The Japanese Lover(42)

November 27, 2005

It seems incredible, Alma: Megumi has decided to retire. She had such a struggle to get her diploma, and loves her profession so much that we thought she would never do so. We’ve calculated that in forty-five years she has brought some five thousand five hundred babies into the world. As she says, it’s her contribution to the population explosion. She is eighty, a widow for ten years now, and has five grandchildren. It is high time she took a rest, but she’s got it into her head to open a food business. No one in the family can understand it, because my sister can’t even fry an egg. I have had a few free hours to paint in. This time I am not going to re—create the Topaz landscape, as I have done so often in the past. I’m painting a path in the mountains of southern Japan, near a very ancient, isolated temple. You should come with me to Japan, I’d love to show you that temple.

Ichi





LOVE


That year, 1955, was not just one of effort and sweat for Ichimei. It was the year of his great love. Alma abandoned her project of going back to Boston, becoming a second Vera Neumann, and traveling around the world. Instead, her only aim in life was to be with Ichimei. They met almost every day at nightfall, once his work in the fields was done, at a motel six miles from Martinez. Alma always arrived first and paid for the room to a Pakistani clerk, who looked her up and down with deep disdain. Proud and haughty, she stared him in the eye until he was forced to lower his gaze and hand over the key. The same scene was repeated most every weekday.

At home, Alma had announced she was taking evening classes at the University of Berkeley. Isaac, who prided himself on having progressive ideas and who could do business with or be a friend to his gardener, would have been unable to accept the idea that someone from his family had intimate relations with one of the Fukudas. As for Lillian, she took it for granted that Alma would marry a mensch from the Jewish community, just as Martha and Sarah had done. The only one who knew Alma’s secret was Nathaniel, and he did not approve either. Alma had not told him about the motel, and he had not asked, because he preferred not to know the details. He could no longer dismiss Ichimei as a childish whim of his cousin’s that she would get over as soon as she saw him again, but he still hoped that at some point Alma would understand they had nothing in common. He no longer remembered his boyhood friendship with Ichimei, except for the martial arts classes at Pine Street. Once Nathaniel had gone to secondary school and the theatrical performances in the attic were over, he had seen little of Ichimei, even though Ichimei often came to Sea Cliff to play with Alma.

When the Fukuda family returned to San Francisco, Nathaniel met him briefly once or twice, sent by his father to give him money for the plant nursery. He could not understand what on earth his cousin saw in him: he was an insubstantial figure who floated by without leaving a trace, the opposite of the kind of strong, self-confident man needed to handle a woman as complex as Alma. Nathaniel was sure his opinion of Ichimei would be the same even if he weren’t Japanese; it was a question of character, not of race. Ichimei was lacking that quota of ambition and aggression all men need, and which he himself had developed through sheer willpower. He recalled very clearly his years of fear, the torment at school, and the superhuman effort he had made to study a profession that required an evil streak completely missing in him. He was grateful to his father for making him follow in his footsteps, because working as a lawyer had toughened him; he had acquired an alligator’s hide that allowed him to manage on his own and to succeed.

“That’s what you think, Nat, but you don’t know Ichimei, and you don’t know yourself,” Alma told him when he explained his theory of masculinity to her.



* * *



The memory of those blessed months when she and Ichimei met at the motel, where they couldn’t switch off the light because of the cockroaches that emerged at night from the corners of the room, was able to sustain Alma in later years, when she sternly tried to drive out love and desire and replace them with the penance of fidelity. With Ichimei she discovered the multiple subtleties of love and pleasure, from frantic, urgent passion to those sacred moments when they were lifted by emotion and lay still in bed side by side, staring endlessly into each other’s eyes, content and sated, abashed at having touched their souls’ deepest levels, purified from having stripped away all pretense and lying together totally vulnerable, in such a state of ecstasy they could no longer distinguish between joy and sadness, the elation of life or the sweet temptation of dying there and then so that they would never be apart. Isolated from the world through the magic of love, Alma could ignore the voices inside her head calling her back, crying out for her to be careful, warning her of the consequences. They lived only for the day’s encounter; there was no tomorrow or yesterday. All that mattered was the grimy room with its jammed window; the smell of damp, worn-out sheets; and the endless wheezing of the air-conditioning. Only the two of them existed, from the first longing kiss as they crossed the threshold and before they even locked the door; their caresses standing up; flinging off their clothing, which lay where it fell; their naked, quivering bodies; each drinking in the heat, savor, and smell of the other; the texture of skin and hair; the marvel of losing themselves in desire until they were exhausted, of dozing in one another’s arms for a moment, only to renew their pleasure; the jokes, laughter, and whispered secrets; the wonderful universe of intimacy. Ichimei’s fingers, capable of returning a dying plant to life or repairing a watch without looking, revealed to Alma her own rebellious, hungry nature. She enjoyed shocking him, challenging him, seeing him blush with embarrassment and delight. She was daring, he was restrained; she was noisy during her orgasms, he covered her mouth. She dreamed up a rosary of romantic, passionate, flattering, and filthy phrases to whisper in his ear or write to him in urgent missives; he maintained the reserve typical of his character and culture.