Authors: Jane Smiley
off. It was eerie, and moment by moment, her feeling that she was waiting for Naoko and
her mother dissipated, and then she simply waited for something unknown that would tell
her why the tea was not drunk and the orange was not peeled. After about half an hour,
she got up and walked down the street and around the corner. The whole block was shut-the cleaners, the grocery, three restaurants, a doctor's office, a seamstress's shop. She had
turned three corners and gotten almost to the fourth when she came to a small
tobacconist, a shop only twice as wide as its own door. Inside, an old man sat behind a
counter covered with cigarette displays. She greeted him and asked if he spoke English.
At first, she had no idea whether he heard or understood her, so she said, "I am a friend of
Mrs. Kiku Kimura, from Vallejo." Immediately he began shaking his head. Then he got
up and went past her out the door. She was wondering what to do next when he came
back with a young man. This young man smiled and dipped his head. She said, "I'm
looking for my friend Mrs. Kimura. Maybe you remember that they came to--"
"I am so sorry tell you, ma'am, that your friends have been taken yesterday."
"Taken!"
"Yes, ma'am. All three. The boy, and then the lady, Miss Kimura, and then also
the old mother." He dipped his head again. The older man said something, and the young
man said, "My father hears they have been arrested."
She went to a telephone booth and called Pete. The phone rang ten, then eleven,
then twelve times, and she had begun to fear that he had been arrested, too, but he picked
it up. His voice was sleepy; he woke up when she told him about her morning. He said, "I
did hear about a man being arrested down in San Jose, but he was a prominent
businessman and a member of JACL. He'd bought a lot of land through his son, who was
born here, and has been agitating for repeal of the Alien Land Acts. I can see how the
local authorities down there would take this opportunity to silence that fellow, but--"
"Just to silence him?"
"And to get hold of his land. But I don't see how that operates in this case."
"But, Pete," she said, "Andrew denounced the Kimuras as spies. He sent letters to
Roosevelt himself--top-secret, of course--and to the Secretary of the Navy and the
Commandant of the Base. They were full of ridiculous claims, and he wrote them all out
by hand so no one could doubt that he had composed them. I made him send a retraction,
but, honestly, would anyone pay a bit of attention?"
Pete was silent. Aghast, she thought.
"He told me that Albert Einstein was coming to Vallejo repeatedly in order to
meet up with Japanese agents and develop a weapon of some kind that would wipe
Americans off the map and leave their natural resources to be developed by enslaved
Chinese workers."
Pete's laugh at this was welcome, but it was not a guffaw, more of a chuckle. She
told him about Agent Keene and Agent Greengrass. She said, "Agent Keene came by
ages ago, and no one ever investigated after that."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it was so crazy. Talking about it made him sound so ..." She paused. "I
thought if he wrote a retraction ..."
Pete gave a deep sigh.
She made herself say, "And he told them he thought you were a spy, too. He said
that I was the unwitting center of a 'nest of spies' who were trying to get to him. When
you weren't at Mr. Kimura's last gathering, right before he died, Andrew thought he saw
you carry away a box of papers, down the alley behind the shop, and then drive off with
them."
"Was he sure?"
"Is he ever not sure?"
"Is he ever not wrong?"
"He was right about the
Panay."
Pete said, "Well, go back up to the Kimuras' apartment and look around."
"I locked the door behind me so their things won't get stolen."
He said, "Darling, that was thoughtful of you, but I don't think that's going to do
any good. I don't know what all of this means in the long term, but ..."
"What does it mean in the short term?"
"Well, you know ..." His voice trailed off.
"I don't know."
There was a silence, then he cleared his throat. He said, "Roosevelt would
possibly not go as far as gassing them in the forests. He might stop at camps."
"Oh, Pete!" She was truly shocked, the way you are when a thing that has not
occurred to you is suddenly present.
He said: "All-out war started Sunday, darling. The Japanese attacked Malaya,
Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines, and Midway, as well as Pearl Harbor. If they
attacked Midway, that means they want to put a refueling base there so that they can get
bombers all the way to here. The Germans have taken Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, and
Rostov. And I'm sure the Germans will declare war on the U.S. any day now." He fell
silent, then said, more thoughtfully, "But I don't think they would have come and picked
up Kiku and Naoko personally if Andrew's big arrow hadn't been pointing at them...." His
voice trailed off again, and then she ran out of nickels. When she had found some and got
back to the phone booth, Pete did not answer. The next day, she tried to call Agent
Greengrass, but he was long gone.
THE Tuesday after Pearl Harbor, Andrew decided to stay home. When he had
finished his breakfast, he asked for another cup of coffee, and when she put on her hat to
go to her knitting group, he said, "My dear, perhaps you would favor me by not going out
today."
"I want to go out. I have things to do."
"Perhaps you would write me a list of those things."
She said, "No, Andrew. I am not going to--" But when she stepped toward the
door, he was out of his seat in an instant, barring her way. She set her hat on the hall table
and went up to her room. In the afternoon, she tried again, coming down to the foot of the
stairs and saying, "Andrew, I am going to the store."
He came out of his office and said, "Let me get the leash for the dog. We can go
with you." And then he stalked down the street beside her, carrying her shopping bag and
leading Stella.
He did not come into her room, or even stand over her in the kitchen, but when
she tried the back door, she saw that it was locked with the key and the key was missing.
She didn't need to try the front door. Perhaps it was more disturbing not to see him. When
she was in her room, his heavy footsteps walked from the front of the house to the back,
and the back to the front, sometimes accompanied by the click of Stella's nails on the
floorboards. Sometimes she heard a few steps that then stopped, and she would find
herself concentrating on that sound, and when it would start up again. She could not read-even the books she had been saving for a free moment drew her in no way. Or she would
start a task, like cleaning out drawers, and quickly abandon it.
When she went downstairs, she would find him reading one of his newspapers. As
soon as he saw her, he would say, "My dear, you will be interested in this," and read
something aloud. When an American oil tanker was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine
off the coast somewhere (unidentified in the article), he said, "Here's something. What do
you think of that? They saw the shelling from the town." When American forces
surrendered Wake Island just before Christmas, he said, "You will want to read this, my
dear." He stood up and handed her the paper, jabbing at the article with his forefinger.
When Hong Kong surrendered, he said, "I suppose you will think it's for the best." When
Manila was bombed, he suggested, mildly, that perhaps she wouldn't believe that the
Japanese had "bombed mere civilians," but that, according to the newspapers, it was
"indeed true. Their objectives, I would say, aren't purely military. I'm sure even you will
have to agree." Her loyalties, she saw, were once more in question--her loyalties to him,
to the navy, the U.S. In his mind, what was the difference, after all?
After the first day, she hated to go out with him, but he insisted they shop together
and walk Stella together. He would not allow her to make or receive phone calls, but after
a few days, there weren't any. He was unfailingly, frighteningly polite. He read to her
about the arrival of the survivors from Wake Island as prisoners of war in Japan. He read
to her about the loss of Singapore, and then the Philippines. When she simply refused to
come out of her room, he brought her toast and cups of tea. One afternoon, he was sitting
just off the entryway, where she could see him from the top of the stairs. He was reading
a book and keeping his eye on the door. She descended the stairs and confronted him.
She said, "I want to go out, Andrew. If only for a walk. By myself."
"My considered opinion is that it isn't safe out there."
"What could happen?"
"There are those who believe that the Japanese are planning to execute a major
attack on all the shipping, airfields, cities, and oilfields along the coast of California,
which would result in the massive evacuation of millions of civilians to the east."
She felt a flutter in her throat at this idea, but she said, "Are there, really? What do
you think?"
"I admit that it would be an unprecedented tactical undertaking."
"If it's not safe out there, then it's not safe in here."
He looked up at her. "But why go out, is my feeling. We would only use up more
energy and require more calories to sustain ourselves."
"I'm going out."
"Well, I'm sure Stella would like a walk as well. Perhaps once or twice around the
block would do us all some good."
"You are keeping me captive!"
"I don't think of it like that, my dear." He put down his book, got up, reached for
his coat. She saw that he was obdurate in a way only he could be, in the way he had
always been--like something large and insensate, a statue of himself. She went back
upstairs.
She sat down on her bed and looked out the window, over the top of the manytrunked black-walnut tree in the side yard. The long dull-green leaves were well out, and
the dangling ropes of buds were beginning to form. Margaret knew that if she stood up
and looked down at the beds, she would see daffodils, but daffodils would remind her
how long she had let him keep her here.
The terrifying thing, once again, was how plausible everything he said was.
Hadn't this always been true--the very first time she met him, on that bicycle of Dora's, he
had talked about telephones and she had believed him. And then, what was it, levees
breaking or something on the Mississippi below St. Louis, and then double stars, and then
his half-mad and permanently bitter former student and all the other resentful colleagues
and unrelenting enemies, and then, of course, the universe itself, with its pillars of
gravity, or was that iron cables? And vast spaces that he spoke about in a warm tone of
voice, as if those spaces belonged to him above all other men. She had seen marriages
from the outside, and even, a little, from the inside--it was utterly routine for women to
talk about other women's marriages as Lavinia had talked about the Bells'--Mr. Bell
staying out of the house as much as he could, and Mrs. Bell doing what she pleased, and
everyone knew he thought she was a fool. Beatrice had gotten married and entered upon
the same dissatisfied but workable course, and no one expected marriage to be anything
different. All sorts of commonplaces covered it--"live and let live," "make the best of
things," "it could be worse," "sauce for the goose." The ladies in her knitting group had
dispatched one another's marriages every week or so for almost forty years.
Nor did they seem intimidated by Andrew. Even when they were not playing
poker with him, they asked him questions and joked a bit and said goodbye and forgot
about him. No doubt in her absence they dealt out a set of commonplaces about him, too-"thinks awfully well of himself," "too big for his britches," "barking mad." Even
thinking of these bits of phrase was reassuring in its way.
But no. Marriage to Andrew was not that small. She could not make it small--not
by parsing it out in daily tasks or making pleasant conversation or doing as she was told.
He wanted something from her that all of these activities did not give him. Right then,
she could feel what he wanted emanating from the floor below, mushrooming up the
staircase, through floor vents, under the door--he wanted agreement, belief, even,
possibly, worship. And he wanted that worship to be large and surrounding, something
that he could feel, not the mere something that she, or anyone, could give. She had agreed
with him more often than not over the years, hadn't she, and as soon as she agreed, he
looked past her for a grander and more satisfying embrace. The hugeness of his ideas
made her small, and then the smallness of her agreement goaded him to seek more. She
enlarged in his mind only when she didn't agree with him--then he set himself to conquer
her, and overwhelm her disbelief.
And yet--she lay down--his own developing smallness was what preoccupied him,
wasn't it? He had been the most brilliant boy in their town, the best student at the
university, that genius who changed the nature of the universe, that big fellow who