Country of Origin

by Don Lee

  HE SEARCHED the English-language newspapers for a report of a hit-and-run, but there was none. Gradually, he stopped fretting about it, thinking they had been right, the woman on the bicycle had not really been hurt.

  Nonetheless, as if to avoid incrimination, Julia edged away from Tom. Instead of embarking on an affair in earnest, as he had hoped, she made vague excuses for why she couldn’t see him, abruptly cutting off their phone conversations by saying, without explanation, “I have to go.”

  Tom began pestering Kenzo Ota for updates on Lisa Countryman, reaching for a pretext to see Julia.

  “Why you so interest now?” Ota asked him. “You not care so much before.”

  He didn’t get anywhere with Ota on the telephone, so he went to the police station in Roppongi to talk to him in person. They sat in an empty interrogation room with cups of cold tea in front of them on the table. “Look,” Tom said, “you’re supposed to give me your full cooperation, and that means full disclosure.”

  “I tell you everything,” Ota said. “Nothing new.”

  “Then why do I get the feeling you’re holding out on me? What have you been doing? Have you been doing anything?”

  The question was a mistake. It gave Ota the opportunity to regale him with a recitation in his rotten English of his every investigative move in the most detailed, boring, painful fashion imaginable: his interviews with Takagi and Waru, with apartment building neighbors and shopkeepers and bank and post office clerks.

  “And you’ve come up with no leads?”

  “Nothing,” Ota said.

  “I find that hard to believe. What about the purse snatcher?”

  Ota shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Are you sure you’re not leaving anything out?”

  “No.”

  “No, you’re not sure, or no, you’re not leaving anything out?”

  “Not leaving.”

  “What about putting out posters? Or broadcasting announcements on TV and radio?”

  Ota frowned. “Maybe not necessary?”

  “Why not?”

  Ota didn’t answer him.

  “Oh, I get it,” Tom said. “She was working in Japan illegally, so you figure whatever happened to her, she got what she deserved. You’re only going through the motions.”

  Ota looked at him impassively. “I call you when something new.”

  THE SUMMER was winding down. The Lockheed trial had begun again. Ambassador Mansfield met with a group of top LDP officers at the embassy to discuss the car trade issue and wider access to the telecommunications market. Hua resigned. Nicaragua’s Somoza was assassinated. The ROK found Kim Dae Jung guilty of sedition and sentenced him to death. Khomeini seemed to soften the terms for the release of the hostages in Iran.

  “They’ll never be released before the election,” Jorge said.

  They were at the Grew House pool—Jorge, Tom, and Benny—sitting on lounge chairs near the deep end, all three wearing sweaters over their shorts. It was downright chilly, but it was the last day the pool would be open, and they’d thought they should take advantage of it.

  “Reagan’s tapping into this jingoism and xenophobia that’s been repressed for years,” Jorge said. “After he gets elected, it’ll be lone-cowboy time, and fuck the rest of the world. Every single social and civil rights gain we’ve made in the last twenty years will be repealed.”

  “You’re not being just a little pessimistic?” Benny asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re a communist, aren’t you?” Benny said. “I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me before.”

  Tom saw Julia walking down the other side of the pool with two couples. He knew who they were, he’d seen them before. They were fellow spooks, Pete and Betty Congrieves, Brady and Joanna Keliher. Congrieves was the DCOS, Deputy Chief of Station, the CIA’s number two man in Tokyo. He and Keliher stood out, both tall and athletic and aggressively handsome. Apparently they had been teammates on the basketball team at Yale, members of Skull and Bones.

  “Look at those fuckers,” Jorge said, and Tom knew exactly what he meant. Somehow, merely by the way they walked and talked—their good looks and affability, the ease of their gestures and their lack of self-consciousness—they seemed to flaunt their ownership of the world, the absolute surety that they were kings.

  “Tell the truth,” Jorge said. “Deep down, don’t you think they’re all racists?”

  “Those two?” Tom asked.

  “All of them. Whites.”

  “Come on.”

  “Your problem is you think you can straddle the line,” Jorge said. “You think you can be both.”

  Maybe for a time, growing up, Tom had thought he could be both. At each new post or town or city, he had just tried to blend in, not bring attention to himself, but it had never quite worked. His mother, his Asianness, always seemed to single him out as different, as other. On Yongsan Eighth Army base in Seoul, she had been called a moose—the white wives’ epithet for any local girl who bagged a GI. Everyone had assumed she was a hooker from Itaewon, as did most Koreans. Her family had disowned her long ago, when she had first gotten pregnant with Tom.

  Julia and her friends had settled around a table near the shallow end of the pool, and they were setting up a picnic. From a cooler, they pulled out wedges of cheese and grapes and crackers and chilled martini glasses, along with a thermos of premixed martinis. Julia, wearing a gauzy wraparound dress over her bathing suit, walked to the edge of the pool. She had not looked across the water to Tom yet, had not acknowledged him, and he thought she was stepping away from the group to wave, or maybe even talk to him. Why couldn’t they talk to each other? Why couldn’t they be casual acquaintances? They had met swimming laps, spoken at the reception, found they had common interests, once in a while got together for coffee.

  She slipped off her sandal and dipped her toe in the water, and Pete Congrieves came up from behind her, and with one arm over her ribs—was his hand on her breast?—he casually lifted her in the air and swooped her over the water, as if he were going to drop her in. Julia faked a squeal and, once back on the ground, spun around and punched Congrieves’s chest and chided him, and the two of them joined the rest of the group at the table.

  Tom kept staring at them, trying to will Julia to glance his way. She was holding her martini, laughing at something Brady Keliher had said. Look at me, look at me, Tom implored her. She put her martini down on the table, extracted a tube of lotion from her purse, and extended her right leg. She bent over and, with both hands, massaged the lotion into her calf. Her hair fell forward into her face, and she used her pinkie to hook it behind her ear, and then she turned her head and stared directly at Tom, giving him a look that stopped time, expressionless, unsmiling, but thoroughly wicked, brazen in her complicity, her open declaration of an adulterous heart.

  “Holy shit,” Benny said.

  “What?” Tom said, riveted.

  “Did you see that?” Benny said.

  “What have you been doing?” Jorge said. “Have you been fucking her? You have, haven’t you?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds it may—”

  “You dumbfuck. I wouldn’t be so pleased. You’re playing a dangerous game.”

  Julia had turned away and resumed talking to her friends. The moment had gone unnoticed over there. They drank their martinis, laughed lightheartedly at their jokes and gibes. On Yongsan, the embassy housing compound had been next door to the Army base, and Tom remembered looking across the fence at scenes like this, scenes of bourgeois comfort and glamour. It had seemed to Tom the best life imaginable.

  NINE

  THE FUCKING noises had stopped. It had gone on unabated for a week, the sex noises from No. 501, the apartment above, and then they had mysteriously ceased. Nonetheless, Kenzo had taken to wearing earplugs—first cotton balls squeezed into his ears, secured by Scotch tape, and then foam plugs he found at the drugstore. There was still the refrigerator compressor to contend with, an
d the footsteps, and the odd thumps and smacks.

  He hadn’t spoken to Miss Saotome since discovering she was his upstairs neighbor, so when he called, she assumed he had another noise complaint.

  “What is it now?”

  “Your namecard,” Kenzo said.

  “Mm, yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking about your services,” he said.

  “Ah, I thought you might.”

  “Could we talk, please?”

  The next night, they met at the coffeehouse around the corner from the apartment building. Miss Saotome was impeccable in another stylish designer dress, her chapatsu hair in a bob. It was the first time Kenzo had had the chance to examine her face closely, and he had to say that she was actually quite plain, with bad teeth, and she was much older than he had believed—a kurisumasu keeki.

  “Why don’t you tell me the type of girl you’re looking for?” she said.

  “That’s not why I called you.”

  “Don’t be shy. I’m sure I can find a match for you. The important thing is to be up-front from the beginning about your likes and dislikes. Now, I assume you want her young, which I can accommodate to a certain point. Do you want a city girl or a country girl?”

  “I’m not looking for myself.”

  “Excuse me? I don’t think I understand.”

  Kenzo shifted in his seat. The plastic chairs in the coffeehouse were uncomfortably hard. “I’d like your help in a police investigation.”

  “An investigation?”

  From his inside suit pocket, he pulled out five sheets of paper, on which he had copied the names of all the nightclubs from Lisa Countryman’s notebook, with the two-letter codes in parentheses: PS, IC, SL, NP, SM, NT, PR. “I need to find out what kind of establishments these are, what happens at them.”

  “What sort of investigation is this? Is this an official investigation?”

  “You’ll be paid for your time at your usual rates, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Oh, I see. Not quite official.”

  “What, by the way, are your usual rates?”

  She stared at the pages. “This wouldn’t fall under the usual services. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “You’ll assist me, then?”

  “I don’t know,” Miss Saotome said a bit churlishly. “This isn’t my forte.”

  “You would be a great help to me,” Kenzo said.

  He didn’t want another embarrassment as at Splash Poodle. He didn’t want any more surprises. He could have tried to locate a sex guidebook, he supposed—there had to be things like that, secret, underground guides with ratings and maps—or combed through porno magazines, but he didn’t know where to begin. He certainly couldn’t ask anyone at Criminal Investigations. Yamada would have had a field day with the revelation that Kenzo was so ignorant about such matters.

  There was also another factor, which was that ever since Miss Saotome had slipped her namecard under his door, he had been thinking about her. He was intrigued. She didn’t look like a prostitute or a madam, but she clearly was. Those had obviously been clients visiting, making all those sex noises. Now that it appeared that Lisa Countryman had gone to work as a prostitute, it would be beneficial to learn the mind-set of a prostitute. Miss Saotome could be a convenient resource.

  More and more, Kenzo sensed that he was onto something fairly big with Lisa Countryman, which had somehow become apparent to the young bureaucrat from the US Embassy, Tom Hurley, who had had the temerity to show up at the station and question his dedication. A little bit of Kenzo felt almost sorry for him. Handsome or not, it couldn’t have been easy for Hurley, being a haafu. From personal experience, Kenzo knew about the state of racial equality in America. It was sound in theory, but not in practice. It was a glorious dream, but just a dream. It would never work. It had never worked—not anywhere, not anytime in history—and the US was the only country foolish and hypocritical enough to try.

  Like the rest of the world, Japan prized its homogeneity. It was all very orderly and predictable, unambiguous, and very reassuring, the dictates of the group, the importance of tradition, the building of seron—consensus. Without seron, there was anarchy, the disintegration of society, such as what was happening in America today, beginning with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the race riots, the sixties, hippies, free love, marijuana, rock and roll, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate. Now there was inflation, skyrocketing interest rates, recession, unemployment, servility to OPEC. What had they expected, with their self-indulgence and immorality and rampant consumerism? Look what they had done to Kenzo’s son. Look what they had done to Kenzo’s wife, his mother. Now they were trying to export their depravity to Japan, bringing in their McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Shakey’s Pizza. The Americans couldn’t kill them with their radiation, so now they were trying to kill them with their fat and grease, their music and movies, their brands and pop culture, Coca-Cola, Marlboros, Ritz crackers, Planters peanuts, Levi’s—the ubiquity of American products was overwhelming. That was what Doug Marabelli was doing in Tokyo, trying to infect the Japanese with more toothpaste and shaving cream and hair lotion. And these eikaiwa schools—they were bastardizing the Japanese language into Japlish. It was an assault on all fronts, a coordinated campaign to corrupt the Japanese soul and enslave them with American values. It was another Occupation.

  And the Americans thought they were entitled to whatever they wanted, because ultimately they believed they were better. They believed Asians were beneath them. Imperialism never changed in that respect. Now that Japan was fighting back, the Americans were whining about nontariff barriers and trade deficits and defense spending. They were picketing with signs to “Buy American.” Their weakness and dissolution was matched only by their arrogance.

  Secretly Kenzo was happy about the hostages in Iran, pleased that Americans were getting a taste of the humiliation they deserved, the humiliation they had inflicted upon so many other countries. It was only the beginning, Kenzo believed. Japan, with its economic might, would, in due time, crush the United States.

  THE FOLLOWING afternoon, Miss Saotome called him at the station. “How did you know which station I work at?” Kenzo whispered, cupping the phone and turning his back to the other detectives.

  “It’s on your rental application.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re a lousy detective, aren’t you?”

  “Have you decided?”

  “I’ll help you, but only because I’m curious myself.”

  She told him to meet her in the lobby of the Shinjuku Prince Hotel that night, but at the appointed hour, nine o’clock, he couldn’t find her. She had either backed out or was delayed.

  “Ima nanji?” Twice before, this fellow, who was loitering nearby Kenzo in the lobby, had asked him for the time. It seemed he was being stood up, too. But then the fellow said, “Miss Saotome sends her regards.”

  Kenzo looked at the man. He was in a baggy blue suit and had a strange mop of hair that Kenzo could now see was a wig, and his skin was smooth and hairless.

  “It’s me,” Miss Saotome said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m in disguise.”

  “I can see that,” Kenzo said. What a strange woman, he thought.

  “A lot of these places don’t allow in women.”

  “But we’re not going inside anywhere. I just want you to explain them to me, tell me how they operate, what goes on in them.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Miss Saotome said. “Come on. We’ll discuss it over a cup of coffee.”

  The coffeehouse she took him to was very brightly lit, which wasn’t very flattering for Miss Saotome, who had no makeup on. She didn’t seem to care. She was practically bouncing out of her seat with excitement. She laid out the sheets he had given her on the table. “I took your list,” she said, then unfolded some more papers, “and sorted them according to the codes.”
She pointed to the group of names under the label PS, one of which was Splash Poodle. “These are ‘Pink Salons,’ ” she said, pronouncing the phrase in mellifluous English. “Pinku saron. They have booths there where girls”—she leaned closer to him and whispered—“play the shakuhachi.” The shakuhachi was a traditional Japanese bamboo flute, and it was a common euphemism for fellatio.

  She showed him the page with the SL code. “These are ‘Soaplands,’ sopurando. They used to be called Turkish baths, but the Turks took offense. The girls will start out with shakuhachi, and then will soap the man up and lie on top of him and give him the, eh, human sponge treatment and get him very clean.” She put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

  Kenzo stared at her. “Have you been drinking? Are you drunk?”

  “I just had one drink to calm myself. Okay, maybe two drinks.”

  She identified more categories—PR for “Peeping Rooms,” HC for “Hostess Clubs”—but Kenzo became preoccupied with the noises in the coffeehouse. People kept dropping things onto the linoleum floor, spoons, pens, the impacts making him jump, just as the sounds from Miss Saotome’s apartment did. He turned around, looked across the room, and noticed three things. One, all the customers were men. Two, the waitresses wore extremely short miniskirts. Three, whenever a waitress approached or passed, the men dropped items and bent down to retrieve them, falling in succession like dominoes, lingering in that twisted-sideways position and staring upward.

  “What’s going on here?” Kenzo said.

  Miss Saotome smiled and tapped on the list under the code NP. “We’re in a ‘No-Panty’ coffeehouse, no-pan kissa. The waitresses don’t wear underwear.”

  Kenzo looked across the room again and saw an older man who was clearly a veteran. To save himself the trouble of bending over, he had brought along a hand mirror, which he held beside his chair and angled strategically.

  “Let’s go to another place,” Miss Saotome said.