Shark Dialogues

by Davenport, Kiana

  “Please. Think of my sisters. They will be lost. So many of them lost.”

  Rachel watched Kori-Kori lead him to the guest house, then walked unsteadily into the kitchen. “Hiro ... is dead.” Like a paper doll she folded in slow motion to the floor.

  She woke to Fumiko screaming, splashing thimbles of gin down her throat. Rachel gagged, threw the bottle of Bombay Sapphire against the wall, welcoming the shatter.

  “Stop it! Or I will slap you.” She said it in such a different way, cold, authoritative and controlled, Fumiko immediately stopped screaming.

  She drifted in a dream from room to room. So much wasted wealth. She opened closets full of dresses in dozens, evening clothes, shoes arranged by color, by heel height. Some clothes she had never even worn. She entered Hire’s room, a monochrome of gray. So many suits he had had a wall removed and built a carousel, matching shoes beneath each suit. She tried to feel grief, tried to justify his sick and seamy life. She closed her eyes, and saw children posed behind glass windows on which were posted small fly-speckled signs. CUSTOMERS REQUESTED TO WEAR CONDOMS.

  She sat by a window, full of dark speculations which turned to sober intricacies, rage tempered by sane reason. She returned to Hire’s room. On an old teak pedestal, under a crystal bell jar was an object he had highly prized. A perfect, pure white porcelain bowl from the Yi dynasty. It was serenely round, rounder than anything she had ever seen, so perfect that, leaning close, she felt it correct the shape of her eyes. The bowl had always instilled in her envy, malice; its perfection was what Hiro had wanted her to be. His child-bride, personified in this small, empty vessel.

  She removed the jar, picked up the bowl, walked into his bathroom, walls and floor tiled in the flecked green marble of Renaissance palazzos. She fondled the bowl, such fine porcelain she could see her hand through it, could see blood pulsing in the blue veins in her hand. Watching her reflection in a mirror, she let the Yi bowl slip through her fingers, the sound on marble tiles mere tinkling that echoed and echoed, like temple chimes in ancient dreams. She shook her shoes free of slivers, turned, and left the room.

  First, she placed a call to a Dr. Seko at Tokyo University. A man Hiro had consulted on numerous purchases: an antique yak fan from the court of K’ang-hsi, emperor of China, a preserved bound foot, hard and tiny as an inkwell, from the Manchu dynasty. Hiro had paid him handsome consultation fees, had endowed his pathology department in Seko’s name, thereby giving the man enormous status. He was also celebrated in his field as one with hands of surgical dexterity.

  Hearing her voice he gasped, made weeping sounds. He had already learned of Hire’s death.

  “Yes,” she said. “A tragedy.” Then she told him what she wanted. “I will pay you anything. I know your expertise in such an art.”

  “Are you quite sure?” he asked. “It is such an extreme . . .”

  “It would be the handsomest memorial to my husband.”

  Still he seemed to hesitate.

  “It should not take more than a week to accomplish the first step?” she said. “You will have everything at your disposal, a car and driver. I will arrange a suite for you at the Royal Hawaiian. Anything you need or desire. Anything.”

  Finally, he agreed to come to Honolulu.

  Next, she called Shiroshi’s Mortuary and Crematorium in downtown Honolulu. The owner was Yakuza, a man Hiro had set up in business thirty years ago when he needed to dispose of small-time thugs. Mr. Shiroshi cursed the Burmese druglords who had killed his friend, promising revenge.

  “Yes, tragic,” Rachel said flicking paint from her fingernails. “Of course it’s fitting that you handle the ceremony of final leavetaking.”

  “Honored. I am deeply honored.”

  “There will be certain tasks first. A Dr. Seko is arriving from Tokyo in two days. He will explain. I think he will need perhaps a week before the final ceremonies, a room at your establishment in which to work.”

  “To . . . work?”

  He was silent while she explained the purpose of Seko’s visit. After considering, Shiroshi sounded overjoyed, exhilarated.

  “Yes. Fitting! Proper! We will send a car now for the body.”

  Lastly, she called Hiro’s attorney. The man had not heard of his death, and when she told him, something happened in his throat, he sounded terrified. “What has to be done? Who has taken over?”

  She knew he owed Hiro nearly $60,000 in gambling debts. “Don’t worry, Lee. No one will come for you. I’ll erase you from the ledger. But do not gamble anymore.”

  The silence was protracted; he was choking with relief. “Anything. Anything I can do.”

  “Call our accountants. Find out how much I’m worth. In liquid assets.”

  “Not on the phone, Rachel. I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”

  “No. Tonight.”

  Several hours later, he sat across from her. “It seems last year he divested himself of huge blocks of stocks in his portfolio here in Honolulu. Investing in businesses in Hong Kong, Bangkok—the water trade. Profits of that whole empire—gambling casinos, liquor, pornography, the rest—are in banks in Tokyo, under corporate names. You’ll never be able to touch them, Rachel. But really, would you want to?”

  “No. Please go on.”

  He looked down at a page of figures. “His personal holdings here, securities, gold certificates, real estate ...” He looked at her, apologetic. “I’m sorry. If he hadn’t sold those stocks, there would be much, much more.”

  “Lee. Just tell me what I’m worth.”

  He glanced at the statements again. “You’re his sole heir, of course.” Then he wrote a figure on a piece of paper.

  That night Rachel lay in bed, looking round the room as if she were a stranger. She shook her head from side to side, sat up, flung herself down again. What was I doing when they shot him? The moment when his body felt the impact of the bullet. His tattoos—did they change color when he died? Will I have the energy to suffer if all of this is true? Suddenly she shrieked, and could not stop. She was finally free of him; she was totally alone. Now she could go out in the world; she was paralyzed. She was widowed and rich; she was orphaned and damned. She shrieked again, the sound so frightful the young man, Ban, heard her from the guest house. He shivered, bowed his head, imagining her wrenched with shame and grief, not knowing the genesis of that grief was the terror of a child abandoned by her father, her lover, her judge and executioner.

  Long before dawn, when it was still dark, Rachel rose, the crumpled paper in her hand drifting to the rug. She wrapped herself in Hiro’s old kimono, embroidered silk of midnight blue, and softly, half-blindly, stumbled out across the lawn, lying down beside the pond, dropping her hand in the water. They swirled round, sighing, nipping gently at her fingers as she stroked them, his flower-patterned koi, the bravest of fish, who, when captured, face the knife without flinching. She lay there feeling tradewinds brush her cheeks, watching the ocean’s skin take on a sunrise blush.

  In her bedroom, a piece of paper shivered in the breeze so the figures seemed to resonate: “$27,000,000.”

  Toru arrived with Jess and Vanya, each puzzled by Rachel’s lack of grief. No emotion whatsoever. Immaculate in black, she seemed serene, or drugged, a woman moving on a trolley. The wake was long, politicians, tycoons, museum curators, people Hiro had boosted through the years, each one indebted to him. Then there were the faceless ones, the men nobody knew. Yakuza. One hand kept inside their pockets, hiding the missing digit of a finger, they stood silent, expensively dressed.

  Mr. Shiroshi bowed and bowed, unctuous, overeager. There was no window in the coffin, Hiro’s face could not be seen. Instead, a large photograph of him had been placed on the wall above, on a sort of hanging altar arrangement. Directly beneath on a shelf, propitiatory offerings, uncooked riceballs, fruit, incense. Flowers surrounded the coffin. Crowds filed past, shook Rachel’s hand. Some shook it too vociferously, Hiro’s death unweighting them. There was no funeral ceremony. Sh
e made a large contribution to the Buddhist temple priests, preferring a memorial service in the future.

  Behind Shiroshi’s Mortuary was the crematorium, where guests were handed sticks of incense by attendants, which did not dilute the pervasive odor of charred human flesh. There was a period of ten minutes or so during which Rachel stood alone in a room with his coffin, saying farewell. An old Filipino cleaning woman opened the door and entered. Hearing murmuring, she started to back out, but curiosity held her. She moved closer and what she saw would haunt her dreams for years.

  A beautiful woman dressed in black, leaning on an open coffin like a sailor leaning at a bar. She seemed to be laughing softly, joking with whoever lay within. The cleaning woman paused. People did strange things here: some buried their pets in king-sized coffins all decked out in baby clothes. One couple was married here, in coffins! Who was the beautiful woman laughing with? The old woman edged closer.

  Hair stood straight up on her arms. She screamed, and screaming, fled the room, dropping her rags and pail, fled the mortuary, fled across a parking lot, and fell to her knees on gravel. Crossing herself repeatedly, trying to understand what she had seen. The beautiful woman leaning over, joking with what looked like a giant, skinned animal. What had once been pink flesh and sheer, glistening, yellow fat, had turned gray, shiny-hard and hideous. Yes, a giant skinned animal, surely not a human in that coffin.

  Hiro’s closed coffin was rolled out, Rachel walking soberly beside it. A small man in overalls standing before what looked like an elevator, shouted theatrically, “The moment of final leavetaking!” With no further ado, he pressed a button, which opened the door to the furnace. The coffin rolled forward, flames roared up, the doors closed behind. During cremation and final preparation of the ashes, the mourners were led to a room with tables laid out in damask linen, porcelain china, and crystal.

  “He would have wanted it this way.” Rachel said, as waiters served Dom Perignon, Beluga caviar.

  People drank and ate copiously during the cooling of the ashes. Two hours later they ambled leisurely back to the main hall of the crematorium. There they were ushered into a room where Hiro’s remains had been placed upon a tray. The heap of bone and ash was rusty colored, large fragments sticking up like coral. Beside the tray, stood a large jade urn and very large chopsticks.

  Each guest stepped forward, gingerly transferring a piece of Hiro from tray to urn. A fragment of skull was so unwieldy Jess dropped it repeatedly, thinking she would faint each time it slipped through her chopsticks. Rachel finally came to her aid, picked up the fragment with her fingers, nonchalantly dropped it in the urn. When the last deposition had been made, the urn was sealed. Guests quietly departed as Rachel dutifully shook hands.

  The last man she spoke to was Dr. Seko from Tokyo. “A beautiful job,” she said. “Very . . . clean.”

  “It has been an honor. It will be a work of art.” He took her aside. “Forgive me for this boldness, but your husband was a brilliant strategist, he did not make mistakes. I think he chose the bullet. You see, he was already dying, slowly suffocating. The tattoos. Ink toxins in his blood accumulating in the lungs, a common thing with full-body art. We discussed this many times. I understand he had prepared you.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Though I should have listened more attentively.”

  He looked down at his slender hands as if they were jeweled. “Death is most beautiful when swift. In the end that’s all that is remembered, how we die.” He patted her arm. “As you saw, the bullet entered the base of the skull and lodged there. The rest of him was not disturbed. Curing will take a matter of months.”

  “As long as you need, Dr. Seko. Patience was something Hiro taught me.” She shook his hand, watched him walk away, a sensei of decortication.

  Later, at the house she poured small cups of sake for Toru and the others.

  “How do you feel?” Vanya asked, still waiting for some show of grief, a little theater.

  “Don’t rush it, Vanya. Grief will come in its time.” She sat back, speaking modestly. “Of course, Hiro left me everything.”

  “Including a new houseboy?” Torn gazed through the windows at a young man brooding by the pond.

  “Ban. He worked for Hiro. I’ve extended his visa here. I’m thinking of helping him.”

  Toru smiled. “And what will he do for you?”

  Her face grew pale. “My feelings are maternal. Hiro regarded him as a son, the child we never had. You see, I have desires now beyond the physical, desires that are ...”

  They sat forward, suddenly intrigued. Jess asked her in the softest voice. “Cousin, what is it you desire?”

  “To learn.” She saw their skepticism. “Did you think Hiro’s death would stop my progress in life? I want to know about things. The thingness of things. I want to make up for all the years I . . .” She waved those thoughts aside for now. “As I said, Hiro left me wealthy. I want to do something for the family, for each of you. Tell me, what do you need?”

  Jess shook her head, she couldn’t think of anything.

  “Come. There must be something I can give you!”

  Vanya studied Rachel, as if measuring her. She glanced at Toru, and finally spoke.

  “Bombs,” she said. “More bombs.”

  Hiamoe Loa

  * * *

  Eternal Sleep

  “SNAP OUT OF IT, JESS. This is revolution, not a bad mood.”

  Jess slowly shook her head. “Revolution is the overthrow, or renunciation, of one political organization for another. What’s happening here isn’t organized. It’s chaos.”

  They were sitting on the beach, stumbling through that featureless zone of two humans trying to understand each other.

  “This is America, Vanya. You can’t ...”

  “Don’t tell me I can’t this, can’t that. The politics of retreat are finished. You’ve seen what’s happening in the Pacific.”

  Jess had to agree. Living here now, she saw in the papers and on TV tragedies that never reached mainland America.

  “Look what’s happened in the past ten years,” Vanya said. “Assassinations in Palau, military coups in Fiji. Armored tanks, the killing of schoolchildren in New Caledonia. Perhaps it was all accelerated by the French bombing of the peace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in ’85, killing that Canadian photographer. The point is, on a smaller scale, upheavals across the Pacific mirror what’s going on around the world. Island nations are fighting back. Terrorism is now our Mother Tongue.”

  “How much good can you do?” Jess asked. “It’s theater, bad theater. Blowing up hotels won’t give Hawaiians back our land. Only sovereignty will.”

  “Jess. Listen to me. Achieving sovereignty will take eight to ten years. After that, bureaucratic paper-shuffling here and in Washington will take another ten years. Our people will still be waiting for their lands twenty-thirty years from now. Meanwhile our kids and elders will be dying from respiratory problems, from polluted milk and water, from drugs and booze. We’ve got to show the world we’ve had enough. This isn’t protest anymore. It’s war.”

  Jess looked at her like she was mad. “A dozen radicals pitting yourselves against billion-dollar business interests and the U.S. military. It’s not war. It’s suicide.”

  Vanya’s lovely face turned dark, anger pulsing just beneath the skin. “Do you think I want to die? I want to live. I want to make a difference. I’m so tired of talking, pleading, compromising.”

  “Can’t I change your mind? Can’t I?” Jess threw her arms around her, rocking her. “For God’s sake, we’re nearing middle age. We have Grandfather now. Can’t we be a family for a while?”

  “Family.” Vanya pulled back, studying her. “I used to hate you, because you could walk out in the world and fit. I’d stand in elevators, sit in classrooms full of haole, wondering if I’d get out of there alive. Do you know what that’s like? That fear? The feeling you’re no good because you’re dark? No. You’ll never know.” She laughed, half joking. “You�
�re only part-time dark.”

  Jess rubbed her wrists, remembering restraints on her arms and legs when the abortionist did what he did to her all those years ago which were just a moment ago because it never faded, never went away.

  “White skin doesn’t save you, not if you’re a woman. I was never any safer in the world than you.”

  “Maybe that’s all I’m fighting for,” Vanya said softly. “A place where we can feel safe. I know we’re doomed, dying out. Maybe I just need to show that we failed honorably.”

  “What about Pono and Grandfather? What you’re planning to do will kill them.”

  “They know.”

  Jess looked at her in total disbelief.

  “Accept it, Jess. Just accept it. Why do you have to understand everything?”

  Jess was quiet then, looking at the sea, perceiving how it had its own dark rituals, creating, uncreating, tiny organisms dead in froth, others born in phosphorescence.

  “Then . . . what can I do to help you?” she said. “I’ll do anything you ask. I swear.”

  “Take care of them.”

  They gazed down the beach at their grandparents, mooning on a blanket like young lovers. Pono suddenly stood, galloping down the beach after Duke’s Amigo as waves carried it into the surf. Duke rolled on his side, laughing uproariously, his handsome, broken face aglow.

  Jess spent her days and nights with them, every hour they could give her. And everything Duke said seemed to define her, things she had never known, yet knew.

  “I never thought my mother loved me. That made her very interesting to me.”

  “She loved you,” Duke said. “But, maybe you were not enough. From what you say, she lived a life of penance. One can die of longing for a place. I know.”

  Things Jess confessed were said for Pono, too, giving her back parts of her daughter, Emma. “Mother was beautiful, and very sensitive. She was an artist, she painted, that’s why she traveled so.”