Clifford was sprawled and snoring across the room, still in his uniform. I hadn’t heard him come in the night before. I headed for the latrine—crapped, showered, shaved. He was still out cold when I returned. There was a letter on the table by the bed. I’d typed it for him just two days before so he could have it ready, as usual, for the mail on Friday. I doubted the penalty for missing Bunny’s deadline was all that grave, but it wasn’t like Clifford to let things slide. I thought I’d do him a favor, drop his letter at company HQ on my way to shop for Arthur. To my surprise, there were two letters waiting for me. One from my mother, another from my wife. Somehow letters from both of them at once felt like a bad omen. I wasn’t ready to read them yet, so I tucked the envelopes in my back pocket and went out into the street. I passed a road crew hanging new signs—the main thoroughfare had recently been rechristened MacArthur Boulevard—and the Red Cross station, where the walls were pasted over with notes in Japanese from locals still seeking information about soldiers who never made it home or family members gone missing in the confusion of the air raids. On the Ginza, I started with the street vendors because I didn’t have much to spend on Arthur’s present. Partway down the second block, I came upon a pair of GIs, both negroes, both privates, both lanky and tall, ogling Namiki in her display window. They were debating whether or not she was real, and it’s true that with her long neck, her expressionless face in profile to the street, she looked lovely enough that she might have been dreamed up in some mannequin maker’s workshop. These GIs were pressed and dressed, and I figured they were on leave from a base out in the provinces.
“See there—she blinked.”
“I didn’t see nothing.”
“Ain’t nobody keep that still that long.”
“She can if she knows the secrets of the Orient.”
The one looked at the other like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. I was standing right behind them. I tried to catch Namiki’s eye, but if she saw me, she didn’t let on.
“What?”
“Secrets of the Orient.”
“I heard what you said. I just don’t know what you saying.”
That’s when I cut in. I couldn’t stand it. They were too much.
“She’s real,” I said.
“You hear that?”
“He don’t know nothing. He trying to make a fool of you.”
“Just wait,” I said.
“You know so much, how bout tell me when this place open up?” He pointed at the sign by the door that led downstairs to the Oasis.
I told him and he said, “Will there be ladies?”
I explained about the tickets and the hostesses and so forth and he said, “Whass our chances?”
I laughed and said, “If you want to get laid, try Ueno Station. That’s where you’ll find the working girls.”
“Aw, man,” he said, “Willie Wall don’t pay for no pussy,” and at that precise moment, Namiki shifted her pose and both GIs jumped and squealed and grabbed each other. Then they started in on how the one or the other was so scared, so dumb, and that bad omen feeling lifted from me like a fog. I left them waiting for her to move again, as if movement rather than stillness was the trick of her profession. A little farther down the sidewalk, I found a vendor selling toy soldiers made from salvaged roofing tin. Hand-painted, snipped into action poses, folded in such a way that they could stand. I bought five samurais for a dollar, and by the time we’d settled up I was ready to take a closer look at my mail. The morning was pleasant, summery—a day that would be hot but wasn’t yet. I crossed the street to a café and ordered tea in Japanese, a man in full possession of his life.
I hate writing this letter but it’ll hurt no matter what and better to get it over with. I’m pregnant. There. Now you know. I’ve been carrying this secret for months but I’ll be showing soon and I can’t hide it much longer. You’ll want to know about the father but I can only tell you that he is no longer in my life. It is enough that I have been unfaithful, that I am a low, despicable woman, that I made a terrible mistake, that I am alone. I wanted to kill myself but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to get rid of the baby, but I prayed and prayed and I couldn’t do that either. Oh, Van. I’m sorry. I know you don’t believe me but it’s true. Everything happened so fast with you and me. It hardly seemed real, and the longer you were gone the less real it seemed. None of this is any excuse for what I’ve done, and I’m sure you’ll want to ask for a divorce. I’ll accept whatever you decide.
I read the letter three times then hoofed back to the Imperial Finance Ministry intending to compose a reply, but I just sat there, my mind filled up with static. The strange thing was I didn’t feel anything. I rolled one sheet out, rolled another in like there was something wrong with the paper. This little bird kept lighting on the windowsill, then darting off when it noticed me at the desk. I stared at the keys. I missed my language class. I was still sitting there, hours later, when Clifford showed up. He leaned into the room from the open door.
“You seen that letter?” he said. “It was right there on the table.”
“I mailed it for you,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Thanks.” Only then did he come inside. It was like he’d been waiting for an invitation, like I’d offered one. He plopped down on the bed and began powdering his feet.
“You wanna get drunk?” I said.
He said, “I’ve got plans.”
I thought maybe, since I’d done him a favor, he’d invite me to tag along but he did not. The little bird flitted down again, spotted me, fluttered off. Slowly, night was falling over Hibiya Park. I watched a local man sweeping the sidewalk. The little bird came and went. Finally, he stayed gone. By the time darkness settled over the city and the barracks had fallen quiet around me, I had yet to type a single word.
After a while, I remembered the tin soldiers and the letter from my mother. The soldiers were in my breast pocket but I couldn’t find the letter anywhere. I hadn’t read it in my distraction, and now it dawned on me that I’d left it on the table at the café. I trudged back to the Ginza in the dark but the café was closed, the letter nowhere to be found. On impulse, I ducked into the Oasis. I stood at the bar drinking beer for a long time but couldn’t get drunk and they didn’t serve anything stronger. A band was playing by the dance floor, local musicians doing popular American songs. The music wasn’t bad but it was apparent that the singer didn’t understand what he was saying. Likely he’d learned the lyrics phonetically, like we did in class, except he didn’t waste time on the meaning of the words. Not only was his accent atrocious but his phrasing was all over the place and he kept emphasizing the wrong parts of the lines. I watched Willie Wall and his friend dancing with one girl after another. They must have spent a fortune. I watched Namiki, too. She was a popular choice among the hostesses. When she danced, she hung her wrists over her partner’s shoulders and twitched her hips slowly like a cat.
Eventually, I’d had enough beer that I had to use the head. When I came back out, Willie Wall was asking Namiki to dance but she was ignoring him. I was too faraway to hear what he was saying, but it was easy enough to guess what was going on. Lots of locals were scared of negroes. They didn’t have negroes in Japan. He’d say something and she’d gaze over his shoulder and pretend she hadn’t heard. He’d say something else. Same response. At first, he looked confused. Maybe he thought something was getting lost in the language barrier, but after a minute he realized that he was being snubbed. You could see the emotion change in his face. He grabbed Namiki’s wrist and tried to drag her out to dance, but she snatched her arm away. She wouldn’t look at him. His friend tried to get him to settle down but he couldn’t now. He was being humiliated and he wouldn’t stand for that. None of the other hostesses or employees stepped in. Didn’t matter that he was a private. Didn’t matter that he was black. He was still a soldier. The white GIs were all hanging back, waiting to see what would happen. It would be funny or it would be ugly. Either way it was bound
to be entertaining. That’s when I remembered Clifford telling me about the Communist and I walked over and tapped Willie on the shoulder and he whirled in my direction.
“Remember me?” I said.
After a second, a kind of angry glaze fell away from his eyes.
“Mr. Know-It-All,” he said.
“Right. Listen. You don’t want to mess with this one.”
“Don’t nobody tell me who I can dance with.”
“I’m not telling you you can’t. I’m telling you you don’t want to. Nothing good is going to happen now.”
He stood there for a second, rigid as a billy club, and then he seemed to realize the trouble he was causing, the trouble that might be coming next, and his shoulders sagged and he pinched his mouth into line. Finally, he said, “Fuck it,” and went fuming off into the crowd. His friend followed him out. The gawkers went back to their business. The whole room breathed.
“Thank you,” Namiki said.
A new song was starting up, and without prompting she stepped into my arms. She was soft and warm, close enough that I could feel her heart beat—frantic at first, slowing little by little as we turned. She smelled like American perfume. It was all I could do to keep from bawling. I told her I didn’t have any tickets but she let me have the dance for free.
IV
I met my wife at a Fourth of July dance while I was doing basic at Fort Benning. I see no reason to identify her here. Suffice it to say that both her names are nouns—like Hope or Patience, Baker or Lane. I proposed without telling my parents or asking her father for permission. Who knows why she accepted? The base chaplain performed the ceremony, such as it was. For a honeymoon, we took the train to Savannah. Wandered in and out of shops and made small talk like strangers. It was obvious, even then, that we didn’t love each other but we pretended otherwise. Back at the hotel, I asked her to do things neither of us had ever done before, all the things the men in my unit told lies about to pass the time. Afterward, slick with sweat, windows thrown open to the night, she talked bravely of the life we might have together after the war, of meeting my parents, of a little house somewhere, children, and I let her voice wash over me, thinking how much my mother would like her and how my father would be charmed and how I could hardly wait another minute to disappear, listening without listening, like hers was a voice on the radio and I was already far away. My wife had it right in her letter. The longer you were gone the less real it seemed. This didn’t make her confession any easier to take, but neither was I able to muster indignation for very long. Probably she had imagined pining for a boy under fire, a boy she might never see again, and here she was married to a typist. And I’d hardly been a model husband. I’d quit wearing my wedding ring almost as soon as she was out of sight. I’d stayed faithful, that was true, but I wondered now if that wasn’t due as much to gutlessness as decency. I suppose I should have been relieved. My wife’s infidelity cleaned the slate for me. But the truth is I wasn’t relieved at all. I waffled from humiliation to empathy, from bitterness to concern, never able to settle on how I was supposed to feel.
I didn’t see much of Clifford the next few weeks. He’d rented a place for Namiki after all, a room at the back of someone else’s house in the Oimachi neighborhood. Not as lavish as Namiki had hoped, he told me, but they had access to a kitchen and a privy, and there was a bathhouse down the street. It was nice enough, apparently, that Namiki held up her end of the bargain. He still came around sometimes to pick up a change of clothes or to drop off a letter for me to type, but most mornings he reported for duty directly from her arms.
His arrangement wasn’t particularly unusual. Plenty of locals picked up extra cash renting rooms to soldiers and their girls. Mocking the local mispronunciation, we called these girls onri s because they devoted themselves to onri wan soldier rather than accepting money from anyone willing to pay like panpans. What was unusual about Clifford was that he was a corporal and most of the onri s belonged to officers. Enlisted men couldn’t generally afford the freight. And I knew Clifford was working hard to pull it off. In his most recent letter, he’d informed his mother that he would be sending less money home for a while because he and his roommate—namely, me—had thrown in together on a motorcycle. That was, of course, a lie. Paying for Namiki’s room had left him strapped, even with whatever he brought in on the side.
Without Clifford, the room felt big and empty and quiet. I had tried and failed a dozen times to reply to my wife’s letter. Eventually, the sight of the Super Speed began to nag me like a toothache, so I returned it to its cardboard case and stowed it under my bed. But even there I could sense its presence, so I began to spend more time away. I’d head over to the Oasis after chow time or walk the quiet footpaths in Hibiya Park, the stars blurry through the heat, the moon big enough to cast shadows, but most nights I loitered in the rec room, where the air was always riotous with Ping-Pong. In the barracks, the most popular variation of the game was called King Pong. According to the rules, one player kept his paddle and his position at the table until another player managed to beat him to 11 points. Then the victor would take his place as the reigning King Pong until he in turn was beaten and so on. There was one player, a mess cook named Gene McCoy, who was particularly serious about his game. Around the same time I began hiding from my typewriter, Gene began a remarkable three-day run as King Pong. Nightly, challenger after challenger rose up to face him, and nightly he beat them back. Most of the men took pride in the speed and power of their respective games, but Gene was all english and control. He made the ball feint and dance. He didn’t overwhelm his opponent with power so much as dink him into clumsy, frustrated submission.
On the final night of Gene’s reign, Clifford showed up and took a seat off to the side. I hadn’t laid eyes on him for several days, and right away I sensed something was wrong. Honor Guardsmen didn’t usually mix with the rest of us. They had their own Ping-Pong table down the row, their own habits and haunts. Plus Clifford looked wound up, jittery, his eyes weary and veined. He watched a couple of games before asking if he might have a turn. The gallery gave way with an air of nervous anticipation. I think half of them hoped that Gene would put the Honor Guardsman in his place and the other half hoped King Pong would finally be toppled from his perch.
Clifford played gamely but Gene beat him 11–6. He waited patiently for another turn and was dispatched again, this time 11–3. The third time he circled back to the table, Gene gave him what we called a skunking. That is, if one player reached 7 points without the other player scoring at all, the game was called. On the final point, Gene sliced a backhand over the net that so wrong-footed Clifford he lost his balance and lurched into the table, scooting it several feet across the floor. He stood there, panting, visibly enraged. It looked like he was going to refuse to give way to the next player, and I worried what might happen if one of us asked him to step aside. I was just rising from my seat, wondering how best to approach him, when he dropped the paddle on the table and left without a word. Gene lost the very next game. He was so shaken up, apparently, by the potential of Clifford’s anger that his spin went flat and he was dethroned 11–8 by Rudy Grand. But I missed all that. I went after Clifford instead. I found him in bed with his fists buried in his eye sockets.
“You all right?” I said.
He raised one fist, glanced at me, then covered his eye again.
“Namiki threw me out,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“I gave her the clap,” he said.
It was as difficult to keep from laughing as it was to restrain myself from asking if he was sure she’d gotten the clap from him. I assumed he knew he was infected—so many GIs picked up one disease or another that people wondered about your character if you didn’t experience painful urination now and then—but even I understood that it was awfully quick for Namiki to be showing signs.
“I don’t know why she’s so pissed,” he said. “I’ve got her on penicillin. And it’s not my fault a
nyway. How was I supposed to know the whores in this country are diseased?”
“You tell her that?”
“That’s right about when she threw me out.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Nothing. She’ll take me back. She has to. Who’s gonna want her now she’s got the clap?”
“What if she doesn’t?”
He shrugged. “Rent’s paid through the week. If she doesn’t take me back by then, it’s sayonara love shack. She can go home to her parents. She can live on the streets, for all I care.”
In the next instant, he yanked his pillow out from under his head and smothered it over his face and did a muffled bellow.
“Who am I kidding?” he shouted. “Fuck me, Van. I’m in love with a Nip girl with the clap!”
Finally, I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. He looked so pitiful. He lowered the pillow to his chest and stared at me from his bed.
In the morning, Clifford returned to his rented room and found it vacated, all Namiki’s things removed, the only evidence of his occupancy the seppuku sword he’d bought on their first date hanging forlornly over the futon. He cajoled Eguchi, a day later, into accompanying him to her parents’ house. He wanted to be absolutely certain that none of his pleas were mangled in translation and he hoped a relative friendly to his cause might prove useful, but even Eguchi was barred admittance by her mother. Convinced, now, that an elliptical approach was best, he tried Fumiko but she not only refused to hear his case, she sent him home with a shiner. As soon as he was in range, even before he’d had a chance to tell her why he’d come, she launched a potato at his head with her good hand.
Finally, he turned to me. His plan was simple: I’d go down to the Oasis, ask Namiki to dance, and convince her to forgive him before the song was through. She couldn’t turn me away, he said, because I’d rescued her from the dangerous negro Willie Wall. I had my doubts about his chances, but I agreed to try. Not too many months before, Clifford had expressed his envy of my marriage, and suddenly I found myself jealous of him, jealous even of his heartache. At least he knew what he wanted.
The Typist Page 4
