by Susan Barker
A loud reverberation comes up through the ground, shaking the building like an epileptic fit. The candle flames quiver wildly and the venetian blinds chatter.
‘They’re back,’ he says solemnly, ‘to finish the job.’
The train rumbles off into the distance and I smile and slap him lightly on the shoulder, embarrassed. He grins back and I see the chip missing from his tooth.
‘My mother told me what happened. I’m sorry.’ Yuji cups my face in his hands. ‘It’s my fault you went through all that. I don’t know how I can ever make it up to you . . .’
‘Please, it’s not your fault. Nothing happened to me, nothing compared with what they have done to you. I don’t care about . . .’
He kisses me, tentatively at first, careful of his split lip. But then harder, so I taste the metal of his blood. Another train sends the bar into seizure, rattling the loose slats on the walls, the dusty glasses behind the bar. We drop to our knees and Yuji pushes me down onto the floor. I run my hands beneath his T-shirt, helping him pull it over his head. He fumbles at the buttons of my shirt and I help him with those as well. I pull him down close, whispering that I want him, lifting my hips so his hands can slide underneath. His mouth traces an invisible trail, over my collar-bone and breasts, down to my navel. I run my thumb beneath the cut in his forehead before I tug him back up to feel his mouth on mine again. He pulls away, looks away, says he looks fucking awful. I shake my head and tell him, no, he looks fantastic, always does. He laughs and calls me a liar. So we roll onto his back, and I hitch up my skirt and lift myself astride him, to see if I can’t prove him wrong.
In the midst of the ruins, the candles are burning themselves down, extinguishing one by one in a puff of darkness. I sit in my knickers and underwired bra, my skirt and blouse cast aside, defiled by grime and fingerprints. Yuji is lying down, shirtless, staring at the damp sunken ceiling. He smokes a Marlboro from the packet I brought, and after twenty-four hours’ abstinence is heavy-lidded with near-narcotic delight. Cross-legged beside him, I dab at the gash on his ribs with some cotton soaked in antiseptic. Yuji winces and sucks air through his teeth. ‘Keep still,’ I say: ‘it’s for your own good.’ We grin at each other, because I sound like the school nurse. Every so often the patter of tiny paws can be heard, as dark shapes dart from one side of the room to the other, wary of the rise and fall of our voices. The mobile phone Mama-san gave me lies dormant on the floor beside us, waiting to be rung.
‘I can’t believe my mother gave you her toilet slippers,’ Yuji drawls.
‘You spend the night soaked in your own blood and still you find fault with my shoes.’
‘Toilet slippers . . . There’s a big difference . . . Ouch.’
I apologize, and blow across the graze to take the sting away. Then kiss him on the forehead again, because tonight I can’t seem to stop kissing him.
He lifts back the tent my hair has made over his face. ‘Your hair is tickling my cuts.’
I pull it back over my shoulders. The hand not holding the cigarette rubs my lower back, probing beneath my knicker elastic. Another bullet train shoots by, shaking the walls. The clock on the phone says it is exactly ten. I trace the ridge of hair, the tufts and whorls leading down from his belly button to the waistband of his Levi’s.
‘Why did you do it?’ I ask.
‘Do what?’
‘Take that money. Steal Yamagawa-san’s drugs.’
The hand fondling my lower back grows still. ‘For us. I told you already. So we could leave Japan. It was fucking stupid, I know . . .’
‘But the drugs went missing before you needed the money to leave Japan. Hiro told me they broke into your apartment because of the missing drugs. And it was after that you wanted to leave.’
A geyser of smoke plumes from his mouth. ‘I had planned to leave long before I told you about it. That time after the break-in was the first time I mentioned it to you, that’s all. I wanted to keep all that shit separate from you. It wasn’t until we knew each other better that I asked you to come.’
Yuji’s eyes break with mine and he gingerly touches his swollen eyelid. I am hurt. All those months and he never said anything. The candlelight weaves through the blades of the ceiling fan, casting baroque shadows up above. He turns away slightly, telling me the subject is closed, that I’d better stick to the language of flesh and touch. But I have to know more.
‘What happened to the drugs, Yuji? Did you sell them?’
Yuji is quiet for a while, brooding. Finally he says: ‘I really don’t want to talk about this. You live in a different world, Mary. You wouldn’t understand . . .’
This riles me. ‘How do you know I wouldn’t understand?’
‘I want to be honest with you but I don’t want you to hate me.’
‘I could never hate you.’
Yuji resumes staring at the ceiling. I kiss him again, on the shoulder this time. I could never hate you. Not a lie exactly. More a statement of faith. A train screeches by, a pterodactyl on rails. Shadows oscillate, and the walls judder, flimsy as a low-budget soap-opera set.
‘Why does Hiro hate you so much?’
Yuji sits up, wincing at the parts that hurt when moved. Reluctantly he meets my eyes. ‘We used to be friends,’ he says. ‘Until we both started working for Yamagawa-san.’
‘What made you fall out?’
‘Yamagawa-san took a shine to Hiro. After a few months he was always taking him aside, talking to him in private. It pissed everyone off, me most of all. I got jealous, we stopped talking, drifted apart. It was immature, I suppose.’
‘That’s not the only reason, though.’
‘No. About a year ago someone set Hiro up to make it look like he had screwed Yamagawa-san over. He was punished and sent away from Osaka. He thought I was the one who set him up.’
‘Do you know who it was?’
Yuji shakes his head. ‘No.’ He stares into the empty space beside me. ‘They put acid on his face,’ he says. ‘I saw them do it. I didn’t hold him down or anything. But I had to watch, I had no choice. I still have nightmares about it – his screaming, the smell.’
I reach out and touch his hand. I am sickened that he stood by and watched it all, but at the same time I believe him when he says he had no choice. This is what we have to leave behind.
‘Have you seen him since?’
Yuji pulls his hand away from mine. ‘He came here today with a gun.’
My heart thuds. I thought he said it was safe here. ‘Are you serious! To shoot you?’
‘In the face.’
‘Oh God.’ I can’t see my face but I am sure it is a caricature of fear. ‘But you’re OK, though. Why didn’t he? What stopped him?’
‘He had the barrel in my mouth, finger on the trigger, when his phone rang. If I hadn’t had a mouthful of gun right then, I would have laughed. I thought he would ignore it, but he answered, listened to whoever it was, then turned and walked away. Just like that. Without a word. I lay on the floor, sweat pouring off my face, waiting for him to come back and finish me off. Then I heard his car drive away.’
I try to imagine what that must have been like, but my mind is blank.
‘Who was on the phone?’
Yuji shrugs. ‘Yamagawa-san, or maybe he answers to someone else now. That boy who works for my mother – you know, the boy who is strange in the head. He was with him, and stood over there . . .’ Yuji points to the door and I look over, almost expecting to see a figure in the shadows ‘. . . just staring at me. When I get out of here he’s not gonna be making pizzas for my mother any more. I’ll make sure of that.’
‘Watanabe?’
‘Is that what he’s called? Watanabe?’
Watanabe? Mixed up in all this? Is anything as it seems any more?
‘Did Hiro do all that to your face?’
Yuji taps the gash below his hairline. ‘Maybe this one. It’s hard to remember who did what. In the last twenty-four hours I’ve been everyone’s favourit
e bitch.’
He grins and I try to smile back, dumbfounded his sense of humour has survived all this.
‘What’s to stop him from coming back?’ I ask.
‘Trust me, he’s not coming back,’ he replies, with easy assurance.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Trust me. He won’t.’
Yuji strokes the back of my head and I lean towards him, my head in my hands, despairing. I yearn for the semi-ignorance of before, to slam the lid on Pandora’s box and never go near it again.
My memory snags on another item on the long list of Yuji’s crimes. ‘Hiro said that you told his fiancée he was dead.’
Yuji stiffens. ‘I had no choice. She took it well. No tears; she just asked me to leave. She went to work as usual the next day. Never mentioned it to anyone.’
‘How did you say he died?’
‘Gunshot wound.’
‘She knows the truth now. She must hate you.’
‘She knew the truth from the start. And she doesn’t hate me; she knows I was just doing my job.’
I fall quiet, turning things over in my head.
Yuji mistakes this for the silent treatment. ‘Look, Mary, what do you want me to say? Do you think that I don’t already feel guilty, every single day? I stood by and watched them torture my best friend. I’ve known that Hiro has been back for weeks now. I’ve been expecting him. When he held that gun to my face today, do you know what I thought? Good. Pull the trigger. Give me what I deserve.’
‘Don’t talk like that. How does being shot in the face help anything?’
‘I fucked everything up,’ Yuji says. ‘All I want to do is pay my dues and get out. I just want this to be over. I’d cut off my own hand just to get out of this.’
‘Stop it. We are leaving, remember? We can leave and never come back.’
I put my arms round him, breathing in the antiseptic rising from his pores. The night has cooled, but his flesh is hot, like all the sins he has yet to atone for are burning him inside. I hold him quietly, feeling the pressure of something left unsaid. Some words of reassurance, to ease the weight on his conscience. Now is the right time, but nothing comes to mind.
All that remains of the candles are pools of wax, moulded against the grain of the floorboards, opaque splashes on table legs, where drips hardened middescent. We lie in each other’s arms, our eyes soaking up the darkness like sponges. It is midnight and our stomachs are growling together. We smoke Marlboros and swig from an ancient bottle of sake to ease our hunger pangs (Yuji hasn’t eaten for over twenty-four hours and swears he can feel his stomach digesting itself). Between swigs from the dusty bottle Yuji talks about his past, the school he was sent to, how he used to resent his mother for being a hostess. I listen, interrupting only to ask the meaning of a word I don’t know. Yuji never usually talks like this to me; he is aware of the departure too. He keeps pausing, apologizing for boring me. I ignore his apologies and tell him to go on, not wanting to miss a thing.
The phone rings while Yuji is talking. Set on vibrate, it writhes over the floorboards in cellular exorcism. Yuji pounces, breath held in suspense. I listen to the low grumble of static, the authoritative monotone. It lasts for half a minute. Yuji says nothing until the caller hangs up.
‘Well?’
‘That was my mother. A car is on its way. It will take us to Yamagawa-san. He wants to talk to me first, then we are free to leave Osaka.’
‘What does he want to talk to you about? Shit! What if he wants to do to you what he did to Hiro?’
Yuji puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezes it. ‘Listen. If my mother brought this about, then we are not in any danger. Yamagawa-san wants to see me so he can lay down the law. Then he will let me go. My mother has spoken to him and he has promised her.’
‘And you trust him?’
‘Well, no. I think he wants to break my fingers . . .’
‘Yuji!’
He laughs. ‘Sorry . . . Listen, he knows I’ve already had the crap kicked out of me. He just wants to give me a talking-to. No one skips town without the farewell speech. My crime wasn’t serious and my mother is his close friend.’ He picks up his bloodied T-shirt, shakes it out and pulls it over his head. ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ he says.
‘I go where you go,’ I say.
Yuji threads his arms through his T-shirt sleeves. I reach for my crumpled skirt.
‘Are you scared?’ I ask.
‘No.’
‘I am.’
‘Mary, they’re not gonna do anything to you . . .’
‘It’s not me I’m scared for.’
‘Just think, in a few hours’ time we won’t be in Japan any more. My mother is sorting out our passports and plane tickets as we speak.’
The BMW pulls into the yard, headlights glaring. The chauffeur who drove me here lurches out, as pokerfaced as an undertaker. He stares through us as though we are transparent, ghosts of the condemned, unworthy of his acknowledgement. He pulls open the back door without so much as a glimmer in the direction of Yuji’s battered face.
In the back seat I whisper: ‘He’s strange. Do you know him?’
Yuji shakes his head, thoughts engaged elsewhere. The ignition sparks and the BMW pulls out of the yard, over the stony track, back past the bamboo and corrugated-iron fences. We roll into a built-up area, and are stared at by two bozoku, straddling Harleys, in a 7–11 car park. Graveyard-shift workmen in yellow boiler suits are drilling up the road. A man in a hard hat and reflector vest waves us through the detour with a flashing wand. Yuji is silent, but his nerves generate a near-audible hum. He was lying when he said he wasn’t scared. I want time to speed up for us, so that the meeting is already over, or to slow down, so it never arrives. We avoid looking at each other. I squeeze his hand. And he squeezes mine back, transfixed by the world beyond his azure-tinted window.
Though Yamagawa-san’s bar is just a few streets away from The Sayonara Bar, this is the first time I have been here. It is tucked into a cobbled side street filled with tiny bars with façades of pink neon and names like Pink Panther and Tuesday World. One or two places don’t have names, just blacked-out windows and heavy-set doormen. Outside Diamonds Are Forever two Japanese drag queens flourish cigarette holders aloft, rouged as pantomime dames, lending the street a carnival atmosphere. A disembodied karaoke howl rips through the night as somewhere, not so far away, a falling-down-drunk salaryman insists he did it ‘My Way’.
Yamagawa-san’s bar is called The Seven Wonders. The clientele are exclusively salarymen, grouped round large tables. Above each table a large plasma screen is suspended, each boasting a virtual construct of one of the seven wonders of the world. The one closest to me shows the Pyramids. The perspective dips and glides, soaring overhead, exploring the Sphinx from the viewpoint of a circling bird. As well as the plasma screens each table has its own hostess in a beautiful dove-white kimono. Ebony hair secured into chignons, skin translucent from whitening lotions, the hostesses smile and pour drinks, possessed of an understated elegance that suggests hidden toil.
‘What kind of bar is this?’ I ask Yuji.
Yuji doesn’t hear me. A handful of salarymen overshadowed by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are having a sly gawp at the wreckage of his face. The hostesses blank us completely, in a forced manner that makes me think they know exactly who we are and what we are doing here.
Yuji turns to me and says: ‘Listen, Mary, I want you to wait at the bar while I go and speak to Yamagawa-san.’
‘No. I’m coming with you.’
‘I won’t be gone for long. Just wait here.’
I shake my head, determined not to back down. ‘I’m coming with you.’
He drops my arm. ‘OK.’
The hostess concocting drinks makes no attempt to stop us when Yuji leads me behind the bar. Yuji opens the door leading to a stairwell and I glance back in time to catch her violet irises flash in my direction. A click of recognition and her eyes break away. She i
s the young mother I saw at Mama-san’s bar fourteen hours ago, wearing coloured contact lenses. I thought she said that she hated hostessing.
Yuji pulls me by the hand. ‘C’mon . . .’ he says.
We go up a flight of stairs leading to a short corridor, where the starkly plastered walls act as sounding boards for the thud of blood in our hearts. The fluorescent strip light is broken, stuttering like a defective stroboscope. Yuji inhales, as though oxygen will lend him the courage he needs, and knocks on the door. A gruff voice shouts at us to wait; then, in the next breath, to enter. Yamagawa-san rises from behind his desk as we walk into the dark room. The walls are blacker than black, as though they have been painted with some light-absorbing pigment. A plasma screen, sister of the multimedia downstairs, emits the only source of light. Virtual tropical fish flit about, their rainbow fins gliding through waters too sparkling and aquamarine to be real. It is 2 a.m. and Yamagawa-san is immaculate: his shirt is whiter than white, his hair a carefully sculpted wave.
‘Good evening, Yuji.’
‘Good evening, Yamagawa-san.’
‘Mary.’
‘Good evening, Yamagawa-san.’
We bow, deep and prolonged. If it’s humility he wants, we’ve got it in spades. Anything to get out of here with a minimum of fuss. Yamagawa-san is relaxed and informal, like we’ve just dropped in to say hi. He gestures to two leather chairs, then walks round and perches on the edge of his reconstituted granite desk. As the computer-synergized light falls upon Yamagawa-san’s face, I begin to suspect that all is not well. At first it looks like an illusion caused by the ripples of the virtual water, but then I see there is definitely some kind of muscular disturbance going on beneath his skin. His jaw clicks. He is coked up to the hilt.
‘You have blood on your shirt,’ he remarks to Yuji.
He gets up and slides open an invisible compartment in the wall. He pulls out a brand-new shirt, folded and cellophane-packaged, and tosses it to Yuji. This is an encouraging sign: you don’t go to the trouble of giving someone a clean shirt just before you smash his face in. I smooth my skirt and slide my toilet-slippered feet under my chair. Yamagawa-san re-perches, tapping out a rhythm on the table top, creaking his jaw. He smiles. Perhaps his being off his head could work to our advantage.