"Later," she said. "First you have to see some photographs. It's a Japanese custom; you have to know who you are sleeping with." She went into the bedroom and came back carrying two albums, holding them away from her body on outstretched arms. He thought they might be porno pictures, but the snapshots showed family groups. He pretended to be interested as she explained the pictures. Father and mother. Uncle so-and-so in front of his house, a famous house which had been a cookie store at one time. The emperor had visited it, the emperor Meiji who had opened the country to the foreigners.
A soup vendor, rattling his bamboo sticks in the street, provided an excuse to get away, and he went out and brought back a paper container, and they sat opposite each other in the four-mat room, fishing noodles and bits of meat out of the hot broth.
"The musicians who play in my bar came to see me just before the doctor said I could go home," she said, feeding him a choice bit of meat with her chopsticks. "They said you had been to their old temple and that you played the flute." De Gier nodded.
"How did you find their temple?"
"I asked the doorman at the Golden Dragon."
"They said you were crazy, just like them."
"Mother there walks an eagle," de Gier said, with his mouth full.
"Pardon?" He thought about explaining the eagle. "Eagle?"
"Never mind. A bird, sometimes it walks. Yes, I played the flute with them."
"Why did you come to the bar that evening?"
"You know," he said.
But she shook her head. "I didn't know, they only told me later."
"Who told you? And what did they tell you?"
"Somebody, you wouldn't know him, he is in charge of the bar. He told me that you are a member of an organization which interferes with ours."
"So why don't you kill me?" de Gier asked pleasantly, looking at the small refrigerator in the rear of the room. She turned around to see what he was looking at.
"Are you hungry? I have some tofu in there; do you like tofu? It's beancurd, very tasty. I can put some in this soup, I have other things too, but they are all Japanese too, and I don't know whether you like them."
"Anything," de Gier said, "except sour plums. They gave me some at the inn yesterday. Nice-looking little plums, but I thought my face would fall off when I tried one. Very sour, like a thousand lemons."
She giggled. "No, there are no plums in the icebox. I'll get the tofu? Yes?"
"Please. But you didn't answer my question. Why don't you kill me?"
"Me?"
"You. The yakusa."
She was searching about in the icebox, and he couldn't see her face, but her tone of voice was normal. "Maybe we don't want to kill you. You haven't been to Kobe yet, have you?"
"No."
"Don't go there."
"I'll go where I want to go," de Gier said. "The yakusa tried to frighten me. It was well done. They also tried to bother my boss. I didn't like that; he is an old man, and he has rheumatism."
"You weren't frightened," Yuiko said. "You played your flute, I was told. I would have liked to hear that."
De Gier took out his flute and played the tune he had heard in the little theater. The flute's high notes wavered and broke, and the room suddenly seemed very cold.
"Bad," she said. "Evil. Is that what they played to you? You repeated it, didn't you?"
De Gier had picked up the photo album again and flipped through the pages. Each snapshot looked formaclass="underline" serious citizens, lined up in balanced patterns, like chessmen on a checkered board, staring noncommittally at the lens. The vacation pictures were a little more relaxed. The fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts and the few children had shed their neat suits and kimonos and starched dresses and were now wearing swimsuits and jeans and colorful shirts. Some of the girls were shown in bikinis, and there were a few portraits of Yuiko herself accentuating her large firm breasts and slim straight legs. She had been placed against suitable backgrounds-a bush of azaleas in bursting color, an enormous rock standing upright in carefully swept sand. None of the photographs showed a boyfriend. There would be another album somewhere, safely hidden.
She was cutting the tofu, a white spongy cake reminiscent of very young cheese, and dropping the little elastic bricks in the pot of bubbling soup, which she was reheating on a hot plate.
"You like the photographs?"
"Yes, very interesting. Especially this one." He showed her the album and pointed at an enlargement which had been given a page of its own. Yuiko in color, legs tucked behind her, pouted lips and aggressive nipples directed at the camera. The tiny bikini was wet, she had obviously just come out of the sea, which formed the background of the photo, and the damp cotton showed every detail of her body.
She laughed. "Yes, that one got me a nice check. I sold it to a company manufacturing canned foods and they used it for an advertisement, but the daimyo saw it in a magazine and I was told not to model anymore. I can't have two jobs."
He was slurping the tofu soup, stuffing the streaked white blobs, darkened by the soy sauce she had poured into the pot, into his mouth with the chopsticks, sucking them in at the same time. She was watching him and reached over to ruffle his hair.
"You are doing very well. You are eating Japanese style. Are you going to burp afterward?"
He shook his head. "I can never do it at the right moment. It usually comes much later, when the meal is over and done with and I am on my way home. The air, I mean. It gets stuck here." He pointed at his throat. "Makes a big bubble and sits there. The maids at the restaurant up in the hills, the fish restaurant where you have to catch your own carp before they will serve it to you, were also telling me to belch after the meal. I couldn't do it. They were bumping me on the back but nothing happened. The burp came in the car, half an hour later."
"The restaurant where your friend stuck a knife through Kono-san's hand?"
"Is that his name? Kono?"
"Yes. He is a dangerous man, chief of the tough guys. He trains them in the daimyo's palace. He lost face that evening."
"Is he angry now?"
"No. Your friend bandaged his hand. Kono isn't as wicked as he pretends to be; he is really very sensitive. He is very fond of birds you know. He has pheasants and peacocks, and when the eggs are incubated he sleeps in the bird barn." She giggled. "He has a special bird friend, an old fat turkey whom he calls MacArthur. MacArthur has been picked bare by the other younger turkeys and he is half-blind, but he is always trying to make everything he sees. The daimyo has a big black car, and I saw MacArthur stamp up to it, honking deep in his chest, but the car just stood there, and the bird got bored in the end and went to look for something else. When Kono calls him he jumps into his arms, it's very funny to see the two of them."
"Has he got any cats?" de Gier asked, fishing about in his bowl for a particularly slippery noodle.
"No."
"Pity. Cats are the only beings I can get on with. If he had cats we could be friends, I don't know much about birds. I like looking at them, but they always fly away or run off when I come close."
"Shame," she said, and touched his hand. "Birds must be stupid. I won't run away when you come close." She kissed his ear, but he pushed her away gently. "No," he said, "you are still weak. That poisoning must have been something terrible. I think you should rest as much as possible now. Let's wait a few days. How do you feel now, Yuiko?"
"Fine," she said, and looked at him languidly. "Don't you like me anymore? I am strong; soon I'll be working again. We should enjoy this holiday, just a few days. Would you like to go sailing with me on Lake Biwa?"
"Sure."
"Can you sail?"
"I had a sloop once, and I often sail with friends. Sailing is easy. It's like riding a bicycle; once you have mastered the trick you never forget it."