Bullfight Read online

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Mr. Tsugami!”

  Tsugami, staring at Okabe’s thin lips, which moved quite a lot when he spoke, felt slightly turned off by the man’s attitude—so familiar you half expected him to reach out and pat you on the shoulder. Tsugami held out his business card the same way he always would, behaving if anything more stiffly than usual.

  Okabe removed his business-card holder from his pocket and felt around inside, then snapped his fingers to call over a young man who seemed to be his secretary.

  “Write out a business card for him, will you?” he said, passing the man a notepad and a fountain pen. “Put down the company phone.”

  He picked up Tsugami’s card and held it out to Tashiro, who explained what it said: that Tsugami was the editor-in-chief of a newspaper. Okabe nodded a few times but said nothing. Tsugami looked once more at the small, unremarkable man who sat before him with an air that somehow suggested he wasn’t afraid of anything. Unless Tsugami’s acumen had failed him, Okabe, who Tashiro had said was the most successful man from Iyo, was unable either to read or to write.

  Someone brought drinks and food. Okabe adeptly kept up a constant stream of talk, his attitude open and informal. “I’m thinking of turning this into kind of a space for people to indulge themselves, see? We Japanese have been starved for good food, so my idea is to make this the place you come to for absolutely the best of the best. When we open, I’ll introduce you to three of the top cooks from Beppu, Kōchi, and Akita. Come see me, all right?”

  Tashiro had become so rigid in front of Okabe that it was funny. His hefty frame was completely engulfed by Okabe’s small body, all of one hundred and fifty centimeters tall. He didn’t say a word about the important matter he had brought Tsugami and Okabe together to discuss, but just went on taking the dishes as they were carried out and arranging them on the table, grabbing the bottle and filling the men’s glasses the second they were empty. When he wasn’t doing this, he sat there meekly, unobtrusively, listening as though he didn’t want to miss a word they said.

  Tsugami waited with a certain amount of curiosity for Okabe to come out and say what was on his mind. He himself wasn’t a heavy drinker by any means, but each time his cup was filled he raised it to his lips. Right about now, newspaper boys would be walking around the streets distributing the paper with the announcement of the tournament.

  “Does company work keep you busy?” Tsugami asked.

  “Not at all, nothing to do. I’ve got five or six companies, but to tell the truth, yeah, I have a lot of time on my hands. Can’t expect a company to thrive if the president is busy, you know? I just sit here drinking like this day after day, that’s all they need from me.”

  Okabe had a penchant for taking his listeners by surprise, and he seemed to enjoy it. Evidently at the moment he was less concerned with figuring out what sort of man his new acquaintance Tsugami was than with expressing his own sense of himself.

  “Seriously, I’m not kidding! You can’t hope for much from a person’s mind until you pour in some booze. You can wrack your brains all you like when you’re sober, but you still won’t turn up anything worth having, you know?” From time to time, as Okabe spoke, his small eyes would sparkle and he would peer into Tsugami’s so long and hard it was almost rude—an effect, perhaps, of all the whiskey he had downed before they arrived. He kept his tumbler in his hand as he talked, sometimes tossing down a few glasses of the yellow liquid in a row, holding it in his mouth for a moment before swallowing, his face expressionless.

  “So. Let me tell you how I got where I am, Mr. Tsugami—you too, Tashiro.”

  “By all means, please! I’ve always wanted to ask. The Making of the Great Okabe.”

  Tashiro was so abject in his pandering to Okabe that it put Tsugami off. Tashiro reached out to pour Okabe more whiskey; rather than hold his tumbler out, Okabe simply pushed it along the table. He sat for a few moments with his small eyes shut, a smug expression on his face, and then suddenly snapped his eyelids open.

  “I don’t know if I’m the Great Okabe or the Little Okabe or what. I can tell you, though, all these companies I’ve got, I built them all up after the war ended. Be nice if I could say I’ve accomplished it all in one generation, but the truth is I did it in a year, out of nothing. One year, that’s all. That’s what makes this world so much fun. How fast things change.” He laughed hoarsely.

  Okabe had returned from the South Seas in the November after the war ended, about a year ago. He was thirty-eight when he was called up, forty-two when he came back. He had no wife and no children. He borrowed three thousand yen from a woman he had been involved with almost a decade earlier and fled from his hometown in Iyo, coming up to Kobe to shack up with a friend from his soldier days who had a job driving a truck. After lazing about for half a month, he decided that he could make some money selling farm equipment.

  He had heard that a company called Akebono Manufacturing in Amagasaki had produced a new kind of thresher with an electric motor, and hit upon the idea of finding some way to acquire a whole bunch of these things and then sell them off—it was the perfect way to sponge up some of the cash that had been flooding into the farming villages of late. The first thing he did was go have a talk with the management at Akebono Manufacturing, introducing himself with a business card that identified him as “Director, Akebono Industrial Co.” Needless to say it was fake: he’d had the cards printed a few days earlier at a department store in Osaka. His little ploy had precisely the desired effect. Well look at that, your company’s called Akebono, too! The coincidence of the two names created a sort of connection, predisposing the men at Akebono Manufacturing toward him, and as a result they agreed to go ahead and ship a hundred threshers to him the very next day. The contract was extraordinarily generous by usual business standards—they would let him pay the following day, when the goods arrived. So now the only problem was how to come up with the three hundred thousand yen he had to hand over when the goods arrived.

  “So how do you think I got the three hundred grand? I borrowed it from a stranger.”

  Okabe’s tone, as he spoke these two brief sentences, sounded oddly intense and sharp in comparison with his usual tone. He had set his sights on a man named Yamamoto, a former Diet member from the same prefecture who had made a fortune doing business with the military, and decided that come what may he would find a way to get three hundred thousand yen out of him. He went straight from Akebono Manufacturing to Yamamoto’s house in Mikage and cajoled and pleaded with the man to lend him three hundred thousand yen as a favor to a child of the same prefecture, but to no avail—obviously there had never been any chance that Yamamoto would agree. Okabe visited Yamamoto’s house three times that day, and on the third he finally sat down on the packed dirt floor of the entryway and refused to budge, only to be struck by a sudden, almost mystical flash of inspiration: he would take out a three-hundred-thousand-yen life insurance policy and use the contract as security.

  Without waiting another moment he rushed off to N. Life, which was operating from a temporary location in the burned-out area around Yodoyabashi, but by the time he arrived it was evening and the office was closed. He had no choice but to ask the employee keeping watch to look up the home address of the insurance section chief and then go off and barge into his house in Suita, asking for a three-hundred-thousand-yen contract. The insurance section chief’s response was negative: I can’t do it today, you’ll have to come by the office tomorrow. Ah, I’m afraid that won’t work, Okabe told him, and with that they entered into a long series of exchanges that finally ended with Okabe getting exactly what he wanted. He handed over three thousand yen and went away that same evening with a provisional contract worth three hundred thousand yen. He got on one of the last trains, went back to Yamamoto’s house, and pushed as hard as he possibly could, telling him he had the life insurance contract right here to use as security, so wouldn’t he please just lend him the money?

  “And it worked.
In retrospect, of course, a life insurance contract isn’t worth anything. But that’s what makes people so fascinating! The way he saw it, I was putting my life on the line. So he said, ‘All right, if you’re that determined I’ll lend you the money for a month, that’s all.’ And that was how I got started doing what I do now.”

  Tsugami found it difficult to fathom Okabe’s true intentions in recounting his past adventures as a swindler—since that was what it was—but the tale didn’t bore him. Okabe’s tone had in it a sort of self-absorption that was almost passionate.

  “Interesting story,” Tsugami said, not entirely out of politeness.

  “Anyway, that’s basically the kind of guy I am. Only now I’ve got ten or twenty million yen in my pocket. So how about it, Mr. Tsugami? You think I might be able to help out with this bullfighting thing your paper is planning?”

  Tsugami, caught off guard, locked eyes with Okabe for a moment; Okabe glanced away, took his time lighting a cigarette, and then turned to face Tsugami again. There was a stony, insistent glare in his eyes that said he would not give up easily.

  “If you don’t want to buy the bulls as a joint investment, I’ll buy them all myself. I’ll also assume all the shipping costs, the costs associated with the tournament, and everything else relating to the bulls. You run the project without having to pay a thing, turn as much of a profit as you like.” Okabe’s voice was quiet but his tone made it clear he would brook no opposition.

  “I’m afraid that won’t work,” Tsugami said, once Okabe had said his piece.

  Tsugami couldn’t argue with the fact that accepting his proposal would result in a sweet deal for the newspaper, even if Okabe’s character made him slightly uneasy. But he had been seized with an intense dislike for those two little eyes, brimming with confidence, that were now trained upon him. He felt agitated, as if he and Okabe were engaged in a duel, and the motions of his spirit drained his face ever so slightly of its color, infusing it with a look of elation.

  “No, I think the paper had better manage this on its own. This is my first project of this type, after all.”

  Okabe held his tumbler and listened, nodding politely. Then, when Tsugami had finished, he let the subject drop surprisingly easily: “I see. Yes indeed. Well, too bad, but I guess it can’t be helped.”

  He poured Tsugami another glass of whiskey, as if to change his mood.

  “I must say,” he boomed as he poured, “I like you. I like your style. You’re absolutely right, this is your idea, your job. Of course you should do it on your own! To tell you the truth, I feel even better now that you’ve turned me down.”

  You couldn’t tell how sincere Okabe was being, but he did seem in high spirits.

  It had felt like night in the basement room, with all the electric lighting; when they stepped outside again, a winter dusk was just beginning to drape itself over the charred, burned-out strip.

  “Why did you refuse?” Tashiro said, running up behind Tsugami. “What a waste!”

  “Yes, it’s a waste.”

  Tsugami didn’t need Tashiro to tell him; he was thinking the same thing. The two men turned up the collars of their overcoats and walked shoulder to shoulder; then, as they stepped to the side of the road to avoid a passing truck and briefly stood facing each other, Tashiro spoke.

  “Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier. Actually, we have a bit of a problem.”

  Eight railway cars were needed to move twenty-two bulls, but at present only two were leaving W. each day. Obviously they couldn’t proceed with just two, so Tashiro had been negotiating with the Hiroshima Railway Bureau for special permission to extend the train; so far, however, he had made no headway. The authorities had pointed out that the timing was bad in terms of the availability of coal, and in any event they simply didn’t have any extra cars. Tsugami walked on in silence. He felt as if he were looking at the ocean, watching another enormous whitecap heave itself up as it rushed toward the shore.

  “Under the circumstances,” Tashiro said, “I don’t think we have any choice but to ask Okabe to use his business connections, get him to talk with the Railway Bureau, and convince them to find some way around this. That’s the only solution.”

  Tsugami stopped in his tracks and cast an accusatory glance at Tashiro.

  “You’d already told him, hadn’t you.”

  Tashiro smirked. “He’s quite a man. You turn him down, and still he wants to step in and give us a helping hand.”

  Tsugami really had no desire to be on the receiving end of a helping hand or even a helping finger from Okabe, but he understood that it was already too late: without his realizing it, that small, fearless man had insinuated himself into the bullfighting tournament. Obviously Tashiro had already been to see Okabe about this problem, and that business about buying the bulls was his bargaining chip.

  *

  Sakiko had not paid a visit to Tsugami since the calendar returned to January. From late autumn into the New Year, Tsugami had spent almost every night at the office, abandoning even a planned visit to his parents’ house in rural Tottori so that he could keep dashing around taking care of preparations for the bullfight. The one exception had been the last day of the year, when Sakiko insisted that they go hear the temple bells being struck, and he agreed, and they went up to Kyoto and spent the night at an inn in Okazaki they had been to before, in a room so quiet that if you sat still you could hear the water coursing in the canal.

  The past two or three days had been blustery, but that evening the wind died down and the stars were gorgeous. At midnight, all at once, the long, low gonging of the bells began issuing for the first time in years from all the great temples scattered throughout the city. Even Tsugami, who had been crouched over the low desk sipping the whiskey he had brought with him, carefully writing out in his brand-new pocket-size diary everything that needed to be done in the twenty days remaining until the tournament, set down his pen and surrendered to the sound. Sakiko sat beside him. They heard the bells being struck at regular intervals, nearby and far away, their countless reverberations all layering and colliding, echoing into each other, flowing like a hundred streams through the crisp midnight air.

  They sat for a long time, saying nothing. It was a peculiarly quiet moment, unlike any Sakiko had experienced in all the years she and Tsugami had been together. The face of this man, liberated now from his work, as if some possessing spirit had lost its hold on him, looked oddly plain and docile. Oh, look at him—that helpless face, she thought. And suddenly, like water spreading through her, she felt something that was neither love nor hatred, but a sense of how truly lost he would be without her. It was a pure feeling, far removed from desire. Again and again, endlessly, the bells rang.

  The bells would be struck one hundred and eight times. A little past the halfway mark, Tsugami got to his feet, opened the window, and stood for a time looking out. Sakiko rose, too, then went and leaned against him. Outside the night was uncannily dark and deep, nothing but the sound of the bells flying past. Thick foliage walled them in, blocking out every trace of light from the town. All at once, Sakiko felt intensely uneasy. The very fact that they were standing here quietly beside one another, as much like two lovers as two lovers could be, listening to the passing of the ringing of the bells being struck to send off the old year, filled her with a dark sense of foreboding. Maybe the only reason we are able to share a night like this, she thought, is that this time we really are going to break up.

  Sakiko stepped away from Tsugami and went to sit at the small red-lacquered mirror in the corner. Her heart was still pounding. In the mirror, staring out at her like a fox, was the ashen face of a woman who had spent three years of the most important period in her life, from her twenties into her thirties, suffering with Tsugami.

  *

  Partly because of what felt like the onset of a cold, Sakiko spent the unseasonably warm first days of the new year holed up in her apartment. As soon as the three-day holiday ended, the New Evenin
g Post started running a remarkable number of articles about bullfighting. One day there was an interview on the subject with a celebrated opera singer known for his performance of José in Carmen, and then the next a large section of a page was devoted to bullfighting anecdotes that Count F., a well-known sports enthusiast, had shared with the paper. One article, accompanied by a photograph, introduced an old sculptor who specialized in fighting bulls; in another, printed under the rather pedantic headline “The Specialist’s View,” an up-and-coming boxer offered his thoughts on the nature of the sport. They also ran a special series called “A Visit to the Fighting Bulls in the Nan’yo Region.”

  Sakiko was not in the least interested in bullfighting, but this incessant stream of articles, day after day, inspired in her the same feeling she got looking into Tsugami’s coldly blazing eyes, so passionate he seemed like a man possessed. The angles the articles took were so typical of him; spread there on the page, they were like a map of his neuroses, his likes, his idiosyncratic style. One introduced an old man in W. who had worked as a handler in the ring for thirty years and had been recruited to serve as a commentator for the tournament; another outlined plans news media in Japan and elsewhere in the world had to film the event—though they were treated as news, in essence they were advertisements, meant to drum up interest. Reading them, Sakiko could imagine Tsugami running around, coming up with new ideas, working out plans, negotiating.

  On the 8th, she decided to go see him. Once she had made up her mind she found it impossible to sit still. She would have to go back to the dressmaking shop in Shinsaibashi where she worked the next day, and besides, that unease she had felt on New Year’s Eve was still there like a knot inside her, even now that a new year had begun.