Minae Mizumura - A True Novel

And he was a very good-looking man. In the morning when he was shaving, he would raise his chin, lean back and, looking into the mirror, proclaim, “I am the Valentino of the Orient.” He did this almost every morning.

“Maybe people should call me Rudolph instead of George.”

On the base, he went by the name of George, a name he had used since his days on the ships. Well-read foreigners in the first-class cabins used to ask him whether his name had any connection with that of the romantic hero of The Tale of Genji . The Chinese characters were different, of course, but that was beside the point. Being compared to an imperial prince, the epitome of aristocratic beauty and refinement, seemed to be going a bit too far—so Uncle Genji changed his name on board to George.

All the housework at his place was my responsibility, but it was still an easier life than on the farm, where I’d had to look after the three younger children and my grandfather, who got more and more feeble, and do my share of chores, indoors and out, starting with hauling buckets of water. At Uncle Genji’s, I could finish the housework and still have time to read for an hour or so before I went to sleep, even on weekdays. I bought the cheap secondhand paperbacks they sold in the bookstands right next to rude magazines for men. On weekends, after finishing the cleaning and laundry, I used to take a book out to the narrow veranda and read until there was no more light.

As I said before, most of the maids at the base were either farm girls from around there, or city girls commuting from different parts of Tokyo. Since I didn’t fit into either category, I found myself without any friends with whom to spend my days off. I know I grew up on a farm, but when I heard other girls saying, “I’ve gotta take a piss”—and then saw them relieve themselves right by the side of the road, in broad daylight—I felt I hadn’t much in common with them. It was easy to forget that as a child I’d thought nothing of squatting down in the middle of a rice field myself! I didn’t try to make friends with the city girls, either. They intimidated me, with their smart way of talking.

Perhaps out of pity, or because he was fed up with me hanging around reading all weekend, my uncle occasionally took me into central Tokyo. We’d go to Shinjuku or the Ginza and see a double feature, foreign movies usually. Once when we saw a hit Japanese film called What Is Your Name? he cried more than I did and looked a bit ashamed afterward.

It was interesting to watch Tokyo being rebuilt right in front of us. Yet in all the bustle of those weekend crowds, you still sometimes came across a disabled veteran, one leg dressed in a white bandage, with a cane propped by his side, playing a sad accordion. He was asking for small donations. Most passersby would veer away and walk quickly on.

The war was fast receding into history.

By 1951, a year before I started working at the base, the Occupation was, for all intents and purposes, over, with the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco. When I arrived, the golden days of the base—by which I mean the days when the place buzzed with energy and activity—were on their way to being a thing of the past. Conscripted GIs were heading back home and being replaced by people my uncle referred to as “square heads,” making the base less and less exciting. In fact, by the time he got me the job, he was apparently already thinking about finding a new job for himself. Though he was the reason I was there, he used to say, “This is no place for a young girl.”

In May of 1954, he learned that one of his fellow workers—someone he was close to, a cook for the officers—had given notice. This cook had managed to get his old job back, at the Imperial Hotel. It was then that my uncle decided that he was ready to leave the base as well.

The morning after the farewell party for the cook, Uncle Genji and I were sitting on the tatami having breakfast when he put down his newspaper, looked me in the face, and said, “I wish I knew what to do about your future, Fumiko.” This started a whole lecture. “You know, it can be difficult, being a girl. With your mother, it was easy. She wasn’t any smarter or prettier than the next girl, so she wasn’t too unhappy with the life she ended up with. But there are other cases. A girl with a pretty face but no brain expects too much out of life, and gets disappointed. A girl with a good head and a plain face won’t aim so high, but can end up living a life that’s way beneath her. It’s not like you’re bad-looking, Fumiko, but you’ve really got it going for you up here, in your head. You’ve always been clever. If you came from a rich family, then it wouldn’t matter how you looked or how smart you were. But guess what? You don’t, so I don’t know what to do with you.”

In elementary and middle school my grades had always put me at the top of the class. I distinctly remembered a teacher saying she wished I was going on to high school.

“Isn’t it the same for boys?” I asked my uncle.

“Are you kidding?” he said, trying to play down the discouragement he could hear in my voice. “All a man has to be is smart, and then he’s set for life. But guys who are good-looking on top of being smart, like me, nothing can beat them!”

A few days later, he came home and announced that on Sunday we were going out to find me a job as a proper maid.

“And, here, these are for you,” he said, handing me a girdle and a pair of nylon stockings, both labeled Made in U.S.A., which he’d picked up at the PX. “But don’t wear them till Sunday!”

I FEEL AS though my first real memories—those connecting me to the person I am now—date from the day I went out wearing stockings for the first time. It was that day that my life took a very different turn, though I didn’t know it then.

I’m not sure exactly where we got off the train—I think we took the Yamanote Line from Shinjuku and got off at Komagome or some station near the Rikugien Garden. We didn’t talk as we walked along, but somewhere on the way I remember glancing at my uncle and seeing a look of complete bewilderment on his face. He stopped, his eyes blank, and stroked his cheek.

“It’s all gone,” he said.

Apparently, an entire neighborhood of stately houses had burned down in the fire bombings.

All we had was the new address on a slip of paper. We turned one corner after another, retraced our steps, and in the end decided to ask the lady at a cigarette shop for directions. The house had an impressive gate; my uncle paused to study a pair of new nameplates before he pressed his finger to one of the doorbells. In a moment, an older woman in a kimono peered out of the service door at the side. When she saw Uncle Genji, she exclaimed, “George! It’s been ages! How have you been? What brings you here?” Then she led us in through the front garden, the hall, and into the parlor. The house, which had a woody smell, was in the Japanese style, but with a Western parlor. It wasn’t too long before her husband, dressed in a casual kimono, came out to meet us.

His name was Mr. Ando, but Uncle Genji always referred to him as “the gentleman in Koishikawa.” Later I learned that my uncle had been purser on the ship the family took when Mr. Ando was posted to Paris, and, coincidentally, also on the ship they took back to Japan. He had kept up some connection with him. Apparently, Mr. Ando was now an executive at Mitsubishi Docks.

After my uncle had duly presented the cartons of Lucky Strikes and the Hershey’s chocolate bars he’d brought in his bundle, he introduced me. The wife looked at me and smiled to put me at my ease, but I wasn’t sure whether her husband even noticed I was in the room. He just sat down and said, “You would not believe how shoddily built this place is.”