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“Scout’s honor.”
Harry stopped a taxi, stuffed Hajime into the backseat and gave the driver two yen, which would cover the meter to anywhere in the city and clean a bloody seat. As the car moved off, Hajime stuck his head out the window. His eyeglasses were bright with theater lights, but there was something hidden behind Hajime’s expression, some nasty surprise tucked under his mustache or kept up his sleeve.
“ Tokyo Station, Harry.”
Harry gave the taxi a halfhearted wave. The car had disappeared in the crowd when Harry remembered the gun still in his belt. He kicked himself. A gun might be useful if Ishigami caught up with him, but Harry didn’t want to shoot anyone. It was against the law to possess a handgun, and his first instinct was to ditch it. The trouble was that a soldier who lost a weapon entrusted to him by the emperor could face a firing squad, which was a little stiff even for someone as unpleasant as Hajime. Now Harry really would have to see him again just to return it.
In the meantime, there was plenty to do. Harry’s part of Tokyo was Asakusa, and its theater row was lit with side-by-side marquees like Broadway. Life-size posters of samurai stood between cardboard cutouts of Clark Gable and Mickey Mouse. A customer could see Gable, go next door to a samurai film and end up at a newsreel theater to follow warplanes in action over China. Tall ba
Warmed by shochu, Harry found a pay phone and made a call. A woman answered.
“Are you alone?” Harry asked.
“Not exactly.”
“How about tomorrow? Matsuya’s roof at two.”
“I’m sorry, this is a bad co
A man came on the line. “Beechum here.”
“The lady of the house?” Harry switched to the querulous voice of an old woman uncertain about her l’s and r’s.
“What?”
“The lady of the house, please?”
“Busy. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“She want to learn geisha dance, to play shamisen, to pour tea. I tell her she has to be Japanese to be geisha. Not Japanese, very difficult.”
“My wife has no interest in being a geisha girl.”
“Flower arranging is possible. Or prepare sukiyaki. Or maybe squid.”
“Are you quite mad?”
The man hung up. Too bad, Harry thought, though the course of adultery ne’er did run smooth. He considered wandering over to the Rheingold, a German version of the Happy. The Rheingold served Berlin pancakes with Holsten beer. The waitresses wore dirndls and were renamed Bertha and Brunhilda, gruesome enough; but worse, their jukebox played only waltz and schmaltz. Harry decided he couldn’t tolerate that. Still, the night was young. There was a hearts game at the Imperial Hotel, expats killing time with pissant pots. Better games were on river barges. Where the river Sumida lazed along Asakusa, boat after boat hosted games of dice. Merchants, brothel madams, famous actors bet serious money, and because the boats were run by yakuza instead of amateurs, the games were honest. Sometimes it was better to join a game midway, when you were fresh and the other players stale, for as the Good Book said, The last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
Heading for the river, Harry took a shortcut through a jigsaw puzzle of dark streets without names. Cars could pass through some streets, only bikes through others, and in some alleys the pedestrians squeezed between walls that nearly touched. Harry was at home, though. These were the escape routes he grew up in. From a chestnut cart, Harry bought a bag of nuts that were hot and charred, the skin split open and the meat as sweet as candy. Oharu came to mind. Harry remembered, as a kid, bringing her chestnuts wrapped in a cloth. “My hero,” Oharu would say and kiss his cheek. He saw more sparks down the street and thought that another chestnut cart lay ahead until he heard the singsong Klaxon of a fire engine.
The fire was down a side street at a tailor’s shop; Harry knew the place, which was near the garage where he kept his car. He had often seen the tailor and his wife, a grandmother, a girl and her younger brother eating di
A pumper arrived with a company of firemen. In helmets of lacquered leather with paneled neck protectors they looked like samurai in armor launching a siege. They hosed one another until their jackets of heavy cotton were soaked. One man climbed with a hose to the top of a tall ladder that was supported by nothing but the strong arms of his companions. Other firemen swung stout poles with metal scythes to tear down not only the burning house but also the tattoo shop and eel grill on either side. No one protested, not in a city where sparks swarmed over the rooftops like visible contagion and a hundred thousand could die in a single blaze. A second wall peeled off, revealing a tailor’s dummy trapped by flames. Screens burned from the center, stairs step by step. Hell, Harry thought, why not just build the whole damn thing of matches? Smoke swirled like ca