December 6 by Martin Cruz Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

great nation, and especially in Tokyo, the seat of the Son of Heaven. If anyone in this center of industry noticed Harry, they saw a pale, unusually round-eyed Japanese schoolboy with a typically shaved head, ratty sweater, knickers and clogs.
    Kato noticed. “We have a real discovery, Oharu. He’s like an urchin out of Dickens, and he’s right here in the middle of Tokyo. He has a guardian who’s always drunk, so Harry gets the money orders and pays the bills. I’ve heard him on the telephone. Do you ever wonder how a boy his age buys sake? Harry calls the sake shop and, in the voice of a Japanese woman, says a boy, a gaijin, no less, will be by to pay and pick up the sake. That’s when Harry doesn’t out-and-out steal it. We may be rearing a monster, Oharu, you and I. I suspect so. I think our Harry has all the morals of a young wolf. The real question for me is, is he a monster with sensitivity. I can’t waste my time with someone who has no eye for color.”
    On hot days, Kato, Harry and Oharu stayed in Asakusa and went to the movies. Asakusa boasted more theaters per square foot than anywhere else on earth. The three friends sat in the dark, eating dried fish with beer and watching Buster Keaton take pratfalls on the screen while, in the back of the theater, a fan blew cool air from a block of ice.
    At all foreign films a Movie Man sat onstage to translate the dialogue titles and what the audience was seeing. “Now Buster is running after the train. Now the train has turned around, oh, now the train is after him. Puff, puff, puff! Puff, puff, puff! He calls out to Mary, ‘Save me! Save me!’ Mary calls, ‘Run, Buster, run!’”
    “Have you noticed,” Kato would inquire loudly of all the nearby viewers, “that, according to the Movie Man, the heroine in American movies is always called Mary. Is this likely? Don’t they have any other names in America? Why is the villain always named Robert?”
    “Kato is an expert on villainy,” Oharu said to Harry. “He says an artist has to try every vice.”
    “In Paris we drank green absinthe and smoked hashish,” Kato said. “It was the happiest time of my life.”
    Three rows ahead was the dancer Harry had seen his first day backstage at the music hall, the girl who changed with such naked cool from ballerina to majorette. Despite the dark he saw every detail, the wavy perm of her hair, a hat that was not much more than a feather, the shadow of her neck, her ear like a curled finger beckoning him, although she had never spoken to him other than to send him for cigarettes.
    Kato followed Harry’s attention. “You like little Chizuko? Too bad, it looks like she already has an admirer.”
    The admirer was an army officer. Harry immediately cast for explanations: father, uncle, family friend.
    “Chizuko’s not for you,” Oharu whispered.
    “Chizuko could be perfect for him,” Kato said. “A playmate his own age, inventive, full of energy.”
    “Leave him alone,” Oharu said.
    “I’m sure something can be arranged,” said Kato. Oharu pinched his arm.
    Afterward they took in the theater of the streets. Kato taught Harry to appreciate the storyteller with his slide show and never-changing tales, the candy maker who turned and tugged rice dough into cats and mice, the publicity bands who banged through the alleys with saxophones, drums and spinning umbrellas to sell soap, seltzer, cigarettes. The twenties were a loud, bright time of modern girls — mogas — who worked at new telephone exchanges, sold French perfumes in department stores, punched tickets on buses. Fashion was war. On one corner, a corps of Salvation Army uniformed like majorettes would shake tambourines and sing “Rock of Ages” while, from the next corner, the Buddhist Salvation Army in saffron robes tried to drown them out with bells and chants. No one knew how the next social advance would take place. In a Ginza department-store fire, salesgirls burned to death rather than leap down