T. Boyle - The Women

There followed a succession of dinners (running typically to more than two dozen courses), formal teas and ceremonial meetings with what seemed half the population of Tokyo, the greetings so elaborate and extended in those first heady days he barely had time to think about the hotel and the superhuman effort it would take to see it realized in three dimensions. After the drive in from Yokohama in a spanking new Mitsubishi sedan flying the flag of the rising sun, he and Miriam had been installed in a suite of rooms at the old Imperial, a three-story monstrosity of wood, brick and plaster in the heart of downtown Tokyo that featured neo-Renaissance facades and damp cavernous halls in the elaborate gimcrack style of the Second Empire. It was a molding, fermented sort of place that did no one the least lick of good, but at least their rooms opened out onto the courtyard below so that they would have access to fresh air and sunshine. His first order of business was to make himself comfortable, because, as he explained to Hayashi-San as best he could in the absence of a reliable interpreter, he simply could not work in a state of chaos, and as he always did no matter where he was or how temporary his residence, he quickly transformed the rooms into a flowing and elegant space. Before long, he’d acquired a grand piano (the sine qua non, along with a working fireplace, of any home), half a dozen suitable rugs and a few decent screens and hangings, and he positively haunted the shops of the print dealers. 127Despite the language barrier— Dōmo sumimasen, ukiyo-e arimasu-ka? (Excuse me, do you sell prints?) he asked everyone he met — he was like a child in a candy shop. He’d come to the source and for the first few weeks the hotel seemed almost an afterthought.

But of course it wasn’t. It was the commission of a lifetime. And once he’d settled in, once he’d made the rounds of the print shops three or four times each and set up an on-site office and got his assistants to work on the drawings, the rounds of dinners and teas began to wear on him.

One evening, he found himself in yet another teahouse, braced up against the wall on a pristine tatami mat while geisha fluttered about and his host — one of the ubiquitous bankers — made long sake -inflected speeches about matters that were entirely lost on him. He leaned forward over the low rosewood table, putting on his listening face and struggling to ignore the shooting pains in his knees and at the base of his spine, while Miriam, in a kimono and wearing an embroidered Turkish towel wrapped round her head, sat beside him with her back perfectly arched and her legs folded delicately beneath her, all the while nodding and smiling broadly, as if she not only understood but revered each nugget of wisdom with which Tanaka-San was showering them. They were on the sixteenth or seventeenth course, he couldn’t recall which, one morsel of pickled ginger, seaweed and raw fish succeeding the next as if the chef had spent the entire morning combing the beach and breakwaters and was determined to represent every species in Yokohama Bay laid out on a ceramic saucer in its own drizzle of soya. He wanted a steak. Wanted to go back to the hotel and take up his protractor and T-square, wanted a hot bath, a mug of cider instead of the thin green tea, wanted to quarry stone and pour concrete and for Christ’s sake get on with it. He wondered if he looked bored. If he was giving offense. His mind drifted.

And then, as if magically, a voice began speaking to him in a tone and accent so flawless he thought he’d been transported back to Wisconsin. Across the table from him, seated beside Yoshitake-San, was a young man in his late twenties, who had heretofore — through the elaborate greetings, the preliminary samisen playing, the sake toasts and the first sixteen or seventeen courses — held silence. He wore a mustache like Hayashi-San’s and a thin pointed beard. “Wrieto-San, if I may,” he was saying, and he bowed from a sitting position. “And Mrs. Wrieto-San.” A second bow. “I am Endo Arata, and of course we have met in the confusion of the anteroom, but have not till this moment had the opportunity to communicate.”

Startled, Frank simply smiled and nodded. Then he gave his own version of the sitting bow and murmured, “A pleasure, I’m sure.”

At the head of the table, Tanaka-San had paused, his hands folded patiently before him. The young man said something to him then in his own language and Tanaka-San, a full-faced man in his fifties who managed to look as if he were attempting to swallow a perpetual goldfish, even when he was speaking, grunted “Hai.”

“I am, if you will allow me,” Endo-San said, turning back to him with yet another bow, “able to act as an interpreter, as I have acquired some rudiments of your language. What Tanaka-San has said, and please do not take offense because he means only to provide you with an aphorism, one of our reverend sayings of the past: Deru kugi wa utareru. And”—a glance for Tanaka-San—“he means it not in reference to you specifically but to the Western style of architecture in general and the way in which he perceives gaijin, that is to say, foreigners, to do business—”

Beside him, her voice ringing out its richest tones, he heard Miriam say, “How charming, Endo-San. And what does this mean?”

“Literally?” He looked to Tanaka-San and back. “It means, roughly, ‘The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.’ ”

Miriam, broadly Southern now, the belle in full display: “Oh, then I take it to be an architectural phrase?”

Frank stiffened. There was something afoot here, something lost in translation, a caution, a warning. He looked to Tanaka-San, who was clutching his sake cup and swallowing his goldfish, and nodded gravely before turning back to the younger man.

“Not actually,” Endo-San said, bowing again as he maneuvered delicately round the question. “It is more a. . general expression. You see, Tanaka-San”—a glance, a bow—“is commenting on the Japanese way of cooperation, in which the team is always held above the individual and all decisions are group decisions. He understands”—and here Tanaka-San clarified in a burst of guttural Japanese—“that some Westerners are what we call ‘one-men’; that is, people who act on their own initiative without regard for the larger group. But that you are not such a man, Wrieto-San, begging forgiveness.”

What were they saying? He kept his face neutral as he tried to make sense of it. Didn’t they understand that the Imperial was his and his alone? That he’d been appointed because of his genius, because he stood head and shoulders above all the other architects of the world and that he would brook no interference? He looked from one man to the other — and to Yoshitake-San — and now Miriam was trying to fill the silence with her lyrical voice, assuring everyone that she and Frank were as thrilled to be present at this lovely gathering as anybody could imagine. And thanking them for their kindness. And generosity. And the exquisite and absolutely delectable cuisine. She paused, a bright pink morsel of fish roe eclipsing one of her front teeth, and let her smile radiate from one end of the table to the other.

“Which is to say, Wrieto-San, with your permission, I will offer my assistance at every step of the way”—Endo-San paused, struggled to find his own smile—“both as interpreter, and in my humble way, as consultant.” 128

If Frank was a bit huffy in the car on the way back to the hotel—“Good God, what do they think, they’ve hired a lackey to do their bidding? If they wanted a lackey why not have one of their own architects design the damned thing, Yoshitake or Endo or how about that man there in the straw hat and dirty yukata, he looks like he could use a job”—Miriam was floating on a cloud of serenity. She was Mrs. Wright in the eyes of an entire nation, given the respect and honor she deserved, invited everywhere in the highest circles of Japanese and emigré society — and if she wasn’t yet Mrs. Wright in her own country because Frank’s pigheaded wife wouldn’t grant a divorce, well, she would be, all in good time. And the hotel, though it was gloomy, did provide first-class service — and they had their car and driver and a pair of houseboys to see to their needs. Of course, the streets were of beaten dirt — mud when it rained — and that was something of a shock, and automobiles were as rare as shooting stars, and the food, noodles, miso, fish in one form or another three times a day, was a far cry from what she’d expected (and what she wouldn’t give for a charcuterie or even a bistro). But the climate was acceptable and the company an enormous improvement over Chicago.