Fifty Words for Rain(103)
If she can keep me safe, she will. But only if I serve the family. Or, really, only if I serve her.
* * *
July 5th, 1939
She is still here.
God help me.
I can tolerate her constant criticism of absolutely everything I do, from the way I run my household to the way I dress, but I cannot tolerate her stealing my son away from me.
Her passion for him is overwhelming the poor boy. I think she wants to dip him in gold and put him on display as a holy icon.
He is respectful towards her, he is a most well-mannered boy, but he looks desperate for rescuing.
She talks to him like he’s a grown man, not a child at all, and she showers him with gifts as if this is the way to win love.
I can do nothing. I am unable to stand up to her, as usual.
She asks me when I will make another grandson for her, but she is not asking as a loving grandmother.
She is asking as the guardian of a dynasty. If I have a girl, I doubt she will trouble herself to come back here.
She only needs boys.
I won’t tell her that I haven’t slept with my husband in months. He doesn’t come to my bedroom. I suppose he has mistresses. I can’t be bothered to ask.
Eventually we’ll need another son, but for now I’m free.
Now if only my mother would go home to Kyoto.
It’s a miracle the city has not crumbled to dust in her absence.
* * *
August 1st, 1939
My mother has taken my boy.
She has taken him away, just as a falcon will pick up a shiny object and fly it back to the nest.
I can barely write for grief.
She has insisted he spend the whole of August with her in Kyoto and I am not invited. Though I am a married woman and the mother of our family’s heir, apparently I am still too tainted to soil the threshold of her beloved city.
Yasuei is still not back. I write to him and tell him that he must come home at once and take command of his household. My mother is running roughshod over us all.
I dismiss all the servants, every one, and I tell them I will send for them when I want them to return.
I am left alone in this great house. I can hear my footsteps echoing as I walk.
But I cannot stand to be here, trapped within the walls of my husband’s house, in a city that still doesn’t feel like home.
I have to get out.
I must get out.
I will go where I always go when I cannot tolerate my life.
I will go to the music.
* * *
August 20th, 1939
I have met an American.
I have met an American at the symphony.
He touched my shoulder as I was walking out, just slightly, and he smiled at me and told me I had dropped my fan. He spoke in English, he cannot speak a word of Japanese, and he lit up when he realized that I could understand him. He says he’s been very lonely with few people to talk to.
He’s in the army, or the navy, or something of that sort. He has a uniform in any case. But since it is peacetime in his country, he is on leave, and he came here to paint the cherry blossoms.
He has brown skin like a coconut, unlike anything I’ve seen before, and eyes like amber. They’re the oddest color. But they are beautiful.
My God, they are beautiful.
And he is tall, very tall, with strong arms that he says he got behind a plow. I don’t know what a plow is—I think it is some kind of peasant farming device. He has the most perfect full lips.
He is the most extraordinarily handsome man I have ever seen.
But I have been here before. I know better.
I have quashed desire, I have not dreamt of love since my husband slid a ring on my finger and a halter around my neck.
I am his chattel, his broodmare, his loyal and obedient wife, and I will be until I die.
This is what my mother would say. This is what I should say.
But I have seen the American five times now, every night this week. He is renting a horrible little room in the worst part of town, but I don’t care. I throw a scarf over my head, I put on dark sunglasses, and I go into the ghetto as if I were not cousin to royalty, as if they did not used to call me “little princess.”
He is a gentleman. He never tries to touch me, though I cannot miss the way his eyes graze the skin at my collarbone, as if he thinks of nothing but kissing me there.
And we talk. Amazingly, we talk about everything. We have almost nothing in common and yet we understand each other perfectly.
I have never been able to speak to anyone this way.
My boy will be home soon, and though I am so happy, I know this will bring my husband back too. For all his faults, he loves our son.
He sees me no more than he sees the furniture, but I fear that he will smell the desire on me. I am a dog in heat, surely he will know?
This is a dangerous road I am treading down.
I should go back.
But I cannot.
Oh, I cannot.
* * *
September 7th, 1939
Something is happening in Europe, everyone is talking about it. Germany is causing trouble, just as they have always done, and my husband says that it will all end badly and that he hopes Japan has the sense to stay out of yet another war. We are already at war with China, and there has been terrible loss of life on both sides. But the Emperor has declared that Japan must expand and my husband says that another Great War is looming.