December 6 (22 page)

“I’ll bet you.” Harry refilled Ishigami’s cup.

“You’ll bet me again? Once I have your head, I’ll have your money, too.”

“Forget the head. I have another thousand yen nearby. A simple wager of a thousand yen.”

“What sort of bet is that? I could say anything.”

“I trust you. I’ll bet the maps showed a chain of islands with a fleet launching station in the northwest and a central island with a southern harbor.”

Michiko sighed musically and said, “But there’s no bet, Harry. I know where that money is, in the Happy Paris under the floorboards. So, there’s nothing to bet with, is there?”

Ishigami let out his breath. But he had held it, Harry thought. It sounded like Pearl to him.

“Are you a spy?” Ishigami asked.

Michiko laughed and hiccuped. “I am sorry. It’s just so funny. Harry a spy? Who would trust Harry?”

Ishigami said, “I remember a boy who used to deliver woodblock prints to me. To see him, you would think he was an American lost in Tokyo, but he wasn’t lost at all. You knew too much, Harry, even then. Where do you keep all that information?”

Harry avoided the obvious answer. He drained his cup and held it out. “Thanks, I will have more.”

Ishigami wavered, his hand halfway between the jar and the sword. He seemed to shift in and out of focus, and Harry felt it wasn’t just the effect of the sake. There was something damaged and smudged about the colonel, like a photograph taken into battle too many times. Harry read a mood that was dangerously variable: exhausted, energized, amiable, mad. Talking to Ishigami was like walking in the dark while trapdoors opened and closed on all sides. Michiko busied herself slicing ginger with a small knife until the colonel snapped out of his reverie and they were back on friendly terms, then she refilled the cups. Pouring sake was a geisha’s primary concern.

“How long have you really known the colonel?” Harry asked her.

“One day,” Michiko said. “Sometimes one day is enough, sometimes a year is too long.”

“I wanted to take care of you in your own club,” Ishigami said. He smiled as if appreciating an earthy joke. “But she wants to take over the establishment when you’re dead, and it’s not good to start with a bloody floor, so she convinced me she could bring you here.”

“Such an ambitious girl. I never knew,” said Harry.

“Oh, Harry, there’s so much you don’t know.” Michiko hid her laugh behind her hand again.

Harry remembered how Kato had said that geisha covered their laugh to hide their teeth, which were bound to look yellow next to their white face paint, although Harry would have been happy to see any sign of the Michiko he thought he’d known.

They played jan-ken-pon —two-fingered scissors cut paper, open paper wrapped rock, fisted rock broke scissors— and the loser drank. It was a favorite geisha party game, and Harry and Ishigami drank twice as much as Michiko. With too much sake in him, Harry found himself staring at this new, illuminated woman. He couldn’t help but think of her hidden self, the softer whiteness of her skin, the tiny moles at the base of her neck, the way her spine sank into the swell of her ass. Between cups of sake, he thought he could almost taste her mouth. This painted outer self didn’t so much disguise the Michiko he’d known as split her into two versions.

“Rock breaks scissors!” Michiko clapped for herself and poured Harry another cup.

“If you want the Happy Paris, you can have it. You don’t have to kill me for it.”

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Michiko said.

“Drink up,” Ishigami said.

“Why are you doing this?” Harry asked Michiko.

She smiled as she refilled his cup. “Because you were leaving, Harry.”

“I would have left you everything.”

“But I didn’t want to be given, Harry, I wanted to take.” She laughed as if explaining something simple to a child. “If I take it, it’s mine. If you give it, it’s always yours. That’s at the heart of the Marxist struggle.”

“She’s a Red, you knew that?” Harry asked Ishigami.

“Asia is the same way,” Ishigami said. “We can’t wait for the white man to give us what’s ours. We have to take it. One, two…”

“Three.” Michiko squealed with delight as she threw paper to Ishigami’s fist. “You drink.”

“It’s a shell game, the way she plays,” Harry said. He caught a glance from her that told him she could have beaten him at any game he chose. Who had he been living with the past two years? In his vanity, he had supposed she’d cared for him in at least a possessive mother-serpent sort of way. He had never spent more time with anyone and never been so wrong. It hurt a man’s self-confidence. The way only the pads of her lips were painted gave her a smile within a smile, as if she had one for Harry and another for Ishigami.

“Who did your makeup?” Harry asked. Even the most experienced geisha needed help with all the powders— vermillion, gold and pale blue— and brushes— wide and flat-handled for base glue and paint, sable brushes for the eyebrows— and the wig, a sculpted mass of human hair. Especially for painting the intimate design on the nape of the neck. Simply putting on a kimono, with all its hidden strings and tightly wrapped obi, demanded the hands of someone else. “Is someone else here?”

“No.”

“Somebody helped.”

Michiko ducked Harry’s eyes while Ishigami lit a Lucky. Harry finally noticed flecks of white on the tips of the colonel’s fingers, the same way paint used to stick to Kato’s hands no matter how hard he washed. This time Ishigami was the artist. Information came in vivid images: Ishigami applying white primer to Michiko’s skin, brushing red powder on her cheeks, binding her hair with strips of gauze and setting the crown of her wig. Which were skills learned only through long practice. Ishigami blew aside smoke and offered Harry a gaze that held a whole catalog of images. Of tracers spraying the night sky. Of an officer’s tent sagging under pillows of snow. Inside, the tent was lit by a kerosene lamp, and an aide with narrow shoulders and a long gentle face held still as he was painted, his eyelids outlined in black, his lips budded red. The officer fixed a wig on the boy with strings and gum, brushed the bells in the hair to make them sing. Well, Harry thought, gender had always been a slippery item in Japan. The first geisha had been men, and sex between samurai had been virtually Greek.

Ishigami became confidential. “You must be brutally honest to achieve beauty. The eye that seemed bewitching can become as stupid as a cow’s. The chin that was handsome becomes heavy, the feet and hands too large, the neck too crooked. You must erase the flaws. You lengthen the eye, shade the chin, train the hands and feet. An effect of the moment, but that’s all you need.”

Harry remembered the first time he had dressed Michiko in her Record Girl suit of top hat, sequined jacket and long black stockings. And the underkimono of red silk she slept in, was that her idea or his? Meanwhile he said, “What I hear is, there’s lead in the paint. People who paint geishas sooner or later go insane.”

“It has that effect.” Ishigami’s voice tailed off, and his gaze dropped to the head box, which smelled of freshly cut and sanded wood. The mood was changing again, losing a little effervescence. They were sliding back into China, Harry thought, back to Nanking, as if his life were on a tether tied to one spot. He even had a brief picture of Ishigami carrying out the execution as before, this time aided by Michiko, who looked likely to start off as Butterfly and end as Salome.

“The emperor,” Harry prompted Ishigami, “when you saw him, did he say anything?”

“The emperor asked the aides how long a Pacific war would take. They said three months. He reminded them that the army had told him four years ago that a war in China would take three months. The problem is, we have won decisive battle after decisive battle, and nothing is decided. There are just more Chinese. Now we would lose too much face to leave. It would be better to lose to anyone other than China.”

“There’s always the option of sanity, declaring yourself winners and coming home.”

“It would be defeat. From then on, the hands of America and England would be around our neck. They could cut off our oil anytime, and we would be beggars. Better a truly decisive stroke than slow strangulation, don’t you agree?”

Everything seemed to be coming back to the sword shining by Ishigami’s side.

“How does the emperor feel?”

“The army will decide for the emperor’s sake.”

How will they do that, Harry started to ask, when Ishigami held up his hand for silence. Harry heard nothing to begin with, then a door shutting at the front of the hallway.

“These fucking shoes and laces, every time I go in a fucking house. Off and on, off and on. Harry! Harry, are you in there? Why isn’t the Happy Paris open? Is there a mama-san in the house? Harry? Anybody home?”

“An American correspondent named DeGeorge,” Michiko whispered to Ishigami.

DeGeorge sounded drunk, as if lurching into the sides of the corridor with every step. Harry could picture the man’s red nose and dirty gray suit. Go away, he thought.

“Harry Niles is here,” Ishigami said loudly. He smiled at his own English. “Come see Harry.”

“Where?” DeGeorge’s voice shouted. “I filed a story on your little speech. The censor killed it. What are you, hiding? Playing cards?”

“Come see Harry,” Ishigami said.

From the sound of it, DeGeorge slid open each door as he progressed up the hall, stumbling around in stocking feet. “Jesus, you hired the whole place? Having a private party, are we?” The heavy steps paused at the closed door behind Harry, who could almost feel the bulk of DeGeorge leaning into the shoji. “This must be the place.”

Harry turned and said, “Run! Get out of here!”

“Knockee-knockee.”

The door slid open. Al DeGeorge pushed through a leer that changed to a quizzical expression as Ishigami stepped over the table with sword cocked and sliced the correspondent of
The Christian Science Monitor
diagonally from his shoulder to his hip. Holding himself together with his hands, DeGeorge tried to go in reverse. Ishigami followed, poking him with the tip of the sword as if steering a pig into a sty to a room with more space to swing. DeGeorge was out of sight, but Harry heard him, a reporter to the last, ask a plaintive “Why?”

The answer was a sound like scissors closing, weight dropping in a heap and something rolling underfoot. Harry endured a sensation like falling from a window and not yet hitting the ground. Michiko maintained perfect geisha poise.

Ishigami returned, stepping fastidiously around the bloody mat at the threshold and sliding the door shut.

He said, “That’s one.”

18

T
HERE WAS AN ETIQUETTE
to geisha parties: no groping, no show of money, no sake once rice was served, although the rules were often violated by wartime profiteers who knew no better. Ishigami was a gentleman of the old school, who fueled on nothing but high-octane sake. Screw the rice. Anyway, who was sleepy? Not Ishigami, who sat in a white kimono spotted with blood and tended his sword with an oily rag.

Ishigami seemed to swell and fill the room. Perhaps because every sense of Harry’s was sensitized, Ishigami was magnified, every pore of his hatchet face, the blue cap of his cropped hair, the black wires of his brows and lashes, the dark mirrors of his eyes, not to mention the smell of salty sweat tinged by background accents of incense and blood. Harry noticed the checkmarks of fragmentation grenades on the colonel’s scalp, a notched ear, the way his neck swelled like a forearm when he leaned back. He studied how Ishigami’s hands curled around the handle of the sword the way a baseball glove would fit around a ball. Harry had to wonder whether Ishigami had soaked his hands and sword in neat’s-foot oil for a better grip. He noted the white kimono, which suggested a sense of ceremony and dedication to a task. He also noticed how little air was in the room, as if he and Ishigami had labored to the thin atmosphere of a mountain peak.

The problem was that Ishigami was smart, moral and psychotic, the worst possible combination. He couldn’t be gulled, bought or reasoned with. The last option was to kill him, and Harry couldn’t imagine accomplishing that without the gun he had just buried under the floorboards across the street. There was Ishigami’s own sword, but the colonel was just waiting for Harry to try.

Meanwhile, there were other plates to keep spinning. For example, the DC-3 being readied in its hangar at Haneda Field. DC-3s were built on license by Nakajima Aircraft, which also built excellent bombers. A crew would work around the clock to make sure the plane shone like a silver spoon on Monday. Harry anticipated speeches at the foot of the ramp from the Foreign Ministry and Nippon Air, appropriate remarks from passengers about the glowing future of the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, bouquets, bon voyages, bows all around. Thirty-six hours from now. None of this would include him if he were involved in a homicide, let alone if he were dead.

The other fly in the soup, so to speak, was Hawaii. Harry thought he had helped discourage any adventure in that direction with the phony oil-tank farm. Now, however, Ishigami said he had found the emperor perusing sea charts and maps. A sea chart was for locating a point in the ocean. A map was for finding Pearl Harbor and Battleship Row. Maybe His Majesty was being consulted, but he had about as much influence as the Indian on the hood of a Pontiac. It seemed impossible for the Japanese fleet to get close enough to attack Pearl, but after all, Yamamoto was the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. And his fleet was missing. However, if Harry had to bet, he’d say a raid on Pearl was no more than fifty-fifty, and not until he had winged his way back to California, assuming he survived the night.

He pictured the fatally surprised DeGeorge while Michiko laughed and chattered on. Lady Macbeth could learn from Michiko, Harry thought. No craven “Out, damned spot!” from this girl. With her long-sleeved kimono, elaborate wig and her face flattened by matte white, the geisha Michiko was a dangerous two-dimensional version of herself. Over time, the getup actually looked less bizarre and more like Michiko’s true face. He couldn’t believe he had slept with this woman, known her literally inside out, taught her the difference between an upbeat and down. At least he had never said “I love you,” he’d never been that big a fool. Between Ishigami and Michiko, Harry felt as if he had wandered into a samurai drama.

And the sword? Harry had once attempted counterfeiting swords. In fact, his first impulse when he got his hands on a welding torch was to attach an ordinary blade to a tang signed by a famous swordsmith, so he had an eye. Ishigami’s long sword had the unusual length, smoky temper line and elegant sweep of a Bizen. All Harry could see of the short sword tucked into the colonel’s kimono sash was a worn leather handle. Well, it was good to see these old beauties used instead of being hung on a wall. Think of a sword that had been chopping heads for four hundred years. It took your breath away.

Michiko clapped her hands. “Let’s do some haiku. I’ll go first.”

Haiku, that should pick up the party. Harry thought it had lost its festive air.

Michiko poured more sake, sat back on her heels and began:

“The world was born when the

Goddess Izanami

Spoke the first word.”

“That’s it?” Harry asked.

“That’s it. Five syllables, seven syllables, five. Haiku.”

In spite of themselves, Harry and Ishigami shared a glance of amusement.

“That’s not it,” Harry said. “There’s much more to haiku.”

Ishigami agreed. “Haiku contains a word that evokes the season. You use the word ‘winter,’ or you suggest it with ‘icicles,’ or ‘spring’ or ‘cherry blossoms.’ Your poem doesn’t have either.”

Michiko shrugged in a pretty way. “Because in the beginning there were no seasons.”

“More importantly,” Ishigami said, “you have the story wrong. When the goddess Izanami and the god Izanagi came down from heaven to create the islands of Japan, yes, Izanami spoke first, saying, ‘What a nice man you are.’ But Izanagi was offended, because a man should speak first, so nothing was created. Then Izanagi spoke, saying, ‘What a beautiful lady you are,’ and only then did they create the islands of Japan.”

Michiko pouted. “Like any man. It’s obvious he never would have said a word if she hadn’t gone first. And then he takes the credit.”

“That is why women should never be allowed to write poetry,” Ishigami told Harry. “They want the first word and the last.”

She laughed, and the bells in her hair rang softly. She told Ishigami, “Now you go.”

“Harry?” Ishigami offered to wait.

“No, please.” Harry hated to break up the flirtation between Michiko and the colonel. There were moments when he felt as if Ishigami and Michiko were enjoying a picnic on his grave.

Ishigami thought for a moment. “This is a favorite of mine.”

“This will be very good,” Michiko said.

“Can’t wait,” said Harry.

Ishigami stopped oiling the sword.

“They call this flower white peony

Yes, but

A little red.”

Michiko clapped, eyes bright. “The petals are like that. It makes me think of a white kimono edged in red.”

“Harry, you seem to know something about haiku. What does it make you think of?” Ishigami asked.

“Round shoulders and blood.” What else? Like florists said in the States, “Say it with flowers.”

“Yes.” Ishigami picked out a fresh cloth to clean the blade. “You and I, Harry, we seem to be on the same wavelength.”

“Women just don’t understand.”

“England has poetry, Shakespeare and Donne. Is there poetry in America?”

“It’s different.”

“I would think so. It takes history to be distilled into poetry.”

“No, there’s poetry everywhere you go.”

“Such as?”

“Such as:

“His face was smooth

And cool as ice

And oh! Louise!

He smelled

So nice

Burma-Shave.”

Harry even remembered seeing the ad outside Palm Springs. He had been driving an ingenue to have her nose bobbed, hair dyed and teeth aligned. The girl sobbed the whole ride. She’d planned to be a nun, for God’s sake. In Palm Springs, Harry put her on a bus bound for Iowa City, called the producer and said she skipped. One week later, she was back at the studio begging and worse for a second chance, and Harry had to drive her down all over again. That was when he decided to get out of L.A. Now, admittedly, he was reviewing his life choices. Palm Springs was pretty nice in December.

“Or,” Harry said:

“The answer to

A maiden’s prayer

Is not a chin

Of stubby hair

Burma-Shave.”

“Commercial haiku,” Ishigami said. “Now that is American.”

“Whatever makes the cash register ring,” said Harry. Such an amiable conversation, he thought, if only he ignored the blood on Ishigami’s kimono. It was typical of the colonel that he’d spared his uniform. Thinking about the uniform, Harry asked, “You’re in the Third Regiment? The Tokyo regiment, is that what you’re in?”

“A good regiment. Kyushu boys are known for recklessness, and Osaka boys aren’t quite reckless enough. Tokyo boys are just right.”

“To Tokyo boys.” Harry raised his cup.

“Tokyo boys!”

“Tokyo!”

For a party that was essentially an execution, this was pretty good, Harry thought. Except his legs ached. Since he was used to sitting on his heels, he realized that the only thing his legs could have ached from was fear. From the waist down, he was scared to death. Ishigami wore a look of satisfaction. Once, when Harry was sick in bed as a boy, he had watched a cat play with a mouse for hours, holding it by its tail, flipping it in the air, gnawing gently. Harry had feverish dreams about the mouse for days. He added that picture to his memory of the Chinese prisoners in Nanking. It would be nice to be rescued. For once Harry even missed Shozo and Go. The Thought Police had been watching him for days, and now they were —dare he say it?— thoughtlessly gone. Doing what? Didn’t matter. Harry had squirmed out of tight spots all his life, and he would get out of this one. There were ways. For example: when in doubt, flatter.

“What would you have told the emperor if you had been able to see him alone?” he asked.

“I would have told him about parasites like you.”

“Besides me, what else?”

“That his troops were ready to carry out any mission and overcome any enemy, but that our real enemy on the mainland was not China but Russia, who is happy to see us waste our blood against the Chinese. I would have said we are no longer at war with any aim but to assure obscene profits for Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Datsun as we buy their tanks and guns. I would have told him that the army with the purest ideals in the world has become an opium broker. I would have said that I no longer recognize the army I have served in for twenty years. I no longer recognize myself.”

That wasn’t what Harry had expected. Insight and feelings, they always stun us coming from another human being, Harry thought. Especially from a murderer.

“You’re against the war?”

“No, but I am for a war with honor.”

“Against both the Bolsheviks and the capitalists?”

“Yes.”

“Against the workers and the owners? At what point does this touch on reality?”

“Japanese reality is different.”

Harry had heard that the moon was different in Japan, the cherry trees were different, the seasons were different, the mountains were different, the rice was different. Add them all up and he supposed that reality itself was different. Japanese swords were different.

“Okay.”

“Japanese are different because they live for an ideal, for the veneration of the emperor. Without the ideal, we do not deserve an empire. The idea that Izanami and Izanagi came down from heaven is ridiculous, of course. That the emperor is a living god is a myth. But it is a transformative myth that makes every Japanese godlike. It is an ideal, an ambition that lifts us to heaven.”

“Too much ambition. There’s a war memorial at Kyoto of forty thousand Korean ears. Has to look like chopped squid. You have to be really ambitious to collect forty thousand ears.”

“It’s a start.”

“It’s the cult of the sword. Yamato spirit. The need of attack.”

“Always attack, that’s true.”

Harry was aware of being a little drunk, but he also felt he was on to something. “Ten Japanese against one enemy, attack. One Japanese against ten enemies, attack.”

“The element of surprise is decisive.”

“Always close combat.”

“The closer the better,” Ishigami agreed.

“Bayonet work.”

“A man with a sword is worth ten rifles. War is spiritual. What is your ideal, Harry?”

“Decent odds and an honest game, I ask nothing more. What would you say my chances are of cutting cards to an ace ten times in a row? If I do it, you let me go, and I’ll even dispose of the body in the other room. You have a brilliant military record and a great future ahead of you. Don’t throw them both away for vengeance on some lowlife like me. Remember your obligations. The army needs you in China. The emperor needs you in China. Ten cards. That’s fate.”

Ishigami touched his sword. “This is fate.”

“So serious, you two. Like a pair of monks.” Michiko frowned at them. “We should sing silly songs. Anyone serious is too sober.”

Harry wished he could see some drunkenness or inattention on Ishigami’s part, but the colonel seemed to burn off alcohol like a spirit lamp. He also seemed willing to indulge Michiko. Geisha had that talent.