“What would you do for a living?”
“Run the village shell game. Drop jazz, pick up the shamisen, mumble around in an old kimono. That’s not bad, is it? We’d just sit under the mulberry tree and listen to the silkworms munching on the leaves.”
“They’re just waiting to pick you up.”
“As for the wedding, well, that’s pretty simple. Do it country-style and just share a drink.” He brought out his silver flask. “Presto, you’re married.” He continued to pay attention to the beetle, to make sure it didn’t slide off the dashboard.
“I’m not going to let them take you,” she said.
“Let’s stick to the subject, do you want to get married or not? I’m afraid this is a one-time offer.”
She looked at the flask. “This is the best you can do?”
“It’s the thought that counts.”
Michiko took a healthy swallow, and the interior of the Datsun filled with fumes of good Scotch. Harry carefully followed suit, watching in case she decided to pull the gun and execute a honeymoon suicide by surprise. Besides, it would scare the beetle.
“We’ll get old and gum away on tofu and tea,” he said.
“What about sex?”
“I didn’t know you liked sex that much. I take it back, I take it back.”
“That has always been good, even when you have been bad.”
“May I?” He leaned forward and lightly put his lips on hers. He knew she disliked kissing on the mouth, but all the same, she let him linger for a moment.
“It’s been interesting, Harry. It’s always been that.”
The street had fallen into a shadow that put Harry in mind of two sailors sitting in a lifeboat by a sinking ship, waiting for the great, overturned hull to go under and suck them down with it, this moment or the next.
“Listen.” Michiko put her hand up suddenly. “A sound I heard when Haruko died.”
Harry heard the usual traffic echoes, the nasty buzz of unseen trams and the squeal of a train crossing the viaduct.
“I didn’t catch it.”
“Did you feel it?”
“No.”
Something, however, had prompted the beetle to raise its head, and the lifting of such a magnificent horn was its undoing. It slid down the dash, legs scratching and scrambling, until it fell into Harry’s palm. He let the beetle climb round and round his hands like a treadmill before he handed the insect to Michiko and shifted into first.
Michiko was occupied enough with replacing the beetle in its box for Harry to take away her bag with the gun. She looked up sharply, betrayed.
“Just for a minute,” Harry said. As he pulled away from the curb and started toward the train station, the car down the street did the same.
The nearer they drew to the station, the more the sidewalks filled with exuberant draftees, families and well-wishers, newsboys, vendors of war bonds and sun flags, most arriving simply to draw on the proximity of the Son of Heaven. The throng Harry had seen earlier on the plaza between the station and the imperial palace had doubled. Wives had rushed out with their thousand-stitch belts. More than one veteran had put on his old uniform and medals. Well, this was Buckingham Palace and the Vatican rolled up in one, Harry thought. He looked over. In her beret and cashmere coat, Michiko was French enough for Kato. With her ivory face and lidded eyes, better than French. Traffic police tried to maintain lanes for buses and trams, which was like trying to stop the waves of the sea. Michiko could, though. She was brave enough to part the sea. Harry dug out the last tael bars, tucked them in the bag with the gun and reached across to open Michiko’s door.
“Out.” He stopped the car.
“I won’t-”
Harry tossed her bag out the door. As Michiko stepped out to retrieve it, he stepped on the accelerator and left her in the street. A policeman bleated on a whistle, but Harry swung behind an army truck and passed through the main crush. In the mirror, he saw Michiko fall behind a wall of flags.
No one seemed to notice the gaijin driving toward the road along the river. In the general euphoria, people were blind to details. As the workday ended, they swept into the street, most headed to the palace or Hibiya Park but also moving in countercurrents along the river. Cadets waved flags from the roofs of the river buses, the boats competing in cheers. A collegiate type sliding by in a one-man scull hoisted a bottle of champagne. On the sidewalk, shopgirls linked arms to sing, “Mount Saiko is deep in mist, waves rise on the river. Sounds that travel from afar are waves or soldiers’ cries, brightly, brightly, brightly!” As night came on, Harry became aware of streetlamps staying unlit, the first blackout of the war. A policeman walked along the cars, ordering their headlights off, although it hardly mattered with all the paper lanterns on the sidewalk. Traffic inched. Looking in the rearview mirror, Harry couldn’t find any particular car following him, although he felt something, as Michiko had said. He didn’t doubt he had been followed; he hadn’t exactly hidden. If anyone wondered where he was going, so did he, apart from simply gravitating to territory most familiar to him. Which gave him ample opportunity to contemplate the folly of toying with history. History was celebrating all around him. He hadn’t changed a thing, except for losing DeGeorge and Haruko their heads. Michiko was angry, which was bad enough, but she was alive and had a gun to defend herself with. Most important, she wouldn’t be trying to defend him. That was her weak spot. People called back and forth. Harry rolled down his window to hear that rallies were gathering at Ueno and Asakusa. The radio played “The Battleship March” over and over. Paper lanterns streamed, creating a soft melding of people into one entity, one heart, one Yamato spirit.
Azuma Bridge was a span of candles and lanterns above the starry water. There were spots of rowdiness, but over all spread an awe-filled hush of self-astonishment that, in a single day, they had vaulted to the top of the world. They had dared and they had won. On the radio, announcers made the point again and again that each victory was made possible only by the “virtues of the emperor,” but they were all demigods now. Here it was barely the second week in December, and everyone had had their lucky New Year’s dream, the wealth of Asia and the Pacific in their hands. As he approached Asakusa Park in traffic that was almost stopped, the Datsun coughed and died. Harry abandoned the car in the middle of the street, sliding the beetle into a jacket pocket and adjusting the knife in his belt. Despite the blackout, the movie marquees were a bank of blinding tungsten lights. A cardboard John Wayne was the first Western face Harry had seen in hours. He debated with himself whether to hide his own face behind the germ mask. “To be or not to be,” Hamlet asked. “I yam what I yam,” said Popeye. Harry kept it off.
Asakusa Park and the Kannon grounds were a nighttime festival. Lanterns lit the avenue of souvenir stalls leading to the double-roofed temple. Whole families were out for a spontaneous promenade, father followed by wife, trailed by children in descending size. Fortune-teller tents were swamped. Monks, too, did a land-office business with divining rods next to confectioners who fashioned candy cranes and turtles, symbols of long life. Harry drew a few astonished looks, but he was so familiar to so many shopkeepers and regulars that he passed unchallenged. A beam swung against a bell for evening prayer as Harry climbed the temple stairs. From a threshold of red columns came throaty chanting and a haze of joss sticks. Harry remembered reading that during the earthquake that killed Kato and Oharu, a hundred thousand citizens had survived by taking sanctuary at the Kannon and the park. Since then, in crises, it had been the place to come. People crowded around a grate to toss in money, clap their hands and pray. Harry emptied his pockets and said what little he had to say to the few spirits who meant anything to him. His father had written him after Nanking to say he had heard from China missionaries that Harry had helped save lives. Roger Niles wrote that the stories were painful because they were so implausible, no doubt an elaborate fraud. The old man’s problem, Harry decided, was that, having confused himself with God, he had to be right without exception. Harry’s mother, on the other hand, had great faith in exceptions. She could stand under a tree that he was hiding in and talk as if he were a cherub who happened to be snagged on an upper branch. She deserved a word or two. And Oharu. The expression of surprise painted on her brows. Would she be surprised now? She would lead him to a balcony seat so they could watch together. Kato? Harry had often wondered which work of art Kato had died trying to save. He preferred to think it wasn’t one of the French pastiches but a print of Oharu powdering herself at the backstage mirror of the Folies. What had Kato’s words been? I baptize you Japanese.