The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

by Natasha Pulley

  ‘Right. Let’s go and make sure our vermin hall hasn’t fallen down,’ he said, setting off at once so that Mori was left behind.

  Mori caught up easily. He had lately proven himself to be one of those men designed much more for middle age than youth. Where Ito was starting to thin and grey, he had broadened from the unhappy frailty of his twenties, and brightened.

  ‘I’m sorry about Kuroda,’ he said.

  ‘No, no. I’m teasing.’

  Determined not to talk about Kuroda, Ito turned over a few other things in his mind, but couldn’t find anything of substance to introduce. The point came where anything at all would have thunked in the quiet. Mori turned his head away to follow the path of a swarm of dragonflies.

  They came to Hibiya Park from the small gate in the south wall. It brought them in by the lake, where the trees were turning now. The last of the cicadas had stopped singing a fortnight before, and so the place was quiet except for the hoots of the crows. Where the trees leaned together over the path, spiders hung in the lower branches, quite big enough to see easily. There was a ripping noise and Ito jumped, thinking it was the battle cry of something upset and arachnoid, but it was only Mori tearing a bouquet of seeds from a grass stem, like he always did when they came through. He smoothed his waistcoat down again and gave himself a talking to. He had grown used to the solid ground of London and Washington, and now earthquakes made him jittery.

  As he turned his head, he saw a human figure among the trees. The man was standing still and watching them. He was not a groundsman; he was in a full evening suit. Ito lifted his hand, thinking that he must be an early guest come strolling, but the man did not wave back. Unsettled, Ito glanced forward again to check where he was going, and then looked back to find the man still watching them.

  The ground shook again, not so badly this time, though the trees still rained down dead leaves and insects. The man had disappeared when Ito looked back a second time. He brushed bits of twig from his jacket sleeves and tried to brush off the memory of the unbroken stare. People did stare when they saw a man they knew from the newspapers, after all.

  Beyond the lake, they came out into a tailored garden where small streams ran under red bridges and by new stone lanterns. Some of Ito’s aides were set up under the pagoda, drinking tea from English china. They had not yet changed for the ball, and so they were still in kimono and bowler hats, and in one case a fez.

  ‘Evening, sir!’ one of them called. ‘We’re about to have a game of baseball – care to join in?’

  ‘Oh, heavens, I can’t play baseball,’ Ito laughed. ‘But don’t let me stop the young and vigorous being young and vigorous.’

  ‘Mr Mori?’ he said hopefully. The aides were all frightened of Mori, but he was well known for his reflexes. ‘Please? Baseball, the modern man’s swordsmanship?’

  ‘Not … this time, thank you,’ said Mori. The young man winced.

  Ito nudged his arm. ‘Be kind.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Well then, come down off your high horse and take off your damn armour: you’re clanking,’ Ito said. He had meant it to be a joke, but it came out snappishly. ‘And while you’re at it, you might see Kuroda less often. I know I said liaise, but you’re on the point of turning it into a liaison, if you haven’t already.’

  ‘All right. Our plans to overthrow everyone in cufflinks are almost complete anyway.’

  Ito sighed. He yearned for a row, sometimes. ‘Do warn me, when you act on them. Are there bombs in that briefcase?’

  ‘No. He’s going to be an octopus.’

  ‘Octopus?’

  ‘I want a pet,’ Mori explained, insufficiently.

  ‘Gone off your bees?’ Mori kept bees. He lived in the middle of nowhere, in Shibuya, next door to a monastery. He let the monks come in to collect the honey. The hives had glass sides so that you could see when the combs were ready, and the peristalsis writhing of the drones. Ito had always hated them and asked why he bothered with them at the beginning of every visit, because Mori was hardly a keen entomologist, but he never had much in the way of a reply.

  ‘They aren’t pets.’

  ‘Then … I know a fellow who sells puppies?’

  ‘Clockwork doesn’t bark all the time and it’s easier to take on a ship.’

  ‘I’ve told you, you’re not going to England until you explain why.’

  ‘And I’ve told you, I’ve a friend in London.’

  ‘No, you haven’t got a friend in London. You’ve never been to London, and you don’t write to anyone.’

  ‘I’m not secret-selling to the British,’ he said.

  ‘But you can see why this worries me?’

  ‘I’ve been telling you for years, you can’t say you’ve had no notice.’

  Ito was quiet, because it was true; after having initially said he would leave in ten years, Mori had brought it up every now and then to show he meant it. But he had never explained, and lately it had begun to make Ito nervous. That being so, he had given Mori’s photograph to every harbourmaster between here and Nagasaki, and strict instructions. He had no doubt that Mori knew, because he could feel the heaviness in these moments when neither of them mentioned it. Or perhaps Mori would have mentioned it now, because he looked as if he wanted to say something, but then he put his hand in front of his face and caught the baseball that would otherwise have broken his nose. A flock of apologies came from the aides and whatever it was he had meant to say was forgotten.

  There was, near the edge of the lawn, an enormous, ancient pear tree. Mori veered to it and dropped his handful of seeds among the long grass that had already grown around the trunk. He did the same thing whenever they came, and by now he had cultivated a lush patch of the stuff. He had a pathology of un-neatening overly neat things that matched his aversion to new houses and ironing his shirts. It was no accident he had chosen the one spot the gardeners absolutely could not mow without resorting to a pair of nail scissors. The roots were risen and twisting, and they wrapped all about the trunk making nooks and pools of withered pears, and little havens for weeds.

  In the warm evening, the Rokumeikan was a rosy colour. A double bank of Roman arches ran the whole width of the building, one along the ground and one along the balcony above. Even in comparison to the train station, which was hardly elderly, it was magnificently new and clean. The earthquake had not unseated even a tile, which did not surprise him now he was here. It had a look of immense permanency, like a church. As they crunched on to the gravel drive, the great double doors of the balcony opened, and the Foreign Minister’s young wife stepped out, already in her evening gown. The air was so still that Ito heard the silk hiss. The gown was Parisian, the bodice a sheaf of grey and pink pearls that sheened.

  ‘Oh, hello, gentlemen,’ she called down. She spoke English with a beautiful American accent. ‘Baron Mori, it’s been such a long time! What do you think, now the scaffolding is gone? Will all those fussy foreigners take us seriously now?’

  He shook his head once. ‘No. The moment they take Japan seriously will be the moment she defeats an existing Western power in a war of sufficient significance.’

  She was a woman of grace, and so she laughed. ‘But I guess it’s better to try a dance hall before we order a thousand ironclads from Liverpool, right?’

  ‘Exactly right,’ Ito said, kicking Mori’s ankle. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been working him too hard, Countess Inoue, he’s forgotten what few social graces he used to have.’

  ‘Oh, it’s okay. It’s important to have blunt men around. Why don’t you come in?’

  Ito pushed Mori to the door before he could refuse, and the Countess turned inside again. Another little earthquake rattled the teacup she had left on the banister. Behind them, the pear tree creaked.

  *

  Few by few, the grand ballroom filled with glittering girls and tall foreigners in military tails or white ties. So many purple banners waved in the heat of the lamps that it felt to Ito
like being inside an inflating hot-air balloon. Imperial chrysanthemums crowded everywhere, on the stairway, round the doors, in looping arches around the floor, a forest’s worth. Over the past year, Ito and Count Inoue had poured more than fourfold more funds into this building than had gone into the new Foreign Ministry, and it showed. Mori of course had looked at it as if it were a casino and taken himself and his case of clockwork off to the balcony, which was empty except for six of the Empress’s ladies, who had lost no time in making it clear they had been ordered to come.

  Ito turned away from the buffet with a saucer full of chocolate strawberries to find the man from the woods looking at him across the room. Ito looked back at him, thinking that there must be something wrong with him. The man began to walk toward him, and as he passed under a chandelier, it traced the shape of his hands in his pockets, and the gun in his left. Ito stood still and realised that he was about to die holding a plate of chocolate strawberries. He couldn’t move, only think how stupid it was.

  Mori stepped between a pair of dancers as they spun and stood between Ito and the man. Ito lurched, because every inch of him expected a gunshot, but the man only froze and stared at him. Mori handed him a slip of folded paper. Without opening it, the man turned from him and almost ran.

  Ito swallowed, and after what felt like a long time, set down the saucer and went to Mori.

  ‘Who was that?’ he said.

  He saw Mori prepare a lie about the man having needed directions to the balcony, but then give up on it. ‘Assassin.’

  ‘What was that paper you gave him?’

  ‘I didn’t give him anything.’

  ‘You did, I saw.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Ito made an impatient noise that his wife would have called rude. He would have too, if he had been talking to someone less impervious. ‘You are an astonishingly poor liar, for an intelligence officer. I’ll go and ask him, shall I?’

  ‘Ito—’

  ‘What, something else you don’t want me to know?’ he snapped as he made for the stairs.

  Mori lifted his hands but didn’t bother to chase him. Ito was downstairs in time to see the man running through the front door.

  The fine afternoon had turned into a cool night. The wind was up and even from the drive, he could hear the old pear tree shivering. The man was going that way now. Ito hesitated before he stepped off the drive and on to the grass, but then, feeling angry with himself, followed more quickly. Kuroda had once said that the difference between noblemen and commoners was the same as that between warhorses and donkeys. Mori was modern but not liberal. He thought the same, Ito knew he did. He had let him go because he thought the bookseller’s boy would, as an inevitable consequence of his unimpressive breeding, prove a coward.

  The man slowed as he reached the pear tree. Ito moved to the left so that he would not pass from view, and saw that there was a horse there too, grazing its way through Mori’s patch of long grass. The man stopped and stood still. He had unfolded the piece of paper. As Ito watched, the man took out his watch and took more than usual care over the time, then looked around, all the way, so that Ito had to duck behind a hedge. Then he screwed up the paper and shoved it in his pocket, shaking his head as if he thought he had been conned somehow. His hand went to the gun again and he stood fingering it, but didn’t move back toward the hall. He glanced around, as though waiting for something, but nobody else was coming.

  ‘What did he give you, just now?’

  The man jumped and held up the gun.

  ‘If you’re afraid of him now, I wouldn’t like to imagine what he will be like if you kill me,’ he said quickly. Hiding behind Mori’s name became no less shameful when the man let his hand fall again.

  Looking anguished, the man took out the piece of paper instead and came across to show him. As he did, the earth gave a little shrug, the last of the aftershocks, and the pear tree crashed down an inch from the horse. The horse shrieked and bolted. The man stared at the tree. Ito took the piece of paper from his hand.

  It was a list of names, dates, and times. There were five. The final name was listed by today’s date, beside which was the time, nine forty-seven. Ito pulled out his watch. The minute hand was just now easing to nine forty-eight.

  ‘Is your name Ryosuke, then?’ he asked into the echoing quiet. It was not silence; the broken tree trunk was still clicking, and the air was full of insects disturbed by the fall. A waltz reached them quite clearly from the open doors of the club. There was a shadow of earth in the grass. The tree had fallen so hard that it had ploughed a harrow.

  ‘Yes.’ The man pulled his gaze away from the tree again. ‘I should find my horse,’ he said in a faraway voice.

  ‘Wait. Who are these others?’

  The man looked at him strangely. ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘They came after you too. He killed them all.’

  Ito stopped following him. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got to find—’

  ‘Wait!’ Ito called after him, but he did not wait, and because the horse had run into the denser trees near the lake, he disappeared within twenty yards, into the dark.

  The offices of the Choya Newspaper Company were closed by the time he arrived. Having made a good deal of money from being leery of the new government, they had acquired a grand brick building in Ginza, in sight of the clock tower, with high pillars and a fine arched doorway. The door was locked, but there was a lit window on the ground floor. When he tapped on it, a young man came out with a fountain pen stuck under the left strap of his braces. He stopped still when he recognised his visitor.

  ‘All due respect, Mr Ito, sir, but you cannot come and shout at us for reporting the news, however unfavourable it happens to be for the government—’

  ‘I’m not here to shout at you, I’m here to ask if I might look at your archives. Particularly obituaries, if you keep them. I’m terribly sorry for the late hour, but I’m afraid it’s urgent and newspapers keep altogether better records than the ministry does.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ the young man said, perplexed. ‘We keep everything in the cellar. I’ll just unlock … ’

  Ito followed him inside, down a shallow flight of steps to a cold cellar. Leaving behind two lamps, the young man retreated, and Ito had to explore a little to get his bearings. Six or seven years’ worth of papers had been stored in wide drawers – flat, first and uncorrected editions. They were in good order, and it did not take him long to find the broadsheets for the dates on the note.

  The newsprint crackled as he sifted through it. Because the cabinets were wood and the drawers not sealed, the summer damp had got inside a few, and in some places sheets were stuck together, rendered so thin that they looked and felt like a single page that had been over-printed twice. It was on one of these that he found the first name. He had to bring the sheet right out and hold it over a light box to read it properly. He had expected a shooting or a mugging, but the man in question had been struck by lightning. He had been poaching birds in the grounds of the Palace, it said, and the lightning had struck him through his rifle.

  The second man had been killed in a traffic accident in Kojimachi. By then, Ito’s eyes were beginning to sting from the close focus and the difficult light, but he found the third too. Caught in the crossfire of a robbery, again very close to Kojimachi, perhaps two streets away from Ito’s own house. He vaguely remembered hearing of it at the time, but not in detail. Of the fourth man, though, there was no mention, even in the days surrounding the one on the note. He sat back and pulled off his spectacles, and looked over at the enormous cabinets. It would take his entire staff weeks to sift through everything in search of one name, and even as he tried to think of ways to do it, he could see it was hopeless. But three was enough to be getting on with. Three men dead in accidents, a fourth unaccounted for and a fifth whose possible accident had been predicted to the minute. Ito sat gazing down at the crumpled note, translucent over the lig
ht box. He had always assumed that Mori’s knack for pre-empting things was subconscious.

  When he sat back, he thought that his watch was wrong. He had been there only for an hour and a half; it was not yet midnight. He stood up slowly, stiff, and put everything back before making his way up the stairs. The young journalist nodded as he saw him out, his fountain pen hooked over his pocket this time. Ito stepped outside into the cool air, knowing that he would have to walk back. The street was deserted now. The rickshawmen had long since got cold and gone home, and the trains had stopped an hour ago. It was less than a mile, but he was tired and felt disproportionately grateful when hooves clopped along beside him, and a black horse huffed at a firefly that had looped too close to its nose. The firefly veered off and, to Ito’s tired eyes, left behind a trail of light.

  ‘Mr Ito?’ the driver said.

  Ito looked up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘To the Rokumeikan?’

  ‘Oh, thank God. You did well to recognise me in the dark.’

  ‘Well, I was told to pick up the man on the steps of the newspaper office, and there was only you,’ the man laughed.

  Ito fell quiet. ‘I don’t suppose a Mr Mori made the reservation.’

  ‘Didn’t get a name, sorry. Do you still want the carriage?’ he added anxiously.

  ‘Yes – yes.’ Ito climbed up and lapsed on to the leather seat.

  As the cab stopped gently on the gravel drive, he saw Mori on the balcony. He was working at something by lamplight. Although he must have heard them, he did not look down. Threading his way through the foyer and the crowded stairway, where people had lined the rail to watch the dancing from above, Ito went up to him. Even the white men didn’t have to duck to pass through the chrysanthemums.

  Mori’s lamp shone over the cogs spilled across the table top. Among them were sparks that cast rainbows. Ito sat down opposite. Under Mori’s hands, the octopus was recognisable but split open, and there was a galaxy of clockwork inside. Parts of it glittered different colours to others, some bigger, some tiny and buried deep, all making winking networks of shapes that shifted and clicked softly, like something sleeping.