Ransom Page 7

  Ito arrived wearing his gi, as if he had no civilian life. He bowed to Ransom and to Udo and then began jogging around the lot. It still might rain, Ransom thought. Udo watched Ito circle the lot, then began running himself. He was scared to death of Ito.

  The sensei was in a buoyant mood, smiling owlishly. Ransom bowed. The sensei nodded and asked if he thought it was going to rain. Ransom felt that it wasn’t his meteorological intuition which was being checked, but his enthusiasm. Did Ransom want it to rain? seemed to be the question. Or maybe he was just paranoid.

  When the sensei knelt down on the asphalt, the twelve of them fell into line according to rank—the sensei, Ito and then Ransom. Yamada was absent. Ransom had less seniority than others down the line but unlike most Japanese institutions the dojo was a meritocracy. The sensei didn’t award belts—Ito’s being the legendary exception—but the hierarchy was clear. Practicing seven days a week, at the dojo and on his own, Ransom had moved up through the ranks.

  Kneeling seiza, butt resting on his heels, eyes closed, Ransom tried to drain himself of everything but will. To do this it helped to find an image. He pictured a box and held the image still while he filled it with the junk of his quotidian concerns: the broken English of student essays, Marilyn’s problem, the bald rear tire on his Honda. Last of all he deposited his fear of injury. Then he tipped the box, slowly spilling its contents out into a void. When the box was empty he was clean. The box hovered in front of him, bare and luminous.

  The sensei clapped his hands and it was time to begin. Jumping to his feet, Ransom felt ready for anything. Ito led the stretching and calisthenics, the others facing him in two lines. Ransom concentrated on duplicating his every move. With years of scrupulous imitation he might gain possession of the discipline.

  The sun broke through an hour into practice but it didn’t seem to cut the humidity. The front of Ransom’s gi was soaked through. He was dragging by the third hour, then got a second wind which kept him going until the sensei called them in. They waited to hear if they would be sparring.

  “Kata,” the sensei said, to Ransom’s immense relief. Kata were prescribed sequences linking offensive and defensive moves; performed individually, usually in slow motion, they choreographed one side of an imaginary battle. Although it was often difficult to summon the required calm at the end of such a long practice, Ransom liked the kata because no one got hurt.

  The sensei demonstrated the swan kata. There were two aspects of representation. On the one hand, six imaginary opponents were dispatched. It was also a balletic sketch of a possible ornithological mating dance. Both had to be there at once, the fight and the grace of the swan. The sensei stood at attention in his white gi, filled his lungs and drifted through the sequence. The sweep of his arms was unmistakably winglike as he brushed aside attackers, not least in the slow, clapping motion of the hands which represented the popping of an opponent’s eardrums. He finished on the same spot from which he had started.

  The disciples formed two rows. The sensei signalled and they began. Halfway through, Ransom forgot the next move and lost his rhythm.

  That was no swan, the sensei said to him at the end. Ransom asked if he could try it again. The others watched him repeat the performance. After the third run the sensei said, Not bad. They worked on kata for almost an hour.

  When the sensei kneeled, everyone rushed to his assigned place. Ransom took his time, feeling the operation of musculature up and down his calves as he walked over to kneel beside Ito. Now that practice was finally over, he wanted to continue. He would like to see what he could do with Ito today. But he was not unaware of being grateful at having been spared for another day.

  Have you seen Yamada? the sensei asked him after everyone had showered.

  I haven’t seen him, Ransom said.

  I thought you two were buddies, the sensei said. It sounded ominous.

  I see him sometimes, Ransom said. Not recently.

  The sensei said, I think he’s got a woman.

  Good for him, Ransom said.

  Bad for his karate, the sensei countered. You never would have made it this far if you had been thinking about women.

  I was thinking about them, Ransom said. They weren’t thinking about me.

  The sensei shook his head. You made a choice, he said.

  At times Ransom considered the sensei omniscient, but he was wrong to think that Ransom had given up women for karate. He would have to understand the concept of penance.

  8

  After practice, Ransom had an hour and a half to kill before he had to meet Marilyn. He ate a bowl of noodles with the sensei and rode downtown to a public bath he frequented. Leaving his shoes with the others in the tiled entryway, he pulled back the door to the men’s entrance, paid the attendant and asked for a bucket, towel and soap. In the changing room an aged man wearing the wraparound diaper favored by the prewar generation was dressing a young boy of three or four. The boy pointed at Ransom—“gaijin,” he said—and the two of them openly watched him undress.

  His clothes folded in a basket, he pulled back the glass door and stepped into the blue steam of the bath chamber. The sound of running water slowed and thickened as he closed the door behind him. Two men were submerged to their necks in the baths. Three others sat in front of the faucets along the far wall, one of them very dark-skinned. Closer up, Ransom could make out the dragon-and-flame motif of the tattoos which covered his back and arms. One of the attractions of the bath was that it was a yakuza hangout. The tattoos were worth the price of admission. Missing fingers were a bonus.

  Ransom scooped his bucket in the warm tub and poured it over his head, then sat down on the tiles in front of one of the faucets. He rinsed himself down, lathered up his washcloth, and soaped himself, starting with the toes. Glancing sideways at the tattooed man, he observed the dragon getting doused. Yamada had come here with him recently and warned him not to stare, told him that yakuza were dangerous. Being stared at seven days a week, though, Ransom felt entitled to gawk himself.

  Yamada’s waning interest in the dojo disconcerted him. For two years Ransom had been putting nearly all of his energy and time into karate, hoping eventually to be as good as Yamada, who was three or four years older and had been at it for half of his life. Ransom believed that he would become a different person, better somehow, if he kept training. Without actually cataloguing imagined benefits, he felt that the discipline would tone all of his being. It was a way of knowing himself. He wished to be morally taut and resolute, and at the same time more at ease with his fellow creatures, to achieve a self-mastery that would reduce the complexity of transacting with others.

  When he had finished rinsing, he went over to the first of four tubs arrayed in order of ascending temperature. In movies, the manly, samurai sort of man leapt immediately into the hottest tub, killing millions of sperm even as he proved his virility, but the sensible procedure was to work your way up. Ransom stepped into the first and submerged himself up to his neck. He lay back and closed his eyes. When the water began to feel cool he moved to the next tub, already occupied by two men who shared rough, peasant features and who openly scrutinized the invader. The tattooed man in the third tub stood up and lowered himself unceremoniously into the hottest. Ransom’s two companions were conferring. The thickness of their Kansai dialect and the distortion of the echo obscured the conversation, but Ransom gathered they were talking about him.

  Gaijin are bigger, one said, standing up, but Japanese are harder.

  This, Ransom knew, was the common wisdom.

  The laughter of women carried from the other side of the partition. The men eyed Ransom suspiciously: they knew he had come to steal their daughters and their sisters. These two were old enough to remember the Occupation. Ransom assumed an innocent expression—Nobody here but us eunuchs.

  He lay back in the tub and considered the Marilyn business. Her cause was not exactly a noble one. She had been sleeping with two men—or at least thinking about it�
��one married and one a gangster, and she’d been caught. The only good thing she had done so far was to keep it from Miles, but her concern for his well-being was riddled with self-interest, a function of diverting shit from fan. Friendship was a motive for Ransom, but otherwise he was emotionally disengaged, which gave him an ethical vista. If Marilyn were his lover, then there wouldn’t be any moral dimension at all, only an erotic competition. The fact that he didn’t particularly like her gave a clarity to the proceedings. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he felt that he had been waiting for something like this to present itself, a chance to act.

  He moved to the third tub but passed on being parboiled in the fourth, finishing with a dunk in the cold water. The two men, now in the fourth tub, watched this procedure and perhaps observed that the gaijin anatomy exhibited a familiar response to cold water.

  The drills did not feel real to DeVito. He knew this shit cold. He felt like he was sitting in the corner watching his body kick and block his partner. He wailed on the sucker, a brown-belt technician, driving him back on the attack, standing fast when he was defending, waiting for the drills to end and the sparring to begin. The drills were important, but combat was the point. Everything came together when you were fighting. Everything was real when you knew you could get your teeth smashed in, your balls delivered express to the back of your throat. Then you had to be all there and smash the other guy first.

  Most dojos had a general hands-off-face policy, which obliged you to pull your hits just short of the head and neck. You only gained what you risked, was DeVito’s view, and if you didn’t put the whole works on the line, what was the point? That was one of the things he admired about the Japanese: they understood this. One of his buddies in the Marines had lent him a book about the samurai and he had learned about Bushido: the way of the warrior. They were prepared to die at any moment, and that, DeVito realized in a flash of enlightenment, was the way to really live.

  After he was eighty-sixed out of the service DeVito came to Kyoto hoping to study kendo, the way of the sword, until he discovered that it was nowadays practiced with bamboo staves and protective gear. Karate seemed a more immediate and vital form of combat. After a protracted search he had found the kind of dojo he was looking for. The sensei was one of the toughest motherfuckers in Japan, or anywhere. Kuro-obi, seventh grade, national champion for three years, and the star of several karate flicks. The rumor at the dojo was that he had whipped hell out of Bruce Lee in an informal match.

  The initiation almost killed him. Altogether it was about ten times harder than basic training at Camp Lejeune, although the memory of basic helped him get through it. For starters he had to run to the top of Mt. Hiei in December. It took six hours. Halfway up, running barefoot, he hit snow. A group from the dojo followed him in a car, jeering. The remaining trials were no picnic. In the dojo, he repeatedly had the shit kicked out of him. He understood what it was about. He would have endured worse. Now he was kuro-obi, second grade, having flattened and bloodied most of those who had presided over his initiation. The sensei, pleased with his progress, had named him second assistant.

  Finally, the sensei banged the Chinese gong signalling the end of drills and the beginning of sparring. Everyone hustled to the sparring circle in the middle of the floor. Anyone who was perceived to dawdle would quickly regret it.

  DeVito watched the early matches with a rising sense of excitement. He projected himself into each one, seeing missed opportunities, unprotected areas crying out for a hit, identifying with the clean arc of a kick hitting home. Finally the sensei called his name. He strode into the circle and slipped into his fighting stance as if into a warm bath, knowing as he looked into the eyes of the other that he had already won, feeling even before the match started the trajectory of his kick and the hard contact at the end of it.

  Ransom crossed the river at the Sanjo-Ohashi Bridge and rode out through the Okazaki district, noted for temples and love hotels. The love hotels were tucked away on the residential streets, the word HOTEL in English indicating that the rates were hourly rather than nightly, that the beds might be circular or heart-shaped, the parking areas fenced and hedged so that patrons—illicit lovers, or husbands and wives whose domestic setup didn’t afford privacy—could enter and exit discreetly. The Miyako Hotel was not one of these, aloof on a hillside on the western edge of the city, approached via a long, meticulously landscaped drive. Ransom chose it for their meeting because it was remote.

  A flock of schoolgirls was milling around the front entrance, watched over by two cops. As Ransom passed through the group, he kept the visor of his helmet down so as not to excite the usual “gaijin” chorus. The Miyako was not the kind of place for a school outing. Nor was it exactly his kind of place. The maître d’ in the lounge did not appear pleased with his jeans, but Ransom had the foresight to wear a blazer. He didn’t see Marilyn. He asked, in English, for a table, and said a lady would be joining him.

  “An American lady?”

  “Not an American lady.” Ransom didn’t feel her ethnic or national origin was the management’s concern.

  “And would you like a drink, sir?” the waiter asked after Ransom was seated.

  “Yes. I would like a drink of water.”

  “Water?”

  “On the rocks. With a twist of lemon.”

  Ransom found himself seated near an American couple, fiftyish, dressed for dinner.

  “What was the name of the one with all the arms?” the man said.

  “Kannon. Goddess of mercy. The arms were to help people into paradise.”

  “Right.”

  “Tomorrow I want to visit the Temple of the Golden Pavilion. And I hope the cherry blossoms are out soon. They were supposed to be out this weekend. Excuse me for a moment, Dave.”

  She stood up and walked away, an elegant woman, trim and tan inside an expensive-looking silk dress. When Ransom looked back at the table the man was watching him.

  “Fuck the cherry blossoms,” he said heartily. “And if we saw one temple, we saw a hundred of them.”

  “Only nineteen hundred to go,” Ransom said.

  “Stop! You’re giving me nightmares. Don’t tell the wife. She’ll want to see them all.” He took a swig of his drink, shook his head back and forth and sighed. “Been here for a while, have you?” he said.

  “Just walked in,” Ransom said.

  “No, I mean—” He brightened suddenly and laughed. “Dave Constable’s the name.” He held out his hand, which Ransom shook. “That’s quite a grip you’ve got there. Where you from? Back in the States, I mean.”

  “New York,” Ransom said, preferring the city of his birth to that of his upbringing.

  “What are you—over here on business?”

  “More or less.”

  “So you know the ropes in this part of the world?”

  “Not really.”

  He pulled his chair closer and leaned forward. “Say, what about these geisha?”

  “What about them?”

  “Where do you find them?”

  “About a mile from here in an area called Gion. But that doesn’t mean you can find them.”

  The man was spinning the hexagonal ashtray on the tablecloth, moving his index finger from slot to slot, dialling it like a phone. “What are they like?”

  “Expensive.”

  “Do they . . . Are they . . . you know?”

  “Not exactly,” Ransom said. “You need an introduction just to get your foot in the door, and lots of money. What you would get for your money is conversation, mild flirtation, singing and dancing.”

  “No sex?”

  “You’d have to spend months, and thousands; then, maybe.”

  “They sound like the girls I went to high school with.” Still dialling the ashtray, he looked wistful. “Are they beautiful?”

  “Apparently to the Japanese. It’s a question of packaging.” Shortly after he had come to Japan, Ransom had gone once to a geisha house, the guest
of a rich private student. He had been fascinated and appalled. The geisha had white porcelain faces and blackened teeth. They moved like marionettes, and their voices were high, almost mechanical, like the prerecorded messages on the subways and streetcars, artificial in the extreme. The wigs, the student told him later, weighed almost ten pounds.

  “So much for Oriental nookie,” Constable said with a wink. Catching sight of his wife, he put a finger to his lips. “Mum’s the word.”

  He introduced his wife, Elizabeth, and said, “This young man here is an old Japan hand.”

  “Oh, wonderful. We can pick your brain for ideas. Would you recommend the Temple of the Golden Pavilion?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never been there.”

  “It’s famous,” she said.

  “I’ve heard it’s very nice.”

  “You know how it is, honey,” Constable said agreeably. “People come to Rochester from all over the world to see the George Eastman House, but if you live practically next door, you don’t even think about it.”

  “You probably know it as the International Photography Museum,” the woman said to Ransom. She was waiting for a response so Ransom nodded. “Rochester is the home of Kodak.”

  “Don’t forget Xerox,” Constable said.

  “Anyway, we’d be grateful for some pointers. We really want to immerse ourselves in Japanese culture.”

  “Your husband was just telling me that,” Ransom said.

  Across the table, Dave’s face suffered changes, tending towards fearful and gray.

  “Did he tell you about the tea ceremony we participated in?”

  “He didn’t mention it.”

  Mrs. Constable described the event in detail while her husband sat by silently, dialling the ashtray.