The Japanese Lover(26)
December 3, 1986
Yesterday when we talked about Topaz I didn’t mention the most important thing, Alma: not everything was negative. We had parties, sports, art. We ate turkey at Thanksgiving and decorated the barracks for Christmas. People sent us parcels with candy, toys, and books. My mother was always busy with new plans; everyone respected her, even the whites. Megumi was in love and overjoyed with her work at the hospital. I painted, planted the vegetable garden, mended broken things. The classes were so short and easy that even I got good grades. I used to play almost all day long; there were lots of children and hundreds of stray dogs, all of them the same, short legged and with wiry hair. The ones who suffered most were my father and James.
After the war, the people from the camps spread throughout the country. The youngsters became independent; the idea of living isolated in a poor imitation of Japan was finished. We integrated into America.
I think of you. When we meet I’ll make you tea and we’ll talk again.
Ichi
IRINA, ALMA, AND LENNY
The two women were having lunch under the historic stained-glass cupola in Neiman Marcus on Union Square. More than anything, they went there for the popovers, served warm straight from the oven, and the pink champagne, which was Alma’s favorite. Irina ordered lemonade and both raised their glasses to the good life. In silence, so as not to offend Alma, Irina also toasted the Belascos’ wealth, which allowed her the luxury of this moment, with its soft music, elegant shoppers, willowy models parading in high-fashion dresses to tempt purchasers, and obsequious -waiters wearing green ties. This refined world was infinitely removed from her Moldovan village and all the hardships she had suffered in her childhood, let alone the terrors of her adolescence.
The two women ate peacefully, savoring Asian dishes and ordering more popovers. A second glass of champagne loosened Alma’s tongue, and on this occasion she talked about Nathaniel, her husband, who was nearly always part of her reminiscences; she had managed to keep him alive in her memory for three decades now. Seth had vague memories of his grandfather as an exhausted skeleton with burning eyes propped up on downy pillows. He was barely four years old when his grandfather’s painful expression was gone forever, but he had never forgotten the smell of medicines and eucalyptus vapor in his bedroom. Alma told Irina that Nathaniel was as generous as his father, Isaac Belasco, and that when he died, among his papers she had found hundreds of IOUs for loans he never called in, and precise instructions to pardon his many debtors. She found herself unprepared to take charge of all the matters he had left unfinished during his devastating final illness.
“I’ve never in all my life worried about money matters. Strange, isn’t it?”
“You were lucky. Almost everyone I know has money worries. The residents at Lark House all scrape by, and some of them can’t even buy the medicines they need.”
“Don’t they have health insurance?” asked Alma in astonishment.
“The insurance covers part of the expense, but not all. If their families don’t help them, Mr. Voigt has to draw on Lark House’s special reserves.”
“I’ll go and talk to him. Why did you never tell me this before, Irina?”
“You can’t solve every case, Alma.”
“No, but the Belasco Foundation could maintain the park at Lark House. Then Voigt would save a stack of money he could use to help the neediest residents.”
“Mr. Voigt would faint in your arms if you suggested such a thing, Alma.”
“What an appalling thought! I sincerely hope not.”
“But tell me more about what happened to you after your husband died.”
“I was drowning in all the paperwork, when it finally occurred to me to ask Larry. My son had lived quietly in the shadows and had grown up to become a cautious and responsible gentleman without anyone really noticing.”
Larry Belasco had married young, in a rush and without fuss, both because of his father’s illness and because his fiancée, Doris, was visibly pregnant. Alma admitted that at the time she was so preoccupied looking after her husband that she had few opportunities to get to know her daughter-in-law, even though they lived under the same roof. Yet she ended up loving her dearly because, quite apart from her virtues, Doris adored Larry and was a good mother both to Seth, the little mischief maker, who soon was bounding around the house like a kangaroo, driving out the lugubrious atmosphere, and later to Pauline, a placid little girl, who kept herself amused and seemed to have no further needs.
“Just as I never had to worry about money, so I never had the bother of domestic chores. In spite of being blind, my mother-in-law looked after the Sea Cliff house until her dying breath, and after her we had a butler, who seemed to have come straight out of one of those English films. He was so mannered that in the family we always thought he was making fun of us.”
She told Irina that the butler was at Sea Cliff for eleven years and left when Doris dared to suggest how he should do his job. “It’s her or me,” the butler told Nathaniel, who by this time no longer left his bed and had little strength to struggle with this kind of problem, despite his having hired all the staff. Faced with this ultimatum, Nathaniel chose his brand-new daughter-in-law, who, despite her youth and her belly rounded by seven months of pregnancy, had already proved herself a compulsive lady of the house. During Lillian’s lifetime the mansion had been run with goodwill and spontaneity; as for the butler, the only noticeable changes were the length of time it took to serve each dish at table and the cook’s sour expression, because he could not stand him. With Doris’s strict regime, the house became a model of precision where no one felt completely at ease. Irina had observed the results of her efficiency: the kitchen was a spotless laboratory, no children were allowed in the living rooms, the wardrobes were scented with lavender, the sheets were starched, daily meals consisted of minuscule portions of fancy dishes, and the flower displays were renewed weekly by a florist. All of this however did not lend the house a festive atmosphere, but made it as solemn as a funeral parlor. The only thing that the magic wand of domesticity had spared was Alma’s empty bedroom, as Doris held her in reverential awe.