December 6

by Martin Cruz Smith

  A pumper arrived with a company of firemen. In helmets of lacquered leather with paneled neck protectors they looked like samurai in armor launching a siege. They hosed one another until their jackets of heavy cotton were soaked. One man climbed with a hose to the top of a tall ladder that was supported by nothing but the strong arms of his companions. Other firemen swung stout poles with metal scythes to tear down not only the burning house but also the tattoo shop and eel grill on either side. No one protested, not in a city where sparks swarmed over the rooftops like visible contagion and a hundred thousand could die in a single blaze. A second wall peeled off, revealing a tailor’s dummy trapped by flames. Screens burned from the center, stairs step by step. Hell, Harry thought, why not just build the whole damn thing of matches? Smoke swirled like cannon fire, and all the windows of the street lit, as if each house yearned to join in. The firemen regrouped, their jackets steaming. Firemen had a special incentive in leveling whole neighborhoods, since their second occupation was construction. What they tore down, they rebuilt. Not a bad racket, it seemed to Harry. However, there was more than money in such a drama of smoke and flames. It sometimes struck him that there was in the Japanese a majestic perversity that made them build for fire, leaving open the chance that at any time they could be wiped from the map just so they could start from scratch again.

  But the tailor was defeated. He sank to the ground, a man who would hang himself if he had a rafter and a rope, his eyes dazed by the light that was consuming his life’s possessions, as if he had been displaced from his home by a visiting dragon. He looked vaguely in the direction of the ambulance siren and returned his stupefied gaze to his daughter, the girl who had left her homework on the heater. She was a plump girl who looked like she wished she were already dead. He lifted his eyes to his wife, who looked to Harry like a wrung-out rag, beyond tears. It wasn’t just their shop and home, it was their neighbors’ homes and shops, too, which involved the idiocy of honor and face. As a third house collapsed the tailor sucked air through his teeth and seemed to draw in his eyes to avoid the unbearable sight.

  Harry opened his billfold and found a hundred-yen note. And another hundred-yen note, which cleaned him out. He pressed the money into the wife’s hand.

  The tailor’s boy ran toward the fire, not directly in but obliquely around the firemen. A sack he had been holding had slipped from his hands, spilling small boxes. The boy bent forward as he ran, and Harry saw that he was chasing beetles perhaps two inches long. Every boy kept pet beetles at some point, kept and fed and pampered them. The beetles scuttled nimbly ahead, a miniature menagerie flying in short bursts, not so much drawn to the flames as confused by the fiery heat and glow. Even after a fireman seized the boy by the scruff of his neck and dragged him away from the flames, he struggled to break free. Harry followed the beetles through puddles of water and picked up the insects one by one, depositing them in his jacket pockets. The beetles were black beauties, some equipped with antlers, some with horns. Four had disappeared underfoot into the crowd, but Harry was satisfied that he had rounded up the majority, and when he delivered them, the boy identified each by name as he replaced them in their boxes.

  From the peak of a ladder, a fireman swung his pole like an executioner’s ax and the house next door came down, front punched in, sides sliding together, a house of cards in a city of cards. Glutted, the fire took on a rosy glow that made Harry feel thoroughly baked. He noticed that his pants and sleeves were wet and smudged. He finally noticed by a reflection of the fire in sequined lapels that Michiko was in the crowd, watching him instead of the flames.

  HARRY STANK SO MUCH of smoke that he went straight up to the apartment while Michiko closed the club. He undressed and soaped thoroughly at a bucket, sucked in his balls and sank into a tub of water so hot the steam was suffocating. When he was settled against the velvety wood, he lit a cigarette and let his head rest against the rim. A bath for Harry was both ritual and amniotic fluid. It was his context, the sea he swam in. His missionary parents had been too busy wearing out shoe leather on the byways of Japan to enjoy salubrious moments in a bath, but Harry had been brought up on his nurse’s back. That was how Japanese learned how to behave, bowing whenever their mother —or nurse— bowed. Who had washed him but his nurse? And what followed the washing? A bath veiled in steam, where Harry was as Japanese as the next man.

  Through the steam, he noticed Michiko enter the narrow bathroom with Hajime’s gun. She aimed it at Harry. “Did you call her?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “Ah, this is one of those circular conversations.”

  “Her.” The gun bobbed for emphasis.

  “She couldn’t talk. Her husband was there.”

  A Japanese face could be flat as paper, slits carved for the eyes and mouth. Michiko showed no emotion at all. “If we were married, you could have a mistress, I wouldn’t care. But I am your mistress. I could kill you and then me.”

  She aimed at his head, his heart, his head. It was distracting. Also, he was too old for this. Suicide was for the young.

  “Have you ever fired a gun before?” Harry asked. It was amazing what he didn’t know about Michiko.

  “No.”

  “I’ll bet you a hundred yen you can empty that gun at this range and not hit me.”

  “Your life is worth that little? A hundred yen?”

  “Eight shots, Michiko. You’re not going to get better odds than that.”

  “I could do it so easily.”

  “Keep your elbows flexed. You know, it’s moments like these that make me wonder what marriage with you would actually be like. Michiko, if you’re not going to shoot me, could you get me a drink?”

  “So irritating. Why do you have a gun?”

  “An old friend came by.”

  “And left you this?”

  “I’ll give it back tomorrow.” He pointed to the water. “Michiko, I do believe there’s room for you.”

  “Harry, we know from experience there is not. Why are you giving a speech to bankers tomorrow?”

  “Why not? I’m a respectable businessman.”

  “Respectable? Have you ever looked at yourself, Harry?”

  “Well, you’re not exactly the girl next door, either. Okay, I’m going to see bankers in the morning to screw them out of some money. I’m going to be charming and well rested. That means that right now I will enjoy a soak and a cigarette. Unless you are going to shoot me, of course.”

  “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  “I explained before that I can’t.”

  “But you always have an angle.” The Nambu had a dart-shaped sight. Harry waited for it to waver. Not a millimeter. “Who is this?” Michiko asked.

  Harry wafted steam aside and saw that in her other hand, Michiko held the newspaper picture of Ishigami. “Where did you get that?”

  “Your German friend. Who is it?”

  “An officer we knew in China. I guess he’s back.”

  “Yes. He came to the club tonight after you left.”

  As the news sank in, the bath seemed warmer.

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Exactly what happened?” Harry asked.

  “He went to the bar and asked for you. Kondo said he didn’t know where you were. The colonel asked where you lived, and Kondo said he didn’t know that, either. They talked a little.”

  That was okay, Harry thought. The bartender had four sons in the military. Ishigami wouldn’t hurt Kondo. “Did he talk to anyone else?”

  “The German.”

  “Willie? What did Willie say?”

  “He doesn’t speak Japanese. The colonel saw this picture on the table and was amused.”

  Ishigami amused? That didn’t sound pretty.

  “Was he in uniform?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he threaten anyone?”

  “No.”

  Harry was relieved at that. Sometimes soldiers busted
up cafés out of patriotic fervor. Harry paid for protection from that sort of agitation, and whether he was leaving town or not, he disliked being out good money.

  “As soon as he was gone, I came looking for you.”

  That was pure Michiko, Harry thought. She saw no contradiction in holding a gun on him while expressing concern for his safety.

  “Then nothing really happened, right?”

  Her eyes narrowed, and Harry waited. He could tell she was mustering an attack on a new front. “If there’s a war, what will you do?”

  “There won’t be a war.”

  “If there is.”

  “There won’t be.”

  “If.”

  A man stands on a rock in a river, and sooner or later he slips. Harry regretted his words even as they left his mouth: “I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to be a sucker, a fall guy, the chump left holding the bag.”

  She lowered the gun.

  “Ah. That’s all I need to know.”

  “Michiko, don’t take that the wrong way. That doesn’t mean I’m skipping—”

  But she disappeared from the doorway.

  The news that Ishigami hadn’t forgotten was unnerving. Harry had blithely assumed that no one would survive four years of leading bayonet charges on the China front, yet here he was at the Happy Paris. Ishigami, Ishigami, Ishigami. Sounded like the sweep of legs through high grass. It was like walking down through a misty valley and seeing a white kimono far behind but gaining.

  Of course Harry was skipping town. Any sane person would. People expected war back in June, and now they were in December, each day like a drop of water trying to fall. The way he saw it, the Westerners trapped in Tokyo were there for a reason. They could have gotten out earlier, but they were grown-ups who had made decisions to stick by their Japanese investments or their Japanese wives. Missionaries wanted to scoop a few more souls. DeGeorge wanted one more Pulitzer. If they were counting on Harry to be their weather vane, forget it. Three more days and there would be no Harry Niles in Tokyo or its vicinity. That was the purpose of his talk at the Chrysanthemum Club, not just to massage an audience of bankers but to earn a million-dollar ticket out of Tokyo. It was a matter of playing his cards in the right order at the right time. He didn’t like the news that Ishigami was in uniform, which probably included a sidearm and sword, but he remembered what the poet said: “I went into my bath a pessimist and came out an optimist.” All he had to do was dodge the colonel for two days, and then it was clear sailing.

  Wrapped in a light kimono, Harry wandered with his glass into the living room, which was dark, bedding spread on the floor. Michiko was tucked under the quilt, the gun in her hand. He felt like he was defanging her by easing the gun from her fingers. She stirred, moving her head in dreamy motion.

  He had literally run into her when they met, Harry at the wheel of his car, Michiko bloody from a crackdown on the last Reds in Tokyo, a police sweep that scattered the comrades over rooftops and down alleys. Harry had pulled Michiko into the car and driven off, the first in a series of impulsive decisions he regretted, such as taking her home, patching her head, letting her stay the night. She left in the morning and returned a week later, her hair hacked short, with a pack containing a prayer wheel and the works of Marx and Engels. She stayed another night and another and never left Harry’s for good; that was two years ago. If he’d left her on the street, if he’d given her over to the police, if he hadn’t fed her the morning after he’d rescued her. That was probably the worst mistake of all, the fatal bowl of miso. If he’d just returned her silence when she left instead of asking whether she liked Western music. Gratitude was always a dicey issue in Japan; the very word arigato meant both “thank you” and “you have placed a sickening obligation on me.” When she returned, she presented him with an Ellington record. What was interesting was that it was one of the few Ellington albums he didn’t own, which suggested the possibility that in the middle of the night, her head bandaged, she had searched his apartment while he slept. Besides admitting she was a Red, she told him nothing about her past. Never did. Harry had seen others like her, tough girls from the mills who organized unions in spite of the owners and police, who got their education from night school rather than Tokyo Women’s College and read Red Flag instead of Housewife’s Friend. Men, when they went to prison for radical activities, got religion and dedicated their confessions to the emperor. Women like Michiko hanged themselves in their cells rather than give their keepers an inch of satisfaction. Harry had gotten her into the chorus line at the Folies, but she was too argumentative for management, so when the war scare chased his American musicians from the Happy Paris to Hawaii, he replaced them by making her the enigmatic and, apart from lyrics, silent Record Girl.

  He heard a scraping outside. The club’s neon sign was off, but in the haze of the street-lamp Harry saw the discreet gate of the willow house directly across from the Happy Paris. A willow house was an establishment where geishas entertained. Harry was no fan of geisha parties, but he occasionally hung out in a back room across the street just to escape DeGeorge, if nothing else. A cart with metal-rimmed wheels went by, the nocturnal visit of the night-soil man visiting homes without plumbing, gathering what kept the rice fields fertile, the cycle of life at its most basic. The cart moved aside to let pass a van with the crossed poles and looped wires of a radio direction finder on the roof. The van sifted the air for illegal transmissions the way a boat night-trolled for squid. Or, Harry speculated, if the van was from the Thought Police, perhaps they were trying to sift dangerous ideas out of the air. They typically liked to raid suspects around three in the morning, but this time they seemed to be just passing through. The surveillance usually annoyed Harry, but with Ishigami on the prowl, the added security was welcome. Anyway, in one week, two at the most, Harry would be in the States. He saw himself driving down Wilshire, having that first martini at the Mexican place around the corner from Paramount where they stuffed the olives with chili peppers. He could taste it.

  When Harry left the window and approached the bed again, he saw that Michiko had moved the quilt aside in her sleep. The looseness of an underkimono made her limbs ghostly thin, half submerged in silk. Wouldn’t it be a relief to be with an American girl, a big blonde built for a convertible? He knelt and, with no more pressure than the weight of the air, ran his fingertips around the base of her thumb and up her arm to the warmth and soft hair in the hollow under her arm, then along her collarbone to the line of her cheek as if committing to memory her shape and smoothness, a calligrapher writing in the dark.

  4

  THE THEATER’S DRESSING ROOM was an entry to a new world for young Harry Niles. He and Gen ran errands for singers, dancers, musicians, comedians and magicians, fetching cigarettes, beer by the case, cough syrup for the codeine. Vitamin B was the rage. Soon Oharu would let no one but Harry give her injections. She twisted in her chair, offering her soft, smooth bottom.

  Harry’s guide to this new Japan was the artist Kato. With his French beret, color-stained fingers and silver-headed walking stick, Kato cut a consumptive, sophisticated figure. Looking back, Harry realized that Kato must have been only in his twenties at the time, but he was the first person Harry met who had actually been to France and seemed to know about the world. Harry’s father, the pastor Roger Niles, knew about heaven and hell but not so much about the here and now. In turn, Kato took an interest in Harry the way a man might adopt a monkey. The idea that a gaijin could speak like a Japanese, eat like a Japanese and shoplift cigarettes like a born thief entertained Kato on a philosophical level, and the fact that Harry was a missionary’s son amused him enormously.

  Harry lived for Saturdays between shows when he, Kato and Oharu walked around Asakusa like the royalty of a raffish kingdom. Asakusa stood for pleasure, for theaters, music halls, ballrooms, tearooms, licensed and unlicensed women. Everyone could afford something in Asakusa. And everyone, of course, admired Oharu in her pillbox hat
, white gloves and long French dress that slithered over her like a snake. She had a dancer’s athletic body. Silk hugged her legs and slid across her body while she looked blandly out from under her painted brows.

  Sometimes they would step outside Asakusa to a French patisserie in the Ginza to devour éclairs or visit the Tokyo Station Hotel, which was built into one of the station’s domes. The hotel had an elevator and a plush lobby with velvet chairs, but its greatest attraction was a wrought-iron balcony that ran around the inside of the dome below a crown of plaster eagles. Harry stood on one side of the balcony, Oharu on the other, and her merest whisper would bend around the dome to his ear as if she perched on his shoulder. Once they went to HibiyaPark for a concert of modanjazu, modern jazz. American Negroes played a brassy, speeded-up music before an audience both stupefied and curious. When the band left the stage, people reached with a total lack of self-consciousness to touch the skin of the musicians as if their color might rub off. There was a sense at the time of change and exhilaration. Japan had been on the winning side of the Great War. Fortunes were being made. The future was at hand, nowhere nearer than in Japan, the new great nation, and especially in Tokyo, the seat of the Son of Heaven. If anyone in this center of industry noticed Harry, they saw a pale, unusually round-eyed Japanese schoolboy with a typically shaved head, ratty sweater, knickers and clogs.