The Moving Blade

by Michael Pronko

  When they finally found the kissaten on a long, straight backstreet, Hiroshi was about to tell him to take a break, but Ueno held his hand up to silence him and pulled off without a word.

  Hiroshi held the door of the kissaten open for Jamie. Inside, the kissaten had dark wood walls, a long European style mirror behind the counter, and hundreds of antique coffee grinders, hand cranks frozen in place.

  At the back of the coffee shop sat Setsuko, Mattson’s first wife. When she saw them enter, she put down her reading and got up to hug Jamie as if they’d known each other much longer than a couple of days. “This was your father’s favorite seat,” she said, motioning for Jamie to sit beside her on the banquette.

  A row of siphon vacuum coffee makers bubbled over low blue flames behind the glass counter, the glass bulbs lined up evenly along the brown wood top. A piano sonata was playing over the speakers, Debussy or Satie, Hiroshi wasn’t sure.

  “Bernie loved to watch the coffee go up and down the glass chambers. Said it helped him think.”

  “We were robbed yesterday,” Jamie said. “I didn’t want to tell you on the phone.”

  Setsuko twisted in her seat. “Are you all right? Where were you?”

  Hiroshi said, “In front of the archives. They wanted whatever Mattson had there.”

  Setsuko leaned back. “They were following you.”

  Jamie nodded. “They must have been.”

  “I’m not surprised. I’ve—” Setsuko stopped when the waiter came to take their order. Setsuko ordered coffee for them and patted Jamie’s hand, “Your father said the coffee here was the best in Tokyo, but I think he just liked the theater of the whole thing.”

  “It’s old, this place?”

  “I came here when I was a girl,” Setsuko said. “So, yes, old.” She laughed. “But it’s changed. My father was a doctor and all the best doctors—who studied in Germany—lived in Ginza. After the war, nothing German remained. Your father liked to write his scroll here.”

  “Scroll?”

  Setsuko laughed. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but he started to keep a journal, for you, on a scroll.”

  “You mean like paper wrapped around wood rods?” Jamie laughed.

  Hiroshi let the two women talk. Coffee bubbled along the counter, filling the air with a rich, roasty aroma, a pleasant accompaniment to the music.

  Jamie said, “I remember sitting at the kitchen table practicing calligraphy with him, copying each one I mastered on a scroll. My mother wasn’t ever much one for books.”

  Setsuko looked away.

  The coffee meister, dressed in a jacket-less tux, brought three cups of coffee on a lacquer tray, setting them down on the dark wood of the table, turning the handle precisely to the right to be picked up more easily.

  “Your mother was a different kind of person. Who could resist her good looks?” Setsuko said. “Beautiful as she was, she couldn’t stop whatever was eating Bernie up. And she wanted your father to do something he didn’t want to do.”

  “What was that?”

  “She wanted to live in America.”

  “She got her wish,” Jamie said. “She said I’d be better off there, too, but I’m not so sure.”

  “When I first met your father, he was into Zen and tea. We met at a retreat at Koya-san.”

  “Koya-san? We were going to go there. Together. On our trip.”

  “At that time, the late 50s, he was criticized as having ‘gone native’ by his American colleagues. They were running the country but could hardly speak Japanese. Always on about Communism, which was the least of everyone’s problems.”

  “That’s when he started drinking?”

  “Your father started getting in arguments at work and coming home staggering drunk. He screamed about the idiots in Washington.”

  “It must have been a stressful time.”

  “Diplomatic cables were slow then, but the one agreeing with his view of SOFA never arrived. When the final version was delivered, it was nothing like what he’d argued for. He disappeared for two weeks. Drunk, I guess, with some woman. Maybe your mother, but there were others. I moved out.”

  “What did you do after you moved out?”

  “Japanese women could get divorced, choose our jobs, even vote and remarry. I worked in shops for a while, then got a teaching license and a teaching position at a women’s school. Eventually, I set up my own school. I’m teaching women now whose grandmothers I taught!”

  “And you didn’t see my father…”

  “Until I took him to rehab three, four, years ago. A year in rehab and a year at a temple on Koya-san, the one where we met, and he was as good as new. Right after the earthquake and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, he felt he was being called back to service.”

  Jamie smiled. “Well, everything will come out now. I signed an agreement to get everything published.”

  Setsuko and Hiroshi set their coffee cups down and looked at Jamie.

  Jamie smiled, pleased with herself to divulge this secret.

  Setsuko said, “Who did you sign an agreement with?”

  “A Diet member,” Jamie said.

  “When was this?” Hiroshi asked.

  Jamie said, “She wanted to meet me at her office in the Diet building.”

  Setsuko and Hiroshi exchanged glances.

  Setsuko said, “What was the Diet woman’s name?”

  “Shinobu Katsumura. She knew my father and wanted to publish everything. Someone in her family owns a publishing house…what?” Jamie looked at Setsuko and Hiroshi.

  Setsuko patted her hand.

  Hiroshi excused himself. He stepped outside the kissaten onto the street, ignoring calls from Sakaguchi, who would only scold him, and from Akiko, who he could guess had everything organized. He called Eto Sensei instead.

  “Are you visiting again or have you got more questions for me?” Eto Sensei had more energy in his voice than anyone Hiroshi talked with.

  “The latter. Do you know a Diet member by the name of Shinobu Katsumura?” Hiroshi asked.

  Eto Sensei was quiet. “I certainly do. Why do you want to know?”

  “Apparently, Mattson’s daughter met with her and she wanted to publish Mattson’s entire memoirs.”

  “Well, they would do that, wouldn’t they? One of the dynasties in Japanese politics, they made their fortune as land speculators and now run numerous businesses. They moved into publishing a few years ago, and since they know people in all the ministries, they took over high school textbooks.”

  “Textbooks?” Hiroshi felt confused. None of the questions he asked went where he expected. Inside his office, everything was comfortably unsurprising.

  “That’s where the money is. Most of what they publish is standard right-wing bunk—revisionist history, moral instruction, patriotism. Other works tried to disprove the Nanjing Massacre and comfort women. Their usual targets.”

  “So, why would they want to publish Mattson’s work?”

  “Well, that’s just it. They wouldn’t. Once they get the materials, they’ll probably do what they do with textbook proposals they don’t like—sit on them.”

  “They want to buy the rights to Mattson’s work to not publish them?” Hiroshi couldn’t quite get it.

  “Exactly. One of my former students had a textbook manuscript quashed after signing with the Katsumura’s. He called it ‘shelving the truth.’ A very Japanese sort of censorship.”

  “Do you think they—?”

  “They wield power in a slow, steady, wear-you-down way,” Eto Sensei said. “In Japan, that usually works.”

  “I wanted to ask you to look through some documents if you have time? I could really use your expertise.”

  “I’m finishing another manuscript of my own, but this sounds urgent. I hate to make you bring them down here, but if you could, that’d be easiest for me.”

  “I can do that.”

  “And I’ll check with my younger colleagues about Mattson. They might know more than I
do.”

  Hiroshi bowed, automatically, with phone in hand as he thanked Eto Sensei. He and Akiko would have to look through everything, and go again to the archive for the rest of Mattson’s research. Hiroshi went back inside the kissaten and sat down next to Jamie and asked, “Did you turn over any documents, notes or writings of your father’s to them?”

  “No, not yet. Why?” Jamie looked confused. “I signed a contract. But I couldn’t even read it. Trey—”

  “Trey took you there?” Hiroshi asked, as calmly as he could.

  Jamie breathed out, her eyes averted.

  Setsuko said, “You could have asked me to read it for you.”

  “They promised to send me an English version. Maybe it’s at the house already?”

  “I just explained that Bernie was going to publish with a small press in Jinbocho,” Setsuko said.

  “Yes, I know. The Endo Brothers. My colleague, Sakaguchi, talked with them,” Hiroshi said.

  “Is this connected to the people following me? Us?” Jamie asked, picking up her empty cup, then setting it down.

  “Speaking of being followed,” Setsuko said. “I’ve been followed since Bernie’s death.”

  Hiroshi and Jamie looked at Setsuko.

  “That’s why I wasn’t surprised when you said they followed you too,” Setsuko said. “I can’t go anywhere without one of them following me.”

  “One of who?” Hiroshi asked.

  Setsuko locked eyes with Hiroshi, “They take turns, but one of them is sitting at the table closest to the door.”

  Chapter 24

  Speaking with feigned calm, Hiroshi sent a text to Sakaguchi telling him to come right away to the coffee shop in Ginza. He glanced at Setsuko, and at Jamie. “Why didn’t you tell me you were being followed? And Jamie, keep talking and don’t look around.”

  Setsuko shrugged. “Tokyo’s so crowded, there are always people close by, so it’s usually safe. It’s only when no one’s around that there’s a risk.”

  “But that’s what they’re waiting for—the moment when no one’s around.”

  The man by the door folded and refolded a newspaper, pulling it close to his face. Dressed in a grey wool suit jacket over a black sweater, he lined up his coffee, cigarettes and cellphone precisely at hand. He looked like no one in particular, with a flat face, a small nose and thin eyelids that let him watch without anyone knowing he was watching.

  In a calm voice, Setsuko said, “They take turns, but this guy and one other are the most common. There are about four of them altogether. I wonder if they know I know?”

  “Since when have they been following you? Jamie, don’t look around.”

  Jamie trembled, her coffee cup clinking against the saucer when she set it down.

  “For a couple months. I didn’t want to distract Bernie. Now, I realize I should have. He was working so hard on his book and the speech.” Setsuko turned to Jamie. “Won’t you give his speech for him? He would want your voice to carry his words?”

  Jamie rubbed her wrists, still raw from the tape. “I can’t give a speech. Let’s just get it into print instead.”

  “It won’t matter once you start speaking.”

  “It will matter.”

  “Your father was nervous about public speeches, too, but once he got going—”

  “We don’t even know where the speech is.”

  “I’m sure it’s there somewhere. He hid things all over the place.”

  Jamie leaned back and tried not to look at the man by the door. “Look, I’m not standing up in front of a huge group of people. I’ve never done anything like that. I was a student, then an HR director, a shopper, consumer, and debtor, I guess.”

  “Your father learned by doing.”

  “My father was reconstructing the world at my age. Of course, he could give a speech. I’m the opposite.” Jamie rubbed her wrists again, nervously.

  Hiroshi’s cellphone buzzed, startling all three of them. Sakaguchi and Sugamo were on their way, ten minutes depending on traffic. “Just keep talking,” Hiroshi said to Jamie and Setsuko.

  Perhaps sensing he’d been made, the flat-faced man took his check to the counter. Three coffee bulbs were just finishing siphoning, so the coffee meister bowed with an apology and asked the man to wait by the register.

  Hiroshi leaned across the table to Jamie and Setsuko. “Do not leave this shop no matter what. I’ll be back to get you.”

  After paying, the flat-faced man left. When the bell on the front door stopped tinkling, Hiroshi got up, pulled on his coat and hurried out to the narrow road of shops outside.

  The man moved quickly, hugging the tall buildings along the Ginza back street. At the first major crossing, he turned onto a busy sidewalk, scooting around window shoppers staring at jewelry, fashion, and furniture displays. The flat-faced man picked up his pace, cutting diagonally into the six-way crosswalk as the light turned yellow.

  Hiroshi ran to get across before the light changed. When he got to the other side, he heard honking from Sugamo who had just pulled up at the corner. Sakaguchi hopped out and hurried ahead. Hiroshi let him take the lead, texting Ueno with instructions to find Jamie and Setsuko and stay with them in the kissaten.

  The man turned into a small alley between an artisanal chocolate shop and a luxury pet goods store. Sakaguchi turned after him. Hiroshi hurried after. Turning the corner, he found Sakaguchi plunging down a long thin alley full of greasy trashcans and mops flopped over rope lines, drying.

  The man was gone.

  Hiroshi ran after Sakaguchi, pulling on the back doors on the left. Sakaguchi yanked the door handles on the right. All locked. The end of the alley was blocked by a large dumpster and a tall fence too high to scramble over easily. To the right, a door into the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant was tied open with rope. Sakaguchi burst in with Hiroshi right behind.

  The cooks stopped chopping, stirring and frying when Sakaguchi held up his badge. Sakaguchi pushed through to the front of the restaurant, as Hiroshi waited by the door. After checking back down the alley to be sure they hadn’t missed anything, Hiroshi ducked through to the front of the restaurant, a red-walled area with eight or nine Chinese-style tables. None of the half dozen customers looked anything like the guy.

  “Did anyone come through here?” Sakaguchi asked one of the waitresses.

  She answered in thickly accented Japanese. “People come through all day,” she said. The cooks stepped to the door holding their cleavers and long wood spatulas, unsure what to do. The young woman shrugged.

  One of the cooks came over and pulled off his white cap. “Why don’t I call the owner for you?” The cook and the waitress started arguing in Chinese and the cook went back into the kitchen to get his cellphone.

  At the side of the dining room, Hiroshi pulled back the noren curtain to a stairway so steep it was almost a ladder. Stacked along the side were pickling tubs, brown storage pots and fermenting vats of liquor. The aroma of vinegar, onions, shrimp sauce and chili pepper made Hiroshi sneeze. He pulled himself up the unlit stairs sideways, struggling to find a place to put his hands. When he got to the landing, he popped his head around the corner, then pulled back and did it again, but he could not see or sense any presence. He ran his hand along the wall by the doorframe but found no switch. So he pulled out his cellphone and held it up to illuminate what little he could of the room. He pushed against a stack of boxes. It didn’t budge.

  “Hiroshi!” Sakaguchi yelled from below. “Quick. Next door!” Hiroshi climbed down as quickly as he could, his hand on the ceiling to keep from hitting his head. He rushed out the front door of the restaurant. Sugamo—who must have pulled around the corner, parked and run down the front alley—waved him towards the door into the next building.

  Sakaguchi was waiting just inside at the bottom of a long flight of stairs up to a purple glass door with the characters for “mahjong” in large gold letters. A thick haze of tobacco smoke hung in the air at the top of the steep stairway.r />
  Hiroshi went up first with Sakaguchi and Sugamo right behind. The three of them paused at the top of the stairs and with a glance, burst in to the crowded game room. The noisy clack of mahjong tiles instantly ceased. No one looked at Hiroshi, Sakaguchi and Sugamo, but everyone at the dozen felt-covered tables froze. Light trickled in through frosted windows along one side of the room and got lost in the cheap wood paneling on the other three sides. The air was thick with cigarette smoke.

  Sakaguchi and Sugamo fanned out to the sides of the room and Hiroshi checked every face of the men at the tables. He checked everyone again to be sure.

  Sakaguchi saw Hiroshi’s disappointed face and barked out, “Where’s the fire exit?” in a rough Osaka accent, more yakuza threat than cop command.

  Everyone remained quiet where they were.

  “Last chance,” Sakaguchi said. “Where’s the fire exit?”

  No one moved.

  Sakaguchi stepped to the nearest table, put his thick hand under the edge, and dumped it over with a yori-taoshi throw. With his left hand, he tossed the nearest players’ cart. Mahjong tiles, drinks, and ashtrays scattered across the floor. All around the room, the other players leapt to their feet. With nowhere to run, a few players backed towards the windows, while others stood where they were.

  “If I have to ask again, the rest of the tables are going over, and this parlor will be closed for a very long time.” Sakaguchi put his hand under another table.

  A young man with a buzz cut in a tight grey sweater took a step forward from a table in the back. Without a word, he pointed towards a frayed curtain in the back corner.

  Hiroshi and Sugamo yanked back the curtain to reveal a metal door. When Hiroshi pushed it open, no alarm sounded as it should have, and he stepped out onto an old metal grate fire escape. When Sugamo came out after Hiroshi, the landing dipped under his weight. Sakaguchi put one foot out on the landing and stopped when the metal creaked beneath them. Hiroshi grabbed the rusty metal of the rail.