Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King Read Free Book Online Page A

back to Bombay once we reach Colombo. With no further ado, Miss Haruki Sato.”
    Neither Holmes nor I joined in the polite applause, Holmes because he was unconscious of it, and me because I was watching him with growing consternation. He wore his hunting-dog look, as if the purser had just sounded the horn.
    “Holmes, what—” But he was up and away, following the purser through the side door.
    I half-rose, then sank back: whatever was on his mind, he couldn’t very well leave the ship without me.
    At the front of the room, Miss Sato and her fellows were straightening from a group bow. She then turned and bowed to them, a salutation they returned, before all four Japanese citizens sank gracefully to the floor, settling onto their heels, backs straight and hands in their laps. Their fans began to move the sultry air. Heads craned side to side as fifty-some Westerners wondered how on earth two grey-haired women could look so comfortable with their knees on hard boards.
    “This is how we sit,” Miss Sato told the room. “In Western-style hotels and restaurants, you will find chairs, but we Japanese live simply, on the floor. Those floors are fitted with soft, clean mats called ‘tatami,’ very thick, woven from a kind of grass. Tatami are quite uniform. Our houses are built around them, so they fit together to keep out draughts from below. Every year, we take each house to pieces and clean it, from attic to foundation: this is required, by our government. Even then, so sorry, youwill often find fleas. All—” She broke off, confused by the chuckles. With a glance at her fellows, she waited until the response subsided, then she resumed. “All year, we sit on the tatami. We take our meals from low tables set on tatami, which also serve our children for doing homework. At night, the tables are moved aside and bedding is brought out from cupboards, and we sleep on the tatami.
    “I begin with tatami so you will understand why taking off one’s shoes is so basic to everything in Japan. Think of them not as carpeting, but upholstery. A muddy pair of boots will ruin the house.”
    She paused, allowing every mind’s eye to picture the catastrophe of footprints across pristine woven grass. Then she went on.
    “But why do we not have floorboards, tiles, and carpeting, like you have in the West? It is not, as you may have heard, because we are a primitive people. Yes, we lived behind locked doors until seventy years ago—but picture, please, what your country would look like if your grandparents had been born into the technology of Elizabethan times.
    “However, it is not simply our long isolation. Tell me, how many of you have experienced an earthquake?” Another stir ran through the room, fed by the images that had dominated newspapers for weeks, the previous September. The two largest cities in Japan had been flattened by a huge tremor. Those buildings that survived the shaking later burned in the terrible firestorms. Few of us had been through such a thing ourselves—I had spent part of my childhood in San Francisco, where the 1906 earthquake was an omnipresent memory—but we all nodded our understanding. “Please allow me to warn you: if you find yourself in a brick building when the earth begins to shake, get away from it as quickly as you can. Brick and stone collapse. In Yokohama, half of all the brick buildings fell. Hundreds died. I lost friends, in Tokyo.”
    A low murmur of sympathy ran through the room, which she did not acknowledge.
    “In Japan, the earth moves often. In a Japanese house, roof tiles may fall, cups and plates may smash, but the house itself is soon repaired. It is built of wooden beams that lock together and move.” She held up her intertwined fingers, by way of illustration. “Traditional Japanese housenot even— does not even have windows. If an earthquake destroys a house—or a city—in Japan, it is because of the fire, not the shaking. In September, the earthquake came at a