100 Years of Vicissitude

by Andrez Bergen

‘Twenty-three when we first met.’

  ‘And you?’

  The lady lost some of her sentimental sparkle, just as I intended.

  ‘Forty.’

  ‘How long did the fling last?’

  ‘For two years—up until I received the nip in the back.’

  I’ll tell you, often I felt like throwing up my arms, to leave all this idiocy behind me. Yet every time I looked at my companion, and those eyes, I gave it one more shot. ‘All right. You say this mad woman punished you by stabbing you in the back. What was Yamadera’s punishment?’

  ‘He was far too important to “The Cause”. Hiroko let him off scot-free.’

  ‘But he jumped to your defence, of course, endangering himself in the process.’ Yes, I was baiting, but could not reel myself in.

  ‘Not at all. He walked away and left me to her.’

  ‘You do pick them,’ I muttered.

  We wandered across the field, watching the distant figure stagger to a farmhouse and begin pounding on the door.

  ‘Quite a fist she has there,’ I said.

  ‘The same fist I would have used on Kunio’s skull if I’d ever seen him again.’

  ‘You said this Yamadera fellow was never captured?’

  ‘Yes—and no.’

  ‘Well, which is it?’

  ‘In actual fact, he was caught later this same month, after holding a woman hostage for ten days at a resort near Mount Asama. He even shot a police officer. But a couple of years later, his mates in the Japanese Red Army—a different faction—took more than fifty hostages from the American and Swedish embassies in Malaysia, and Kunio was released as part of an exchange.’

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘Then? He vanished. Hearsay popped up in the media that he’d been spotted in Russia, Thailand, China, the Philippines. But he was never captured again.’

  ‘Well, what happened to your two mad tyrants?—What were their names?’

  ‘Seibei and Ushitora.’

  ‘Seibei and Ushitora.’

  ‘Some justice there. They both died in jail.’

  The farmhouse door had opened and closed, and this world’s Kohana was obviously inside. They would be calling an ambulance, or the police. Probably both. I would.

  ‘What about you? If you were so involved with these killers, a member of the club so to speak, wouldn’t the police have had an interest in you as well?’

  Kohana looked at me with an expression so blastedly sweet and innocent, I actually lost my train of thought.

  ‘I played dumb,’ she said, and then she winked. ‘Shhh, say nothing. Not really all that difficult for me, I know.’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘It’s far better for me to get in first than to leave the door wide open for your cruel barbs.’

  The angelic façade dropped in an instant, and she poked me in the ribs.

  I tried not to squirm.

  ‘So I was all tears, sugar-sweet smiles, and silly, when they interviewed me. I gave the police the information they wanted, they took pity, and left me to recover in the hospital—no charges laid.’

  ‘How do you get away with it?’

  ‘Well, in this case, I didn’t actually do anything wrong.’

  ‘You were socializing with terrorists.’

  ‘It was an error of judgment.’

  ‘I don’t think judgment entered into the equation.’

  ‘See what I mean? Cruel.’ Kohana shook her head. ‘When I was recovering in the hospital, I had a visitor who brought me flowers every day. Plumerias, better known as frangipanis.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I groaned, ‘not another Romeo.’

  Finally, we were thrust indoors, in the middle of a whitewashed ward, where Kohana’s bed was separated from the five others by plastic curtains. She didn’t look at all poorly for a woman who had been stabbed.

  A small young man, with bad posture, wearing a forgettable black suit and a characterless dark tie, had just finished bowing to her, and handed over a bunch of white flowers—each one with a ring of rich yellow towards the centre.

  The fellow was timid, bespectacled, and a couple of centimetres shorter than me. So much for a potential inamorato. I could warm to this walkover.

  ‘His name was Toshiro,’ Kohana said from over on the hospital bed, just as she sniffed the flowers. ‘He was Kunio’s younger brother. Toshiro was twenty-two then, and he would become the head of a famous Japanese electronics firm by the age of thirty-eight. You would never have known he was a Yamadera, if you compared him to his infamous sibling. Toshiro hated Kunio. He blamed him for their father’s suicide.’

  She smiled faintly.

  ‘I never thought I’d end up marrying the man.’

  30 | 三十

  There was a rap on the door, so polite I almost didn’t hear the patter.

  I removed my head from the bar-fridge to double-check. There was no decent food there anyway, aside from the plastic sushi.

  After several seconds, the soft knock-knock repeated itself.

  ‘Are you expecting company?’ I called to Kohana, since she evidently hadn’t noticed—she was busy vacuuming tatami mats. Where the hovel’s electricity came from, I declined to ask.

  The woman ceased her housework and switched off the machine.

  ‘Sorry? I couldn’t hear a thing.’

  ‘I said, are you expecting company?’

  ‘Why?’ Further tapping answered the question on my behalf. Kohana behaved genuinely puzzled. ‘Can’t say there’s anyone I invited. You?’

  ‘None that I remember.’

  There was a fourth knock.

  ‘We’re forgetting our manners, aren’t we?’ Kohana went over, opened the door—and then slammed it shut. ‘Gatecrasher,’ she said, her face suddenly pale.

  ‘Eh?’

  That was when we were treated to a shriek outside the hovel. This started relatively low, but reared into a shrill, piercing high note. ‘Ko-ha-na!’ the voice wailed. ‘Ko-ha-na!’

  ‘Good Lord… that sounds like an ailing version of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Who the Devil is it?’

  ‘You do not want to know. Hardly a devil, but the next best thing?’

  The delicate cuff on the door had become a ruffian’s pounding. ‘I’ll huff,’ that eerie, cacophonous voice called, ‘and I’ll puff, and I’ll blo-ow your house down!’

  And here I’d been thinking I was meant to play Big Bad Wolf.

  The door shook violently one more time, before it crashed aside, and a man blundered in. His stature might have been a disappointment, but I recognized the scar straight off the bat—it was the gangster Shashin, that shortish fellow Kohana had used as an ottoman.

  ‘Crap,’ I heard the woman exhale.

  Our visitor waltzed further into the house, wrapped in a dirty, ragged-looking old army greatcoat, though I noticed he’d bothered to remove his shoes. His face, pallid before, looked chalky and irate as he examined us both.

  ‘Kohana—I say, Kohana, I think the man can see me,’ I opined as I backed away. More disturbing was the fact that his head rested at a thirty-degree angle.

  ‘Fascinating,’ Kohana said. ‘I thought only women in Japan sought vengeance from beyond the grave.’

  ‘Your point being?’

  ‘I misunderstood my own culture?’

  The man was in no rush to converse. Either he was pausing for dramatic effect, or he was willing to give us a few extra seconds’ idle banter.

  This suited me. ‘I thought I had your guarantee we wouldn’t be troubled here by the bugger.’

  ‘I don’t recall any such thing.’

  ‘Well, that’s why I let you make use of him as a hassock.’

  Possibly the chatter was so idle it bored him senseless, or mention of his previous status as a footstool stirred Shashin. He veritably flew into action and chucked off his coat, whereafter the illumination in the room changed—as if some lighting man, sight unseen, had flicked a switch.

  When
my sight adjusted, I saw he’d assumed a more confident stance, clutching a katana sword and clad in a kimono, with a loose obi sash. Detracting from the warrior image was a creamcoloured silk scarf, gift-wrapping his throat.

  ‘Wolram, I think he’s been taking fashion pointers from you,’ Kohana whispered.

  ‘No, that shade doesn’t suit his complexion.’

  ‘Shut up!’ the man roared.

  He raised the sword in two hands, presumably to punctuate showmanship, but the pose was cheapened when his head lazily bounced around. Shashin was forced to loosen one hand from the sword’s hilt and straighten up his skull.

  ‘Shashin-sama,’ Kohana said from her side of the room, ‘we can talk.’

  ‘Talk?!’

  ‘Or we can stay mum and enjoy the silence,’ I suggested.

  ‘Who are you?’ Shashin was drifting my way, the sword outstretched.

  ‘Nobody at all.’

  ‘Coward,’ I heard Kohana say.

  I glared over. ‘Haven’t you caused enough trouble? I stick my neck out for nobody. Sorry, no offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ the man tried very desperately to growl. It came out all wrong, a rasping treble that bordered on a soprano.

  ‘That’s right, blame me.’ Kohana blew out loudly, annoyed.

  This thoughtless gust reminded our guest of whom he’d come to visit, and he turned accordingly.

  His face, however, stayed in the same place, looking at me, so he had to again use his fingers to swing it round. I noticed there was a patch of red soaking through the scarf.

  ‘Kohana,’ I called out, as the man advanced on her, ‘did you see his neck?’

  ‘I did. Ew.’ Kohana held up her hands as Shashin placed the sword-blade next to her throat.

  ‘Now—Now!—it’s my turn to slice and dice.’

  ‘You’ll never do as pretty a job as me.’

  I’ll give her chips for bravery, but I’m certain Kohana was wondering whether, in this place, she could be injured, or forced to give up the ghost. We had our doubts.

  Shashin was ready to give the concept a whirl.

  This did not mean I relished standing by, since I’d be the next sacrificial lamb on the block. What was it I conjured up, earlier in the piece? ‘I recognized the scar straight off the bat’?

  The cricket bat.

  I edged toward the suit of armour. There was always the axe, but that was too messy. No, willow would do fine.

  Seconds later, I crowned Shashin with the same bat Pop had used to entertain kids, in the neighbourhood where this crook had probably started up protection rackets and was smuggling liquor.

  ‘I always figured that would again come in handy,’ Kohana appraised, as she came over to inspect the body at my feet. ‘Can you help me? He’s getting blood all over the floor.’

  ‘You weren’t overly concerned about that when you killed the man.’

  ‘Because it was at his place, not mine. Come on, Wolram—let’s stick him on the sofa. At least we can wipe that down afterwards.’

  So it was that I helped Kohana haul our caller to the couch.

  We eased him down and he rolled back, his head swinging so wildly, I fretted it might detach. The head stayed in place, but he groaned.

  ‘And now?’ Kohana said. ‘What’s next?’

  ‘We could always feed him that sushi you have in the refrigerator.’

  ‘Be serious. Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?’

  ‘He’s not Bela Lugosi. What is this fixation you have with vampires?’ I didn’t wait for an answer, since I had other concerns. ‘Say, my head repaired itself when I ended up here, while you appear to have been guzzling from the fountain of youth—why is his throat still mangled like that?’ I looked down several inches. ‘I don’t like to think what’s afoot in his private parts.’

  The man groaned again, and then leaned forward to place his wobbly head in his hands. He sat there like that for some time. Meanwhile, Kohana and I stood awkwardly, waiting for a sign.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I finally asked.

  ‘Look what you did to my neck!’ he cried out between his fingers. ‘You… you bungled it! You and your stupid attempt to kill me!’

  ‘Not I.’

  At that, the gangster really did cry. Yes, he bawled. My friend and I looked at each other. Aside from his blubbering there was another ungainly silence.

  Kohana broke it first. ‘Well, this is comical. What should we do?’

  ‘Are there any tissues?’

  ‘Only toilet paper.’

  ‘Well. You should apologize.’

  ‘Apologize?’

  ‘You could try. I’m not sure I can stand much more of this. It’s all a bit pathetic really.’

  ‘I’m not going to apologize—don’t you remember what he did to me?’ She frowned. ‘And to Tomeko?’

  ‘That’s in the past. My God, it all happened before I was born. Besides, do you want that knight-errant of yours to stop by? I think atoning to this fellow might be part-and-parcel of the deal.’

  ‘You don’t know that. You’re guessing.’

  ‘I’ll admit it—of course I’m guessing. But what if I’m right? It’s time to move on.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. I’m beginning to wonder who really is playing the Ghost of Christmas Past.’ Kohana sighed. ‘All right.’ She knelt before Shashin, with a hand behind her on the fallen sword.

  ‘Be casual. Don’t frighten him. Smile.’

  The woman gave me a diabolical look from beneath her fringe, before turning back. ‘Shashin-san. I’m sorry I stabbed you in the throat,’ she said, in a measured tone, ‘and I’m sorry I cut off your… you know.’

  ‘And the other thing,’ I urged.

  ‘I think I just mentioned it.’

  ‘Not that. The other thing.’

  ‘The tissues?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh—yes, sorry. I apologize for using you as a footrest. I was angry. You deserved it.’

  ‘A polished piece of work, my girl. One would think you’ve been doing this all your life.’

  ‘Shut up, Wolram.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Shashin dropped his hands to his lap and slowly raised his head. He peered from Kohana, to me, and back again.

  ‘I’m parched,’ he decided.

  ‘I’m happy for you.’

  ‘Do we have any of that saké?’ I asked.

  In return, the woman bristled. ‘We? Whose place is this, again?—okay. Yes. You’ll find a fresh batch on the stove.’

  I went over, poured a cup almost to the brim, and brought it over to our houseguest. ‘Here you go. Try this.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The man gulped it down so fast, I doubted he would taste the fine drop. Straight after, I noticed a clear liquid stain growing around the red patch on the scarf.

  ‘Not bad,’ Shashin said, as he took his lips from the cup.

  ‘Served at the correct temperature as well.’

  ‘There is one?’

  ‘Please,’ Kohana cut in, ‘don’t get him started.’

  That comment put a dampener on things. The three of us fidgeted in silence.

  ‘Well, it’s been pleasant,’ Shashin abruptly announced, ‘but I won’t impose on the two of you any longer.’

  We took the man to the broken door and showed him outside.

  ‘Run along now,’ I said. ‘There’s a good boy.’

  ‘May I please have my sword now?’

  ‘Don’t push it,’ Kohana muttered.

  ‘You’re absolutely right.’

  He tried to take Kohana’s hand, but she pulled it away from him and scowled. The man bowed deeply, and his head momentarily lolled around in that position, before he stood straight again.

  ‘You despise me, don’t you?’

  ‘If I gave you any more thought, I probably would—but I think Wolram’s on the ball. We’ve shifted somewhere beyond that. There’s no point in hol
ding a grudge or whatever you call it.’

  ‘True. You know, Kohana-chan, I had many a friend in Asakusa, but somehow, just because you despised me, you were the only one I trusted.’

  ‘You have an odd way of showing it.’

  ‘I was conflicted.’

  ‘No, you’re a sociopath. Anyway,’ Kohana said, ‘I would say it’s been nice to catch up, but I’m not in the mood for fiction.’

  Shashin looked out over the dreary landscape. ‘Do I have to leave? I don’t see any native girls, hungry for affection.’

  ‘Go,’ Kohana said, in a sterner voice.

  ‘Yes—of course.’

  ‘And be careful out there,’ I added. ‘Don’t go losing your head again.’

  With another gruff bow, Shashin had one more thing to add: ‘Nagaremono ni onna wa iranai, onna ga icha arukenai.’ Then he left.

  I glanced at Kohana. ‘I didn’t catch that. What did he say?’

  ‘A drifter doesn’t need a woman. If a woman’s around, he can’t walk.’

  ‘An interesting deduction.’ As the man traipsed away, with his head at an odd angle, I sighed. ‘He doesn’t look the part of a bad guy.’

  ‘Neither do you.’

  ‘Cheers. I think. You know, I am exceptionally proud of you.’

  ‘Why? Because I didn’t cut off any more body parts?’

  ‘There is that.’

  ‘It was difficult.’

  ‘But mostly, I’m impressed you moved up a notch, from the petty depths of revenge.’

  ‘You didn’t think I had it in me?

  ‘You, I wasn’t sure. As for myself, I know I don’t.’ Feeling a little daring, I placed my arm around her shoulders. ‘Have you given any consideration to the notion that I might be your knight? In casual-wear, I mean.’

  Kohana tried to suppress her amusement—to a minor degree.

  ‘You?’ she laughed. At least she didn’t remove my arm.

  ‘I seem to recall rescuing you in there. I usually run away.’

  ‘A splendid principle.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The role of saviour makes you happy, huh?’

  ‘It does indeed.’

  ‘Yes, yes, all right, you do have your moments, but a real knight would have grabbed the axe.’

  31 | 三十一

  ‘Kyoto—shit a brick.’

  Kohana screwed up her eyes.