"There was nothing to say."
"Matsuo . . . about that night, behind Izumi-san's store, I—"
"There is still nothing to say." His voice was flat, toneless.
"You've got to understand. I don't know what happened to me. I panicked!"
"It doesn't matter."
"There's got to be some way I can make it up to you. We were best friends for so many years."
With quick, sharp movements, Matsuo yanked his shirt free of his waistline and pulled it up far enough to bare his right ribs. My stomach turned at the sight of the indentation there. I suddenly saw Matsuo lying on the ground against the fence, and Mick McGarrigle's boot flying in and out, kicking him again and again.
He pulled his shirt down and tucked it back in. "We can never be friends again. And you must never speak to Meiko again."
Still I heard no heat of anger or hatred in his voice. I would have much preferred that to the utter contempt there. He turned away and left me standing in the hall.
I leaned against the wall, withering inside. Knowing that the best friend I'd ever had felt that way about me was devastating. Knowing that his feelings were justified made it even worse. But through the haze of pain I heard a name echoing in my mind.
Meiko.
So that was her name. I hadn't even got around to asking her.
Meiko.
It sounded magical. I peered through the square window in the cafeteria door and saw her walking out the far door. Alone.
Meiko.
I wanted to see her again, talk to her again. She had touched something in me. I didn't know what, and I didn't know how, but I had to be with her again. Matsuo could issue all the threats and warnings he wished. It didn't matter. I was going to find her again.
1931
THE YEAR OF THE RAM
JUNE
Matsuo played alone. Few of the other fellows who frequented the recreation room cared to test themselves against him anymore. He had started freshman year as the butt of their jokes, a buffoon of sorts, but they had let him play because he was easy pickings when money was on the table. That hadn't lasted too long. Now, as a junior, he had won it all back and then some.
Still, he knew he was not ready.
He carefully lined up the shot—an important one. He had cleared the table of two racks in a row save for one last ball. Never before had he run this many balls without a miss.
His game had changed when he began using the kyo jutsu techniques Nagata had taught him with the bow and arrow. He let himself flow into the cue stick, become one with it as he had learned to do with the shaft of an arrow, aligning himself with the cue ball, letting himself slide forward along the green felt, to send the little white sphere rolling toward the black eight ball, to strike it and watch it bounce off the cushion and roll into the corner pocket.
Matsuo straightened and smiled.
Good. But still not good enough.
He opened a window to let in some fresh air. Summer was almost here, and that meant Meiko would be returning to Japan until September. During that season, California would lose its one bright light. Just as well he had spent the last two summers traveling around America, and would do so again, one final time. Berkeley without Meiko would be more than he could bear. He had found that he missed her less when he kept moving.
Meiko . . .
He blotted her face from his mind. She belonged to Hiroki. He had to keep reminding himself of that. If just for one moment he allowed himself to forget, no telling what he might do. Yet even with his constant reminders, she haunted him night and day. So he had backed away from her, minimized their contact, avoided her whenever he could, watched over her, but from afar.
Frank Slater stayed much closer. Despite warnings, Frank had persisted in keeping company with Meiko over the past year and a half. Matsuo had changed his mind and had allowed it to continue unchallenged. He saw no danger in Frank's presence and was amused at the ways the American contrived to "accidentally" run into Meiko all over the campus. No future in that relationship. Meiko was a perfectly proper Japan woman who would be returning home in June next year when they both graduated. Frank provided her with the companionship Matsuo could no longer trust himself with.
He filled the empty hours with his studies and perfecting his pool game. He expended no effort to make any new friends. He had met a few guys who seemed blind to his race but saw no reason to start relationships that had no future. And in the summers, he traveled.
He had begun his trips tentatively, starting with the West Coast and western states in the summer of '29. Last year he had gone through the Midwest, taking notes all along the way. And next week he would strike out for the industrial Northeast.
Nowhere had he found welcome. These were bad times in America. A great economic depression was ravaging the country, and the sight of a foreign face was met with violence and naked rage at worst; sullen, resentful tolerance at best.
Those were the people. But it was the land that grabbed his attention, held him in thrall.
The land.
Since his first trip he had found the immensity of the country mind numbing. So many resources. Such rich soil. So much room for growth. How could Father's dream of competing industrially with America ever come true? He had been taught since a child that Japan was the nation blessed by the gods; if so, then the gods themselves must have lived here in America before they blessed Japan. Even in the grips of this terrible depression, he sensed the depth and breadth of the country’s economic power.
If this was the country Father planned to engage in a trade war, he had his work cut out for him.
Matsuo racked up another set, placed his cue ball, and leaned over the table. He blotted out the chatter from the far end of the room, along with the annoying refrain of "Minnie the Moocher" from the radio standing in the corner.
Maybe tonight he could run the table three times in a row.
He let himself flow into the cue. Lining himself up on the cue ball and the stack, he let himself fly.
For giri!
AUGUST
It felt good to be back in America, Meiko thought as her ship sailed between the two cliffs that formed the Golden Gate.
Until this summer, she had thought such a notion would be inconceivable. But during her eight weeks back in Japan she had found herself grumpy and restive—bored even. At first she did not understand it. Her parents doted on her as they had during her past two return trips, and as usual she was the center of every social occasion along the shore of Sagami Bay, the prime source of knowledge about the giant land across the ocean. Even the baron himself paid a visit to inquire as to how Matsuo was faring in America. And Hiroki had been properly attentive, at least so far as physical presence was concerned. But his mind was preoccupied and he was ever running off to rummage through old temples and shrines.
What should have been a perfect summer turned out anything but. Meiko sensed a growing distance between herself and everyone else she had once felt so close to.
She could see Japan itself changing. With each trip home she noticed an increasing number of military uniforms in the stores and on the streets. More this summer than ever before. With no war on, she found it vaguely disturbing.
And as she and her family discussed the wedding plans for the spring of 1933, she felt none of the happiness she had expected. Where was the excitement, the sense of anticipation that should come with the approach of the most important day in her life? What was missing?
She had moped about, wondering what was wrong with her. And then one day she and her mother had discussed the date she would board ship to return to America, and she had felt her spirits lift.
That was it. She longed to return to San Francisco—hungered for it, in fact. And with a rush of feeling, she knew why.
Not the city itself, which indeed had its beauty, not the lush rolling hills of the countryside around it, not even the company of her one good American friend, Frank Slater, that drew her back.
It was Matsuo.
Meiko could not pinpoint when her feelings for him had changed. Certainly not overnight. A slow process instead, progressing from acquaintanceship to friendship to . . . what? Love?
Yes. Love.
She had come to see Matsuo as more than simply Hiroki's younger brother. She sensed his strength, his tenderness, his integrity. She found herself looking forward to his calls at the home where she stayed with one of her father's retainers and his wife, found herself hanging onto his words, waiting for his smiles, hungering for those times when he would hold her arm as they crossed a street.
And she knew Matsuo felt it too. If not love, then at least a strong attraction. She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. Most of all, she could see it in his face when he came in sight of her. All the tension and tautness that living in America caused in him flowed out of him. That had to be some sort of love.
But what to do about it? Less than two years from now she would wed Hiroki. But she was doing more than simply marrying Matsuo's brother. She was marrying the Mazaki family to the ancient nobility of the Okumos. The Mazakis were a noble family, too, but their money came from the silk trade rather than from land deeded to them by a past Emperor—like the Okumos. The marriage would bring the Mazakis much closer to the Imperial Line. As Hiroki's wife, she would be cousin-by-marriage to the Empress Nagako, and Meiko's children would be blood cousins to the next Emperor.
Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of that. The honor of her family was intimately involved here. Her course in life was set.
Meiko wondered what an American girl would think of her situation. They had the freedom to marry whomever they pleased. But they had to wait to be asked and face the chance that the one who pleased them would not ask. They might go through life and never be asked. She had always thought the Japanese custom among respectable families of having the family select the spouse and arrange the marriage far superior. That way there was no worry about the future, for the future was guaranteed: She would be a wife and mother and raise a family. And wasn't that the true purpose of marriage? To have children and preserve the continuity of family life? Marriage for love and love alone was silly Western thinking. Just look at all the trouble it caused in America.
And yet . . . Meiko had to admit that now she could see the American side. She could not approve of it as a universal social custom, for that would lead to chaos, but she could not help fantasizing about marriage to Matsuo. Wouldn't that be wonderful. If only he had been the brother to stay home in Japan and Hiroki the one sent to America. Then she would be marrying Matsuo next spring, and she could have love and marriage while bringing great honor to her family.
A beautiful fantasy, one she indulged in at every opportunity. But it would never be more than that. She would marry Hiroki and have his children. Not so bad, really. At least she hoped not. But sometimes, when she caught Hiroki staring at her, she saw not love, not even hunger, in his eyes. She sensed a ferocity there that sent a quake through her insides.
Just her imagination, of course. Hiroki was an intense young man who focused all his energies into whatever he did. Their married life would be hectic, but at least Matsuo would be around. At least she would be able to see him and talk to him at family gatherings or when he came to visit his brother or his nephews and nieces.
For now, she would make the most of her last year of maidenhood, reveling in whatever time she could have with him. Which wasn't much. Matsuo’s calls and visits had become increasingly rare. He seemed to be stepping back, disengaging himself from all but the most necessary contact. At first she had been hurt, suspecting that he had found a woman who could give him more than she. But if that was true, why then did his face still change the way it always had when they ran into each other on the campus? And why did his eyes still embrace her as they always had?
She didn't understand. Unless it was because Matsuo was afraid of his own feelings for her and was avoiding her to protect her honor and the honor of both their families.
If that were the case, it only made her love him more.
As her ship neared its mooring, she saw a familiar figure waiting on the dock: Frank Slater. She liked Frank. He was a good friend, a sweet, gentle man. She could not imagine what in the world could have happened between Matsuo and him to cause such enmity.
* * *
Meiko's ship arrived ahead of schedule, but I was there when it docked. She was on one of the big Matson liners out of Honolulu. I'd had a letter from her telling me that she had to make the trip in two legs: from Yokohama to Hawaii, and then from Hawaii to San Francisco. Because of the immigration restriction, no Japanese passenger ship found it worthwhile coming here.
The air vibrated with the bass boom of the huge liner's horn as the tugs nosed it into the dock crowded with the families of people returning from Hawaiian vacations. I was up front. I'd been waiting since dawn.
"Frank!" she said when she saw me coming up the gangway. "What a surprise. I never expected you to be waiting."
She looked absolutely radiant. Her dark eyes sparkled and her smile was so big and bright I hurt inside.
"Couldn't let you carry your bags by yourself, could I?"
"Oh, you're sweet."
She touched my arm as she said it. A perfectly innocent friendly greeting as far as she was concerned, I'm sure, but the contact, the closeness, the scent of her set my heart to pounding and made me light-headed. I think I actually staggered a little as I picked up her bags.
I didn't understand my feelings. Easy to call it simple infatuation. Certainly I was infatuated, but it went deeper than that.
Was it love? How could it be love? How could I love someone from such an alien culture, who considered my culture barbaric? Who was engaged to be married and would be leaving for the other side of the world in less than a year? How could I love someone like that?
But she was Meiko, and how could I do anything but love her?
Her beauty had attracted me at first, but in the year and a half I had known her, I'd come to see past that. And she had changed in that time. Not her beauty, for if anything she grew more beautiful every year, but I could see monumental changes within her. When we first met in our sophomore year, she presented me with a mixture of vulnerability and snootiness—although America frightened and awed her, she somehow managed the courage to look down her nose at us. But as time went by, I noticed a gradual softening of her parochial views until she could finally admit to the possibility that there might be other acceptable ways of life outside the social customs of Japan.
She blossomed at Berkeley. Although the country was in economic chaos, the campus provided an oasis for those students who could afford tuition or who, like me, had a scholarship. And within that oasis I could see Meiko's mind opening to the myriad possibilities life presented, possibilities she hadn't even known existed, let alone actually considered for herself.
And there, I thought, lay my chance.
Hardly a moment passed that I didn't think about her at least once. Time flew when I was with her and crawled when I wasn't. I wanted her near me always. And so sometime this fall, when I got up the nerve, I would ask her to marry me.
I had to ask. I knew chances were slim to none that she'd have me, but I'd had encouragement from her during the past year—not from anything she had said or done, actually, but rather from what she hadn't said or done.
For instance, she hadn't been talking much about her fiancé. During her sophomore year when we first met, all she could talk about was someone named Hiroki whom her parents had arranged for her to marry. She seemed awfully reticent about exactly who he was, but she was certainly enthusiastic about the match. That had changed. She hardly mentioned him at all toward the end of our junior year. Perhaps a little time in America had taken the blush off the idea of an arranged marriage.
The second encouraging sign was Matsuo's relative absence. A year and a half ago I’d found it difficult to run into Meiko without Matsuo some
where nearby. But as last winter had melted into spring, he seemed to spend less and less time at her side. Consequently, it became easier and easier for me to spend more time with Meiko. And I took full advantage of whatever opportunities presented.
We became close. She liked me—I was sure of it. And that was why I thought that maybe—just maybe—I had a chance of persuading her to forget about her coming marriage to this Hiroki fellow and stay here with me in America. She would not have to worry about loss of face or social disgrace for she would be away from all that. We could have a good life together here in America. I had almost a year to convince her of that.
"Did Matsuo send you?" she said as I tried to juggle all four pieces of her luggage.
My stomach gave a little twist. "No. We're still not on the best of terms."
Actually, we hadn't spoken since our sour reunion eighteen months ago. But I had learned through Meiko that Matsuo had given her no details about our past together. I didn't know why he was keeping silent, but I was grateful.
"He is supposed to meet me here at the dock."
"Oh."
I had assumed she had wanted me to meet her, but as I mentally reviewed her letter, I realized that she had only mentioned the date of her return in passing.
"But I do thank you for coming. Why don't you wait with me? I do wish the two of you could be friends."
So did I, but Matsuo had made it more than clear that we never could be.
"I don't think that would be a good idea. But I'll bring your bags down to the dock and you can wait there. You must be tired of this ship by now."
"Very tired. Thank you, Frank. You are too kind."
We pushed through the crowd to the street. I left her in a shady spot where a growing number of other passengers were waiting to be picked up. I waved good-bye and made my retreat. But I didn't leave the scene. I found a doorway uphill from her that gave me a clear view of where she sat. I leaned back in the shadows, waiting and watching. If Matsuo didn't show up, I didn't want her to be stranded there.