Dreaming Spies (17 page)

We looked down at our two bags, bemused. “Do you suppose the onsen has buried Haruki-san under the tatami mats?” I asked Holmes.

Holmes grunted, and picked up his valise. After a moment, I reached for mine, and saw that, unlike his, the top had not been fastened. I frowned, and dropped to my heels to pull it open. On top of my clothing lay a small cloth bag with a drawstring. I pulled it open, then poured its contents out onto the tatami.

Some coins—disconcertingly few and small—and an envelope. Inside it were two slips of printed paper, tickets of some kind, and a folded sheet of writing paper containing two brief lines of Japanese characters—not the simpler
kana
, which function as a sort of alphabet, but
kanji
, the complex system based on the Chinese. “Do you recognise these?” I asked my companion.

“I propose that we ask the gentleman at the desk.”

The desk in the inn’s entrance foyer was a low table on which lay a ledger and abacus. Holmes and I knelt on either side of it, ignoring the maids who had trailed behind us. The gentleman in question dithered for a time, then reluctantly settled down across from us.

Holmes bowed, laid the piece of paper on the table, and waited. Without knowing if the characters represented a person, place, shopping list, or lines of poetry, an expectant expression seemed the best way to knock information free.

But the fellow was unknockable. Holmes put together a simple sentence asking what it said. The gentleman dutifully read it aloud: in Japanese. We sat. He sat.

No set of English knees is about to outlast Japanese legs when it comes to a sitting contest. However, our faces warned the man that we intended to try. With a sigh almost too faint to hear, he turned his head and said something to one of the maids. She scurried off, and returned with paper and pen.

Wordlessly, he set to work. I ignored the numbness in my extremities. Holmes was motionless.

In a minute or two, one question was answered: the message—or part of it at least—concerned a place, for the man’s pen began to shape a map.

Eventually, our host put aside the instrument and turned the sheet around to face us: a rough approximation of the Japanese coast, with roads and railways depicted by lines straight and cross-hatched, respectively. The gentleman put one finger on a dot near the bottom margin of the page. “Arima,” he said, raising his eyebrows in a question. When he was satisfied that we understood, he moved his finger up to a dot to the north of us and said, “Kyoto.” After that came “Nagoya,” then “Tokyo.” Retracing his path along a faint, winding inland route between Tokyo and Kyoto, he said, “Nakasendo.” Finally, his finger stopped beside a tiny ink dot on the inland road: “Mojiro-joku.”

He then moved his hand to tap the first line of kanji, and repeated the village name. He then pointed to the second and longer line, and said,
“Please to arrive at three in afternoon, Thursday. Today Monday.
Wakarimasuka
?” Do you understand?

“We are to arrive in the town of Mojiro-joku at three o’clock Thursday afternoon,” Holmes replied.

“That winding line is the Nakasendo Road,” I said to Holmes. “Up the Kiso Valley. It was one of the two main highways during the Edo period.” The cheaply printed book that Miss Sato—Haruki-san—had given me was of poems Bashō had written about the Nakasendo, which had, as I remembered, sixty-nine stations along its 330-some miles.

“Kiso-kaido,
hai
,” agreed the innkeeper, looking relieved at my comprehension. “Nakasendo,” then a stream of words that either warned us of typhoons and highwaymen, or told us that the two things meant the same road. I hoped the latter, since some of the familiar sounds might have been a bit worrying, if I thought I was understanding them correctly: rain, yes, and river, but bears? At the end, he paused, then said once more, with slow emphasis, “Mojiro-joku.”

Holmes and I pronounced the words after him, causing him to beam in relief. He checked that the ink was dry, then folded his map up and, with both hands, delivered it into Holmes’ for safekeeping. He bowed; we bowed.

We had been dismissed.

Dismissed, but not heartlessly abandoned. We were assigned a cheerful lad we had seen around the inn, whose task, it seemed, was to escort us safely onto a train—the train for which we had two tickets. His only word of English was “hello” (or more specifically, “ 
’aro
”) which he used at all possible occasions. He grinned at the bounce of the rickshaws, grinned at the bustle around the train station, grinned as he pushed us into the arms of the station-master.

I decided, rather too late for it to do me any good, that the boy was a bit lacking in wits.

We had either missed our train, or the tickets were for some other station. If not country.

The station-master drew himself up to his full five and a half feet, resting one white-gloved hand on the truncheon at his belt. The other thrust out our two apparently useless scraps of paper.

Reluctantly, Holmes took them. One could almost hear our brains whirring through the possibilities, but as it happened, I found an answer first, triggered by a conversation with our absent teacher and the deep, red-faced humiliation of an innkeeper with inadequate footwear.

I bowed, and assembled a sentence to use against the official. “I am very sorry. Can you help me? I wish to save a man from shame.” And then I named the innkeeper of the onsen who had just evicted us.

The station-master’s officiousness paused a moment. I remained in my obsequious position, and haltingly explained. Holmes caught on instantly, and bowed as well. Even more helpful, he fed me words when mine faltered:
The innkeeper gave us the tickets. The innkeeper’s boy brought us here. The innkeeper was wrong. We would return to the onsen and show him the mistake. He would be most ashamed, but what could one do? Unless the honourable station-master could help …?

In a town the size of Arima, the two men had to know each other. It was always possible that the two were mortal enemies, but even if that were the case, we would be no worse off than we were now.

We waited, heads inclined. After a moment, the white-gloved official replied with a bow of his own. Then he plucked the tickets from Holmes’ fingers and snapped out an order. We followed him across the station to the ticket office, straining our ears at the rapid-fire conversation. After a string of
Hai
s and a lot of ducking of her head, the young ticket-seller pulled the offending tickets towards her, then hesitated.

A lot more conversation, increasingly vexed, and a great deal of bowing and sideways glances of apprehension at our persons.

“Holmes, I think our tickets may be no good.”

The woman’s gaze slid in my direction. “Tickets good,” she said, then corrected herself. “Were good, for morning train. But this not right class, for you.”

“Ah.” Perhaps Westerners were expected to shell out for First-Class seats? I dug the little bag out of my valise, offering her the coins inside.

Her face looked surprised, then uncomfortable. She looked to the station-master for a command decision.

The two set about debating the issue. While they were so engaged, I spotted an English-language map and brochure, printed with fare, simple map, and schedule. Holmes and I put our heads down over its creative English, and eventually determined that a First-Class ticket was three times the price of a Third-Class, and Second-Class twice that of Third.

Holmes broke into the ongoing debate. “We do not need First-Class. Even exchange.
Wakarimasuka?
”

“
Hai
,” she said, then translated for the station-master. Both of them looked at us with dubious expressions. We arranged our faces with encouragement and approval. The man finally gave a small shake to his head and ordered the woman to issue us the equivalent tickets for a later train. She did so, then carefully explained the hieroglyphics they held. It was a train to Kyoto, leaving in ninety-four minutes.

We accepted the slips of paper, gave them both many appreciative bows and thanks, and made our escape out onto the street. I tucked the schedule carefully away.

I still had the cloth bag in my hand. I pulled open the top, and took out a worn copper coin. “These appear to be almost worthless, Holmes. Our first stop needs to be a Thomas Cook. Failing that, we might get money out of a bank.”

“Russell, we have been issued with a challenge.”

“True.” I dropped the one
sen
coin onto the others and folded the bag away. “Do we want to accept it?”

“Why not?”

Indeed.

He looked up the street, at the shops and the busy traffic, wheeled and otherwise. “Perhaps we might begin with transformation.”

The clothing of a Buddhist pilgrim was basically that of a Japanese peasant: short white jacket over white trousers, sturdy shoes or sandals, a
rucksack on the shoulders and a cloth bag around the neck, with a conical straw hat and a sturdy walking stick. Variations and refinements are, as one might expect, legion, with stoles, prayer beads, bells, badges, and all the paraphernalia under the heavens.

When I stepped out of the ladies’ room in my garb and saw Holmes, it was hard not to laugh aloud. Particularly with a Bond Street valise at his feet.

By his face, he felt much the same at my appearance.

“Still,” I said, “they’re quite comfortable.”

“At least you’re not required to strap yourself into a kimono and obi.”

“Shades of Palestine. But we have to get rid of these valises. For one thing, they’re leather.”

With that goal and ninety minutes at our disposal, we plunged into the active street.

Our first purchase was a pair of cheap cloth squares. These were called “
furoshiki
,” and were used by everyone, to carry everything. There in the shop, we decanted the essentials from our valises, ruthlessly pruning away extra garments, writing implements, and—hardest of all—books. I hesitated over these, and in the end, kept only Haruki-san’s Bashō. We then turned to the fascinated audience that had gathered to watch these proceedings, and asked if anyone saw anything they wanted to buy.

A pen, a notebook, all our handkerchiefs, a waistcoat knit by Mrs Hudson, two silk scarves, and many stockings went instantly, each sale producing a few coins. We worked our way up the street, hawking the remainder and bargaining for a few essentials along the way. When we started, we collected looks that were as close to outrage as they were to befuddlement; by the time we finished, the walking sticks we carried and straw hats we wore gave us instant identity as
henro
, pilgrims. Our height and our eyes might attract second glances, but mostly as we were already moving away.

We even found a buyer for the valises, at a shop where we purchased two sturdy cloth rucksacks. Silver in pocket, sticks in hand, we marched back to the train station.

The station-master’s face was indescribable. Mouth hanging open, he pointed mutely towards the waiting crowd.

Holmes and I stood, two unlikely pilgrims, gazing down the tracks while thirty or so Japanese of all ages studied us from head to foot.

A train appeared, narrower in gauge than English or American trains. At the precise time we had been given, it came to a halt before the platform, stopped in a great hiss of brakes, and opened its doors.

What followed was totally unexpected. This most methodical and polite of people were seized by a daemon. As if they were facing the last escape from a raging inferno, they began instantly to shove—those onboard to push out, and those on the platform to be first in. Grim determination was the rule for the next two minutes, with Holmes and me, the largest objects in the stream, pushed aside by our lack of technique.

Gasping, we managed to gain the interior, expecting the train to lurch into life and speed away. But the doors remained open while the struggle for supremacy shifted to the car’s interior.

We were so outclassed, there was no point in trying for a spot. Standing by the door, we waited for matters to settle down. Which they did, with an unexpected degree of efficiency.

The narrow car had two long, blue-covered seats beneath the windows. Those were now occupied primarily by children, women with babies, and men. The other women, old or young, began to settle in the centre, possessions strewn in all directions. Oddly, two of the men were taking up multiple spaces along the seat rather than offer it to an old woman lowering her arthritic knees to the floor. One of the men was lying outstretched, his head covered with a cloth, his geta tucked on the floor below. And now the other man proceeded to strip off his clothing: overcoat, shoes, suit jacket, waistcoat, necktie. Shirt. When he then reached for the fastenings of his trousers, my jaw was hanging down. No one else took any notice—no more than they did of the young woman who shrugged out of her kimono to nurse her small child. She, seeing me looking, gave me a proud display of a mouth of large gold teeth.

Holmes and I looked at each other. The train jerked, and pulled forward.
Women and children settled. Half the people lit cigarettes. We were the only passengers still standing. Left to myself, I would have settled onto my rucksack there at the doorway, but Holmes had other ideas. He began to pick his way across the sprawled bodies, bags, shoes of all sorts, and lumpy furoshiki of all colours—taking particular care with what turned out to be a spittoon, sitting out in the centre of everything—and ended up where the one man was stretched out beneath his cloth. His hand hesitated only briefly, before coming down on the stranger’s shoulder, and shaking.

The man’s exaggerated snort made it clear that he had been faking slumber. He looked around, his eyes growing wide as they took in the two white-clad figures looming over him. He withdrew his legs and shot upright, and watched along with the rest of the carriage as Holmes and I removed our rucksacks, threaded our walking sticks among the heaps on the floor, and sat.

I removed the irritating hat, dropping it atop the furoshiki between my feet, and took a deep breath. Everyone on the train was waiting in fascination to see what we would do next. Boringly for them, I just took out the train schedule and studied the map.