Sujata Massey - Shimura Trouble

“Well, he hasn’t been answering his phone.”

“He may not have taken his phone on the water because of the risk of capsizing. Those little boats go over easy.”

“Really?” I said, feeling a prickle of unease. “Do you think he wore a life jacket?”

“So you do care about him.” Karen gave me a speculative look, then passed her husband in the narrow area outside the bathroom where there was a sink and mirror. She opened a make-up bag, and began extracting a top-quality arsenal that put my collection to shame.

“He’s an excellent swimmer and seaman, Rei,” Parker said, coming over to sit down next to me. “Don’t worry. If the two of you had plans tonight, I’m sure he’ll make it back.”

“We didn’t have plans. I mean, we had them and then he cancelled.”

“No date with you on a Friday night, when he’s flying out on Sunday?” Parker’s forehead wrinkled. “What is with that boy?”

“Maybe he’s just trying to be on the careful side and give Rei time to rest,” Karen said. “After all, she was just released from the hospital.”

“I’m sure that it’s something I said.” I was regretting what I’d blurted out to Michael about Hugh arriving on the island. I’d thought it was important to be honest, but what I’d said had clearly dashed what faint progress the two of us had made.

I wrote a short note telling Michael that I wanted to talk to him, and slipped it under his door before I took the elevator downstairs again. Against my better judgment, I checked my phone for any voice messages, and came up with zip. Sickened by the prospect of paying over $100 for a cab ride back to our house, I asked the bell captain if there was a cheaper way to get to the Leeward Side.

I was pondering a sheaf of bus schedules when I caught a glimpse of a bedraggled lean man in wet shorts, T-shirt and Topsiders walking purposefully toward the elevator. I paused, wondering if I should wait to let him read the note. No, I decided, there was too high a risk he’d avoid me. I hadn’t come all this way to be meek.

I took off after him, and as my heels clattered against the granite floor, he turned abruptly. His voice was guarded. “How did you get here? This is a surprise.”

“If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain…” I shrugged.

“You look good, Rei. I know I’m a mess.” He ran a hand through his hair.

“With sailing, that’s par for the course, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly.” Michael smiled. “You’re mixing your sports metaphors, but yes, people do get messed up when they’re out in a catamaran by themselves and are distracted enough to capsize.”

“I knew it!” I exclaimed. “I had a bad feeling about you going sailing at night.”

“You worried about me tipping over in a catamaran?” Michael shook his head. “Well, you shouldn’t. It’s the easiest kind of vessel to right; kids do it all the time. Why are you even here?”

“Unfinished business.”

“OK then. I’ll just clean up first,” Michael said easily, as if our heated argument of a few hours earlier had never happened.

“Good!” I moved to follow him toward the elevator.

“You’d be better off waiting down here.”

“If you prefer.” I watched the elevator doors close after him and a half-dozen other hotel guests.

As the lights on the band above the elevators showed the car traveling upward, I tried to think of why he didn’t want me in the room. Maybe he feared I’d once again be moved by his semi-clothed body and attack. How ironic that the undergarment that I was wearing underneath my dress was sometimes referred to as a merry widow, because Michael was the opposite: an unhappy widower.

After about ten minutes in the lobby, watching children skip about, my cell phone vibrated, surprising me. Here comes the brush off from Michael, I bet. I answered it in a sober voice.

“Miss Shimura, this is Josiah Pierce.”

“Oh, hello.” Even though it was an open area lobby, I felt pinpoints of moisture form on my face.

“I heard you became violently ill the day after our meeting. Are you still in the hospital?”

“No, I was released this morning. Thanks for your concern.” My mind raced. How much did he know about my poisoning, and had the Navy reached him yet to tell him about the land?

“I apologize if something in the meal may have sickened you. Have you learned what kind of food poisoning it was?” Mr. Pierce continued in his well-bred tones. “Midori and I are equally mortified that anything she served might have ailed you.”

“The verdict’s still out on what made me sick. That’s the reason the authorities are visiting everyone I ate with that day, plus examining our own refrigerator’s contents.”

“Well, no doubt they’re operating on Hawaii time, which will mean you’ll find out later rather than sooner. I was wondering if you could stop by again, because I have something to discuss with you, and as you mentioned, these things are sometimes better done in person.”

Now my heart was thudding. The man who might have poisoned me, inviting me to return to his house? ‘I’m without a car at the moment, but I can’t stand suspense. Can you please tell me over the phone what you know?”

“Very well then.” Josiah Pierce’s voice sounded stiff. “Actually, the chief reason I’m telephoning is that I did the research, as I promised you I would, on Harue Shimura’s situation.”

“Did you find out something about ownership of the cottage?” I could barely breathe, I was so excited.

“As you know, I inherited my father’s house, and I use his old office as my own,” JP began, as if he was intent on telling the story his way. “He had two file cabinets relating to the plantation, which Midori’s been after me to dump for years, but I haven’t. I guess I had it in my mind that someday a historian might be interested in an account of this long-ago time. Anyway, once I opened the files, I found hundreds of papers relating to the plantation. It was just a matter of looking through folders until I found the employment records for Keijin Watanabe, who later became Ken Shimura.”

“Do you have the originals?”

“Yes, and I’ll have my lawyers send you copies, if you’d like. But to summarize, Keijin came to us from Okinawa in 1910, having signed a contract promising a minimum of five years’ employment. He started at one of our sugar plantations on the Big Island. He was described as an average worker-which meant a very hard worker, in terms of how we look at productivity in retrospect. However, he had a number of citations for drunkenness and fighting with other workers. There was a particularly bad fight with another worker, a well-liked Filipino boy, who wound up losing his sight in one eye. The solution the plantation manager came up with was to move Keijin from that plantation, get him married, and convince him to change his name to avoid having his reputation follow him.”

“So he came to Oahu,” I said.

“Yes, and within the same month of his arrival, Harue Shimura came to Hawaii. My father spotted Harue when she arrived at the docks in Honolulu by herself, without a sponsoring fiancé to meet her. She asked him for a job, in good English. In his diary for that day, he had a notation: “Hired Harue Shimura, well-bred young lady originating from Yokohama, near-fluent in English, both spoken and written. Agreed to salary of $10 per month and marriage to another worker.””

“It sounds almost like a slave being sold at auction block, doesn’t it?” I thought aloud.

“I’m sure my father thought she was a willing participant because, after all, she’d traveled here alone, and there were plenty of women emigrating in search of husbands that for one reason or other they couldn’t find in Japan. After the wedding-at which Keijin changed his first and last names-an employment record was also opened for Harue. She began work shucking cane in the fields, but her production was lower than other women’s; she was weaker, not coming from peasant stock, the luna noted numerous times. The camp medical record notes that she miscarried her first pregnancy. After she became pregnant again, she was reassigned from the field to teach in the plantation school. Her baby was born full-term, a boy named Yoshitsune. A few months after the birth, she resumed work as a teacher.”