“My little guide,” he said, “take me to see the gardens.”
In a garden, he thought, there will be hiding places, grottoes, rockeries, quiet pools, hedges, banks of shrubs. He suspected her of mischief when she led him to no such place.
“The Ryoanji Temple,” she explained. “This is the Stone Garden. It is one of the most famous.” She gazed at an arid rectangle, a desert enclosed by a low wall. Dry rocks stood like islands in a dead sea of white sand. Upon the sand a wide rake had drawn static waves, motionless in long curves.
“A garden?” he inquired. He forgot for a moment the purpose of the day. There was something here he did not understand, a dignity immense and incomprehensible.
“You will see,” Josui explained gravely. “Count the stones, if you please.”
There were fifteen groups of five and two, of five and three, and three and three.
“They are not all islands,” she explained. “Some are made to look like resting water fowl,” she pointed with her little finger. “There, if you please, wild ducks.”
The stones were natural, uncarved, shaped only by wind and water and brought here to sleep, but it was true they looked like waterfowl.
“Do you understand this garden?” he demanded.
“Not wholly,” she confessed. “I know only because my father has brought me here. He understands. At least he knows. This garden explains the pure soul of the man who created it. It is famous and very old. If we stayed here many hours, in silence, we would begin to understand.”
He shook his head. “Not me! I like more life.”
So in patience she took him to a green garden in an old palace, an enchanting place, where low hills united ancient gardens with the sky. Yet even so, it was no place for love. It was a garden watched, its every leaf secured. He saw no workman, no one except a few like themselves who seemed only sight-seers, but there was no wildness to provide freedom. He walked constrained, impressed, admiring but confined. He did not dare to touch her hand. She too seemed remote. He felt that she belonged here, but not he.
By noon he wanted no more of palaces and temples, not gardens or gods, either. “I’m hungry,” he said suddenly. “Also I have walked miles enough on polished stone. We will go somewhere to eat, and then I shall hire a carriage and we will go outside the city. I want to see some wild country.”
She was almost dreamlike in her acquiescence. Having yielded so much, having committed the monstrous sin of the stolen day, she seemed willing now for anything. His blood ran a little faster for this thought.
She was gay enough at lunch, answering his sallies, replying to his questions, telling him who the few people in the small restaurant might be. She had never been there before, an obscure place on a hidden street, where only the excellence of the shrimp tempura made it possible to remain, that and the pale green tea and the dry and snowy rice. A clerk, she suggested, when he nodded toward a pallid little man in a gray canvas suit, perhaps a clerk in a small shop; a servant girl, stopping by to buy a few shrimps; an old man, lonely, eating here instead of at his home; a man of middle age, greedy for a taste of good food that he could not afford at home because of many children.
But later, on the mountain side, he found her still remote.
They left the rickety carriage at the foot of the hill, the old white pony half-asleep, the aged driver incurious, mute at least before an American in uniform. They climbed the hill by a path of brick laid through the bamboos. It seemed a lonely place and yet he suspected it. The bricks were swept too clean, the ferns were planted too amiably through the bamboos, there was no underbrush, no thicket. He found a plot of moss and stopped.
“This is good. Soft as a cushion, isn’t it? Sit down, Josui.”
She obeyed, seating herself on her knees, a little distance from him. The fine hairs about her forehead were wet and clung to her smooth damp skin. Her lips were very red. He looked at her a moment, daring himself to cross the distance she had made. Abruptly he moved himself near her and took her hand.
“Josui!”
She turned large clear eyes. “Tell me about America,” she said.
America! It was far from his thoughts at this moment.
“All morning I have been showing you Japan,” she said. “Now show me a little of America. I can remember California. But tell me of Virginia, your home, your parents. Are they alive?”
She did not withdraw her hand, nor did she move away from him. But to talk of Virginia, to ask about his home was to send him far from her.
“I am so curious,” she begged.
“Well,” he said most unwillingly. “I live in a small town. That is, our house is in a small town, not far from Richmond.”
“Richmond?”
“Like Tokyo,” he explained, “but not so big, the capital only of Virginia.”
“Tell me how is your house,” she coaxed.
He looked down at her hand and began to play with the fingers gently, her little left hand, wearing no rings. She wore no jewelry of any kind.
“A big house made of wood,” he intoned, “painted white. Six big white pillars, an old house, my great-grandfather’s house. Around it acres of land, a thousand, I reckon, woods and hills, a river.”
“It sounds beautiful,” she sighed.
“Inside the door a hall, a wide stair winding to the very roof, all the usual rooms.”
“Where is your room?” she asked.
“Upstairs, left, at the front.”
“I remember carpets in America, pictures, curtains, and so forth,” she said.
“And so forth,” he agreed.
“Bed and chairs with legs, also tables?”
“Also and all with legs.”
“Your family is what—father and mother?”
“And me—no more.”
“You are the only child?”
“The only.”
She looked solemn after this. “You are perhaps too precious,” she suggested.
He laughed. “Sometimes I have thought so.”
She pondered awhile. “And your mother—how is she?”
“Well, I believe.”
“I mean, looking?”
“Oh!” He understood. “Rather small, slender, quite pretty. But she is strong, very strong.”
“Your father?”
“A big man, quiet—lazy, I reckon. That is what my mother says.”
“He has some job?”
“He is a lawyer, but he doesn’t practice. He doesn’t have to, I reckon—since my grandfather died.”
She understood this meant wealth but delicately she refrained from mentioning money. She gazed over the tops of the bamboos below a small cliff some yards from where they sat. The city of Kyoto lay far below, but not so far actually as it looked.
“I must go home soon,” she said suddenly. “I must go home when the college classes are over.”
This reminded him that the day was passing swiftly. He flung himself back upon the moss and pillowed his head on his folded arms. “Not yet, Josui.”
She looked at him with eyes he could not understand. Not fearful surely?
“Lie down beside me, Josui.”
She shook her head and a blush flooded up her white neck.
“Why not, darling?”
She did not reply but he saw her lower lip tremble and she seized it between her teeth.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked tenderly.
“Some afraid,” she confessed.
“I won’t hurt you, sweet.”
She shook her head.
He asked most gently. “Have you forgotten that I love you?”
“No,” she said in a small voice. “I remember it always. But why you love me?”
She turned and looked at him now, her eyes enormous and grave. He sat up suddenly. Why indeed did he love her? She had made it impossible to do what he wanted to do. “I don’t know,” he said. “I ask myself. I’m—call it hungry, I reckon. I haven’t seen anyone here that I could love. Only y
ou!”
“You are going away in a few days.”
“I am coming back.”
She smiled. “Then we can wait,” she exclaimed. “It is not necessary to decide now why you love me.”
She rose almost abruptly and stood looking down into his upturned longing face. Then as suddenly she began to run down the hill, lightly, swiftly, and there was nothing he could do except follow her, half angry, half amused. She did not stop until they were at the carriage, when she cried out, panting, “Oh, I have not run like that while I have been in Japan! I used so to run in California, but not here—never!”
The old driver stared. The horse woke, and blew hard through its nose.
“Is this the end of the day?” Allen demanded.
“Just the one day,” she answered, “one day with you, Al-lenn Ken-neddy!”
She had not spoken his full name before, and she made the syllables separately with a pretty emphasis on each, a promise, perhaps, of many times to come.
The day, which had seemed so impossible to Josui when it was begun, thus ended in a dreamy joy. She found her books undiscovered behind the wisteria root. It was late and everyone had gone home except the old gateman. He was sitting asleep in his tiny room, as he often slept whenever the pupils were gone, and the college yard was quiet. He saw her neither come nor go, and she paused for only a moment more on the street, to bid Allen Kennedy good-by.
“But I have not seen enough,” he protested. “I have not seen Nara. Everyone must go to Nara.”
“You should have gone with your friends,” she said primly. “It was not my fault.”
“It was your fault,” he argued. “I saw you. I had to find out who you were.”
He treated her with a half-joking, half-childish approach, this to defend himself rather than her. He was growing frightened at the intensity of his purpose, unwilling to penetrate his own motives. He did not wish to do what he saw other men do every day. He would not believe he was as other men are. Nor did he wish to believe that Josui was the common Japanese girl whom he saw in Tokyo aping the commonest girls of American streets.
To his surprise she was looking at him with a sad surprise, her face grave.
“You wish me to go with you to Nara tomorrow?” she inquired.
“I humbly wish it,” he replied.
She continued to look at him. “I must think,” she said at last.
“How will I know what you think, Josui?”
“If I am coming I will be here tomorrow morning but without my books.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
They parted without touching so much as their hands, as though each knew the other’s reluctant and fearful longing.
Josui was stunned by her own wickedness. For she went home as though she were coming from the college. Her father was late, he had been called to an emergency, and she and her mother ate their evening meal alone. This was hard, for had her father been there as usual, it would have been easier for her to maintain her usual reserve. Her mother was so yielding, so gentle, so good, always anxious only that she be happy. It was hard indeed to meet her penetrating and kind questions. She hated to lie, and yet how could she avoid it now?
“It must have been hot in the schoolroom today,” her mother said.
“The room is on the north side,” Josui replied.
She busied herself with the small dishes for her mother’s tray.
“Please do not trouble,” her mother urged. “I have very little appetite. I do not dare tell you.”
“Tell me what, Mother?” Josui asked.
“The emergency is in the Matsui family. It is Kobori. Your father fears appendicitis.”
Josui must concern herself. “Kobori? Oh, I hope it is not too serious! He is the last son in that house.”
“And such a good son,” her mother said.
“I have always heard that he is,” Josui replied. She bent her head and began to eat, keeping her eyelids downcast.
“Your father feels such responsibility,” her mother went on.
“Mr. Matsui is his best friend,” Josui replied.
“It is not only that,” her mother said. “Your father is also thinking of Kobori. He feels great liking for this young man. He often wishes—many things.”
Josui knew what her father wished, but she could not reply even for her own protection. She sat in a dream of secret love, her whole self removed from this place, from her home and her parents. She had already left them, heart and body cleaving to the young American. It was no use to pretend. She could only hide the truth until she knew what he meant to do. She had seen many American young men, though none, no, not one like him. The ones she had seen were the noisy ones on the streets, the louts, the boys, the drunken soldiers, the grabbing, jeering, pushing roisterers. On parade they looked clean, they were silent, always obedient. They marched in perfect lines, feet rising together and coming down in great unified footsteps. On parade they looked neither to the right nor the left, unless they were told to do so, and then all eyes turned as one. When they were not on parade, however, they broke into fragments, and each fragment became a noisy unit, still like all the others. She despised them, avoided them, hiding inside a gateway somewhere until they passed. The girls whom they seized, the Japanese girls, were even more to be despised. Indeed, she was not like them. She was unique. But he also was unique. Their love could not be like any other therefore. Only what should they do?
She answered her mother absently, sometimes lying. When the meal was over she saw her mother looking at her with puzzled eyes
“Is there something you are feeling that you do not tell me?” her mother asked
“Only a problem that came up during school hours,” Josui said. She was amazed at the ease with which such answers came to her. They were couched in truth while they were lies. Someday she would be sorry to know she was a liar but at this moment, when all her mind and blood were filled with the same sweet daze, she did not care.
She withdrew very early, saying that she was tired, and she did indeed go to bed soon. The night was clear and from her pallet on the floor she looked through the open screens into a sky full of stars. There was dampness in the air, perhaps, or some stillness at least, which made the stars hang large and soft. They did not sparkle. Instead they shone with a yellow gleam, like distant lanterns of silk. Was he wondering, too, what they should do? When two people fall into love, as Americans put it, is it possible to do nothing? Something was always done. She recalled the magazine stories she used to read in California. Love there was always followed by marriage. First was the kiss, then the declaration, then the request for the date of marriage. She had received the kiss, he had made the declaration. It remained therefore for him to ask for the date of the wedding, if these customs were what they had always been. In Japan much was changed by the war. It might be true in America, also, especially in Virginia.
She sighed, thought of his face, smiled, and longed for tomorrow.
The weather connived again with sunshine. Waked by the sun Josui rose early, and though she saw her mother, she did not meet her father. He had come in late, her mother said. He had operated upon Kobori, who was not yet out of danger, for the appendix had burst, and he was still anxious. He had not come home until after dawn but he had given orders that he must be waked by nine o’clock if he did not wake himself.
Josui was gone by half past eight. She left suitable messages for her father, and then forgot everything. There had been a small thunderstorm in the night, the streets were still wet, and the sky was glorious. Allen was there, waiting for her. This time the old gateman stood looking thoughtfully into the street. Josui saw him there and stopped, and Allen, seeing her, walked toward her. They met just inside the narrow alley to the west of the college.
“He didn’t see you,” Allen said.
“We will go by the back streets to the railway station,” she said. “The journey to Nara is less than an hour from here.”
They joined hands at
once and thus they walked in silence along the wet street. Drops from overhanging trees fell upon them in a little rain. She wore a clean blue cotton skirt and a thin white blouse, and the drops made small clear spots through which her skin showed. She never wore a hat and the drops fell on her face and her hair.
“Dew on a flower,” he said.
She smiled up at him, her eyes liquid with love.
The early train was not crowded, and he insisted on going at least second class. She saw, or refused to see, the inquisitive gaze of the passengers, wondering that a Japanese girl of good family should be with an American. Nothing could be done about it but it was not approved. Women looked at her haughtily and men half angrily. She tried not to know, she spoke in her limpid fluid English, quickly explaining one place after another as the train passed.
“Nara was Japan’s first permanent capital,” she said in a clear rather loud voice. “At first we had no fixed capital. Each ruler put the capital wherever he lived. But in the first century Nara was fixed upon, and continued for seven reigns as the capital, which was then changed to Nagaoka, also near Kyoto.”
“What shall we see in Nara?” he inquired, aware that she spoke for the benefit of others than himself.
“What you wish,” she replied. “There are shops, palaces, temples, shrines, the great Buddha, the Imperial Park.”
“The park,” he said promptly. “Is it big?”
“More than twelve hundred acres.”
“Then the park,”
She kept talking, seated carefully away from him, until the train whistled shrilly for Nara. They came out, and still somewhat formally she engaged rickshaws and they rode to the park. It was necessary to take even more time to remove the unpleasant memory of the accusing eyes of the passengers. In the park they wandered for an hour, then coming upon a lonely spot, he could not restrain his desire. He was leading the way along a narrow path when suddenly he whirled upon her and took her in his arms.
There was now no question of surrender to the kiss. It was no longer strange. It was known, it was intolerably sweet. She hungered for renewal. It was still an experience, a fulfillment in itself.
Hidden Flower Page 6
