Divorce!
Kent read the letter over again, carefully, laboriously, for his
thoughts would not concentrate on the sentences. He had to force
himself to bring his mind on them. The letters from Isabel had shown
indifference, every evidence of having been written as a matter of
duty in their painstaking regularity, one a month; they had been cold
even; but he had never for a moment suspected that she would, suddenly,
without leaving room for discussion, thus make the end bluntly, finally.
She wrote that the petition had been filed in court. The grounds were
desertion. The summons would probably be in the same mail. Desertion.
It struck him as wantonly malicious treachery. He had been careful
always to send her the regular allowance which they had agreed upon
before he left for Japan, and even more. He could certainly show in
court---- Still, what was the use? He would not contest the case. If
she wanted divorce, well, let her have it. A man was a fool who would
try to hold a woman against her desire. And then, after all, why should
he care? His affection for her had long since dissipated. The adage
that absence makes the heart grow fonder--he had more than halfway
believed that it might work out--but it had not in his case, nor,
evidently, in hers either. He had no cause to object. On the contrary,
she was giving him his freedom. It was the logical thing, after all.
Now, if that had come a year ago, before Sylvia had left Tokyo? Isabel
must even then have considered divorce. She had probably done so even
before he left America. Why could she not have done it then, when he
and Sylvia---- Would she have married him? Plainly, she had liked him,
but this other? Still, there would have been a chance. And now, now
when opportunity had finally come, it was so absurdly futile. He had no
means of reaching Sylvia. She had disappeared utterly, had gone as if
she had vanished into space. No one appeared to know where she might
be. Evidently she had wished to disassociate herself entirely from
Tokyo, to sever every thread that might connect her with Japan. He had
written a couple of times on chance clews. She had been seen by some
one somewhere along the upper Yangtze. A note in the personal column
of a Hongkong paper showed that she had gone from that place to Macao.
Report had it that she had visited Singapore. He had written each time,
but nothing had ever come of it. So he had given up thought of her,
forced himself to blot that chapter out of his life, to consider it a
definitely closed incident. Now, it was too late. Even if he knew where
to find her, what would she say should he gallop up to her the moment
he was free. One could never know how a woman might take things. And
then she would by this time undoubtedly have found new friends, might
be engaged, married, for all he might know. No, even if he might find
her, should she have been placed out of his reach through some other
man, that, he knew, must hurt him like the devil. It would reopen,
grievously lacerate the old wound which seemed now to have all but
healed. After all, he had come to appreciate, enjoy in recent months
his safety from emotional turmoil. One risked too much, paid too
heavily for the raptures of infatuation. He would remain safe.
So that phase of the situation was disposed of. He would allow himself
to consider it no more. Now for the other phases.
He lit his pipe and leaned back to think it over, to reason it out.
Logically he should be pleased; but he could not make himself feel so.
It was an ugly word, "desertion"; smacked of being a scoundrel. Still,
of course, divorces were common things, and every one knew that the
law required, for some obscure reason, that the grounds must always be
clothed in terms implying disgrace of some kind. Well, let it go.
Still, he was oddly dissatisfied. He tried to analyze his feelings.
Gradually, as he smoked, it came to him that what he resented was the
suddenness of entire change in his status of life, the necessity for
making new adjustments. He would now be alone, under a changed moral
code, a different mode of life. Still, he was being made free. What
he lost was, of course, only obligations. To blazes with the entire
business!
He crumpled the letter and threw it out of the window impulsively.
He would be rid of the whole thing, like that; would write her to go
ahead. It was the end. Undoubtedly he would soon find himself pleased,
as he should be, that a relation had been severed which there could be
no possible reason to continue.
"Kent-san."
It was a woman's voice, low, clear. He looked about, startled out
of his thoughts. There she was, across the alley, in her window,
his geisha neighbor. Through the bamboo bars she was holding out
to him something white. He recognized the crumpled letter. What
a perverse grotesquery of fate that his divorce announcement
should, eccentrically, cause his acquaintance with this woman, this
professional in the arts of affection, whom he had heretofore known
only mutely, through her formal courtesy of a smile when she had
happened to meet his eye from her window.
"It came right in through the window. It frightened me. It hit me right
on the head." She was laughing, but her eyes asked for explanation. Of
course--one did not throw things through windows, even at geisha.
"Pardon me. I was angry. It was bad news. My wife in America is seeking
divorce." He caught himself. It was stupid to plump it out to an utter
stranger; but the idea had filled his mind, had dominated him so
entirely that the words had slipped without thinking.
"_O kinodoku sama_, I am so sorry." The smiling face became a mask of
polite regret. "Do you love her?"
The amazing frankness of the Orient in intimately personal matters in
contrast to its reticence where the West is frank!
"No, I don't care a bit." As he spoke he felt with surprised
satisfaction that he really did not care, that his resentment was
fading. Evidently it did him good to get this thing out of his system,
to speak out about it, even to this new-found geisha friend. It was
not so incongruous, after all. Was she not supposed to be an expert in
matters of the heart.
Her serious expression vanished instantly. She laughed. They did really
laugh like "tinkling silver bells," some of these Japanese girls. "Then
you will find another woman. Ah, but here in Japan, what will you do?
Here we have only the _kitanai_ Japanese girls."
"_Kitanai_," literally "unclean," used in the sense of "unworthy" as
the Japanese always speaks, perfunctorily, of what is his own. The
unjustness of the phrase bewildered him for the moment, as he thought
for words to express indignant refutation, protest that the Japanese
girl was, of course, the very opposite of "_kitanai_."
He started to answer. The murmur of a voice came to him from the unseen
background of the girl's room. The face of an old woman appeared behind
her.
"I was just calling at the shaved-ice man," said the girl, over her
shoulder. "But he didn't hear me. He has gone." Evidently the elder
woman, probably a sort of duenna, had asked her what she was doing. He
admired her instant wit. She smiled at him hurriedly, surreptitiously.
He caught the odd charm of the wink of her long almond eye. Then the
_shoji_ closed.
Well! A bizarre episode. But a charming one. He was in a happy frame of
mind. It was a good augury. Evidently he was not so badly hurt, when a
pretty face could so easily dispel his resentment. Divorce; it was only
proper that his marriage be ended, an unsatisfactory chapter. Let the
thing take its course.
He decided to place the letter in a drawer where he kept things
which he wished to remain unseen by the unknown one who periodically
ransacked his desk. He had left it open purposely, and at the top he
had placed a layer of old papers, which must have been seen often by
the intruder, and which could no longer tempt his curiosity. Below the
papers he kept the other things, his wife's letters mainly, and then
Kimiko-san's slippers. He had been surprised to receive them in the
mail, a few days after their first dance in Tsurumi. It had amused him
that she had taken him thus literally. It was dangerous to be jocose
with Japanese girls; they were likely to take things to the letter. But
he had been pleased at the possession, at having this dainty, unique
souvenir of a delightful incident of his life in Japan.
He was surprised to find that the investigator had evidently been
there. The ruse had not worked. The slippers were not in the position
where he had left them. Still, it made little difference. He would take
them home. The trophy would amuse Jun-san.
Jun-san was intensely interested, pleaded that he tell her from whom he
had obtained them. He always enjoyed seeing her in her gay moods; she
was generally so serious, almost melancholy. He had planned to bring
about this air of gayety, that he might, as had been the case when he
was chatting with his geisha neighbor, forget unpleasant thoughts.
But it failed. The humor dissipated. The serious thoughts recurred
insistently. He could see that Karsten noticed his preoccupation. The
idea came to him to tell Karsten all about it, talk it out with him.
It would do him good; one always reasoned more clearly when one placed
one's thoughts in words to another; and then Karsten had been known in
San Francisco as a man with unusual experience with women, had had the
reputation of being an expert, in those days, in such matters.
So after dinner, when they were sitting upstairs, as usual, looking
over the blaze of the geisha quarter below, he told him. "It is not so
much that I care," he concluded. "There was no longer such a thing as
affection--on either side. But I can't help feeling a vague sense of
trouble, of unrest. I am fairly commonplace. I don't give much thought
to self-analysis and that sort of thing. I was married; it was a state
of affairs, a condition. I had become used to it. It governed my
relations to women. I followed the traditional moral code of marriage,
gave no thought to such matters. It was plain sailing; I played the
game with my wife; there could be no other women; it was an easy frame
of mind. And now it seems as if suddenly I am at sea without sailing
orders, as if I were captain of a ship in mid-ocean and suddenly find
that I have no compass course, no destination. And, of course, one
must have one, must decide where one is going. You would say that it
makes no difference, that as I have not seen my wife for a year or
more, the thing is essentially the same. But it isn't. I am bewildered
by a feeling that my status is utterly different, cataclysmically
changed. I am like a life prisoner who has without warning been taken
out of a cell where he has lain for years, passively, without need
of thought of what he should do with life, and who is then suddenly
placed in the midst of the sunlit city. He feels he is free, must do
something, wants to do something, but somehow, oddly, misses the quiet
impassivity, the lack of responsibility of his cell. I know that there
is no reason why I shouldn't live to-morrow as I did yesterday, but the
fact is that for some reason it seems impossible. There is the sense of
an entirely new condition of life which overwhelms me, and I want to, I
feel I must respond to it, in some way, but--I know I talk like a fool.
I am hanged if I can explain coherently--but I wish I knew what I want
to do."
"I think you are doing the best thing just now," said Karsten. "Talk it
out of your system. After all, it is a thing you will eventually decide
for yourself, gradually. You need be in no hurry. I know just how you
feel. You know I was divorced, too. Only in my case another woman, whom
I cared for, threw me over at the same time. I went through the same
thing. I don't pretend to be able to give advice. In such matters a man
must act on his own. But, since we have come to the intimate things in
our lives, I don't mind telling you how I fared. One may profit from
the foolishness of others."
He smoked silently for a while, evidently gathering his thoughts. "My
marriage turned out just like yours," he began suddenly. "There was
no reason why it shouldn't have turned out well, only it didn't.
We simply grew tired of each other, for the usual reason, too much
intimate daily contact. When one sees every day, morning after morning,
a woman in a dressing gown, with her hair down, going through the
process of elaborating her attractions, careless of one's presence,
it takes the glamor out of the illusion. A man shaving, seen every
morning, can hardly be an inspiring spectacle. Crudely put, that was
about all there was to it. Came the divorce. It was the only reasonable
thing. I felt that I should be pleased, but, just like you, I felt
bewildered, that I had lost my bearings.
"I drifted for a while, but I was agitated, nervous, febrile; felt that
I should have done with women, but the very fact that I had my liberty,
that I could do as I pleased, kept running in my mind. It gave me no
rest. I had no moral scruples. You know I am a Dane. The family is one
of these old tradition-ridden clans that you find in Europe. Everything
must be governed by precedent set by people who have been dead for
ages. In my tribe the woman element has always been predominant. When
I was still in school my uncles impressed on me the family code--never
touch a friend's wife or his daughter, and never cause a woman regret.
Simple, isn't it? If such things worked, it would probably be as good,
at least for those whom it fitted, as any other, but such things are
not nostrums.
"Anyway, I felt then that as long as I lived up to that, I was all
right. Then Sanford, of the _San Francisco Herald_, you know, gave me a
piece of advice. He quoted Lawrence Hope's verse recommending to 'love
only lightly,' to pluck the pleasant, superficial flowers of love and
to avoid the thorns by not allowing yourself to become too devoted to
any one woman. I took the advice too seriously. You remember that
during my last years in San Francisco I was just a roué, a libertine,
a swine. Instead of giving me rest, peace of mind, I became worse off
than ever. Then accident brought me to Japan. It did me good. What had
bothered me was, I discovered, not lust for women, but only desire
for excitement; but, of course, as you know, in our well-ordered
civilization a man can get excitement, change, new impressions and
experiences out of few things, politics, sports, gambling, business
perhaps, but, if he is cursed with an imagination, mainly women. When
I came here, all the new life, the new sights, interested me so much
that after awhile I found myself rational again. I played a bit with
the geisha, down there, but temperately, sensibly. Then, finally,
accident brought me a woman, a Japanese woman, for whom I felt real
affection, whom I really cared for. I found that I wanted no others. I
was absolutely faithful to her, not because I had to be, nor because I
felt that I ought to be, but because I wanted to be. That is where the
relation without benefit of clergy works better than the institution
of marriage. It is more likely to last because of the absence of the
feeling that one must be faithful as a matter of obligation. I had come
to the conclusion that monogamy is the only rational, natural thing,
one man for one woman, one woman for one man. I would like to see some
kind of marriage invented that would work effectively. In my case, I
was happier than I had ever been. I had peace, content, I thought I had
solved my life.--Then my--my best friend seduced the woman."
As he talked, Karsten had been pacing up and down the narrow veranda
which, now the _shoji_ had been removed on account of the heat, formed
part of the room. Now he stopped and stood staring out over the city,
smoking silently. Suddenly he turned, faced Kent.
"I am afraid that there has not been as much as I thought in all this
for you to draw a moral from. I'll be more specific. What I was trying
to drive at was this: why don't you, in a tentative way, try the 'love
lightly.' That I made a mess of it, at first, in San Francisco, was my
own fault. One may take an overdose of any remedy. But here in Japan it
is somewhat different. First of all, there is no sense in deliberately
going out stalking such adventure. The kind you find that way, picking
up with the first woman who crosses your path, doesn't pan out. But
keep your mind open, ready to seize upon opportunity--it will come. In
fact, I have rather wondered that you have not come to it, in spite of
your principle, though, by the way, I rather admire the fact that you
have stuck to it. But I have been watching you--one can't help watching
a man whom one likes when living together as we do--and I think that
it is with you as with Kipling's Tomlinson--if you will forgive the
paraphrase--that 'the roots of sin are there.' You take too much
interest in the life, and color, and movement that you see all about
you. The unique charm of these Japanese women has gotten its insidious
white fingers on you. That principle of yours was all that held you
back, wasn't it? Now that's gone--_le deluge_! No, maybe not quite
that, but I expect to see you soon studying Japanese life and character
by the only means through which it can be studied with something
resembling complete understanding--through some woman. As a matter of
fact, there is no reason why you shouldn't, and there is every reason
why you should. It is your business as a newspaperman to get inside
the Japanese mind as intimately as you can. You know that it cannot
be done through the men; the bar of nationality, race, is constantly
between you and perfect frankness. But with women sex is bigger than
race. When a woman cares for you, she looks upon you as a man, not as
an alien. She gives you her heart, her innermost mind, without thought
of nationality. You understand me, don't you. I don't mean that you
should deliberately, cold-bloodedly stalk a woman for the purpose of
dissecting her soul and using the results for calculated, mercenary
purposes, just to reduce them to copy. What I mean is that you are now
free to follow when inclination in the form of a woman beckons you;
only be careful that you go into it only as a game, and let the woman
understand that it is only a game. At least part of the old family
code is good--that to the effect that one must not cause a woman to
suffer. So be careful how you play. You have heard, as I have heard a
thousand times, that these women are cold, passionless. It is a lie. I
know it. Their capacity for affection, devotion, sacrifice, is as great
as that of our women; sometimes I think it is even greater. And their
poor little souls are delicate, sensitive. They are like children, who
brood over and magnify sorrows which we might consider fairly trivial.
And then they have their heads still filled with feudal romance. They
read their paper-covered novels seeking with noble sacrifice for love
and all that, _shinju_, double suicide, you know, where the lovers kill
themselves together. We had a case last year right here in the quarter
below, where a geisha and a student threw themselves into the Kegon
waterfall, at Nikko, which is the most fashionable thing. One reads
of cases where friends who get wind of the intention of the lovers
insist on joining the party, and then there is a triple suicide. They
get their heads filled with this kind of romance, picture themselves
as heroes and heroines in the high lights of melodrama, imagine how
the papers will sound their names from one end of Japan to the other.
It may be a bit hard for the practical American mind to understand,
but the Japanese have an odd, introspective, often a bit hysterical
psychology, something like the Russians, I often think, like characters
out of Dostoievsky.
"So, to sum it all up, I think it will be a good thing for you to leave
the latchstring of your heart hanging out a bit that some little hand
may take a pull at it by chance. It will be good for your present state
of mind, and it will be good for your work. I am not joking. Not only
will it give you insight into Japanese character such as you may get
in no other way, but, if you are at all like me, you may find in some
girl, if not exactly inspiration, whatever that is, at least some kind
of subtle sympathy that helps and pushes you along. I myself, in my
time, under just such circumstances, did some mighty good work, or came
near accomplishing it, but now, damn it!"
He snapped his fingers, flung out in impatient gesture. The pause was
so sudden it produced, conflictingly, the effect of an abrupt sound, a
trumpet blare in hushed stillness. Kent looked up. Jun-san had noticed
it, too. Squatting on her silk _zabuton_ in the background, her sewing
had dropped to her lap, and she was looking at Karsten wonderingly,
solicitously. She never spoke in English; it was generally accepted
that she did not understand it, but Kent wondered whether she did
not really understand more than they thought, whether she might not
intuitively, from intonation, gesture, aided by such words as she
must have picked up, gain at least some idea of the drift of their
conversation.
The silence became uncomfortable, exasperating. "But why don't you take
it up again? You are no man to mope about. You are not doing anything,
just killing time reading magazines and novels. How can that satisfy
you in the long run. Why, then, don't you take some of the advice that
you have just given me?"
"I can't, or at least I won't, on account of---- That is, the woman
is still here, in Tokyo, and I want to show her. It may seem to you
contradictory, absurd, perverse. It doesn't sound logical, except,
possibly, as a sort of heaping of coals on her head, to show her that
I, at least, am faithful. I never told her what I knew, never blamed
her. I think that in this way she is getting punishment far more subtle
than anything I could inflict by abusing her, or by running after other
women. Something must be going on in her mind. Still, who am I that I
should have a right to punish any woman for turning to another man,
after my sort of life? I only got what I deserved, after all. Anyway,
my position happened to be such that I couldn't speak out, couldn't
jump on the man or the woman. That rather governed my course. For, of
course, one doesn't in that way, in such a case, when one is still
agitated, shattered by anger, jealousy, disappointment, in all that
whirl of emotions, just sit down and deliberately shape out a definite
course of procedure, I shall do this, and I shall do that. No, one
stews about, waits to figure it out, to decide what to do when one
has become calmer, and then, if one has done nothing at the moment of
crisis, at the impulse of sudden discovery, consternation, passion,
then one gradually drifts into accepting the course which things
naturally take, the path of least resistance. Yes, that's undoubtedly
it, the path of least resistance."
He shook out his pipe into a huge brass bowl which was kept in the
room for that purpose; took out his knife, began with over-careful
deliberation to carve out the lava-like incrustations from the bowl.
"But the work you were doing?" Kent wanted to bring the conversation
into a smoother channel. He was nervous, uncomfortable, with a sense
of something undefinably grievous, tragic, as if it were, hovering,
indefinitely threatening, closing about them from the darkness outside.
"The work!" Karsten kept scraping at the pipe bowl, methodically
held it to the light, inspected it. "It took the heart out of me,
this revelation, the sudden shock of it. It had been too perfect,
this working away, always in festival spirits, in the atmosphere of
affection, devotion, love, damn it, to use the banal old word. I
thought I had the rest of my life all well ordered, that peace had
come at last. I am too old to start again, and then, anyway, as I told
you, there were other reasons. So the work--I have never looked at it
since. But," he seemed struck by a sudden thought. "Jun-san," he was
still intent with his pipe and did not look up. "Jun-san. Bring out the
_kodomo_."
"_Kodomo_," child. The word puzzled Kent. What the devil----?
He looked past Karsten, as he sat there doggedly scraping at his pipe,
to Jun-san. She had risen from her _zabuton_, was looking at the man
with wonder. It grew into consternation; was it apprehension, fear? But
she had turned and was going to the _todana_, wall closet, was drawing
from it papers, loose and in bundles, reaching into the depth of the
recess, pulling out still more. Then she turned and came towards them,
arms filled, held in front of her. She advanced hesitatingly. By God,
she was trembling; her eyes were misty with tears. Kent jumped up, but
she did not look at him. In front of Karsten she stopped, held her
burden towards him, silent, trembling. He laid away his pipe finally,
looked up at her, stretched out his hands. She moved still nearer, as
if to pass the papers over to him. Then her hands fell away, bundles
dropping, loose papers fluttering to the floor, into the brass bowl.
Karsten had risen, patted the woman on the shoulder tenderly, as one
would a child. It was the first time Kent had seen him caress her.
"Oh, you poor little girl, you poor little girl," the man's voice
was hoarse, broken. "Come, you had better go to your house." She was
weeping openly now, shaking. "Forgive me, Jun-san. Come."
The sliding door closed behind her. Karsten turned to Kent. "I might
as well tell you now, of course. The woman was Jun-san." He turned
abruptly to the papers, began gathering them. "These are nothing much,
after all, Kent. Only notes of various kinds for a great Japanese drama
that I thought I might construct. The Danes have a proverb that every
sow thinks that her own pigs are the best. Probably I did the same."
He carried the papers to the _todana_, put them out of sight. "We have
had a melodramatic evening, haven't we, Kent-san, with your troubles
and mine. It seems as if women must ever be the cause of our sorrows,
yes, and our joys. _Shikataganai._ It can't be helped. Now let us have
a drink and go to bed."
They had their drink. Karsten went to the adjoining room where he
slept. Kent started downstairs to his room. At the head of the
stairway he noticed something dark, bulky in the half-light, moving a
little; his ear caught a sharp indrawn breath. It was Jun-san. A wave
of intense pity swept over him. He wanted to say something to her,
to comfort her, but what could he say. Undoubtedly she wished to be
undisturbed by such crude, stupid consolation as he might contrive.
He descended slowly and went to bed. But he could not sleep. He lay
tossing, it seemed for hours. What, after all, did love of women,
relations with women, ever bring but regret; swift, passionate,
heart-swelling joy for the moment, even for days or years, but in the
end weariness, sorrow, pangs of tragedy, irreparable, regretful remorse?
In the stillness of the night he could hear the shrill twitter of the
cicadas in the garden, and faintly, softly, the sobbing, interminable,
unconsolable, of Jun-san.