Gaijin Cowgirl (9): Comfort woman
But at the final beat of the dance, bowing before the last post, he whispered, “Buddha protect me."
(Previous chapter, or start at the beginning.)
Simon Newby scanned the audience from above the ring. He reckoned he could spot that platinum mane among the several thousand spectators. But Japan was continually surprising him. Half the audience had hair dyed in outlandish colors.
Wouldn’t miss it for the world, her e-mail had said. I’m coming to Yokohama. The words had floated through his afternoon training. Good luck!
Lotdorn crossed the hallway from the locker room. “Are you nervous?”
“What, me, nervous?”
“You pace like a trapped lion. I never see you so nervous before.”
“Course I’m not nervous.”
“These Japanese boxers are very good. I understand.”
“I said I’m not nervous!”
Lotdorn smiled. “Okay, Simon. Just stop pacing. You making me nervous.”
Simon grunted and turned his attention to the current bout. Muay thai tournaments involved nine fights, each with five three-minute rounds, starting with the youngest, least experienced fighters and building up to the top seeds. Simon was third for Khru Chatri’s team, one of two foreigners from the school today challenging an all-Japanese home squad. Lotdorn was scheduled sixth.
Simon barely paid attention to the second fight, which saw the Thai side win on points. No sign of a platinum-maned goddess out there.
The announcer shouted, “Pansa Nubthong” and his theme song, “London Calling”, rocked the stadium. Simon adjusted his woven headband and trotted to the ring. He raised his gloves but couldn’t hear anything above the din of The Clash, couldn’t see anything but the anonymous blur of the audience and the humorless appraisals of the judges. The music switched to J-Pop and a compact Japanese fighter climbed through the ropes to a rushing tide of applause.
They proceeded with the ram muay, a dance steeped in Buddhist ritual, each stretching and spinning to the sounds of Thai music, bowing before each corner of the ring, each seeking to project more serenity than his opponent.
The loud music, the bright lights, the antiseptic stadium – none of it felt right to Simon. Arenas in Thailand tended to be dark, medieval places, where the eerie sounds of the Thai oboe and drums helped foment an intense, sweaty atmosphere. The arena in Yokohama lacked soul, making a rite such as the ram muay feel somehow out of place – to the Englishman, at any rate.
But at the final beat of the dance, bowing before the last post, he whispered “Buddha protect me,” his mantra, his lucky charm, and discarded his robe with a flourish.
The referee brought the fighters together. The opponents bowed as Simon heard his nomme de guerre announced on a loudspeaker: Pansa Nubthong – the muay thai name bestowed upon him by Khru Chatri, after the school’s late, revered founder – versus Akita Junichi.
From above, the other foreigner in Khru Chatri’s squad, Magnus from Sweden, shouted, “Come on, Pansy!”
Ding! The fighters, gloves up, circled, testing each other with the occasional kick. The pace quickened. Simon advanced, missed his footing. Akita push-kicked forward, faked the move, Simon’s arms wheeling to deflect it. The foot changed direction, connected with his thigh, catching the muscle on the inner side; the pain was immediate and fire-blue.
Simon didn’t waste time in lamentation. Kept his focus. But his leg had gone numb, useless. He had to evade kicks, keep his hands up to shy away the other’s attacking feet, and that left him vulnerable to two good punches before Simon grappled Akita into the ropes and the first three minutes expired.
He stepped into a low plastic tub at his corner. The assistant trainer washed him down with a scrub. Khru Chatri violently massaged his leg to restore sensation. The old man gave him a twenty-second tirade in Thai, punctuated by a handful of English commands: Focus! Spirit! Pansa!
Simon nodded, looking at Akita across the ring through half-closed eyes. “I will, Khru Chatri, I will.” The bell rang. Akita grinned as they tapped gloves and started again. They fought a desultory round, neither landing a decent blow, even when grappling, but Simon was at least getting back into the flow.
He started to feel better in the third round. He was bigger than Akita, just barely qualifying for his welterweight class, and now he started to use his natural strength and speed.
Simon stormed to life in round four, battering Akita with a solid roundhouse kick to the ribs, followed by a flurry of undercuts and an elbow across the chin. But he took a punch in the eye that took the shine off his otherwise victorious round, and for the next sixty seconds, both fighters sat in their tubs in utter exhaustion as trainers sponged off their blood and sweat.
“Come on, Pansy, come on!”
Bloody Magnus.
But he heard another voice, nearer, wonderful, calling, “Simon! Simon!” He glanced over his shoulder through the ropes to see her jumping up and down, cheering him on. Even in his dilapidated state, he couldn’t fail to notice the halter top practically bursting from beneath a loosely buttoned blazer. The fighters touched gloves and danced. They found themselves locked in an embrace, exchanging knee strikes, and Simon felt a final surge of energy. For a moment he realized he was going to win, he was going to beat this man, and Suki was going to see it, and wrap her arms around him…
The blow jarred him out of this split-second reverie and before he could catch his balance, he crashed to the mat.
As he donned his robe and headed back toward the locker room, however, he saw her again, still cheering him on. He felt the side of his face swelling, the bruise splotching across his leg, the heat of disappointment emanate from the doorway that led to the locker room, where his colleagues waited.
* * *
Suki waited for half an hour after the tournament outside the arena, leaning against a lamppost on the street, clutching her enormous Louis Vuitton handbag. Finally, the Chatri team emerged wearing street clothes and carrying gym bags. Simon’s face was an experiment in purple and blue. When Simon excused himself from his group to approach her, she couldn’t tell if he was happy she was there.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
She smiled. “What does it look like?” He nodded absently and her stomach took an unwelcome tumble, as if suddenly she felt like the world’s biggest fool. He glanced back at Lotdorn.
“I was going to join the lads. Kind of a ritual, you know, after the fights.”
“Oh. I understand.”
“Yeah, OK. Well, thanks for coming out to see me.”
“You were great.”
“I was crap. Look, Suki.” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“English people like curry, right?”
“Yeah.” He was looking back at his friends. Lotdorn was waving him on, pushing him on with a big smile.
Suki said, “There’s one place I know near your hotel.”
He looked at her – really looked at her now, for the first time. Her hands reflexively covered her smile.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They took the train. He waved her off when she tried to fuss with his beat-up face. He pointed out the new bruises and welts. She ran her hands there. His body was hard, his belly absolutely flat, his shoulders and arms rounded like giant ball bearings. She touched where he hurt and his eyes winced but he didn’t say a word. He fell asleep on the train, spent, his head lolling against the back of the seat, with her fingers twined in his.
“If someone grabs my purse, will you protect me?” she teased as they ambled down Ginza-dori, the boulevard lit by a thousand colors of nightlight.
“Why? Should I prepare for a crime spree in Japan?”
“You never know what kind of trouble you can find.”
“Reckon I’m already in it.”
She blotted out what she really should say. “I think that restaurant is the next block. See there? That’s the Sony Building. Very famous.”
He nodded at the exotic tower. “This city is ‘Bladerunner’.”
The curry house, Ashoka’s Wheel, was on the fifth floor of an unremarkable building crammed with other bars and restaurants. “How does anybody find these places?” Simon wondered. “Must be a thousand of them just in the Ginza alone.”
The food turned out to be excellent, if a little spicy for her taste, but she liked watching him devour dahl-soaked naan and roghan josh. She enjoyed the way his shirt fell straight over his flat stomach.
“When do you go back to Thailand?”
“Day after tomorrow,” he said as he scooped another spoonful of aloo gobi onto his plate. “Mm, pukka tuck.”
She giggled. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“Great food,” he said with his mouth full.
“When will you come back to Japan?”
“Dunno. Maybe if we have another tournament next year. Otherwise I doubt it. I like it well enough but it’s expensive, innit?”
“Not even to see me?”
He paused, fork in the air, and looked at her with a softer expression. “Well that’s another matter altogether.”
“I was so happy to see you fight. Happy? Proud, maybe. Proud that I know you. But a little scared.”
“Ah, nothing to fret about.”
She raised her glass of Kingfisher. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” He held up his lime soda.
Clink.
After a minute, he ventured, “Blokes round here sure are lucky.” His cheeks flushed and she started to fall a little bit in love with the way the fighter was groping toward a way to tell her something she wanted to hear.
“Really?” she prompted.
“Well, the women here are gorgeous.”
An awkward attempt that she welcomed. “Some of them.”
“Yeah.”
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“What way?”
“Like…that.”
“I’m not looking at you any way,” he said, his eyes never leaving hers. “Dunno what you’re on about. I’m just…we’re just…”
“Let’s go dancing.”
They cruised the nightlife – discos, clubs – and she let herself get tipsy while he kept up his no-alcohol policy. He was grinning now, constantly, and she felt cloud-high to see him like that, with her. But as they bounced around a dance floor surrounded by people in hip-hop gear, he shouted, “I can’t stay here,” and outside he explained that smokes were his weakness. “Khru Chatri’s already disappointed with me, so I don’t want to break down.”
She nodded, exchanging her cigarette for gum. “Okay, let’s go to Starbucks.”
“Uh, okay. I mean, if you want to go home I understand…”
“No, I don’t want to go home. There’s a Starbucks just down the street.”
He followed her to the coffee shop, where they sipped latte while listening to Willie Nelson sing “Always on my Mind”.
“What made you learn to fight?”
“To protect Jimmy, my little brother. He’s slow and the local hoodlums liked to beat him up. Until I started training, then nobody bothered Jimmy anymore. But I got cocky, like, and fell in with the wrong lot. Got into drugs and then I’d lose it and start throwing punches, doing a few stupid things I regret. Now I can’t go back, really.”
“Are you still in trouble?”
“I don’t want to go back, that’s the thing. When I went to Thailand I found Khru Chatri and he’s sorted me out. I owe that bloke my life. You should visit some time, yeah?”
“I’d love to.” She thought about what Val had said, about leaving Japan. For the first time since going to Yokohama earlier that evening she remembered Yoshino in his blue trench coat; recalled the shooting. Her coffee mug trembled so she set it down before he’d notice.
They moved back to the street. As they walked toward his hotel, their fingers automatically joined.
“Could I visit you soon?” she asked.
“Have a particular time in mind?”
“Well—” She was interrupted by a loud buzz as a motorcycle raced around the corner, nearly mowing them down.
“Bloody teenagers,” Simon muttered as the bike passed, the young man riding it taking a quick glance in their direction. “Same the world over, I guess.”
“Really soon,” she said. “Like maybe this week.”
His eyes widened. “Oh. Really?”
She surprised him with a kiss. He was awkward but then his arms moved around her. He tasted like coffee, like chocolate.
“Really.”
* * *
Val wasn’t sure what scared her more: facing her father, or Takahashi and the other men who had made contacting Congressman Benson a desperate necessity. She had checked into the inn after leaving Suki’s apartment. The beautiful stone garden outside her simple room should have been calming. She couldn’t shake the feeling of nausea.
The phone purred. It wasn’t Suki; it was René. Surprised, she took the call.
“Allo Val, this is René, calling you like I said I would. I have party favors just for you, my sweet.”
She recalled a request she had made two weeks ago, for that something that made her feel like a superhero for a few hours. A feeling that, in that lonely room, she suddenly, achingly missed.
“How’s eight o’clock?” she said.
Bulldozing her mind past this folly – spend the night alone here with nothing to do but brood on the Painter? – she called Suki to see if she was going to stay with her at the ryokan.
The conversation was brief. Val quickly realized Suki was with the English kickboxer, and Suki didn’t seem anxious to join her.
She found René at one of his seedy hangouts, an entertainment building in Kabuchiko, the red-light district in Shinjuku, playing blackjack at an illicit casino that stank of beer. The elevator doors had parted at each floor on the way up to reveal two stories of a noisy pachinko parlor and an illegal soccer betting club; above the casino was a karaoke hall and a “massage” parlor.
René spotted her entrance and gestured for her to take the stool beside him. His eyes were bloodshot and his mouth reeked from too many cheap cigarettes. Val had once found him oddly charming, but now he rankled, and she had to breathe through her mouth whenever he came near.
“Look at these fucking beautiful cards, Valerie!” His two cards were a five and a six; the dealer had an eight and a card facing down.
“Hi René.”
“The women of Cowboy will never lack as long as there is René,” he said. Then he put his mouth to her ear. “This shit is the best they make. I know the chemist who processes it from long ago, in Corsica.” He leaned back. “So I can guarantee, guarantee ma chere, that one line of this and you and your beautiful lady friends will party as long as there is neon light in Tokyo. Even the Thai girls upstairs buy it.”
“Thai girls?”
“The Japanese import them, they are cheap and make very little money. But René brings a smile to their pretty faces.” To the dealer he said, “Double, s’il te plaît,” and pushed another stack of chips to the appropriate spot on the table.
“I hope you give them a discount,” Val said.
“For the world’s oppressed, of course. And for you too, because you are René’s friend, n’est ce-pas?”
Luck went against him as he drew a five and the dealer a queen. “Putain.” The dealer removed the pile of chips from the table and delivered another round.
The Frenchman threw up his hands. “Life is cruel to me. But you, Val, are here to replenish my cash or to distract me from winning at Blackjack?”
“I’ll bankroll you tonight, René.”
She left him at the casino to go dancing, armed with lipstick, René’s cocaine and a rolled thousand-yen note.
She was still wired when she passed the morning commuters back to the ryokan. She retained the delighted confidence that coke gave her, as if merely by dancing non-stop in one tiny club after another meant that she could handle anything the world deigned to throw at her. Slowly, however, power was seeping out of her veins, leaving only the detritus of cosmopolitans and margaritas. As she reached her room, the dull jackhammers in her head had already begun to sound.
Suki had arrived sometime in the night after taking leave of Simon. She snored in the corner.
Val collapsed on her futon but lay awake for a while. The drugs made her heart race and kept her in a conscious purgatory while the hangover set in. It wasn’t until after nine that she finally drifted to sleep. She woke in the afternoon feeling ill.
Suki had left a note to say she was spending the day showing Simon around Tokyo.
Val made use of the inn’s natural hot spring bath, which was empty at that time of day. Relaxing in the near-scalding pool and then washing in cold water restored some of her balance, but the clearer her head became, the deeper her self-loathing.
It scared her to have been so desperate to get wasted. Money down the drain. Even now she thought about escaping again, to steel herself for her meeting with her father, but she had snorted up everything.
Nonetheless she did not set out directly for the embassy that evening. She could not simply leave things like this with poor Charlie. She owed him a proper apology. And a warning. Takahashi, Yoshino…they know where you live.
But he was not taking her calls on his mobile or at home. She decided to find him at his office. And if he refused to see her, then so be it.
You’re not the one with the map…but did anyone know that?
Office towers eclipsed the red sun by the time she reached his workplace. The modest office occupied the top floor of a townhouse two blocks away from the Ebisu Garden Place complex. There was no receptionist, just an anteroom, a door with frosted glass, and a telephone with a list of the dozen employees’ extension numbers.
She dialed Charlie’s but a woman picked it up. “Sorry, Mr. Kwok is not available.”
“Can you tell him this is Val and I need to see him urgently?”
“Please wait one moment.”
There was a pause, then another voice came on. “Hello, this is Stephen Gould, can I help you?”
“Stephen, this is Valerie Benson. You remember me, Charlie’s girlfriend?” Make that ex-girlfriend.
“Val, of course. You’re where, oh, here at the office? Hang on.”
A minute later he opened the frosted glass door and beckoned her inside. The office was cluttered with partitions, stacks of boxes and copiers, more a shoestring operation than the slick design she had expected.
Stephen led her to his office, which was even more jumbled with books and files, about as tidy as its owner, with his monk’s ring of curly hair jutting in random directions and one corner of his rumpled white shirt hanging outside his belt. He cleared a space on what turned out to be a low shelf, and she was relieved to sit down.
“What a nice treat to see you, Val. So, where is Charlie, anyway?”
She felt a pang. “He’s not here?”
“Haven’t seen him all day. Never phoned in, didn’t return messages.”
“Oh.”
“You mean you’re looking for him?” he asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Hm.”
“He never mentioned where he might be today?”
“Nope. Figured he and you had taken off for a romantic weekend.”
Val fought to not cry.
“Pretty girl like you, that’s how I’d spend my free time. I’ve been kinda steamed all day. Thinking he should have told me he wanted the day off. But.” He crossed his fingers, leaned forward like a judge. “This is most unlike him. And this is the first time you’ve ever visited this office. Which suggests something is wrong.”
“I…I don’t know.” She thought of Japanese death poems delivered to her door. And all she wanted now was just to close her eyes, lean back in this chair and sleep, but her pounding chest kept her awake. “Oh my God. Stephen. Something bad’s happened.”
“Okay, tell me.”
“You know that case you’re pursuing against Colonel Takahashi?”
“Of course.”
“I was there, at Takahashi’s farmhouse, when he was shot.” She told the story. Her initial words were slow and unsteady but once she began, she couldn’t stop, and it came out in a rush.
“The map…I’m scared, Stephen. Yoshino knows where I live. I haven’t been there since yesterday morning. What if something’s happened to Charlie?”
“Let’s get over there,” Stephen said.
“But I have to go meet my father now. It’s urgent. I need his help in all of this. He’s a Congressman. He knows about things like this – wars and spies and things. If I miss this meeting I’ll never get another chance.”
He picked up the phone and spoke in rapid Japanese. To her he said, “I’m sending the police around there. I think you should speak with them.”
She shook her head. “I’ve already told you why I can’t.”
Stephen Gould’s secretary knocked on the door and said, “Stephen-san, Mrs. Kishi is here.”
“Okay, please send her in.”
Val stood. “I’d better go.”
Stephen raised an eyebrow at her. “Actually, Val, I think you should stay for a few minutes. Can you wait here while I deal with this client?”
She checked her watch and nodded. Stephen opened the door and Val caught a glance of a diminutive old woman stooped over a cane, her square face cracked with wrinkles like a spangled windshield. The lady caught Val’s gaze and returned it with an efficient examination, lucid despite a body that had dried into a husk.
Stephen closed the door.
She waited, not trying to beat off sleep. He woke her when he came back.
“Mrs. Kishi is the plaintiff against Colonel Takahashi and the others,” Stephen said as he rummaged through his documents. “This shooting has really screwed things up for us. If he lives, he’ll never see a courtroom, on health grounds. One thing that had made this case doable was that Takahashi was known to be a robust character, physically speaking. The war is so long ago, not too many army guys were left to pursue this sort of case against. And if he dies, there will be no trial at all. No justice.”
“I’m truly sorry to hear that,” Val said.
“Mrs. Kishi really wants to see Takahashi in court.”
“I know.”
“Let me tell you about your number-one tipper,” Stephen said.
She didn’t want to know. “I have to go.”
Stephen withdrew a manila folder from the paper mountain on his desk and with surprising force smacked it before her. “This is Mrs. Kishi’s file,” he said, settling back in his chair. “Go ahead, Val, take a look. It’s all part of the public record.”
Signed statements, depositions, photographs. A recent shot of a decrepit Mrs. Kishi in her underwear, her rumpled flesh covered with scars and welts, including a long purple line along her throat. An ancient photo in grainy black and white of a row of somber schoolgirls.
“That,” said Stephen, “is Mrs. Kishi when she was still the daughter of a Korean rice merchant. Her real family name is Kim. The building there is a Japanese military post in Korea where she was held captive for three years as a sex slave. You can see the rising sun flags here – and – here, and there’s the sentry. These other shots are of her injuries sustained during that period.”
“This mark on her throat…”
“She wore a rope collar around her neck for over a year.” Stephen leaned back to open the door of a small refrigerator behind his desk. “The burn marks scarred her for life.”
“That’s…horrible.”
“Mrs. Kishi was sold to a broker by her family. The broker told her parents she’d be a maid. The guy raped her and then sold her to the Japanese and she was sent to this camp. It’s only one of several places she was held. Toward the end of the war she was loaded onto a warship and sent to service enlisted men back in Japan.”
“I can’t imagine what she went through,” Val said.
“Oh, I’ll read the deposition.” He opened a folder. “At first she was reserved for officers, which meant getting raped only two or three times a day. After about a year she had lost her good looks, that’s when she started with the enlisted men. Some days she was raped thirty, even forty times. Naturally some of these guys coming off the battlefield could be out of control, and it didn’t take much to provoke a beating. This one—” He pointed to a picture of a vicious black mark on her back. “This one was caused by a wrench. Soldier was a truck mechanic.”
Val closed the file, shocked to think the old lady she had just seen had endured such torture. “It’s gruesome. I don’t know what to say.”
“Mrs. Kishi’s story is quite common. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it, except that she stayed here, instead of returning to her home country. She was able to blend into the local Korean community, and like a lot of Koreans here, adopted a Japanese name. But it doesn’t help much.”
Stephen regarded her with a calm disgust.
“I don’t like to think about it,” she whispered.
“Neither does the Japanese government. About ten years ago some of these women began to talk, telling the world their stories. But the government says it isn’t responsible because under the Hague Convention, individuals can’t sue governments for wartime actions. Private citizens here, mainly from right-wing groups, have set up a fund to provide compensation, but it’s a joke – it’s far too small, and anyway people like Mrs. Kishi want a proper apology and money from the government. Charlie and I have been pursuing cases against Japanese individuals.”
Images of Takahashi’s obscene paintings haunted her. Time hadn’t changed the criminal. She had just been too greedy and stupid to see it.
“This is what we’ve got on Takahashi,” Stephen said, opening a third file to reveal the young face of Shigeru Takahashi, bespectacled and uniformed, looking at the camera with righteous determination.
There were other photographs too: one labeled ‘Mukden, Manchukuo’ showing Takahashi and a company of soldiers relaxing outside a tent; one of him inspecting a formation of troops in Nanjing, China; and one of him supervising the work of native coolies in the jungle of Kanchanaburi, Thailand.
Stephen leaned over and pulled out another photograph. “This one is of particular interest.” It showed a group of officers, with Takahashi in the background. At the forefront was a tall man in glasses carrying a pointer. He looked like some kind of general.
“That’s Takahashi with Prince Chichibu, the younger brother of Emperor Hirohito,” Stephen said. “This is in China in 1938. Chichibu was in charge of a project to systematically rob conquered territories of anything valuable – gold, bonds, jewels, art – anything that could help finance the war effort. We suspect that Takahashi was part of this secret mission. He had already been involved in setting up brothels for the soldiers using kidnapped native women, which I now think was just a front for the work he was doing for Chichibu. He did such a good job in China that in 1941 Chichibu sent him to Thailand to do the same.”
She looked at the photo taken in Thailand. Takahashi was pointing off in the distance, the young officer’s back straight with the majesty of conquest, as a collection of stick figures, barely human in their starvation and near nakedness, carried a long steel bar for a railroad track. She looked back at the picture of old Mrs. Kishi with the purple welt on her neck and the scars up and down her back, and she remembered the frightening candor of the Painter: The Koreans were the most beautiful….
“How many women did he do this to?” she asked.
“Hundreds. Maybe thousands. We’ve been able to track down three, including Mrs. Kishi. But I’m not so sure about his Thailand days. He organized some brothels but I think he was really more involved in doing work for Chichibu. He eluded American justice after the war, and eventually MacArthur stopped looking for war criminals and started to enlist good anti-communists. Takahashi became a prominent member of the LDP – never elected to the Diet, but a political fixer and a man willing to put his growing business interests to their use.”
“I…” What was she supposed to do? “Is there anything I can do to help you go after him? Get my father involved?”
“The problem, you see, is that most of the women don’t speak out. They have kept their experiences a secret because it’s a deep shame. Women known to have worked in Japanese military brothels had a hard time getting a husband. It’s very sad, these lonely people. A few are angry enough to sue, but then some are too old to remember things, or they get confused. Mrs. Kishi was one of the special cases. One of the brave.”
She wiped her nose. “And I’ve taken this away from her.”
Stephen relented and passed her a tissue box. “You know Charlie’s grandmother was our first client.”
The screaming shame was too much.
“He never told you that, did he?”
“No.” And she had never thought to ask.