December 6 (V5.0)

by Martin Cruz Smith

  Harry threw his clogs over the gate. Using the gate’s copper bosses for handholds, he scaled the top and went after, landing on a cushion of moss. The house was larger than it had appeared from the street, with a side garden not of flowers and trees but of large stones set among raked pebbles. In a brief illumination of lightning, Harry saw the garden as it was meant to be contemplated, as small islands in a sea of perfect waves. The pebbles chattered in the rain. Harry was so wet the downpour no longer made any difference to him.

  In August, Tokyo yearned for breezes. The outer screens of a long veranda were removed, and inner screens that were nothing more than frames of paper were left half open to the night air. In the front room, Kato sat in a kimono and beret, sketchpad on his knees, working by the overhead light of a paper lantern. At first Harry thought that Kato saw him, too, before he realized that between the artist’s concentration and the lantern’s muted glow, anything in the garden was virtually invisible. A brilliantly quick artist, Kato drew fluid contours and penciled notes in the margin for color and shade. The interior dividers seemed to be open so that Kato’s eye could run the entire length of the house, although what Kato saw Harry couldn’t.

  Careful to stay on the moss that trimmed the stones, Harry moved past the front room to the second. The veranda was hardwood polished to a black sheen. A chain led rainwater from the roof to the ground. Although the screens of the second room were dark and shut, it was where the sound of the shamisen emanated from. Harry admired how Kato had arranged matters, the artist with a bare minimum of light, an unseen musician in a middle room creating ambience and then, at a distance, the artist’s model bathed in light.

  Not quite bathed. The screens were wide open to the garden, and Harry saw inside the third room a shallow light of candles around a canopy of mosquito netting draped from the ceiling. Outside a corner of the netting lay a bowl, a fan and a mosquito coil with wispy smoke. The netting was a gauzy green shadow. Within it, Harry could see two heads and the glint of a gold kimono. He was sure they couldn’t see him.

  At a word from Kato, the figures began to shift. One climbed behind the other, and Harry heard breathing mix with the notes of the shamisen. The canopy shifted like a skirt from side to side. While the netting moved, a slim hand pulled up the green mesh on Harry’s side, and Oharu looked out. She was on all fours, her kimono bunched between her shoulders and her hips. One moon-white breast spilled out. The kimono was a peacock pattern, green on gold with an undone purple sash. Harry could imagine Kato jotting down the colors, indicating inks. In her sleeve, Oharu found a pack of cigarettes and matches. The other figure stuck his head out; it was the gap-toothed comedian, the amusing violinist. She lit a cigarette even while he pushed into her. The bowl was an ashtray. Veins bulged on the comedian’s neck as his face reddened and his eyes squeezed shut. Oharu showed no emotion beyond mild impatience and irritation. The forehead above her rounded brows stayed porcelain-smooth. Kato said something. Oharu stretched out on her side and loosened her kimono more to show her legs and black stripe of pubic hair and the man behind her still plugged in, grinding his dark balls between her thighs, his fingers on her throat.

  Harry stumbled back onto the pebbles. Oharu looked up at the sound as a bolt of lightning wandered from the main storm and exploded overhead, revealing everything in the garden —rocks, rake lines, Harry with his hand across his mouth— in the white of a photographer’s bulb.

  Harry ran. He clambered over the gate and landed with knees pumping. He wasn’t so much aware of his route as of houses and shops flying by. A policeman shouted, but Harry easily outstripped him, racing through a narrow alley and around the reek of a night-soil wagon. Over a wall, scattering cats, pounding through the overflow of gutters until he turned the corner to a street of one-story wooden houses that seemed to sink in the rain. In the middle of the block were the bleak accommodations he shared with his uncle. He rushed in the front door and threw himself on a mat. The house was essentially a single room. A kitchen area with a stone sink and gas stove was tucked in back with a water closet and a narrow bath. Orin Niles was out, which was a mercy. Usually Harry cursed the lack of ventilation, but now he wanted the room warm and dark, and he hung on to the sweet smell of the tatami.

  When he started shivering, he stripped down to his wet shirt and underpants and curled up between two quilts. His uncle’s space was a narrow mattress on the other side. Orin could be found in bed most days, drying out. If he was out this late, the drought was over and he’d spend the night at a sailors’ bar in Yokohama, sitting in a haze of laudanum and rye. The housekeeper lived apart with her own family. Harry was alone.

  His domain: the mats, the rats that lived in the tiles of the roof, a shelf of schoolbooks, a stack of baseball cards, a cigar box with playing cards and dice, a beetle named Oishi in a bamboo cage, his parents’ print of the child Christ confounding Pharisees, his print of Japanese warships sinking the Russian fleet, his money wrapped in oilcloth and hidden under floorboards. He turned his back on his earthly possessions and laid his face toward the wall.

  “Harry? Harry, are you in there?”

  There was a scratch at the door. It opened, letting in a moment of air and the sound of rain on macadam, and slid shut again.

  “This place is almost impossible to find. You forgot your clogs.”

  “Leave them,” Harry muttered and pulled his quilt tighter. He didn’t need to see Oharu in the dark, taking in his shabby port in a storm, condescending to her little errand. He hated her. He’d left his clogs in the garden of the green house. He hated his clogs, too.

  “I’m sorry, Harry. It was just sex.”

  Exactly what the Folies manager had said about Gen. Everyone mouthed the same hypocrisy. He didn’t dignify her with a reply.

  “Do you want me to go, Harry?”

  Silence was good enough. That had to be clear to the stupidest person in the world. He hadn’t heard her slip off her shoes or fold an umbrella, so she obviously wasn’t sincere.

  “It was just for money, Harry, it didn’t mean anything. I am very sorry.”

  There was one drip in particular that Harry heard right on the other side of the wall, a steady tapping on the ground outside. Oharu stirred. At any second Harry expected to hear the door slap shut behind her.

  “You’re still wet.” Oharu felt his hair. “You must be soaked.”

  “It meant enough.”

  “You’re right, Harry, it did. I am so sorry. But you’re shivering.” Her hand slid down to his neck. “You’re wet all the way through.”

  “How could you do it?”

  “I’m getting by, Harry. Doing what a modern girl has to do. You have to take those wet clothes off. We have to dry you.”

  “No.” The last thing Harry was going to do was undress in front of her.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll warm you.”

  Harry still had his face to the wall. He heard silk slip over skin, and then he felt Oharu crawl under the quilt with him. She was so warm it was like being by a fire.

  “So cold and uncomfortable, Harry. You’re sure you don’t want to get dry?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She cupped herself around him, her hips against his, her breasts against his back, her breath on his neck.

  “It gives me gooseflesh. Feel my skin, Harry.”

  She took his hand and ran it lightly up and down her leg. She had muscular dancer’s legs.

  “Like a goose, right, Harry?”

  Harry’s damp back had made her breasts stiffen. He felt himself grow hard and held his breath.

  “That’s all I am, a goose, a silly girl. Can you forgive me?”

  He let his hand spread on her leg as if he were touching a temple column of cool marble. He was angry with her. At the same time, he was afraid that if he turned toward her, she would disappear.

  “I want to give you something, Harry. It’s not worth anything, don’t fool yourself,
but it’s all I have to give.” She slid her hand down his stomach. “I think you’re ready for it.”

  Harry swallowed because a mere second touch might set him off. He was no longer chilled at all, he burned like a coal. She turned him toward her and the small blue eye of the lamp and pulled his head down to her breast. The tip stiffened more in his mouth. She lifted herself and led his hand between her legs.

  “Softer, even softer, even softer.”

  He felt the crispness of the hair there and the heat unfolding at his fingertips.

  “You’re going to be a good lover, Harry. You’re going to care.”

  She smiled proudly, the best smile he’d had in his life. Oharu led him in. It was for Harry the closest to heaven he’d ever been, and he’d barely touched bottom when he came and clung to Oharu like a boy on a raft. When his heart stopped pounding, he looked up and saw she was still smiling.

  “That was a little fast,” Harry said.

  “No, for a first time that was perfect. My Harry, my wild boy, what will we do with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Harry did know that his knowledge of the world had just doubled, as if the moon shone not as brightly as the sun but as fully in a softer way, as if he could see his body by her light. She changed the nature and purpose of skin, of hands, of mouth. The scent of Oharu stayed on him like salt on a swimmer. Many things made more sense now than they had ten minutes before. An equal number of things no longer made any sense at all. For example, he was already hard again.

  “I should be going,” Oharu said.

  “Don’t go,” said Harry.

  Oharu smoothed his hair from his forehead. Between her own rounded eyebrows lay one wrinkle of concern, and she studied his face as if coming to a fateful conclusion. She had him sit up and peeled off the rest of his damp clothes. She showed him how to kiss Japanese-style with the tip of the tongue, and French-style, with an open mouth. On his own inspiration, he slid behind her to kiss the nape of her neck, the soft weight of her breasts, their softer aureoles, while she took his hand as she had before. This time where his hand went his mouth followed. He felt a moment of hesitation in her before she lifted herself to him and caressed his head. A groan came from deep inside her, and Harry lifted his eyes in time to see her put a cloth between her teeth. As her eyes rolled back and her hips moved against him, Harry thought, this is for real, this time she means it, I did this for her. She raked him up onto her, and as he entered, he heard an electric crack of lightning that rolled down his spine and limbs and nailed him deep, deep inside her.

  Followed by a profound sleep with Harry folded around Oharu as if they were riding with their eyes closed slowly through the rain, the heart’s rhythm like a black horse. A faint electric haze lay in all directions. They rode through high grass soughing in the wind.

  • • •

  “OH MY GOD, he’s with a whore!”

  Harry sat up, blinded by lights. He saw Oharu cover herself with her arms.

  “My son is with a whore!” Harriet Niles said again.

  Roger Niles grabbed Oharu by the hair and shook her. “Who are you?”

  “She’s a friend,” Harry said.

  On her knees, Oharu tried to gather her dress. She said, “So sorry, so sorry.”

  “She can speak for herself,” Roger Niles said.

  “That’s all the English she knows. She doesn’t speak English, and you don’t speak Japanese.”

  Harry didn’t see his father’s slap coming. It bowled him to the wall with his ears ringing, but at least it got him out of the direct glare of the lanterns and he could see his parents in their wet capes, umbrellas and galoshes. Behind them hovered his uncle Orin in a drowned hat, luggage still in hand, disaster in his eyes. Obviously he had met Harry’s parents at the train station, and this was their homecoming. Harry lying with Oharu. Orin, in loco parentis, did seem chagrined.

  “What is a whore doing in our house?” Harriet asked.

  “That’s rather self-evident, dear,” Roger said. He pulled Oharu up by her hair and thrust her toward the door. “Get out.”

  Oharu bowed. “So sorry.”

  “If she says that one more time, I’m going to scream,” Harriet said.

  “It’s raining,” Harry said.

  “So it is, Harry,” his father said. “So your whore might have to run down the street naked and get her bottom wet.”

  “The neighbors,” Harriet said.

  “Get dressed.” Roger threw Oharu’s clothes at her. She looked small and humiliated to Harry, her eyes darting this way and that as she dressed in disarray. Roger turned on Harry. “As for you, do you know why the surprise visit? Because we have been informed by the mission board that you have been sending your uncle Orin to China to make money off the currency exchange. We come here to spread the word of God, and you have found every conceivable way to spread corruption. It’s like having a viper for a son.”

  “I’m sorry,” Harry told Oharu in Japanese. “It’s not your fault. Thank you for everything. Thank Kato, too.”

  Roger Niles put his whole weight into a roundhouse slap. Harry took half a step back. He’d received as bad from the school drillmaster.

  “I’m talking to you,” Roger said. “My mission here is over. You have destroyed it. You have broken your mother’s heart, you have abused our trust, and I see not one sign of repentance.”

  “Good-bye,” Harry told Oharu.

  “God damn it.” Roger undid his belt. “Turn around.”

  “Go to hell,” said Harry.

  Roger Niles gathered both ends of the belt in his hand as a whip and laid into Harry. A white welt edged in red curled from his ribs to his neck. Harry gasped but otherwise said nothing. Oharu ran as soon as she was in her shoes. Staggering from fury and frustration, Roger raised the cry, “All the way to Japan around the world for this. Like whipping a stone.” He whipped until Harry was crisscrossed with welts, until Harriet and even the derelict Orin hung on to Roger’s arm and consoled him as family must have once consoled the father of the prodigal son.

  THE NILES FAMILY left two days later on a Colombian freighter bound from Yokohama to Panama and a connection to the States. To keep Harry’s condition secret, they stayed almost entirely in their cabin, and as no one in the family spoke Spanish, it wasn’t until they saw American newspapers in the Canal Zone that they read about the earthquake in Japan. While the Nileses had been at sea, 120,000 Japanese had died in Tokyo in three days of shaking and fire. Except for the Imperial Hotel and Tokyo Station, hardly a building was left standing. The updraft of the fire was so intense it lifted people high into the air, where they burst into flame. American observers said it was the end of Tokyo as a modern city and that it would take the Japanese fifty years to recover.

  Over the next few years, Harry wrote everyone in Tokyo he could think of. Finally Gen answered as a project for high school, where he was studying English. All the old gang, the five samurai, had miraculously survived, most by crowding into the Asakusa temple grounds as the fire swirled around them. Kato, however, had died while retrieving paintings; his building collapsed on his last trip in. The little dancer Chizuko was killed by rioters who took her for Korean; mobs who blamed Koreans for everything blamed them for the fires and killed a thousand for revenge. She had looked vaguely Korean, Gen added. Oharu had simply disappeared. A lot of people disappeared.

  16

  AS HARRY DROVE , he learned on the radio that the evening English lesson had been replaced by German.

  Ist Hans in seinem Wanderjahr?

  Ja, Hans ist in seinem Wanderjahr. Er ist in Paris.

  Harry wondered where that madcap Hans would turn up next. Moscow? London? Where would Harry be? At ten thousand feet on the Hong Kong Clipper, a flying boat en route to Manila, Midway, Honolulu and America, Home of the Free, the Chrysler Airflow, the platinum blonde. He’d give Alice Beechum an inside tour of the movie studio, introduce her to her favorite stars, take in Tijuana and Santa Anita
.

  The radio said, “And now that popular tune ‘Neighborhood Association.’” After a space of a few seconds, a lively voice began, “A knock on the door from friendly neighbors saying, ‘Watch out for foreign spies!’”

  Well, that was catchy, too, Harry thought.

  When Harry was a kid, he found it odd that his parents and other missionary adults had trouble speaking Japanese. Some missionaries were sent home with what was called “Japan head,” an overloading of the brain. The problem, Harry came to understand, was that Japanese did not translate into English or vice versa. Basic words had no equivalents or meant different things. What was warm and expansive in English was presumptuous in Japanese. What was respectful in Japanese was craven in English. To Americans, a whore was a whore unless she was willing to be rescued; to the Japanese, a girl sold by her family to a brothel was a model daughter. Japanese said yes when they meant no because other Japanese knew when yes meant no. Americans cursed and vilified an endless number of fuckers, assholes, bastards, bootlickers, et cetera, et cetera. With shading and intonation, Japanese made one word, “Fool!” express them all. Harry learned this naturally. Now he was about to unlearn, simplify, drop his Japanese side and be 100 percent red-white-and-blue American. He had wired $85,000 to New York the day before Japan froze American assets. If that didn’t make him American, what the hell did?