by Unknown
‘Yes, sir?’
The door creaked open and Goatwriter squinted over his glasses. ‘I believe m-market day is with us again, Mrs Comb?’
‘Aye, sir. I’m off to sell my eggs.’
‘Splendid, splendid. I sense a shocking shortage of short stories hereabouts. I thought perhaps you could take one of my volumes to the m-market, and see if a storybroker comes along. You never know. Supply, demand, and all that . . .’
‘Right you are, sir.’ Mrs Comb was sceptical, but she didn’t want to hurt Goatwriter’s feelings, so she slipped the book into her apron pocket. The door banged open and the wind sprang in. Pithecanthropus stood on the threshold, and grunted a question to Mrs Comb. ‘Aye,’ she answered, ‘I’m leaving now. And no, you can’t come with me – I don’t want you scaring away all the customers like that time in Marrakesh-under-marsh.’ Pithecanthropus grunted a favour, and opened his cupped palms at Mrs Comb. She nearly dropped her basket. ‘Worms! In my boudoir! Respectable, well-fed folk live in these parts! Nobody eats Worms! How dare you even think of putting those slimy creatures in with my lovely fresh eggs! Get away with you this instant! Lout!’
Bless my weathered feathers! thought Mrs Comb as she made her way across the blasted heath. Whatever became of this place? The landscape had once been beautiful, but now crops were dead or dying, trees stripped or ripped, and craters pocked the scorched, torched ground. Virile red-hot pokers thrusted from rusted, busted tanks through uranium shell-holes. Thistles whistled. A pipe dribbled sewage into a mire of wire. The stench made Mrs Comb cover her nose with her headscarf. ‘By ’eck!’
Suddenly the sky screamed at the top of its lungs.
Mrs Comb barely had time to shelter her precious basket of eggs and cover her ears with her wings before the sonic boom hit, blowing her apron over her head and ballooning her knickerbockers. The shock waves ebbed away. Mrs Comb peered out and got to her feet. Looking up, she saw a peculiar sight – a hippie and his psychedelic surfboard, falling out of the sky, straight towards Mrs Comb! Acting on reflex, she scooped up her basket and fluttered behind a large barrel labelled ‘Agent Orange’. The hippie hit the dirt at terminal velocity. Stones and collision noises showered from the impact crater. Mrs Comb watched the dust settle, too buffeted to say a word, even to herself. From the crater she heard a groan. ‘Oh, man!’ The hippie heaved himself over the edge. His dreadlocks were ginger, his sunglasses wraparound and his halo wonky. ‘Man.’ Seeing Mrs Comb, he made the peace sign. ‘Good day, ma’am.’
Mrs Comb found her tongue. ‘That were a nasty tumble, and no mistake.’
‘Darned Phantoms! Totally blew me away! Never even saw ’em coming. They must be bombing the town, if they can find anything left to bomb. Still, the munitions are there, so they gotta use ’em up.’
‘Is owt broken?’
‘Only my pride, ma’am, thanks for asking. I’m immortal, y’see.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Immortal. My name’s God. Mighty pleased to make your acquaintance.’
This unsettled Mrs Comb. Should she curtsy? ‘Charmed, I’m sure. But if a town is about to be bombed, shouldn’t you do something?’
God readjusted his halo. ‘Would if I could, ma’am, but once the military decides to bomb the living bejesus out of a country . . . well.’ He shrugged. ‘Time was, we had a divine veto on wars, but our executive powers got whittled away, bit by bit, and now nobody even bothers consulting us.’
‘Fancy . . . just what does it take to stop a war, may I ask?’
God made a ‘search me’ face. ‘Tell you the truth, ma’am, I never wanted to be no God. My daddy insisted, it running in the family and all. I flunked the Ivy League divinity colleges, and wound up in California.’ God grew nostalgic. ‘Surf was high, the sand was gold, and the babes! The babes . . . Divine intervention was compulsory on the syllabus, but I skipped most of the lectures for the breakers on Big Sur! Stopping wars? One sticky spittoon of guacamole, ma’am. So, I graduated, third-class dishonours, and the only thing I learned was the water-to-wine scam. Daddy tried to pull strings, but heaven, ma’am’ – God lowered his voice – ‘is another word for nepotism. Golden City makes the freemasons look meritocratic. Ain’t what you know – it’s who you know and where you know ’em from. The cronies of the Almighty get given the stable democracies, and us nobodies get the war zones and peacekeeping missions. Ma’am, do you have the time?’
Mrs Comb checked her wristwatch. ‘Five and twenty to eleven.’
‘Bonymaronie! I gotta get my videos back to the shop or they’ll fine me again!’ God clicked his fingers and his surfboard levitated from the impact crater. God jumped aboard and waggled his sunglasses. ‘Been mighty fine passing the time of day with you, ma’am. If you run into any trouble, just send me a wing and a prayer!’ He crouched in a kung fu position and surfed away. Mrs Comb watched the dwindling divinity disappear. ‘Aye. Well, I won’t hold my breath.’
In the parched fog and half-light I wake with a yell because an old woman in black leans over me. I sort of spasm, and fall off the sofa. ‘Steady,’ the old woman says, ‘steady, child. You were dreaming. It’s me, Mrs Sasaki, from Ueno station.’ Mrs Sasaki. I unclench, breathe in, breathe out. Mrs Sasaki? Fog blows away. She smiles and shakes her head. ‘Sorry I startled you so. Welcome back to the land of the living. Buntaro neglected to mention I would be visiting this morning, am I correct?’
I untense and breathe deeply. ‘Morning . . .’
She puts down a sports bag. ‘I brought you some items from your apartment. I thought they might make your stay here more comfortable. Though had I known about your black eye, I would have brought a T-bone steak.’ I am embarrassed that Mrs Sasaki saw the mess I live in. ‘I must admit, I thought you would be up by now. Why don’t you sleep in the guest room, you foolish youth?’
My mouth is dust and glue. ‘I feel safer down here, I guess. Mrs Sasaki – you, Buntaro – how did he know your number at Ueno? How do you know Shooting Star, and Buntaro?’
‘I’m his mother.’ Mrs Sasaki smiles at my astonishment. ‘We all have a mother somewhere, you know. Even Buntaro.’
Pieces slot into place. ‘How come neither of you said anything?’
‘You never asked.’
‘It never occurred to me to ask.’
‘Then why should it occur to us to tell you?’
‘My job?’
‘Buntaro got you the interview, but you got the job yourself. None of this matters. We shall discuss your position at Ueno over breakfast. One thing at a time. First, you are to clean yourself up and shave. You look as if you spent the week camping out with the homeless in Ueno park. It is high time you stopped yourself going to seed. While you shower, I shall cook, and I expect you to eat more than me. What is the point in saving your hide if you go on hunger strike?’
I stay in the shower for ages, until my bone marrow is hot and my finger pads wrinkle. I body-shampoo myself three times from scalp to toes. When I come out, even my cold is better and I weigh less. Now I shave. I am lucky, I only need to shave once a week. The boys in my class at high school used to boast about how often they shaved, but there are a hundred other things I would rather do with my time than drag steel over my hair follicles. Still, a suggestion from Mrs Sasaki is more or less an order. Uncle Money gave me a shaver a couple of years ago, but Uncle Tarmac laughed when he saw it and said real men use blades. I am still on my first packet of Bic disposables. I splash on cold water, and rinse my blade under the cold tap – Uncle Tarmac says the cold makes the razor contract and sharpen. I think of him every time I shave. I smear on Ice Blue shaving gel, especially the groove between the upper lip and the nose – why is there no name for that? – and my chin cleft, and the lower jaw hinge where I usually cut myself. Wait until the gel stings. Then start on the flatlands near the ears where it hurts least. I sort of like this pain. Tugged, uprooted. Some pain is best conquered by diving into it. Around the nose. Ouch! Rinse away, stubbly goo, I ch
ase it down the plug-hole. More cold water. I touch my black eye until it hurts. Clean boxers, T-shirt, shorts. I can smell cooking. I go downstairs and put my shaving stuff back in the sports bag. I catch the eye of the lady in the shell photograph. ‘There, feeling better now? You worry too much. You are quite safe here. Tell me what happened. Give me your story. Speak. Give it to me.’
The Mongolian disappeared into thin air. The burning Cadillacs broke into fresh applause. My senses struggled back from wherever, and I knew I had to get away from that place as soon as possible. I started jogging down the bridge. Not running, I knew I had a long night in front of me. I did not look over the parapet again, and I did not look over my shoulder. I was not even tempted. The thick smoke spun with plutonium fumes. I willed myself to become a machine whose product was distance. I jogged a hundred paces, and walked a hundred, over and over, along the perimeter road, scanning the moonlit distance for cars. I could hide down the embankment if anything came – the slope was built of those shorefront prefabricated concrete blocks with big hollows. Horror, shock, guilt, relief: all the predictable things, I felt none of them. All I could feel was this urge to put distance between me and everything I had seen. Stars weakened. The fear that I would be caught and nailed to the crimes on the reclaimed land shook open emergency seams of stamina, and I kept my hundred-hundred regime up until the perimeter road curved through the roadblock and on to the main coastal road that led back to Xanadu. The dawn was scorching the horizon and the traffic on the main thoroughfare towards Tokyo was thickening. The aspirin moon was dissolving in the lukewarm morning. Drivers and passengers stared at me. Nobody walks out there, there was no pavement, just a sort of bulldozed-up ridge of ground – they assumed I had escaped from a mental hospital. I thought about hitch-hiking, but figured this could attract attention to me. How would I explain what I was doing there? I heard a fleet of police sirens approach. Luckily I was passing a family restaurant, so I could hide in the entrance and pretend to make a phone call. I was wrong – no police cars, only two ambulances. What should I do? My fever was taiko-drumming my brain. I had no plan of action beyond calling Buntaro and begging for help, but he wouldn’t be at Shooting Star until eleven and I didn’t have his home number, and I was afraid he would dump my stuff on the pavement when he found out what sort of company I kept. ‘Are you okay, lovie?’ asked a waitress behind the till. ‘Do you need anything for that eye?’ She looked at me so kindly that the only way I could stop myself blubbing was leaving rudely without answering. I envy her son. The route passed an industrial estate – at least I had a pavement to walk on. Every streetlight switched itself off simultaneously. The factory units went on for ever. They all made things for other factory units: stacking shelves, packing products, fork-lift gearboxes. The drumming was subsiding, but the fever was now steaming the contents of my skull. I had used everything up. I should try to get back to the family restaurant, I thought, and collapse in the lap of the angel of mercy. Collapse? Hospitals, doctors, questions? Twenty-year-olds don’t collapse. The restaurant was too far behind me. There was a bench in front of a tiling sealant factory. I don’t know why anyone put a bench there, but I sat down gratefully, in the shade of a giant Nike trainer. I hate this world. NIKE. THERE IS NO FINISHING LINE. Across a weed-strewn wasteland I could see Xanadu and Valhalla. One great circle. A firing pistol went off somewhere, and the sun sprang up, running. A bird was singing – a long, human whistling note, then a starburst of bird code at the end. Over and over. Same bird lives on Yakushima, I swear. I willed myself to get up, and make it as far as Xanadu, where I could find some air-conditioning and a place to sleep until I could phone Shooting Star. I willed myself, but my body wouldn’t move. A white car slowed down. Beep, beep. Beepy white car. Go away. The door opened from the inside, and the driver leaned over the passenger seat. ‘Look, lad, I’m not Zizzi Hikaru but unless you know of a better offer coming along, I suggest you climb in.’ An uncoupled moment as I realized the driver was actually Buntaro. A haggard, stressed Buntaro. I was too drained to even wonder how, who, when, why. I was asleep in thirty seconds.
The market town was a razed maze of clubbed rubble and treeless scree. The mosque on the hill had taken a direct hit, its innards lobotomized and its windows blasted out. The building gazed blankly over the town. Trams lay toppled and stripped. Abandoned children lay by the roadside, skin shrink-wrapped around protruding bones. Flies drank from their tear ducts. Vultures circled near enough to hear the wind in their feathers, and hyenas skulked in the gutters. A white Jeep from a peacekeeping organization drove past, nearly running Mrs Comb over, taking lots of photographs and news footage. Mrs Comb came to an enormous statue reigning over the ruin. The Beloved Commander, read the plaque. In his shadow, a gaunt man sizzled worms over a fire for his family. The ballasted, bombastic, brassy, beetle-browed, bulging dictator on the plinth was the very opposite of the gaunt man beneath, whose skeleton seemed to have been twisted out of coat hangers. ‘Excuse me,’ said Mrs Comb, ‘I’m looking for the marketplace.’
He glowered at her. ‘You’re standing in it.’
Mrs Comb realized he was quite serious. ‘This wasteland?’
‘There is a war on, lady, in case you haven’t noticed!’
‘But surely people still need to eat?’
‘Eat what? We are under siege.’
‘Siege?’
The gaunt man dangled a worm over the mouth of his son, who delicately took it from the chopsticks, and chewed without expression. ‘Well, they call a “siege” “sanctions” these days. It is an easier word to swallow.’
‘Fancy . . . who is the war between, exactly?’
‘Sssh!’ The man looked around. ‘That’s classified! You’ll be arrested for asking questions like that!’
‘Surely you know, when the soldiers fight each other?’
‘The soldiers? They never fight each other! They might get hurt! They have a gentleman’s agreement – never fire at a uniform. The purpose of war is to kill as many civilians as possible.’
‘Shocking!’ Then Mrs Comb said something rather unwise. ‘Looks like I won’t be able to sell my eggs, after all.’
A fertilizer bag flapped open and the gaunt man’s wife crawled out. ‘Eggs?’ The gaunt man tried to shush her, but she shrieked, ‘Eggs!’ The still noon shook as the word spread like shockwaves. ‘Eggs!’ Orphans without forearms emerged from drains. ‘Eggs!’ Old women tapped their canes. ‘Eggs!’ Men appeared in doorless doorways, eye sockets hollow with hunger. ‘Eggs!’ A menacing mob encircled the statue. Mrs Comb tried to calm the situation. ‘Now, now, no need to—’ The mob surged – a hurricane huckus of hoohah, hubbub and hounding hands broke over Mrs Comb and swept her basket away. The mob roared. Mrs Comb squawked in terror as her eggs rolled away and were pounded to shell-spatted yolk and white underfoot. Mrs Comb flapped and rose above the crowds – she hadn’t flown since she was a spring chicken, and couldn’t stay airborne for more than a few seconds. The only nearby roosting place was the handlebar moustache of the beloved commander. The crowd watched her, awestruck. ‘She flew! The lady flew!’ Only a tiny fraction of the mob was near enough to fight for the gobs of crushed egg. The rest looked at Mrs Comb. A little kid said it first. ‘She ain’t no lady!’
‘I most certainly am a lady!’ retorted Mrs Comb. ‘My father ruled the roost!’
‘Ladies don’t fly! She’s a hen!’
‘I am a lady!’
The word devoured the hungry town as wildfire devours thornbush thickets of Thales. Not ‘lady’, not ‘hen’ but: ‘Chicken! Chicken! Chicken!’
Mrs Sasaki ladles my miso soup from the pan into a lacquer bowl. Koiwashi fish and cubes of tofu. Anju loved koiwashi – our grandmother used to serve it this way. The miso paste swirls at the bottom, deep-sea sludge. Yellow daikon pickles, salmon rice-balls wrapped in seaweed. Sheer comfort food. I exist on toast and yoghurt in my capsule, assuming I get up early enough: this is too much hassle to make. I know I should be raveno
us, but my appetite is still in hiding. I eat to please Mrs Sasaki. When my grandmother’s dog Caesar was dying, he ate just to please her. ‘Mrs Sasaki, I have some questions.’
‘I imagine you do.’
‘Where am I?’
She passes me the bowl. ‘You didn’t ask Buntaro?’
‘Yesterday was weird all day, I wasn’t thinking straight. At all.’
‘Well, you are staying in the house of my sister and brother-in-law.’
‘Are they the couple in the seashell photo above the fax?’
‘Yes. I took that photograph myself.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘In Germany. Her books sell very well there, so her publisher flew her over for a literary tour. Her husband is a scholar of European languages, so he burrows in university libraries while she does her writerly duties.’
I slurp my soup. ‘This is good. A writer? Does your sister work in the attic?’
‘She prefers “fabulist”. I was wondering if you would find the study.’
‘I hope it was okay to go up there. I, uh, even began reading some stories I found on the writing desk.’
‘I don’t think my sister would object. Unread stories aren’t stories.’
‘She must be a special person, your sister.’
‘Finish those rice-balls. Why do you say that?’
‘This house. In Tokyo, but it could be in a forest during the Kofun period. No telephones, no TV, no computer.’
Mrs Sasaki purses her lips when she smiles. ‘I must tell her that. She’ll love it. My sister doesn’t need a telephone – she was born deaf, you see. And my brother-in-law says the world needs less communication, not more.’ Mrs Sasaki slices an orange on the chopping board, and zest spray-leaks. She sits down. ‘Miyake-kun, I don’t think you should come back to Ueno. We have no proof those people or their associates want to find you, but nor do we have any proof that they don’t. I vote that we shouldn’t take any risks. They knew where to find you on Friday. As a precaution I ensured your Ueno records were misfiled. I think you should sit tight here, until the end of the week – if anybody comes asking for you at Shooting Star, Buntaro will tell them you skipped town. If not, the coast is clear enough.’