Tokyo (21 page)

‘What about the Russians? They’re going.’

‘The Russians!’ She sniffed indignantly, pushing a tiny straggle of white-blonde hair off her forehead. ‘The Russians!’

‘They don’t understand any better than I do.’

‘Okay.’ She held up her hand to stop me. She drained her glass, sat up straight and patted her mouth, her hair, trying to regain her composure. ‘Okay,’ she said, sitting forward and pointing the cigarette-holder at me. Sometimes when she was drunk like this she’d show her teeth and gums. The funny thing was that with all the surgery she’d never had her teeth fixed - they remained discoloured, one or two were even black. ‘You go to Fuyuki apartment you be careful. Okay? If it me, I don’t going to eat nothing in his house.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘I don’t going to eat any meat.’

The hairs on the back of my neck rose. ‘What do you mean?’ I said faintly.

‘Too many stories.’

‘What stories?’

Strawberry shrugged. She let her eyes wander out to the club. Fuyuki’s cars were waiting fifty floors down and most of the girls were already in the cloakroom getting their bags and coats. Outside a sour wind had started to blow, and from the panorama windows we could see that it had taken down power lines. Parts of the city were in darkness.

‘What do you mean?’ I repeated. ‘What stories? What meat?’

‘Nothing!’ She shook her hand dismissively, still not meeting

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my eyes. ‘Just jokes.’ She laughed then, a high, artificial laugh, and noticed her cigarette had gone out. She plugged a new one into the holder and waved it at me. ‘Better we finish this. This discussion finish now. Finish.’

I stared at her, my mind cantering forward. Don’t eat the meat? I was thinking how to pursue it, how to stalk her, sure she was dropping a vital clue, when quite suddenly Jason appeared, sitting next to me, leaning forward and gripping my chair, turning it round to face him.

‘You’re going to Fuyuki’s?’ he whispered.

He had already changed out of his waiter’s tuxedo into a grey T-shirt with a faded Goa Trance slogan. His holdall was strapped across his chest, ready to walk home.

‘The twins told me,’ he said. ‘You’re going.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’ll have to go too.’

‘What?’

‘Because we’re spending the night together. You and me. We’d already agreed that.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t make anything come out. I must have looked odd, my pupils wide, my mouth open, a light haze of sweat on my neck.

‘The Nurse,’ Jason said, as if I’d asked a question. ‘That’s why I’ll be welcome.’ He licked his lips and glanced at Strawberry, who was smoking another cigarette, her eyebrows raised knowingly at this exchange. ‘Let me put it this way,’ he whispered. ‘She’s kind of itchy for me. If you know what I mean.’

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Fuyuki and his entourage had gone ahead, leaving a string of black cars, with ‘Lincoln Continental’ written in curlicue script on their boots, in the street to pick up the guests. I was one of the last to leave the club, and by the time I got to street level almost all of the hostesses, and Jason, had followed him, leaving just one car. I slid into the back seat with three Japanese hostesses whose names I didn’t know. As we drove they chattered about their customers, but I was quiet, smoking a cigarette and staring out of the window at the moats of the Imperial Palace flashing past the car. As we came through Nishi Shinbashi we passed the garden where I had first met Jason. I didn’t recognize it at first: it was almost behind us when I realized that the odd rows gleaming in the moonlight were the silent stone children lined up under the trees. I swivelled in my seat to stare at them through the back window.

‘What’s that place?’ I asked the driver in Japanese. ‘The temple?’

‘That’s Zojoji temple.’

‘Zojoji? What are all the children for?’

The driver looked at me hard in the rear-view mirror, as if I was a surprise to him. ‘Those are the Jizo. The angels for the dead children. The children who are stillborn.’ When I didn’t answer he said, ‘Do you understand my Japanese?’

I turned back to gaze at the ghostly lines under the trees. A little shudder crossed my heart. You can never be sure what’s going on

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in your subconscious. Maybe I’d always known what the statues were. Maybe that was why I had chosen the park to sleep in. ‘Yes,’ I said distantly, my mouth dry. ‘Yes, I do. 1 understand.’

Fuyuki lived near the Tokyo Tower, in an imposing apartment building set in private gardens behind security gates. As the Continental swept down the driveway, the wind coming off the bay made the big palm trees rustle. The guard roused himself from behind a low-lit reception desk, crouched to unlock the bottom of the glass doors, and escorted our party through a quiet marble lobby to a private lift, which he opened with a key. We crammed in, the Japanese girls giggling and whispering behind their hands.

When the doors opened at the penthouse the man in the ponytail was waiting for us. He didn’t speak or meet anyone’s eye as we filed out into the small hallway, but turned smartly and led us into a long passage. The apartment was arranged round a square. A long walnut-panelled corridor linked all the rooms and seemed to go on for ever; concealed lighting dropped round pools of light in front of us, like a runway, inviting us into the distance. I walked cautiously, shooting looks around me, wondering if the Nurse lived here too, if she had a lair behind one of these doors.

We passed a ripped and stained Japanese flag hung in a lighted frame, a ceremonial ashes box carved from wisteria, painted white and displayed in a glass cabinet. No locks, I noticed. I allowed myself to drop to the back of the group. We passed a military uniform, battle-worn and mounted so that it appeared to have flesh and substance. I bent a little as I passed the glass cabinet, keeping my eyes on the group ahead, and trailed my hand up inside the open base of the case, brushing the hem of the uniform.

‘What’re you up to?’ asked one of the hostesses, as I caught up with the group.

‘Nothing,’ I murmured, but my heart was picking up speed. No alarms. I hadn’t dared hope that there would be no alarms.

We passed a flight of stairs that led down into darkness. I hesitated, staring down into the gloom, resisting the urge to break

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from the group and slip down the steps. The apartment was arranged over two floors. What sort of rooms would be down there? I wondered, suddenly and inexplicably picturing cages. It is not a plant that you’re looking for …

Just then the group stopped up ahead and were depositing their bags and jackets in a small cloakroom. I had to leave the staircase and catch up with them, pausing to leave my coat too. Soon we could hear low music, the gentle clink of ice in glasses, and presently came into a smoky, low-ceilinged room, full of carefully lit alcoves and display cabinets. I stood for a moment, my eyes getting used to the light. The hostesses from the earlier cars were already seated in large oxblood chesterfields, balancing glasses and talking in low murmurs. Jason was in an armchair, comfortably reclined, one bare ankle resting lightly on the other knee, a cigarette burning in his fingers - just as if he was relaxing at home after a long day’s work. Fuyuki was at the far end of the room in a wheelchair. He was dressed in a loose yukata, his legs bare, and he was backing and shunting the wheelchair along the edges of the room, leading Bison around. They were looking at erotic woodcut prints on the walls, long-bodied courtesans with skeletal white legs, embroidered kimonos swirling apart to reveal oversized genitals.

I couldn’t help it. I was immediately mesmerized by those prints. I could sense Jason a few feet away, watching my reaction with amusement, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. This one showed a woman so aroused that something was dripping from between her legs. At last, when I couldn’t stop myself, I turned. Jason raised his eyebrows and smiled, that long, slow smile that showed just the corner of his chipped tooth, the smile he’d given me in the corridor in Takadanobaba. The blood rushed to my face. I put my fingers on my cheeks and turned away.

‘This one,’ Bison said in Japanese, tilting his cigar at a print. ‘The one with the red kimono?’

‘By Shuncho,’ Fuyuki said, in his cracked whisper. He planted the cane on the floor and rested his chin on it, looking ruminatively up at the print. ‘Eighteenth century. Insured for four

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million yen. Beautiful, isn’t it? Had a little chimpira from Saitama liberate it for me from a house in Waikiki.’

The ponytailed man coughed discreetly and Bison turned. Fuyuki rotated the motorized wheelchair to look at us.

‘Come with me,’ he whispered, to the assembled girls. ‘This way.’

We went through an archway to a room where, under two samurai swords suspended from the ceiling on invisible wires, a group of men in Aloha shirts sat drinking Scotch from crystal tumblers. They half stood, bowing as Fuyuki glided past them in his chair. Sliding glass doors stood open to reveal a central courtyard lined entirely with gleaming black marble, the night sky reflected in it like a mirror. In the centre, black as jet, as if hollowed from the same block, was a spotlighted swimming-pool, a faint chlorine steam hanging above its surface. Several gas powered heaters, tall, like lampposts, were dotted around, and six large dining-tables were arranged beside the pool, each set with black enamel place mats, silver chopsticks and heavy glass goblets, napkins stirring in the breeze.

Several of the places had already been taken. Large men with cropped hair sat smoking cigars and talking to young women in backless evening dresses. There were so many girls. Fuyuki must know a lot of hostess clubs, I thought.

‘Mr Fuyuki,’ I said, coming up behind him as we crossed to the tables. He brought the wheelchair to a stop and turned to look at me in surprise. None of the girls had dared to speak to him yet. My legs were wobbly and the heat from the burners made the side of my face red. ‘I - I want to sit next to you.’

He narrowed his eyes at me. Maybe he was intrigued by my rudeness. I stepped closer, standing in front of him, near enough for him to be aware of my breasts and my hips, taut inside the dress. On an impulse, the vampire in me stirring, I took his hands and placed them on my hips. ‘I want to sit next to you.’

Fuyuki looked at his hands, pressed into the folds of my dress. Maybe he could feel the French knickers beneath it, the slither of silk on silk, the elastic stretch under his fingers. Maybe he just thought I was crazy and clumsy, because after a moment or two

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he laughed hoarsely. ‘Come, then,’ he whispered. ‘Sit next to me, if you want.’

He propelled his wheelchair into a place under the table and I sat down shakily, pulling my chair up next to him. Bison was already settled a few seats away, picking up a napkin, flicking it out and tucking it into his collar. A waiter in black jeans and T-shirt hovered around us with chilled vodka cocktails in cloudy white glasses, vaporous trails coming from them like dry ice. I sipped, surreptitiously surveying the courtyard. Somewhere, I thought, looking at the windows, some lit, others in darkness, somewhere in this apartment is the thing that keeps Shi Chongming awake at night. Not a plant. If not a plant, then what? There was a red light set high up on the wall. I wondered if it was an alarm.

Food arrived at the table: slabs of tuna piled like dominoes on beds of nettle; bowls of walnut tofu sprinkled with seaweed; grated radish, crunchy as salt. Bison sat immobilized, staring down at a plate of yakitori chicken, as if it posed a huge problem, his face pale and sweaty, as if he might be sick. I watched him in silence, thinking of how he’d been last time at the club, his expression of amazement, the way he’d been transfixed by the residue on the sides of Fuyuki’s glass. Just like Strawberry, I thought. He doesn’t want to eat the meat. He’s heard the same stories she has …

I licked my dry lips and leaned over to Fuyuki. ‘We’ve met before tonight,’ I murmured in Japanese. ‘Do you remember?’

‘Have we?’ He didn’t look at me.

‘Yes. In the summer. I was hoping to see you again.’

He paused for a moment, then said, ‘Is that so? Is that so?’ When he spoke, his eyes and his odd little nose didn’t move, but the skin on his upper lip adhered to his teeth and lifted to reveal strange pointed canines in the top corners of his mouth, just like a cat’s. I stared at those teeth. ‘I’d like to see your apartment,’ I said quietly.

‘You can see it from here.’ He felt in his pocket and pulled out a cigar, which he unwrapped, clipped with a discreet silver tool taken from his breast pocket, and inspected, turning it this way and that, picking flakes of tobacco off it.

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‘I’d like to look around. I’d like to …’ I hesitated. I gestured to the room where the prints were hung and said, in a low voice, ‘To see the prints. I’ve read about shunga. The ones you’ve got are very rare.’

He lit the cigar and yawned. ‘They were bringed to Japan by me,’ he said, switching to clumsy English. ‘Back to homeland. My hobby is to - Eigo deha nanto in no desuka? Kaimodosu kotowa - Nihon no bijutsuhinwo Kaimodosu no desuyo.’

‘Repatriate,’ I said. ‘Repatriate Japanese art.’

‘So, so. Yes. Re-pa-tri-ate Japan art.’

‘Would you like to show them to me?’

‘No.’ He let his eyes close slowly, like a very old reptile at leisure, vaguely resting his hand across them, as if that was enough conversation for now. ‘Thank you, not now.’

‘Are you sure?’

He opened one eye and regarded me suspiciously. I started to speak, but something in his look made me think better of it. I dropped my hands into my lap. He must never know, Shi Chongming had said. Never suspect.

‘Yes.’ I cleared my throat and fiddled with the napkin. ‘Of course. Now is the wrong time. Quite the wrong time.’ I lit a cigarette and smoked, turning the lighter over and over in my hands, as if it was utterly fascinating. Fuyuki watched me for a few more seconds. Then, seeming satisfied, he closed his eyes again.