December 6 Read Online Free PDF Page B

trouble was that a soldier who lost a weapon entrusted to him by the emperor could face a firing squad, which was a little stiff even for someone as unpleasant as Hajime. Now Harry really would have to see him again just to return it.
    In the meantime, there was plenty to do. Harry’s part of Tokyo was Asakusa, and its theater row was lit with side-by-side marquees like Broadway. Life-size posters of samurai stood between cardboard cutouts of Clark Gable and Mickey Mouse. A customer could see Gable, go next door to a samurai film and end up at a newsreel theater to follow warplanes in action over China. Tall banners animated by the evening breeze invited the passerby to music halls like the Fuji and the International. The Folies, where Oharu used to dance, had been closed on charges of frivolity, but the Tokiwaza Theater still offered all female swordplay, and Kabuki had special devotees, prostitutes tattooed with the faces of their favorite actors. Fortune-tellers in tents with gnostic symbols read palms, faces, feet, bumps on the head. Food stalls sold sake and shochu , sweet-potato vodka poured into a glass set in a little bowl until both glass and bowl brimmed over. Asakusa brimmed over. It was set between the pleasure quarter’s thousand licensed women and the elegant willow houses of the geishas and was called the Floating World in part for its evanescent, irrepressible quality. It was also called the NightlessCity. Harry watched police with short sabers stroll by. The rest of Tokyo hewed to wartime regulations about brothels closing by ten and willow houses by eleven. But there was always action in Asakusa, which was too bizarre, too full of life to quell.
    Warmed by shochu , Harry found a pay phone and made a call. A woman answered.
    “Are you alone?” Harry asked.
    “Not exactly.”
    “How about tomorrow? Matsuya’s roof at two.”
    “I’m sorry, this is a bad connection.”
    A man came on the line. “Beechum here.”
    “The lady of the house?” Harry switched to the querulous voice of an old woman uncertain about her l’s and r’s .
    “What?”
    “The lady of the house, please?”
    “Busy. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
    “She want to learn geisha dance, to play shamisen, to pour tea. I tell her she has to be Japanese to be geisha. Not Japanese, very difficult.”
    “My wife has no interest in being a geisha girl.”
    “Flower arranging is possible. Or prepare sukiyaki. Or maybe squid.”
    “Are you quite mad?”
    The man hung up. Too bad, Harry thought, though the course of adultery ne’er did run smooth. He considered wandering over to the Rheingold, a German version of the Happy. The Rheingold served Berlin pancakes with Holsten beer. The waitresses wore dirndls and were renamed Bertha and Brunhilda, gruesome enough; but worse, their jukebox played only waltz and schmaltz. Harry decided he couldn’t tolerate that. Still, the night was young. There was a hearts game at the Imperial Hotel, expats killing time with pissant pots. Better games were on river barges. Where the river Sumida lazed along Asakusa, boat after boat hosted games of dice. Merchants, brothel madams, famous actors bet serious money, and because the boats were run by yakuza instead of amateurs, the games were honest. Sometimes it was better to join a game midway, when you were fresh and the other players stale, for as the Good Book said, The last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
    Heading for the river, Harry took a shortcut through a jigsaw puzzle of dark streets without names. Cars could pass through some streets, only bikes through others, and in some alleys the pedestrians squeezed between walls that nearly touched. Harry was at home, though. These were the escape routes he grew up in. From a chestnut cart, Harry bought a bag of nuts that were hot and charred, the skin split open and the meat as sweet as candy. Oharu came to mind. Harry remembered, as a kid, bringing her