Butterfly's Shadow Read online

Now he intended to lead the girl swiftly to bed but before he could make a move she slid open the door and waved a hand at the sky. He looked up. Nodded.

  ‘Right. Full moon.’

  He waited. The waiting was getting him down. The silence was getting him down, the famous Japanese silences that, Sharpless told him, ‘spoke between the words’.

  The consul had recited an old Japanese poem to him when they first met; something about a pond and a frog that jumps in. The last line was ‘The sound of water.’ The line, Pinkerton had commented, rang no poetical bells for him.

  ‘Ah,’ Sharpless said. ‘We Americans might translate that line as “Splash!” But for the Japanese there needs to be an awareness of the silence between the jump and the splash. They would wait to learn the sound from the silence. Hence, “the sound of water”. That does it. Do you see?’

  No he did not. For Pinkerton, a poem should make sense, describe something properly. And rhyme. At school they read Longfellow, learned verses by heart. You didn’t need to hang around waiting for the silence to tell you what in hell Longfellow was driving at.

  The girl was still looking up at the moon, he could see its light reflected in her eyes. Then she folded her hands and made a small bow, towards the sky, like a greeting. She turned her head slightly; now she seemed again to be waiting for something. He took a chance and inclined himself in a sort of bow in the general direction of the moon. She smiled.

  In the bedroom he unwound her sash, lifted the kimono from her shoulders – the nape of her neck above the collar was as frail as a child’s and for a moment he wondered just how young she was, nobody had mentioned her age, but too late to worry about that now. Pinkerton was not inexperienced, but something about this light, yielding body was unexpectedly arousing. In his urgency he ripped the fragile undergarment of white cotton and as the weight of his body crushed her against the mattress she gasped. Then she cried out.

  The futon was as uncomfortable as he had feared and there were one or two misunderstandings and a few tears, but she took instruction well.

  Afterwards she looked into his face and enquired, ‘Nice?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Nice.’

  ‘Good.’

  He was surprised. ‘You speak English!’

  She shook her head, serious. ‘I learn.’

  He laughed. That was cute and it was also true. She had much to learn, but she was learning fast.

  Later, while Pinkerton slept, snoring gently, she explored her body, the silky folds he had pushed his way into so forcefully, still raw, so sore that even the touch of her tentative fingers caused her to cry out, softly. Her husband, stepping out of his white trousers, had revealed a startling body part, bright crimson, as thick as her wrist. Men could be rough, they had warned her in the tea-house, but no one had warned her of the pain, sharp as a knife blade, a burning flame between her legs that split her apart with each thrust. She slipped cautiously from the bed.

  Among her few possessions was a doll, a Cho-Cho doll, dressed in a kimono and obi sash, tied in the butterfly bow that gave her the name. She had sewn clothes for the doll, a kimono from a scrap of discarded silk, tiny beads binding the stiff black hair. But she had never undressed the doll completely. Now she removed the white underclothing and examined the pale body. Between the legs was nothing. Limbs flowed smoothly up to hips and waist. The doll could not be entered. The doll could feel no pain.

  She washed away his stickiness, her blood. Applied a cooling ointment made from herbs. Summoned back to the futon, she was obedient, her small body pliable.

  She was learning all the time. She no longer cried out, biting her lips as she flinched. She managed to smile, and learned that she was required to move in various ways, the better to accommodate him. There was still more she could learn, and did. And though sometimes she still wept, the tears trickling into her obediently smiling mouth, always she would enquire afterwards, anxiously,

  ‘Nice?’

  He was surprised, from the evidence of the sheet that first time, to discover she was a virgin. Or was she? These girls had ways of fooling you. All part of the game.

  And she was learning fast.

  ‘American way?’ she would ask, nodding, when he showed her something new. She had an admiration of things American that he found appealing. These people sat on the floor to eat and had some pretty funny ideas, but she was open to instrucion, and not only in the bedroom.

  As with the matter of the yard. He saw that her idea of a yard consisted of a few rocks, a bit of moss and a trickle of water. He showed her magazines from home and he could tell she picked up on the difference.

  She walked down the hill and asked to see Sharpless.

  ‘I was seeking guidance on a small matter . . .’ She looked at his desk, piled with documents. ‘Ah, but you are busy. Another time.’

  He was swamped with applications from locals seeking work and a better life in America; there was much checking of dates and stamping of documents, but he waved her to a seat.

  ‘Guidance?’

  ‘Sharpless-san, I want to create . . .’ She paused, moved into English, ‘American garden.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please help me.’ She paused and retreated into Japanese: ‘I want you to tell me what I should plant.’

  ‘It’s not just a matter of what you plant. It’s how you plant. There are gardens and gardens.’

  ‘I want one that will be beautiful but not in the Japanese style.’

  For Sharpless, growing ever closer to this austere land with its culture of discretion, the desire seemed perverse. He smiled sadly.

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  He abandoned his desk and summoned a rickshaw.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll soon see.’

  The rickshaw man grunted as he pulled them up the curving hillside path. Cho-Cho had never seen the harbour from the opposite side, and she looked about, noting the differences: the houses were larger, two-storeyed, built of stone and solid wood beams, with deep verandas. This was a district for affluent gaijin, a foreign enclave. But she could see no gardens of interest, until the rickshaw stopped outside a square stone structure with a wide, tiled roof.

  ‘A man called Thomas Glover built this house.’

  ‘An American?’

  ‘He came from Aberdeen.’

  ‘Is that in America?’

  ‘Ah, not exactly –’

  ‘But I want an American garden.’

  ‘Trust me,’ he said, and led her through the gates.

  On either side of stone-paved paths the gardens spread out around them, huge beds of brilliant colour, circular or oval, interspersed with flowering trees.

  ‘What are these called?’ She pointed to a carpet of lush green leaves spiked with orange blooms.

  ‘Marigolds,’ Sharpless said with more confidence than he felt. ‘I think those are marigolds. The ones over there are roses. Some of them are fragrant.’ He was on more secure ground with the roses, which the Japanese regarded as no more than bushes with thorns, their flowers banal.

  He showed her the rest of the garden and she darted from bed to bed, hovering over the blooms like her namesake insect. As they moved on she fluttered ahead of him along the curving path into some shrubbery, her tiny figure glimpsed between the bushes. But when he caught up with her she was standing quite still, staring at a small statue of a woman in a kimono by the side of the path. Sharpless cursed silently. He had forgotten the statue.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She was Mr Glover’s wife.’

  ‘Japanese.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The two figures confronted one another, both kimono-clad, one frozen in stone, spine gracefully curved, holding a fan, the other moving closer, backing away, pressing fingertips to face as though to confirm that indeed she too was Japanese and female.

  Going home in the rickshaw she was silent for a while. Then she turned to Sharpless.

  ‘I want to pl
ant seeds, grow American flowers.’

  ‘It will take some time,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘Oh, I have time! The lease of the house is nine hundred and ninety-nine years!’ Her laugh was dangerously bright. ‘My husband says the honeymoon may last longer than his lifetime!’

  Sharpless was torn: he wanted to warn her, tell her to beware of putting too much faith in a lifelong honeymoon; the lease could be cancelled in a day if Pinkerton decided to stop paying the rent. But it was not the Japanese way, to make bald statements. And did he have the right to intrude on the girl’s happiness, to risk spoiling a story which, after all, might against all odds have a happy ending? When before her was visible evidence of a Nagasaki mixed marriage that had stood the test of time.

  He ordered the seeds.

  5

  From the start Pinkerton had found the house cold, unwelcoming: no vases filled with flowers, no framed photographs, no shag rugs . . . He searched for words, simple words that she would understand, to explain how he felt. Next day he came home to find her waiting, an expectant smile on her face, hands clasped. She had prepared a speech:

  ‘Surprise for you, happy Pinkerton!’

  He looked around, eyebrows raised, and glanced back at her, puzzled.

  Her smile dimmed. She waved a small white hand at the wall. The scroll was one she treasured, it had belonged to her father and she had removed it from its crimson box and hung it in the small alcove at the centre of the wall, the tokonoma, the place of honour reserved for a precious object.

  ‘From – my family.’

  Pinkerton stared at the scroll, bemused; a few scribbled lines, dark grey on white, plus one red mark.

  ‘Oh. Right. Nice.’

  In his view the scroll didn’t exactly light up the place; he thought the room still looked bleak.

  And there was the matter of what they put into their mouths. Sharpless had warned him about the food: ‘You eat raw things at home: think of it as a kind of salad.’

  He was unpersuaded: ‘Raw fish? Forget it!’

  Next day he appeared with offerings from a sympathetic ship’s cook, which he handed to Cho-Cho. She unwrapped the packages and looked doubtfully at the mysterious, curiously similar brown slabs.

  Pointing at each in turn he identified them: ‘Meat loaf. Hash brown potatoes. Apple pie like Momma makes.’

  She broke off a morsel of meat loaf and placed it in her mouth. She did her best, nodding and smiling, but he noticed that she found it hard to swallow the small scrap.

  ‘Okay, try this – apple pie.’

  ‘Apple-u-pie,’ she echoed, nibbling.

  ‘Right!’

  She continued to chew, cautiously.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Good.’

  No, she wanted to say, not good, horrible, but that would have been impolite. Instead she set out to win him over to real food.

  He found himself watching her prepare the stuff, helped by the maid: kneeling, feet tucked beneath her, pale hands deft and swift, the blade slicing delicate fillets of fish into discs of almost transparent thinness, carving vegetables into fantastic flower shapes, moving small bowls of this and that from one low table to another. Finally she would turn her head, glance across at him with an encouraging smile.

  ‘Try now.’

  The tuna and swordfish, the vinegar-rice, grilled eel and fiery pickle proved easier to accept than he would have believed, and he even learned to manipulate the short, polished chopsticks, appreciate a good, aged sake.

  He drew the line at horse mackerel, but grudgingly admitted that even the dishes he was unable to stomach were good to look at – you could put them in a glass case in a museum. Still, every now and then his taste buds sent unambiguous messages and he would bring home a parcel from the galley storeroom:

  ‘Meatballs! Apple pie like Momma makes!’

  *

  His off-duty hours were agreeable; the girl constantly found new ways to please him and there were even times when – fleetingly – he felt a sense of uncertainty, of indecision. He floated on a sea of strangeness here; nothing in his life had prepared him for this unsettling blend of distance and closeness: she was obedient, totally subservient, yet within that servitude she found ways to make him feel like a beginner. His life had been a thing of broad brush-strokes, thoughtless pleasures; easy-come, easy-go. Here, where each action, each reaction entailed its history, he was reluctantly drawn into an acknowledgement of something more.

  It was at moments like these, when Cho-Cho became aware of his blue eyes resting on her thoughtfully, that she felt most fiercely the hope of happiness. On days when he went swimming off the rocks she watched him from the shore, seeing the gleam of sunlight on his wet body as he rose from the surf like the sea god Ryjin, who controlled the tides from his coral castle beneath the waves. He waved to her, sending drops of water flying through the air, sparkling like jewels being cast back into the foam. When he came ashore he would pull her from her perch like a boy prising a mollusc from a rock, and squeeze her with wet arms, soaking her cotton kimono until she squealed in mock protest.

  The ship was almost ready; before long he would be leaving. But perhaps it would not end there. She persuaded herself that like two differently coloured threads entwined, as their bodies were so often entwined, they might form a strand that was strong enough to hold them together.

  On his last night Cho-Cho prepared a special supper. She dismissed the maid, Suzuki, and did the whole meal herself. One dish was served, somewhat to Pinkerton’s dismay, on an oval leaf plucked from a nearby tree. Given the choice, he preferred his food on a plate. She noted his bafflement.

  ‘Tradition.’

  ‘I should’ve guessed.’

  ‘This – tegashiwa leaf.’

  She had prepared her words, she wanted to tell him, as her father had explained to her that in the old days when a samurai left his home to follow his lord it was customary for his wife to serve him a farewell dish on a tegashiwa leaf. Afterwards, ot-san told her, the leaf was hung above the door to bring the departed samurai home safe.

  ‘In old days,’ she began, but she failed to find the words she needed. She smiled and shook her head; presented him with the leaf-dish.

  ‘Tradition.’

  When the meal was over, she washed and dried the leaf, and hung it above the door. She recalled ot-san saying that when the leaf, with its shape so like a human hand, was stirred by the wind it would wave up and down, the way a Japanese beckoned to a friend, a wife to her husband.

  Pinkerton watched the procedure indulgently.

  ‘Tradition?’

  ‘Tradition.’

  Early next morning, tucked together as close as two birds, they rested for the last time in the nest of the futon.

  ‘You will come back, Pinkerton?’

  He nodded sleepily.

  ‘When?’

  He tried to think of something vague enough not to tie him down but encouraging in a way she could accept. Outside the window he saw birds filling the sky, flying high, wing tips almost touching; tiny silhouettes speeding away from land.

  ‘One day, after the birds come home.’

  He was pleased with the reply; he felt it was a bit Japanese.

  She followed his upward glance and watched the swallows darken the sky, wave after wave. Birds left. Birds came home. She nodded. She understood.

  She curled up, into his shoulder, stroking the golden hairs on his arms, delicately licking with the tip of her tongue first one nipple, then the other, as he had taught her. He groaned with pleasure, and a touch of sadness, momentarily sharing a sense of loss.

  He would forget that fleeting twinge. It did not cross his mind that the pain would stay with her.

  When the ship steamed out of the harbour Pinkerton was busy and failed to notice the moment when they slipped between the lighthouses and out to the open sea. As the wind sharpened and the waves creamed against the hull, he glanced back at the receding coastline and became aware
of a sense of freedom, as though a fragile, yet unexpectedly powerful chain that had wound its way round him like a clinging ivy, had suddenly snapped.

  Cho-Cho stood outside the house, watching the departing ship through the telescope he had brought her. Surely that was him, on deck, arm raised, waving? Behind her she heard a small sound and glanced round: in the morning breeze the hand-shaped tegashiwa leaf fluttered, up and down, waving farewell and beckoning, come back.

  When the last trace of the ship was lost beyond the horizon she felt a chill as though the sun was covered by a sheet of ice and hurried into the house.

  She planted the seeds and watered the ground. Small green shoots appeared and, to her delight, leaves and then buds that opened into flowers, bright and glowing. Where earlier she had watched for the cherry blossom, the plum, the chrysanthemums, now she hovered over these small saucers in colours she would once have considered too bright, too obvious. She was getting the garden ready for Pinkerton’s return. For, of course, he would return.

  And it was not only in the garden that new life was growing.

  *

  Calling on Cho-Cho one evening, Sharpless saw that she was busy at the far end of the garden, stooping to tie up a showy orange flower whose stalk was too fragile to stand without support. Suzuki showed him into the house and stood nearby, eyes lowered. In the weeks following Pinkerton’s departure, he had seen how tenderly she cared for Cho-Cho, anticipating her needs, small, bright eyes following her mistress’s every movement. But today her broad face was closed, she seemed distant.

  ‘Suzuki? Is something wrong?’

  ‘In one way, you could say so. In another, things could not be better.’

  He knew enough of the form to wait.

  ‘She is expecting a child.’

  This was an appalling indiscretion, as they were both aware. But Suzuki, less naïve than her mistress, was also aware of the realities involved.

  ‘If Lieutenant Pinkerton could be informed—’

  But Cho-Cho was approaching, and the conversation ceased.

  He should not have been surprised. Indeed, he was saddened rather than surprised. The girl’s future had narrowed.