IT WAS UNDERGROUND for miles and miles, then they burst out into the same old factories and rectangular fields. Little concrete riverbeds, almost dry. A valleyful of houses, jumbled and heaped as if they’d been left there by a flash flood. Then the houses thickened and became almost walls – vast, endless apartment blocks – sometimes with tunnels embedded in them, into which Royce’s train rockingly dived. There must be bedrooms and kitchens just on the other side of this tunnel.
‘Change, Atami,’ said a voice. It was nothing more than voice at first, because he had no idea where it had come from – and hadn’t excluded his own head as the source. But where did he get an accent like that?
They stopped at a station. A bloke across the aisle nodded and waved to the door. ‘Go under line and to train over there.’ He pointed to a train across a cobweb of empty tracks.
Numbly Royce disembarked, made his way down the tunnel under the lines and into the waiting train.
‘To Fujinomiya?’ he asked a woman.
She nodded; said nothing.
He sat. His previous train – his lifeline – departed. His new train lay inert. Few people entered. Eventually an engine rumbled; in ten seconds the train was uncomfortably full. They set off.
Between apartments and tunnels he sometimes now glimpsed the sea.
Beside them as they pulled into Numazu stood another train.
‘This train for you,’ said a man who had been sitting beside him only for two stops.
Without hesitation Royce changed trains.
And again at Fuji when a man tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to an empty platform. ‘Your train come there.’
He waited some confident minutes until a neat little silver train – rather like a Metro that had surfaced – wobbled into view and bore him off to Fujinomiya.
Powerful stuff this akshara – and male-oriented too. He hadn’t been train-changed by any women at all.
They burst clear of an infinity of refineries – and into the presence of Mount Egmont! It was incomparably bigger. Jesus, look at that. It was sort of shimmering in the sky above him as if either the atoms it was made of, or the atoms his sight was made of, couldn’t make up their mind whether it was there or not.
‘Fujinomiya means shrine of Fuji,’ said a light voice. At last, he’d been akshara’d by a woman.
She was a pretty version of the standard model – because, let’s face it, they all looked the same to him – with a solemn baby and two lustrously beautiful little daughters. ‘The shrine is Sengen taisha, which means top shrine because it is on the side of Fuji and so is top shrine in Japan. If you go there, drink its water.’
‘Right, I will, thanks.’
‘Every year the goddess of Fuji leaves the mountain and travels to the sea. She travels down the river and so it is blessed.’
She was the first Japanese woman who’d spoken to him.
‘You speak very good English.’ Come to think of it, by international standards his own English probably wasn’t that wonderful.
‘Thank you. We learnt at school and then my father sent me for two years to Seattle.’
He was fairly sure that was in America somewhere, but she didn’t have an American accent. She was a very nice person. And really helpful. ‘Look, I wonder if you can help me, when we get to Fujinomiya I need to find the Bad Bar …’
She gasped, just like heroines did in old-fashioned movies. Then without another word she packed up her family and moved down the carriage. Jesus, Royce, use a bit of nouse – whadda ya think it’s called the Bad Bar for, you nong?
FUJINOMIYA. THE GIGANTISM of Tokyo is nowhere in evidence – the buildings are maybe shamed into shrinkage by the massiveness of the mountain. Nothing is over two, sometimes three storeys and none of it very classy. Snappiest building in the area was striped red and white with golden arches and a ‘Bigu Maku’ sign.
In the absence of direction he headed towards the mountain – ‘when in Fuji …’
The tilted, uneven footpaths were blessedly shoal free – and the streets no more populous than Palmerston St, Westport, on an unimportant Friday night. Tiny cars and small buses bustled down the bumpy grey roadways, politely deferring to iron-faced cyclists. Never in his life had Royce seen bell-ringing cyclists wreak such tyranny upon motorists and pedestrians.
He was a major curiosity as he walked along. Every furtive eye was upon him, though only the kids stared openly. But cripes, they were goggle-eyed. Hadn’t they seen a white man before? He was a bit of a giant, too. With a slight jump he could have touched the sills of second-storey windows, and you had to reach slightly further down to touch a tomato in a greengrocer’s than was normal. He was in a town one size too small for him.
He passed a small, stooped man – still identifiably Japanese under a balaclava – sporting sunglasses, yellow jacket, black backpack … and one ski pole.
‘Reinkoto,’ the small, stooped man greeted him.
‘Yeah – reinkoto,’ said Royce, he had learnt a traditional greeting.
A cross-roads; on the other side of it a bridge – over the most amazing water he’d ever seen. Well, was it water? It was so clear that you couldn’t see it – you could only see the effects of it. Fronds of clean green weed undulated in perfect crystal nothingness – great big ten-pound gold fish shimmered beside them. Further up the stream there was proof of water in the shape of glassy rapids. The stream was narrowed by perspective to a thread that wound its way towards the ghostly mountain. To the left of the stream, behind big red-trunked trees, was a massive wooden temple with a roof made of about a million cedar slates, and spouting made of dragons. This’d be the shrine the nice woman had told him about before he’d scared her off.
‘Good day,’ said a sing-song voice.
‘Oh, reinkoto,’ he replied.
‘You are iteki … aah … visitor to our town?’
‘Yes.’ He was talking to a thin, semi-bearded man, wearing history’s worst haircut. ‘Yes, it’s very beautiful.’
‘Very beautiful town, very beautiful shrine. Sengen taisha. River called Kusa kawa – to you mean Glass river. See? Glass waving in water.’ He pointed to the weeds.
‘Oh. Yeah. Grass River?’
‘Yes. Here grand festivar every years. Goddess of Fuji return from sea. We cereblate. Big wooden stage carry by men. On stage big fire and beautiful young womans. Virgins. Very small clothes. White. Fire is volcano – Fuji. People throw water at fire, try to put out. Young womans stop water with body, protect Fuji. Water make clothe heavy. Fall down. See chest, see fanny. “Wahoi, washoi!” people say – “More, more.” Velly good festivar.’
‘Yeah, sounds great,’ murmured Royce, still reeling from the miasma of mangled ars and els. ‘Look, I wonder if you could tell me …’
‘Japan have many festivar.’
‘Yes. Look …’
‘Japan have many volcano.’
‘Yes …’
‘Mount Aso – biggest crater in world. Mount Sakurajima elupt every day – children wear hard hat to school.’
‘I’m looking for the Bad Bar,’ blurted Royce.
The guy’s expression changed no more than did his bad haircut. ‘You know what mean Yakusa?’
‘… No.’
‘Yakusa gambling game of dice. Very old. “Yakusa” worst score. You understand?’
‘Not quite.’
‘Yakusa worst.’
You knew the man was about fifty, yet he looked about twenty. Probably because his skin was so clear. His thick black hair was shaped in its awful basin cut and under his lip he had a tuft of about five long black hairs. Whether they grew there or were stuck on, Royce wasn’t sure.
‘Okay … I’ll bear that in mind.’
The man nodded his basin. ‘Good. You only iteki … aah … foreigner in Fujinomiya.’
‘I am? The only?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, thanks for letting me in.’
‘No. You let you in. Yakusa let you out.’
‘Do you know why I am here?’
‘Good day.’ He pushed off from the wooden railing of the bridge and walked away.
Bad Bar. Christ. Couldn’t they have called it the Pig and Whistle or the Fuji Hilton or something? This was impossible: ‘Excuse me, could you incriminate yourself by telling me you know where the Mafia hang out in this town?’ Sheesh. He glared down into the pellucid water. Golden carp. There was more gold down there than in Glover’s Horology. A monster came to the surface to have a chat to him. Gulp gulp gulp went the big round mouth. Probably telling him where the frigging Bad Bar was.
How did they all know that’s what he wanted? Were they all Akshara specialists? Something Amos had said came back to him: ‘Most of Tokyo coulda told you the same thing.’ With a little shiver he saw himself from the outside: the only foreigner in the town. Every midget in Toytown knew why he was here. The Yakusa was the only reason to come here.
The little guy with the bad haircut had crossed the street. Then, without turning back, he raised his left hand, index finger out. He was pointing. Pointing up the street that ran beside the glassy liver … river … to the Bad Bar.
The nutter with the balaclava and one ski pole walked by.
‘Reinkoto,’ said Royce.