The Golden City

23

Hollis woke up from a dream and found himself in a cold, dark room. There were no street lights in the village of Shukunegi, and Billy Harano’s aunt turned off everything electrical before she went to sleep. Back in Los Angeles, Hollis could always hear traffic noise or a police siren. Now the only sound came from the wind whistling through a crack in the shutters.

He slid his hand across the quilt and then reached out to touch the handgun lying near the edge of the tatami mat. The weapon reminded him that he was still a fugitive. Hollis breathed deeply and tried to relax, but at that moment it felt like sleep was in far off land and he didn’t know how to travel there. And then the memory of the Itako chanting and clicking her prayer beads returned to him. He could still recall the old woman’s dead eyes as Vicki’s voice emerged from her body.

After the Itako finished the ritual, Hollis walked out of the house. For several months, a continual anger had directed his actions and given him a fierce power. Now that anger was gone, and he felt tired and confused. Billy Harano stared at him as he stood in the middle of the country road. Exhaust drifted from the taxi’s tail pipe, but Hollis didn’t get back in the car.

“I need to stay out of sight for awhile,” Hollis said. “Do you know a good hiding place?”

Billy looked like a doctor who had just been asked a complicated medical question. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he paced around for a few seconds, then kicked a stone into the road ditch. “It is dangerous to hide in a Japanese city. There are police everywhere, and they would notice you. In a village, people would also have questions. But maybe I could take you to Sado Island.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s off the west coast of Japan. My aunt lives there in a village called Shukunegi. There are thousands of tourists on the island every summer, but right now it’s just the fishermen.”

“So what is she going to say when I show up?”

“They have television sets in Shukunegi, but they only get one channel. It’s a village of old people. They watch the game shows, but they don’t care about the news.”

“I’m still going to stick out in that location.”

“Of course you will.” Billy grinned. “You’ll be a new source of entertainment. Watching foreigners make mistakes is a traditional Japanese pastime. But on the islands, people live their own lives. They do not like to talk to the police.”

The rest of the day, they took a series of regional train lines over the mountains to western Japan. The fields were covered with long sheets of white plastic as if the soil had to be gradually introduced to sunshine. All the train conductors stared at the black foreigner, but Billy told them that Hollis was an American choreographer who had come to Japan to study traditional dancing.

During the ferry ride over to Sado Island, the boat passed through patches of snow and rain. At one point, the sun broke through the thick cloud cover and light streamed down on the grey-green ocean like a shaft of divine energy. Hollis doubted if anyone saw it; the other passengers on the boat lay on the floor of a carpeted television room dozing or staring at music videos. He wondered if that was the true secret of history: Great changes occurred in the world, but most people spent their lives half asleep.

“What happens when we reach the island?”

“We take a bus to the village and meet my Aunt Kimiko.”

“What if she doesn’t like me?”

“You are my friend, Hollis. That is all I need to say. We are guests for the first few days, and then we have to work.”

They arrived at Shukunegi in the evening. The village was a settlement of about fifty homes squeezed into a coastal canyon. At the mouth of the canyon the fisherman had built a bamboo wall with a pair of gates at the center. The wall made the village look like a fort built to resist barbarian invaders, but the real enemies were the ice storms that roared out of Siberia and hit the western side of the island.

Billy led Hollis through the gates and into the village. The modern two-story houses had electricity and running water, but they were built very close to each other, with dirt passageways between the buildings. A stream ran through Shukunegi; the sound of rushing water mingled with the wind and the faint echo of laughter from a television set in someone’s home.

Following the stream up the canyon, they walked past a community center and a sprawling graveyard filled with statues of the Buddha and lichen-covered gravestones. Aunt Kimiko’s two-story home was in the middle of the graveyard, toward the end of the canyon. Like many of the villagers, she had placed a black rock on each roof tile. The rocks were supposed to keep the wind from ripping up the tiles, but they made the roof look like an odd board game that was waiting for players.

There were no locks on any of the houses in the village-only wooden latches. Billy slipped off his muddy shoes and then entered the house without knocking. Hollis remained alone on the doorstep and listened to a woman’s voice coming from within. The voice was high-pitched and happy, as if Billy’s arrival was an unexpected gift. A few minutes later, an elderly Japanese woman-as small as a child-hurried to the door, bowing and talking and welcoming her guest.

Billy spent a few days on the island before returning to Tokyo. He would talk to the other men who danced to rock and roll music in the park and see if there was a safe way for a foreigner to slip out of Japan. Hollis explored Shukunegi and quickly found a job that would help the village. A brick retaining wall at the base of the cliff was beginning to collapse. Using Aunt Kimiko’s tools, he would tear the wall down and build a new one. The fact that a strong foreigner had agreed to do a difficult job for free made the villagers very happy.

Aunt Kimiko woke around six in the morning. She would serve Hollis a breakfast of sticky rice, miso soup, and one dish that always surprised him. Once she presented him with an enormous sea snail and watched him rip the salty brown flesh out of the black shell. After Hollis finished breakfast, he performed some martial arts exercises, then carried his tools over to the retaining wall. Usually, two or three old women wearing pink rubber boots would sit on benches and watch him work. Hollis had never been so conscious of his own body, the strength of his arms and legs. Whenever he lifted something heavy, the old women murmured to each other and clapped their hands to show approval.

Working every day calmed him down and brought some order to his life. First he dug a trench, then he began to lay bricks, filling the cavity behind the wall with buckets of gravel he had taken from the beach. Hollis was slow and deliberate with each part of the job, using a length of twine to make sure the foundation was level. As he mixed concrete and slapped it on the bricks, he began see his past choices with a new sense of clarity.

Vicki had told him that he was on the right path. “If you remember who you are, you’ll know what to do.” So who am I? Hollis wondered. Back in Los Angeles, he had taught his students to never use violence for negative goals. The true warrior used both mind and heart. The true warrior was calm within, not ruled by anger. He remembered standing on a London rooftop with a sniper rifle and felt ashamed.

More bricks and more mortar. Build the wall higher. Straight and true.

It was his fifteenth day in the village. After working on the wall in the morning, he ate some rice and tempura and wandered through the graveyard that surrounded the houses. Dead flowers. Old coins in a rusty kettle filled with rainwater. A line of chubby stone Buddhas with white cotton caps and little bibs tied around their necks.

He went out the gate, and then walked along the tide line to a black sand beach littered with plastic bottles, automobile tires and all the other debris of the modern world. Pine trees clung to the rocks like bonsai, and the waves fell softly onto the shore.

Know this my love… Believe this my love… the Light survives. Vicki had traveled a long way to tell him that and now it was the foundation of his faith. If someone truly thought you were a good person, it could change you forever. Perhaps that’s why God had created holy men and women. They saw the Light within others, and sometimes that inspired people to live up to an ideal.

Gabriel couldn’t have known about the brave bookseller and the yakuza with the gun and the killing in the hotel room, but perhaps he had seen the general direction of Hollis’s journey. Who am I? Hollis asked himself again. He would always be a warrior, but now he needed to be fighting for a something more important then revenge. Staring out at the waves, he felt as if he had cut away all the clutter and confusion that had held back his understanding. If you remember who you are, you’ll know what to do.

“Hollis!”

He spun around and saw Billy Harano striding down the beach. Billy must have bought a fresh tube of hair gel in Tokyo -every hair of his Elvis pompadour was in its proper position.

“These old people like you. My aunt says you are a good worker. If you want, you can stay here forever.”

“Your aunt is a wonderful person, but I need to move on.”

“Yeah. I thought you would say that. I talked to some people. There is a safe way for you to get out of Japan. We take a ferry down to Okinawa and the southwest islands. If you pay enough money, the fishing boats will carry you anywhere you want- Taiwan, the Philippines, even Australia.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“These villagers will miss you,” Billy smiled. “I will miss you, too. It is very cool to know a Harlequin.”

“I wanted to talk about that, Billy. Now that we’re friends, I can tell you my Harlequin name…”

He was still Hollis for a few more seconds. Gazing out at the horizon, he felt very aware of this choice. He was giving up all attachments, a normal life.

“My Harlequin name is Priest.”

“Priest. Yes. Very good.” Billy looked satisfied. “I never really thought you were called Hollis.”