'I don't think the commissaris plays golf,' de Gier said slowly.
'What would have caused such an outburst?' the commissaris asked after Dorin had left and de Gier had put down his mattress and bedding in the other corner of the room and switched off the light. 'It seems that our associate has a personal interest in the case, don't you think? So far he hasn't shown much emotion although he is a high-strung man. It's really most extraordinary that he would lose his self-control.'
'His brother,' de Gier said. 'He told me about his younger brother some time ago. His brother is a junkie. A dropped-out student, hooked on the heroin. One of these young men we saw in the back alleys of Tokyo, staring at their shoes for hours on end until the drug wears off and they have to start robbing again. Mr. Woo's merchandise is rather expensive.'
The commissaris sighed.
'What do you think about our adventure, sir?' de Gier asked a few minutes later.
'I am not thinking much, sergeant,' the commissaris said softly. 'I might be upset about its unlawful procedure and I might be thrilled because it seems that we are mixed up in a fairy tale. And there may be some truth in what Dorin has told us. Maybe organized crime should be wiped out by trained warriors, although it would seem to me that too much power will be held by the men directing the warriors. What do you think yourself?'
'I am afraid I don't care much either way, sir,' de Gier said, shifting his head so that he could see the vague outline of the commissaris' body. The blanket had slipped and a streetlight's ray lit up the commissaris' knee, a white circle in the dark room. 'But then I haven't cared much about anything since I shot my cat. I feel very light and nothing touches me. Almost nothing. If I think about today I see a haze. All I really saw today were some ferns, waving in the breeze, I could see the lake's waves through them. And the daimyo's eyebrows.'
'The daimyo,' the commissaris said. 'He hasn't got much chance of living through the week, not with that bunch of cutthroats camped near their helicopters.'
'Jin-gi,' de Gier said. 'Friendship. I didn't ask Dorin about it, but the innkeeper explained it to me a little. He drew the two characters for me. The first stands for Two Men, and the second has to do with justice. Two men relating to each other and together they form something superior.'
'Very nice,' the commissaris said. 'Very praiseworthy. But the result is perverted. As you said just now, young men are staring at their shoes for hours on end, in the gutters of the big cities. But if the yakusa didn't deal in drugs I would be tempted to drop a warning to the castle in the Rokko Mountains.'
'It would cancel the party,' de Gier said. 'Good night, sir.'
'Yes,' the commissaris said, 'and I am looking forward to that party. Good night, sergeant.' But a few minutes later he was up again and de Gier stirred and reached for his gun.
'Anything wrong, sir?'
'No,' the commissaris said brightly, 'only that I can't find my slippers. I forgot all about the ambassador. I have to phone him from time to time, you know, and report. I am sure he is getting all upset about our fate.'
'Yes,' de Gier said. 'How was it again, sir? Our mission here, I mean. The whole thing is beyond me sometimes.'
The commissaris was sitting on the floor, struggling with his right slipper. 'Easy,' he said. 'Don't you remember? In the year sixteen hundred and something the Japanese government granted us the right to live on a very small island just off the coast of Nagasaki, a port in the South.'
'Us?' de Gier asked.
'Us. The Dutch. Merchants. We were allowed to buy things from them and they learned things from us. Medicine and how to make guns.'
'Yes,' de Gier said sleepily, 'so the one favor equals the other, but I seem to remember that we ought to be grateful for something and that we are repaying a favor, us, I mean, you and I, running about like dumb rabbits so that the yakusa can shoot at us.'
'Yes, that part was never clear to me either. The ambassador seemed very clear however. We are repaying a favor. The Japanese government is upset about their art being stolen and exported to the West and we are here to pose as buyers, to draw out the yakusa so that they can be arrested and tried in court. Maybe the ambassador was impressed by the point that only we, the Dutch, were allowed to trade with the Japanese.'
'In the year sixteen hundred something,' de Gier said.
'And during the three hundred and something years following that year. And apparently they kept us in food and wine and women when the French conquered Holland. Maybe that was the favor.'
'You aren't really going for that sort of stuff, are you, sir?' de Gier asked, and sat up. The commissaris had finally managed to get his slippers on and was standing in the open door.
'It's a free trip to a foreign country, isn't it?' the commissaris asked, and smiled pleasantly.
'Maybe a free trip to death.'
'To die is to travel,' the commissaris said. 'It should be the most interesting journey of all the journeys a man can make.'
The sliding door closed and de Gier could hear the old man's slippers rustling down the stairs. He grinned and lay back, trying to stay awake. He was still awake when the commissaris came back half an hour later.
'That was a long telephone call, sir.'
'The ambassador was a little slow tonight,' the commissaris said, and rubbed his hands, 'but he did manage to understand me in the end.'
\\ 27 /////
'Banzai' the five musicians shouted, and jumped from their seats. The commissaris, Dorin and de Gier stopped and bowed, three small and somewhat lost looking figures in the castle's hall, a hall four stories high and a hundred feet square. The commissaris seemed shy, Dorin was angry, but the sergeant felt as if he might take off for the sky. He looked at the two long rows of yakusa, each lining an entire wall, and at the small reception committee at the end of the hall, the daimyo and Kono, and kept on walking toward the two men. He was no longer aware that the commissaris and Dorin were walking with him; he felt supremely alone. I am a gaijin, he thought. I am a foreigner, all on my own. The conclusion was pleasurable and he grinned and the grin became part of the BANZAI shout from the stage. De Gier waved at the musicians, and the trumpeter gave a short blast in reply while the pianist struck a chord, making it change into the opening theme of 'St. Louis Blues.' De Gier went on walking and the daimyo and Kono moved forward. The sergeant's awareness of utter freedom was still growing. He hunched his shoulders and spread his arms and began to bounce with the bubbling rhythm, now strengthened by the saxophone supporting the trumpet's blasts, wheezing an octave lower, and the throb of the suddenly released double bass. The drums had burst free at the same time and a wild cacophony of trembling bangs mixed with the clashing cymbals.
The yakusa had been watching the sergeant jump, and a roar of approval filled the hall, finding its center in the daimyo, who, grinning widely and with arms outspread in an all-embracing gesture of welcome, was skipping along, trailing Kono with him and beginning to form a circle around his guests. The yakusa had left their walls and joined the circle, moving slowly at first, but increasing their speed as the volume of the blues grew. The commissaris, dumfounded, looked about him, but felt engulfed in the glow of energy which had so suddenly erupted and which also seemed to come from himself, for he felt a distinct trembling at the lowest point of his spine. A surge of energy rose along his back and flowed into his head and beyond and made him dance too, an old man's dance, involving a minimum of action but moving his feet and his shoulders. All around him he saw the brownish orange faces of the yakusa, each split by a white smile, and he grinned back. Very nice, he thought, and touched Dorin, smiling invitingly.
'What?' Dorin asked.
'Party!' the commissaris said. 'Nice! Let's join them!'
Dorin seemed to wake from his stupor and lifted a leg, like a ballet dancer who intends to cross the entire stage in one leap, and the yakusa roared again.
The three men had become the center of a flowing moving circle and looked like three delicate animated toys. De Gier in his light blue denim suit and white silk scarf and Dorin in a beautifully tailored linen suit formed suitable ornaments for the commissaris in his shantung jacket and narrow trousers and a gray necktie fastened with
