The Japanese Corpse ac-5

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  "I found him maps of Kobe and Kyoto, at his request, and he studied the street names and general layouts. He asked me to examine him afterward, and he knew practically everything the maps could tell him. He even memorized the numbers of the streetcars and buses and where they go to, and my aunt translated the notes for him, tourist information-where the stores are and the museums, that sort of thing. He knew it all. Both Kobe and Kyoto are large cities, they each have about a million people; the information he has stored should be very useful. In Kyoto you will find art. I would suggest that I show you some of the famous temples over there so that you can become acquainted with what you are supposed to be interested in. There are also private collections we can see."

  "Yes," the commissaris said. "I bought some books on the subject and I have done my homework, but that's a good idea. And what did the sergeant do?"

  "We found some priests who will play our game," Dorin continued, sipping his iced coffee. "The buying of stolen art can be set up fairly easily, I think. The heroin connection may be difficult, however. Perhaps we should take the shortest way and talk to the Chinese Communist Commercial Delegation directly. They will pretend they know nothing, but they will send a man around later. We'll have to go to Kobe, I think."

  "The sergeant?"

  "He has great powers of concentration," Dorm said, and played with his coffee glass, moving it about in a circle on the plastic tabletop; the glass squeaked. "And he is a good companion. But I found him a little unnerving too."

  The commissaris sighed. He remembered a saying from a book on Chinese philosophy: Hurry is a fundamental error. He looked at Dorm's hands. Honey-color, not yellow. He wondered why Westerners consider the Japanese a yellow-skinned race.

  "Yes?" he asked pleasantly.

  "Your sergeant seems to have some rage in him, bottled up and compressed. A great pressure. It shows in his actions. I know that rage, I think. I have some of it myself. You probably know that I work for the Japanese Secret Service. Some of my colleagues show the rage plainly. It is an aggression, white-hot, like melted steel. They are at war, but it isn't clear who the enemy is. Perhaps you know what I mean. I am told you are a police officer and you specialize in crimes of violence."

  "Perhaps," the commissaris said. "But go on, please. What happened?"

  Dorin's eyes wandered over the commissaris' face. He began to speak hesitantly, leaving pauses. "One evening we went out together, two days ago now. Your assistant likes sake, our Japanese gin. It is often called rice wine, but it is much stronger than wine; it's a spirit, served hot, in small cups. We had a small jug each in a small bar and wandered into the pleasure quarter. We wandered about until we found ourselves in the poorest part of the red light district. It was fairly late and there weren't many people about. In a back alley we suddenly came across three young men who were throwing stones at a cat. Young toughs, leather boys with long hair, you know the type, they are usually drug dealers and pimps, in a small way. Brainless idiots with minds like rats."

  The commissaris dipped his neat little head. "Yes, I know the type, it's universal."

  "They were throwing stones at a cat. The animal was dying; it had broken its back and blood came from its mouth but it wasn't dead yet. But the three toughs were picking up more stones and laughing. De Gier-san attacked them without any warning. He saw what they were doing and jumped. He was so quick that I couldn't restrain him straightaway. He attacked to kill. I broke his grip and he let go of the first man but twisted himself free and went for the two others. They never had a chance, although I am sure that they were trained street fighters and probably armed with knives. By the time I got hold of the sergeant again and dragged him off, all three of them were down. Somebody must have seen the fight and phoned the police."

  "He didn't get himself arrested, did he?" the commissaris asked.

  Dorin smiled. "No, no. We got away. We ran in different directions and I lost sight of him. He turned up the next morning at the inn. He did very well really. It's difficult for a gaijin, a foreigner, to hide himself in Japan, but de Gier-san managed. He told me he vaulted over a wall and landed in the little garden of a house. The house belongs to an old lady, a retired prostitute, and she wasn't frightened when she saw him picking his way through her azaleas. He remembered to bow and smile and wish her a good evening and to excuse himself. He has learned two hundred words by heart; my aunt helped him with the pronunciation. He said 'komban-was,' good evening, and 'sumimasen,' excuse me. They had tea together and she put him up for the night."

  The commissaris grinned. "Good. The sergeant has a way with women; I am glad he hasn't lost it. He has had a severe personal loss a short time ago, lost both his girlfriend and his cat in a traffic accident. He had a nervous breakdown but he recuperated. Maybe the recent horror of his loss explains his action, but please go on, I am sorry I interrupted you. So he got away."

  "Yes. The police arrived quickly. I heard their siren as I ran, but I got to a main thoroughfare and mingled with the crowd. I inquired the next day and found out what had happened to the sergeant's victims. They were taken to the hospital and they are still there. Broken arms, twisted neck, bruised ribs, concussion. He really messed them up."

  "Any danger to life?"

  "The doctors were worried about the fellow with the twisted neck, but it seems they can fix it. He'll have to wear a support for some months."

  The commissaris breathed deeply, turned and waved at the waitress. He ordered more coffee. "Well, well," he said, "I shouldn't have allowed him to be on his own perhaps, or I should have asked the ambassador to let you know about his state of nerves. This shouldn't have happened. You said he attacked them without any warning. He might have killed them if you hadn't been around. I am surprised really. He has been taught two methods of fighting, judo proper and a series of grips and movements which the police have worked out for arresting and holding suspects. But both methods are defensive rather than aggressive."

  Dorin sipped his coffee and nodded pensively. "Yes. We are taught aggressive fighting, I am a commando on loan to the Secret Service. Most of the grips I have learned will kill the enemy instantaneously. When I saw the sergeant jump I thought of a commando going in for the attack. There wasn't a moment of hesitation. That's why I made my assumption that he has a rage in him. I didn't know about his dead girlfriend and his cat. The toughs were torturing a cat. I understand the sergeant a little better now."

  "A nice round case of attempted manslaughter," the commissaris said, "with extenuating circumstances. In court he would be in a weak position. I don't think a Dutch judge would let him go. Are the police looking for him now?"

  "They are," Dorin said, "but they don't have a proper description. There were no witnesses and the victims can't remember any details. They saw that he was a gaijin and tall, and one of them saw his moustache and curly hair, but that is all. I don't think the police will find him, and if they do they'll drop the case once the Service tells them that the sergeant is a friend. I don't think there is anything to worry about. On the contrary, perhaps it is a good thing the sergeant happens to be in this particular state of mind. We are up against a strong and ruthless enemy and we are fairly weak as long as we are under cover. If I could fight them openly I would squash them in no time at all. I can easily muster a force ten or twenty times as strong as all the yakusa combined, but that'll be for later. Now we are just three men, with some anonymous help to back us up. But we can't show our strength for a while."

  "And I am not exactly a fighter," the commissaris said smiling. "Yes, I see your point. So you think we shouldn't disturb the sergeant by scolding him?"

  "No," Dorin said firmly, but laughed to take the strength out of the word. "The sergeant is fighting heaven, for heaven killed his girlfriend and his cat. It was an accident, you said, so no known power can be blamed. But the sergeant wants to blame something. So far he is blaming heaven, soon he'll be blaming the yakusa."

  The commissaris took off his glasses, put t
hem on the table and began to rub his eyes. "I think I would like to go to your uncle's inn now," he said pleasantly. "Do they serve Japanese meals?"

  "Breakfast is Western style," Dorin said, and grinned. "Lunch and dinner are Japanese, but you can eat out. De Gier-san usually eats out. Our food can be enjoyed by Westerners, but it takes a little while to acquire the taste. Still, you may enjoy my aunt's cooking; her sukiyaki is famous and you may like it."

  He paid the bill and picked up the commissaris' suitcase. As they left two men got up from a nearby table and followed them. When the commissaris got into Dorin's small car he saw the two men get into a gray Datsun.

  "We are being followed, I think," he said.

  Dorin smiled. "They are ours," he said. "I think my department is exaggerating. I can look after you on my own, especially here where nothing is supposed to happen. In Kobe things may be different. But when my boss heard that you are chief of the Amsterdam CID he became nervous. I am afraid there will be men following you everywhere."

  "Is de Gier being followed too?" the commissaris asked, turning around to take another look at the gray Datsun.

  "They were behind us in that alley," Dorin said, "but they melted away. They are only supposed to be of service."

  "They wouldn't have attacked the police, would they?"

  "They might have," Dorin said, turning the wheel to avoid a motorized tricycle carrying a load of rice bags. "They are very dedicated men and their orders are clear enough. But I am glad they didn't have to. I hate explaining difficult situations to the police. They think differently, you know."

  "I know," said the commissaris.

  \\ 9 /////

  "It must have been an interesting experience for you," the commissaris said, and stretched himself out on the thin mattress which a servant girl had unrolled from a cupboard cleverly hidden in the wall. She had made the bed quickly, with a minimum of movements, tucking in sheets and covering it with a light padded cotton blanket. The cushion was small and hard but the commissaris had pounded it into shape, grunting with pleasure.

  De Gier had been watching him from his own bed, at a distance of exactly four mats, and had enjoyed the old man's antics. De Gier had had the large room to himself for five days. There were other rooms available, but when the innkeeper suggested that they should share, both to save expense and to enjoy each other's company, the commissaris had assented at once. Dorin had left as soon as he saw that his guests were comfortable and had promised to return later that evening.

  "Very nice," the commissaris was saying, half to himself, half to the sergeant. "That bath!"

  "The only civilized way to bathe," de Gier said. "We are primitive people. It had never occurred to me that there are other ways to take a bath but there was no comparison."

  "Yes." The commissaris had lit a cigar and was looking at a sliding door covered with tightly stretched white paper. The moon caused a shadow of some waving reed grass in the small garden outside. The grass stalks moved slightly and a pattern was formed on the door. "Yes, sergeant, obviously it is best to stress the pleasure of soaking. Soaking in hot water is the good part of a bath, but the way we do it is silly. We lie in our own dirty water, for we wash first and then soak. Here we washed first too, but we did it outside the bath, on a tiled floor. And then we soaked. Afterward. In clean very hot water. For a long time. My legs don't hurt at all. Ah." He stretched again.

  "You said something about an interesting experience, sir. Were you referring to the bath?"

  "No. I was referring to your attempted manslaughter. You very nearly killed one man, I am told, and seriously hurt two others. They were torturing a cat. Your crime doesn't balance theirs, so technically you are at fault and you may be arrested and charged. Not having given yourself up, you are now a fugitive. I don't think you have ever been a fugitive before."

  De Gier grinned. "I see, sir. I hadn't thought about it really. Maybe I have come to the end of the road?"

  "No." The commissaris contemplated his toes. The ten wriggling shrimps at the end of the mattress took him back to the blurred warm dreamland where his mother would pick him up from his bath and put him on a couch, wrapped in a towel. There wasn't anything left to wish for. De Gier's presence, the lanky figure sitting in a corner of the beautifully quiet room, comforted him and his mind went back for a moment to the memory of the meal they had just shared: a fried fish on an oval plate decorated with rice and vegetables, served on the low table which now carried a tray and two small jugs with matching cups.

  As De Gier got up to pour sake into the cups, the commissaris thought that he knew the sergeant well. He accepted the cup of sake and sipped the strong hot liquid, smiling at de Gier who winked at him. "Strong stuff, sergeant. I'd better be careful, we may have things to do tomorrow."

  "Yes sir, but a few cups won't do much harm. These jugs are designed for Japanese stomachs, and they are a lot smaller than ours. One jug will relax them; they begin to get drunk on the second. We can probably have two jugs each and still stay perfectly sober."

  There was no tension in the sergeant as he sat back against a post in the wall, his legs tucked into each other and his back almost straight. A different man from the mental patient the commissaris had taken care of in his house in Amsterdam. The doctor had kept him in a drugged sleep for the first few days, but the sergeant woke up every few hours, mumbling the names of Esther and the dead cat Oliver and feeling for the girl's hand and the cat's paw. He had called the commissaris "father" and looked at his superior officer with large troubled eyes, often filled with tears. As the medication became less potent the sergeant began to approach a crisis and one night the commissaris had sat up until morning, moistening de Gier's head with a wet towel, making him drink tea and restraining the sergeant's antics by talking gently and even holding his hand. De Gier talked endlessly, but most of the talk was garbled. He had whined and groaned and thrown himself about in the bed, tearing at the sheets and his pillow. It had been the beginning of the rage which would later attack three Japanese hoodlums, three bad men killing a cat in a dark alley.

  The commissaris wondered if the rage would kill a yakusa. They hadn't come to kill anyone. They had come to be human bait, worms crinkling at a hook dangled by the Japanese Secret Service. The commissaris grimaced. He wondered if the Dutch government would be tactless enough to mail an invoice to some Japanese government agency in Tokyo. It had happened before. He remembered how he had once asked the army to send him some frogmen to look for a corpse in a lake. The frogmen found the corpse, and the murder brigade received an invoice for some ridiculous amount, so many hours of diving at so much an hour. He had instructed the police clerks to send an even bigger bill to the army for some detection work his brigade had once done to solve the death of an army officer. Both bills were protested and never paid. He shrugged. If they had been paid it wouldn't have meant more than a useless shifting about of the taxpayer's guilders.

  He held up his cup and the sergeant jumped up and filled it. He swallowed the sake, smacked his lips and coughed. The sergeant went back to his corner.

  "So you like it here, eh, sergeant?"

  "Yes, sir. This place is several steps ahead of us. Food tastes good and looks beautiful, the architecture is better, the women are more accommodating, and people are friendly. I have only lived here a week and it seems that they have accepted me as a full member of their neighborhood. Yesterday I got lost in the street. The streets look a little alike and I had been watching shop windows and going here and there without minding my way, and suddenly I had no idea where I was. I asked a young fellow on a motorcycle for directions and he took me on the back of his cycle and rode me straight home."

  The commissaris laughed. "That's nice. So what else do you like?"

  De Gier got up and opened the sliding doors leading to the balcony. "The moss gardens," he said. "They are everywhere. Not in town, unfortunately; pollution will kill anything in the center of town, but here we are a long way from the city proper
. Each house has a little garden and most of the gardens have moss. I have seen them working on the moss patches. Square inch by square inch. All sorts of weeds grow into them, and the moss has to be raked and combed and kept moist, but the result is magnificent. I should have had moss on my balcony in Amsterdam."

  The commissaris had got up and was standing next to the sergeant. The inn's garden flowed in low miniature hills and banks, surrounding a pond. A few bushes were planted behind the hills, creating the impression of a forest, and all of the ground was covered with thick mosses, glowing softly in the light of a single lantern, a weak electric bulb set in a hollow stone pillar. Each side of the pillar had an open oval, and the pillar had a small roof, also covered with moss.

  "There are at least ten varieties of moss in this garden," the sergeant said. "The innkeeper gets up early every morning to pull the weeds out. Sometimes his son helps him. I don't think it is work to them, it's more like a discipline which rests the mind. That's what Dorin said."

  "Beautiful. What else did you notice?"

  The sergeant emptied the second jug into their cups and they both went back to the balcony doors and looked at the garden again. "I feel a little uncomfortable at times, sir. I am too tall. When I walk in the street my head floats on top of the crowd, like a conspicuous bird sitting on the surface of a lake. With a Western body it is impossible to fit in here. I have been wishing I were a Japanese. People smile and snigger and little children nudge each other and start shouting HELLO HELLO when they see me. Endlessly. It's the only English word they know, I think. After a while you feel like shooting them."