TOKYO, 1882
Mori had a habit of walking through traffic as though he couldn’t see it. Ito usually attributed it to absent-mindedness, but at a place like Shinbashi station, it struck him as wilful. Shinbashi was the terminus of the trunk line from Yokohama, a great Western-style building with wide ticket halls that horseshoed the end of the tracks and stood twice as tall as anything around it. The road outside swarmed.
While everyone else gathered outside the station, waiting for a lull in the traffic, Mori came straight out and straight across. Ito wondered how many generations of knights it took to produce one who came with a guarantee that even a Tokyo rickshawman could spot good breeding and get out of its way. Bastardy, it seemed, was no obstacle. He looked just like his mother. The old noblemen of the court tended to say it with a certain reverence.
Of course, the good breeding was at double strength today, because he was walking with Kiyotaka Kuroda. Always vain of his name, the man was wearing all black. Even discounting his personality, Ito would have disliked him vigorously just for that. It was a special sort of bad taste for an admiral to go about advertising a name that translated into what sounded like a copycat pirate. Blackfield: between that and his triannual invasions of Korea, he might as well have sewn matches in his beard. But Mori had always liked him. Kuroda was walking close to him now, and as they approached, Ito caught snatches of their conversation, half whipped away by the passing traffic that never quite hit them.
‘—should make a fuss. Damn embarrassing.’
‘—no reason – you idiot.’
‘A baronetcy for services to the throne when you should be Duke of Choushu. Might as well have slung mud at you. Why haven’t you stabbed anyone yet?’
‘I’m better off. The castle land was requisitioned but—’
Kuroda’s voice dropped into an indistinct gutturalness that eventually resolved itself into, ‘I’d better leave you to the bookseller.’
Ito waited for Mori to defend him, but he said nothing about it. ‘Remember to come tonight.’
‘What’s happening tonight?’
‘The opening of the Rokumeikan,’ Mori said.
They were just on the pavement, a few feet away. Ito turned his back to them and watched the river to give, at least, the impression of not overhearing. It didn’t work. He felt Kuroda notice him.
‘The whatkan?’
‘The new foreigners’ residence. You burnt the invitation.’
‘Oh, that. Is it mandatory?’
‘The Emperor says so. Foreign relations.’
‘I’ll show him what foreign relations look like, when he can be bothered to stir himself and get on a battleship. Why has it got such a stupid name? What have foreigners got to do with deer? Deer Cry Hall,’ he said, pronouncing the words very separately. He had pitched his voice for Ito to hear. ‘Sounds like a pub.’
‘It’s a Chinese poem. A general sees deer grazing near his camp and thinks what good guests they make.’
‘I’ve got deer in my garden. Used to have orchids.’
‘The Americans don’t read Chinese poetry,’ Mori said, and the gem edges of his Imperial accent showed much more, suddenly, now that he had enough of the games. ‘They won’t know if we’ve accidentally called them vermin. The point is, put in an appearance. Hysterical as it would be to see the Emperor shout at you and demote you to midshipman, I really haven’t the time to soothe your ensuing alcoholism. The ball finishes at one o’clock in the morning.’
‘I’ll be there at ten to, then.’
There was a bump that sounded like an elbow meeting ribs, and then Kuroda’s sudden roar at a rickshaw boy. Ito didn’t turn around. He had no doubt Kuroda was looking back to see if he would.
Mori came to stand next to him. ‘Afternoon.’ He had a leather case over one wrist, but it was not the right shape for documents.
‘Yes, good afternoon.’ He sounded stuffy after their roughness.
‘What are we looking at?’
‘Nothing in particular.’
‘You know,’ he said in his solemn way, ‘I sometimes think this country could be quite a good place unabsorbed by the British or the Chinese if you and Kuroda could face each other without spitting.’
‘And I think it would be quite good if he would see that these parties have a far greater impact on foreign policy than any of his battleships. I hope you’ve brought a change of clothes,’ he added. Mori was in greys and old tweed and looking, as usual, chronically unofficial. ‘It’s white tie. I did tell you, ten or twelve times.’
‘I would have if you hadn’t had one of your aides bring one for me.’
Ito didn’t ask him how he knew. Mori was paid to know things and in all fairness it would have been odd if he didn’t know the whereabouts of his own dinner jacket. It was still irritating. He felt as though a trap had been laid for him.
Mori put his free hand to the rail of the bridge just before Ito felt the judder too. It began like an ordinary earthquake, but then the ground jumped and the road was full of falling rickshawmen and stumbling horses. The plant pots that decorated the upper windowsills of the station all fell and burst on to the pavement. On the river, the barges tipped. A haul of barrels splashed in and, roped together as they were, bobbed away in line.
It lasted a long time, about a minute, and when it died down, Ito straightened and tugged down his jacket, rattled. Other than the plant pots and one teetering carriage, there was no obvious damage, although of course there would be in the parts of the city where the buildings were old and wooden rather than new and stone. Wooden houses had a strangely complete way of collapsing; they fell flat, as if they were designed to be packed away. He imagined rows of little flat heaps along the canals and pushed his hand over his face.
‘Right. Let’s go and make sure our vermin hall hasn’t fallen down,’ he said, setting off at once so that Mori was left behind.
Mori caught up easily. He had lately proven himself to be one of those men designed much more for middle age than youth. Where Ito was starting to thin and grey, he had broadened from the unhappy frailty of his twenties, and brightened.
‘I’m sorry about Kuroda,’ he said.
‘No, no. I’m teasing.’
Determined not to talk about Kuroda, Ito turned over a few other things in his mind, but couldn’t find anything of substance to introduce. The point came where anything at all would have thunked in the quiet. Mori turned his head away to follow the path of a swarm of dragonflies.
They came to Hibiya Park from the small gate in the south wall. It brought them in by the lake, where the trees were turning now. The last of the cicadas had stopped singing a fortnight before, and so the place was quiet except for the hoots of the crows. Where the trees leaned together over the path, spiders hung in the lower branches, quite big enough to see easily. There was a ripping noise and Ito jumped, thinking it was the battle cry of something upset and arachnoid, but it was only Mori tearing a bouquet of seeds from a grass stem, like he always did when they came through. He smoothed his waistcoat down again and gave himself a talking to. He had grown used to the solid ground of London and Washington, and now earthquakes made him jittery.
As he turned his head, he saw a human figure among the trees. The man was standing still and watching them. He was not a groundsman; he was in a full evening suit. Ito lifted his hand, thinking that he must be an early guest come strolling, but the man did not wave back. Unsettled, Ito glanced forward again to check where he was going, and then looked back to find the man still watching them.
The ground shook again, not so badly this time, though the trees still rained down dead leaves and insects. The man had disappeared when Ito looked back a second time. He brushed bits of twig from his jacket sleeves and tried to brush off the memory of the unbroken stare. People did stare when they saw a man they knew from the newspapers, after all.
Beyond the lake, they came out into a tailored garden where small streams ran under red bridges and by new stone lanterns. Some of Ito’s aides were set up under the pagoda, drinking tea from English china. They had not yet changed for the ball, and so they were still in kimono and bowler hats, and in one case a fez.
‘Evening, sir!’ one of them called. ‘We’re about to have a game of baseball – care to join in?’
‘Oh, heavens, I can’t play baseball,’ Ito laughed. ‘But don’t let me stop the young and vigorous being young and vigorous.’
‘Mr Mori?’ he said hopefully. The aides were all frightened of Mori, but he was well known for his reflexes. ‘Please? Baseball, the modern man’s swordsmanship?’
‘Not … this time, thank you,’ said Mori. The young man winced.
Ito nudged his arm. ‘Be kind.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Well then, come down off your high horse and take off your damn armour: you’re clanking,’ Ito said. He had meant it to be a joke, but it came out snappishly. ‘And while you’re at it, you might see Kuroda less often. I know I said liaise, but you’re on the point of turning it into a liaison, if you haven’t already.’
‘All right. Our plans to overthrow everyone in cufflinks are almost complete anyway.’
Ito sighed. He yearned for a row, sometimes. ‘Do warn me, when you act on them. Are there bombs in that briefcase?’
‘No. He’s going to be an octopus.’
‘Octopus?’
‘I want a pet,’ Mori explained, insufficiently.
‘Gone off your bees?’ Mori kept bees. He lived in the middle of nowhere, in Shibuya, next door to a monastery. He let the monks come in to collect the honey. The hives had glass sides so that you could see when the combs were ready, and the peristalsis writhing of the drones. Ito had always hated them and asked why he bothered with them at the beginning of every visit, because Mori was hardly a keen entomologist, but he never had much in the way of a reply.
‘They aren’t pets.’
‘Then … I know a fellow who sells puppies?’
‘Clockwork doesn’t bark all the time and it’s easier to take on a ship.’
‘I’ve told you, you’re not going to England until you explain why.’
‘And I’ve told you, I’ve a friend in London.’
‘No, you haven’t got a friend in London. You’ve never been to London, and you don’t write to anyone.’
‘I’m not secret-selling to the British,’ he said.
‘But you can see why this worries me?’
‘I’ve been telling you for years, you can’t say you’ve had no notice.’
Ito was quiet, because it was true; after having initially said he would leave in ten years, Mori had brought it up every now and then to show he meant it. But he had never explained, and lately it had begun to make Ito nervous. That being so, he had given Mori’s photograph to every harbourmaster between here and Nagasaki, and strict instructions. He had no doubt that Mori knew, because he could feel the heaviness in these moments when neither of them mentioned it. Or perhaps Mori would have mentioned it now, because he looked as if he wanted to say something, but then he put his hand in front of his face and caught the baseball that would otherwise have broken his nose. A flock of apologies came from the aides and whatever it was he had meant to say was forgotten.
There was, near the edge of the lawn, an enormous, ancient pear tree. Mori veered to it and dropped his handful of seeds among the long grass that had already grown around the trunk. He did the same thing whenever they came, and by now he had cultivated a lush patch of the stuff. He had a pathology of un-neatening overly neat things that matched his aversion to new houses and ironing his shirts. It was no accident he had chosen the one spot the gardeners absolutely could not mow without resorting to a pair of nail scissors. The roots were risen and twisting, and they wrapped all about the trunk making nooks and pools of withered pears, and little havens for weeds.
In the warm evening, the Rokumeikan was a rosy colour. A double bank of Roman arches ran the whole width of the building, one along the ground and one along the balcony above. Even in comparison to the train station, which was hardly elderly, it was magnificently new and clean. The earthquake had not unseated even a tile, which did not surprise him now he was here. It had a look of immense permanency, like a church. As they crunched on to the gravel drive, the great double doors of the balcony opened, and the Foreign Minister’s young wife stepped out, already in her evening gown. The air was so still that Ito heard the silk hiss. The gown was Parisian, the bodice a sheaf of grey and pink pearls that sheened.
‘Oh, hello, gentlemen,’ she called down. She spoke English with a beautiful American accent. ‘Baron Mori, it’s been such a long time! What do you think, now the scaffolding is gone? Will all those fussy foreigners take us seriously now?’
He shook his head once. ‘No. The moment they take Japan seriously will be the moment she defeats an existing Western power in a war of sufficient significance.’
She was a woman of grace, and so she laughed. ‘But I guess it’s better to try a dance hall before we order a thousand ironclads from Liverpool, right?’
‘Exactly right,’ Ito said, kicking Mori’s ankle. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been working him too hard, Countess Inoue, he’s forgotten what few social graces he used to have.’
‘Oh, it’s okay. It’s important to have blunt men around. Why don’t you come in?’
Ito pushed Mori to the door before he could refuse, and the Countess turned inside again. Another little earthquake rattled the teacup she had left on the banister. Behind them, the pear tree creaked.
*
Few by few, the grand ballroom filled with glittering girls and tall foreigners in military tails or white ties. So many purple banners waved in the heat of the lamps that it felt to Ito like being inside an inflating hot-air balloon. Imperial chrysanthemums crowded everywhere, on the stairway, round the doors, in looping arches around the floor, a forest’s worth. Over the past year, Ito and Count Inoue had poured more than fourfold more funds into this building than had gone into the new Foreign Ministry, and it showed. Mori of course had looked at it as if it were a casino and taken himself and his case of clockwork off to the balcony, which was empty except for six of the Empress’s ladies, who had lost no time in making it clear they had been ordered to come.
Ito turned away from the buffet with a saucer full of chocolate strawberries to find the man from the woods looking at him across the room. Ito looked back at him, thinking that there must be something wrong with him. The man began to walk toward him, and as he passed under a chandelier, it traced the shape of his hands in his pockets, and the gun in his left. Ito stood still and realised that he was about to die holding a plate of chocolate strawberries. He couldn’t move, only think how stupid it was.
Mori stepped between a pair of dancers as they spun and stood between Ito and the man. Ito lurched, because every inch of him expected a gunshot, but the man only froze and stared at him. Mori handed him a slip of folded paper. Without opening it, the man turned from him and almost ran.
Ito swallowed, and after what felt like a long time, set down the saucer and went to Mori.
‘Who was that?’ he said.
He saw Mori prepare a lie about the man having needed directions to the balcony, but then give up on it. ‘Assassin.’
‘What was that paper you gave him?’
‘I didn’t give him anything.’
‘You did, I saw.’
‘I didn’t.’
Ito made an impatient noise that his wife would have called rude. He would have too, if he had been talking to someone less impervious. ‘You are an astonishingly poor liar, for an intelligence officer. I’ll go and ask him, shall I?’
‘Ito—’
‘What, something else you don’t want me to know?’ he snapped as he made for the stairs.
Mori lifted his hands but didn’t bother to chase him. Ito was downstairs in time to see the man running through the front door.
The fine afternoon had turned into a cool night. The wind was up and even from the drive, he could hear the old pear tree shivering. The man was going that way now. Ito hesitated before he stepped off the drive and on to the grass, but then, feeling angry with himself, followed more quickly. Kuroda had once said that the difference between noblemen and commoners was the same as that between warhorses and donkeys. Mori was modern but not liberal. He thought the same, Ito knew he did. He had let him go because he thought the bookseller’s boy would, as an inevitable consequence of his unimpressive breeding, prove a coward.
The man slowed as he reached the pear tree. Ito moved to the left so that he would not pass from view, and saw that there was a horse there too, grazing its way through Mori’s patch of long grass. The man stopped and stood still. He had unfolded the piece of paper. As Ito watched, the man took out his watch and took more than usual care over the time, then looked around, all the way, so that Ito had to duck behind a hedge. Then he screwed up the paper and shoved it in his pocket, shaking his head as if he thought he had been conned somehow. His hand went to the gun again and he stood fingering it, but didn’t move back toward the hall. He glanced around, as though waiting for something, but nobody else was coming.
‘What did he give you, just now?’
The man jumped and held up the gun.
‘If you’re afraid of him now, I wouldn’t like to imagine what he will be like if you kill me,’ he said quickly. Hiding behind Mori’s name became no less shameful when the man let his hand fall again.
Looking anguished, the man took out the piece of paper instead and came across to show him. As he did, the earth gave a little shrug, the last of the aftershocks, and the pear tree crashed down an inch from the horse. The horse shrieked and bolted. The man stared at the tree. Ito took the piece of paper from his hand.
It was a list of names, dates, and times. There were five. The final name was listed by today’s date, beside which was the time, nine forty-seven. Ito pulled out his watch. The minute hand was just now easing to nine forty-eight.
‘Is your name Ryosuke, then?’ he asked into the echoing quiet. It was not silence; the broken tree trunk was still clicking, and the air was full of insects disturbed by the fall. A waltz reached them quite clearly from the open doors of the club. There was a shadow of earth in the grass. The tree had fallen so hard that it had ploughed a harrow.
‘Yes.’ The man pulled his gaze away from the tree again. ‘I should find my horse,’ he said in a faraway voice.
‘Wait. Who are these others?’
The man looked at him strangely. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘No?’
‘They came after you too. He killed them all.’
Ito stopped following him. ‘What?’
‘I’ve got to find—’
‘Wait!’ Ito called after him, but he did not wait, and because the horse had run into the denser trees near the lake, he disappeared within twenty yards, into the dark.
The offices of the Choya Newspaper Company were closed by the time he arrived. Having made a good deal of money from being leery of the new government, they had acquired a grand brick building in Ginza, in sight of the clock tower, with high pillars and a fine arched doorway. The door was locked, but there was a lit window on the ground floor. When he tapped on it, a young man came out with a fountain pen stuck under the left strap of his braces. He stopped still when he recognised his visitor.
‘All due respect, Mr Ito, sir, but you cannot come and shout at us for reporting the news, however unfavourable it happens to be for the government—’
‘I’m not here to shout at you, I’m here to ask if I might look at your archives. Particularly obituaries, if you keep them. I’m terribly sorry for the late hour, but I’m afraid it’s urgent and newspapers keep altogether better records than the ministry does.’
‘Oh, of course,’ the young man said, perplexed. ‘We keep everything in the cellar. I’ll just unlock … ’
Ito followed him inside, down a shallow flight of steps to a cold cellar. Leaving behind two lamps, the young man retreated, and Ito had to explore a little to get his bearings. Six or seven years’ worth of papers had been stored in wide drawers – flat, first and uncorrected editions. They were in good order, and it did not take him long to find the broadsheets for the dates on the note.
The newsprint crackled as he sifted through it. Because the cabinets were wood and the drawers not sealed, the summer damp had got inside a few, and in some places sheets were stuck together, rendered so thin that they looked and felt like a single page that had been over-printed twice. It was on one of these that he found the first name. He had to bring the sheet right out and hold it over a light box to read it properly. He had expected a shooting or a mugging, but the man in question had been struck by lightning. He had been poaching birds in the grounds of the Palace, it said, and the lightning had struck him through his rifle.
The second man had been killed in a traffic accident in Kojimachi. By then, Ito’s eyes were beginning to sting from the close focus and the difficult light, but he found the third too. Caught in the crossfire of a robbery, again very close to Kojimachi, perhaps two streets away from Ito’s own house. He vaguely remembered hearing of it at the time, but not in detail. Of the fourth man, though, there was no mention, even in the days surrounding the one on the note. He sat back and pulled off his spectacles, and looked over at the enormous cabinets. It would take his entire staff weeks to sift through everything in search of one name, and even as he tried to think of ways to do it, he could see it was hopeless. But three was enough to be getting on with. Three men dead in accidents, a fourth unaccounted for and a fifth whose possible accident had been predicted to the minute. Ito sat gazing down at the crumpled note, translucent over the light box. He had always assumed that Mori’s knack for pre-empting things was subconscious.
When he sat back, he thought that his watch was wrong. He had been there only for an hour and a half; it was not yet midnight. He stood up slowly, stiff, and put everything back before making his way up the stairs. The young journalist nodded as he saw him out, his fountain pen hooked over his pocket this time. Ito stepped outside into the cool air, knowing that he would have to walk back. The street was deserted now. The rickshawmen had long since got cold and gone home, and the trains had stopped an hour ago. It was less than a mile, but he was tired and felt disproportionately grateful when hooves clopped along beside him, and a black horse huffed at a firefly that had looped too close to its nose. The firefly veered off and, to Ito’s tired eyes, left behind a trail of light.
‘Mr Ito?’ the driver said.
Ito looked up. ‘Yes?’
‘To the Rokumeikan?’
‘Oh, thank God. You did well to recognise me in the dark.’
‘Well, I was told to pick up the man on the steps of the newspaper office, and there was only you,’ the man laughed.
Ito fell quiet. ‘I don’t suppose a Mr Mori made the reservation.’
‘Didn’t get a name, sorry. Do you still want the carriage?’ he added anxiously.
‘Yes – yes.’ Ito climbed up and lapsed on to the leather seat.
As the cab stopped gently on the gravel drive, he saw Mori on the balcony. He was working at something by lamplight. Although he must have heard them, he did not look down. Threading his way through the foyer and the crowded stairway, where people had lined the rail to watch the dancing from above, Ito went up to him. Even the white men didn’t have to duck to pass through the chrysanthemums.
Mori’s lamp shone over the cogs spilled across the table top. Among them were sparks that cast rainbows. Ito sat down opposite. Under Mori’s hands, the octopus was recognisable but split open, and there was a galaxy of clockwork inside. Parts of it glittered different colours to others, some bigger, some tiny and buried deep, all making winking networks of shapes that shifted and clicked softly, like something sleeping.
‘You were planting grass seeds under that tree six months ago,’ Ito said at last.
‘Yes,’ Mori said to the octopus. He was wearing glasses; Ito could see the clockwork reflected in the lenses. The rainbow-making sparks were diamonds. As he clicked another cog into place, a new section of the workings began to spin. The moving bearings threw more bright specks inside the casing.
‘Those other men, the ones on the list. They were all near the Palace or in Kojimachi. They were going to kill me, weren’t they?’
‘Yes.’ He was still speaking to the clockwork. Ito could not have said when it had begun, but he became aware then that the mechanisms were singing. It was a strange noise, one that made the hairs on his arms prickle. It was the after-tone of a struck tuning fork. ‘The last one believed me and went to a monastery in Kyoto.’
He was speaking as he always did, dry and clear.
‘Why would you let me find out about this?’ Ito said at last. He felt like he had when he had broken his wrist. Altogether worse than pain was that maddeningly clear vision of having not tripped, not broken anything, when logic held up a lamp in the straight tunnel that time drove humans through, and showed that the walls were made of glass. His chest was stiff with the dismay of it. He could still see what would have happened if he hadn’t chased the man to the pear tree. He need only have decided, as he often did that, like gravity and wives, Mori was one of those things best trusted and not over-scrutinised. He realised Mori was waiting for him to finish the question.
‘You can kill a man by planting grass seeds in the right place. What can I possibly do now that I know that? Take your word for it that Kiyotaka Kuroda won’t one day persuade you that world war is a good idea?’ He could hear his voice rising but couldn’t stop it. ‘He’s on the edge of it already. I should lock you up and throw away the key.’
‘It was necessary to frighten you. Now you won’t send anyone after me when I go to the ship,’ he said. ‘There’s no point stabbing a man when you can arrange for him not to be in the way in the first place.’
‘Oh, how philanthropic of you! Are you going to enlighten me about London now? What’s there? What’s so damn important?’
‘A friend, like I said.’
‘There isn’t.’
‘He hasn’t met me yet.’
‘I can’t let you go anywhere.’
Mori let his breath out. The last of the clockwork across the table was gone now. He clicked the octopus’s hatch closed and the thing shifted, waking, and wound its tentacles through his hands. He lifted it into his lap. ‘I’m sorry about this. It’s the only way to make you change your mind.’
‘Oh, do your worst, I think you’ll find—’
‘Your wife is unknowingly but extremely allergic to bee stings,’ Mori interrupted, quietly.
Ito fell still. ‘No.’
Mori only watched him, as if he were very far away.
‘Get out !’ Ito exploded, and didn’t care that it made the court ladies jump.
Mori did as he was told. The octopus sat with its beak on his arm. Ito half thought it would wave, but it didn’t. Once they were gone, he leaned forward against his elbows and pushed his hands through his hair. He had always prided himself on his politics. Not left or right or old or new, but the mechanics of it: compromise, diplomacy, and the avoidance of war, which was what happened when statesmen failed. War was punching the clock instead of looking at the broken mechanisms. He had never failed like that in his life. He normally made fun of people who flew into rages. He closed his eyes and waited for his heart to subside, but it cantered on and on.
The balcony door opened and Kuroda came through, looking left and right. Ten to one already.
‘You’ve just missed Mori,’ Ito said. ‘He’s gone to England.’
‘Mm,’ he said, unbothered, and began to turn inside again.
‘Kuroda,’ he said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘About Korea.’ He had to pause and feel his way around the idea. ‘It frightens you. Why does it frighten you?’
The admiral looked as though a dog had sat up and talked. ‘The Chinese, of course.’
‘Why? We have the treaty—’
‘Balls. Ask your British friends what they think about treaties.’
Ito took a deep breath. ‘Just … come here a moment and tell me what would be best.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean I’m not a military man. I need someone to explain.’
Still frowning, Kuroda bent into Mori’s seat and etched a map on the mahogany table top with his penknife. Ito winced, but stopped when Kuroda pointed it at him to ask if there was something he wanted to say. When the dawn came, the clouds were like smoke. He thought of trains and ships, and Mori probably already on the sea. Now that he was calmer, he was confused. Mori was rich enough to persuade anyone who followed him to stop, without giving himself away. He sighed. Kuroda gave him a salt cellar to hold in place of the Russian fleet and told him to pay attention.