Please Enjoy Your Happiness by Paul Brinkley-Rogers Page A

is wonderful,’ Paul Feng said. ‘A young American wants to read the most famous book in China. Please let me buy that book for you.’ We talked for a while. We sipped bitter tea from small cups. It was good to feel like the equal of an educated man, I recall telling you. It was good not to be the stereotypical young American but to be the object of friendly curiosity. Nonetheless, because I had tasted the fruit of seduction-by-book with the volume of Chinese history, I raced back to the Suzie Wong bar, sat down at the same table, pulled out
Ah-Q
, and attracted yet another swarm of Sobranie smokers. In the midst of these adventures, I received an extraordinary letter from you, dated 5 June, 1959.
    Dear Paul,
    I envy you because you can visit many new places. These places should be exciting for a creative mind with the desire to be the poet I want you to be. They are especially interesting for a journalist. You can be a journalist too, you know. It is not as wonderful as being a poet, but I will allow that. Journalism is a side pocket of culture. It is not appreciated very much. But it is thrilling. Thank you very much for the nice letter (May 27th) from my utopia, Shangri-La. I think just reading your letter is better than writing to you because me . . . I am having such good feelings when I read your letter.
    When I am writing to you every time there become funny sentences every time, and mistakes all over and of course rotten grammar all the time. Areyou not yet tired of my letter? I am sorry for my errors. But I simply just have to write to you because, first of all, I enjoy it, and secondly because I don’t want you to forget me.
    Since we become friend I feel from you every time something that remind me of an emotion that we almost be forgetting here at this kind of work I do. I appreciate it profoundly. You make me cry with joy. The girls at the bar worry about me crying. But I say “No. This is happy crying. Happy!!” Because they are good girls, they understand. They are so kind to me even though I am a bad woman. After they see me enjoying your company and after you have gone, always they talk about you. This makes me jealous but I love it so. Yes, I do. I love watching you walk out the bar because no one walks the way you walk and at the last moment you always turn and give me such a shy smile that I have to hold my heart because I am almost fainting. But of course, I am Japanese, so I would not be fluttering and torn like a woman’s precious scarf caught in the thorns of this thing foreigners call LOVE. No one has ever said I LOVE YOU to me, by the way.
    Now I have to tell you, Paul, that sometimes I saw in your eyes a special glittering. I hope you can translate what I try to say here. I can’t express this very good in English. So this is the secret I give to you today. TAKUSAN (much) NO SAINOO (ability) WO MOTTA (have) HITO (man) GA, SONO KANOOSEI (possibility) WO DEKIRU-DAKE (as much as) HAKI (exhibit) SHITOO TO (to do) KIBOO (hope) NIKAGAYAITE (glittering) IRU KOKORO (mind). There. Can you understand that? I know I am also your teacher, but I know your mind was made up – your good mind existed, sailor boy – even before you left the United States to come to Japan.
    Dare I say it? I am WAITING your letter from now on. I HATE that word WAIT!! I am WAITING. I am hating that word. No! No! An ugly woman like me should accept she will spend her whole life WAITING!! I wish I could write more but I’m tired of my bad English. Even sometimes when I don’t write to you Paul, I am always thinking about you. Take care of yourself.
    Love,
    Yukiko
    P.S. Please remember always and forever, for all the years you live, this simple thing: in my womb there will be a memory of who you were and everything you could be. Maybe some day, many years from now, some tiny thing will remind you of me. Maybe you will read this letter again. Maybe you will remember me: a certain woman from a such long time ago. Maybe you will