James Bond Anthology (307 page)

Later, the Shinto priest received her gravely. He almost seemed to be expecting her. He held up his hand and spoke to the kneeling figure. ‘Kissy-chan, I know what I know. The spawn of the devil is dead. So is his wife. The Castle of Death has been totally destroyed. These things were brought about as the Six Guardians foretold, by the man from across the sea. Where is he now?’

‘In the cave behind the shrine,
kannushi-san
. He is gravely wounded. I love him. I wish to keep him and care for him. He remembers nothing of the past. I wish it to remain so, so that we may marry and he may become a son of Kuro for all time.’

‘That will not be possible, my daughter. In due course he will recover and go off across the world to where he came from. And there will be official inquiries for him, from Fukuoka, perhaps even from Tokyo, for he is surely a man of renown in his own country.’

‘But
kannushi-san
, if you so instruct the elders of Kuro, they will show these people
shiran-kao
, they will say they know nothing, that this man Todoroki left, swimming for the mainland, and has not been heard of since. Then the people will go away. All I want to do is to care for him and keep him for myself as long as I can. If the day comes when he wishes to leave, I will not hinder him. I will help him. He was happy here fishing with me and my David-bird. He told me so. When he recovers, I will see that he continues to be happy. Should not Kuro cherish and honour this hero who was brought to us by the gods? Would not the Six Guardians wish to keep him for a while? And have I not earned some small token for my humble efforts to help Todoroki-san and save his life?’

The priest sat silent for a while with his eyes closed. Then he looked down at the pleading face at his feet. He smiled. ‘I will do what is possible, Kissy-chan. And now bring the doctor to me and then take him up to the cave so that he can tend this man’s wounds. Then I will speak to the elders. But for many weeks you must be very discreet and the
gaijin
must not show himself. When all is quiet again, he may move back into the house of your parents and allow himself to be seen.’

The doctor knelt beside Bond in the cave and spread out on the ground a large map of the human head with the sections marked with figures and ideograms. His gentle fingers probed Bond’s wounds for signs of fracture, while Kissy knelt beside him and held one of Bond’s sweating hands in both of hers. The doctor bent forward and, lifting the eyelids one by one, gazed deeply into the glazed eyes through a large reading-glass. On his instructions, Kissy ran for boiling water, and the doctor proceeded to clean the cut made by the bullet across the terrible swelling of the first wound caused by Bond’s crash into the oubliette. Then he tapped sulpha dust into the wound and bound up the head neatly and expertly, put surgical plaster over the cut across the ribs and stood up and took Kissy outside the cave. ‘He will live,’ he said, ‘but it may be months, even years before he regains his memory. It is particularly the temporal lobe of his brain, where the memory is stored, that has been damaged. For this, much education will be necessary. You will endeavour all the time to remind him about past things and places. Then isolated facts that he will recognize will turn into chains of association. He should undoubtedly be taken to Fukuoka for an X-ray, but I think there is no fracture and in any case the
kannushi-san
has ordained that he is to remain under your care and his presence on the island to be kept secret. I shall of course observe the instructions of the honourable
kannushi-san
and only visit him by different routes and at night. But there is much you will have to attend to for he must not be moved in any way for at least a week. Now listen carefully,’ said the doctor, and gave her minute instructions which covered every aspect of feeding and nursing and left her to carry them out.

And so the days ran into weeks and the police came again and again from Fukuoka, and the official called Tanaka came from Tokyo and later a huge man who said he was from Australia arrived and he was the most difficult of all for Kissy to shake off. But the face of
shiran-kao
remained of stone and the island of Kuro kept its secret. James Bond’s body gradually mended and Kissy took him out for walks at night. They also went for an occasional swim in the cove, where they played with David and she told him all the history of the Ama and of Kuro and expertly parried all his questions about the world outside the island.

Winter came, and the Ama had to stay ashore and turn their hands to mending nets and boats and working on the smallholdings on the mountain side, and Bond came back into the house and made himself useful with carpentry and odd jobs and with learning Japanese from Kissy. The glazed look went from his eyes, but they remained remote and faraway and every night he was puzzled by dreams of a quite different world of white people and big cities and half-remembered faces. But Kissy assured him that these were just nightmares such as she had, and that they had no meaning, and gradually Bond came to accept the little stone-and-wood house and the endless horizon of sea as his finite world. Kissy was careful to keep him away from the south coast of the island, and dreaded the day when fishing would begin again at the end of May and he would see the great black wall across the straits and memory might come flooding back.

The doctor was surprised by Bond’s lack of progress and resigned himself to the conclusion that Bond’s amnesia was total, but soon there was no cause for further visits because Bond’s physical health and his apparently complete satisfaction with his lot showed that in every other respect he was totally recovered.

But there was one thing that greatly distressed Kissy. From the first night in the cave she had shared Bond’s
futon
and, when he was well and back in the house, she waited every night for him to make love to her. But, while he kissed her occasionally and often held her hand, his body seemed totally unaware of her however much she pressed herself against him and even caressed him with her hands. Had the wound made him impotent? She consulted the doctor, but he said there could be no connection, although it was just possible that he had forgotten how to perform the act of love.

So one day Kissy Suzuki announced that she was going to take the weekly mailboat to Fukuoka to do some shopping and, in the big city, she found her way to the local sex-shop, called The Happy Shop, that is a feature of all self-respecting Japanese towns, and told her problem to the wicked-looking old greybeard behind the innocent counter containing nothing more viciously alluring than tonics and contraceptives. He asked her if she possessed five thousand yen, which is a lot of money, and when she said she did, he locked the street door and invited her to the back of the shop.

The sex merchant bent down and pulled out from beneath a bench what looked like a small wired rabbit-hutch. He put this on the bench and Kissy saw that it contained four large toads on a bed of moss. Next he produced a metal contraption that had the appearance of a hot-plate with a small wire cage in the middle. He carefully lifted out one of the toads and placed it inside the cage so that it squatted on the metal surface. Then he hauled a large car battery on to the bench, put it alongside the ‘hot-plate’ and attached wires from one to the other. Then he spoke some encouraging endearments to the toad and stood back.

The toad began to shiver slightly, and the crosses in its dark red eyes blazed angrily at Kissy as if it knew it was all her fault. The sex merchant, his head bent over the little cage, watched anxiously and then rubbed his hands with satisfaction as heavy beads of sweat broke out all over the toad’s warty skin. He reached for an iron teaspoon and a small phial, gently raised the wire cage and very carefully scraped the sweat-beads off the toad’s body and dripped the result into the phial. When he had finished, the phial contained about half a teaspoon of clear liquid. He corked it up and handed it to Kissy, who held it with reverence and great care as if it had been a fabulous jewel. Then the sex merchant disconnected the wires and put the toad, which seemed none the worse for its experience, back in its hutch and closed the top.

He turned to Kissy and bowed. ‘When this valuable product is desired by a sincere customer I always ask them to witness the process of distillation. Otherwise they might harbour the unworthy thought that the phial contained only water from the tap. But you have now seen that this preparation is the authentic sweat of a toad. It is produced by giving a toad a mild electric shock. The toad suffered only temporary discomfort and it will be rewarded this evening with an extra portion of flies or crickets. And now,’ he went to a cupboard and took out a small pill-box, ‘here is powder of dried lizard. A combination of the two, inserted in your lover’s food at the evening meal, should prove infallible. However, to excite his mind as well as his senses, for an extra thousand yen I can provide you with a most excellent pillow-book.’

‘What is a pillow-book?’

The sex merchant went back to his cupboard and produced a cheaply bound and printed paper book with a plain cover. Kissy opened it. Her hand went to her mouth and she blushed furiously. But then, being a careful girl who didn’t want to be cheated, she turned some more of the pages. They all contained outrageously pornographic close-up pictures, most faithfully engraved, of the love-act portrayed from every possible aspect. ‘Very well,’ she whispered. She handed back the book. ‘Please wrap up everything carefully.’ She took out her purse and began counting out the notes.

Out in the shop, the wicked-faced old man handed her the parcel and, bowing deeply, unlocked the door.

Kissy gave a perfunctory bob in return and darted out of the shop down the street as if she had just made a pact with the devil. But by the time she went to catch the mailboat back to Kuro, she was hugging herself with excitement and pleasure and making up a story to explain away her acquisition of the book.

Bond was waiting for her on the jetty. It was the first day she had been away from him and he had missed her painfully. They talked happily as they walked hand-in-hand along the foreshore among the nets and boats, and the people smiled to see them, but looked through them instead of greeting them for had not the priest decreed that their
gaijin
here did not officially exist? And the priest’s edict was final.

Back at the house, Kissy went happily about preparing a highly spiced dish of
sukiyaki
, the national dish of beef stew. This was not only a great treat, for they seldom ate meat, but Kissy didn’t know if her love-potions had any taste and it would be wise not to take any chances. When it was ready, with a trembling hand, she poured the brown powder and the liquid into Bond’s portion and stirred it well. Then she brought the dishes in to where the family awaited, squatting on the
tatami
before the low table.

She watched surreptitiously as Bond devoured every scrap of his portion and wiped his plate clean with a pinch of rice and then, after warm compliments on her cooking, drank his tea and retired to their room. In the evenings, he usually sat mending nets or fishing lines before going to bed. As she helped her mother wash up she wondered if he were doing so now!

Kissy spent a long time doing her hair and making herself pretty before, her heart beating like a captured bird, she joined him.

He looked up from the pillow-book and laughed. ‘Kissy, where in God’s name did you get this?’

She giggled. ‘Oh that! I forgot to tell you. Some dreadful man tried to make up to me in one of the shops. He pressed that into my hand and made an assignation for this evening. I agreed just to get rid of him. It is what we call a pillow-book. Lovers use them. Aren’t the pictures exciting?’

Bond threw off his kimono. He pointed to the soft
futon
on the floor. He said fiercely, ‘Kissy, take off your clothes and lie down there. We’ll start at page one.’Winter slid into spring and fishing began again, but now Kissy dived naked like the other girls and Bond and the bird dived with her and there were good days and bad days. But the sun shone steadily and the sea was blue and wild irises covered the mountain side and everyone made a great fuss as the sprinkling of cherry trees burst into bloom, and Kissy wondered what moment to choose to tell Bond that she was going to have a baby and whether he would then propose marriage to her.

But one day, on the way down to the cove, Bond looked preoccupied and, when he asked her to wait before they put the boat out as he had something serious to talk to her about, her heart leaped and she sat down beside him on a flat rock and put her arms round him and waited.

Bond took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and held it out to her, and she shivered with fear and knew what was coming. She took her arms from round him and looked at the paper. It was one of the rough squares of newspaper from the spike in the little lavatory. She always tore these squares herself and discarded any that contained words in English – just in case.

Bond pointed. ‘Kissy, what is this word “Vladivostok”? What does it mean? It has some kind of a message for me. I connect it with a very big country. I believe the country is called Russia. Am I right?’

Kissy remembered her promise to the priest. She put her face in her hands. ‘Yes, Taro-san. That is so.’

Bond pressed his fists to his eyes and squeezed. ‘I have a feeling that I have had much to do with this Russia, that a lot of my past life was concerned with it. Could that be possible? I long so terribly to know where I came from before I came to Kuro. Will you help me, Kissy?’