Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [19]
‘And he’s here in Nagasaki?’
A tray with tea and refreshments edged its way round the half-open door, followed by a young servant. He bowed and placed a small salver with a scribbled note on the desk. Sharpless read it and glanced up at the youth: ‘Lieutenant Pinkerton was here?’
He heard Nancy cry out in surprise and at once he understood everything. He felt a deadening sense of inevitability: he was about to watch a disaster take place, unable to influence or avert it.
‘You are engaged to Lieutenant Pinkerton.’
She blushed. Sharpless was astonished that in this modern day American girls could still blush, but then he remembered that, despite the flapper dress and cloche hat he was familiar with from the American newspapers, Nancy was not a modern girl. She was the granddaughter of missionaries, the daughter of churchgoing folk, herself trained to be a teacher. She would, of course, have a sense of duty, he thought, and was not comforted.
Sharpless wondered later whether, had he been at his desk when Pinkerton called, he could have altered the course of events. But what would he – could he – have done? Momentum, once established, has its own imperative; the situation had moved beyond his power to affect it. There was no runaway horse to be mastered here, no vehicle out of control; just three people moving towards a calamitous impact. Sharpless was a quiet man, not given to emotional extravagance, but he found himself groaning as he contemplated the picture before him.
In the house above the harbour, Pinkerton felt time stretching like elastic, past and present shifting disconcertingly: now, as on that first time, he felt the ridged tatami mat beneath his feet; saw the way light fell on paper walls; inhaled the smell of sweet rice. Across the room, a woman with almond white skin waited.
Seated cross-legged, he engaged his son in a game, a sleight of hand in which an errant thumb mysteriously vanished, then reappeared. The child gurgled with delight as Cho-Cho watched. At one point Pinkerton looked up and caught her eye, but turned back immediately to the game, putting off a conversation that could only be painful. In this situation natural behaviour felt unnatural.
‘Pinker-ton’ – she had never called him Ben – ‘I will prepare some refreshment for you.’ A hint of a reassuring smile. ‘No tea ceremony!’
He was surprised by her grasp of English; she had obviously been studying. And he knew that what her words were really saying was, ‘we must talk’, but she would never say that: it would be too quick, too open, not the Japanese way.
He shook his head. ‘I’m fine.’
When Suzuki hurried back with a small package wrapped in thin purple paper, Pinkerton handed it to the boy with a flourish:
‘Here you go, Joey. Surprise!’
The boy had never before received a present, and he held the rustling paper sphere cupped in his hands, turning it, stroking the dark wrapping. Impatient, Pinkerton tore the flimsy paper to reveal a wooden spinning top patterned in scarlet and yellow.
‘Koma!’ the boy exclaimed, clapping his hands.
‘Thank ot-san for your present.’
‘Arigatou gozaimasu,’ he said obediently. ‘Thank you, ot-san.’
Suzuki watched them for a moment. Outwardly they were a family engaged in a family game, but she saw how Cho-Cho’s hands were clenched in her lap; the sheen of sweat that gleamed on Pinkerton’s face although the day was cool. She backed out, bowing, and ran down the hill to the factory.
The woven reed-straw of the tatami mat was proving useless as a spinning surface. Pinkerton reached for the low table and set the top spinning smoothly on the gleaming lacquer. As it spun, the red and yellow painted rings seemed to rise and hover magically in the air above the twirling disc. Again and again the child handed the top back to his father –
‘More!’
Another spin.
‘Motto!’
Another chance to snatch in vain at the hovering rings.
Pinkerton ruffled the boy’s fair curls, smiling. Then he got to his feet.
‘I’m due back on the ship.’
There was awkwardness: