by Matt Killeen
Stay still, she screamed to herself, as her feet bumped painfully over the threshold of the door to the assistant’s office and onto carpet. She remembered that smell, though—
The door closed with the smallest swish, and the arms released Sarah onto the floor. The desk lamp came on.
Standing above her was the ambassador’s secretary, Fujiwara. Her expression was concentrated, revealing nothing, but the smallest series of blinks revealed the effort required to not give anything away. Sarah looked at the exit that led to the corridor. Even from the floor she might get there first . . . but looking at the dark red streak her foot had left on the light carpet, she knew she couldn’t outrun the woman as far as the staircase. Even a woman in high-heeled shoes. Wearing Chanel No. 5.
Fujiwara saw the look to the exit. Silently and slowly she shook her head, before raising a manicured index finger to her lips.
Her other hand held a gun, a weapon so small that Sarah hadn’t identified it as such until then, it being just a glint of silver and dull white pearl. The woman looked at Sarah, then placed it on the desk and reached over to a box next to the typewriter.
She flicked a switch and the voice of Hasse oozed into the room, as if heard on a wireless set.
“—this mission on the edge of the Congo has been receiving money from some friends of ours in the United States, friends whom I have been helping fund.”
Fujiwara leaned against her desk and readjusted hair that had come loose in the struggle, without looking away from Sarah.
“These friends obsess over Wunderwaffe, and always want to know what horrors can be dug up from the dark continent,” Hasse continued excitedly. “But I believe that these missionaries really have stumbled upon something marvelous . . .”
The woman seemed to have come to a decision. She crouched, pointing at Sarah’s right foot, before making a give it to me gesture with her fingers. Hasse’s voice droned on behind her.
“. . . it is highly infectious,” Hasse burbled happily. “Guaranteed lethal, and if this virus is truly airborne—”
The ballet shoe slid off her foot to reveal a sock saturated with blood. Just that movement made Sarah wince and clench her teeth. She glanced at the gun on the edge of the desk. She could kick Fujiwara in the face with her other foot, get to the—
The woman shook her head and gently squeezed the sole of her foot through the sock. The pain was jagged, sharp, piercing, like a flashbulb light, like vinegar in a papercut. It left Sarah panting.
“Kangaenasai . . .” the secretary whispered, tapping the side of her head.
“Do we want a virus that’s one hundred percent fatal?” Ishii’s booming voice crackled, distorted by the desk speaker. “If the enemy doesn’t have to care for the sick—”
Sarah’s sock was teased from her foot, and Fujiwara tutted at the sight of the wound, before standing and rummaging through the desk drawers.
“My friend, you are thinking too small,” said Hasse, quieter, more distant. “Imagine the expanse of China . . . entirely free of the Chinese. That long, difficult war you’ve been fighting, using up all your strength . . . over in a few weeks. No garrison required, just ten million square kilometers of a new Japan, with all its resources and no sub-humans littering the land . . .”
Sarah had been distracted up until that moment, by the pain in her foot, by the actions of the secretary, and by the peculiarity of the situation. But that sentence, the matter-of-fact, mundane coldness of it, stopped the racing train of her thoughts like a fallen tree.
The woman had also stopped and was staring at the speaker.
Ishii exhaled. The sound through the intercom was like the snort of a horse.
“We’d lose a workforce . . .” Ishii mused. “We’d have to import more Korean forced labor.”
Fujiwara’s mouth had fallen open as she heard this, outrage and distaste overtaking her. Then she glanced at Sarah to see her staring back. The woman’s mouth closed, sealing away the visible emotion. She pulled a first aid kit from the desk.
“It’s what we call here Lebensraum,” Hasse pontificated. “A bit of room for your people to live. You’d be doing them a great service.”
The secretary crouched again, and after a moment’s preparation began to swab alcohol onto the sole of Sarah’s foot. She was in her late twenties, Sarah guessed, but her eyes seemed older, more tired. There was something very familiar there, but Sarah wondered if she just recognized suffering.
“You’ll obtain samples for me?” Ishii grunted.
“And you will do the field trials? . . . Although it sounds like they’re doing that already,” Hasse continued with a laugh. Like sandpaper on steel.
The secretary gripped something embedded in Sarah’s foot with a pair of tweezers.
“Shush,” she whispered to Sarah, and pulled.
Sarah hissed once more as she saw a flashbulb light and felt the tearing stab. She squeezed her eyes shut against it.
When she opened them again, Fujiwara was holding up a serrated sliver of white tile, two centimeters long.
She mouthed, Wao, and dropped it into the kit. She looked very young at that moment. Very alive. Sarah marveled at how much this woman was concealing.
“You see, until we invade the Soviet Union, I don’t have anywhere to do them,” Hasse explained. “Poland is too small and too full of Germans. Italian East Africa is too near to the British. Your unit in Manchukuo is perfect. You have human test subjects, the ‘logs,’ do you not?”
As the woman bandaged her foot, Sarah could see her mouthing the odd word or phrase coming from the speaker, as if committing it to memory.
“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Ishii growled. “And you’re still allied to the Soviet Union—”
“You and I are adults, Ishii. We both know how worthless that alliance is to Germany, even if Stalin apparently does not. And you have nothing to lose here. Do you want to go on poisoning rivers and giving children contaminated sweets, or do you want to create something truly destructive? A weapon to conquer China? Even the United States?”
“I should strike you for your impertinence,” Ishii said quietly.
“But you won’t because you know I’m right. I have some nerve gases you might be interested in, too—”
“Yes, I’ve read those papers, thank you. Not exactly secret. Why don’t you use them on Stalin?”
“If I controlled them, I would.” Hasse laughed. “You met Stalin once, didn’t you?”
“No, but I did see his work. He’s as intent on wiping out his people as you are, if the starved corpses in the streets were anything to go by.” Ishii paused. “They did claim to be making smallpox, tularemia, typhus, glanders . . . but they also said they had a grain surplus.”
“Either way, they won’t be alive to use any of it.”
* * *
The men talked of their families, then of their favorite Laufhäuser in Paris, before they left noisily.
Fujiwara leaned against her desk, smoking and watching Sarah struggling to put her damp sock back on. She listened to the men’s voices fading away to nothing, and when she was sure they were gone, she stubbed out her cigarette and straightened up.
“So,” she said out loud at last, in quiet, fluent but heavily accented, singsong German that reminded Sarah of something. “Who would send a little girl to spy on the Japanese ambassador to the German Reich?” She pushed her gun idly in a circle on the desk with a manicured finger, repeating the word Reich until the R hardened, and continued. “That’s not very ethical, is it?”
Sarah picked up her shoe, which was a flat and sodden dripping mess. She tried to tease the wet satin upper from the sole.
“Ethical like a secretary listening into her bosses’ private conversations?” Sarah replied, uncertain of how to proceed.
“Well, Rikugun-Gun’i-Taisa Ishii Shirō is not my
employer, and the Obersturmbannführer is gaijin, a foreign agent,” Fujiwara stated in mock solemnity. “His Excellency will be delighted that I can report extensively on the meeting that he was ejected from. From. From.” She walked around her desk and opened several drawers. “Tell me, little Nazi girl, who will be delighted that you can do the same?”
She tossed two flat-soled shoes at Sarah, who let them bounce to the floor before thinking better of it and retrieving them. They were only two sizes too large, and Sarah could depart, if she was departing, without leaving a bloody trail through the embassy.
Lies will eat you up, she thought.
“I work for the Abwehr,” Sarah stated, pulling a shoe over her injured foot.
“The Abwehr!” Fujiwara cried out melodramatically, looking to the heavens and placing both hands to her face, an expression that, again, Sarah found oddly familiar. “We’re being spied on by the German Army! That would be simply awful . . .” She dropped her hands, cocked her head to one side, and made a sad face. “If it were true. But it’s not.”
“It is true, it is,” Sarah found herself saying.
“You are telling me that, er . . . German military intelligence is now employing little girls? Jewish little girls?”
Sarah felt paralyzed and cold. She fought the rising panic and the urge to repeatedly inhale.
She forced a smile that could turn into a snarl, and shaking her head, she managed a dismissive snort. She rose to a standing position, ready to leave, to bluff it out, to seize the gun.
“I’m not a . . . Jew, that’s ridiculous . . . and an insult. Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Yes, you are. It’s passed down by the mother, yes?” The woman leaned into her. “And you’re Alexandra Edelmann’s daughter.”
Sarah took a step backward, the shake of her head no longer voluntary.
“You are Sarah Edelmann . . . no, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah Goldstein, your real name. That’s you.”
Sarah lunged for the gun and closed her hands around it, but her foot gave way and she collapsed to the floor. She fumbled the tiny, heavy piece of metal, trying to hold the stock and aim the barrel but failing. Fujiwara smiled and knelt down next to Sarah, neatly swatting the weapon from her hands. Sarah was hyperventilating as she crawled backward.
The woman’s face softened and she began to sing in a gentle, lilting timbre, a melody both foreign and utterly, wholly part of Sarah’s being.
“Kono-ko yō-naku, mori-woba ijiru—”
“Lady Sakura?” Sarah gasped.
The woman blinked and held a hand in front of her mouth to hide a wide grin, but it could not hide her dimples.
“It has been a long, long time since somebody called me that.”
* * *
* * *
The music got louder. The laughter more raucous.
Sarah covered her ears with her hands, but it was no longer enough. The dull stabbing through them made her want to collapse in on herself, to fold her head into a clenched fist. It was the second night of the earache, a constant blanket of fever, warm pus, and pain.
Someone sat on the piano keys, and when this drew a laugh and a burst of applause, they did it again. And again.
Sarah rolled her lower body off the edge of her mother’s bed and let her weight carry her feet the last few centimeters to the floor. She stood, shivering, her nightgown damp with sweat. She was small, not much taller than the vertiginous bed, and the ceiling seemed like the distant vaults of a great hall.
Tottering unsteadily and fighting the dizziness, she made her way down the hall toward the noise and lights.
She passed two men with glazed eyes slumped against the wall and skirted a wide pool of clear liquid and broken glass. Emerging into a packed piano room that was thick with tobacco smoke and intensely bright, she searched for her mother.
A woman, half-dressed and with streaked makeup, sat bouncing on the piano keyboard, laughing hysterically. An enraptured audience of middle-aged men clapped along. Gramophone records were crushed underfoot, empty bottles were strewn, spinning on the sticky floor, and those who were not unconscious on the furniture were shouting to each other over the noise.
Sarah saw her mother talking to a tall man from the theater. Struggling to pass a gyrating dancer who was sloshing a yellow liquid out of a green bottle, Sarah called out.
“Mutti—” Sarah began.
Her mother turned, eyes red, saturated in irritation. “Sarahchen, go back to bed at once. It’s very late, very late . . . very early in fact. Too early to get up.”
“Mutti, it’s really loud. I can’t sleep and . . . my ear really hurts and—”
“I’m working, just go to bed,” her mother hissed. “Or join the party, I don’t care.”
A single tear rolled down Sarah’s cheek. It cooled as it traveled, to become cold and uncomfortable as it gathered on her chin for the final drop.
“I’ll see to her, Alexandra-san,” said a singsong voice. Alexandla. “Alexandra. Alexandra.”
Sarah turned to see a mountain of brightly colored fabric gliding across the floor toward her. There were robes upon robes of silks and patterned cloth, rising to a wide sash of bundled material and ties, before erupting over the top with two wide sleeves. The vision had a porcelain-white face, the features and expression seemingly painted on, while her hair, jet-black buns as smooth and perfect as polished ebony, was adorned by combs, flowers, and streams of falling petals.
Then the vision suddenly grinned, cracking the blankness of the mask. Above the edges of her smile, small dimples formed, and warmth flowed from them. The face under everything, her true face, was little more than a teenager’s.
“Sarah-san, take my hand,” she said. “I am Lady Sakura.”
“Hello, Lady . . . but my mother . . .”
“Your mother is working, she has asked me to care for you. She tells me you are sick. Come . . .”
Sarah thought that this wasn’t how it had happened, but she felt weak and unable to argue. She reached out for the woman’s hand, which was long, slender, and as soft as anything she had touched.
The woman bent down and swept Sarah into her arms. There was the scent of clothes badly stored, a touch of mothball, the tension of bathed skin and poorly laundered material, and the crisp jasmine and rose tang of what Sarah identified as Chanel No. 5.
They flew from the crowded room, the partygoers melting away in front of them.
It felt quieter and cooler in her mother’s room than it had before. Even the bed felt less monolithic and softer, being laid on it by two caring arms.
“You’re Japanese?” Sarah wondered aloud as she wriggled under the covers.
“I am. A visitor to your country,” Lady Sakura murmured, feeling Sarah’s brow and making a clucking noise. She reached for a tumbler of water but did not like what she found there.
“Are you a geisha?” Sarah asked, remembering the word.
The woman placed a hand in front of her mouth to conceal a smile, but her eyes creased under the white makeup and the grin danced across her dimples. “No, I am not. I am a professional fake.” She chuckled. “Hitsuji no atama, inu no niku.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sheep head, dog meat. I am not as advertised. I am just a dancer and singer, and a . . . courtesan.”
“What is a courtesan?”
The woman paused and shook her head.
“Not a geisha. Geisha are artists, respected, refined. Once, long ago, I was maiko, an apprentice geisha. Now . . .” She paused. “Now, I am just a showgirl,” she finished with a joviality that Sarah did not believe.
“Is there anything wrong with being a showgirl?” Sarah ventured. “All our friends are show people . . .”
“I wanted to be a geisha, then to travel the world like Madame Sadayakko, the Sarah
Bernhardt of Japan, bewitching theaters of westerners. To return home, cherished. But the world does not need two Sada Yaccos. Just more cheap, exotic dancers in inexpensive kimonos . . . so people can mock their eyes.” Lady Sakura added the last sentence almost to herself, then leaned forward and whispered in a conspiratorial stage whisper, “This obi, my sash, is a curtain from a boardinghouse in Hamburg.”
She began to laugh, not trying to cover her mouth, or maintain her tranquil aspect. It was a deep belly-chuckle that set her shoulders quaking. It made Sarah smile for its joy, but that made her wince. Lady Sakura settled onto the bed next to her.
“Mimi no itami? Pain in your ears?” The woman sighed and made a deep noise of profound sympathy. “Come, I will help you sleep. This is a lullaby from where I grew up, so close your eyes.”
She gathered Sarah into her right arm and began to sing in a flute-like voice of penetrating gentleness.
“Kono-ko yō-naku mori-woba ijiru . . .”
Sarah fought the song’s soporific effect.
“That’s beautiful,” she managed when it was over. “And sad, really sad. What does it mean?”
“The lullaby is sung by a servant girl, looking after another family’s baby, who is crying.” Without the melody and her voice, the words are dark and painful. “She is tired and without sleep, and she pleads with the baby to rest. She wants to leave, to return to her own family, but she cannot, she has nothing. She is ashamed.”
“Why can’t she go home?” Sarah complained, burdened by the misery of the story.
Lady Sakura looked away.
“She is of the Burakumin people,” she began. “She is an eta as they used to say, the lowest of the low, worth just one seventh of a real person. The Burakumin have long done the dirty work—burying the dead, slaughtering animals, making leather. That was all they were permitted to do, but they were shunned because they did it. People no different, treated as outcasts, for their whole lives . . . The girl in this lullaby is lucky to have that job. Lucky. She should be grateful.”
