December 6 (20 page)

On her knees, Oharu tried to gather her dress. She said, “So sorry, so sorry.”

“She can speak for herself,” Roger Niles said.

“That’s all the English she knows. She doesn’t speak English, and you don’t speak Japanese.”

Harry didn’t see his father’s slap coming. It bowled him to the wall with his ears ringing, but at least it got him out of the direct glare of the lanterns and he could see his parents in their wet capes, umbrellas and galoshes. Behind them hovered his uncle Orin in a drowned hat, luggage still in hand, disaster in his eyes. Obviously he had met Harry’s parents at the train station, and this was their homecoming. Harry lying with Oharu. Orin, in loco parentis, did seem chagrined.

“What is a whore doing in our house?” Harriet asked.

“That’s rather self-evident, dear,” Roger said. He pulled Oharu up by her hair and thrust her toward the door. “Get out.”

Oharu bowed. “So sorry.”

“If she says that one more time, I’m going to scream,” Harriet said.

“It’s raining,” Harry said.

“So it is, Harry,” his father said. “So your whore might have to run down the street naked and get her bottom wet.”

“The neighbors,” Harriet said.

“Get dressed.” Roger threw Oharu’s clothes at her. She looked small and humiliated to Harry, her eyes darting this way and that as she dressed in disarray. Roger turned on Harry. “As for you, do you know why the surprise visit? Because we have been informed by the mission board that you have been sending your uncle Orin to China to make money off the currency exchange. We come here to spread the word of God, and you have found every conceivable way to spread corruption. It’s like having a viper for a son.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry told Oharu in Japanese. “It’s not your fault. Thank you for everything. Thank Kato, too.”

Roger Niles put his whole weight into a roundhouse slap. Harry took half a step back. He’d received as bad from the school drillmaster.

“I’m talking to you,” Roger said. “My mission here is over. You have destroyed it. You have broken your mother’s heart, you have abused our trust, and I see not one sign of repentance.”

“Good-bye,” Harry told Oharu.

“God damn it.” Roger undid his belt. “Turn around.”

“Go to hell,” said Harry.

Roger Niles gathered both ends of the belt in his hand as a whip and laid into Harry. A white welt edged in red curled from his ribs to his neck. Harry gasped but otherwise said nothing. Oharu ran as soon as she was in her shoes. Staggering from fury and frustration, Roger raised the cry, “All the way to Japan around the world for this. Like whipping a stone.” He whipped until Harry was crisscrossed with welts, until Harriet and even the derelict Orin hung on to Roger’s arm and consoled him as family must have once consoled the father of the prodigal son.

T
HE
N
ILES FAMILY
left two days later on a Colombian freighter bound from Yokohama to Panama and a connection to the States. To keep Harry’s condition secret, they stayed almost entirely in their cabin, and as no one in the family spoke Spanish, it wasn’t until they saw American newspapers in the Canal Zone that they read about the earthquake in Japan. While the Nileses had been at sea, 120,000 Japanese had died in Tokyo in three days of shaking and fire. Except for the Imperial Hotel and Tokyo Station, hardly a building was left standing. The updraft of the fire was so intense it lifted people high into the air, where they burst into flame. American observers said it was the end of Tokyo as a modern city and that it would take the Japanese fifty years to recover.

Over the next few years, Harry wrote everyone in Tokyo he could think of. Finally Gen answered as a project for high school, where he was studying English. All the old gang, the five samurai, had miraculously survived, most by crowding into the Asakusa temple grounds as the fire swirled around them. Kato, however, had died while retrieving paintings; his building collapsed on his last trip in. The little dancer Chizuko was killed by rioters who took her for Korean; mobs who blamed Koreans for everything blamed them for the fires and killed a thousand for revenge. She had looked vaguely Korean, Gen added. Oharu had simply disappeared. A lot of people disappeared.

16

A
S HARRY DROVE
, he learned on the radio that the evening English lesson had been replaced by German.

Ist Hans in seinem Wanderjahr?

Ja, Hans ist in seinem Wanderjahr. Er ist in Paris.

Harry wondered where that madcap Hans would turn up next. Moscow? London? Where would Harry be? At ten thousand feet on the Hong Kong Clipper, a flying boat en route to Manila, Midway, Honolulu and America, Home of the Free, the Chrysler Airflow, the platinum blonde. He’d give Alice Beechum an inside tour of the movie studio, introduce her to her favorite stars, take in Tijuana and Santa Anita.

The radio said, “And now that popular tune ‘Neighborhood Association.’” After a space of a few seconds, a lively voice began, “
A knock on the door from friendly neighbors saying, ‘Watch out for foreign spies!
’”

Well, that was catchy, too, Harry thought.

When Harry was a kid, he found it odd that his parents and other missionary adults had trouble speaking Japanese. Some missionaries were sent home with what was called “Japan head,” an overloading of the brain. The problem, Harry came to understand, was that Japanese did not translate into English or vice versa. Basic words had no equivalents or meant different things. What was warm and expansive in English was presumptuous in Japanese. What was respectful in Japanese was craven in English. To Americans, a whore was a whore unless she was willing to be rescued; to the Japanese, a girl sold by her family to a brothel was a model daughter. Japanese said yes when they meant no because other Japanese knew when yes meant no. Americans cursed and vilified an endless number of fuckers, assholes, bastards, bootlickers, et cetera, et cetera. With shading and intonation, Japanese made one word, “Fool!” express them all. Harry learned this naturally. Now he was about to unlearn, simplify, drop his Japanese side and be 100 percent red-white-and-blue American. He had wired $85,000 to New York the day before Japan froze American assets. If that didn’t make him American, what the hell did?

Not yet, though. On the banks of the TamaRiver, south of the palace, stood the villas of patriots who had done well by the war. There Harry arrived with his donation for the shrine of National Purity, ten thousand yen in a furoshiki cloth bag. Tetsu and Taro were already waiting at the gate. What more fitting entourage for modern Japan, Harry thought, than a sumo in a formal black Japanese jacket and a yakuza sweaty with tattoo fever? Actually, both looked uneasy as Harry approached.

Taro’s shoulders filled the gateway. Inside, a pathway climbed through a garden of evergreens to a large house ablaze with lights. A second path lit by stone lanterns ran even farther to a torii gate, a barracks and dojo and, finally, enveloped in a gauzy light, a ring of ancient pines that was the shrine itself.

“Ready?” Harry asked. “I’m here to pay my respects to Saburo-san.”

Taro didn’t move. “Sorry, Saburo’s not here.”

Harry could see Saburo with a circle of devotees, enjoying a cigarette in the living room of the house. There were groups of men inside and outside the house, which wasn’t unusual for a man with Saburo’s following. He’d started off as a moneyless Japanese patriot in Manchuria seven years before but had had the prescience to hook up with an energetic army officer named Tojo. By the time Tojo and Saburo were done, the army and National Purity co-managed railroads, cotton mills, coal and iron mines throughout Manchuria in the name of imperial harmony. Tojo became a general and prime minister. Saburo returned to Tokyo and established academies, charities and shrines dedicated to his Society of National Purity.

“What are you talking about?” Harry said.

“He’s not here, Harry,” Tetsu said. He looked sick and miserable.

“I just need Saburo’s ear for a second.”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Taro said.

It would have been discourteous for Harry to point out the visible Saburo. Anyway, Harry was at a rare loss for words. He had invited his own friends along, and now they were blocking his way.

“Tetsu, did you talk to Saburo about the donation?”

“I mentioned it. He said it was unnecessary.”

“I still want to talk to him. I could see one of his assistants.”

Taro said, “It’s late, Harry. Everything is pretty much closed up.”

Harry saw people bustling all over the grounds. “We talked about this. All I want is to leave this generous donation so someone will call the Foreign Office and free the exit papers for the bride of a German ally. A one-minute phone call.”

“That would be difficult,” Tetsu said, meaning no.

“Let me go to the shrine.”

“Very difficult,” Taro said, meaning absolutely no.

“Then suppose I try Saburo-san tomorrow.”

Tetsu said, “I don’t know, Harry, he may be gone for days.”

Taro folded his arms. Nothing but a truck could have dislodged him.

“Then I hope he has a good trip,” Harry said. “Please tell Saburo-san that I stopped by.”

“We’ll do that,” said Taro.

“Sorry, Harry,” Tetsu said. “Really.”

“I guess things are changing. Get that fever looked at.”

“Thanks,” Tetsu said.

Harry fumed all the way back to his car. Snubbed, as if Saburo hadn’t sold favors for years. Being turned away by friends, however, that brought acid to the craw. It was downright comical; he’d asked them to come, and they’d told him to go. So that’s what friends were for: betrayal. The hell with them. In two more days, Harry would be gone and Japan would be a speck in the Pacific Ocean. As for Willie and Iris, well, Harry had tried.

He felt better by the time he reached Asakusa and parked the car. The theaters were bright with moviegoers wandering from
Die Deutsche Wehrmacht
to
The Texas Rangers
. Customers lined up at food stalls, the curious filled the peep shows and the side streets were strings of red lanterns and cozy bonhomie, the same as any weekend night. It would be odd, Harry decided, if he didn’t make an appearance at his own club, although he braced himself for an evening under the scrutiny of the Record Girl. Tonight he would tell Michiko that he was going. She must know, she had to have figured it out weeks ago. No doubt there were snakes who stood taller than Harry Niles, but to run out on her with no warning was too low even for him. He just had to make sure she didn’t get her hands on the gun.

However, the Happy Paris was dark. The sign should have been bright, buzzing red. On a Saturday night, Harry expected to see a neon EiffelTower beckoning the thirsty of all races and creeds. He paid Tetsu good money not to be harassed, although he didn’t know what to expect from Tetsu anymore. Harry took a cautionary pause in the shadow of a doorway and watched a bicycle go by with a swaying stack of noodle boxes, followed by sailors, a chestnut vendor’s cart, businessmen who passed in high spirits and returned disappointed a few seconds later, complaining about jungle-music establishments that closed with no apologies or explanation.

Harry crossed the street. The club’s neon sign was not damaged, as far as he could see, simply off. He unlocked the door and found the Happy Paris empty. No customers, no Kondo to mix drinks, no waitresses to serve them. Harry went to the small galley behind the bar and found fresh cold cuts wrapped in butcher paper resting in the icebox, so someone had taken deliveries earlier in the day. Kondo the bartender was so reliable it was hard to believe he’d abandon his post: he loved his Happy Paris uniform so much he wanted to be buried in it. Harry turned the lights on, off, on. Off. What was the point of opening alone?

Michiko came to mind. Had she heard about the plane already? Considering her temper, he was surprised only that she didn’t burn the place down. He ran his hand over the smooth shoulders of the jukebox, looking for support, for his Record Girl, his black-widow spider. Harry pulled down the ladder stairs behind the bar and went up to his apartment. Nothing there was touched. His clothes and hers were still neatly laid in drawers, there were no bodies on the floor or notes in blood. He looked out the window and noticed that the willow house directly across was open for business, its polished gate ajar to a discreet candle glow. A willow suggested something yielding and feminine, the sort of tree that knelt by water to admire its own reflection.

Harry returned to the Happy Paris and slipped into the narrow kitchen. Kondo used the cool space under the floorboards for pickling eggplant, ginger, melon. Harry shifted loose boards, moved pickle jars aside and pulled out a loosely buried cookie tin. Just enough light made its way from the street to see a picture of Tara on the lid. Framed by white plantation columns, Scarlett O’Hara wore a bustle skirt as big as a parachute. Harry lifted the lid. Inside the tin were separate envelopes of cash: $10,000 American, $5,000 in yen and even $1,000 in Chinese yuan. Traveling money. He added the pistol to the money, set the tin on the damp ground and replaced the boards. Things were moving so fast now that he felt light-headed as he stood.

It was just him and the jukebox now. He selected “Any Old Time” and set the volume low. The intro was smooth, melodious, going nowhere in particular until Billie Holiday shyly chimed in, “
Any old time you’re blue, you have our love to chase away the blues
.” As if Michiko were with him, Harry took a solo turn around the record player. For some reason he was put in mind of Kato’s copy of the Moulin Rouge, the redheaded cancan dancer. Too bad they never had dancing at the Happy Paris, Harry thought, only the immobile, inscrutable Record Girl. The front door was open a crack, and figures on the street flickered by. Harry decided he needed something not so sad. Who needed love if they had wings? How many hours till takeoff? Thirty-six? Harry punched three, six. Behind glass the automatic arm lifted Shaw off the turntable and put on “Sing, Sing, Sing,” which Harry regarded as four minutes of pure inspiration, starting with Krupa’s native drums, then joined by a growl of brass and, diving boldly in, Goodman on clarinet. Because of Krupa, “Sing, Sing, Sing” had a manic force that usually made Harry think of Tarzan, conga lines, war canoes. Tonight was different. He imagined tanks rolling over trenches and flamethrowers lighting huts. A horn soloed and a temple turned to a poppy-red ball of fire. Krupa took over and machine guns chattered. Harry didn’t know how long he had listened before he stopped the record and noticed that a geisha stood at the front door, her matte-white face cocked to one side.

“Niles-san?” she asked in a high voice.

“Yes.”

“Please.” The geisha bowed and motioned Harry to follow her. She was small, a shimmer of silk in the dark.

“Now?”

She stayed bowed. “Yes, please.”

Harry saw that she was trying to direct him to the willow house. “Who is there?”

“A friend, please.”

She showed no sign of straightening up, a social pressure that was like a soft nutcracker. Although a geisha party was the last thing Harry was in the mood for, people did not snub geishas in public. Also, this was not a smart time for a gaijin to offend anybody. Even if it was to make excuses, Harry had no choice but to go.

“Okay.”

“Thank you, thank you so much.”

While they crossed the street, the girl chirped about what excellent Japanese he spoke, about such pleasant weather for December. She was vaguely familiar to Harry. He’d seen geisha go in and out of the willow house for the past two years. The problem was that the whole geisha presentation was a mask. Their faces were masks of white greasepaint under elaborate, top-heavy wigs with hairpins and tiny bells. They were wrapped in volumes of kimono and minced unnaturally in high wedge sandals. Every gesture and every note were pieces of acting, a doll-like combination of the innocent and erotic.

Inside the willow-house gate, a walkway lit by stone lanterns led to a slatted door with saucers of salt on either side. Harry left his shoes in a foyer that was discreetly dim and followed the geisha down a hallway lit by standing lanterns. Usually an older man or a lady of the house welcomed a visitor to make sure of the privacy of the parties within. Harry saw no one, heard no one, although on either side were the screens of different rooms. At this hour on a Saturday night, each room should have been ringing with idiot hilarity. There was a parabola to geisha parties: first, the soulful plucking of the shamisen; second, sake-fueled parlor games; third, maudlin singing; fourth, collapse. The girl made not a sound, just a beeline to the end of the corridor where the best room was, as far from the street as possible. As the geisha bustled ahead, he had a good view of the seasonal blue of her kimono and the tinkling bells in her hair and the way the red inner collar revealed the nape of the neck. Every once in a while she would glance back, a painted simper on her red double-bow lips. It was like following a puppet until they reached the end of the hall, where she stumbled ever so slightly, and Harry saw the three pinpoint moles on her neck and felt the electrical charge of recognizing Michiko while his legs carried him forward.

She slid open the screen to the last room. In the middle sat Ishigami in a white kimono at a low table of lacquered black. The colonel was darker than Harry remembered, flesh drawn taut around the skull, skin raw from a campaign in bitter weather, hair close-cropped and flecked with gray. The curve of an unsheathed sword lay across the table. Michiko gently pushed Harry to his knees.

Ishigami’s eyes lit on Harry. He said, “You owe me five heads.”