Captain Yon wandered out of the room, leaving Jun and Goto sitting silently side by side with their whisky glasses in their hands. The whisky was like nothing that Jun had drunk before. Not even Colonel Brodsky’s favourite Ararat brandy, which Jun had once been allowed to sip, had such a rich and mellow taste as this. Goto kept staring at Jun, but said absolutely nothing until the silence became so oppressive that Jun felt he had to break it.
‘What are we waiting for?’ Jun asked at last.
Goto looked at him over the top of his whisky glass. His expression was blank. ‘We’re waiting until it starts to get dark,’ he said.
* * *
Jun couldn’t remember when he had last eaten. The whisky went straight to his head, and the room began to blur. He was vaguely aware of another figure appearing on the opposite side of him, and had a feeling that this was the soldier who had helped Goto lock him in the cellar of the mansion the day he first arrived here. Had he ever learned the man’s name? He wasn’t sure.
Goto and the other soldier helped him to his feet and guided him unsteadily down the stairs. This time they weren’t taking him to the cellar.
The shadows had thickened in the garden, and the deep glow of sunset was reflected in the stained-glass panel over the front door of the mansion. They got into the jeep again, Goto sitting next to Jun with a pistol cradled on his knees, while the other soldier drove.
They took a route that was unfamiliar to Jun: along a road crowded with evening shoppers; past a big Buddhist temple with a string of brightly coloured lanterns outside; past the half-finished walls of a large new concrete building clad in bamboo scaffolding; through a narrow backstreet between wooden tenement buildings with washing hanging from their windows; and then out on to an unpaved road that ran along the top of a weed-covered embankment, with a jumble of squalid junkyards and shanties on one side and the dark waters of the Sumida River on the other. Goto sat absolutely still and straight on the seat next to Jun, staring at the gathering darkness in front of them. The silence between them reminded Jun of the start of his spy training, when he and Goto had stood side by side on the train in and out of Tokyo, barely speaking to each other. I never really did get to know this man, thought Jun.
At last, when the road narrowed so much that it seemed impossible for the jeep to go any further, Goto said to the other soldier, ‘Take a left here.’ His voice sounded muted, as though he had a dry throat.
The jeep bumped down a slope on to a concrete platform that formed a kind of jetty protruding above the river. When the vehicle came to a halt, they all sat there for a moment, as though waiting for something to happen. Then Goto said, ‘OK. You can get out now.’
Jun felt entirely calm as he climbed down from the jeep into the hot summer evening. Goto pointed the pistol at his head, and they walked to the end of the concrete pier, with the other soldier to one side, carrying a coil of rope over each shoulder. The waters of the river smelled of mud and rotting fish. Goto cleared his throat as though he were about to say something, but seemed to change his mind, and simply nodded to his companion, who, quickly and efficiently, started to tie the ropes tightly around Jun’s ankles and wrists, pinning his hands behind him.
Jun inhaled a deep breath of the damp, stagnant air. He looked towards the end of the pier, where a row of three rather bedraggled seagulls sat, with their heads tucked under their wings. It occurred to Jun, when he saw these birds, that after all he had never managed to get to the Kabushima Shrine. But then again, perhaps it was just as well. He imagined thousands of white birds, as numerous as stars in the sky, soaring over a dark rock jutting from a shining sea. The place in reality would almost certainly have failed to live up to his imaginings.
Beyond the pier and the river, he could see banks of storm cloud rising behind the warehouses on the other side of the river. There was a small gap between the clouds, through which shone a glimpse of clear sky, pale gold and infinitely distant. As the soldier tied his wrists and ankles, Jun kept his eyes fixed on that small window of sky.
Once the last knot was tied, he could no longer walk the few steps to the end of the pier, so Goto and the other soldier took his arms and dragged him there.
He didn’t see whose hand gave him the final push which sent him over the end of the pier, slapping into water that felt as hard as concrete and then, as he broke through its surface, shockingly cold. The water embraced him in its relentless grip, sweeping over his mouth and nose and eyes, like the dark, choking waters of his dreams. He managed for a moment to lift his head above the surface, spit the foul taste out of his mouth and inhale one last deep breath of air, before the water sucked him down again.
And it was as he took that breath that a final sound caught him by surprise: Goto’s voice above him. The sound was muffled by the roaring of the water in his ears, but Jun just managed to catch the words.
‘I’m so sorry, Kamiya-kun,’ Goto was saying. ‘I am so very sorry.’
CHAPTER 25
‘Well, talk about dark horses,’ said Fred Quincy, when Elly rang to ask him about registering her son’s birth with the British Liaison Mission. ‘Many congratulations, my dear. But we had no idea you were even expecting. Weren’t we having a conversation about adoption just a few months ago? What was all that about?’
‘I know,’ replied Elly, who had been anticipating the questions, ‘I suppose our friends must think it’s very odd. But I was just so anxious, right up until the final months. I had a bad experience with a pregnancy before, you know, and was really afraid it would happen again. That’s why we decided to keep it to ourselves until the baby was born. It almost seemed like tempting fate to believe that everything would work out well this time around. But it did. It all worked out beautifully.’
‘Wonderful news, anyway, Elly. I’m so happy for you both. It is a little boy, isn’t it? Has he got Fergus’ red hair?’
‘No. I think he’s inherited his hair from me, but he has grey-blue eyes like Fergus.’
‘And I hear you’ll be leaving us soon for Hong Kong? So I suppose you’ll want to register the birth before you go.’
‘Fergus’ editor has actually given him a bit of a reprieve because of the arrival of the baby. Fergus doesn’t need to leave until the end of September now, and I’ll be staying on in Tokyo with the baby for a few months longer, so there’s no great rush, but obviously, we’d like to get it done as soon as we can.’
‘And are you going to give him a Japanese name or an English one, or one of each? Or Scottish, perhaps? Wee Hamish, maybe?’
‘We’re keeping the name a surprise for now. I’ll tell you when I bring the baby to see you.’
‘Aaah. The suspense will be unbearable!’
The name, in fact, was a problem. They had discussed it with Ted in the long and outrageously expensive trans-Pacific phone call where they worked out this arrangement. It had been a tense and awkward conversation at first — each side afraid of demanding too much of the other. But they trusted one another, didn’t they? That was all that really mattered. They would sort out the realities of multiple parenthood as they went along. As Elly and Fergus’ son, the baby had a loving home and was safe from the clutches of the authorities, who would otherwise almost certainly try to put him into an institution or hand him over to Vida’s hostile family. Elly and Fergus, it was agreed, were to register the birth under their names with the British Liaison Mission so that the baby would be eligible for citizenship. But Ted would always have the right to see his son and share in decisions about the child’s future.
All of this had gone into a long letter — almost a contract, really — that Fergus had composed and sent to Ted, keeping a copy for themselves, and for the baby too, who would someday need to know about his beginnings and understand the origins of his unconventional family.
But before Fergus and Elly could legally register him as their son, they needed to give the baby a proper name — not just the bland and nondescript ‘Jack’.
‘Vida w
as going to send me a list of three possible names, and I was going to choose one of them,’ Ted explained on the phone. ‘But that never happened . . .’
They discussed all sorts of names, wondering aloud what Vida would have wanted. This would have been very important to her, Elly thought. Vida took names seriously. But no inspiration came to them.
Every time they heard the clang of the doorbell, Elly and Fergus were gripped by fear that it would be the police, back to ask more questions. With the kitchen draped with drying nappies and bottles of milk standing in saucepans on the table, they had no chance of concealing the fact that their household had suddenly acquired a new member. But oddly, since the night that the baby had appeared on their doorstep, the police had not been in touch with them at all. As far as Elly could see there hadn’t even been any reports of the case in the newspapers: just one lurid and wildly inaccurate article about Vida in a weekly magazine, which depicted her as some kind of comic-book femme fatale but said nothing at all about the investigation into her murder.
* * *
Four days before Fergus’ departure for Hong Kong, Elly left the baby with him for a couple of hours and went out by herself. She had decided that there was something that she needed to do before it was too late.
She wanted to retrace her steps to the bookshop where she had met Vida and to the building where the poet had lived. The thought of those places was beginning to haunt her. She didn’t know how her mind and body would react when she visited them again. If she didn’t force herself to overcome her fears now, she thought, they would become dangerous booby traps on the map — places so filled with the fear of fear itself that she would never dare to go near them again.
She headed towards Kanda first, to visit the Lotus Bookshop, and was surprised to find it gone. The sign on the building was still there, but the front door was locked and fastened with a chain, and a handwritten sign said Lotus Bookshop — closed as of 29 August 1951. Please direct all enquiries next door.
But when Elly went into the neighbouring stationery store, the young woman behind the counter was vague. ‘They’ve gone away,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure if someone else will be taking over the shop. You could try leaving a message if you’d like, but I don’t really know if I’ll have a chance to pass it on.’
‘Never mind,’ said Elly. ‘It’s not important.’
She wandered down the road, passing a bookshop adorned with advertisements for Ogiri Joji’s bestseller. At the door of the café where she had eaten lunch with Vida, Elly paused, wondering whether to go in for a cup of coffee. But, after the long, hot summer, today the air was bright and fresh, and she could smell the approach of autumn. She had spent most of the past month indoors with the baby, and was desperate for exercise, so she decided to skip coffee and instead walk to the street near Tokyo University where Vida had lived. She was surprised how much had changed in the short time since she had last walked this route. There was a brand-new restaurant with a large glass front window not far from the bridge across the Kanda River, and a smart shop selling musical instruments, which Elly was sure she had never seen before.
As she approached the crossroads where she had telephoned for help on the night of Vida’s death, Elly spotted a shabby little building on the right-hand side of the road. A sign over the door read Hongo Esperanto Centre, and a couple of crudely printed posters in the window advertised Saturday evening beginners’ classes in the universal language, and a three-month course for more advanced students. Had Vida taught here? Elly wondered.
Unable to resist, she went into the building, and found herself in a dimly lit space with rather dusty little piles of booklets on a table in the centre of the room. She was the only person there. It looked as though they didn’t get many visitors.
She picked up one of the booklets from the table at random. It had a photograph of a bearded Westerner on its cover, and the Japanese title read Esperanto: A Short History, with, beneath it, the words Esperanto: Mallongo Historio. She skimmed the pages, surprised to discover how many words of the language she could recognize.
‘Can I help you?’ asked a dumpy young woman with thick glasses, appearing unexpectedly from behind a bead curtain at the back of the shop.
‘Oh, I’m fine, thanks,’ said Elly. ‘Just browsing, really.’
But the young woman was not so easily discouraged.
‘We’re always delighted to have visitors who take an interest in our language. There are hundreds of thousands of people learning Esperanto worldwide, you know,’ she said. ‘Could I give you a programme of our classes? Perhaps you might be interested in enrolling?’
Elly smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think so. I have a small baby and I doubt if I’d have time to attend.’ She felt it would be only polite to express some kind of interest, though, so she pointed to the photo of the man on the cover of the booklet.
‘Is this your founder? Dr Esperanto, is that his name?’
‘His real name was Zamenhof,’ explained the young woman, her face lighting up as she spoke. ‘But he used the pen name “Dr Esperanto”, meaning “the one who hopes”, from the word “espero”, meaning hope. That, of course, is how the Esperanto language got its name. It’s a very logical language, with extremely simple grammar, so really anyone can learn it. You’d find it easy, I’m sure.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Elly with a smile. ‘A language of hope.’
But she found the fervid gleam in the young woman’s eyes disconcerting and didn’t want to get drawn into a long conversation, so she bought one cheap booklet and then beat a hasty retreat. She was back on the pavement outside before she realized that she hadn’t asked whether Vida had frequented the shop. And she wished, too, that she had thought to ask the young woman what the name ‘Vida Vidanto’ meant.
The street where Vida had lived was as quiet and dull as ever. Elly remembered the last time she had been there — the terrible, dizzy sickness that had gripped her as she ran along the street after calling the police. Now, as then, the bench halfway along the road was empty.
But this time, as she walked towards the brown apartment building, Elly realized that she felt no emotion at all.
She was reminded of her grandmother’s death in Bandung, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. She and Ken had been taken by their grandfather to view their grandmother’s body, lying in a back room of the little drapery store. Elly had been seized by terror at the thought of having to see the dead body of the grandmother she had always loved. But when she entered the room, and saw the little doll-like figure laid out on a mattress in its best kimono, she felt nothing except the realization that her grandmother was no longer there. The body on the mattress was not Grandma. It was just something that Grandma had once used and had now cast off, like her embroidered slippers, which still lay by the doorway of the shop.
This street was the same. It was not haunted. It was empty. The brown apartment building had never really been Vida’s home — simply a temporary place of residence. It was just a rather ugly building. The poet’s spirit had not chosen to linger here.
The front door of the apartment building was closed, and Vida’s name-card had been removed from the top bell, though the Nomura Offices nameplate was still there. The café across the road had a sign outside its door saying Gone out: Back in thirty minutes. On the noticeboard outside the post office next door, the postcards appealing for the return of lost pets or advertising special massage services had been crammed into one corner to make way for two identical posters advertising Ogiri Joji’s Visions for a New Nation.
Elly had turned away and was about to set off home when an idea came to her. Surely not, she thought. But now that the notion had entered her head, she needed to see what she could find out. So she went back to the post office, stared at the noticeboard again for a while and then stepped inside.
There was only one counter, which was occupied by an irate woman who was arguing with the postmaster about the fact that
a parcel from her son in Niigata had not arrived yet.
‘Two weeks, it’s been!’ the woman kept repeating. ‘What have you done with it?’
The postmaster’s murmured apologies and explanations failed to mollify the woman, but just as Elly was thinking of giving up her impulsive mission, the disgruntled customer stormed out, leaving her facing the flustered man behind the counter.
‘Can I help you, madam?’ he asked, struggling to regain his composure.
‘How long have those posters for Visions for a New Nation been there, outside your shop?’ asked Elly.
The postmaster looked at her oddly. Two madwomen in one morning, he was clearly thinking.
‘I really couldn’t tell you,’ he said. ‘We get all kinds of things on that noticeboard. We don’t control the content, you know. Is there a problem?’
‘No, no problem,’ said Elly. ‘I’m just wondering how long they’ve been there for.’
‘I’d say probably about six weeks or so,’ said the man. ‘As far as I remember, they went up sometime in the first half of August, but I couldn’t tell you exactly when.’
* * *
‘I need a magnifying glass,’ said Elly, as soon as she walked through the front door. ‘You’ve got one in your study, haven’t you, Fergus? You haven’t packed it yet? And where is that photo?’
It took a while to find the magnifying glass in the general chaos of Fergus’ packing, and by the time they had dug it out, the baby had started to cry and needed feeding and changing. It was only once he had fallen into a contented sleep that Elly was able to take the photograph over towards the window and examine it carefully.
THE LANTERN BOATS an utterly gripping and heart-breaking historical novel set in post-war Japan (Historical Fiction Standalones) Page 23