Butterfly's Child (40 page)

He looked at the libretto:
Act II. Inside Butterfly's little house
.

Butterfly and Suzuki were arguing about whether or not Pinkerton would return. Butterfly was certain. She began to sing alone, her voice soaring.

Her voice rose, swelled with emotion; her face was beautiful with passion.

Frank's eyes filled with tears. All that time, she had been waiting. She had loved him so.

Sharpless and another man reappeared. He closed his eyes and listened to the music, like waves, the way the melody flowed up and down. He thought of the sea, the smell of it, remembered sailing into Nagasaki Bay that first time. It had been a warm June morning. He'd climbed up and down the hills, flowers everywhere, beautiful women, though Cio-Cio-san was the loveliest. A uguisu geisha, Sharpless told him when he introduced her, because like the uguisu bird she had a rapturous voice. She had sung in the house, cooking, cleaning the kitchen; he'd been lulled by the contented sound of her voice. Sometimes she had given him a private concert, plucking on her shamisen.

Onstage, the music and voices grew more intense. Sharpless had a letter from Pinkerton, announcing his imminent return. That much was true; he'd written to ask for Sharpless's help with his business dealings in Nagasaki. It must have been Sharpless who alerted Butterfly. He felt a stab of anger. Sharpless should have been the one to pay.

A blond child was brought onstage. Benji. Butterfly kissed his head. His son. At first he hadn't believed it, but Sharpless had convinced him it was so. Sharpless had called him irresponsible, but how could he have known she'd had a child and that she was waiting?

He fumbled with the program, couldn't find his place, looked back at the stage as people moved about, singing; the voices pounded at him. It
wasn't fair. He wasn't the only man—far from it—to have had an arrangement with a geisha.

Butterfly and Suzuki were running about, scattering flowers. Butterfly believed he was coming; she would wait until he came, she and Suzuki and the child.

The three of them knelt. The music changed; there was humming offstage. The light dimmed. It was night, Suzuki and Benji slept, but Butterfly stood, waiting. The humming went on and on.

He thought of his parting from Butterfly when he'd left Nagasaki that first time. Suddenly he could see her clearly, her mournful black eyes, her bent head. She'd looked so forlorn that he told her he would return someday. He'd hoped it was true. He shifted miserably in his seat. He'd wished it so. But—he stared at her on the stage, waiting for him—he had known he planned to leave the Navy. He had made it easier for himself by lying.

The curtain dropped. He was a coward.

He hadn't always been a coward. When he was a child, he'd stood out in the fields to watch tornadoes, the black funnel materializing from the clouds, the long leg of it drifting above the rows of corn. Once a tornado had swept over him, ripping off his hat, then dove down at the barn, dug it up. His spotted pony had been found ten miles away, lying on a road, its eyes white.

He stared numbly at the stage. The curtain had risen. Butterfly was sleeping, Pinkerton and Sharpless looking down at her. “What did I tell you?” Sharpless's refrain. Pinkerton could not bear to see her; he must flee. Farewell. A coward.

There was Kate, looking exactly like Kate, in a blue dress, quiet, kind, modest about her beauty. She took Butterfly's hands, promised to take care of the boy. Of course it hadn't exactly happened like that, but it was true: Kate had taken care of Butterfly's child. His child. The yoke of it had fallen on her. He thought of her in the asylum, glassy-eyed, gone from him, plucking at the bow on the box.

The climax. He held his breath. The child was blindfolded. Butterfly was behind a curtain. A scream—it seemed to come from him—and she rushed forward, falling, reached for the child. Went still.

“Butterfly.” His voice offstage. “Butterfly. Butterfly.” A voice of grief and recognition.

He had killed her.

A hubbub of bravos and bows and people standing, talking.

The crowd pushed out of the auditorium. He didn't move. His skin burned as if he'd been flayed. He thought of the sycamore tree, stripped of its bark by lightning.

That storm off Brazil, where they'd almost gone down. If he'd died, none of this would have happened. Butterfly would be alive; Kate would have married a gentleman from Galena, lived in the comfort she deserved. Benji wouldn't have suffered.

What had happened to Benji? There was a hard knot in his throat.

He rubbed his hands against the arms of the chair until they chafed. He imagined his hands on fire.

It was all his fault. The lie about coming back.

The foolish return with Kate. He'd always told himself that Kate had talked him into it, but he'd had a few hundred yen to recover from the Mitsubishi shipyard. And he was proud of Kate, wanted to show her off.

Then the note from Butterfly, delivered to his hotel; he and Kate warm in bed.

The horror of her death. He forced away the memory.

He had to take Benji, he'd thought, the sad little fellow, all alone then, his child, his responsibility. Being the big man. But he hadn't calculated the effect on Kate. Those had been scalding years for her, tending to Butterfly's child.

And now she was in that awful place. He shouldn't have allowed it; he hadn't been man enough. He should have sold the farm years ago—he hadn't the gift for farming anyway, he should have admitted that early on—and taken her and the children to live in town. He could have continued with his import/export business. He could have saved her.

The lights went out in the auditorium. He was alone, sitting in the dark. Below, a heavy door slammed shut; the sound reverberated through his body.

He could still save her. He sat upright. If he took the job in Nebraska, he could take her with him. In the home office, with no long weeks on the road, he could care for her, with the help of a good farm woman. At home, in comfort, in peace, her books and music—a piano, she must have a piano—she would return to herself. Darling Kate.

The children would be there: Elmer and Rose at last, and Mary Virginia and Franklin. They could see Mary Virginia into young womanhood, marriage. The little ones would go to city schools, a good education.

He had failed Benji, but he could be a good father to the others. And in Nebraska, neither they nor Kate would hear of this goddamn opera.

It was possible. He could do it. Something like joy rushed through him as he stood and felt his way to the door. He'd celebrate with a drink, and in the morning he'd tell Wilkes and then go for Kate. On his way, he'd buy her some perfume and a new dress.

Sharpless was to arrive
in an hour, and the house was in turmoil. Benji's mother and Rinn were at odds over particulars of the dinner; Shoichi, to have been bathed and dressed by now, was nowhere to be seen; and baby Yasunari—Matsumoto's namesake—was wailing in Suzuki's arms in the room next to Benji's study.

Benji sat at his desk, his ears plugged with greased cotton as he tried to concentrate on his account books. It was an inconvenient time for company. He was leaving for Kyoto the next day, but his mother said Sharpless had made it quite clear that only this day would be suitable for his visit; he was soon to depart on a diplomatic mission to the United States, and, in the meantime, affairs at the consulate were pressing. Sharpless was also eager to see her, his mother reported: “An angel risen from the dead.” Rinn rolled her eyes every time the phrase was mentioned.

The door slid open and his mother looked in. She was wearing an elaborate new wig studded with ornaments and a kimono from her geisha days, which Rinn privately said was too young for her.

“Your wife wonders if Shoichi is with you.” She peered around the room.

“He must be playing outside.” Benji stood and stretched.

“I'll go find him.”

“I hope Sharpless will like my gifts. Did you wrap the Ming vase?”

“Yes,” he said, and patted her arm. “Everything will be fine,
Okasan
.” For the past month—since Benji's stepsister Yoshiko and her husband had met Sharpless at a dinner party in Tokyo and the conversation turned to “a certain tragic tale”—his mother had talked of nothing but Sharpless in their weekly phone conversations.

He and his mother stepped into the hall, where Suzuki was pacing with Yasunari. “Cutting a tooth,” Suzuki murmured. His mother took the baby and, jiggling him against her shoulder, began to hum “Sakura,” the same lullaby she'd sung to Benji. Golden light from the window touched the fabric of his mother's kimono and Yasunari's foot.

Benji ran downstairs to the kitchen, which was filled with the odors of hot oil and ginger. Rinn held up one hand. “I've burned my finger.”

“I wish you'd agreed to let him take us to a restaurant as he suggested.”

“I was quite willing, but a certain other person was not.”

“She's nervous—try to be patient. I'm going to get Shoichi.”

“I thought you were watching him,” she said.

He ducked from the kitchen and went out the front entrance of the house—newly washed, for their guest—down the lane, and up the slope. He found Shoichi at the top of the hill, just where Benji knew he'd be, trying, with little success, to get his kite into the air. “Your mother wants you home. It's time for our visitor.”

“I'm winning, Papa-san.” A precocious little boy with straight brown hair and tortoiseshell glasses, he was forever pretending—a kite contest now, sometimes a samurai expedition, or an American cowboy hunting down a gold thief.

“Hurry,” Benji said, “unless you want a kappa to get you.” He made a silly face to show he didn't mean it, but Shoichi squealed and went running down the hill. Benji picked up the kite and rolled the string. Sharpless had given him a kite once, his mother said, with a tiger on it, because it was the year of the tiger. He had no memory of the man.

He lit a cigarette—nothing for him to do at home except be in the way—and looked out over the hill below him, a patchwork of houses and gardens just coming into bloom. The roof of his new house rose above the others; the tile, with its hint of red, had been made by a craftsman in Kyoto. He'd spared no expense on the house—extravagance, perhaps, but it seemed right for him to take his place in Nagasaki with his growing family. They were secure now, thanks to the inheritance from
Matsumoto-san and the connections he'd passed on to Benji, collectors and curators in America and Europe. Sharpless would be impressed by his circumstances, his mother said; she seemed eager to show him off. He glanced at his watch and started down the hill, whistling, to meet the great man.

Sharpless had just arrived and was standing at the edge of the front room with Benji's mother, murmuring as he bent over her. A tall, slightly stooped man with a fringe of gray hair, he was dressed in an American-made suit and a startlingly white shirt; he had brought flowers and a large flat package wrapped in a gray silk furoshiki. There was an air of subdued excitement about him; his blue eyes gleamed as introductions were made and bows exchanged. His voice was a little too loud.