The Sun Gods by Jay Rubin Page B

from the table, mumbling apologies to the others. Gathering Billy’s toys, she took her little blond son by the hand and followed Tom out. Jiro was speaking angrily as they stepped into the fading summer light.

    Yoshiko called two days later to say that Jiro had decided to return to Japan early. Tom felt some satisfaction at that news, but the reports that came in the paper each day were increasingly harder for him to deal with.
    At the end of June, the Japanese foreign minister proclaimed his country’s wish to unite all East Asia and the South Seas under Japanese control. A few days later President Roosevelt declared that no American soldiers would be sent to war, which sounded more like wishful thinking than an unshakable commitment. A new Japanese cabinet was formed in July vowing to “enhance” the spirit of the empire. On August 15, all political parties but the Japanese militarists’ ruling party were dissolved, and on the twenty-second, Japan recalled most of its diplomats serving in the United States. By mid-September, Roosevelt signed a bill authorizing a military draft. Less than a week later Japanese troops crossed the northern border to attack the French defenders of Indo-China.
    None of this found its way directly into Tom’s sermons, but there was a new intensity each time he spoke, a new sense of urgency, as if he had to help his flock understand more clearly than ever the gospel of Christ. Only he, standing in the pulpit, could insulate them from the evil influence of their yellow brothers in Asia. Only he, stretching forth his protective embrace, could shield them from the rising tide of resentment here at home. Carried along on the current of his own words, he felt the truth of his mission with absolute certainty.
    If only he could find a way to make this feeling last outside the walls of the church! If only he could find a way to forget that his wife was the sister of a man whose very hands might have worked on the planes that were raining down the manna of hell upon the heads of the helpless Chinese!

    The wind was tearing Seattle apart on Thursday morning, November 7, but Tom found the thought of staying home all day unbearable. Increasingly, his little office at the church had become a refuge for him. He loved his wife, of that he was certain, but the sight of her, the touch of her, the sweet ecstasy she gave him with her flesh, seemed to undermine everything he had always been. He stood at the window, watching the rain sweeping horizontally past, the wind carrying with it tree branches and sheets of newsprint, shreds of hay, tumbling signboards and umbrellas and hats.
    â€œWhy don’t you stay home today?” Mitsuko said, coming up behind him. He had been thinking the same thing, but the caressing, velvety sound of her voice convinced him almost instantaneously that he must do exactly the opposite. With hardly a word to her or Billy, he left the apartment.
    The wind turned out to be less devastating than it had at first appeared to be, though traffic was slowed by horses pulling their tarpaulin-covered loads with heads drooping.
    Once he had closed himself in his office, Tom continued doing what he had been doing at home, standing at the window, watching the storm. He had needed desperately to get away, and now that he was away he needed just as desperately to go back.
    Shortly before noon, the power failed, and Tom wondered if everything was all right at the apartment. He lifted his phone, but it was dead.
    The streets were strewn with sodden pine branches as he made his way back, and in the short run from the car to the front entrance of his building, his coat became drenched.
    â€œDaddy! We’re having a picnic!” Billy squeaked when Tom walked in. His mouth was ringed with rice grains, and he clutched a glob of rice in both hands.
    Mitsuko had shaped her leftover rice into triangular lumps topped with the flaky dried seaweed that had almost choked Tom the