Gen’s tone became more certain. “Now there’s no problem.”
Ishigami hadn’t blinked. It was like being watched by a Buddha. And as the crowd closed in and stamped out the fires, Harry ran. Gen paused a second on his dignity, which allowed Harry to bolt into a movie-house lobby as ornate as a Moorish palace and through the theater doors. On the screen, a Western stagecoach rolled across a black-and-white canyon of wind-sculpted rocks. Harry ran down the aisle and plunged through the emergency door into a back street of noodle shops.
Behind, Gen came out of the emergency door. Harry pulled on his germ mask as he detoured into a pub, through the kitchen frying tofu and a narrow passage encrusted with fish bones to a backyard alley and the window of a prostitute who suggested, “Celebrate our victory. Be the first tonight.” Harry caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Gen jumping the garbage of the pub, getting closer. The drumming of the motorcycle swung ahead. The alley ended at a bamboo fence wound in dry vines. Harry climbed the fence and landed in a market of silk flowers and bonsai tied in straw ropes. A geisha started in surprise, leaving a whiff of face powder in the air. Gen soared over the fence. Harry turned through a food market, by trays of squid legs and satiny kelp, spilling a tower of rice tubs in Gen’s way. Harry got ahead enough to join the crowd at the shooting range, waiting their turn to fire an air rifle at enemy bombers already repainted from Chinese to American. Gen went by. Harry backtracked through the market and found Hajime waiting alone on the motorcycle. Ishigami was gone. There was no option left for Harry except a fence planted with nails. He tossed the knife over, spread his fingers between the nails and tried to swing himself up and across in one try. Didn’t quite, and landed on his back in a house garden with a row of red puncture marks across his shirt. At least there was a kimono drying on a rod. Lose some, win some. Harry pulled on the kimono as he walked through the house past an astonished maid, into another street of noodle shops and cafés with photos on the wall for choosing licensed women. With the power cut, shops made a murky glow, but Gen was a head taller than the crowd, and Harry picked him out from a block away. Harry turned and saw Hajime pull up to the other corner, and the maid came out of the doorway, looking in all directions. Harry tucked himself into a group around a printer’s stall doing a brisk business in maps of the Pacific. Because of the maid, Harry couldn’t stand still. With a map spread before his face, he took slow, abstracted steps toward Gen, who seemed content to shepherd Harry rather than chase him. Another group of men gathered around a chess club, everyone suddenly a military tactician. As the maid saw Harry, he ducked into the chess club and took the stairs, climbing over games in progress, and came out on a balcony that was a garden of flowerpots. A small, hairy dog came to life and yapped possessively. Harry stepped onto the one-story roof next door, walked across the tiles to a yet higher adjoining roof and caught his breath. Barking drifted below. With streetlamps dark and houses at half power, the city had the brooding glow of a volcano, not one that was subsiding but one about to blow. Harry crossed the roof and found a fire escape that let him down to a black sidewalk. As the counterweight swung the escape back up and out of reach, he heard the motorcycle coast up the street. The door behind Harry was padlocked, but the sash was old. He levered off the hasp with the knife, slipped inside and realized where he was.
He would have known before, but he didn’t usually approach via the roof, without streetlamps or in such a hurry. The building itself was dark because the peep show, the Museum of Curiosities, had been closed by the police on suspicion of frivolity. Closed but not emptied. In the shadows Harry saw familiar forms. The Venus de Milo that was billed as an “exotic nude.” A stereopticon with views of belly dancers. Best of all, the freaks. The “mermaid” concocted of a flounder’s tail, papier-mâché body and horsehair wig. Siamese twins with the gaping jaws of lantern fish. With paste, paper and imagination, an artist could make anything. Harry’s stomach didn’t feel good. It felt cold. He sank to a sitting position, pulled off the germ mask and lit a cigarette to give himself a different focus than the pain. Between his kidneys and his stomach, he felt like he’d been run over by a thresher. What was this, Plan D or E? He hadn’t flown away on a silver plane, hadn’t stopped the war, had no more money. There was an old saying, that if after five minutes in a card game you don’t know who the mark is, it’s you. Harry admitted he didn’t even have a clue what the game was anymore. All he knew was that a creature concocted of fish scales and paper was hardly more patchwork than Harry Niles.
“Harry.” Gen stood with a gun at the end of the aisle and motioned Harry up. “Leave the knife.”
Hajime arrived by Gen’s side. “Maybe he has a gun. I’ll look.”
Harry said, “Hajime, Hajime, Hajime. Was that your idea to drop the gun on me? Pretty stupid.”
“‘Sergeant’ to you.” Hajime hit him on the side of the face and searched him. To Gen, Hajime reported, “No gun.”
“Guns aren’t Harry’s style. Harry trusts in luck.”
Harry spat out blood. “I’ve always been a lucky man.”
Gen smiled sadly, humoring the delusional. “Come on, Harry, it will be like old times.”
They left the peep show, Harry in the middle with a gun in his back, and turned not out to the street but up the stairs to a door with a sign that read, by the flame of Gen’s cigarette lighter, NO ENTRANCE. THIS DOOR IS LOCKED AT ALL TIMES. Gen had the key and led the way into a narrow room of vanity mirrors. Dirty slippers were piled by the door, tatty costumes hung from a rack, and although the Folies had been closed for a year, the changing room was still redolent with stale sweat, body powder and perfume. At that table, Oharu had first turned to the young Harry as he fell through the door. At that chair, Kato reigned as artist-king. Little Chizuko undressed behind that screen. The main difference was that the mirrors had been stripped of lightbulbs, and what had been a space full of color and life was a dusty coffin. No music, either. Music had always stolen up from the show. Harry remembered a burst of fanfare, light shining and dancers flying through the door.
“Decadence,” Hajime said.
“Fun,” Harry said. “It was the best place on earth.”
Gen said, “Long gone. Times have changed. Look at today, a Japanese task force goes undetected halfway across the Pacific and catches the American fleet like a row of ducks. Practically without resistance. Catches American planes parked on the ground and wipes them out. The greatest naval victory in the annals of war.” While he talked, Gen led Harry out the other door and down a spiral staircase to a backstage maze of ropes, trapdoors and sandbags. Rays of light from the front probed the painted flats of a barbershop, streetcar, battleship cannons, the palms of a tropical island, the playground of boyhood friends. Harry remembered the skits: the doctor routine, the cannibal scene, the bumblebee. And the chorus line’s top hats and kicks. The curtains framed a black abyss of orchestra seats. Ishigami was onstage, busy setting tatami mats in the subdued glow of footlights. A chair with a water pitcher, bowl and head box stood to one side. A belt and sword hung off the chair back. Harry couldn’t see past the lights. He wouldn’t have minded a full house, the Folies orchestra pumping out “Daisy, Daisy” and the chorus line crossing the stage on bikes. He tried to keep his eyes off the head box. Concentrating on Ishigami didn’t necessarily help. From the first day Harry had met him, the colonel had stayed essentially the same, the way a knife becomes more itself, both worn and sharp, by use. Harry missed Michiko. She would have evened the odds more than most. However, it was interesting to watch the interaction of the three men, awe for the colonel, adoration for Gen, acceptance for the loathsome Hajime. Harry was with them and not with them. They were going on, and Harry was definitely staying behind. Gen continued, “Despite the longest odds in history, we did it. The greatest gamble of all time, and we did it.” Harry was trying to think of some agreeable response when Gen sent him sprawling over the boards. Harry rolled over to find Gen’s gun dug into his cheek. Gen’s cap had fallen off, and his hair hung wildly down. “And it was worthless, worse than worthless.”