by Gavin Black
“You in business?”
“Sure.”
“All in business here. Too much money for student.”
I looked around and saw the sweating, middle-aged faces, nearly every customer with his personal comforter. My girl was concentrating on me in a way which suggested that by turning up I’d simply made her night. It’s a great art that, much neglected west of Suez and east of San Francisco. Beyond her cold tea she made no demands at all, that not being the woman’s place, and I was soothed, I didn’t feel the peculiar kind of loneliness that was waiting outside this sleazy night spot.
“You not happy man?”
“Who is?”
“You have money, eh? You not happy?”
“It doesn’t buy the world, lady.”
“You make a joke of me. You like me, no?”
“Yes, I do. What’s your name?”
“Haruko. You come to ‘Happy Days’ each night. I waiting.”
“You mean I get a special booking?”
“Sure, I waiting. I look for you. You not eat sandwich.”
“I will.”
“You have wife and children? You show me photo?”
Where else would you get a night club girl asking to see pictures of the wife and kids? It’s impossible not to react to these people when you’re not expecting to, and with a lot of emotion. I was scared sitting there, scarcely able to breathe between the pillar and my table, but I had room for other feelings, for that odd surging sense of the vast amount of just natural goodwill which is somehow allowed, in Japan, to spill out all over the dirty floor of living.
“Don’t be sad,” Haruko said with great simplicity. “You like to dance? Soon dancing.”
“No, I’m quite happy just sitting here. I’ve had a busy day.”
“Girl takes off clothes soon. You like that?”
“You mean Miss Zuroff?”
“So. You have seen?”
“No. What’s she like?”
“Oh, beautiful. Russian. But live in Japan always, I think.”
“Nice girl?”
Haruko made a face which eliminated Russians from that category. She put one soft paw over my hand on the table and smiled at me. She had small, very good teeth, each slightly separated from its neighbour. There was no Oriental mystery here at all, she brought her charm straight from the country, from some village where the fields climb up the mountainside and if you’re lucky enough to stay you wear yourself out young climbing to work in them. If you’re not lucky you end up in one of the thousands of “Happy Days.” It’s a crowded country, with a lot of waste.
“You finish beer. I get.”
The turn on the dais behind a very small dance floor was now a juggling act, a frenzy to achieve some physical contortion that hasn’t been on the boards before. I had noted the way performers came in and went out again, from around behind a sort of permanent screen. There was plenty of shadow to act as cover for anyone wanting to get behind that, and it was the only way back-stage I could see. I knew when I was going to try it.
Haruko was holding my hand with all the gentleness of a mother dealing with a fretful child when Miss Zuroff came on. The new entertainer did it to conga music from a sweating, shirt-sleeved four piece, a tall slim girl with chestnut coloured hair which hung down to her waist. Miss Zuroff was draped in long strips of what looked like butter muslin and she undulated with only a moderate amount of vigour, as though knowing her act didn’t call for any extremes of this incidental kind. She didn’t use the dais, but oozed out towards the audience, coming very close to the tables, close enough to mine for me to have a good look at her. I saw an extravagantly painted pure Slav face, with the high cheekbones and the slanting eyes, but it was her mouth that was exceptional, two great slabs of wet red lips slightly parted.
It took an awful long time for her to lose that first piece of muslin and the business men began to get a little impatient for their money’s worth. A stamping started and then a chorus of male voices in time to the conga music, feet bashing on the floor.
“Stripoffu Zuroff! Stripoffu Zuroff!”
She obliged in her own time, teasing them. The thumping grew louder than the music.
“Stripoffu Zuroff!”
I reckoned that very soon after the finale, perhaps in total darkness, Miss Zuroff would beat a retreat to her dressing-room, where I meant to be waiting for her. She was my only lead now to Harry Komatsu and Marla and I was pretty certain that I could scare her into telling me a good deal about that boy.
When the last strip was beginning to wave about I rose.
“I’ll be back,” I said to Haruko.
“That way!” my hostess hissed helpfully at once, but I could see she was more than a little puzzled by my apparent indifference to this expensive item provided by the management.
There was no proper back stage at all behind that screen, just a door with a coloured light over it beyond which I could see one of the jugglers talking to another hostess. They looked at me in surprise.
“Not this way,” the hostess said.
“I’m a friend of Miss Zuroff. She asked me to come back. Which is her dressing-room?”
“Friend not allowed!”
“But I know the manager here.”
“Mr. Mikasa? You know?”
“That’s right. Mr. Mikasa is an old friend of mine. I have his card somewhere. Miss Zuroff’s dressing-room?”
The girl hesitated, while the juggler frowned. Behind us the din was terrific, clearly Miss Zuroff was finally obliging.
“Down this passage, isn’t it? And then?”
The girl pointed, still uncertain, reluctant. I went through an area devoted to performers’ changing-rooms, a part of living that is supposed to have its glamour but in my limited experience has always seemed singularly sordid. Through open doors there was a good deal of flesh visible, and the smell of it. I was looked at by one or two faces masked by make-up.
“Happy Days” didn’t apparently rise to star dressing-rooms, but I saw what seemed an unoccupied cell with the door slightly ajar and a light on. I knocked, and when there was no answer, pushed it open.
It was Miss Zuroff’s dressing-room. The bulb-fringed mirror was decorated with pictures of her act, and one close-up, which did nothing to improve my earlier impression of her charms. Lying over a kind of laundry rack was a concoction of feathers, not much else, which must have been her costume for another appearance. The whole place was about eight feet square, and cluttered. I nearly fell over a huge, old-fashioned trunk with a rounded lid.
Then I looked behind it. Harry Komatsu was staring up at me from the floor. He was lying flat on his back with a bean curd seller’s knife sticking out of his chest. There was scarcely any blood as yet, and I was certain that if I touched the body I’d find it warm.
The corpse’s face still had surprise on it, as though that was the last expression, not yet wiped out by the neutrality of death. No horror, or fear even, just surprise. He was lying there dead, but still astonished.
My own first feeling matched Harry’s last one. I just looked at him. It was seconds before I understood what this meant for me, that knife like a trade mark in murder, my brand sign in the eyes of the police. And I was here within minutes, perhaps less, of Harry’s murder. I had been seen coming backstage. The hostess would remember, and the juggler. Haruko would have a lot to tell them, too.
There was a clicking of heels in the corridor. I turned just as Zuroff came in, wearing a dressing-gown of a bright helio shade, gaping at the neck.
“Why have you come to my room? Who are you? They said you were here, but I’ve never seen you in my life!”
She couldn’t see past me and over the trunk. Zuroff went shrill.
“Why do you just stand there? Say something! What …?”
“Let me out,” I said.
She moved inside the doorway, as though only too pleased to let me do that, her eyes under all that plastered black with an angry, suspicious venom in th
em. And in moving she saw all the dressing-room.
“Harry? You … wasn’t there someone here when you came?”
Some kind of headdress, diamante and glittering, perched on a peg, fell off it, and on to Harry. Zuroff moved forward. Her scream then isn’t easy to forget.
I knew there must be some kind of a stage entrance, and I was lucky, it was right there, with no attendant, the place didn’t rise to a doorkeeper. I was through it into a little lane, hearing the screams even out there. The lane was a blind, leading alongside the “Happy Days” into the neon shine of the pleasure street. I ran down it, almost running out into the lights, but checking myself, catching hold of a wooden wall.
Just as I did it a policeman ran past me, down the lane, his short little official sword clanking. I turned my face into the wall. I could still hear the screaming. The policeman down there was tugging at the door, which apparently didn’t open easily from outside.
I slipped around a corner into the street. I saw uniformed backs going into the entrance of the “Happy Days.” It was like a raid.
The pleasure street was crowded. The Japanese tend to concentrate places of amusement in clumps like this. On both sides of it were cafés, strip joints, and theatres, and walking down the stone paved street, where no wheeled traffic was allowed, were lots and lots of people.
I remembered getting out of my taxi at one end of this glare of light and noise, because I couldn’t be delivered to the door.
I looked back once, and there was a crowd gathering outside the “Happy Days.”
“Don’t look back,” a voice said beside me.
I knew the voice, even though I couldn’t believe it.
“Slowly, Mr. Harris, slowly!”
“Ohashi, how the hell …?”
“Quiet. Don’t look at me. Police both ends. Trap. But I fix.”
“How the hell can you?”
“Quiet. Now turn in! Here!”
I scarcely saw where we were going until we were inside. There was an odd smell, of steam and heat. We were in a square hallway, quite empty except for a little paybox. But it wasn’t a place of entertainment. I knew when I saw a white tiled wall to one side. It was a bath house! Right in the middle of the pleasure street was a bath house, men to the right and women to the left, and lots of shoes and geta waiting, showing that there were plenty of patrons. Maybe the performers in the shows liked to come here between acts to relax.
“Not speak,” Ohashi warned.
I looked at him, though. Now he seemed a little frightened. I was more than that. I was shivering. I knew the raid on the “Happy Days” was no coincidence. Someone had tipped the police off. The murderer?
“Take shoes with you,” Ohashi ordered. “Leave with clothes.”
We stepped up on to creaking boards, carrying our shoes, and Ohashi paid at the little box. A woman was sitting in behind a window knitting and I don’t think she had looked at us. I heard her shrill voice for a minute to Ohashi. Then we were in the room where the men undressed, with two wooden tagged keys for the boxes in which we were to put our clothes.
We were alone in the changing-room. The boy was peeling himself out of his student’s uniform, and at speed.
“Hurry!” he said. “Soap.”
He handed me a small cake. He must have bought it. In a moment he was naked and waiting for me. I didn’t take long, I locked away my clothes as he had done, and with my soap and wooden tagged key followed. We went into a cloud of steam, vapour rising so thickly from a vast tank of water that you couldn’t see faces distinctly at all. In that water, practically parboiling, were a lot of bodies, damp heads, sticking out, but that was all.
“Wash!” It was an order from Ohashi.
I soaped myself as he was doing, and rinsed with one of the dippers provided. Before I was ready he had approached the bath, one corner of it that seemed the least populated. Over beyond a partition, in the women’s section of the tank, we could hear shrill voices and laughter, but the men didn’t seem to be talking much.
Ohashi was easing himself down into that steaming tank, slowly. The moment my foot touched the water I knew why he was going gently. I was certain I couldn’t get in. I saw Ohashi’s face as the water reached his waist, tight with the shock of heat.
He signalled me to follow, with a curious down flip of the hand. It was like a foretaste of hell, fire up my legs and against my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. Ohashi had only his head out, with sweat standing on every pore of his face. I had the sense, even then, to keep my head away from the rest of the bathers, looking towards a back wall.
There was a little ledge around the bath where Ohashi had put his key. I put mine there too and went lower, closing my eyes, letting the molten agony reach my chest and then my arms.
After a time I could breathe, just. I faced the back wall and Ohashi in his corner. He watched me and he smiled, rather slowly, as though even that much movement had to be approached with caution. You didn’t move in that bath, not if you wanted to live. Every movement set up red jabs of pain.
I wondered how the women could do it, how they could laugh and talk. For this was their water too, beyond the partition, the same fire somewhere beneath board slats cooking both lots at the same time.
One man got out somewhere down the tank, making noises like a rhino surfacing, and the upheaval sent blistering ripples to the rest of us. Then there was a diversion. A party of four drunks arrived, with one very bad case they were more or less supporting. They made a great deal of noise, and the bad case had to be assisted to use the soap at the side trough. Some of the men already in the tank didn’t like the prospect of this rowdy crew. There was shouting, particularly one authoritative voice:
“If any of you are sick in the water we’ll call the police!”
“Eh, eh? Taro won’t be sick. Taro doesn’t get sick. None of us get sick.”
Taro was sick into the trough, and extremely noisy about it.
“See what I mean?” authority bellowed.
“How did you follow me?” I hissed at Ohashi.
The boy’s eyes without his specs seemed very narrow, slits almost, concealing what was in them. But clearly he was pleased with himself.
“On scootabike.”
“You …? Wearing a crash helmet and goggles?”
“So.”
“You little fool! You could have been killed at the speeds we were going. Where did you get the scooter?”
“A friend. I borrow.”
“And why the devil did you do it? Why come after me?”
“I am ashamed. What you say. Am I the son of my father who die at Iwo Jima?”
“Look, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. But you don’t have to make any amends. And you know why I’m on the run. You shouldn’t be helping me …”
“I am clever not to lose you,” Ohashi said. “Twice I think I lose. At Shinagawa, nearly.”
It certainly was a neat piece of tracking, something I had to acknowledge and I did.
“Ohashi, if I ever get out of this and you wouldn’t mind a job abroad let me offer you one. In Singapore.”
“Business?” he sounded not too eager. Literature was plaguing him again.
“Business but with a difference. There’s sometimes tracking on the side.”
“Oh! Sure, I come.”
I looked at him. He was as innocent as a babe, a shrewd babe. And he had redeemed himself in his own eyes now, risking jail to do it. But I couldn’t go on using him.
“Ohashi, I came to the ‘Happy Days’ to see if I could find Harry Komatsu. Do you know who he is?”
“Yes. Bad man, I think.”
“That’s as may be. He’s not any more. He’s dead. I found him in that place down there. With a knife sticking out of him that is exactly like the knife the police think I used to kill a man in the Myoko Hotel.”
Ohashi’s tongue came out and touched his lower lip. Then he said:
“So?”
“Yes, so. Which is why y
ou aren’t sticking with me when we leave this place.”
“I am sticking.”
“Now look, you little …”
“Ssh! Too loud!”
But he needn’t have shushed me. There was a diversion behind us. Taro was being lowered into the bath by his pals, and he wasn’t liking it at all. He roared. The authoritative type roared, too, repeating himself:
“If he’s sick in here I’ll call the police! I’ve warned you!”
But there was no need to call the police, they had arrived, walking in without taking off their boots. It was their boots I heard, I didn’t turn my head, but I guessed from Ohashi’s face.
“Oi!” The police shout is unmistakable. “Any of you seen a foreigner in here?”
That startled everyone. The water rippled. Taro slipped from supporting arms and screamed. Someone shouted:
“Foreigners don’t come in bath houses!”
The man was daring, talking to the police like that, but brave in the anonymity of steam and blistering water. One of the drunks took that up, remembering a song from his childhood.
“ ‘Red hairy foreigner,
Son of a cat …’ ”
There was a bellow of laughter. Taro’s pals, bent on rescue, got into the bath and the level rose, perceptibly. The women next door were enjoying this sudden liveliness from the men’s section which until now had been dull all evening. One of them made a suggestion about foreigners which showed she wasn’t a lady. The drunks rallied to that, all except Taro, whose head had probably gone under.
I don’t know when the police left, you couldn’t hear their boots in the din, and if they peered at the occupants of the bath they certainly didn’t come down to our end. Probably the floor was slippery. But I saw Ohashi’s face relax, the tension go out of it. It was safe enough to talk, with all the din from the exchanges across a flimsy partition, and there was a question about Ohashi hanging on which had to have an answer.
“How did you come to be near the Daibutsu last night? I don’t think I can believe you were just taking a stroll.”
“No. I tell lie.”
“Why?”
“Because I am ashamed to show I follow you. Like a dog, eh?”