dried his hands, and she offered her lips. He kissed her on the mouth and felt her tongue darting in and out of his lips. Her arms clutched his neck and her hips and stomach rubbed rhythmically against his body. He gently broke the hold of her arms and stepped back, knocking into the washbasin. She laughed and playfully rubbed his back.
'Uai?' she asked. 'Pain?'
'No pain.' He walked into the bar and she came with him, holding his hand, but let it go when they were inside and wandered over to some Mends at the bar. He stopped and looked around in amazement. For a moment he thought that he was in an aquarium and that gleaming fish were swimming around him. A clever artist had been able to create a most mysterious light which flowed from the ceiling through small holes, and the girls, all dressed in very low blouses and short skirts, reflected a silver shine on their breasts. They were walking about slowly, a trick perhaps to lure the new arrival, and a fairylike glow moved with them. The light also reflected on the shaved skulls of the three barmen, shaved apart from one spot where their hair had been allowed to grow until it formed tails, the old-fashioned queues of the Chinese, and the tightly twisted hair ropes had been dipped in silver paint so that they glittered with every movement of their owners. The barmen were Chinese, and were talking to each other in the soft Canton dialect which he had heard so often in the old city of Amsterdam. They also spoke English, an exaggerated English with Oxford overtones.
'Would you care for a whisky, sir? Scotch or local? Or would you prefer a Canadian brand, or a bourbon perhaps?'
'A bourbon,' de Gier said.
'On the rocks, sir?'
'On the rocks.'
'Very well, sir. One bourbon on the rocks coming up, sir.'
He raised his glass, returned the Chinese's flashing smile and drank. 'Would you care for female company, sir? There is plenty of choice. If you tell me whom you prefer I will have her come over.'
'I'll find one,' de Gier said, 'later.'
'Very well, sir. Are you a poker player, sir? Or do you prefer roulette. Gambling has started about half an hour ago, sir.'
'Gambling has always bored me,' de Gier said. 'I don't know what it is, but rolling dice and shuffled cards make me sleepy. I would rather just sit and drink. This is a nice bar you've got here.'
'I only mentioned the gambling because it is in the back room, sir, and I haven't seen you before. I thought perhaps you might want to know about it. I don't like gambling myself, sir. Very strange for a Chinese, I don't even like mahjong.'
'Good,' de Gier said. 'So we are not alone in our perversions. Do you like watching football?'
'No, sir.'
'Excellent. Neither do I. What do you like?'
The barkeeper bent forward and whispered into de Gier's ear. 'Watching flowers?' de Gier asked softly. 'Where? In parks? Or do you grow them yourself?'
'I have a small garden,' the Chinese said. 'Very small.'
More guests came in and the barman went over to see what they wanted to drink. De Gier stirred the crushed ice in his glass and thought about his balcony. His geraniums would be dead by now, and the nasturtiums, which he had been growing with great care, brushing the mites off twice a day, feeding with various vitamins, watering and spraying at set hours, should be in flower, but there wouldn't be much left except crumbling bone-dry brown stalks and leaves lying on cracked dry gray earth. And somewhere in the soil of Amsterdam rotted the corpse of Esther, and insects would be eating the cat Oliver, buried in the park opposite his apartment building. He thought painlessly, registering images, the images of death. He was staring at his glass while he thought, and he only looked up when he felt a thigh pressed against his leg and he recognized the girl who had gone into the rest room with him.
'Amerikajin?' she asked.
'Orandajin,' he said. 'From Holland. Do you know where Holland is?'
Another girl had joined them. The girl laughed and said something in Japanese. De Gier caught a few words and reconstructed the meaning of the sentence. 'Foreigners stink as a rule, but if they have eaten garlic they stink too badly, even for a whore.'
'I haven't eaten garlic,' he said. 'I ate some broiled fish in a Japanese-style restaurant. If I stink, I stink normally.'
'Oh,' the two girls said in chorus, and clapped their hands over their mouths. 'Do you speak Japanese?'
'Two hundred words, but it was enough this time.'
'Sumimasen,' the girl said. 'Tai-hen sumimasen. Very very sorry. I was very rude. Please forgive.'
'Sure,' de Gier said, and laughed. The girls looked as if they might break into tears any minute. 'But of course.'
'Yuiko,' the girl from the rest room said. 'That's my name, and my friend is called Chicako. But maybe you don't like us so much now, maybe we better call other girls for you, yes? Please look around and tell us who we must call.'
'No, I like you both fine. Do you want a drink?'
The bartender had placed a dish filled with brown mushy objects, floating in a thick sauce, on the counter, and de Gier pushed it toward Yuiko. 'Have some of this, whatever it may be.'
'Thank you. They are mushrooms, very delicious. Try some yourself.'
De Gier sighed and picked one up gingerly. His tongue had difficulty dealing with it but he managed to get it between his teeth and chewed.
'Nice?' Yuiko asked.
The taste was pleasant and he smiled.
'They look horrible, don't they?' Yuiko asked. 'But they are very good. Have some more.'
They ate a few each, and he repeated his suggestion about the drinks.
'Drinks are very expensive here,' Yuiko said. 'Maybe better not. Maybe we buy you a drink. Another bourbon?'
'One bourbon,' de Gier said to the Chinese, 'and two of whatever the ladies like.' He felt his back pocket. Dorin had given him a fair amount in cash when he arrived, and he had been giving him more since. Compliments of the Japanese Secret Service. He should have enough to get through the night, even if the drinks were expensive.
'Do you like music?' Yuiko asked, pointing at a platform at the back of the bar where five musicians had appeared.
'Yes, jazz, but maybe they don't play jazz?'
'They do. What would you like to hear?'
'St. Louis Blues,' de Gier said. Yuiko spoke to the pianist and he bowed and smiled. One two three FOUR, the men shouted, and the blues broke loose, the theme first and variations following, some of them played by everybody, some of them only by the trumpet backed up by the drums. They played well, de Gier thought, and he clapped and asked the barkeeper to send up five beers. The musicians came to attention, bowed, raised their glasses, shouted 'BANZAI' and drained the glasses in one gulp.
'Banzai?' de Gier asked. 'Shouldn't they shout 'Kampai'? I thought 'kampai' meant bottoms up. Banzai is some sort of war cry, isn't it?'
'They should say, 'Kampai,'' Yuiko said, 'but these musicians are very crazy. They never react normally to anything. I think it's because they used to play on a cruise ship, Tokyo to San Francisco, back and forth, back and forth, forever. One of them is my cousin. He said they got so bored that they had to go crazy or they would jump overboard. One of them did jump overboard; there used to be six.'
'Really?' de Gier asked, turning around to look at the musicians again. They appeared to be normal enough, five middle-aged small men. One was bald, the others had long hair.
'They live in an old temple nearby,' Yuiko said. 'Sometimes I go to see them. It is very nice out there. They live with their wives and girlfriends, and the bald man has two children. The owner of this club is very fond of them; he often goes out there. They play for him and they have parties. They are quite famous, you know. They often play for the TV studios and they have a lot of records out.'
'In a temple,' de Gier said dreamily. 'I am sure it must be very nice to live in a temple. Do they meditate
