by Susan Barker
‘Do you think that Mama-san knew what they were going to do to me?’
‘Mary! She set you up. She sent you to him. And I bet Yuji was in on it too. I’m sorry . . . I know you trusted him.’
Katya leans over the handbrake to put her arms round my neck. The embrace is awkward, her arms too thin. She rubs my back, as if trying to diffuse comfort through my shoulder-blade. I can tell she means it, but I am strangely detached.
‘I want to go to the police,’ I say. The desire makes itself known as I speak it.
Keeping hold of my shoulders, Katya pulls back, her eyes fierce with opposition. ‘You have not been hurt and the only evidence you have is your word. They have friends in the police. Think about it. You will only make things worse. You have been very lucky.’
Lucky? Is she serious? Branches sway above the car, sending fitful shadows across the windscreen.
‘So I just let them get away with what they did?’
‘I don’t like it either, but there is nothing that can be done.’
Hiro abandons stone-skimming to watch the breeze unsettle the surface of the lake. I almost ask Katya how she felt when she first saw what they did to his face, but there is a fine line between curiosity and cruelty. I know she is happy anyway. Radiance diffuses from her every pore; it hit me as soon as I got in the car, sharpening my heartbreak.
‘Hiro didn’t mean to scare you yesterday. He hasn’t made a very good impression on you, has he?’
‘He scares me more each time I see him . . .’ I say this in jest, then realize it is true. ‘What next for you two?’
‘America. Hiro has a cousin who can get us a job on a farm out in California. We’ve picked you up on the way to the airport.’
‘America. Wow!’ I am happy for her, I really am. Especially after all the shit she has been through. But I don’t want her to go. Not just yet. ‘I’m going to miss you,’ I say.
Katya opens the glove compartment and takes out a brown envelope. ‘Here.’
Inside the envelope is a British passport and a sheaf of ten-thousand-yen notes. I hand it back. ‘Katya, I can’t take this. It’s too much – I can’t pay it back.’
‘Take it. No arguments. What else are you going to do? Go back to working at The Sayonara Bar? Count the money later. Hiro got the passport for you this morning.’
I take it out and flip it open. It belongs to Casey Rhodes, a blonde born in June 1979. Nondescript enough to pass for. Just.
‘Mama-san has your real passport. This was the best we could do at short notice,’ Katya tells me. ‘Mary, I want you to come with us to the airport. You have to leave Japan: it is too dangerous here now. Hiro’s cousin can get you a job if you want to come with us to America. Otherwise I advise you to return to England straight away.’
Idyllic as it sounds, I can’t bring myself to gatecrash Katya’s new life. I am not too keen on England either, but any destination that puts a fourteen-hour plane journey between me and Yamagawa-san can’t be all bad.
‘Looks like I’m going back to England, then. When do you fly out?’
‘In two hours.’
‘Two hours?’
I am fraught; how can she go so soon? Katya’s smile is a strange hybrid of guilt and love-struck indifference.
‘How come you never mentioned Hiro before?’
‘I never said anything to you because it was safer to keep my mouth shut. It was just too risky with you seeing Yuji. I knew he was coming back, I just didn’t know when.’
‘A year is such a long time. How could you stand it?’
‘I would do it again. I would wait ten years, my whole life if I had to.’
The man Katya would wait her whole life for stands with his hands in his pockets, introspecting on the glinting surface of the lake. I remember something he said in Yuji’s apartment. That he couldn’t contact his girlfriend because they’d threatened to send her back to the brothel he rescued her from. I look at Katya, beatific even when she is unsmiling. At the hostess bar I always saw her as hard and cynical, but I know better now. I knew ten per cent of her before this morning. Five per cent. And now that she is going away I will never rectify this.
‘When did you know Hiro had come back?’
‘Two hours before we met you. He had been back in Osaka for weeks, but Yamagawa-san told him he had to stay away from me. Hiro got sick of being told what to do and resigned from his position early this morning. Then he came to get me.’
‘And Yamagawa-san just let him go?’
‘They didn’t part on good terms. Which is why we are leaving on the first flight out of here. After what happened at The Seven Wonders, I advise you to do the same.’
Katya also advises me to change my clothes. She takes a black vest, a linen suit and espadrilles out of her bag. I climb into the back, where I strip and change into the outfit, lifting my hips off the seat to pull on the trousers. Then I set to work on my hair with a comb. Katya sits with her bare feet up on the dashboard and smokes a cigarette, one eye on the clock. The skirt and blouse I wore last night are next to me on the seat, covered in Yuji’s fingerprints, his sweat and blood, dust from the floor of the Lotus Bar. I hate the sight of them. I ball them up, shove them in a carrier bag and kick it under the driver’s seat. Katya notices but says nothing. I would kill for two minutes with a borrowed toothbrush, but Katya is getting twitchy.
She twists round in her seat. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes, but it’s a shame I can’t go back and say goodbye to Watanabe. Or at least say thank you. I owe him that much.’
‘Watanabe is dead, Mary. They killed him for informing the police.’
My heart splutters. Dead? ‘How?’
‘They tied him up and drowned him.’
‘Jesus . . . Why?’
‘Because they can,’ Katya says. ‘Now do you see what the rush is for?’ She leans over to the steering wheel and presses down on the horn. It honks across the lake, scaring the birds from the treetops. Hiro begins to walk back to the car. ‘We have to go,’ says Katya. ‘Or we’ll end up dead like Watanabe.’
We tear down the Hanshin expressway, churning up the asphalt and spewing it out with the exhaust. The city is a distant concrete haze, throwing up a skyscraper here, the artificial green of a golf course there. This motorway gives me déjà vu, like I have dreamt this journey before, all the carbon monoxide and grey. I keep hearing my last words to Watanabe: ‘Can you clean the ice machine?’ Not even a please. Be honest, Mary, you treated him like everyone else did: like shit. He was just a kid, a teenager.
Hiro drives and smokes and doesn’t say much. None of us say much. Hiro took a clean shirt out of the boot before he got in the car, and threw the one with blood on it into the lake. Katya sits with one knee up like a restless child. Her hand moves from the back of Hiro’s neck to his arm, always touching some part of him. She kisses him as often as she can, right where the acid has eaten into his face. Cars hover alongside us before peeling away into the background. I close my eyes and pretend to sleep.
We abandon the car and follow an indoor route of glass walkways and escalators to the International Departure lounge. The air-conditioned hall chimes with multilingual announcements, foreign inflexions and echoes. Tourists stand around hillocks of luggage, frowning up at electronic indexes of gates and boarding times. Children dangle from luggage trolleys, begging to be pushed.
The sinister charisma of Hiro’s scar draws stares from all around. Some timid, others vulgar double-takes. A boy in a Spiderman T-shirt points and shouts: ‘Mummy, what’s wrong with that man’s face?’ Blushing, Mummy hisses fiercely and drags her child away. I wait around the Delta airline counter as Katya and Hiro calmly show their fictitious passports to claim their boarding passes. The flight for California leaves in thirty minutes. There is no time for lingering goodbyes.
The designated farewell zone is the metal barrier ahead of the security check. A corporate chieftain is sent on his way by a gathering of company men. Two teenagers b
id farewell in the tragicomic style of a holiday romance. This is happening too fast.
Hiro takes Katya’s bag, and nods at me. ‘Sorry about yesterday.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Thanks for the passport.’
We shake hands, no less uncomfortably than the first time we met in the karaoke booth.
Hiro steps back, hesitates and says: ‘Watanabe, he was a good kid. Really cared about you.’
I nod, not knowing what to say.
Hiro turns away to give me and Katya privacy. We hug quickly.
‘Look after yourself.’
‘You too. I hope America works out for you.’
‘Good luck back in the UK.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Listen,’ Katya whispers tersely. ‘I know how you feel right now. Yuji will make enemies wherever he goes. He will get what he deserves one day. They all will.’
I shake my head. I don’t want these to be our last words to each other. ‘Stay in touch,’ I say. But how can we? Neither of us has a contact address or email.
Katya must be conscious of this too, but she says nothing. She nods. ‘I should go before I make us late.’
One last hug and she turns away. Hiro takes her hand and they join the line for the security check. On my side of the barrier left-behind friends and family smile, waving until their loved ones are swallowed up by the metal detectors. I turn and walk myself out of sight.
What now? Breakfast? The date-rape whisky was the last thing to pass between my lips, but I don’t have any hunger pangs or even thirst. I have to make the effort, though. I head for a coffee shop beyond the souvenir precinct. The automatic doors wake the waiter dozing on the counter. Bleary-eyed, he welcomes me. The windows overlook the aeroplane safari park below; commercial liners drinking petrol or tracing slow, distinguished circles on the runways. One lifts off and I watch it until its Thai Air logo vanishes into the cloudscape. Chances are before nightfall I too will be belted up inside one of these winged cylinders. Why does the thought depress me so much?
I sit with my back to the window and watch the counter TV, which is tuned into The Powerpuff Girls. The waiter brings over a hot flannel and water and takes an order pad from his apron pocket. I scan the menu for something easy to eat and order ice cream, then coffee as an afterthought. A boy of Yuji’s height and build stops at the door of the coffee shop to read the menu. My pulse quickens with dread though I know it is not him. He is long gone, like a rat that gnawed off its tail to flee a trap. I hold the flannel against my face, letting the heat coax open my pores. I remember the envelope that Katya gave me, take it out and count the money. I count it once, hyperventilate, then count it once more. There is over five hundred thousand yen. Where the hell did she get it from? Katya is insane. I love her. Forget England. I can go wherever I want with this.
The waiter stands over me, politely clearing his throat. I shove the money back into the envelope, but not before his eyes widen in intrigue. He sets down my order and withdraws to the counter, where he shakes open a newspaper.
I pour my coffee over the ice cream.
‘That taste nice?’ he asks.
‘Very. You should try it some time.’
I eat a spoonful of ice cream, wincing as the cold shoots down the nerve endings in my teeth.
‘Your Japanese is very good,’ he says.
I smile and shake my head in knee-jerk modesty. The old man seems nice enough, but when I am this lonely I prefer to be left alone. Those few crumbs of friendliness only make me feel ten times worse.
‘What part of the world are you off to?’ he asks.
Good question. The lenses of his spectacles magnify his eyes, lending him an air of owlish curiosity.
‘I am trying to decide.’
The waiter lays down his newspaper. The tufts of grey above his ears are separated by a generous dome of bald. His fingers wander to the dome now, and give it a confused scratch. ‘You’re a strange one,’ he says. ‘Have you just been on holiday in Japan?’
From nowhere comes the heartburn of nostalgia.
‘Yes. I need a change of scene.’
‘Anywhere in mind?’
‘Asia, I guess.’
‘Been to Korea?’
‘No.’ I shudder. ‘I don’t want to go there.’
‘I went to Guam on my honeymoon, years and years ago. Beautiful, that’s the only word for it.’
‘Guam . . .’ I’ve heard good things about it. And it is easy to find work there if you can speak Japanese. ‘Why not?’
‘Guam it is, then.’ The waiter laughs, delighted I have taken his recommendation to heart. ‘You can buy a ticket on the second floor. Flights leave every two hours. Aren’t you lucky to be young and free to do what you want?’
This is the second time I have been called lucky today. I stir my coffee ice cream slush.
The automatic doors part for a party of ten or so healthy-looking young people. The waiter welcomes them and jumps up to fetch flannels and water. They move to a table by the window. ‘Shame that Maiko of the secretariat division couldn’t make it.’ ‘Did they refund her ticket?’ They must be co-workers going on a company holiday. I listen to them laughing politely, the ice yet to break, the romances yet to happen. Quite a few salarymen I know met their wives on trips like this. It’s a big, contrived group date really, the first stop on the nuclear-family production line. Most of the time I am scornful of this sort of thing, but sitting here without a friend left in the whole of Japan I almost envy them.
The waiter stops by my table as he ferries a pyramid of hot towels to the newcomers. ‘You’ll like it in Guam. There’s enough sunshine to chase all your troubles away . . .’
I push my melted ice cream aside, wishing I could inhabit his innocent world, where sunshine is a miracle cure-all.
The news distracts me from my loneliness. The TV is unable to sustain an image for more than a second: drab rows of suits in parliament; a pod of whales; a typhoon in Okinawa; a photofit of a Brazilian armed robber. The volume is too low for me to grasp much of what is going on and the result is disorientation. Out of the fray a giant crab, clacking its claws like some crustacean enforcer, pulls me back from the brink of disengagement. I know that crab; I know the Shinsaibashi restaurant it sits on top of. Beneath the mechanical crab a reporter talks into a microphone. The camera pans back to take in some more of the entertainment district, washed-out and dirty in the daylight. I swallow a mouthful of coffee and watch the reporter’s lips move with media-honed solemnity.
A face I know but cannot place floods the TV screen. It could be an actor, but he is too pinched and misfitlike to appeal to any casting agent. He looks scared, spooked by something lurking beyond the camera. Only when the screen returns to the reporter do I realize who the face belongs to. I look round to see if anyone else is as stunned as I am. Then I dash to the counter, jumping up and pressing all the buttons, trying to crank up the volume. That was no actor. That was Watanabe.
I move closer to the TV, the picture now green and horizontally realigned after my button pushing. The camera cuts to a bridge over the Yodogawa. Sunday shoppers swing glossy bags, talk into mobiles or stare blankly. One or two notice the camera and glance self-consciously into the lens. A shaven-headed monk chants and collects alms. The reporter’s voiceover says: ‘Blah blah blah . . . Shinsaibashi.’ I raise my hand to the TV screen, now showing the murky waters of the Yodogawa. As if sensing the touch of my fingers the picture flits to a roomful of people doing wheelchair aerobics.
‘Are you all right?’ The waiter is next to me, scratching the inside of his ear with his ballpoint pen. In his other hand he clutches an order pad full of scribbles. He must think I have never seen a television before.
‘He was my friend,’ I say.
‘The joker who threw himself in the river?’ he asks.
Is that what they are saying? That’s outrageous! How can they get away with that?
‘He didn’t throw himself in,’ I say.
<
br /> ‘But they just said so, on the news. The police chased him and he jumped . . .’
I open my mouth in protest, then close it again. So I correct one misinformed opinion. How many thousands of others out there have just seen this news bulletin?
‘Oh, he was sick in the head, that one,’ the waiter says. ‘Pretending to be from the Aum and making Sarin threats to the police. It’s just sick.’
‘Sarin threats?’
‘The police had to clear out the whole area last night. Sent everyone into a real panic . . . Er . . . He wasn’t a close friend of yours, was he?’
‘No, not close. But you are wrong about him: he was a good person . . . a little strange maybe, but not sick. He didn’t deserve to die.’
The waiter gapes at me, a thin strand of saliva between his lips. He makes a startled sound, severing the silvery thread. ‘Didn’t deserve to die? He’s not dead! They fished him out of the river this morning. They said they were keeping him at Osaka General.’
I charge back the way I came. Around me the airport rewinds in slow motion: the crawling check-in queues, the kids playing dodgems on the trolleys, the overpriced souvenir stalls swindling last-minute shoppers. I know there is no need to hurry – the boy is not going anywhere, at least not out of police custody. But I hurry nonetheless. I speed down the escalator, the woven soles of my espadrilles slapping the metal of each step. A Chinese woman I collide with shouts at me in Cantonese. I shout back an apology in English and tear down the walkway linking the airport to the train station. Will they let me see him? What will I say? Thank you, then what else? The rest will come to me. I remember Katya’s warnings. I will avoid Shinsaibashi. I was too trusting before, not wary enough. This will change.