Chimes in the Night

I

was staying with Toyoko Akimoto regularly now, and it was almost as natural as being with my own family. Despite our age difference, we had much in common, and usually needed little more entertainment than the sound of each other’s voices. Sometimes we sat at evening in the rear garden and leaned against a large, lichen-covered rock by the wall.

Overhead curved the flowering branches of a tree clustered with fragrant yellow blossoms, and occasionally their petals fluttered down upon us in gentle celebration. Often Toyoko placed a stick of incense in a rusted urn nearby, and we would savor the odor, eyes closed for the moment while freshets of night air flirted the smoke into tendrils and sudden swirls.

As much as I wanted to be with Tatsuno and Nakamura, there in those final days, I wanted to be with Toyoko more. I could not, in fact, stand to be away from her for a single night, and the days without her were growing torture. Simultaneously, I was often insecure, wonder­ing how she could possibly be content to spend her free time with one

so young as I. . . such a natural relationship in one respect and yet so strange I often seemed to walk in a dream.

My friends, of course, were beginning to make remarks. It was, I realized, inevitable, and more than one flier had begun referring to Toyoko as my “woman”. Several, unable to disguise their envy, began plying me with questions. Upon returning to the barracks for morning formation, I was met with many a joke and inquiry. “How was it, Ku- wahara? Terrific, right?” or, “Hey, lover boy! How come you never live in the barracks any more?”

Most of the men, however, were unaware of my absence, having abandoned the base by night themselves. As for the others, I made little effort to clarify the situation and usually managed to change the subject. For one thing, few of them would have believed me had I told the truth, and those who did would have ridiculed me mercilessly. Furthermore, I thought too highly of Toyoko to open her private life to the crassness of the army air force.

With Tatsuno and Nakamura, on the other hand, it was a different matter. They deserved to have the facts and understand how I felt about the situation. “For your information,” I told them, “This is not at all what people think it is. We have a relationship that’s impossible to understand unless you’ve experienced it. She reminds me a lot of my older sister, and I remind her of her younger brother who was killed in Burma.”

“I believe you,” Nakamura said, “but seriously now. . . you actually mean to tell us that you can spend night after night with a musume like that, almost on the same futon, and not—”

“We sleep in separate rooms!” I retorted, becoming a bit angry.

“All right, all right!” Nakamura held up his palms in mock surrender. “But she must like you a lot, so maybe you’re really missing out.”

“I can see what Yasbei means, though,” Tatsuno said, subdued and reflective as usual. “I’d give anything for a situation like that—just some­one special to be with and talk to. Most of the people around here can’t even carry on an intelligent conversation. Nothing but foul language.”

“That’s the military,” Nakamura said.

“True,” Tatsuno replied, “but that doesn’t mean it’s worth any­thing.”

“I know it doesn’t, but I’m just saying—”

“It’s not only degrading, it’s trite; it’s an insult to anybody with even half a brain.”

“I agree!” Nakamura said pointedly. “I’m on your side. But still.

. . a woman like that? And nothing but talking?” He rolled his eyes. “Not me!” I began to reply, but he continued. “It’s none of my business. That’s just the way I look at it.” He shrugged and shook his head, actu­ally looking a bit sorrowful. “No, I’d never take on one of those sluts in town again, but you’ve got something special.”

“I know,” I said, “that’s why I don’t want to ruin it.”

“Yes, but getting physical—that doesn’t mean you have to ruin it. It’s how you go about the whole thing. It’s not just you; it’s whether she wants it too, and I’ll bet you my next month’s pay she does.” He shot me a glance. “Look, Yasbei—none of us have much time left. When a starving man is offered a first-class dinner, he doesn’t just sit and look at it forever.” He clapped me on the arm. “You’re going to kick yourself, Kuwahara!”

“Don’t try to propagandize him,” Tatsuno said. “He’s found some­thing good, and he knows what he wants.”

Nakamura’s advice merely left me sad and uneasy, and it also made me very lonely. At the time, Toyoko had taken a trip to Fukuoka to visit some acquaintances. Consequently, I spent the empty evenings with my friends and proved a poor companion. With Toyoko away, life was suddenly more bleak than ever.

Nights in the hot, humid barracks were like a lone and dreary wasteland, and before long, first as a form of escape, I began fantasiz­ing about Toyoko, about making love to her. But if it ever happened, I told myself, it would be all right because she would have become my wife. Yet in between each fantasy, I felt the growing dread. The day of destruction loomed more and more ominously.

Toyoko returned after less than a week, but I was nearly frantic to see her. That night as she opened her door, I simply stood gawking for a moment. “What’s the matter?” she laughed. “Don’t you recognize me?” As on my first night at her apartment, she had just returned from the bath and was wearing the midnight-blueyukata. “Yasuo-chan?” Toyoko tilted her head sidewise. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no, not at all,” I said. “For some reason you look different, and

. . . well, I’ve really missed you.”

“Well,” she said consolingly and held out her hands. “Here I am—I’m back.” Instinctively, I reached out, extending my own hands inward beneath the broad sleeves and laid hold of her upper arms. It was the first time I had ever touched a woman that way, and her arms were smoother, softer, more slender than I had ever imagined. Suddenly I realized that I had grown a lot the past few months.

Clumsily, I pulled her to me and found her lips with my own. One tantalizing instant. Then she ducked her head, twisting it slightly to one side. “Yasuo!” she murmured, sounding far too much like a mother.

Drawing her still closer, I kissed her exquisite neck, repeating, “Toyoko, I’ve missed you.”

Again, I sought with only partial success to kiss her. “You’ll never know how alone I’ve been.”

As we separated, her eyes were wistful. “I’ve missed you too, Ya­suo—Immensely.”

Simultaneously I remembered. I had bought her a present, a rare and expensive bottle of perfume, Kinsuru. I had hunted a long time for it.

“Yasuo-chan. How wonderfully sweet! How remarkably considerate and generous!”

Suddenly more flustered than ever, I replied, “No, it is nothing at all. It is a most miserable gift, really. I just wanted. . . .” Opening the bottle, she sniffed, half closing her eyes in an expression of exotic delight. “Oh, yes, Kinsuru. . . How utterly fantastic!” Tilting her head provocatively to the side, she dabbed the tiniest amount with utmost grace behind one earlobe, then extended her finger tips, fragrant and faintly tremulous, for me to smell.

Later that evening, however, as we strolled along a mild bluff beside the ocean, Toyoko seemed strangely taciturn. “Are you sad?” I inquired at last. She paused, gaze sweeping the horizon, sighing almost inaudibly. “Didn’t you have a pleasant time with your friends?” I persisted.

I watched her chest rise and fall. Then she glanced at the sand beneath our feet. “Let’s sit down,” she said at last. “I need to tell you something.”

“All right,” I replied, but my voice quavered. As we settled down upon the sand, I felt a sense of dread, almost as though I were on the

verge of receiving my final orders. “What is it? What’s wrong?” “Promise me first that you won’t be angry,” she said.

I glanced at her strangely. “How can I promise you that when I don’t have the vaguest idea what you’re going to say?”

“Oh,” she sighed, “you are angry, aren’t you?”

The very words she had used that first night in the Tokiwaya, and for some reason they vexed me considerably.” Only because you’re making me angry!” I retorted. “Just tell me what’s going on and quit playing games.”

“All right,” she sighed, “maybe that’s what I’ve been doing. It’s just that. . . well, that trip to Fukuoka wasn’t merely to see friends.”

She waited so long I was becoming desperate.

“So?” I demanded. “Whatever it is—just tell me.”

Another sigh. “It was to see a man I’ve known for a long time.” I waited, holding my breathe. “He’s an army officer.”

Wonderful, I thought bitterly, A sixteen-year-old corporal competing with a grown-up man, an officer. “What rank is he?” I asked, despite myself.

“He’s a lieutenant,” Toyoko replied. So, it could have been worse, but still. . . “He used to be stationed in Hiroshima, and a year or so back we were going to be married. But after he was transferred a few months ago he changed his mind. I guess, in fact, that we both did. The relationship was very good at times. . . very bad at others.” She folded her arms, shook her head faintly and gazed into the gathering night.

“Anyway, about two weeks ago he sent a letter asking me to come visit. I debated whether I should go, but finally decided I had to, had to give it one last chance.” Again, I waited in mounting agony. “After we were back together again, though, it became all the more evident that we needed to go our separate ways.”

“So you mean you definitely aren’t getting married?” It was a stupid question on the surface. She had already told me, and I was immersed in a wave of relief. Nevertheless, I had to be absolutely certain.

“Yes, that’s what I mean. It’s good that I went so there would be no question, but it’s all past now. And I had to tell you.”

My heart was resuming its normal rate now, but I was still perplexed.

“Why?” I asked at last. “You could have just come back and said you had a nice visit with your friends, let it go at that.”

“Because,” she replied, “I want to be an honest and trustworthy person, especially with you.”

After that, neither of us spoke for a long time, and I leaned back upon one elbow, wondering, wondering. Why, honest with me? Only because I was so much like her brother? Before us lay the sea, breathless at the moment yet very much alive, filled with faint yet portentous stirrings within its ever darkening vastness.

“I’m honored if I have become a brother to you Toyoko,” I said, “but if that’s all I am then maybe you’d be better off with your lieutenant after all. Before long I won’t be here either.” Suddenly, unexpectedly, we both began to cry, uncontrollably, clinging to each other like the last survivors on the ledge of a crumbling world.

“No, Yasuo, no!” she wailed. “I won’t let it happen!” Our tears mingled together, coursing down our cheeks. Yet strangely I could dis­tinguish the taste of her tears from my own, salty as the sea, yet somehow sweeter, far more pure. “I will not let it happen!” Toyoko repeated and pressed her jaw against my temple, almost painfully. “The war will end! The war will end in time!”

Eventually we fell asleep clasped in each other’s arms, but dimly aware at times of the occasional sprinkling of warm raindrops. We awakened, cold and shivering to the leaden tones of dawn in the far east, a sallow smear of yellow more like imagination than reality. Toyoko’s hair was damp and gritty with sand, and the waves were lambasting the shore on a rising tide, its lacy, white fringes sizzling near our feet. A great strand of kelp with bulbs and tentacles the color of iodine neared and withdrew, neared closer and withdrew. Tiny spider crabs pranced, skittered, and vanished into the sand as though vaporized when we arose and headed toward the apartment.

The hour was nigh for my return to the base.

For a time my life remained in strange suspension. The flights contin­ued, but I only lived for my nights with Toyoko. Somehow the prospect of my own demise seemed less real, not quite so inevitable whenever I was near her. Vagrant rays of hope, subtle yet distinct, like the coming of that morning on the beach. For now I took refuge in Toyoko’s insistence that the war would end, end in time, partly because it was so passionate, partly because I believed what I wanted to believe.

The strip of beach we frequented was a relatively safe one for swim­mers, and on nights when the sea was calm we sometimes entered it, occasionally swimming out beyond the breakers, rising together upon the gentle swells, feeling perhaps that somehow we might be transported far away on those warm, moon dappled waters to some enchanted isle of respite, far far away to a place of perpetual happiness, magically liberated from all danger, from fear and sorrow. . . a place where the war would never come.

Late one night after just such a moment, we returned to shore, stroll­ing hand in hand back to her apartment, smelling the tang of salt and seaweed mingled with ozone on the breath of a nascent storm. Back in the apartment, with no light but the glowing coals in the hibachi, we changed into ouryukata. Once I glanced at Toyoko, seeing a faint, red – orange glow against the bare curve of her thigh and shoulder. The rest was in shadow.

Then we went out onto the balcony and sat listening to the bird­like wheedles of the soba flutes. Even now, with the war nearing its very nadir, people had to make a living. Somehow, inevitably, life would go on. “There are a lot of lonely people in the world tonight, millions of lonely women,” Toyoko murmured.

“Are you lonely also?” I asked.

“No,” she said and pressed my hand. “Not with you, Yasuo. It’s just that. . .” Her hand withdrew.

“Just that what?”

Her eyes closed, and she took a deep breath. “Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know. Why couldn’t you be. . . .”

“Be what?” I was becoming angry again. “Older? Less like your brother?” She made no reply. I began to tremble. “Am I such a baby to you still?”

“No, not a baby.”

“I’m almost seventeen, Toyoko. Maybe that seems awfully young to you, but age isn’t merely a matter of years. I’ve seen things. I’ve done things! I know things that other men—millions of older men—don’t know. Things they won’t know if they live forever!” The words had simply erupted spontaneously, and I was surprised at them, at my own emotions. Nevertheless, they were undeniable, suddenly overwhelming. “Toyoko, I have to tell you. . . I can’t go on like this. It’s driving me crazy. Yes, you were a sister to me at first but no more, not now! I want you!”

“No, Yasuo-chan, please!” she murmured. I was stroking her face, her neck, pulling her to me, kissing her eyelids, her ears, her entire face. Capturing her mouth, I held it fiercely against my own, and for an instant she relented, her lips moving and fluid, incredibly tender and pliant. .

. uninhibited. Then, I crushed her to me tightly, bearing her down and she began to struggle. “No, Yasuo—please don’t.”

“But why?” I agonized, “when will it be right? Never? Or only when I’m dead and gone?” Reaching beneath heryukata, I began to stroke her thigh, and the skin was fantastically smooth, beyond belief, so hot it seemed to burn my hand. “Toyoko, I need you—we need each other! Let me prove to you that I’m a man!”

But now she was thrusting my hand away with greater determina­tion than ever. “No, Yasuo, no, no. It’s not right, not for either of us, not now!”

“But why?” I implored. “When?” Heryukata had fallen open in our struggles, revealing her breasts. I had never seen anything so sweet, so exquisite, so tantalizing. I sought them with my mouth, my hands, my face, consumed in their remarkable softness, but she gave a smothered cry and thrust a knee against my ribs, throwing me off balance.

Now we were rolling wildly about, grappling, sobbing, suddenly finding ourselves against the brittle railing of the balcony. Several of the rails loosened from the impact, and two or three of them fell off to strike the tiled roof, clattering on the paving stones of the courtyard. Somewhere a voice called out, full of irritation. We were literally upon the brink of destruction.

Gasping, I stared into Toyoko’s face, pulling her back to safety. She was crying like a child, inconsolably. Sick at heart, I released her, pulling her yukata tight about her waist. “Toyoko, please forgive me!” I pleaded. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I buried my face against her shoulder. Now, once again, both of us weeping. How much weeping we were doing of late!

The plaintive flute calls had subsided when at length we entered the apartment again, stretched out in our separate rooms on our separate futon. Occasionally, I could hear Toyoko sniffling, still catching her breath. Once a tide of anguish and sorrow such as I had never experi­enced inundated me. “Toyoko, I’m so sorry,” I called. “Please forgive me. At least don’t hate me!”

No reply—only the echo of my own voice, dying and forlorn. That and the omnipresent sighing of the ocean. Well, the words came, It’s over now. Nothing now but going back to that immense black hole called Oita Air Base. Volunteer for your orders. Maybe they will grant your request early. . . for surely, there is nothing left.

Within moments, however, I heard sounds of activity. Toyoko was dragging herfuton into my room, laying it out quietly. . . smoothing its surface with the palms of her hands. . . stretching out beside me. Then her hand found mine, our fingers intertwining. “I don’t hate you, Yasuo.” Her voice was still thick with emotion, very frail. “I could never hate you, and there’s nothing to forgive. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was,” I protested. “I was the one who forced things.”

“No,” she whispered, “no, shhhh!” Two fingers pressed against my lips. “It wasn’t your fault; it’s really mine, and I don’t think you’re not a man. You are not simply my little brother either. It’s just that we’ve had something so wonderful and special, I don’t want to destroy it. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

“Maybe,” I replied. “I hope so.”

“I haven’t always been the person I wanted to be, Yasuo, but I’m try­ing to change. I want to look at Toyoko Akimoto in the mirror and know who she is—to know that she is worthy of her own respect. I want to look into my own eyes and see someone of. . . .” She began to cry again, this time almost inaudibly. “Someone of value. Not simply to be like most of those girls at the Tokiyawa, and the ones who walk the streets.”

“You are of value,” I insisted. “More valuable to me than my own life. And you are not that way, not that way at all. I never for a moment thought of you in that connection. It’s just that. . .” I paused for a long time, trying to collect myself, wondering how to explain it, then scarcely explained it at all. “Just that I got carried away, and I’m sorry.”

“Shhhh!” she intoned, ever so gently, again pressing her fingers to my lips. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Let’s just be together and at peace. Together and at peace; that’s good enough.”

“Yes,” I said and waited for some time. “But I have to tell you something, Toyoko,” I continued more calmly. “If I don’t I can never be at peace.”

“Tell me,” she said. “Whatever you need to.”

I hesitated a long time, summoning my courage, for such words are not easily spoken by people of my background and culture. Indeed, scarcely ever given voice. “I love you,” I said, “more than I can possibly say.”

Her hand tightened upon my wrist, and I could feel my own pulse. Her breath came in long, shuddering sighs merging with the faint roar of the rising surf and the miniscule clink, tinkle, clink of the wind chimes. The rain was settling lightly again, little more than a dense mist.

“I love you too, Yasuo,” she said. “Ever since that first night.” Something seemed to be flowing from her hand into my wrist, into all my veins and arteries, tingling in my skin. Both pulses now beating in unison. “And that first night, Yasuo, we were so lonely.” Our breathing was deep and tranquil now, slow and regular. The chimes and the sea would carry us quietly away. “So lonely,” she repeated. “So lonely.”