by Abhishek Roy
“Guys, we need to get out! They are running towards us!” I urged.
The three of us got out of the car and sprinted towards the pavement. We dodged the river of cars and ran into a small but decorated building. It was a wide building with a pagodalike roof and lots of banners and billboards in Japanese.
We didn’t get time to admire the architecture. We shoved away two men guarding the entrance and just before we pushed open the doors, I read one sign in English. It read Kabuki-za Theatre.
The three of us climbed up the stairs quickly. Vivek led the way and seemed to know where we were going. We stopped on the third floor and ran towards a heavy set of doors. Vivek pushed them open and we burst into an enormous theatre filled with people. It was dark, only the stage being the source of light. The seats were full of both Japanese and foreign tourists. A few people looked at us annoyingly but went back to watching the performance.
“This is a Kabuki theatre,” Vivek whispered to us. “There are a lot of people here. The men behind us might not get as much freedom over here as they had outside.“
The three of us began walking down the aisles towards the stage when the door behind us opened again. We looked back and our eyes met with the Jargantaans.
In the dim light, we noticed their police attire. The three of them were dressed in grey shirt and dark trousers with a baton hanging from their waist and a gun in a holster. Suddenly, one of them pulled out his pistol from the holster and shot a bullet into the air.
“Koko kara nukedasu! Watashitachiha, keisatsudeari, karera wa kyoaku-handesu! Deteike!” the man shouted. “Get out of here! We are police and they are thugs! Get out!” he translated for the tourists.
Most of the people panicked and started running towards the exits. When the official personnel inside tried to manage the crowd, the three giants gestured them to get out as well. Having no choice, they obeyed. Then they started coming after us. A lot of the hall was still filled with people who were just too shocked to move.
We ran down towards the stage where the traditional Kabuki performers, with demonic facial make-up and Kimono costumes, had just stopped the play and stood rooted to the stage in shock.
Having nowhere else to go, the three of us climbed onto the stage but came to a halt when a bullet hit the stage close to our feet.
The Jargantaans then climbed up onto the stage and surrounded us in a circle, the one with the gun being only a few metres away from us.
“You have nowhere to go Thorson. Surrender!” commanded one of the men.
For a few moments, everything was at a standstill. The spectators, the Kabuki performers, us and the pale giants who awaited my decision.
My eyes scanned the surroundings for something to protect ourselves with. Unfortunately, this was a Kabuki performance that didn’t use many useful props. There were a few bowls on the other side of the stage but they were surely of no use.
Finally my eyes fell on the Katana, or Japanese samurai sword hanging from the waist of the Kabuki performer standing next to Ram. If I could get a hand on one of these.
With my peripheral vision I spied the finger of the Jargantaan with the pistol, squeezing the trigger slowly and aiming the gun right at my head.
Vivek suddenly lunged forward surprisingly quickly towards the gun and caught it with his right hand. He pivoted on his right heel and kicked the Jargantaan in his sternum. The big man let go of his gun and staggered backwards. Vivek quickly aimed and shot the Jargantaan farthest from us in his thigh. Thick blood poured out instantly and his feet buckled while he cried in pain.
I swung back and threw a bowl straight at the nose of the man in front of me. It hit his nose and a small cracking sound indicated a fracture.
Without losing pace, I grabbed the Katana and in one fluid motion swung it at the man’s legs in front of me. He had been running towards me and the blade cut right though his trousers and sliced open a bloody wound over his femur.
“Aarrgghh!” the man caught his thigh in agony and reminded me of the Jargantaan I had killed in Meerut. I finally kicked the knee ball of his wounded leg and the pain caused by it was excruciating enough to make him double over and fall to the ground.
“Come on! Run backstage!” I shouted and the three of us sprinted backstage.
Unlike any normal theatre, the backstage area was quite spacious with many corridors and rooms. There weren’t many people as this was probably the last show for today. As it is, it was very late for a show - it was probably a special show being staged for some group of tourists. A few of the spectators ran away after seeing me with a bloodied Katana and the three pale Jargantaans chasing us.
Suddenly, I looked back on an instinct, but it was too late. Even while injured, the Jargantaans had reached us. The Jargantaan directly behind me pushed his shoulder into my appendix using all his momentum, and the two of us were hurled into a door whose hinges instantly came loose. We landed half on the door and half on the floor while the Katana slipped from my grip and clattered to the floor, skidding to a stop in the middle of the room.
“Ram! Run into a room and try to lock the door. Vivek and I will keep them busy,” I yelled at Ram while the Jargantaan and I were trying to recover. Ram, who was totally petrified, didn’t move.
“Go!” Vivek shouted back, setting his bag down and getting ready to fight. Ram had no choice but to acquiesce. In our current predicament, he did as we told him to. Without a word, he rushed to the door in the far side of the small vestibule we were in.
While a battle raged in between Vivek and the two Jargantaans, I brawled with probably the heftiest of the trio in what looked like a small corridor leading to another room far away. This was the Jargantaan whose nose I had broken. His face was contorted in anger and he was breathing heavily in rage.
After crashing to the cold marble floor, we got up from the floor simultaneously. Instantaneously, he was onto me again. He pushed me and drove his knee into my sternum painfully. Using my shock, he hurled me into the wall on the right. My back slammed and the breath rushed out of my body.
My peripheral vision caught the Jargantaan unsheathing his baton. He swung it towards my chest but I was ready. I leaned to my right and caught his arm with my left hand. Using the left hand as the fulcrum and the right as the effort, I twisted his hand backwards and drove him into the wall. Once I had got him locked, the man was rendered helpless. Just a little more pressure and he gave up his grip on the baton.
It fell to the ground and after one final hit to his head with my elbow, I picked up the baton and slammed it against his temple. The man collapsed to the ground, howling in pain. I jogged to the place where the sword was lying and picked it up.
Once I had the Katana in my right hand and the baton in my left, I rushed to the small hall. Vivek was holding them back brandishing the gun.
“Get away from him!” I shouted. They raised their hands and backed off temporarily.
“Go get Ram,” I whispered to Vivek. Immediately, he jogged to the room Ram was hiding in and knocked loudly. “Come on out, Ram! It’s fine.“
The door opened ever so gingerly. Ram peeked outside and was relieved to see Vivek. Ram walked out and the two of them stood together.
In a fraction of a second, I threw the baton on the head of the Jargantaan with the bullet wound in his thigh. At exactly the same time, Vivek let loose a burst of shots into the legs of the other.
Instantly, Vivek, Ram and I ran away from the room. Just before the two injured men could catch us, we entered into an elevator used by the Kabuki artists. Vivek punched the ground- floor button and the doors clicked shut, right in the face of the two men.
Momentarily, we were in peace. Though none of us spoke a word, I knew that no one really wished the elevator to stop.
When it stopped, we ran outside into the main road.
Before the Jargantaans could come, we hurried to our Prius. However, before I got into the car, I walked up to the Hummer and knelt down. My Katana had already attra
cted suspicious eyes and I decided to use the sword in a different way.
The sharpened tip was enough to slash the rubber tyres and they began to deflate rapidly. I did the same to the other tyres when Vivek yelled, “Mathias! That’s enough!”
I nodded and got into our Prius. Vivek didn’t waste a second and drove away just before the monsters emerged from the building and could see which way we went. We had escaped from them again.
While Vivek drove us away, I rubbed the shoulders of Ram to stop his hyperventilating breaths. “Where are we going?” asked Ram finally.
“I think we should go to a hotel. We need some privacy and...and time to sort out things,” Vivek answered.
“Fine,” Ram said and flopped back into his seat, relieved to have evaded the Jargantaans. At the same time, Ram was really disappointed by this theft. Being a person who respected relics and history, he was greatly perturbed by us stealing a 1500 year old Japanese bronze mirror.
Silence hung in the air for the rest of the journey.
Kapittel 36
Mathias’s story
SHINJUKU, TOKYO, JAPAN
March 12, 2017, Sunday, 2245 hours JST
“We-need-a-capsule,” Vivek said to the Japanese receptionist, trying to bridge the gap in between the languages. We tried to get far from Ginza and hide in the interiors of the bustling city. As a result, we had arrived at a hotel deep in the Shinjuku region. It wasn’t the cheapest but the rates were fair.
The hotel we had arrived at was completely different than the quintessential English hotels that I knew.
The hotel we had stopped by, had around a 100 rooms as specified by the billboard outside. When we entered, two staff members urged us to keep our shoes in the shelf beside us and wear a pair of slippers. Once we did that, Vivek walked over to the reception and started talking or rather communicating with the receptionist.
“Capsule, capsule!” Vivek was making gestures with his hands and almost reaching the level of yelling. Suddenly, something clicked inside the receptionists head. Her blank face turned to a smile as she finally seemed to understand what we were talking about.
“Aaww...capusero?” she traced a box in the air with her hands.
“Hai! Hai!” cried Vivek, relieved.
Fifteen minutes later, after another series of cacophonous conversations between Vivek and the receptionist, we were final proceeding to our capsule.
As we walked through a narrow corridor, I whispered to Ram, “Seems pretty interesting.”
“I am really curious to see these ‘capuseros’ we are going to stay in,” he whispered back.
The three of us along with the receptionist walked up two flights of stairs and turned right to walk into the locker room on the mezzanine floor. We kept our scant luggage in one of the large lockers and locked it up. The woman then took us to a door, adjacent to the locker room, pushed it open and ushered us into a huge room which looked like a futuristic lab with controlled environments for biological specimens.
The entire room had five columns, each having ten capsules stacked over another ten. The walls of the capsules facing us had been labelled A, B, C, D, and E. Likewise, each cell in the bottom part of the column was numbered from 1 through 10 and the capsules resting on them were numbered from 11 through 20. The entire hall was clean and well painted, air conditioned and well lit.
The receptionist led us to our capsules. Vivek explained that these hotels were mainly meant for men who were drunk and wanted to spend the night. They would spend the night here and move out the next day. In some inns, the poorest of the poor men would spend months in the shelters of the capsules while some others were meant solely for tourist attraction.
“This-your-capusero.” said the receptionist as she pointed to three cells- 6B, 15B and 16B, two up and one near the floor. ”Arigato Kuzaimas.” She thanked us and was off in the blink of an eye.
“So, who wants to stay down to earth?” Vivek joked.
“I have no qualms.” volunteered Ram and the capsule was assigned to him. Ram bent down, opened the plexiglass door with a metal framework and crawled into his capsule.
“How do you like it?” I asked him, inquisitively.
“Feels pretty cosy,” he replied while he stuffed his small satchel bag at the back of the six and a half feet deep cell. It was then that I got a good look at it. The entirety of the cell was made with hard plastic. The bed, with a blanket and bed sheet, was in the middle and was surrounded by the three walls. There were several pouches and small shelves that lined up the walls. All in all, the capsule provided utmost privacy.
Up on the ceiling, right above Ram’s head were the air conditioning vents which were the only thing that made the capsule different from a sophisticated coffin. Fitted to the ceiling was a small television and by the look of the screen, we were doubtful that it would work.
“That must be the speaker.” I pointed at the small cuboid projecting out from the right hand side wall.
“Should be,” replied Ram.
“Let us all settle down first. Then the two of you can hop into my capsule and we can discuss about the mirrors. I think we should be able to fit.” Vivek advised us.
Vivek and I climbed into our capsules. I took a moment to gaze at the inside myself. Next, I changed into a fresh pair of clothes and neatly arranged everything in my capsule. In a matter of ten minutes, Ram and I were comfortably seated in Vivek’s cell.
Finally, after Vivek and I had examined many ways of opening the mirror, I hit jackpot. I had been tinkering with the mirror and had noticed a small bronze knob between the mirror and the hilt exactly at the same place where the telltale sign was there. Out of curiosity, I pressed it and the handle detached itself from the mirror with a click, similar to the way my locket had.
“Look!” I exclaimed. “The handle has come off!“
Vivek and Ram come closer to me. I pulled the handle away from the mirror gingerly and extracted the entire piece of flat bronze. Keeping away the mirror, the three of us examined the bronze piece closely.
At first glance, it appeared no less than a simple piece of bronze with a thin band of cloth wrapped around its base several times to form a grip. However, looking at it closely revealed several grooves of varying lengths on the side opposite to the cloth grip. These grooves had different widths, ranging from probably one tenths of a millimetre to three millimetres, giving it the look of a barcode. They had been carved into all the four surfaces of the metal, stretching from the top to the middle of the bar.
“It is surely a specially designed key and from the look of the grooves, we are behind something that is worth an awful lot of money!” Ram was excited.
“Hhmm,” nodded Vivek as he continued gazing at the hair thin grooves cut into the metal with a precision that could only be achieved by an advanced machine. “Hey, I think there is something written here along the length of the bronze strip.” We followed his finger and sure enough, there was something inscribed into the metal.
“Ram, give me your Maglite,” said Vivek.
Ram took out his precious Maglite and handed it over. However, as much as Vivek tried, he could not get a single glow out of it. The batteries seemed to have run out of power.
“Do we have a magnifying glass?” Ram asked.
“I do, but I am feeling too lazy to go down and bring it from the locker. So...I am going to use this bottle.” I grinned and grabbed the bottle of mineral water beside the pillow. The bottle magnified the inscriptions like a magnifying glass would have done.
“It’s not very clear but I think it is written in Japanese.”
“I don’t think it is Japanese. Bodhidharma proliferated Zen Buddhism so it should be Zen literature,” suggested Ram.
Vivek had his cellular device which thankfully could connect to the wifi in the hotel and also had a camera. Using an online translator, the device translated the text in seconds.
’The ultimate key to the opener of tunnels lies in the largest invisible City
The Centre of the Greek, Persian and Roman Empire
The New City
The man of Bor-nu
Consecrated under the Church which started it all’
“That’s not all guys. There is a small sign next to city.” I showed them the sign
Two paths lead to one
“Well, this looks like the Nordic rune - Raido. I knew it! It wasn’t crystal clear on the mirror itself but now that I know. “ said Ram and picked up the mirror that had been detached from the hilt. “Yes! It is the same sign.“
“Educate us,” said Vivek
“If my memory serves me right, then this rune signifies a ride or a journey,” replied Ram.
“A teleportation is a ride through space and time, right?” I asked, trying to link the rune with our objective.
“Correct,” concurred Ram.
“Alright. Ram, help us decode the poem, will you?” I asked.
“Sure.” He took the handle from me and read the cinquain, “The first line says ‘ The ultimate key to the opener of tunnels lies in the largest invisible City ‘.
“The key to the opener of tunnels surely means the key to the tele porter. It must also be the final key since the line say ‘ultimate key’,” I offered.
“Nice. But what do we understand by the ‘invisible city’?” Ram questioned us.
“Well, this means that the city cannot be seen. Something like Atlantis, no?” Vivek offered.
“The city might be in a cave or underground... hey, what about the catacombs in Rome?” my face lit up.
“Could be. It is likely that this line refers to the Catacombs. Let’s leave it aside for the moment and check the other lines. The second line says ‘Centre of the Greek, Roman and Persian Empire’. If we suppose that we are talking about the roman catacombs, then Rome should be the centre of the Greek, Roman and Persian empire,” Ram said.
“Nice. What about the next line?” Vivek asked.
“The New City! Well, Rome is a relatively new civilisation for the Japanese. Rome was founded in about 750 BC and the Jomon period in Japan ranges from 13000 BC to 3000 BC! So if this poem was written by Odin who had come to Japan during 5th to 6th century CE, then it is possible that he wrote this verse with respect to the Japanese.”
