Japanese Incident

NIGHT after night I heard it, and this night too — a high quiet moaning that seemed to drift in from the direction of the servants’ quarters. During our earlier less tranquil years in Japan, every unexplained noise had given me the creeps, until little by little all that was strange and foreboding became at last familiar and friendly. Yet there would always be for me, apparently, unother unknown.

One of my earliest terrors was an eerie midnight whistle, which shrieked of some weird temple rite fraught with sin and shame, whose only claim to human decency was its relentless regularity. At least they did it — whoever ‘they’ and whatever ‘it’ might be — each night at midnight. And then one morning my husband observed cheerily, ‘Don’t you love the macaroni man’s whistle — that special one he blows for the midnight factory shifts?’ Good heavens, was that horrid tootling only the noise of an honest tradesman, offering a bowl of hot macaroni to tired factory hands returning in the chilly night? Later one learned to listen for it, and venture out occasionally oneself for a midnight snack of savory noodles served from a friendly little shop on wheels.

Then there was that awful clacking in the night, not once, but just every now and then with disturbing irregularity. It began with one tremendous clack of wood on wood, which split all silence. Then a long pause, another clack, then a lesser pause, more and faster clacks, until it all died away in a frenzy of minor clackings, unaccountable and terrifying. And that turned out to be the night watchman casually scaring away any stray spooks that might precede him in his rounds.

And so I battled with those and other noises, quite too proud and scared and homesick to try to understand the strange new land we had come to live in. My husband, for whom the awesome Orient held few if any terrors, laughed me through many of mine. Yet there was always a new one.

The Japanese language itself had a sinister ring to it. The people always seemed to be plotting something, with an occasional glance at me, instead of decently discussing the weather. And when I tried to talk to them their very deference was disarming. As I think back upon the dreadful jargon of pidgin English mixed with a few authentic Japanese words and a great deal of emotion with which I asserted myself to our first cook, I continually wonder what kept her from leaving the place.

One day, having just mastered the useful verb ‘to eat,’ I blithely bade her, ‘Eat my baby every morning at eleven.’ She bowed, and ever after that brought the baby’s dinner promptly at eleven. My husband, who seemed to know all about Japanese verbs at scratch, heard me repeat the order one day, and he laughed much too loud and long. But the cook, smiling, apologized to him for me. ‘The mistress really speaks excellent Japanese, considering her recent arrival in our country. Her skill surprises me.’

As the months slipped into years, the nerve-racking noises resolved themselves into a sort of accompaniment to life, the paradigm of the verb ‘to eat’ embraced all other verbs, at least in the same class. We did somehow manage to establish for ourselves a household in one of the loveliest old cities of the empire.

Gradually the strange and smelly world around me became simpler, and of a certain fragrance. New maids took the places of old ones, for whom marriages were continually being arranged. Fat lazy cooks took over the affairs of lean tidy ones, and we ate what they could cook until they learned to cook what we could eat. More babies blessed our family. More nursemaids came and went.

We had the professors and their quiet wives to tea, and were exquisitely entertained by them in return. College boys called on us at all hours of the day and night, and with them we exchanged Shakespeare, Brahms, and Emily Post for glimpses into a rare and beautiful tradition of living. We had the usual go at illness and worry, and misunderstanding and muddles; impatience with the wrong-side-out Japanese mind; amusement, short temper, regret, remorse, humility — never quite finding the magic of Japan, never quite losing the urge to pursue it.

On this particular night the old priest had come to give me another lesson in the gentle art of flower arrangement. As his long, deft fingers composed the early spring branches into classic form, he mused half to himself and half to me: ‘You see, the willow bends so, with the wind, even as a gracious lady meets each breath of happy or unhappy fortune, and, in so bending, never breaks.’ How unlike the willow I had been that day, and what a day! The cook had produced a soggy cake, a cocky policeman had bossed me off a path reserved for royalty in the palace gardens, and one of the babies had come down with a queer-looking itch that might be practically anything. The new little nursemaid had looked so hurt when I scolded her for possible carelessness with the children.

The new little maid had come to us only a few weeks before to help with the babies. She had done her work well, so quietly that one hardly knew she was about. And she was from a Christian family. I smiled when she told me that, remembering the emphatic realism of the German professor’s wife who said, ‘No Christian servants for me! They always want too much time off for church.’ But this child had asked for no time off, except to sew some gay little kimonos for the children.

She did seem to get along with the children, and we all liked her. Only, after all, how could one ever know what was going on about one, what thoughts these people really had of us, what influences were upon our children?

There was that strange high moaning sound again. What on earth could it be? True, the Japanese did often intone their meditations, but who could be meditating on what at this hour of the night, and every night? It reminded one of the strange enchantments of another world than this. After all these years of trying to get the hang of things, must there always be one more mystery to solve?

I asked my husband to listen. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘it’s probably only one of the maids reading love poetry out loud. Cherry season is almost here again, you know. Can’t we just leave this one noise unexplained, at least for to-night?’

‘But it’s late,’ I argued, ‘and they should all be properly asleep, spring or no spring. And besides, it is n’t just to-night’s noise. I hear it almost every night.’

‘Oh, all right,’ he sighed; ‘let me just finish this last translation, and we’ll take a stroll ourselves and solve once and for all the last mystery of the Orient.’

And so we did go out together into the stillness of our own garden, following the soft intoning voice, which now came quite plainly from the room of the new little nursemaid. The cook’s room was dark, and she was apparently properly asleep. But the papercovered doors of the maid’s room were slightly apart, because the night was warm, and a low light just illumined her small kneeling figure.

At first we could make out only the soft chanting tones of her voice, and then, as our ears and minds became more attuned, the gentle cadences resolved into words and meaning.

‘And oh, Great Spirit of the Universe, and Father of us all,’ she continued in exquisite and classic Japanese, ‘bless thou these who have come from the great rice country beyond the seas to dwell in my humble land. Grant them patience and forbearance with the ways of my people, which yet often seem so strange to them. Quicken my own mind and heart that I may understand them better, that through my loving service they may find greater peace and happiness here. Comfort those whom they have left behind them, who wait faithfully for their return. Bless their little ones, whose golden hair is like unto the angels’, and guard me from thought or word or deed unworthy of their innocence. And finally, O gracious fatherly Spirit, forgive us all our sins. Amen.’