They faced each other, wheezing, neither able to speak.
“Let me finish this meal you fixed for me,” Joe said at last.
“Won’t you say? You won’t tell me? You do know what it is, yourself; you understand and you just go on eating, pretending you don’t have any idea what I mean.” She let go of his ears; they had been twisted until they were now bright red.
“Empty talk,” Joe said. “It doesn’t matter. Like the radio, what you said of it. You know the old brownshirt term for people who spin philosophy? Eierkopf. Egghead. Because the big double-domed empty heads break so easily… in the street brawls.”
“If you feel like that about me,” Juliana said, “why don’t you go on? What are you staying here for?”
His enigmatic grimace chilled her.
I wish I had never let him come with me, she thought. And now it’s too late; I know I can’t get rid of him—he’s too strong.
Something terrible is happening, she thought. Coming out of him. And I seem to be helping it.
“What’s the matter?” He reached out, chucked her beneath the chin, stroked her neck, put his fingers under her shirt and pressed her shoulders affectionately. “A mood. Your problem—I’ll analyze you free.”
“They’ll call you a Jew analyst.” She smiled feebly. “Do you want to wind up in an oven?”
“You’re scared of men. Right?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was possible to tell last night. Only because I—” He cut his sentence off. “Because I took special care to notice your wants.”
“Because you’ve gone to bed with so many girls,” Juliana said, “that’s what you started to say.”
“But I know I’m right. Listen; I’ll never hurt you, Juliana. On my mother’s body—I give you my word. I’ll be specially considerate, and if you want to make an issue out of my experience—I’ll give you the advantage of that. You’ll lose your jitters; I can relax you and improve you, in not very much time, either. You’ve just had bad luck.”
She nodded, cheered a bit. But she still felt cold and sad, and she still did not know quite why.
To begin his day, Mr. Nobusuke Tagomi took a moment to be alone. He sat in his office in the Nippon Times Building and contemplated.
Already, before he had left his house to come to his office, he had received Ito’s report on Mr. Baynes. There was no doubt in the young student’s mind; Mr. Baynes was not a Swede. Mr. Baynes was most certainly a German national.
But Ito’s ability to handle Germanic languages had never impressed either the Trade Missions or the Tokkoka, the Japanese secret police. The fool possibly has sniffed out nothing to speak of, Mr. Tagomi thought to himself. Maladroit enthusiasm, combined with romantic doctrines. Detect, always with suspicion.
Anyhow, the conference with Mr. Baynes and the elderly individual from the Home Islands would begin soon, in due course, whatever national Mr. Baynes was. And Mr. Tagomi liked the man. That was, he decided, conceivably the basic talent of the man highly placed—such as himself. To know a good man when he met him. Intuition about people. Cut through all ceremony and outward form. Penetrate to the heart.
The heart, locked within two yin lines of black passion. Strangled, sometimes, and yet, even then, the light of yang, the flicker at the center. I like him, Mr. Tagomi said to himself. German or Swede. I hope the zaracaine helped his headache. Must recall to inquire, first off the bat.
His desk intercom buzzed.
“No,” he said brusquely into it. “No discussion. This is moment for Inner Truth. Introversion.”