Seiji and Nobu and Chieko.

Ball, Gordon

He kept his thick straight black hair neatly parted, but it would sometimes arc its way down his forehead. He had a broad jaw and high cheekbones, and his skin was dark, as if he were Okinawan. His job at the La Salles's was to drive Mr. La Salle to work, young Robert to school, Mrs. La Salle to Takashimaya for shopping--or to flower exhibits, luncheons, teas or other foreign ladies' functions. He then helped around the house in his spare time, until leaving once more to bring everyone home.

Robert was eleven now, and one day when Seiji was driving him home he asked the word for "doo-doo" in Japanese. "Unko," Seiji-san replied, and Seiji soon sometimes found himself so called. "Unko-san," Robert would say.

Seiji was serious and intense and would not say anything about this, but if Robert had noticed his face in the rear view mirror he would've seen the broad, thin lips pressed tight together in a scowl. One fall afternoon when Seiji, in his standard open-neck starched white shirt and black pants, was playing catch with Robert in the quiet narrow street next to the La Salles's Azabu home, he stopped a moment to tie his shiny black shoe. To do so, he had to take off the baseball glove Robert had loaned him; he set it down atop the garbage can in front of the cement wall bordering the house. Robert, seeing the shiny new glove his parents had bought him during their recent U.S. furlough now placed on the dirty metal garbage can lid, ran screaming at Seiji, small fists clenched in anger.

ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON some months later, Robert's mother informed him that Seiji-san was leaving. Within a week, a new chauffeur and houseboy, Nobu-san, became part of the daytime household. Nobu was slightly larger than Seiji and much paler of skin, as if--in geographic complement to his predecessor--he were an Ainu. He kept his hair in a flat crew cut, and he had a low forehead, thick lips and broad hunched-over shoulders.

Early one evening a year later, Robert was riding with his mother in the back as Nobu-san drove them down a narrow street. Soon the block ahead became packed with people, including many young ones in colorful traditional festival attire--short lightweight blue kimonos tied tight at the waist, with the character, unfamiliar to Robert, for festival emblazoned on the back. White sweat cloths snaked through black hair, across pale foreheads. All the young Japanese--his age and older--seemed to be moving, nearly dancing, in unison, as rhythmic chants--"Yosha! Yosha! Yosha!"--rose from their midst. In the distance some sort of large ornate golden object could be seen, supported on myriad raised hands and arms.

"What is it?" Robert's mother asked.

"It is for a great one," Nobu responded. "The great one's name is Nichiren."

Robert did not know of Nichiren, the Buddhist leader of the thirteenth century whose nationalistic sect would become a popular force in the twentieth. But he was amused by the linguistic oddity of "the great one." "The Great One," he repeated in his mind as slowly they made their way through knots of invigorated young men and women, then turned off onto a side street.

THAT SUMMER ROBERT went to a classical Japanese theatrical performance with a family friend, a visiting American two years older than he. Together the two of them, seated high in the balcony, laughed hysterically at the squawking voices, squeaking instruments and crazy movements far below. Between laughs, Robert's friend told him all about picking up girls and "moon-docking"--driving out to the edge of a pier and drinking.

His guest returned to the States, and time passed; Robert entered his teens and soon began taking the trains to school. Occasionally, he'd be accosted by an earnest Japanese strident, serious in a black uniform with bright gold buttons and a black visored hat. The student would politely and awkwardly ask to practice his English. Robert tolerated the request, responded minimally, tried to keep from laughing and, after a few minutes, concluded the "lesson." After such events recurred with regularity, Robert wrote a satire of these encounters for tenth grade English, highlighting the grammatical missteps as well as the physical appearance of his standard interlocutor. His instructor, Mr. Stockholm, told Robert's classmates that he'd written a "good" satire, but explained that it shouldn't be read to the class for fear of "stepping on toes."

THE ENGLISH OF Yumiko, the freckled-faced good spirited maid who'd been with the La Salles eight years, was quite serviceable: rarely was there a communication problem between her and a family member. Over time there'd been a succession of "junior maids" who shared a small room with Yumi and helped with housecleaning, cooking and laundry. Though the English of these assistants was fragmentary, and their familiarity with western manners remote, their ability, like Yumiko's, to discover signs of humanity in their superiors was never lacking.

Once, when Yumiko was helped by a cheery moon-faced girl named Masako from provincial Niigata, the two young women served dinner in starched white uniforms. Dining with the La Salles was a close family friend from the American South. Sam Payne, married to a cousin of Robert's mother, had served many years in the U.S. Marines before recently retiring. A man of great composure, he was crisply dressed in a brown tweed coat, a yellow oxford shirt with a button-down collar, and a blue-and-white polka-dot bow tie. He sat proudly and engagingly at the formal table with its covering of white lace. Yumiko and Masako began quietly serving the first of several courses.

Mr.--Colonel--Payne had a very large oval-shaped head, now totally bald and shiny on top, with short curly lengths of graying hair just above his ears. He liked to talk, telling stories in a deep rich southern voice with a dominating resonance and drawl that lengthened every syllable. "And so then Sammy asked his teacher," he was saying of his son at one point, as he slowly tipped the broad rose medallion bowl from 1930s Tienstin to spoon out the last bit of extremely warm French onion soup. Robert noticed that Yumiko-san and Masako-san, attempting to move quietly behind Mr. Payne to set up the next course on the sideboard, had burst into hand-over-mouth suppressed laughter. As Robert glanced back to the unaware teller of the tale, he saw steam--evidently from the hot soup--rising straight into the air from the top of Colonel Payne's large bald head.

A YEAR OR so later the La Salles moved to a new home in the YMCA compound near Iidabashi Station. Masako left, and a new maid presented herself one afternoon. Robert and his mother were seated at the darkly lacquered dining room table when Yumiko ushered in a slender, slightly toothy young woman who stood before them on the light beige wall-to-wall carpet. She was the same height as Yumiko, had high cheekbones, large black eyes and long black hair, which she kept wrapped in a bun. Her slender legs were knock-kneed, her ankles covered in thin white socks above soft white canvas work shoes. Her face was quite pretty, and as she stood there facing mother and son, with Yumiko waiting behind her, she managed at last to utter "Neimu--Chieko" in the direction of her superiors.

In the succeeding months as Robert got to know her better, and as Chiekosan gradually picked up more and more English, he would call her simply by her last name, "Arakawa!" She was a mishap, always embarrassed, full of accidents at age nineteen in her first domestic work, mistaking one article of clothing for another, ironing socks rather than pants, still learning a beginner's work and language. And that was the role she continued to project at Robert's encouragement, if not his insistence.

But eventually she managed to teach him a little Japanese; in the summer, when he'd return home from a day at the pool, she'd tell him how brown he'd gotten and take his arm in her long, delicate fingers and place it, touching, next to her white slender arm with its soft dark down. Then he'd tease her again for being silly or inferior, and they'd push and shove each other lightly, careful not to disturb nearby silver or glass or china.

One day she told him that Nobu-san was doing bad things, that when he left their house at the end of a day he'd put on dark glasses and go to bars and drink and pick up girls. Sometimes he'd bother her and Yumiko a little at work, she said, and he loved to make fun of Robert's father behind his back: "Big Banker," he called his employer, Chieko said. More than once she'd heard him brag to some of his friends about how much money he got from Mr. La Salle and how little real work he had to do.

Robert didn't know what to feel about Nobu's going to the bars for women, for only recently he'd sat in the study and written, to himself, on clean white paper, that what he wanted most of all in life was a woman. But he didn't approve of the dark glasses, and the thought of his father being made a fool of angered him. He went to his father, whom he found alone in the quiet living room, an issue of Forbes open in his lap. He told him all that Chieko had said.

"I'll take care of things here at home if any problems arise," his father returned, looking up a moment. "But don't worry about me. I'm not being made a fool of." Mystified, Robert left his father to his Forbes.

Weeks passed and as summer came to an end. Yumiko's mother, who lived at the far end of Chiba Prefecture and had been in declining health for three years, grew worse. Yumiko took several days off to be with her, and though her absence meant more housework for Ghieko, she had few chores to do the third night when Robert's mother and father, with Nobu-san chauffeuring, were out for a late dinner party. Robert stayed in his room, at work on his first homework assignments of the new school year. Then, too tired to complete what remained, he went into the kitchen for a glass of water. Ghieko, sponging off the counter, had just finished arranging everything for breakfast the next morning.

"Tired? She asked in Japanese he could understand.

"Yes."

"Me, too. I'm going to sleep. Good night."

At the kitchen doorway she paused and looked across the room towards Robert, who'd just placed his emptied glass on the clean counter next to the sink. Behind Ghieko, across the carpeted hall, was the sliding paper door to the maids' room.

"Good night," he answered, looking in her eyes.

She turned to cross the narrow carpeted hall, stopped and turned back. Her face brightened with a small glow--but with the pink of embarrassment, too. Softly she asked, with the slightest smile, "Together?" Without thinking Robert raised his hand and lowered it diagonally in front of him in a gesture of rejection as he blurted out "Arakawa!" as if mocking her for her silliness, for having really out-sillied herself this time.

She laughed delicately and looked up at him as he shook his head in disapproval and disbelief at the preposterousness of it, and then her smile vanished and she was across the hall pulling open the sliding door. "Goodnight," she said, facing him again but without expression, as the sliding paper eclipsed her face.

In his room Robert undressed quickly, for now he felt even more tired. It will be good to sleep, he thought. But as his head rested heavily on the clean white pressed case of his pillow, he found his mind full of thoughts, his heart pounding.