A marquee identified one establishment as The Flying Dutchman. It hadn’t been rebuilt since the Devil Quake. No one could remember how high it had once reached. The second floor and above had been wrecked and those scars still remained. Now it was an old one-story brown building.
Left of the plaza’s former fountain and right past the Koma Theater and descending toward Okubo brought the adventurous sightseer to the boundary avenue of the love hotel district. Turning right, and a couple more rights after that presented a view of a block utterly destroyed by the Devil Quake.
A two- to three-hundred-square-yard wasteland of bricks and debris. The lights of the bar came from a single structure at the northern end of the field.
At this hour of the morning, the pedestrian traffic was understandably light. Peering through the wavy stained glass windows revealed a steady stream of customers arriving and departing the place.
People unfamiliar with the place often stopped by. But because of the unique atmosphere there, they rarely stayed long. Though it wasn’t a members-only club, the regulars occupying the cramped, twenty-five-by-thirty-foot space had been there night after night since it opened.
Even a free spirit visiting first thing in the morning wouldn’t shift the mood. The bartender might flash a disinterested look toward the door and place a glass on the counter. The patrons playing poker at a nearby table would barely spare a backwards glance.
“Hey,” a woman said in an aggrieved voice. The woman’s body was wrapped in a blue glow. She shifted her hips. The blue light shimmered. “I come all the way here to wet my whistle and nobody pays the slightest attention. My feelings are hurt. Hey, look at me.”
An old man at the poker table puffing on a cigar turned and looked at her. He had blond hair and blue eyes and high cheekbones. The way it all went together with the beard and mustache suggested a strong Anglo-Saxon heritage.
He was wearing a navy blue top and bottom, and a white hat with a blue visor. “That hat—are you a ship’s captain?”
He answered in fluent English. “Aye, aye. Benjamin S. Briggs, at your service.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Takako Kanan.”
She bowed in a fashion that would have been more befitting had she been wearing a crinoline hoop skirt. But her blue and naked body created a rather stranger scene.
“I appreciate the introduction. So, Miss, where are you from?”
Takako craned her neck and gazed mischievously into space. “I’m sure I’m from somewhere. I can’t remember where that is.”
The atmosphere in the place suddenly shifted.
“Whoa.”
All eyes in the place focused on her.
“Yo, Miss, come over here.”
“We got an empty seat right here.”
The warm invitations came one after the other. Takako instead sat down at the counter.
“What can I do for you?” said the bartender, smiling like a completely different person.
“This isn’t any ordinary bar, is it?”
“You’ve got an observant eye.”
“I guess I do. The captain, that old man, that person over there—they’re all wearing clothes from a century ago.”
The last one she’d pointed to had on a farmer’s bib overalls and a thick cotton shirt. Another was wearing a bomber jacket and aviator glasses. The bartender sported some unfashionable getup from a bygone era.
“It’s not a masquerade club. Perhaps a watering hole for psychiatric outpatients?”
The bartender frowned. “That is David Lang. Over there is Amelia Earhart. You’re familiar with those names?”
“They do sound familiar.” Takako’s eyes glowed, or rather, her whole body did. She gazed back at the bartender. “A farmer who vanished off the face of the earth in the American state of Tennessee. A pilot who disappeared shortly before the Second World War. Now that you mention it, that sea captain, I thought his name struck a bell. Ah, I see.”
“You’ve figured it out?” The bartender looked at his patrons with sad eyes. “Those who come here have nowhere else to go, no kith or kin, no home or tombstone to call their own. And yet they live on. Not enough time has passed to get used to the now, and yet having been on the other side, they can’t go back to a normal life. At the end of the day, Demon City and this bar is all they’ve got.”
“You don’t say. And you’re the owner?”
“No. A far mightier man than me. He established this place for them. Speaking of which, today is the seventh year. He should be entering Tokyo Bay. You might be able to catch a glimpse of him here.”
“Hmm. Well, I should be on my way.”
As she drifted away, the bartender called after her, “Come again! Those who return only to find they have no place to go are always welcome here.”
“Thank you.” Takako said to herself as she made her way to the door, “Such a pitiful lot. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them.”
A man waited for Takako to leave before entering the Flying Dutchman with heavy steps. The smell of the ocean wafted about him as he passed.
“Good to see you, Boss!” called out the bartender.
The rest of the patrons turned their attention to the man in the soaking wet sailor’s coat with respectful and appreciative eyes. “Welcome aboard, Captain Van der Decken,” somebody said.
Captain Benjamin S. Briggs was a Puritan from Massachusetts. On the fourth of November 1872, he departed New York and set sail for Genoa. That same year, on the fourth of December, the Mary Celeste was discovered adrift in the Atlantic Ocean with not a person on board.
Typical of the Puritans of his era, the captain was a strict man, on himself and others, and was said to recite a verse of the Bible in a loud and sonorous voice every day.
David Lang was a farmer in Tennessee. On the afternoon of September 23, 1880, while setting off to inspect his fields, he disappeared in full view of a local minister and his children.
Amelia Earhart was a famous woman airplane pilot in the years leading up to the Second World War. On the first of June, 1937, she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, launched their second attempt to circumnavigate the globe. On the second of July, they left Papua New Guinea and never arrived at their destination, Howland Island.
One theory held that they were on a secret intelligence gathering mission for the American government, were captured by the Japanese military and executed.
According to Wagner’s version of The Flying Dutchman, obstructed for nine days by terrible storms and high seas while rounding the Cape of Good Hope, an arrogant sea captain named Van der Decken cursed God and Heaven in frustration. As a result he was condemned to sail the Seven Seas without setting foot on land.
He was finally redeemed by the love of a faithful woman. This story seems to have been based on that of Bernard Fokke of the Dutch East India Company, whose mastery of the seas was so complete it was rumored that he had made a pact with the devil.
Half an hour later, the blue lady came to a stop on a street near Yocho. Going right down the alley fifty yards ahead of her would bring her to a camp of vagrants.
A strange sight came down the road, a beautiful woman covered with red roses and trailing plumes of white smoke. Takako melted though the shutters of a dry cleaners and emerged after the woman had passed.
Takako smiled. “I wonder where that Methuselah of a Princess is headed? I didn’t imagine she’d take a stroll in the middle of the morning. There’s no way she can keep that up for long. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.”
At last contending with the golden rays of dawn, the blue light followed after the lady of roses.