Roger Crossland - Red Ice

On the fourth afternoon, after a timed fifteen-mile ski trek, I let the men go into Sapporo. The liberty would be good for morale and I knew they’d eventually start sneaking off for local color anyway. Consequently, I opted for Sapporo, which could absorb our group without trauma.

A knock on the door interrupted some map work. “As I remember, you said liberty was for all hands, Skipper.”

It was Dravit.

“A good officer must lead by precept and example,” he said, storming into the room before I could reply. “And it is about time you guided me through the mysteries of Kobe beef and Kirin beer, otherwise I will be thought horribly backward by the local ladies and justifiably branded a big-nosed, hairy barbarian.”

“Okay, okay. This map work can wait. Seems about time I renewed my acquaintance with bright lights and civilized living.”

Ice demons menaced us in Sapporo—great crystalline, reptilian demons who had slithered out of crevasses somewhere on Hokkaido and crept down to Odori Park to squat among the snow sculpture. The eighty-foot figures defined the perimeters of the Yuki Matsuri , the snow festival. Their threatening frozen stares sent the hotel bus scurrying down the thoroughfares until it found safety within the brave lights of the entertainment district.

The bus deposited Dravit and me before a well-known businessmen’s nightclub. Dravit’s primary interest was pub crawling, and when I told him what the price of a drink and charming conversation in this expense-account-geared club totaled, he became even more convinced we ought to make our donations to the local economy over a broader range of recipients. “Share the wealth and all that. Might ossify staying all night in one place, actually.”

In addition to the many businessmen, the district swarmed with Japan’s strayed souls. Japan categorized them tribally: the kaminari-zoku , motorcyclists of the “thunder tribe;” the yoromeki-zoku , the voluptuaries of the “philandering tribe;” the taiyo-zoku , the affluent, aimless members of the “sun tribe.” The West didn’t have a monopoly on rudderless ships.

We had no trouble finding other places to visit. The district teemed with bars, tearooms, cabarets, nightclubs, pachinko parlors, and restaurants: the Miyako, the Fuyago, the Kamakura, the Moulin Rouge, the Jazz Inn, the Nevada…. Every street tout offered to guide us to a “number-one nice place.” Instead we followed out our own instincts and concentrated on a string of cubbyhole bars.

The Kamakura—the snow hut—proved attractive. Its frosted-glass booths resembled Japanese igloos or snow huts. “ Irasshai-mase ,” welcomed a predatory hostess. “Sit down… you drink scotch?… Joni Waluka Red, I bet… best music here, ne ? she fired off without taking a breath.

Despite an earlier warning to steer clear of scotch, the most coveted liquor in Japan, Dravit ordered it anyway. He inspected the bottle of Royal something or other when the bartender poured. Dravit twisted the label for me to read.

“Says here this scotch is distilled by appointment to the Queen and ‘manufactured from the finest Scottish grapes.’”

We threaded through the yoru no cho —butterflies of the night—of three more bars, including a karaoke , a tavern for very amateur solo vocalists, until we hit the Transistor Dolly Bar. The name had me puzzled until Dravit—sensitive to these things—noted that not one of the hostesses stood over five feet tall.

The bantam Royal Marine’s eyes lit merrily and several of the girls buzzed about attentively. Each wore a distinctive electronic symbol that matched a button on a console at our table. Dravit punched two buttons, which lit corresponding symbols on a display board over the bar. We heard a short electronic ditty and all but two girls disappeared.

They sat down and graciously listened to Dravit burn out his circuits in pidgin Japanese.

“Bothers you a bit, doesn’t it? That ruddy gentleman’s cashiering they gave you. You hide it well, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, wishing he’d change the subject, but he’d had a few by now. He worried for people doggedly after he’d had a few.

“Try to do some good with no hope of reward and they’ll stomp on your fingers every time.”

He thought a moment.

“Too bloody dedicated, that’s what it is. Ramrods like us are too dedi-bloody-cated for the bleeding system to understand. No frame of reference. They don’t want us ’cause they can’t figure us from a self-interest point of view. I mean, all right, self-interest is a valid enough spur for most pursuits, but getting shot at is just basically contrary to a beggar’s self-interest, bloody clearly it is.”

Dravit’s micro-component dolly refilled his glass.

“So it figures they can’t appreciate a first-rate officer when they see one because they don’t understand why ruddy integrity is so important to the military in the first place. Well, bugger them if they can’t take a joke, that’s what I always say. But it hurts, doesn’t it? Down deep, I mean. You won’t let much show, but an old jolly can tell. You gave it your heart and they rubbed your face in it. Sod ’em. Here’s a chill to the vocationless bastards.”

“About time we moved on,” I said somberly. “Wasn’t someone saying something about spreading the wealth and terminal ossification?”

A few blocks farther on we heard the busy chimes of a pachinko parlor. Pachinko—vertical pinball with marbles instead of steel balls—ranked high among Japanese addictions. We would have gone on had I not seen a familiar bowlegged figure leaning against one of the machines.

Leaning wasn’t quite the right word—propped, maybe. Barry Puckins of west Texas had flown in for a few days on his way. back from the Philippines. The chief would return stateside tomorrow and be back for keeps in a week. Now he stood in a frozen stance, his palms up and his forearms parallel across his stomach. Pinned to his anorak jacket was a note in katakana, and next to him a bargirl he’d liberated somewhere laughed uncontrollably.

Soon a dissipated teenage girl in a motorcycle jacket and a few of her friends shuffled over to Puckins to read the note. She reached into her pocket, tucked something into the pouch of Puckins’s anorak, and touched one of several buttons sketched on the note. Slowly, Puckins rumbled to life like a coin-operated machine.

The girl, a world-weary urchin, had pressed the button “oil.” With uneven movements he removed his scarf, wrapped it around his head like a turban, and began to drill. When he struck an invisible gusher, he grabbed the girl, danced a mechanical polka of joy, then abruptly wound down and resumed his original fixed and lifeless position. The girl and her friends were in stitches. Something made me think they didn’t often have much to laugh about.

Someone else inserted a coin and pressed “overdrive.” Again he rumbled to life, this time leaning backward as he moved and assuming the appearance of a pilot functioning under high G-forces.

Throughout, his eyes showed neither mirth nor recognition. I figured he’d go on like this until the parlor owner threw him out or he passed out. (The bargirl ran across the street for bottles of beer, which he chugged every time someone pressed “lubrication.”)

By the time we’d left, the pouch of his anorak bulged heavily with coins.

Several bars later we reached the Fuyago, the nightless castle. Its ladies came on shrill and competitive.

At a corner stool I noticed Chamonix with a bargirl as hard and time worn as deck plate. She was doing all the talking—in French, perhaps—in any event he wasn’t holding up his end. He just sat there glassy eyed and expressionless, pouring them back with a vengeance. I saw no reason to disturb them. Empty stools surrounded them like barbed wire.