Yoshi wanted him to return tonight. He had promised to call when he got back from Yokohama. Well, he would call; but he wasn’t going back tonight. Tonight he had to think. It suddenly struck him that this was the fourth of the four nights he had booked at the Lucky Strike. A figure produced at random, but the right one. This was somehow an omen.
He drank his whiskey and called the house. Yoshi answered and he told him what he had to tell him. Then he hung up. It was a few minutes to midnight.
At just this moment, as it happened, the Suzaku Maru, under floodlights, was slipping out of the dry dock at Nagasaki.
17
For the first two days of September the Suzaku Maru steamed steadily through the Sea of Japan at her customary rate of nine knots. She had left behind the southern island of Kyushu and was hugging the mainland coast of Honshu. The weather was very fine and the bosun took advantage of it to turn the hands to painting ship. The hurried departure had left no time for this in harbour, and he knew her leprous appearance would produce rough treatment from the dockers at Niigata. She was in poor enough shape already.
Eight hours before Niigata the captain radioed his expected time of arrival, 1600 hours, and asked for his berth.
Would he require bunkering facilities?
No, he wouldn’t; he would be refuelling at Otaru.
He was given the berth, and went off watch. He had stood the night watch himself for he intended to sleep the rest of the day. He knew he would be up all night: the loading at Niigata was the main one of the trip and he meant to keep an eye on it.
Also his stomach was out of order. There had been much nervous excitement before he had got out of Nagasaki, and several back-handers to various officials. He knew the ship was not in the pink of condition, but there was ample time ahead to rectify what was wrong and work in both ship and crew before they reached the Arctic.
He had taken breakfast on the bridge. Now he went below to the officers’ heads, the small convenience he shared with the mate, and eased himself before going through to his cabin. He looked over the loading plan before turning in, and also initialled the note left for him by the mate authorising a six-hour shore leave for the off-duty watch.
At 1600 hours, exactly to timetable, the ship nosed into harbour, and an hour later, as unloading of wool commenced, the four off-duty men, in their best rig, trooped down the gangway and set off jovially for Taki’s place. This was the first of a round of places, just outside the dock gates, and it was usual to sink a glass in each before finally tumbling into Yasu’s. Yasu’s was the ultimate place, an enormous cellar, the liveliest and most popular of all among the seamen. Madame Yasu was herself enormous, the widow of a sumo wrestler. In his retirement her late husband had given exhibitions to the clientele, and the establishment was still known for its entertainment. At Yasu’s you could eat, drink, sing along or accompany certain of the girls upstairs, where they served as efficiently as at table: there was always a steady turnover of talent at Yasu’s.
By seven-thirty the jovial four had arrived there. The place wasn’t yet crowded and a table was promptly found for them. It was found for them by the very latest talent, and they took an immediate interest in her. For one thing she was a pert and pretty little thing, and for another she had taken an immediate interest in them, eagerly hurrying forward as they stood grinning and swaying on the entrance balcony. She efficiently took them in tow, shepherded them down the steps, and got them seated.
Madame Yasu watched the young woman’s work with approval. She liked enthusiasm in a girl, and this one was very enthusiastic. Following house etiquette, she first of all gave her own name, which was Toyo, and then invited theirs as she whipped round the menus. And she was coquettish. She avoided the groping hands but still managed a playful pat for each of them as she took their drink orders. But in serving the drinks, as Madame Yasu noted with a frown, she was less than perfect, for in announcing the names and setting down the glasses she managed to upset one, leaving a disconsolate sailor without. She rectified the accident quickly enough, and gave him an extra big one, together with a contrite little peck on the cheek while he drank it, so everything passed well enough. All the girl needed was more experience.
From the off-duty four there were no complaints. Toyo was a little beauty — not unfortunately available for duties upstairs but very willing in all other departments. The place was famous for its seafood, and she swiftly served up helpings of sashima, all fresh, raw and glistening, with seaweed and noodles, and rice amply drenched in soy sauce; together with several more drinks, not one of which the bright little girl spilled again.
By a quarter to eleven, in good heart and voice, the off-duty men were staggering back inside the dock gates and wending their way to the Suzaku Maru. She was bathed in floodlight and loading was in full progress. On the bridge the captain watched the containers swing aboard. On the deck the bosun watched his paintwork.
By ten o’clock next morning she was at sea again and settling to her stately nine knots. Not too much damage had been done to the deck works, so the bosun put the men over the side. His best chance of getting an Arctic sea coat on her lay between here and Otaru, two days away. It couldn’t all be done in the time, but beyond Otaru the weather would worsen, so he kept them at it for long hours, ignoring all grumbles; except, in the late afternoon, from one of the hands who had to be pulled up in his cradle on the grounds of feeling dizzy and unwell.
The bosun looked at him as he came up. ‘Dizzy and unwell? Of course you’re dizzy and unwell, you prick. You got pissed last night.’
‘I got pissed last night,’ the man allowed, ‘but it isn’t that. I’m not right, bosun.’
‘What’s up with you?’
‘I’m just not right.’
He wasn’t right. And he didn’t look right. He looked green. His teeth were chattering. The bosun told him to turn in for a spell. But over supper, with the engineer, the bosun was again called to the man. He had fallen out of his bunk and was shaking about so much it was a job to hold him back in it.
The bosun went to see the mate.
‘Who is he?’ the mate asked.
‘Ushiba. Seaman first class. He was ashore last night.’
‘What did he eat there?’
‘Fish. Shellfish.’
‘Ah. Food poisoning.’
‘All the others ate the same.’
‘Yes, it’s chancy, seafood. Give him castor oil.’
The effect of the castor oil was to throw the man into convulsions, and at ten o’clock the captain was sent for. By then Ushiba was vomiting black and his colour had deepened. He was still shaking violently and in a high fever. The heat could be felt radiating off him from a distance.
The captain returned to his cabin and reached for his Mariner’s Medical Dictionary. He went slowly down the list of fevers until he found the matching symptoms. At these his eyes bolted. But he read doggedly on through the rest of the fevers before returning to the fateful one. Then he reached for the voicepipe and asked the mate to step below.
‘Where’s this fellow been to?’ he asked.
The mate failed to understand the question until he too read the symptoms. Then he got out the crew records. Ushiba had last been in Java waters — East Timor. Two other members of the Suzaku Maru’s crew had been there with him. All three of them had been drunk and disorderly, and Ushiba had fallen into the harbour. The ship’s captain had paid a hefty fine for them all before being allowed to leave port the same night, 28 July.