East is East

What followed was as astonishing as anything that had happened since he’d taken the plunge from the wingdeck of the Tokachi-maru: they believed him. “Hold on!” the man called as he might have called to a drowning child, and in the next moment he was down off the platform and splashing toward him through the mire. It was nothing short of a rescue. The man threw Hiro’s arm over his shoulder as if he were a casualty of war, as if the rain were a shower of bullets and hot shrapnel, and scuttled back with him to the shelter, where the woman and boy were in motion too, hastily hanging some sort of dropcloth as a protection against the elements. Within minutes the fire was snapping, he was toweling his hair dry and the man was offering him a sleeping bag to wrap himself up in. Then the kettle sang out and a Styrofoam cup of hot instant noodles was thrust into his hand and he was eating while the three fed the fire, stopped the holes in the roof and watched him with bleeding eyes. “More?” the man asked after Hiro had finished, and when he nodded yes, a second Cup O’Noodles appeared as if he’d conjured it.

“You’ll need dry clothes,” the man said, and before he could even communicate the need to the woman, she was digging through a backpack crammed with shirts, shorts, towels and socks. Backpack? Were they campers, then? And if they were, why weren’t they camping out on the clean sweet dry expanse of the open prairie instead of in this sewer? Gaijin: he would never understand them, not if he lived to be a hundred and four. They offered him clothing—a T-shirt that bore a huge childish drawing of a smiling face and the legend WORLD’S GREATEST DAD, a pair of too-tight underwear and cut-off blue jeans that would never have fit him if he hadn’t suffered so much privation of the hara. Hiro went off into the far corner to dress, all the while bowing and asserting his gratitude, calculating

on and giving thanks so profuse he could have raised a shrine to them. Did he want more to eat? He did. And then it was meat snapping on the grill, potato chips, hard-boiled eggs, carrot sticks, cabbage salad and pound cake. “Dōmo” he said, over and over, “dōmo arigatō.”

They were watching him. Sitting there in a semicircle before him, hands clasped to their knees, eyes aglow with charity and fellow-feeling. They watched him eat as a doting young mother might watch her baby spooning up his mashed peas and carrots, hanging on every bite. Inevitably, though, now that they’d rescued and fed him, the questions began. “You’re a Filipino?” the man asked as Hiro fed a wedge of pound cake into his mouth.

Careful, careful. He’d decided that the best policy—the only policy—was to lie. “Chinese,” he said.

Their faces showed nothing. The smoke swirled. Hiro reached for the last piece of pound cake. “And you were out here on a day trip?” the man persisted.

Day trip, day trip: what was he talking about? “Excuse and forgive me, but what is this ’day trip’?”

“In the swamp. As a tourist—like us.” For some reason the man laughed at this, a hearty, beautifully formed laugh that bespoke ease and health and success in business, and which burst from an orthodontic marvel of a mouth. “I mean, did your boat overturn, was anyone hurt? Were you alone?”

“Alone,” Hiro said, leaping at the answer provided for him. He felt that a smile would be helpful at this juncture, and so he gave them one, misaligned teeth and all. This lying business wasn’t so hard really. It was the American way, he saw that now. He was amazed that he’d had such trouble with it at Ambly Wooster’s.

They were the Jeffcoats, from Atlanta, Georgia. From New York, actually. Jeff, Julie and Jeff Jr. (The boy blushed when his father introduced him.) Hiro bowed to each in turn. And then they were watching him again, but with a look of expectation now. What? he wanted to ask them. What is it?

“And you are—?” the man prompted.

“Oh!” Hiro let a little gasp of embarrassed surprise escape him. “How silly. Forgetful. I am—” and then he stopped cold. Who was he? He’d told them he was Chinese, hadn’t he? Chinese, Chinese: what did the Chinese call themselves? Lee, Chan, Wong? There was a place called Yee Mee Loo two blocks from his obā san’s apartment, but the name was ridiculous—he, Hiro Tanaka, standard-bearer for Mishima and Jōchō before him, couldn’t be a Yee Mee Loo. Never.

“Yes?” They were leaning forward, smiling like zombies, all three of them, absolutely delighted to be out here in this drizzling hellhole exchanging pleasantries with a mud-smeared Chinaman. Rain dripped from the timbers overhead, fell like shot on the surface of the water before them.

“I am called … Seiji,” he decided finally—what would they know, Americans; how would they know a Chinese from an Ugandan?—“Seiji … Chiba.”