The Japanese Corpse (16 page)

"Good. Then maybe we should offer our friend a beer. Would you like some nice cold beer, sir?"

The priest smiled. "Please, last few nights I drink many beers, very nice. Also gamble and meet prostitutes. Very strange occupation for priest. High priests say this is spiritual exercise."

They all laughed. A maid brought the beer and the four men discarded their formal ways. The priest returned the scroll to its box and put it in a corner of the room. After the second glass his words seemed to come more easily. The commissaris asked about Deshima, and the priest started a long discourse on Japan's early contact with the West. As, during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, only Dutchmen were allowed to trade with the country, Japanese curiosity about Western ways had to be satisfied via the tiny island, the size of a large ship. A special science was developed, called Ran'gaku, "Ran" being an abbreviation of Oranda or Holland, "gaku" meaning "study." Japanese scholars managed to master the Dutch written language and read Dutch scholarly works on medicine, astronomy, botany, mathematics and the art of war. Ballistics was of special interest as the Japanese, by then, had grasped the principles of firearms.

"Very useful," the priest said, and giggled, "but our people thought that Holland was large and powerful country, dominating the Western world. Not true. Later, English had to be learned, much more important language. Dutch very interesting no doubt, but only few people spoke it."

"That's still true today," the commissaris said, and nibbled at a cookie. "Very tasty this."

"Seaweed," Dorin said. "It tastes a little like pretzels, doesn't it? But it comes straight from the sea."

"Hmm," the commissaris said, and slipped the cookie into his pocket as he pointed at a pine tree, visible through the open sliding doors which led to the balcony of their room. The inn was similar to the one where they had stayed in Tokyo but larger and more luxurious. It was, the priest told them, a converted temple, as so many buildings in Kyoto are. With the decline of Buddhism and the receding number of monks and priests, and the lessening support, both from state and public, temples had fallen into disrepair, and only during the last ten years or so had interest in the magnificent structures been revived.

"But Buddhism seems very popular in the West now," de Gier objected.

"In the West, but here it is almost dead. Maybe there are fifty masters left in Japan, each master with a small cluster of disciples. But the disciples aren't always serious. The monks know that they can become priests after a few years, and a priest can live in a temple of his own and have some status. They go into the training for material gain. There are few serious students left. It's all according to the predictions: the religion will almost die out, spread to the West, and come back again. But meanwhile it will not die out here. The masters are still here and they have great wisdom."

"How do you feel about your own master?" the commissaris asked. He was staring at the priest's face.

The priest suddenly grinned. "He is source of great irritation to me. Always one inch ahead. What is an inch?" He held up his hand, indicating an inch by bringing the top of his index finger toward his thumb. "Very small distance. I go to great trouble, meditate for many hours, do this and that, and I reach him. But then he is an inch away again and I have to start all over again. Always same thing, I can touch him for brief moment, then..."

A maid came in. She said something to Dorin and the commissaris recognized the word "denwa," electric speech. He had heard the word before. "Telephone."

"Telephone," Dorin said, "for you, sir. There is a phone in the office downstairs. A call from Holland."

"Yes? How do they know we are here?"

"Our American friend in the capital knows our number, he must have passed it on."

The commissaris made his way down to the small office and took the phone from a smiling and bowing clerk.

"Commissaris?"

"Yes, Grijpstra. How are you?"

"Sleepy, sir, it's four in the morning here. It took me a while to get through to you."

"Yes, you phoned Tokyo, we are in Kyoto."

"Different cities?"

"Tokyo is the new capital, Kyoto is the old. Three or four hundred miles' distance, I think. Lots of temples and parks. Very nice here."

"Yes, sir. The State Police found the corpse, sir."

The commissaris looked at the cup of green tea the office clerk had placed in front of him before leaving the small room, walking backward. He took a sip and began to listen while Grijpstra described his recent adventure.

"Killed by an amateur, you think?" the commissaris asked, sipping more tea. Grijpstra talked at length.

"I see, I see. Pity in a way, we thought we had the case started nicely. I'll have to think about this, don't let your two suspects go yet. I'll let you know something within the next day or so. Send you a cable."

"How's the sergeant, sir?"

"De Gier? I think you should talk to him. Don't tell him about the case, I'll do that later."

De Gier came down and the commissaris left the office, taking the small teacup with him. He found the clerk in the hall. "O-cha"
*
the commissaris said slowly. "Yoroshii. Arigato."

The clerk's face was wreathed in smiles. He rushed off and came back with a gigantic kettle and poured another cup. The commissaris picked the cup up, but the clerk began to hiss and bow. He took the cup from the commissaris' hands and pretended to drink himself, holding the cup with two hands.

"Ah, I see," the commissaris said. "Like this?"

"Yes," the clerk said. "Ceremony. Sometimes important. Not now, but sometimes."

The English words had exhausted him and he left hurriedly, carrying the kettle.

"Are you doing anything over there?" de Gier was asking.

"No. Very quiet here. We had a complaint from an old lady who was shot in the leg with an air gun, while she was waiting at a streetcar stop. The pellet had to be taken out in the hospital and she limped for a day. Cardozo found the man, some idiot in a garret room, with nothing to do all day but stare out of the window, young chappie on welfare. Cardozo had six constables on the job, took them two days. He is very patient, you know." "But you? What did
you
do?"

"Went for walks, had a few good meals, read the daily reports. Oh yes, you remember that inspector with the rat face?"

"Yes."

"He is bothering me."

"Badly?"

"Yes, badly. Told me to screw a confession out of the two Japanese. It isn't even his case. Threatened me, in fact."

"Yes," de Gier said. "Pity you weren't in Tokyo with me. They sent me there five days ahead of the commissaris, I don't know why. Maybe they wanted me to meet some of our colleagues here. I could have asked the commissaris why, but I haven't. He doesn't like that sort of question."

"Yes. So did you like your five days?"

"Sure, but I almost killed a man, twisted his neck."

"Self-defense?"

"No. He was throwing stones at a cat."

Grijpstra rubbed his short bristly gray hairs and stared at the phone which sat in his hand, innocently gray. De Gier's voice had sounded very quiet.

"Shit," Grijpstra said. "Is there a charge against you?"

"I suppose so, but I got away."

"The commissaris knows?"

"Yes."

"And you are still on the job?"

"Sure."

"Ah well," Grijpstra said. "Send me a postcard sometime. And if they catch you I'll come and blow up the jail. It will be a change. Maybe I can get my two little fat friends here to help me. I've gotten quite friendly with them, you know, especially since I found them Japanese newspapers. Yes, that's a good idea." He was feeling really cheerful now. It
would
be a change, waltzing around Tokyo arm in arm with two trained gangsters. And with de Gier in jail, waiting patiently in some smelly cell, living on half a bowl of cold mushy rice a day. Saving his friend. His only friend. Did he have any other friends? No. Grijpstra nodded to himself.

"How are you otherwise?" he asked.

"Funny," de Gier said, "very funny. It seems as if there is nothing left in me, everything goes straight through. I see all these beautiful things here, temples, gardens, lovely girls. The man they assigned to us is quite a character and we get on well. I do judo practice, I learn Japanese words, I study maps, I think about what we are supposed to do here. But nothing really seems to register. It all goes straight through, as if I am not there. Even when I drink I am not there."

"But that must be a good feeling," Grijpstra said, surprised.

"Sure. I am not complaining. Maybe the only worry I have is that the feeling will stop. I will remember who I am and that I live in Amsterdam and that I am a policeman and all that. Now there is nothing. I am some sort of mirror. Things reflect in me and then the things go away and the reflection goes too."

"Yes," Grijpstra said. "I think I know what you mean. But I only get that after the twelfth drink or so, and by that time I am staggering about, and the feeling never lasts. I just get sick after that, throw up and all."

"Where are you?" de Gier asked.

"In our room, at my desk. I wouldn't phone Japan from my own house, would I? The bill will be for an unpronounceable amount."

"You are really there, eh?" de Gier asked. "And I am here, at the other end of the world. And I have to get back to our room. We are pretending to buy a valuable painting from a corrupt priest. Maybe the chase will be on by tomorrow."

Grijpstra hung up. "Twisted a man's neck because the man was throwing stones at a cat," he said aloud.

He was still shaking his head as he left the building. Ten minutes later he was knocking on the door of a small hotel reputed to keep its bar open right through the night. A number of bearded and bleary-eyed poets looked up as the portly gentleman elbowed his way to the counter and ordered two jenevers.

"Two?" the girl in the low blouse asked. "In one glass?"

"In two glasses," Grijpstra said. "I'll drink them both at the same time. I am drinking with my friend, you see, but he is in Japan."

"I see," the girl said, and poured the drinks. She smiled reassuringly at the poets. The poets still looked worried.

She went to them to spell out her message.

"It's all right," she said, "he is crazy too."

*
Cha means tea, O is a polite preface.

\\\\\ 14 /////

T
HE COMMISSARIS WOKE UP BECAUSE HE DREAMED that he had been caught up in a flood and washed down a sewer and that its creamy contents were bubbling and foaming up to his lips. He screamed and tore at the bed-sheets and rolled off the mattress onto the doormat, where he hurt his shoulder on the brass strap of his old-fashioned suitcase. He sat up, mumbling and rubbing his shoulder. De Gier was up too, standing with his back against the wall, the Walther gleaming in his hand, the barrel of the gun sweeping between the balcony doors and the door leading to the corridor.

"It's all right, sergeant," the commissaris said. "A bad dream. What's that terrible smell? Do you think they are having trouble with the sanitation here?"

De Gier put the gun back in the holster which was strapped over his pajamas, and stretched. He looked at his watch. "Five o'clock, sir, pretty early still, but I keep on waking up. They are making quite a racket in the temples across the street. Bells, clappers, gongs; must be a merry party. They were chanting too just now, deep voices, some religious ceremony, I suppose, I'll ask Dorin about it. It's amazing you didn't wake up. I thought they were in the garden, but I went on the balcony and it's coming from behind those high walls. I looked through the gate yesterday; the main templets another hundred yards behind the waU. The monks are getting up at three o'clock over there, every day I imagine. Must be a strange life."

"They wouldn't be causing that smell, would they?" the commissaris asked, wrinkling his nose. "Powerful smell, must be pure excrement, and human excrement too."

De Gier laughed and lay down. "Yes, sir, that's shit. There are no flush toilets here. The pipe leads to a wooden bucket and every day the buckets are picked up. That was the cart you are smelling; it came by a few minutes ago, a horse-drawn cart. Dorin says they call it the 'honey-cart.' It's the same all over Japan. They use it for manure here. Dorin was joking about it. 'The base of our economy is pure shit.'"

"Not a bad idea," the commissaris said. "Better than blowing it into the sea under pressure, as we do, and then swimming in it. A waste and a nuisance. But we don't have the smell. I have noticed it before but not as strongly as just now."

There was a sound on the balcony and de Gier reached for his gun again. The commissaris felt guilty. His pistol was somewhere in his suitcase. He got up and began to rummage about, Ashing the holster out of a pile of shirts.

Dorin's head peered around the balcony door.

"O.K.," de Gier said. "We can't sleep, that's all."

"I heard a scream." Dorin came into the room. He was dressed only in a fundoshi, a white wrap covering his genitals. The long-barreled revolver looked out of place in the quiet room. He was pointing it at the floor, his index finger stretched along the trigger guard.

"Bad dream," the commissaris said. Dorin smiled and turned, and they heard him jump from their balcony onto his own, next door.

"We are well protected," the commissaris said. "I hope he really called his henchmen off. They were making me very uncomfortable in Tokyo. They were always somewhere behind me, two brooding little men with wide shoulders and long arms."

"Sad-faced monkeys," de Gier said sleepily, and pulled the blanket over his shoulder. "Dorin was telling me that in the old days the Chinese seriously doubted that the Japanese were human. Maybe they have changed since then. I find them very human, with a few exceptions, those cat-killers and the bodyguards you mentioned just now and a few other types I saw on the Ginza in Tokyo. The others seem to be very pleasant people, and intelligent too. Their average I.Q. is said to be considerably higher than ours. I'd like to be able to read their literature."