Breakers

by William B. McCIoskey Jr.

  Should cancel, thought Hank with sudden unease. No way this won’t have strings. But in his mind he’d already allotted the nine thousand. And to see Japan was a way to learn, to make contacts maybe useful some time. Not like he was signing anything.

  As he warmed to the subject, Gains wagged his finger teacherlike, earnest and protective. “Never lose your temper, Hank, or raise that famous voice. Those are sure ways of scaring off these, uh, folks. And of losing face yourself, believe me. And keep this in mind: if you phrase questions for a yes or no answer you might as well not ask. A blunt ‘no’ makes folks cringe, so they’ll say ‘maybe’ when they mean an absolute nix. As for ‘yes,’ sometimes folks are just embarrassed to admit ignorance, or they think that’s what you’d like to hear.”

  “Folks? You make it sound like walking through booby traps.”

  “No, good manners, distilled by centuries of overcrowding. I should come with you but I’ve got to testify in Washington. I’ll fly straight to Tokyo when it’s over.”

  The idea of the trip suddenly lost some of its savor. “You don’t have to trouble, John. You’ve briefed me.”

  “Well, you know, inviting you puts me on the line too.”

  At least for the first week he’d be left to handle things for himself.

  Back in Kodiak as he packed, Jody turned snappish. Didn’t she understand this was business? And she was used enough to his being away on fishing boats. “What’s eating you?” he asked at last.

  “Nothing!”

  The kids were playing outside noisily. There was a thump. Pete came in whimpering with woebegone tears, followed by Dawn who declared: “It was all Henny’s fault, not mine, Mommy.”

  “Yes yes yes,” said Jody automatically. She let Pete hug her leg, but her look was somewhere else.

  Hank watched uneasily. He wouldn’t want to be stuck with kids either, he realized. But he continued packing.

  PART III

  APRIL-MAY 1982 JAPAN

  13

  THE JAPANESE

  TOKYO, APRIL 1982

  In late April a delegation of three greeted him at Narita airport. By now he had cards to exchange. His stiff bow in response to their deep ones brushed his beard against their heads. One of them chuckled as his hand rose to feel his own smooth chin.

  He settled into the long chauffered car that drove them from the airport into Tokyo, and fielded politely his hosts’ polite questions. “No, not my first visit to Japan. But the first in a long time.” To an uneasy look as they probably thought of wartime soldiers: “Little vacation.” The visits from Vietnam had been with others in frantic search of pleasure, memories that no longer counted, filtered through a buzz of alcohol. Fields outside the car’s window had greened months ahead of green in Alaska, good for a comment that received nods and smiles. He confused the three name cards. His mistake in addressing Mr. Hayashi as Mr. Asakura broke ice for laughs all around. A festive banner in the yard of one neat house announced the birth of a son, they said when he asked, brightening at his interest. Definitely he needed no John Gains to Japan-break him.

  It grew dark as they entered the city, deeper and deeper into traffic and bustle. Steam rose from food stalls and shops. He’d forgotten, living in muddy Kodiak and the Anchorage of empty streets, how a metropolis vibrated. Crowds moved chin to shoulder. How did they breathe? He watched, uneasy and excited. Too long away from New York, too seldom even in Seattle. Neon flashed big Japanese characters. Shop windows had smaller signs, some in English. He controlled a hoot at “Panty stocking. Makes your legs striking sexy.” Another read “Fashion hair. Permanent hair.” Might enjoy this place after all.

  His hosts left him with bows, limp handshakes, and smiles perpetual. He had a morning pickup at ten to call at the fisheries office. The hotel room was indeed small. His knees bumped between the bed and the furniture. At least the mattress was decently hard. He lay for a while, expecting sleep after ten hours’ flight connecting from Kodiak and a reversal of days. Finally he dressed again and went outside.

  A turn around the hotel comer brought him into lights and energy. People swept past in straight directions. A cart offered roasted squid on a stick. He fingered a five-hundred-yen note from the three thousand they’d handed him in the car as he calculated its value—something like two hundred to the buck, have to nail that better—and offered it to the vendor. Coins in exchange, and the squid: rubbery, not that good. Further along the street drifted smells of grilled meat. He followed into a wide alley with sidewalk tables. Spits on coals, twin signs in English: “Yakatori,” and “Exciting Stadium.” A group of Japanese men occupied several tables pushed together. They waved tall bottles toward him with politely hearty greetings, then returned to their own business. He pointed at objects, soon ate savory skewered chicken downed with beer in an oversized bottle.

  A western woman paused at the yakatori sign, hesitated, then sat at the farthermost table. Hank watched her idly. Tailored clothes but not severe, softened by a scarf, nice. The men quieted and muttered to themselves. Hank waved to the waiter and pointed for more yakatori which came immediately, but the woman remained ignored for fifteen minutes even when she turned to signal. Oh yes, Gains-wisdom, no woman of virtue traveled the streets alone, especially at night.

  She prepared to leave. The large beer had mellowed him. He passed a finger across the smooth gold of his wedding ring and kept it prominent, walked to her table, and said affably: “Excuse me, ma’am, this isn’t a pickup. I just thought if you joined me you might get served.”

  “That’s very kind.” She looked him over, then crisply: “Mind greeting me like an old friend so that it doesn’t look like a pickup?”

  “Sure. Why, you are Daisy Mae Scraggs from back home, aren’t you? Mother’ll jump for joy to hear that we met!”

  Up came her hand. “Cousin Herbert, I do declare.”

  Her beer and kabobs soon arrived at his table. “I was famished,” she said between bites, “and didn’t have time for a restaurant tonight. This country certainly belongs to the men. Can I buy you some more of this for your gallantry?”

  “Kindest thing is to let me be. I’m stuffed and jet-lagged, asleep on my feet.”

  “Just from the States? Some wild part to judge from that bully bush on your chin. I haven’t seen a proper beard like that in ages. Not afraid of scaring the Japanese?”

  He leaned back, enjoying himself. Brightness appeared to be her habit. “Don’t hurry. I can snooze till you’re done.”

  “I won’t keep you long. I really am in a hurry.” It turned out that they were going in the same direction.

  She stopped at a marquee roofed in a pagoda sweep. “Do you know Kabuki? I’m here on a Fulbright to study it. I suppose the name Ennosuke means nothing? Never mind, he’s doing seven roles including the ghost of Iwafuji. The play’s called ‘Kagamiyama Gonichi No Iwafuji’—don’t laugh, it’s a classic. It runs through the month. I come now just for special parts after seeing it a dozen times. The whole play lasts five hours.” Hand on his arm. “Come in! No, not when you’re half asleep, it’s too special. Take a breather some night and see it when you can stay awake.” She held out her hand: “Thanks again, Cousin Herbert,” and entered the theater smartly. Hadn’t even exchanged names.

  Photos outside showed pop-eyed actors in the poses of Japanese prints. He headed away, then returned, paid the fifteen hundred yen minimum, and entered a lobby as busy as the street. Shops sold candy and elaborate souvenirs. No sign of her. Just as well, probably. Some of the women wore kimonos. Unmistakably Japan. Damn, here I am!

  His seven-buck ticket put him high in a gallery sharing a rail with Japanese. Below, on a dark stage, phosphorescent bones rose from the ground to assemble themselves into a completed moving skeleton that became a woman. Like nothing else he’d ever seen. In the next scene, full of flowering trees, a chalk-faced actor or actress—maybe the same one who played the skeleton but now in a bright kimono—rose on a trolley and floated around the ceilin
g, exclaiming in a singsong voice that was half rusty hinge and half cat yowl. The figure moved close to Hank’s face, close enough to show sweat oozing through a man’s white makeup. His red-veined eyes met Hank’s for a moment, impersonally, but Hank jolted at the flesh-reality. This man was working hard, was no more part of lazy everyday than were crab fishermen on the grounds. Later, actors in fantastic costumes declaimed in sounds that could have come through a grinder. Some swaggered shouting from a side ramp. In a wild battle—wild as scud on the ocean!—one actor brandished a dagger from the top of a ladder held by stagehands. At the end Hank left his seat grinning, and glanced unsuccessfully for Daisy Mae to tell her what great stuff it was.

  Back at the hotel a message from John Gains: “Be my guest for a massage to celebrate your first night in Japan.” What the hell. He gave an okay to the desk clerk and went up to wait. To hear Jody’s voice was what he wanted, but they had agreed to save phone expense since in an emergency she could reach him through Gains. He lay drifting. Pete, mister honey dear, keep healing. Dawn, push him to speak, keep at it. Henny, stay out of water. His arms ached to hold them. Seth, don’t screw up the boat. Money would come from somewhere.

  A knock woke him. At the door stood a solid middle-aged woman. Her smile showed two front teeth missing. Might have known, coming as a gift from Gains, nothing to behave about. She started to roll down his pajamas. “Uh uh, mama, just do the best you can otherwise,” he laughed. As compromise she bunched up the pants legs. Her mattress-crackling rub and pull started on the left foot, slowly. A long fifteen minutes later she had worked up to the groin. An erection rose through his fly despite efforts to conceal it. “You hold baby,” she chuckled, and patted it impersonally. He felt the blush as he cupped his penis and scrotum from her busy hands. She started on the right toes. It was relaxing: every part but the groin which had started teasing. Oh Jody. After a long while she rolled him on his stomach. He woke to find her walking barefoot on his back. Sonofabitch, here I am.

  He started awake. Deck didn’t roll. Boat might have hit a reef. An automatic bound for the wheelhouse tripped him over his hotel baggage. Oh. Tokyo. His watch said 9:30 and still dark outside. Meeting at ten! Oh. Hadn’t set. Four thirty local. Back in bed his head pumped with energy and half-dreams. Sweating Kabuki whiteface-on-a-wire merged with a grope for gaskets in Jody Dawn’s engine room to morning sun backlighting Jody’s hair through the picture window. He stared sleepless around the little room. Twenty minutes later he strode the near-empty street, following a hotel map away from the darkened theater toward canals.

  He knew Tsukiji Market was drawing closer when trucks rumbled, people pushed in his direction, and lanterns flickered over stallkeepers’ stolid faces. A man in a rubber apron stood with a bowl close to his mouth, chopsticks shoveling noodles. Hank dodged men pulling long plank carts at frantic speed, but no one challenged his entry into the warehouse spaces. He followed the carts toward noise, through an acre of stalls empty except for some women scattering ice into trays. Clean fishy odors.

  Suddenly he entered an action space: dark figures busy as Dante’s Inferno, smells of cold sea, rasping shouts. Dozens of bulletlike tuna big as culverts cluttered the floor: bluefins up to five hundred pounds live, he judged—fighters in the water. They appeared to be fresh. That probably meant they’d been flown direct from boats around the world, given the price of fresh bluefin. Overhead lights glistened on their blue-black hides and on the wet floor. He walked gingerly to keep from slipping. Each carcass bore a tag and a painted number. Their chopped ends revealed ruby-colored meat. The largest still had powerful heads, tapered and noble* Fighters brought to earth and market.

  Buyers in tagged caps squatted by the tuna. They examined discs of meat cut from the tails, thumped the skin, sniffed, scribbled notes on pads pulled from money pouches. In an area empty of buyers an attendant slapped lettered paper on carcasses, and laborers in sweatbands immediately locked hooks into big gills to grunt the tuna onto carts. Cart men gripped thick shafts, bent forward, and hurried off with their loads. The main noise centered around auctioneers on a platform surrounded by men in caps. Arms shot from the crowd. The lead auctioneer barked fierce monosyllables while his assistants documented. Transactions appeared to last only seconds.

  He dodged and enjoyed, ignored, although his head ached from jet lag catching up. At length the wet floor gleamed increasingly empty. The auctioneer actually paused to sip from a bottle and chat with colleagues. Hank wandered the warehouse spaces toward other sounds. He found a loading dock carpeted with hundreds of smaller tuna—skipjacks probably—all frozen and steaming frost. A crane carried the rigid carcasses five or six to a cargo net from boat holds, and thumped them down on the dock like cordwood. Stevedores up to their boot tops in ice-fog dragged the fish into rows. The steady pace had not the frantic drive that dealt with fresh tuna worth many times more. One young stevedore sat on a crate smoking. He regarded Hank sullenly: envy, maybe. In a side room with bandsaws men cut the hard carcasses into irregular chunks that they stacked on end. The men actually stopped at Hank’s appearance and waved fish slabs, enlivened by his interest. At their urging Hank lifted a piece the size of a fencepost and, surprised by its weight, pantomimed dropping it on his foot. His mock yowl started gleeful shouts.

  Further wandering took him to an elevator accessed only with a key. What the hell. He waited for an officious pair and entered with them as if he owned the place. Their conversation stopped for a moment, but they didn’t challenge. The elevator opened on a circular gallery with windows looking down over the warehouse roofs. He followed the men through a door into a vast, low hall. Open crates stood on tables throughout. Men passed down the aisles inspecting their contents. The crates held handful-sized stuff dried and fresh (some of it live): pale worms with pinpoint black eyes, snails, spidery crayfish waving dainty antennae, grubs like coughs of phlegm, silver minnows.

  A man in a stiff gray shirt planted himself before Hank and challenged him in Japanese. Hank tried innocence with outstretched arms. It didn’t work. The man ordered him to the elevator and watched frowning until the door closed.

  Back down in the warehouse spaces the floor of the big tuna lay empty except for a man with a hose. Hank passed a quieter auction with no product in sight but long lists on a blackboard. Between bids some of the buyers actually smiled and visited. Heavy action had shifted to the area he’d first passed where women had been scattering ice. People and carts now jammed the aisles, frantic but as focused as the Kabuki actors. Women and men arranged the contents of crates, their sound a buzz punctuated by shouts. It could have been a flower show for the careful arrangements on ice beds surrounding each merchant. Variety he’d known, but this outdid anything previous. There were domino rows of small fish laid head-to-tail, purple tentacles peppered with white suction cups like firework bursts, spiky urchins laid so that their orange meat formed a uniform line, spotted crabs whose claws interlocked in drill precision. In contrast to the humans’ nondescript kerchiefs and aprons there were red blocks of tuna, olive sea blobs that quivered, big individual fish still silver-gleaming (an elusive quality he could appreciate, gone within minutes on a careless deck under hot sun), fat maroon squid big as party crackers, stacks of little squid dried to a leathery brown-yellow, more.

  It was the freshness that clung to his mind most as he stepped from cartways and squeezed against display rails. He could have been aboard Jody Dawn with wind across the deck for absence of the usual ripe fish market odors.

  Back at the hotel he debated his dress for the day, decided to shed the jeans he’d worn since leaving Kodiak in favor of brown cords, a jacket-coat (compromise for all occasions, selected by Jody), and shined leather shoes (packed at Jody’s insistence). Maybe wear the nice clothes back at Kabuki tonight, spring for a better seat. A car waited exactly at ten. Mr. Teruo Hayashi of the afternoon before greeted him with a limp handshake but eager warmth. He wore a suit but seemed less formal than he’d been in the presenc
e of others.

  Call Hayashi forty, Hank decided, although he could have been thirty with an old face or fifty with a young one. Short as a kid, brown, wiry. Earnest expression. Tense but likable.

  “You have slept well, Mr. Crawford?”

  “Restless, thanks. Hey, since I left you I’ve been to a Kabuki play and to Skeeji Market. Really impressive, both!” He had expected pleasure, but:

  “By yourself?” The balding forehead contracted in anxious lines. “Oh, Mr. Crawford, I should to stay having guide you. It was thought you are sleepy.” Chewed lip. “We have fish market on the schedule, there is no need for you to take yourself.”

  When Hank cheerfully reassured him, Hayashi attempted to lighten, but the effort was pale. To ease it: “I’ve never seen such a range of good-looking fish under one roof. Do I pronounce what’s spelled Tsukiji right—‘skeeji’?”

  “Yes. Yes. I would gladly have to take you, Mr. Crawford.”

  “Call me Hank. What’s your name?”

  “Ohhh . . .” Uncertain smile. “Mr. Hayashi best.”

  The car entered a clot of traffic that moved in spurts. The road led to an avenue skirting walls of huge stones that Hayashi said surrounded the Emperor’s palace (Hank craned but saw nothing more), then into crisscross streets between ubiquitous tall buildings. The car stopped by a dull chrome entrance. “Please beware the traffic, Mr. Crawford. Traffic does not move on the American side.”