It was like a game of cat and mouse. Except he didn’t know if he was the cat or the mouse. He would be eating his breakfast and suddenly, there she was, just beyond the dining room window, carrying a basket of linen across the stepping stones of the pond. He couldn’t remember if she had always performed this task at this time of day and he had never noticed, or whether this was a completely new occurrence. He would go out to his workplace by the waterwheel and a tray with tea and biscuits would be waiting. He would return to his room after dinner and the bed would be turned down, a lamp conveniently left on and the scent of her green tea perfume still lingering. Each swish of kimono or pad of footsteps in the corridor had him turning his head or rushing to the corner for a glimpse of her. But she evaded his capture. Until one evening he decided to stay in his room rather than go down to the dining room. He sat by the window in an armchair, the curtains cracked open to reveal the shadowy outlines of the furniture. As he waited, he realised how excited he was at the prospect she might turn up. It reminded him of the times he used to wait for Macy. Heart racing, mind restless, limbs restless, until the thrill of anticipation peaked and he was left with the disappointment of her non-appearance. But there was a sweetness in Sumiko’s toying with him while with Macy there had been a vindictive edge to the way she drew him in then pushed him away.
A light tapping on the door. His body tensed. He regretted not having a glass of Scotch by his side, a cigarette between his fingers. Lock turning, door opening slowly. A glow from the hallway. A petite female figure entering. The light snapped on. Sumiko. A large ring of keys in her hand. He leapt out of the armchair. That had not been his intention. Rather he had depicted himself casually delivering some Japanese bon mot from his chair. But a baser instinct had prevailed, propelling him from his seat. He grabbed her. And she screamed. Another instinct forced his hand over her mouth. She was shaking so much he thought she might collapse to the floor. Keys jangling. He pulled his hand away from her mouth. A speechless, choking sound in her throat. Her eyes bulging. What was he doing? Why had he not thought this through?
‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘God. I’m so sorry.’
She shook her head from side to side. Like an hysterical puppy. With one hand, he reached out for the door, pulled it wide open. She spun out of his grasp, ran out of the room.
He slept fitfully, the episode with Sumiko making him feel no better a person than her GI pursuer he had tripped in the corridor, reminding him of how he had behaved in Brighton with Macy. He twisted and turned so much during the night that at one point he fell out of bed. The tight wind of the blankets had saved him so that he burst awake to find himself dangling in mid-air with his shoulder swinging just above the floor. His subconscious had betrayed his body. It had ignored the usual boundaries and taken a leap into the void. He hauled himself back into bed. The incident had scared him, making him suspicious of his own nature. If it happened again, he would have to sleep on a futon.
At breakfast, he remained tense to her possible appearance in the garden outside the dining room window. He ate too quickly, spilled tea over his newspaper. He could now add indigestion to lack of sleep as part of his condition for the day. He wondered how she felt, what she thought he had been trying to do to her. What had he been trying to do to her?
‘Mind if I join you?’
Jerome Fisk. In his cream suit, the American looking more colonial servant than academic. Without waiting for a response, Fisk pulled out a chair, sat down. A waiter swiftly moved into attendance, laying out a second place.
‘The American breakfast,’ Fisk said, ignoring the menu. ‘You look like shit, pal. Are you ill or something?’
‘Slept badly.’
Fisk peered over at his tray. ‘Could be all that Jap food making you restless. Miso soup, natto, grilled fish. At this time of day. You gotta be kidding.’
‘An acquired taste,’ Edward said, looking down at the fish skeleton left over from his own breakfast. ‘Just like kippers really.’ He picked up his knife and fork, scraped a last remnant of flesh off the bones, popped it into his mouth as if to prove his point. ‘How’s the wonderful world of academia?’ he asked.
‘For you writers, it’s a case of publish and be damned. For me it’s publish or be damned,’ Fisk said, laughing too loud at his own joke, causing a Japanese couple at the next table to visibly stiffen.
‘What’s your research about?’
‘Really interested, Eddie? Or just being a polite Brit?’
‘Bit of both.’
Fisk cleared his throat. ‘A linguistic theory I’m putting forward about the Japanese. The way they put the verb at the end of the sentence.’
‘Meaning?’
‘The Japanese want to know all the details first before they take action. Same with the Germans and their verb.’
‘And we English-speakers?’
‘Oh, that’s easy. We’re all about “I” with a big capital letter. Even in the middle of a sentence. Only culture to do that. But usually it’s “I” right at the beginning followed by the verb. We put our big selves first, then we do the action, then we worry about the details later. I, I, I, I. That’s what we English-speakers are all about. But does our grammar create our culture of egoism? Or our culture create our grammar?’
‘Well? Which is it?’
‘Haven’t decided yet. What do you reckon?’
‘I’d need time to think about it. But it’s an interesting thesis.’
‘Thanks. I believe it explains the obsessive deliberation of the Japanese before they decide to do anything. They want to know the who, where, how and why of everything before they move their asses. We Yanks and you Brits. We just jump on in, work out the details later.’
‘Seems accurate.’
‘You think so?’
He was about to answer when Fisk suddenly placed a hand on his arm.
‘Hey, look at that little doll.’
That little doll was Sumiko. She had emerged into the garden from one of the side doors, holding a large pile of sheets in both hands. Despite her load, she walked remarkably upright. Edward could just see her face above the top sheet. Her steady forward gaze, eyes showing no sign of a sleepless night. Fisk’s presence was a fortunate distraction. He could focus on the man’s striped tie, the leery eyes, the throat purple-raw and noduled from shaving. He could feel his own skin become hot as he struggled to hold his gaze away from the window.
‘Don’t know what to make of them,’ Fisk said, shaking his head as if in a memory of some previous encounter. ‘Do you?’
‘Not really,’ Edward responded, not sure whether Fisk meant Japanese women or just women in general.
‘Excuse me, gentlemen.’
Ishikawa, the hotel manager, had arrived at their table along with the waiter and Fisk’s breakfast. The manager bowed, the morning sun reflecting blindingly on his thick lenses. ‘I am sorry to disturb you. But I must announce that lunch will be served in the terrace-lounge today. The Honourable Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, will be hosting a private luncheon in this room on behalf of the Indo-Japan Friendly Society from twelve o’clock. I trust that this will not inconvenience you in any way.’
‘I’m sure we can cope, Ishikawa-san,’ Edward said. ‘I read of the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Japan. But I didn’t realise he would be staying at this hotel.’
‘Regretfully, Mr Strathairn, that will not be the case. I believe the Honourable Prime Minister has to return to Tokyo this evening.’
Ishikawa remained by the table, rubbing his hands together in what appeared to be gleeful anticipation. ‘And if I may also inform you,’ he continued. ‘Tonight there is to be a performance by the great Chinese illusionist Hu Wei in the Magic Room. Your attendance would be most welcome.’
‘The staff call him binzoko,’ Fisk said after Ishikawa had left. ‘Bottle bottoms. Because of the specs. Not to his face, of course. Coffee?’
‘No, thanks.’ Edward glanced out of the window. Sumiko had already completed her passage across the pond and was gone, the door of her exit left half-open. To add to his misery, a fish bone had wedged itself between two of his back teeth. He tried to dislodge it with his tongue.
‘What about your novel?’ Fisk asked.
‘Yes, my novel. I am working on the first draft.’
‘Well, what’s it called?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That’s an odd thing. Not having a title.’
‘Not really.’ To his relief, the bone had wriggled free. He picked it out of his mouth, wiped it on to his napkin. ‘I believe that anyone who ever says he’s got a wonderful title for a book will never write it,’ he added, stealing one of Aldous’ many pronouncements on literary endeavour.
Jerome looked chastened. As if he had such a wonderful title stored up there in his brain beside all his linguistic theories.
‘So what’s it about then, Eddie? Can you at least tell me that?’
‘I took your advice. It’s about American colonialism in Japan.’
‘I suggested that?’
‘The night I caught the soldier chasing the chambermaid. Coincidentally, it was that girl we just saw in the garden.’
‘Actually, I think it’s going to be a love story. But the underlying theme concerns the Tokyo fire-bombings, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Especially Nagasaki.’
‘Why especially Nagasaki?’
Edward knew he should back off but there was something about Jerome Fisk and his American breakfasts that made him want to continue. ‘Yes, Nagasaki. A monstrous act.’
‘It brought the war to a quick end, Eddie. Saved tens of thousands of lives. Both American and Japanese.’
‘That’s the official narrative. But the fire-bombings had already brought Japan to its knees. They were ready to surrender even before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. But even if I could forgive you Yanks for Hiroshima, Nagasaki was completely unnecessary. An utter disregard for civilian life.’
‘You really think so?’ Fisk chomped down on a piece of toast. There were buttery crumbs on his chin. ‘So why did we evil Americans do it then?’
‘To finish off the Japanese before the Russians got involved in the war in the East. And to show off your devastating weaponry, thereby proving who’d be in charge in the post-war world.’
‘That’s a dangerous thesis, Eddie. I’d keep that one to yourself. A lot of our boys who were fighting in the Pacific are still based here. They wouldn’t take too kindly to what you’re suggesting.’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m telling you straight. Bombing Nagasaki was an act of pure evil. The Emperor was ready to surrender. Then seventy thousand civilians wiped out for no reason. What was that all about? It’s about time you Yanks did some soul-searching. Instead of hiding behind this “saved so many lives” story.’
‘Like I said, Eddie, there are a lot of guys who wouldn’t take too kindly to what you’re suggesting.’
‘And like I said, Fisk. It’s a love story.’
Fisk dabbed his lips with his napkin, rose to his feet. ‘Well, don’t make it a love story to the Japanese. They had their fair share of evil acts too. Just ask the residents of Nanking about that. Or any of the survivors of the Bataan Death March. Hey, maybe I’ll see you tonight in the Magic Room.’
The Honourable Jawaharlal Nehru had returned to Tokyo but several members of his entourage remained. Edward had seen them loitering in the dining room, milling around in the corridors, strolling in the gardens. A noisy, animated bunch enveloped in clouds of pungent tobacco smoke as they got down to the serious business of politics. Divided strictly by gender and colour of garment – the men in their baggy white cotton clothes, the women in colourful swathes of silk. By the time he arrived at the Magic Room almost all the seats were taken by these distinct groups of Indian men and women.
Earlier in the day, he’d caught a glimpse of Nehru in his trademark frock coat and white cap, addressing the packed luncheon. He marvelled at how the presence of just this one man could create such a stir among the staff and guests. The hotel so puffed up for the event, Edward imagined he could hear the beams and plaster crack with pride. Limousines stacked up in the forecourt, their capped drivers, arms folded, leaning carelessly against the expensive paintwork. Journalists, photographers, police officers, all adding to the excitement. An excitement that remained and carried over as a palpable buzz to the Magic Room, this salon off the main reception area, where the guests chatted and smoked as they awaited the commencement of the evening’s entertainment.
He scanned the room, trying to locate Sumiko among the few members of staff in attendance. He had not seen her since her morning cameo in the garden. She had not come out to the waterwheel to deliver his afternoon tea nor had she attended to his room while he had been at dinner. He worried that he had scared her to the point of leaving her employment.
‘Hey, Eddie.’ Fisk shouting, pointing frantically to the empty seat beside him. ‘Come sit here.’
Edward pushed his way through a bevy of Indian woman to the front of the room.
‘Kept one for you, pal.’
‘Just being an evil American. Did you see him?’
‘Who?’
‘The great man. Nehru.’
‘Only in passing.’
‘I got to shake his hand.’ Fisk wriggled his palm at him as if it still retained some essence of the Indian leader.
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘Wished him good luck.’
‘Good luck for what?’
‘I don’t know. That’s a big country he’s running.’
‘The show’s about to start.’
‘Yeah, like I’m going to see the Great Houdini or something.’
‘Maybe you will.’
Ishikawa performed the task of master of ceremonies, introducing Hu Wei to the audience first in Japanese then in English. The internationally-acclaimed illusionist was a thin, elderly gentleman who bore all the usual characteristics of his trade – the wispy beard, the pantaloons, the wide-sleeved silk coat embroidered with gold dragons. More impressive was the Chinaman’s air of aloofness, as if he were here this evening to pass on the mysteries of his ancestors, but only if he deemed the audience worthy of receiving them.
The illusionist started off modestly. Rings were linked and unlinked with ease, silk handkerchiefs changed colour, a needle was passed through a balloon. Edward had seen a similar performance at the Glasgow Hippodrome with his father just before the war. It was all very ho-hum. He was just about to slip away when Hu Wei announced in English:
‘Many of you may have seen an illusionist cut a woman in half. But tonight I will go one stage further.’ He stretched out an arm to beckon the arrival of two of the hotel staff carrying a long, pale-green wooden box, which was placed on top of a covered table.
‘Tonight I will cut a woman into three parts. Please. My assistant for this evening.’
And there she was. Sumiko. Shuffling on to centre stage, dressed in her traditional kimono, her face painted with thick white make-up. She bowed to the audience, her eyelids fluttering, the stage lights reflecting the perspiration on her upper lip. She really did look like someone who was about to be cut up into parts. Edward genuinely feared for her – not for her safety – but for her ability to carry out the performance. Surely she had never done anything like this before.
At Hu Wei’s beckoning, she entered the box from one side, sliding in until her quivering feet appeared at the far end. There were three flaps across the front that Hu Wei lifted and closed in order to show the three sections of her body. A saw was produced and flourished high above the audience. Sumiko’s head and feet settled into tense stillness. The audience hushed. And the cutting began. It wasn’t the illusion of the sawing that enthralled Edward, or the grind of metal teeth on wood, the sawdust gathering on the floor, the collective imagining of torn flesh, blood, organs and entrails. It was when Hu Wei separated the three sawn sections, moving them on their individual tables about the stage, that he became the most excited. Sumiko’s head on one side of the stage, her torso on another, her legs in the middle. He found the whole performance to be extremely erotic, as if each part of her was being served up for him, and for him alone. Of course, Hu Wei re-formed her, held her hand while she tip-toed front stage, bowed to the audience. Edward clapped loudly, too loudly, in the hope of attracting her attention. But she remained impassive, caught up in an almost trance-like state that may or may not have been part of the act. She bowed again and disappeared behind a rear curtain.
The audience had hardly re-settled in their seats when the illusionist moved into his finale – shooting flames from the tips of his fingers. It was a spectacular display of digital fireworks, provoking loud cheering until one of Hu Wei’s ribbons of fire hit a pelmet to the side of the stage. The flame flickered then caught hold of the curtain fabric. Edward assumed, as must have everyone else in the static audience, that the incident was part of the illusionist’s act, until he saw a young reception clerk rush from the back of the room, rip down the flaming fabric, throw a bucket of sand over the fiery heap. The poor lad appeared to burn his hand in the process.
‘I am a doctor,’ declared an Indian gentleman emerging from the audience. ‘Ice. Get me a bucket of ice. Please. I will need some ice. And make way for our young hero.’
There was a burst of applause as the crowd parted. Edward saw Hu Wei pick up a piece of the burnt fabric from the stage, shake his head, then follow the doctor and his charge downstairs to the kitchens. Someone opened a window to let out the lingering smoke.
‘Quite a performance,’ Fisk said, flushed his cheeks.
‘The sawing or the burning?’
‘The whole goddamn show. Fancy a nightcap?’
‘Another time. I think I’ll go back to my room. I feel like writing.’
‘Wouldn’t want to disturb the muse. And the untitled novel.’
Edward really did feel like writing. The events of the day and evening shaking him up into a state of creative agitation. He needed to get it all out, get something down on paper.
She was waiting for him. In the semi-darkness. Sitting in the armchair where he had sat the night before waiting for her. Fingers of blue moonbeams lighting up her pale make-up. That porcelain face.
‘I am trembling,’ she said.
He walked over to where she sat, drew her off the chair. She really was shaking. She held her face up to his. That white, expressionless mask. The corner of her eyes bloody in irritation from the make-up. What did she want? He really couldn’t tell. He held two alien cultures in his hands. The culture of woman. The culture of the Japanese. He could not read the signs, these strange hieroglyphs of need, desire, fear. Then instinct or passion or some other invisible force took over. And he kissed her.
At first, Edward feared he might be acting merely in the spirit of the times, the lingering zeitgeist of the Occupation – another arrogant, foreign victor come to take the spoils now that the Americans had departed. Or even more simply, that he was the honoured paying guest taking advantage of the poor chambermaid. But it was not like that. This was not an unequal partnership. Sumiko possessed as much power over him as he did her. His life became dictated by the possibility of her turning the handle of his door as he waited, caught on that emotional ledge between anticipation and disappointment.
Sumiko confided their liaison to no one. And neither did he. The Fuji Suite served as the sole location of their relationship, and by making herself responsible on the staff rota for the cleaning of their love nest, she gradually sneaked more and more of her belongings into his rooms. He loved these almost daily additions to his surroundings. When she was not there, he would go over to the wardrobe just to smell her scent on the sleeves of her garments or play with the jars of mysterious creams and unguents on the dressing table. There was something comforting in seeing her robe draped over the foot of his bed, discovering a long strand of her hair in the basin or flicking through the pages of the book she was reading just to feel where her own fingers had been.
‘You should read this book,’ she said. She was sitting upright and bath-clean on the bed, wrapped in a blue and white yukata courtesy of her employer. Her feet were bare. Such tiny feet. He abandoned his manuscript just to go over and kiss their soles. Her skin hot and scented from the soak. She giggled and wriggled and kicked at him to stop.
‘What is it?’ he asked, sliding up to lie beside her.
‘Snow Country. By Yasunari Kawabata. It is both sad and beautiful. It is my favourite book.’
‘My Japanese is not good enough to appreciate such a novel.’
‘I will help you translate.’
‘What is it about?’
‘About a cold man from the city. He goes once a year to an onsen in the snow country. There he meets a hot-spring geisha. Are you such a cold man?’
‘Why do you say such a thing?’
‘Because sometimes you are mean to me.’
‘When?’
‘In little ways.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Try.’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes you make me feel I am not perfect for you.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘I can see it in your eyes.’
Winter closed in, wrapping the hills in an icy mist. Gone were those wonderful days of writing by the waterwheel. Edward stayed in his room all day, radiators boiling, hardly changing out of his pyjamas and robe, ordering meals to his door. His whole world of sleep, work and play narrowed down to this one set of rooms. His cave in the mountains. He was hibernating. And he loved it.
It began to snow. He watched the plump flakes fall, purifying his world into a muffled silence. Until a crow flew off a branch, loosening a white trail in its wake. The hotel boilers stoked up into a frenzy. Black smoke from the few village houses grazing the sky. No one ventured out. No footprints in the snow. No snowmen. No snowballs. Or the joyous laughter of the young. For there were no children here. No vehicles could make it up the hillside either. The hotel was cut off from the plains below.
‘Supplies are dwindling,’ Ishikawa told him with all the worried seriousness of a military officer at the front. ‘We can only last a few more days if this freeze doesn’t break. Let us pray the pipes do not break first.’
Edward kept on writing, inasmuch a reaction to the blank canvas outside his window as from any inner inspiration. The snow made everything clearer, more defined, more true. Being stranded added a further dimension to his urgency. Page after page emerged from his typewriter. Accompanied by the sound of a clarinet, the soulful rehearsal of a member of the touring Japanese National Orchestra snowbound in the room above. Sumiko curled up on the bed reading her novel. She had found her own snow country and she was happy.
‘I want to go out of this room with you,’ she said sleepily. ‘It would be very great fun.’
‘It’s better for both of us that we aren’t seen together. You know that.’
‘Then let us go somewhere else.’
‘Where?’
‘An onsen. I have a day off next week. If the snow goes away.’
He didn’t want to go anywhere. He was locked into his magical world, why would he want to break the spell? But she persisted. The snow began to melt into marbled slush, the local bus company was getting vehicles through with fresh produce from the plain. He arranged to meet her at an onsen further down the hillside, away from the usual orbit of the other members of staff. Just before he left, he received a letter from Aldous delivered by the first mail-van to reach the hotel in ten days.
“Eduardo, mon cher,
I am delighted to inform you I have decided to sleep with the enemy. I am now a literary agent. A natural progression from my nurturing of neurotic writers at The Londinium which I continue to edit, of course – readership now close to two thousand and counting. I do believe people are beginning to read serious fiction again. I wonder if you have finished your own manuscript. If so, please send it over post haste. I am eager to read it. Love, your friend as always. A.”
Typical Aldous. Short and sometimes sweet. Edward tucked the letter into his pocket, concentrated on his walk down to the bus stop from the hotel. Bellboys worked ahead of him shovelling salt on to the icy pathway. The ponds were frozen. The trees frosted white. As his eyes widened to take in his new horizons, he glimpsed a hawk trace a hungry path in the sky. It felt strange to move away from his base. He had spent months at the hotel hardly venturing outside its grounds. He thought he had hidden himself away in order to write. But as he stood waiting for the bus, his lips and cheeks already chaffed from the cold, he realised he was also emerging from a dark, womb-like period of mourning for the death of his parents. He felt like an invalid learning to walk again. He felt re-born. Aldous’ letter also cheering with the opportunity it presented. He clapped his gloved hands, stamped the cold from his feet, began to hum as the bus appeared, cautious in its slippery descent, but remarkably, still on time.
Sumiko was waiting for him at the entrance to the spa hotel. Rosy-faced and smiling. She wore a fur hat, a long woollen coat and a matching muffler. He had never seen her in street clothes before. He had never seen her look so beautiful.
‘A friend borrowed to me,’ she said, touching her hat. She then linked her arm in his, and he let her lead him to their room.
‘However much time you spend washing your body at hotel,’ she told him as he changed into his robe. ‘Multiply by three.’ She nibbled on the tip of a finger in contemplation of this thought. ‘No, multiply by four. Only then can you enter the common pool.’
He did as she advised, soaping and rinsing himself in the men’s washrooms until his skin emerged prune-wrinkled from under the foam. Yet still the other Japanese male bathers took longer with their ablutions. He felt like a dirty foreigner polluting their water. He would soak in the naturally heated pools until his skin bristled pink, his blood thawed, his limbs dissolved into a rubbery mass. And then plod back to their room to lie on the futon where his body merged with hers into a constant mineral heat. The kneading of sweaty flesh. His blood boiling into fists of erections. Spilling his seed and still he was hard. Pores open. Heart open.
‘I love you,’ she said.
He watched her as she sat cross-legged on the tatami, towel-drying her hair in front of a low mirror. She turned to look at him. A tiny muscle twitched at the corner of her mouth. But he couldn’t bring himself to repeat her words. She turned back to the mirror, dragging a large comb so harshly through the tangle of her hair that he saw her eyes water from the pain. ‘I am not your panpan girl,’ she said.
He knew what she meant. Panpan. A prostitute served up by the Japanese government during the Occupation to soothe the invading American hordes. The remark hurt him. He knelt down beside her on the tatami. A slither of space between them but it felt like a chasm to cross. He could hear her gulping for breath.
‘I am very happy here with you,’ he said. ‘I don’t ever remember being so happy.’
‘You make me feel like your panpan girl.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Tell me then, Eddie. Tell me what is fair?’
Back at the hotel, he began to prepare his manuscript for posting to Aldous. A few last-minute pencil edits but generally he was satisfied. Except for the title. He had kept that for last. But really he had known from the beginning what it would be. The Waterwheel.