sooty blue wall above the fireplace where the portraits had once hung, and through to the sunroom.

  This was where Sachiko had sat, always elegant, sometimes traditionally and sometimes wearing western dress. She would let Emmett spend an afternoon with her here, while she sat doing nothing, yet with an attitude of sufficiency. Her chaise remained, as did the petite point ottoman that he would sprawl on, dangling his arms and legs onto the rattan matting. He stared at where Sachiko had sat, where he’d lingered in her neutral presence.

  French doors opened to a garden where there was a small pond that had once held goldfish and a lawn bordered with the naked stems of azaleas and the reddish-purple, almost black glow of late chrysanthemums. Here was where eventually he’d come to hide from his father. The heat remained then too, and the zing of cicadas. His father was really sick, hidden from sight at the other house, where his mother could watch him slowly deteriorate in a bedroom that Emmett never entered, observing the quarantine necessary for patients with tuberculosis. At home, he was keenly aware of his father’s unseen suffering, and so he spent his time at Sachiko’s house. Sometimes he pretended that he was his father. He mimicked his mannerisms. It compensated for never being able to tell the man how he yearned for him.

  Her name was Aoi. She was an unusual-looking young woman who believed herself beautiful and thus became so. He’d begun by speaking to her in Japanese, but she always responded in English. The room where they sat had been Sachiko’s room, and now he moved slowly, staring, remembering, nostalgia a sweet syrup in his veins. Everything appeared to be coated in a greasy film; he thought it was from the candles they’d used for light during the war.

  He asked her where she’d learned to speak English. In Australia, she told him, she’d gone to school there. Her father had died, she didn’t say how. She said that when she returned to Japan after the surrender, the Americans gave her this house to live in. “Mr. James wants me out,” she said, but she made it sound like this, too, was a special benediction. Everything she said sounded like that — her victory over English partly made it seem that way; she had a victorious accent, and her Japanese decorum was like that of a clown, a geisha in baggy trousers, a strangely beautiful woman.

  When Emmett was a boy, the James-yama Estate was comprised of fifty-five houses, plus Ernest W. James’s own mansion and a clubhouse with a gym that had once employed an Italian trainer who ran exercise classes to music. Earnest W. James was buying up yet more of the mountain when he was imprisoned by Japanese police, July 1940, along with another fourteen British residents of Kobe, including Emmett’s father, who was so ill with TB. A Reuters correspondent by the name of Cox had written a letter that found its way to the house in Vancouver where Emmett lived with his mother after he’d got out of the sanatorium with a clean bill of health. The letter informed them that his father had died while being interrogated. The official story was that he had jumped out a window.

  Earnest W. James fled the Shiyoa estate, fled the country, and the Japanese government froze his assets. His mansion then served as a recreational hall for the Imperial Japanese Navy, while Germans, Italians, French, and Japanese citizens lived in his fifty-five houses.

  “You knew this house before the war,” Aoi said.

  “My father leased it, yes, and another house for us, my mother and me. But he lost both houses when he was put in prison.”

  “Two houses!” said Aoi, ignoring the fate of his father.

  “His mistress lived here.” He yielded to the temptation of playing the prince. He liked that he could please her.

  She smiled her toothy smile and jumped up. She had a great figure. He was beginning to find her quite magnificent. She said that she was terrible not to have offered him something to drink. “Wait,” she said and left the room. Even in the baggy clothes, she was voluptuous.

  He went to the doors that led to the garden and pulled them open — the sound of them opening was not as he remembered — such a small thing for a body to remember — so he looked closely and saw the miniature mountains of sawdust on the mat, and then he saw the white ants.

  The house sat on timber that had soaked up rain delivered by the spring typhoons; the wet wood had invited termites. He went outside. The sun had set behind the mountain. The road would be dark on his descent. He walked the perimeter of the house. Everything returned to him, every window frame, every inch of clapboard, but it was being eaten away by the white ants. In the dusk, he saw them moving in the wood; the house, its stasis seemed to depend on their agitation. So this is the way, this is the way the material world will reveal its secret, destructive aspect.

  He re-entered through the French doors to find Aoi seated on the floor. She had changed into a white kimono and she held a lute on her knees, a biwa. Her black hair was cut so it exaggerated the broadness of her face and formed two black triangles on each cheek, then gathered in a long ponytail snaking down her back. The biwa, the kimono, her posture, all indicated tradition, but the smile she gave him was self-mocking.

  She took a fan-shaped pick, a plectrum, from the folds of her kimono and struck the strings, drawing a wave of sound, a metallic, exciting music, her hand forcefully striking. She began to sing. Her voice had a muscled lower register, a masculine, glottal voicing of the Japanese.

  It was a long, ancient song about the fall of the Heike. Emmett had heard performances of it at least twice before, but never a performance by such a woman. Her hand with the plectrum striking and gliding like a knife-sharpener against the steely voice of the instrument, her muscular voice thickening on the consonants, then thinning eerily.

  When the song was finished, Aoi bowed, stood, bowed again, and shuffled from the room, carrying the biwa by grasping the instrument at its neck. The plectrum had disappeared somewhere. She was wearing white gym socks. He thought of Charlie Chaplin.

  When she returned, she carried a tray with a glass and a bottle of bourbon. The kimono was of padded white silk and made her seem unapproachable. He had come to seek a trace of Sachiko, his secret mother, and instead he’d found this extraordinary woman. He wanted her so badly he was touching her sleeve when he spoke to her, touching her knee.

  He began to drink bourbon. No matter how much he drank he felt sober. Aoi offered to cook dinner and took him to the kitchen. But when he saw the tiny portion of rice she found in the kitchen cupboard and generously offered to him, he said that he wasn’t hungry.

  When he undressed her, he was shaken by her beauty. She was of such grand scale she was almost intimidating. He held her breasts in his hands, kneading them in a way that he knew hurt her a little. She smelled of rice powder, a smell that made him ache. He had never inflicted lust on a woman this way, heedless of hurting her, with her long legs around his neck, rising over her while she laughed, catching her breath.

  In the early morning they went down to the seashore and watched a boy and a girl, likely a brother and sister, on the pier. The little girl studied her brother as he let a net into the water, then raised it and searched through the kelp, laying the net on the dock. It was windy, sunny, but suddenly cold. From the beach, families flew kites that darted like swallows in the wind. He watched the keenly coloured kites, and then again searched out the two children on the pier. The brother brought his net out of the water, laid it down, then picked up something whitely blue and fleshy, and held it up to show his admiring sister. The thing changed shape in his hands and dangled its many legs. The little sister clapped her hands.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Herbert Norman asked Emmett to have lunch with him. They didn’t exactly work together; as envoy, Herbert had higher status than Emmett did — but Herbert had maintained a kindly interest in Emmett’s progress as pol
icy analyst with the Liaison Mission. It was October now, and Emmet was finding his way on the job.

  They were sitting at a long counter in a noodle joint. Herbert bent toward the bowl of ramen and let the steam wash over his face. “General MacArthur believes that the Chinese communists won’t get involved in Korea.” When Herbert raised his head, his glasses were fogged and he removed them. “He says the American forces will ‘strike awe in the Chinese heart.’” Herbert did a pretty good imitation of MacArthur. He smiled sadly. “The general believes that the Orientals will ‘bow down before America’s supreme power.’ Chinese soldiers are little men, see? All three hundred thousand of them.”

  Herbert Norman had been working around the general since 1945. “Our views are ‘divergent,’” he said, bending again toward his soup. “In MacArthur’s terms, ‘divergent’ means barbarian.” Then he burst out bitterly, “Why the hell would they investigate me.”

  Emmett asked him what he meant. “Investigate you? Who?”

  “Never mind. I’ll spoil your lunch.”

  Emmett waited till Herbert reluctantly explained, “Someone named me in his testimony before the US Senate Security Subcommittee.”

  Emmett said that this sounded far-fetched, Herbert’s name coming up like that. How could such a thing happen? He was remembering Bill Masters warning him to be cautious of Herbert Norman.

  “I take it you’ve heard of Senator Joe McCarthy,” Herbert said.

  “Sure. But how could McCarthy touch you?”

  “He can’t. But I’m unnerved, I admit.”

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

  “Crazy. Yes.”

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Surely. It’s outrageous.” But Emmett knew it probably wasn’t outrageous. Herbert had been flagged by the FBI by writing for Amerasia — the New York-based magazine that had been discovered with stolen high-level secret documents in its offices. He wondered what else had brought Herbert to the attention of the American Security bloodhounds.

  “The minister assures me I’m protected,” Herbert was saying wanly. “Pearson is a friend of mine. I’m a Canadian citizen. Still — one’s name — ” he broke off and put his spoon down. He saw Emmett’s face. “I don’t think it’s gone so far as to affect those around me.”

  “I’m not worried about that.”

  “You should be.”

  At Herbert’s right, a Japanese man had finished eating, but rather than leaving right away, as everyone else did, he stayed, eavesdropping. Herbert said, “How about we take a walk?”

  It was a warm fall day. They made their way to the moat surrounding the emperor’s palace. Emmett reached to touch the twisted branches of the cherry trees lining the path. The broad moat and brick wall surrounding the palace grounds were on a grand scale. He’d been scrutinizing detailed maps and aerial photographs of tiny Korean villages, of mountain roads and hidden valleys, he was under-slept from working long hours and then taking a train back out to see Aoi for one night on the weekends, and now he stumbled and gripped the iron railing to prevent himself from falling down the steep slope into the water with the swans and lily pads and the rifles trained on him from the emperor’s gardens.

  Herbert noticed Emmett’s unsteady step. “Are you okay?”

  “I think I’ve been working too hard.” Emmett took off his jacket. “Ottawa wants a report about women’s book clubs in suburban Tokyo.”

  “That’s knocking you out?”

  “Spurious inaction takes a lot of energy.”

  Herbert said vaguely, “This war that is not a war.”

  Emmett told him that he intended to do some research into the relationship between the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza, and the government since the surrender. “I’ve been ordered to avoid anything hot. I’m told to stay away from the subject of the war in Korea. I wonder if General MacArthur has complained about me. I don’t think he likes me very much.”

  “You laughed at him. Big mistake. Don’t be blinded by his melodrama. The Japanese love him. He’s truer than true.” Herbert hesitated. “MacArthur is going use his popularity to lure the Pentagon into giving him more rope. Then he’ll provoke the Chinese communists into full-scale war.”

  “Where are the Chinese troops now?” Emmett asked this abruptly, as if the question had just popped into his head. Herbert jumped a little and answered, “In China, for all I know.”

  Emmett shrugged, “Does anyone have any real information? Does MacArthur have any intelligence? Is he all shadow play?”

  “I don’t know,” Herbert said with more emphasis. Then, “Look. I’m leaving Tokyo.”

  Emmett asked him where he was going.

  “Ottawa. Pearson believes it’ll go better for me if I’m there while the RCMP do their investigation.”

  “I see,” Emmett said. “Ottawa wants you to lie low for a while. For show. To appease the Americans.” Herbert Norman’s face revealed some relief at this assessment. Emmett continued, “You’ll go to Ottawa, you’ll clear things up, you’ll return to Japan, and get on with your work. Good.”

  “Think so?”

  “You have to face down this kind of speculation in person.” Herbert turned his back, and Emmett could feel his loneliness. “Easy for me to say,” he added.

  Without looking at Emmett, Herbert said, “I want to give you some advice. When you’ve used my name on any of your reports, you should redact it, don’t name me anywhere.”

  “I won’t erase your name, Herbert.”

  Herbert shook his head. “You don’t understand. A man thinks he’s defending his own freedom, he thinks there’s no reason for him to tell, say, the FBI what he’s doing, he thinks it’s none of their business. Turns out, it’s always their business. Protect yourself. Redact my name and never mention me again.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Herbert Norman quietly left Tokyo a week later, mid-October 1950. Emmett didn’t redact Herbert’s name from his files and correspondence. He fobbed off the report on ladies’ book clubs to a female researcher who was glad to get out of the office while he went ahead with his own investigation into the connections between the CIA, the post-war Japanese government, and the Yakuza. The report was received cautiously in Ottawa, considered risqué, overly confident: Canadian civil servants were expected to be euphemistic, uncritical — but he wasn’t formally censored. Bill Masters sent a fatherly, personal note urging him to take a stronger interest in what the Japanese ladies were reading. “We’re looking for soft information,” Bill wrote, “the stuff you can get only from civilians. Something credible.”

  Emmett wasn’t supposed to board an airplane with a group of American journalists he’d befriended and fly into North Korea. So he didn’t tell anyone; he took a sick day, claiming to have the flu. The sleek receptionist answering his early morning phone call told him to take two aspirin and drink plenty of Pepsi. “How sick are you?” she asked. He told her that he thought a day in bed would get him back on his feet; he’d be in tomorrow.

  He took a taxi from his suite to the airport in the company of the American pressmen, pulling his hat low over his eyes and telling the journalists that his government wasn’t too keen on field trips. That appealed to them, and at the military airport they told the pilot that he was a reporter from Michigan. They said he had the nondescript good looks of somebody from Kalamazoo.

  The clipper carrying the pressmen was on the trail of the air force plane carrying General MacArthur, who wanted to see the Yalu River, to gloat over the apparent retreat of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. They were flying very low, at about six thousand feet, deep into the war zone, but the ancient mountains were peaceful. There was a village on the north side of the winding black river. Emmett heard the newsmen nervously speculate over whether there were anti-aircraft guns in the area.

  In the seat beside Emmett was a journalist named Wilson, an American in his late forties who’d been in the Far East for well over a decade. Wilson stood up and leaned over him to see out the
window. Against a startling blue sky, a heavy grey American bomber, a B-29, was approaching from the south. The plane carrying the general suddenly veered, and the plane with the journalists followed in a steep curve that threw Wilson into Emmett. They untangled, Wilson apologized, and when Emmett looked out again, the bomber was visible about five hundred feet below. Emmett took a leather pouch not much bigger than a cigarette lighter from his jacket pocket and from it he slipped a silver object, a miniature camera, into his hand. The bomber was circling back toward the river. Then it dropped its load.

  The bombs struck the village, igniting a fire that spilled out in orange blooms and black smoke. Emmett photographed the roiling flames and what he believed were the tiny figures of the peasants scattering. There were no trees; even from this altitude the gunner had a clear view. Dirt rose in yellowish puffs from the dry earth around the burning village. No one from the ground was firing back.

  The air force plane flew on, following the river, and the journalists’ plane trailed after them. Behind them the sun shone on smoke that rose into columns of pink marble.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Wilson shakily. “That was some show. I bet we weren’t supposed to see that.” He took out his notebook.

  The plane was filled with shouting men. What did you see? What do you know about that? Somebody said, “We laced into them, didn’t we! Son of a bitch!” Whether in anger, disgust, or valorous excitement, Emmett didn’t know. He watched the mountains for signs of Chinese troops, his camera held ready.

  Wilson was making notes in shorthand. He glanced over and said, “That’s a really small camera.”

  Emmett shrugged. “A hobby of mine.” Then he said, “Those were breadbaskets, each carrying seventy-two incendiary bombs filled with napalm.”

  Wilson gave him a look and returned his attention to his notebook. Emmett read Wilson’s shorthand. Day, time, location, number of bombs, estimated size of kill by bombing, by fire, by machine gun, estimated number of enemy. He said to Wilson, “There aren’t any soldiers here.”