Hawaii - James Michener [443]
"Oh, Ishii-san!” Kamejiro protested. "She's a Hiroshima girl. She's bound to make a good wife."
On the second and third days the men returned to spy upon their wives, and by a process of elimination Kamejiro discovered whom he was to marry. He had failed at first to find her because she was by all odds the loveliest of the girls and he had not been able to believe that she was intended for him. Commiserating with his friend Ishii-san's disappointment, he had the delicacy not to revel in the beauty of his own wife; but as the hours passed, leading up to the moment when the doors would be thrown open, he became frightfully nervous and excited.
"I am beginning to feel sick!" he told Ishii-san.
"I already am," the letter-writer confided.
"I think I may go away and come back later," Kamejiro whispered.
"Wait a minute!” one of the husbands snapped. "Look at the poor women!"
Kamejiro felt himself shoved to the peephole and for the last time he saw the seven brides. They knew that the hour of meeting was at hand, and the bravery that had marked their earlier behavior now fled. Without adequate water or combs, they made pathetic attempts to pretty themselves. They smoothed down one another's rumpled, sea-worn dresses, and tucked in ends of hair. One woman applied her fingertips to her forehead, as if she considered it ugly, and tried to spread its skin more smoothly over the heavy bones. In the corner one girl wept, and after a brief attempt at trying to console her, the others left her alone with her misery. But there was one thing that each girl in her final moments of panic did: she studied the photograph clutched in her hand and desperately tried to memorize the features of the man she was about to meet. She was determined that she would know him and that she would walk up to him unerringly and bow before him. But now all were weeping and the photographs were blurred.
A gong rang and Kamejiro jumped back from the door. Slowly the hinges swung open and the brides came forth. No tears were visible. The placid faces under the mounds of black hair looked steadily, inquiringly forward, and the first sound heard was a muffled gasp of pain. "Oh!" one of the brides sighed. "You are so much older than the picture."
"It was taken a long time ago," the man explained. "But I will be a good husband." He held out his hand, and the girl, controlling herself, bowed until her head almost touched his knees. They formed the first pair.
The next girl, the one who had been weeping alone in the comer, walked straight to her man, smiled and bowed low. "I am Fumiko," she said. "Your mother sends a thousand blessings." And she formed up the second pair.
The third girl was Mori Yoriko, Ishii-san's bride, and as he had feared, she was much more robust than he. She was a true Hiroshima country girl, red-cheeked, square-faced, squint-eyed. Knowing that she was less beautiful than any of the others, she made up for her deficiencies in stalwart courage and a burning desire to make herself into a good wife. She found Ishii-san and bowed low, her big hands held close to her knees. "Mr. Ishii," she whispered, "I bring you the love of your mother." Then, as if she knew reassurance was necessary, she quickly added in a halting whisper, "I will be a good wife."
The last girl to find her husband was Sumiko, the prettiest of the lot, and her recalcitrance sprang not from any lack of wit but from the shock she had received when she first saw Kamejiro. He did not wear the black suit in which he had been photographed, nor was his hair pasted down. His clothes were those of a mean peasant and his arms were brutally awkward. He was grim-faced, like an angry, stupid man, and he was twice as old as she had expected. Last in line, and with only one man unattached, Sumiko obviously knew who her husband was, but she refused to accept the fact.
"No!" she cried imperiously. "That one is not my man!"
"Oh!" Kamejiro gasped. "I am Sakagawa Kamejiro. I have your picture."
She slapped it from his hand and then threw