“I want to give you something, Harry. It’s not worth anything, don’t fool yourself, but it’s all I have to give.” She slid her hand down his stomach. “I think you’re ready for it.”
Harry swallowed because a mere second touch might set him off. He was no longer chilled at all, he burned like a coal. She turned him toward her and the small blue eye of the lamp and pulled his head down to her breast. The tip stiffened more in his mouth. She lifted herself and led his hand between her legs.
“Softer, even softer, even softer.”
He felt the crispness of the hair there and the heat unfolding at his fingertips.
“You’re going to be a good lover, Harry. You’re going to care.”
She smiled proudly, the best smile he’d had in his life. Oharu led him in. It was for Harry the closest to heaven he’d ever been, and he’d barely touched bottom when he came and clung to Oharu like a boy on a raft. When his heart stopped pounding, he looked up and saw she was still smiling.
“That was a little fast,” Harry said.
“No, for a first time that was perfect. My Harry, my wild boy, what will we do with you?”
“I don’t know.”
Harry did know that his knowledge of the world had just doubled, as if the moon shone not as brightly as the sun but as fully in a softer way, as if he could see his body by her light. She changed the nature and purpose of skin, of hands, of mouth. The scent of Oharu stayed on him like salt on a swimmer. Many things made more sense now than they had ten minutes before. An equal number of things no longer made any sense at all. For example, he was already hard again.
“I should be going,” Oharu said.
“Don’t go,” said Harry.
Oharu smoothed his hair from his forehead. Between her own rounded eyebrows lay one wrinkle of concern, and she studied his face as if coming to a fateful conclusion. She had him sit up and peeled off the rest of his damp clothes. She showed him how to kiss Japanese-style with the tip of the tongue, and French-style, with an open mouth. On his own inspiration, he slid behind her to kiss the nape of her neck, the soft weight of her breasts, their softer aureoles, while she took his hand as she had before. This time where his hand went his mouth followed. He felt a moment of hesitation in her before she lifted herself to him and caressed his head. A groan came from deep inside her, and Harry lifted his eyes in time to see her put a cloth between her teeth. As her eyes rolled back and her hips moved against him, Harry thought, this is for real, this time she means it, I did this for her. She raked him up onto her, and as he entered, he heard an electric crack of lightning that rolled down his spine and limbs and nailed him deep, deep inside her.
Followed by a profound sleep with Harry folded around Oharu as if they were riding with their eyes closed slowly through the rain, the heart’s rhythm like a black horse. A faint electric haze lay in all directions. They rode through high grass soughing in the wind.
“OH MY GOD, he’s with a whore!”
Harry sat up, blinded by lights. He saw Oharu cover herself with her arms.
“My son is with a whore!” Harriet Niles said again.
Roger Niles grabbed Oharu by the hair and shook her. “Who are you?”
“She’s a friend,” Harry said.
On her knees, Oharu tried to gather her dress. She said, “So sorry, so sorry.”
“She can speak for herself,” Roger Niles said.
“That’s all the English she knows. She doesn’t speak English, and you don’t speak Japanese.”
Harry didn’t see his father’s slap coming. It bowled him to the wall with his ears ringing, but at least it got him out of the direct glare of the lanterns and he could see his parents in their wet capes, umbrellas and galoshes. Behind them hovered his uncle Orin in a drowned hat, luggage still in hand, disaster in his eyes. Obviously he had met Harry’s parents at the train station, and this was their homecoming. Harry lying with Oharu. Orin, in loco parentis, did seem chagrined.
“What is a whore doing in our house?” Harriet asked.
“That’s rather self-evident, dear,” Roger said. He pulled Oharu up by her hair and thrust her toward the door. “Get out.”
Oharu bowed. “So sorry.”
“If she says that one more time, I’m going to scream,” Harriet said.
“It’s raining,” Harry said.
“So it is, Harry,” his father said. “So your whore might have to run down the street naked and get her bottom wet.”
“The neighbors,” Harriet said.
“Get dressed.” Roger threw Oharu’s clothes at her. She looked small and humiliated to Harry, her eyes darting this way and that as she dressed in disarray. Roger turned on Harry. “As for you, do you know why the surprise visit? Because we have been informed by the mission board that you have been sending your uncle Orin to China to make money off the currency exchange. We come here to spread the word of God, and you have found every conceivable way to spread corruption. It’s like having a viper for a son.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry told Oharu in Japanese. “It’s not your fault. Thank you for everything. Thank Kato, too.”
Roger Niles put his whole weight into a roundhouse slap. Harry took half a step back. He’d received as bad from the school drillmaster.
“I’m talking to you,” Roger said. “My mission here is over. You have destroyed it. You have broken your mother’s heart, you have abused our trust, and I see not one sign of repentance.”
“Good-bye,” Harry told Oharu.
“God damn it.” Roger undid his belt. “Turn around.”
“Go to hell,” said Harry.
Roger Niles gathered both ends of the belt in his hand as a whip and laid into Harry. A white welt edged in red curled from his ribs to his neck. Harry gasped but otherwise said nothing. Oharu ran as soon as she was in her shoes. Staggering from fury and frustration, Roger raised the cry, “All the way to Japan around the world for this. Like whipping a stone.” He whipped until Harry was crisscrossed with welts, until Harriet and even the derelict Orin hung on to Roger’s arm and consoled him as family must have once consoled the father of the prodigal son.
THE NILES FAMILY left two days later on a Colombian freighter bound from Yokohama to Panama and a connection to the States. To keep Harry’s condition secret, they stayed almost entirely in their cabin, and as no one in the family spoke Spanish, it wasn’t until they saw American newspapers in the Canal Zone that they read about the earthquake in Japan. While the Nileses had been at sea, 120,000 Japanese had died in Tokyo in three days of shaking and fire. Except for the Imperial Hotel and Tokyo Station, hardly a building was left standing. The updraft of the fire was so intense it lifted people high into the air, where they burst into flame. American observers said it was the end of Tokyo as a modern city and that it would take the Japanese fifty years to recover.
Over the next few years, Harry wrote everyone in Tokyo he could think of. Finally Gen answered as a project for high school, where he was studying English. All the old gang, the five samurai, had miraculously survived, most by crowding into the Asakusa temple grounds as the fire swirled around them. Kato, however, had died while retrieving paintings; his building collapsed on his last trip in. The little dancer Chizuko was killed by rioters who took her for Korean; mobs who blamed Koreans for everything blamed them for the fires and killed a thousand for revenge. She had looked vaguely Korean, Gen added. Oharu had simply disappeared. A lot of people disappeared.
16
AS HARRY DROVE, he learned on the radio that the evening English lesson had been replaced by German.
Ist Hans in seinem Wanderjahr?
Ja, Hans ist in seinem Wanderjahr. Er ist in Paris.
Harry wondered where that madcap Hans would turn up next. Moscow? London? Where would Harry be? At ten thousand feet on the Hong Kong Clipper, a flying boat en route to Manila, Midway, Honolulu and America, Home of the Free, the Chrysler Airflow, the platinum blonde. He’d give Alice Beechum an inside tour of the movie studio, introduce her to her favorite stars, take in Tijuana and Santa Anita.