Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [66]
In the room behind them there was the sound of children’s voices; the girls coming to the door to say goodbye to their favourite visitor. Cho-Cho embraced them in turn. She lingered for a moment with the tallest.
‘How is my clever Mayu? What are you reading?’
The girl had inherited Henry’s fine bones and Suzuki’s calm, slow smile.
‘The book you brought me, about the girl from the sea.’
‘Ah! The Little Mermaid. Well, she made a bad choice, poor girl. We’ll talk about that next time.’
30
Shortages were announced almost daily, patriotic sacrifices demanded. Now Cho-Cho was presented with a batch of government leaflets to hand out to her customers, encouraging austerity: ‘Luxury is antipatriotic’.
For someone trying to run a restaurant, this was not an attractive idea.
‘They might as well tell me to send the customers home,’ she complained to Henry. He shrugged.
‘The national love affair with America has gone sour. Germany seems seductively disciplined.’
Worse was to come. When Henry called in for his daily coffee, he found Cho-Cho distraught.
‘They’ve banned political meetings. Provocative assemblies, they call them – and of course women’s gatherings are provocative, unlawful.’
Henry began to sympathise, but she waved a dismissive hand at him. The law was unjust; so they had decided to ignore it.
‘I’m leaving the waitresses to take care of the restaurant this afternoon. I’m going to a meeting.’
When the troops arrived at the doors of the lecture hall the women envisaged a confrontation; perhaps some noisy intimidation – enough to discourage a normal female congregation. But the army had more specific instructions: arrest the speaker, drag her out, throw her in a wagon. When the audience protested, the soldiers moved in to break up the meeting by force.
Driven out of the hall like cattle, the women poured into the street. Their cries mingled with the shouts of soldiers who were thrown off balance by this unruly throng – some women in flapping kimonos, others in Western dress displaying arms and legs to an alarming degree. The men bawled abuse at the unnatural creatures, penning them in, the bright colours slowly crushed within the tightening barricade of khaki uniform.
Pinned against the wall, arms flung up to protect her face, Cho-Cho fought fiercely, defending herself, sensing a giddy moment of reunion: she too might be struck by a baton or a truncheon, be thrown into the river. The Urakami flowed past, just the other side of the street. She would sink through the green water, weighed down by her clothes; the swirling river uniting her with Pinkerton.
The crowd surged, there were shrieks; wet blood in the street fed the panic of the mass. Dimly she thought, can a crowd make decisions? Who will take control here?
Then she was knocked aside, fell to the ground and the pullulating organism flowed on. Hours later she stumbled into Henry’s house and Suzuki’s soft arms. How foolish to imagine she could mingle, one river with another, one soul with another. This time she wept for herself.
When the bruises healed, she got back to work: there were new instructions for the cook.
Political friction and sabre-rattling had segued into untidy conflict; the long, stumbling war with China dragged on, and the Americans tightened sanctions. Cho-Cho adjusted her position: the menu was global now, with a hint of northern Europe, as Henry noted.
‘No more apple pie, I see. Well, it makes a change from wasting Kobe beef on hamburger addicts.’
As always, the conversation continued with Henry provoking her and Cho-Cho demolishing his arguments with the affectionate ease of years: parry and thrust, sharp words that never cut too deep, though to a silent listener they could cause unintended pain. Occasionally Suzuki wept. No one witnessed these moments of weakness and she was firm with herself, making sure she displayed no outward signs of sadness. Why should she? She had no cause to be unhappy: Henry