It was thrilling, the unity of voices, the forward motion of history that swept up Kato and Harry. Flags seemed to set the park on fire as the phalanx swung down a wide flight of steps to the street, where a row of police waited. Like the bank of a river, the blue line of uniforms redirected the course of the march, containing it along a high stone wall. Demonstrators ran ahead to outflank the police, but they were checked by the arrival of flatbed trucks bearing men in black headbands, with shirtsleeves rolled back from tattooed arms. Newspapers always identified groups like this as patriotic citizens; their tattoos revealed them as yakuza, initiated members of the underworld, but criminals could be patriotic, too. All Harry knew was that it was like watching a painting of a battle come to life, in place of warring samurai the modern armies of the streets. Demonstrators raced, waving and snapping their flags. Men in black headbands jumped off the trucks, shouted, swung ax handles. As the two forces collided, individuals turned to indistinct forms grappling with each other. A red vanguard plunged through the black ranks, and Harry felt the flags surge, bearing away all opposition. Red paint splattered the trucks.
Kato clutched his package. His eyes lit up. “We’ll see some action now.”
As the battle became more equal, fighting became more vicious. What the thugs in black headbands lacked in group discipline, they made up for in back-alley experience. Anyone who fell was stomped before he rose, but Harry saw how oblivious to danger Kato was, and the sense of invulnerability was catching. Besides, Harry was proud to be part of any event that entertained Kato so much.
Just when Harry was sure the red flags would carry the day, horses with blue riders moved down the park steps. Mounted police carrying bamboo rods. It was wonderful, he thought, to hear the sound of hooves on stone, the muffled breathing of the horses like the Battle of Sekigahara, when Ieyasu, the founder of Tokugawa rule, crushed his enemies. It was a scene with everything except flights of arrows and the smoke of matchlocks. As marchers noticed the closing trap, confusion spread. They tried to organize a stand around their banners, but the impact of the horses was too much. Black headbands waded in with their shafts. Flags swayed. Toppled. One moment Harry stayed upright amid contending men, the next he was sucked under a truck like a swimmer out at sea. Between tires he saw Kato go down, walking stick and package wrested from his hands. Harry didn’t see Kato’s adversary, only the walking stick as it broke over Kato’s head. On his elbows, Harry crawled to the package and covered it with his body. He hadn’t kept track which prints had been delivered. The one he shielded could have been the girl with the cat, the strolling girl, the geisha with the tattoo artist. On the ground he recalled each one completely, the embossing of their golden kimonos, the shadowed pink around their eyes, their tremulous lips as if they were alive and asking for protection.
Once the issue was decided, the rout was swift. Demonstrators scattered, bearing the wounded they could carry. Those that didn’t escape were dragged onto trucks for further beating at a less public venue, or pushed into vans by police. In a matter of minutes the street was cleared, except for strewn shoes and banners and bloody shirts. Kato staggered and giggled as if drunk on survival. A dark stripe of blood ran from his beret.
Harry looked up. “I saved the picture.”
“The print?” Kato rocked on his heels. “Harry, there are hundreds of prints, every print is a copy. You risked your life for nothing, which proves you have true Yamato spirit.” With his own blood, using a finger as a brush, Kato put a mark on Harry’s forehead. “Because you have proved yourself a true son of Yamato, I declare you, I baptize you, Japanese.”
It was, as far as Harry was concerned, true glory.
5
BY FIVE IN THE MORNING Harry was shaved and out the door, leaving Michiko asleep.
Asakusa had the hollow sound and desultory look of an empty stage. Marquees that had pulsed with electric light were dark canopies. A couple of workmen engaged in hanging a loudspeaker from a streetlamp. A pair of geishas staggered home, face-white almost luminous in the morning twilight, their elaborate coifs lurching with every step. Holding hands, the women maneuvered around paving stones strewn with fish bones, toothpicks, lists of auspicious numbers and a pack of scrofulous dogs tugging a squid in opposite directions. One geisha hiccuped good morning to Harry, who was on his way to the car.
Harry often dressed in a casual kimono, but for breakfast at the Chrysanthemum Club, he wore a single-breasted suit because the club members, those captains of Japanese trade and finance, were expecting a true-blue American. He carried Hajime’s gun in a box wrapped in a furoshiki, the same sort of cloth he used to wrap Kato’s prints in. Harry was virtually at the garage when his sleeve was tugged by a boy in a sailor sweater. The boy was joined by a small woman who executed a bow of such respect that Harry was thrown into confusion until he smelled the smoke on her and realized he had reached the corner where the tailor’s shop had burned the night before. Where the shop had stood was a near void. A girl with a lantern sifted through the rubble of roof tiles and iron pans and the blackened body of a sewing machine. Harry saw no other indication that a family had inhabited the spot, not a sandal, photograph, workbench, bolt of cloth, not even a thimble. Nothing was left of the neighboring tattoo and eel shops, either. The entire corner of the block had been reduced to a wet black smudge.
In whispers, the tailor’s wife apologized to Harry for the inconvenience of the fire. Thanks to his generosity, they would be able to find a new shop and to help the people next door. All the time she talked, the boy tugged at Harry’s jacket.
This was the sort of conversation Harry hated. First, he was on the move. He had things to do. Second, this woman’s house had burned down, and she was thanking him for a few lousy yen, money that he had been on the way to gamble with. He looked around as if a magic exit sign might start flashing. To change the subject, he asked about the grandmother he had seen going off in an ambulance.
“She is much better, thank you. Thank you very much for asking. Grandmother also thanks you for your help. She also apologizes.”
“It was nothing, please.”
“One thing,” she said and hesitated.
“Yes?”
Harry wasn’t sure in the poor light, but he thought her face flushed. “My husband does not know about your help. He would not understand.”
About accepting money from a gaijin? Everyone knew that the entire point of the campaign in China was to free Asia of Western entanglements. Every patriotic man took this cause as his personal mission. Women were a little more intelligent.
“Ah,” Harry said.
“Very difficult.” She lowered her head.
“Well.”
“I am so sorry.”
“I understand.” But there was no mention of giving the money back, and Harry had to smile. “I’m sure you’re doing the right thing. I leave it all in your hands.”
“You are too kind.” Her relief was so naked that Harry was embarrassed all over again. “I will say a prayer for you.”
“Then we’re even.”
The boy kept tugging on Harry’s jacket pocket and saying “For you” until Harry pulled free.
TEN THOUSAND CUTTLEFISH, dried on lines, rattled in the dawn. A year before, the Tokyo fish market had been rich in red salmon, eels in silver coils, crabs the size of monsters, rockfish, monkfish, needlefish laid like cutlery on beds of ice and massive blue-skinned tuna. No more, not since marine gasoline was reserved for the navy. The fishing fleet had gone back to oars and sails, plying the coast instead of deeper water, and the general nature of the catch had changed to mounds of shellfish, clams and oysters, mussels and cockles, as if the boats had gone for stones instead of fish. Regular gas was as tight. The week before, Harry had seen farmers pushing a truck heaped with sweet potatoes. It seemed to him that in its effort to lead the world, the entire country had gone in reverse.