Tokyo

by Nicholas Hogg

  二十九

  KOJI STOOD IN front of the mirror and switched on the buzzing clippers. He watched the black hair peel from his scalp and fill the sink. Then he took a razor from the plastic wrapping and wet his head and removed the bristly stubble. And his eyebrows too, careful not to tug at the delicate skin. When he stepped back and observed himself naked, he found the rest of his body hair incongruous, dirty. He raised his arms and shaved his armpits. And then his genitals, lifting up his penis and stretching the translucent skin over his testicles, running the blade over the spidery veins.

  He felt as if he’d been following her his whole life. Hard to consider what was existence before she stepped off the moon and sat down next to him.

  What were dinosaurs?

  What were continents floating on the Cambrian sea?

  Once there was his grandmother. The group and his dying Leader.

  Then her.

  But who was her father? Letting his daughter wander the streets at night. What if he hadn’t been in Roppongi? He was surprised by the warmth of their blood, the look of disbelief on the man clutching his stomach.

  Koji turned in the mirror. He liked his new form. Clean. Beyond human. Better.

  He had one of her discarded PET bottles, plucked from a station trash can. Sometimes he put the neck to his mouth and closed his eyes. There were pictures of her jogging in the park, playing tennis.

  Koji flushed his hair down the toilet. He showered and stepped from the cube of his tiny bathroom and switched out the light.

  Then he opened his balcony and sat on the concrete floor, naked in the city.

  三十

  I WAS STANDING on the balcony of my university office. A canned coffee in one hand and stats on task accuracy in the other. Focus on neither. Beyond the jumble of rooftops and apartment blocks, the grey flotsam of suburbs and dormitory towns, the cone of Mount Fuji floated like a white temple on a blue sea.

  I’d never climbed the volcanic summit. I tried, but the day I took a bus from Shinjuku, my brand new hiking boots ready for the three thousand metre ascent, thunder and lightning rippled about the mountain like warring gods. Rain hammered on the cafeteria roof at the base station, and as the bolts of electricity had hissed and crackled I’d thought about Kaguya-hime, how the Emperor had burned her potion of everlasting life when he realised he’d never see her again.

  A month after saying goodbye to Kozue in Inakoshira park, I could empathise. She’d seemingly vanished. Returned to the moon.

  It wasn’t long after the ride back to Tokyo, fiddling with the price tag on my backpack as the coach sluiced along the watery highway, that I caught the plane back to England. And started on the book, the grand distraction.

  Or so I thought.

  I went back inside and threw my canned coffee in the bin. When I grabbed my jacket from the chair and got ready to go home, my phone rang, buzzing on the table. It was Yuki, and I let it ring through to the voicemail.

  She sounded older, wiser.

  She said that Kozue wanted to meet me, and that she’d asked her to be my escort.

  She said that we had to get a train out of Tokyo, and that if we didn’t go this weekend we might not be able to go at all.

  I looked at the papers on my desk, the books and journals documenting human behaviour. From the contested histories of Palaeolithic cave tribes to the evolution of the brain. Free will and hormones, nature versus nurture. Yet no trope on my personal folly. No theory to reference on what I should do and why.

  **

  Mazzy had been quiet, busy, I presumed, with school and friends. It was hard to define the atmosphere when I told her I was going away for Saturday night, and that I’d arranged for her to stay at Yamada’s for the evening.

  “Okay?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Michiko says she’ll take you to the Ikegami sento, the one with black water.”

  “Cool.”

  She started bouncing the tennis ball she was holding, drumming it on the hardwood floor.

  I said, “There are people downstairs.”

  “There are people everywhere.”

  She caught the ball and went into her room. I followed her as far as the hallway, and told her that we could take a trip to Fuji in a couple of weeks.

  “It’s covered in snow.”

  “And?”

  “I know climbing season is finished because Larissa went with her mom on the last day you could go to the peak.”

  I talked about skiing in the Japanese Alps. “Near Nagano, on the Olympic slopes. You can bring Larissa.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or Nikko. Where the monkeys bathe in volcanic pools.”

  I described how snowflakes settled on their heads like icy crowns, that group hierarchy could be observed by watching who groomed the alpha male, which apes had to wait in the frosty air.

  “If I don’t have too much school work.”

  “It’s a plan.”

  I’d see tiny hand prints in the snow, trails where baby monkeys had walked through a pine forest.

  **

  On a sleek-nosed bullet train with armchair seats, we watched the city slide by on tinted glass. As if set designers had switched the urban scenery for snowcapped peaks and verdant rice fields.

  With Yuki, I was going to Nikko. The hot spring town with a perfect lake and painted temples, a frozen waterfall.

  Kozue.

  I’d kissed Mazzy goodbye in the morning, and told her what time she was expected at Yamada’s. She seemed nonchalant about my trip, and her maturity was as satisfying as it was distancing. In the rare moments I rationalised my actions, I knew, accepted, that I needed a woman, a lover, before my daughter left me for good.

  And of course I was nervous. What was I really doing by getting on a train with a hostess tour guide? Who was I going to find? Part of the chase was the otherworldliness of the venture. The unexplained. In a world I watched and measured, the behaviour of my fellow human coolly observed, this was an enduring mystery.

  Yuki was chatty on the ride north. She could talk about everything and nothing. From the comfort of the seats to the lunch in our bento boxes. I ordered a miniature bottle of white wine, not in celebration, just a drink to take the edge off the journey. I felt claustrophobic. Although I was escaping Tokyo, I was closing in on my narrow self.

  Then we arrived in mountain air. Stepping from the train into an oxygen chamber. That deep and exaggerated inhale when you feel the sky in your lungs. A wide river sparkled, winter light skimming the shallow rapids. Black peaks and white snow, liquid sun on the rooftops.

  “Is she going to meet us at the hotel?”

  Yuki tucked her arm through my elbow as I wheeled her suitcase across the platform. “I have to call her later.”

  We walked up a small, main street, lined with souvenir shops and restaurants.

  “Tabun, ne.”

  Tabun. Maybe. Now I was sceptical. Maybe in Japanese usually meant no. Not a possibility. There was also the fear I was walking into a trap. A trap I’d constructed. What if she was still with the same man, married and content, and once again here was the gaijin intruder.

  It was too early to check in to the hotel, and after dropping our luggage with the concierge we strolled around Nikko. We visited a giant, golden Buddha, and then walked beneath a lavishly decorated tori, where a four hundred year old carving of the three wise monkeys sat above the Toshu-go shrine.

  I stood and stared at the famous apes. “Hear no evil, speak no evil.”

  “See no evil,” completed Yuki.

  It was the first time I’d heard her use English, and I realised there was more to her than I’d thought, that I’d underestimated her.

  If the tourists looked away from the gar
ish temples, they looked at us. The gaijin and his girl. Perhaps they were calculating the age gap. I tried not to catch our reflection, not wanting the contrast presented for my own eyes to judge.

  After the stroll we checked into a large traditional ryokan, set within the hallowed temple grounds. Although plush, with deep carpets and uniformed staff at the ready, it was past its heyday. The receptionist copied down our names, either with utter disinterest or absolute professionalism, and we followed a kimono clad porter to an empty room. In the cupboard was a futon, two pillows, four white towels, a pair of yukatas and a kettle. Nothing else. I slipped off my shoes and walked across the tatami, sliding back the window and taking in the scent of pine.

  Yuki inspected the bathroom, the complimentary biscuits by the kettle. Then she came up behind me and put her hand in my palm.

  When I turned and let go she stepped back into the middle of the room. And without warning unzipped her skirt. She let it drop to the tatami, past a pair of hold up stockings and black pants. She stepped forward and nimbly slipped her fingers through my belt buckle. Her hands moved around my waist before the reflection of us in the window fixed my scruples. How vulnerable she looked. I backed away and told her to stop, that she didn’t need to do anything she didn’t want to because I was paying her.

  “Daijobu.”

  The screen door was open to a swathe of fir trees, green hills and blue sky.

  “Let’s go,” I said, instructed. “See the waterfall, the frozen river.”

  Half naked, she stood in the milky light that reflected off the snowfields, and I bent down and picked up her skirt.

  三十一

  MAZZY TOOK OFF her jeans, picked them up, and folded them back into her closet. Then she grabbed a skirt from her drawer and pulled it on. She checked her hair in the mirror, applied another coat of lip gloss, and walked out of the apartment.

  Fuck him.

  She walked past the subway, the train she was supposed to be taking to Omori, where Yamada lived, and headed up towards Roppongi. Every shop window she walked past she saw her reflection. Older. Definitely older. And height with the heels. How they gave her hips curves that her Converse flattened out.

  Larissa was waiting at the foot of Mori Tower, standing under the giant spider, waving. She wore leggings and dangly gold earrings, banned at school.

  She said, “You look so hot.”

  Mazzy played down the compliment, as if she dressed like this everyday.

  “What time shall we make the phone calls?”

  “Let’s get there first.”

  Larissa linked arms with Mazzy, and together they went down the escalators to the station. Both of them tested the allure of their outfits by smiling at the passing men. No mirror needed. The smiles came bouncing back. And bitchy stares too. Good. That meant she was someone worth looking at.

  They took the train to Yokohama and walked around the quayside, riding the huge ferris wheel where Mazzy tried not to be shocked when Larissa told her she’d had sex with Legolas.

  “I think he was a virgin.” She was looking down at the water below their dangling capsule. “He said he’d done it before, but that was bullshit.”

  Then Larissa stared at Mazzy, and asked the question.

  Mazzy lied, and said that of course she wasn’t.

  They ate tempura in a tenth floor restaurant that hovered over Chinatown. Larissa paid with her mother’s credit card. Mazzy wanted to tell Larissa about her father and the girl in the taxi. But she wanted to forget it, too.

  Then they headed to the Yokohama Blitz, a venue with no ID checks. Nothing. All Mazzy did was hand over the ticket that Larissa pulled from her purse.

  “Where are we going to stay tonight?”

  “Who fucking cares?”

  They walked into the concert hall past rows of fans in band T-shirts, names and dates of gigs in different continents across their backs. There were a few foreign guys in the crowd, “English,” Mazzy told Larissa. “Definitely.”

  Where the Englishmen leered, the Japanese men seemed fearful of the bold twosome levering their way towards the front, and parted for them to squeeze and shove through until they were wedged against the barrier.

  “I’m so gonna crowdsurf,” said Larissa, pulling a can of Red Bull from the waistband of her leggings. “Here.”

  Mazzy snapped it open and drank, passed it back.

  Larissa let out a little scream. “Fuck, I could pee myself I’m so excited.”

  She watched Larissa drink and wished she had a sister.

  “Shit, we better call.”

  “Now?”

  “Before the gig starts.”

  Mazzy looked around the hall. It was filling up quickly. Fans in the rear seats unfurling banners and cheering, shouting out the names of songs and band members.

  三十二

  ON THE EDGE of a perfect lake, where stately clouds drifted over the grandeur of their own reflection and the granite brows of mountain peaks, Mazzy rang.

  She said she was out with Larissa, and that it was too late to be heading over to Omori, and much easier to stay at her house. I stepped away from Yuki and stood by a cafe closed for the winter. And talked to my daughter. I explained that it was rude when Yamada was expecting her, and that she really should have told me sooner.

  “Dad, it’s so much easier to stay with Larissa.”

  She sounded stressed, amongst the Tokyo crowds.

  “She’s right here if you need to speak with her.”

  “If you say it’s okay, it’s okay.”

  “It is.”

  “Be good.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  Then she hung up. And I was left on the shore of a postcard, the blue sky bleeding into pink, where the sun went down like a light show arranged by the local tourist board.

  Yuki was struggling on the ice, awkward in heeled shoes, and I put my arm around her as though she were kin, a daughter.

  三十三

  AND THEN THE band came out, swaggering, wired and glaring. The crowd roared and seethed. Mazzy felt the push of fans behind her, and Larissa gripped her arm and the two of them jumped and danced with the rest of the stadium. When the lead singer leapt down between the stage and the bouncers that separated him from the screaming fans, it was Mazzy and Larissa he came and sang for, of that they were certain.

  “He so fucking sang to us,” said Larissa. “Did you see him.”

  Mazzy was watching the band exit, how the bassist poured a whole bottle of water over his head.

  “Come on,” said Larissa, pulling at her wrist. “Let’s get backstage.”

  At the rear of the venue they stood with a gaggle of Japanese fans, mostly women. The sharp wind cut through their jackets, cold clothes damp with sweat.

  “If they come out and sign autographs, we’ve got to get an invite to the after party.”

  Larissa was standing at the doorway to the car park, where a tour bus with tinted windows idled.

  “I got it,” said Larissa. “Let’s go flirt with the driver.”

  “You’re doing the flirting.”

  Larissa took off her jacket and gave it to Mazzy. The driver was reading a manga comic, shoes off and socked feet crossed over the steering wheel. He saw them knock at the door, the cute half girl with braces and cleavage, the blonde girl with brown legs, probably American.

  三十四

  A DRAMATIC SCULPTURE in petrified glass, the frozen waterfall passed through an eyelet of rock and fell like a lace of ice into the deep gorge. Cold, I stood with Yuki on the observation deck. The wind bit sharply as the bright stars whirled above the peaks.

  “Samui.” Yuki was shivering. She linked her arm around mine. “Let’s go back to the hotel. Have a bath.” She put her hand under my jacket. “Together, ne.”

  I stalled with the excuse of hung
er, and we ate bowls of soba at a little shop on the road back to the hotel. Yuki slurped and twirled the noodles, skilfully wound down mouthfuls of buckwheat.

  When she went to the bathroom I popped outside and rang Lenny, told him where I was and what I was doing.

  “Props for tracking her down.”

  Then I explained Yuki, the deal. How I was paying her one hundred thousand yen to escort me to Kozue, and how that seemingly wasn’t enough.

  “She’s persistent?”

  “I make excuses.”

  “Maybe she likes you?”

  “Help me out here.”

  Lenny went quiet. Beyond his breathing I could hear Tokyo, the beating city and its clamour.

  “How old is she?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Twenty something, I guess.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Through the fogged windows of the noodle shop, I watched her walk back to the table.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not.”

  Lenny chilled my blood. He told me that girls under eighteen would sleep with customers before the yakuza followed up with extortion deals and jail threats.

  “Nothing’s happened.”

  “Well keep it that way.”

  “Shit.”

  “They usually get proof, anyway.”

  I recalled her phone on the coffee table in the hotel, how it was rested on its side against the tea cup when she dropped her skirt.

  “Sounds like a good ruse to me.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Don’t panic, man.”

  “Is she going to give me Kozue’s address?”

  “Did she give you her word?”

  “She did.”

  Lenny guessed she would, and that Kozue probably made no difference to any plans they had for me, the gaijin who’d waltzed into The Island and bragged about his earning power.

  “Fuck it. What a mess.”