Butterfly's Child (41 page)

“I never expected to see you again,” he said to Benji, “and certainly not your mother,” he added, turning to look at her. They bowed to each other once more, deep bows suffused with feeling.

Suzuki brought down the baby—still fussy, but Sharpless pronounced him magnificent—then carried him back upstairs.

Rinn led them to the table beside the open window at the far end of the room; Sharpless was seated in the place of honor, with a view of the tokonoma, Benji's mother to his right.

Benji watched as his mother poured Sharpless's sake and he raised his cup to her. “To Midori-san,” he said. “After dinner I have a story for you—for all of you,” he added, glancing around the table. “It even bears a title: ‘Sharpless's Revenge.' ” Throughout the small talk—Hiroshi's regrets that the inn was presently too crowded for him to be away; inquiries after Mrs. Sharpless's health; changes in Nagasaki since Sharpless had left nearly twenty years before—Benji's mother and Sharpless exchanged glances and smiles, in a conversation of their own.

“Now,” Sharpless said, after the dishes were cleared away. “My tale.” He folded his hands on the table. Benji looked at the starched white cuffs, the gold monogrammed cuff links. There was something careful about his hands, as though he kept them constantly in mind.

“I trust you are all aware of how Midori-san and her son suffered as a consequence of Lieutenant Pinkerton's actions, culminating in the apparent—”

“Yes,” Rinn interrupted, glancing at Shoichi. “We know.”

Sharpless cleared his throat and continued. “For years, I have suffered from remorse because of my role in the events. There has, of course, been
a happy ending”—he paused to smile at Benji's mother, then turned to look at Benji—“but for a long while I thought I had set a tragedy into motion. You see, I was the person to introduce your mother and father and even helped to make the arrangement between them.”

“What arrangement?” Shoichi said.

“Shh,” Rinn said. “No more questions.”

“It often occurred to me,” Sharpless said, “that I was the responsible party—having acted as a go-between.”

“It wasn't your fault,” Benji's mother burst out. “You were only being generous—so like you.”

“It is kind of you to say so.”

For a few moments, the only sound in the room was that of the small bell outside the window.

“Even at the time of the initial meeting, I had misgivings,” Sharpless said. “Pinkerton referred to Cio-Cio-san, as he insisted on calling her, as a pretty little plaything and said he intended to marry an American woman eventually.”

“Kate!” Benji said. “Did he already know her?”

“I think not. I chided him for his heartlessness and thought I had made some impression, for when he departed from Nagasaki he vowed to return the next spring.”

Sharpless adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves and bent forward. “One evening—this was sometime after Midori-san's apparent … when I was suffering from … if I may say so”—he glanced at Benji's mother—“grief …”

She bowed, hiding a smile.

“… I was invited to a dinner party in Higashiyamate, where I happened to be seated beside the wife of a prominent missionary. In the course of our conversation, she revealed that her brother, a writer who lived in Philadelphia, wished to write a story with a Japanese slant, Japan being a country of much international interest at the time.

“As I began the account of poor little Cio-Cio-san and her so-called benefactor, Pinkerton, I could feel the stirring of the woman's interest. She went stock-still when she heard of lovely Cio-Cio waiting all those years with her young son, climbing the hill each day to scan the horizon for his ship—a nice touch, I thought,” he said, looking around at them at them with a slight smile. “When I told of the blond wife, the sword, my listener looked as if she might weep. I recall my guilty pleasure in having had such an effect.”

“That must be where Haruki heard the story,” Benji said to Rinn, “passed on to another missionary.”

“Not long afterward,” Sharpless went on, “I was transferred to Tokyo at my request—so great was my distress. My wife and I settled in, and I tried to put the horrific event from my mind.”

Benji poured himself some sake. Obviously Sharpless was going to draw out his tale as long as possible.

“But only two or three years later I learned that the missionary's brother had indeed published the story—”

“Published?” Benji said. “In America?” He thought of the magazines in the parlor, Kate sorting through them.

“Yes. The story was not quite as I had told it, and it was riddled with errors and flaws with regard to Nagasaki and Japanese culture. However, Butterfly's and Pinkerton's names were intact, just as I had conveyed. Divine Providence, I think of it. Though perhaps he was merely a lazy writer. Nevertheless, I am as much the author of the story as he.” He laid one hand on his chest in a melodramatic gesture—a failed attempt at irony, Benji thought. He glanced around the table; everyone else was listening intently. Shoichi looked like a little owl, peering at Sharpless through his glasses.

“However, this is only the beginning of the story's voyage; it next took life in a stage play. Wait—” He held up a hand, cutting off exclamations. “Here is the truly miraculous part: The play was transformed into an opera,
Madama Butterfly
, by the famous Italian composer Giacomo Puccini.” He smiled around the table as though he expected applause.

“What is an opera?” Benji's mother said.

“Like a Kabuki play,” Sharpless said. “Western style, with more singing.”

“But … not well known, surely?” Benji asked.

“It is, indeed.
All over the world
,” Sharpless said, emphasizing each word. His face broke into a gleeful smile.

Benji felt a flush of rage. “You seem delighted. Please consider the effect on my family.” He looked at Shoichi and Rinn.

“What is it, Papa-san?” Shoichi asked.

“Nothing important, little one,” Rinn said. “Let's go see Suzuki-chan.” She stood, tugging at his hand, and led him from the room.

“None of you needs to worry,” Sharpless said. “Japan is one of the few countries where the opera is not known. Of course it would not be popular
here. I doubt that it will come to our shores, rife as it is with inaccuracies about Japan. For example, the absurd Yamadori, Cio-Cio's ‘suitor.' There is no such name as Yamadori, and furthermore …”

They must know about this in Plum River. The shame of it, the humiliation, even worse than the photograph. He pictured Kate, her face bloated from crying, Grandmother Pinkerton coaxing her to eat. Frank—he couldn't imagine what Frank might do.

“… the so-called ancestor dolls, the locks on the doors of a Japanese house,” Sharpless was saying, “and of course the love of an exquisite, sophisticated geisha for this callow American is implausible.” He glanced at Benji's mother; she bowed, modestly lowering her eyes.

“The whole thing is implausible,” Benji said. “I can't believe it.” The man had concocted the story to charm his mother.

“Neither could I, young man, neither could I.” Sharpless shook a finger at him. “But I have proof.”

Rinn came back to the room just as Sharpless, with a dramatic gesture, lifted the gray furoshiki off the floor and unwrapped it. “Midori-san,” he said, “here is some reparation for what you and your son have suffered.” He held up a box of phonograph records. “Famous arias by Puccini. Two are from
Madama Butterfly
. This is a program and libretto for the production I myself saw in New York City.” He handed a booklet to Benji.

“Metropolitan Opera House, Grand Opera,”
he read aloud.
“Madama Butterfly.”
A woman who looked vaguely Japanese decorated the cover; she was holding what seemed to be a lute rather than a shamisen.

As Rinn and his mother went in search of the phonograph and arranged it on the table, Benji flipped through the libretto. Pinkerton, Butterfly, Sharpless, Suzuki. Everyone was here. His hands went cold. He looked at the inside cover:
The Only Correct and Authorized Edition … Copyright 1906
. It seemed to be authentic. His heart began to pound. “Has this been performed in Chicago?”

“Oh, yes, Chicago to be sure. Everywhere.”

Benji stared at Sharpless's arrogant face as he took the record from its case and placed it on the phonograph. “Now, Midori, in this aria, ‘One Fine Day'—
‘Un bel di vedremo,'
as you will hear in Italian—you are expressing your love for Pinkerton as you wait for his return.”

She laughed. “I was waiting for him to pay my debts at the geisha
house, as he had promised. And for you to have a father,” she added, nodding at Benji.

“A dreadful father,” Sharpless said. “A reprehensible cad.”

“He wasn't entirely a villain,” Benji burst out. “He took me.”

“I thought he was unkind,” his mother said, frowning. “Cruel.”

“Sometimes,” Benji said. But he didn't deserve this, he thought.

“Now let me translate beforehand,” Sharpless said. “Cio-Cio-san, you are waiting, imagining a wisp of smoke on the horizon, then his ship sailing into the harbor. You hear him coming for you, calling your name. You hope he will call you his baby wife.”

“He'd better not,” his mother said; everyone but Benji laughed.

“Now,” Sharpless said. “Please listen.”

“Un bel di vedremo levarsi un fil di fumo …”
The music washed over them. Benji could hear the longing in the soprano's piercingly beautiful voice.

He thought of Frank lugging around the Japanese–English dictionary, even in the fields, trying to make him feel more at home during those first terrible months. He had a startlingly clear memory of sitting in Frank's lap behind the horses and plow, the warm sweaty smell of him. One of those days when they were in the field, Frank told him his grandfather was a samurai. That had helped him survive, even against Frank.

The music had ended and Sharpless was holding forth again: “Here Pinkerton is expressing his remorse, while I remind him of my warnings.”

Frank must have felt more than remorse, Benji thought. Savage guilt, more likely, despair, believing himself responsible for the suicide. And he had been there, Butterfly's child, a constant reminder.

“Pinkerton sings, ‘Haunted forever I will be by those reproachful eyes.' One of my prominent lines is, ‘Alas, how true I spoke!' ”

A passionate male voice poured out into the room, then another, a deeper voice, the two of them striving against each other.

Sharpless scraped the surface of the record as he lifted the needle. The music seemed to vibrate in the silence.

Benji jumped up. “I'm going for a walk.”

“Let's all go, shall we?” Sharpless boomed. “To celebrate. I've been hungering for some of Nagasaki's kasutera cake. Shall we visit a coffee shop on the waterfront?”

“If we can talk of other things,” Benji said. He waited impatiently during the flurry of getting ready; he hadn't intended a party. Shoichi flew
down the steps, wanting cake. Benji would have said no, but Rinn told him to change his shirt first. Finally Shoichi was ready, the women gathered their things, and they set off up the hill.

Sharpless and Benji's mother strode ahead. He and Rinn walked together, swinging Shoichi between them. He looked at Rinn's lively face; how lucky he was.

She looked at him. “This is very strange for you,” she said.

“Yes. I can't talk about it yet.” He was relieved when Shoichi broke free and Rinn went hurrying to catch him.

He fell farther behind the others, walking slowly up the hill in the dusk. It was a fine evening, the warmth of the April sun lingering in the air. He thought of the light on the meadow at Plum River at this time of day, the white boulders glowing, the cows coming in for milking, their bells clanking. Probably Franklin handled the cows now, and a large share of the farming. He would be fourteen, practically grown. Maybe he had a sweetheart.

Benji thought of the time Franklin gashed his head while they were skating at the Cases' pond and Benji had carried him home, Franklin's breath on his neck. And the time Franklin won at marbles and came running to tell his big brother.

He had abandoned Franklin. And Mary Virginia, with her blond curls and sticky kisses.

He paused at the top of the hill, gazing out over the bay where he'd departed with Frank and Kate almost twenty years ago. He'd spent his childhood with the Plum River family yet had put them from his mind. He'd been absorbed with his life here, the search for his mother's family at first, then Rinn and the children, his shop.

He stared at a large ship in the harbor, a dark shadow against the water.

Revenge. He heard it in Sharpless's voice.

He had taken revenge himself: against Frank, against his loneliness and the unfairness of his life. He'd abandoned them all and as a consequence had lost them—Kate, Grandmother Pinkerton, even Keast. He knew nothing about the family.

And now, this musical drama.

The others waited for him at the foot of the hill, their figures illuminated by the streetlights along the wharf, like characters on a stage.

“You go on,” he said, “I'll join you soon.” The telegraph office at the
Nagasaki Hotel was always open to send and receive international messages.

The others began to walk along the edge of the water toward the restaurant. “Benji?” Rinn called. He waved her on.

When they had moved away, he turned in the other direction, walking quickly, before he could change his mind, to the hotel. He paused at the bottom of the steps, looking up at the porch—people there admiring the view of the bay, fragments of their speech drifting down to him, English, Japanese, and the clink of ice in their cocktails. He began to move up the stairs, his legs weary, as though pushing through mud, climbing slowly to the brightly lit lobby that waited above him.