The Japanese Corpse

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The Jenever was served in style. the forty-eight bottles had been taken out of the freezers and placed on the bar with a show of reverence. The bartenders filled small frosted brandy glasses with careful gestures, supervised by a fierce-looking Kono. The daimyo and the guests were served; the others lined up at the bar, bowing before they accepted their glasses. When everyone had his drink the daimyo climbed onto the stage.

"Kampai! Bottoms up!"

He poured the soft yellow liquid into his widely opened mouth, pressing the glass against his thick underlip. He swallowed and bent his knees, waiting for the shock, and roared with pleasure when it came.

"GOOD!" the daimyo shouted. "Fire from Holland! More!"

The chief bartender came running with a bottle, and the yakusa crowded around the bar. The piano started a rhumba and Ahboombah was escorted to the middle of the hall. A bartender brought her a tumbler filled to the brim with the icy explosive, and drums rolled while she drank. Cymbals clashed when she swallowed. The glass flew off and was neatly caught by the bartender while Ahboombah jumped, coming down nine feet away and leaping off into the dance, choosing the daimyo as her partner. The yakusa joined in, taking their girlfriends with them, and after a while the rhumba changed into a slow foxtrot that seemed to be better suited to the squat and still somewhat lumpy-looking men, but loosened later into a more modern shuffle, as more alcohol had been consumed.

De Gier watched the merriment from his corner near the dragon screen, close enough to the bar to be served frequently. The shuffle went on and on. Every now and then an instrument would be silenced because its player had been given a fresh drink, but the others continued, improvising endlessly. The yakusa, flushed and noisy, were jostling each other, grabbing glasses from the bar. De Gier was spotted occasionally and they would wander over, grinning.

"Hello!" "Hello!"

"Kampai!" "Kampai!"

Another glass emptied. The crowd pushed, and de Gier would spill some, but a new glass was always on its way. "Your very good health!" Down with the jenever. Into the stomach and through the stomach into the blood.

He felt hot and took a bottle, rolling it on his cheeks and neck. How many drinks now? Eight? Nine? He recognized the well-known symptoms. Increased speed of thought, images following each other so quickly that they overlapped, intense identification with the music and a great love for everybody around.

"A great love for the yakusa," he said aloud. This came out unclear. "Drunk," he said. Drunk because he was told to get drunk. How nice. How many drinks did I have? He wanted to count something, so he counted the yakusa, stopping at ninety. The counting took a while, for everybody moved around as he pointed at them with an unsteady finger. Half a bottle each, he thought, and closed his eyes. He recalculated. Ninety divided by forty-eight. A hundred by fifty. That's two. Two bottles each. No. Other way around. Half a bottle. But half the people were women, and very small women too, but Ah-boombah was rather a large woman. An important factor to be taken into account. He opened his eyes. Ahboom-bah was coming right at him. Pity, he almost had the formula. Another few seconds. No, too late. He felt her strong hands on his shoulders and her wide moist lips on his cheek. He followed her, a well-behaved toddler trusting the nursery school teacher. They danced, at double arms' length, their fingers intertwined. The yakusa stood around and applauded and the musicians sang, a rowdy song mottled with dirty words, underlined by drumbeats and the hum of the bass. The daimyo and Kono sang too, arm in arm, dirty words too, no doubt, but they sang in Japanese. The commissaris was doing his dance again, all on his own, and Ahboombah went to give him his prize, a kiss on the top of his head.

De Gier returned to his corner to work on his formula, and the daimyo called the commissaris. They sat on the edge of the stage, each on a small crate, with Yuiko in between.

"Did I ever tell you about my hashish experience?" the daimyo asked. "No?"

"No," the commissaris said, "but I would like to hear it."

"It was a little like tonight, strange but true, very true. And yet hashish is very different from alcohol. With hashish you see things; with alcohol whatever you see becomes exaggerated. Or perhaps it's all the same. Who knows!" The daimyo swung forward and almost slipped off the stage; the commissaris and Yuiko held him just in time. The commissaris also swung forward, but was caught by his suspenders and heaved back. "You listening?" the daimyo asked, leaning on Yuiko with both arms and looking at the commissaris owlishly.

"Yes," the commissaris said. He was trying to clean his spectacles by rubbing them with his necktie. "Yes, hashish!"

"Hashish," the daimyo said triumphantly. "Exactly! That's what I wanted to talk about. I smoked it, lots of it, a whole bag, a white bag tied with a red cord, same color as those ridiculous suspenders of yours. Haha."

"Haha," the commissaris said. "De Gier bought them for me. Pants kept on slipping down because of that crazy pistol."

"Where is your pistol?"

"Home," the commissaris said and raised a finger. "Jin-gi!"

The daimyo leaned forward, intending to pat the commissaris on his back, but fell all over him because Yuiko had slipped away.

"Come here!" the daimyo shouted, and Yuiko came back. "What?… She says that she can't translate if I lean on her. Right, so I won't lean on her anymore."

"Hashish," the commissaris said.

"Yes, a bagful, a sample bag. An Arab brought it, wanted to become our supplier. Kono also smoked but he fell asleep. I didn't. I went to the beach."

"Beach?"

"Beach. But first something else happened. I won't tell you what it was. Very terrible, I never smoked hashish again. There was nothing left, nothing at all, and I fell and I fell. But I won't tell you about that."

"No," the commissaris said.

"And then I was on the beach. Clean crisp sand, waving trees, enormous trees, mangroves they were, standing on strangely twisted roots and there were palm trees too with huge leaves, split right through, and they moved above me with great sweeps. Oh, beautiful! I stood on the beach and I felt the surf breaking over my feet and I felt how the water moved the hairs on my toes. Did you ever feel that?"

"No," the commissaris said. "I don't have hairs on my toes."

"No?" the daimyo asked. "What a pity, then you can't feel that, the most lovely feeling a man can experience. Hallucinations have more detail than…"

"Than?"

"Yes," the daimyo said, and moved on his crate. Yuiko reached out and held him. "I was going to say 'than reality' but perhaps I don't know what reality is. Well, anyway, there I was with the water moving the hairs on my toes and I knew I was going to see something very important, the answer to the great question, the question, the question of my life." He rubbed his chin.

"And?"

"And then they came. Two huge black gorillas."

The daimyo tried to get up to show the commissaris how big the gorillas were, but Yuiko held on to his belt and he fell back, giggling.

"And, haha, they were, haha…" He wiped his eyes.

"Yes," the commissaris said, also wiping his eyes and tittering helplessly.

"Haha," the daimyo puffed. "They had their arms around each other and they were waving their straw hats and their canes, and they were soft-shoeing all along the beach, for more than an hour. I was there. I was with them. And they were so serious! They were the most serious gorillas I ever saw doing a soft-shoe routine!"

"Excuse me," Yuiko said, and shuffled free from the two men, who were holding each other, sobbing with pleasure and rubbing their heads together in inane and complete surrender to a shared moment of insight.

The commandos were dressed in olive drab fatigues and steel helmets. They had come in as a compact body, a large pincushion bristling with blue gleaming barrels, but they spread out immediately, running along the walls and pushing the yakusa back to the entrance, and through it, separating them from their girls, moving silently on thick rubber soles, their faces expressionless apart from the glint of dark eyes under the rim of their helmets. The commissaris tried to see what was going on, but he saw no more than lines, green lines of the commandos and dark lines of the yakusa. There was no music, and he heard the irregular heavy rumble of a helicopter lowering itself into the yard outside, ready to pick up the first captives. A woman screamed, but the scream was cut by a thud as a commando hit her in the neck, without much force but in the right spot. There was another scream and the commissaris thought he recognized Yuiko's voice. That scream stopped halfway too. He saw commandos trotting in, carrying stretchers, and the last yakusa, sodden and senseless, were dragged from behind the bar and dumped on green canvas and whisked out. It was all over. The helicopter outside was gaining height already and making place for another, and he thought he could hear the whir and the chop of other machines coming close. Four helicopters, he thought, that's right. About fifty suspects, and the copters will be big army machines.

"Good," the daimyo's voice said into his ear.

The commissaris turned his head slowly. "Good?" he asked.

"Yes. Your work?"

"Yes," the commissaris said. "Some of it."

The daimyo thought of words. "Secret Service?" he asked.

"Yes. Japanese Secret Service."

"Good," the daimyo said again. "And you?"

"Police. Amsterdam."

The daimyo was nodding to himself. The hall was very quiet. The three bartenders were still behind the trestle table. Commandos were roaming about, holding their machine pistols. Through an open side door a few girls could be seen, milling about in the yard, like moths attracted by the lights. The black dancer was still in the hall, motionless on a chair, her legs crossed, her head leaning on her arm.

De Gier had found a post to lean against, but he was ready to leave it, wondering whether he could make it to the bar. His legs were giving way, but he wanted to drink; there seemed nothing else to do. Dorin, carrying a gun which he had taken from a commando, came to help him, and together they swayed to the orange dragon, mumbling and leaning against each other.

"A drink," the sergeant said. "Two small drinks."

The bartenders didn't move, and de Gier reached over, trying to grab a bottle. Dorin put the machine pistol on the floor and attempted to help him.

"Drunk," de Gier said, as he sipped from the small glass. "Very. Well done, Dorin. No killing. Well done." He was nodding solemnly.

Dorin's bloodshot eyes tried to focus on the sergeant's face. "Not well done," he said loudly. "Badly done. Telephone call this morning. From Tokyo. General shays, No Killing. Shtupid general, shilly general." He breathed deeply and threw the glass against the bar. "Idiot general!"

"Why?" de Gier asked, letting go of the support of the bar, but quickly grabbing hold of the rail again.

"They'll get free," Dorin said, pointing his index finger at de Gier's nose. "No death penalty here. One day they get free. My general shays, Never mind. I shay, Mind, but he shays, Orders from the minister. Had to change all plans. Shnow Monkeys upshet. Orders changed."

De Gier grinned.

"No killing," Dorin said sadly. "Only in self-defenshe, general says. No self-defenshe. All drunk. Your chief's idea."

He pointed at the stage, where the commissaris and the daimyo were still sitting next to each other, their legs dangling. "Your chief spoke to your ambashador. Your ambashador spoke to minister. Minister spoke to general." He shook his head violently. "Idiot general," he said again, shrieking the words.

"Now," the daimyo said softly to the commissaris. He pushed himself off the stage, fell and crawled to the bar. The commissaris watched his progress. The commissaris' glasses had slipped off and he was trying to replace them as the daimyo reached the weapon. Three commandos were watching the daimyo too. The barrels of their weapons came up as he grabbed Dorin's machine pistol. They shouted, but the daimyo's hands moved on. He raised himself slowly, waving the short stubby gun in an almost ritual gesture, and collapsed. The commissaris saw the heavy bullets break the daimyo's head. The skull had burst before the body touched the floor.

"No," the commissaris shouted. De Gier and Dorin looked up. The commissaris had fallen off the stage. They got to him, holding on to each other.

"Sir?" de Gier asked, kneeling down.

"He is asleep," Dorin said.