100 Years of Vicissitude Read online

  ‘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 amat
eur 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.’