Andrew Miller - One Morning Like a Bird

‘Your own?’

‘It’s good to be prepared, eh? When do you need it?’

‘Soon.’

‘How soon?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon?’

‘As soon as that . . Well, let’s see. If I can leave those boxes of Shanghai eggs at the bakers in Monzen Nakacho and find somewhere for the golf balls, the van will be empty enough.’

‘Thank you,’ says Yuji. ‘I’ll be ready.’

They smile at each other through the open window. If, thinks Yuji, Fujitomi asks him a direct question now, if he asks him the direct question, then he will answer it, directly, but Fujitomi, long conditioned by that habitual restraint of curiosity required by the pick-up and delivery business, does not ask.

‘I’ll be there at half twelve,’ he says. ‘People will be busy with the midday meal. We’ll have less of an audience.’ He revs the engine, finds the gear at the third attempt. ‘Looks like I shall have to do my own driving for a while,’ he shouts, then grins, peers from the far window to watch the road, and moves the van, in a series of lurches, into the evening traffic.

When Yuji reaches home, two men walk into the house behind him. They do it so naturally — the air of people whose right to enter this or any house is beyond debate — that Yuji, turning to face them in the vestibule, is, at first, more impressed than alarmed, as if they have performed an interesting trick, a little theatrical coup. One man is several years older than the other. They are wearing smartly pressed but inexpensive suits, the same suits Yuji saw them in outside the cemetery.

‘Surprised to see us?’ asks the elder man.

‘We know all about you,’ says the younger, taking off his shoes and leaving them neatly beside the step.

‘We’re going to have a look around,’ says the elder man. ‘You don’t mind, I hope?’

Miyo comes out of the kitchen. ‘They want to look around,’ says Yuji. She asks if she should serve tea.

‘And something sweet,’ says the elder man. ‘I’m aching for something sweet.’

With Yuji walking between them, an arrangement they seem to fall into quite naturally, they go out to the verandah, put on garden slippers, and follow the curving path of worn and irregular slabs down to the garden study. Yuji opens the door. The study is chill and slightly damp. The elder man starts smoking. As he looks along the shelves he taps his ash into the palm of his hand, then scatters it on the wooden floor. The younger one has a camera. He photographs any book with a foreign title, photographs the photograph of Father with fellow students in a rowing boat on the Sumida, summer 1911. Also the picture beside it, Father and two unidentified foreigners, one a woman, all young, none quite in focus, in front of a statue in a park in London or Paris.

In the house, in the Western room, he takes a photograph of the wireless. In the Japanese room, it’s the empty shelves beside the alcove that interest them.

They go up the stairs, open the storage cupboard, drag everything onto the landing, place in a pile — presumably for later confiscation — the jazz records, a bowler hat, a woman’s felt cloche hat, several elaborately framed portraits of unsmiling ancestors Yuji could not have begun to identify. Then they go to Yuji’s room. In here, locked inside a box of black and bronze tin, he has the telegram from Alissa (‘Arrived Tuesday. All in good health. Emile eats everything.’) He has Feneon’s address in Singapore, a roll of 340 yen and a document authorising passage on the Izu Dancer , a cargo vessel chartered by the West Japan Shipping Corporation leaving Shiminoseki on the fifteenth bound for Tourane, Singkawang, Batavia. (‘I’m in the rubber business now,’ he told Masuda. ‘And as you know, it’s a crucial time for rubber.’)

While the elder man searches through clothes, the younger lays out novels and books of poetry, arranges them first in a line and then in a square, as if it was important not just to present the evidence but to show it in a way that would be aesthetically pleasing.

‘What are these?’ asks the elder man, holding in his palm the last of Dick Amazawa’s pills.

‘I have headaches,’ says Yuji.

‘Shouldn’t read so much,’ says the younger man, who has now found the black and bronze box and is trying, with the pressure of his thumbs, to force up the lid. ‘How does this open?’ he asks.

‘There’s a key,’ says Yuji.

‘Find it.’

‘It’s just some money. Some savings.’

‘Find it.’

The key is in Yuji’s pocket. There is, he knows, not much sense in delaying the moment, but if he is about to be arrested, beaten, imprisoned, he would like a few seconds to prepare himself. Is it worth trying to run? He concentrates on not looking at the platform door. He would have only the smallest possible start on them, but if he could get outside, he could clamber down to the garden. Are they armed? Would they shoot at him? And where would he run to? Kanda? Setagaya? If they know all about him, they know about Kanda and Setagaya.

He pretends to be searching for the key among the clothes tangled on the floor. His mind, little by little, is assuming the blankness of surrender, of dumb capitulation. An hour ago he was free! Free to eat in Otaki’s, free to ride his bicycle, free to make his plans. But already it seems hard to remember it, to recall exactly how that felt. He is about to start on some schoolboy story about having lost the key, or no, given it to someone, someone whose name he has unfortunately forgotten, when the elder man lets out a sharp grunt of surprise. Yuji turns to him. The man is holding the velvet-skinned case. The case is open. The pin, in its satin crease, gleams with the self-contained glamour of a weapon.

‘This yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where d’you get it?’

Yuji tells him.

The man stares at him, stares at the pin, runs his tongue along his teeth, glances at the younger man, looks back at the pin. ‘You should have said,’ he says, a high voice, a whine. ‘Now you’ve let us embarrass ourselves. There was no need for that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Yuji.

‘We’ve lost face.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You want us to help you put this back?’ He gestures to the floor and, more generally, to the chaos on the landing.

‘There’s no need,’ says Yuji.

‘You should wear it,’ says the man, shutting the case and giving it to Yuji. ‘Save everyone a lot of trouble.’

‘Yes,’ says Yuji. ‘Thank you.’

The younger man hangs his camera over his shoulder. He winks at Yuji. ‘The key,’ he says, ‘it is in your pocket, right?’

He has a single tan suitcase with him. He is dressed plainly, the graduation suit again, the austerity hat. When he rose it was dark, when he left it was dark. Now, at six fifteen, the station’s yellow lights are switched off and a crowd of men and women are streaming through the station doors. It is morning, officially.

He has drunk tea and eaten rice in the all-night food stall by the Station Hotel, but there is something wrong with his insides. An hour after the Tokko left he was racked with stomach cramps, followed by violent diarrhoea. It has been over a week now. The cramps have stopped but the diarrhoea remains troublesome, unpredictable.

He stands by a pillar, sits on a bench, studies, as discreetly as he can, what the others do, what is normal. He lines up to buy a newspaper. When he reaches the front of the queue, he becomes confused by the coins in his hand. The vendor is irritated. Time is money. Are there more policemen at the station this morning? More uniforms? Through the clustered speakers above his head a woman’s voice, broken by amplification, is announcing the name and destination of a train. Part of the crowd peels away, advances in close formation. Yuji’s gut grips tighter. He stops, shuts his eyes, breathes. All that has led to this moment is hidden from him. What was it? What made him think he could do this, could break through the black lines? Certainly, he is no longer guided by argument, by any of those justifications he muttered to himself for hours in the sewing room. All he has left now are skin memories. The ghostly weight of a child in his arms, a woman’s hair on his face . . How can that possibly be enough?