100 Years of Vicissitude

by Andrez Bergen

  Kohana and I stood in one corner, me longing for a chair.

  Two other people lay on top of a mattress, in the middle of the floor. I recognized the young Kohana and Pop.

  They were lying side by side, their bodies only just touching, and they were fully dressed.

  ‘Would that we could exchange places,’ I muttered. ‘They look comfy.’

  ‘Hush.’

  My grandfather spoke straight after.

  ‘There’s rarely a case of black and white,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Only the grey, between both. Terrible people are capable of wonderful deeds, and good people can stoop to the lowest level.’

  Kohana, the one over on the bed, seemed to be listening attentively as she gazed at his face.

  ‘I saw it all, in the war—as I’m certain you did too. Nationality, culture… Neither matter when it comes down to the basics. Human nature prevails. I did things for which I will never, ever forgive myself.’

  ‘He didn’t talk much about it,’ the Kohana beside me said. ‘This was one of the few occasions he opened to me.’

  Les turned onto his side and raised himself to an elbow. ‘I was stationed in the Territory of Papua for a year, in the campaign to hold the Kokoda Track against the Japanese advance. Do you know about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s inconsequential, really—a tiny, narrow walking trail, about sixty miles long, that is used for transportation across the country. The track weaved through dense jungles and some of the most rugged terrain I’ve seen—remember, I’m from Australia, which has that aplenty. Along the route, from the middle of 1942, we fought some vicious battles with the Japanese army. Both sides had chronic supply problems, and we were forced to cope not only with the hunger, but also leaches, snakes, spiders, torrential rainfall, mud. Most of us ended up with malaria. Eventually, we somehow won the standoff; we pursued the enemy to the north, and by January were mopping up the leftovers. If victory is supposed to be sweet, I felt none of that. All we found were exhausted and starving soldiers who were too weak to put up much of a fight. Then we came across a field hospital.’

  Les sat up. He rubbed his face, using the balls of his hands to push hard. That done, he sighed. It was a loud wheeze.

  ‘Dozens of wounded men were scattered about a large clearing, on mouldy mats, or lying prone in the mud, covered by flies and mosquitoes.’ He glanced at his partner. ‘Most of this mob were in the last stages of starvation. Skeletal corpses were tossed in a pile, with chunks of the remaining flesh carved off. Streuth. Some of the chirpier ones tried to put up a commotion, but the rest, they barely moved a muscle. Couldn’t. There was one young lad; he—I—’

  My grandfather took a break and inclined his head. A silence prevailed, before he spoke again.

  ‘Two days before, I would’ve shot at the bugger in an instant. Now, all I could think about was how I wanted to help him. It was too late. He had a sunken face, with hollow cheekbones, and a gaze that, thank God, looked like it’d vacated the madness of the world. Wouldn’t be long before his life followed it. He had this dark mole on his nose that stood out above the desolation around it. It seemed to be the only thing alive there. I squatted beside him, to give him water from my canteen, which he couldn’t swallow. His clawed hand passed me a damp, creased photograph that had a picture of a woman and child, and he said one word, over and over: Jihi. Only that.’

  ‘Jihi?’ The word rang some abstract bell.

  ‘“Mercy”,’ uttered both the Kohana on the bed and the one beside me, in unison.

  Les nodded.

  ‘I was in the intelligence corps, so I knew a smattering of key Japanese phrases, most of them military-related stuff, but this word was beyond me. I assumed he was telling me the name of his wife. So, when I came to Japan after the war finished, I tried, in my own small way, to find “Jihi”—the woman in the picture—until I learned my mistake. He was asking for mercy; he wasn’t telling me his wife’s name. I never found her, of course. I wouldn’t have known where to start.’

  The other Kohana sat up too, and placed an arm around his shoulders. ‘Thank you. For trying.’

  He looked at her, and he smiled.

  My Kohana looked away.

  ‘Les never so much as kissed me,’ she said. ‘On the mouth, I mean. On the forehead, yes, and that was precious. He occasionally gave me a hug I never wanted to end. But that was all. When my hand or my lips strayed, he would gently maintain distance. “I can’t. I’m so sorry. I’m married,” he would remind me. He had a locket around his neck, and inside that, a tiny photograph of a beautiful golden child. “My daughter,” he told me when I first saw her. “She was only two when I left for the war. Now she’s nine. God, I miss her.” And his face looked so sad in that moment.’

  ‘My mother,’ I mused.

  ‘Yes. Did I mention that Les was a history buff?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Oh. Though he never studied history at university, he’d read up on all sorts of things related to the European medieval period. We ended up spouting so much, mostly about Arthurian legends and poems—the drivel you despise.’

  ‘Kohana, I don’t despise it.’ I pecked her forehead, something bold for me. ‘I just find it a wee bit disagreeable. I picture people running amuck with coconuts, pretending they’re making the sounds of a horse.’ I regarded her. ‘Can we sit down now? My back is killing me.’

  22 | 二十二

  ‘Itai!—that means “ouch” in Japanese, by the way—Itai! Itai!’

  The metaphysical carousel continued its merry twist, on this occasion depositing us in some kind of artists’ studio.

  It was an ill-lit, grubby place, with black-and-white and garishly coloured pictures on the walls, most of them flowers, fish, dragons, demons, women, and assorted ukiyo-e clichés. It was also over-heated in there.

  ‘Why is it so damned hot, and why am I aware of that?’

  ‘It adds to the ambience.’

  Kohana was in the middle of the room, face down on some kind of hammock, with her top off. A wiry old man, with several needles, leaned against her, pottering over something I couldn’t see from my chair against the wall. Whatever he was creating accounted for the repetitive ‘itais’ coming from my companion’s mouth.

  I glanced at a man seated next to me.

  He was dressed in a dark suit, with a thin tie and American pilot’s sunglasses, and he distractedly masticated on a toothpick. Sweat beaded around his buzz-cut hairline.

  I noted that he’d misplaced the little finger on his left hand.

  There was a bulge beneath the jacket, just under his left armpit, and I suspected what it might be. I’d had my full of firearms. I shook my head and looked away.

  ‘What on earth are you having done?’ I asked Kohana.

  ‘I’m getting Orochi tattooed across my back.’

  ‘Ahh, so this is the grand occasion. How silly of me.’ I stared at her. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was sick and tired of being the identical twin of someone as stainless as Tomeko. I needed to stamp my own mark. I felt it best captured who and what I am, beneath the sham veneer.’

  ‘What, that you have eight heads, or an uncontrollable hankering for saké?’

  ‘Itai!’

  Kohana pulled a face, and then relaxed.

  ‘I think I also needed to mark myself, in order that I’d not be tempted to play my sister—with a branding like this, I could hardly give consideration to any silly stunts.’

  ‘Sounds to me like you don’t trust yourself.’

  ‘Would you trust me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I said the comment before I gave it any thought. When I did think it through, I came to the same conclusion.

  Kohana chewed her lower lip. ‘Precisely.’

  23 | 二十三

  In return for my honesty, I almost fell into a diabolical-looking, makeshift gutter.

  Kohana’s hand steadied me, and I clutched it gratefully.

>   When I turned to the girl, I saw she had on a long blue and white polka dot dress, boasting a revealing neckline, lapels, and a skirt that came down beneath the knee. The waist was cinched in, accentuated by a thin belt, while the sleeves of the dress sat at mid-length on her arms, rolled-up at the ends. She had a tight coral necklace, high-heeled pumps, and a flower—an orange lily—was tucked into the side of her hair. That hair was pulled back on the sides but heavily rollered at the front, with backswept curls.

  ‘You look top-heavy,’ I decided.

  ‘It was the look. 1948.’

  ‘Post-Orochi?’

  ‘Pre. I’ll be getting him done next week.’

  ‘Are we here to meet Pop?’

  ‘No. He left Japan the year before, in ’47.’

  ‘You don’t seem so upset about it.’

  ‘Life goes on—and as you continually reminded me, he was married.’

  This time around, we were outside on a street that showed signs of war damage, yet on the mend. Basic construction and slapdash scaffolding could be seen in both directions.

  There were still a lot of dilapidated, uneven wooden houses and shops, none of them taller than two storeys—save for the one before us, which appeared to be four. It was a huge hall, with a patched-up roof and a garish new sign that read ‘Western Saloon’ in English, and had a picture of a ten-gallon cowboy hat.

  Somewhere nearby, I could hear a big band number, as a trio of rowdy GIs in uniform passed us by—but not before ogling my companion. One of them issued a wolf-whistle as he pushed his side cap to the side of his head.

  Kohana ignored them. ‘Americans,’ she sighed. ‘Time for a bop.’

  She led me through the double doors, into the building, where I found an East/West collision that socked my senses.

  The music, much louder inside, came across desperate and dissolute, a frenzied primeval dirge to which the young men and women here, dressed in copycat Hollywood gangster-and-moll style, shook their frames with reverence.

  Their older, far more sensible peers sat at tables, drinking in civilized repose, and there was a band on a stage, comprising a dozen or so musicians, carrying a lot of brass.

  The dancehall had two floors.

  There was an upper level, with less space, that looked down onto the dance floor, and had a flimsy bamboo trellis to prevent inebriated patrons from toppling over the edge.

  I looked back at Kohana. She had just finished speaking to a woman with bulging, frog-like eyes and a bizarre hat with fake fruit all over it, and now was swaying her head to the music. She looked tickled pink.

  ‘You’re in luck. Shizuko Kasagi sings tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Astounding! Really?’

  ‘What, you know her?’

  ‘Never heard of the woman. I, er, assume it’s a woman?’

  ‘She is. A little before your time, I s’pose. We christened her the Queen of Boogie, since she mastered American jazz straight after the Occupation, though I heard she sang opera before the war. When she performs, she has a tendency to gesticulate wildly, and acts a little mad—which drives the audience frantic. I mean really deranged.’

  I looked around. There were a few hundred people squeezed into the venue, all of them a distorted version of garish, promiscuous, cinematic hoodlum culture. This was deranged enough.

  ‘Surely the Japanese were not so enamoured with this ugly and absurd side of American popular culture that they renounced their own?’

  ‘Most of these people are black marketeers—you know, yakuza. But this is the real economy in Japan now. The old structures, and the old formalities, have been ruptured.’

  ‘The American influence again?’

  ‘Well, we were occupied by them for seven years. At this point we’d been under the cusp for three. That, and our resounding defeat in the war, changed the way of thinking. Some people got depressed about it—we had a name for it: kyodatsujoutai—while others made a quick buck.’

  ‘Human nature.’

  ‘For many people, the black market was the only place to get basic goods. We were struggling to find a new identity. Things like that change society, for good and for bad. The conservative press had a field day. What did they soapbox about? …That young people had become irresponsible, obsequious, listless? Other things too, mostly negative.’

  ‘Ahh, the youth of today,’ I breezed.

  ‘In all honesty, Japan in 1948 was a dysfunctional state, in sore need of renovation, like the ceiling above our heads. After World War Two, jazz took off as something modern, an invitation to a new world, from the dustbin of the old. Plus, we got a Japanese Equal Rights Amendment in the new constitution, partially aimed at helping women escape household chores—penned by an American lady, of course.’

  We weaved around people who were obviously inebriated, and stopped at a table next to the dance floor. There were three chairs, one taken.

  Tomeko was in it.

  She smiled at Kohana, and pushed a drink across the table as we sat down. If she uttered something, I couldn’t make it out above the ruckus of the band.

  I grabbed the tumbler intended for Kohana, and peered at the contents. It was apparently alcohol, but it smelled off.

  ‘The rich clientele are drinking brand stuff,’ Kohana said. ‘The lackeys, the girls, and most of the others are getting liquored-up on kasutori, a kind of moonshine shōchū. Who knows what’s in the recipe?’

  I put the glass back on the table. ‘You know how to cure a thirst.’

  ‘Live a little.’ She swiped it and took a large sip. ‘Oh yes, I remember this taste. Oh boy.’

  I heard a minor commotion above the music, as a diminutive gentleman, with an entourage of three taller minders, wandered in our direction.

  The short man was clad in a striking white linen suit that would have cost more than the construction of the entire ramshackle club. He had slicked-back hair, a lime blossom in his lapel, and a winding scar that travelled all the way down his cheek, from brow to chin, riding roughshod over a self-satisfied mien.

  ‘His name is Katsudo Shashin,’ Kohana said discreetly, ‘and the man is a turning point, of sorts.’

  ‘He certainly turns heads.’

  While Victor Laszlo in Casablanca had a facial scar that made him look dapper, Katsudo Shashin’s scar was just that—a disfigurement. It possibly helps that Laszlo’s was created from stage makeup and could be washed off in a jiffy, whereas the newcomer’s was likely made from a razor and would zigzag there till the day he died.

  He had dark rings and an unhealthy pallor that was visible indoors, intimating some kind of illness.

  ‘Syphilis,’ Kohana whispered.

  Shashin had reached our table by this stage and stood close by, his gaze centred on my erstwhile companion.

  The man was toying with a cigarette, affecting a pose by continuing to hold the thing with all the fingers of his right hand as he inhaled and puffed out smoke.

  The music ceased, and all I could make out was uncomfortable silence as everyone in the room looked this way.

  ‘Kohana-chan,’ Shashin purred, taking her hand and pressing it to his lips, at the same time that he affected a bow. ‘As luscious as ever.’

  ‘Shashin-san, what are you doing in these parts? I thought you were moving up in the world, and we’d be henceforth deprived of your company.’

  This comment was said so sweetly and so politely that it was impossible to detect the lie. Yet there was something bogus that tainted the sentiments therein.

  If he noticed, the man chose to ignore it.

  ‘Oh, I am, I am. But I’m here for the women—you know what they say about hoodlums that can dance.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t.’

  ‘Allow me to demonstrate. One Yokohama jitterbug, to go. Shall we dance?’

  The band had just started up again, as a diminutive female waltzed up the stairs, onto the podium, and reached the microphone.

  ‘Shizuko-chan,’ Kohana said, and then she laughed a
s the song commenced. ‘Oh, “Jungle Boogie”! Would you believe the timing? Perfect.’

  It was hard to tell if the tag ‘perfect’ was meant with sincere, or sarcastic, intent.

  Kohana gave her hand again to Shashin, who led her to the middle of the crowded dance floor, just as the singer on stage embarked in a frantic jazz work-out and some wild high-notes that the audience loved. I found myself ducking for cover whenever she hit a crescendo—until I looked on the floor.

  Shashin could, indeed, dance.

  He had a monstrous energy—menacing and sinister, yet at the same time, the women round the room appeared to find his prancing magnetic. Knees bent, he roved across the dance floor, shaking his backside, like a grotesque Groucho Marx who had suddenly discovered how to live la Vida Loca.

  For her part, Kohana was the consummate partner, adapting without any glitch to the man’s footwork, as it weaved from tango to seemingly tangled. He spun her around on the dance floor—her dress lifted up and revealed a lining of red, to contrast with the navy blue and white polka dots—and they almost collected a couple of kids in the process.

  Shashin then stormed up to the girl, face-to-face, and slapped his palms on each cheek of her derrière. They had their eyes latched, and I would swear the temperature of the place, clammy as it was, spiked a notch.

  I felt myself stiffen. I picked the drink back up and downed it in one shot, though I felt no ill effect whatsoever, nothing to chase away the discomfort. Kohana eclipsed every other person in this place, and did it with flair—even while dragged down by an uncommon brute like Shashin.

  Then I looked at Tomeko, opposite me at the table.

  The girl also had a flower, a white lily, tucked behind the ear on the left side of her head. Yes, she had Kohana’s glamour, to be sure—but there was something transparent about her, as if she lacked gumption. A passive, enduring temper occupied this space, but the artistry had strayed.

  Likely, I did her an injustice.

  It’s possible that, were we allowed the opportunity to carouse, I’d debunk such talk once I realized otherwise. I had misjudged people’s character traits before.