Midnight and the Meaning of Love (55 page)

I opened Josna’s refrigerator. There was only a chunk of tofu,
floating in some water and wrapped in a clear thin plastic. There was also a jug of some drink, perhaps cold tea. When I opened her freezer, there was a container inside, just as she said there would be. When I peeled back the tight lid, the keys and card and a small piece of folded paper were inside. As I turned to leave, I noticed an open window on the opposite wall in the next room. I went to close it. Chiasa followed.

“Sorry,” she said. “I jumped out from there. I didn’t get the chance to close it back up.”

I looked at her. She was “so fucking cool” to me. I stuck my head by the window and looked down at how far she’d had to leap. I pulled my head back in and shut the window, impressed, but didn’t say shit about it.

In the small porchlike room where I stood, I saw Akemi’s hammock. It was still and looked and felt lonely.

“Look what I got.” Chiasa showed me a paper. Everything on the paper was in Japanese.

“Are you trying to be funny?” I asked her. She knew I couldn’t read it.

“No, this is the label from the courier service that just left here. When I saw that they were sending two of the sculptures somewhere, I got curious. They left their truck door standing open, so I lifted this document. Now they have a copy and I have a copy,” she confessed.

“But that’s different than stealing, right?” I ribbed her.

“Definitely. All is fair in love and war. You heard that before, right? It’s an English saying,” she said.

“Who said it? Aunt Tasha?” I asked her, as we walked down the iron stairs.

She laughed. “No, not Aunt Tasha! Maybe it was Shakespeare or something I read in school. Whatever, when I first heard it, I thought to myself, that sounds true. A real warrior would do anything when he’s at war. And a real lover will do anything when he’s in love. Right? Besides, according to Yuka’s philosophy, I should blame my African American side for stealing the document. Then what I said about the Japanese people not stealing would still be true.” I listened and thought to myself,
Chiasa is clever.

“What does the paper say?” I asked. “From the courier service.”

“Oh this?” she said casually. “This is the exact address where they are sending those two sculptures. It’s in Hokkaido.”

I was grateful to Allah, but instinctively I hugged Chiasa. Her body stiffened a bit and she dropped her head shyly. I realized and released her.

“I must’ve done something good?” she asked. “So you shouldn’t dock my pay for going to Osaka earlier today …” She joked, dodged, and distracted.

“Could you imagine us just roaming around the entire Hidaka Mountains?” She laughed. “We would be two thousand meters in the air, stopping hikers and climbers and asking if they had seen a girl in really expensive, really high heels, walking up this way. Now that would have been crazy!” She laughed and loosened up our serious mission.

We were out, going straight to Josna’s cottage.

* * *

“Don’t even think about leaving me on watch out here. We both know that no one is home and no one is coming. Nakamura-san has used up all of his soldiers. Let’s count,” Chiasa said, pulling each of her gloved fingers. “He has men flying out with him to Singapore. He had security that seized Akemi from the doctor. He has men who picked up Josna separate from the ones who dealt with Akemi.” She clapped her gloved hands together. “That’s it. There is no one left. Of course he could have others. But I’m thinking his most trusted guys are surrounding him, his daughter, and Josna, and he’s running out of time. Believe me, you got him scrambling by being here first in Tokyo, then in Kyoto,” she said like a military strategist.

“I pay attention,” she said solemnly. Her big gray eyes and long black lashes were more pronounced through her
zukin.

How could Chiasa know that it was not because I feared being captured by security while entering the Nakamura estate that I wanted her to stand outside and wait? It was because I had decided that I would not allow anything bad to happen to her. If anything went wrong, it should happen to me instead. Akemi is my wife, my family. I am the one who should run all the risks gladly. As I turned to walk away, leaving her behind, she followed eagerly.

Josna’s cottage revealed the influences and maybe reasons for her loyalty to Nakamura. It was a lovely, tiny place behind a secured wall, accessed from a side entrance behind a locked iron gate. In front of
the cottage door there was a stone fountain pouring water continuously. The sound of the water was very calming for our tense circumstances. Surrounded by plants, flowers, and trees, some growing on the bricks and wrapped around the house, it was like a small slice of paradise. We entered. The entire inside of Josna’s home was soft and warm and feminine. There was no area designated as a work space, no clay or tools or plastic or incomplete art. Her bed was round and her sheets and spreads were too. Each item seemed hand-crafted and high-quality. She had many framed family photos and hung a beautiful carpet on one wall instead of laying it across her floor.

We breezed through in search of her back door. Outside her cottage was a courtyard. She flew a Nepali and a Japanese flag on a shortened flagpole. The ground had tiny lights that led all the way to her best friend’s wing of a separate building on the Nakamura estate. Hurriedly we entered Akemi’s code, and automatically the door opened. Chiasa removed her shoes and I did the same.

“I think I’m falling in love with her too,” Chiasa said softly. Her expression was funny to me, but when I looked at her face, it revealed nothing but awe. The building, shaped like a crescent moon, was topped with a stained-glass ceiling! Moonbeams poured light through the colors of the glass and gave me the feeling that I was walking not on the ground but up in the sky, close to the stars. The weight of the glass, the design of the glass, and the incredible, unusual curved cut of the glass were a magnificent architectural accomplishment. As Chiasa and I stood still, staring upward, I was imagining an assembly of mathematicians and engineers and architects gathered in a circle, along with Josna’s father, calculating the angles, the geometry, and the algebra, to avoid making one incorrect move that could result in the entire crescent-shaped ceiling crashing down.

Born in the land of the pyramids that have never been deciphered or duplicated, despite being raided, I shook myself out of awe.

“Come on, this way …” I bumped Chiasa, and as we walked, the light-blue-tinted walls to my left created an underwater feeling. I could not locate a light switch or device anywhere, which led me to believe that the whole wing went on natural light. When the sun shimmered brightly, the wing would light up. When the moonlight ruled the sky, its pieces of blue and white or yellow or purple light would make it nighttime in Akemi’s wing of the estate as well.

Her bed was a swing shaped like a clamshell.

“She really lives in a glass house,” Chiasa said, still a prisoner of amazement. In Akemi’s bedroom, the ceiling was stained glass and the walls were made of thick clear glass behind which two huge yellow and orange sea turtles swam freely. It was designed as though she wanted to live in the infinite sky and on the ocean floor all at once.

“So fucking cool,” Chiasa said, her face pressed against the glass, watching the sea turtles maneuver. I found a closet and went inside. It was the size of a small New York boutique stuffed and packed with everything exquisite. Dresses on cloth hangers and boxes piled high in size order and footwear displayed on a foot-high platform. Exotic sandals, high- and low-top Nikes, pretty-colored petite Pumas, necessary Adidas and shoes and boots galore from Gucci to Prada to some exclusive Japanese line. A hat collection of crocheted winter ski caps, and Kangols and berets and a few fitteds. There were leather and suede belts, jeans, shirts, and leather jackets and ski coats. Wow, what the fuck had I gotten myself into?

In another room at the rear, the walls were white. Yet everywhere on the white walls were drawings done in charcoal, pencil, and colored markers. It was like a New York graffiti haven, but better because the artwork was intricate, passionate, and seemed so personal. Where other kids may have been punished for writing on the walls, Akemi was permitted and probably praised. The light from the stained-glass ceilings made the still drawings on the walls appear as though they were moving, like an emotional and complicated animation film.

It was at the tip of the crescent moon where I found the marble mantel that held the solid gold urn with Akemi’s mother’s ashes. I reminded myself that I didn’t have the luxury of time on my side. I wouldn’t be able to pause and process the meaning of all of this. I already knew that Muslim burials are not like this, are not cremations. At the same time I know that Muslims respect life whether it is present or deceased. When a Muslim passes away, his body is treated carefully and respectfully. It is washed and shrouded, prayed for and prepared and placed into the earth in a particular way, an Islamic way. I whispered an Islamic prayer over the urn. It is my way and the only way for me. I placed it between my palms and walked out the full length of the crescent, hoping to find no one else but Chiasa along the way.

We boarded a 6:00 a.m. flight from Osaka International Airport to Sapporo, Hokkaido. I needed rest, but my mind refused to let go. First there was the strategizing. Having to place my mind inside Nakamura’s mind and anticipate and then intercept his moves had been difficult. Certain thoughts that had occurred to me while reading
Never Surrender
and
Peculiar People
, the book on Japanese culture, stood out in my mind prominently. Then there were the comments of each person I had spoken to. Piecing the history and culture together with Nakamura’s profile and bits and pieces of what Akemi’s acquaintances and closest friends had revealed knowingly and unknowingly was complex.

I was realizing and learning the hard way that thinking is a strenuous activity. The same way I could achieve three hundred push-ups, one hundred pull-ups, and an infinite number of sit-ups, thinking took up time, and a massive amount of mental energy. The same way exercising uses muscles and burns fat, thinking is hard work that burned up brain cells and hopefully resulted in eliminating burdens and bringing victory.

I became conscious also that thinking occurs on various levels. There are some thoughts that are too heavy, some thoughts that torture, some thoughts that make the soul shake. My mind maneuvered to shift thoughts into positions that were bearable for me. When packing a grocery bag, you wouldn’t put the soft and perishable items on the bottom and the heavy packaged items on the top; I used the same method when storing my thoughts. The heavy, burdensome, torturous, and unbearable thoughts I pushed below and beneath all
others. It had to be this way. If I kept my heaviest thoughts on top and directly in my mind’s eye, something would crack.

Separate from the strategizing was the financial matter. I was experiencing firsthand a rich opponent who could burn out a rival simply by making the battle so expensive that he couldn’t afford to continue the fight. I was more mindful now of my paper. My money stack was still heavy but was slowly dwindling under the weight of Japanese prices, which were five times the average American price and fifteen times the average Sudanese cost of things. And I was learning that some items in Japan that I paid five times more for gave me four times less. I wanted to organize my receipts, but Chiasa’s face was lying against my stomach now. If I began moving, I would awaken her. So I collated rough numbers in my mind.

I had paid out $275 American to the Hyatt, which amounted to $75 per night. It was a discounted rate because Chiasa held a Red Cross membership card. Then there were the room taxes and her bike rental. I paid $300 American for Chiasa’s round-trip Tokyo to Kyoto Shinkansen train ticket. I paid about $125 total in taxi fees. I paid $1,000 American total for two round-trip Osaka/Hokkaido plane tickets. The binoculars with the other supplies came to about $500. Daily food expenses for us totaled about $200, and Chiasa’s fee was rounded at 30,000 yen. I calculated in my head, down $3,000 in one week. There was $7,000 remaining and whatever jewels I carted with me strictly for an extreme and strapped situation.

Of course I knew that I was into an extra week with Chiasa’s services. She would issue a new charge. That money I was paying her was minor compared to the mental cost that her presence extracted from me. But then again, her presence had also spared me a lot of confusion, grief, and vulnerability. She had sped up my mission as though I had previously been riding on a donkey and she pulled up in her Porsche or Lamborghini or fuck it, in her jet flashing her pilot’s license.

As the plane descended, the mountains came into view. In the midst of spring some of the tops were still capped in snow. I was relieved that we were arriving safely at 8:30 a.m., a half an hour before business officially opened in Japan. By announcing to Himawari that I would leave Kyoto that same night and return to New York the following morning, I believed I had burned my trail. To be certain that
I had burned it, Chiasa and I left separately from the Hyatt and took separate cabs to Kyoto station. If anybody had been lurking, creeping and watching, like the game-faced Japanese seemed to tend to do, they would have been convinced of my departure. I had to assume that Himawari and her six invisibles would run about talking me up. If she ended up speaking with Shota or anyone from the Nakamura family or estate, she would explain that I had bowed out and gone back to Brooklyn. That’s what I wanted her to say. By actually leaving Kyoto late at night by cab, riding to nearby Osaka, and boarding the first flight to Hokkaido and arriving before the opening of business, I knew Nakamura, or whoever in his employ he had assigned to keep track of my whereabouts, would be baffled about my movements. I would land in Hokkaido without raising any suspicions. I wanted Nakamura to feel content that his nefarious plans were still working. In fact
nefarious
was a word I had learned while I was reading about him. The author referred to Nakamura this way. I circled the word and looked it up. The more I considered the moves he’d been making against me and my wife and our marriage, the more I agreed that the adjective
nefarious
fit him nicely.