The Heat of the Sun

mumbled under the music; I wondered if
they were talking about me, but I thought not. I was invisible. There was something timeless in this place, something weightless, as if nothing here could have consequence. A second sake appeared
beside me. Between soundings of the martial song I heard the wash of the sea. It was closer than I had thought.
    A man leaned beside me. At first he was only a mouth, a gust of spicy breath through big, jutting, peg-like yellow teeth. Why he spoke to me I could not imagine; then I realized he was speaking
English. He was Mr Arnhem’s driver.
    ‘Hah! But Sharpless-san, you see my suffering, no? To think, my old friend to be wrapped in funeral robes! How fat he look in them, like a fugu fish! Ah, many time we drink, drink’
– he gestured about him – ‘and I say, Good Yakuside-san, our days they grow short, but mine, I fear, shall be short by more, and yours ’ – he laughed, a little
hysterically – ‘ yours, the sorrow when we part ... and treacherous Yakuside-san, he nod, he smile, he say, Hah! old friend, you die half already, your eyes are like weasels,
your knees are like raisins ...’ – did he really say weasels ? Did he really say raisins ? – ‘ you, you join your ancestors any day now . And
Yakuside-san, he lie, he lie!’
    Only slowly did I realize that the fellow was telling me about a dead friend. I wondered how long ago the funeral had been. That day? Yesterday? Months ago? Years?
    ‘Yakuside-san and I, we have understanding,’ he said. ‘Business we do, business here and there. But stories that went around after that – that business with his
little niece, they lies, Sharpless-san, all lies, lies. Me, I blame the Bonze...’ He slugged back his sake. His driver’s uniform had frayed at the collar.
    ‘Goro, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That’s your name?’
    His breath was overpowering. ‘All of us, we look same to you, no? But, Sharpless-san, I know you at once! When I see you last, you tiny baby. Now look like father – like father come
back. Who in Nagasaki not know that honourable man? I pleased to say he my friend. Perhaps he speak of me, in those years after he go away – Sharpless-san, I nakodo!’
    I began to feel drunk. ‘I thought your name was Goro.’
    ‘Goro the nakodo – man who make marriage.’
    ‘You married them?’ I said. ‘The lieutenant and the girl?’
    ‘No marry! Me man of business, not holy man.’ He said it as if a man of business were the better thing to be, then grinned, and the grin made me feel slightly sick. ‘I, Goro,
help them meet.’
    ‘A pimp?’ I had not meant to say it aloud.
    ‘He is drunkard.’ It was the Chinaman. Filling our glasses again, he splashed the counter. ‘Every night, with Yakuside-san...’ He flung back his head and mimed a glugging
motion. ‘Every night, till head it fall to bar.’
    ‘Shut up!’ Goro waved the barman away. I downed another sake, and at once wished I had not. Goro’s mouth opened and closed; his yellow teeth waggled. Now he was saying
something about the days, years before, when he had been with Sharpless-san and Pinkerton-san on Higashi Hill, and I asked him if he would take me there, but just then the barroom fell silent.
    In the doorway, half in shadow, stood three Japanese soldiers.
    A young officer stepped forward. Blearily, I took in his rounded cap, his tight collar, the leather strap that crossed his chest. Pacing forward, he held in one hand a thin stick like a
schoolmaster’s cane and slapped it in a slow rhythm into the palm of the other. Stopping before one bench, he inspected the elderly drinkers before moving on. No one spoke. I thought myself
barely visible in the gloom, but before the officer stalked out again, his eyes fixed on mine and I felt singled out, threatened, as if he had marked me down as an adversary to be crushed.
    Sighs and nervous laughter rippled around the barroom after the patrol had gone. Goro slapped me on the back, beckoned the barman for sake, and demanded that I drink, drink.
    Moths flurried around glimmering lanterns.
    ‘Where did you go?’
    I had woken more than once in the night, startled each time to find myself beneath gauzy netting. Restless dreams disturbed me. Again I was in the bar with Goro; again his toothy face thrust
into mine, but he spoke Japanese or just nonsense-words, gobbling away like a turkey cock. I sank under the tide of talk; I saw his face twist; then he drew away and there behind