T. Boyle - The Women

“Good evening,” he said when first they’d sat down, and then he repeated the phrase several times in succession, and she, playing along, returned the greeting or observation or whatever it was, until, on the third or fourth repetition, it began to take on a new meaning altogether and it was all she could do to restrain herself when “Good night” would have been more appropriate. “The weather is pleasant, is it not?” he observed next. And then, after sitting silent through Frank’s dissertation on the quarrying of native stone in its naturally occurring sedimentary layers so as to deliver it intact to the landscape, he cleared his throat and asked her if he might light her fire. “I beg your pardon?” she said, and he produced a cigarette case, offered her a cigarette and lit it for her even as Frank flashed his disapproval. She smiled then and Yoshitake-San, lighting his own cigarette, smiled back.

It was during dessert — by her count the eighth course of the evening — that Frank began to shift his focus to Hayashi-San’s wife. He actually picked up his chair in the middle of the tea service and inserted it between Hayashi-San’s and the wife’s, and Miriam stiffened, she couldn’t help herself. Of course, she was thinking, why wouldn’t he fawn all over her like the beast he was — she was young, wasn’t she? And pretty? Even if she was an Oriental. Oh, she was a little porcelain doll, the wife, wrapped in her black silk gown with the pale chrysanthemums climbing gracefully up the hem and across her abdomen and the swell of her pointed little Japanese breasts as if she were one of Frank’s prints sprung to life, and when he spoke to her she batted her exaggerated lashes and smiled out of a mouth of uneven oversized teeth. 120For the most part, she stared down at her lap, except when Frank was probing her with facetious queries about her kimono or her impressions of America, but at one point she turned to him and asked a question of her own, as if this were all part of the performance expected of her. “I wish to ask you, Wrieto-San”—and here she gave Miriam a look—“and Mrs. Wrieto-San, what is this word ‘goddamn’?”

Frank laughed. And Miriam, despite herself — she detested it when he paid attention to another woman, any woman, as if he were dismissing her publicly, shaming her, shunning her, but the sound of that casual appellation, Mrs. Wrieto-San, was music to her ears — found that she was smiling as well. How adorable, she was thinking. How childlike. How pitiful.

“ ‘Goddamn’?” Frank repeated, levity lifting his voice, and everyone at the table was watching the wife now — Takako-San — and everyone was smiling in anticipation of the sequel. “Why do you ask? Have you heard this expression often since you’ve arrived in our country?”

A little pout, a widening of the eyes, and she was very young, Miriam saw, in her teens or early twenties, young and full of grace. And coquetry. But didn’t they teach that in Japan? Wasn’t that what women existed for over there? 121“Oh, yes, Wrieto-San,” the wife said in a diminished little puff of a voice, “every day. All the time. Here tonight. You have said it yourself.”

And Frank, grinning, flirting — infuriatingly, as if she didn’t exist, as if she weren’t sitting across the table from him with the smile drying on her lips — gave a broad wink for the benefit of the table and for Hayashi-San in particular, no sense in ruffling his feathers, and replied that “goddamn” was a polite adverb meaning “very.” “As in, oh, I don’t know — Paul, help me out here—” But before Paul could answer, he went on, “—it’s a goddamn fine evening. Or this is goddamn fresh butter. After a meal you might thank your host for a goddamn good dinner.”

Takako-San shifted prettily in her chair, made her eyes big and looked round the table as if she were sitting in the catbird seat— and she was, she was —and chirped, “Then I thank you, Wrieto-San — and Mrs. Wrieto-San — for a goddamn good dinner.”

Of course everyone laughed — it was a pretty performance — and Frank and Hayashi-San petted her as if she were a dog or monkey granted the power of speech, but Miriam, though she was grinning, felt a stab of hate run through her. Hate that carried over into the living room, where they sat before the fire and Frank paraded out his treasures — the prints in particular — to get Hayashi-San’s studied opinion of them, and then there was the inevitable tour of the house that went on till it was past midnight and Hayashi-San, for all his rigid propriety, began to yawn.

“Well,” Frank sighed, taking the cue at long last though she’d been signaling him with furious eyes for an hour and more, “you must be all tired out, rail travel can be so enervating, I know — but perhaps we’ll take it up again in the morning. Perhaps you’d like to see something of the house from the grounds. Or from horseback. If you like we can saddle up the horses — or take the motorcar. But please, let me show you to your rooms. .”

There were the elaborate good nights, the ritual bowing, Hayashi-San’s eyes all but melting into his head with exhaustion, the two students as silent and impassive as the carven statue of the Amida Buddha in the loggia and the little wife grinning her toothy farewells till finally they were alone in the bedroom and Miriam shut the door behind them and stalked to the closet. Frank had begun to whistle. He stood before the mirror, working loose the knot of his tie, a look of satisfaction on his face, and it was that look that set her off as much as anything. He was so pleased with himself, wasn’t he? Frank Lloyd Wright, the great man, beguiler of foreigners, seducer of women, god of his own universe. The light at the bedside cast a soft glow. Shadows climbed the walls. She was one tick from combustion.

“That went well enough, don’t you think?” he said, shrugging out of the tunic with the trailing tails and open flapping arms that was like something you’d see on a Barnum & Bailey clown, and who was he to talk of parody? She snapped her neck round to glare at him, at his bare shoulders and the back of his inflated head. Did he actually expect her to reminisce over the evening? Over her own public humiliation? Was he that insensible?

“Hayashi-San, I mean,” he went on, addressing the wall before him as he balanced first on one foot and then the other to remove his trousers. “He was reserved, of course, but that’s the nature of the Japanese, their natural dignity, but I could see that he was visibly impressed with Taliesin and the beautiful things we’ve collected here. . Yoshitake-San too, though it’s Hayashi who makes the decisions, you can see that in an instant. No, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t come to a mutual agreement within the next few days. A ten percent commission, of course, and I’ll want travel and accommodation in the old Imperial, for the two of us and three assistants at least. And I’ll want a car and driver too, so that we can explore the countryside on our own, and the shops, of course. .”

She made no answer. She turned away, removed her jewelry and set it on the tray, jerked the comb from her hair. Her hands were trembling. The blindness of him, the stupidity! And did he really think she was going to tramp all the way over to the Orient with him to be treated like this?

“And what did you think of Takako-San? Charming, wasn’t she?” And now it was too late, now the match had been struck, now. She flew at him across the room — he was just pulling the nightshirt over his head, oblivious, full of himself, swaggering, boasting, Lothario incarnate — and before she could think she’d slammed into him, both her hands extended, and he was staggering back against the wall, the garment caught over his head. There was a heavy fleshy thump and he cried out in surprise, working the neck of the nightshirt down over his face even as she shoved him again and he fell awkwardly to the floor. He was so stunned, so totally taken by surprise, that he just sat there staring up at her, not even angry yet, not even defending himself, as if he were the victim of some natural disaster, an earthquake, an avalanche. “What the—?” he stammered. “What are you—?”