He stopped at the corner of the street and raised his hand. A taxi made a U-turn and stopped. De Gier gave the address and the tiny car crashed into gear and shot off, squealing its tires cruelly at the next corner. The driver was a very young man, dressed in the student's uniform, and the face reflected in the rear mirror was haggard and tired. Working through the night to pay for his studies, de Gier thought, and his country is already overloaded with intellect.
His mind wandered off as the car raced on, beating traffic lights and forcing pedestrians to jump for their lives. He wondered what he would do for a living if he should find himself to be Japanese. He tried to envisage the life of a water policeman on the Japanese Inland Sea. He had seen something of the sea from the plane when he came into the country. Vast stretches of calm water with many tiny islands with strangely curved shores. He would float on and in beauty, and he would have little to do, for the Japanese are lawabiding citizens and even the yakusa, he felt sure now, lived along rigid rules, rules which could be learned.
The car jolted to a stop and he paid the low fare, tipping the driver who smiled wanly before making the taxi jump off again. The nightclub doorman saluted smartly when de Gier walked through the entrance, which was shaped like a rustic porch, in contrast with the building itself which looked as if it had been built the month before, poured out of concrete. An artificial waterfall tinkled on steps made out of smooth rocks, and a stone bear standing on its hind legs, caught some of the water in a basin. A young woman, dressed in a short skirt showing surprisingly straight legs, and carrying very full breasts under a transparent blouse, came out from behind the counter, greeted him in English, and took him to the rest room, where she gave him a new bar of soap and a small towel. He washed his hands and looked at the girl in the mirror. Most Japanese women seemed to have slightly bent legs and small breasts. He wondered if Dorin was right when he told them that many women have their breasts inflated with compressed air, injected mechanically. The treatment has to be renewed every few weeks, is expensive and destroys the elasticity of the flesh which, after some years, will lose all strength and become flabby and soggy. The girl smiled, showing a brilliant white set of capped teeth. An artificial woman, de Gier thought, completely remodeled. But he had to agree that the result was attractive. He turned around and kissed her cheek while he dried his hands, and she offered her lips. He kissed her on the mouth and felt her tongue darting in and out of his lips. Her arms clutched his neck and her hips and stomach rubbed rhythmically against his body. He gently broke the hold of her arms and stepped back, knocking into the washbasin. She laughed and playfully rubbed his back.
"Uai?" she asked. "Pain?"
"No pain." He walked into the bar and she came with him, holding his hand, but let it go when they were inside and wandered over to some Mends at the bar. He stopped and looked around in amazement. For a moment he thought that he was in an aquarium and that gleaming fish were swimming around him. A clever artist had been able to create a most mysterious light which flowed from the ceiling through small holes, and the girls, all dressed in very low blouses and short skirts, reflected a silver shine on their breasts. They were walking about slowly, a trick perhaps to lure the new arrival, and a fairylike glow moved with them. The light also reflected on the shaved skulls of the three barmen, shaved apart from one spot where their hair had been allowed to grow until it formed tails, the old-fashioned queues of the Chinese, and the tightly twisted hair ropes had been dipped in silver paint so that they glittered with every movement of their owners. The barmen were Chinese, and were talking to each other in the soft Canton dialect which he had heard so often in the old city of Amsterdam. They also spoke English, an exaggerated English with Oxford overtones.
"Would you care for a whisky, sir? Scotch or local? Or would you prefer a Canadian brand, or a bourbon perhaps?"
"A bourbon," de Gier said.
"On the rocks, sir?"
"On the rocks."
"Very well, sir. One bourbon on the rocks coming up, sir."
He raised his glass, returned the Chinese's flashing smile and drank. "Would you care for female company, sir? There is plenty of choice. If you tell me whom you prefer I will have her come over."
"I'll find one," de Gier said, "later."
"Very well, sir. Are you a poker player, sir? Or do you prefer roulette. Gambling has started about half an hour ago, sir."
"Gambling has always bored me," de Gier said. "I don't know what it is, but rolling dice and shuffled cards make me sleepy. I would rather just sit and drink. This is a nice bar you've got here."
"I only mentioned the gambling because it is in the back room, sir, and I haven't seen you before. I thought perhaps you might want to know about it. I don't like gambling myself, sir. Very strange for a Chinese, I don't even like mahjong."
"Good," de Gier said. "So we are not alone in our perversions. Do you like watching football?"
"No, sir."
"Excellent. Neither do I. What do you like?"
The barkeeper bent forward and whispered into de Gier's ear. "Watching flowers?" de Gier asked softly. "Where? In parks? Or do you grow them yourself?"
"I have a small garden," the Chinese said. "Very small."
More guests came in and the barman went over to see what they wanted to drink. De Gier stirred the crushed ice in his glass and thought about his balcony. His geraniums would be dead by now, and the nasturtiums, which he had been growing with great care, brushing the mites off twice a day, feeding with various vitamins, watering and spraying at set hours, should be in flower, but there wouldn't be much left except crumbling bone-dry brown stalks and leaves lying on cracked dry gray earth. And somewhere in the soil of Amsterdam rotted the corpse of Esther, and insects would be eating the cat Oliver, buried in the park opposite his apartment building. He thought painlessly, registering images, the images of death. He was staring at his glass while he thought, and he only looked up when he felt a thigh pressed against his leg and he recognized the girl who had gone into the rest room with him.
"Amerikajin?" she asked.
"Orandajin," he said. "From Holland. Do you know where Holland is?"
Another girl had joined them. The girl laughed and said something in Japanese. De Gier caught a few words and reconstructed the meaning of the sentence. "Foreigners stink as a rule, but if they have eaten garlic they stink too badly, even for a whore."
"I haven't eaten garlic," he said. "I ate some broiled fish in a Japanese-style restaurant. If I stink, I stink normally."
"Oh," the two girls said in chorus, and clapped their hands over their mouths. "Do you speak Japanese?"
"Two hundred words, but it was enough this time."
"Sumimasen," the girl said. "Tai-hen sumimasen. Very very sorry. I was very rude. Please forgive."
"Sure," de Gier said, and laughed. The girls looked as if they might break into tears any minute. "But of course."
"Yuiko," the girl from the rest room said. "That's my name, and my friend is called Chicako. But maybe you don't like us so much now, maybe we better call other girls for you, yes? Please look around and tell us who we must call."
"No, I like you both fine. Do you want a drink?"
The bartender had placed a dish filled with brown mushy objects, floating in a thick sauce, on the counter, and de Gier pushed it toward Yuiko. "Have some of this, whatever it may be."
"Thank you. They are mushrooms, very delicious. Try some yourself."
De Gier sighed and picked one up gingerly. His tongue had difficulty dealing with it but he managed to get it between his teeth and chewed.