Butterfly's Shadow

by Lee Langley

  ‘Pinker-ton! O-kaeri nasai! Wel-u-come home!’

  Sub-Lieutenant Jensen was confused: surely the so-called marriage had been a temporary affair? He glanced at his senior officer who was staring, aghast, at the woman in the doorway.

  ‘I saw the ship,’ she called, ‘with your telescope. I knew it was you.’

  She spoke English, surprising both men. Pinkerton was not often at a loss; he reckoned he knew how to handle a difficult situation. The problem here was that he was uncertain what situation he was confronting. Maybe the girl had prospered, had stayed on in the house, and was merely pleased to see an old client back in town. That must be it.

  Then, almost invisible behind Cho-Cho, clutching at her knee, he saw the child; blue eyes fixed on his, blond hair bright in the dimness of the room. He was wearing a sailor suit. A living doll. And from the blurred jumble of images that occupied the inside of Pinkerton’s head, one sharp memory emerged: himself as a child, posing for a snapshot, holding his mother’s hand, on a visit to the State Fair. Staring at the child now, it all flooded back: the grinding music of the carousel, the crowd, the smell of hot dogs and the taste of cotton candy. The great treat, he recalled, had been for your dad to win a stuffed animal or a doll at the shooting range. A doll as big as a real live child. He recalled the snapshot, mounted in a leather-bound album rubbed at the corners, put away in some drawer. He had been wearing a sailor suit.

  Cho-Cho drew the boy close and stood waiting, her hands on his shoulders, as the men approached.

  ‘Here is your son. He is called Joy.’

  Then, as the child darted forward and flung his arms round Pinkerton’s knees, Cho-Cho knelt, touching her forehead to the ground. She rose to her feet, smiling.

  ‘You can talk to him. He will understand. He is an American boy.’

  Jensen saved the occasion. He stepped forward and introduced himself. The words flowed: he had heard so much about Japan, Lieutenant Pinkerton had told him what a great place Nagasaki was . . . He talked on, the soft Southern vowels filling the silence.

  Years later, in command of his own ship, under enemy fire, Jensen recalled that occasion as the moment he recognised he possessed qualities of leadership. At the time, he was aware only that Pinkerton seemed frozen, incapable of speech.

  Within the house, out of sight, Suzuki was about to leave for the late factory shift. She hovered by the window and noted that an ocean liner was anchored in the harbour. She picked up Cho-Cho’s telescope and looked more closely at the ship: the funnel, gleaming brass and pale deck. Leaning on the rail was a young woman wearing a yellow dress that ended at her knees, revealing legs in flesh-coloured stockings. Her hair too was yellow; cut short, barely visible beneath a tight hat that covered her head like a cooking basin. As Suzuki watched, a man climbed from a small boat on to the deck and approached the young woman. They embraced. The man was Sharpless-san.

  7

  For a few minutes, in the state of turbulence following his first sight of the boy, Pinkerton was incapable of anything more than a shocked recognition of paternity. He listened with astonishment as the child recited greetings, first in Japanese, then English.

  Suzuki, emerging from the house, eyes downcast, mortified to be seen in her work clothes, did her best to remain invisible as she skirted the group. But Pinkerton called out, ‘Hey, Suzuki! You’re still here!’

  She paused and bowed, still without looking up, trying to keep her factory-scarred hands out of sight, tucked into her sleeves. But Pinkerton, desperately seeking diversions from the calamity of this encounter, drew her aside and muttered that he needed a present for the boy – for Joey, as his Western ear had heard the name.

  ‘You understand what I’m saying?’

  Suzuki, who understood quite well what he was saying, cast a frantic glance in Cho-Cho’s direction.

  ‘Suzuki has work she must attend to—’

  ‘Sure, just as soon as she’s got me a little something for Joey, okay?’

  He pressed bills into Suzuki’s hand and pushed her cheerfully towards the path.

  ‘I should be going,’ Jensen said. ‘I can find my own way back to the ship.’

  Pinkerton, aware this would leave him stranded alone with Cho-Cho, waved away the suggestion:

  ‘Heck no, you’ll just get yourself lost. Enjoy the view, sniff that clean air.’

  But the young lieutenant proved obstinate and set off to catch up with Suzuki, who could point out to him the best way back to the harbour.

  On board the liner Sharpless greeted his niece affectionately.

  ‘My dear Nancy, welcome to Japan!’

  Mary was his favourite sister, and the girl had her mother’s looks, the same way of wrinkling her nose when she laughed, a mannerism he found endearing. He smiled, taking pleasure in the look of her, the shiny hair, the quick smile, the sense she brought him of an outside world where people were open and direct and said what they thought. He had grown to love this complicated, unfathomable, coiled society; there was a poetry to social intercourse here that turned humdrum exchange into an art form, but just occasionally he yearned for simplicity, the calling of a spade a spade. The American world.

  As they rode through town he made plans for her brief visit.

  ‘You’ll stay at the Methodist mission house, with Mrs Sinclair.’

  Disappointed, Nancy murmured, ‘Not with you?’

  He shook his head, smiling.

  ‘My quarters are hardly suitable. I think I should warn you: Nagasaki has made some progress – look at the paved streets – but conditions are unlikely to match American expectations.’

  He did not add that it had been his own decision to choose a traditional Japanese house rather than westernised accommodation.

  He asked for news from home, but as they rattled along the road he kept breaking in to point out an unusual building, or a view worth noting. She saw with some surprise the affection, even pride, with which he regarded this malodorous, primitive place.

  Only when she was seated across the desk from him did he enquire why she had so suddenly decided to join the ship which brought her to Nagasaki. She gave a small, gleeful jiggle of the shoulders.

  ‘I thought you’d never ask! The trip’s horribly expensive, but Daddy said he never gave me a proper twenty-first birthday present, so this is it.’

  An excited laugh and a wrinkling of her nose. ‘My fiancé is here and it seemed a cute thing to do, to give him a surprise!’

  ‘You’re engaged! I didn’t know—’

  ‘It happened quite quickly.’ She laughed again. ‘He swept me off my feet!’

  ‘And he’s here in Nagasaki?’

  A tray with tea and refreshments edged its way round the half-open door, followed by a young servant. He bowed and placed a small salver with a scribbled note on the desk. Sharpless read it and glanced up at the youth: ‘Lieutenant Pinkerton was here?’

  He heard Nancy cry out in surprise and at once he understood everything. He felt a deadening sense of inevitability: he was about to watch a disaster take place, unable to influence or avert it.

  ‘You are engaged to Lieutenant Pinkerton.’

  She blushed. Sharpless was astonished that in this modern day American girls could still blush, but then he remembered that, despite the flapper dress and cloche hat he was familiar with from the American newspapers, Nancy was not a modern girl. She was the granddaughter of missionaries, the daughter of churchgoing folk, herself trained to be a teacher. She would, of course, have a sense of duty, he thought, and was not comforted.

  Sharpless wondered later whether, had he been at his desk when Pinkerton called, he could have altered the course of events. But what would he – could he – have done? Momentum, once established, has its own imperative; the situation had moved beyond his power to affect it. There was no runaway horse to be mastered here, no vehicle out of control; just three people moving towards a calamitous impact. Sharpless was a quiet man, not given to emotional extravagance, b
ut he found himself groaning as he contemplated the picture before him.

  In the house above the harbour, Pinkerton felt time stretching like elastic, past and present shifting disconcertingly: now, as on that first time, he felt the ridged tatami mat beneath his feet; saw the way light fell on paper walls; inhaled the smell of sweet rice. Across the room, a woman with almond white skin waited.

  Seated cross-legged, he engaged his son in a game, a sleight of hand in which an errant thumb mysteriously vanished, then reappeared. The child gurgled with delight as Cho-Cho watched. At one point Pinkerton looked up and caught her eye, but turned back immediately to the game, putting off a conversation that could only be painful. In this situation natural behaviour felt unnatural.

  ‘Pinker-ton’ – she had never called him Ben – ‘I will prepare some refreshment for you.’ A hint of a reassuring smile. ‘No tea ceremony!’

  He was surprised by her grasp of English; she had obviously been studying. And he knew that what her words were really saying was, ‘we must talk’, but she would never say that: it would be too quick, too open, not the Japanese way.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m fine.’

  When Suzuki hurried back with a small package wrapped in thin purple paper, Pinkerton handed it to the boy with a flourish:

  ‘Here you go, Joey. Surprise!’

  The boy had never before received a present, and he held the rustling paper sphere cupped in his hands, turning it, stroking the dark wrapping. Impatient, Pinkerton tore the flimsy paper to reveal a wooden spinning top patterned in scarlet and yellow.

  ‘Koma!’ the boy exclaimed, clapping his hands.

  ‘Thank ot-san for your present.’

  ‘Arigatou gozaimasu,’ he said obediently. ‘Thank you, ot-san.’

  Suzuki watched them for a moment. Outwardly they were a family engaged in a family game, but she saw how Cho-Cho’s hands were clenched in her lap; the sheen of sweat that gleamed on Pinkerton’s face although the day was cool. She backed out, bowing, and ran down the hill to the factory.

  The woven reed-straw of the tatami mat was proving useless as a spinning surface. Pinkerton reached for the low table and set the top spinning smoothly on the gleaming lacquer. As it spun, the red and yellow painted rings seemed to rise and hover magically in the air above the twirling disc. Again and again the child handed the top back to his father –

  ‘More!’

  Another spin.

  ‘Motto!’

  Another chance to snatch in vain at the hovering rings.

  Pinkerton ruffled the boy’s fair curls, smiling. Then he got to his feet.

  ‘I’m due back on the ship.’

  There was awkwardness: he knew she was waiting to be drawn into his arms, embraced. Instead, Pinkerton scooped up the child and kissed him heartily on both cheeks, then handed him to his mother, so that the boy was between them, making an embrace impossible. He threw a quick, discomfited glance at Cho-Cho and consulted his watch.

  ‘I better get back. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He pinched the boy’s cheek. ‘So long, kid!’ And then, remembering: ‘Sayonara!’

  Pinkerton struggled to get his shoes on, hands and feet failing to co-ordinate. He left hastily, not looking back, feeling her eyes on him as he strode down the hill. In his white uniform he sweated, moisture crawling down his back, soaking his armpits. He took off his cap and wiped his brow, his brain a buzzing hive of bees.

  From the house she saw him remove the naval cap; saw the way the sun glittered on his hair, the golden hair of her golden husband, who had not touched her since he arrived.

  8

  Pinkerton had seen on a market stall a woodcut of a Japanese dragon caught in a trap, its body writhing in panic. He walked through the Nagasaki streets now in a state of agitation no less panic-stricken, his thoughts twisting this way and that.

  One: he had a son. Two: the mother was Japanese. Three: he had a career to consider. Four: he had a fiancée. Another man might have put these priorities in a different order. Again and again he ran through the situation, a dragon trapped in a pit, a rat trapped in a maze: a son, a woman he’d almost forgotten, a fiancée . . .

  He had found his way without thinking to the consul’s office, perhaps intending to ask his advice, but as he reached the entrance, a woman appeared in the doorway – a vision in yellow, an impossible sight: a girl who should be safely far away in Oregon stood before him as though materialising from his wild thoughts. She laughed delightedly at his astonishment.

  ‘Surprise!’ she cried, opening her arms wide like a self-presenting conjuror.

  He folded her in an extravagant welcoming hug and saw, over her shoulder, Sharpless watching them, bleak faced. Once again Pinkerton felt sweat break out on his body.

  And Sharpless, seeing his niece flinging herself into the arms of a man he despised, felt incredulity melt into something like horror. Was Nancy, like Cho-Cho, to become a woman betrayed? He felt a sinking of the heart, a taste of the pain that lay ahead.

  The afternoon aged into the evening and a tray of tea brought in by a servant was removed untouched, to be replaced by another, steaming hot, which cooled untouched in its turn. Nancy, huddled in the consul’s oversized wooden chair, tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Pinkerton had finally run out of words and the silence lengthened. She looked at the two men appraisingly, as though considering their relative merits. Her uncle seemed to have shrunk into himself; he looked old, the long face gaunt and drawn; Pinkerton sat very straight, naval cap tucked under his arm, as though facing an examining board – which in a way he was.

  Nancy said slowly, her voice drained of expression, ‘So. You have a child.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Did you not know this before?’

  ‘Not exactly . . .’

  She frowned in puzzlement. ‘How could you not know exactly, Ben? Either you know you have a child or you don’t.’

  He had been uncertain, he said. He tried to explain the difficulties: the naval life, moving about from place to place, communication chancy . . . It sounded thin, even to his ears.

  Nancy attempted to keep to the facts that could be established. The certainties of this messy affair.

  ‘So the child’s mother died.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘No?’

  Sharpless saw a steeliness enter his niece’s face, an expression he had seen in his sister. She leaned forward, hands gripping the arms of her chair.

  ‘You have a wife?’

  Haltingly, he tried to build a picture for her of how it had been. A man, lonely, far from home. The local custom. A wife here was not for always. It was . . . what was it? The words filled his mouth like fur balls in a cat’s throat; he coughed, tried to swallow. ‘It was a mistake. But it happened.’

  A spasm of disgust. She glanced carefully about the room, as though assessing the framed prints on the walls.

  Pinkerton’s ruddy complexion had drained into greyness. He looked and sounded like a sick man as he fumbled his way through a thicket of words: he knew it was impossible for Nancy to condone what had happened. He did not expect her to forgive him; nothing could make up for what he had done. He was the worst of men. All he could attempt now was to do what was right for the child. But he wanted her to know that she mattered more to him than the world—

  Nancy stood up briskly.

  ‘I’m going back to the ship now.’ She addressed Sharpless, her voice as mechanical as a railroad station announcement:

  ‘Will you get a rickshaw for me, please?’

  ‘Wait!’ It was almost a shout. Pinkerton added, quietly, ‘Please. Hear me out.’

  Sharpless stood up. ‘I’ll leave you—’

  But Nancy, in a quiet, dead voice, asked him to stay.

  And Pinkerton talked on, sentence after stumbling sentence, his words filling the room like a thickening gas.

  He said desperately, ‘It’s not the kid’s fault. He’s my son and I can’t just abandon him. I want to g
ive him a life, I reckon it would be the Christian thing to do. It would be asking too much of you, I know that. But – can we talk? Please?’

  After a while Sharpless found it hard to breathe. He reached for a fragile cup of cold tea and drained it. He sensed Nancy’s hesitation. Should he speak? She was on a knife-edge and he could tilt her one way or the other. But which way should it be?

  He was no Solomon; he wanted no part of a situation that was bound to end in tears. Pinkerton, backed into a corner, was reluctantly seeking what would be the right thing to do. Cho-Cho, he knew, remained wrapped in a protective garment of hope and illusion that prevented her from seeing the reality before her eyes. One day, she had always maintained, one fine day when the swallows returned, so would her husband. He had returned, but not as her husband, and despite the sunlight the day had taken on the chill of betrayal.

  But he was getting ahead of himself: there were three people involved here and the third was being introduced to circumstances bizarre beyond anything she could have imagined.

  He expected anything from hysterics to fury, but when, after a long silence, Nancy spoke, she seemed oddly calm, seemed at first to be changing the subject.

  ‘They told us on the ship that there’s a special church here, an old wooden church.’

  ‘That would be Oura Cathedral,’ Sharpless said.

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘Not really.’ He felt unreality descending: were they actually having a conversation about a Gothic wooden church? Perhaps his niece was unable to face the truth of what she had heard and was retreating into a sanctuary of ignorance.

  Nancy said, ‘I would like to go there. Now. With Ben.’

  ‘You are aware it is a Catholic cathedral,’ Sharpless said cautiously.

  ‘I think I can speak to God from a Catholic cathedral as directly as from a Methodist church, Uncle Henry.’

  She rose and stood waiting. Sharpless marvelled at her composure, that a girl so young and innocent seemed of the three people in the room to be the one in charge.

  He led the way to the street and put them into a rickshaw.