“It was to stop the war,” Harry told the colonel. He tried it on Gen. “It was to keep the war from starting.”
“I believe you,” Ishigami said.
Gen weighted down Harry’s back. Suddenly the punctures in his stomach felt like mere pinpricks. Hajime aimed a gun at Harry in case he moved. Ishigami’s boots creaked as they took an executioner’s stance.
“A thousand yen says you need just one swing,” Harry said, because the last thing Harry needed now was two.
“Remember that song ‘Amazing Grace’?” Ishigami asked. “That was a good song. Fill your mind with that.”
Instead, Harry sensed every hair on his head stand. He rocked to the pumping of his heart, an engine trying to wrest itself off its moorings. His head, his hands, his legs, every organ wanted to divest itself of any association with a target named Harry. He heard the colonel’s explosive grunt and the furious whisper of the blade and sudden impact.
Harry opened his eyes to find his head still on his shoulders. Gen’s wasn’t. It had rolled almost off the apron of the stage. His body, in its long leather coat and gloves, poured blood that drained, with the rake of the stage, into the pit. Ishigami flicked blood from the blade, retrieved the head and delicately washed it in the bowl. Harry couldn’t find at first the proper word for Gen’s expression. Melancholy, perhaps. A son of Asakusa born with nothing but beauty, a poor boy who had to bet his all, time and again, to advance, a prey for wrong companions. Ishigami closed Gen’s eyes, smoothed his hair and toweled his face, kissed his cheek and set him in the head box.
“Why him?” Harry asked.
“After such an error in judgment? Such dishonor? An officer has no choice.”
“People think it was a great victory.”
“People will learn otherwise. Who could live with that?”
Ishigami wiped his sword until the blade showed its distinctive swirling line of black and white. Hajime dropped to his knees and removed his cap. Vile little Hajime closed his eyes.
“Wait!” Harry said.
Ishigami raised his sword, took three sideways steps and sliced off Hajime’s head. Hajime’s eyeglasses shot into the orchestra pit while his body slumped, one arm cradling his head, the gun loose.
“Jesus,” Harry said.
The colonel flicked the sword, spraying the floor. This was a new medium of art, Harry thought; there was blood everywhere. He didn’t dare move.
“Credit where credit is due,” Ishigami said.
“I’m not a spy.”
“You’re not a spy, you’re only Harry Niles, and that is dangerous enough. Oil? That’s your weapon.”
“A lot of modern things run on oil. Gasoline, lubricants, aviator fuel.”
“Please, you remind me of your commercial poetry. Burma Shave.”
“Exactly.”
“See, you are never what you seem to be. I remember the first time I met you, you were just a boy. I thought you were like a trained monkey. At Nanking, years later, I took you for a profiteer, a cheat. You cheated me of five heads. Six, actually.”
Including the aide-de-camp, Harry thought. He said nothing. A conversation with Ishigami was like sharing a high wire with a lunatic; the slightest misstep would be fatal.
“It wasn’t until the willow house that I began to see what you really were. Now I am put in mind of the ‘Forty-seven Ronin,’ the samurai who hid behind a mask of gambling and drink. That’s what you are, a true ronin. That’s the secret.”
“What secret?”
“I told you at the willow house what my mother said about telling a secret to a seashell?”
“And then crushing it?” Harry could picture the young illegitimate Ishigami standing on a beach, getting this wisdom from a woman who could never name the man she slept with. For some reason, Harry also thought of his father at the stern of the ship that carried the Niles family back to the States. His father had found the Fifty Views of Fuji, the damning evidence Kato had sketched of Harry’s life on the streets of Asakusa, the pilfering, brawling, utter joy. Roger Niles balled up each page and threw them to the gulls that dipped and tilted in the breeze behind the ship.
“Yes. You’re not what I expected, Harry.”
“Who is?” Well, Harry thought, he could be killed on the floor or on his feet, so he got up. “Now we’re done?”
“Almost.”
Ishigami gave the sword a final brief inspection before handing it to Harry by its grip of braided leather. The blade trembled in an unfamiliar hand. The colonel sank to his knees. It was like watching a statue climb down from its pedestal.
“Oh, no,” Harry said.
“Do me the honor. It would be shameful if I didn’t follow my own men.” Ishigami unbuttoned the top of his tunic and rolled the collar back, unveiling the contrast between his brown neck and broad white shoulders. “Seppuku is too honorable an end for such failure. Sometimes the sword is more sincere.”
“You’d rather lose your head than lose face? What about the war?”
“As a soldier, I never expected to live out the war. The war is over.” Ishigami dismissed it like an episode in history already passed. He clasped his hands behind his back and lowered his head, scalp shining through the stubble. “It is less dishonor to be beheaded by a friend. You are the one gaijin who understands.”
“Well, the war is young.” Harry considered the outstretched neck. “Sorry, I won’t do it.”
“You’d be doing me a favor.”
“I know, but I have to go with the numbers. Three men, their heads lopped off, indicates the help of a fourth. Two men beheaded and a third a suicide by gunshot, that’s a believable parlay.”
“Harry Niles is still Harry Niles.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s your only reason?”
“Part of the reason.”
Ishigami raised his head and fixed not on Harry but on the sword a gaze of disappointment. As if a cup of sake had been whisked away.
“Go ahead.” Harry picked up Hajime’s gun and gave it to Ishigami, who turned the Nambu over and over in his hands, the thought process in action. His eyes reached out for Harry’s.
“You owe me five heads.”
“And I always will.”
Ishigami’s hands seemed to make up his mind. He pressed the muzzle to his chest and fired. He swayed, managed a second pull on the trigger and folded over. The sound of the shots rang around the theater, followed by a resonant stillness.
WHEN HARRY STUMBLED OUT, dazed, slightly deafened, he discovered no one could have heard the gun. The street was a rally swept by the contagion of enthusiasm, songs and cheers and the rattle of firecrackers. He had his germ mask on and, except for dried blood on his pants cuffs, looked like any other reveler. The crush was overwhelming and good-natured, faces red from celebration, silk kimonos rubbing against sufu uniforms. The idea of a wartime blackout added novelty, and the lack of streetlamps made the carbide lights of the stalls and the red lanterns of pubs more intense against the dark.
Harry knew that Shozo and Go would pick him up. But as part of the general sweep of gaijin or something more particular? He bet the police would not investigate much. No one wanted to hear at the beginning of a long, arduous war that it was already lost. Knowing what he knew, he almost felt that he stood in a street of ghosts. Faces loomed and bobbed. Bodies pressed against him with a certain insubstantiality, voices hollow as echoes.
Then his hearing cleared and the clamor of the street was overwhelming-the martial delirium of a loudspeaker, the chatter of clogs running after a cascade of lanterns-and in one step Harry was swept along by the bright, irresistible stream.
Martin Cruz Smith
