Nicholai wandered-the rainy streets with thousands of others, looking for any kind of work; looking, at last, for anything to steal. But there was no work, and nothing worth stealing. His high-collared student’s uniform was muddy in patches and always damp, and his shoes leaked. He had ripped off the sole of one because it was loose, and the indignity of its flap-flap was unacceptable. He later wished he had bound it on with a rag.
The night of his second day without food, he returned late through the rain to Shimbashi Station. Crowded together under the vast metal vault, frail old men and desperate women with children, their meager belongings rolled up in scraps of cloth, arranged little spaces for themselves with a silent dignity that filled Nicholai with pride. Never before had he appreciated the beauty of the Japanese spirit. Jammed together, frightened, hungry, cold, they dealt with one another under these circumstances of emotional friction with the social lubrication of muttered forms of politeness. Once during the night, a man attempted to steal something from a young woman, and in a brief, almost silent scuffle in a dark corner of the vast waiting room, justice was dealt out quickly and terminally.
Nicholai had the good fortune to find a place under one of the benches where he would not be trod upon by people seeking to relieve themselves during the night. On the bench above him was a woman with two children, one a baby. She talked softly to them until they fell asleep after reminding her, without insistence, that they were hungry. She told them that grandfather was not really dead after all, and was coming to take them away soon. Later, she confected word pictures of her little village on the coast. After they fell asleep, she wept silently.
The old man on the floor beside Nicholai took great pains to set out his valuables on a folded bit of cloth close to his face before nestling down. They consisted of a cup, a photograph, and a letter that had been folded and refolded until the creases were thin and furry. It was a form letter of regret from the army. Before closing his eyes, the old man said good night to the young foreigner beside him, and Nicholai smiled and said good night.
Before a fitful sleep overtook him, Nicholai composed his mind and escaped from the acid gnaw of hunger into mystic transport. When he returned from his little meadow with its waving grasses and yellow sunlight, he was full although hungry, peaceful although desperate. But he knew that tomorrow he must find work or money, or soon he would die.
When the police rousted them shortly before dawn, the old man was dead. Nicholai wrapped the cup, photograph, and letter into his own bundle because It seemed a terrible thing to let all the old man had treasured be swept up and thrown away.
By noon Nicholai had drifted down to Hibiya Park in search of work or something to steal. Hunger was no longer a matter of unsatisfied appetite. It was a jagged cramp and a spreading weakness that made his legs heavy and his head light. As he drifted on the tide of desperate people, waves of unreality washed over him; people and things alternated between being indiscriminant forms and objects of surprising fascination. Sometimes he would find himself flowing within a stream of faceless people, allowing their energy and direction to be his, permitting his thoughts to spiral and short-circuit in a dreamy carousel without meaning, His hunger brought mystic transport close to the surface of his consciousness, and wisps of escape ended with sudden jolts of reality. He would find himself standing, staring at a wall or the face of a person, sensing that this was a remarkable event. No one had ever examined that particular brick with care and affection before. He was the very first! No one had ever looked at that man’s ear in such sharp focus. That must mean something.
Mustn’t it?
The lightheaded hunger, the shattered spectrum of reality, the aimless drifting were all seductively pleasant, but something within him warned that this was dangerous. He must break out of it or be would die. Die? Die? Did that sound have any meaning?
A dense rivulet of humanity carried him out of the park through an entrance where two broad avenues intersected with a congestion of military vehicles, charcoal automobiles, clanging tramcars, and wobbling bicycles pulling two-wheeled carts loaded down with incredibly heavy and bulky cargoes. There had been a minor accident, and traffic was snarled for a block in every direction while a helpless Japanese traffic policeman in huge white gloves was trying to settle things between a Russian driving an American Jeep and an Australian driving an American jeep.
Nicholai was pushed forward unwillingly by the curious crowd that seeped into the spaces around the congealed traffic, intensifying the confusion. The Russians spoke only Russian, the Australians only English, the policeman only Japanese; and all three were engaged in a vigorous discussion of blame and responsibility. Nicholai was pressed against the side of the Australian jeep, whose officer occupant was sitting, staring ahead with stoic discomfort, while his driver was shouting that he would gladly settle this thing man-to-man with the Russian driver, the Russian officer, both at once, or the whole fucking Red Army, if it came to that!
“Are you in a hurry, sir?”
“What?” The Australian officer was surprised to be addressed in English by this ragged lad in a tarnished Japanese student’s uniform. It was a couple of seconds before he realized from the green eyes in the gaunt young face that the boy was not Oriental. “Of course I’m in a hurry! I have a meeting—” He snapped his wrist over and looked at his watch. “—twelve minutes ago!”
“I’ll help you,” Nicholai said. “For money.”
“I beg your pardon?” The accent was comic-opera British raj, as is often the case with colonials who feel called upon to play it for more English than the English.
“Give me some money, and I’ll help you.”
The officer gave his watch another petulant glance. “Oh, very well. Get on with it.”
The Australians did not understand what Nicholai said, first in Japanese to the policeman, then in Russian to the Red officer, but they made out the name “MacArthur” several times. The effect of evoking the Emperor’s emperor was immediate. Within five minutes a swath had been forced through the tangle of vehicles, and the Australian jeep was conducted onto the grass of the park, whence it was able to cross overland to a wide gravel path and make its way through astonished strollers, finally bouncing down over a curb into a side street that was beyond the jam of traffic, leaving behind a clotted chaos of vehicles sounding horns and bells angrily. Nicholai had jumped into the jeep beside the driver. Once they were free from their problem, me officer ordered the driver to pull over.
“Very well, now what do I owe you?”
Nicholai had no idea of the value of foreign money now. He clutched at a figure. “A hundred dollars.”
“A hundred dollars? Are you mad?”
“Ten dollars,” Nicholai amended quickly.
“Out for whatever you can get, is that it?” the officer sneered. But he tugged out his wallet. “Oh, God! I haven’t any scrip at all. Driver?”
“Sorry, sir. Stony.”
“Hm! Look. Tell you what. That’s my building across the way.” He indicated the San Shin Building, center of communications for Allied Occupation Forces. “Come along, and I’ll have you taken care of.”
Once within the San Shin Building, the officer turned Nicholai over to the office of Pay and Accounts with instructions to make out a voucher for ten dollars in scrip, then he left to make what remained of his appointment, but not before fixing Nicholai with a quick stare, “See here. You’re not British, are you?” At that period, Nicholai’s English had the accent of his British tutors, but the officer could not align the lad’s public school accent with his clothes and physical appearance.