Gai-Jin (82 page)

Impatiently the sailor reached into his shirt and showed the Colt. “You gets it when I gets the money.”

“Bu’rret, p’rease?”

A filthy rag from the man’s trouser pocket revealed a dozen or so cartridges. “A bargin’s a bargin and me word’s me word.” The sailor reached for the money but before he could take it Hiraga’s hand closed.

“Not sto’ren, yes?”

“’Course not stolen, come on, for crissake!”

Hiraga opened his fist. Greedily the coins were grabbed and examined carefully to ensure they were not clipped or forged, all the time the crafty eyes darting this way and that. When he was satisfied he passed over the Colt and bullets and got up. “Don’t get caught with it, matey, or you’ll swing: ’course it’s stolen.” He leered and scuttled away like the rat he resembled.

Hiraga hunched down as he went back to the comparative safety of the Japanese village—safe only so long as the riffraff and drunks did not decide to rampage. There were no police or sentries to protect the villagers. Only an occasional naval or army patrol passed along their main street and these men rarely took their side in any ruckus.

It had taken Hiraga many days to arrange the purchase—naturally he could not ask Tyrer’s assistance. No one in the Yoshiwara possessed one. Raiko had said queasily: “Only gai-jin have them, Hiraga-san, so sorry. Dangerous for civilized person to be caught with one.”

Akimoto said with a grin, “If my cousin wants one, then get him one, Raiko! You can do anything,
neh,?
For payment I will take you to bed without fee …” He ducked as she threw a cushion at him, laughing with him.

Raiko said, fanning herself, “Ah, Hiraga-san, so sorry, I beg you to take this naughty man away, two of my girls have already demanded a day off to soothe their yin from the onslaught of his yang …”

When they were alone, Akimoto said seriously, “Perhaps you should change your mind, forget the gun. Let me try and persuade Ori to meet us here.”

Hiraga shook his head, glad for the company of his good-natured cousin. “Ori has a gun, he will use it against us the moment he sees us. I have tried every way to snare him out of Drunk Town and failed. If I ambush him with a gun there, it will seem a gai-jin did it. Any day he will try to get at that girl again and then I’m finished here.”

“Perhaps he will tire of waiting. Every man in the village has been told to watch out for him, and no one is to sneak him in by sea.”

“Who dare trust a villager?”

Akimoto said heavily, “Then when you get a gun, let me do it.” He was much bigger than Hiraga, who had not recognized him when he arrived, since he too had cut his hair in similar fashion.

Eventually Hiraga had accosted the sailor on the beach, pretending to be a visiting Chinese trader from Hong Kong and had struck a deal, his only proviso that the gun should not be stolen. But of course it would be stolen …

Akimoto was waiting for him in their dwelling in a village alley they now rented by the month. “Eeee, Cousin, please excuse me,” he said, laughing, “no need to ask if you got it, but you look so funny in those clothes, if our shishi comrades could see you …”

Hiraga shrugged. “This way I can pass for any of the gai-jin coolies, wherever they come from. All kinds of gai-jin and coolies dress like this in Drunk Town.” He eased himself more comfortably, sore in the crotch. “I cannot understand how they can wear such heavy clothes and cramping trousers and tight coats all the time—and when it’s hot, eeee, they’re terrible, and you sweat a fountain.” While he talked he checked the action of the Colt, testing its weight, aiming it. “It’s heavy.”

“Saké?”

“Thank you, then I think I will rest till sunset.” He loaded the revolver, swigged some saké and lay down, pleased with himself. His eyes closed. He began to meditate. When at peace he let himself drift. In moments he slept. At sunset he awoke. Akimoto was still on guard. He looked out of the tiny window. “No storm or rain tonight,” he said, then pulled out a scarf and tied it around his head as he had seen low-class gai-jin and sailors do.

Suddenly Akimoto was filled with dread. “And now?”

“Now,” he said, hiding the gun under his belt, “now for Ori. If I do not return, you kill him.”

Most villagers on the streets did not recognize him, the few who did bowed nervously as to a gai-jin and not a samurai, as they had been ordered. To most gai-jin eyes, in his European attire he would be just another Eurasian or Chinese trader from Hong Kong or Shanghai or Manila, the quality of his clothes and bearing foretelling his position and wealth: “But never forget, Nakama-san,” Tyrer had warned him continually, “however rich you appear, smart clothes won’t protect you from harassment or insults from riffraff if you go alone into Drunk Town, or anywhere.”

The first time he had gone looking for Ori, the moment the shoya had told him Ori had disobeyed him, he had stormed into Drunk Town wearing his Tyrer clothes. Almost at once he had been cornered by a rowdy group of drunks who surrounded him, jeering and cursing him, then started to attack. Only his skill in karate, still an unknown art to gai-jin, had saved him and he had retreated, seething, two broken heads and another man crippled in his wake.

“Find out exactly where Ori is! At once,” he had told the shoya. “What he’s doing and how he’s living!”

The next evening the shoya drew a rough map: “The house is here, on this corner facing the sea, near some wharfs. It is a drinking-sleeping house for very low persons. Ori-san rents a room, paying double, I was told. Very bad that place, Hiraga-san, always full of evil men. You cannot go there without a special plan. It is important he is sent away?”

“Yes. Your village is at risk with him here.”

“So ka!”

Two days later the shoya told him that, in the night, the Ori house had burned down, the remains of three men had been found in the ruins. “I was told ‘the native’ was one, Hiraga-san,” the shoya said easily.

“A pity the whole foul area was not destroyed too, and every gai-jin in it.”

“Yes.”

So life became calm again. Hiraga continued to spend time with Tyrer, content to learn and to teach, unaware how vastly important and informative his knowledge was to Tyrer, Sir William and Jamie McFay. For half a day he had gone aboard the British frigate with Tyrer. The experience had shaken him and made him more determined than ever to find out how these people he despised could invent and make such unbelievable machines and warships, how such despicable people of such a tiny island, smaller than Nippon—if again Tyrer was to be believed—could have acquired the vast wealth necessary to possess so many ships and armies and factories and, at the same time, rule all sea-lanes and much of the gai-jin world.

That night, he had drunk himself to insensibility, his mind disoriented, uplifted one second, in the abyss the next, his kernel of belief in the absolute invincibility of bushido and the Land of the Gods badly mauled.

Most evenings he would spend with Akimoto in the Yoshiwara, or their village haunt, planning and sharing his gai-jin knowledge though keeping the extent of his disquiet hidden, but always strengthening his net around Tyrer, toying with him: “Ah, so sorry, Taira-san, Fujiko contract take many weeks, Raiko hard trader, contract expensive, she have many c’rients, many, so sorry she busy tonight, perhaps tomorrow …”

A little over two weeks ago, to Hiraga’s fury, the shoya had discovered Ori had not died in the fire: “… and oh, so sorry, Hiraga-san, but I’m told now Ori-san has become suddenly wealthy, spending money like a daimyo. Now he has several rooms in another drinking house.”

“Ori rich? How is that possible?”

“So sorry, I don’t know, Sire.”

“But you do know where his new house is?”

“Yes, Sire, here—here is the map, so sorry th—”

“Never mind,” Hiraga had said furiously. “Tonight burn him out again.”

“So sorry, Hiraga-san, that is no longer easy.” The shoya was outwardly penitent, inwardly just as furious that his first and immediate solution to the mad ronin had not achieved the purpose he had paid for. “It is no longer easy because this house is isolated and it seems he has many bodyguards, gai-jin bodyguards!”

Icily Hiraga had considered the consequences. He sent a honeyed letter to Ori by one of the villagers who sold fish in Drunk Town, saying how delighted he was to hear Ori was alive and not dead in the dreadful fire as he had heard, also that he was prospering and could they meet in the Yoshiwara that evening as Akimoto also wanted to discuss shishi matters of great importance.

Ori had replied by letter at once: “Not in the Yoshiwara or anywhere, not until our
sonno-joi
plan is done, the girl is dead and the Settlement burned. Before that if you, Akimoto or any other traitor comes near you will be shot.”

Akimoto said, “He knows the fire was not an accident.”

“Of course. Where would he get money?”

“Only by stealing it,
neh?”

Other messages only brought the same answer. A poison plot had failed. So he had bought the gun and made a plan. Now it was time and tonight perfect. The last rays of sunset guided him across No Man’s Land and along the fetid streets that were pocked with dangerous potholes. The few men who passed him hardly looked at him except to curse him out of the way.

Ori reached haphazardly into the small sack of coins on the table beside the bed and pulled one out. It was a clipped Mex, now worth half of its normal value. Though still five times her agreed price, he handed it to the naked woman. Her eyes lit up, she bobbed a curtsey, mumbling abject thanks again and again, “Yore a proper gent, ta, luv.”

He watched absently as she wriggled into her tattered old dress, astonished that he was here, repelled by everything about this room and bed and house and place, and the pallid, bony gai-jin body and slack buttocks he had fantasized would allay the fire maddening him, but had only made his need worse, in no way comparing with
her
.

The woman paid no attention to him now. Her job was done except to mumble the customary thanks and lies about his performance—in his case not lies, for what his organ lacked in size was made up with strength and vigor—and to get away and keep her newfound wealth without further trouble. Her dress hung on her thin, bare shoulders to trail on the threadbare carpet, partly covering the rough wooden floorboards. Torn petticoat,
no drawers. Lank brownish hair and heavy rouge. She looked forty and was nineteen, a street urchin born in Hong Kong to unknown parents, and sold into a Wanchai House eight years ago by her foster mother. “You want me back termorrer? Termorrow?”

He shrugged and pointed to the door, his wounded arm healed and as good as it would ever be, never with the same strength, or quickness with a sword, but good enough against an average swordsman, and good enough with a gun. His derringer was on the table and never far from his hand.

The woman forced a smile and backed away, mouthing thanks, glad to get away without a beating or having to endure the foul practices she had feared. “Don’ you worry, Gerty,” her madam had told her, “Chinermen’re like any others, sometimes a bit picky, but this bugger’s rich so just give ’im wot he wants, give it to ’im quick, he’s rich so give it good.” There was little extra she had had to do, other than to endure his frantic battering with stoicism and necessary grunts of feigned pleasure.

“Ta again, luv.” She went out, the Mex secreted in the soiled bodice that hardly covered her flaccid breasts, another coin, a twentieth of its value, clutched in her hand.

On the landing outside was Timee, a rough Eurasian seaman of mixed but predominately Chinese blood. He shut the door and grabbed her. “Shut yor gob, you poxy whore,” he hissed, forcing her hand open to take the coin, then cursed her in Chinese and guttural English for the poorness of her earnings: “Ayeeyah, why didn’t you please the Guv?” Then he cuffed her and she half stumbled, half fell down the stairs, but when safe, turned and cursed with even more venom. “I’ll tell Ma Fortheringill ’bout yer, she’ll do yer!”

Timee spat after her, knocked and reopened the door.
“Musume
gud, Guv, heya?” he asked unctuously.

Now Ori sat at an old table by the window. He wore a rough shirt and breeches with bare legs and feet, his short sword-knife in a belt holster. The money sack was on the table. He saw the narrowed eyes staring at it. Carelessly he found another Mex and tossed it. The heavy-shouldered man caught it expertly, touched his forelock and smirked, his few remaining teeth broken and yellowed. “Thankee, Guv. Grub?” He rubbed his big belly. “Grub,
wakarimasu ka?”
Their communication was with sign language and a little pidgin, and he was chief bodyguard. Another watched downstairs in the bar. A third in the alley.

Ori shook his head. “No,” he said, using one of the words he had picked up, then added,
“Beer-u,”
and waved him away. Alone at last he stared out of the window. The glass was cracked and fly encrusted, a corner missing, opening on to the drab facade of another ramshackle, wooden hostel opposite, ten yards away. The air smelt dank and his skin felt filthy, and crawled at the thought of that woman’s body in sweating close contact, with no chance for
a civilized Japanese bath afterwards though he could easily have had one in the village, a couple of hundred yards away across No Man’s Land.

But to do that you risk Hiraga and his spies who will be waiting, he thought, Hiraga and Akimoto and all villagers who deserve to be crucified like common criminals for trying to prevent my grand design. Scum! All of them. Daring to try to burn me to death, daring to poison the fish—eeee, karma that the cat stole it before I could stop the beast and, in moments, died retching instead of me.

Since then he had eaten sparingly, and only rice that he cooked himself in a pot in the grate, with a little meat or fish stew made for the other boarders and bar customers that he made Timee taste in front of him as a further protection.

The food’s foul, this place foul, that woman foul and I can only wait a few more days before I go mad. Then his eyes noticed the money bag. His lips moved from his teeth in a vicious smile.