When he had bathed and dressed he made his way to the sitting room. There was nobody there, and it was by then half past nine; so, after waiting for ten minutes, he rang the bell. With surprising speed it was answered by a white-coated houseman who flashed a fearsome row of upper teeth at him then bent almost double, as though offering his head to be cut off. Julian had been searching his memory for a few suitable Japanese words to enquire where the man’s master was; but it proved unnecessary to use them. The servant took a pace forward, bowed a second time, grinned again, extracted a piece of paper from a pocket and, bowing yet once more, handed it to Julian.
It was a note from Bill and ran:
Sorry to run out on you but I’ve some business to see to at the office. Turn on the telly if you want and help yourself to the liquor. I’ll be back lunchtime.
The houseman retired as swiftly as he had appeared, leaving Julian standing there far from pleased at being left on his own for the morning. He considered television an admirable medium for witnessing events of importance and, occasionally, watching a version of a good play, but he was far from being a television addict. Nevertheless, he turned it on and found to his surprise that Japan had no fewer than seven home channels running simultaneously. But he could understand hardly a word that was said and none of the subjects being shown interested him particularly; so after playing with it for half an hour, he switched it off and began to look through some magazines that were on a side table. Among them he found a few American ones which, as they were several weeks old, he assumed Bill had bought before setting off on his holiday-cum-business travels. All of them were Hollywood products, mainly featuring film stars and gossip about them, but they kept Julian’s mind off Merri until, shortly after midday, Bill arrived.
‘How do. It’s good to see you here,’ the young Japanese said heartily. Then, striding over to the walnut cocktail cabinet, he added, ‘I’ll mix you a Martini.’
‘Thanks,’ replied Julian, ‘but I’d rather have a gin-and-lime if you’ve got it.’
‘O.K. It’s all here, and I’ll make it a strong one. You’ll maybe need it when I tell you the way things have been moving.’
Julian sat forward quickly. ‘You mean you’ve got news of Merri already?’
‘No, worse luck. It’s about my old man, and I’ve a hunch that you won’t like it. Last night after you’d tucked up we talked some more. He was dead against our calling in a private eye. Got all het up with the notion that, if the dick turned it in that Hayashi had got Merri at his place in Kyoto, I’d go sticking my neck out to get her and have myself taken for a ride. He was hard sold on it that this was a job for the police. And there’s no moving him when he gets that way. First thing this morning he dated the local Chief and had me go down to Headquarters with him, to shoot the whole works.’
Chapter XI
The Unprofessional Guide
Julian’s eyes went hard and he held Bill Urata’s with them as he exclaimed, ‘That was contrary to our understanding! You agreed that you would do no more than employ a private detective. If, as a result of this, Hayashi gets wind of it that the police are making enquiries he may do away with Merri rather than let her fall into their hands. If that happens her blood will be on your head.’
The face of the young Japanese went almost grey and he cried, ‘For Chris’ sake don’t say that! I’d no option. Things are different here to what they are in Europe and the States. There, fellers and girls won’t stand for being ordered around by their parents any longer. But here the old ways still go on. It’s part of the system. I’d sooner jump off a cliff than not do what my old man tells me. He was dead set on going to the police. What the hell could I do but fall into line?’
He could not be held responsible for the age-old customs of his country, and as Julian mentally assessed this new development he decided that it might not be as serious as he had at first feared. While he had accepted Tilly Sang’s word for it that Hayashi had spies among the police, in view of his special interests it seemed probable that such spies would be men employed in the Narcotics Prevention Department and so unlikely to learn that his activities were being investigated on a matter that had no connection with it. And at least, Julian felt, the Uratas’ having gone to the police proved one thing: they were not in league with Hayashi as Tilly Sang had feared. While in Hong Kong, it had seemed possible that young Urata appeared anxious to go to the police only to support a bluff; his admission now that he had been forced to break his word, and had actually done so, put him in the clear.
After a moment Julian said in a gentler voice, ‘Perhaps my judgment was a little hasty; so don’t take what I said too seriously. Naturally I was annoyed with you for having gone to the police without first letting me know that you had decided to go back on our understanding. But it’s done now. And there is a chance that they may pull our chestnuts out of the fire for us without any harm coming to Merri. Does this mean, though, that we ought to stay here to await the result of their enquiries, or do we go on to Kyoto as we planned?’
‘There’s nothing to be gained by our staying here,’ Urata replied. ‘If the cops get wise to anything they’ll call us up and give us their hand-out in Kyoto; so I’m all for going there. We’ll at least be on the spot then if anything does blow.’
‘When do you propose that we should start?’
‘After lunch. We’ve a place there that’s been in the family since my grand-dad’s time. It’s looked after by a skeleton staff, so as we can make use of it at the big festivals. I mean to check in there, and I’d be happy to have you as my house guest, but I doubt your taking kindly to the way of life you’d have to lead. It’s traditional Japanese. Almost empty rooms; no beds or chairs and low tables. We sleep on bed-rolls on the floor and eat squatting on our fannies. You’d do better to go to the Miyako. That’s American-planned and pretty good with European eats. You’d be more comfortable there.’
Julian nodded. ‘Thanks for the invitation, but I agree. As a matter of fact, I was told in Hong Kong that the Miyako is the best hotel in Kyoto, and I told Mrs. Sang to have the Kuan-yin delivered to me there.’
They lunched in the flat and afterwards left in a chauffeur-driven car. When the modern skyscrapers of the big port dropped behind they ran on through seemingly endless streets of two-storey wooden houses interspersed with rows of squalid shacks, so that Julian began to think that this dreary shanty town would never end. Later it transpired that the city did not have any perceptible ending, as two-thirds of the road to Kyoto was a built-up area.
Occasionally there was an open stretch of flat rice fields with hills in the distance, but most of the way was lined with small factories, poor shops, junk yards and one-storey dwellings with paper windows. To make the journey even more depressing it was raining again, the road was full of pot-holes and so narrow that for the greater part of the time they were crawling behind coaches or lorries.
Kyoto had been the capital of Japan for over a thousand years, and the Mikados had resided there, while the Shoguns, who actually ran the country, lived in the eastern capital Yedo, as Tokyo was then called. It had not been until 1868 that the great Emperor Meiji had overthrown the Shogunate and moved his headquarters to Tokyo; so as Kyoto had been the seat of the Emperors for so many centuries Julian had expected to find it a splendid city.
He was sadly disappointed. It had originally been planned as a large rectangle, modelled on the residence of the T’ang Emperors in China, but now it appeared to consist mainly of many square miles of tatty little shops and poor dwellings. As in Osaka, the people in the streets were drab. All the men, other than labourers, were dressed in Western clothes, shoddy cloth suits with flamboyant ties or cheap mackintoshes and caps or trilby hats. All but a few of the women still wore the national costume, but in subdued unattractive colours, and slopped along the pavements in wooden-soled clogs. Totally unlike the Chinese in Hong Kong, who were always smiling and laughing, they were going drearily about their business, and quite a numbe
r of them were wearing thick white pads over their mouths and noses. Out of curiosity Julian asked Urata the reason. The young man promptly produced that which Julian had half expected:
‘The folk in my country are very hygiene-conscious. Every Japanese takes a bath at least once a day, mostly in the public bath-houses, and I’d say our clinics here are as good as any in the States. Those pads are worn by people who’ve gotten colds, as a precaution against spreading infection.’
Not till later was Julian to see Kyoto’s more attractive aspects; for in many places not far from the main highway, yet still within the city, there were scores of secluded temple gardens and countrified lanes bordered by tree-surrounded private residences. But only in the city’s centre were there a few broad streets with modern blocks and stone buildings. Running through one of these they sped up a hill, leading to the wooded heights to the east of the city, and arrived at the Miyako.
Entering it was like walking into the Ritz after having driven through one of the poorer quarters of Manchester. Porters in spotless uniforms bowed them in, the lofty and spacious entrance hall was filled with well-dressed Japanese, Americans and Europeans. Urata secured a room for Julian, then accompanied him up to it; and, although it was only about a quarter of the size of the one he had had at the Repulse Bay, he saw that it was equipped with every conceivable modern convenience. The air conditioning was perfect, boiling water gushed from the taps in the bathroom at a touch and he had only to press a bell for one of three small neatly dressed maids, all of whom spoke English, to pop in immediately, take his orders to wash or press his clothes and return them in perfect order in an amazingly short time.
As both men were anxious to see the place in which they believed Merri to be held prisoner, as soon as Julian had inspected his quarters Urata looked up Inosuke Hayashi’s address in the telephone directory, then they went straight out again.
The car took them through the Shijo Dori, with its big department stores, then north-west till they reached an area where there were few modern buildings and most of the houses stood among trees in private gardens. Hayashi’s property proved to be one of the larger of these and formed an irregular island, about two acres in extent, bordered on all sides by leafy lanes. It had big wooden double gates and was surrounded by a tall wall. Leaving the car they walked all round the wall, but the house could be seen only from the front, and then no more than glimpses of its old-style curved roof between the branches of pines and camphor trees.
Having stared at it despondently for a while, and decided that its lay-out offered them no chance of discovering whether Merri was really a prisoner there, they returned to the car, which dropped Urata at his family house, about a mile away, then took Julian back to the Miyako. But they met again an hour later, as Julian had invited the young Japanese to dinner.
When he arrived they went first to the upstairs lounge for drinks, and it was there that Julian saw his rival in a better light. It chanced that at a nearby table there were three men of about Urata’s age, two of whom he recognised as having been at school with him before he had gone to live with his uncle in the States. With Julian’s consent, he asked the three to join them, and his friends were soon eagerly plying him with questions about his life in America. Julian would have expected him to be superior and boastful, but on the contrary he put on no airs and spoke with great modesty of his success at Berkeley University.
This general conversation proved a pleasant prelude to dinner and, over it, the two of them continued to talk about America as, although Julian had never lived there for any length of time, the greater part of his fortune was invested in the States and he had visited its principal cities. By the end of the meal they were calling one another by their Christian names; and as they left the big dining room, with its long glass windows that gave a splendid view of the sweep of wooded mountain to the north-west of the city, Bill said:
‘There’d be no sense in our sitting around tying ourselves in knots about Merri while we’re waiting for the cops to get us the low-down on Hayashi. How say I take you round some of the temples tomorrow?’
‘You’re right,’ Julian agreed. ‘We must do our best to keep our minds off her. It’s good of you to suggest it.’
‘Why, I’d be glad to. I’ve not been to see these old places myself since I was a young teenager, and there are more here than in any other locality in Japan. I’ll pick you up in the auto around ten.’
They went first to the Heian Shrine, a huge building erected only in the nineties to commemorate the eleven hundredth anniversary of the founding of the city. The approach to it lay through an eighty-foot-high scarlet-painted Torri—as the arches with flat tops and up-curved ends, so frequently seen in Japan, are called. In its vast forecourt a number of priests and women wearing white blouses and bright red skirts were strolling about. Bill told Julian that the monks were not Buddhists, as they served only in temples whereas this was a Shinto shrine; and that the women were nuns, although they were allowed to marry.
In the courtyard there were also several large bushes that in the distance looked as if they were smothered in white blossom. But it was a late spring; so few of the trees in Kyoto had yet come out, and when seen from nearer the massed white on the branches turned out to be hundreds of strips of paper tied to them. With a laugh Bill explained that many people came to the Heian Shrine to learn their fortunes. If the paper telling the fortune was favourable they kept it, but if unfavourable they left it tied to a branch.
Having mounted the broad steps to the shrine, they took off their shoes, entered it and tried their luck by shaking one brass rod with Japanese characters on it out of a small hole in the top of a canister that held fifty or more. Bill interpreted: Julian had drawn an unexpected journey to a far country, a good rice crop, no family worries and a disappointment in love. Bill’s read success in an undertaking, but later disappointment, only a moderate rice crop, the anger of a parent and success in love.
Julian smiled and shrugged. ‘As there can be no earthly reason for me to set off for a far country, and you are on excellent terms with your father, I don’t think we need take the predictions about love very seriously.’
In the rear of the shrine there was a big garden with three ornamental lakes, over one of which was a picturesque bridge. From it they fed some fat carp with pieces of bread; but as only a few azalea bushes were in flower, Julian found the garden disappointing.
A three-mile drive brought them to Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion, a lovely three-storey building set on the edge of another artificial lake. An artistic creation of great beauty, it had graced the site for five hundred and fifty years then, like so many of Japan’s ancient wooden structures, been burnt down; but not until 1950 and not, in this case, by accident: a misanthropic young priest had deliberately set fire to it. His story had been told by Yukio Mishima in a novel that had become a best-seller in the United States, and was said to rival the work of Dostoevsky. However, as a precaution against fires the Japanese kept detailed drawings of all such buildings; so the Golden Pavilion had been re-erected and stood there again in all its pristine glory.
Driving back westward, they ran level with one side of the tall wall that enclosed the Imperial Palace and its many acres of park, then past the fine modern buildings of Kyoto University to Ginkakuji, the Silver Pavilion. Its garden was very similar to that of those they had already visited and, like them, swarming with sightseers, a great part of whom were students and school children. After walking round it the time had come for lunch, and Bill said that Julian must try at least one Japanese meal, adding with a laugh, ‘I recall how you ragged me, first time we met, about being an eater of raw fish; so I’ll let you off that. But I’ve laid on lunch at the Kyoboshi tempura restaurant, where they give you the whole works.’
The car took them to a narrow side street and pulled up outside what looked like a small private house. A man led them through a very narrow passage, up a flight of stairs and into a low room about fourteen feet
square. The walls were painted with landscape scenes in the traditional style and occupying the middle of the room was an eighteen-inch-high table shaped like a flattened horseshoe. Inside it were the cook’s requirements, and round its outer edge there was space enough for half a dozen diners.
A youngish but very fat woman, who proved to be the cook, came in, and with her two maids. Both the girls looked to be only just out of their teens. They were dressed in heavy silk kimonos, their jet-black hair was elaborately piled on their small heads with many combs, flowers and ornaments, and their faces were masks of white paint. After the usual deep bows the cook sat down between a large cauldron of boiling oil, that neither smoked nor smelt, and a bowl of thin rice-flour batter; then one of the maids began to supply her with a succession of bits and pieces.
Bill and Julian had, meanwhile, seated themselves on thin cushions, the former with crossed legs, the latter, after finding it awkward to lean forward in that position, sitting sideways on one hip. The cook took up a small piece of something, dipped it first in the batter then in the oil and laid it on the little dish in front of Julian. Near the dish were several small bowls containing sauces, but he did not risk trying any of them and found no difficulty in using his chopsticks to pop the morsel into his mouth. It was so hot that he could not properly taste it, but he thought it was fish.
Having served Bill with a similar morsel, the cook continued to put other pieces, all of which she had dipped in the batter and oil, on their plates alternately. There seemed no rhyme or reason to the meal. Long peppers, prawns, bits of aubergine, quails’ eggs, celery leaves, seaweed and other more mysterious items followed one another and were frequently repeated, although not in the same order.
Bill for the Use of a Body Page 13
