What transpired next was like the opening reel of the old film version of Henry V, starring Laurence Olivier, although we can dispense with cast and crew lists here.
Instead, picture an artificial, very grounded stage play that has a velvet curtain pulled back to reveal the real world, within the story. The set vanishes and becomes 1415, with Prince Hal rallying his English troops for the Battle of Agincourt against the pesky French.
Dorothy Gale secured a similar location reboot when she traded Kansas for Oz, and so it was with Kohana’s tale—minus lions, tigers, and bears. Plush drapes were amiss, a wild tornado failed to threaten, and sadly there was no trusted steed to lord it up on.
The switch also scared the willies out of me.
One moment we were comfortably seated in her hovel, sipping saké, and the next we’d lost the drinks and were forced to stand on pebbles in a shadowy archway. My kingdom for that horse. Fortunately, I was once again wearing my slippers, even if they weren’t made for this kind of outdoors adventurism.
I looked around us, getting a better feel for the Devil’s details.
The structure looming above us, an aqueduct of some kind, was so tall you could steer a double-decker bus through it. This stretched from one set of trees on the left to a forest the other way. I couldn’t see where it ended, but that’s not saying much.
Black moss spattered sections of the uneven, pale pink brickwork, in contrast with other splashes bleached white. There were odd bits of green vegetation clinging to an upper parapet and the bricks looked handmade.
I’m not sure how it would compare in scale with famous European aqueducts like the Pont du Gard, which I’d studied in art class during the final year of high school, since that was a four-by-five-inch photo neatly tucked away in a textbook. This one was more imposing if only because it dwarfed the snapshot.
Surrounding a small, flat expanse of gravel were maple trees, and I believed I could make out the sounds of a stream. A stone’s throw distant was the grand black silhouette of a temple or shrine, with winged roofing that pointed this way and that, uncertain in which direction Heaven lay.
‘This is enchanting. Where on earth are we?’
‘The aqueduct above us is named “Sosui”, and it was constructed between Lake Biwa and the city of Kyoto in the nineteenth century. It runs through Nanzen-ji, where we now stand: a Zen Buddhist temple in the foothills of Kyoto.’
I had a hunch I hadn’t forgotten my guidebook. This was convenient.
‘An odd place to put a European-style waterway, slap-bang in the middle of this Asian religious house. Then we actually are back in the real world? I was joking.’
‘Not exactly. We’re lodged in a memory of the past, circa World War Two. It’s reality on rewind, I suppose.’
This morsel threw me, so I unspooled my attention to check more closely than before, dubious thoughts running amuck. ‘A memory? My grandfather’s?’
‘Not his. Mine.’
‘Is he here?’
‘No. We’ll get to that part—just not now.’
‘In which chapter, then? Or do I have to wait for the epilogue? At my age, it would more likely turn out to be the requiem.’
‘Charming—and you take other people to task about over-dramatics. Have you forgotten that you skipped through the pomp and circumstance of your own funeral rites? We’ll get to “Pop” at another stage.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Trust me. Time is on our side, since we no longer have to fret about the concept. For the moment, I have skeletons to address and I need an outsider’s perspective. I hope you wouldn’t mind being chivalrous enough to escort me through the maze.’
I squinted at her. ‘I have reservations. Chivalry is not my strong suit.’
At that point in the conversation—in spite of said squint—I noticed something in the corner of my eye. Strangely, this called to mind a peacock.
I loosened my lids to focus properly and saw it was another woman. I have no idea how I missed her before—she stood out well enough, hovering in the bright sunlight about ten metres away.
The woman was wearing a mostly orange kimono, with sleeves that hung down past her knees, and she had hold of a salmon-pink parasol. When I noted the serene, alabaster face shading itself beneath, I decided chivalry might come to me.
‘Is it vital for me to know who the geisha is?’
‘Not geisha. Not yet, anyway. In Kyoto, they called them maiko, apprentice geisha. In Tokyo, the epithet hangyoku was used. You don’t recognize me?’
I do have to confess the tidbit trounced me, yet once she made the remark the evidence became discernible, as I started to see the structure of the face. It had Kohana’s excellent symmetry written all over it, buried beneath the paint.
‘Kyoto. Geisha. It fits.’
‘Actually, I was only visiting Kyoto on this occasion. I was from Tokyo.’
The focus of our conversation had her gaze set somewhere in the middle distance. I glanced over that way, but could find nothing remarkably magnetic. ‘What’s she—you—looking at?’
I whispered the query, and can’t opine why. Perhaps I did so because the lady was oblivious to our presence here in the archway shadows.
For her part, Kohana wasn’t concerned how far her voice carried.
‘Tell me you’re kidding. You can’t honestly expect me to remember minor details like that, can you? This was all the way back in 1944.’
‘Really?’ I did some quick finger counting, which isn’t as easy as it sounds when your digits are semi-arthritic. ‘But that would make you… I say, about…’ I was at a complete loss. It was impossible to calculate such things in our current state. ‘How old are you? Or were you, when you—?’
‘Died? I’d hit one day past a century when I gave up the ghost. Can we get back to the here and now of this place?’
‘I’m not sure I’d employ those words. “Elsewhere and past the use-by date” would better apply, with some kind of superlative thrown in to stress how far back we are. I hadn’t been born yet.’
‘My, aren’t you young?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t get all hysterical about it.’
Right then, I recognized the gown the other girl was wearing. It was the sheet of fabric Kohana had hanging on her wall, the silk number with the embroidered storks—sorry, wrong bird. The ibises.
‘I wore it today, for him,’ Kohana said beside me in a more subdued voice. ‘It was his favourite.’
She motioned at the approaching figure of a man with a strong profile, dressed in Japanese military uniform, a vintage Second World War number. He stood to attention before the geisha with a superbly straight posture, and bowed formally.
‘Hangyoku,’ Kohana whispered, so close that I could feel her warm breath on my neck. ‘Not geisha, not yet. I told you.’
‘Sadly I will never, ever be able to remember that word,’ I murmured in return. ‘Geisha’s easier. What does it matter? Call me a heathen.’
Back on stage, the geisha gave the pilot that entrancing smile I’d witnessed earlier. Even the makeup couldn’t disguise it. Then they talked together, but we were too far away to get the gist.
‘It’s a stunning gown,’ I admitted.
‘This kimono was lost during the firebombing of Asakusa in 1945, when the okiya I lived in was destroyed.’
‘But I believe I saw it just now, on the wall of your hovel.’
‘Cottage.’
‘Cottage. Right you are.’
Like that kimono, questions hung unanswered. I detest such moments. As I believe I mentioned, a mystery leaves a sour sensation in my throat—unless, of course, I’m the architect of said whodunnit.
To compensate, I tried to focus on the girl chatting with the man, and studied her mannerisms. She occasionally laughed in a controlled, subtle fashion, and when she did so she sheltered the lower half of her face with an elaborately opened fan. Once composure was regained, the fan would close up shop with a deft flick.
There was a scarlet-fringed collar poking out above the gown that set off her white throat and upper shoulders, although I noticed a couple of patches on the back of the neck were left exposed to the elements, sans greasepaint. Tassels and not-so-hidden extras adorned an elaborate, glossy, brunette hairdo.
‘Grant me one request.’
‘What now?’
‘Is that a wig? Or did you really have hair like that?’
‘It was my own.’
‘How did you make the hair so shiny, and what did you do to cause it to defy gravity?’
‘Shhh.’
The other girl had a bright, colourful sash wrapped tightly around her waist and tied together in elaborate fashion, yet it dangled to her ankles. On her feet were white socks, with wooden clogs that looked like precarious miniature towers.
‘We call the shoes okobo—but sometimes you may hear the term geta. Foreigners generally use that. They were worn to prevent our kimono from touching the ground. This pair was thirteen centimetres in height. They took a lot of practice.’
Tall, yes, and eye candy, to be sure, but I had no clue why we were here.
‘Is this a pucker-up and make-out memory?’ I asked, with some suspicion.
Kohana barely registered the query. ‘Patience.’
‘Well, when does it get otherwise involving?’
‘Keep your smoking jacket on, and allow it to unravel.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘My gosh, you have too many questions.’
‘Of course I do! Bah. It feels off. Not only are there connotations that this is going to be courtship bunk, it’s also voyeuristic. Here we are studying you, yet you’re right beside me and refuse to fill in the gaps. You wouldn’t like me when I work myself up into a lather of pedantry, Kohana, and I have to assume you’re already impartial to my charms.’
The girl looked fed up. ‘Yes, yes. He left me today. In a few minutes from now, if you must know.’
‘Ah-hah, so we are adrift in tear-jerking terrain. Due to some fit of bizarre nostalgia, or am I to take it you enjoy rehashing misery? The scoundrel was married, am I right?’
It seemed Kohana couldn’t detach herself from the scene of the couple, not even while I needled her with a shoddy insult or two.
‘He wasn’t married. No, I suppose his was a different kind of commitment. Y was a pilot, a lieutenant, with the Japanese Imperial Navy. He was here on leave from a posting in Taiwan.’
‘Which “here” are we looking at? What’s the date?’
‘It’s 1944. I told you.’
‘When, precisely? Humour me.’
‘September 17.’
‘About a year before the end of the Pacific War. How long had you known the man before today?’
‘Almost three weeks? We met at an officers’ party in Tokyo in late summer. We spent two of those weeks there, and then, at his invitation, the final one here in Kyoto in order to visit his family in Fushimi.’
‘Where the feminine saké comes from.’
‘You remembered.’
‘I’m not completely oblivious. So, correct me if I’m wrong: you entertained notions of deep affection for this man within a smattering of days?’
‘We were in the middle of a war and time was scanty.’
Kohana frowned, though her face was too confoundedly young for the expression to have definitive meaning.
‘If we move closer, perhaps we can hear what they’re saying.’
‘And why on earth would I do that? I don’t take to eavesdropping. I mean this in my case, of course—you’ve heard all the sweet nothings before.’
‘Oh, put a lid on it.’
‘Temper, temper.’
She seized my hand and tugged me after her, out of the security of shadow, to be closer to our colour-mismatched lovebirds. If I’d tried to drag my feet, I doubt I could have stopped her. My withered bag of bones had nowhere near the stampeding vitality Kohana gave off in presumed death.
‘Aren’t we likely to interrupt things?’
‘How? We’re just ghosts—so much for not being forgetful.’
The voices became clearer as we neared, and true to my slave driver’s suggestion, they paid no heed.
In all honesty, I doubt the pilot would have noticed us if we were flesh and blood passers-by. It was apparent that his attention was devoted to the jewel before him, and fair enough too.
‘You wore it. You look exquisite,’ the man remarked, in a hearty baritone.
He struck my ear as a young Gregory Peck. The fact I could understand him at all was a fortuitous bonus—when had I picked up Japanese language skills?
‘I’m flattered that you appreciate my kimono.’ Kohana’s voice came from a different source, this time the student geisha, with a softer, more singsong inflection.
The man touched the girl’s cheek, taking care not to spoil her makeup.
‘Without this face, the garment would be sorely lacking.’ He blinked a few times, and the hand dropped. ‘I must tell you something. I’m being transferred to the Philippines and will be leaving on a flight this afternoon.’
‘This afternoon—? Why?’ His escort’s intonation lacked the strength and confidence of the one I’d lately become accustomed to. ‘I thought you were a training instructor, that you were out of combat duty.’
‘Things change, Kohana-chan. This is war.’ He looked past her and stroked his chin. ‘You wouldn’t understand. You’re a child.’
‘Is that so? I’ve been woman enough to this point.’ That was more like it. Not in any way shrill—it was a deserved reproach, uttered with a tad of dignity.
Obviously the barb also made its mark. The man’s gaze drifted to hers, but I fancied he was holding something back.
‘Very well. I’ll tell you as much as I can, which I’m afraid is very little, about the new posting. It’s an idea of Vice Admiral Onishi’s: the shinpū tokubetsu kōgeki tai, a special attack group.’
‘What makes it special?’
‘This is a new weapon the enemy won’t expect. A divine wind, like the one that stopped the Mongols invading our land.’
‘Seven hundred years ago? I thought military technology had improved since then.’
‘The same wind blows.’
Well, that was disengagingly cryptic. I yawned.
There were lead-grey tufts of clouds in the nearby hills that threatened to despoil a marvellously sunny day. For now, the light was so bright it felt like the world was overexposed and the colours—particularly of the kimono—incandescent. Probably this was down to my inability to adjust to direct sunshine, after years without.
‘Is it dangerous?’
The girl’s face was nowhere near so blinding as the kimono, white-washed aside from a pert red mouth and watchful eyes. If there were an incorporeal being hereabouts, the geisha would be a better candidate for the role than myself. Even so, her façade was composed and her tone wonderfully steady. It was the question that came across strained.
‘There is always danger in war, my flower. If I had the freedom of choice, I would stay here with you—but, alas, I do not.’
I recognized the lofty, patronizing overture, since over time I’d availed myself of a barrelful of like-minded gems. On top of this, he had squirreled away something, believing her too naïve to get the gist.
‘I am not going on the mission for Emperor or for Empire. I am simply going because I was ordered.’
‘What if I ask you to belay the order, or insist that you stay?’
‘Such an enterprise would have the same impact as my parents’ attempt. If we were to place it on a numerical scale from one to ten, I’m afraid it would rate only as—’
‘Zero?’
‘Zero is a powerful number to bandy unwisely.’
‘Oh, rubbish,’ I muttered.
Thunder rumbled somewhere, but there was neither lightning nor rain. The air felt heavy around us and it surprised me a shade could be so sensitive.
‘I may be unwise,’ the girl was saying, ‘and yes, I am young. But I comprehend the truth when it blows my way, like those laughable winds of yours. Besides, you people bandy about “Zero-sen” enough on your own—isn’t it what you call your silly airplanes?’
Bravo.
In answer, the pilot bobbed his head. He may have been as starched as a dinner shirt, and the movement conducted almost imperceptibly, but I noticed.
‘He nodded,’ Kohana assailed me in the left ear, ‘didn’t he?’
‘To my mind, yes.’
‘I thought so then, and I believe so now. But I never knew whether he was acknowledging the point, making some kind of vague apology, or if he did so out of politeness. I still can’t fathom the gesture.’
‘I got the impression the man was more acknowledging the sting in your words.’
‘What’s the use of returning here if nothing is clear? Isn’t it a complete waste of time?’
I patted her shoulder. While I instantly twigged that, in doing so, I was treating her in the same condescending manner as the heel of a pilot, another option escaped me.
‘Kohana, my dear, are you forgetting we have a lot of time to waste?’
‘No. Don’t be stupid. Of course not.’
‘Just double-checking.’
She pushed her arm around my waist and this time manhandled me away from the two people, back toward the shadowy arches of the aqueduct. I may have been put out, but was grateful she showed some discretion and hadn’t yanked me by the beard.
While we walked, I felt her arm tremble a fraction, and I made up my mind a shot of levity was in order.
‘So, as you implied, he was married to his job, a depressingly familiar lark. This all took place a very long time ago—what happened to the rotter?’
‘Y was killed the following month.’
‘Ah.’
‘He was sent on a one-way mission to fly a tokkō—kamikaze—attack.’
‘Self-immolation was this ingenious new weapon he boasted of?’
‘Most likely. The Japanese love to sacrifice themselves for stupid things.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I do wish I could convey an appropriate homily—you know, “He died with honour”, or with his boots on, or whatever Hallmark classic you gift to a war widow. And yet—’
‘There’s nothing honourable about nose-diving an airplane, packed with explosives, into an enemy ship? Have no fear, I’m there with you.’
‘Where did it happen? Near Japan?’
I was thinking of Okinawa—I’d read about the battle years ago. Oddly enough, Kohana read my mind.
‘No, no, Okinawa was the following year. Y killed himself in the Philippines, at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Right here.’
In a flash, we were standing on the flat deck of a monstrously huge vessel, with a twisted bundle of burning metal nearby and Caucasian-looking sailors running about, screaming and shouting. Others sat and bled, and some lay prone, burnt, blackened, or missing limbs. Perhaps some of these were included in the collection embedded in the metal walls.
Water cannons sprayed everywhere, yet missed the blaze itself, and airplanes buzzed high above. There was the muffled, far-off sound of machine guns and explosions.
Thrown all together like this, it was madness.
‘Jesus wept,’ I managed. ‘He was not selfish in death. It looks like he took a crowd of other people with him.’
To my consternation Kohana, standing beside me, had commenced on one of her fancy cigarettes. I hadn’t seen her light up. I looked around at puddles of gasoline on the deck nearby.
‘Should you be smoking here?’
‘Once again, you forget. We’re yūrei—what do you call them, spirits?’ She exhaled a liberal plume of smoke as she surveyed the wreckage. ‘What a mess. What a stupid bloody waste.’
‘Kohana, might I remind you that we’re supposed to be paying a social call on your memories? It’s impossible for this to be one of them.’
‘Did I say that? I must have a vivid imagination. There’s his plane,’ she said quietly, nodding to the jumble of twisted and torn kindling the sailors danced around with their huge hoses.
‘I presumed as much.’
You would never have known what it once was. This was genuine spectacle, but thankfully the decibel level of the yells had been taken down a couple of notches. The only things missing from the entertainment were the debilitating heat of the flames and the smell of burned fuel, gunpowder, and flesh.
The woman flicked away her cigarette.
‘He was twenty-three years old. The news travelled lethargically to my ears—there was no wind to whisper the truth, not even a polite breeze. I heard about it from one of his fellow officers that December, and I carefully closed up shop in my heart.’
‘Oh, poppycock,’ I cut in, determined to bang the ticker back open. ‘How ridiculous. This reminds me of something pilfered from an overwrought romance novel: “I will never love again.” Surely you can’t believe such tripe.’
Kohana’s abrupt laughter cut through the melancholy.
‘Wow! I knew there was a good reason I dragged you along with me,’ she managed to say, clapping her hands, ‘and it wasn’t for the convoluted vocabulary.’
This was when I realized I was back on the leather sofa, cradling a cooled-down cup of saké in my fingers. She was opposite me, again seated on the Egg chair, smiling. I felt my left eyebrow rise of its own volition.
‘How the Hell did you—?’
‘That old trick? Who knows? Nifty, though, don’t you agree?’
‘Allow me to reserve judgment.’ I sat there for a few seconds, untamed thoughts and a modicum of distress taking turn to storm the ramparts of what passed for good sense. Finally, I found words. ‘I have some silly questions.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘How is it possible that I can understand what people are saying, when they’re clearly speaking a language I never studied?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I see. Well, how do we jump, or teleport, or flip channels—or whatever it is we’re undertaking—between each setting?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Am I insane?’
‘Are you?’
‘I hope not. Are we dead?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Oh, the Devil with you, this is ridiculous. You evade answering a single question, hit me with unsweet nothings, or lob back interrogatories! It’s maddening, and let me tell you—I am not one to be treated this way.’
Kohana looked straight my way, her eyes sparkling. ‘Are you threatening me in some obscure, geriatric fashion?’
‘Take the comment whichever way you prefer.’
‘All right, Wolram. If you want free-range interpretation, by all means. Let’s look at you. For starters, you like to be in charge, am I right? You ran your own company, your own city, your own world. In bed, in the missionary position, I bet you’re the one who has to be on top—dictating proceedings while stark naked.’
‘If it were a paying position, why not?’
‘So you’d be up for prostitution?’
‘I’m not certain many people would be up for a seventy-one-year-old gigolo.’
I don’t know why I blushed, but it was obvious that’s how I reacted, since I could feel my ears and cheeks burning.
‘And, by the way, if you are saying I am a control freak, I resent the implication.’
‘If I said you were a control freak, it’s not an implication—it’s a statement.’
‘That’s damned well pedantic.’
‘It’s damned well proper word play.’
‘Well, are you?’
‘Am I, what?’
‘Implying? …Stating?’
‘Neither tangent entered my mind.’
‘Pfaw!’
Kohana laughed. ‘Oh, Wolram—what does that mean—“pfaw”? Isn’t it something more appropriate between the covers of a Charles Dickens?’
I was too annoyed to see any wit behind the comment. ‘You tell me, since you’re the avid reader. In fact, why is this important at all? Let’s return to everything right here, right now, about this place and what on earth we’re doing. What exactly can you tell me?’
‘Very little.’
‘Oh, rich.’
‘I’m sorry. There’s no instruction manual here, no convenient cheat-notes. I can’t skimp on the book by watching the movie version, like you did at university with The Name of the Rose.’
I’d been moodily staring at the floor, rubbing an index finger along my right brow, an old habit when grumpy, but glanced at her when I heard this last comment.
‘That’s not entirely true. I read some of it.’
‘How many pages?’
I shifted in my seat. ‘Thirty-odd?’
‘Then you only missed the next five hundred.’
Kohana pursed her lips—it seemed to be her own pet mannerism when thoughtful. The two of us were full of them.
‘Anyway, I may have been here longer, but like you, I’m mostly flying blind.’
‘Making it the mystery you were talking up earlier.’
‘Much of it, yes.’
‘A lot of good that does me.’
‘I agree. So, stop thinking so hard and go with the flow.’
‘The flow? I’d say it’s more like inserting my head into a strobe machine.’
‘A neat analogy.’
‘Thank you. May I ask a different question?’
‘You can try.’
‘Will you grant me an honest answer?’
‘I don’t know. That would mean my turn to try. Bother.’
‘Are you a religious person?’
‘Far from it. Life taught me otherwise.’
‘Putting inconsequential lessons to one side—are we ghosts?’
‘Well, the thought crossed my mind that we might be Buddhist Preta.’
‘Eh?’
‘In Japanese, we call them Gaki, and I think the English expression is “hungry ghosts”? But all the pictures I ever saw portrayed these creatures with bulging tummies, and an otherwise emaciated look—neither of us has to worry there. Also, we’re by no means aflame like Gaki, let alone smoky—unless we take the cigarettes into account.’
‘Gaki?’
‘It’s an Asian thing. Spirits of jealous or greedy people, cursed with an insatiable desire for the good things in life.’
‘That sounds like me before I died,’ I groaned. ‘One last query.’
‘Yes?’
‘Are we merely passive observers? What do you call those non-memories, like the burning kite on the American ship? Bonus extras? Are we ethereal, no more than ghosts?—and, if so, how can we touch objects? How can we walk on solid ground, for that matter?’
‘Sorry, I’m swamped.’ Kohana got to her feet and crossed silently to a cupboard. ‘Are you hungry? I have some rice crackers, though you probably won’t much like them. Wasabi flavour. It’s my favourite, aside from yuzu.’
‘Look, at this stage of affairs I’d partake of grasshoppers in soy sauce—’
Kohana wrinkled her nose.
‘—and, yes, I do know they were considered a treat in some parts of Japan, though from your expression, I’d wager they’re scarcely your cup of tea. Not that I have an appetite. I never do these days, but at my advanced age I need to keep my hands from clawing up out of disuse.’
‘Zounds,’ the woman muttered as she placed a bowl of tancoloured crackers nearby. ‘Give me a few weeks and I’ll be combing cobwebs out of your hair. You really are obsessed with your age. When will you get it through that brain of yours that I’m older?’
‘Probably, I’ll allow further consideration when you look the part. By the way, I’m not happy about the situation we’re in, or the lack of concrete answers. I refuse to budge from my high-horse until I’m satisfied.’
Without thinking, I took a bite from one of the crackers.
I knew what to expect—I was well enough acquainted with Japanese horseradish—but it took its own chomp out of my palate, and I swallowed the bugger as quickly as I could.
‘By God, you weren’t joking. This finger-food is running rampant across my taste buds.’
When I looked up, I was blessedly able to forget all about wasabi, since we’d swapped locations in an instant.
This time, the two of us were deposited at a low table in some kind of restaurant that didn’t believe in chairs. We were forced to sit cross-legged on prickly tatami mats, which played havoc with my problematic left hip.
There was a cup of murky, frothy, green-coloured liquid before us both. I presume I blanched at the sight.
‘Do we really have to go through this now? I was looking forward to a toilet break—my bladder isn’t what it used to be, my girl.’
‘Later,’ she shot back, all serious again. The woman was like a revolving door.
Turns out, the adolescent geisha and her pilot beau were ‘seated’ at the next table. Surprise. My Kohana scrutinized them closely, like someone absorbed in a thoroughly gripping Korean telly drama. Of course I had to join in and watch. The ratings must have flown through the roof.
Our ring-in Kohana, starring in this nonsense, wore a different kimono, a ravishing emerald-green number with a lemon-yellow obi sash.
Since we were much closer to her and the light was gentler indoors, I could better see charcoaled brows with a touch of crimson, and gently arched eyes outlined with red and black. The sienna irises, with flecks of chestnut, stood out a league or two.
I should have hoped the pilot would notice them, but on this occasion he was preoccupied with the bland meal before him, a dish of grey pasta slapped down on a bamboo mat.
‘Soba,’ Kohana mentioned. ‘Buckwheat noodles. They’re far better than they look to you.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘By the way, just so you know, wasabi isn’t horseradish.’
Once he finished some disturbingly loud slurping, the pilot dabbed at his lips with a napkin. ‘I’ll take you today to see Nijōjō,’ he announced, with all the pizzazz of a gherkin.
What had Kohana called him? Y? Didn’t the man have space for a full name?
‘I was under the impression that this Y-character had flown the coop,’ I said, muzzling another yawn.
‘We had lunch together here, the day before our final meeting at Nanzen-ji.’
‘You’re flipping the narrative around? You could grant me fair warning next time.’
‘I’m doing so now. Isn’t that enough for you?’
‘No, it’s not—I’m bursting to go to the loo, and of course I’m going to get cranky.’
‘Shush.’
‘You shush.’
Meanwhile, the young man droned on, despite the better attempts of a rousing baritone. Oh, hurrah. How I craved the ability to override my newfound language decoder.
‘Construction of the castle was begun by Tokugawa Ieyasu, and completed by his grandson Tokugawa Iemitsu in the 1620s. It’s more palace than castle, but what fascinates me is the karamon gate. It was plundered from Fushimi Castle’—cue wry twinkle, bordering, I’ll admit, on debonair—‘and is one of the most beautiful castle gates I’ve observed.’
Throughout the one-way discourse the geisha kept her gaze more often downturned, with a charming smile on cherubic, plum-red lips.
‘Chiefly it’s the inlay of the toki in flight, above the heavy gates themselves,’ he went on. ‘There is a sense of otherness that reminds me so much of you and that kimono you once wore. The magnificent one also graced with ibises.’
At that, the geisha’s eyes looked up and sparkled.
I swivelled to the girl’s doppelgänger, triggering a dull ache in my hip. I knew we would not be overheard, but spoke to her in a low voice. ‘What’s he waffling on about?’
‘Is your hearing worse than your memory?’
‘Whatever. Is this sort of oratory romantic to you people? Does he seduce you with a line like that?’
‘Well, I’d hate to hear what you consider lovey-dovey,’ Kohana whispered back. ‘For such a ladies’ man, you exhibited some shocking courtship choices in your time.’
I glared at her. I could feel my face getting hot, something I’d not experienced in years. ‘What the deuce do you know of my life?’
‘This and that.’
‘Meaning?’
‘A portion of this, and a smidgeon of that.’
I think I was prepared to leave the table, then and there, if my troublesome hip hadn’t locked.
‘I’m becoming very tired of this circular discourse, getting no straight answers. Please don’t let you be the Ghost of Christmas Past, or some such nonsense.’
‘I’m Japanese. The only thing we celebrate at Christmas is fine wine and dinner with a paramour. Occasionally, we get tipsy and sing Christmas songs at karaoke. Poorly.’
‘Well, good. I’m not one for Scrooge and all that morality claptrap.’
Kohana beamed. ‘I can’t believe you said “claptrap”—isn’t that a bit grizzled? Why don’t you road-test “humbug” for effect?’
Her bonhomie disarmed my anger, and went so far as to provoke a grin. ‘Well, I considered using “mumbo jumbo”, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue so sweetly, and—I don’t know—it sounds provincial. I don’t want to come across as a bamboozled old fart, even if that’s what I am.’
I looked at the two people we were supposed to be here to observe.
‘Speaking of which, is he still prattling?’
‘I believe so. He talked for over an hour. Y cherished his traditional Japanese architecture, and I loved listening to him “prattle” on about it. How else do you think I learned about the aqueduct at Nanzen-ji? There was such affection and passion in his attention to detail. Whatever you make of him, Mr Deaps, he showered that on me as well.’
‘Wolram, for Heaven’s sake.’
‘May I call you Wol?’
‘No.’ I sized her up. ‘Ko.’
‘How would you like a chopstick in the eye?’
‘Would it make any impression in our current state? I could become accustomed to the wearing of an eye patch.’
‘I really don’t know. I doubt we’re capable of injury, but I’m not keen to try out the theory.’
Kohana had conceivably forgotten the monologue at the next table, and I was not going to remind her.
‘Well,’ she mused, ‘a different question: do you entertain any regrets?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘A quick fire response.’
‘I appreciate what I am, and strive to keep things uncomplicated.’
‘Oh? Good for you. Like your vocabulary, I suppose.’
‘Is that sarcasm I detect?’
‘I have no idea. You tell me.’ The girl rotated her cup in both hands before taking a long sip.
‘How is it?’ I had been too cagey to try my own.
‘Wonderful. I’d forgotten how perfect the matcha was at this teahouse.’
She placed the cup on the low table.
‘You might be foolishly frightened of green tea and foreign noodles, but I think we’re similar. Both of us have lived self-centred lives that harmed other people, and we did it with a careless—no, make that deliberate—ardour. The other thing we have in common? We’re both murderers.’
I felt as if my stomach had been bludgeoned.
‘You?’ Somehow, I motioned to the docile twin at the next table. ‘Her?’
‘Yes. Us. And you. We all do what we must, and live with what we’ve done—isn’t that right?’
Though I couldn’t mark it, the comment sounded eerily familiar. I felt discomforted, a sensation not entirely caused by my aching hip. ‘Go on,’ I murmured.
‘Ends up, you’re not the only miscreant with a fractured Iago complex.’
‘I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.’
‘About murder in general, or the amateur analysis I tagged on the end?’
‘The Othello part.’
‘Oh, so you bothered looking at a book?’
‘It was compulsory reading material at school—but anyhow, Shakespeare has more pull than Sir Thomas Malory.’
‘Possibly because he smote closer to home.’
‘Possibly.’
I stared at her, as I tried to gauge in what direction she was corralling the conversation. Her face may have suggested itself as an open tome from which I could ransack meaning while her guard was down, but, as with Shakespeare, I couldn’t come to grips with most of the content right there in front of me. I wished I’d paid more attention in class.
‘Let’s back-pedal to Iago, shall we?’ I suggested. ‘While the man did have his moments running rings around the Moor, and his amorality is an intriguing beast to explore, at a baser level the man lacked confidence.’
‘You think so?’
‘I do. The man shot himself in the foot pursuing a course of self-sabotage, and he was hamstrung by—what should we call it? …Meaninglessness? A long-winded word, to be sure, but you get the gist.’
‘Relatively.’
‘So, these are things miles from my character. I’m willing to take the punt that the same applies to you.’
‘Oh, very kind.’
Her voice had wandered across in a glacial monotone. I was impressed, but in return guffawed out loud. I hadn’t laughed so boisterously in an age or two, and ended up having to wipe the tears away, in order to see properly.
‘Murderers? Well, for goodness’ sake. Would you care to know the misgiving that’s been whizzing about in my head? I was worried you’d be an artless princess-bride, enamoured with the dashing, cardboard cut-out aerialist.’
‘There’s a zany idea, Wolram—do you make up these things for a living?’
‘Frequently.’
‘Then this is one time you don’t have to fret.’
‘I stand, or sit, gratefully corrected.’
Sashimi had appeared before us on a light blue ceramic platter, decorated with shredded radish and a flower. Kohana poked at the fish with a pair of chopsticks.
‘The real deal,’ she confirmed. ‘When I was alive, people would have been aghast to see me playing with my food this way. Now, who’s to stop me? I wish I were hungry. Think of Y as an adolescent phase I went through. I was immature. He died on October 25, a day after the sinking of the Japanese aircraft carrier Zuikaku—but also the day after my fifteenth birthday. I mean, really, I was too young. Good riddance.’
The girl watched me as she spoke. While there was not a single moment that her gaze failed her, I experienced doubt all the same. Probably it was the amount of detail padding out the sentence. I wouldn’t have been surprised had she rehearsed the disavowal.
I glanced at her likeness, seated beside us with the ironing board posture.
The fan in her right hand occasionally spread its wings to send a cooling breeze across an absurdly pale face. I studied those made-up eyes as she attended her pilot. I don’t care how well someone is trained to behave in a certain way, no matter if they’re a geisha, an actor, a politician, or a high-stakes businessman—the truth is always there.
When I looked back to my Kohana, there was a similar glint.
This glint was minute, cleverly hidden behind trapdoors and pulleys, and I’ll admit it was more difficult to smoke out. But in the end, I could see precisely how she felt.
‘You’re still in love with the miscreant,’ I said, affixing a degree of venom that surprised me.