The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (11 page)

It was very cold; leaning against the railing with their arms around each other, they stamped their feet.

“It can’t be long now,” Fusako said, her voice rising above the chatter of small birds. The lipstick she had dashed on before they left the house, a spot of vivid red rising out of the whiteness of her chilled, drawn face, looked beautiful to Ryuji.

A minute later, far to the right of the floating lumber and surprisingly high up, a gauzy red ring loomed in the slate-gray sky. Immediately the sun became a globe of pure red but still so weak they could look straight at it, a blood-red moon.

“I know this will be a good year; it couldn’t be anything else with us here like this, watching the first sunrise together. And you know something? This is the first time I’ve ever seen the sunrise on New Year’s Day.” Fusako’s voice warped in the cold. Ryuji heard himself bellow in the resolute voice he used to shout orders into the wind on the winter deck: “Will you marry me?”

“What?”

Annoyed at having to repeat himself, he blurted things better left unsaid: “I’m asking you to marry me. I may be just a dumb sailor but I’ve never done anything I’m ashamed of. You may laugh when I say this, but I have nearly two million yen saved up—you can see my bankbook later. That’s everything I have to my name and I’m going to give it all to you whether you marry me or not.”

His artless proposal touched the worldly lady more deeply than he knew. Overjoyed, Fusako began to cry.

The sun was blazing now, too dazzlingly bright for Ryuji’s anxious eyes, and the whistle-wailing, gear-grinding cacophony of the harbor was surging toward full pitch. The horizon was misted over, the sun’s reflection spreading like a reddish haze over the surface of the water.

“Yes—of course I will. But I think there are some problems we ought to discuss first. There’s Noboru, for example, and my work at the shop. Can I make just one condition? What you’ve just said, I mean—if you’re planning to leave again soon—it would be hard. . . .”

“I won’t be sailing again for a while. As a matter of fact . . .” Ryuji faltered, and was silent.

There wasn’t a single Japanese room in Fusako’s house; her mode of living was thoroughly Western except on New Year’s Day, when she observed tradition by serving the special New Year’s breakfast on lacquered trays and drinking toasts with spiced sake.

Ryuji hadn’t slept at all. He washed his face with “young water,” the first water drawn in the year, and went into the dining room. It was a strange feeling, as though he were still in Europe, at the Japanese Consulate in some northern seaport. In the past, he and the other officers of the
Rakuyo
had been invited to New Year’s breakfast at consulates abroad: the sake dipper and the wooden cups stacked on a stand inlaid with gold, and the lacquered boxes filled with traditional side dishes, were always arrayed on a table in a bright Western dining room just as they were here.

Noboru came down wearing a new necktie, and New Year’s congratulations were exchanged. In previous years Noboru had always drunk the first toast, but when the time came and he reached for the uppermost and smallest of the three cups, Fusako stopped him with a reproving look.

Pretending to be embarrassed, he simpered:

“It seems pretty silly for Mr. Tsukazaki to drink out of the smallest.” But his eyes never left the cup. It seemed to wither in the grasp of the huge, calloused hand that carried it to the sailor’s lips. Buried under the thick fingers of a hand accustomed to grappling rope, the vermilion plum-branch cup looked horribly vulgar.

When he had finished the toast, Ryuji began an account of a hurricane in the Caribbean before Noboru even had a chance to coax him:

“When the pitching gets really bad you can hardly cook your rice. But you manage somehow and then eat it plain, just squeezed into little balls. Of course, the bowls won’t stay put on a table, so you push the desks in the lounge up against the wall and sit on the floor and try to gulp it down.

“But this hurricane in the Caribbean was really something. The
Rakuyo
was built overseas more than twenty years ago and she starts leaking when you hit rough weather. Well, this time the water came pouring in around the rivet holes in the hull. And at a time like that there’s no difference between officers and deck-hands, everybody works together like drowning rats, bailing and throwing mats down and pouring cement as fast as you can get it mixed. And even if you get slammed against a wall or hurled into the dark when the power shorts out, you haven’t got time to be scared.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though: no matter how long you’ve been on a ship, you never get used to storms. I mean you’re sure every time you run into one that your number is up. Anyway, the day before this last hurricane the sunset looked too much like a big fire and the red in the sky was kind of murky and the water was quiet as a lake. I had sort of a feeling then that something was coming—”

“Stop it, please stop!” Fusako screamed, clapping her hands over her ears. “Please don’t talk about things like that any more.”

His mother’s histrionics annoyed Noboru: why did she have to cover her ears and protest about an adventure story which obviously was being told for his benefit! Or had it been intended for her in the first place?

The thought made him uncomfortable. Ryuji had told the same sort of sea story before, but this time his delivery seemed different. The tone of his voice reminded Noboru of a peddler selling sundry wares while he handled them with dirty hands. Unsling a pack from your back and spread it open on the ground for all to see: one hurricane Caribbean-style—scenery along the banks of the Panama Canal—a carnival smeared in red dust from the Brazilian countryside—a tropical rainstorm flooding a village in the twinkling of an eye—bright parrots hollering beneath a dark sky. . . . No doubt about it: Ryuji did have a pack of wares.

O
N
the fifth of January the
Rakuyo
sailed and Ryuji was not aboard. He stayed on as a guest in the Kuroda house.

Rex opened on the sixth. Relieved and in high spirits because Ryuji had stayed behind, Fusako arrived at the shop just before noon and received New Year’s congratulations from Mr. Shibuya and the rest of the staff. Waiting on her desk was an invoice from an English distributor:

The shipment had arrived during the vacation on the
El Dorado;
there were two and a half dozen men’s vests and pullovers, and a dozen and a half pairs of sports slacks, sizes 34, 38, and 40. Including the 10 per cent commission for the distributor, the bill came to ninety thousand yen. Even if they shelved the order for a month or so they could count on clearing fifty thousand yet in profits: half the merchandise was on special order and could be sold at any time. And not having to worry about depreciation no matter how long the rest remained on the shelf was the advantage of handling English products through a first-rate distributor. The retail prices were established in England and their account would be canceled if they tried to undersell.

Mr. Shibuya came into the office and announced: “The Jackson Company is having a pre-season showing of their spring and summer collections on the twenty-fifth. We have received an invitation.”

“Oh? I suppose that means we’ll be competing with buyers from the big Tokyo stores again—not that those people aren’t all blind as bats.”

“They have no feel for fabric or design because they have never worn fine clothes themselves.”

“Isn’t it the truth!” Fusako noted the date in the memo book on her desk. “Is it tomorrow that we’re supposed to go to the Foreign Trade Ministry? Bureaucrats always make me so nervous, I’ll probably just sit there and grin. I’m counting on you to get us through.”

“I’ll do what I can. One of the senior clerks happens to be an old friend.”

“Oh yes, you’ve mentioned that before—I feel better already.”

Hoping to satisfy the tastes of some new customers, Rex had entered into a special agreement with the Men’s Town and Country Shop in New York: letters of credit had already been issued and now it was up to Fusako to apply through the Foreign Trade Ministry for an import license.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Fusako said abruptly, her eyes on the V neck of the thin old dandy’s camel’s-hair vest, “how you’ve been feeling lately.”

“Not awfully well, thank you. I imagine it’s my arthritis acting up again, but the pain seems to be spreading.”

“Well, have you been to see a doctor?”

“No, what with the holiday rush and everything . . .”

“But you haven’t been feeling well since before New Year’s.”

“I don’t have time to waste sitting around in a doctor’s office, especially this time of year.”

“I still wish you’d have someone look at you right away. If anything happened to you, we’d be out of business.”

The old man smiled vaguely, one wrinkled white hand fussing nervously with the tight knot in his necktie.

A salesgirl came in to say that Miss Yoriko Kasuga had arrived.

Fusako went down to the patio. This time Yoriko had come alone. She was wearing a mink coat, peering into a showcase with her back turned. When she had decided on some Lancôme lipstick and a Pelican fountain pen, Fusako invited her to lunch: the famous actress beamed with pleasure. Fusako took her to Le Centaure, a small French restaurant near the harbor where yachtsmen often gathered. The proprietor was an old gourmet who once had worked at the French Consulate.

Fusako looked at the actress as though to measure the loneliness of this simple, somehow stolid woman. Yoriko had received not one of the awards she had been counting on for the past year, and obviously her excursion to Yokohama today was an escape from the eyes society levels on a star who has failed to win an award. Though she must have had followers beyond counting, the only person with whom she could be frank and at ease was the proprietress of a Yokohama luxury shop, not even a close friend.

Fusako decided it would be best not to mention movie awards during lunch.

They drank a bottle of the restaurant’s celebrated
vin de maison
with their bouillabaisse. Fusako had to order for Yoriko because she couldn’t read the French menu.

“You know, Mama, you’re really beautiful,” the large beauty said abruptly. “I’d give anything to look like you.” Yoriko slighted her own beauty more than any woman Fusako knew. The actress had marvelous breasts, gorgeous eyes, a fine-sculptured nose, and voluptuous lips, and yet she was tormented by vague feelings of inferiority. She even believed, and it pained her not a little, that the awards committee had passed her by because men watching her on the screen saw only a woman they would love to take to bed.

Fusako watched the famous, beautiful, unhappy woman flush with contentment as she decorated her name in an autograph book produced by the waitress. Yoriko’s reaction to an autograph book was always a good indication of her mood. And judging from the drunken generosity with which she was flourishing her pen just now, a fan would need only to ask for one of her breasts to receive it.

“The only people in this world I really trust are my fans -even if they do forget you so fast,” Yoriko mumbled as she lit an imported woman’s cigarette.

“Don’t you trust me?” Fusako teased. She could predict Yoriko’s felicitous response to such a question.

“Do you think I’d come all the way to Yokohama if I didn’t? You’re the only real friend I have. Honestly, you are. I haven’t felt this relaxed in ages and it’s all thanks to you, Mama.” That name again! Fusako winced.

The walls of the restaurant were decorated with water-color paintings of famous yachts, bright red checkered tablecloths covered the empty tables; they were the only people in the small room. The old window frames began to creak in the wind and a page of a newspaper scudded down the empty street. The window opened on a dismal reach of ashen warehouse walls.

Yoriko kept her mink coat draped around her shoulders while she ate: an imposing necklace of heavy gold chain swayed on her stately chest. She had escaped the scandal-loving world, she had even eluded her own ambition, and now, like a muscular woman laborer lazing in the sun between wearisome tasks, she was content. Though her reasons for sorrow or joy rarely seemed convincing to the observer, Yoriko managed to support a family of ten, and it was at moments like this that the source of her vitality became apparent. She derived her strength from something she herself was least aware of: her beauty.

Fusako had a sudden feeling that she would find in Yoriko the ideal confidante. Thereupon she began to tell about Ryuji, and the happiness in the story made her so drunk that she revealed every intimate detail.

“Is that right! And did he really give you his seal and a bankbook with two million yen on deposit?”

“I tried to refuse, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“But there was no reason for you to have refused. And wasn’t that a manly thing to do! Of course, the money is only pennies as far as you’re concerned, but it’s the spirit behind it that counts. I would never have dreamed that there were men like that around anymore. Especially since the only men who come near me are freeloaders out for whatever they can get. I hope you realize how lucky you are.”

Fusako had never dreamed that Yoriko could be practical and she was astonished when, having listened to the whole story, the actress promptly prescribed a course of action.

A prerequisite of any marriage, she began, was an investigation by a private detective agency. Fusako would need a photograph of Ryuji and about thirty thousand yen. If she hurried them she could have the results within a week. Yoriko would be happy to recommend a reliable agency.

Though she didn’t imagine there was any cause for worry in this case, there was always the possibility that a sailor might have an ugly disease: it would be best if they exchanged health certificates, Ryuji accompanying Fusako to a doctor of her choice.