I was happy to try conversing with any or all of these foreigners, employing my few words of Japanese, and listening to some peculiar versions of English. The only persons I was wary of talking to were those who looked American, and I noticed that they were not anxious to talk with me either. Chances were too good that they were refugees as I was, employed in some desperate enterprise to stay in Avalon; it was rumored that quite a few worked for the police. In the face of such dangers it seemed best to ignore any fellow feeling.
The old part of Avalon stood much as it had in the old time, I was told: small whitewashed houses covering the hillsides that fell into the little bay that served as the harbor. Jetties had been built to enlarge the harbor, and new construction spilled over the hills to the north and west, hundreds of buildings in the Japanese style, with thick beams and thin walls, and peaky tile roofs. The whole of the island had new concrete roads, lined with low stone walls that divided the grounds of parklike estates, on which were giant mansions that the Japanese called dachas. Here officials of the U.N. and the Japanese administration made their homes. The dachas on the west side of the island were smaller; the really big ones faced the mainland, as the view of America was greatly prized. The biggest dachas of all, I heard, were on the east side of San Clemente Island; it was their lights I had seen on the night I decided to circumnavigate the globe.
A few weeks passed. I travelled in a car over the white roads, drove once and nearly crashed into a wall; when one drives there is a gale created merely by one’s passage over the road, and everything moves a bit too fast for the reflexes.
“Isn’t that what you said you felt when you were on the trains?” Rebel interrupted to ask me.
“That’s true,” I said. “You go so fast that you’re ripping through the air. I’m glad we didn’t have to drive that train; we would’ve crashed a hundred times.”
“Quiet!” Mando exclaimed, and Steve nodded and went on, too absorbed in the story to even look up from the page.
I saw the giant flying machines, jets, land at the airport like pelicans, and take off with roars that almost burst the ears. And all the while I pursued various tasks for the gain of Mr. Nisha. When I had fully obtained his trust, he asked me if I would guide a night expedition to San Diego, consisting of five Japanese businessmen who were visiting Catalina expressly for that purpose. I was extremely reluctant to return to the mainland, but Mr. Nisha proposed to split the fee he charged for such a trip with me, and it was enormous. I weighed the advantages, and agreed to it.
So one night I found myself motorboating back to San Diego, giving instructions to the pilot, Ao, the only other person aboard who spoke English. Ao knew where the coast patrol ships were to be that night, and assured me there would be no interference from them. I directed him to a landing site on the inside of Point Loma, took them up to the ruins of the little lighthouse, and walked them through the lined-up white crosses of the naval cemetery—a cemetery so vast it might have been thought to hold all of the dead from the great devastation. At dawn we hid in one of the abandoned houses, and all that day the five businessmen clicked their huge cameras at the spiky downtown skyline, and the blasted harbor. That night we returned to Avalon, and I felt reasonably happy about it all.
I led four more expeditions to San Diego after that, and they were all simple and lucrative but for the last, in which I was convinced against my better judgement to lead the boat up the mouth of the Mission River at night. My readers in San Diego will know that the mouth of the Mission is congested with debris, runs over an old pair of jetties and a road or two, changes every spring, and is in general one of the most turbulent, weird, and dangerous rivermouths anywhere. Now on this night the ocean was as flat as a table, but it had rained hard the day before, and the runoff swirled over the concrete blocks in the rivermouth as over waterfalls. One of our customers fell overboard under the weight of his camera (they have cameras that photograph at night), and I dove in after him. It took a lot of effort from myself and Ao to reunite us all, and escape to sea. In a sailboat we would have drowned, and I was used to sailboats.
After that I was not so pleased with the notion of guiding further expeditions. And I had accumulated, through Mr. Nisha’s generosity, a good quantity of money. Two nights after the disaster trip, there was a big party at one of the plush dachas high on the east flank of the island, and the man whose life I had saved offered, in his dozen words of English, to hire me as a servant and take me with him to Japan. Apparently Ao had told him of my aspiration to travel, and he hoped to repay me for saving his life.
I took Hadaka out into the shaped shrubbery of the garden, and we sat over a lighted fountain that gurgled onto the terrace below. We looked at the dark bulk of the continent, and I told her of my opportunity. With a sisterly kiss (we had shared kisses of a different nature once or twice.
“I’ll bet they had!” Rebel crowed, and the girls laughed. Kathryn imitated Steve’s reading voice:
“And I prepared to tell my dear mother back home that her grandchildren would be one-quarter Japanese…”
“No interruptions!” Steve shouted, but we were in stitches now. “I’m going to go right on!” He read,
(we had shared kisses of a different nature once or twice, but I did not feel an attraction strong enough to risk Mr. Nisha’s anger)
“Oooh, coward!” Kristen cried. “What a chicken!”
“Now wait a minute,” said Steve. “This guy has a goal in mind; he wants to get around the world. He can’t just stop on Catalina. You gals never think of anything but the romance part of the story. Quiet up now or I’ll stop reading.”
“Pleeeeeeease,” Mando begged them. “I want to know what happens.”
Hadaka informed me that it would be best for all if I took the chance and departed; though the Nishas had not made me aware of it, my staying with them was not entirely safe, as my papers could be proved counterfeit, which would immerse Mr. Nisha in all kinds of trouble. It occurred to me that this was why he had shared so much of the profit of our mainland trips with me—so I could eventually leave. I decided that they were a most generous family, and that I had been exceedingly lucky to fall in with them.
I went back inside the dacha, therefore, and avoiding the naked American girls who pressed drinks and cigarettes on everybody, I told my benefactor Mr. Tasumi that I would take up his offer. Soon afterward I bade a sad farewell to my Catalina family. When I had left my mother and friends in San Diego, I could truthfully say to them that I would try to return; but what could I say to the Nishas? I kissed mother and daughter, hugged Mr. Nisha, and in a genuine conflict of feelings was driven to the airport, there to embark on a seven thousand mile flight over the great Pacific Ocean.
“That’s Chapter Two,” Steve said, closing the book. “He’s on his way.”
“Oh read some more,” Mando said.
“Not now.” He gave a sour glance at the women, who were getting the trays out of the ovens. “It’s about time for supper, I guess.” Standing up, he shook his head at me and Mando. “These gals sure are hard on a story,” he complained.
“Oh come on,” Kathryn said. “What’s the fun of reading it together if we can’t talk about it?”
“You don’t take it seriously.”
“What does that mean? Maybe we don’t take it too seriously.”