by S. J. Parks
Her voice rose against the half-truths of advertisement jingles. ‘The professor had suffered a seizure and he died and never returned.’
They came to a halt in front of a statue of a dog.
‘Here is Hachikō. This is your Hachikō exit.’
Naomi stopped out of politeness but had an eye on the next waymark as a pedestrian claxon sounded on the massive crossing. She hoped to make the lights but she could see the crowd thinning and the last stragglers beginning to run to beat the change. She would miss it anyway.
‘The emperor heard about this act of loyalty so admired in the Japanese character and he agreed to this statue.’
The girl followed her eyes towards the sea of people.
‘Where do you go from here?’ The girl doll tugged at the line of her sharp fringe.
The lights changed. Naomi’s mounting anxiety dissipated as she surrendered to being very late.
‘It’s near PARCO, Udagawacho,’ she said, reading the biro on the back of her hand.
‘I know the store. I’ll go that way with you.
She might be difficult to shake off, Naomi thought.
‘Is it out of your way?’
‘I guess not.’
Waiting for the sea of people to move from the edge of the road. Languid little questions followed as they made their way through the crowd.
‘Yes, almost a month. An amazing city. ‘
The Japanese girl was time-easy and very laid back. It was late; it would rile him but there was little she could do about it. Her responses were short.
‘An architect but not qualified. And you?’
‘PR. My friend is an architect. You should meet him.’
She might be the type who knew everyone. Over the sea of heads a digitized figure cartwheeled across the face of five buildings as the accumulation of bodies waiting to cross deepened.
The girl beside her bridged the alien space between her and the crowd, somehow emphasizing it. The otherness of the place was daunting. Had she really committed to living here? They crossed to walk up the hill together. At the Seibu Store a six-foot seed pod filled a window and shook like a silent maraca; the first sign, in the urban landscape, that was organic. She wished the seed would grow to a pantomime vine and she could climb it and escape.
‘PARCO,’ the girl announced.
‘Thanks.’ Naomi hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult to shake free of her politely.
‘I’ll leave you here.’ The girl began backing off easily, waving as she left.
‘Thanks. Thanks so much,’ Naomi yelled back.
And then, on a second thought, the girl turned again, taking a paper from her clutch.
‘I’m Miho. Give me a call sometime.’
Chapter 18
A B-52 bomber wingspan formed the lintel entrance to the café. A self-conscious witticism from an international designer. Josh was sitting beside a half-drunk cup of coffee at a table just inside and she met him with an emollient kiss. With a copy of the Economist to hand and his leg crossed high, he had the distant ease of man of privilege. He finally smiled.
‘Half my waking life waiting for you, then a little more time waiting for the apology.’
‘I am sorry,’ she said, throwing the map on the table and sitting down.
He cut her no slack at all.
‘I nearly drowned in the crowd.’
He glanced approvingly at the close-fitting knee length skirt she had chosen. She had good legs.
‘You’re a good swimmer, Naomi.’
She thought of the girl in the cotton dress, cum lifeguard.
‘Nice choice.’ She surveyed the apocalyptic interior of the café, ready to acknowledge that there were some good reasons for coming to Japan; if only to see at first-hand the architectural experiments.
‘You want to order coffee? You’re too late for a bite.’
Josh proceeded to pick up the map and painstakingly refold it along the original lines, the fissures in his complexion lost in his flexing jaw.
‘You been having a picnic with this?’
Often he left the hotel room early to get to the office because he was keen and he finished his working day late as London woke and Sydney was a sparkling hour ahead. Some days he tried to cover it all. Because she hadn’t yet found them an apartment he had been obliged to take control.
‘The apartment we saw yesterday was great and I just don’t get why you don’t like it. Great views, central …’
‘It was just so soulless. We could be anywhere in the world.’
‘With Tokyo Tower on the skyline?’
‘It’s a warren. A ghetto exclusively for Westerners. We should live like locals while we are here.’
‘Is international so bad? With a gym and pool, and when else do we get to live in a condominium?’
Josh looked out over the expansive pavement. A smell of sweet soy baking drifted on the air. He had persuaded her to uproot and he supposed he should give her a say in where they lived.
The sun was still struggling to break through the heat haze and, just as she ordered ice tea, the diminutive figure of figure of Mr Kami, the rental agent, left his motorbike and came towards them, swinging his helmet from its retro leather strap.
He laid it on the table wearily as he surveyed them. Slight as a jockey, his simian face ridiculously wizened.
Naomi shook his hand, entranced as he rolled a matchstick between his yellowing teeth.
‘I show you a Japanese traditional style without fear or favour,’ he said proudly, retrieving his helmet. The girl was certainly opinionated and had wrong-footed him yesterday over the luxury apartment he had felt sure he would secure for them. They were so young yet sky-high real estate values that made his eyes water were within their budget because a company allowance would cover it. Quite why she carried so much weight in the decision when the guy had liked it was a conundrum. His own choice was limited to the pigeon coop he called home.
Josh gave Naomi a knowing look. The man was a walking set of idioms and ‘without fear or favour’ was his catchphrase.
‘Excellent,’ she emphasized as Josh recovered his Economist.
Mr Kami opened his arms expansively and swung them, helmet and all, in the direction he intended to take them. He would bring them to their senses. They, or more precisely she, had asked for a property with character. Well, he would show them a rental with character. Given his wealth of experience, this was just one step in a well-worn process. The property he had in mind was one they would be unable to settle upon on but fitted her revised brief and he knew it would send them straight back to the Tower of Babel and the cloying luxury that people mistook for privilege in Hiroo. The detour this morning would ultimately save him more effort in the end. That said, she was wasting everyone’s time, including her own. What she was looking for did not exist. She was a romantic, impractical girl, looking for a Japan lost some time back with the shogunate.
The house was indeed traditional. Just a short walk from the prime real estate of Shibuya, set in gardens of a quarter of an acre that some family feud or canny speculator playing the long game had retained. She hung back with Josh as Mr Kami spoke with the occupant in high whispers of disagreement.
Josh lost patience. ‘What are we doing here? I should be at work.’
She wasn’t going to let him have it both ways. ‘Why are you here? I could go round on my own. You didn’t have to come.’
Josh looked at her from the full height of his education.
‘Look, my Bohemian princess, we could end up with a very shaky decision if left up to you. This place looks condemned.’
‘You would have me live in a box on the forty-third floor? Did I leave London for the penal colony of apartments in Hiroo Garden Hills?
‘Correction: it wasn’t a box, it was bigger than, this wooden … this …’ he paused, attempting to retain some tact ‘… this garden shack.’
She had to agree it looked as though it would be over-ventilated in the winter
and the towering real estate around it left it in permanent shade.
As Mr Kami beckoned them from the porch, she saw him watching mischievously for her response. She would uphold a pretense with him.
‘What a contrast.’ She smiled benignly.
‘We Japanese are about contrasts,’ he said sagely, scratching his bald head.
It was open-plan, dingy and ill-lit. In the entrance hall stood an oxblood chest with an intricate black, metal phoenix over the lock. Unable to resist, she ran a finger along the top. A line in the dust came to a halt at the photograph of an elderly couple beside an incense stick, alight and trailing coils of spent ash on a strip of brocade. The face of the elderly woman in a kimono carried a demure smile as if she too were in on a joke. A figure passed across a curtained doorway ahead of them.
‘Very nice.’ Naomi said vaguely, searching Josh for what would be a charged reaction but finding he would not return her glance. His arms were folded across his blue summer suit to contain his patience.
‘And which room is that?’ she asked, pointing in the direction of a figure passing in the distance.
‘That is the other half of house, belonging to the owners,’ Kami announced.
‘So a mere curtain divides the two dwellings?’ she asked incredulously.
‘There is a possibility to make an adaptation,’ he said almost genuinely.
She couldn’t help herself but burst out laughing. A large generous English laugh that was full and deep had the effect of throwing her head back and making her pale hair resonate with the sound. She finally came to realize that she was laughing alone and had angered the two men for different reasons. That she was the object of their astonished attention was for a moment a greater cause for amusement. She held her slim arms and pursed her lips in an effort to rein in the uncontained mirth.
‘I don’t … I don’t think I should take any more of your time here.’
Mr Kami was surprised that such strength could come from her slim figure. He looked nervously over the shoulder of his check jacket. The landlord had undoubtedly heard the outburst.
How could she possibly live here and how could she remain marooned in the hotel?
‘I have a call to make and must get back.’ Josh took her by the elbow across the garden as if carefully leading an unexploded device that might go off at any time.
‘We have just been shown the ex-granny annex,’ she said, by way of excuse, and then turned towards the agent as he returned to join them.
‘How quaint. When was the house built, Mr Kami?’
‘I believe,’ he said, as threaded the leather strap of his helmet between his hands, ‘not long before the nineteen sixties. Nineteen twenty-three was the last big earthquake and the Great Fires, and not much survived that levelling. We are due an earthquake every fifty years.’ He tapped her hand in a kind of ‘nota bene’ consideration. Yes, she could work it out.
‘Today, in eighty-nine, we are a full sixteen years overdue a large-scale tectonic eruption, according to our best Japanese estimates.’ He seemed pleased to be imparting such usefully intimidating information.
The basis of this calculation lay with authorities ranging from folkloric to seismic analysts. His use of the first-person plural for a catch-all of one hundred and twenty million people had began to grate.
‘So, you like Hiroo Garden hills better now?’ He smiled victoriously.
‘I thought you had one more property to show us?’ she parried, as Josh’s perfunctory farewell kiss landed on her cheek from nowhere, in the way that his decisions often did. He could see she was well able to manage Mr Kami on her own.
‘I am going to have to go, Mr Kami. Naomi can take a look and then we can discuss whether she thinks it is a contender?’ Josh rattled the sabre that was his rolled-up Economist for emphasis. He nodded towards her. ‘See you later.’
As he left, almost as an afterthought, he called back his thanks in the agent’s direction,.
Naomi turned to give Mr Kami her full radiant attention.
‘I hope the next property might be some way between the two styles? Is it somewhere between the two?’ She fanned herself with the city plan imperiously.
Mr Kami looked at her from under his barber-trimmed brows.
‘You are the student of architecture, Miss Naomi. You will tell me how is the style.’ He looked at her less-than-practical sandals and contemplated whether he should make them walk to the next viewing. She was so young, but with the controlling vote over such a large budget, he dismissed the thought and hailed a taxi.
That night, she wore her loose Indian cotton trousers; Josh took her arm as they walked as they often did under the railway arches in Ginza. They followed a noisy of line of ten-seater restaurants as if the street itself were a menu card; shelves of moulded plastic meals; levitating chopsticks above glutinous dishes of cascading noodles, tonkatsu and ebi rice; the air warm from the charcoal braziers and the heat of the summer city. And she did not miss the electric blue of home skies at dusk.
‘I think you’ll like it.’
‘Well, after the shack you led us to this afternoon, I am going to have to take a look at it myself.’ He would never leave her to make a decision.
‘You don’t have time to see it,’ Naomi protested. She wished he would trust her judgment.
‘The presentations to the Aussies finish at the end of the week. And after the G7 summit it’ll go quiet.’
‘You’ll have to trust me, because it’ll have gone by then.’
‘What?’
And his complaint was lost as she drew him inside a ramen bar, sure that he would be easier to persuade once he had food inside him. They ate a simple dinner of yakitori and soba broth. But even so she could not get him to commit to the property.
Last thing that night, back in the chill of the air-conditioned room, clutching starched fresh sheets to her chin, she watched as he strode in his boxers to open the chilled drinks fridge.
‘Water?’
The head of an iceberg lettuce rolled out over his bare foot across the floor.
‘What is this?’ he moaned. The water was barely accessible.
She had stuffed a picnic lunch above the cans of Asahi beer and miniature whiskies and between the fresh tomatoes she had crammed wrapped slices of ham and a cucumber.
‘I can’t afford to eat out every meal and, besides, what happened to home cooking? Sometimes for lunch … I … look – we have to find a house soon, Josh.’
Josh had overlooked the fact that she might feel a need for money when he had so much. But in his defense he felt all she had to do was to ask him.
The cold, blue light of the mini fridge did not illuminate his response.
He finally answered as his head hit the pillow.
‘Okay, the architect gets to make the decision on the house. Go and see it again tomorrow and you decide.’
Chapter 19
Shimokitazawa, 2012
As she poured a mixer into the second Whisky Mac, the diamante on Hana’s short evening dress caught the bar spotlight like a cheap promise. She could carry as many drinks on the small, silvered tray as a Chinese acrobat now. While watching the effervescence Hana mentally measured her progress since leaving London: she had charted the temples in six districts of Tokyo and had to acknowledge what she could only describe as a personal insolvency. Living in Japan, with all its eccentricities, seemed an occupation in itself and she felt she was trapped sleeping or spending hours in the persistent half-light of the basement club.
The blinking neon arrow to the basement attracted mostly benign regulars. They were now on smiling terms with Hajime, who needed no encouragement to show off his broken tooth. The undernourished doorman had a prominent kanji character tattooed on his chin and she wondered what communication he had chosen to make ever so visible. He was paid to filter newcomers and the clients she had seen were fine. It was a relief that Tako had never once appeared. The job was just as it had been advertised: easy job; easy mon
ey.
Two months before she arrived, a hostess was abducted north of the city but she had stopped worrying that the same fate would befall every bar worker in Japan. She had Jess, and, besides, Wednesday night – their night off, when the transvestite danced – was as lively as it got.
Tom had rung, last night, and said he had issues with her working in a hostess bar. It was hard enough that eight hours behind, they didn’t speak often enough, but to have a disagreement too. His criticism was easier to bear than news that he was seeing a lot of Sadie. He had suggested the lawyer Ed should find some documentation: something with her name, or Naomi’s name … or his name. But there was nothing positive in the Helvetica Neue font that returned her text messages. Ed was out of the country. He was tied up.
Jess was over at the other end of the bar, picking her nails with a toothpick with great concentration. Backlit with amber light from the wall of whisky, she looked like someone Hana didn’t know. The bottles were tagged with personal labels for individual clients – Tanaka, Saito, Nakamura, Watanabe – warding off the impersonal among so many people. Jess slipped off her chair, pulling at her Lycra dress, to come and sit beside her.
‘Day off tomorrow. We’ll get a bento picnic from the 7-Eleven and take it to temple six hundred and fifty three?’ Jess’ enthusiasm was flagging.
Emiko, dressed as usual as a geisha hostess in her red kimono, brought them a tray of newly washed tumblers.
‘Polish those smiles.’ Her tone was pleasant.
The air was smoke-filled as Hana took up the lint cloth, behind her an enlarged print of an old woodblock, ‘The Diver’: an erotic dream of a geisha, lying in folds of generous kimono silk coupled with a giant octopus. Every tentacle, as she carried its weight, searched out an orifice. Emiko had explained that the kanji hieroglyphics floating like bubbles over the geisha, were moans of pleasure.
Emiko followed her disapproving gaze.
‘It’s okay, the artist got a month’s jail sentence for his efforts.’
Emiko motioned Jess to move causing her pretty hair ornaments to backchat in her heavily sprayed hair.