The Emperor's General

by James Webb

  As we walked she dared to touch my arm again, drawing stares from a nearby group of returning soldiers. Feeling the weight of their disapproving eyes it occurred to me that Yoshiko was at some level on her own kamikaze mission. For despite Kido’s assurances that she was being honored by my affections, what Japanese man would ever want to marry a woman who had spent the first days of the occupation in the bed of an American officer?

  “I’m sorry, too, Yoshiko.”

  We reached the edge of the park. I stopped walking, and we stood silently watching each other under the cold bronze torii.

  In her eyes I saw more than duty. “Will I see you tonight?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m leaving for the Philippines.”

  “When will you be back?”

  Such a simple question, normal for any two lovers, was fraught with complications. Was she asking me as a woman who cared for me, or was she making certain she had a complete report for the lord privy seal? The answer, as it had always become, was probably both.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  The very mention of the Philippines had splashed me with a reality that was as cold as the coming rain. I felt myself withdraw from her, until even my body had stiffened with its own disapproval.

  “I will miss you, Jay-san,” she said.

  And as she turned to walk away I knew she meant it.

  My flight, a C-54 courier that delivered important mail, messages, and personnel, would leave at midnight. It would stop to refuel at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, then land in Manila in time to begin the workday. A similar courier ran from Manila at midnight, reversing the course to Atsugi. The couriers flew at night so that officers on important assignments could catnap on the aircraft, work a full day in Manila or Tokyo, then if necessary return to their own headquarters by the following morning. Such tight turnarounds were really no longer necessary in October 1945, but the system, devised elsewhere in the Southwest theater during the exigencies of wartime, had not yet slowed down to keep pace with peace.

  I returned to my hotel, packing quickly and racing back downstairs. It was only a two-hour drive to Atsugi, but I had business to take care of before I left. I was afraid to face Divina Clara. And I needed Father Garvey to help me.

  The First Cavalry Division had taken over a large Japanese military cantonment not far from the embassy. The cantonment, a collection of low, flat-roofed barracks and administration buildings that surrounded a parade ground, had for years served as the headquarters of the Tokyo district’s ground defense forces. One of the smaller buildings, formerly used as a classroom, had been turned into a chapel. My driver stopped in front of it and I jumped quickly from the jeep, trotting inside.

  A lanky, longhaired chaplain’s assistant sat at a field desk in the chapel’s outer office, absently scratching pimples on his pink face with one long finger. A Japanese kanji sign was still nailed above the doorway, giving instructions to a now-dead army. An American military field phone sat on the desk. Incongruously for this holy venue, the chaplain’s assistant was reading a Superman comic book.

  “Father Garvey?” I asked.

  He pointed toward the converted classroom that was being used as the chapel itself. “You’ll have to wait in line,” the young soldier drawled.

  More than a dozen soldiers were standing quietly just outside the classroom. I walked past them toward the room itself, anxious to see Father Garvey. They watched me with caustic glares as I passed, noticing my captain’s bars and thinking only that I was pulling rank.

  “Sorry,” I said, entering the auditorium. “I have a plane to catch.”

  “Right,” muttered one of them. “And my name’s Hirohito.”

  Another soldier was more direct. “God doesn’t recognize your rank, Captain. Add this to your list when you see the priest.”

  “As you were, Sergeant,” I barked fiercely, my false authority covering my embarrassment. “I’m under orders.”

  In a far, darkened corner of the auditorium Father Garvey had erected a heavy cloth curtain as a floor-to-ceiling partition. On its near side sat a young soldier. The solider looked lonely and confused. He was leaning forward with his head down and his hands dangling between his legs. Now and then he would tilt his head toward the curtain, whispering urgently into it. Then he would nod, again and again, as the priest answered him. On the other side of the curtain, Father Garvey was hearing his confession.

  Finally the soldier finished. He stood up, seeming somewhat relieved but no happier, and began to leave. I walked quickly across the room, nodding to him as we passed each other, then took my seat on the other side of Father Garvey’s curtain.

  For a moment I merely stared at the curtain. I didn’t know quite what to do. I had never been to confession before. But I had to do something, soon. I was in the chair. At the auditorium’s entrance I could see several of the waiting soldiers staring at me. Their arms were folded across their chests. Their eyes held a deep resentment at my having pulled rank and jumped to the front of the waiting line. They clearly had decided that I was a pompous ass.

  The clock was ticking. Atsugi was waiting. As I regarded the folds of the curtain a thought occurred to me. I hadn’t really seen the priest on the other side. What if it wasn’t Father Garvey after all?

  “Father Garvey,” I said. “Is that you?”

  “My son,” said Father Garvey, heavily into his priestly duties, “we are meeting under the sanctity of God. That is a question you are not supposed to be asking.”

  I grinned happily, recognizing his voice. “Father, it’s me! Jay!”

  There was a moment of empty silence on the other side of the curtain. I began to wonder if in the eyes of Father Garvey I had committed some papal fraud that would cause him to rise from his chair and pull back the curtain and then banish me to my own Protestant hell, or at a minimum endanger our friendship. Then I could hear him chuckling.

  “And didn’t I always know you were a clandestine Catholic, Jay?”

  “Father, I’ve got a big problem. I need your help.”

  On the other side of the curtain, I could hear him sigh. “How big a problem? This is confession, Jay. There are many people waiting.”

  “I’m leaving for Manila at midnight. From Atsugi. I have to clear it up before I go.”

  “And what does it involve?”

  I gulped, taking a breath. “Fornication, Father.”

  He fell into silence, then I heard a sound. It was either a groan or a stifled guffaw. “Did they get to you, too, lad?”

  “It’s very complicated, Father. It’s personal but it—also involves my duties.”

  “And doesn’t it always?”

  “My professional duties.”

  “And aren’t we in Japan, then?”

  “You’ve grown cynical, Father, and it’s hardly been a month.”

  “And what a month it’s been, though.” He paused for a moment. I could hear him shifting in his chair. “Can you wait thirty minutes?”

  “For what?”

  “They’re expecting to talk with me, burdened as they are with sin. I cannot let them down, can I? Let me finish with confession. Then I’ll go with you to Atsugi. We can talk better that way.”

  I blanched. “I don’t want to talk about this in front of my driver.”

  “Then I’ll drive you. I do have a license, you know.”

  I felt myself starting to grin. “If you drive like you preach we’ll never make it.”

  “And when is the last time you heard me preach, you simple redneck pagan?”

  “And when do you ever stop, Father?”

  I stood up. The line of waiting confessors had grown, and most of them were glowering at me from the other side of the classroom. They could not hear our conversation, but watching my full, amused grin they seemed collectively confused, as if in addition to having cut to the front of the line I now was violating an obligation by not appearing properly penitent.

  “Thirty minutes, Father. Out front.”<
br />
  “Out front where?” he asked.

  “In case you don’t recognize me, I’ll be the guy in a khaki uniform, standing next to a green jeep.”

  “And what shade of green would that be?” joked Father Garvey.

  Thirty-seven minutes later Father Garvey trotted out of the chapel building, holding his cap in one hand and a pack of Camel cigarettes in the other. His eyes twinkled as he neared me. He was trying to be harsh, but even as he shook a disapproving finger in my face he glowed with a blissful smile: he was indeed happy to see me.

  “See what happens when I let you out on your own?”

  I offered to drive but Father Garvey insisted, as if it were a chance to find a few hours of liberation from his priestly chores. He did drive about as well as he preached. I began to think that it might qualify as a minor miracle if we reached Atsugi at all. Tokyo’s streets were filled with rickshaws, horse-drawn carts, military trucks and jeeps, old buses, and everywhere people walking. On all sides of us along the roads the city was flush with construction crews and the dusty, churning chaos that went into the rebirth of thousands of buildings.

  Father Garvey wended in and out of the slow traffic, ever at his gearshift and brakes and accelerator as the jeep surged and lurched, yelling and laughing, shaking his fist at some and waving gladly to others. I did not mind his driving. I had never seen him have so much fun.

  The canals near Yokohama were filled with squat, unpainted barges that once hauled coal, lumber, and produce. After LeMay’s firebombs incinerated tens of thousands of homes throughout the city, the barges had been turned into houseboats. The houseboats were teeming and overcrowded. Their occupants, whom the Japanese simply called the “water livers,” seemed to watch us longingly from the protals of the barges and the muddy banks of the canals that neared the road. Under the darkened, rain-ominous afternoon sky scores of bundled women knelt or squatted on the main decks, their hair wrapped in large kerchiefs. Surrounded by dreary pennants of laundry, they were cooking dinners on small out door charcoal stoves. The odors of boiling cabbage, roasting fish, and raw, recent sewage embraced us as we passed them.

  The rain came in, wet and cold. The road now paralleled a set of train tracks. We passed station after muddy station as we drove through the city that seemed never to end. Relentless throngs of drably dressed Japanese crowded every wooden platform, shivering under the rain. Great rushes of people raced into and out of the old, rounded railroad cars. The commuters seemed focused and intent, like armies. They hurried to and fro in groups, packing the cars to merciless capacity. Those who did not make the doors in time often crawled in and out of windows. Those who did not make the windows sometimes jumped onto the coupling gears that connected the cars.

  Raw energy, that was what I was watching. An entire nation boiling, anxious to get on with whatever it was that fate, the emperor, and the supreme commander were at last offering. And as we drove past them I found myself rekindling my respect for General Douglas MacArthur. For all his vanities and frequent paranoia, for all the moments of small-minded vindictiveness and obsequious deference to power, MacArthur did indeed possess a sweeping wisdom that was fueling and even helping to direct this energy. A lesser man might have been consciously stifling it and sending it deep underground, where it would later erupt in national resentment and possible rebellion.

  “So,” said Father Garvey finally as the traffic thinned. “You have committed fornication. And now you must face the woman that you love.”

  “You do have a way with words, Father.”

  “I told you, words are my profession. And I’ve been hearing this story rather frequently of late.” He glanced at me for a moment, then looked back at the road. “More than once?”

  “More than once.”

  “Are you done with it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s gotten into you, you idiot?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Well, why do you think I asked to talk to you?”

  “To tantalize me, Jay!” I could see his fleshy cheeks working to suppress a smile. “To tease me! To show me that you are capable of winning a lover in whichever country you happen to land. Well, you’re a regular Tennessee stud now, aren’t you?”

  “Father, I’m from Arkansas. And besides this isn’t funny.”

  “Well, he has a conscience. That’s a start.” He glanced over at me again. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “She was sent to me by the lord privy seal. He saw me looking at her. At first I couldn’t turn her away without shaming her.”

  “Ah,” said Father Garvey. “He couldn’t turn her away. Poor lad! He took her into his bed for the cause. The old conundrum, the Jay Marsh view of the universe. A tale of Asian shame versus Christian sin, is that what I’m hearing?”

  “Kind of,” I said. “It would have disgraced her if I’d just sent her back. She would have failed.” I shrugged wearily. “I don’t expect you to understand that.” He didn’t answer me. “There’s something else,” I said. “I have to keep seeing her. We each have a duty, here. We’ve become messengers to the other side.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Father Garvey, mocking me with false understanding. “She brings you messages from this fellow, the lord whatever—”

  “The lord privy seal.”

  “Yes,” said Father Garvey sarcastically. “And you pass on messages to him through her.”

  “Mostly I just listen,” I said. “And I pass on the information to General Willoughby and General Whitney.”

  “The Bobbsey twins of the occupation,” grunted Father Garvey.

  “Now you’re being disrespectful, Father.”

  “I’m a priest, Jay! I don’t even have to salute them!”

  “You criticize me, but you’re the one who’s lacked humility. You haven’t been the same since we’ve been in Japan.”

  “You’re trying to throw me off,” said Father Garvey. “To sidetrack the very road to your salvation.”

  I smiled sheepishly. He knew me too well. “Sorry. I’m embarrassed, Father! Anyway, I’m expected to continue. It’s become quite useful.”

  “No doubt!” Father Garvey glanced over at me again. “And the only way these messages can be transmitted is if you and she—”

  “Fornicate?” I said, trying to be helpful.

  “Fornicate. Of course.”

  “No. I mean, not really.”

  We were on the same road that we had taken from Atsugi on that first historic day after MacArthur’s grand entrance to Japan. As we drove I remembered it all, the Keystone Cops convoy and the lord privy seal in his morning coat and the tens of thousands of rigid, sweating infantrymen that the emperor had sent to MacArthur as his welcoming gift. So much had happened in those five short weeks that it seemed almost to have taken place during my childhood. Suddenly I felt very sad.

  “It just happens when I see her, Father. And I’m not strong enough to stop it. She’s so—pretty, and so sweet. And I can’t decide on my own to stop seeing her. It’s part of my job.”

  “Oh, a regular gigolo now, are we?”

  “Father, I’m not proud of this. That’s why I came to see you.”

  “Perhaps you don’t really love Divina Clara. Have you ever thought of that?”

  “But I do.”

  Just the mention of her name snapped me back into a different world, the place of harmony and happiness where I longed to be. Within a day I would be with her again. How could I keep this from her, and if I could not, how could I explain it?

  “It was a magical time, Manila,” said Father Garvey with a sudden, quiet passion. “The electricity of war. The loneliness and fear. The way that the trees and flowers and the very earth smelled each morning when the sun cooked out the rain of the night before. The joy of falling in love.”

  Watching his face, I could
see that his lament was personal as well as instructive, coming up from someplace deep inside him that he had never shown to me before. Had Father Garvey himself fallen in love in Manila? Were those booze-filled evenings of denial brought on not by an attempt to drown out his attractions but by the terrible, sweet confusion of having yielded to them? Suddenly I realized that he probably had indeed fallen in love and that his advice to me was wiser and even sadder than I had expected.

  “Yes. It was a wonderful time, Father.”

  “But it’s gone, Jay. It will never be the same. You can’t recapture it. So perhaps your future is elsewhere.”

  The jeep bounced and surged on the rough, potholed road. Dusk had settled over us like a hovering blanket. The rain was cold. Winter was coming, I could feel it in the icy air. For the first time in years I felt my face begin to numb, and it reminded me suddenly of fetching winter firewood for my father. Peasant poet that he was, he had even invented a phrase for it: the bleak rainwinter air. And here it was, upon us, in Japan.

  Father Garvey turned on the headlights. Just in front of us was the side road that led to the Atsugi airfield. As he made the turn I could see the air terminal just ahead. In a few hours I would lift off and reverse course, and by dawn I would once again step into the hot, perfumed, welcoming air of Manila. That moment would be my homecoming, far more so than breathing in the crisp salt air at the pier in Santa Monica or standing lonely in the cemetery just above the bleak rainswept cow pasture where my father still lay in an unmarked grave.

  “No, Father,” I said. “My future is in Manila.”

  “I understand that. In fact, I envy it.”

  He looked over at me and in his eyes for the first time I saw the truth, that Father Garvey’s past held a burning glory that was also in Manila, but that unlike me he could never reclaim it without abandoning his God. And now his words took on a different meaning. In a way, he was speaking them for both of us.

  “But if that’s where you want to be, then you’d best be tending to your future, Jay. Stay pure in your love for this woman. Have the courage to give her all your heart. Or you’ll end up a very lonely man.”