“Can’t you make arrangements?” the Colonel persisted. “The Japanese don’t look on these matters as we do. The men here have plenty of arrangements. The girls don’t expect them to marry. Japanese men marry as high as they can, without thought of love. Love is something else.”
The Colonel was an educated man. He knew that sex, while made up always of the same instinctive lust, found its satisfaction in ways as various as man himself. The sensitive and somewhat too delicately handsome face of the young man facing him with such resolute blue eyes revealed a nature complex beyond the soldier on the street. Lust might burn within such a frame but it could be slaked only by the magic of romantic imagination. It was not the need of the bull, yet it was as definite a need, though entangled in the mind and the soul and infinitely more difficult therefore to satisfy.
“I suppose,” Allen said reluctantly, “had I been the sort to make ‘an arrangement’ as you call it, it would have been better. Unfortunately I—can’t—”
The Colonel nodded. “Well, men aren’t alike. Give me a few days to think it over.”
Allen got to his feet at once, aware of dismissal. “Shall I—”
“I’ll send for you when I’ve made up my mind,” the Colonel said. He was already sorting the papers.
“There’s one more thing, sir,” Allen said standing his ground. “We have made up our minds. It is not a question of will I or won’t I. It is simply how to do what we have to do. What does an American do, in short, when he wants to marry a Japanese girl of good family? That is all I am asking you, sir.”
The Colonel flared at him. “Just leave it to me, will you, Kennedy? I can’t see my best officer make such a step without taking some thought I can’t think now—look at this!” He waved handfuls of papers.
“Yes, sir,” Allen said, and went away.
Actually what the Colonel wanted was to go home and talk with his wife, but an unmarried man could not know this. As soon as Allen had left the room the Colonel made no further pretense of work. He smoked several cigarettes while he pondered, then he called his wife on the telephone. She was, she said, doing nothing at all.
“I thought you were going to play bridge today?” he inquired.
“That’s tomorrow,” she reminded him.
“Oh? Well, I think I’ll come along early to lunch with you. I’ve just had some upsetting news.”
He left the office, wishing he had brought a topcoat with him this morning. The air was sparkling clear and already early chrysanthemum venders were everywhere on the streets. He had never seen such blooms, bigger even than the big yellow balls he used to buy for Edna to wear to the football games in New Haven. She had been a real success as an officer’s wife, always knowing the right thing and doing it, treating the lesser wives without condescension, and the higher ones with exactly the right deference but not too much. She had a sense of humor, although, thank God, not too much of that either. She took military life seriously, as a woman had to, if she was married to a Colonel.
At their house she was pleasantly waiting for him, wearing a nut-brown woolen suit that looked warm without being heavy. She was a brown-eyed brown-haired woman, and though he suspected that she tinted her hair to keep the gray hidden, yet he would not for anything have pried into her little secrets. She was not prudish in any sense. She understood men. Nevertheless she liked to be let alone while she was dressing, and he had learned that he was not welcome when she was fixing herself up, as he called it. He smiled at her now.
“You look nice. Is that new?”
“Heavens, no—ten years old, at least. Don’t you remember I bought it in London when we were stationed there?”
“I never know what you buy,” he retorted. “Is lunch ready?”
“I made cocktails, just in case.”
“Good.”
Over their cocktails in the big sunny living room in this house which had been requisitioned from a Japanese millionaire, he told her the unfortunate news.
“Kennedy has got himself mixed up with a high-class Japanese girl,” he began abruptly. “He wants to marry her.”
“Oh, Robert!” his wife cried reproachfully, as though he could help it.
“I know,” he said, “but what can we do? I told him all that you’re thinking.”
“Can’t he just make it—temporary?”
“That’s what I suggested.”
“Well?”
The Colonel smacked his lips slightly over his cocktail and dried his clipped mustache on the tiny napkin. “It’s not that Kennedy is a prude,” he said cautiously. “I don’t think it is a matter of morals.”
“What else?” she demanded.
“He’s overbred,” the Colonel said. “Know what I mean? He can’t just take his women and leave them. The kind that you can do that with don’t appeal to him. The only kind that rouse him are the kind that don’t expect to be treated that way.”
“Oh, he’s romantic,” she cried, robustly.
“Maybe,” the Colonel conceded. “Whatever you want to call it! But I’ve seen men that couldn’t go through the act unless it was romantic. It’s a nuisance, to say the least. Unrealistic. You can’t count on men like that. I’d rather have a fellow that stands in line for a couple of dollars and gets it over with and back on the job.”
She was an amazingly comfortable woman. You could say things like that to her and she didn’t mind. She knew what you meant. At the same time, knowing what men were like, she didn’t fall in love with them and make talk for him.
“Don’t take more than two, Robert,” she warned him when he filled his glass again. “You know what it does for you at noon.”
“Yes, dammit,” he said gloomily. She mixed a rousing good drink, tangy and on the sour side. He hated sweet stuff. “Well?” he said.
“I’m thinking,” she replied. She drank very little, but she never refused to drink with him. She was always willing, though not often enthusiastic. She was too sensible for enthusiasms.
“I’ll tell you,” she said after a few minutes. “Why don’t you wangle him a leave?”
“Now?” he demanded, “When Korea is looming?”
“Get him home. Get him into the home atmosphere. He lives in Virginia, doesn’t he? Remember the pictures he showed us of that big white house with the pillars? Get him home quick. Pull your wires. Bob! He’ll find a girl at home who will make him forget. My guess is that it is just a case of continence, not conscience!”
Her brown eyes twinkled at him and they laughed. They enjoyed a dirty joke together now and then, each knowing that the other was decent at heart.
“Smart girl,” he said feelingly. He was warmed with the alcohol, with the sunshine in the big room, with the general comfort, security, and superiority of his life. He put out his arm, pulled her to him by her neck, and gave her a mighty kiss. “Best girl in the world,” he mumbled against her acquiescent lips.
Kobori did not go home earlier, although he was desperately tired. For all his large softness of body he was a healthy and strong man, never tired physically, but easily tired from within. If he had a religion it was that an air of happiness and content must be maintained at all costs. He considered this his filial duty, as the only remaining child his parents had. He admired his father more than any man, knowing that he had sacrificed much for principle’s sake. Thus his father, almost alone before the war among the merchant princes of Japan, had declared that the policy of the militarists who controlled the government was wrong.
“We cannot possibly hold an empire by force,” Takashi Matsui had declared when summoned before a committee of the Diet.
“England has done so,” a general declared. “But the age has changed,” Mr. Matsui had reminded him. “India three hundred years ago is not to be taken as example of China today. The Chinese will not tolerate subjection by Japan. They have never been a subject people.”
“If we do not continue with our policy of building an empire,” the general insisted, “we ourselves will
fall into colonialism. Do not think that the West has given up the idea of empire. The United States is only now rising to power. Americans dream of empire.”
“They dream of trade,” Mr. Matsui said stubbornly.
“Trade—trade!” the general snorted. “All empire begins in trade. Englishmen went to India to trade but the end was empire for three hundred years. If we do not seize Asia, the Americans will.”
“You must remember, sir, that today there is also Russia,” Mr. Matsui said gently. “Russia is more to be feared than America.”
The general replied in so loud a voice his words rang through the hall. “We will take them one at a time, if you please!”
Takashi Matsui left not quite in disgrace, he was too rich for that, the family too ancient and honorable. But he went into prudent retirement. The Matsui interests were ignored, and only since the Occupation had they begun to be rebuilt. Meanwhile Kobori’s elder brother was dead and his second brother was lost in Russia. Seeing the deep sadness of his parents, he tried by all means to comfort them, and the best comfort, he had discovered, was to appear always happy before them. He had never revealed to them, therefore, any discontent in himself, and this stern self-discipline had made him a controlled and seasoned man.
His first thought now as he walked home, according to habit, was of his father and how he would present the blow which had fallen upon him in the best way to assure his father that it was not a crushing one. His mother would feel as his father did. She was an old-fashioned Japanese wife, so long and so exquisitely subdued that now she was only a shadow of his father, a reflection and not a substance.
The evening was clear and cool and the streets were lined with the baskets of chrysanthemum venders. He looked at them as he passed, to see if there were any varieties which his father did not have. He saw at last a very pale and pearl-pink one, the petals quilled around a center as yellow as gold. He stopped to buy the pot and have it wrapped in a bit of old newspaper. Then he carried it carefully the short distance to the gate. Before the Occupation no man would have thought of carrying a flower pot thus, but now it was considered democratic to do so. He enjoyed the freedom of its being convenient.
It would be pleasant, he thought, to present his father with the new chrysanthemum. It would be an introduction, which he could follow later or at once with the evil news. He would let the moment occur when it would. He hoped it might be soon, for it would be easier for him to control himself if his father knew, since he would be obliged to assure his father that he did not mind as much as he thought he would and that certainly he would not have wished for his wife a reluctant woman.
His father was, as usual at this time of evening, walking in the garden. Like most garden lovers, he could never enjoy the perfection of the garden as much as he wished, because his overzealous eye saw always some imperfection, too minute to be noticed by a stranger.
Now Kobori saw his father among the formal beds of chrysanthemums, his lips pursed as he stood above a magnificent bush of red and gold blooms.
“Kobori!” his father cried. “I think these are not as fine as last year!”
Kobori bowed. “I will come and see,” he said. “But first, Father, do we have this pink-quilled variety? I have not seen it, I think.”
Mr. Matsui put out his hands eagerly. It was those two outstretched hands which startled Kobori. They were so thin that every bone was clear. His father was as thin as this! He gazed at the beloved face and saw the same thinness. As usual Mr. Matsui wore Japanese garments and his neck was bare. Kobori could see the hollows of the collarbone, the sunken temples. He was taller than his father, broader and stronger in body than his father had ever been, and now he yearned over this aging man, transferring himself almost into the position of the parent. He made himself laugh.
“You have not this one? I have actually found a new chrysanthemum for you!”
His father’s dry brown face crinkled. “I would not have believed it possible.” The Matsui chrysanthemums were famous.
Together they bent over the new flower, absorbed in its fragile beauty.
“Now where shall we put it?” Mr. Matsui asked anxiously. “Certainly not with these red and gold ones. Your mother will like this new one. It looks like her. I shall place it here where she can see it from her window.”
He set the plant carefully in another group and then rubbed his hands together to free them from dust. The scene was so pleasant, the air so delightful, that Kobori seized upon the happy moment.
“Father, I am glad I found this chrysanthemum for you. It makes it easy for me to tell you something not so pleasant. My marriage will not take place.”
Mr. Matsui whirled on his son. “What is this?”
“Miss Sakai has decided against the marriage,” Kobori said calmly.
Mr. Matsui blinked; he could not speak for a moment. Kobori took advantage of his father’s instant shock. “You are not to be troubled by this, Father,” he said mildly. “I had been feeling somehow that the marriage would never come about. I think Dr. Sakai overpersuaded his daughter, in his devotion to you. You know how he admires you. He will suffer very much. We must think of how to spare him. It is really very good of Miss Sakai to let me know in time.”
“Did she, herself—” his father sputtered.
“Yes,” Kobori said tranquilly. “She is very American, you know. She came simply to my office and explained her feelings. She prefers to marry an American.”
“Is there an American?” Mr. Matsui demanded.
“It seems that there is,” Kobori said. “Under the circumstances, therefore, I am sure it is for the best.”
Mr. Matsui had now recovered enough to be angry. “It is certainly for the best, certainly so! A young woman such as this would never fit into our ancient family. But what of you, my son?”
Kobori smiled. “You see me. I am quite happy!”
Mr. Matsui put out his hands and clasped his son’s arm. It felt reassuring to him, so strong and soft inside the flannel coat sleeve. “How embarrassing, my son, for you, that she came face to face with you.”
“Not at all,” Kobori said lightly, “I rather liked her frankness. It was something new. She is an intelligent young woman. I think she will be happier in America than here. After all, she spent the first fifteen years of her life in California. She can never be really Japanese, I think, after that. We must think only of her father. A wonderful man, suffering much, I think, because he has lost one country and cannot relive his life in another,”
They walked slowly toward, the house, arm in arm.
“How to tell your mother,” Mr. Matsui murmured.
“Let us not tell her just now,” Kobori suggested. “Let us have the evening meal as usual. Then tonight perhaps you can tell her alone, when you have retired for the night. Tomorrow we will decide how to meet Dr. Sakai. It should not be too soon, perhaps. He must have time to arrange himself and create a proper mood. We should await this mood, in order that we can meet it suitably.”
Mr. Matsui leaned upon Kobori’s arm. “I think only of you, my son. So long as you are not wounded—”
“I cannot be wounded,” Kobori said. He smiled down upon his father’s uplifted face.
So clear were his brown eyes, so reassuring was the richness of his mild voice, that Mr. Matsui believed him.
“So, and therefore,” the Colonel said. “You may take off for home, my boy, next Thursday. You may have as long as you like, within reason.”
Allen grinned at his superior. “Don’t think I am fooled, sir.”
The Colonel did not look up from the papers he was signing. He was brisk and efficient this morning and very self-confident.
“Who wants to fool whom?” he retorted. “I don’t care if you are fooled or not. I want you to go home and think. Get back into your home atmosphere, see your family, look at the girls.”
“It won’t make any difference, sir.”
“It might,” the Colonel said. “If it doesn’t, then d
on’t come back here.”
He added these words in sudden anger at the obstinacy of this handsome young officer. He had put a lot into Kennedy, time and advice and liking. He was angry that it might all be wasted for a Japanese girl. Be refined, he thought, but weren’t there refined American girls? He did not believe in mixing the races. Already there were thousands of half-American Japanese babies, thousands of half-American Chinese babies, just as in India there were hundreds of thousands of half-English Indian babies. It was one of the accursed accompaniments of war and even the Pentagon could not lick the problem. While they were trying to keep America safe for the Americans, the men themselves were undermining the whole idea. Even Kennedy! Lust he could understand, when men were in a foreign country, but marriage!
“Thank you, sir,” Allen said formally.
“Oh, you’ll be back,” the Colonel snarled.
Allen went away. Three days! What could he do in three days? He was furiously angry at the trap that the Colonel had laid for him and into which now he was compelled to step. There must have been telephoning back and forth across the Pacific. Whose idea was it? The Colonel’s wife, of course! Only a woman could have thought of something so mischievous. Last spring he would have been mad with delight to think of getting home. Now the one thing he longed to do was to stay in Japan—forever, if that was the only way to be with Josui. He was shocked at his own faithlessness, for at this moment he would willingly have sworn never to go home again, never to see his parents, if he could be sure that he could spend his life with Josui. There was something more than love in his anger. He had never been thwarted in so high-handed a fashion. Very little had been forbidden him in life. An only child, he had been too precious for frustration, and he was not inclined to submit to it now. He had always had what he wanted.
Three days!
“Get your things ready,” the Colonel had said. “I won’t ask anything of you. I advise you just to go off without seeing the girl again.”
Well, this he would not do. He would go to Kyoto on the first train he could catch. Of course he had to go home. Not to go would be insubordination to a degree he did not care to face. But somehow he would have to persuade her that he was coming back. He wished that the Japanese fellow were not so near, so powerful, so ready. The doubt was whether Josui could hold out.
Hidden Flower Page 11
