“I would have told him about parasites like you.”
“Besides me, what else?”
“That his troops were ready to carry out any mission and overcome any enemy, but that our real enemy on the mainland was not China but Russia, who is happy to see us waste our blood against the Chinese. I would have said we are no longer at war with any aim but to assure obscene profits for Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Datsun as we buy their tanks and guns. I would have told him that the army with the purest ideals in the world has become an opium broker. I would have said that I no longer recognize the army I have served in for twenty years. I no longer recognize myself.”
That wasn’t what Harry had expected. Insight and feelings, they always stun us coming from another human being, Harry thought. Especially from a murderer.
“You’re against the war?”
“No, but I am for a war with honor.”
“Against both the Bolsheviks and the capitalists?”
“Yes.”
“Against the workers and the owners? At what point does this touch on reality?”
“Japanese reality is different.”
Harry had heard that the moon was different in Japan, the cherry trees were different, the seasons were different, the mountains were different, the rice was different. Add them all up and he supposed that reality itself was different. Japanese swords were different.
“Okay.”
“Japanese are different because they live for an ideal, for the veneration of the emperor. Without the ideal, we do not deserve an empire. The idea that Izanami and Izanagi came down from heaven is ridiculous, of course. That the emperor is a living god is a myth. But it is a transformative myth that makes every Japanese godlike. It is an ideal, an ambition that lifts us to heaven.”
“Too much ambition. There’s a war memorial at Kyoto of forty thousand Korean ears. Has to look like chopped squid. You have to be really ambitious to collect forty thousand ears.”
“It’s a start.”
“It’s the cult of the sword. Yamato spirit. The need of attack.”
“Always attack, that’s true.”
Harry was aware of being a little drunk, but he also felt he was on to something. “Ten Japanese against one enemy, attack. One Japanese against ten enemies, attack.”
“The element of surprise is decisive.”
“Always close combat.”
“The closer the better,” Ishigami agreed.
“Bayonet work.”
“A man with a sword is worth ten rifles. War is spiritual. What is your ideal, Harry?”
“Decent odds and an honest game, I ask nothing more. What would you say my chances are of cutting cards to an ace ten times in a row? If I do it, you let me go, and I’ll even dispose of the body in the other room. You have a brilliant military record and a great future ahead of you. Don’t throw them both away for vengeance on some lowlife like me. Remember your obligations. The army needs you in China. The emperor needs you in China. Ten cards. That’s fate.”
Ishigami touched his sword. “This is fate.”
“So serious, you two. Like a pair of monks.” Michiko frowned at them. “We should sing silly songs. Anyone serious is too sober.”
Harry wished he could see some drunkenness or inattention on Ishigami’s part, but the colonel seemed to burn off alcohol like a spirit lamp. He also seemed willing to indulge Michiko. Geisha had that talent.
“Well, what shall we sing?” Ishigami asked.
Michiko said, “I have just the song. And to make it interesting, as Harry often says, there will be a little wager. Whoever fails to sing the chorus in one breath must drink his sake in one swallow.”
“What if we don’t know the song?” Harry asked.
“Oh, you will know it,” she said. “But I will go first to make it easy for you.”
She sat up straighter and began,
“This is the song of the frog
I can hear the sound of it…”
With even the first words, memory flooded back. This was one of the first songs learned by all Japanese children. Harry remembered being in kindergarten, seated next to the open window on a rainy day, picking at the elbow of his sweater and looking wistfully out at a canal while the entire classroom sang in a round,
“Croak…croak…croak…croak.
Croakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroak.”
Michiko finished like a cat with cream on its whiskers, and Ishigami picked up the song. Did they sing this childish round at the Peers’ School, too? Harry wondered. At the most exclusive school on earth, set on the imperial palace grounds, had the young Ishigami’s eyes wandered to the moat? Apparently so, because he sang with gusto, imparting animation to the call of the frog:
“Croakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroak.”
It was funny, it was undeniably silly. It was a geisha party with a macabre hilarity built out of Michiko’s laughs, Ishigami’s baritone frog, the sheer innocence of the song, the unsheathed sword on the table and the invisible DeGeorge in the next room.
“Your turn, Harry,” Michiko said.
Harry cleared his throat. He wasn’t going to wait any longer, because sooner or later Ishigami was going to kill him, either in the house or in the street. He would come up one “croak” short, lift his cup and throw his hot sake in Ishigami’s eyes. He figured the odds of snatching the sword first were about even. Of prevailing with the long sword against Ishigami’s short sword-realistically, factoring in skill-about four to one against. Not the best odds. Like a game of Fifty-two Pickup, it was going to be messy. Ishigami liked attack, surprise, close work? Harry would try to give it to him. The question was what Michiko would do.
Harry had a tenor that he roughed up when he sang along with Fats or Louie, but it fit nicely to a child’s tune. “I hear the song of the frog…” He reminded himself to stay relaxed; Ishigami would sense a tensing of the shoulders.
“Croakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroakcroak.”
“That was only nine croaks,” Michiko said.
“Ten,” Harry protested.
“Nine. You lose,” said Ishigami.
“I counted ten,” Harry said.
“Nine!” Both Michiko and Ishigami shouted Harry down.
“Drink up, that’s your penalty,” Michiko said, but when she went to fill his cup, the sake flask was empty. “A second.”
“Cold sake is fine,” Harry said.
“No, no, it’s not such good sake, it’s better hot.”
Ishigami gathered his sword. “Maybe Harry and I should go now. We will see who we meet in the street.”
“No,” Michiko insisted. “Harry has to pay. I have the sake on a hot plate. It will be ready in a minute.” She returned to the table and smiled like a doll. “That was fun. We should sing some more. Please?”
“Very well,” Ishigami said.
“Sure,” said Harry.
From her knees, Michiko sang a ditty about a virgin learning “The Forty-eight Positions,” suggesting with her fingers the more complicated ones. She acted a scene between a beauty and a flea. It was all puerile and inane. What was most maddening to Harry was how attractive Michiko was. He noticed where perspiration had eroded the white paint behind her ear. No one ever touched a geisha’s face, that would be like smearing a painting, but he felt the impulse to pull her mouth down to his and taste the red bud of her lip. Geisha wore nothing underneath the kimono. Harry wanted to slip his hand through the folds of her ice-blue kimono and raise his hand between the two columns of her legs to listen to the sound of the bells in her hair.
She told Ishigami, “Now you sing.”
“My voice is too poor.”
“No, we heard you before. Besides, you are a hero, you shouldn’t be afraid. Something humorous.”
Ishigami paused and then erupted into “Camptown ladies sing this song, doo-dah, doo-dah, Camptown racetrack five miles long, oh! doo-dah day…” The Japanese loved Stephen Foster. Harry didn’t understand why, but they had made Foster Japanese.
Ishigami finished red-faced and pleased. Harry clapped dutifully. “Sake ready?”
“Sing,” Michiko said. “Something humorous. No jazz.”