The Women: A Novel Part 12

Dinner that night was nothing less than an ordeal, akin, she supposed, to what the flagellants must have experienced when they paraded themselves through the streets of Rome, blood drying in streaks, ritual humiliation, that sort of thing. At least for her, at any rate. For his part, Frank was having the time of his life, his voice rising and falling with the inevitability of waves beating at the sh.o.r.e as he regaled the a.s.sembled company with his views on the j.a.panese character, the parlous state of contemporary architecture, the use of natural materials, the samisen as opposed to the banjo and just about anything else that came into his head, along with a barrage of jokes, stories, snippets of song and limericks so h.o.a.ry they would have fallen dead in the last century. The food was uniformly awful. The cook had attempted a j.a.panese theme, presenting the usual pork and gravy, fried fish and boiled cabbage with an accompaniment of little bleached mounds of white rice so impossibly adhesive it was as if she'd melted down a pot of Wrigley's chewing gum. And the chopsticks. Frank had had Billy Weston carve them from sc.r.a.ps of pine-as if Hayas.h.i.+-San and the rest couldn't imagine how to perforate a bit of meat with the tines of a fork- and the j.a.panese just stared at them as if they'd never seen such a thing before in their lives. But it was hilarious, wasn't it?

Frank was at the head of the table, of course, and she was seated in her usual place, at his right, while Hayas.h.i.+-San and his painted little wife sat across from her and Frank's mother commanded the far end of the table, where Russell Williamson and Paul Mueller and his wife tried to find common ground with the two mute students Hayas.h.i.+-San had brought along with him as his entourage. Hayas.h.i.+-San's consulting architect, a short slight man in his forties with an absolutely immobile face-Yos.h.i.+take-San-was on Miriam's immediate right, and throughout the meal he would turn to her at intervals and present her with brief guttural comments out of his English primer.

"Good evening," he said when first they'd sat down, and then he repeated the phrase several times in succession, and she, playing along, returned the greeting or observation or whatever it was, until, on the third or fourth repet.i.tion, it began to take on a new meaning altogether and it was all she could do to restrain herself when "Good night" would have been more appropriate. "The weather is pleasant, is it not?" he observed next. And then, after sitting silent through Frank's dissertation on the quarrying of native stone in its naturally occurring sedimentary layers so as to deliver it intact to the landscape, he cleared his throat and asked her if he might light her fire. "I beg your pardon?" she said, and he produced a cigarette case, offered her a cigarette and lit it for her even as Frank flashed his disapproval. She smiled then and Yos.h.i.+take-San, lighting his own cigarette, smiled back.

It was during dessert-by her count the eighth course of the evening-that Frank began to s.h.i.+ft his focus to Hayas.h.i.+-San's wife. He actually picked up his chair in the middle of the tea service and inserted it between Hayas.h.i.+-San's and the wife's, and Miriam stiffened, she couldn't help herself. Of course, she was thinking, why wouldn't he fawn all over her like the beast he was-she was young, wasn't she? And pretty? Even if she was an Oriental. Oh, she was a little porcelain doll, the wife, wrapped in her black silk gown with the pale chrysanthemums climbing gracefully up the hem and across her abdomen and the swell of her pointed little j.a.panese b.r.e.a.s.t.s as if she were one of Frank's prints sprung to life, and when he spoke to her she batted her exaggerated lashes and smiled out of a mouth of uneven oversized teeth.120 For the most part, she stared down at her lap, except when Frank was probing her with facetious queries about her kimono or her impressions of America, but at one point she turned to him and asked a question of her own, as if this were all part of the performance expected of her. "I wish to ask you, Wrieto-San"-and here she gave Miriam a look-"and Mrs. Wrieto-San, what is this word 'G.o.dd.a.m.n'?"

Frank laughed. And Miriam, despite herself-she detested it when he paid attention to another woman, any woman, as if he were dismissing her publicly, shaming her, shunning her, but the sound of that casual appellation, Mrs. Wrieto-San, was music to her ears-found that she was smiling as well. How adorable, she was thinking. How childlike. How pitiful.

" 'G.o.dd.a.m.n'?" Frank repeated, levity lifting his voice, and everyone at the table was watching the wife now-Takako-San-and everyone was smiling in antic.i.p.ation of the sequel. "Why do you ask? Have you heard this expression often since you've arrived in our country?"

A little pout, a widening of the eyes, and she was very young, Miriam saw, in her teens or early twenties, young and full of grace. And coquetry. But didn't they teach that in j.a.pan? Wasn't that what women existed for over there?121 "Oh, yes, Wrieto-San," the wife said in a diminished little puff of a voice, "every day. All the time. Here tonight. You have said it yourself."

And Frank, grinning, flirting-infuriatingly, as if she didn't exist, as if she weren't sitting across the table from him with the smile drying on her lips-gave a broad wink for the benefit of the table and for Hayas.h.i.+-San in particular, no sense in ruffling his feathers, and replied that "G.o.dd.a.m.n" was a polite adverb meaning "very." "As in, oh, I don't know-Paul, help me out here-" But before Paul could answer, he went on, "-it's a G.o.dd.a.m.n fine evening. Or this is G.o.dd.a.m.n fresh b.u.t.ter. After a meal you might thank your host for a G.o.dd.a.m.n good dinner."

Takako-San s.h.i.+fted prettily in her chair, made her eyes big and looked round the table as if she were sitting in the catbird seat-and she was, she was-and chirped, "Then I thank you, Wrieto-San-and Mrs. Wrieto-San-for a G.o.dd.a.m.n good dinner."

Of course everyone laughed-it was a pretty performance-and Frank and Hayas.h.i.+-San petted her as if she were a dog or monkey granted the power of speech, but Miriam, though she was grinning, felt a stab of hate run through her. Hate that carried over into the living room, where they sat before the fire and Frank paraded out his treasures-the prints in particular-to get Hayas.h.i.+-San's studied opinion of them, and then there was the inevitable tour of the house that went on till it was past midnight and Hayas.h.i.+-San, for all his rigid propriety, began to yawn.

"Well," Frank sighed, taking the cue at long last though she'd been signaling him with furious eyes for an hour and more, "you must be all tired out, rail travel can be so enervating, I know-but perhaps we'll take it up again in the morning. Perhaps you'd like to see something of the house from the grounds. Or from horseback. If you like we can saddle up the horses-or take the motorcar. But please, let me show you to your rooms . . ."

There were the elaborate good nights, the ritual bowing, Hayas.h.i.+-San's eyes all but melting into his head with exhaustion, the two students as silent and impa.s.sive as the carven statue of the Amida Buddha in the loggia and the little wife grinning her toothy farewells till finally they were alone in the bedroom and Miriam shut the door behind them and stalked to the closet. Frank had begun to whistle. He stood before the mirror, working loose the knot of his tie, a look of satisfaction on his face, and it was that look that set her off as much as anything. He was so pleased with himself, wasn't he? Frank Lloyd Wright, the great man, beguiler of foreigners, seducer of women, G.o.d of his own universe. The light at the bedside cast a soft glow. Shadows climbed the walls. She was one tick from combustion.

"That went well enough, don't you think?" he said, shrugging out of the tunic with the trailing tails and open flapping arms that was like something you'd see on a Barnum & Bailey clown, and who was he to talk of parody? She snapped her neck round to glare at him, at his bare shoulders and the back of his inflated head. Did he actually expect her to reminisce over the evening? Over her own public humiliation? Was he that insensible?

"Hayas.h.i.+-San, I mean," he went on, addressing the wall before him as he balanced first on one foot and then the other to remove his trousers. "He was reserved, of course, but that's the nature of the j.a.panese, their natural dignity, but I could see that he was visibly impressed with Taliesin and the beautiful things we've collected here . . . Yos.h.i.+take-San too, though it's Hayas.h.i.+ who makes the decisions, you can see that in an instant. No, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't come to a mutual agreement within the next few days. A ten percent commission, of course, and I'll want travel and accommodation in the old Imperial, for the two of us and three a.s.sistants at least. And I'll want a car and driver too, so that we can explore the countryside on our own, and the shops, of course . . ."

She made no answer. She turned away, removed her jewelry and set it on the tray, jerked the comb from her hair. Her hands were trembling. The blindness of him, the stupidity! And did he really think she was going to tramp all the way over to the Orient with him to be treated like this?

"And what did you think of Takako-San? Charming, wasn't she?" And now it was too late, now the match had been struck, now. She flew at him across the room-he was just pulling the nights.h.i.+rt over his head, oblivious, full of himself, swaggering, boasting, Lothario incarnate-and before she could think she'd slammed into him, both her hands extended, and he was staggering back against the wall, the garment caught over his head. There was a heavy fleshy thump and he cried out in surprise, working the neck of the nights.h.i.+rt down over his face even as she shoved him again and he fell awkwardly to the floor. He was so stunned, so totally taken by surprise, that he just sat there staring up at her, not even angry yet, not even defending himself, as if he were the victim of some natural disaster, an earthquake, an avalanche. "What the-?" he stammered. "What are you-?"

"Your little Cho-Cho-San," she said, and she was standing over him, her fists clenched. She wanted to kick him like a dog. "Your little wh.o.r.e. Is that why you want to go over there, for your wh.o.r.es? Wrieto-San?"

"Miriam, d.a.m.n you, d.a.m.n you!" He scrambled to his feet, tugging at the folds of the nightgown as if it were a hair s.h.i.+rt, and she backed away from him-was he going to hit her? Well, let him. She didn't care. She'd show his precious Orientals the bruises in the morning, wear them like battle scars.

"No," she shouted, "d.a.m.n you! But tell me, tell me, Frank, is it really true what the sailors say, because you ought to know, you're the one who deserted your first wife over there to go whoring with all the little buck-toothed fish-stinking geisha and if you think I'm going to tolerate that-"

"You don't know what you're saying."

"Tell me," she screamed, and she didn't care if they heard her all the way to Yokohama and back, "is it true? Do they really have their little slits on backwards?"122 In the light of day she began to see things more clearly. And calmly. She'd gone too far, she could see that now, but she'd been upset, she couldn't help herself. Still, Frank had been good about it-he was in the wrong, he knew it-and he'd taken her in his arms and held her to him till all the bad blood had flushed out of her and then he'd taken her to bed. And loved her like no man ever had, not even Rene at his best. She was left drained and she slept the night through without recourse to her pravaz and her dreams were fluid and rich, the bed undulating beneath her like a stateroom on the high seas, and if she couldn't have the SS Paris then she would have the Empress of China, and if the yokels of Wisconsin treated her like a leper, in Tokyo she would be Mrs. Wrieto-San, the daring and ravis.h.i.+ng wife of the great man himself. They would marvel at her, at her style and her carriage and her Parisian manner and perhaps she'd turn back to sculpture, set up her own studio there, the materials cheap as water, and coolies-was that what you called them?-to do the onerous things for practically nothing, for yen, mere sc.r.a.ps of paper. Best of all, she would escape the narrowness of Chicago and the sterility of life in the countryside.

Edo. Old Edo. She lay in bed through the morning-long past breakfast-and stared at the prints on the walls until she felt she could enter them, climb into their richly colored depths and live there curled up in a ball of undiluted happiness. And what was all this-Frank's screens and vases and all the rest-if not preparation for the voyage of her life?

That night, when they sat down to dinner, she held fast to Frank throughout the meal and she did the talking, or the better part of it, and if Frank could enchant Hayas.h.i.+-San, well so could she. By the time they retired to the living room to sit before the fire Hayas.h.i.+-San wouldn't leave her side. His eyes-so dark they were nearly black-were fixated on her, roaming over her lips, her eyes, her tongue, her ears, her throat, and she recognized the look he trained on her from a hundred nights in the salons of Paris. All the while the little wife sat in the corner like a puppet with its strings cut while Frank lectured the architect and the earnestly nodding students-he barely glanced at the woman; he wouldn't dare-and his mother, with her bobbing old white-crowned head, served the tea herself. There was a record on the Victrola-strings pouring out of the speaker in pulsing waves of warmth that seemed to float over the room as if the orchestra were there with them. Hayas.h.i.+-San looked into her eyes. All the beautiful things in the room glowed in the firelight. She took the wrap from her shoulders, leaned back in the chair and let herself relax. She was going to Tokyo. Better yet: she was already on her way.

CHAPTER 8: DERU KUGI WA UTARERU.

He wasn't much of a sailor and he'd be the first to admit it. Give him a dingy or a canoe or even a sailboat out on the chop of Lake Mendota and he was fine, but the eternal pitching of the open sea took all the strength out of him. And, of course, leaving at the end of the year,123 some ten months after Hayas.h.i.+-San had visited Taliesin, only complicated matters. On the first day out of Seattle the s.h.i.+p was overtaken by a storm sweeping down out of the Gulf of Alaska, the decks as slick as a hockey rink, his bunk-which he was unable to crawl out of except in those intervals when he staggered to the head-floating in mid-air like a magic carpet for a giddy moment only to plunge violently as if all the magic had been sucked out of it before it floated up again and then plunged back down. And came up. And down. And up and down and up and down. He couldn't keep anything on his stomach, not even water, and when he was able to sleep his dreams were clotted with images of the t.i.tanic and the Lusitania listing amid panic and chaos, and he woke, invariably, to the sensation of catapulting over Niagara in a barrel.

Miriam was a gem. She was as unaffected as a harpooner by the heavy seas, tucking away three hearty meals a day, walking the decks for exercise and lingering late in the first-cla.s.s lounge, all the while urging him to take a spoonful of broth, China tea, brandy (purely as a digestif, of course), and sitting beside him in his agony for long stretches of time, reading aloud from the jumping pages of a kinetic book. She bathed him. Laid compresses on his brow. Ma.s.saged his cored-out muscles. She was at her best and sweetest and most motherly but nothing could awaken in him the slightest pulse of volition or the least tick of energy but the thought of the pier at Yokohama beneath his feet. It had been this way when he'd first come to j.a.pan with Kitty124 and when he'd crossed the Atlantic with Mamah too. He wasn't a sailor. He would never acquire his sea legs. If only they had transcontinental rail service, he thought, lying there miserably in his bunk, and he envisioned a bridge across the Bering Sea or maybe a tunnel as deep down as the core of the earth itself. Or what of those other Wrights and their airplane? Or a blimp. What about a blimp?

There were stretches during the two-week voyage in which he was able to sit at the drafting table and at least examine the preliminary plans, but it was impossible even to think of taking up a pencil, not with that infernal bounce and roll. Still, he was able to think things through all over again, the central problem one of engineering against the destructive force of the earthquakes that regularly ravaged the j.a.panese archipelago, another thing altogether from building on a stable lot in Chicago or Oak Park. He'd talked it over with his son John and Paul Mueller, both of whom had come along in the company of their wives to help set up shop, and with Antonin Raymond, the Czech architect he'd taken on as well, and his thinking was that he'd float the building on a series of piers,125 relying for support on cantilevered beams, much in the way of a waiter balancing a laden tray on the adjustable axis of one hand. The j.a.panese wanted a new and spectacular hotel to replace the antiquated Imperial the Germans had designed for them in the last century, a structure that would symbolize j.a.pan's ascent to the forefront of modern nations, and he was going to give it to them-a building that would be the glory of all j.a.pan and stand proudly a hundred years and more even if the city around it was s.h.i.+vered to dust.126 They were met at the dock by Hayas.h.i.+-San himself and an entourage of some fifty others, including various dignitaries, members of the Imperial Hotel board, j.a.panese architects, representatives of the press and any number of beaming young students who looked as if they were about to faint dead away with the anxiety of staring into a white face for what might have been the first time in their lives. A band began to play, something with trumpet fanfares and an erratic drumbeat he didn't recognize. Bows were exchanged. Gifts. Though there was a lingering chill over the ocean, the sun felt unnaturally hot on his face and he found himself sweating beneath the overcoat he'd slung casually over his shoulders. With Miriam at his side he went down the row of greeters, murmuring "Ohay gozaimasu" and bowing to each of them in turn, feeling a burst of confidence and enthusiasm like nothing he'd ever known. He was free of it all, free of all the scandals, the bickering and tantrums of his mother and his aunts, the struggle to maintain Taliesin and his practice and keep his head above water financially, and as he bent to the last of the greeters, a white-haired ancient in samurai costume, he caught a single scintillating whiff of j.a.pan on the breeze riding up off Yokohama Bay-an ineffable amalgam of broiled eel, incense and human effluent, and knew he was home at last.

There followed a succession of dinners (running typically to more than two dozen courses), formal teas and ceremonial meetings with what seemed half the population of Tokyo, the greetings so elaborate and extended in those first heady days he barely had time to think about the hotel and the superhuman effort it would take to see it realized in three dimensions. After the drive in from Yokohama in a spanking new Mitsubis.h.i.+ sedan flying the flag of the rising sun, he and Miriam had been installed in a suite of rooms at the old Imperial, a three-story monstrosity of wood, brick and plaster in the heart of downtown Tokyo that featured neo-Renaissance facades and damp cavernous halls in the elaborate gimcrack style of the Second Empire. It was a molding, fermented sort of place that did no one the least lick of good, but at least their rooms opened out onto the courtyard below so that they would have access to fresh air and suns.h.i.+ne. His first order of business was to make himself comfortable, because, as he explained to Hayas.h.i.+-San as best he could in the absence of a reliable interpreter, he simply could not work in a state of chaos, and as he always did no matter where he was or how temporary his residence, he quickly transformed the rooms into a flowing and elegant s.p.a.ce. Before long, he'd acquired a grand piano (the sine qua non, along with a working fireplace, of any home), half a dozen suitable rugs and a few decent screens and hangings, and he positively haunted the shops of the print dealers.127 Despite the language barrier-Dmo sumimasen, ukiyo-e arimasu-ka? (Excuse me, do you sell prints?) he asked everyone he met-he was like a child in a candy shop. He'd come to the source and for the first few weeks the hotel seemed almost an afterthought.

But of course it wasn't. It was the commission of a lifetime. And once he'd settled in, once he'd made the rounds of the print shops three or four times each and set up an on-site office and got his a.s.sistants to work on the drawings, the rounds of dinners and teas began to wear on him.

One evening, he found himself in yet another teahouse, braced up against the wall on a pristine tatami mat while geisha fluttered about and his host-one of the ubiquitous bankers-made long sake-inflected speeches about matters that were entirely lost on him. He leaned forward over the low rosewood table, putting on his listening face and struggling to ignore the shooting pains in his knees and at the base of his spine, while Miriam, in a kimono and wearing an embroidered Turkish towel wrapped round her head, sat beside him with her back perfectly arched and her legs folded delicately beneath her, all the while nodding and smiling broadly, as if she not only understood but revered each nugget of wisdom with which Tanaka-San was showering them. They were on the sixteenth or seventeenth course, he couldn't recall which, one morsel of pickled ginger, seaweed and raw fish succeeding the next as if the chef had spent the entire morning combing the beach and breakwaters and was determined to represent every species in Yokohama Bay laid out on a ceramic saucer in its own drizzle of soya. He wanted a steak. Wanted to go back to the hotel and take up his protractor and T-square, wanted a hot bath, a mug of cider instead of the thin green tea, wanted to quarry stone and pour concrete and for Christ's sake get on with it. He wondered if he looked bored. If he was giving offense. His mind drifted.

And then, as if magically, a voice began speaking to him in a tone and accent so flawless he thought he'd been transported back to Wisconsin. Across the table from him, seated beside Yos.h.i.+take-San, was a young man in his late twenties, who had heretofore-through the elaborate greetings, the preliminary samisen playing, the sake toasts and the first sixteen or seventeen courses-held silence. He wore a mustache like Hayas.h.i.+-San's and a thin pointed beard. "Wrieto-San, if I may," he was saying, and he bowed from a sitting position. "And Mrs. Wrieto-San." A second bow. "I am Endo Arata, and of course we have met in the confusion of the anteroom, but have not till this moment had the opportunity to communicate."

Startled, Frank simply smiled and nodded. Then he gave his own version of the sitting bow and murmured, "A pleasure, I'm sure."

At the head of the table, Tanaka-San had paused, his hands folded patiently before him. The young man said something to him then in his own language and Tanaka-San, a full-faced man in his fifties who managed to look as if he were attempting to swallow a perpetual goldfish, even when he was speaking, grunted "Hai."

"I am, if you will allow me," Endo-San said, turning back to him with yet another bow, "able to act as an interpreter, as I have acquired some rudiments of your language. What Tanaka-San has said, and please do not take offense because he means only to provide you with an aphorism, one of our reverend sayings of the past: Deru kugi wa utareru. And"-a glance for Tanaka-San-"he means it not in reference to you specifically but to the Western style of architecture in general and the way in which he perceives gaijin, that is to say, foreigners, to do business-"

Beside him, her voice ringing out its richest tones, he heard Miriam say, "How charming, Endo-San. And what does this mean?"

"Literally?" He looked to Tanaka-San and back. "It means, roughly, 'The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.' "

Miriam, broadly Southern now, the belle in full display: "Oh, then I take it to be an architectural phrase?"

Frank stiffened. There was something afoot here, something lost in translation, a caution, a warning. He looked to Tanaka-San, who was clutching his sake cup and swallowing his goldfish, and nodded gravely before turning back to the younger man.

"Not actually," Endo-San said, bowing again as he maneuvered delicately round the question. "It is more a . . . general expression. You see, Tanaka-San"-a glance, a bow-"is commenting on the j.a.panese way of cooperation, in which the team is always held above the individual and all decisions are group decisions. He understands"-and here Tanaka-San clarified in a burst of guttural j.a.panese-"that some Westerners are what we call 'one-men'; that is, people who act on their own initiative without regard for the larger group. But that you are not such a man, Wrieto-San, begging forgiveness."

What were they saying? He kept his face neutral as he tried to make sense of it. Didn't they understand that the Imperial was his and his alone? That he'd been appointed because of his genius, because he stood head and shoulders above all the other architects of the world and that he would brook no interference? He looked from one man to the other-and to Yos.h.i.+take-San-and now Miriam was trying to fill the silence with her lyrical voice, a.s.suring everyone that she and Frank were as thrilled to be present at this lovely gathering as anybody could imagine. And thanking them for their kindness. And generosity. And the exquisite and absolutely delectable cuisine. She paused, a bright pink morsel of fish roe eclipsing one of her front teeth, and let her smile radiate from one end of the table to the other.

"Which is to say, Wrieto-San, with your permission, I will offer my a.s.sistance at every step of the way"-Endo-San paused, struggled to find his own smile-"both as interpreter, and in my humble way, as consultant."128 If Frank was a bit huffy in the car on the way back to the hotel-"Good G.o.d, what do they think, they've hired a lackey to do their bidding? If they wanted a lackey why not have one of their own architects design the d.a.m.ned thing, Yos.h.i.+take or Endo or how about that man there in the straw hat and dirty yukata, he looks like he could use a job"-Miriam was floating on a cloud of serenity. She was Mrs. Wright in the eyes of an entire nation, given the respect and honor she deserved, invited everywhere in the highest circles of j.a.panese and emigre society-and if she wasn't yet Mrs. Wright in her own country because Frank's pigheaded wife wouldn't grant a divorce, well, she would be, all in good time. And the hotel, though it was gloomy, did provide first-cla.s.s service-and they had their car and driver and a pair of houseboys to see to their needs. Of course, the streets were of beaten dirt-mud when it rained-and that was something of a shock, and automobiles were as rare as shooting stars, and the food, noodles, miso, fish in one form or another three times a day, was a far cry from what she'd expected (and what she wouldn't give for a charcuterie or even a bistro). But the climate was acceptable and the company an enormous improvement over Chicago.

She was thinking of this-of the invitation for the succeeding evening from Count and Countess Lubiensky of Poland, who had the most charming little house and the most charming of friends, the Russian Princess Tscheremissinoff, Count Ablomov and his wife, a very pretty woman, actually, if her style was somewhat stodgy, and had she really been wearing a bustle?-when the car pulled up in front of the hotel and Frank sprang out in his usual impatient way, barely able to wait for her to gather herself before he had her by the arm, as if he meant to drag her up the walk.

The night was clear and cold. There was the sour odor of smoke on the air, of the braziers the j.a.panese warmed their feet with-paper walls and no central heating, every house as cold as an icehouse and no fireplaces, of course, else the whole place would burn to the ground every night of the week-and the pervasive tang of fish in all its essences. Red-paper lanterns everywhere, floating on the faintest breeze. The lights of the hotel. Stars overhead. As they made their way up the walk, she couldn't help noticing the cl.u.s.ter of sedan chairs in the street, fifty or more of them, and the coolies loitering beside them. Something must have been going on in the ballroom, j.a.panese high society having an evening on the town, dancing to the orchestra on the dais, just like people anywhere, in Paris, New York, Memphis. The thought arrested her and she pulled away from him just to stand there a moment and take in the strangeness of it all.

Music drifted down to her then, an odd tinkling sort of music with a rippling rhythmic undercurrent that seemed to tug the melody in another direction altogether, into the depths of a deep churning sea, but beautiful for all that, and so perfect and unexpected. She felt languid and free-all eyes were on her, every man turning to stare-and it came to her that she loved this place, this moment, these people. She could stay here forever, right here, in the gentle sway of the j.a.panese night.

"Miriam? What are you doing? Come on, will you?" Frank was five paces ahead of her, and he turned now to give her a look of exasperation. He was impatient, always in a hurry to move and make and do, the endless round of social engagements wearing on him, the forced smiles, his clumsiness with the language, the string of toasts with the rice wine he loathed and only pretended to drink.

"Are we in a hurry? Is this some sort of athletic compet.i.tion? Can't I stop here a minute to take the air? Will that kill you?"

His face bloomed in all its complexity, the wondering frown, lines erupting at his hairline to pull deeper lines yet across his brow and into the creases at the corners of his eyes, and he would never sit for a bust, she saw that now, but no matter, she was busy with other things, helping him, guiding him through the shoals of inelegance and insensitivity and into the safe harbor of politesse, elegance, comportment. Because she could see through all the bowing and sc.r.a.ping, the tender solicitations and doe-eyed looks-these people were quick to take offense and no two ways about it. They would devour him if they could. But she wasn't going to let that happen.

"Please, Miriam. I have work to do."

"I want a cigarette."

Two couples pa.s.sed them on the steps, the men openly gawking at her, the women riding rhythmically up off their lacquered clogs so that the movement of their haunches was exaggerated-they didn't walk so much as undulate, their every gesture a s.e.xual advertis.e.m.e.nt.

"Can't you do it inside? People are staring. Come on, I want to go now," he insisted, his voice darkening.

"You don't like me smoking in the rooms."

He let out a sigh, then reached for her arm, but she drew it back.

"If you were a gentleman," she said, watching him as the lanterns washed his face in the gentlest shade of red, like a blush, "you would offer to light my cigarette. And you would stand here beside me for the whole night if that was what I wanted." She was toying with him now, enjoying herself. She took her time extracting her cigarette case and held it out to him so that he could remove a cigarette and offer it to her. When he leaned in close to light it, he murmured her name, twice, in resignation. Very gradually, bit by bit, through moments like this or at the teahouse earlier tonight when she'd eased over all the rough spots for him or at Princess Tscheremissinoff's when she taught him how to behave in society, how to kiss a lady's hand and murmur "Enchante" or "Je suis desole de partir," she was taming him.

The wind stiffened, rattling the naked branches of the trees and setting the lanterns a-sway. She took her time, smoking the cigarette down to the nub, and then she turned to him-finally, when she was good and ready. "I'm getting cold, Frank," she said. "Let's go in. And by the way, I want you wearing your navy blue suit tomorrow night to the Lubienskys'-none of this Oriental business. It just won't do in polite society."

They stayed three and a half months that first time, leaving in mid-April, just as the weather turned mild and the cherry trees came into bloom. She hadn't been feeling well toward the end, some sort of intestinal disorder eating away at her-the diet, no doubt, eel and sea urchin and all the rest-and though she'd gone off on her own once or twice to make inquiries among the closemouthed, blunt-eyed physicians, she'd been unable to awaken in them even the most rudimentary apprehension of the problem or obtain any aid whatsoever and she'd had to ration her morphine tablets. The voyage back was something of a relief, however, the Western cuisine settling her-and who'd ever have thought that something as simple as an omelet could be so redemptive? And there were the wines, of course, and meats. She really tucked into the meats-she couldn't help herself. Filets mignons Lili, the saute of chicken Lyonnaise, the roast duckling, the squab, beef sirloin and the piece de resistance, real pate de foie gras served on rounds cut from a real baguette with a nice gelee de vin and a Sauterne to complement it.

Naturally, Frank was green-faced the entire time, poor man. He just didn't travel well. Especially on a rolling sea. She nursed him as best she could, but there was life on the s.h.i.+p, a whole society to beguile away the dull dank gray-crested days of the voyage, and she wound up spending a good deal of time simply enjoying herself, and why not? She'd devoted herself to him in Tokyo, giving up any notion of pursuing her own art in order to help him with everything from working out the designs for the textiles to be used throughout the hotel to the chinaware and cutlery (no chopsticks, absolutely, because what they were looking for here was strictly in the Continental mode), and keeping him on his toes and alert to the nuances in the presence of Hayas.h.i.+-San, Baron kura and the others. Mrs. Wrieto-San. She'd done her duty.

And then they were in Los Angeles, where Frank set up another office with yet another son-Lloyd-having left John behind in Tokyo to supervise as they prepared to break ground for construction the following year. Frank had taken a commission to build some sort of Aztec fortress on a hilltop there for a fat-faced heiress with theatrical pretensions,129 and as long as she kept her hands off of him, that was fine with Miriam. There were palm trees in Los Angeles, ocean beaches, and, better yet, Leora's husband was retiring from the exchange business in Chicago and they were in the process of acquiring property in Santa Monica. Of course, Frank's concerns-he was always on the very lip of disaster, both financially and professionally-required a plethora of back-and-forth travel between Los Angeles, Chicago and Taliesin (and Oak Park, where the bank was threatening to foreclose on his wife's house and he was frantically selling off his precious prints to raise money). She tried to take it in stride. Inevitably it affected her nerves-she'd begun to think she put in more hours on the rails than the Negro porters-but her doctor examined her and comforted her and provided her with just the emollient she needed. And then, as soon as she'd begun to feel settled, it was back to j.a.pan and the raw fish and the mincing little geisha and the bowing and sc.r.a.ping and the only honorific she ever cared to accept or adopt, Mrs. Wrieto-San.

Somewhere in there-and in looking back on it she could never be quite sure which trip it was130-Frank fell seriously ill. It was springtime, that much she remembered, because they were out in the country with Baron kura, the princess and some of the others (and here the name Olga Krynska rose up in her memory in a dark gnarl of hate and envy) viewing the cherry blossoms, which were then at the height of their beauty. For the j.a.panese, a quaint diminutive people so much in tune with nature and the change of the seasons they might have been a nation of satyrs and wood nymphs, the sakura bloom was one of the high points of the year, and everyone, from the murkiest slum dweller to the Emperor himself, made a point of celebrating the occasion. When the Baron proposed a blossom-viewing party at his country house, Frank-who'd been working himself to death in a din of noise and dust as his army of masons pounded away at the peculiar volcanic rock he insisted on using for the hotel's superstructure-agreed to take a hiatus. "How would you like a little ramble in the country?" was the way Frank put it to her. "Why not?" she said, because for all its brilliant company, Tokyo was an ugly squat over-bursting city, and its smells and sounds were beginning to weigh on her, especially now that she found herself compelled to leave the windows open in order to keep from stifling. A jaunt in the country sounded like just the thing.

The sky was brilliant that first day, the cherry trees marshaled in rows of pink clouds that softened the horizon as far as she could see or standing solitary on a sculpted slope where they seemed to concentrate the light, flaming out against the dull grays and greens of the surrounding landscape as if on a stage, and the entire party made a picnic of the occasion, the Baron providing boxed lunches and champagne, various people sketching or reading, lying stretched out on mats in the sun, chatting in the soft revolving tones of perfect contentment. In short, it was an idyll. And she was enjoying herself despite Madame Krynska, the little unattached Pole the Lubienskys had brought along for what seemed the express purpose of separating her from Frank, as if she would ever allow that to happen, even for a minute . . . The champagne was chilled, the sandwiches were of white bread, b.u.t.ter and cuc.u.mber instead of rice and raw fish, the servants attentive. She was just communing with the Baron over their mutual love for things Gallic and reflecting aloud on how much the blossoms reminded her of spring in Paris, particularly in the urban oases, the Tuileries, the Jardin des Plantes, the Luxembourg Gardens (and he was as much under her spell as Hayas.h.i.+-San, leaning forward over his tented knees, his black eyes fixed on her so as not to miss a single syllable), when Frank, who hadn't uttered a word in the past five minutes, suddenly let out a gasp as if the wind had been knocked out of him.

He'd been sitting beside her, or rather just behind her, in a circle that included the Lubienskys and Countess Ablomov, and as she turned round in alarm she could see immediately that he was in trouble-he seemed shrunken all of a sudden, deflated, his skin bleached and bloodless, his legs drawn up under him like a child's. He gasped again, but before she could reach out to him or even call his name he buckled over on his side, both hands clutching his abdomen, his face pressed awkwardly into the gra.s.s at the edge of the mat. Her first thought was that he must have had an attack of some kind-only that week Leora had written her in excruciating detail about her husband's heart problems-and even as she scrambled to him on her knees she felt the loss of him, the future closing over her like a dark engulfing cloud, and she would be n.o.body's widow because she was n.o.body's wife. She pulled him to her, already in tears, as he attempted, feebly, to push her away. "Frank, what's wrong, what is it?"

He was wincing. He kicked his legs out. Writhed on the gra.s.s. He was trying to say something, but she couldn't make out the words.

The others were on their feet now, gathered round in a constellation of apprehensive faces, and no one seemed to know what to do. Someone said it was appendicitis and then someone else said that if it was he'd have to be operated on, but weren't they getting ahead of themselves? Shouldn't someone call for a doctor? That was when La Krynska-slim, young, b.u.t.ter-haired, dressed in some sort of athletic costume and with a badminton racket still clutched in one hand-appeared on the scene, pus.h.i.+ng her way through the circle to kneel beside him. "He needs water," she said. "Ice. Here"-and she rose to dip her handkerchief in the ice bucket and press it to Frank's brow-"try this. Does that feel better?"

Miriam felt the champagne float to her head. Here she was on her knees on the lawn of a baronial estate in the mountains overlooking the Kant Plain and this Pole was kneeling beside her as if they were praying over a corpse, Frank's corpse, and it was the strangest thing in the world. Fear seized her. Loathing. Terror. He was going to die, she was sure of it.

"I need," Frank gasped, and she could see how weak he was, how reduced and mortified, "I want, if someone could help me . . ."

"What, Frank?" she heard herself cry out. "What do you need?"

Krynska let her fingers slip behind his ears a moment, to feel in the hollows there, then pulled back his eyelids to peer into the whites of his eyes. When finally she lifted her head, she let her gaze sweep over Miriam and take in the faces gathered round them. "I'm afraid he's got what we all contract here in j.a.pan at one time or another, we non-Asiatics, that is"-a glance for the Baron, who was shouting over his shoulder for one of the servants to go and fetch the doctor-"and what he needs, most immediately, is a little privacy." She pressed one hand to the cloth on his forehead and looked back down at him. "And a bathroom."

Dysentery was common enough in the Far East, where primitive sanitary practices encouraged its spread, and the j.a.panese Isles were no exception. No matter how often Frank sang the praises of the cleanliness of the country and its people, the rituals involved in the was.h.i.+ng of the hands, the scouring of the public baths, the simplicity and purity of the tatami mats and the robes they wore, there was no denying it. Plumbing was nonexistent. Flush toilets unheard of. For all the rustic charm of the lavatories in the inns and private homes-the bamboo screens, the ferns, pottery, flowers-you were nonetheless squatting over a hole in the ground, no different from the hillbillies in the mountains of Tennessee. Miriam could only account herself lucky that she hadn't come down with the scourge.

The Baron summoned the local physician, who tapped and auscultated and peered into Frank's ears and up his nose and confirmed Krynska's diagnosis, after which Frank slept for the better part of two days while Miriam sat beside him in a state of nervous exhaustion and the others took rambles over the hillside, observed the farmers at work in their paddies, played parlor games and watched the cherry blossoms s.h.i.+mmer in the breeze. Then it was back to Tokyo-the driver stopping at intervals so that poor Frank could be helped out to relieve himself-and on to the premier physician in all the country, who tapped and auscultated and peered into Frank's ears and up his nose and put him on a strict diet of water and rice b.a.l.l.s and nothing else.

She was shocked. And she took the man aside and told him so. "Is that all you're going to do? Give him rice b.a.l.l.s? Can't you see he has a fever?"

The man was tall for a j.a.panese, with a black brush of the chin whiskers they all seemed to affect. His English was minimal. They stood outside the door of the bedroom, surrounded by the artifacts Frank had collected. "Hai," he said, bowing. "Rice ball."

"But he's delirious, soaked in sweat. He's-he's been calling out in the night, talking nonsense." She had a sudden vision of her son Thomas, stricken with influenza when he was boy, the sticks of his legs beneath the sweated sheets, the hair pasted to his forehead, his lips cracked and dry. She'd been sure he was going to die and she was so paralyzed by the thought she couldn't nurse him, couldn't look at him, couldn't even pa.s.s by his door without breaking down.

The doctor glanced across the room to where Hayas.h.i.+-San, who'd attempted to act as interpreter, but with limited success, clutched his hands before him and bowed. "Dysentery," the doctor said. "Very serious."

"But aren't you going to give him anything? Any treatment, any medicine? You do know medicine, don't you?" In exasperation, she turned to Hayas.h.i.+-San. "Tell him medicine-what is the word for medicine?"

Hayas.h.i.+-San bowed again and said something to the doctor in j.a.panese, to which the doctor replied with his own bow before turning back to her. "Rice ball," he said. "Only rice ball."

It must have been a month or so later when she came back from a shopping expedition, feeling as j.a.panese as she ever would, having haggled with various dealers over a brocade screen, a statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin Frank had had his eye on and a beautiful little inlaid rosewood table, to find Frank sitting up in bed, looking pleased with himself. Over the past weeks he'd made a steady improvement, graduating from the rice b.a.l.l.s to broth, tea and finally noodles with bits of fish and vegetables, but he'd been irritable, frustrated, cursing his foreman, the houseboy, the diet and the delay in construction this was costing him, and, of course, taking it out on her whenever he could. But now he was propped up against the headboard, the bed strewn with books and papers, whistling one of his music hall tunes.

"You look like you're feeling chipper," she said, removing her wrap and draping it over a chair.

He didn't answer. Just kept whistling.

"I got the most adorable little table"-she held off telling him of the bodhisttva, knowing what a fuss he'd make of it, criticizing the smallest flaws, badgering her over the price no matter what she'd paid-"and a screen I thought was quite . . . What's that I smell? Perfume?"

The whistling abruptly died.

There was a tray beside him, the tea things laid out, two cups, English biscuits, mochi. "And what's this? You didn't wait tea for me?"

His smile flashed and faded just as quickly. She saw that his hair had been carefully combed and that he was wearing his best robe and one of his stiff high-collared s.h.i.+rts. And a tie. "Oh, yes," he said, as if it were an afterthought, "Olga stopped by to see how I was doing, and we-"

"Olga?" she repeated.131 It was at that moment that the bathroom swung open and Madame Krynska-La Krynska, Olga-appeared, a washcloth in her hand. "Oh, Miriam," she chirped, "I didn't know you'd come back. How nice to see you." And she proceeded across the floor of the bedroom as if she were in her own Polish hovel to bend over Frank and lay the wet compress on his forehead, just as she had that day in the country. "Isn't it a marvel how well he's looking?" she said, still bent at the waist and glancing over one shoulder, her pet.i.te pretty manicured hand pressed to Frank's brow and Frank looking like a Pomeranian with a belly full of chopped liver.

Miriam was astonished. Slack-jawed. So stunned at the audacity of this woman-of Frank, the cheat, the liar, the adventurer-that she couldn't speak a word.

"There," La Krynska was cooing, her yellow hair burgeoning round her like some unnatural growth, like fur grafted to her head above the yellow paste of her Polish eyebrows, "does that feel better?"

In her own room, in the drawer where she kept her pravaz-right beside it-Miriam also kept a pistol. It was a small s.h.i.+ny thing that held two shots only and she'd bought it in Albuquerque the day she arrived, when she was feeling low, and she couldn't have said why she'd thought to buy it-she wasn't suicidal, not at all, no man could make her sink to that level and no man was worth it, not even the high and mighty Frank Lloyd Wright-except that having it near her, in her purse or in the desk drawer, gave her a sense of security, of power in reserve. She'd never fired it. Never even given it a thought. Till now.

"Miriam," Frank called out in the voice of a dog, the petted voice, false and callow, "come join us. The tea's hot still."

But she was already out the door, already crossing the hall to her own room and the drawer there. She was utterly calm. She fit the key in the lock and pulled out the drawer to reveal the pravaz and the pistol beside it and her hand never trembled the way it sometimes did when she was upset and needed a shot for relief. The pistol-it was called a derringer and she'd known women in Paris who carried such things in their purses in the most casual way-was cold to the touch, as if its s.h.i.+ny nickel plating had just been dug from the earth. She took it in one hand and crossed the hall to Frank's bedroom, all the world solidly in place, his prints and rugs and statues, and La Krynska just bending to the teapot, a thumb pressed to the lid as she lifted it and poured.

It took a moment. Frank's eyes leapt at her and retreated. "Miriam, what are you-?"

"I'll kill her, Frank," she said, and she was pointing the gun now, her finger on the miniature trigger, a sudden tide of emotion gus.h.i.+ng up in her so that she was no longer calm, even as her voice rose and rose till it was a shriek, "and you. I'll kill you too. I'll kill both of you!" she screamed. "And myself! Myself too!"

Of course, she killed no one, least of all herself. But she would have-she knew it, she swore it-if that little Pole hadn't bolted out of the room and Frank hadn't come up out of the bed and wrestled the gun away from her. But it was finished in any case. He was a beast. A criminal. He didn't love her and he never had, no matter what he said. And even before she heard the news that his mother was on her way to Tokyo-the old dragon herself-to nurse him through his illness, as if she weren't perfectly capable, as if he hadn't recovered already and put the rice b.a.l.l.s and all the rest behind him, she moved out. Bolted the door against him, packed up two suitcases-and no, she wouldn't shed a tear, not for him-and took the train back to the mountains and the dead cherry blossoms and any inn that would receive her. She was in j.a.pan and she would live in j.a.pan as she'd lived in Albuquerque, free of him, rid of him, in exile, one white face among all those yellow ones.

CHAPTER 9: THE AXIS OF BLISS.