Apocalypse for Beginners (16 page)

Back on the sidewalk, Hope was somewhat shaken. This investigation was shaping up to be more complicated than what she had expected. She looked at her watch, opened her
Rough Planet
to the chapter on accommodations, and found a youth hostel a two-minute walk away, at the end of a cul-de-sac.

It was a narrow, quiet street, evidently inhabited by working people, since Hope did not cross paths with anyone except a Jordanian—or possibly Syrian—cleaning lady. In other words, she said to herself, it was a good place to set up a headquarters. But instead of a youth hostel, what she found was a vacant lot closed off from the street by a fence.

She verified the surrounding addresses several times. She had not made any navigational errors—the hostel had
disappeared. Did anything ever stay put in this city?

Hope let out an extended yawn. A blend of sleepiness and nausea began to overtake her. She spotted a bar on the ground floor of a crumbling building stuck between a Buddhist temple and a fruit store. A neon light sputtered around a very un-Japanese-looking name: Jaffa’s.

The building appeared to be on the brink of collapse, but the storefront looked inviting. Hope stepped inside.

The interior was bathed in a comforting half-light. “Sir Duke” was playing softly and two students were sipping beers in a booth, surrounded by books. A girl stood behind the counter. Mid-thirties, Mao-collar shirt, dreadlocks tied up in a bun, cigarette suspended from the corner of her mouth. She was drying the glasses with an air of nonchalant virility probably picked up from a John Wayne movie.

Hope noticed a pay phone on the wall near the toilets. She tottered up to it and grabbed on to it as if it were a lifebuoy. She opened her
Rough Planet
, dropped a few coins in the slot and dialed the youth hostel number. A peculiar dial tone gave way to a recorded message in Japanese—a long, unfathomable message. She hung up, and the telephone regurgitated the yen.

Hope rubbed her eyes, glanced unenthusiastically at the list of youth hostels in the neighbourhood. Her mind began to blur. She brought her left hand up to her lips and absentmindedly chewed on the nail of her forefinger. She
frowned and spat: her fingernail tasted of polish. She eyed the girl at the bar. Maybe she had some nail clippers.

She dropped all her change into the pay phone and punched in the Bunker’s number. A few seconds went by. An operator eventually took the call and launched into a non-stop explanation in high-speed Japanese. Something was obviously amiss. The number may have been incomplete, or she had not put in enough yen or, then again, maybe the tectonic plate of North America had sunk into the magma.

She looked at the
Rough Planet
table of contents, found the “How to dial a telephone number” section, sighing. She would have to learn everything over again from scratch.

A huge weight bore down on her shoulders. She was done in, no longer willing to struggle against matter, let alone a Japanese telephone operator. She hung up. Yawned. Leaned against the wall. She gently let herself slide down and dropped onto her heels with her eyes shut. “Just a quick nap,” she muttered. “A quick tiny little nap.”

Hope opened her eyes in a panic. She was lying on a futon under a heavy quilt. Where was she?

She propped herself up on one elbow and looked around: tatami, sliding rice paper doors, cabinets camouflaged in
the walls—a veritable museum of traditional Japanese architecture. There was a bathroom at one end and a kitchenette at the other, with a fireplace unobtrusively heating the apartment.

Who would have thought that houses like this still existed in Japan? It looked like a movie set, but one where the realistic effect had been pushed to the limit by an obsessive designer. The wood showed subtle signs of wear in the places touched time and again by a passing hand. The edges of the tatami were threadbare. A complex smell of wax, starch and soap pervaded the room.

So it definitely wasn’t a movie set. Someone lived here.

Next to the futon, an overturned wooden crate served as a night table. On it lay a flashlight, an ashtray holding three dubious cigarette butts (Dubek No. 9) and a bilingual (Arabic–English) edition of
A Thousand and One Nights
. On the floor, a few dozen books stacked against a wall included French, English, Japanese and Hebrew titles. Hope opened an edition of the Talmud and ran a perplexed finger over the austere blocks of Hebrew lettering. Just who was the person who lived here?

She found her clothes and bag neatly folded at the foot of the bed. While she dressed, she examined the room with growing disbelief. No electrical appliances of any sort—not even a switch or light bulb. Just the fireplace
quietly burning. On the wall hung a yellowed calendar opened to August 1945.

Hope felt dizzy: What if she had actually been thrust back in time? She nervously shuffled through the bills and magazines scattered on a small desk, and sighed with relief when she finally came upon an edition of
Ha’aretz
dated March 12, 1991.

She explored the house on tiptoe. It was hardly any bigger than the Randall Pet Shop. But it was oh, so much more tasteful! She marvelled at the washroom, especially the sunken blue ceramic bath. Perched on the tiny toilet was a box of sanitary napkins. Hope registered the clue: the occupant was a woman.

When she looked in the mirror, Hope discovered a wreck with dark rings around the eyes and cracked lips. She splashed water on her face and washed her hands. Her fingernails brought a scowl of disgust to her face. She opened the taps of the bathtub and, from a basket serving as medicine cabinet, pulled out a nail clipper and a bottle of nail polish remover. While the hot water was running, she cleaned, cut and filed her fingernails with painstaking precision. The clippings showered down on the floor tiles amid the gentle fragrance of keratin and steam.

After a while, Hope was enveloped in a sweet emptiness. She tested the temperature of the water, took off her
clothes and slid into the tub. A faint smile lit up her face. She took a deep breath and let herself sink below the surface.

The Tony Lamas were waiting dutifully by the door. The leather felt cold under the soles of her feet, but now properly shod, Hope regained a sense of control over events.

Once outside, she leaped into the future. The little traditional house—all rustic pine, rice paper and slate tiles—sat on the roof of a building, several floors above Tokyo!

The sun was at its highest and the light made Hope squint. Her environment grew more distinct. A deck of greyish wood, synthetic resin furniture, a few empty flowerpots and a miniature Shinto altar (long unused, if the stubs of incense planted in the sand were any indication). The surrounding roof offered a depressing landscape: tarred gravel, discoloured tiles, braids of electric wire and dozens of parabolic dishes and Yagi antennas.

A few kilometres away stood a thicket of waterfront cranes, which immediately brought back images of Yarmouth. Hope sniffed the air for traces of iodine, but the only smell the wind brought her was of diesel.

Hope moved closer to the ledge and looked straight down. A fire escape zigzagged its way to an alley, five
storeys below, where she could make out a hopscotch court drawn in pink chalk, and a pair of dumpsters.

How the hell had she landed on top of this building? Someone must have carried her up here, but how?

On inspecting the house more closely, she discovered a concrete staircase flanked by an old water heater. She opened the door a crack and cast a glance down something resembling a mineshaft. She swept her hand over the wall and flipped the switch. An ancient fluorescent tube started to blink two floors below.

The stairway was barely wide enough for one person. It plunged directly into the building—no landing, no door, no handrail—at an impossible angle, as if the inner wall had been bored through to make the roof accessible from ground level without the need to stop on the floors in between.

A secret stairway.

Hope emerged in the back room of Jaffa’s. The bar was still closed and there was a tape of reggae music playing for no one in particular. “Come We Go Burn Down Babylon.”

The girl she had glimpsed the day before was busy behind the counter. She was wearing a tattered Pac-Man T-shirt and had her hair up in a loose knot. She greeted
Hope with a warm smile. Bob Marley continued to chant down Babylon.

The girl wiped her hands on her T-shirt and lowered the volume.

“
Bon matin, camarade!
”

So, she spoke French … Hope wondered whether this should come as a surprise. No, ultimately, she was not really surprised. She realized that over the last few days she had shown an increasing tolerance for the unlikely and the improbable.

“Feeling better? You had nightmares all night long.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost noon. Are you hungry?”

Before Hope could say anything, the girl peeled opened a container of ramen, unscrewed the top of a thermos bottle and poured some boiling water on the noodles, which released a pungent aroma of buckwheat, seaweed and monosodium glutamate. She placed the bowl on the counter with a theatrical flourish.

Hope immediately recognized the irksome little astronaut on the label, but never had the smell of a mundane package of ramen made her mouth water to such an extent! She sat down on the stool, grabbed the chopsticks with sudden virtuosity and began bolting the noodles down at an unreasonable rate. The girl burst out laughing.

“Easy now! You look like you haven’t eaten anything for weeks! Is that why you fainted yesterday afternoon?”

“I didn’t faint. I fell asleep.”

“Well, you sleep very soundly, comrade! I had to lug you up five flights of stairs on my back!”

Hope eyed the girl between mouthfuls of noodles. She did not look very Japanese, but it may simply have been the rasta hairdo that muddied the picture.

“So the samurai hut on the roof—you live there?”

“Cool, isn’t it? It’s the house where my boss grew up. He had it moved from Kokura in the fifties. A team of archaeologists dismantled it piece by piece. You can still see the numbers on some of the planks.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“Yeah, I agree. But it suits me fine. The boss never sets foot in Tokyo, so the house serves as lodging for the bar personnel. The personnel being yours truly.”

She reached her hand out over the counter.

“By the way, I’m Merriam.”

“Hope.”

Smiles, handshake. Merriam took a bag of lemons out of the fridge and emptied it on the counter. Then she began slicing the citrus into quarters using an oversized knife.

“So, what brings you to Tokyo? Sightseeing? Business? Love?”

“I’m looking for someone. A man called Hayao Kamajii. Is that a common name?”

Merriam bit into a section of lemon and puckered her face.

“Kind of. There must be about nine thousand of them in the phone book.”

Merriam listened attentively to Hope’s account of her misadventures. She examined Kamajii’s business card and confirmed the address. She was very familiar with the municipal swimming pool that Hope was referring to, but she had no recollection of seeing the Mekiddo offices there.

“That said, I know where they are.”

“Really?”

“Yes. In Nayot, the district just next to this one.”

She glanced at the clock on the microwave oven.

“I’ve still got an hour to spare. If you like, we can go check it out right now.”

Without waiting for an answer, she reached into a narrow cupboard and pulled out a water-lily green folding bicycle. Hope gulped down the broth of her noodles in one go and mechanically noted the best-before date
printed on the rim of the bowl of ramen: 17 07 01. The Mission was still on track.

Merriam lifted the roll-up grille halfway and they slipped into the street. The spring sunshine beat down on the surrounding facades. Hope discovered a Tokyo completely different from the one she had seen the day before.

Merriam lowered the grille again, swiftly unfolded the bicycle, and a minute later they were flying through the streets of the neighbourhood, with Merriam steering and Hope precariously balanced on the rack. It was a mild day, and the thoroughfare was overrun by schoolgirls in shirtsleeves with their sweaters knotted around their waists.

Leaning over Merriam’s shoulder, Hope observed the streets.

“About Mekiddo—exactly what sort of company is it?”

Merriam shook her head.

“No idea, comrade.”

Merriam obviously knew the district inside out. They rode up Akko Boulevard, weaved in and out among the cars, sped across vast, overcrowded intersections like a bullet, threaded their way along a cluttered lane, cut across an inner courtyard, barrelled down three stairs (for an instant Hope lost contact with the bike), jumped over a median strip and rolled under a monorail ramp. Merriam flashed Hope a reassuring smile over her shoulder.

“We’re almost there!”

They careened around the corner and braked in front of a commercial building. With her heart pounding, Hope instantly caught sight of the strange bearded Mekiddo mascot. Next to the beast, however, hung a large sign advertising the upcoming construction of thirty-seven luxury condominiums, which the idyllic illustration made instantly understandable, even for someone without the slightest notion of Japanese. The doors were boarded up. Fifty metres away, three pink excavators with white polka dots were tearing bites of concrete and steel reinforcement rods out of the side of the building.

Merriam spat on the sidewalk.

“
Beitzim
!”

She pulled a cellphone out of her pocket and dialed the directory assistance number. After a heated discussion with an unspecified interlocutor—secretary or telephone operator—Merriam hung up and checked her watch with a worried expression.

“They’ve moved to the Gotah borough.”

“Is it far?”

“Yes, quite. We’ll have to put the investigation off to another day.”