Suddenly, almost overnight, I wasn’t afraid of Tokyo. There were even things I liked about it. I liked the view from my window, for example, because I could tell hours in advance when there was a typhoon in the east, just from the bruised colour of the sky. The gargoyles on the roof of the club seemed to crouch a little lower and the gas streams, red against the blackening sky, sputtered in the gathering wind, spitting and guttering until someone in the building thought to switch them off.
That year venture capitalists were throwing themselves off the top of the skyscrapers they’d built, but I was oblivious to the depression that was creeping through the country. I was happy there. I liked the way no one on the trains stared at me. I liked the girls sashaying down the street in oversized sunglasses and embroidered bell-bottom jeans, wearing the glittery red eyelashes they got in the shops in Omotesando. I liked the way everyone here was a little bit odd. The nail that sticks up will be hammered down. That was how I’d expected the Japanese to be. One nation, one philosophy. It’s funny how sometimes things turn out so differently from the way you picture them.
I worked on my room. I cleared everything out, all the furniture, the dust and the sheets tacked on the walls. I bought new tatami mats, washed every inch and replaced the dangling lightbulb with a flush, almost invisible fitting. I mixed up pigments and painted a picture of Jason and me on the silk in the far corner of the room. In the picture he was sitting in the garden next to the stone lantern. He was smoking a cigarette and watching someone just out of the frame. Someone moving, maybe, or dancing in the sun. I was standing behind him, gazing up into the trees. I drew myself very tall, with my hair full of reflections and a smile on my face. I was wearing a black satin Suzie Wong dress and I had one knee slightly forward and bent a little.
I bought a sewing kit and pounds and pounds of silver and gold beads from a shop called La Droguerie. One Saturday I tied a scarf over my hair, put on black linen Chinese worker’s pants, and stood for hours sewing constellations into the ruined silk sky, above the dark painted buildings of Tokyo. When I had finished, the tears in the sky were healed and it lay flat against the walls, criss-crossed with glittering rivers of gold and silver. The effect was mesmerizing – it was like living inside an exploding star.
The funny thing was that I was happy in spite of the way things had become between me and Shi Chongming. Something had shifted – it was as if the dry, frantic neediness I’d brought with me to Tokyo had somehow edged out of me and infected him instead.
On the Monday following Fuyuki’s party, I’d tried to get Strawberry to tell me more about the stories she’d heard. I’d sat down in front of her and said, ‘I ate some meat when I was at the party. Something about it tasted odd.’ When she didn’t answer I leaned towards her and spoke in a low voice, ‘And then I remembered – you’d told me not to eat anything.’
She fixed me with an intense look. For a short time it seemed as if she was going to say something, but instead she jumped up and nodded at her reflection in the plate-glass window. ‘Look,’ she said conversationally, as if I’d said nothing. ‘Look. This dress nice dress from movie Bus Stop.’ It was a mothy green coat-dress she was wearing, with attached black net and a fur collar, worn unbuttoned to show her daringly engineered bosom. She smoothed it over her hips. ‘Dress suit Strawberry figure, ne? Suit Strawberry more good than suit Marilyn.’
‘I said, I think I’ve eaten something bad.’
She turned to me, her face serious, her head unsteady from the champagne. I could see her jaw working in tiny movements under the skin. She put her hands on the desk and leaned forward so that her face was close to mine. ‘You must forget this,’ she whispered. ‘Japanese Mafia very complicated. You cannot easily understand it.’
‘It didn’t taste like anything I recognized. And I’m not the only one who noticed. Mr Bai. He thought there was something strange, too.’
‘Mr Bai?’ She made a contemptuous clicking sound in her throat. ‘You listen to Mr Bai? Mr Bai like Fuyuki’s pet. Like dog with collar. He famous singer once, but maybe now not so famous. All fine now, until…’ She held up her hand warningly. ‘ Until he make mistake! ’ She drew her hand across her throat. ‘Nobody too important to make a mistake. Understand?’
I swallowed and said, very slowly, ‘Why did you tell me not to eat anything?’
‘All rumours. All gossip.’ She grabbed the champagne bottle, filled her glass and drained it in one, using the glass to point at me. ‘And, Grey-san, you never repeat what I have told you. Understand?’ She shook the glass, and I could see how serious she was. ‘You want happy life? You want happy life working in high-class club? In Some Like It Hot?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It mean your mouth. Keep shut your mouth. Okay?’
Which meant, of course, that when Shi Chongming telephoned, unusually early the following day, I had nothing more to tell him. He didn’t take it well: ‘I find this attitude most odd, yes, most odd. I understood you were “desperate” to see my film.’
‘I am.’
‘Then explain to me, an old man with a poor grasp of the vicissitudes of youth, please do me the honour of explaining this sudden unwillingness to talk.’
‘I’m not unwilling. I just don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t make things up. I’ve got nothing new to tell you.’
‘Yes.’ His voice was tremulous with anger. ‘It is as I suspected. You’ve changed your mind. Am I wrong?’
‘Yes, you’re-’
‘I find this quite unacceptable. You have happily allowed me to make a monumental effort,’ I could tell he was trying not to shout, ‘and now such casualness! Such casualness when you tell me that you are no longer involved.’
‘I haven’t said that-’
‘I think you have.’ He coughed and made an odd sound, as if exhaling through his nostrils in little staccato bursts. ‘Yes, yes, I believe that, where you are concerned, I will trust my instincts. I will say goodbye.’ And he put the phone down.
I sat in the chilly living room staring at the dead receiver in my hand, my face blazing with colour. No, I thought. No. Shi Chongming, you’re wrong. I pictured the Nurse’s shadow, climbing up the corridor wall, I remembered standing inside the bathroom door, my heart leaping out of my chest, memories of the crime-scene photo playing in my head. I put my fingers over my closed eyes, pushing gently at them. I’d done so much, gone so far, and it wasn’t that I’d changed my mind – it was just that the picture had got hazy, like seeing something familiar through a steamed window. Wasn’t it? I dropped my hands and looked up at the door, at the long corridor, stretching away, a few rays of sunshine illuminating the dusty floor. Jason was asleep in my room. We’d been up together until five o’clock that morning, drinking beer he’d got from the machine in the street. Something odd was dawning on me. Something I could never have predicted. What if, I thought, shivering in the cold morning air, what if there was more than one route to peace of mind? Now, wouldn’t that be something?