by Mo Hayder
‘But -’ she put her hands to her face, horrified ‘- Chongming, it’s dark outside. Haven’t you noticed? Didn’t your mother teach you anything?’
And then I recalled a superstition from my childhood: to cut your nails after dark will certainly bring demons to the house. ‘Well, really, Shujin,’ I said, in a teacherly voice, ‘I do think you’re taking this a little too far-’
‘No!’ she insisted, white in the face. ‘No. Do you want to bring death and destruction on our house?’
I looked at her for a long time, not knowing whether to laugh. At length, when I could see no good reason to antagonize her, I abandoned my nails and returned the scissors to the box. ‘Really,’ I muttered, under my breath. ‘Really, a man has no liberty in his own home.’
It wasn’t until later that night, when she was asleep and I was left alone to stare at the ceiling and wonder, that her words came back to me. Death and destruction. Death and destruction, the last things that should be on our minds. And yet sometimes I wonder about this peace, these long days when Shujin and I lie in our cheerful disagreement under the sullen Nanking skies. Are these days too quiet? Too dream-filled? And then I wonder, Why does last week’s terrible sunrise return to my thoughts hour after hour after hour?
9
All through my teens, in the hospital and at university, whenever I thought about my future it didn’t have wealth attached to it, so I really didn’t know what to do with money. That night, when I put together the tip and my evening’s wages, and worked out that it was the equivalent of a little over a hundred and fifty pounds, I stuffed it into the bottom of my holdall, zipped it up, hurriedly pushed it into the wardrobe and stood back, my heart pounding. A hundred and fifty pounds! I stared at the bag on the floor. A hundred and fifty pounds!
I had made the money I needed for rent and there was no need for me to go back to the club, but something odd had happened. Those customers listening to me had made a tiny part of me open like a flower. ‘I can always tell when a woman’s enjoyed herself,’ Jason said wryly, at the end of the night when we all stood in the lift together. ‘It’s all about blood.’ He held the back of his hand to my face, making me shrink against the glass wall. ‘The way the blood flows to the skin. Fascinating.’ He dropped his hand and gave me a sly wink. ‘You’ll be back tomorrow.’
And he was right. The next day my instinct was to go to Shi Chongming, but how could I approach him after yesterday’s angry scene? I knew I’d have to be patient and wait out the week. But instead of waiting at the house among my books and notes, I went to Omotesando and got the first dress that wasn’t above my knee and didn’t show my cleavage. A tunic in a kind of stiff black bombazine, with three-quarter sleeves. It was smart and didn’t say anything much except ‘I am a dress’. That night Mama Strawberry gave it one cursory look, and nodded. She wetted her finger and pasted aside a strand of my hair, then tapped my arm, pointed to a table of customers and sent me straight out into service, into a whirl of lighted cigarettes, drinks poured and countless ice cubes tonged into glasses.
I can still picture myself that first week, sitting in the club and staring out over the city, wondering which of the lights was Shi Chongming’s. Tokyo was in the grip of a heatwave and the air-conditioner was kept on high, so the hostesses all sat in cool pools of light, their shoulders in their evening dresses bare and silvery like moonlight. In my memory I see myself from outside the building and it’s as if I’m suspended in nothingness, my silhouette bright and blurred behind the plate-glass window, my expressionless white face obscured every few moments by Marilyn swinging past, no one suspecting the thoughts that flit crazily across my mind.
Strawberry seemed to like me, and that was a surprise because her standards were legendary. She spent thousands and thousands of dollars a month on flowers: crab-orange protea flown in refrigerated cartons from South Africa, amaryllis, great ginger lilies and orchids from mountain peaks in Thailand. Sometimes I’d stare at her openly because she held herself up so straight and seemed to love being sexy. She was sexy and she knew it. And that was that. I envied her confidence. She loved her outfits so much: every night it was something different: pink satin, white crêpe-de-Chine, a dress in magenta, roped with sequined straps ‘From How to Marry a Millionaire,’ she said, dropping her arm, pushing out her hip and turning to pout over her square shoulder at the customers. ‘It’s “charmeuse”, you know,’ as if it was a name everyone should recognize. ‘Strawberry can’t walk nice if she not dressed like Marilyn.’ And she’d waggle her mother-of-pearl cigarette-holder at anyone who’d listen. ‘Marilyn and Strawberry same build. Only Strawberry more petite.’ She was short-tempered, always snapping at people, but I didn’t see her really upset until the fifth night I was there. Then something happened that revealed an entirely different side of Mama Strawberry.
It was a hot night, so hot that steam seemed to be coming off the city, a kind of condensation that rose above the top of the buildings and blurred the red sunset. Everyone moved languidly, even Strawberry, drifting round the dance floor, gleaming in her full-length, sequined ‘Happy birthday, Mr President’ gown. She would stop occasionally to murmur something to the pianist, or to place her hand on the back of a chair and throw back her head at a customer’s joke. It was about ten p.m., and she had retreated to the bar where she was sipping champagne, when something made her put down her glass with a terrible clatter. She sat up straight on her stool, and stared stonily at the entrance lobby, her face white.
Six enormous heavies in sharp suits and punch perms had come through the aluminium doors and were looking round the club, snapping cuffs over the wrists, running fingers between collars and thick necks. In the centre of the gang was a slim man in a black polo-neck, his hair tied in a ponytail. He was pushing a wheelchair, in which sat a diminutive insectile man, fragile as an ageing iguana. His head was small, his skin as dry and crenulated as a walnut, and his nose was just a tiny isosceles, nothing more than two shady dabs for nostrils – like a skull’s. The wizened hands that poked out from his suit cuffs were long and brown and dry as dead leaves.
‘ Dame! Konaide yo! ’ Mama Strawberry slipped off the stool, pushed herself up to full height, raising the champagne to her mouth and swallowing it in one, her eyes locked on the group. She put the glass down, snapped a cigarette into her holder, smoothed her dress over her hips, swivelled on her heels and clicked away across the club, her elbow locked against her ribs, the cigarette out at an angle. The piano-player, leaning back on his bench to see what the fuss was, faltered on the keys.
A few feet from the head table, next to the east-facing window with all the best views of Tokyo, Strawberry stopped. Her chin was up, her solid little shoulders pushed back. She put her feet very smartly together and turned boldly to face the group. You could tell she was struggling to control her feelings. She put one hand on a chair, and raised the other stiffly, beckoning to them, using that peculiarly Japanese downward hand movement.
As other customers became aware of the new arrivals, the roar of conversation slowly diminished and every eye swivelled to watch the group make its slow progress across the club. But something else had caught my eye. A small alcove was cut into the wall behind the reception desk, a rectangular area with a table and chairs. Although there was no door, it was at such an angle that anyone inside could be seated out of sight of the other customers and sometimes Mama Strawberry had private meetings in there, or chauffeurs would use it to drink their tea and wait for their clients. As the group moved from the reception area, one figure detached itself, made its way to the alcove and slipped silently inside. The movement was so swift, the shadows on that side of the club so patchy, that I got little more than a glimpse, but what I saw made me sit forward a little, fascinated, uneasy.
The figure was dressed as a woman, in a neat black wool jacket and pencil skirt, but if she was a woman, she was incredibly tall. I had an impression of wide, masculine shoulders, long arms, sinewy legs crammed into large, high
ly polished black stilettos. But what really struck me was her hair: cut in a long, fringed bob, and so glossy it must have been a wig, worn hanging down in such a way that her face was almost totally obscured. Although the wig was extremely long, its ends only reached her shoulders, as if her head and neck were strangely attenuated.
As I watched her, my mouth hanging open a little, the group had reached the table. The waiters were setting it in a flurry of activity, and the invalid was wheeled to the head position, where he sat, crabbed and black as a scarab beetle, while the ponytailed man fussed around, getting him comfortable, directing the waiters where to place the glasses, the carafes of water. From the dark corners of the club twenty hostesses turned nervous eyes to Strawberry, who was moving among the tables, whispering names, calling them up to sit with the group. In her face there was a strange, bloodless look of something like anger. For a moment I couldn’t place that expression, but when she threw back her head and clipped across the floor to me, I saw it. All the small muscles in her face were twitching. Strawberry was nervous.
‘Grey san,’ she said, leaning over to me and speaking in a low voice. ‘Mr Fuyuki. You go now and sit with him.’
I reached for my bag, but she stalled me with a finger to her lip.
‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘Be very careful. Don’t say nothing about nothing. There are good reason people afraid of him. And…’ She hesitated and looked at me very carefully. Her eyes had narrowed and the tiniest rim of brown iris showed behind the blue contact lenses. ‘Most important of all is her.’ She raised her chin to indicate the alcove. ‘Ogawa. His Nurse. You must never try to speak to her, or look her in the eye. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ I said faintly, my eyes drifting to the huge shadow. ‘Yes. I think so.’
Anywhere in Tokyo you could be aware of the presence of the yakuza: the underground gangs who claimed to be descendants of the samurai tradition. They were some of the most feared and violent men in Asia. Sometimes it was just the sounds of the bosozoku motorcycle gangs that reminded you of their existence, like a chrome wave rolling down Meiji Dori at dead of night, sweeping everything in front of them, the characters for kamikaze painted on their helmets. But at other times you’d be aware of gang members in less tangible ways: odd visual segments – the flash of a Rolex in a café, a boxy man with a punch perm rising from a restaurant table and tucking his polo shirt into black Crimplene trousers, a pair of shiny snakeskin shoes on a hot day on the subway. Or a tattoo on the hand that bought a ticket in the queue in front of you. I didn’t give them much thought, not until I walked across the club that night and, in the hushed silence that had fallen, heard someone sitting near the dance floor whisper, ‘ Yakuza. ’
At the table there was absolute silence. All the hostesses seemed sunk inside themselves, nervously avoiding meeting anyone else’s gaze. Everyone seemed determined not to sit with their back to the Nurse, who was still seated in the alcove, motionless as a snake. I was given a place near Fuyuki in his wheelchair and I was close enough to study him. His nose was so small it looked as if it had been eaten away in a fire, making every breath rattle noisily. But his face, if not exactly kindly, was peaceful, or watchful, like a very old tree frog’s. He didn’t attempt to speak to anyone.
His men sat quietly, their hands placed respectfully on the table while they waited for the man in the ponytail to prepare Fuyuki’s drink. He produced a heavy shot glass wrapped in a white linen napkin, which he filled to the brim with the malt whisky, swirled it twice, dumped the whisky in the ice bucket, wiped the glass carefully with the napkin, then refilled it. He held up his hand to stall the other men from drinking and there was a brief hiatus while he passed the glass to Fuyuki, who lifted it with a trembling hand and sipped. He lowered the glass, pressed one hand to his stomach, the other to his mouth to hide a belch, and, satisfied, nodded.
‘ Omaetachi mo yare.’ The ponytailed man jerked his chin towards the ceiling to indicate that the men could now drink. ‘ Nonde.’
The henchmen relaxed. They lifted their glasses and drank. Someone stood and removed his jacket, someone else pulled out a cigar and snipped it. Slowly the mood softened. The girls refilled the glasses, tonged in ice and mixed the drink with the Some Like It Hot swizzle sticks, using the little plastic silhouettes of Marilyn to push the ice around in the glass and it wasn’t long before everyone was talking at once and the conversation was louder than at any other table in the club. Within an hour all the men were drunk. The table was littered with bottles and half-finished dishes of pickled radish, dainty purple yam and lobster crackers.
Irina and Svetlana asked for Fuyuki’s meishi. It wasn’t an odd thing to do – out of habit most customers presented us with their business cards within a few minutes of being seated, but Fuyuki didn’t give out his cards lightly. He frowned and coughed and looked the Russians up and down suspiciously. It took a long time and a lot of cajoling to get him to fish into his suit – his name, I noticed, when he moved, was embroidered in gold thread above the inside pocket – slide out some meishi and distribute them around the table, scissoring them between his brown fingers, his palm facing down. He leaned over to the ponytailed man and whispered in a dry, scratched voice, ‘Tell them not to treat me like a trained monkey. I don’t want anyone calling me and asking me to the club. I’ll come when I want to come.’
I stared down at the card in my hands. I’d never seen one so beautiful before. It was on rough, unbleached handmade paper, the edges ragged. Unlike most cards it had no address and no English translation on the back. It bore only a telephone number and Fuyuki’s kanji, only his second name, hand-calligraphed in pine-soot ink.
‘What is it?’ Fuyuki whispered. ‘Is something wrong?’
I shook my head and gazed at it. The little kanji were beautiful. I was thinking how wonderful this old alphabet was – how morose and thin the English language seemed in comparison.
‘What is it?’
‘Winter Tree,’ I murmured. ‘Winter Tree.’
One of the men at the end of the table began to laugh before I’d finished. When no one else joined in, he changed the laugh to a cough, covering his mouth with a napkin and fumbling to take a swallow of his drink. A baffled silence fell, and Irina scowled, shaking her head regretfully. But Fuyuki sat forward and said, in his whispery Japanese, ‘My name. How did you know what my name means? Do you speak Japanese?’
I looked up at him, my face white. ‘Yes,’ I replied, a little unsteadily. ‘Just a little.’
‘You can read it too?’
‘Only five hundred kanji.’
‘Five hundred? Sugoi. That’s a lot.’ People were looking at me as if they had only just realized I was a human being, and not a piece of the furniture. ‘And where did you say you were from?’
‘ England?’ It came out as a tentative question.
‘ England?’ He leaned over and seemed to be peering at me. ‘Tell me, are they all so pretty in England?’
Being told I was pretty by anyone… well, it was just lucky that it didn’t happen very often, because that was when I got itchy and uncomfortable, remembering all the things that were probably never going to happen to me. Even if I was ‘pretty’. Old Fuyuki’s comment made me blush and retreat into myself. I didn’t speak from that moment on. I sat in silence smoking cigarette after cigarette and made every excuse to get away from the table. If there was a fresh glass to be brought from the bar, or a new plate of snacks, I’d leap up and get it, taking my time.
The Nurse barely moved all night. I couldn’t help sneaking glimpses at her – her shadow almost motionless on the alcove wall. I could tell the waiters were uneasy about her presence: usually one of them would slip into the room and find out what the occupant wanted to drink, but tonight it seemed only Jason had the courage to speak to her. When I came to the bar for a fresh hot towel, I saw him in there. He had taken the whisky menu to her, moving confidently, unafraid, and was sitting casually against the table, his arms cross
ed, looking down at her. I had a few moments to study her.
She sat side on to me and she was amazing to look at – every inch of her skin was covered in a crumbly white powdered makeup, caking the cracks on her neck, the lines on her wrists. The only breaks in the white were her odd tiny eyes, small and dark as finger-holes in dough, single-lidded, set a long way from her nose, so deep inside her head that the sockets seemed empty. Mama Strawberry had been worried about me looking at the Nurse, but you couldn’t have met her eyes if you tried, and their odd positioning must have meant she had poor eyesight, because she was holding the menu very close to her face, passing it back and forward in front of her face almost as if she was smelling it. I didn’t turn and go straight back to the table, but lingered for a few moments at the bar, pretending to be preoccupied with inspecting the hot towel, as if it might be flawed.
‘She’s kinda sexy,’ I heard Jason tell the bar staff when he came out with her order. He leaned his elbows casually on the bar and spoke to no one in particular. ‘Sexy in a freako S and M way.’ He looked over his shoulder at her, a small, amused smile twitching at his mouth. ‘Reckon I’d do the bad thang with her if I had to.’ He turned back then, and saw me standing at the bar, staring at him in silence. He winked and raised his eyebrows, as if sharing a tremendous joke with me. ‘Nice legs,’ he explained, nodding at the Nurse. ‘Or maybe it’s the heels that are doing it for me.’
I didn’t answer. I snatched up the oshibori and turned away, a stupid blush spreading all over my face and my shoulders. The thing about Jason was that he always made me feel a little like crying.
It’s funny how people can plant ideas in your head. Much, much later that night, I looked down at my legs, crossed neatly under the table. I was quite drunk, and I remember seeing them, crossed primly at the ankles, and thinking, What do nice legs look like? I smoothed down my tights and moved my knees apart a little, so that I could see my thighs a little more clearly. I turned them so I could see the calf and the little tautness when I flexed my feet. I wondered if ‘nice legs’ looked anything like my legs.
