This Scorching Earth. Donald RichieЧитать онлайн книгу.

      Just on the other side of the door an extremely vivid Bengal tiger crept through the bamboo, its eyes shining yellow-ochre, about to pounce on a half-used box of Kleenex and a hastily tossed brassiere. Against the other wall was a large glass case containing an equally large doll holding a spray of paper wisteria. Around its neck had been hung a sign reading "Off Limits to Allied Personnel." Beside it was a plaster miniature of Mount Fuji, the crater of which was hollowed out for an ashtray. On the wall was a Nikko travel poster in full—too full—color. Hanging above it was a paper dragon, and beneath it a silk slip. Against the other wall hung a large Japanese flag, scribbled all over in ink, the brushed characters faded into the silk. Everyone who'd signed the flag was probably now dead.

      In the bed was a long, sheeted figure which coughed miserably and hoarsely. Its long brown hair was half covered by the sheet and the pillow. At the other end a foot was sticking from under the Army blanket. The foot had red toenails. Beside the bed the alarm clock clicked once and, in half a minute, rang. The figure, its head muffled in the sheet, put out an arm and turned it off, then sighed.

      Gloria sat up painfully, her eyes still closed, and covered her face with both hands. She got unsteadily to her feet, licked her lips, and walked to the mirror. Her roommate was gone for the weekend, so she didn't bother with her robe. She always slept naked. Now she had a hangover.

      At the washstand she took a long drink of cold water and opened her eyes. It was after some effort that she remembered today was Saturday. But where was she? She glanced covertly around the room and realized she was in Japan and not in Indiana. For years she had had an early-morning fear of opening her eyes and seeing the tiny doilied bedroom that was hers in Muncie. She had opened her eyes in all sorts of beds and on all kinds of bedrooms, but still the fear remained.

      This morning even the bedroom didn't reassure her. Something was the matter. She began to brush her hair, fifty strokes every morning like Charm said, first thing. On the fiftieth stroke she remembered what it was: she couldn't remember what she'd done last night. Dropping the brush, she looked into the mirror and tried hard to remember. Actually she knew, from experience, what it was she'd probably done. She just couldn't remember with whom.

      It had been like this every morning for years now. The alarm would drag her safely away from vaguely terrifying dreams about God and Father and Mother and Indiana. Then, washing her face or brushing her teeth or combing her hair, she would suddenly come to realize the extent of her sin. The pattern was dreadfully familiar, having been repeated so many times, but the reality of sin was always naked and new and startling.

      Every morning at seven she was at her most vulnerable. Naked and alone, she stood before the mirror, hiding her face in her hands, her guilt lively as a child within her. The bedroom, despite Fuji and the painted tiger, seemed in Indiana, and soon she would force herself downstairs, to her parents, to the poached egg on soggy toast—knowing she was a sinner.

      Later, after she had put on her clothes and her face, she would also put on her attitude. Her parents were narrow-minded bigots. If they thought her spawn of the devil, she returned the compliment. After all, she would think, it was just a matter of which Satan you chose.

      But now she was still cringing before them as before a whip, and hungry guilt gnawed. It was worse than usual this morning because she couldn't remember her partner in sin of the night before. If she could only identify him, then some of the early-morning shame would rub off on him, but this way... it might be just anyone.

      Well, someday it would be too late. There was always the chance that some day precautions would be forgotten and that she would pay, in that humiliating female way, for what she laughingly called, in the bright light of full noon, her very own "American way of life." And perhaps this was the day. Frantically she began gathering up her clothes and, just as frantically, began searching through her memory.

      She remembered going to bed, sort of. She also remembered kissing someone—perhaps good-by, she hoped—in a sedan. Before that it had been either the Officers' Club or the American Club, but she couldn't remember which. And whom could it have been with?

      Shivering, she put on her robe, then began brushing her hair again, feeling better each time the brush hurt her. She brushed harder and harder, until the hair started coming out. Then she stopped, thinking that one really mustn't carry masochism too far. She looked into the mirror, particularly at her mouth and eyes.

      "Well, you'll never be a pretty girl," she said softly, and at once felt better. "But you do have such lovely hair." She always felt better when she could make a joke.

      There was a soft knock at the door, but Gloria paid no attention, knowing it would immediately open. It did, and Sonoko, smiling, walked in with clean towels over her arm.

      "Good morning, Sonoko," said Gloria brightly, hoping to sound a good deal brighter than she felt.

      "Ohayo gozaimasu," said Sonoko. Then: "Hi, there." She always gave a bilingual morning-greeting, the first to show respect for herself and the next a genuflection to all great Americans. Walking to the opposite bed, still made-up, she pointed questioningly to its undisturbed covers.

      "Weekend trip. Far, far away," said Gloria, making vaguely distant gestures with her hands.

      "So desu ka?" said Sonoko and put the towels on the chair.

      Gloria was examining her eyebrows, which she thought looked as though they'd been trampled on. "Sonoko, be a perfect lamb and run out and see if one of the girls can spare me an aspirin. I've got a little headache." Little, my god! Her head was coming off.

      Sonoko looked at her and smiled, as though Miss Wilson had recited a poem, then went back to making up the bed.

      "Sonoko—asupirin."

      "Ah, so," hissed Sonoko, her eyes blank behind her glasses, "asupirin—I catch quick—I hubba-hubba."

      She clattered out of the room, leaving Gloria wincing first at the clatter, second at Sonoko's GI English. It always unnerved her when these people used it—which was often. It was as though the Great Buddha at Kamakura had come out with Brooklynese. She slipped her feet into sandals and went down the hall to the shower.

      In the shower she suddenly remembered whom it was she'd been out with. It had been Major Calloway, of course. From her own office. Imagine having forgotten! A gentleman of the old school. No passes, only comfortable, cozy talk of the just-you-and-me variety. Much explanation of power politics behind the command, climaxed by the revelation of who really ran the office—the Major himself. All of this interlarded with compliments to Gloria about her dress, her personality, and her soul—in that order. They talked shop for a while; then he told her how lonely he was and what a nice homebody she was. She'd used her little-girl smile and folded her hands. Receiving homage from the peasants was always fun.

      The warm water was reviving her memory more and more. They'd had steak and apple pie at the American Club, and in the sedan coming home she'd gotten kittenish and wanted to wade in the Palace moat until he told her it was eight feet deep. In front of the hotel they had kissed good-night, very decorously, using only the lips, and she'd come in and gone to bed. As simple as that! She hadn't done anything at