Jimmy Yamamoto and I...

JIMMY YAMAMOTO and I had been successful in Los Angeles but were far better musicians than the others and had decided to try something different, something unique. We arrived in Japan on the edge of the decade, 1941. Our Japanese agent called himself Ike and had his whole family out to meet us. Ike was a young and jubilant man, a boy, like ourselves. Jimmy’d found him through an advertisement, and it turned out we were his sole clients. Ike had put an ad in the American Musicians’ News only because he’d run across the application form wrapped around some peppermint candies that he’d purchased at an international bazaar. Through his desire not to be typical, Ike had apparently fallen in love with American music, a fact that was severely inhibiting his interest in family affairs. But once Ike got us he was active. He told us that there was a band for us to join, men for us to meet. “I’ve got jobs,” he said. “An agent’s worth is only in the contacts he can make.”

From the very beginning, from that first day, Ike encouraged Jimmy in the courtship of his sister. His was a close family; it seemed constantly together. Yet I thought I could sense that Ike was a little at odds with them, was looking for ways to challenge the awful expectancy of tradition. His family all talked a fast kind of “real” Japanese, which was difficult for us to follow, but Ike’s sister was beautiful, and Jimmy jumped at the chance to walk with her, his trumpet in a bag at his side. Ike’s sister’s name was Kazuko, and right away I could tell that I liked her better than Jimmy did. Ike had found us lodging near his house, and whenever Jimmy and Kazuko went for walks I did my best to go along with them. It was I who acted the part of the unwanted brother. We had only just begun to play music and there was nothing else to do.

One day, just a week after our arrival, Ike went across Tokyo in search of bookings and Jimmy and Kazuko and I went for a quiet stroll in the garden of a Buddhist temple near her house. The clouds were high and the path was empty, but before we had gone too far a calico kitten came to us, a man with a missing finger running after it. “Here, kitty,” said Kazuko, for the man with the missing finger had a sack full of cats, all clamoring to get out.

The man stopped when he saw us, but soon he came up and, pointing his stub, made us imagine the missing finger and look where it led us. “That’s my cat,” he said. “Hand it over.”

Kazuko quickly put the kitten inside her cool summer gown. “Let’s go,” she said, linking Jimmy’s little finger with her own.

By this time I had come up close enough to hear and was smiling at the sight of a casual encounter with a fellow Buddhist there on the perfect path. “Good afternoon,” I said, nodding over their shoulders at the man. “We’ve just arrived from America.”

“I want that cat,” the guy said quietly, his Japanese leaving me a little behind.

We all stood silently for a few seconds, then Jimmy took Kazuko’s arm and turned her back the way we’d come. Jimmy had a certain air about him that made the man stand still. Jimmy’s moustache, meager though it was, was rare in Japan for a man his age. I still hadn’t sensed very well the strangeness of the situation and stayed facing the fellow until Jimmy and Kazuko had walked away.

“You think I can’t get through you, you little shit,” the guy said, walking right up to me.

“What?”

I could understand what the man was saying all right, but I had no idea what it meant. Had Kazuko really stolen his cat?

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear,” he said, then he leaned against me and slowly stuck a knife a half-inch or so into my abdomen.

The guy took his time taking the knife away, and while he waited I stood on tiptoes and felt the blade slide sideways. “See you later,” he finally said, laughing and letting me down. “You can keep the cat.”

When he left I turned to look for my two friends, then slowly sat down. There was moisture all about my middle, and it took a minute, after I began to yell, for Jimmy to hear me and hurry back to help. Kazuko cried when she saw my wound and the kitten laid its head on the edge of her obi to see what was going on. “Japan is not this way!” Kazuko said.

“Christ, man,” said Jimmy. “You can still play, can’t you? Where are you hurt?”

“My stomach,” I said. “Why did you take the man’s cat?”

Kazuko knelt by my side and whispered. “He was a member of the yakuza class, a criminal. He would have fattened the cat up just to skin it and sell its hide for the making of a shamisen.”

“Can you walk?” Jimmy asked. “Can you stand?” While I sat on the path I kept my hands cupped about my wound, afraid to pull my shirt up to see what damage was actually done. Though the blood was warm at the center of the wound it was cold about its edges.

“I don’t want anything coming out,” I told them. “If I stand up something might slip.”

Jimmy began unbuttoning my shirt from the bottom, his unpracticed hands shaking. Kazuko cried and paced in a small circle around us and finally said, “I will go to the temple building. The priests there will know what to do.”

She started to hurry off, but came back quickly and crouched beside me, the kitten, calm and curious, sitting in the center of her two hands.

“Here,” she said. “You’ve got to keep it. You’ve saved its life.”

She sat the calico cat on the curve of my knee then set out again toward the Buddhist building at the center of the temple grounds. The cat could smell the blood and was interested enough to stay where she had put it.

“It’s not too bad,” Jimmy said, peering inside my parted shirt. “It’s crooked, shaped like an L, I think, though there is too much blood to be sure. There’s a little line coming up from the outside which might make it look more like a u.”

I grimaced as he chatted on, more demonstrative than ever before, interested in my wound, in the line the blade made, the design of it. I could see Kazuko running, cutting across the paths, her clothes bunched in her hands and held high enough to allow for longer steps. She ran around a pond, then slowed as she ascended the steep steps and disappeared into the dark mouth of the building.

There was a lot of blood on my clothes. Jimmy jumped up and then sat back down again. “Do you feel all right?” he wanted to know. “You’re not going to faint or anything, are you?”

I held my stomach, laughing a little, then motioned for him to take the cat. In all the time I’d known him this was the first time I’d had his full attention. Before he’d always been vague, a daydreamer, never really paying attention to the things I said. Jimmy and I were matched well musically, but after we got off the stage he was an enigma to me. He didn’t like to do anything, had no friends, never practiced his horn. He was quiet and careful with his words, but he wasn’t well educated and I had trouble discovering things we could do that would interest him. It was only when we worked that I could see the sparkle in his eyes. When we worked he held his horn high and played hard. He knew every song there was, and he was quick to take pleasure in the playing of others.

Two pale priests arrived with Kazuko. They had a thick futon and unrolled it beside me. “Get on,” said one of the priests. “Sit over here.”

I shifted my weight a little but couldn’t move. I rolled onto my back, my knees still bunched, then let them lift me up and place me on the pallet. “It’s soft,” I said.

Jimmy tucked the calico cat under my arm and they each took a corner, lifting me lightly up off the ground. Kazuko kept her eyes down but carried me as well as any of the others. “Ouch,” I said; “can’t you be more careful?” We were working our way back toward the temple, and though the four of them stepped carefully, each jar, each path stone slipping silently out from under a foot, caused me pain.

Kazuko cried when I spoke and with each cry my heart went out to her. She was lovelier than any of the girls I had known at home. I had learned that she liked to practice the tea ceremony and when, a few days before, she had introduced me to her old teacher, I had been proud. A slight bit of perspiration welled up on the outskirts of her perfect nose, and sick as I was, I wanted to reach up and wipe it off. “Kazuko Maki,” I thought to myself, and felt another searing pain as one of the priests put his foot down too hard and the futon fell.

“Jesus Christ!” said Jimmy, glancing at Kazuko, whose corner it was that had come down first. She was horrified, so though the pain was bad I held my tongue, somehow not crying out. “Fine,” I said. “Nothing to worry about.”

They picked me up again and in a moment I was waiting on the steps of the temple while the priests prepared a room for me. One of them brought out a bottle of iodine and poured it about my belly, first pulling the shirt painfully away from the places where it stuck to the drying wound. This time I couldn’t help crying. “Holy Mother!” I said. “Ahhh!” The medicine hurt more than the original stabbing, and when I shouted, using language that my schoolmates had used, the cat came up meowing, eyeing the stain suspiciously and smelling it as it spread across my shirt.

When they finally carried me inside the temple the air was cool under the big Buddha image that dominated the room. We passed through the great main hall and along a wooden walkway to the small rooms where the priests stayed, where they learned their lessons, where the master struck at them with a large stick or clapped loudly when they were slow-witted or wrong.

The rooms we passed were small, like cells, with no windows or doors. In some of them young priests prayed, or sat sleeping. My arrival, the noise of the four of them carrying me past, had caused some curiosity, and in a moment the monks and their master all appeared. The master had been told of my arrival and had sent the iodine out to me. He searched now for its stain, for proof that the priests had carried out his orders.

The master turned to me. “Was there any cause or was the attack unprovoked? I’ll need to know, for the police are coming and if you tell me I will keep them away from you.”

“We were arguing over a cat,” I said.

Some of the priests laughed but the master motioned with his hands so they stopped. The cat was curled up beside me, out of sight. Jimmy and Kazuko had joined hands so my pain was increased.

“A calico cat,” said Kazuko.

The master spoke softly and the monks carried me into one of their small rooms to rest. Someone said the police were waiting, so I finally mentioned what was on my mind. “Has anyone called for a doctor?” I asked.

When I was in the room alone the cat came out, its three colors not very impressive in the dim light. Kazuko had lingered a little so I let the cat lick me, but as soon as she was gone I pushed it away. Dogs had been a part of my past, but never cats.

After that I must have dozed, for when next I became aware of my surroundings there was a doctor kneeling by me, a needle stuck in my side. The doctor grunted as American doctors do, and when I asked him what he thought he laughed and said my friend had been wrong. My cut was not l-shaped, nor was it a u. “It is a little circle,” he said. “An o if we must gauge our wounds by the western alphabet. No serious damage done. If his knife had been sharper he’d have severed your abdominal wall, but as it is, it’s just tissue, a little island of fat separated from the pudgy continent that is yourself.”

When the doctor left, Kazuko and Jimmy sneaked out again too, leaving, for once, some distance between their hands. “Come get your cat,” I called but Kazuko did not return, so the cat remained, calm in the corner. I slept and woke and slept. When it got dark the monks began to moan. The one in whose room I stayed crawled in and took up so little space in the corner that I could barely see him.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” I said. “I would gladly go home now if you’d show me the way.”

The monk sat staring but he would not speak. Indeed, all day it was only the master who had spoken.

“My cat is hungry,” I said. “Is there milk? Something for it to eat?”

“We are vegetarians,” he said.

“Is there a vegetable then, that it could eat? I wouldn’t ask for myself.”

The monk studied me, then stood and sat again in the doorway where he would be seen by someone passing. “The master may not like it,” he said.

I must have slept for several hours during the day, for now, at dusk, I was wide awake. My wound was still aching but since I knew my stomach would not slip I was inclined to get out of that solitary cell. The master came out of the shadows quietly and laid a bamboo rod on the nimble monk’s shoulders.

“Why do you sit in the doorway?” he asked.

“The cat is hungry. Our guest says so.”

The master motioned to the monk and they both went off, and in a moment the master was back by himself with a little bowl of milk and a large sack of oranges.

“Do you like Zen parables?” he asked me, putting the oranges between us and peeling two.

“I don’t know any,” I said. “I’m from the United States. I’ve only been in Japan a week.”

“Once the monk Nansen saw the monks of the eastern and western halls fighting over a cat. He seized the cat and told the monks, ‘If any of you says a good word you can save the cat.’ No one answered so Nansen cut the cat in two. That evening Joshi returned and Nansen told him what had happened that day. Joshi removed his sandals and placed them upon his head. Nansen said, ‘If you had been there you could have saved the cat.’”

I looked at the master but there was so little light in the room that I could not see his face. My cat, unconcerned, kept lapping up the milk in the corner.

“You get it?” asked the master.

“Don’t fight over cats? Let them live as they will?”

“In this case it is true that the cat would have made a fine shamisen. Listen.”

Magically the master pulled a shamisen from beneath his robes. He was a large man and when he put the instrument against his middle I could not see it. He began to play. My father on his farm had played a shamisen, but its strains had never been like this. Where my father’s music had been slow and stumbling, the master’s was smooth and wonderful. All the monks around us in their cells were listening, I could tell. I assumed he’d play for just a moment, so that I could hear all the uses the hide of a cat could be put to, but he continued, without stopping, for half an hour. He played the tunes my father could play and the ones he just listened to as well. And indeed, even the cat, when it finished its milk, wandered closer, put its head across my foot and began to purr.

As the master played I began to fear that he might also have a sword or a knife stuck somewhere under his robes and when he finished he’d pull it out and cut the cat. But when he did stop the cat crawled up on his lap and he merely put his heavy hands around it and began to stroke.

“Your playing is so beautiful,” I said. “Though I have never lived in Japan it made me feel at home.”

“My playing is part of it, but the calico cat that sleeps across the center of the instrument is part of it as well. This shamisen itself once purred in my hands, once caught mice under the Buddha and lapped up the milk the monks gave it. Its hide is so wondrous that it can contain a cat of any size. It will stretch. It could accommodate an even larger shamisen”

“Why not just leave it alone?” I said, hearing a certain whining in my voice.

“Do not fool yourself into thinking that the cat cares. Life and death are one to it.”

The master waved his hands above him and laughed, somehow ending the discussion. I picked up the cat and tried to look at it in the dark. “If this cat were yours would you kill it?” I asked. “Would you fatten it up and then steal its skin so that you could have another shamisen as fine as the one you played tonight?”

“Certainly not,” said the priest.

“You see. Once the cat got close to you you’d give it a name and there would be no more talk of killing.”

“No,” he said. “It would simply be silly to have two shamisen. And if the cat were mine I’d be very surprised. This shamisen is mine but the cat could not be.”

I sighed and decided to stop. What kind of repartee could I accomplish with this man?

“Forget the cat,” I said. “It is people we are supposed to care about.”

“Come what may,” said the priest.

I was thinking suddenly about Kazuko and Jimmy again and was surprised when the priest said, “Of course the secret of receiving is in not wanting.”

I sat there again, smiling a little. This man made his living saying things like that to all the new monks of the temple.

“You’ve been very kind in caring for my wound. Do you think the doctor would mind if I went home now?”

“He would not mind,” said the master.

I stood, knowing after only a few hours that I could not lead a life like this. The master moved a bit to the side and stood in one motion. I was surprised by how short he was. “Take your cat,” he said. “It could come in handy.” He laughed a little and so did I.

The master motioned to the others as we walked back through the building, so they all fell in behind. The Buddha was brighter than I expected it would be at night, and I worried that maybe that man was still out there somewhere, waiting to wedge his knife into me once more.

“The moon is up,” said the master.

The little cat was tucked inside my shirt, sleeping around the soft edges of my wound. I decided to say one thing more to the master.

“I don’t not care for the cat. You don’t think that, do you?”

This time I made him laugh hard so the other monks laughed too. For a moment they held their laughter in, then it burst, echoing a little way over the fragile garden, over the low trees.

“Good night,” called the master as I started down the steps.

I didn’t like their laughing, so without saying anything I started to walk away. The moon was everywhere and I forgot my fear. The night air was invigorating. It was cool. Even the cat must have felt it, for within my shirt it began to stir. It stretched a little and pushed its head between the buttons. It wasn’t a bad cat, its eyes wide, its whiskers white. When the monks stopped laughing the cat seemed startled. When I stepped onto the main street it was inside my shirt again, but its claws were wide now, and pushing a little into the flesh around my wound.