Picking Bones from Ash (26 page)

Eventually I calmed down enough to realize that Timothy was dependent on me as his liaison. I would need to put some of my Japanese outrage aside. In the afternoon, after I had tried and failed to reach someone helpful on the phone, I bought a cheap skirt, matched it to a blouse, and went to the precinct where Timothy was being held. I asked for a meeting. Impossible, I was told. Prisoners weren’t allowed to receive guests as though they were dignitaries languishing in a state-sponsored hotel. I protested that Timothy was a foreigner and barely able to communicate even his basic needs in Japanese. Most likely there had been a misunderstanding, which he wouldn’t be able to clarify without the aid of an interpreter. Not to worry, I was told. Timothy’s attorney had secured an interpreter.

His attorney?

“Yes,” said the man in the blue suit behind the glass window. “Of course we got in touch with his attorney once we had a name.”

I caught myself before I blabbed that Timothy wouldn’t and couldn’t have an attorney in Japan because he wasn’t familiar enough with the country or its language to have these kinds of contacts. I thanked the man for his help and quickly left the police station, my thoughts tumbling over each other as I struggled to understand what had happened.

Of course, Timothy
had
been to Japan before and it was certainly possible that there were things about him that I didn’t know. Over the months that we’d spent together I’d learned something about his habits and his temperament. Despite the easy, laissez-faire quality he liked to project, there was a side to him that was secretive and contained, just as I too hid much of my own personal history.

So, perhaps he did have an attorney. Maybe it did occur to him to contact someone other than me. But whom did he know?

I wandered back to the hotel, where a new desk clerk gave me a wary look. “You have a visitor,” he said, nodding at the lobby behind me.

I turned around. There, hidden behind a plant so large I had not seen him when I’d first walked in, was François, the
gaijin
from the memorial. He rose and came to stand beside me, looking a little remorseful, even as he was smiling in an effort to look friendly.

“Hello, Satomi. Can we go somewhere to talk?”

“François. What … ?” I began.

“It’s about Timothy,” he said gravely.

I turned on my heel, dropped my key off at the front desk, and led François outside and down the street to a cheap restaurant serving curry and beer.

François and Timothy had known each other for a long time. They had first met in the United States, where François had been doing something called a “gap year,” and discovered that they both had a vague interest in “the East.” Over time, they’d managed to focus their interests on Japan and Buddhism. They’d kept in touch over the years through letters and the occasional phone call. Now François was studying for a doctorate at a British university and had come to Japan to do some fieldwork in anthropology. Recently he’d moved away from studying Japanese rituals and become interested in the actual ritual objects, which, he said with a smile,
was another way of saying that he’d finally come around to understanding Timothy’s interest in antiques. They’d begun meeting quite regularly in Japan when Timothy had been over on buying trips and François had been visiting temples to study the
mudras
of various statues and the artifacts that priests used while chanting and conducting ceremonies.

François had heard Timothy speak of me so often that he’d become intrigued. In all the years that he’d known Timothy, François hadn’t heard about a single woman who’d been able to pin down his fascination for such a long time. Art dealers weren’t known for their long attention spans. They liked to find beautiful pieces, sell them, and then move on. And yet here I was, the girl whom so many other women would like to have been, accompanying the very charming Timothy Snowden in Paris, then Amsterdam, and now Japan. François had become curious.

“So,” I said slowly, “it was not an accident that you came to Muryojuji temple.”

“Well, that’s just it,” François sighed. “It was meant to seem like an accident. I assumed I’d meet you again at some later date and I’d go through the motions of being amazed to have met you before.” I was interested to learn that Timothy had apparently been somewhat possessive of me. He’d rejected François’ offer to come to Kyoto to meet us both. Then Timothy had let it slip on the phone that I was rushing off to Hachinohe and next to Muryojuji temple for a memorial service. “I wasn’t that far away,” François said. He had seized the moment and decided to come to Muryojuji temple himself, playing his
gaijin
card and hoping that his odd appearance, Buddhist robes and all, would be reason enough for him not to be shooed off the property.

He’d reported on the meeting to Timothy, who’d responded as François had predicted: anger, amusement, admiration. They were, after all, friends, but male friends, which meant they were rivals and always jockeying to see who was in a superior position. I was glad to hear that Timothy was annoyed at François for peering into my life at such a personal and critical moment. “I told him he was being silly,” François said. “I think I did you a favor, cheering you up when it was so obvious that your family wasn’t helping you out at all. I thought he should be grateful.”

It had seemed something of a coincidence at the time to find another foreigner wandering at the temple during the memorial. But I’d taken it as a sign that I was different, perhaps even better than the rest of my family,
and that this was why fate had conspired to send François to me that day. It was true that his presence had been enough of a distraction to keep me going through the most grueling moments of that ordeal.

“What kind of person,” I said, “spies on someone else on the saddest day of her life?”

“Oh, a word like
spying
makes me sound so cold war. I was just curious. But no need to feel self-conscious. You were fine. Really. Intense in your emotions. I was charmed.”

I twisted the tissue-thin napkin on the table. “I am not self-conscious.”

“Of course you are. Everyone is. But the fact is that we are all always being watched, judged, evaluated. At least I’ve come clean about it.” He fidgeted, like a small child who had misbehaved and hoped to get back in the good graces of a parent.

“I want to talk about Timothy. Did you find him an attorney?”

“Actually, Timothy had the police contact me. I told them I was his attorney. Not exactly true, but technically the police will only contact an attorney, so he pretended I was his guy. I called the embassy, and they set up a translator, and a real attorney. And here we are.”

“Do you know why he is in prison?”

“Drug charges. Something about getting caught in Roppongi with marijuana.”

“
Gaijin
ghetto,” I muttered.

“Seems he was bored while you were away.” François grinned. Then he reached out to touch my shoulder, and the waitstaff in the restaurant looked over in alarm. I was hyperventilating.

“Breathe,” he said. “Slower.”

I tried to catch my breath, to force myself to breathe evenly. I felt my head grow light, watched as the contours of the objects on the table faded. Drugs. I knew that the Japanese legal system would have little tolerance for what Timothy considered a minor indulgence akin to a glass of wine. They would punish him harshly. Now everything began to bleed together, before turning white. I swallowed one deep mouthful of air. And then another. The world, in all its hard and ugly colorful reality, reasserted itself. “What do we do?”

“We?” François smiled. “And here I was ready to convince you that you need my help.”

I shrugged so his hand came off my shoulder. “What do we do for Timothy?”

“We have to wait,” he said. “Look. This is going to take some time, even if Timothy is found innocent, which he won’t be. You know what the conviction rate is in Japan. When he’s found guilty, he’ll be stuck here for quite a while, if they don’t deport him.”

“We had … plans,” I said.

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes! Timothy told me. You had plans to sell a number of items to some
collector
. Do you know where he is?”

I bit my lip. “No.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Satomi.”

“I’m not lying,” I opened my eyes wide, till they watered. Then I dabbed away the tears and continued. “I don’t know exactly what he planned to do. It is true that we bought things together. But, as you can hear, my accent is very thick,” I said demurely. “I make many mistakes in English.”

“Your English sounds fine.”

“Timothy conducts the business. I am just a … helper.” I tried to affect a look of self-deprecation.

At this, François sat back in his seat and looked at me, tapping his fingers together. I swallowed my beer slowly to give myself time to think. François’ demeanor alerted me. He wasn’t exactly like my old piano professor in Paris, but there was something professorial about him, a desire to provoke and to instruct and fascination at the thought that I could be guided to understand something new. I think this is the first inkling I had that François, while he was a foreigner like Timothy, was a very different person. I’m the first to admit it can be hard to tell the difference between the faces of Westerners. Even today it’s tempting for me to think that foreigners will all be one of two things: graceful and kind, or crude. That afternoon I knew that I was being tested by a very intelligent person. If I wanted to maintain any kind of autonomy, I would have to be discreet and cautious.

“I am tired,” I said. “I will go back to the hotel.”

“Of course.” Then his face softened and the air between us changed for a moment, the way fog lifts and temporarily provides a view of a previously
hidden landscape. “We haven’t exactly gotten off to a good start. I know that, Satomi. But let me tell you something. I am a much better connoisseur than Timothy. He has energy and charm and all that, as you know, but he doesn’t really know the dynasties or how to authenticate anything. If you would consider working with me, I think you’d find that I am a more equal partner. We might even have fun building a little business together.”

Timothy was held for twenty-three days, the maximum amount of time someone could remain in prison until appearing before a judge. Those twenty-three days were a strange period.

I have heard stories of women who collapse from grief, abandoning themselves to mourning, taking to bed and crying. I had no such time to indulge my emotions, for I had, quite frankly, encountered a crisis even larger than grief. I was without a place to call home.

Often I was seized with anxiety and completely unable to sleep. I sat in the hotel room and looked out the window at pedestrians going about their daily lives: to work, to the store, to school. I couldn’t imagine a time when my life would ever be ordered enough again for me to be engaged in such routine and calm behavior. Instead, waves of emotion possessed and destabilized me. Occasionally I thought about running away with all the merchandise in the middle of the night when François was sleeping. But really, where would I go?

Masayoshi. Why hadn’t Masayoshi seen my predicament and come to help me? Was he so deferential to custom that he expected me to do as my stepsisters wished? I couldn’t very well return to France since the Horie family had made it clear they would not fund my studies. Sanada-sensei had said that the piano was her first love, but I felt no similar attachment calling me back to my previous life. It was as though my pride in my past successes had simply evaporated in light of all that had happened in the past few days.

I had loved my mother. I did not love the piano.

If I stayed in Japan and went to the house in Hachinohe, I’d have to scratch out a living until I was married off to a man Mineko and Chieko deemed suitable for me, and who knew the kind of person they would pick? I couldn’t very well look up Shinobu and throw myself on her mercy; my problems were too vast for my practical friend to handle now that she
was busy with a baby, and anyway, I had not heard from her in months. The only other alternative I could think of was to stay in Tokyo, get some service job, and find a little room to rent. And then what?

When I was feeling particularly angry, I enacted scenes in my mind in which I scolded my mother for dying, or successfully pulled Mineko’s hair so hard that she hit her head on the pavement and never recovered. How completely useless to have only broken her hand all those years ago.

The entire time I thought about these things, waking, sleeping, smoking, barely eating, there was François hovering nearby, asking if I was okay, asking if there was something he could do for me. His energy never flagged. He brought me beer and
sake
and urged me to drink. He told me that Timothy’s case was probably not very good, but that he would be there to support me no matter what happened.

And every now and then, he asked if I was certain I did not know where the collector lived.

After two weeks of waiting, I went through Timothy’s things, making sure that François was taking a nap in his own room and would not come by for one of his impromptu visits. I found Timothy’s small black leather book with names and numbers written inside. The writing was childish and hasty and often hard for me to make out. Then, as now, I could only read English easily if the letters were carefully printed. I sat at the desk of the hotel room with a blank sheet of paper, a pen, and a cigarette resting in an ashtray. I went through the book very carefully.

I deduced that any phone number that began with 415 was for someone in San Francisco. For a couple of hours, I struggled to decipher the whorls and angles that made up Timothy’s brand of English. There were quite a few women’s names on my list. I crossed these out. Only five men remained.

I scratched out a hasty script to follow. To be honest, I was terrified to make a phone call in English. To this day, I hate the phone, even if I am certain the other person is Japanese. A phone does not transmit the image of a young woman bowing out of embarrassment. I smoked a couple of cigarettes to fortify myself and then I calculated the time difference.