The Sun Gods by Jay Rubin

here. And now, she was his.
    They joined together in the light. Her body clung to his, and sunlight seemed to flow from her, darting and streaming inside his flesh, flowing out again through him to her, then back again, a long, shuddering, frightening spasm. He would not relent, he would not relent, he would not give his eternal soul to this, he would not plunge into the darkness beyond, he would not, he would not.

    He heard a slap that drew him out of the darkness.
    Mitsuko stood at the window, facing the morning light, her hands seemingly clasped in prayer. But then he saw the elbows of her robe move, and the sound came again.
    â€œMitsuko, what are you doing?”
    She turned, her palms pressed together, lips in a gentle smile.
    â€œPraying,” she said. “Praying that the sun will give us as wonderful a day today as he did yesterday.”
    The simple beauty of this woman standing before him stirred his soul to the depths.
    â€œThe sun?” he asked. “You mean Our Lord God Almighty?”
    â€œThe sun is God’s sun,” she said, slipping under the covers again and looking into his eyes.
    There was danger here. He would have to teach her soon. But now he wanted only to hold her close again.

10
    THE WEATHER WAS GLORIOUS again this year for the spring outing to Jefferson Park. Everything else was the same as well—the families, food, races, prizes and prayers—and yet, for Tom, the world was a whole new place. Not only was it the first year of the forties, it was a new age with a new wife by his side.
    The day after the picnic, a cable arrived from Japan. Mitsuko’s brother Jiro would be coming to spend the month of June with them as the family’s “official representative.”
    As stiff as the words sounded, Jiro turned out to be even stiffer. When his ship docked in Seattle, he walked down the gangplank in a tight-fitting suit, looking as if he had a steel rod for a spine. He bowed to his elder sister, Yoshiko, to Yoshiko’s husband, Goro, to his younger sister, Mitsuko, and finally to Tom. His thick, black eyebrows and grim face gave him a forbidding air. He seemed to have left his youth in a far more remote past than should have been possible for a man of thirty-two. To Billy, however, he offered a limp hand in what he apparently conceived of as an American handshake, and he came close to smiling.
    On the way to the Nomuras’ house, where Jiro was staying, Tom felt like a chauffeur. The hushed conversation was entirely in Japanese, and no one ventured to translate for him. If he turned to look at the others, he could see them, and they could see him, but he might just as well have been on the other side of a thick pane of glass.
    When they were alone later, Mitsuko explained to Tom that her family had taken some time to decide what to do about her marriage to an American. Yoshiko’s letters had helped to soften the initial shock, and of course her parents had been partially mollified by Tom’s being a minister. But Ichiro, the eldest, was still feeling bitter, and Jiro was at best ambivalent. He had married a non-Christian woman and was indifferent to religious matters. Finally, they had decided to send this younger brother to investigate.
    Jiro lived in Tokyo, far from the family’s rural home, where he worked as an engineer. The family decided that he could take off from his job more easily than Ichiro could be spared from overseeing the tenants who worked their farmland, and since Tokyo was so convenient to the port of Yokohama, Jiro was the logical one to make the two-week crossing. He had surprisingly little trouble obtaining a leave of absence and travel documents.
    â€œWhy was that surprising?” asked Tom.
    â€œI am not sure I understand exactly,” replied Mitsuko, fidgeting with the doily on the arm of the sofa. “He needed permission from the Army.”
    â€œIs he in the reserves?”
    â€œI don’t think so. It