With the tension broken, the cardplayers came over to commiserate with Taro, acknowledging the white box with that inexpressible combination of pride and regret people felt for those who had sacrificed themselves for the emperor. At the same time they sized up Taro, all but squeezing his arms, because they were sumo fans. Betting on the semi-sacred sport of sumo was illegal except for members of sumo fan clubs, who were expected to be devotees wagering token sums. Naturally, everyone in the ballroom-including Harry-was a member of one sumo fan club or another, and during a tournament, they bet fortunes. It helped that sumo was eminently fixable, particularly now. Food was rationed even at sumo stables, and lower-ranked wrestlers had to survive on the scraps that top-ranked sumos left. Harry had seen young sumos famished after a morning’s workout, wandering the food stalls for handouts, as sad a sight as hippos browsing in a riverbed gone dry.

Goro joined them. He was elegantly dressed, a pickpocket who had married well and no longer dipped but couldn’t resist bad company. He prodded Tetsu. “Show them the latest.”

Tetsu pulled off his jacket and tie and dropped his shirt off his shoulders. His upper body, from his neck to his waist, was continuous tattoos, on his chest a Siberian tiger stepping into a pool defended by an octopus and on his back the image of a smiling Buddha, eyes closed, hands prayerfully together, ignoring monsters and dragons that swarmed on all sides. To Harry, Tetsu looked baptized not in water but in ink. When they were boys, Harry was the one who had accompanied Tetsu to his first tattoo session, performed by a drunk on a bench in Ueno Park with bamboo slivers instead of steel needles. Tetsu twisted now and pointed to his new addition, a goblin creeping around his kidney. The inks were sharp and fresh, the skin puffy and Tetsu’s face betrayed a sweat of tattoo fever.

Harry said, “That’s got to make an impression in the public baths.”

“And women.” Goro spoke like an expert. “Of a certain kind.”

“What do you think old Kato would have thought?” Tetsu asked Harry.

“He would have said you were a walking masterpiece.”

“Yeah? It’s good to see you and Taro. And Jiro, of course.” Tetsu pulled on his shirt. “We’re most of the old gang, four out of six, right? Then there’s Hajime, good riddance, and Gen, way up in the navy.”

Taro climbed out of his funk when the noodles arrived. You had to water a plant and feed a sumo, it was as simple as that, Harry thought. Taro again became a mountain of dignity delicately scented by the wax that stiffened his topknot. As he relaxed, the cardplayers pumped him for information about other sumos. Had this one lost a fingernail? Had that one jammed a toe? The dance instructors dropped the needle on a fresh record and traded places. They moved in silhouette, tangling and untangling their legs. Harry remembered that the first time Oharu had sneaked him into the ballroom, an imitation Rudy Vallee was singing through a megaphone. A dance cost three yen, and men bought a strip of tickets before they were admitted past a velvet rope to a floor where two hundred couples milled under the hypnotic spell of a mirror ball trying out the fox-trot, the waltz, the Bruce. Women in Western gowns sat demurely along the wall while men walked back and forth to exercise their scrutiny. Oharu led Harry up to an empty mezzanine, which had a view of the bandstand and an engineer in a cockpit over the entrance, alternating colored lights and the mirror ball. Reflections raced across the floor. Harry felt them flit across his face. He also noticed that few of the men actually knew how to dance.

“It’s just to hold a woman,” Oharu whispered. “She may be the only woman he’ll ever hold.”

“Except a whore,” Harry pointed out.

“Well, this is nicer. The girls are only paid by the number of tickets they turn in, so they have to be pleasing.”

“How come we’re the only ones up here?”

“The management closed it off. They don’t want the customers sitting, they want them dancing and buying more tickets. Besides, too many things can happen in the dark.”

“Like what?”

“Things. Sometimes a man forces himself on a woman.”

“If anyone tried that on you, I’d stop him.”

“I know you would.”

She had only to brush her lips gently against his cheek and he burned.

TETSU WAS EXPLAINING to Taro and the cardplayers that a small sumo had a natural advantage. “Smaller men have more spirit. It’s concentrated.”

While Tetsu was in an expansive mood, Harry drew him aside and raised the subject of Iris’s travel clearance. The problem was purely bureaucratic, as Harry described it, something that could be resolved in a minute by a phone call to the Foreign Ministry from a respected patriotic group like, say, National Purity. National Purity put patriotism into action, assassinating liberals and moderates, trimming and changing the nature of political discourse. National Purity touched high and low. The same superpatriots who were honored guests at the imperial palace used yakuza to extract protection money from businesses large and small. Harry kept the Happy Paris open not by doing anything as crass as handing money to a bagman, but with generous donations at the shrine of National Purity.

Harry said, “This time I want to meet our patriotic friend at National Purity in person so that I can explain the situation and ask his advice. Then he will make a call to the ministry. Very simple. This is for a German ally, after all. But I want you to go with me, so that when I vouch for the German, you can vouch for me.”

“I don’t know, Harry.”

“There’ll be a donation to your favorite shrine, too.”

“Oh.”

Harry set the time. He considered mentioning the gun. However, now that he’d brought up Iris, he didn’t want to queer the deal. A gun was a red flag; yakuza themselves rarely used guns, and for a civilian to unload one suggested major complications. Why would Hajime go to such trouble to foist a gun on him unless it had been involved in at least a triple homicide? Harry couldn’t forget Hajime smirking through the train window, letting his own gun peek from its holster.

Agawa walked over from the card game. He nodded toward the box next to Taro. “Is everything in there? I know someone who got a box that was empty.”

“Empty?” Taro was alarmed.

“Just saying. It was a shock to the family.”

“That would kill my mother.” Taro picked up the box tentatively. The box was wisteria wood sanded to a satin finish and tied with a white sash. He had carried it to the ballroom but hadn’t tested its heft before.

Agawa said, “There should be an official album of the unit Jiro fought in, along with photos of the emperor, the imperial standard, regimental banner and commanding officers, plus personal snapshots, a map and description of the circumstances in which he died and clippings of his fingernails and hair. And the ashes and pulverized bone, of course, in a stoppered container or a sack.”

“It sounds as if everything is in there.” Taro tipped the box one way and then the other.

“Better be sure,” Agawa said.

“I’m not ready for this, Harry,” Taro said. “I’m not prepared.”

“You’ll have to open it at home,” Agawa said.

Taro set the box on his lap and fumbled with the sash, his big fingers turned to rubber. He lifted the lid as if opening a tomb.

“Everything there?” Agawa asked.

Taro reached in and delicately sorted through the contents. “The album. The album and a little sack for ashes, but the sack is empty.” His face went as white as the box. “That’s all.”

“That’s outrageous,” Agawa said. “You should make a protest.”

“You don’t want to make a protest,” Harry said. “Let’s go.”

“This is going to kill your mother,” Agawa said.

“We’re going.” Harry put the lid back on and helped Taro to his feet.