'Yes,' the commissaris said, and nodded. 'Drunk, that's what we'll have to be, dead drunk, smashed, the worse the better.'
'But shouldn't we be able to look about? You know what Dorin is planning. Maybe we should be on our feet by the time the helicopters come.'
The commissaris pointed with his head. De Gier looked round and saw Dorin, finding his way slowly through the massed yakusa. 'Don't worry, Rinus,' the commissaris said softly. 'Maybe they'll have to carry us out, but tomorrow we'll wake up as usual, with a bit of a hangover I imagine, but safe and sound.'
'I was talking to Kono just now,' Dorin said. 'He took the bandage off his hand. The wound seems to be doing well.'
'A nice man,' the commissaris said.
'A darling,' Dorin said, 'just like all those other sweetie pies. Their pleasantness makes me sick to my stomach. They are doing it much too well tonight, I have to tell myself over and over again that they are the worst bastards you might ever want to avoid, because if I don't I forget, and I forget all the same, every time one of them comes over for a chat and a smile.'
'Is that so bad?' the commissaris asked, and made the cubes in his glass tinkle.
'Yes, that's bad.' Dorm's smile had become a sneer. 'I hate that filth. If I could have a chance to think clearly, I would know that they are of exactly the same type as the Chinese warlords and their cronies who rotted their own country to the point where farmers wouldn't bother to sow their land and babies were left in the ditch because their starving mothers couldn't feed them. The yakusa are a living plague and they should be crushed the minute they reveal themselves, without ceremony, without a second thought. When the daimyo danced just now he showed his true spirit, a vampire, a sucking vermin, but a minute later he was the ideal host who can create a perfect atmosphere by a single gesture.'
'Perhaps,' the commissaris said. 'But he isn't a common man, not by any means, and I doubt whether he is the maniac you seem to think he is. Perhaps the fact that he exists proves that this society in which he lives allows room for his existence, wants him to be, perhaps. In another society he would act a different part, maybe a part which could be defined as good.'
Dorin tried to light a filter cigarette at the wrong end. He pulled the smoldering cigarette from his mouth and rubbed it into the floor with his heel. 'No.'
'What do you think, de Gier?' the commissaris asked, but the sergeant didn't answer. Ridiculous, de Gier thought, I shot my cat, I am in a castle in the Rokko Mountains, a black angel has danced all through my soul just now.
'De Gier?'
Esther is dead, de Gier thought, and the earth in my flowerpots is caked and has burst. I can't go back, but I am free, I have been free for weeks, and I have no idea what I should do with my freedom. I have slept with a Japanese woman and all I saw were fern leaves growing from a lake. And all the people in this hall are my deadly enemies.
'Where are you?' the commissaris asked.
'Yes, sir,' de Gier said, and walked away.
The daimyo, holding Yuiko's hand, came to fetch his guests. Tables were being carried in, and the bartenders, helped by cooks in white uniforms, brought in trays loaded with dishes and bowls.
'I had some special food prepared for you,' the daimyo said. 'I heard that you have been living on Japanese dishes so far, and I thought that you might be ready for a change. There is some steak, and lamb chops and fried potatoes and salads and…' He pointed and described the various dishes, and pulled the commissaris and Yuiko with him. 'The salads are the cook's specialty and he also knows how to prepare the right dressings. The salads come from Kono's garden, I helped him with the harvest this morning, we often work together in the fields, too often perhaps, I am neglecting my duties these days. The pleasure of a man about to retire.'
'You are retiring soon?' the commissaris asked.
'In another year perhaps, but I will remain interested. Old men still have some value in Japan. Perhaps I will be asked to advise from time to time.'
'Here,' the daimyo said. 'Please feel free to serve yourselves, I'll be back in a minute, I have to cut the carp on the other table.'
Dorin was looking at his watch. 'The airstrip should be in our hands by now,' he said into the commissaris' ear, 'and the castle should be surrounded. I don't suppose the guards had a chance to resist, if there were any guards. The daimyo has lived safely behind the bribe barrier, for years and years.'
'I hope the Snow Monkeys have been trained in patience too,' the commissaris said, and tipped a spoon above his salad, allowing the dark red dressing to dribble down on the fresh leaves. 'They should come in only when our friends are nicely drunk, and that event hasn't come to pass yet, not by a long way.'
Dorin stabbed his spoon into a silver bucket filled with a white creamy fluid. 'Sure,' he said. 'They are trained in many ways. This is a Russian sauce, I always choose Russian dishes, so that I will be accustomed to them when the time comes. They can be here within a few hours.'
'The Russians?'
'The Russians. I saw them last month through my binoculars. They were exercising just off our north coast. Their islands are so close that they sometimes get onto our beaches after a swim and we have to ferry them back.' The spoon shot free, creating a vacuum that filled with a sick gurgle. 'Don't you worry about the Russians? They must form the same menace in Europe that they do here.'
The commissaris was cutting his steak with slow careful cuts of a very sharp knife. The red bloody slices fell over on his plate.
'No,' he said hesitatingly. 'No, I don't suppose I do. Perhaps when the time comes, but it hasn't come yet. And so many things are coming. Death, for instance.'
De Gier joined them, with Ahboombah holding his arm. The dancer was dressed in a long gown, closing at the elongated neck. She held her plate and de Gier dropped lettuce leaves on it, while she smiled approvingly.
'You are a true artist,' the commissaris said. 'I enjoyed your dance very much.' She laughed. 'I hope you weren't disappointed? I usually dance in a different style, but the daimyo wanted me to do this pantomime. He had seen me do it in New York.'
De Gier touched Dorin's elbow, while the commissaris and the dancer talked.
'Yes?'
'I don't know what your plans are for the rest of the evening,' de Gier whispered, 'but the old man has to get out of this.' His whisper was cold and fierce and Dorin jumped.
'Don't fuss, man,' he hissed back. 'Of course he'll get out of this. This is a party, isn't it? A jolly party! We are with friends, aren't we?'
De Gier didn't have a chance to answer. Dorin had banged his plate on the table and stalked off, his face twitching and his arms swinging.
The daimyo came back and got into the conversation, and wandered off again, taking Ahboombah. The commissaris watched the pair move across the hall. The dancer's long hand, each tapered finger ending in a long curved silver nail, rested on the daimyo's shoulder and her face was bent down to his head, her cheek touching a bristling tufted eyebrow.
Maybe I don't have to get all that drunk, the commissaris thought, but shook his head despondently. He would have to get drunk and afterward he would be ill. Headache, thirst, cramps most probably, diarrhea if the worst came to the worst. But he cheered up again. He could always take a bath, the Japanese baths had done wonders so far, his legs didn't hurt much anymore.
The daimyo turned up again, offering delicacies. Giant shrimps fried in batter and some pieces of squid floating in a thick dark gravy.
'Tomorrow,' the daimyo said. 'Tomorrow we can talk quietly, while we walk and look at things. Kono wants to show off his birds. He has some new pheasants, very wonderful creatures, and there are swans too now, black Australian swans. His birds are his pride, just as my bears were mine once, but they are too old now, and they never wanted to breed.'
'I saw your bears,' the commissaris said, 'when we came in, in a cage near the gates. A peacock was sitting on the cage's roof and I saw a bear's face, in between the tail feathers of the peacock. A sight of great beauty. You do live in splendor, sir.'
