Came the Glorious Fourth, and the embassy garden was decorated with bunting and paper lanterns in red, white and blue. On the terraces, Japanese staff in kimonos with American-eagle crests set out tables of tea sandwiches, deviled eggs, cucumber salad, sweet pickles, angel food cake and lemonade. Adults followed a path edged in azaleas to join a champagne reception in the ambassador’s residence, a white clapboard house and porch that could have been found in Ohio. Outside, children were entertained by blindman’s buff and potato-sack races across the lawn.
“This is actually American territory, Harry,” Harriet said.
“We’re in Japan.”
“Yes,” Roger Niles said, “but legally an embassy is the territory of the country of the ambassador. The American ambassador runs things here.”
“The emperor rules all Japan.”
“Not here,” Roger said.
Harriet said, “You’re in America just as if you were standing at the Washington Monument. And look, American kids.”
Harry was miserable. All the other American children in Tokyo went to the American School. He didn’t know them and he didn’t want to know them. Dressed in a new suit and oxfords, he felt as if he were in disguise. Also, it was embarrassing to see how pleased his mother was to visit the embassy. She believed that the special events in life were like a sachet in a suitcase, it sweetened the clothes and didn’t make the luggage one bit heavier. Besides, after a year of traveling among strangers, it was a relief for her to be patriotic, to be an American among Americans. She squinted up to admire how the Stars and Stripes basked in the rays of descending sun. There were supposed to be fireworks in the evening and skits performed by the kids. What Harry was going to do, he wouldn’t say.
Except for Episcopalians, who were practically Catholic anyway, missionaries abstained from champagne and stayed outside by the lemonade. Baptist families joined a circle of Synod of Christ, Dutch Reformed and Methodists.
Roger Niles took the opportunity to ask the group, “You know what makes me sick?”
There was an uneasy pause. Niles had a reputation for zeal.
“What makes you sick, dear?” Harriet asked.
“The holier-than-thou act the China missions always pull. As if we were in league with the devil just because our call is in Japan.”
“True,” a Methodist minister named Hooper allowed. “We get it, too.”
“Well, I wouldn’t trade today for anything in China,” Harriet said. “What about you, Harry?”
“China is old and backward. Japan can help China back on its feet.” Harry had learned that at school.
“America can help China back on its feet,” Hooper said softly.
“Sometimes I think what Harry needs is a trip back home,” Roger said. “Would you like that, Harry, a good, long visit back home?”
“I am home.” Harry didn’t know much about Louisville, but he doubted that it measured up to Tokyo.
“Your real home,” Harriet said.
“Our folks have never seen Harry,” Roger told the others. “Harry, you have a lot of cousins you don’t even know.”
Harry had seen snapshots of them. The boys, slouching, buttoned to the neck, were always arrayed in ascending height before signs like RED MAN’S GORGE and STONEWALL JACKSON’S PLACE OF BIRTH. The girls had round eyes and dull, stringy hair just like the girls at the embassy.
A line of elderly Japanese guests cut through to reach the refreshments. Roger Niles said, “Look, they don’t even beg your pardon. Typical.”
Because they know you can’t speak Japanese, Harry thought, surprised by his own scorn. He’d heard his parents try.
“Maybe Harry needs to get out there and mix,” Hooper suggested. “My son would be happy to introduce him to the other boys.”
What Harry had planned to do was go along the river with Gen and catch fireflies they could sell to geisha houses at ten sen apiece for firefly lamps. It had rained in the morning, and a clear night after wet weather made fireflies rise so thick that a good catcher could fill a paper sack, both hands and his mouth with captive flies. Instead, a shorter boy in a baseball cap was leading him to a game of tug-of-war being refereed by two embassy clerks.
The boy gave Harry a skeptical examination. “My name is Roy, but my friends call me Hoop. What’s your name?”
“Oishi,” Harry said.
“Oishi? That doesn’t sound American.”
“Who said it was?” Still, Harry was amazed. “You never heard of the Forty-seven Ronin?”
“No. I’m going to recite ‘Casey at the Bat’ for entertainment. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to disappear.”
The clerks each had fat cheeks and shiny, lubricated hair. They arranged tug-of-war teams on either side of the embassy’s reflecting pool, smaller boys to the middle of the rope, larger boys at the ends. When one side had the advantage, the other side was dragged into the water. Almost immediately Roy Hooper lost his baseball cap in the pool, and Harry’s oxfords were soaked. By his third time in the water, Harry saw by the smirks on their faces that the larger boys on each side were having fun pulling and giving way by turns, staying dry while boys in front got drenched. The same poorly concealed smile spread through the clerks, a collusion of the strong against the weak. Harry found the cap, filled it with scummy water, marched to the last on the rope, a robust boy in a Hawaiian shirt with a patch of beard on his chin, and stuffed the cap over his head. The boy hit Harry so hard he collapsed like an accordion, but he hung on to the boy’s arm and dragged him to the ground. When the boy got on top, Harry head-butted him and bit his nose.
“Fight fair!” The clerks pulled the two up.
The bigger boy swung at Harry who ducked under the punch, grabbed him by the shirt and threw him down to the ground. It was what Harry had trained to do at school for years.
“Dirty fighter, are you?” someone said as Harry was pulled off again, but he broke free and ran for the trees and azaleas that screened the lawn from the street. The clerks got a late jump, and by the time they reached the trees, Harry was halfway up a pine and out of their sight. Their footsteps tramped around the needles.
“A missionary kid, can you believe that?”
“Almost bit his nose off, Jesus!”
“Probably went over the wall, the little son of a bitch.”
Roger Niles’s voice joined in. “Do you know where my son went?”
“No, sir. But it’s getting dark and he could be anywhere now.”
“Harry? Harry?”
“I wouldn’t worry, sir. An American boy in Tokyo, where’s he going to go?”
“Harry?”
“Got to go set up the fireworks, sir.”
“Kind of a wild boy there, sir.”
Two pairs of footsteps retreated. Roger Niles tramped back and forth calling Harry’s name for another minute before he left. Harry heard one more set of steps slip between the trees, then his mother’s voice. “Harry, I know we don’t see you as much as we would like, but I do feel you are a special child, that you are protected like Moses was protected even in a frail cradle of reeds. That an angel watches over you and that you may seem a prince of Egypt when you are truly something even better. Could you come out now, Harry, wherever you are? For the love of your mother, could you do that, Harry?”