The Heat of the Sun

cherry blossoms, lotus leaves, girls in kimonos wielding fans.
    Mr Arnhem expatiated upon the delights of Nagasaki-ken (‘Great Temples of Kyushu? The greatest are close by’) and assured us that his driver, whose name was Goro, would be at our
disposal throughout the length of our stay. Every so often I glanced at Kiku. Twin dabs of scarlet shone from her lips. The girl might have been a china doll, and every bit as brittle.
    I did my best to make conversation. ‘Tell me, Mr Arnhem, do you fear there will be a war?’
    ‘There is one,’ Le Vol interposed, ‘in China.’
    ‘I meant with us,’ I said. ‘Senator Pinkerton seems most concerned.’
    The senator had become a key figure in the Roosevelt Administration. That he should ever be president seemed unlikely now, but some said he was vice president in all but name.
    Mr Arnhem stroked his moustache. ‘Look at it this way. Japan has shown herself to be the imperial power of the East. The world is a pie. For years, Europeans have carved out their slices:
Spanish, British, French, Dutch, all have had their share. Lately, Americans have tucked in too. And now Japan comes to the table. She has proven her power. On what grounds is she to be turned
away?’
    ‘That seems a little cold-blooded, sir – if I may.’ Le Vol’s face had flushed. ‘Empires are brutal. And empires clash. We’ll be dragged into an Asian
bloodbath that will last for years.’
    He might have said more, but Kiku, at this, leaped up with a cry. As she hurried from the room, the patter of her little stockinged feet resounded down the corridor like a bird’s rapid
heartbeat.
    ‘Poor child!’ Mr Arnhem laughed. ‘I’ve been teaching her English. Not a good idea, perhaps.’
    ‘She’s frightened of war?’ Le Vol said.
    ‘Frightened – so I flatter myself – that I shall leave her.’ Mr Arnhem laughed again, leaned across the table, and slapped Le Vol on the back. ‘Women, eh?
I’ve had them white, black, brown, red, and yellow, and haven’t they always been flighty, emotional things?’
    After dinner he suggested we take a turn in the garden. When he offered us cigars, I shook my head. The garden had grown chilly, but scents of blossom hovered on the air. From an open window I
heard sounds of sobbing. Disturbed, I imagined I would go to Kiku, comfort her. But what could I say?
    Le Vol, striding ahead with Mr Arnhem, praised our host’s generosity before returning to the Chinese war.
    ‘Perhaps we pushed them into it. Japan had shut out the world for hundreds of years. Would she ever have opened up without Commodore Perry? No Perry, no black ships in Edo Bay, no army
raging across China now. Funny, isn’t it? We thought modern war was something just for us. But all they had to do was watch and learn. And don’t they learn quickly?’
    Cigar smoke, like echoes lingering, traced the gestures of Le Vol’s hands. I hung back, studying the gardens. Insects flickered by, ghostly in moonlight. The consulate was built on an
angle on the hill. Through a gap in the trees, I saw a low wooden gate and a path, descending steeply, leading to a clutter of tiled roofs, telegraph poles, and overhead wires like a web. Music,
some martial air, drifted up faintly. I looked back at Le Vol and Mr Arnhem. They were far away. They had forgotten me. I sidled to the gate.
    In the alleys below there were few wanderers. Jaundiced street lamps, scattered above, made splashes of light. Here, the music I had heard before was louder, coiling out from an open doorway. I
bowed my head and entered a barroom, a place of flickering lanterns and blackened low beams, like the cabin of an ancient ship. Faces loomed above shadowy benches. On the bar stood a frilly-horned
phonograph, crackling out the martial-sounding song.
    ‘Sake.’ The barman, a pigtailed elderly Chinaman, pushed a glass towards me. I shook my head: No, no sake , I tried to say, but already he had hobbled away from me, slipping
into semi-blackness, where he squatted, eyes shut, swaying his head to the music. I leaned, half turned, against the bar and drank. I took in my companions. Every face was old: seamed,
parchment-brittle. Only one fellow appeared to be Western, a Slav perhaps, but his features, like beaten bronze, stretched Orientally over cuttlefish cheekbones.
    The phonograph crackled into silence, and the Chinaman wound the handle. The same song played again; heads nodded for the opening measures. Two old fellows