Red Ice

Gurung had served Great Britain, as his father, his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father had. He knew his duty, and his wife, who waited loyally for him in Nepal, knew hers. It was somewhat irregular for him to hire out individually, but he was with Dravit, and surely wasn’t wherever Dravit stood a piece of the British Empire? Gurung had languished too long in the garrison in Hong Kong, and a Gurkha must fight, or he was no Gurkha at all. Finally there was the Kampfschwimmer, Lutjens. Physically he could have been Wickersham’s younger brother, but he was a delicately dark Bavarian whereas Wickersham was an oakenly buff Wisconsinite. A top-notch gymnast, he seemed to be always in the air, balanced on his hands, or moving with graceful lunges. Where Wickersham’s face had been hammered into shape, Lutjens’s was chiseled to leave a thin nose and those narrow creases on either side of the mouth associated with well-bred yacht captains, Grand Prix drivers, and men in ads for good scotch. Something about him exuded evening in black tie, svelte debs, and fine crystal. His heavily accented English was hard to follow but I remember overhearing him say, “…a boring death, don’t you t’ink? T’ese escapades of mine will drive Aunt Elga verriickt, which would be a reward in itself, ja?” From the most sophisticated backgrounds sometimes came the simplest motivations of all: Lutjens waged a dangerous rebellion against a gilt-edged family.

At the other end of the scale, two of the Marseilles group, an ex-British para and an ex-U.S. Marine, developed injuries whose authenticity I doubted, but which gave them an honorable way out.

Heyer, following my lead, increased the complexity and difficulty of our ski maneuvers. Local skiers often glided through small groups of men digging snow caves, bivouacking or assuming strange formations prone in the snow. These skiers whisked by, shrugging off the odd behavior of foreigners.

On the fourth afternoon, after a timed fifteen-mile ski trek, I let the men go into Sapporo. The liberty would be good for morale and I knew they’d eventually start sneaking off for local color anyway. Consequently, I opted for Sapporo, which could absorb our group without trauma.

A knock on the door interrupted some map work. “As I remember, you said liberty was for all hands, Skipper.”

It was Dravit.

“A good officer must lead by precept and example,” he said, storming into the room before I could reply. “And it is about time you guided me through the mysteries of Kobe beef and Kirin beer, otherwise I will be thought horribly backward by the local ladies and justifiably branded a big-nosed, hairy barbarian.”

“Okay, okay. This map work can wait. Seems about time I renewed my acquaintance with bright lights and civilized living.”

Ice demons menaced us in Sapporo—great crystalline, reptilian demons who had slithered out of crevasses somewhere on Hokkaido and crept down to Odori Park to squat among the snow sculpture. The eighty-foot figures defined the perimeters of the Yuki Matsuri, the snow festival. Their threatening frozen stares sent the hotel bus scurrying down the thoroughfares until it found safety within the brave lights of the entertainment district.

The bus deposited Dravit and me before a well-known businessmen’s nightclub. Dravit’s primary interest was pub crawling, and when I told him what the price of a drink and charming conversation in this expense-account-geared club totaled, he became even more convinced we ought to make our donations to the local economy over a broader range of recipients. “Share the wealth and all that. Might ossify staying all night in one place, actually.”

In addition to the many businessmen, the district swarmed with Japan’s strayed souls. Japan categorized them tribally: the kaminari-zoku, motorcyclists of the “thunder tribe;” the yoromeki-zoku, the voluptuaries of the “philandering tribe;” the taiyo-zoku, the affluent, aimless members of the “sun tribe.” The West didn’t have a monopoly on rudderless ships.

We had no trouble finding other places to visit. The district teemed with bars, tearooms, cabarets, nightclubs, pachinko parlors, and restaurants: the Miyako, the Fuyago, the Kamakura, the Moulin Rouge, the Jazz Inn, the Nevada…. Every street tout offered to guide us to a “number-one nice place.” Instead we followed out our own instincts and concentrated on a string of cubbyhole bars.

The Kamakura—the snow hut—proved attractive. Its frosted-glass booths resembled Japanese igloos or snow huts. “Irasshai-mase,” welcomed a predatory hostess. “Sit down… you drink scotch?… Joni Waluka Red, I bet… best music here, ne? she fired off without taking a breath.

Despite an earlier warning to steer clear of scotch, the most coveted liquor in Japan, Dravit ordered it anyway. He inspected the bottle of Royal something or other when the bartender poured. Dravit twisted the label for me to read.