Ichiro started walking down Jackson Street, plunging down the hill with quick strides which bore him away from Freddie, who could be of no help to anyone else because he too was alone against the world which he had denounced. He had gone to seek assurance and not having found it had not increased his despair. Freddie was waging a shallow struggle with a to-hell-with-the-rest-of-the-world attitude, and he wasn’t being very successful. One could not fight an enemy who looked upon him as much as to say: “This is America, which is for Americans. You have spent two years in prison to prove that you are Japanese—go to Japan!” These unspoken words were not to be denied.
Was it possible that he, striding freely down the street of an American city, the city of his birth and schooling and the cradle of his hopes and dreams, had waved it all aside beyond recall? Was it possible that he and Freddie and the other four of the poker crowd and all the other American-born, American-educated Japanese who had renounced their American-ness in a frightening moment of madness had done so irretrievably? Was there no hope of redemption? Surely there must be. He was still a citizen. He could still vote. He was free to travel and work and study and marry and drink and gamble. People forgot and, in forgetting, forgave. Time would ease the rupture which now separated him from the young Japanese who were Americans because they had fought for America and believed in it. And time would destroy the old Japanese who, living in America and being denied a place as citizens, nevertheless had become inextricably a part of the country which by its vastness and goodness and fairness and plenitude drew them into its fold, or else they would not have understood why it was that their sons, who looked as Japanese as they themselves, were not Japanese at all but Americans of the country America. In time, he thought, in time there will again be a place for me. I will buy a home and love my family and I will walk down the street holding my son’s hand and people will stop and talk with us about the weather and the ball games and the elections. I will take my family to visit the family of Freddie, whom I have just left as I did because time has not yet done its work, and our families together will visit still another family whose father was two years in the army of America instead of two years in prison and it will not matter about the past, for time will have erased it from our memories and there will be only joy and sorrow and sickness, which is the way things should be.
And, as his heart mercifully stacked the blocks of hope into the pattern of an America which would someday hold an unquestioned place for him, his mind said no, it is not to be, and the castle tumbled and was swallowed up by the darkness of his soul, for time might cloud the memories of others but the trouble was inside of him and time would not soften that.
He was at Fourteenth Street where Jackson leveled off for a block before it resumed its gradual descent toward the bay. A bus turned into the stop and he hurled himself into it. There were plenty of seats and he was glad for that because he could not have suffered a crowd. Sitting next to the window and glimpsing the people and houses and automobiles, he gradually felt more at ease. As the bus sped down Jackson Street and made a turn at Fourth to go through downtown, Ichiro visualized the blocks ahead, picturing in his mind the buildings he remembered and reciting the names of the streets lying ahead, and he was pleased that he remembered so much unerringly.
Not until the bus had traversed the business district and pointed itself toward the northeast did he realize that he was on the same bus which he used to take every morning as a university student. There had been such a time and he vividly brought to mind, with a hunger that he would never lose, the weighty volumes which he had carried against his side so that the cloth of his pants became thin and frayed, and the sandwiches in a brown grocery bag and the slide rule with the leather case which hung from his belt like the sword of learning which it was, for he was going to become an engineer and it had not mattered that Japan would soon be at war with America. To be a student in America was a wonderful thing. To be a student in America studying engineering was a beautiful life. That, in itself, was worth defending from anyone and anything which dared to threaten it with change or extinction. Where was the slide rule, he asked himself, where was the shaft of exacting and thrilling discovery when I needed it most? If only I had pictured it and felt it in my hands, I might well have made the right decision, for the seeing and feeling of it would have pushed out the bitterness with the greenness of the grass on the campus and the hardness of the chairs in the airy classrooms with the blackboards stretched wall-to-wall behind the professor, and the books and the sandwiches and the bus rides coming and going. I would have gone into the army for that and I would have shot and killed, and shot and killed some more, because I was happy when I was a student with the finely calculated white sword at my side. But I did not remember or I could not remember because, when one is born in America and learning to love it more and more every day without thinking it, it is not an easy thing to discover suddenly that being American is a terribly incomplete thing if one’s face is not white and one’s parents are Japanese of the country Japan which attacked America. It is like being pulled asunder by a whirling tornado and one does not think of a slide rule though that may be the thing which will save one. No, one does not remember, and so I am not really to blame, but—and still the answer is there unchanged and unchallenged—I did not remember and Freddie did not remember. But Bob did, and his friend, who talks of Bob’s dying because the father wishes it, did, and so did a lot of others who had no more or no less reason than I.
The bus stopped at the corner with the fountain lunch where he had had many a hamburger or coke or black coffee in cups that were solid and heavy but did not hold much coffee. From there he walked naturally toward the campus and on up the wide, curving streets which soon branched off into countless narrow walks and drives among countless buildings of Gothic structure which had flying buttresses and pointed arches and piers but failed as authentic Gothic because everyone called it bastard Gothic with laughing familiarity as though the buildings were imperfect children of their own.
As if he had come to the university expressly for the purpose, Ichiro went directly to the offices of the engineering school. He found the name Baxter Brown on the wall directory and proceeded up the stairs to the assistant professor’s office in a remote corner of the building which was reached finally by climbing a steep flight of stairs no more than twenty inches wide. By their very narrowness, the stairs seemed to avoid discovery by the mass of students and thereby afforded the occupant of the office the seclusion to which the learned are entitled.
Mr. Brown, grayer and heavier, sat behind a desk impressively covered with books and journals and papers. He gaped at Ichiro in that vague, suddenly alert way that one instinctively manages when startled unexpectedly from a dozing mood.
“Professor Brown?” He knew it was Professor Brown and he hadn’t meant to make it a question.
The professor wrenched himself out of his chair and came forth energetically with extended arm. “Yes, yes, have a chair.”
He sat and waited until the professor got behind the desk. “I guess you don’t remember me. It’s been some time since I was one of your students.”
“Of course I remember. I knew the moment you stepped inside. Let me think now. No, no, don’t tell me.” The professor studied him thoughtfully. “You’re Su . . . Suzu . . . no . . . Tsuji . . .”
“It’s Yamada. Ichiro Yamada.”
“That’s it. Another minute and I would have had it. How are you, Mr. Yamada?”
“Fine, sir.”
“Good. Lot of you fellows coming back. Everything all right?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. Tough about the evacuation. I really hated to see it happen. I suppose you’re disturbed about it.”
“No, sir. Not too much, that is.”
“Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be? Families uprooted, businesses smashed, educations interrupted. You’ve got a right to be sore.”
“Water under the bridge now.”
Professor Brown smiled and leaned back in his chair, relaxing. “Admire you for saying that. You fellows are as American as I am. And you’ve proved it. That outfit in Italy. Greatest there ever was. You were there too, I suppose?”
“No, I—”
“Over in the Pacific then? Interrogating prisoners I bet.”
“Well, no. You see—”
“Sure. We can’t all get in. I was in the first one myself. Did some consulting work for the navy this last one, but as a civilian. Still, every bit helps. Good to see you’re thinking about coming back to the university.”
Relieved to get off the touchy matter of war and who was in it and who wasn’t and, if not, why and so on until it was too late to turn and run, Ichiro spoke quickly: “Yes, sir, I’m thinking seriously about it. It’ll probably take me a little time to adjust myself . . .”
“Everybody worries about that. No point to it. It’ll come back in no time at all. You just pick up where you left off and you won’t have any trouble. I’ve talked plenty of fellows out of repeating courses because they think they’ve forgotten so much and, you know, they all come back and thank me for it. You fellows are older and you’ve matured and you know what you want. Makes a whale of a difference, I’ll tell you. You haven’t forgotten a thing—not a thing. It’ll be there when you need it. Take my word for it.”
“If you say so, but—”
“I say so. What were you in? Double E? Mechanical? Civil?”
“Civil.”
“Makes no difference, really. Big opportunities in any branch. Too bad you’re late for this quarter.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Professor Brown stood up and extended his hand, “nice seeing you again. Drop in any time.”
Ichiro took the hand and while being ushered to the door muttered something about the professor’s being good enough to spend time with him. Outside the office and alone again, he went down the narrow stairs and hurried outside.
That wasn’t the way I wanted it to happen, he thought. What happened? He was nice enough. Shook hands, talked, smiled. Still, it was all wrong. It was like meeting someone you knew in a revolving door, you going one way and the friend going the other. You smiled, maybe shouted “Hi” and then you were outside and he was swallowed up by the building. It was seeing without meeting, talking without hearing, smiling without feeling. We didn’t talk about the weather at all only that’s what it felt like all the way through. Was it him or was it me? Him or me? He or I? Brown or Itchy? It wasn’t Brown, of course. Brown was heavier, his hair grayer, but he was still Brown of the engineering school of the university of the world of students and slide rules and he was Brown then and now of that tiny office with the books and papers which was cut off from the rest of the world by the narrow stairs which one would not think to climb unless he was six and curious and thought that the stairs led to the roof and the big blue sky. No, Brown is still Brown. It is I who reduces conversation to the inconsequential because Brown is of that life which I have for-feited and, forfeiting it, have lost the right to see and hear and become excited over things which are of that wonderful past.
And then he crossed the street and did not look back at the buildings and students and curved lanes and grass which was the garden in the forsaken land. He felt empty and quietly sad and hungry.
He was halfway through his second hamburger, sitting on the stool at the counter, when Kenji placed a hand on his shoulder.
Ichiro turned and looked into the smiling face, the pleasant, thoughtful, old face of Kenji, who was also twenty-five.
“Ichiro, is it not?” It was said softly, much more softly than he had known the shy, unassuming Kenji to speak.
“Yes, and you’re Ken.”
“Same one. At least, what’s left of me,” said Kenji, shifting the cane from his right to his left hand and shaking with Ichiro.
So Kenji had gone too. Or had he? He hoped that it was an automobile accident or something else that had brought on the injury which necessitated the cane and inspired the remark. “Join me, Ken. We can talk,” he said, displaying his hamburger.
“I’ve already had lunch, but I’ll go for another coffee.” The stools were high, and he had to hook his cane to the counter and lift himself up with both arms.
“Going to school?”
“Yes, I guess you could call it that.” The waitress came and he ordered coffee, black.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m enrolled. I go when I feel like it and most of the time I don’t. How about you?”
“No. Just looking around.”
“Feel the same?”
“How’s that?”
“Things. You’ve probably been walking around the campus, trying to catch the same smells and sounds and the other things which you’ve been thinking about all the time the government kept you away from Seattle. Is it still the same? Can you start back to school tomorrow and pick up just where you left off?”
“No, it’s not the same and I’m not going back.”
“Why?”
“Well, because it’s not the same. Or rather, I’m not the same.”
Kenji sipped his coffee gingerly. “So what are your plans?”
“Haven’t got any.”
“That makes it nice.”
“Does it?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t any either.”
They left the café and walked slowly to Kenji’s car, for Kenji could not hurry on his bad leg, which was stiff and awkward and not like his own at all. Ichiro felt he should ask about it but could not bring himself to do so.
The new Oldsmobile was parked by a meter with the flag up to indicate that the time had expired. There was a ticket on the windshield, which Kenji removed with the rubber tip of his cane. The pink ticket floated down and under the car.
“Is that the way to do it?”
“My way.”
“Get away with it?”
“Sometimes.”
They got in and started down the street. Ichiro sniffed the new upholstery and touched a finger to the shiny, spotless dash. “New?”
“Yes.”
“These things must cost a fortune these days.”
“It’s a present.”
“Must be a nice guy,” he said, remembering Kenji’s father, who had known only poverty and struggle after his wife died leaving six children.
“He is. Uncle Sam.”
Ichiro turned so that he could see Kenji better and he saw the stiff leg extended uselessly where the gas pedal should have been but wasn’t because it and the brake pedal had been rearranged to accommodate the good left leg.
“I was in, Ichiro, mostly in hospitals. I got this for being a good patient.”
“I see.”
“It wasn’t worth it.” He started to slow down for a red light and, seeing it turn green, pressed on the accelerator. The car responded beautifully, the power in the engine throwing the vehicle forward with smooth effort.
Ichiro looked out at the houses, the big, roomy houses of brick and glass which belonged in magazines and were of that world which was no longer his to dream about. Kenji could still hope. A leg more or less wasn’t important when compared with himself, Ichiro, who was strong and perfect but only an empty shell. He would have given both legs to change places with Kenji.
“Am I a hero?”
“What?”
“They gave me a medal too. Ever hear of the Silver Star?” Kenji was talking to him and, yet, he was talking to himself. Ichiro felt drawn to the soft-spoken veteran who voluntarily spoke of things that the battle-wise and battle-scarred were thought not to discuss because they had been through hell and hell was not a thing which a man kept alive in himself. If Eto had been a brave man, if Eto had been wounded and given a medal, he would have dramatized his bravery to any and all who could be cornered into listening, but he was not a brave man and so he would never have gone into battle and displayed the sort of courage of which one might proudly speak.
There was no trace of the braggart as Kenji continued: “A medal, a car, a pension, even an education. Just for packing a rifle. Is that good?”
“Yes, it’s good.”
Kenji turned and watched him long enough to make him feel nervous.
“Better watch the road,” he warned.
“Sure.” Kenji looked through the windshield and bit his lower lip thoughtfully.
“Ken.”
“Yes?”
“Tell me about it.”
The small man behind the wheel raised the leg which was not his own and let it fall with a thud to the floor board. “About this?”
“If you will. If it isn’t too painful.”
“No, it’s not painful at all. Talking about it doesn’t hurt. Not having it doesn’t hurt. But it hurts where it ought to be. Sometimes I think about killing myself.”
“Why?” There was anger in his voice.
“What makes you say why that way?”
“I didn’t mean it to sound the way it did.”
“Of course you did. I don’t say that about killing myself to everybody. Sometimes it scares people. Sometimes it makes them think I’m crazy. You got angry right away and I want to know why.”
“Tell me about it first.”
“Sure.” He turned the car into a park and drove slowly along a winding road, with trees and neat, green grass on both sides of them. “It’s not important how I lost the leg. What’s important are the eleven inches.”
“I don’t understand that about the eleven inches.”
“That’s what’s left.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Do you really, Ichiro?”
“I think so.”
A mother and a child strolled across the road ahead of them and Kenji slowed down more than necessary. “What I mean is, I’ve got eleven inches to go and you’ve got fifty years, maybe sixty. Which would you rather have?”
“I don’t quite follow you, but I’ll settle for eleven inches.”
“Oh?” Kenji was surprised.
Ichiro regarded the thin, sensitive face carefully and said bluntly: “I wasn’t in the army, Ken. I was in jail. I’m a no-no boy.”
There was a silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Ichiro could tell instantly that it did not matter to Kenji, who drove the new Oldsmobile aimlessly through the park because it was as good a place as any.
“Still,” he said finally, “you’ve got your life ahead of you.”
“Have I?”
“I should think so.”
“Would you trade places with me? I said I would with you.”
Kenji laughed softly. “I’ll forget you said that.”
“No, I meant it.”
“Let me tell you about the eleven inches first.”
“I’m listening.”
Rolling down the window, Kenji let the cool air blow in on them. “Turned out to be a pretty nice day.”
Ichiro waited without answering.
“The doctors didn’t have to work too hard. The machine gun had done a pretty good job. They were pretty proud about having saved my knee. Makes things a lot easier with a sound knee, you know.”
“Yes, that’s not hard to see.”
“They gave me a leg and it worked out pretty well, only, after a while, it started to hurt. I went back into the hospital and it turned out that there’s something rotten in my leg that’s eating it away. So they cut off a little more and gave me a new leg. As you’ve probably guessed by now, it wasn’t long before I was back in and they whacked off another chunk. This time they took off more than they had to so as to make sure they got all the rottenness. That was five months ago. A couple of days ago I noticed the pains coming back.”
“Bad?”
“No, but it’s starting.”
“Does that mean . . .”
“Yes. I’ll go back and they’ll chop again. Then, maybe, I’ll only have eight inches to trade for your fifty or sixty years.”
“Oh.”
“Still want to trade?”
Ichiro shuddered and Kenji rolled up the window.
“How much time do they give you?”
“Depends, of course. Maybe the rottenness will go away and I’ll live to a ripe old age.”
“If not?”
“They say a fellow ought to trade in a car every third year to get the most out of it. My brother can take care of that.”
“How long?”
“Two years at the most.”
“You’ll get well. They’ve got ways.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” said Kenji and drove faster until they were out of the park and once again headed toward Jackson Street.
They didn’t talk, because there was nothing to say. For a brief moment Ichiro felt a strange exhilaration. He had been envying Kenji with his new Oldsmobile, which was fixed to be driven with a right leg that wasn’t there any more, because the leg that wasn’t there had been amputated in a field hospital, which meant that Kenji was a veteran of the army of America and had every right to laugh and love and hope, because one could do that even if one of his legs was gone. But a leg that was eating itself away until it would consume the man himself in a matter of a few years was something else, for hobbling toward death on a cane and one good leg seemed far more disastrous than having both legs and an emptiness that might conceivably still be filled.
He gripped his knees with his hands, squeezing the hard soundness of the bony flesh and muscles, and fought off the sadness which seemed only to have deepened after the moment of relief. Kenji had two years, maybe a lifetime if the thing that was chewing away at him suddenly stopped. But he, Ichiro, had stopped living two years ago.
I’ll change with you, Kenji, he thought. Give me the stump which gives you the right to hold your head high. Give me the eleven inches which are beginning to hurt again and bring ever closer the fear of approaching death, and give me with it the fullness of yourself which is also yours because you were man enough to wish the thing which destroyed your leg and, perhaps, you with it but, at the same time, made it so that you can put your one good foot in the dirt of America and know that the wet coolness of it is yours beyond a single doubt.
“I like you, Ichiro,” said Kenji, breaking the silence.
Ichiro smiled, a little embarrassed. “I could say the same about you,” he said.
“We’ve both got big problems, bigger than most people. That ought to mean something.”
“Whose is bigger?”
“Huh?”
“I was thinking all the time we were silent and I decided that, were it possible, I might very well trade with you.”
“For the eleven inches or for the seven or eight that’ll be left after the next time?”
“Even for two inches.”
“Oh.” They were getting close to Ichiro’s home and Kenji took his time as if reluctant to part with his friend.
Soon, however, they were in front of the grocery store.
“Well?” asked Ichiro, opening the door.
“Mine is bigger than yours in a way and, then again, yours is bigger than mine.”
“Thanks for the lift,” he said and climbed out onto the sidewalk.
“I’ll pick you up tonight if you got nothing better to do,” said Kenji.
“That’ll be fine.”
He watched the Oldsmobile pull away and then pushed open the door which jingled the bell of the grocery store with home in the back end.
His mother was at the counter ringing up a loaf of bread and a bag of Bull Durham for a white-haired pensioner. She glanced briefly at him, her eyes sharp and troubled. Feeling uneasy, he made his way past her into the kitchen.
Taro was playing solitaire at the kitchen table, his hands mechanically flipping and shifting the cards as if he found no enjoyment in the game. The father sat opposite his younger son and watched, not the cards, but the face of his son, with a kind of helpless sadness.
He sat on the end between them and watched for a while.
“No school?” he said finally, noticing that it was still only a little after one o’clock.
“Keep out of it.” His brother spit the words out angrily without taking his eyes off the cards.
Ichiro looked at his father with the unanswered question on his face and failed still to get an answer because the father did not remove his gaze from Taro.
“You will wait, ya? Please, Taro. It is not long.”
He turned up the ace of spades and piled several cards in rapid succession upon it.
His mouth still open, the father forced more words out of it: “Mama does not understand, Taro, so you must understand her. Try. Try to understand. Until June. Then, if she still says no, you go. Anyway, finish high school.”
“What’s going on?” Ichiro looked from Taro to his father and back again and got no reply.
“That is all right, ya? June, you finish high school. Then, if you still feel the same, I will say nothing. Only a few months. Okay?”
The old man sighed, the weight of the problem noticeably too much for him. “Ahh,” he groaned, then “Ahh” once more. He rose and got the bottle from the cupboard and wet his throat amply. After only a slight pause he took a second, shorter drink and returned the bottle to the shelf. Seconds later, he was back in the chair looking at Taro in the same lost fashion.
Ichiro tried again: “What’s going on?”
“Birthday party,” said Taro, looking up with a wry grin. “You gonna sing for me too?”
“I might.”
“Sure, you can get your buddies from the pen and do it right. You can sing me happy birthday in Japanese. I’d go for that.”
The blood rushed to his face and it was with considerable difficulty that he kept himself from swinging at his brother. “You hate me that much?”
“I don’t know you.” He shifted the diamond six to a club seven and put up the seven of spades.
“Ichiro,” said the old man and he still did not take his eyes away from the other son.
“Yeah?”
“Taro is eighteen today. He came home at lunchtime, when he should be in school. Mama said: ‘Why are you home?’ ‘It is my birthday,’ he said. ‘Why are you home?’ said Mama, ‘why are you not in school like you should be?’ ‘I am eighteen and I am going in the army,’ he said. We were eating, Mama and me, and Taro stood here beside us and said: ‘I am eighteen and I am going in the army.’”
“Are you?” he asked his brother.
“For crissake. You want me to write it down? You want me to send you a letter? I said I’m goin’ in the army. You think the old man’s just talkin’? Besides, it’s none a your business.” Extracting a red ten from the discard pile, he played it on a black jack, which enabled him to make several advantageous moves.
“You realize Ma won’t get over it, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The answer did not disturb him. If he were eighteen and in Taro’s shoes he would probably do the same thing. And not having done it when it was his to do, there was really nothing for him to say. It was not Taro who was rejecting them, but it was he who had rejected Taro and, in turn, had made him a stranger to his own parents forever.
“Think it over,” he said weakly, “give it time.”
Taro threw the cards in his hand on the table and swept them onto the floor with an angry sweep of his arm. “It’s been nice,” he said and he might have been on the verge of tears. “I got things to do.” He stood and looked down at Ichiro, wanting to speak but not finding the words in himself to tell his brother that he had to go in the army because of his brother whose weakness made it impossible for him to do otherwise and because he did not understand what it was about his mother that haunted him day and night and pulled his insides into meaningless bits and was slowly destroying him. And it was because of these things and because he was furiously mixed up that he had to cut himself free and spare himself the anguish of his brother which he knew must be there even if he was a stranger to him, and maybe that was still another reason why he was going.
In that brief moment when Taro looked at Ichiro and felt these things which he could not say, Ichiro felt them too and understood. So, when Taro stalked into the bedroom and banged the drawers and packed a small bag, he felt the heaviness lifting from his own shoulders. He did not even turn to look when Taro swept past him on the way out, for he saw in the fearful eyes of the father the departure of the son who was not a son but a stranger and, perhaps more rightly, an enemy leaving to join his friends. Then the bell tinkled to signal the opening of the door and it tinkled again as the door closed and shut them off from the world that Taro had entered.
The mother uttered a single, muffled cry which was the forgotten spark in a dark and vicious canyon and, the spark having escaped, there was only darkness, but a darkness which was now darker still, and the meaning of her life became a little bit meaningless.
Ichiro looked at his father, who did not look as would a father who had just lost a son, but as a man afraid. His face paled perceptibly as the mother came into the kitchen.
“Mama,” said the father, and he might have been a boy the way he said it.
“We don’t have enough nickels,” she said, trying to sound the way she would have sounded if Taro had never been born, but it was not the same and Ichiro felt it.
“Ya, I get,” the father almost shouted as he jumped up. “The bank will still be open.” He threw on his overcoat and hastily departed.
Ichiro started to pick the cards off the floor and felt his mother’s eyes on him. He took his time purposely, not wanting to look at her, for the strength that was the strength of Japan had failed and he had caught the realization of it in the cry and in the words which she had spoken. As if suddenly sensing what was in his mind, she quickly turned and left him alone.