EDFRANK CUSTOM JEWELERS 2 page

“Yes, Mr. Tagomi.” Miss Ephreikian seated herself, the portable battery-operated tape recorder ready.

Mr. Tagomi began, “I inquired of the oracle, “Will the meeting between myself and Mr. Childan be profitable?” and obtained to my dismay the ominous hexagram The Preponderance of the Great. The ridgepole is sagging. Too much weight in the middle; all unbalanced. Clearly away from the Tao.” The tape recorder whirred.

Pausing, Mr. Tagomi reflected.

Miss Ephreikian watched him expectantly. The whirring ceased.

“Have Mr. Ramsey come in for a moment, please,” Mr. Tagomi said.

“Yes, Mr. Tagomi.” Rising, she put down the tape recorder; her heels tapped as she departed from the office.

With a large folder of bills-of-lading under his arm, Mr. Ramsey appeared. Young, smiling, he advanced, wearing the natty U.S. Midwest Plains string tie, checkered shirt and tight beltless blue jeans considered so high-place among the style-conscious of the day. “Howdy, Mr. Tagomi,” he said. “Right nice day, sir.”

Mr. Tagomi bowed.

At that, Mr. Ramsey stiffened abruptly and also bowed.

“I’ve been consulting the oracle,” Mr. Tagomi said, as Miss Ephreikian reseated herself with her tape recorder. “You understand that Mr. Baynes, who as you know is arriving shortly in person, holds to the Nordic ideology regarding so-called Oriental culture. I could make the effort to dazzle him into a better comprehension with authentic works of Chinese scroll art or ceramics of our Tokugawa Period… but it is not our job to convert.”

“I see,” Mr. Ramsey said; his Caucasian face twisted with painful concentration.

“Therefore we will cater to his prejudice and graft a priceless American artifact to him instead.”

“Yes.”

“You, sir, are of American ancestry. Although you have gone to the trouble of darkening your skin color.” He scrutinized Mr. Ramsey.

“A tan achieved by a sun lamp,” Mr. Ramsey murmured. “For merely acquiring vitamin D.” But his expression of humiliation gave him away. “I assure you that I retain authentic roots with—” Mr. Ramsey stumbled over the words. “I have not cut off all ties with—native ethnic patterns.”

Mr. Tagomi said to Miss Ephreikian: “Resume, please.” Once more the tape recorder whirred. “In consulting the oracle and obtaining Hexagram Ta Kuo, Twenty-eight, I further received the unfavorable line Nine in the fifth place. It reads:

A withered poplar puts forth flowers.

An older woman takes a husband.

No blame. No praise.

“This clearly indicates that Mr. Childan will have nothing of worth to offer us at two.” Mr. Tagomi paused. “Let us be candid. I cannot rely on my own judgment regarding American art objects. That is why a—” He lingered over his choice of terms. “Why you, Mr. Ramsey, who are shall I say native born , are required. Obviously we must do the best we can.”

Mr. Ramsey had no answer. But, despite his efforts to conceal, his features showed hurt, anger, a frustrated and mute reaction.

“Now,” Mr. Tagomi said. “I have further consulted the oracle. For purposes of policy, I cannot divulge to you, Mr. Ramsey, the question.” In other words, his tone meant, you and your pinoc kind are not entitled to share the important matters which we deal in. “It is sufficient to say, however, that I received a most provocative response. It has caused me to ponder at length.”

Both Mr. Ramsey and Miss Ephreikian watched him intently.

“It deals with Mr. Baynes,” Mr. Tagomi said.

They nodded.

“My question regarding Mr. Baynes produced through the occult workings of the Tao the Hexagram Sheng, Forty-six. A good judgment. And lines Six at the beginning and Nine in the second place.” His question had been, Will I be able to deal with Mr. Baynes successfully? And the Nine in the second place had assured him that he would. It read:

If one is sincere,

It furthers one to bring even a small offering.

No blame.

Obviously, Mr. Baynes would be satisfied by whatever gift the ranking Trade Mission grafted to him through the good offices of Mr. Tagomi. But Mr. Tagomi, in asking the question, had had a deeper query in the back of his mind, one of which he was barely conscious. As so often, the oracle had perceived that more fundamental query and; while answering the other, had taken it upon itself to answer the subliminal one, too.

“As we know,” Mr. Tagomi said, “Mr. Baynes is bringing us detailed account of new injection molds developed in Sweden. Were we successfully to sign agreement with his firm, we could no doubt replace many present metals, quite scarce, with plastics.”

For years, the Pacific had been trying to get basic assistance in the synthetics field from the Reich. However, the big German chemical cartels, I. G. Farben in particular, had harbored their patents; had, in fact, created a world monopoly in plastics, especially in the development of the polyesters. By this means, Reich trade had kept an edge over Pacific trade, and in technology the Reich was at least ten years ahead. The interplanetary rockets leaving Festung Europa consisted mainly of heat-resistant plastics, very light in weight, so hard that they survived even major meteor impact. The Pacific had nothing of this sort; natural fibers such as wood were still used, and of course the ubiquitous pot metals. Mr. Tagomi cringed as he thought about it; he had seen at trade fairs some of the advanced German work, including an all-synthetic automobile, the D. S. S.—Der Schnelle Spuk– which sold, in PSA currency, for about six hundred dollars.

But his underlying question, one which he could never reveal to the pinocs flitting about Trade Mission offices, had to do with an aspect of Mr. Baynes suggested by the original coded cable from Tokyo. First of all, coded material was infrequent, and dealt usually with matters of security, not with trade deals. And the cipher was the metaphor type, utilizing poetic allusion, which had been adopted to baffle the Reich monitors—who could crack any literal code, no matter how elaborate. So clearly it was the Reich whom the Tokyo authorities had in mind, not quasi-disloyal cliques in the Home Islands. The key phrase, “Skim milk in his diet,” referred to Pinafore , to the eerie song that expounded the doctrine, “…Things are seldom what they seem—Skim milk masquerades as cream.” And the I Ching , when Mr. Tagomi had consulted it, had fortified his insight. Its commentary:

Here a strong man is presupposed. It is true he does not fit in with his environment, inasmuch as he is too brusque and pays too little attention to form. But as he is upright in character, he meets with response…

The insight was, simply, that Mr. Baynes was not what he seemed; that his actual purpose in coming to San Francisco was not to sign a deal for injection molds. That, in fact, Mr. Baynes was a spy.

But for the life of him, Mr. Tagomi could not figure out what sort of spy, for whom or for what.

At one-forty that afternoon, Robert Childan with enormous reluctance locked the front door of American Artistic Handcrafts Inc. He lugged his heavy cases to the curb, hailed a pedecab, and told the chink to take him to the Nippon Times Building.

The chink , gaunt-faced, hunched over and perspiring, gasped a place-conscious acknowledgment and began loading Mr. Childan’s bags aboard. Then, having assisted Mr. Childan himself into the carpet-lined seat, the chink clicked on the meter, mounted his own seat and pedaled off along Montgomery Street, among the cars and buses.

The entire day had been spent finding the item for Mr. Tagomi, and Childan’s bitterness and anxiety almost overwhelmed him as he watched the buildings pass. And yet—triumph. The separate skill, apart from the rest of him: he had found the right thing, and Mr. Tagomi would be mollified and his client, whoever he was, would be overjoyed. I always give satisfaction, Childan thought. To my customers.

He had been able to procure, miraculously, an almost mint copy of Volume One, Number One of Tip Top Comics . Dating from the ‘thirties, it was a choice piece of Americana; one of the first funny books, a prize collectors searched for constantly. Of course, he had other items with him, to show first. He would lead up gradually to the funny book, which lay well-protected in a leather case packed in tissue paper at the center of the largest bag.

The radio of the pedecab blared out popular tunes, competing with the radios of other cabs, cars and buses. Childan did not hear; he was used to it. Nor did he take notice of the enormous neon signs with their permanent ads obliterating the front of virtually every large building. After all, he had his own sign; at night it blazed on and off in company with all the others of the city. What other way did one advertise? One had to be realistic.

In fact, the uproar of radios, traffic noises, the signs and people lulled him. They blotted out his inner worries. And it was pleasurable to be peddled along by another human being, to feel the straining muscles of the chink transmitted in the form of regular vibrations; a sort of relaxing machine, Childan reflected. To be pulled instead of having to pull. And—to have, if even for a moment, higher place.

Guiltily, he woke himself. Too much to plan; no time for a midday doze. Was he absolutely properly dressed to enter the Nippon Times Building? Possibly he would faint in the high-speed elevator. But he had motion-illness tablets with him, a German compound. The various modes of address… he knew them. Whom to treat politely, whom rudely. Be brusque with the doorman, elevator operator, receptionist, guide, any janitorial person. Bow to any Japanese, of course, even if it obliged him to bow hundreds of times. But the pinocs . Nebulous area. Bow, but look straight through them as if they did not exist. Did that cover every situation, then? What about a visiting foreigner? Germans often could be seen at the Trade Missions, as well as neutrals.

And then, too, he might see a slave.

German or South ships docked at the port of San Francisco all the time, and blacks occasionally were allowed off for short intervals. Always in groups of fewer than three. And they could not be out after nightfall; even under Pacific law, they had to obey the curfew. But also slaves unloaded at the docks, and these lived perpetually ashore, in shacks under the wharves, above the waterline. None would be in the Trade Mission offices, but if any unloading were taking place—for instance, should he carry his own bags to Mr. Tagomi’s office? Surely not. A slave would have to be found, even if he had to stand waiting an hour. Even if he missed his appointment. It was out of the question to let a slave see him carrying something; he had to be quite careful of that. A mistake of that kind would cost him dearly; he would never have place of any sort again, among those who saw.

In a way, Childan thought, I would almost enjoy carrying my own bags into the Nippon Times Building in broad daylight. What a grand gesture. It is not actually illegal; I would not go to jail. And I would show my real feelings, the side of a man which never comes out in public life. But…

I could do it, he thought, if there weren’t those damn black slaves lurking around; I could endure those above me seeing it, their scorn—after all, they scorn me and humiliate me every day. But to have those beneath see me, to feel their contempt. Like this chink peddling away ahead of me. If I hadn’t taken a pedecab, if he had seen me trying to walk to a business appointment…

One had to blame the Germans for the situation. Tendency to bite off more than they could chew. After all, they had barely managed to win the war, and at once they had gone off to conquer the solar system, while at home they had passed edicts which… well, at least the idea was good. And after all, they had been successful with the Jews and Gypsies and Bible Students. And the Slavs had been rolled back two thousand years’ worth, to their heartland in Asia. Out of Europe entirely, to everyone’s relief. Back to riding yaks and hunting with bow and arrow. And those great glossy magazines printed in Munich and circulated around to all the libraries and newsstands… one could see the full-page color pictures for oneself: the blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan settlers who now industriously tilled, culled, plowed, and so forth in the vast grain bowl of the world, the Ukraine. Those fellows certainly looked happy. And their farms and cottages were clean. You didn’t see pictures of drunken dull-wilted Poles any more, slouched on sagging porches or hawking a few sickly turnips at the village market. All a thing of the past, like rutted dirt roads that once turned to slop in the rainy season, bogging down the carts.

But Africa. They had simply let their enthusiasm get the better of them there, and you had to admire that, although more thoughtful advice would have cautioned them to perhaps let it wait a bit until, for instance, Project Farmland had been completed. Now there the Nazis had shown genius; the artist in them had truly emerged. The Mediterranean Sea bottled up, drained, made into tillable farmland, through the use of atomic power—what daring! How the sniggerers had been set back on their heels, for instance certain scoffing merchants along Montgomery Street. And as a matter of fact, Africa had almost been successful… but in a project of that sort, almost was an ominous word to begin to hear. Rosenberg’s well-known powerful pamphlet issued in 1958; the word had first shown up, then. As to the Final Solution of the African Problem, we have almost achieved our objectives. Unfortunately, however—

Still, it had taken two hundred years to dispose of the American aborigines, and Germany had almost done it in Africa in fifteen years. So no criticism was legitimately in order. Childan had, in fact, argued it out recently while having lunch with certain of those other merchants. They expected miracles, evidently, as if the Nazis could remold the world by magic. No, it was science and technology and that fabulous talent for hard work; the Germans never stopped applying themselves. And when they did a task, they did it right .

And anyhow, the flights to Mars had distracted world attention from the difficulty in Africa. So it all came back to what he had told his fellow store owners; what the Nazis have which we lack is—nobility. Admire them for their love of work or their efficiency… but it’s the dream that stirs one. Space flights first to the moon, then to Mars; if that isn’t the oldest yearning of mankind, our finest hope for glory. Now, the Japanese on the other hand. I know them pretty well; I do business with them, after all, day in and day out. They are—let’s face it—Orientals. Yellow people. We whites have to bow to them because they hold the power. But we watch Germany; we see what can be done where whites have conquered, and it’s quite different.

“We approach the Nippon Times Building, sir,” the chink said, his chest heaving from the exertion of the hill climbing. He slowed, now.

To himself, Childan tried to picture Mr. Tagomi’s client. Clearly the man was unusually important; Mr. Tagomi’s tone on the telephone, his immense agitation, had communicated the fact. Image of one of Childan’s own very important clients, or rather, customers, swam up into his mind, a man who had done a good deal to create for Childan a reputation among the high-placed personages residing in the Bay Area.

Four years ago, Childan had not been the dealer in the rare and desirable which he was now; he had operated a small rather dimly lighted secondhand bookshop on Geary. His neighboring stores sold used furniture, or hardware, or did laundry. It was not a nice neighborhood. At night strong-arm robberies and sometimes rape took place on the sidewalk, despite the efforts of the San Francisco Police Department and even the Kempeitai, the Japanese higher-ups. All store windows had iron gratings fitted over them once the business day had ended, this to prevent forcible entry. Yet, into this district of the city had come an elderly Japanese ex-Army man, a Major Ito Humo. Tall, slender, white-haired, walking and standing stiffly, Major Humo had given Childan his first inkling of what might be done with his line of merchandise.

“I am a collector,” Major Humo had explained. He had spent an entire afternoon searching among the heaps of old magazines in the store. In his mild voice he had explained something which Childan could not quite grasp at the time: to many wealthy, cultured Japanese, the historic objects of American popular civilization were of equal interest alongside the more formal antiques. Why this was so, the major himself did not know; he was particularly addicted to the collecting of old magazines dealing with U.S. brass buttons, well as the buttons themselves. It was on the order of coin or stamp collecting; no rational explanation could ever be given. And high prices were being paid by wealthy collectors.

“I will give you an example,” the major had said. “Do you know what is meant by ‘Horrors of War’ cards?” He had eyed Childan with avidity.

Searching his memory, Childan had at last recalled. The cards had been dispensed, during his childhood, with bubble gum. A cent apiece. There had been a series of them, each card depicting a different horror.

“A dear friend of mine,” the major had gone on, “collects ‘Horrors of War.’ He lacks but one, now. The Sinking of the Panay . He has offered a substantial sum of money for that particular card.”

“Flip cards,” Childan had said suddenly.

“Sir?”

“We flipped them. There was a head and a tail side on each card.” He had been about eight years old. “Each of us had a pack of flip cards. We stood, two of us, facing each other. Each of us dropped a card so that it flipped in the air. The boy whose card landed with the head side up, the side with the picture, won both cards.” How enjoyable to recall those good days, those early happy days of his childhood.

Considering, Major Humo had said, “I have heard my friend discuss his ‘Horrors of War’ cards, and he has never mentioned this. It is my opinion that he does not know how these cards actually were put to use .”

Eventually, the major’s friend had shown up at the store to hear Childan’s historically firsthand account. That man, also a retired officer of the Imperial Army, had been fascinated.

“Bottle caps!” Childan had exclaimed without warning.

The Japanese had blinked uncomprehendingly.

“We used to collect the tops from milk bottles. As kids. The round tops that gave the name of the dairy. There must have been thousands of dairies in the United States. Each one printed a special top.”

The officer’s eyes had glinted with the instinct. “Do you possess any of your sometime collection, sir?”

Naturally, Childan did not. But… probably it was still possible to obtain the ancient, long-forgotten tops from the days before the war when milk had come in glass bottles rather than throwaway pasteboard cartons.

And so, by stages, he had gotten into the business. Others had opened similar places, taking advantage of the evergrowing Japanese craze for Americana… but Childan had always kept his edge.

“Your fare,” the chink was saying, bringing him out of his meditation, “is a dollar, sir.” He had unloaded the bags and was waiting.

Absentmindedly, Childan paid him. Yes, it was quite likely that the client of Mr. Tagomi resembled Major Humo; at least, Childan thought tartly, from my point of view. He had dealt with so many Japanese… but he still had difficulty telling them apart. There were the short squat ones, built like wrestlers. Then the druggist-like ones. The tree-shrubflower-gardener ones… he had his categories. And the young ones, who were to him not like Japanese at all. Mr. Tagomi’s client would probably be portly, a businessman, smoking a Philippine cigar.

And then, standing before the Nippon Times Building, with his bags on the sidewalk beside him, Childan suddenly thought with a chill: Suppose his client isn’t Japanese! Everything in the bags had been selected with them in mind, their tastes—

But the man had to be Japanese. A Civil War recruiting poster had been Mr. Tagomi’s original order; surely only a Japanese would care about such debris. Typical of their mania for the trivial, their legalistic fascination with documents, proclamations, ads. He remembered one who had devoted his leisure time to collecting newspaper ads of American patent medicines of the 1900s.

There were other problems to face. Immediate problems. Through the high doors of the Nippon Times Building men and women hurried, all of them well-dressed; their voices reached Childan’s ears, and he started into motion. A glance upward at the towering edifice, the highest building in San Francisco. Wall of offices, windows, the fabulous design of the Japanese architects—and the surrounding gardens of dwarf evergreens, rocks, the karesansui landscape, sand imitating a dried-up stream winding past roots, among simple, irregular flat stones…

He saw a black who had carried baggage, now free. At once Childan called, “Porter!”

The black trotted toward him, smiling.

“To the twentieth floor,” Childan said in his harshest voice. “Suite B. At once.” He indicated the bags and then strode on toward the doors of the building. Naturally he did not look back.

A moment later he found himself being crowded into one of the express elevators; mostly Japanese around him, their clean faces shining slightly in the brilliant light of the elevator. Then the nauseating upward thrust of the elevator, the rapid click of floors passing; he shut his eyes, planted his feet firmly, prayed for the flight to end. The black, of course, had taken the bags up on a service elevator. It would not have been within the realm of reason to permit him here. In fact—Childan opened his eyes and looked momentarily—he was one of the few whites in the elevator.

When the elevator let him off on the twentieth floor, Childan was already bowing mentally, preparing himself for the encounter in Mr. Tagomi’s offices.

At sunset, glancing up, Juliana Frink saw the dot of light in the sky shoot in an arc, disappear to the west. One of those Nazi rocket ships, she said to herself. Flying to the Coast. Full of big shots. And here I am down below. She waved, although the rocket ship of course had already gone.

Shadows advancing from the Rockies. Blue peaks turning to night. A flock of slow birds, migratory, made their way parallel with the mountains. Here and there a car turned its headlights on; she saw the twin dots along the highway. Lights, too, of a gas station. Houses.

For months now she had been living here in Canon City, Colorado. She was a judo instructor.

Her workday had ended and she was preparing to take a shower. She felt tired. All the showers were in use, by customers of Ray’s Gym, so she had been standing, waiting outdoors in the coolness, enjoying the smell of mountain air, the quiet. All she heard now was the faint murmur from the hamburger stand down the road by the highway’s edge. Two huge diesel trucks had parked, and the drivers, in the gloom, could be seen moving about, putting on their leather jackets before entering the hamburger stand.

She thought: Didn’t Diesel throw himself out the window of his stateroom? Commit suicide by drowning himself on an ocean voyage? Maybe I ought to do that. But here there was no ocean. But there is always a way. Like in Shakespeare. A pin stuck through one’s shirt front, and good-bye Frink. The girl who need not fear marauding homeless from the desert. Walks upright in consciousness of many pinched-nerve possibilities in grizzled salivating adversary. Death instead by, say, sniffing car exhaust in highway town, perhaps through long hollow straw.

Learned that, she thought, from Japanese. Imbibed placid attitude toward mortality, along with money-making judo. How to kill, how to die. Yang and yin. But that’s behind, now; this is Protestant land.

It was a good thing to see the Nazi rockets go by overhead and not stop, not take any interest of any sort in Canon City, Colorado. Nor in Utah or Wyoming or the eastern part of Nevada, none of the open empty desert states or pasture states. We have no value, she said to herself. We can live out our tiny lives. If we want to. If it matters to us.

From one of the showers, the noise of a door unlocking. A shape, large Miss Davis, finished with her shower, dressed, purse under her arm. “Oh, were you waiting, Mrs. Frink? I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Juliana said.

“You know, Mrs. Frink, I’ve gotten so much out of judo. Even more than out of Zen. I wanted to tell you.”

“Slim your hips the Zen way,” Juliana said. “Lose pounds through painless satori. I’m sorry, Miss Davis. I’m woolgathering.”

Miss Davis said, “Did they hurt you much?”

“Who?”

“The Japs. Before you learned to defend yourself.”

“It was dreadful,” Juliana said. “You’ve never been out there, on the Coast. Where they are.”

“I’ve never been outside of Colorado,” Miss Davis said, her voice fluttering timidly.

“It could happen here,” Juliana said. “They might decide to occupy this region, too.”

“Not this late!”

“You never know what they’re going to do,” Juliana said. “They hide their real thoughts.”

“What—did they make you do?” Miss Davis, hugging her purse against her body with both arms, moved closer, in the evening darkness, to hear.

“Everything,” Juliana said.

“Oh God. I’d fight,” Miss Davis said.

Juliana excused herself and walked to the vacant shower; someone else was approaching it with a towel over her arm.

Later, she sat in a booth at Tasty Charley’s Broiled Hamburgers, listlessly reading the menu. The jukebox played some hillbilly tune; steel guitar and emotion-choked moaning… the air was heavy with grease smoke. And yet, the place was warm and bright, and it cheered her. The presence of the truck drivers at the counter, the waitress, the big Irish fry cook in his white jacket at the register making change.

Seeing her, Charley approached to wait on her himself. Grinning, he drawled, “Missy want tea now?”

“Coffee,” Juliana said, enduring the fry cook’s relentless humor.

“Ah so,” Charley said, nodding.

“And the hot steak sandwich with gravy.”

“Not have bowl rat’s-nest soup? Or maybe goat brains fried in olive oil?” A couple of the truck drivers, turning on their stools, grinned along with the gag, too. And in addition they took pleasure in noticing how attractive she was. Even lacking the fry cook’s kidding, she would have found the truck drivers scrutinizing her. The months of active judo had given her unusual muscle tone; she knew how well she held herself and what it did for her figure.

It all has to do with the shoulder muscles, she thought as she met their gaze. Dancers do it, too. It has nothing to do with size. Send your wives around to the gym and we’ll teach them. And you’ll be so much more content in life.

“Stay away from her,” the fry cook warned the truck drivers with a wink. “She’ll throw you on your can.”

She said to the younger of the truck drivers, “Where are you in from?”

“Missouri,” both men said.

“Are you from the United States?” she asked.

“I am,” the older man said. “Philadelphia. Got three kids there. The oldest is eleven.”

“Listen,” Juliana said. “Is it—easy to get a good job back there?”

The younger truck driver said, “Sure. If you have the right color skin.” He himself had a dark brooding face with curly black hair. His expression had become set and bitter.

“He’s a wop,” the older man said.

“Well,” Juliana said, “didn’t Italy win the war?” She smiled at the young truck driver but he did not smile back. Instead, his somber eyes glowed even more intensely, and suddenly he turned away.

I’m sorry, she thought. But she said nothing. I can’t save you or anybody else from being dark. She thought of Frank. I wonder if he’s dead yet. Said the wrong thing; spoke out of line. No, she thought. Somehow he likes Japs. Maybe he identifies with them because they’re ugly. She had always told Frank that he was ugly. Large pores. Big nose. Her own skin was finely knit, unusually so. Did he fall dead without me? A fink is a finch, a form of bird. And they say birds die.

“Are you going back on the road tonight?” she asked the young Italian truck driver.

“Tomorrow.”

“If you’re not happy in the U.S. why don’t you cross over permanently?” she said. “I’ve been living in the Rockies for a long time and it isn’t so bad. I lived on the Coast, in San Francisco. They have the skin thing there, too.”

Glancing briefly at her as he sat hunched at the counter, the young Italian said, “Lady, it’s bad enough to have to spend one day or one night in a town like this. Live here? Christ—if I could get any other kind of job, and not have to be on the road eating my meals in places like this—” Noticing that the fry cook was red, he ceased speaking and began to drink his coffee.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 606