The Japanese Lover (26 page)

“I'm pregnant,” was all she managed to utter.

Still holding on to her, Nathaniel led her over to the sofa, where they sat side by side. Alma told him about her love, the motel, and how the pregnancy was not Ichimei's fault but hers, and that if Ichimei found out he would doubtless insist on marrying her and taking responsibility for the child, but that she had thought it through carefully and wasn't brave enough to give up all she had always enjoyed by becoming Ichimei's wife. She adored him but knew that the disadvantages of poverty drove out love, because faced with the choice between a life of economic hardship within a Japanese community she had nothing in common with, or of continuing to be protected in her own environment, her fear of the unknown won out; she was ashamed of her own weakness, Ichimei deserved unconditional love, he was a wonderful man, a sage, a saint, a pure soul, a delicate, considerate lover in whose arms she felt blessed.

She spoke in a rushing torrent of phrases, blowing her nose to avoid crying, trying to retain some dignity.

She went on to add that Ichimei lived on a spiritual plane and was always going to be a simple gardener rather than develop his enormous artistic talent or to try to turn his flower nursery into a proper business; nothing like that, he didn't want more, he was satisfied to earn just what he needed to get by and wasn't the slightest bit concerned about prosperity or success; his passions were meditation and calmness, but they didn't put food on the table and she wasn't going to start a family in a wooden shack with a tin roof and live among gardeners with spades in their hands.

“I know, Nathaniel, forgive me, you warned me a thousand times and I didn't listen, you were right, you're always right, I can see now I can't marry Ichimei, but I can't stop loving him either, without him I'd wither away like a plant in the desert, I'd die, and from now on I'll be more careful, we'll take precautions, this won't happen again, I promise you, Nathaniel, I swear.” She went on talking and talking without pause, the excuses and sense of guilt welling up alternately, while Nathaniel listened without interrupting until she had run out of breath and her voice had died down to a murmur.

“Let's see if I understand you, Alma. You're pregnant but aren't thinking of telling Ichimei,” Nathaniel concluded.

“I can't have a child outside of wedlock, Nat. You have to help me. You're the only person I can turn to.”

“An abortion? That's illegal and dangerous. Don't count on me for that, Alma.”

“Listen, Nat. I've looked into it and it's safe, there's no risk and it would only cost a hundred dollars—but you have to come with me, because it's in Tijuana.”

“Tijuana? Abortion is illegal in Mexico too, Alma. This is crazy!”

“It's much more dangerous here, Nat. In Mexico there are doctors who perform the operation under the noses of the police, and nobody cares.”

Alma showed him a scrap of paper with a phone number on it, and explained that she had already called up and spoken to someone named Ramón. A man had answered in terrible English, asking her who had sent her and if she knew the conditions. She gave him the name of her contact, assured him she would pay cash, and they agreed that in two days' time he would pick her up in his car at three in the afternoon on a specific corner in Tijuana.

“Did you tell this Ramón you'll be accompanied by a lawyer?” asked Nathaniel, tacitly accepting the role she had given him.

They left at six the next morning in the family's black Lincoln, which was better suited to a fifteen-hour journey than Nathaniel's sports car. Furious at being trapped in this way, Nathaniel initially kept a hostile silence, his mouth a tight line, brow furrowed, hands like talons on the wheel as he stared fixedly at the highway, but the first time Alma asked him to stop at a truck stop to go to the rest­room, he softened. She was gone for half an hour, and just as he was thinking of going to look for her, she returned to the car in a bad state. “I feel sick in the mornings, Nat, but later on it passes,” she explained. For the rest of the journey he tried to take her mind off things, and they ended up singing out of tune the most syrupy Pat Boone songs, the only ones they knew, until eventually, exhausted, she clung to him, laid her head on his shoulder, and dozed off.

In San Diego they stopped overnight at a hotel to eat and get some sleep. The receptionist presumed they were married and gave them a room with a double bed. They lay down together holding hands, just as they had done as children. For the first time in weeks Alma slept without having nightmares, while Nathaniel stayed wide awake until dawn, breathing in the shampoo scent on his cousin's hair, thinking of the risks they were running, feeling upset and nervous as though he were the child's father, imagining the repercussions, regretting having agreed to this sordid adventure rather than bribing a doctor in California, where everything was possible if the price was right, just as in Tijuana. As the first light filtered through the gap in the curtains he was finally overcome with fatigue and didn't wake up until nine in the morning, when he heard Alma retching in the bathroom. They took their time crossing the border, with the predictable delays, and drove on to keep their appointment with Ramón.

Mexico greeted them with its well-known clichés. They had never been in Tijuana before and were expecting a sleepy little town, but instead found themselves in a city that went on forever, brimming with color and noise, people and traffic, where dilapidated buses and modern cars sped alongside carts and donkeys. In the same store you could buy Mexican artifacts and American household appliances, shoes and musical instruments, spare parts and furniture, caged birds and tortillas. The air was filled with the smell of fried food and garbage, and the din of popular music, evangelical preachers, and football commentators on the radios in bars and taco joints. They had difficulty finding their way, because many of the streets had no names or numbers, and so had to ask every three or four blocks, but didn't understand the directions they were given in Spanish, which more often than not consisted of a vague wave of the arm and a “right here, just round the corner.” In their frustration they parked the Lincoln near a gas station and walked until they came to the agreed corner, which turned out to be at the intersection of four busy streets. They waited arm in arm, stared at shamelessly by a lone dog and a group of ragged children begging for money. The only indication they had been given, apart from the name of one of the streets at the intersection, was a store for first communion dresses and images of holy virgins and Catholic saints, bizarrely named Viva Zapata.

After they had waited for twenty minutes, Nathaniel decided they had been tricked and ought to go back home, but Alma reminded him that punctuality was not exactly a Mexican characteristic and went into Viva Zapata. She gesticulated to use the telephone and dialed Ramón's number. It rang nine times before a woman's voice answered in Spanish, which she couldn't understand. At four in the afternoon, by which time Alma had accepted they might as well give up, a pea-colored 1949 Ford with tinted rear windows just as Ramón had described it pulled up at the corner. Two men sat in the front seats: a youngster with a pockmarked face, a pompadour, and bushy sideburns was in the driver's seat; the other one got out to let them in, because the car was two doored. He introduced himself as Ramón. He was thirtysomething, with a carefully groomed mustache, slicked-back hair, a white shirt, and pointed high-heeled boots. Both men were smoking. “The cash,” Ramón demanded as soon as they were inside the car. Nathaniel handed it over; Ramón counted it and stuffed the bills in his pocket. Neither of the men spoke during the journey, which to Alma and Nathaniel seemed endless: they were certain they were being driven around and around to get them lost—an unnecessary precaution, as neither of them knew the city. Clinging to Nathaniel the whole time, Alma was thinking how much worse the situation would have been if she had come on her own, while Nathaniel calculated that the men had already got their money and so could quite easily put a bullet in their heads and throw them down a ravine. They hadn't told anyone where they were going, and weeks or months would go by before their family found out what had become of them.

Finally the car came to a halt, and they were told to wait while the driver went into the house and the other man kept watch. They were outside a cheap-looking house similar to others along the street, in a neighborhood that to Nathaniel looked poor and dirty, although he could not judge it by San Francisco standards. After a couple of minutes the youngster reappeared, and the pair told Nathaniel to get out of the car. They patted him down and made as if to lead him away, but he swatted them off and confronted them, cursing in English. Taken aback, Ramón raised his hands to mollify him.

“Slow down, man, everything's okay.” He laughed, flashing a pair of gold teeth.

He offered Nathaniel a cigarette, which he accepted, while the other Mexican helped Alma out of the car. They all went into the house, which was not the gangsters' den that Nathaniel had feared, but a modest family home, with low ceilings and small windows. Inside, it was hot and dark. In the living room, two children were sprawled on the floor playing with lead toy soldiers next to a table and chairs, a plastic-covered sofa, a showy lamp with a fringed shade, and a refrigerator as noisy as an outboard motor. A smell of fried onions came from the kitchen, and they caught sight of a woman in black stirring something in a pan. She showed as little interest in the newcomers as the children had. The younger of the two men pointed Nathaniel to a chair and disappeared into the kitchen, while Ramón led Alma down a short corridor to another room with a blanket over the entrance instead of a door.

“Wait!” shouted Nathaniel. “Who's going to perform the operation?”

“I am,” said Ramón, who apparently was the only one who spoke English.

“What do you know about medicine?” asked Nathaniel, staring at the man's hands with their long, polished nails.

Once more came the friendly laugh and the golden smile, with fresh reassuring gestures and a couple of stilted phrases explaining that he had a lot of experience and that it would take less than fifteen minutes, no problem. Anesthetic? No,
mano
, we don't have any of that here, but this helps, he said, handing Alma a bottle of tequila. When she hesitated, glancing mistrustfully at the bottle, Ramón took a lengthy swig, wiped the neck on his sleeve, and offered it to her again. Seeing the look of panic on Alma's face, Nathaniel instantly made the most important decision in his life.

“We've changed our minds, Ramón. We're going to get married and have the baby. You can keep the money.”

Alma had many years ahead of her in which to carefully consider the way she had behaved in 1955. That was the year she was pitchforked into reality, and her efforts to avoid her nagging sense of shame proved useless: the disgrace at becoming pregnant, loving Ichimei less than herself, her horror of poverty, yielding to social pressure and racial prejudices, accepting Nathaniel's sacrifice, not living up to the role of the modern Amazon she had imagined herself to be, shame at herself for being not only fearful and conventional but another half dozen adjectives as well that she punished herself with. She was aware that she had avoided the abortion more from fear of the pain and of dying from a hemorrhage or infection than out of respect for the being that was growing inside her. When she examined herself once more in her wardrobe's full-length mirror, she could not discover the Alma from before, the bold, sensual young girl Ichimei would see if he were there, but a cowardly, capricious, and selfish woman. There was no point making excuses; nothing could lessen her feeling that she had lost her dignity. Years later, when it had become the fashion to love someone from a different race or to have children without marrying, Alma admitted to herself that her greatest prejudice was that of social class, which she never managed to overcome. In spite of the nightmare trip to Tijuana, which destroyed the illusion of love and humiliated her to such an extent that she took refuge in a monumental pride, she never doubted her decision to keep the truth from Ichimei. To confess would have meant facing up to her own complete cowardice.

On her return from Tijuana she arranged to meet Ichimei several hours earlier than usual in the motel they always used. She arrived with her head held high and with her lies well rehearsed, yet she was weeping inside. For once, Ichimei had arrived first, and was waiting for her in one of those filthy rooms where the roaches ruled, but which they lit with the flame of love. It had been five days since they had met, and several weeks since something obscure had been spoiling the perfection of their meetings, something that Ichimei felt was enveloping them like a thick fog but that she dismissed lightly, accusing him of being jealous and talking nonsense. Ichimei could tell there was something different about her: she was anxious, she talked too much and too quickly; her mood changed every few minutes, from amorous and affectionate to a stubborn silence or inexplicable bad temper. He had no doubt she was distancing herself emotionally, although her sudden passion and insistence on reaching an orgasm over and over again seemed to indicate the opposite. Occasionally, while they were resting in each other's arms after making love, her cheeks were wet. “They're tears of love,” she would say, but to Ichimei, who until now had never seen her cry, they seemed more like tears of frustration, in the same way that her sexual acrobatics were an attempt to distract him. With his ancestral discretion, he tried to discover what was going on, but she responded to his questions with mocking laughter or foul language, which, even if meant as a joke, greatly upset him. Alma slid away like a lizard. During the five days they had been apart, which she justified as a family trip to Los Angeles she could not get out of, Ichimei withdrew into himself. All that week he continued working the land and cultivating flowers in his usual selfless manner, but his movements were those of a man in a trance. His mother, who knew him better than anyone, refrained from asking him questions and took their stock to the San Francisco florists herself. As he bent over the plants with the sun on his back, silently and undemonstratively Ichimei surrendered to his forebodings, which rarely proved wrong.