Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [118]
For Joe, too, family came into the story: it was an ironic twist of the knife that SCAP, the hero of the hour, should be the murderer, the man who caused his father’s death. MacArthur’s order to the troops in Washington had sent Ben sinking to the bottom of the river. Here, he had usurped the Emperor, taking on the mantle of a god to bring the nation back to life.
The jeeps bounce past; the GIs see a blond head and wave at Joe. Otishi told him one night in Italy, as they shared a patch of mud and canvas, that if you stood on a certain corner of the Ginza for twenty minutes you’d be sure to see someone you knew. They had made a pact, sealed with a half-melted Hershey bar, to test the theory one day. How do you make God laugh?
Behind him a voice says, ‘Well look who’s here. The boy with perfect hair.’
She is dressed in what looks like some kind of uniform, eyes concealed by dark glasses, her polished ebony hair longer than he recalls, lipstick scarlet, and she is actually smiling up at him, albeit quizzically, not much more than a curve of the lips. ‘Well they say if you stand on this corner –’
Joe says, ‘Hi, Yasuko,’ trying to sound cool and unsurprised, aware that he is beaming at her idiotically. Understandable, forgivable, surely, to show he is pleased to see a familiar face here in this place of sorrow and numbed pain, but he is prepared for her to be sharp with him.
‘What are you doing in Tokyo?’
‘I’m writing the new constitution,’ she says, and now she does smile. ‘Well, I think the idea was I’d make the coffee but I’m lousy at coffee-making, so they’re letting me help out in the office. Seeing as I can type and handle statistics and speak the lingo. And since we’re giving women the vote. So that’s in my favour.’ She tilts her head and studies him over the dark lenses.
‘We’re bringing them democracy, Joey, no inequality based on race or family origin. No unlawful detention. They couldn’t set up a Tule Lake here. Doesn’t that make you feel proud? Feel good? Is my sarcasm too heavy?’
She glances around at the ruined cityscape.
‘You know what all this was? Revenge for Pearl Harbor. A case of overkill, would you say?’
Passers-by stare at her, suspicious, some hostile: a Japanese girl, immaculate and elegant with scarlet nails and lips.
‘What about you?’ she asks. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m with the re-education unit, interpreter stuff—’
‘Interpreter! When could you speak Japanese?’
‘I did a language course back home. I’m here to do adult teaching. Liaison, they call it.’
‘You’re a spy, basically.’
‘No—’
‘It’s okay. I am, too. We all are.’
‘We?’
‘Outsiders. Foreigners. You don’t need to be a yellow-haired Yank to be a gaijin. You know that. Ask the Koreans. We’re all spies, but for different reasons. SCAP and his boys want to find out what makes these people tick, get inside their heads and then change them.’
We, she said.
He has a class to set up: teachers to be introduced to the new constitution, indoctrinated in democracy; she has telegrams to send. They agree to meet later.
He suggests a rendezvous at the Ernie Pyle Theater.
‘You mean the Takarazuka. All this renaming, you’re such cultural imperialists.’
You. For a moment she is on the other side of the divide. For a moment he sees the old Yasuko, mouth grim, face stony.
He says hastily, ‘We might take in a movie.’
‘Why not. Oh, I saw The Maltese Falcon again. It’s not bad.’
She moves off, calls back over her shoulder, ‘That last line you love so much. From Shakespeare? It’s a misquotation.’
He watches her go, the slim figure slicing through the shabby crowd, walking fast in her tiny flat shoes. Why was he