The Diamond Chariot (37 page)

‘And is it possible for the touch of a finger to leave a burn mark on the neck, through a celluloid collar?’ Fandorin countered. ‘All right, it’s too early to argue about that. Let’s go to the mooring and wait for the samurai. If they don’t come, we’ll work on the owner of the Rakuen. But Mr Asagawa is right – we can’t go at this like a bull at a gate. Tell me, Inspector, do you have agents in civilian dress … that is, I mean, not in uniforms, but in kimonos?’

The Japanese smiled gently.

‘The kimono is formal wear. But I understand your question, Mr Vice-Consul. I have very good agents – in Japanese clothing and in European frock coats. We will put Semushi under secret surveillance.’

‘And from what my servant can tell me, I shall compose a verbal p-portrait of the man who touched Blagolepov’s neck. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Perhaps the Satsumans will show up after all?’

The deceased Captain Blagolepov’s launch was tied up among fishing boats at a berth a long way from the Settlement.

The ambush was already in place two hours before the dawn. The Japanese police were ensconced under the decking of the jetty, on the launch itself and on the boats beside it. Lockston and his constables were posted on the shore, in a warehouse.

It was very dark and very quiet;, the only sound was the breathing of the bay, and every now and then the moon peeped out for a short while from behind the clouds. Erast Petrovich had found the prospect of sitting in the warehouse with the white policeman uninteresting. He wanted to be with Asagawa and his men in the immediate vicinity of the launch. The titular counsellor and four of the Japanese policemen had taken up a post under the pier, up to their knees in water. After a quarter of an hour Fandorin started feeling cold, and half an hour after that his teeth were chattering wildly, but he had to put up with it in order not to disgrace himself in front of the locals.

When there was moonlight filtering through between the boards of the pier, the young man examined his silent companions. Not one of them had a firearm, or even cold steel – only long staffs. But during the fight at the Rakuen, Erast Petrovich had seen how effective this weapon was in the hands of a master, so he contemplated the Japanese men’s unimpressive equipment with respect.

What surprised the titular counsellor most of all was that four of the ten men brought by Asagawa were wearing spectacles. It was absolutely impossible to imagine a Russian constable in glasses – the very idea was enough to make a cat laugh. But for the Japanese officers it seemed to be in the accepted order of things. Unable to quell his curiosity, Fandorin quietly asked the inspector what was the reason for this phenomenon – was it perhaps a national disposition to short-sightedness?

The inspector replied seriously and comprehensively. He explained that from the day they were born men of the samurai class had a predilection for reading and self-education. And the pursuit of book-learning was particularly well developed in the police – which was good for the job, but bad for the eyesight. Nonetheless, this activity was enthusiastically encouraged by the high command, for now, in these times of progress, the representatives of authority should be educated individuals – otherwise the public would lose all respect for them, and contempt for the representatives of authority was detrimental to society.

So there was Erast Petrovich with his teeth chattering, up to his knees in water, pondering the terrible mistake that the government of his homeland had made by not involving the landed gentry in socially useful activity following the liberation of the peasantry. If only at that point they had disbanded the appalling Russian police – illiterate, corrupt through and through – and started taking young men from the nobility as police constables in the cities and rural districts. What a wonderful idea – a police force that is more educated and more high-minded that its fellow citizens, a police force that is a model for emulation! Russia had so many starry-eyed idlers with a grammar-school education! And now they were living totally useless lives, or else youthful idealism and the energy of unspent passion drove them to join the revolutionaries. What a loss for the state and society!

When he hit his forehead against a rough beam of timber, Erast Petrovich realised that his mind had slipped imperceptibly into the drowsy realm of daydreams. Noble police constables – what an absurd fantasy!

He shook his head to drive sleep away and took his watch out of his pocket. Three minutes after four. The gloom was starting to brighten.

And when the first, hesitant ray of sunlight stretched out across the dark-blue waters of the bay, it finally became clear that the Satsumans would not come.

It seemed like the end,
No hope left. But suddenly –
The first ray of sun.

A
MAMUSI
’S HEART

While his master was sleeping, Masa managed to do many important jobs. A thoughtful, responsible approach was what was required here – after all, it’s not every day that a man starts a new life.

Masa did not know much about
gaijins
, and he knew almost nothing at all about his master, and, naturally, that made him feel a bit timid – he didn’t want to make a mess of things, but his spirit was filled with the zeal of devotion, and that was the most important thing.

Shirota-san had explained Masa’s duties to him the day before: do the housekeeping, buy provisions, prepare food, clean clothes – in short, do everything to meet his master’s every need. Masa had been given twenty yen to cover outgoings and also his salary for a month in advance.

The salary was generous, and he spent it as befitted a devoted retainer, that is, on acquiring an appearance worthy of his position.

The Yakuza known as Badger had died with the Chobei-gumi gang. Now the same body was inhabited by a man called Sibata-san – no, better ‘Mister Masa’ – who had to live up to his calling.

The first thing Masa did was pay a visit to the barber and have his lacquered pigtail shaved off. Of course, the result was not very beautiful to see: white on top and black at the sides, like an old
gaijin
’s bald patch. But Masa’s hair grew with remarkable speed: in two days the back of his head would be covered with stubble and in a month he would have a wonderful stiff brush. It would be clear straight away that the owner of a head like that was a modern individual, a man of European culture. Like in that song everyone was singing in Tokyo:

Tap a lacquer-pigtailed head

For full elucidation.

Hear the dull and obtuse thud

Of musty, crass stagnation.

Tap a trim and tidy head

For full elucidation.

Hear the clear, progressive note

Of bright illumination.

Masa knocked on the freshly trimmed crown of his own head and was pleased with the sound. And while his hair was growing, he could wear a hat – he bought a fine felt bowler, only very slightly frayed, for just thirty sen in a second-hand clothes shop.

He bought his outfit in the same place: jacket, shirt-front and cuffs, check trousers. He tried on a heap of shoes, boots and half-boots, but decided to wait for a while with the
gaijin
footwear – it was very stupid and uncomfortable, and took such a long time to put on and take off. He kept his wooden
geta
.

Having transformed himself into a genuine foreigner, he visited one of his former girlfriends, who had taken a job with the family of an American missionary: first, to show off his newly acquired chic and, secondly, to ask about the habits and customs of
gaijins
. He obtained a great deal of surprising and very useful information, although not without some difficulty, because the brainless girl pestered him with her amorous advances and slobbered all over him. But he had come on serious business, after all, not just to fool about.

Now Masa felt sufficiently prepared to set to work.

It was a real stroke of luck that his master didn’t come back until dawn and slept almost until midday – there was enough time to prepare everything properly.

Masa put together an elegant breakfast: he brewed some wonderful barley tea, then took a wooden plate and set out on it pieces of sea centipede, yellow sea-urchin caviar and transparent slices of squid; he arranged the marinated plums and salted radish beautifully; he boiled the most expensive rice and sprinkled it with crushed seaweed; and he could feel especially proud of the absolutely fresh, snow-white tofu and fragrant tender-brown
natto
paste of fermented soybeans. The tray was decorated according to the season with small yellow chrysanthemums.

He carried this beautiful display into the bedroom, where he sat down on the floor without making a sound and started waiting for his master to wake up at last. But his master didn’t open his eyes; he was breathing calmly and quietly, and the only movement was the trembling of his long eyelashes.

Ai, this was not good! The rice would get cold! The tea would stand for too long!

Masa thought and thought about what to do, and a brilliant idea occurred to him.

He filled his lungs right up with air and gave a great sneeze.

A-tishoo!

His master jerked upright on the bed, opened his strange-coloured eyes and gazed in amazement at his seated retainer.

Masa bowed low, begged forgiveness for the noise he had made and held out one hand spattered with saliva, as if to say: It couldn’t be helped, an impulse of nature.

And then straight away, with a broad smile, immediately held out to his master the magnificent earthenware chamber pot that he had bought for ninety sen. Masa had learned from his former girlfriend that foreigners put this object under the bed for the night and did their
gaijin
business in it.

But his master did not seem pleased to see the chamber pot and waved his hand, as if to say: Take it away, take it away. Evidently Masa should have bought the white one, not the pink one with beautiful flowers.

Then Masa helped his master get washed, examining his white skin and firm muscles as he did so. He wanted very much to take a look at how a
gaijin
’s male parts were arranged, but for some reason the master sent his faithful servant out of the room before he washed the lower part of his body,

The breakfast was a magnificent success.

Of course, he had to spend some time teaching his master to use the chopsticks, but
gaijins
had nimble fingers. That was because they were descended from monkeys – they admitted that themselves, and they weren’t ashamed of it at all.

Masa’s master delighted him with his excellent appetite, and he had an interesting way of swallowing his food. First he bit off a small piece of centipede, then he wrinkled his face right up (no doubt in delight) and finished it off very quickly, washing it down greedily with barley tea. He gagged on the tea and started coughing, his mouth opened wide and his eyes gaped. That was like the Koreans – they belched when they wanted to show how delicious something was. Masa made a mental note that he must prepare twice as much next time.

After breakfast there was a language lesson. Shirota-san had said that the master wanted to learn Japanese – not like the other foreigners, who forced their servants to learn their language.

The lesson went like this.

The master pointed at various parts of his face and Masa told him their Japanese names: eye –
meh
, forehead –
hitai
, mouth –
kuti
, eyebrow –
mayu
. His pupil wrote these down in a notebook and repeated them diligently. His pronunciation was funny, but of course Masa didn’t permit himself even a tiny little smile.

The master drew a human face on a separate page and indicated its various parts with little arrows. That was clear enough. But then he started asking about something that Masa didn’t understand.

He could make out some words: ‘Rakuen’ and
satsumajin
– but what they referred to remained a mystery. His master pretended to be sitting there with his eyes closed, then he jumped up, staggered, waved one arm about and prodded Masa in the neck, then pointed to the face he had drawn and said, as if he was asking a question:

‘
Meh? Kuti?
’

Eventually, having reduced Masa to a state of complete bewilderment, he sighed, ruffled up his hair and sat down.

And then the most unusual part began.

The master ordered Masa to stand facing him, held out his clenched fists and started gesturing, as if he was inviting Masa to kick him.

Masa was horrified and for a long time he refused: how could he possibly kick his
onjin
? But then he remembered an interesting detail about the
gaijins
’ intimate life, something that his former girlfriend had told him. She had spied on what the missionary and his wife did when they were in the bedroom and seen her mistress, wearing nothing but a black bodice (apart from her riding boots), beating the sensei with a whip on his bare
o-siri
, and him asking her to hit him again and again.

That must be how the
gaijins
did things, Masa guessed. He bowed respectfully and struck his master in the chest with his foot, not very hard – right between absurdly extended fists.

The master fell over on to his back, but jumped up straight away. He clearly liked it and asked Masa to do it again.

This time he started springing about and following Masa’s every movement closely, so Masa couldn’t hit him straight away. The secret of ju-jitsu, or ‘the art of soft combat’, is to follow your opponent’s breathing. Everyone knows that strength enters into you with the air, and it leaves you with the air too; breathing in and out is the alternation of strength and weakness, fullness and emptiness. So Masa waited until his in-breath coincided with his master’s out-breath and repeated the attack.

His master fell down again, and this time he was really pleased.
Gaijins
truly were different from normal people, after all.