Hawaii - James Michener [441]
"Are you thinking of getting married?" the scribe asked, for he recognized the symptoms.
"Yes."
Unexpectedly, the thin little letter-writer grasped Kamejiro's hand and confided: "I have been thinking the same thing. What would it cost?"
"Not much!" Kamejiro cried excitedly. "Photograph three dollars. Fare seventy. Maybe a hundred and forty-three altogether."
"I am going to do it!" Ishii-san announced. "I've been thinking about it all this year."
"So have I," Kamejiro confessed, and he sat upon the floor as Ishii-san got out his brushes: "Dear Mother, I have decided to take a wife and later I will send you my photograph so that you can show it to Yoko-chan and she can see how I look now. When you tell me that she is willing to come to Hawaii, I will send the money. This does not mean that I am not going to come back home. It only means that I shall stay here a little longer. Your faithful son, Kamejiro."
It took nine weeks to receive an answer to this letter, and when it arrived Kamejiro was stunned by its contents, for his mother wrote: "You must be a stupid boy to think that Yoko-chan would still be waiting. She got married twelve years ago and already has five children, three of them sons. What made you suppose that a self-respecting girl would wait? But that is no loss, for as you can see I am sending you the photograph of a very fine young lady named Sumiko who has said that she would marry you. She is from this village and will make a lovely wife. Please send the money."
A photograph four inches by three fluttered to the bed, face down. For several moments Kamejiro allowed it to lie there, unable to comprehend that when he turned it over it would show not Yoko, whom he had kept enshrined in his memory, but some girl he had never known. Gingerly, and with two fingers, he lifted the edge of the picture and dropped his head sideways to peer at it. Suddenly he flipped it over and shouted, "Oh! Look at this beautiful girl! Look at her!"
A crowd gathered to study the photograph, and some protested: "That girl will never marry a clod like you, Kamejiro!”
"Tell them what the letter says!" Kamejiro instructed Ishii-san, and the scribe read aloud the facts of the case. The girl's name was Sumiko, and she was willing to marry Kamejiro.
"Is she a Hiroshima girl?" a suspicious man inquired.
"She's from Hiroshima-ken," Kamejiro replied proudly, and a sigh of contentment rose from the long bunkhouse.
On one person the photograph of Kamejiro's good luck had a depressing effect, for in an earlier mail Ishii-san had received a picture of the bride his parents had picked for him. She was a girl called Mori Yoriko, which was a pleasing name, but her photograph showed her to be one of those square-faced, stolid, pinch-eyed peasant girls that Japan seemed to produce in unlimited numbers. Ishii-san's mother assured him that Mori Yoriko could work better than a man and saved money, but the scribe felt that there was more to marriage than that, especially when, as in his case, the husband could read and write. He was patently disappointed and asked to see Kamejiro's picture again. Sumiko, as he studied her, appeared to have the classic type of beauty: gently slanted eyes, fine cheekbones, low forehead, pear-shaped face and delicate features. She looked like the girls whose pictures were painted on the sheets advertising Japanese historical movies, and Ishii-san said, "She's very pretty for a Hiroshima girl. Maybe she's from the city."
"No," Kamejiro assured him. "My mother would never send a city girl."
The next day the two would-be husbands borrowed Ishii Camp's publicly owned black suit, the tie that went with it, and the white shirt; they wrapped their treasure in a Sheet, hired a taxi and drove into Kapaa, where Hashimoto the photographer told them, "Take turns with the suit, and be sure to comb your hair."
When Kamejiro climbed into the strange clothes, Hashimoto had to show him how to tie the tie, after which the stocky field hand plastered his