Midnight and the Meaning of Love

Seeing that the only television here in the Harajuku hostel was in an open-area lounge, I asked Chiasa, “If your grandfather agrees, could we go by your house and view the footage? Does he have a VCR?”

  “It’s mine. I have to ask if I can have you over or not. But my grandfather knows that I’m a businesswoman. He wouldn’t restrict a great client!” she said with her brand of calm excitement—and eagerness.

  “Let’s move then. I gotta pick up my luggage from over there anyway.”

  On the walk over to Yoyogi, which was next door to Harajuku, my curiosity intensified. I got Chiasa to translate the newspaper article and sum it up for me in English.

  “It’s announcing Nakamura’s trip to Singapore this weekend, which is his first stop on his Asian corporate tour.”

  I stopped. Would he take my wife across the continent with him? Or would he leave her at home? Where is her home? Is it Tokyo, or is it Kyoto? Were Iwa and Akemi being heavily supervised right now and simply waiting for their fathers to leave on the trip, so they could contact me? Then Akemi would just pick up the phone when I called Iwa and say, “Take me back to New York. I want to go home with you. I want to see Umma.”

  What-ifs were choking me. The thought battle was fucking up my head. The other voice in my head said only two words, “Take action.”

  Chapter 5

  FIGHTING

  “We should stop here,” Chiasa said, as we stood in front of a bicycle stop in Yoyogi. The bicycle game in Tokyo is serious, I had discovered. Although it was my first full day here, I had actually counted more bicycles than cars. I was shocked to see a parking deck for bikes only. On our way over, I saw policemen on bikes in Shinjuku, and now delivery and messengers on bikes in Yoyogi. Some women seemed to balance their whole lives on the bike, their babies and children and food and purses and other items. I saw a Ginza policeman issuing a parking violation to a bicycle. One minute later a flatbed arrived and towed the bike away. In addition to armored trucks to transport money, they had armored bikes.

  As she pushed the shop door open, Chiasa shouted “Tadaima!” She looked up and down and then called out, “Ojiichan.” No one answered. She flagged me in. I stepped inside, not really interested but checking out a mountain bike for 100,000 yen, which is almost one thousand American dollars. On display also were mopeds of different styles and brands. There were some cheap bikes available for a hundred or even thirty dollars, but they were stacked off to the side.

  Chiasa disappeared. I walked toward the back of the shop. By a silver curtain I could hear voices. One of them was hers. They were both speaking in Japanese. I stood close to the curtain. I guess that’s why Chiasa bumped into me as she emerged with an elderly man. “Ojiichan kare wa Ryoshi,” Chiasa introduced us. Ojiichan was one of my vocabulary study words. It meant “grandfather,” and for some reason she told him that my name was Ryoshi.

  “Ryoshi?” her slim, tall, laid-back, silver-haired grandfather responded. Chiasa nodded.

  “Hai, Ryoshi.” I went along with it, assuming she had her reasons for the cover-up. Or maybe by now she realized this job she had offered to do for me could end up with almost any type of mysterious outcome.

  “Hajime mashite Ryoshi deska,” I greeted him. He smiled and seemed less stiff and formal than the few Japanese men I had observed so far. He fired off some Japanese sentences too advanced for me. Then he and Chiasa got into a quiet, respectful, and friendly back-and-forth. I stepped a few feet away and checked my watch. It was four o’clock.

  “My grandfather says I can’t have company in the house while he’s away. He won’t be home until nine fifteen tonight,” Chiasa said.

  “I can understand him,” I said.

  “I don’t know. It’s the first time he ever told me that. Usually I ask for something and he agrees.”

  “How many men have you invited over before?”

  “None, but—”

  “Well, that’s it then,” I said. “I’ll just have to find another way to view the tapes.”

  “No!” she said anxiously. “My grandfather said we can use the backyard. I’ll bring the TV out and run an extension. We can eat dinner back there also. It’s nice and warm.”

  I knew in my mind there wasn’t gonna be a picnic with me and her in her backyard. I didn’t want her to get too comfortable.

  “Sunset is at six thirty tonight,” she announced. “My grandfather said so. What are we going to eat?” she asked. Then she added strangely, “I don’t eat any four-legged animals.”

  “What?” I needed to hear that one again.

  “No four-legged animals,” she repeated. “No cows, no pigs, no sheep, no goats, no lambs, no anything with four legs.”

  She faced front as she walked. I walked beside her and looked at her profile. She was different from any woman I had ever known. I smiled.

  She sensed me looking and asked, “What?”

  “Nothing,” I responded. “No four-legged animals. That’s cool with me, wakarimashta!” I said. She laughed each time I used Japanese vocab.

  The shade of the maple tree shielded the glare of the sun from the television screen. The red sun had simmered purple with a pink hue but had not settled yet.

  The film footage that Chiasa shot in the lobby of Akemi’s father’s building was clear and crisp. Her hands only shook the shot once or twice. We were both watching the screen. Chiasa narrated. I was watching the details of the visual more than I was listening. “Nakamura was on the thirty-second floor, like I suspected. It was a penthouse. This is the elevator that the public uses, but here is a private elevator,” she pointed out. “The regular public elevator doesn’t take you up to the top floors. They are labeled executive levels. If you press an executive level number, a recording comes on explaining that it’s restricted. The stairwell goes up to twenty-eight, but then it seals shut. This is me in the lobby.” She pointed to the image of herself being filmed.

  “I see. Who is holding the camera?” I asked her.

  “One of the school kids,” she said, as we watched her huddled in with eight school kids throwing up peace signs beside the company directory. Both her smile and her skin stood out on film. Standing beside those other school kids, who were probably her same age, she appeared more powerful. It was not just her body but something coming through her eyes, an energy that swirled around her and that could be seen and felt even on film.

  “Hold it!” I said. She pressed pause.

  “You are so smart!” she exclaimed softly to me. “There it is, what you were looking for!” Now she had her slim finger on the screen. “Bishamon Ikeda!” she said, pointing out his name on the directory. “Even if I hadn’t given you the Daily Yomiuri news article, you would’ve found his name right there listed on the wall directory.”

  My mind shifted back onto the Iwa Ikeda problem. When Iwa heard the Narita Airport announcement, she panicked and hung up the phone. Either she told my wife that I was here in Tokyo or she didn’t. Either she told her father that I had arrived here in Tokyo or she didn’t. Either Bishamon Ikeda told Naoko Nakamura or he didn’t.

  “What is the meaning of his name, Bishamon?” I asked randomly.

  “Let’s see …,” she said, examining the kanji. “It is the name of the god of war.” Chiasa pronounced each word with emphasis. There was no fear in her voice, but a hint of excitement was apparent.

  “Press play,” I told her. As the film continued, images of the parking deck came into view. “There was a guard there, private security,” Chiasa explained. “I waited until one car pulling out stopped at the guard’s booth. When the driver and the guard began speaking, I slipped in but didn’t have to go far. The executive vehicles are all parked on the ground floor. You see there. It’s a private elevator. So no one would ever see them entering the building through the front, side, or rear doors,” Chiasa explained.

  I was listening but focused on the vehicles. The first one was a Toyota Century Royal built and designed like a Bentley, but it was not British-made. It was
Japanese. “Have you seen this kind of car before?” I asked Chiasa. “I might’ve seen it before but never really noticed it.” It was a clever answer, not admitting that there were some things that she didn’t know. But I knew that if she had seen the car before, she would have remembered. People who love motorcycles, cars, boats, and planes don’t forget the top-of-the-line items, ever.

  This vehicle on the screen was obviously customed after the Bentley but made to suit Japanese tastes or even Japanese politics. “It’s pretty. The seats are wide and wool-upholstered. I couldn’t get up that close to get all of the features on camera, but the inside of that car was really pretty. It’s Nakamura’s. Or at least the reserved sign said CEO.” She pointed to the kanji and translated. I’m sure it’s his. I thought to myself. But he probably leaves the driving to his driver.

  “You know, two men smoking cigarettes approached me. That’s why this part is so shaky.” Chiasa narrated and explained why the camera image suddenly shook, then dropped and turned upside down facing only a cement pillar.

  “What were they saying?”

  “Not much, just asked what I was doing. I played dumb, giggled like girls do, and told them I thought the car was pretty.”

  So she is an actress too, I thought to myself, and then remembered this was the same girl who pretended to be asleep on the plane ride for at least an hour.

  “It’s not the same as New York out here. No one is expecting anything to happen. We don’t steal and there’s no crime.”

  My mind drifted. I could tell that she believed what she was telling me, but I didn’t believe either of her last statements. If there was no crime, what were all those crazy movies I saw when I was young, Ameer and Chris and the whole movie theater of black faces cheering for gangs of Asian guys beating the life out of each other ruthlessly? Limbs were being broken, eyes poked out, bodies sliced up, and whole crews left for dead. They had to be fighting over something. Only them boys on my Brooklyn block fought over nothing—clothes, kicks, and colors, over buildings and territories they didn’t own and couldn’t afford, over blocks, benches, and bullshit every fucking day. Nah, these Japanese cats were onto something major, the battle of billions, the war of nations, the push of politics. I just needed to slide my girl out from under their noses and leave them to their business.

  One thing Chiasa said did stand out in my mind. It sounded true, and I would use it to my advantage: “No one is expecting anything to happen.” It echoed in my mind. I was glad that they were not expecting anything to go wrong.

  I sent Chiasa inside while I made the Maghrib prayer at sunset. She had fasted for the first day of Ramadan and handled it easily. No food for twelve hours is a small thing to many, but no water or drinks of any kind is torture to those used to satisfying their thirst. So she did well under the red sun, yet I understood that she didn’t know the meaning or reason of the holy month. In my prayers I thanked Allah for the revelations of today. And I thanked him for Chiasa, who I believed Allah had sent as a helper. Also I asked for guidance in all that I knew I would do in the Tokyo late night. I had already given the elephant Nakamura the day. Now things would shift.

  Raw fish and brown rice with the fruits she had offered me earlier, that’s what Chiasa ate. I scooped peanut butter and ate it off the spoon the Sudanese way—without bread. I had three rice triangles, called onigiri, made of brown rice stuffed with a tablespoon of salmon and wrapped in a sheet of seaweed. They were simple and satisfying. I added a bag of raisins. On Ramadan many Muslims tend to eat light. Each year, Umma and I did the same.

  Chiasa’s backyard was impossible to separate from the wilderness that surrounded us. The lone house made of huge stone had no neighbors but the flowers, plants, and trees. I also worked out back there. It felt better than working out in a small room indoors. In fact, it felt great.

  “Let’s go,” Chiasa said. When I turned, she was wearing her dark-blue dogi cut from a thick cloth. She had a deep-blue skirt with a high waistband cut from a lighter-weight fabric. The skirt was quality, I could tell. It was cut long, just above her ankle. Hanging across her back was a long sword inside a wickedly crafted cloth case. In her left hand she held her gym bag.

  “Let me take that from you,” I said, reaching for her bag. She hesitated at first but then handed it over to me. I smiled at her ways, naturally.

  She responded with four words spoken softly and seriously. “It’s time to fight.”

  I followed her out of her yard into Yoyogi Park, curious.

  * * *

  In a clearing where the trees no longer gathered in an intense crowd and under the strength of the Tokyo moonlight, the dopest dojo I have ever entered was right there in Yoyogi Park, about a quarter mile away from where Chiasa’s house was located. If she had wanted to impress me and capture my attention completely, in this moment she had succeeded—with the beauty of the facility itself.

  The architecture appeared ancient and maybe had been constructed by fifty to a hundred workers for some imperial or samurai, I imagined. The rooftops were not flat and without texture, like I had seen in many places. The roofs were on wicked angles, swooped down and curled upwards at the end. The texture was created by baked and curved red clay tiles, each one laid near the other carefully and perfectly placed. I had seen this type of roof before in films where the scenery surpassed the story and ninjas tiptoed and glided so light and fluid like butterfly assassins to the complete shock and horror of their prey. Standing here in the night in a small clearing in the woods in the park facing this dojo, I felt like someone had dropped me into an ancient film that was already fifty minutes into the viewing.

  “Come this way,” Chiasa said.

  The fact that it was wider than any indoor fighting/training space I had ever seen was not even its strongest point. The floor was made of bamboo laid in perfectly for the length of a football field. It was so clean, flawless, and polished, that it seemed impossible to imagine that anyone had ever placed a foot on it. The ceilings were forty-eight feet high. I pretended to myself that this was in case a fighter wanted to fly. The ceiling too was designed with great care and precision. Like a complicated math problem, a craftsman had cut the entire ceiling into even squares and surrounded more than two hundred squares with bamboo borders to outline and highlight its perfection. Some of the squares were lit up brightly, which the floors reflected, the light giving everyone the opportunity to see every movement that any fighter might make. Even in the hallways the floors were incredible, the wooden seats placed at even distances and immovable, so that no one could alter the order and the measurement and the count—or the seating arrangement.

  The female fighters in Chiasa’s class sat on their knees. Their silence and their form was elegant, their uniforms flowing with the contour of their bodies. Not tight, not too loose. To the left of each was a face helmet, a type that I had never seen but admired. The male fighters sat across the room, their robes as expertly tied, tidy and neat. The elder men sat at a table, which of course raised them above the heads of both their male and female students, who all sat with their swords to the side.

  At first I believed a sensei would take charge and begin to lead the class. On second thought it seemed the presence of the elders signaled some kind of ceremony or ritual. Because I couldn’t understand the language, I watched it like a video with the volume dropped out. This made my eyes pay even closer attention to each detail.

  An elder laid out several medals on the head table. An awards ceremony, I guessed.

  Suddenly Chiasa stood up, held her helmet at one side and sword at the other. She approached one of the elders and bowed before him. The elder man spoke softly to her and at length. Chiasa was completely subdued, silent, and humbled. At his last words he lifted a gold medal with a red ribbon on it and placed it around her lowered head. She in turn did a deep bow before him. Quietly she turned, her eyes seeming to survey the room. Then she walked over to another seated female fighter. She stood before her, then slowly put on h
er helmet. She tied its long strings back, her fingers moving expertly behind her head as though she had easily tied it a thousand times. With the helmet secured and in her full uniform, she looked completely different and more incredible to me. She raised her sword and lowered it at the head of the seated girl. Without notice, all the other seated fighters slid either to the left or the right and stilled once again on their knees, now all facing the girl who was left seated alone.

  Chiasa wearing her kendo dogi.

  Slowly the girl stood up. She picked up her helmet. Before she covered her head, I realized that it was Yuka, the girl from the plane who had introduced herself to me univited by simply saying, “Let’s trade music.” I leaned forward on the wooden bleachers where I was seated and watched intently.

  The tremble of Yuka’s finger was so slight it could’ve been missed. She tied her helmet and raised her sword. It seemed to signal that she had accepted the challenge.

  Chiasa crashed Yuka’s head with the sword with a dizzying speed. It woke Yuka up and their battle began. The bamboo sword striking both the metal helmet and the thick dogi made loud crashes. Yet even louder were the warlike cries and shouts of Chiasa as she set to conquer and humiliate her opponent on the dojo floor.

  The style of fighting was unusual to me. The helmet offered too much protection, I thought. The fight was waged with the upper body and not the feet. Although their feet moved in a rhythmic dance. From the strike of the sword, I could calculate that they were both aiming only at the head, the throat, the stomach, and the wrists.

  The elders were transfixed and absorbed by the battle. Even I was completely drawn in. It seemed that men battle one another individually and in groups, gangs, and armies all across the globe, yet warring women mesmerized us all. No longer seated, the elders were each standing on their feet with their arms folded before them. Their eyeballs bounced and jumped at each movement the girl fighters made.