The Ends of the Earth (6 page)

Chiyoko was sometimes delivered to Silvers’ by her older brother, Junzaburo, a handsome young man in his early twenties. Malory, for long starved of much that was pleasurable in life, did not resist his early advances. Their first kiss was on the top floor of the Twelve Storeys building in Asakusa. She was intoxicated by all things Japanese at the time, as well as by Junzaburo. He introduced her to the delights of Kabuki theatre and Sumo wrestling and the hot springs beyond the city. The weekend they spent at an
onsen
hotel in Hakone marked for her the point of no return, as she saw it, in her immersion in the country and her union with Junzaburo.

But what she saw was not all there was to be known. She detected a gradual change in the Japanese after they emerged victorious from their war with China – and she did not care for the resulting strain of strident nationalism. Then Mr Silvers, a man whose perceptiveness was usually confined to precariously balancing the school’s books, decided he should inform her that her beau had associations that were, to put it bluntly, criminal. ‘He is being groomed by the Yakuza, my dear. This is what I hear. And I hear it from reliable sources.’

How Mr Silvers had any connection, however indirect, with the Yakuza, Malory never discovered. But Junzaburo did not deny the report when she confronted him. He saw membership of the Yakuza, she realized, as a way of earning enough money to maintain her in luxury as his wife. And, more disturbingly still, he did not believe she was entitled to an opinion on the subject.

He changed his mind about that when she ended their relationship. He offered to turn his back on the Yakuza and do whatever she wanted him to do. But it was too late. ‘The question you must ask yourself, my dear,’ advised Mr Silvers, ‘is whether you wish to become a Japanese woman, with all that entails.’

There could be only one answer.

More than twenty years had passed since Malory had last set foot in Tokyo. The station she arrived at from Kanagawa that night had not existed when she left. A whole area of the city she remembered as an empty quarter considered dangerous after dark had been filled with office buildings. And streetcars had arrived, screeching and rattling through the evening heat.

A letter Malory received from a fellow teacher, Miss Gibson, about five years after leaving Japan, told her Mr Silvers had died and the school had closed. Miss Gibson was heading for another teaching post in Shanghai. She said nothing of Junzaburo, although she must have known of their affair. Malory was ashamed to recall just how notorious she must have been in the small world of Tsukiji.

One person Miss Gibson did mention was Chiyoko, whose father had died suddenly, obliging their star pupil to abandon her education and help her mother run the family’s toy and confectionery shop in Fukagawa. Malory had been there once, with Junzaburo, and could remember only too well Chiyoko’s confusion about what had brought Miss Hollander to her humble home.

She would be confused tonight too, if she still lived there. But this time Malory would have to explain herself. She took a taxi to Eitai-bashi, one of the bridges over the Sumida river, and walked from there.

Fukagawa was, as she remembered, a fetid warren of tenements threaded by narrow alleys and murky canals. Little had changed in the area. She tried not to attract attention and had left it late enough to ensure most of the residents were asleep. The canal water slopped with the occasional passage of barges and small boats. Cats slipped in and out of openings and the few people still out and about cast her odd, quizzical glances. She knew she looked out of place, but it could not be helped. She
was
out of place.

Junzaburo had brought her by
choki-bune
– canal taxi – from Asakusa. She remembered a tavern next to the landing-stage. The Shimizus’ shop was one alley back from there. The boat had turned off the river just before the bridge. By following the canal it must have used, and retracing her steps several times after realizing she was on the wrong track, she eventually found what she thought was the tavern she had seen that night.

She was close now, to help or the discovery that there would be no help. The alley was even narrower than she recalled, the roofs of the buildings either side almost meeting in the middle. The boards covering the central gutter sounded to her footsteps. People unseen in the paper-walled homes jumbled together around her coughed and muttered and cursed. The smell was of stale cooking and smoke and sewage and cramped humanity. Moths fluttered round the lamps. Gnats and mosquitoes swirled in the air.

The door of the shop was closed, but through its bamboo bars she could see confectionery cases and spinning tops and kites hung up behind them. She tapped on the door so quietly, in order to avoid rousing any of the neighbours, that she doubted anyone inside would hear either. She tapped again, more loudly.

There was movement within. A figure came into shadowy view, holding a lantern. Could it be Chiyoko? She would be a woman in her mid-thirties now, vastly changed from the bright, smiling young girl Malory had taught. There was no way to tell. The woman in the kimono holding the lantern might be her – or a stranger.

‘Chiyoko?’ Malory called softly. ‘Is that you?’

‘
Donata desu ka?
’ came the response.
Who is it?

A hesitant breath. Then: ‘Malory Hollander.’

Silence and stillness. The lantern did not move. Malory did not know what to do or say. Then the lantern was set down. The door slid open.

Chiyoko looked out at her. In the gloom, with the lantern behind her, it was impossible to see the expression on her face. ‘Miss Hollander?’ she murmured, disbelievingly.

‘Yes.’

‘What … are you doing here?’

‘May I come in?’

‘But—’

‘Please, Chiyoko. I need your help. May I please come in?’

The Shimizus’ home was even smaller than Malory’s memory of it. Beyond the tiny shop, overflowing with stock, was an even tinier kitchen and another room, the door to which was closed.

‘We must be very quiet,’ Chiyoko whispered. ‘
Haha
is sleeping.’ So, her mother was still alive. Chiyoko looked slightly younger than her age in the lamplight, however disappointed she might be by what life had allotted to her. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I’m in trouble. There’s no one else I can ask for help.’

‘You said you would never return to Japan.’

‘I never intended to. I’m sorry. I have no right to ask you for anything. I’m desperate, Chiyoko. Tell me to go and I will. But what will happen to me then … I don’t know.’

‘How can a person like you be in trouble? You are American.’

‘That means nothing. I came to Japan with friends, also American. They’ve been arrested by the Secret Police.’

‘Not possible.’

‘It’s happened. And they’re looking for me.’

‘Kempeitai? Looking for you? I cannot believe this.’

‘You must. I’m telling you the truth, Chiyoko. I’ve done nothing wrong except take a stand against a cruel and ruthless man.’

‘What man?’

Mentioning Lemmer would require too much explanation. But his Japanese partner in crime was a different matter. She might well have heard of him. ‘Count Tomura.’

Chiyoko did not respond at first. A look of amazement crept across her face. ‘Count Tomura?’

‘You know him?’

‘Has someone told you what happened to Junzaburo … after you left?’

‘No. But when I met Count Tomura recently, in Paris—’

‘You met him?’

Suddenly, the door from the other room slid open. Chiyoko’s mother, a little bird-like old woman, stared out. If she was surprised to see Malory, there was no hint of it in her voice. ‘
Hollander-san
,’ she murmured.

Chiyoko engaged her mother in urgent, whispered conversation. Mrs Shimizu frowned suspiciously throughout. Malory could not follow the exchanges, but noted Chiyoko’s frequent instruction. ‘
Nete.
’
Go to bed.
Eventually, Mrs Shimizu obliged, after a parting glare at Malory.

‘You look tired, Miss Hollander,’ said Chiyoko, returning her attention to Malory. ‘And worried.’

‘I’m both.’

‘Because you and your friends have become enemies of Count Tomura?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘Do you want me to explain? Once I do, you will know things it may be dangerous for you to know.’

‘Things about Count Tomura?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I want to know them. He is my enemy also.’

SAM WOKE TO
a dull ache in his head and a general sensation of disorientation. For a moment he was unsure if he was in Paris or Walthamstow. Then he remembered he was actually in Tokyo.

It was dawn, as he could discern by the grey light seeping through the shutters at the windows and the fine mesh of a mosquito net. He was in bed in a large dormitory. Other men were sleeping in the beds around him. The patching together of his memory of the previous night soon enabled him to deduce he was in hospital. His head was bandaged, the bandage low enough to restrict the vision from his right eye.

Experimentally, he flexed his limbs, then pulled himself up on the pillow. The pain in his head was not a great deal worse than a Bass hangover. He must have been brought to the hospital after collapsing on the train. But there were no policemen sitting at the end of the bed, so he could only suppose no one knew who he was. Fortunately, he had left his passport at the Eastbourne Hotel, so they would have had no way of identifying him.

Consciousness brought little in the way of consolation. Malory had probably been arrested, along with Ward and Djabsu. Max was dead. Schools was in custody. The game was up.

Except that Sam himself had still not been apprehended. And he intended to spite Lemmer and Tomura by staying at liberty as long as he possibly could. If he could find any way of freeing his friends or punishing their enemies, he would take it. But to do that he had to avoid capture. And the longer he remained in hospital the harder that would be.

He parted the mosquito net and swung his legs to the floor, which met them rather sooner than expected because of the lowness of the bed. Then he slowly stood up. He felt a little unsteady, which he attributed to hunger as much as concussion. A big fried breakfast appealed mightily to him. He rated his chances of obtaining it at zero.

He was wearing a thin white kimono-style gown. Someone had tied a label to his wrist, on which there was a jumble of Japanese characters. A narrow cabinet stood beside the bed. Easing the door open, he found his suit and shirt hung inside, with his socks and underclothes neatly folded on a shelf. His shoes were propped on a piece of bamboo at the bottom. He glanced around, but the other patients all seemed to be asleep. Moving as quickly and quietly as he could, he took the gown off and dressed himself. Then he tore the label off the piece of string round his wrist and slipped it under his pillow.

He reckoned a hat to cover his bandage would be useful, but he had lost his own at some point during his escape from Sakashita’s shop. Then he noticed a straw hat resting on top of the cabinet serving the next bed. With apologies to the oblivious owner, who looked more dead than asleep, he tried it on. It fitted loosely, which did the job.

Sam headed off, treading carefully, along the ward. Outside, a nurse was sitting at a desk, dozing gently. The building was bathed in silence and the lingering warmth of a hot night. The clock on the wall above the nurse’s head showed the time as just short of 4.30. It would be another four or five hours before Sam could hope to find Fumiko Yamanaka, the man Morahan had recommended he turn to for help in an emergency, at his desk in the Home Ministry. Where Sam could spend those hours he did not know. For the moment, he could only think about making a swift and inconspicuous exit from the hospital.

He padded past the dozing nurse, to reach a landing and an unshuttered window through which he saw what looked like warehouses beyond the hospital grounds and the silvery curve of a river. He had no knowledge whatever of the geography of Tokyo and therefore no idea where in the city he might be. He would just have to trust his own judgement.

He started down the stairs.

Around the same time, Malory woke from the few hours of sleep she had managed on the futon Chiyoko had laid in the kitchen for her. A cockerel in some nearby tenement was celebrating the dawn, as yet a grey and grudging affair. Through the open doorway, in the shop, Malory could see the shadow of the bamboo branch hung with strips of paper Chiyoko had pointed out to her the night before.

‘Today was the star festival. Shopkeepers hang out a branch for people to tie their wishes to. If I had written one, it would have been a wish to never have heard the name of Count Tomura Iwazu.’

The two women had sat for hours in the kitchen, sipping tea as they each revealed a little, and then a little more, of their dealings with Count Tomura. They had spoken in a whisper, anxious not to be overheard.

‘Fukagawa is a bad place to bring a secret, Miss Hollander. We are as close almost to our neighbours as I am to you.’

‘There’s nowhere else I can bring it. And no one else I can bring it to.’

‘You should not stay here long. You will be seen. Someone will report you to the police. Then Kempeitai will come for you. And for me.’

‘I’ll leave in the morning. There is a man at the Home Ministry who may agree to help me.’

‘Does Tomura know who he is?’

‘Possibly,’ Malory had admitted. And it was true. Yamanaka’s brother would probably be suspect in Tomura’s eyes.

‘Then his men will watch for you there. You must stay here. I will go to the Home Ministry.
Haha
will serve in the shop. She will say nothing. She will make an evil face at you. But she will say nothing.’

Malory had told Chiyoko the full truth of her presence in Tokyo because she could conceive of no way to enlist her aid without being completely honest. Her position was too perilous for any other course.

She had feared on her way to Fukagawa that Chiyoko would denounce her as the treacherous foreigner who had broken her brother’s heart. But the tragedies and misfortunes of Chiyoko’s life had deeper causes, as she had acknowledged. And one of those causes was Count Tomura.