Dance of Days Ch. 07

But the child that's born on the Sabbath day
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

Serena Giovanni glanced up from her work at the big clock on the wall. The large face clock indicated it was five thirty. That meant it was five fifteen, but she was already the only one left in her section. Putting all else firmly out of her mind, she returned to the decryption scale and finished the descramble she was working on.

Decrypting messages by hand was meticulous, exacting work. It required a lot of attention to detail and one mistake could set you back hours, because it would throw off the decrypt key. This one was from Combined Fleet. From the call letters, she assumed it was issued when Koga was still Commander-in-Chief. As the message gave up its secrets, she found it to be an ordinary fleet reassignment, sending Cruiser Division 8, from Truk to Lingga Roads, prior to the Battle for the Philippine Sea.

Serena took the decrypted message, along with the others she had completed that day and snapped a rubber band around them. She cleared her desk, put on her white gloves, grabbed her purse and started for the door. On her way, she dropped the decrypts into the slot marked for Commander Layton, the G-2 man assigned to Combined Fleet.

She headed up three flights of stairs and then down the long, antiseptically clean hallway, to where two GI’s stood guard at the door. One glanced at her ID badge with a bored expression and passed her a clip board so she could sign out. They were both good boys, but she avoided eye contact. They weren’t much older than her twenty-two years, but both had served on Okinawa. They had the look of men many times older and the haunted expression in those eyes always chilled her.

“G’night Miss,” the shorter one said.

“Good night, Jeb,” she replied.

She took a deep breath and stepped out into the teaming humanity that flooded through the narrow road fronting the building. There were military personnel from all services, in jeeps and on foot. They were outnumbered by thousands of Japanese. Men, women, children, most in drab war issue clothing, although she occasionally saw a woman in a kimono or a man in what was left of his uniform. They were in general, a ragged, tattered, sad looking people and her heart went out to them. She had only to look east, towards what had been the business district to see the devastation the fire bombing raids had left in their wake.

Serena loved the oriental mode of dress, if she hadn’t had such an affinity for it, she would have never noticed the girl. She was standing on a corner, wearing a beautiful white silk kimono, decorated with a delicate purple flower motif. Her face was freshly scrubbed, the blood serving as rouge and her hair had obviously been done up with attention to detail. She was beautiful, absolutely stunningly beautiful, reminding Serena of one of those porcelain china dolls she used to see at the county fair.

As she watched, the girl hesitantly tried to approach a fat army sergeant, but he took no notice of her and she drew back towards the corner of the building. Serena felt a lump in her throat and she fought back tears. It was an all too common sight. Women, with nothing left but their bodies to offer for food and shelter.

Don’t get involved, she told herself, but she knew it was too late. She was already involved. Half her meager paycheck each month went to a Catholic war orphans relief fund. She did all her shopping at a local market, not so much because she enjoyed oriental food, although she was developing a taste for it, but because it allowed her to give more than just the half her paycheck she could afford. As she watched, the girl seemed to work up her courage to try again.

Serena saw two marines coming and realized, they wouldn’t fail to take the girl up on it. Marines never missed a chance to get laid and after all they had been through, they had absolutely no sympathy for anyone Japanese.

She was moving before she thought, crossing the street, heedless of the traffic or blaring horns. The girl was reaching out, to touch one of the marines on the shoulder when Serena passed between them, catching the girl’s arm and pulling her along.

When she resisted, Serena stopped and faced her.

“Come with me,” she said, in her halting Japanese.

The girl eyed her curiously, but nodded and docilely followed. Serena led her through the maze of buildings, to the one she called home. Her apartment was on the third floor and the MP guarding the door gave her a quizzical look.

“What?” she said testily.

“Nothing Ma’m,” he replied quickly.

Once they were inside, she indicated the sofa. The girl seemed confused, but sat down, carefully folding her feet beneath her body.

Serena poured the girl a glass of lemonade and went back into the living room to hand it to her. She took it cautiously, delicately sniffed and then sipped. The look on her face as the sweet sour coolness hit her taste buds was as close to ecstasy as Serena had ever seen on a woman’s face. She drank greedily and seemed embarrassed when she finished and found Serena watching her.

“How long?” Serena asked, pointing to her stomach.

The girl cocked her head, but didn’t respond.

Serena could read, write and translate Japanese, but her training hadn’t included conversational Japanese and she had been afforded little opportunity to practice speaking. She knew the language of war, of orders, of Combined Fleet directives, but she found herself searching her memory for the phrase to eat.

Giving up, she pointed to her stomach again, then pantomimed eating.

The girl seemed to understand and fired off a flowing, beautiful sentence that was spoken so fast Serena couldn’t make out more than one word in ten.

“Slow,” she said in Japanese.

The girl spoke again, very slowly and Serena got the gist. A fucking week. She hadn’t eaten in a fucking week!

“What kind of a world is this?” she muttered as she went into the kitchen, took off her gloves and pulled out the kaka she used for cooking rice.

She was at home in the kitchen and as the comforting routine of preparing a meal began she let her mind wander.

Serena had been born in Northern Italy, but her family had emigrated to the US while she was very young. Her father, a cobbler by trade, had taken a job in a factory and they had lived in a Bronx slum until she was sixteen. She had grown up to favor her mother, tall, blonde, with a bust that attracted too much attention and a soft, melodic voice. From her father she got only his dark eyes, sensual lips, roman nose and firey temper.

At sixteen, her father had saved enough to open his own shop and they moved out to the country, to a small town in New Jersey that needed a cobbler. When the war came, Serena was twenty and already something of a local Icon. Every boy in town wanted to date her, but she was bookish and devoted to her father, spending her afternoons in his shop helping him.

When she volunteered, her impressive intellect and ability to concentrate on minute detail brought her to the attention of the man who headed the Cryptanalysis branch of the army. Because of her Italian ancestry, she was assigned to the Pacific theatre and ended up on General Macarthur’s staff in Brisbane. When the war ended, she had become so proficient that they couldn’t bring themselves to let her go, so she had been assigned, along with hundreds of others, to go through the warehouses full of material captured from the Japanese.

She was most proficient with the Japanese navy’s JN-25 code and so she ended up in D section, going over the records of the actions of the Japanese Combined Fleet. Unlike most of her co-workers, she didn’t hate the Japanese or anyone else. Her natural goodness and compassion were roused by the devastation she saw around her in Tokyo. It had lead to some friction with her co workers, but she had been lucky. The general, now Supreme Allied Commander and virtual ruler of Japan, wanted to cease hostilities and his people began to rotate home anyone who couldn’t let go.

The girl, whose name was Kika, ate very slowly and took only small bites. Serena watched as she delicately nibbled on a rice ball. She was obviously hungry, but she seemed incapable of eating as a hungry American would. Serena had cooked some scallions and crab to go with the rice, but Kika seemed to shy from them. She drank water with her meal, while Serena had a coke in a glass bottle.

When they were finished eating, the tall girl cleaned up while her guest sat placidly on the sofa, staring off into space. She was quite beautiful, Serena decided, with almond eyes and a cute little upturned nose, wide lips and high, delicate cheekbones. Catching herself, she wondered what had gotten into her? Checking out another girl like that was disconcerting.

Serena started for her room. Kika looked so serene and relaxed, she didn’t want to disturb her and in fact, with their limited ability to communicate, she couldn’t even really think of anything to say or do. She did, however, pause to flip the radio on. It was playing some soothing, orchestral music, as the armed forces radio was want to do in the evenings. She gathered up two pillows and a blanket and took them back out. Kika had not moved, but was watching her curiously. Serena placed the bedding on the end of the sofa and smiled.

“Not as nice as a bed, but I have the feeling it will better than where you stayed last night.”

She cocked her head again, giving that cute, if perplexed look. Serena laughed, flipped off the lamp and went back to her room. She carefully hung up her uniform jacket and tossed her white blouse in the hamper. Sighing, she unzipped her skirt and kicked off her shoes. She happened to glance back towards the door to find Kika standing in the doorway her head bowed.

“What the?” Serena exclaimed.

At her harsh words, the girl recoiled and Serena instantly felt guilty.

“I’m sorry, you startled me,” she began to explain, before remembering Kika wouldn’t be able to understand.

Serena tried to find out what was wrong, but her vocabulary was simply too limited to do more than the most simple communication. Eventually, she noticed Kika pointing towards her bed, with a questioning look on her face.

Laughing, Serena took the girl’s hand and led her back out to the living room. She made up a bed on the sofa and then gestured with her hand. Kika shrugged and lay down, still watching Serena curiously.

“Good night,” she said, before returning to her room.

The episode left her vaguely amused, but also troubled. She had had no firm idea of what she was planning when she grabbed Kika’s arm on the street. She just couldn’t let her prostitute herself like that. But what was she going to do with the girl now? She could just turn her back out in the morning, but she knew she wasn’t going to do that.

I guess I can teach her English. A native Japanese speaker who could speak English would have little trouble finding work, she reasoned.

Serena slipped out of her skirt and tossed it in the hamper. She tossed her bra in, and the tap pants she wore. Sitting on the bed, she carefully removed her stockings and hung them on the line in her small bathroom, before finally tossing her garter belt in with the rest of the dirty clothes. She took a shower, reminding herself to show Kika the bathroom before she left in the morning. She knew how the Japanese loved baths and cleanliness and was sure the girl would appreciate it.

Serena climbed into her bed and shut off the light, fading off to sleep as the music softly played in the living room.

Serena was having the strangest dream. In it, she was lying naked on a sandy beach, while the water gently lapped upon her body. It slowly rose, covering her feet, then her legs, then her hips and tummy, until finally, the small waves were breaking upon her aching breasts.

Her eyes flared open as a soft, sexy moan escaped her lips. Her breasts felt heavy, and her nipples were painfully stiff. In the dim light, she could see Kika, sitting next to her and gently fondling her breasts. The Japanese girl’s delicate hands were tracing slow circles around them, pausing as Serena watched, to gently flick the stiffened nipples.

Serena opened her mouth to protest, but gasped instead as Kika’s soft hands gently squeezed both nipples. Her hands were so soft, so gentle, so unlike a man’s that the contrast was shocking.

As good as it felt, Serena caught Kika’s hands at the wrists and managed to sit up. She looked confused and upset and Serena felt her frustration level rising. As good as it had felt and as horny as she now was, she couldn’t allow it to go on. Yet, she couldn’t imagine how she could convey to the girl why.

Inspiration came in a blinding flash and Serena hurried back into the living room to grab a pencil and a note book. She hastily scrawled “Can you read this?” in ideograms on the pad and presented it to Kika. The girl looked at it quizzically and then nodded.

Even with the new found ability to communicate, Serena couldn’t think of a way to say what she wanted. How do you tell someone that, as good as they felt, you just can’t? What is the point of saving her from prostituting herself to men if I take advantage?

Instead of trying to convey something so complex, Serena decided to just ask simple questions. The sun was rising and the note pad totally used up when Kika fell asleep. Serena moved carefully to the bathroom and after a quick shower she dressed and slipped out of the house. Her last image was of the beautiful girl asleep on the sofa. That image would stay with her through the day.

“Are you all right?” Commander Layton asked, sitting informally on the edge of Serena’s desk.

“Just tired, I didn’t sleep very well last night,” Serena replied.

“Well, take it easy. Another two hours and it’s the weekend,” he said encouragingly.

Serena smiled wanly before returning to the cipher before her. It was a tough one, rendered in the Flag Officer’s cipher, so complicated even the Japanese had stopped using it before the middle of the war. This one seemed to be orders to the First Mobile Force and so she worked doggedly to decode it. Any information on Japanese preparations for the Pearl Harbor attack was considered to be very valuable.

Even as she worked, her mind drifted back to Kika. She had learned so much last night, but it was only now that she was really able to put it all together.

Her parents had been farmers and all three of her brothers had been conscripted early in the war. One died on Bougainville, his ashes returned to them in a white cask. One had been a naval aviator, killed in action over Leyte. The last, her youngest, had joined the Special Attack Corps and had attacked the American fleet off Okinawa.

Her father, Takagashi, had been staying with friends in Tokyo and perished in the first great fire bombing raid. She and her mother, unable to work the farm alone, had come to the capital and made do until the surrender. Her mother, like so many others, had killed herself, rather than submit to the mercies of the occupiers. From there, her story became confused and Serena puzzled over it.

She had apparently survived on the generosity of friends of her family, but she had felt guilty, taking even the small amount of their food they could spare her. She had tried to find work, but had no skills and there were few jobs to begin with. Eventually, she had traded her last worldly possession, a locket her brother gave her, for a kimono, bathed in the river, done up her hair and gone to where she knew she could find Americans.

It was heart breaking to Serena, realizing Kika was prepared to sell herself rather than continue living off of people who were struggling to begin with. It was courageous and selfless and showed her a great deal about the concept of honor that Kika appeared to have absorbed.

While such a deep sense of honor was admirable, it also complicated her own situation. Kika had nothing to offer, except herself and she was willing to do so. If Serena refused, she would likely come in to find the girl gone. If she accepted…god, if she accepted…

Serena was really torn. For no reason she could articulate, Kika had become very important to her. She knew part of it was pity, but there was much more than that. Kika had put a face on the people she had been trying to help with donations. She couldn’t make a real difference in the life of everyone who lost everything in the conflict, but she could make a real difference in this one life. And if she did, and if others made the effort, in other individual lives, couldn’t they make a huge difference?

The problem was in the way it was taken. To Serena, it was just the right thing to do, but to Kika, she was afraid it would be viewed as charity.

She still hadn’t finished the cipher when everyone began the mad rush to leave. For once, she decided, it could wait. She really wanted to get back home.

Serena had almost made up her mind when she let herself into her apartment. She felt a sinking feeling as she flipped on the light. Kika was gone. She knew it, without even having to check the other rooms. The place just felt empty.

Turning on her heel, she hurried down to the desk.

“Sergeant, have you seen a young woman leave? An oriental? She would have been wearing a white kimono.”

“Sure did, what a perfect little china doll she was too. I envy whoever she was with,” he replied good naturedly.

“When did she leave?”

“Mmm, bout half an hour ago I’d guess.”

“Thank you,” Serena said, walking purposefully out of the building.

Serena knew she had only one shot at this. She had to guess right. She would never find Kika if she didn’t now, there were simply too many people crowded into Tokyo. She took off down the street, towards what used to be the business district.

It was almost dark and she had begun to despair, when a gentle hand touched her shoulder. Serena spun to find herself facing Kika. The girl’s face had a questioning look, but there was more to it than that. Serena was so overjoyed, she didn’t try to read the deeper emotions. She caught the girl’s arm and tried to lead her back to the apartment, but Kika resisted.

She was shaking her head and trying to explain herself, but Serena couldn’t understand. At the same time, she knew what Kika was trying to communicate. Serena tried everything she could think of, but Kika seemed adamant. In desperation, the tall blonde threw her arms around the diminutive Japanese girl and pressed her lips to Kika’s.

The girl’s eyes went wide, but her lips parted and she moved closer. Serena tentatively slipped her tongue into Kika’s sweet mouth. Several whistles and cat calls broke whatever mood there would have been in such a gesture. Serena blushed, but this time when she started back, Kika docilely followed.

Serena looked at herself in the mirror. She looked scared, she thought. Actually, she looked terrified. Kika was waiting for her in the living room. They had eaten dinner, put the dishes away, there were no excuses left. What scared her most was the fact she was in some ways happy there were none. Kika was attractive to her, both physically and emotionally. More so than any of the men she had dated, including the Aussie Sergeant to whom she had given her virginity.

The whole thing would be so much easier, if only she knew Kika wanted to and wasn’t just doing it to pay a debt. A debt Serena didn’t recognize as one. If anything, she was the small woman’s debt for opening her eyes to her own desires. But how could she even hope to explain that? She didn’t have the words in English, much less the words in Japanese.