Diamond Solitaire

Their guide stopped by a door marked private and tapped with her knuckles.

Diamond was uneasy about taking Naomi into an enclosed area. 'Do you mind telling me what this is about?' he asked.

The woman turned to face him. 'I am sorry. It is not for me to say.'

'Who are you? I don't even know your name.'

'I am nothing. Disregard me.'

'You speak good English.'

'That is the only reason I am here.'

The door was opened by a burly young Japanese in a black tracksuit. The woman bowed. The young man dipped his head in a formal greeting directed more to Diamond than their guide and revealed that his hair was bunched and fastened in a topknot. Something was said in Japanese.

'Please enter,' the woman told them, standing aside to gesture them forward.

The sickly-sweet fumes of a floral perfume wafted over them. It was coming from the young man's hair, and the scent was camellia, Diamond registered, recalling a more subtle variety sometimes used by Steph. This was looking less and less like a homecoming for a lost child, but there didn't appear to be anything threatening about the invitation. He led Naomi through the door.

They were greeted by a spectacle that nothing had prepared them for: an enormous pair of buttocks, naked except for a strip of black silk squeezed into the cleft.

For reasons too complex to explore, the over-fleshed male bottom is not a feature much revered in modern Western society. It can be the object of mockery-literally, a butt-or, more positively, a source of extra poundage in the rugby scrum, or the tug-of-war team. This bottom manifestly aspired to higher planes of experience. It was monumental; as awesome in its way as the Albert Memorial across the road.

Motionless, pale gold in hue, smooth as traffic beacons, sturdy as two barrels stored side by side, it dominated the center of the room and much of the sides as well. The rest of the owner's body was for the moment hidden, except for a partial view of stocky legs and bare feet. He was bending forward in a position that must have been painful to hold.

From Naomi's eye level, the spectacle would have rivaled Mount Fuji.

Belatedly, Diamond recalled an item he had seen a couple of days before on a television newscast. A Japanese festival had opened and one of the main attractions was a tournament for Japanese wrestlers. The sport had a devoted following here. He mouthed the word 'Sumo?'

The man who had just admitted them nodded.

Although Diamond hadn't watched much sumo wrestling on television, he felt some sympathy with a sport for which the training amounted to gorging oneself with food and the action rarely lasted longer than fifteen seconds.

The buttocks flexed, shuddered and shifted position with astonishing rapidity as their owner, regardless of his guests, went through a physical routine, raising his body level with his hips and lifting his right foot to shoulder height and then slapping it down heavily.

'The shiko,' murmured the woman from the doorway. 'To frighten evil spirits and the opponent.'

'Tell him the opponent isn't here,' Diamond muttered.

The shiko was repeated with the left leg. The great domes of flesh completed their movement, quivered, and were still. If anything, the reek of camellias had intensified. The wrestler, as well as his Jeeves, must have been pomaded with the stuff.

'I rather think someone has made a mistake inviting us here,' Diamond insisted.

Shocked that anyone should speak while the workout was in progress, the man in the tracksuit held up a restraining hand.

The wrestler treated them to the panorama of his backside again, bending so low that his head must have been between his knees. He was wearing the silk loincloth used in combat by the highest-ranking sumotori. The enforced intimacy with this mountainous rump was unsettling Diamond, and he didn't care to think what effect it could be having on the child. Actually, the room wasn't small. Indeed it must have been the star dressing room. But when shared with a sumo wrestler and two heads coated in essence of camellia, it seemed minute. He turned to see if the woman was still present. She was standing just inside the door trying to be unobtrusive.

Diamond asked her, 'Are you sure this is right?'

She nodded and signaled to him to be silent by pressing her fingers against her lips.

The wrestler grunted, raised himself from the jackknife position and suddenly turned about to face them. He was vast all over. His thighs looked as if they could have supported an overpass and in a sense they did, because his huge belly jutted so far over the belt of his loincloth that he appeared naked. A thick band of pectoral muscles lay over his torso, forming a deep, undulating crease. Above all that, almost extrinsic to the show, was his small, moon-shaped head. Its only real distinction was the hair tied at the back and folded forward in the traditional fan shape worn by the highest ranked sumotori. He exchanged the briefest of glances with the man in the tracksuit, who picked up a black jacket not unlike an undergraduate gown and wrapped it around the colossal shoulders.

Then the great man bowed in greeting and Diamond did the same. For once in his life, he was feeling physically diminished, skimpy, if not slender. A hand was extended for him to shake. Having seen the agility of Japanese wrestiers, he wouldn't have been surprised to have found himself on his back in the far corner. Instead he received nothing worse than a firm handshake. Something was said in Japanese, the voice high-pitched and husky.

The woman spoke up from behind Diamond. 'The Ozeki Yamagata wishes to introduce himself and welcome you to the Albert Hall, his temporary quarters.'

Diamond identified himself and Naomi. Chairs were produced for them. Yamagata squatted on a wooden bench and said something to his dresser, who spoke in turn to the woman interpreter.

She told Diamond, 'I have the honor to translate for Mr. Yamagata. He instructs me to explain that Ozeki is the second highest rank in sumo. Mr. Yamagata is a very important wrestler in Japan, and the most senior in this tournament. You are welcome to be his honored guests in the arena tonight if you wish.'

'We are honored indeed,' said Diamond, fitting smoothly into the formal style of address, 'but I think the child is too young.'

When this was translated for Mr. Yamagata he appeared to take it well, nodding sagely.

Naomi still had a tight grip on Diamond's fingertips. With some justification, she regarded these proceedings with the deepest suspicion.

Yamagata spoke again and the interpreter explained that by chance the Very Important Wrestler had watched the transmission of 'What About the Kids?' A portable set had been brought in for him to see a Channel 4 program about sumo, but it had concentrated too much on a rival sumo stable and he had switched channels. 'Mr. Yamagata was deeply moved by the unhappy situation of this Japanese child who appears on British television and says nothing. He asked me to make inquiries, so I phoned the BBC,' she explained.

Diamond's hopes of a breakthrough were dashed. 'You mean he didn't recognize Naomi?'

She shook her head.

'He doesn't know who she is?'

'It was only a TV show.'

'For crying out loud!' Diamond jerked up from the chair, accidentally hoisting Naomi to her feet as well, because she still had hold of his fingertips. 'You brought us here for nothing, because this… this lump of lard happened to see the kid on the box? That's ludicrous. Who else have you dragged in-Arthur Daley?'

'Please! I cannot possibly say these things to Mr. Yamagata.'

'Don't trouble. We're off. We've been conned by this heap of flab.' He turned to leave and found the way barred by the henchman in the tracksuit, hunched forward combatively, looking as if he wasn't messing. Naomi gave a whimper, dropped her precious drawing pad, and flung both arms around Diamond's waist, or as far around as she was able.

Not the ideal conditions for a first encounter with a sumo wrestler.

'Do you mind?' Diamond articulated in a straining-to-be-civil, British fashion. 'We would like to leave now.'