The Secret of the Nightingale Palace (24 page)

Henry obviously had no notion of his luck in that regard. Suddenly he was at Goldie's knees, his head in her lap, his arms reaching up to hold her. “I want you!” he cried, burying his face in her skirt.

His passion elated her. Gently she stroked his cheek. “My darling,” she whispered, and it didn't diminish the intensity of her devotion to recognize at the very same moment that the two of them looked like lovers in a movie.

Henry lifted his eyes to her then. If it had not been for the awkward layout of their surroundings—the narrow armchairs and a picture window that made this office just as revealing to the world as the ones across the street—anything might have happened between them at that moment. Instead, he stayed where he was. Goldie would make it home in time for dinner. But first he pulled her face toward his and kissed her. A few minutes later, his hand began to move. For the first time, Goldie felt a man's fingers pull open the buttons of her blouse and begin the timid but determined journey within. All her attention focused on his hand as it crossed her satin slip, reached the lace of her brassiere, then slipped inside at the point, she thought, where her heart must be, to grasp her breast. Henry pulled away then, breaking off their kiss to absorb the details of Goldie's newly revealed body. “Oh, God,” he sighed, and then he pressed his mouth against her. Goldie could remember odd moments of her childhood—sitting in an awkward position on a bicycle, or touching herself in a particular way with a washcloth in the bath—that had inspired a feeling of intense pleasure between her legs. But this was something different. She felt bursts of heat that began at the center of her body and swept outward, all the way to her fingertips. Until that moment, Goldie had thought of romance in the same way that a starry-eyed child did, as an emotion of rose petals and bridal gowns, sweet perfume and chocolates in heart-shaped boxes. Now, although it would still be months before she understood completely, she realized that there was much, much more to it than that.

Goldie didn't, however, recognize that passion and commitment were not the same thing. When finally she pulled away from Henry and looked down into his love-struck face, she whispered, as if to comfort him, “We'll find a way to be together.”

But Henry only shook his head. “We can't.”

15

Things Fall Apart

O
ver the rest of that summer and through the fall, Goldie and Henry refrained from meeting privately, but they saw each other often. He came by Feld's, perhaps even more frequently than before, to meet with Mr. Blankenship or accompany his sister home. Goldie and Mayumi continued to spend their time off together, wandering the lanes and avenues around Union Square, wistfully shopping. Often, on the weekends, they made their way together out to the tea garden, where Goldie was as welcome as ever. None of the Nakamuras, not even Mayumi, showed any suspicion that anything had changed between Goldie and Henry.

One gray, gusty afternoon in early December, the two girls rode the bus out toward Golden Gate Park. Goldie hadn't worn a heavy enough coat, and she was looking forward to the cup of green tea that the baroness would offer her. The girls chattered nonstop. Mr. Feld had recently added to Marvin's title of vice president a new position, head of merchandising, and like most of the staff at Feld's, Goldie and Mayumi mulled over the duties that such a position might entail. Marvin never spent more than an hour or two at the store on a given day, and the responsibilities of Mr. Blankenship, who was not a vice president, seemed as all encompassing as ever. They had other matters to discuss as well, like the question of where Goldie would sleep when Rochelle had her new baby. And Mayumi complained about the hideous design of the bridesmaid dress that she would have to wear at Henry's wedding, which was now only four months away. Goldie managed this topic by concentrating on weddings in a general way, pushing from her mind the fact that they were talking about Henry's, and that he was marrying someone else. Goldie did occasionally sigh too overtly, and she became quiet and distant at certain moments as well, but Mayumi, who had a fine eye for detail about fashion or art, didn't notice. Perhaps it was simply too crazy to imagine that her best friend, a Jew, could have fallen in love with her Japanese brother.

The bus dropped them off on Stanyan Street, then Goldie followed Mayumi down the path through the woods, which soon turned muddy. The girls slipped off their shoes and ran barefoot, as they always had, across the cold, soft ground. Though the path twisted and turned in front of them, the route had become familiar to Goldie now. The exertion tired her, but it also reminded her of her inherent health and strength, which Henry's rejection had undermined considerably. “I'll be all right,” she said, as much to herself as to Mayumi. “I'll manage.”

Mayumi called back to Goldie over her shoulder. “You're like John Muir.”

Goldie didn't know anything about John Muir, but one heard the name regularly in San Francisco. “Why does everybody talk about him?”

“He was a lover of the land,” Mayumi replied. “A mountain man.”

“I could be John Muir,” Goldie said, stepping delicately over a branch, “if they have chocolate in the mountains. And good china. And if I could wear a pretty hat.”

“How about green tea and cookies?”

“That would do.” Despite her protestations about hating nature, Goldie loved the tea garden. Someday, if she ever had money, she'd like to host a party there. Mayumi had told her that one of San Francisco's most fashionable families had held a dinner years ago at the Conservatory of Flowers, setting up tables among the blossoms and ferns. Mayumi said that the newspaper had described the effect as one of “unequaled delight.”

They came to the end of the path, stepping out of the woods onto the road near the entrance to the tea garden. Most days, the road was quiet except for a few people strolling this way and that, but now, to their surprise, dozens of people were running by in both directions. Goldie and Mayumi, with shoes in their hands, still breathing heavily, stopped and watched them.

“Hurry!” One woman urged her little boy forward, pulling the child by the hand.

“What is it?” But no one stopped to answer Mayumi.

Finally they saw a policeman on a horse up ahead. “Officer, what's happened?” they asked. They had heard the stories of the San Francisco earthquake, followed by the fire. Was there a new disaster now?

The officer looked down at the two barefoot young women, their stockings draped over their shoulders and their pumps dangling from their hands. He focused on Mayumi. “It's the Japanese. They've attacked Hawaii. Go home and turn your radio on.”

The policeman rode away. Goldie hugged Mayumi, but her friend stood motionless, staring into space as she absorbed this news. And then she suddenly came to life again, pulling away to run up to a passing couple. She grabbed the woman's arm. “Did people die? Do you know?”

The couple didn't stop. The woman pulled, disentangling herself from Mayumi's grasp, while the man sneered, “Of course they did. Are you kidding?”

More people raced by, many holding the thermoses and warm blankets they had brought along to the park, some on bicycles, a few on roller skates, mothers pushing buggies. They all shared the same expression of fear and rage and confusion, looking straight ahead or glancing briefly at Mayumi, scowling. Were they really scowling or did Mayumi just imagine it? And then the girls were alone on the road. Goldie took Mayumi's arm and could feel her friend's body shaking. “Should we go find your parents?” she asked.

But Mayumi shook her head, turned, and pulled Goldie back up the path toward Fulton Street. It would be weeks before Goldie realized something that Mayumi understood immediately. A gulf lay between them now. “I'll take you back to the bus,” Mayumi said. “You need to go home to your family.”

 

As Mayumi had anticipated, the attack on Pearl Harbor changed everything. In the post office and at the bank, posters appeared pushing war bonds and rallying support for American troops:
AVENGE DECEMBER 7!
Feld's filled its windows with patriotic scenes of soldiers in uniform and women filling the factories, all of which Mayumi created despite her assumption, which she confided to Goldie, that she would soon lose her job.

Henry's marriage, which had been scheduled for March, was moved up to the end of December. According to Mayumi, the Japanese in San Francisco were anxious to settle unfinished business as quickly as possible. “We're all scared,” Mayumi explained. “No one knows what will happen next.”

Goldie seldom paid attention to what was taking place in the wider world, but she couldn't ignore Mayumi's worries. “You're no more Japanese than I am,” she insisted.

Mayumi laughed. “That's not actually true,” she said.

“Anyway, you're American.”

“The Jews in Germany thought they were German until the Germans burned their houses down.”

It was lunch hour, and the girls had found a sunny bench in Union Square on which to eat their hot dogs. “I hardly think that's going to happen here,” Goldie said. She tried to be light about that issue. She didn't often think about the Jews in Europe, partly because they were so far away and partly because the thought of them made her anxious.

“Anyway,” said Mayumi, who ate with such tiny, delicate bites that she could make a hot dog look like a cucumber sandwich, “at least the wedding plans give me something fun to think about. Just wait until you see it. We're doing the most amazing things with the tables. You'll adore it.”

It was at moments like this that Goldie most fervently wished that Henry had confessed to his sister his feelings for Goldie. At least it would spare her the pain of conversations like this one. “I really don't think I can make it,” she said.

The smile disappeared from Mayumi's face. “You're my closest friend,” she said. “You have to be there.”

Goldie tried to think of an excuse. “Rochelle needs me that day, too.”

“We'll invite Rochelle. Wouldn't she want to come to a wedding?”

Goldie took a last bite of her hot dog, chewing slowly to give herself time to think. She knew that Rochelle would love to be at the wedding, so she tried another tactic instead. “The two of us will be the only people there who aren't Japanese.”

“Silly!” Mayumi responded, turning on the bench to face Goldie. “The wedding isn't a
Japanese
wedding at all. It's at the Methodist church. Completely American.” Her tone was light, but her body had tensed and she looked, suddenly, on the verge of tears. Goldie realized then that Mayumi needed to know that her dearest friend would associate publicly with the Nakamura family.

Goldie crumpled her hot dog paper between her fingers and threw her arms around her friend. “Of course I'll be there,” she told her, and then she found herself running her hand along the back of Mayumi's head, smoothing down her hair and trying her best to comfort her sobbing friend.

 

Several times a week, Henry Nakamura would arrive at Feld's with new acquisitions to offer Mr. Blankenship. During the late summer and early fall of 1941, the provenance of Henry's inventory had expanded. Supplies from Asia and Europe had become more difficult to acquire, but he had found ample quantities of fine wood sculpture and stonework from Mexico and Brazil. He had beaded vases, handmade Hawaiian ukuleles, a pair of Victorian kid-leather christening shoes from England that had been imported decades before. By the time the Christmas season arrived that year, everything Mr. Blankenship bought from Henry sold quickly and at a good price. Even though the atmosphere for Japanese in California was deteriorating daily, and even though his personal life filled him with increasing anxiety and despair, Henry took some consolation from the fact that Nakamura Imports had become a thriving venture.

Whenever Henry completed his business meeting, he found an excuse to drift Goldie's way. Given the relationship between Goldie and his sister, it still seemed perfectly appropriate, both to them and to everyone else, that they would talk when they saw each other. Goldie, who always spotted Henry as soon as he entered the store, had learned to calibrate perfectly the minutes he spent upstairs in Mr. Blankenship's office. She could go to the ladies' lounge, check on her hair, reapply her lipstick, and make it back inside the perfume counter, or wherever she was assigned that day, with such casual nonchalance that no one could know that she'd timed her movements to coincide with his.

“How are you?” he would ask.

“I'm just fine,” she would reply, giving him a smile that was both friendly and unconcerned. He never approached when she was with a customer, but still, she tried to look busy at these moments. Suddenly the brass fixtures needed polishing. A stack of perfume boxes demanded reassembly. Every breath, every movement, every glance from her needed to say:
Nice to see you, Mayumi's brother; I care no more for you than for any other man on the planet.

But then, without fail, Henry would pull out whatever beautiful object he had brought to the store and show it to her. Goldie would become transfixed. Carefully his slender hands would open a box, unfold a velvet wrapper, unwind a leather strap from an ivory clasp. Goldie would become almost immobile with pleasure. She could remember experiencing similar sensations when she was a child, watching her mother braid her older sisters' hair, or do needlework, her fingers piercing the fabric as rhythmically as a musician strumming a guitar. For some reason, observing the fine, precise movements of someone else's hands gave Goldie a peculiar, almost physical delight. When those hands were Henry's, though, the experience became exquisite. She might never verbally express her love for him again, or feel his intimate touch as she had that afternoon in his office, but these moments spent gazing at his hands moving across a little tea set or carved wooden box offered, for Goldie, a fleeting but almost divine consolation.

Goldie stood on one side of the counter and Henry on the other, the object of their attention resting on the glass in between. Goldie appreciated every single thing—the Russian samovar, the pair of blackamoor clips from Venice, the English silver snuffbox (hallmark 1863). Once, he brought a carved ivory chess set in a case so small it could slide easily into a man's jacket pocket.

“It's English,” he said, leaning as close to Goldie as propriety allowed, “but, you see, the pieces have an Indian motif. I imagine it was made for an Englishman who lived there during the Raj.”

Goldie had never heard of the Raj, but it didn't matter. She loved the sound of Henry's voice. One by one, he showed her elephants, tigers, tiny turbaned men. “Look at the rook,” he said. He held the castle in the palm of his hand.

Goldie leaned closer, her arms folded on the glass display case.

“Do you see it?” Henry asked.

She stared. “What am I supposed to see?”

“The boa constrictor.” With one finger, he traced a line up and around the castle wall.

The movement of his hand gave Goldie an even deeper thrill. Carefully, she looked more closely at the little castle. Beneath the tip of Henry's finger, a snake, carved from the ivory itself, climbed like a vine. “I've never seen anything so delicate,” she murmured.

For an instant, they gazed directly into each other's eyes, and then, just as quickly, Henry looked away. He put the rook back in its pocket and pulled out the king. Anyone passing Goldie's perfume counter would have heard him shift into a more businesslike conversation then: “If Feld's passes on this, I'll probably take it down to Los Angeles. I've got a buyer at McAllister's who asked to see it.” In truth, Henry now expected to hold on to this chess set for the rest of his life. He imagined that it would, in later years, provide him with the link to an essential memory of Goldie's face, and he wouldn't let go of something so necessary to his well-being. This sense of the sublime, though, was also why he looked away and changed his tone so firmly. Huddled close to her above the glass, he felt completely untethered, and the mention of Feld's, Los Angeles, and McAllister's served as a ballast to pull him back down. He composed himself. He took his next breath. Sometimes, when he left Goldie's side, Henry felt dizzy.