This Scorching Earth. Donald Richie
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at the opposite end of the car was the next coach. There was no glass in the door, and the people were pressed tightly against each other. A student, in his high-collared uniform and cap, was pressed against one corner of the door-frame. Beside him was a short little man with a bow tie and a derby hat. The student seemed to be staring at the younger soldier, who looked back once and then turned toward the window again. Since he'd met her he didn't much like institutions like the Allied car.
Beside him the old soldier talked on. The Army was full of men like him. That was what armies were for apparently, to provide homes for otherwise homeless men like this one. The younger soldier wondered what would happen if he were to turn around and hit him. Nothing probably. Yet it was strange that while he himself wouldn't hesitate to talk back to an MP just doing his duty, still he wouldn't—couldn't—push around men like this one.
His barracks were full of them. He had to live with them. His flower-arranging lessons had been their delight once they had discovered them. But, come to think of it, they had been more approving than otherwise. They sanctioned any method which worked toward the given, the approved end, no matter how devious. But when they discovered that this wasn't what he was after, their attitude changed.
They no longer kidded him, and if he mentioned her, there was a depressing silence. They could somehow detect the difference between lust and love, and they behaved accordingly. And when they saw him being friendly to their Japanese janitor, they found a name for him.
Eventually the lessons were held at her house. He was surprised to find that hers was a wealthy family and that she had been sent to the Servicemen's Center, not to earn money, but to overcome a natural shyness which her parents thought excessive. They were quite delighted when she brought home an American. He usually bought presents at the PX for them, and they insisted he spend Saturdays and Sundays with them. She acted as an occasional interpreter or helped him with his Japanese lessons or just sat beside him while he, his shoes off, lying on his stomach on the tatami, looked through her photograph albums and decided he had never been happier. It seemed inevitable that he fall love with her.
When he wrote his parents about his feelings, his mother hadn't even answered, and his father, refusing to believe his son was serious, attempted a joke, asking if it really went sidewise. He'd written back angrily, and there had been no more letters for a time. In the barracks for several months now he'd been known as a gook-lover.
This disapproval of his parents and the soldiers he lived with had only made him the more determined in his belief in her and his love. Last night her parents had gone to Atami, and after the servants had gone to bed, he had scratched at the shoji, and she had let him in.
"... and so I went to the PX and I got the prettiest little dress you ever saw." The older soldier was still talking, leaning confidentially toward the other. "And, boy, you ought to seen those eyes light up like Christmas trees when I give it to her. I said, 'Baby, you done earned this,' and laughed my fool head off. And then, you know, first day she wore it outside, one of these god-damn snoopy Jap policemen stopped her and took her to the station. Thought she stole it, you know. Made her give up the dress and sent her home with just her coat over her underwear. Told her she wouldn't get it back until whoever gave her the dress showed up and said he had. So she came to me, all tears, you know." He stopped and blew his nose.
"What did you do? asked the younger soldier, interested.
"Me? Why, I never went near the little bitch again, of course. She knew where I was though and used to ride those damn crowded gook trains out Tachikawa way every day. I never let her see me after the first time, though. Jesus, you'll get into trouble, you know. You're not supposed to let PX stuff get to the Japs—black market. I don't mind the black market, of course, but you got to watch it and make clean business—this messing around with the Jap police could put me right in the stockade. So, if I hadn't been smart and tossed her on her big fat can, I'd of wound up with all sorts of trouble on the deal. See what I mean?"
"Yeah, I see what you mean."
This poor girl probably loved that raspberry-nosed bastard too. Japanese girls all seemed anxious to love and to trust. He closed his eyes and turned his back on the older soldier. The very thought of something like this happening to Haruko made him cold all over.
He remembered how she'd looked last night when he'd scratched on the shoji and she'd opened it. She'd been sleeping in a light-blue summer yukata dyed with a pattern of cranes. Her face was pink, and she rubbed her eyes as though she could not believe it possible that he was there.
"Why?" she asked softly, in English, looking over her shoulder, afraid the old servant might hear. "Go back. Do not do this," she continued in Japanese. She didn't seem afraid, merely concerned for his sake. "When they discover you, you'll be punished."
She was so sincere, and looked so much like a little girl as she knelt by the shoji with one hand delicately on its frame, that he could not help smiling as he said:
"I came to ask you to marry me."
"Marry you?" she asked, and her hand dropped into her lap as she knelt by the shoji. She had apparently never thought of this. "Do you want to be married. To me?"
He nodded.
The moon came from behind a willow, and her face was white.
He stood in the shadow, black, unable to speak.
Somewhere behind her a clock struck one. "Come in," she said softly.
He sat on the edge of the sill and took off his shoes, then swung his feet around and sat inside. She pulled the shoji closed behind him. He looked around him. It was the first time he had ever been in her room.
It was perfectly plain and rather small—six tatami in size. During the day the doors were opened and it became a part of the house. He had often seen it from the main room. This was where her mother knelt, sewing, during his visits—near enough to be seen, far enough away not to appear to be chaperoning them. At night, however, the doors were slid to and it became Haruko's room.
In the tokonoma, below the scroll picture, were some chrysanthemums, arranged in a flat, square bowl, their stems cut very short. There were chrysanthemums in the garden too. House and garden flowed one into the other, separated only by the paper doors, doors so insubstantial that they seemed to Michael more symbolic than actual, symbolizing a barrier that he had just crossed.
She knelt before him. "I could bring you tea. But it might wake the servant. Her room is very near."
He shook his head and looked at the futon where she had been sleeping. Her pallet was very narrow and looked small lying there on the tatami, reminding him of a child's bed. The pillow was small, round, and probably hard. It was still slightly dented from where her neck had laid against it. He put his hand under the padded coverings on the bed. It was warm inside.
"Are you cold? I could bring in the hibachi, but it might wake her. And in the morning too she would wonder. It is too early in the year for me to want a hibachi. Shall I bring it?"
He shook his head again. There was nothing in the room that showed it was hers except the high chest that held her clothes, and her few possessions on top of it. There was a tiny wristwatch and a small statue of Beethoven. Next to them was a small plastic wallet containing her identification card, some pictures taken on a school picnic almost five years before, and her monthly train pass. There was also a rather large French doll in the shape of a brown-satin negress with golden hair. Beside it there was a child's bank, which was made to resemble a Swiss chalet with painted snow on the roof. These, and the clothes in the closet, and a few books—mostly translated German and French novels—were her only belongings. They looked so fragile, these few possessions—one swing of the arm could break them all. Michael, thinking he had never seen anything so lovable, so unbearably sad as the top of that chest, turned quickly away.
"Are you hungry?" she began again. "I could—"
"No, I'm not hungry. Nor thirsty. Nor cold. I came to ask you to marry me."
She was silent for a moment. Then, suddenly, in English: "No, me promised."
He had noticed before that whenever