Janwillem De Wetering - The Japanese Corpse

"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 formal: 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."

"Aren't you afraid?" she asked. "You know now that I am yakusa, and we have been very unpleasant to you and your associate. Is he your associate or your boss?"

"Boss," de Gier said, putting his arm around her shoulders, and lighting the cigarette she had taken from his pack, "and if you are nasty to me and kill me, somebody else will come out. We are a small organization, but Holland is full of merchants. Others have seen the traffic in stolen art and drugs and have calculated the profits. And the yakusa office in Amsterdam is closed now, I hear. It will be some time before you can work your way in again. Any Japanese asking for a resident's permit will be suspect right away. It will take a lot of effort to start all over again."

"Good," she said, "so you will be coming out here all the time, and I can see you. I don't care about the yakusa losing a little business. I am only a girl in the bar. I won't lose my job. They need me; I speak English. I took an interpreter's course; they are paying me good money. In another year I will be free and can set up my own bar. They are paying me one third of my salary in cash, another third goes into a savings account which I can't touch until my contract is up."

"And the other third?"

"My mother gets it. My father is dead. The yakusa wrote the contract with my mother."

"She sold you?"

She laughed and got up, busying herself with the coffee percolator. "We don't call it selling here. Daughters are often hired out on contracts. The big factories write similar contracts. They get all their girls that way, and after some years the girls have money and they can marry. They learn all sorts of things while they are working for the factory. There are classes in the evening and during the weekends. Flower arrangement and tea ceremony and how to cook and sew and keep house and how to bring up babies. The yakusa aren't much different from the factories and the business companies. I go to classes too. I like to arrange flowers."