Please Enjoy Your Happiness Read online

  I have started to dream in Japanese again since rediscovering your letters. Why am I dreaming that way? Sometimes I do not exactly know. But I did begin thinking about Japan again with emotion for the first time in many years in 2011, during the disaster of the Tohoku earthquake, when I spent long hours on my couch watching live video feeds from NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, Japan’s equivalent of the BBC) on my laptop computer. I was an emotional shipwreck. And then again I was overwhelmed by nostalgia after I bought opera tickets in 2012 for Madama Butterfly. And there was that April evening in 1996 here in Arizona when I encountered the gentle Oe Kenzaburo, the 1994 Nobel laureate, drinking tea in a hotel bar and staring out the picture window at a big pile of rocks through his antique spectacles with perfectly round lenses. He told me, at the end of a long conversation about love and longing in which your name came up, ‘Don’t fail to write about this lovely woman before you die or you will regret it when you are in Heaven.’ It is only now, after reading your letters, that I realize how much you cared about me. Maybe age has made me wiser, more appreciative, and wistful. I grew up, finally, I suppose, and now I am an old man looking back, far back, to that brief time in my life when we were more than friends. Sometimes you are talking to me in my dreams. I am lost in Tokyo or some other city. I am looking for a train to take me to Kyoto, but I can’t find the train station. You are speaking Japanese, and I am struggling to understand you. How strange that in my brain there is a reservoir of fluent Japanese! You might be interested to know that when I went to university I majored in Japanese language and history, and that I lived and worked in Tokyo in the 1970s. I was an idiot in my youth. I made no real effort to look for you. It is only now, after my marriages, that I appreciate who you were and what you did for me. You told me over and over again, ‘Go to university.’ You demanded it! You told me to write poetry. You demanded it! Write for newspapers. Write for magazines. Write books. ‘Write! Write! Write!’ you said. I was reeling, not comprehending, astonished at what you were telling me. You imagined reading what I had published. You saw something in me that I could not begin to see in myself.

  Here is the first of your letters, written soon after the Shangri-La left Yokosuka, as it often did after ten or fifteen days in port, to patrol the South China Sea. It was delivered to the ship by mail plane. The Shangri-La would sail away for two or three weeks, and then it would be back again. We were together, and I would go. We were together, and I would go. From April until the last day of summer in September, I was always arriving and leaving. You were always there, waiting on your hilltop, hiding from crows and other malevolent creatures until you could jump down the 101 steps and dash through the wet streets lit by the neon lights of nightclubs so you could greet me.

  Dear Paul,

  Just I came back home now. Nobody stay, so make me feel better. It is only one day since we parted. I did not want to work. I did not know how hard it is to work until I finished tonight. I request the studio to print a photograph of myself today. So I’ll get it tomorrow then send you that photo with this letter. Please look at the woman you see in the photo and smile just a bit because I want to see your smile in my dreams.

  Well, first of all, what pleases me is the fact that you have never given to me decadent impressions from a moral or ethical sense. I can’t explain this very well. I hope sincerely that you understand. But I think that we had spend time for a right and lovely time. You were just you, and I was just me, and I knew we could not become lovers. The beautiful and important thing is that we both found that we loved showing respect. In that way we loved each other. We respect each other and then we surround this respect with the kind of longing that a poet would call “ardent.” Is that the correct word? I think so, because I am an older woman and the word ardent means a lot to me. Because I am an older woman I can say to you with so much happiness, but maybe with some tears, that even if I cannot meet you again I will never regret that I spent my time with you.

  It was for me not the sad, bitter Wakare mo tanoshi [Even Parting Is Enjoyable, the 1947 film by Naruse Mikio about women struggling with the chaos of postwar Japan] but some day our experience will become a very nice memory for us. You were so considerate to me. You were always kind to such a selfish woman as I am. I never forget you. How happy I was, except for my sorrow coming or parting. I was filled in everything by only your being with me and our conversations. Every moment of mine was filled and when we were together even if we did not say anything, we understood each other. And, after you left, my feeling of existence lessened so I could not write you last night even though I wanted to so much.

  This morning I sent off your ship from my mountain. When I went to the top and at 15 minutes to 8:00 already sailors formed a line on the deck. When I had heard the whistle, I wish I could use magic to make stop the ship. But . . . just at 8:00 o’clock the Shangri-La started to take you away from me. Then when the ship became just a form, I came down from the mountain before my eyes become as hazy as the mist hanging over the ocean. Those were my maiden eyes.

  Well, I hope you are thinking of me and write to me. I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Please take care of yourself and remember me to be your friend. I’ll write you again. I hope you understand this broken English and please after correcting this letter, send a copy back to me to study.

  Still my cold is sukoshi [just a little] but soon all right, so don’t worry about that.

  Love,

  Yukiko

  P.S.

  I send you the words Respect. Sincerity. Gratitude.

  Do you recall, Yuki, those long nights at the White Rose when we talked politics? I said some of the crew thought I was a Communist and that my commanding officer told me – when I did not buy the official doctrine that ‘Red China’ was America’s enemy – ‘Rogers! The US Navy doesn’t pay you to think!’ Or those afternoons we sat talking in the Mozart coffee shop, and the delicate sound of the piano in the wet heat of the summer impelled you to touch my hand, as if I were a child or maybe as if we were both children, across the white tablecloth? ‘This makes me think of my father,’ you said. ‘He played piano for me when I was a little girl. Sad. So sad were those years.’

  Do you remember the day you invited me to climb the hill to your apartment? You lit a stick of incense and said a Buddhist prayer. You were upset when I asked you why you were praying. I looked out your window, through the rain, at my ship far off in the bay, and for no apparent reason the tears welled up in both our eyes, and I held you tight, and you told me, ‘Paul. Never let me go!’ I still shiver when I remember that moment. I was just a boy. I held you for a while and then I let you go, and what did I say? Do you remember? I said, ‘I’ll never forget you. Never!’ You looked embarrassed. Or was that look something else?

  That was much later in the summer, just two days before the Shangri-La left Yokosuka forever on 22 September. I had to return to the ship. You gave me your umbrella. You didn’t want me to get wet. I wanted to kiss you, but I couldn’t because I knew, and you knew, that it was all going to end. My youngster’s heart could not cope with the parting, so I was impatient and I offered up only an abrupt goodbye. As I was going down the steps I turned to look. You were staring at me. I could not see the expression on your face through the glass. I saw just your outline, which is all that I can see now, after all these years.

  If you could have been at the opera with me last year, you would have understood why in my seventies I am filled with longing – for what, I do not know. You would have understood why when Butterfly sang ‘Un Bel Dì’ [‘One Fine Day’] I immediately thought of you on the mountain watching my ship leave, waiting for its return. Maybe you are buried on the mountain. Maybe not. But here are Puccini’s lyrics to the most wonderful aria about lost love ever written. Men and women – even hardened and bitter men and women – sob when the abandoned Butterfly, who has never given up hope, begins singing:

  One fine day, we will see

  A thread of smoke arising on the se
a

  Over the far horizon

  And then the ship appearing

  Then the trim white vessel

  Glides into the harbour

  Thundering its salute.

  Do you see? Now he is coming I do not go to meet him.

  Not I.

  I stay upon the brow of the hill

  And wait there

  And wait for a long time

  But I never weary of the long waiting. From out of the crowded city

  There is a man coming in the distance,

  Climbing the hill.

  Who is it? Who is it? Chi sarà? chi sarà?

  E come sarà giunto Che dirà? che dirà?

  He will call ‘Butterfly’ from the distance.

  I, without answering

  Stay hidden

  A little to tease him,

  A little, so as not to die.

  [. . .]

  One fine day you will find me

  A thread of smoke arising on the sea

  In the far horizon

  And then the ship appearing.

  This will all come to pass as I tell you

  Banish your idle fears

  For he will return.

  I know with total faith, I know he will return.

  2

  The Torment

  A thin mist veils the moon and the flowers,

  Now is a good time to meet you.

  My stockinged feet walk on the steps.

  I carry my embroidered slippers in my hand.

  To the south of the painted hall,

  I tremble a short while in your arms,

  ‘It is not easy for me to come out.

  Will you make the best of it?’

  LI YU, FROM ‘A MEETING’, TENTH CENTURY, PUBLISHED IN POEMS OF SOLITUDE

  There was that moment at that small, shabby hotel, on a dirt side road leading nowhere, when I found you lying on the floor, your wrists slashed, dark red blood everywhere. They told me at the White Rose that you had gone there because you were ‘unhappy’. I thought I would go there to cheer you up. When I saw you with your eyes closed and with dried blood caked on your arms, I thought you were dead. The room reeked with the dangerous smell of blood. The young hotel clerk was shaking. She was horrified. She rushed out after saying she was going to call the police. I knelt down, not knowing what to do. So I touched your cheek. It was cold, but you stirred. Your eyes opened and you looked up at me with a strange sweet smile on your face. ‘I don’t want to die,’ you whispered. ‘I don’t want to cause you big trouble.’

  And then you fainted, and I tore the bed sheet and tied your wrists to try to stop the bleeding and the next thing I knew the police were ordering me roughly in Japanese to back away. I had never known such fear. I was going to collapse myself, but then a police lieutenant wearing a tan raincoat and black beret, with one of those extraordinarily potent Peace cigarettes in his mouth, came through the door and told me in excellent English, ‘Let me take care of this. You probably should go. You don’t want to get mixed up in this. Go back to your ship. I promise you we will take care of her.’

  I looked at you. You were limp, lying with your legs apart, your arms straight out, as if you had been crucified. I could not see whether you were breathing. You were so unearthly pale that you looked as if you had been dug out of a snowdrift. You were wearing a simple white dress, a string of red plastic beads round your neck, and bright red lipstick. It was as if I had interrupted you in the middle of an elaborate ritual.

  I had that image of you in my mind as I wandered through the alleys where lives were being lived as they were in those days: The women splashing water on the sidewalks to keep down dust. The delicious onion and shrimp vapours coming from fried rice cooking in big steel pans that always made me instantly hungry. Happy children in their navy blue and white uniforms coming home from classes with black leather school bags on their backs. I could hear the melancholy sounds of an enka coming from one house and I guessed at that moment it was a woman singing about a lost love or a life not worth living and I wondered whether that was why you had tried to kill yourself. There was still blood on my hands. There was a tap running, and a woman watched curiously as she saw me washing the blood away. She came up to me, and I could see that she was worried I had been injured. I did not know enough Japanese then to explain what had happened, so I thanked her and sat on the kerb while she patted me on the back as if I were a baby. It took a while for me to put everything in perspective and calm down enough so that I could continue walking to the main gate of the navy base. I did not want to talk to anyone about what had happened. I lay down on my bunk, shut my eyes, and saw that image of you that I could not erase from my mind. One of many thoughts filled me with terror: was I the reason you had cut your wrists?

  In the morning, I went back to the White Rose, not knowing whether I would be welcome. The mamasan (woman manager) was sitting inside by the door, which was decorated with little mementos of love tacked up by the girls (we always called them ‘girls’ and they in return called us ‘boys’) who worked there as hostesses. She wore a kind of white apron over a simple blouse and the baggy mompe pants farm workers wear. She also wore geta, the wooden sandals that make a reassuring clip-clop, clip-clop in the alleys on dark nights when hardly anything is visible. The girls working in the bar always called her, respectfully, Mama. That was her role, and she was good at it. I never knew her name. I asked once. She shook her head. That’s why I always called her Mama. Her authority was absolute in the White Rose; she treated all of us – hostesses and sailors – with firm and resolute affection, as if we were all toddlers.

  A Japanese bar hostess is not a prostitute, Mama told me when we first met. A hostess pours drinks, cracks jokes, makes conversation, rubs sore backs, and expresses sympathy for things that ail men’s minds. Some guys had also pinned photos of themselves on the door with messages such as, ‘See you next time, Michiko. I love you!’ or ‘Sonny loves Reiko,’ showing a sailor with a big lipstick kiss on his face put there by the woman of his dreams. The girls had left small objects around the doorway, like the votive offerings deposited by the Catholic faithful praying for sick relatives and children. There were ribbons and tortoiseshell hair clips. There were handkerchiefs with messages on them in Japanese, which of course I could not read then, but I knew the meaning of the red hearts alongside the kanji characters written in ballpoint pen.

  Mama looked up at me sadly. I thought she was going to tell me that you were dead. She gripped my arm so I could not move and she said, loudly, ‘I’m sorry!’ You once told me in jest, I think, that the Japanese could be ‘distressingly polite’. A half-dozen of the hostesses ran up to us. They wore cocktail dresses as if they were waiting to be taken to the Ritz. Several of them had been crying, and their mascara was running. They clasped handkerchiefs to their faces. They put their arms round me. ‘Thank you so much,’ one of them finally blurted. I guess I knew then that you were alive.

  Reiko, a sturdy, red-cheeked farm girl from Aomori in northern Japan, spoke some English. She was able to tell me that you were in the hospital and had been given blood transfusions and that you had been able to send them a message saying, ‘Anthony Perkins found me.’

  ‘How do you say that?’ Reiko asked earnestly. ‘Should I call that “rescue”? Did you rescue her? You are a good boy! Very good boy! We love you!’ The girls started laughing, and a couple of them ruffled my hair. And then Reiko said, ‘Go to the hospital, please. Quickly! Urgently! You need talk to Yuki-chan.’

  I was beginning to discover that all these women had secrets. Some of these secrets I learned over time. Every time the Shangri-La steamed out of port I knew more of them.

  In those days the enemy was ‘Red China’. The Shangri-La was, according to US Navy nomenclature, an ‘attack aircraft carrier’; navy publicity about the ship called it a ‘Man o’ War with Men of Peace’. But it was home base to several squadrons of jet and propeller attack aircraft, and in its bowels were nuclear w
eapons in a locked-down area guarded by the ship’s Marine Corps detachment. We would go charging up and down the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea like a bull chasing machos in the narrow streets of Pamplona. Once, somewhere down towards the Philippines, the Shangri-La shuddered and blew its whistle furiously as it tried to put on the brakes. I rushed up on deck. A gloriously antique white four-masted schooner straight out of a Joseph Conrad novel was crossing our path. Its decks were loaded with green bananas, breadfruit, and wooden crates. I could read the ship’s name through the patina of rust on its bow: The Torment. The crew was straining to get more speed out of the sails. The Torment leaned over into the arc of pure white spray it made in the emerald sea. Its safety, its destiny, depended on its skipper, a white-haired man at the wheel wearing a white shirt unbuttoned to the waist. He was laughing – or maybe cursing – as the vast bulk of the Shangri-La cast a shadow over him. He did not look back as he steered The Torment to safety.

  We seamen, by the way, called our vessel the ‘Shitty Shang’. Every day we were fed ‘shit on a shingle’, shredded chipped beef in a milky sauce on black toast, the whole thing loaded with saltpetre or other chemicals to smother our libido, or so the story went. I envied the skipper of The Torment at that moment and every man aboard her being tossed about in our wake.

  Another time we came across a single palm tree fastened to a tiny white coral speck of an island no bigger, it seemed to me, than a soccer field. The sea was like glass, and the island seemed to be floating on it, while the palm tree with its coconuts swayed as if it were an island girl delighting in our presence. The next time we came that way, the palm tree and its island were gone. I asked about that. Someone told me our aircraft had bombed it into oblivion.