Michiko finished like a cat with cream on its whiskers, and Ishigami picked up the song. Did they sing this childish round at the Peers’ School, too? Harry wondered. At the most exclusive school on earth, set on the imperial palace grounds, had the young Ishigami’s eyes wandered to the moat? Apparently so, because he sang with gusto, imparting animation to the call of the frog:

“Croakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroak.”

It was funny, it was undeniably silly. It was a geisha party with a macabre hilarity built out of Michiko’s laughs, Ishigami’s baritone frog, the sheer innocence of the song, the unsheathed sword on the table and the invisible DeGeorge in the next room.

“Your turn, Harry,” Michiko said.

Harry cleared his throat. He wasn’t going to wait any longer, because sooner or later Ishigami was going to kill him, either in the house or in the street. He would come up one “croak” short, lift his cup and throw his hot sake in Ishigami’s eyes. He figured the odds of snatching the sword first were about even. Of prevailing with the long sword against Ishigami’s short sword-realistically, factoring in skill-about four to one against. Not the best odds. Like a game of Fifty-two Pickup, it was going to be messy. Ishigami liked attack, surprise, close work? Harry would try to give it to him. The question was what Michiko would do.

Harry had a tenor that he roughed up when he sang along with Fats or Louie, but it fit nicely to a child’s tune. “I hear the song of the frog…” He reminded himself to stay relaxed; Ishigami would sense a tensing of the shoulders.

“Croakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroak.”

“That was only nine croaks,” Michiko said.

“Ten,” Harry protested.

“Nine. You lose,” said Ishigami.

“I counted ten,” Harry said.

“Nine!” Both Michiko and Ishigami shouted Harry down.

“Drink up, that’s your penalty,” Michiko said, but when she went to fill his cup, the sake flask was empty. “A second.”

“Cold sake is fine,” Harry said.

“No, no, it’s not such good sake, it’s better hot.”

Ishigami gathered his sword. “Maybe Harry and I should go now. We will see who we meet in the street.”

“No,” Michiko insisted. “Harry has to pay. I have the sake on a hot plate. It will be ready in a minute.” She returned to the table and smiled like a doll. “That was fun. We should sing some more. Please?”

“Very well,” Ishigami said.

“Sure,” said Harry.

From her knees, Michiko sang a ditty about a virgin learning “The Forty-eight Positions,” suggesting with her fingers the more complicated ones. She acted a scene between a beauty and a flea. It was all puerile and inane. What was most maddening to Harry was how attractive Michiko was. He noticed where perspiration had eroded the white paint behind her ear. No one ever touched a geisha’s face, that would be like smearing a painting, but he felt the impulse to pull her mouth down to his and taste the red bud of her lip. Geisha wore nothing underneath the kimono. Harry wanted to slip his hand through the folds of her ice-blue kimono and raise his hand between the two columns of her legs to listen to the sound of the bells in her hair.

She told Ishigami, “Now you sing.”

“My voice is too poor.”

“No, we heard you before. Besides, you are a hero, you shouldn’t be afraid. Something humorous.”

Ishigami paused and then erupted into “Camptown ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah, Camptown racetrack five miles long, oh! doo-dah day…” The Japanese loved Stephen Foster. Harry didn’t understand why, but they had made Foster Japanese.

Ishigami finished red-faced and pleased. Harry clapped dutifully. “Sake ready?”

“Sing,” Michiko said. “Something humorous. No jazz.”

Harry could smell the sake on the hot plate.

“Sing,” Ishigami said.

Harry shrugged. What came to him was his mother’s favorite song, one she used to sing over Harry like a desperate wish, a mournful tune that brought out the last hints of the Southern Baptist in his voice. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me… “He let the song slowly unroll, as if carrying a body through the cemetery gates. “I once was lost…“Michiko looked at him through her geisha mask, rosebud lips tentatively open. “Was blind…“For a moment he was in church, the congregation standing and singing with hymnals open, all except his mother, who knew each hymn by heart. She leaned forward to send a smile down the pew to Harry. “But now I see.”

Harry repeated the song in Japanese, and when he was done, he needed the sake badly, but Michiko only stared at him. Ishigami regarded him intently.

“That was a good song,” Ishigami said. “That is how I feel. There comes a time when you feel you are carrying all the dead, all the soldiers who have followed you. They weigh so you can barely place one step in front of the other, and you see ahead of you an endless road of more bodies. I don’t know why I tell you, except that you surprise me.” He reflected for a moment. “It’s good to say things aloud. When I was young, my mother and I would go to the beach at Kamakura, and she would tell me to find a seashell to tell my problems to. Not only problems but ambitions, the foremost being to serve the emperor. And desires.”

“And then?” Harry asked because Ishigami didn’t sound quite done.

“Then my mother said to crush the shell so that no one else would hear.”

“Makes sense.”

“You know,” the colonel said, “at this moment I feel that I can tell you anything.”

This did not bode well, thought Harry.

“Your sake.” Michiko set the flask in front of Harry. “Time for you to pay your penalty.”

The flask was scalding to the touch. All the better.

“Harry? Harry, are you in there?” A voice came from the front of the willow house. “It’s Willie.”

Willie Staub, doing his best to call softly. Harry heard the awkward scuffling of a gaijin removing his shoes. Ishigami took the sword from the table and motioned Harry to stay seated.

“Harry?” Willie called. “DeGeorge said he was coming here to find you. Are you there?”

“It’s late,” a woman told Willie.

Iris, Harry thought. Although the hall was dimly lit and the screen to the room was shut. If they got to the end of the hall, however, they’d see the blood or feel it underfoot.

“Harry? DeGeorge?”

Feet padded closer. Even seated, Ishigami achieved perfect balance. He wouldn’t wait, Harry thought. As soon as Ishigami saw a shadow on the sliding screen, he would rise and, in the same motion, slice through the paper, step through and finish both.

“Harry, please, are you there?” Willie asked.

“There’s no one,” Iris said.

“The house would be locked if no one were here.”

“It’s a geisha house,” she said. “They may be…you know.”

“DeGeorge said he would be here, inside or out. I just want to ask someone.”

Heads two and three delivered right to Ishigami. So much for the sweet Nazi and his Oriental bride. Harry opened his mouth to warn them, and the tip of Ishigami’s sword was at his neck, like a thumb checking a pulse.

“Answer your friends,” Ishigami whispered. “Call them here.”

Harry remembered the drills in the schoolyard, being beaten with wooden staves. That wasn’t the real thing. The real thing was like being skewered like a martini olive on a toothpick. The Chinaman who shit his pants in Nanking? Harry felt for him now.

“Call them.” Ishigami prodded Harry.

Willie and Iris opened shoji screens as they came. “Amazing Grace,” what a hell of a dirge to remember. Back in church. But then Harry saw Ishigami’s eyes twist backward as Michiko knelt behind the colonel, wrapped one hand around his forehead and, with the other, laid a chopping knife, the one she had cut ginger with, against the colonel’s throat.

Harry smiled. Ishigami smiled. Michiko smiled.