The Japanese Lover(29)
Two days later, Seth called Irina for them to meet in the usual pizzeria, but she had bathed five dogs that weekend and was feeling generous. She proposed that this once they go to a decent restaurant: Alma had put the obsession for white tablecloths into her head.
“This time I’m paying,” she told him.
Seth picked her up on his motorcycle and zigzagged with her through the traffic well beyond the speed limit until they reached the Italian district. They arrived with their hair plastered down from their helmets and their noses dripping. Irina realized she was not properly dressed for the restaurant—she never was—and the waiter’s disdainful look only served to confirm it. When she saw the prices on the menu she almost fainted.
“Don’t worry, my firm will pay,” Seth reassured her.
“This is going to cost more than a wheelchair!”
“Why do you want a wheelchair?”
“It’s just a comparison, Seth. There are a couple of old ladies in Lark House who can’t afford the wheelchairs they need.”
“That’s very sad, Irina. I can recommend the scallops with truffles. And a good white wine, of course.”
“Coca-Cola for me.”
“To go with scallops it has to be Chablis. They don’t serve Coca--Cola here.”
“Then I’ll have mineral water with a twist of lemon.”
“Are you an alcoholic in rehab, Irina? You can tell me, there’s no reason to be ashamed. It’s an illness, like diabetes.”
“No, I’m not an alcoholic, but wine gives me a headache,” replied Irina, who had no intention of sharing her worst memories with him.
Before the first course they were served, courtesy of the chef, a spoonful of a blackish foam that seemed to her like it had been vomited by a dragon. Irina tasted it suspiciously, while Seth was explaining that Lenny was a bachelor, had no children, and had specialized in root canal treatment at a dental clinic in Santa Barbara. There was nothing noteworthy about his life, except that he was a great sportsman who had done the Ironman challenge several times—a crazy combination of swimming, cycling, and running that frankly did not sound very appealing. Seth had mentioned Lenny to his father, who had the impression he had been a friend of Alma and Nathaniel, although he couldn’t be sure. He vaguely recalled having seen him at Sea Cliff during Nathaniel’s final illness. Many loyal friends passed through to keep his father company in those days, and Lenny might have been one of them. For the moment, Seth had no more information about him, but he had discovered something about Ichimei.
“The Fukuda family spent three and a half years in a concentration camp during the Second World War,” he told Irina.
“Where?”
“At Topaz, in the middle of the Utah desert.”
Irina had only heard of the German concentration camps in Europe, but Seth explained what had happened, showing her a photograph from the Japanese American National Museum. The caption beneath the original stated that these were the Fukudas. He told her that his assistant was looking for the names and ages of each of them on the lists of the Topaz evacuees.
THE PRISONERS
All through their first year at Topaz, Ichimei often used to send Alma his drawings, but after that they became less frequent, because the censors couldn’t keep up and had to restrict the evacuees’ correspondence. Alma jealously kept those sketches, which provided the best glimpse into this stage of the Fukudas’ lives: the family huddled in one of the barracks; children doing homework kneeling on the ground with benches for desks; lines of people outside the latrines; men playing cards; women washing clothes in huge tubs. The prisoners’ cameras had been confiscated, and the few who managed to hide theirs were unable to develop the negatives. The only permitted photographs were optimistic ones that showed not only the humane treatment the prisoners received but the relaxed, cheerful atmosphere in the camp: kids playing baseball, adolescents dancing to the latest crazes, everybody singing the national anthem while the flag was raised every morning; on no account were the barbed-wire fences, the watchtowers, or the armed guards to be shown. One of the American soldiers eventually took a snapshot of the Fukuda family. His name was Boyd Anderson, and he had fallen in love with Megumi, whom he saw for the first time at the hospital, where she worked as a volunteer and where he had gone after cutting his hand opening a can of corned beef.
Boyd was twenty-three years old. He was tall and pale looking like his Swedish ancestors, with a straightforward, friendly character that made him one of the few whites to gain the evacuees’ confidence. A girlfriend was waiting impatiently for him in Los Angeles, but when he saw Megumi in her white volunteer’s uniform, his heart was taken. She cleaned the wound, the doctor inserted nine stitches, and she bandaged it with professional skill without once looking him in the face, while Boyd stared at her so bedazzled that he didn’t feel the slightest pain. From that day on he hovered around her discreetly, partly because he did not want to abuse his position of authority, but above all because any mixing of the races was forbidden for the whites and was repugnant to the Japanese. Thanks to her moonlike face and the delicacy with which she moved through the world, Megumi could have had any of the most sought-after young men at Topaz, but she felt the same forbidden attraction for the guard, and also struggled with the monstrosity of racism, praying to the heavens that the war would come to an end and her family return to San Francisco so that she could tear this sinful temptation from her soul. For his part, Boyd prayed the war would never end.