The Heat of the Sun (18 page)

Horns bellowed, loud as the shouts and screams. Then, blasting through the throng, came a long, dark sedan, like a president’s car, sweeping one hapless fellow on to its hood.

The Lincoln! I had no way to reach it.

Soldiers had appeared, mounted on horses. One struck at rioters with a club. One fired shots. My rickshaw-puller lost his grip on his vehicle and was carried away from me, sinking under the
human tide. I was flung against one side of the chair, then the other, then out into the street. The rickshaw overturned and covered me like a shell.

I scrambled out. I struggled to my feet. I was pushed down again; I forced myself forward. Where was my ashplant? A camera flared, burning my eyes. I lost my footing. Shots rang out again.
Rearing over me, whinnying, was a horse. The rider, a Japanese officer.

I would be crushed. Horse and rider blocked the sun, then veered away, and I whispered (for, after all, I knew that rider, that officer from the bar): ‘Isamu... Isamu.’

Another figure fought its way towards me. Le Vol! He wrenched me upright. We plunged through a door. The chaos was muffled; leather protected us, brown and slithery as polished brogues.

‘Pleasant afternoon, Mr Sharpless?’ said Clifford T. Arnhem.

I lay, breathing heavily, in Le Vol’s arms. His camera, big and boxy, jutted at my spine, and through a glass partition I studied the back of Goro’s neck: like the upholstery, it was
leathery, brown.

‘Communists.’ Mr Arnhem bit the end from a cigar. ‘Communist agitators. What do the fools want? Don’t they understand this country is on the brink of
greatness?’

To my surprise, Le Vol made no protest at this, only extricating his limbs from mine, winding down the window, and taking more shots. The riot had subsided, leaving a street strewn with debris.
Goro drove on slowly. We passed corpses and overturned vehicles, one on fire.

Glumly, I thought of my missing ashplant.

‘This is just the beginning,’ Le Vol was saying. ‘Mr Arnhem’s arranged an important interview for us tomorrow, Sharpless. Big wheel in the government, this fellow. No
drunken philandering tonight, eh? This is where you come into your own.’ He tapped the window. ‘Who better to explain all this? And China too! The inside story, from their point of
view.’

‘Great Temples of Kyushu, indeed!’ I said.

‘I love temples,’ said Le Vol. ‘Without them, would the
Geographic
have stumped up for our tickets? Don’t worry, I’m shooting temples too. Anyway,’ he
went on, ‘this fellow you’re interviewing, he’s a Jap nobleman. Years ago he was a rootless playboy, living in the West. Back home, he’s the fiercest patriot. What did you
say his name was again, sir?’

‘Yamadori,’ replied Mr Arnhem. ‘Prince Yamadori.’

‘This isn’t like Yamadori,’ I said.

‘Yamadori isn’t like Yamadori – politics, Sharpless!’

‘Since when does a playboy get up at five?’

We trudged through early-morning streets. Gravely, I placed my ashplant ahead of me. Last night before dinner, Goro had appeared in my room, bowed, and presented me with the gnarled black stick,
held horizontally across his upturned palms; he was a servant, I realized, of exceptional powers.

Deserted in the dawn, the broad thoroughfare with its trolley-car tracks might have been anywhere. Only the hand-painted signs above the stores suggested Japan. We were a few streets back from
Dejima Wharf, somewhere between Chinatown and Nagasaki Station.

I asked Le Vol the name of Yamadori’s hotel.

‘City’s finest. Built over thermal springs.’

We crossed the road. Between stores selling fish or rice or radios, an imposing façade stretched the length of a block. Festooned with statues and Doric columns, it looked like an
Austro-Hungarian palace, but for the sense that it was all lathe and paste: Vienna via Hollywood. As Le Vol led me through a pair of mighty doors, young men in bow ties bent low, and a desk clerk,
proud in pince-nez, gestured to an ugly ottoman.

‘We’re expected,’ Le Vol said, impressed.

The young men resumed their tasks: one, polishing a brass plate by the elevators; one, wiping with a damp cloth each leaf of an aspidistra; one, fluffing cushions on sofas and chairs. The desk
clerk, pince-nez glinting, scratched solemnly in a ledger, as if recording deeds of conquest in imperial annals.

Le Vol was nervous, his hands twisting as he asked me, in a murmur, whether I had my questions ready. I was irritated but not worried. Le Vol would do the talking; my task was to take notes, and
afterwards put them in order. ‘You don’t think he’ll tell us much, do you?’

‘This is where you come in, Sharpless. The human touch. Old pals, aren’t you?’

‘Hardly. What’s he doing in Nagasaki, anyway?’

‘Inspecting the shipyards, says Mr Arnhem.’

I expected we would be called up to Yamadori’s suite, and was confused when the young men fell into formation by the elevators. A counter clicked from top floor to ground. The desk clerk,
straightening his jacket, joined the line of young men; Le Vol rose and prodded me to my feet, just as the doors slid back to reveal a stately figure illumined in the mirrored box.

Yamadori had changed since the Manhattan days. The Playboy of the Western World had vanished beneath a military bearing. There was something of the samurai about him. The huge, toad-like head,
with its livery lips and staring eyes, had stiffened, like a carving; a tight collar circled the jowly chins, and his squat, broad torso had been shoehorned into a blue uniform, heavy with
epaulettes, medals, and braid.

The boys, the desk clerk, and Le Vol and I bowed as the prince strutted forward. A sword in an elaborate, curving scabbard jutted from his left hip, and his boots were high and gleaming.
Emerging behind him were three impassive servants, each in grey-green military uniform.

Yamadori, with a faint smile, inclined his head to Le Vol and me, then turned to the desk clerk and barked harsh-sounding words in Japanese. The exchange ended with Yamadori dealing the fellow a
blow and the fellow, cringing and cowering, accepting his fate as if it were deserved.

‘My secretary,’ the great man explained, ‘has been delayed in Tokyo – government business, you understand. He was to have joined us this morning. But, it seems, is late.
Come.’ He snapped his fingers and pointed not to the elevator, but to a far wall of the lobby. Dutifully, with hotel staff bowing all the while, we trailed after the prince and his retinue.
Carved doors, sleekly lacquered, loomed from dark-papered walls; young men, like compliant machines, opened them at our approach, revealing an antechamber of glowing marble. Confused, I stole a
glance at Le Vol as we made our way down a curving staircase into a windowless, subterranean realm.

Everything below was as fine as in the lobby, but stark and simple: Japanese, not Austro-Hungarian. Broad corridors, lit dimly by lanterns, stretched in several directions. The air was humid,
oppressively so, and I heard, from somewhere out of sight, a soft lapping of water.

‘A bathe!’ cried Yamadori. ‘Always the best way to begin the day, don’t you find? Especially when one has spent the night not in sleeping but in talking on the telephone
to this minister and that.’ He sighed. ‘But such are the times. Soon, none shall sleep.’

A servant opened a slatted door.

‘We’ll change in here,’ declared Yamadori.

‘Prince’ – Le Vol, I could see, was losing patience – ‘we arranged an interview.’

‘Mr...
Levi
, is it not?’ – Yamadori smirked – ‘you will appreciate that I am a busy man. Here we are, imperial affairs at a critical pass, and I choose to
speak to two Americans.’

‘What better time,’ Le Vol swept on, ‘to explain yourself? China’s changed everything, for Japan and for the world. You know that, don’t you? Once you were exotics,
charmingly so. The world wished you well. Now we see you as beasts, ravening beasts.’

Yamadori’s nostrils flared and he spoke rapidly to a servant, who skittered forward and took Le Vol’s arm.

‘The interview will be dull for the photographer,’ said Yamadori. ‘Besides, am I to be depicted in the act of bathing? Your American audience would find it indelicate. This
hotel has a tea chamber, Mr Levi, with
most
diverting woodblocks on the walls.’

Le Vol protested, but the servant’s grip was firm.

‘Your friend is a man of political passions,’ Yamadori observed when we were alone. He seemed amused.

‘But fair,’ I said, ‘and just. He’s not here to judge.’

‘And nor are you?’

In the room with the slatted door, a bench, varnished darkly, ran around the walls; there were hooks for hanging clothes. Through a wide opening at the far end of the room was a steaming
pool.

I had thought servants would be on hand to undress Yamadori, but he tugged efficiently at his collar and the many buttons of his tunic. Embarrassed, I half-turned from him as I removed my own
clothes. Cursing Le Vol, I tried to think what questions I should ask. Manchuria: check. Korea: check. War with America: likely or no?

Covering myself with a small, thin towel, I prodded my ashplant over the slithery tiles, then lowered it, discarded the towel, and was about to ease myself into the steaming water when the great
man appeared beside me, gripped my arm, and said, ‘No. First you wash.’

‘I’ve washed,’ I said, ‘earlier.’

‘You wash,’ he declared, and I limped after him, naked, to a bank of showerheads that protruded from one wall. Ice-cold water struck me like a blow, and I gasped and whimpered while
Yamadori, unperturbed, threw out remarks about the weather and the stock market; once, in a rich baritone, he boomed out a melody from
La Bohème
: ‘
O Mimì, tu
più non torni
...’

He reminded me, I decided, not so much of a samurai as of a sumo wrestler. Lathering myself, I tried not to look at his ponderous swaying belly and the surprisingly large genitals that impended
beneath it, like obscene fruit, from a frizz of wiry black; but he, I could tell, was looking at me. Acutely, I was aware of my spindly arms, my sunken chest, the disfiguring scars on my injured
leg, and was relieved when he gestured at last towards the pool. No steps led down from the sides, but he slipped his bulk into the water with unexpected grace. I followed, squelching my buttocks
to the tiles and pitching forward, floundering, crying out at the sudden, startling heat.

The water was opaque, a greyish green. Steam coiled around us, infused with sulphurous scent; Yamadori lay back, luxuriating, and closed his eyes. The time had come for my questions, and I
struggled to recall phrases Le Vol had used, babbling out at last, ‘Many of us in the West have been alarmed by the rise in Japanese militarism. Should we be – in your view?’

Yamadori sniffed, hummed.

I tried again: ‘Japan, to the world’s astonishment, became the only non-Western nation to defeat a Western nation in war, in the Russo–Japanese war of 19...’ (1904? 1905?
I decided not to risk it.) ‘Is the world more inclined to censure Japanese military adventurism than that of other nations – in your view?’

He sighed; his belly rose and fell. ‘Young man, why ask me this? My secretary has the answers, prepared in press releases. Am I to weary myself by repeating what has passed my lips already
countless times?’

The bathing chamber was vast, greenish like the water, with a high, vaulted ceiling. Through crisscrossed panes of skylights, a dawn pallor glowed. Still we were alone, and I was both relieved
and alarmed; other bathers might be banned from the great man’s ablutions, but I had expected attendants, slim boys in loincloths or naked, aquatic geishas, ready with scrapers and
back-scrubbers, like slaves in ancient Rome.

Yamadori sang Puccini again; his voice was remarkably pleasant. In his old life he must have spent many a night at the opera. Cautiously, I asked him whether he missed his playboy days.

For a moment I thought he would not reply; the great whale body stirred not a jot, and I felt content: I had done my duty by Le Vol. No Pulitzer Prize would come from this scene. It was
over.

The pallor from the skylights grew golden; buttery shafts of radiance sank into the steam. Yamadori’s baritone came again – speaking not singing – bearing pictures of an
ancient culture: pagodas like dragons’ scales, stacked tier on tier; the flick of fans in strange ceremonies; suits of armour flashing like jewelled crustaceans; giant torii jutting from the
sea; robed figures ascending sacred stairs. This, said Yamadori, was the time of Tokugawa, the feudal regime that had ruled in splendid isolation from the world before the coming of Meiji and the
birth of modern Japan.

‘After Tokugawa... ah, but all of us come after Tokugawa now!’

He shifted, and the slosh of water startled me.

He went on: ‘There are those who see me as a superficial man’ (I had never, I wanted to assure him, entertained such a thought), ‘idler, skimmer of the surface, seeker after
vain pleasures. Call me butterfly if you will – a fluttering thing of no weight, no consequence!’ (I never would, I almost said – no, never; but held my breath, as if some
revelation were about to come.)

‘I was born, Mr Sharpless, some sixty years ago: 1877 on your American calendar. A year that perhaps means little to you, but in Japan it is the year of the Satsuma Rebellion, when
Takamori, last of the samurai, led his army of forty thousand against the forces of the new Meiji government. My father died in that rebellion – yes, on the losing side. Naturally, I never
knew him; I was an ugly fat baby, clamped to my nurse’s breast, far away in our palace at Omaru. But often I have wished I could speak to him. I should tell him he was a fool. Why cast in his
lot with Takamori? Already the Meiji had entrapped us, an age of iron and lead; Tokugawa and all its gold lay as deep in the past as Lady Murasaki and
The Tale of Genji.
The golden world was
over, crushed by time, from the moment the Americans in their black ships appeared in Edo Bay.

‘
Manifest destiny
, that was your name for it, your progress of pillage and plunder, first across one continent, then around the world. Were you to be denied the rich ports of
Asia?’ He snorted. ‘Ports! In the beginning, that was all. But the doors were flung open then. Our hemisphere fell into the clutches of your race. Was it our destiny to be your colony?
Were we Chinamen? Were we Indians? No! We would never surrender. We would adopt your ways. Modernize. Compete.