Blood Hina Page 5

  As he knocked on the large double doors of the Hina House, he wondered what would be on the other side. This was a residential area, no sign of gift shops or anything below the radar. No one answered, so he resorted to the doorbell. He heard the muffled tune of the Japanese folk song “Sakura,” the sad ode to the fallen cherry blossom, which always reminded Mas of a funeral dirge.

  The door opened, revealing a skeletal man with a frayed wisp of a light-brown moustache. “Hello.” He spoke slowly as if he were savoring each syllable.

  “Hallo.”

  “Can I help you with something?”

  “Ningyo.” Mas must have uttered the magic word, because the skeleton man broke out in a smile and held open the door.

  “Well, if you are looking for dolls, you’ve come to the right house.”

  Mas walked into an uncovered patio with a large pool. Floating in the water were blowup dolls, Japanese cartoon ones with huge eyes reflecting stars and circles. Mas was always mystified by the size of their eyes, since Westerners often made mention of how small Asian eyes were.

  Mas glanced back at the closed double doors. Perhaps he had made a mistake. What right-thinking man would have a pool filled with blowup dolls?

  The man waited for Mas beside another set of doors that led to the house. They were large sliding glass doors, tinted black. Why deface windows like that, he wondered. Obviously the man didn’t want the San Diego sun to damage the contents of his house.

  The man slid the door open and gestured for Mas to enter first. He hesitated for a moment. But hadn’t he been the one to come knocking at the door of Hina House? Whether he liked it or not, he would have to see this through.

  Stepping over the metal grooves of the door frame, Mas blinked hard—pachi-pachi—as he adjusted to the darkness of the space. Most likely designed to be a living room, it was long and cavernous, with a relatively low ceiling. Mini-spotlights arranged in different directions showcased—what else?—dolls. A small forest of kokeshi dolls, armless and legless wooden dolls, was gathered together on a low platform.

  Cascading down a red-carpeted six-tiered stand was an elaborate set of hina dolls. As was tradition for the Hina Matsuri, the bottom row had the mini-trays of food and tansu, lacquer drawers; then a row of rickshaws followed by a row of male big shots. Above the dignitaries were a row of five musicians, each carrying a different instrument. And above them stood the three ladies-in-waiting, each wearing a snow-white kimono.

  At the top perched the dairi-sama and the hina-sama.

  These dolls looked older and more ominous than Spoon’s. Their faces the same plaster white color, this couple was outfitted with gold brocade kimonos that sparkled underneath the spotlight.

  Mas felt his head spin, as if the walls and ceilings were closing in on him. He wasn’t much of a fan of dolls; in fact, many of them frightened him. At Disneyland, for example, he disliked most of the rides, but the worst one was It’s a Small World, in which you rode on a boat that took you through different countries featuring the same plastic dolls, altered only in skin color and costume. These dolls were attached to wooden sets, and they moved mechanically, their eyes choreographed to blink simultaneously. The dolls also moved their mouths to the same tune sung in different languages, an infinite loop of cheeriness. It was enough for Mas to consider jumping ship into the knee-high water. But of course, it was his daughter Mari’s favorite ride, requiring him to accompany her over and over again.

  “Is there something specific that I can help you with?”

  “No, just lookin’.” He attempted to stare down the emperor and empress on display. The dolls won.

  “They’re fascinating, aren’t they?” The man interjected. That was one way to put it. “Hina. Short for small and lovely. Those are from the Edo Period, the mid-seventeenth century.”

  The man gave the dolls a lover’s look. “Americans often mistake dolls for toys. But these are items of royalty—kings gave them to one another. It eventually trickled down to the masses, as these things often do.”

  Hina House’s proprietor then pointed to a series of larger warrior dolls wearing helmets and carrying arrows on their backs. “Those are the ones for Boys’ Day, but they just didn’t catch on like the ones for Girls’ Day.”

  Mas nodded. He seemed to remember that at one time his own family in Hiroshima had a replica of a samurai helmet on display. And then every fifth of May, they flew five moth-eaten carp banners outside their house—that is, until World War Two killed all traditions.

  The man bent down to pick up one of the wooden kokeshi dolls with a gloved hand. It was one of those typical types with a ball head and a long, cylindrical body. The doll had eyes and a dot for a mouth and an ink wisp of a nose. Her costume consisted of colorful stripes. “Even this simple kokeshi can have layers of meaning. No one is sure where the name kokeshi came from, but it might refer to the Japanese words for ‘dead child’ or maybe ‘extinguished child’.”

  Mas moistened his lips. Even though it was warm outside, it felt like a constant breeze was tickling his neck.

  “Some maintain that the kokeshi represents the child killed in poverty-stricken households. But, of course, the kokeshi could be just what it is, a souvenir from a vacation at a sulfur hot springs in the southern part of Japan.”

  Talk of killing children made Mas uncomfortable, and he moved to the other side of the room, where an almost three-foot-tall kimono-clad doll was in a glass box. With a large spotlight focused on her, she appeared to be the Shirley Temple of Hina House, without the golden curls and smile.

  The Hina House man had followed Mas to this side of the showroom. “That’s our star. Our Friendship Doll. Miss Tsuneo.” Noting Mas’s blank look, he continued. “You’re never heard of the Friendship Dolls? In the 1920s, America sent about twelve thousand blue-eyed dolls over to Japan, while the Japanese sent dozens of these magnificent Japanese ones to the U.S. Actually that’s how I first got into this business. I was only a baby at the time, but my mother took a photo with me next to the Friendship Doll at the museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. Miss Kagawa was the only one that was on public display in the United States during World War Two. Most of the other dolls had been destroyed by their owners by that time.”

  The lifelike doll seemed to have real hair, Mas noticed. “Looksu like she breathin’.”

  “Yes, isn’t she amazing?” The Hina House man seemed to dote on the doll and even began to sing a traditional lullaby to it. “Nen nen korori yo, okorori yo.” Go to sleep, go to sleep.

  As Miss Tsuneo’s glass eyes showed no signs of closing, Mas felt the hairs on his arm rise. Your doll is not alive! he wanted to yell.

  The man studied the top of the doll’s head and tsked. “There’s some dust in her hair. Noriko,” he called out.

  Mas was growing more fascinated by and also repelled at the man’s devotion to the doll.

  A side door opened, revealing an Asian woman.

  “Noriko, Tsuneo-chan needs some soji.” The man then remembered Mas and extended his arm toward him. “Oh, forgive my rudeness. This is my wife.”

  She herself resembled a kokeshi doll, with a small to nonexistent mouth and arms that stayed close to her narrow frame. Her mushroom cap hair was a shiny sheet of blue-black. Even though Mas was born in California, he obviously wore some of the years that he’d spent in Japan, because the mushroom woman bowed deeply toward him. “Hajimemashite,” she formally greeted him.

  “Hallo,” Mas said in reply.

  “I didn’t get your name—” the husband said.

  Because I didn’t give it, thought Mas. But he offered, “Mas Arai.”

  The husband bowed and presented a business card with both hands. HINA HOUSE, it stated. Les Klinger.

  Mas awkwardly accepted the card and tugged at his wallet. He had an old business card somewhere in an ignored flap. MASAO ARAI. ORIENTAL GARDENING, and his phone number and home address. The card was so old that it had the old Los Angeles telephone exchange for the
Altadena-Pasadena area, Sycamore for the prefix 79.

  The edges were so worn that the card looked more oval than rectangular. It was all he had, so it would have to do.

  As Noriko excused herself to get some cleaning products, Klinger studied the card for a while, making Mas nervous. “Gardener. A venerated profession. It’s always an honor to meet a gardener.”

  Mas wasn’t sure what “venerated” meant, but he did understand “honor.” Compliments didn’t come his way very often, so he accepted the few that did, even when he didn’t quite comprehend them.

  “Altadena is in Los Angeles, ne?”

  “Near Pasadena.”

  “You’ve come a long way. Surely your coming here is no accident.”

  Mas regretted sharing his business card. Now this Les Klinger had his personal information. There was no alternative but to tell the truth.

  Mas cleared his throat. At least this man obviously knew some Japanese. “I lookin’ into a ningyo, one bought by Spoon Hayakawa.”

  Klinger frowned. “Spoon Hayakawa?

  Mas fished for her real given name. “Sutama.”

  “Hayakawa Sutama-san, of course.” The Montebello Police Department had apparently not yet contacted Klinger, because he seemed unaware of anything negative befalling the dolls. “She had that splendid Odairi-sama and Ohina-sama. A wonderful representation of the early Meiji Period. Excellent condition. We have a few others from the same period.” Klinger moved toward his computer, but Mas stopped him and explained that he wasn’t interested in any others. “Just dat one.”

  “That’s a very popular ningyo.” Klinger spoke carefully. Noriko had returned to the showroom with a key to open Miss Tsuneo’s glass prison. She was using a miniature duster made out of what looked like silk cloth to brush the doll’s hair. “May I ask what this doll has to do with you?”

  “Spoon’s my friend’s wife.” Mas stretched the truth to earn some goodwill. “Somebody robbed it. Spoon don’t have it no more.”

  Klinger’s face, which was already the hue of a manila folder, became even more ashen. The smile on his face slipped a few degrees south. He recovered quickly, but not quickly enough for Mas not to notice. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. I must emphasize that the Hina House is not responsible for anything that happens to our dolls after they are sold.”

  Mas had heard that line from storekeepers before. “How you getsu them, anyway?”

  “A state unclaimed property administrator contacted us. We’re the foremost experts of ningyo in the state, maybe in the whole nation.” Mas could hear the pride in Klinger’s voice. “The doll set had been left in a safety deposit box that had been abandoned. Banks are supposed to be more diligent in finding heirs of safe-deposit box owners, but most of those unclaimed are usually auctioned.

  “We were just happy that Mrs. Hayakawa’s dolls were returned to her, but to now find out that they were stolen is regrettable, indeed. Please tell her that we certainly hope that the dolls will be recovered soon. I trust that she insured them, as we advised.”

  “Insurance?” Mas never heard of people bothering to insure dolls.

  “Yes, the one I advised can deal with a three thousand dollar purchase.” San-zen doru? Three grand? Mas thought he had misheard Klinger.

  “I know, terribly overpriced, I told both of them.”

  Mas couldn’t believe that anything made out of straw, wood, rice paste, and shiny fabric could command such a high price. Even Klinger had apparently been surprised.

  “I know, I know. But don’t accuse me of taking advantage. There were two of them who wanted the dolls, so it was a matter of who wanted them more.”

  “Not just Spoon?”

  “Oh, no, it went to auction. Didn’t Mrs. Hayakawa tell you? She and another person bid on it over our website. I was going to cap it at about a thousand, but they both insisted that I allow them to go higher. Finally, I just put out a ridiculous sum—three thousand. It would either be the one who won the auction or paid that ‘get it now’ price. Mrs. Hayakawa was the one who beat Urashima Taro to the punch.”

  Urashima Taro? The Japanese version of Rip Van Winkle, the man who went to the Turtle World and partied for decades, only to return to his hometown a stranger. Mas at times felt like Urashima Taro in his home state, California, and that was without stepping one foot outside of it.

  “Urashima Taro was his or, maybe her, computer name,” said Les. “Since Mrs. Hayakawa won the auction, I have no idea who the loser is.”

  After leaving the dark showroom of Hina House, Mas found the sun a bit of a shock. In fact, the whole conversation with Les Klinger had unsettled him. Spoon had told him, and even the police, that the display had cost four hundred dollars. Why lie? And the sum. How in the world could Spoon have come up with that much money? Mas was so distracted that he almost rear-ended the car in front of him. The traffic snaked up a green hill that was being eaten away by new housing developments.

  What kind of trouble was Haruo in? It was one thing to be accused of stealing something worth four hundred dollars, but three thousand? If found guilty, Haruo could be locked up for a very long time.

  Why had Haruo gotten involved with Spoon? No one told him to get serious with a woman at his age. The more Mas thought about it, the madder he got. Haruo got himself into this mess, so why did Mas feel like he had to get him out?

  Haruo just needed to go away for a while, Mas told himself. Take a vacation. Everything would probably blow over—the Montebello police surely had more serious crimes to worry about than two stolen dolls. Mas would just tell Haruo to keep his distance from Spoon. Even though she seemed pleasant enough, she was starting to smell kusai, and Mas didn’t want that stink to further ruin his friend’s life.

  After coming to his solution, he felt much better. He even stuck his elbow out the open window and felt the wind blow on his cheeks and earlobes. He’d soon be home, enjoying ten-minute boiled Sapporo ramen noodles. Just thinking about that salt on his lips and tongue made him salivate.

  Back in Altadena, he turned onto McNally Street and immediately noticed an old Honda, the red color faded and its doors battered with decades of dings, parked in front of his house. And a familiar figure seated on his porch beside two duffel bags and a suitcase. If he hadn’t been spotted by his visitor, he would have done a U-turn and pressed down on the gas. But it was too late.

  “You needsu to leave L.A.,” Mas insisted. “At least for little while.”

  “Where I gonna go? Gotta work. Shigoto hard to come by these days.”

  Haruo was right. He was lucky to receive even his meager wages from the flower market. The demand for a seventysomething man with only one good eye was limited indeed.

  “Nowhere else for me to go, Mas,” Haruo repeated, now talking about living at Mas’s house.

  How about your own grown daughter and son? Mas said to himself. Haruo must have read Mas’s face, because he added, “Don’t want to be a meiwaku to Clement and Kiyomi.”

  And you want to be a burden to me? Mas silently responded. But he understood where Haruo was coming from. Haruo had just started to rebuild relations with his daughter, whereas Clement, a mama’s boy, was less forgiving.

  “I figured that you have all dis space just for youzu.”

  “Orai, orai. You stay, but only two weeks, yo.” Mas tried not to think about what would happen if Haruo overstayed that time period. That was tomorrow’s problem, not today’s.

  “Where you been, anyway? Been waiting here for two hour,” Haruo asked him straight-out, and at first he didn’t know what to say. Without knowing what was really going on with the dolls and Spoon, it served no purpose to get Haruo all tied up in knots.

  “Just had yoji.”

  “Bizness? When you do have bizness, Mas?”

  “I still have thingsu to do,” Mas said a little too harshly. He was always sensitive to any insinuation that he might have a lot of time on his hands now that he was semi-retired.

  “Well, another
thing…” Mas waited. “My car’s still not workin’ too good.”

  “Saw it out on the street.”

  “Yeah, well, I had it towed ova here.”

  Chikusho, Mas cursed under his breath. The sheriffs ticketed for overnight parking, so the pitiful heap needed to be moved into the driveway. With Haruo in the driver’s seat steering, Mas pushed from behind. The car had barely moved a few inches when some neighbor children joined in to help. When it came to broken-down cars in this neighborhood, it didn’t matter if you were on your way to rob a bank or keep a date with a mistress. Everyone got a push, because that’s the least that each person deserved in this life.

  They eased the car onto the driveway, and the children disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. Mas looked forlornly first at his Datsun elevated on cement blocks and then at the Honda. He now had two dead cars sitting on his driveway.

  Dinner was next on the agenda. There was only one ramen package in the cupboard. So the noodles went to Haruo, while Mas was left with heels of old bread and some peanut butter. As the peanut butter stuck to the roof of his dentures, Mas could have cried right then and there at the kitchen table.

  Haruo was smart enough to stay quiet for most of the evening. He washed his ramen bowl and even scrubbed the stained counter grout with an old Brillo pad and some cleanser.

  Mas wanted to tell Haruo not to bother, but then they both believed in earning your keep. If this was his method of payment, Mas needed to accept it. “What time you gotsu to be at the flower market tomorrow morning?” Mas finally asked.

  “I can take bus.”

  “I drive youzu,” Mas said.

  Haruo began to protest but then apparently thought better of it. “Gotsu be there by four.”