Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  Inside the car, Emmett was calling her to go back inside. He could sense Grey’s thrill, Grey’s pleasure. Suzanne made a movement toward the car and Grey stepped toward her, Emmett shouting, “Leave it!” Suzanne finally looked at him, then at Grey, and backed up toward the house.

  Grey opened the car door, shaking; he actually reeked, a sharp burnt stink came from him. Grey’s voice, trembling, “I seen her,” he said triumphantly, “I seen her in lots of ways.” Emmett got out of the car, carrying the heavy briefcase. Grey’s face was pink and wet. “Your lady friend.”

  “My wife.”

  “Sick fuck,” Grey said. “I tailed her for years ’n years.” He put his hand in the shape of a gun, aimed at where Suzanne stood, and said, “Pow.”

  Emmett walked quickly to his house and propelled Suzanne inside. Suzanne was still crying, but Lenore was seated primly on the couch wearing a grey cotton dress, her birthday dress, with white bobby socks and her new shiny black shoes; she sat gravely but dry-eyed, like Alice in Wonderland, beyond surprise. Emmett slid the briefcase into the hall closet behind the coats and then he watched the street from behind the drapes until the Buick had cruised slowly out of sight.

  Later that night he’d take the briefcase out to the garage and put it into the trunk of the Alfa, to leave it there till he could hide it in the vault under the garage. The encounter with the Rabbit had so frightened Suzanne, she hadn’t noticed the briefcase. He’d managed to calm her down, getting lunch on the table for her and Lennie, pouring wine for Suzanne, telling her that the meeting had been a formality, just a formality to mark the end of the investigation, it was really good news, the true end of the investigation, and yes, wasn’t that driver a bizarre little man, poor guy, really you have to feel sorry for him in a way, still shell-shocked, a war vet who never got over it, we’ll never see him again.

  Emmett hadn’t destroyed any of the files, though the transcripts and many of the photographs were painful to look at. But air travel, especially of the kind afforded by the Canadian government, was a risky affair. He had to try to see it all through Suzanne’s eyes, should anything happen to him on this trip to Japan.

  He leaned and dug deep into the barrel till he got a grip on the heavy leather briefcase so generously donated to him by the RCMP, clutching it to his chest, bringing up his cold bare feet with their traces of motor oil till he was sitting cross-legged on the bare wooden bench. Then he began his own, personal analysis of the Jones files.

  It took forty minutes because he lingered over the almost-forgotten moments. Suzanne, and then Aoi, each of them photographed in the snow. He would not destroy much of it, but he did make certain selections for disposal. Morton had given him the originals of the photographs, he knew, because they’d not excised the logo of the RCMP’s film shop. This meant exactly nothing.

  Chapter Nine

  Emmett said goodbye to his family at Ottawa’s Uplands airport. Dr. Kimura had insisted on driving them. Emmett had to ask him, “How can you take a Tuesday morning away from your practice?”

  Kimura said, “I left by the back door.”

  “Your patients don’t know you’re gone?”

  “They’re accustomed to waiting.” Kimura winked at Lennie. He was being very merry.

  Emmett could see the apertures in Kimura’s eyes open and shut as he switched from true to feigned merriment. The doctor had kept in contact only by mail with the sister he’d left behind in Kobe; he had not returned to Japan since the night when he and Emmett had got into the brawl that ended with the death of a Japanese policeman. He said that he preferred to let sleeping dogs lie, and refused to leave Canada; this trip to Japan that Emmett was undertaking filled him with misgivings. Emmett had told him that it was irrational to worry about a bar fight so many years ago. Obviously the crime was never to be solved; no one would now be able to connect them with the policeman’s death. Kimura agreed, this was rational, but “I believe that some lives must move in one direction only; I will never go back.”

  Emmett flew to Kobe, the city of his birth, in the company of some fellows from Trade and Commerce. It caught the imagination of the civil service that Canada would deal in know-how, pure as sunlight. He was appointed as a translator, though he would soon discover that the Kobe Steel men spoke perfect English.

  Aoi said that he could meet her at the seaside and that she would bring James. He arrived to find her on the pier. An onshore wind was blowing. Her uncommon beauty was more austere than it had been nearly ten years ago. She was self-possessed, a totem, her face like carved cypress while her skirt tussled in the wind. Her clothing was modern, but it was the same black and ochre of the Manchurian cloak she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her. She seemed taller, more statuesque than he remembered. She gave a dignified bow, establishing that Emmett would not be permitted to come close. He felt ashamed at the way he’d left her, and embarrassed that he’d imagined she might thank him for the money he sent.

  Far from shore a flock of children swam with strong expert strokes past the surf, out to the green roll of the waves, their cries carried on the wind.

  “That one,” said Aoi, proudly pointing. Emmett’s eyes followed the fastest swimmer. She pointed insistently, “That one,” toward the pack of swimmers; with their dark heads in the water, they could be seals. And there was his son. One among them, strongly swimming but not the strongest.

  “They swim so far out!” He wanted to say, Please call him back! How can she so calmly watch the boy risk his life?

  The children rose and fell with the waves, their naked shoulders gleaming. The sea swells lifted them together to let them fall together. Even from this distance he could see their joy. The sight of his son pierced him with love and pride, an elation that also brought a spasm of grief for his own father, and he dimly understood why, understanding perhaps for the first time just how much his father must have loved him.

  But he had a meeting that same afternoon with the men involved in the Kobe Steel agreement. And this evening there was a dinner-party arranged by the ambassador. Aoi sensed his distraction, turned full to face him, and in English she said, “You have things to do.” Now he was convinced, it was the old Manchurian cloak stylishly remade, the wind rippling its rich black fabrics, its ochre braid, all of Aoi’s magnificent physique given to motion but for the lacquered hair. Her moon face, her big mouth, sensuous and unapproachable.

  Speech between them in any language was impossible; there was too much to say. What has it been like for you, raising a boy alone? A boy fathered by a gaijin. He could not touch her, but he was desperate to touch his son. He asked Aoi, “Can you call him?”

  He had forgotten her vocal training with the biwa, the masculine, glottal Japanese by which she called over the windy waves. A boy in the surf stopped, hearing her voice. Emmett could see his excitement, see him shout to his friends and start swimming toward the beach, the other boys following, half a dozen boys racing to their towels to dry their faces, running up the steps to the pier.

  The boys crowded around James, who presented himself before this western man. He was nine years old, no longer childish. He did not look like Aoi very much; his features were more proportionate, his beauty more conventional. He was tall and boldly shy; the victory Emmett liked so much in his mother shone in his eyes. Again speaking English, Aoi said, “This is your father.”

  The other boys pushed James’s shoulders, but he held his place, his upright posture. He did not act like a fatherless child; he showed confidence. With a steady voice, Emmett told him that he was very glad to see him. James thanked him in Japanese, his eyes darting to Aoi for a prompt.

  Emmett’s hands started to shake, and he thrust them into his pockets, but somehow this gesture seemed offhand or disrespectful, so he brought them out again, visibly shaking, and tentatively touched James’s shoulder. The boy responded with a guileless smile.

  Aoi made a sound Emmett couldn’t quite decipher, and James, with all the boys flying around him,
shot off, back toward the beach, James with special consciousness, as if crowned with laurel.

  “Can I possibly see him again?”

  The slightest flinch in Aoi, a tremor. He didn’t dare consider how much he might have hurt her.

  “You don’t have to,” he told her. “You don’t have to let me see him.” He couldn’t bring himself to say that he was sorry; it was impossible to apologize for the shame he must have incurred by not returning to her before he left Japan, the difficulties she must have encountered. He’d convinced himself that Aoi was cold toward him, that she was sublimely self-sufficient. That she conveniently would not love him, so he could love Suzanne pleasurably. He’d ridden another wave of illusion. But now he was again awake.

  He said, “The money I send doesn’t give me the right to see James.” He wished it did, and he wished that James would think so one day.

  Aoi looked at him. She wasn’t cold, she was lucid, and her lucidity made her generous — he remembered the small portion of rice she’d offered to him the night they first met. He remembered her with his blind body.

  Chapter Ten

  There was a man present at every turn at the American ambassador’s dinner party who introduced himself as Jim Smith and claimed he was from an insurance outfit in New Jersey, but Emmett couldn’t guess his function. When he tried to find out, the man waved his hands in front of Emmett’s face and said, “Ho, friendly Canadian, I’m strictly an observer.” At dinner, Jim Smith was seated beside the ambassador, who was seated to the right of Ikeda Hayato, minister of trade and industry.

  Emmett took his seat at Ikeda’s left. Ikeda was stern, greying, with thin, peevish lips. Emmett politely observed, “I understand Kobe Steel will open offices in New York next year. That’s a lot of growth.” Ikeda merely grunted without turning his head.

  He was rebuked, though the Kobe men had boasted of their developments in America and in Germany, rebelliously intent to show off their internationalism. Emmett looked down the table past Ikeda’s blunt grey face and caught the eye of Jim Smith — a lanky man, fair-skinned with light pinfeather hair and sharp, friendly eyes. Jim Smith’s tuxedo bagged a little as if he’d recently lost weight; he put his elbow on the table to rest his chin on his fist, and winked — or it was that kind of blinking smile that makes winks inevitable.

  A voice came from his left. “Try the duck.”

  Emmett turned to look at his neighbour, a genial Japanese man with a full head of white hair and a broad flat nose. He looked to be in his late fifties and in excellent health. Unlike most of the men at the table, he didn’t wear glasses. He had moist red lips and a wide cheerful smile that revealed a set of false teeth. Emmett had seen him before but couldn’t yet place him.

  A waiter stationed behind them bent forward to insert a tray of duck prepared in the Chinese fashion, and his neighbour repeated, “Try it. It’s good.” He introduced himself, “I am Kazuo Takiji,” looking Jones over.

  Emmett remembered Kazuo now. Kazuo had been senior in the Yakuza hierarchy in 1950, when Emmett had used his position of policy analyst to look into the influence of the Japanese gangsters on Japan’s Liberal Party. Kazuo was then running several gangs in the Kobe region, as a rising member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the biggest Yakuza family. Apparently he’d been successful.

  “We have many outsiders coming to Japan now,” Kazuo was saying. “‘The post-war is over!’” He began to laugh. “Have you heard that expression, Mr. Jones?” Emmett was aware of the minister of trade and industry to his right, of Ikeda’s base rate of disapproval. “It is the genius of Mr. Ikeda to coin that phrase, is it not? ‘The post-war is over!’”

  Ikeda said nothing, did not even look.

  “And now my old friend Kishi is playing golf with President Eisenhower,” Kazuo continued.

  Kishi Nobusuke. Kishi was a Class-A war criminal, discharged after more than two years in jail, driven away from Sugamo Prison in an American army jeep. Now Kishi was prime minister of Japan, playing golf with Eisenhower.

  “We are all friendly here.” Kazuo Takiji wore a dinner jacket rather than a tuxedo, a rich fabric with satin lapels. The French cuffs of his white shirt extended below the sleeves of his jacket so as to cover his wrists almost to the base of his thumb. It would look comical if it weren’t so deliberate. His shirt collar recalled the regency style, rising high around his neck.

  Emmett asked about Kazuo’s involvement in Kobe Steel.

  Kazuo’s smile hung in the air while Kazuo himself withdrew from such intemperate curiosity. “I am a philanthropist,” he said.

  Emmett indicated with a nod, That’s nice, retreating into the mask of Canadian civil servant. “I’m sure you do much good work.”

  Kazuo gave a broad smile with his false teeth. A wet smile that hid nothing of its own cynicism, it struck Emmett as vulgar. Kazuo reached to the centre of the table for a carafe of sake, a gesture that tugged at the long sleeves of his dress shirt, revealing a tattoo swirling around his wrist. He was aware that Emmett had noticed, and when he resumed his seat, he tipped his head and Emmett saw what he was intended to see: a swirl of coloured ink on Kazuo’s neck. It was a custom of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia, to tattoo their entire bodies. He felt the strangeness of Kazuo’s dragon skin beneath the expensive suit.

  While Kazuo drank and ate, he talked, ostensibly to Emmett but loudly enough so Ikeda could hear. The subject was “philanthropy,” Kazuo making much use of the English word, which — as Emmett began to drink with him — took on mongrel shapes. Emmett mildly observed that it had never occurred to him that motorboat racing could be conceived as philanthropic.

  The smile vanished. In a deep loud voice, Kazuo said, “You are a socialist.” This was intended as an insult. “Communist,” Kazuo insisted.

  At the end of the table, Jim Smith in his oversized tuxedo broke into laughter and called, “Mr. Kazuo! Are you tormenting our friendly Canadian?” Jim Smith stood.

  Kazuo looked at Jim Smith and, after a short pause, switched to English. “Who is this twig? He does not approve of boat-racing!”

  “Well hang him for a prude,” said Jim Smith.

  Emmett said, “I’m with External Affairs, Mr. Kazuo. The Canadian government.”

  Contempt swept quickly over Kazuo’s face. “Does this mean you have no ideas of your own? Maybe you are a good subject of your emperor!” Then he smiled again. His wet red mouth.

  Kazuo and Jim Smith laughed. Emmett looked across the table to his counterpart in Trade and Commerce, Clark Haywood. Haywood gave him a wary look and addressed himself to the Kobe Steel man seated beside him, putting his hand around his face to block his view of Jones squirming between the paws of the Japanese mafia.

  Kazuo loudly addressed the table, “Such sentiment! The kokutai has been punished! Not to the liking of President Truman! Punished by fire! Burnt to ash by the inhuman bombs! Now what do you do? You mimic us.”

  Ikeda muttered in Japanese, “This will wait for another occasion.”

  “But life is fleeting!” Kazuo persisted, then mockingly to Emmett, “like cherry blossoms.” And laughed with what Emmett hoped was greater goodwill. “I am an ambassador, just as our host is an ambassador!”

  The Canadian ambassador turned grimly to Emmett and then was startled when he felt something touch his back. It was the hand of Jim Smith touching the ambassador while he walked past, coming toward Emmett now, his black dress shoes gleaming. Smith leaned down to say in Emmett’s ear, “How about we go somewhere we can talk quietly about our divine differences?” He firmly pulled Emmett’s chair away from the table.

  Emmett was aware of Clark Haywood’s pale face and the silence that had overtaken the place. The ambassador began to get out of his chair, Ikeda preventing him with a light touch to the arm while he murmured reassurance.

  Jim Smith made an elaborate show of thanking his host. “I’m borrowing your guest for a couple of hours, Mr. Ambassador. I promise to get him back to his hotel a healthy man.”
r />   The ambassador nodded curtly. “I have your word on that, Jim.”

  Emmett, flanked by Kazuo Takiji and Jim Smith from New Jersey, considered his options. He didn’t think that Smith and Kazuo would actually hurt him; nobody wanted an international incident. This was the clue he’d been waiting for: what is his role on this trade mission? He was curious and invigorated with sake-courage. He bowed to Ikeda and to the ambassador and said good night.

  Chapter Eleven

  Emmett, who at eleven years of age had twice tried to join a kendo club and twice a karate club and had been rejected every time because he was a westerner, soon was watching karate at one of Kazuo’s special nightclubs. He responded with warm admiration. It was wise to show respect to the don. He hadn’t had any contact with Japanese gangsters since his time with the Liaison Mission in Tokyo. And he’d never had an evening on the town as the guest of one. Some of Kazuo’s mannerisms reminded him of a man he’d dealt with briefly in Ottawa, a devout French Catholic making a fortune building bridges and highways, the same bull-chested, powerful build, the generosity with money, the physical affection for the men in his employ. Kazuo’s staff at the club obviously loved and respected him.

  At his karate club, the old gangster was surrounded by younger men of extraordinary refinement and sincerity. Emmett watched for excess, bravado, bullying, and saw instead a keen, clear balance, finely pitched. He’d almost forgotten the particularly pure intensity of young Japanese men.

  At this late hour the matches were for the masters, while the acolytes watched. The place was lit like a theatre or a nightclub, with white-hot footlights and stark spots on a low stage. The white uniforms blurred with movement. Each engagement lasted no more than a minute, a brief flurry to the deathblow, then withdrawal. Mesmerizing variations of kihon, feints and kicks, the hoarse shout, disengagement.