The Cat and the City Read online

  First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2020 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Nick Bradley, 2020

  Illustrations © Mariko Aruga

  The moral right of Nick Bradley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78649 988 2

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 989 9

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 990 5

  Printed in Great Britain

  Atlantic Books

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London WC1N 3JZ

  www.atlantic-books.co.uk

  To my parents, for everything . . .

  . . . and my brothers, for the rest

  Contents

  Tattoo

  Fallen Words

  Street Fighter II (Turbo)

  Sakura

  Detective Ishikawa: Case Notes 1

  Chinese Characters

  Autumn Leaves

  Copy Cat

  Bakeneko

  Detective Ishikawa: Case Notes 2

  Omatsuri

  Trophallaxis

  Hikikomori, Futoko & Neko

  Detective Ishikawa: Case Notes 3

  Opening Ceremony

  Acknowledgements

  青猫

  萩原朔太郎（大正１２年）

  この美しい都會を愛するのはよいことだ

  この美しい都會の建築を愛するのはよいことだ

  すべてのやさしい女性をもとめるために

  すべての高貴な生活をもとめるために

  この都にきて賑やかな街路を通るのはよいことだ

  街路にそうて立つ櫻の竝木

  そこにも無數の雀がさへづつてゐるではないか。

  ああ 　 このおほきな都會の夜にねむれるものは

  ただ一疋の青い猫のかげだ

  かなしい人類の歴史を語る猫のかげだ

  われの求めてやまざる幸福の青い影だ。

  いかならん影をもとめて

  みぞれふる日にもわれは東京を戀しと思ひしに

  そこの裏町の壁にさむくもたれてゐる

  このひとのごとき乞食はなにの夢を夢みて居るのか。

  A Blue Cat

  by Hagiwara Sakutaro (1923)

  Translation by Nick Bradley

  To be in love with this city is a good thing

  To love the city’s buildings, a good thing

  And all those kind women

  All those noble lives

  Passing through these busy streets

  Lined with cherry trees on either side

  From whose branches countless sparrows chirp.

  Ah! The only thing that can sleep in this vast city night

  Is the shadow of a single blue cat

  The shadow of a cat that tells the sad history of humanity

  The blue shade of happiness I long for.

  Forever I chase any shadow,

  I thought I wanted Tokyo even on a snowy day

  But look there – that cold ragged beggar in the alleyway

  Leaning against a wall – what dream is he dreaming?

  Tattoo

  Kentaro held the hot cup of coffee to his lips and blew at the rising steam. The back office of his tattoo parlour was dimly lit, and the light from his laptop screen gave his dirty white stubble a blueish hue. Reflected in his glasses, a long list of links on an open webpage scrolled up slowly. His hand gripped a Bluetooth mouse, the buttons covered with greasy finger marks. His coffee was still too hot to drink. He put it down, just to the right of a coaster on his desk, and idly scratched his crotch.

  He clicked on a link and was faced with a loading bar.

  A short pause, then a webcam live stream loaded. The screen showed the interior of someone’s bedroom. A small apartment, with lots of legal textbooks on a shelf – perhaps a university student. On the bed a couple was kissing. Naked. Oblivious.

  Kentaro sat and watched. Then he unzipped his trousers and reached inside.

  The shop’s doorbell sounded. Kentaro froze.

  ‘Hello?’ a girl’s voice called out from the waiting area.

  ‘Sorry, just a minute.’ He shut the laptop quickly, composed himself and walked out to greet the customer.

  Standing at the doorway was a high-school girl. At first glance there was nothing remarkable about her. She was wearing the typical sailor-style uniform with the standard bobbed haircut and baggy socks. She’d dyed her hair blonde to stand out, but that’s what they all did these days. She looked to be in her final year. Probably made some kind of mistake coming in here.

  ‘How may I help you, miss?’ Kentaro did his best to put on his customer-care voice.

  ‘I’d like a tattoo, please,’ she said, her chin raised high.

  ‘Ah, miss. Excuse me, but how did you find this parlour?’

  ‘A friend recommended it.’

  ‘And your friend is . . . ?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I want a tattoo.’ She made to walk into the rear of the parlour.

  Kentaro placed a hand on the wall to stop her. ‘Miss, don’t be silly. You’re too young.’

  She looked at his arm. ‘I’m eighteen. And don’t call me miss.’

  He lowered his arm awkwardly. ‘Have you thought about this properly?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘I want a tattoo.’

  ‘Maybe you should go away and give it a few days’ thought.’

  ‘I’ve already thought long and hard about it. I want a tattoo.’

  ‘But maybe there are some things you haven’t thought about. You won’t be able to go to onsen.’

  ‘I don’t like hot springs.’

  ‘People will think you’re yakuza. Could be a bit scary for a nice young girl like you.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I don’t care what people think. I want a tattoo.’

  ‘It’s expensive – can cost as much as three million yen.’

  ‘I have money.’

  ‘Listen, I do it the traditional way here – tebori – all of it’s done by hand. I’m not one of these upstarts you find in Shibuya with their cheating methods. Even the gangsters I tattoo can’t handle this kind of pain.’

  ‘Pain, I can handle.’ She looked directly at Kentaro, and he saw then something in her eyes, a soft brightness, a light green colour – almost transparent – that he had never seen before in a Japanese person.

  ‘I wonder.’ He flipped the sign on the front door over to CLOSED, then gestured for the girl to follow him. ‘Come through to the back room and we’ll have a chat.’

  He flicked on the t
op lights as they entered the back room, and now the bed-like table his customers lay on was visible, as well as the photos of the various clients he’d had over the years – hissing dragons, gawping koi carp, topless women, Shinto gods and elaborate kanji sprawling across the naked backs, buttocks and arms of his customers. Most of whom were yakuza.

  Kentaro had learnt his trade from one of the old masters of Asakusa, and was famous for his skill and dedication to his art. He loved nothing better than to tattoo a fresh piece of skin, elaborating scenes from ink onto small spaces of bare flesh. The only thing that came close to the satisfaction of creating a masterpiece on another human was the feeling of dominance over the gangsters he worked on.

  ‘This might hurt a bit,’ he’d tell them.

  ‘I can take it,’ they would reply.

  That’s what they all say.

  And then he would begin work on them, and he’d feel the pain in their movements, in the subtle shift of their muscles and bodies, in the sound of their gritted teeth, as he gouged away gently at their bodies with his metal needles in the traditional style he had learnt from his old master, leaving his mark on them indefinitely. It gave him great pleasure to think of his mastery over these kings of men, these lords of the criminal underworld. His creative control was supreme; he alone decided the images and stories that would be a part of his client forever – sometimes even after death. If the client donated their skin to the Museum of Pathology it would be cut from their cadaver before cremation, then treated correctly and stored. Many pieces of Kentaro’s work were on display behind glass at the museum.

  He knew he was the best – as did the yakuza who respected him greatly as an artist. But he’d never had many female customers – not even the female yakuza came to him for their tattoos. They all went elsewhere.

  But here was a female customer now, standing right in front of him.

  ‘Where shall I sit?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh! Hold on.’ He pulled a chair from the corner closer to his own. ‘Here, take a seat.’

  She sat down gingerly and put her hands in her lap.

  ‘So, what would you like a tattoo of ?’

  ‘The city.’

  ‘The city?’

  ‘Tokyo.’

  ‘That’s not very . . . conventional.’

  ‘So what?’ Her eyes flashed again.

  ‘Where do you want it?’

  ‘My back.’

  ‘That’s going to be tricky . . .’

  ‘Look, mister. Can you do it or not?’

  ‘Sure. I can. No need to be sassy. I just need to figure out how.’ He put his chin on his hand, looked at his closed laptop, then it hit him. ‘Oh! Just a minute.’

  He opened his laptop and tapped his fingers on the keyboard, impatient for it to come to life again. It did, just in time to depict a girl facing the webcam, bent over, getting pounded hard from behind. The speakers of his laptop let out a low moaning sound.

  He closed the browser window as fast as he could.

  Kentaro’s face was red as hell. He shot a furtive glance at the girl sitting next to him, but she was looking at the photos of his previous customers on the walls. Maybe he’d got away with it. Close shave.

  He opened up a new browser and clicked on a saved bookmark that took him to Google Maps. The software loaded up and he typed ‘Tokyo’ into the search bar. The map zoomed in, and then the city filled the browser window. He clicked on satellite view, then zoomed in further, the detail getting larger and larger. Gridlines of buildings divided by roads, canals winding along thin alleyways, the sprawling bay, and the veins and capillaries of train tracks pumping people throughout the city.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ she said. ‘I want that on my back.’

  ‘No, that is impossible,’ he said.

  ‘I came to you because you’re supposed to be the best.’ She sighed. ‘I guess they were wrong.’

  ‘No one could do this.’

  ‘I’m sure I could find someone for the right price.’

  ‘It’s not about price, it’s about skill. I’m one of the few true horishi left in Tokyo.’

  ‘So what’s stopping you?’

  ‘It’ll take time. Could be a year, could be four.’ He took off his glasses and rubbed his face with a sweaty palm.

  ‘I’ve got time.’

  ‘It’ll be painful too.’ He fought back a smirk.

  ‘I told you already: pain is not an issue.’

  ‘You’ll have to get naked and lie face down on the table.’

  ‘Sure.’ She began to unbutton her shirt straight away with no hint of shyness.

  Kentaro felt a hot twist in his stomach and quickly looked down at the floor. He ran to the bathroom to get some baby oil. It definitely wasn’t necessary, but he’d had an idea that he would use it as an excuse to touch her body. He imagined his master who’d trained him when he was an apprentice – he’d be turning in his grave seeing him pulling this baby-oil trick. When he came back into the main room she was already naked, lying face down on the table. Kentaro couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Her skin was perfection, unblemished. The muscles of her lower back led perfectly down to her round buttocks, swelling briefly into powerful thighs. He swallowed as he walked towards her.

  ‘Uh, I just need to rub your back with oil.’

  ‘Whatever.’ She shifted slightly.

  He squeezed out a glob of the oil onto his right hand – the bottle made a farting sound, which he almost apologized for, then thought better of it. He snapped the cap back on and began to rub the oil into her skin. It glistened under the lights, and the heat he’d felt in his stomach earlier began to spread downwards.

  ‘So . . . what’s your name?’

  ‘Naomi.’

  ‘Mmm . . . Naomi . . . Pretty name. And . . . do you have a boyfriend?’

  She rolled over slightly to face Kentaro and looked straight at him again, her eyes a soft flash of green. He could see her breasts.

  ‘Look, mister. I’m not gonna put up with any funny stuff. I came here for a tattoo, and that’s all I want. I saw you looking at some weird stuff on your laptop earlier, and I’m fine with that – each to their own – you know. I don’t know how that couple would feel about you spying on them through their webcam though. Maybe that’s something you should have a think about. But I’m not gonna have you perving on me. I’m paying you for a service, so be a professional. Okay?’

  Kentaro held his oily hands limply in the air. ‘Spying? Webcams? I don’t know what you’re—’

  ‘Save the bullshit. I don’t want to hear it.’ She lay back down. ‘And by the way, your flies are undone.’

  Kentaro looked down at his trousers, did up his flies, then got to work.

  Work was something Kentaro had always been good at. He could concentrate for hours at a time – the client usually asking for a break before he himself ever grew tired. When he was tattooing a customer, he threw everything he had into the task, and his work had always been highly praised by fellow artists.

  Naomi came to visit him over the course of several months, whenever she had the time. And he was always glad to see her. He had some superfine needles especially made by the best knife-seller in Asakusa.

  He began inking out the entire city all over her back, shoulders, arms, buttocks and thighs. He started with the roads, the outlines of buildings, the rivers – tracing the outline before he even started thinking about the colouring of the tattoo. He had to complete the ghostly shell-like skeleton of Tokyo, and only once this was finished could he begin shading and colouring. The entire tattoo would take a couple of years to complete and would require regular visits over that period, in which he would work on a portion each time – there was also the small matter of how much pain the customer could take in a single session.

  He jumped straight into the task of inking the city, which he always did in the traditional tebori manner, carving and inking lines deeply into Naomi’s skin with his metal needles. She was truly one of the tough
est customers he’d ever had. She didn’t even blink at the pain. He used a pair of loupes attached to his glasses to draw the finest of detail in the tattoo and created microscopic features of the city, which retained its overall structure when viewed from afar.

  Kentaro struggled only in one matter: it was impossible for him to hold the entire city in his mind while he worked. He would have to work on small levels and refer to a zoomed-in portion on his laptop. Unlike all his previous designs, which he had been able to visualize fully while working, the size and scale of the macroscopic city was just too much to retain in any human brain.

  It took several visits to ink the outline. The last part he finished was his very own parlour in Asakusa. He planned on leaving the roof of his parlour blank as the final space to sign his name – keeping to tradition.

  Once he had completed the outline of the city in black ink, he then faced colouring, the shading and the detail. He decided to start with Shibuya.

  ‘Hmmm.’ He paused in thought.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Naomi asked, lifting her head.

  ‘Oh, I’m just trying to decide whether to have people actually crossing the intersection at the Shibuya scramble crossing, or whether to have them waiting for the green light.’

  ‘I don’t want any people.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She lowered her head back to the table and closed her eyes. ‘I just want the city. I don’t want any people.’

  ‘But it won’t be a city without people.’

  ‘I don’t care. It’s my back, it’s my tattoo. I’m paying.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  Kentaro felt a twinge of pride. It was true that Naomi had paid regularly, and was a good customer. But he was one of the finest tattooists in Tokyo. His customers agreed to his designs. They never told him what to do. His inner artist flared, but as the Japanese saying went: kyaku-sama wa kami-sama desu – the customer is a god.

  Well. She had said no people. Animals weren’t people, were they?

  He smiled to himself and shaded in a small cat – two blobs of colour, like a calico – just opposite the statue of Hachiko the dog in Shibuya. And then he went about his work.

  It was during the shading of the tattoo that Kentaro really began to lose his mind.