Butterfly's Shadow

by Lee Langley

  When the evidence was visible to all, Cho-Cho invited Sharpless to tea. She had not previously honoured him with the ceremony. Now he sat, legs folded under him, while she knelt, setting out the little cups, the scoop and powdered green tea and bowl; boiled the water, whisked and waited, concentrating on every movement.

  Self-consciously he smoothed back his lank hair, almost Japanese in its darkness – not a grey hair to be seen though he was nudging forty-five. His scrawny, weightless body settled comfortably into a posture foreigners usually found painful. He folded his hands and watched her precise movements, the way she honoured each act in turn.

  She had performed the tea ceremony for Pinkerton once, settling, as now, for the shorter version that lasted barely an hour, but it had not been one of their successes. He commented to Sharpless later, ‘Pretty long wait for a mouthful of dishwater.’

  Sharpless had tried to explain that the ceremony required years of training and practice: ‘Chanoyu is an art, a ritual of mystical significance which must be performed in a studied, graceful manner.’

  He could enjoy it, he was enjoying it now, watching Cho-Cho’s small hands lifting, pouring, whisking the liquid to a froth. The bowl she used was precious, one of her few possessions, a relic of a once-prosperous family. Black Oribe ceramic, it could be three or four hundred years old. He admired its lack of symmetry, the rustic surface. Still, he guiltily found himself acknowledging that the whole point of this extended ceremony, its arcane complexity, detail and importance, was, as Pinkerton had implied, the making and serving of a cup of tea.

  After the ritual had been completed, the tea tasted, and the utensils carefully washed and dried and cleared away, Cho-Cho gave Sharpless her news. He offered his congratulations and told her he would write at once to inform Lieutenant Pinkerton that he was to be a father.

  ‘A big surprise!’ she said, smiling. ‘It will bring him pleasure.’

  Sharpless certainly agreed with the first statement. He was less sure about the second.

  When the reply arrived, a brief scrawl, the large, untidy handwriting covering the page, it was accompanied by dollar bills in large denominations. Pinkerton wrote that he was sending more than enough to cover the expenses of the confinement and extend the rental of the house. Cho-Cho, he added, was a working girl in good health, and as for the child, under the circumstances, who could know if it was even his? No personal message enclosed.

  Sharpless sat for a long time at his desk, feeling a greyness settle over him; a sense of failure, of defeat, though who or what had defeated him he could not have said. Next day he called on Cho-Cho, and told her he had heard from Pinkerton. The lieutenant was, of course, delighted by the news. He had sent money to cover all expenses.

  ‘And does he say when he will be returning?’

  ‘It was a brief communication, between duties. He must be extremely busy.’

  It was cowardly. It was also wrong, to continue to give her false hope. But he told himself that a woman expecting a child could not be expected also to handle news that would destroy all hope. Surely there would be a better time, a gentler way to lead her into reality?

  When the child was born, Sharpless paid Cho-Cho a visit, bearing gifts.

  She held out a tiny bundle, red-faced, snuffling. Sharpless saw that the infant had a fuzzy cap of pale gold hair; he stared out, unfocused, with small blue eyes. The Pinkerton genes were evident.

  ‘Here he is, Sharpless-san. My Kanashimi.’

  He looked startled: ‘You’re naming him Sorrow?’

  ‘It also means Trouble.’

  ‘Poor boy!’

  She relented. ‘It’s a little joke among mothers. You tell him, Suzuki.’

  ‘He is named Kanashimi meaning its opposite – Sachio.’

  ‘It’s to fend off the evil eye. If you’re superstitious, it’s a good idea to conceal the arrival of happiness,’ Cho-Cho said. ‘I’m not superstitious, of course, but . . .’ she laughed. ‘Just in case.’

  In due course, when the boy was older and less vulnerable, Sharpless was informed, he could address the child by his true name.

  He paid a flowery tribute of admiration to the new arrival, presented appropriate gifts and left.

  Alone, Cho-Cho leaned over the swaddled bundle, studying the tiny features. She must learn to play a new role: that of mother. But she must first grow accustomed to the very existence of a puzzling creature, one that had grown inside her – how unlikely that had seemed at the beginning, and then how natural. But now, escaping from her body, this small entity that had been part of her must be acknowledged as separate. She must learn to respect that separateness, while still feeling the two of them were one. She breathed in the odour of his body, as sweet as milk and rice, rested her palm on the crown of his head, feeling the faint pulse; lifted a tiny hand with its shrimp-like fingers that already could grip, the pink bud of a mouth that knew its way to her breast. Happiness. Sachio. Joy.

  Sharpless was aware that the cash from Pinkerton must be running low. He tried to give Cho-Cho money he claimed had come from the absent husband. She handed it back. Whether she believed him or not he was unsure, but the response was exquisitely reasoned:

  ‘I will wait until he returns; it is not . . . correct this way.’

  Sharpless guessed she might feel that accepting an impersonal payout reduced the relationship to the level of commerce. She was a wife. Was she not?

  Meanwhile she used her ingenuity to maintain independence. A zoologist friend of her father’s had once told her that there was as much nourishment in the larvae of silk moths as in a domestic fowl. Her father had retorted drily that it would take a considerable number of larvae to equal a chicken breast. But to nourish a growing child she was prepared to try anything. Next to the house was a white mulberry tree; the cocoons were collected and split open; the silkworms cooked with appropriate seasoning. She dug up the garden and planted vegetables; what had once been flower beds were now pushing up food crops. She kept chickens. She learned to fish, baiting the hook with limpets pulled from rocks. She collected and cooked snails. But there was one aspect of reality that was not negotiable: she could no longer afford to employ Suzuki. Any object of value had been sold; the money had run out and ingenuity could not be stretched to cover the hole that yawned before her.

  The difficulty was fundamental: how to arrive at a solution that would enable them to separate without embarrassment; without loss of face on either side.

  Cho-Cho waited until the infant’s bath time; a conveniently distracting moment, with both women concentrating on the baby. She began by expressing concern for Suzuki’s possible state of mind: her own regret that they lived so quietly, spent such uneventful days.

  ‘You must be growing restless in this small house; there is so little opportunity for you to exercise your talents. Really, Suzuki, I must apologise.’

  She reached for the towel the maid held out. ‘Sharpless-san was telling me about a family newly arrived from Italy; they have one of the big houses the other side of the harbour . . .’

  The father was in the silk business and would be spending some time inspecting factories in the province. The Italian wife was looking for someone to help with two small children.

  ‘Sharpless-san could provide an excellent reference for you. This could be a fine opportunity . . .’ And so forth.

  The maid’s smooth, square face remained expressionless. She nodded. Suzuki needed no lessons in the nuances of social deviousness. She expressed her gratitude to Cho-Cho-san, and indeed to Sharpless-san for his kindness in mentioning the Italian family.

  ‘I will make enquiries without delay.’ She broke off to take the baby and prepare him for sleep. She knew what her employer was really saying, and Cho-Cho knew that she knew. But the form had been observed.

  A few days later Suzuki announced that she had found work. Not with the Italian family, but in a silk-reeling factory on the outskirts of town. She was grateful to Sharpless-san: his mention of th
e Italians had been of help to her. This was an excellent opportunity; she was grateful to Cho-Cho-san for drawing her attention . . . And so forth.

  Then, a hesitation; a diffidence: it would be a great kindness if Cho-Cho-san were to permit Suzuki to occupy her usual sleeping space at the back of the house – for a while.

  ‘Luckily the factory shifts are quite long so I will not be in your way.’ And so forth.

  Cho-Cho knew what her maid was really saying and Suzuki knew that she knew. Nothing was spoken, all was understood, and the transition was made: Suzuki would continue to spread her futon in a corner of the house, and asked permission to make ‘a trivial contribution’ to the household expenses. Cho-Cho insisted that she must stay until she found more comfortable lodgings. It was, of course, they agreed, a temporary arrangement.

  Next day, Suzuki put on her thick cotton work clothes and went out into the pre-dawn mist and the unknown territory of her new life.

  After the silk farmers had gathered the bulging cocoons from mulberry trees stripped bare to feed the ravenous larvae, they took them to the factory. Suzuki joined the line of girls waiting to take charge of the loaded baskets and carry them indoors to the cauldrons of boiling water, where the process began.

  When she stumbled home from the factory long after dark, too exhausted to eat, an odd reversal of roles took place: it was Cho-Cho who persuaded her to nibble a few grains of rice; who undressed and washed the dazed girl and helped her to the futon spread out for her while, half asleep, she tried to describe her day.

  ‘Poor worms! They work so hard, spinning threads, wrapping themselves in their fat cocoons, and then they’re tipped into cauldrons and boiled alive. I have to pick out any that have become moths—’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘They crack open the cocoon, to get out. The thread is broken, useless.’ She yawned, too tired to cover her mouth. ‘When the cocoons are soft, we scoop them out of the water and very carefully start to wind the threads on to iron reels. They’re beautiful, as fine as cobwebs.’

  ‘It sounds difficult.’

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Difficult. I have acquired a skill.’

  But when Suzuki spoke of the awesome size of the silk workshop; the long lines of tables where the women worked; the impressive quantity of thread produced – ‘the thread from one cocoon can measure from the door to the shore’ – she said nothing of the boiling vats that spilled over, scalding her arms, the fingertip testing of water temperature, the dangers of unstable machinery.

  When she came home one night with bleeding hands, she shrugged away Cho-Cho’s alarmed questions.

  ‘Machinery can break down. Girls are injured.’

  Cho-Cho, distraught, spread healing ointment on the damaged fingers.

  ‘You must take greater care.’

  Together the two women clung to a precarious existence, and in the small house on the hillside Suzuki could still inhabit another world, one where a baby learned to crawl and then to walk. Where the air was fragrant with steaming rice and shoyu and where clean clothes flapped on the line outside the door. Alongside her at the workbench were girls who slept in cramped, airless dormitories, who had to line up for baths, moving from factory to sleeping quarters like prisoners. She pitied them; she considered herself blessed.

  Occasionally Sharpless visited, bringing a tactful gift, small enough to be acceptable, slipping an additional offering to Suzuki, who could discreetly add it to the household store.

  Cho-Cho welcomed his visits; he was a link with her father, with life as it had once been, and with Pinkerton. He trod warily, conscious of his privileged status, careful never to overstep the mark. He was behaving, he hoped, in a properly Japanese way. At least on the surface. But then, to the Japanese, he reminded himself, the surface was the reality. He felt reassured.

  One day, as he was complimenting Cho-Cho on the precocious intelligence of her child, she committed the social indiscretion of cutting in, her voice barely above a whisper; attempting English, as she often did with him, for practice.

  ‘Sharpless-san, where is my husband?’

  Where was Pinkerton? He had no idea, but he attempted a vague explanation of the difficulties of maritime life. The lieutenant could be anywhere.

  ‘Ah. So I will wait.’

  Sharpless learned to be devious. Back in town, he quietly arranged to extend again the lease of the house, telling the landlord that the money had been sent from America.

  The marriage broker had been biding his time, keeping an eye on the house above the harbour. One morning he came knocking, all smiles, to tell Cho-Cho he had a proposition, a customer. She slid the shoji door closed without a word.

  ‘Be realistic!’ he called. Pinkerton was gone, swallowed into the ocean as far as they were all concerned.

  ‘Luckily there are plenty more fish where he came from, you can pick and choose.’

  But for Cho-Cho there was only Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton; she already had a husband.

  ‘Obstinacy is not a virtue in a woman!’ the broker exclaimed, exasperated.

  He was heading for the road when the door opened and Cho-Cho called to him. Beaming, he hurried back.

  ‘I have some good offers for you.’

  But it was she who had an offer, for him.

  ‘Young women in Nagasaki who “marry” gaijin will be more valued if they can speak a few words of English.’

  She could give them lessons for a small fee. She could also teach them about American culture, which would please their temporary husbands.

  The marriage broker felt he could be frank: vocabulary and culture were not uppermost in the minds of visiting foreign customers. Passing on social skills to other young potential ‘wives’ would not necessarily increase their charms. On the other hand, the charms she had to offer . . .

  Cho-Cho closed the door.

  Even when he returned a few days later to tell her a respectable elderly gentleman, a local merchant in need of an heir, was prepared to offer her a genuine marriage, a permanent arrangement, Cho-Cho remained unmoved. On his next visit Sharpless gently suggested she might consider this latest offer: the security was surely preferable to a future alone?

  She turned to the window and looked out over the harbour. She gazed fiercely at the empty sea, as though through the force of her will she could create a ship, forge metal from water and draw it towards her over the curve of the horizon. And she repeated the familiar words: she knew her husband would return.

  ‘One day, when the swallows nest again, his ship will be there in the harbour. He said so.’

  As an act of faith she had held back one narrow strip of earth in the garden simply for decoration – ‘my American flower bed!’ Surrounded by the closely planted edible greenery the orange and pink blooms sang out, a banner of gaudy vividness.

  But as time passed, as humid months gave way to fog and snow, as she warmed her hands at the little charcoal stove under the table; and the dark filigree of the swallows twice more filled the sky without his ship steaming into harbour, she grew thinner, and the flowers, untended, withered. The bright petals shrivelled, dying back into the dark soil.

  6

  When Pinkerton called at the consulate, Sharpless was not in his office.

  Leaving a message to say he would look in again later, Pinkerton set off across town with a junior lieutenant on his first trip away from home, Pinkerton acting as guide and mentor to Jensen, just as Eddie had for him, three years before. Moving speedily through the pungent market district, Pinkerton remarked on signs of modernisation since his first visit:

  ‘They got themselves a fire-truck! In my day it was a guy with a pole and a red paper lantern running ahead of a hose reel.’

  He saw that some of the streets had been paved, some shops enlarged. But the stall where he had bought a bracelet one day as he passed was still as he remembered it. He glanced over silver and enamel jewellery spread out on a white cloth: cloisonné. She had taught him the name for it. />
  He drew the young officer to a stall selling sweetmeats. ‘Jensen, you should try this: Nagasaki castella, sort of a Portuguese cake.’

  Pinkerton was not given to self-searching: in his experience you took what life handed out, knocks included, and moved on. But as they wandered through the turmoil of the little town he felt unsettled; he felt stirrings: he realised with a shock of surprise that he had been happy here.

  He wondered, with a twinge of guilt, how things had worked out for Cho-Cho. Not that he had anything to reproach himself with: she was a tea-house girl, it had been a commercial arrangement, but she was a sweet kid and he hoped she had found other protectors as generous as he had been. The existence of a child lurked at the back of his mind, but as a dim ghost of a thought; he pictured for a moment a sort of infant Cho-Cho, a tiny Japanese girl in a cute kimono such as he had seen in the market. There was little reality to the picture, and certainly he felt no sense of connection. The image that retained a hold on him was of Cho-Cho herself, clad in silk, a porcelain doll, the gentleness accompanied by a surprising passion. (Though, there again, he wondered whether ‘passion’ was something they taught the girls, a tool of their trade; a classy way to turn a trick.)

  ‘It’s a great place for a visit,’ he told the new boy, and threw in a few facts: the system of the temporary wife, the house, ‘home comforts’.

  It was this mood of easy nostalgia that led him to the road round the harbour and up the hill, to take a look at the wood and paper house – if it still existed – where he had enjoyed sweet nights of pleasure on the futon, and learned to eat raw fish.

  He was explaining the curious concept of a Japanese yard – ‘a bunch of rocks, gravel and moss, basically’ – as they rounded the last bend and came in sight of the house. To his surprise, the area around the house appeared to be filled edge to edge with green plants; vegetables, by the look of it. At the far end chickens pecked and clucked. The door of the house was open, and standing in the entrance they saw a small figure, thin, very upright, in a plain blue kimono. She called out, her voice clear and firm.