Kara - Kun, Flip - Kun
Tom Bradley


It was a regular Tower of Babel in the crypt chapel. A single language, English, echoed among the jelly doughnuts and seaweed sembei, but it was an English thick with Portuguese, Indonesian, Belgian, Uruguayan, Belarussian, Kenyan, Manchurian and Michigan accents, just to name a few. The parishioners were passing a bundle around. "Ms. Edwine's latest acquisition" is what they had decided to call it.

In the bundle, her sparse black hair still damp from the baptismal font, a beautiful two-month-old was sucking up the attention. She already seemed to recognize her new mother: when Polly Edwine's turn came around to hold her, a certain extra light radiated from under her double eyelids-or did they have single eyelids? Polly could never get that straight.

Then a strange Japanese man appeared. There was a lull in the chaos as everybody eyed him. Natives were not exactly welcomed here. This was as much a once-a-week Japan-bashing session as it was a chance to "fellowship" with Christ.

Someone murmured, "What's this? More Yakuza coming to impose on us?" But it seemed unlikely: nobody had heard the grind of another black-windowed van pulling up in the gravel outside. And if this new intruder was a purveyor of human flesh, his winding among the pews lacked the requisite un-Japanese swagger.

He was bent forward at the waist and slightly trembling. When forced to cross anybody's line of sight-not just the mobsters', but even the women's and children's-he bowed even more deeply, held out his hand, and limply karate-chopped the air. It was a gesture of intense, but not necessarily sincere humility, which seemed to say, "Forgive me. I know the light particles bouncing off whatever you're glancing at are infinitely more significant than my miserable person. But contingencies have made it necessary for me to interrupt their flow into your eyeballs for the briefest of instants. Here, let me use the palm of my hand to effect the breach in the gentlest manner. Then I will slip the rest of myself through as unobtrusively as possible."

"Pretty lame genuflection," whispered somebody's adolescent child, in Hiroshima on vacation.

He seemed to be making a beeline for Polly's pew; and it wasn't until he was about three feet away that his eyes became recognizable through the incense smoke and crypt-gloom. (The rest of his face was covered by one of those surgeon's masks affected by urban orientals with colds or halitosis, real or imagined.) Since her husband's much-bruited "illness," this little man had been following Polly around. She had noticed him most recently loitering outside the prefectural child guidance office after her latest screaming bout with senile adoption officials.

"Mr. Fukuoka has come for his baptismal instruction, and he's a bit early, I should think," said Father Gaudi to nobody in particular, with an uncharacteristic lack of warmth. Oddly, the priest seemed to be maintaining several outstretched arms' length between himself and his masked catechumen.

The festivities resumed. It was a good thing, too, for the new Edwine had been starting to fuss in all the inactivity.

"Pardon me for interfering in your religious worship, Madame," Mr. Fukuoka choked out, "but you left an important thing at the family court yesterday, and-"

There was a gleeful outburst near the sedilla. Apparently the baby had said a word or punched somebody in the face.

Polly's new self-appointed man Friday seemed both agitated and relieved at the interruption. Whatever he had to deliver was making him twitch and flush in embarrassment. His whole body was knotted like a little fist. Then somebody passed the gurgling bundle into his arms.

He said, into her face, "A fine Hiroshima maiden, ne?"

Of all the many pairs of arms she'd visited this morning, Mr. Fukuoka's seemed to fit her best. She was one of his own, after all. But there was something anomalous about his reaction. His words were tender, yet his voice was cold. He bounced the child up and down in the universal manner, but he almost seemed to be hefting her, appraising her like a bag of goods.

Then, from under the jelly-smeared receiving blanket, his wristwatch made one of those tiny blips
that can somehow penetrate every corner of a room, even one crowded with rowdy, milk-fed occidentals.

"I admire your charity, Madame," he said as he passed the baby on to her next fan. "But it's so
different from the Japanese way. It's maybe the strangest of all the things you gaigokujin do." He glanced at the Nigerian acolyte's shiny white surplice. Under their lids, Mr. Fukuoka's eyes yearned for some kind of enlightenment. "What I'm wondering is, do you intend to keep her forever?"

Polly's whole body lurched forward in her desire to say everything that should be said about high-priced in vitro quackery and seven-year waiting lists in the U. S., about staving off the despair of encroaching middle age with participation in a brand-new, entirely separate life, about love and floating affection and twelve thousand other things. But the only words her mouth could spout were, "Thomas Jefferson, Jesus Christ-"

Mr. Fukuoka sighed and nodded his head, visibly disappointed. He'd obviously anticipated a
Brotherhood-of-Man speech, but had been hoping for something more concrete, or at least more exotic."Well," he said, "at least she'll never be able to curse you for bringing her into the world."

Someone from Michigan, an automotive industry man, bellowed, "Hey, Polly! Can I give your new
brat a couple slugs of this Suntory Dry? I hear it's great for the kidneys. They'll bring you top price in the States."

This oaf's wife lost no time punching him in his own kidneys. But Mr. Fukuoka was so intent on
emptying his face of any reaction that he didn't see. He gazed down at the flowered baptismal candle tucked under Polly's thigh on the pew, next to the baby's snoring older sister. Of course, he immediately divined its function. No matter how "internationalized" they got, no matter how worldly or wealthy, the Japanese would never lose their facility with the irrational, their intuitive grasp of ritual mystery.