Murder on the Cliff (11 page)

“Giri
means obligation,” he explained. “To the Japanese, no act is ever an isolated event; every favor must be repaid in kind. To fail to fulfill one’s obligation is the worst sin a self-respecting Japanese can commit. The whole country runs on the principle of
giri: giri
to your boss,
giri
to your family,
giri
to your business clients.”

“And Okichi-
mago
failed to fulfill her obligation to Tanaka?”

“She certainly did,” Spalding replied. “Tanaka was her
hanna
, her patron. He showered her with magnanimous gifts, as he was expected to. He set her up in her own teahouse. She in turn was supposed to reserve her sexual favors for him; or, if she did take a lover, to be discreet about it. Not only was she indiscreet, she was practically shouting about her affair from the rooftops.”

“The press was shouting about it from the rooftops,” Charlotte corrected. She spoke as one who was sensitive to having her private affairs splashed across the front pages of the scandal sheets.

Spalding shrugged.

“I’ll grant you that she was indiscreet, but at least she was honest,” Charlotte continued. “Obviously she must have been conscience-stricken about continuing to accept Tanaka’s patronage in the face of her relationship with Shawn. Instead of carrying on in secret as someone else might have done, she accepted the responsibility for her actions and publicly severed her relationship with Tanaka. I think that’s commendable.”

“She may have thought she was behaving responsibly and you may have thought she was behaving responsibly, but to most Japanese, she was being irresponsible, disloyal, and selfish. That’s why she was vilified in the press. To the Japanese, style is more important than substance: it didn’t matter that she had a relationship with Shawn as long as she kept up the
appearance
of loyalty to her patron.”

“She made Tanaka lose face.”

Spalding nodded.

“But Spalding, he didn’t seem to me to be acting like a humiliated man. Did he to you? In fact, he struck me as a man who was handling the situation with tact and sophistication, even humor.”

“Which is what made the burden of her obligation to him all the greater. If he’d publicly denounced her or publicly attacked Shawn, she would have lost face in return, and they would have been returned to an equal footing. But he behaved like a perfect gentleman.” Spalding harrumphed. “I wish he’d displayed the same degree of tact when he gave his talk at the opening ceremonies.”

“His only reproach was the marionette song,” Charlotte said, remembering Tanaka’s high, clear voice singing the song about the marionette whose heart “flip-flops and changes.”

“Exactly,” said Spalding. “Not only did he behave like a perfect gentleman, he behaved with impeccable style.”

“Giving her no out but to take her own life, leaving his half-burned business card as the only clue to the reason why.”

“Yes. To atone for her debt of honor. A modern young woman wouldn’t even consider atoning for her disgrace in such a situation—look at the bar hostess who was blackmailing a cabinet minister to keep their relations a secret—but geishas in general, and Okichi-
mago
in particular as one of Japan’s foremost geishas, are different. The world they inhabit is an anachronism; they are the guardians of traditional values.”

“‘To die with honor, when it is impossible to live with honor,’” said Charlotte. She explained: “The words that Butterfly reads before she takes her life: the words inscribed on the blade of her knife.” Charlotte had played Butterfly in the screen version of Puccini’s opera. After
Soiled Dove
’s success, she’d played Oriental women in a whole string of films. That was the Hollywood recipe for success: if it worked, repeat it
ad nauseam
.

“Ah yes, another story based on the Okichi legend,” said Spalding.

As they rode, Charlotte looked out the window. She never tired of this lovely avenue. But this afternoon she saw a sight that disturbed her. The enormous fern-leafed beeches in front of a sprawling Victorian were being cut down. Their beautiful sculptured gray trunks bore huge white scars where limbs had been amputated in preparation for felling the entire tree. They looked like mutilated bodies.

“Spalding, why are they cutting down those trees?”

“Sickening, isn’t it?” he said. “I can hardly bear to look at it. It’s Nadine Ogilvie’s property, Strawberry Lodge. She’s selling off a lot on Bellevue Avenue. She’s planning to move the entrance to her house from Bellevue Avenue to the side street. Several others have done the same thing. They make money from selling off the lot, plus they save on their real estate taxes as a result of no longer having Bellevue Avenue frontage.”

“What a shame,” she said.

“Yes. I’d rather have seen her sell off the entire property to someone who could afford to keep it up, and move to a smaller place. But people will do anything to hang on to their houses on Bellevue Avenue, even if they have to enter from a side street. They sell off a lot, they sell off the furnishings, they fail to keep the place up, until eventually all that’s left is a big rundown house on a tiny lot with nothing of substance left in it.”

“You’d think the developer would have the good sense to at least try to save the trees,” said Charlotte.

“Several have tried, but it doesn’t work. They start to die when they dig the foundation hole. Beeches are shallow-rooted, which makes them very sensitive to any ground disturbance. The Preservation Society’s trees are dying too, either from old age or from ground compression caused by the footsteps of all the tourists. They have a program to replace them with young trees, but it will be a long time before they reach full maturity.”

“What does Paul think about Nadine’s cutting down the trees?” asked Charlotte. She imagined that an ardent preservationist like Paul would be horrified at the prospect.

“I don’t know,” replied Spalding. “As you know, Connie and her cousin aren’t that close,” he added, with his usual talent for understatement. “But I’ve heard from other members of the Preservation Society board that it’s been a source of contention between them.”

Charlotte nodded. She would miss these graceful trees whose airy, delicate foliage turned Bellevue Avenue into a leafy bower. Nadine’s trees were only three or four among dozens, but their absence would make a difference.

As they rode, Charlotte’s thoughts turned back to the idea of
giri
. It was a concept that she still had trouble with, though it helped to think of it as an informal system of IOU’s.

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” asked Charlotte.

“What’s that?” asked Spalding.

“Oh,
giri
,” she said. “I’m back on that. If Okichi-
mago
committed suicide because of her obligation to Tanaka, and if she was forced to do so because of her affair with Shawn, then what kind of ah obligation does that impose on Shawn?” she asked. “And what does Shawn then have to do to free himself of the burden of that obligation? Is he obligated to redress the balance by taking his own life because their affair forced her to take hers?”

“You’re getting the hang of it. The answer is ‘maybe.’ The ramifications and counter-ramifications of
giri
can get pretty Byzantine, to say the least.”

“But if Okichi-
mago
’s commitment to tradition was so great that she took her life on account of it, why didn’t she conduct her affair in secret, as you suggested that tradition dictates she should have?”

“Ah, now you’re getting into another aspect of Japanese culture:
ninjo
, or the demands of the tenderer feelings. She was carried away by
ninjo
, by love. The conflict between
giri
and
ninjo
is a major theme in Japanese literature. The story usually involves the illicit love between a geisha and a young actor or sumo wrestler. Sumo wrestlers in particular. The worlds of the geisha and the wrestling ring have always been closely associated.”

“Why’s that?”

“The geisha and the sumo wrestler lead very similar lives. They both have an appreciation for the traditional arts. They both serve long apprenticeships, and they both undergo arduous training. They both live in a closed society, and they both are expected to behave in a particular fashion. Also, they are both readily identifiable from their appearance.”

Charlotte hadn’t thought about it before, but he was right.

“They even share some aspects of technique,” said Spalding, looking over at her with a twinkle in his eye. “They say the forty-eight traditional winning techniques in sumo correspond to the forty-eight positions of love.”

Charlotte arched an eyebrow. Then she giggled as she thought of a four-hundred-pound sumo wrestler contorting himself into some of the positions she had seen depicted in Paul’s
shunga
.

“That’s why their romance has gotten so much attention in the press. To the Japanese, they’re larger than life: they could be Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde.”

“Somehow I have the feeling that these love stories don’t have a happy ending,” said Charlotte, thinking again of
Madame Butterfly
.

“You’re right. They usually end like
Romeo and Juliet
, as a matter of fact,” Spalding replied. “With a double suicide. Caught between
giri
and
ninjo
, the lovers choose to be reborn together in another life.”

At the end of the string of mansions, Spalding turned the car into a shopping-center parking lot across the street from the casino. In a city that was being taken over by day-trippers and the ice cream stands and T-shirt shops that catered to them, the casino was a relic of a gracious time when people still had the leisure to spend an entire summer doing nothing. Originally built as a country club—it had once been considered the most exclusive private club in the nation—it was a long, rambling structure sheathed in weathered wood shingles and adorned with a multitude of porches, gables, and verandas. The former club rooms on the upper story were now the home of the International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum. Considered the masterpiece of the renowned architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, it was a combination of Victorian charm and Oriental elegance. If the Newport of the Gilded Age could be compared to the floating world, then the casino was its most popular teahouse, the center of its social life.

“Spalding, what does
Tojin
Okichi mean?” asked Charlotte as they headed across the street to the casino.

He frowned. “Where did you hear that?”

“At the geisha party,” she replied. “I heard Hayashi whisper it—actually, it seemed more like he hissed it—into Okichi-
mago
’s ear as the party was breaking up. It seemed to upset her.”

“It’s a derogatory term for a Chinese—we would translate it as
chink
—but in the larger sense it applies to all foreigners. Before Perry opened Japan, the only foreigners the Japanese were familiar with were the Chinese.”

“But Okichi-
mago
wasn’t a foreigner; at least, she didn’t have enough foreign blood in her veins to make a difference.”

“No. But she consorted with a foreigner.
Tojin
-Okichi or ‘Foreigner’s Okichi’ was one of the taunts that the townspeople hurled at Okichi because of her relationship with Harris. At that time, foreigners were ranked on the same level as animals. Some Japanese don’t think any better of foreigners today.”

Charlotte nodded. She remembered the stricken expression on Okichi-
mago
’s beautiful face.

6

The casino’s street façade was relatively simple—the ground floor housed chic boutiques and galleries—but once one passed under the green awning and through the arched, wood-paneled passageway, one was in another world, another century. It was on the uneven brick sidewalk outside this dim passageway that the townspeople had once gathered to catch a view of the summer colonists taking their afternoon tea on the Horseshoe Piazza. Rubber plants, these stargazers were called. A few rubber plants were planted there now, trying to decide whether or not to pay their admission to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The passageway opened onto an oval courtyard of smooth, green grass surrounded by one- and two-story piazzas enclosed by latticework screens pierced by round openings, like the moon gate in a Japanese wall. A fat clock tower bulged near the entrance, the white clock face contrasting with the weathered shingling. Beds of roses edged with boxwood surrounded the courtyard, and baskets of brightly colored flowers hung from the piazzas. Over all grew sheaths of old ivy. Beyond the courtyard lay the working—or rather, playing—part of the casino: a dozen or more immaculate grass tennis courts, an indoor court for the sixteenth-century game of royal tennis (one of only a handful in the United States) and a theatre. Although Charlotte had been there before, the place always struck her anew with its magic. It was as if this vivid oval of emerald green was the heart of the floating world that was Newport. On the green, a croquet match was in progress. In addition to housing the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the casino was the home of the New England Regional Croquet Association. Players in starched white trousers carefully lined up their shots while diners in the adjoining restaurant looked on.

The Meet the Sumos reception was being held on the Horseshoe Piazza. Walking down a gravel path at the side of the courtyard, Spalding and Charlotte climbed the stairs to the U-shaped piazza, where members of the Black Ships committee and other guests were mingling with the sumo wrestlers, who were readily identifiable by virtue of their size, their bathrobe-like kimonos, and their distinctive topknots. One sumo wrestler who wouldn’t be present was Shawn. He had been discouraged from attending because he might hear about Okichi-
mago
’s suicide. Her death was being kept from him until after the match.

At the head of the stairs, they were greeted by an extraordinary man. He was at least six foot four and must have weighed four hundred pounds. He wasn’t handsome—his deeply lined face was framed by long, bushy sideburns and several layers of fleshy chins, and his dark skin was pockmarked by a bad complexion—but he had a warm, infectious smile. Unlike the other sumo wrestlers, he was formally dressed in a kimono jacket over a culotte-like skirt.