New Hokkaido

by James McNaughton

  Tunny turns and looks up. His eyes are full of tears too. ‘He cut his own throat, Marty. He stopped himself, bro.’

  Muffled sobbing comes from the cabin. He opens the door on a TV room; its plush leather couches are crowded with terrified women and children. It’s hot and stinks of sweat, urine, excrement and some other powerful odour. The women, a dozen of various ages, shrink back. Those with children draw them closer. Pale, their hair plastered to their skulls, stripped down to T-shirts, barefoot, they won’t look at him, but stare at the floor instead.

  ‘Okay?’ he asks. A black puddle of blood is smeared under the door. No one is cut; no one is bleeding to death. It must be Brian’s blood. ‘Okay?’ he asks again. The women seem afraid to breathe. Tunny chokes a sob in the corridor. ‘Sorry,’ Marty hears himself saying. ‘He was an old soldier … a man who fought for his country for too long … ’ They want him to go. He closes the door. A jet howls low overhead, and from the top deck a ragged cheer goes up. A puff of fresh warm air finds its way to him. They’ve made it.

  Chapter 20:

  From Featherston to Waiterere

  Chris wakes curled up in the back seat of his car with a dry tongue and pulsing head. His neck is sore. It’s 2:07 in the morning and pitch black outside. The darkness is partly due, he discovers upon getting out of the car, to the huge old macrocarpa he’s parked under: the old king in a line of pines along the gravel road. Water flows on the other side of the trees. The air is mild. And although he feels like shit, he’s grateful the spinning has stopped. His eyes adjust and the icy gleam of a wide and fast-flowing creek flashes through the pines. Negotiating his way down the bank, he sits abruptly in a bed of pine needles. Still wasted, he thinks, and steps with exaggerated care on the stones of the creek bed. The swiftly flowing water flares strangely at its edges. Phosphorus, he thinks. No, the word comes to him: fluorescence. A lot of hash was smoked. He takes off his T-shirt and sits on a boulder to remove his jeans. The water he splashes over his head and chest is violently, gaspingly cold. He kneels at the water’s edge summoning the courage for another splash. His last act at the Port Ferry Hotel was climbing out of a toilet window to escape … what was her name? Turza? He wonders how long she waited outside the door for him. It was bad form to run off like that, but probably didn’t cause her lasting pain, given how wasted she was and the interest a couple of other guys had shown in her. There was nothing wrong with her, really, other than she didn’t have the poise and grace of Hitomi Kurosawa. He didn’t say goodbye to his host either, the barman, a nice guy who played pool with him while the bar was quiet, shouted him a jug and took him out back into the kitchen for a spot of hash on the stove. From that point things are hazy. A couple of the barman’s mates showed up, and Turza, and a couple more women, and suddenly it was dark and very sociable. At some point he realised he was no longer a conscious actor. It was a brief moment of lucidity as he took the hot knives from the element and one of his new friends dropped a clump of hash onto the red-hot metal. A burst of smoke which he sucked into the sawn-off milk container someone else held at his lips—and he had gone under again, operating on pure instinct, which was exactly what he wanted.

  He strips naked and wades out up to his thighs. It’s better, he remembers, to drink the fast-flowing water near the centre. ‘Careful, careful,’ he tells himself. The sensation of ice around his legs loosens its grip. The creek is merely very cold. He wobbles, takes a step backwards and abruptly sits down. Gasping, he puts his head under. And again. Sitting naked in the freezing creek he drinks his fill and then wonders what to say to Noble Dawn when he finds him. The lights of a car downstream mark a bridge and the main road. ‘What has my brother done?’ he asks the freezing water rushing away with his body heat to the sea. No answer comes. I will appeal to Noble Dawn’s reason, he thinks, to his compassion. He stands and loses his balance. He hits the water and a river stone turns under his hand. His head goes under for a second. The water feels a bit warmer. Maybe the sea is warm too. He has a feeling people are waiting for him downriver. His niece, his mum, the father he never knew, Johnny Lennon.

  ‘Testicles are not overrated.’

  ‘Huh?’

  It’s Johnny Lennon’s voice, muffled. It’s hard to tell if the figure under all the oversized fur-and-leather polar gear is him; his face is hidden in the hood’s long dark tunnel and his outfit is so ridiculously bulky he can barely move. The tips of his mittens, of the old-school variety Scott wore, but fifty sizes too big, trail along the stones. ‘Eunuchs are said to miss theirs most in the morning,’ he says. ‘I’m not going downriver to retrieve them for you, I can tell you that now, young man. So out you get. Speedo, speedo.’

  ‘Ah, piss off. You’re imaginary.’

  ‘Said Aladdin to the genie.’

  ‘Aladdin is also imaginary.’

  ‘Stop talking to me and listen, you fuckin’ idiot. You won’t be of any help to your brother if you die in this creek. And listen, I’m not picking my nose down by the sea with your relatives waiting for your corpse to show up. You have a duty to the living, man. Do you want your dad’s phantom foot up your phantom arse? That’s what’s waiting for you if you sit there much longer. Get up and get out of this fucking creek!’

  A shiver of embarrassment penetrates Chris’s warming body. He lurches to his knees. ‘But, I—’

  Johnny puts on the voice of an exasperated old woman. ‘Shut up and put some clothes on.’

  ‘Okay.’ Chris lurches alarmingly; his balance has gone and he hits the water twice on the few steps it takes to return to the bank. His numb feet strike stones as he carries his clothes, jaw chattering. The carpet of pine needles barely registers. He sits in the passenger seat with the engine running and heater blasting.

  Lennon knocks soundlessly on the glass with a giant seal-fur mitten. Chris winds the window down.

  ‘You were right about the genie in one sense, Chris. I’ve seen you twice and will come one more time.’

  ‘Thanks, Johnny.’

  ‘Good, you’re bowing again. A sure sign you’re feeling better. Get warm, brother. Time to roll.’

  Johnny manages a thumbs-up sign with the massive mitten, curls into a ball and rolls and bounces away down the road as if he’s inflated with air. Chris can’t help but smile at this exuberant exit, even though he’s sorry to see Johnny go. The warmth of his presence remains. Once dry he moves out of the wet seat, gets dressed and, still shivering sporadically, sets off for the drive back to Wellington over the Rimutakas.

  It’s after 3 when he lets himself into his apartment. After turning on the shower he strips and looks in the fridge. Exhausted, seeking to hit his futon as quickly as possible, he is about to take two chicken drumsticks into the shower when there comes a sharp knock on the door. Through the bending, shrinking lens of the peephole he sees a woman’s blond hair. He bites the drumstick in his right hand and wonders. She knocks again and he opens the door.

  ‘Oh.’ Hitomi’s face flashes. ‘Breakfast?’ she asks, looking at the drumsticks in his hands.

  ‘Dinner. Just got home.’

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Please.’

  She steps in and, as the heavy door closes behind her, kneels and kisses the end of his dick, then takes the head in her warm mouth. He finishes the drumstick in his right hand and tears into the other. Turza would have done this, he thinks, if I’d opened the toilet door. She just wanted to do this good thing. What an odd misunderstanding. He lobs the drumsticks into the sink. He would touch Hitomi’s head but his fingers are greasy and would mark her wig. A strange current of regret and sorrow rushes through him as he comes. She gags, surprised no doubt by how quickly it happened. My dick’s still stoned, he thinks.

  ‘Lovely to see you, Hitomi,’ he says, pulling her to her feet and hugging her. She nods and blinks, unwilling to speak or open her mouth. ‘Here, I put the kettle on for you. I’ll just hop in the shower.’

  Only in the shower does he wonder how she foun
d him. Why would she come so late on a weeknight? The answer is that she’s like Turza and he is paranoid.

  She lies on her back under the covers in his single futon. Her bare shoulders indicate she is at least topless. He turns off the light.

  ‘I like the wig, but you can take it off.’

  ‘I’ll always wear it when we’re together. It must become a habit. Until I dye my hair blond, right?’

  ‘Okay.’

  She’s so slim they can both fit on the single futon.

  ‘Plenty of room.’

  He runs his hand lightly over her, checking she’s naked.

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘You told me your address. I remembered the building but not the number so clearly. I thought it was 12 or 22. The woman in 12 thought I was a prostitute. She was very rude, yeah? Then I tried 22.’

  ‘Why so late?’

  ‘So no one sees me.’

  ‘Hitomi, I’ve been fired.’

  ‘Oh?’ She raises herself on her elbow. It takes an effort to open his eyes. Concern is etched over her imperious face. The blond hair makes her non-racial, a kind of perfect model human. And she’s nude in his lonely bed. He ignores the first twinge of sexual excitement. ‘Why?’ she asks.

  ‘Family scandal. I’ll tell you tomorrow. I’m shattered.’

  Her fingers stroke his head. ‘Your hair’s getting long.’

  ‘I’m going to Auckland tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To see a man about a dog.’

  ‘I see.’

  He’s grateful that she understands.

  She’s shaking him. ‘Wake up. Wake up.’

  The electric clock reads 5:30 am. He feels he’s only just dropped off.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she tells him, throwing back the covers. She stands over him, naked but for the wig, with a commanding hand on her hip. His dick stirs.

  ‘No time for that,’ she says, pointing to it. ‘I’m coming with you as far as the Kapiti coast. If we leave now in the dark you can drop me off there.’

  He wants to fuck her now and leave in a leisurely fashion later, alone.

  ‘Sit on this.’

  ‘I’ll sit on it at the bach. Now get up.’ She turns away and dresses rapidly.

  ‘You have a bach to stay at?’

  ‘Yes. My friend gave me the key to use any time.’

  Half an hour later she is standing in a corner of the underground car park as he throws his pack in the boot of his car and hangs his suit in the back window. It will provide some cover, if nothing else. As soon as she gets in the car she reclines the seat and closes her eyes. He feels jealous.

  He knows he shouldn’t, but he stops for a coffee at the kiosk outside the railway station, leaving her asleep in the car park. The first trains have arrived in darkness. He returns to the car with the coffee and sees her sleeping face partly illuminated in the harsh street light. An attractive Japanese woman in a wig. At least his lateish-model car is appropriate, a good fit for her. Commuters march past, their hard-soled shoes striking the pavement with military urgency. He knows it was risky to stop, but he’s very grateful for the coffee as he pulls away.

  He recalls Master Ichiro suggesting that he would have made a great wrestler. Strangely, perhaps, it was never an ambition of his, despite having the kind of height and width that would fill out well. Maybe it was the thought of living in his brother’s shadow that stopped him, he thinks; the impossibility of matching his achievements. Still, he’s flattered. As the caffeine takes effect, the possibility of going to the national sumo tournament in Auckland, finding Noble Dawn there and reasoning with him, becomes real and easily achievable. He remembers Master Ichiro saying that Noble Dawn had the power to stop the prosecution without having to confess anything himself, that Noble Dawn had the power to singlehandedly release Patrick and restore him to his previous position. The chain of misfortune can be turned off like a tap. Because the murder is a personal vendetta rather than the act of a political institution, Patrick is caught in a single strand rather than a web and can be released much more easily. In the coffee glow, his intention to talk to Noble Dawn man to man seems exactly right; to let him know in a subtle way that his revenge (well-deserved, Chris will admit, even though he has no idea what offence Patrick could possibly have committed to justify the murder of an innocent child and her mother) has gone far enough, and to suggest that the door is now open to him, Noble Dawn, the victor, to end hostilities mercifully before the police are alerted. And if the mention of the police doesn’t faze him, maybe Chris’s threat of going to Free New Zealand will. The coffee is finished but its encouraging effect lingers. His plan feels inspired, rational, reasonable, and its success inevitable. The key thing, Chris concludes, is to get the man alone. Everything else will follow.

  Hitomi wakes at the Paremata roundabout as the eastern sky begins to lighten. It’s a dull and cloudy day. The water in the middle of the inlet pales while headlights float around its dark edges.

  ‘You should probably stay down in the built-up areas.’ He’s speaking English. ‘Keep your head down in the towns, I mean.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Where’s the bach?’

  ‘I can’t say it very well. Waiterere Beach.’

  ‘Your Maori pronunciation’s better than mine.’

  ‘Same vowel sounds, yeah? Vow-els. Vow-els,’ she says, as if there’s a ball rolling in her mouth. ‘Hah.’

  ‘Have you been to the bach before?’

  ‘No. I have the address. My friend gave me a key and said to use it any time.’

  ‘But what about your job?’

  ‘Ha. I told you last night but you fell asleep in one second. Bang.’

  ‘Okay. What did you tell me?’

  ‘I quit.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t need the money—that much. It’s Mazda, but not really Mazda. I think this is a Japanese thing.’

  ‘In Japanese?’

  ‘This lifelong commitment to the company we Japanese enjoy has its advantages if the company is strong. But there’s no real market here for Mazda. No opportunity for expansion, right? The company basically supplies maintenance to an ageing fleet. It’s a different mindset in New Zealand. A man would be ashamed to drive a car more than five years old in Japan. Here, even company cars are often more than seven years old. Kiwis drive twenty-year-old cars. Mazda here is basically a used-car dealer. I ran around like some kind of weird nurse selling overpriced parts for dying cars. The idiots I had to deal with—’

  ‘You speak a lot faster in Japanese.’

  ‘Of course. It’s my mother tongue.’

  ‘Obviously. Not all Japanese speak as quickly as you though.’

  ‘The Japanese here … their vocabularies shrink. They speak in a very functional and practical way. It’s almost a dialect. A dialect lacking the vocabulary to articulate abstractions, right? I got sick of men talking to me about rust and rugby. A really smart guy would say “corrosion”.’

  ‘I fear I may not be smart enough for you, Hitomi.’

  ‘Fear? I don’t think you know the meaning of the word.’

  As they enter the outskirts of Levin, she turns sideways in her seat, away from the window. At a red light in the centre of town, she shrinks down while farmers and shopkeepers cross the road in front of them intent on their destinations. Random checkpoints for morning commuters are rare, but it occurs to Chris for the first time since leaving his apartment that they could be stopped at any time. He has made the trip in a hungover fog, high on caffeine, with no plan at all on how to deal with a checkpoint. However, if his foolishness has come across as bravery, he’ll take the credit.

  As they turn off onto the gravel road that leads to the beach, she consults a scrap of paper and gives directions. The sky is light grey. A thick belt of pines lies behind the dunes. The further they drive down the potted road parallel to the sea, further from the main road and little cluster of shops, the better Chris feels.
The baches become scattered. They reach the very end of the road and turn into a dead end bordered by pines. There are only three baches and theirs is the most secluded, hard against the pines with private access to the beach.

  ‘Perfect.’

  Even the driveway, running down the seaward side of the house, is private; with access to the door it means they can get out of the car and unload entirely out of view of the other baches. Stretching in the pale light, she nods approvingly.

  ‘Very isolated,’ she says. ‘Like my friend said.’

  He likes the fresh scent of the pines too, the sea’s dull roar, and the prospect of getting laid in a leisurely fashion. He’s wondering if he should stay until dark before continuing on to Auckland, when he spots the squat shape of a sumo figurine in the long grass under a straggly apple tree. In a moment he has the heavy ball-shaped object in his hands. It’s his brother, fired to a glossy finish and looking almost Japanese with his black topknot. But the almond eyes and features are unmistakeably Patrick’s. Chris laughs as he turns the figure over, delighted by the craftsmanship. It strikes him as being a very good omen. Maybe a sign he should stay a while.

  ‘My brother,’ he says proudly, replacing the figure under the tree.

  ‘Great.’ She looks as happy as he’s ever seen her. She tries the key and the door swings open.