“We had a great gang. Then you and Gen started hanging around the theater and dumped the rest of us.”
“We grew up.”
“What was the name of that dancer you were so crazy about? Oharu? That was terrible about her.”
“What’s the point, Hajime?”
“The point is, I know how much you wanted to be Japanese, and now you see you’re not.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This. This army is only for real Japanese, that is why it is unstoppable. This is a pure army. No pretend Japanese here. You think you know everything, you always thought you were so clever. Soon enough there won’t be a white man left in Asia, and that includes you.”
Hajime’s voice rose with the approach of a locomotive drawing a train decked in red and white bunting. Flags flew on the engine’s steam domes and boiler front. Recruits who had already been gathered from other stations leaned out coach windows to shout over the explosion of air brakes, squeal of rails and renewed fervor of the band, which welcomed them with a popular song.
Bullets, tanks and bayonets
Bivouac with grass for a pillow.
My father, appearing in a dream,
Encourages me to die and come home.
“Hold this.” Hajime handed back the gun while he cleaned the lenses of his glasses. There was a rush to board because the train was running late. This was a city where people were physically packed into subways and onto buses. Harry let families shoulder by to the steps for leave-taking, mothers and fathers bowing to their soldier-sons with much trembling but no crying. Hajime set the glasses on his face and took a step backward up to the railroad car.
“Don’t forget this.” Harry stretched out an arm with the package.
“From me to you,” Hajime said. A smirk crept across his face as if this was a moment he had waited years for, a payback for ancient debts. The locomotive let off a snort of steam, aching to roll; Japanese engines were thoroughbreds, black and slim. At once, the press of bodies, enthusiasm and noise carried Hajime all the way up the steps of a coach that was rocking from the motion of soldiers finding seats.
“It’s yours,” Harry shouted.
The tide of embarkation, boys aching to leave good-byes behind, pushed Hajime into the car. “Too late,” he said, or something like that, his words overwhelmed by the noise of the band. The press grew greater, and the next time Harry saw Hajime was at an open window where families passed up last-second remembrances and boxes of food. Hajime pulled aside his cape to open his holster flap and show Harry another pistol, a full-size Nambu, already nestled there.
“Good luck, Harry,” Hajime mouthed through the window.
The train shuddered and began to slide along the platform. Harry tried to push forward to Hajime, but the wall of bodies and banners and flags was too dense to breach. The fervent waving of hands prevented Harry from even following Hajime’s coach by sight. The boys were going, hurtling toward destiny with lives that weighed less than a feather, with the bulletproof prayers of their loved ones, to open a whole new dawn for Asia. With such purity of spirit, how could they fail?
10
GAIJIN WERE FREAKS, and Harry’s parents were the biggest freaks of all. The pair of them preaching the gospel on a street corner was almost mortally embarrassing to Harry. First was the presumption of preaching at all before being asked. Second was his father’s total inability to speak Japanese. Third was his mother’s partial Japanese. Fourth was the fact that she spoke not women’s but men’s Japanese, full of bluster no decent woman would use. Fifth was the way she stood beside her husband instead of behind him. Sixth was their mysterious ignorance about how much and to whom to bow. Seventh was their loudness. Eighth was their clumsiness. Ninth was their color. Tenth was their size. Those were the Ten Sins of Gaijin, and every day Roger and Harriet Niles were guilty of each one. And if there was any contradiction between Harry’s condemnation of them and his own black reputation, it escaped him. Sundays were the worst. A Baptist church had no stained glass or popish carvings, only pews leading up to the choir organ and pastor’s pulpit and, in between, the satin curtain that veiled the baptismal well. The order of service was call to worship, Scripture, prayer and sermon leading to the testimonials of believers. Thus was the hand of Jesus made visible, His intervention and the redemption of a sinner followed by hymns translated and sung in Japanese in triumphant dissonant satisfaction. Or the service would include baptism, when the veil of purple satin was drawn aside for an immersion into water that cleansed the soul, a drama that, when he was in town, Roger Niles conducted with the theatrical vigor of the original John the Baptist. The entire congregation would lean forward and hold its breath, all transfixed except for two figures in the front row, Harry and his uncle Orin, who both smelled of mint, his uncle to cover the reek of whiskey, Harry to hide a taste for cigarettes. He would rather have been strolling with Kato and Oharu, taking in fresh air on the Rokku or, better yet, sharing a smoke in a movie house.
Oddly enough, Harry actually liked the painting of the river Jordan above the well. The artist had depicted Jesus in white robes and John in a lion skin, wading into azure water with the spirit descending from heaven in the form of a dove. Cedars and date palms fringed the riverbanks, and around the entire scene was a string of pearls. Harry found the scene calming, not the baptism itself but the slowly flowing river.
Kyoto had a river like that. The summer after Harry had met Kato, he and his parents had gone down to the old capital, which had a Baptist hospital and church. While the congregation attacked the hymns, Harry slipped out and wandered behind the church. There the river lay, brown-green water with torpid folds and ripples under a yellow haze. A branch trailed like an idle hand in the water. On a twig, two dragonflies touched tails of gold. Harry sat at the base of the tree to dig cigarettes from his shirt.
“Share?”
Harry looked up at an American girl, a couple of years younger, with tangled curly hair and a dusty sundress. She was plain, with a square jaw and broad teeth, but she had the most dazzling eyes Harry had ever seen, like the glass heel of a Coca-Cola bottle crushed into crystals. He lit her a cigarette just to see what she would do. She let out a sensual exhale and leaned against the tree.
“I know who you are. You’re Harry Niles, the wild boy. Everyone says your parents don’t have a real church.”
“You sure know a lot.”
“They even send you to a Japanese school.”
“Why not? I don’t want to be a snob. Anyway, my dad preaches in church when he’s in Tokyo. If you don’t like it, play somewhere else.”
She squatted next to him. Her shoes were cracked, and her elbows were scabby, but Harry recognized self-possession when he was next to it.
“I know why you’re here,” she said.
Harry didn’t know. It was just a trip to Kyoto, although the decision had come out of the blue. He shrugged. “Church business.” Sundays were always full of church business, fund and oversight committees, temperance leagues and spirit rallies. Sunday could be boring in infinite ways.
“The trial,” she said.
“A trial?”
“They call it a mission meeting, but it’s a trial, my dad says.”
“Someone stole the offering?” If there was something worth stealing, Harry wanted to know.
“Not really stealing,” she said.
“What?”
“Currency rates.”
That beat Harry. He frowned because he didn’t like looking stupid.
“What’s that?”
“It’s not illegal,” she said. She took a stick and scratched into the ground. “If you turn in dollars for Chinese yuan at this rate in Shanghai, then trade yuan for Japanese yen, and then come home and trade yen back to dollars, you can double your money.”
“That’s legal?”
“Um-hum.”
Harry stared at the numbers as if glimpsing an entire new alphabet. She wiped them out with her hand.