Angel Eyes (26 page)

"This is a sleepless place," Big Ezoe said softly. "And yet it is just the spot where dreams are born."

He stopped in front of a shoji near the end of the hall. He put his hand on the ash-wood frame, turned to her, said, "Trust, Mrs. Kansei, is too often misplaced. Won't you see my words turned into reality?''

He threw open the sliding shoji, and Honno stared into the room beyond. There were two people-a man and a woman-entwined on the futon. There was a crush of movement, rhythmic, primitive, unmistakable. Then the man, aware through the veil of his pleasure that he was being observed, flung the woman off his hips. The woman rolled out of the bedcovers, and Honno saw the woman was a man. He sat up, stared into Honno's face.

All at once Honno's blood froze. She was looking right at Eikichi. Her husband making love to another man. It was inconceivable. This must be a painting or a photograph, Honno thought. It cannot be real. She felt dizzy. And then Mama-san's words flooded back through her. Mama-san had spoken of Kojimachi. Kojimachi was one of Tokyo's poshest neighborhoods. It was where Eikicki had grown up, where he went to high school. It was where his parents lived, where he aspired to live. If a man owns no respect, then he is nothing, and his life is but coins sifting through his fingers. Mama-san, in her oblique way, had been trying to prepare Honno for this scene.

''Honno-san!'' Eikichi screeched. ''How dare you come here! How dare you lie to me! How dare you spy on me!" The look of contempt on his face was acid. "Well, why should I be surprised? You're hinoeuma. Oh, yes, I know. Stupid you!" Seeing the look of dread and shame on her face, he was not about to stop now. There was a kind of gleeful malevolence that seemed to bubble out of him like lava from the mouth of a volcano. "Your father came to see my parents a month before our wedding. He was concerned, you see, for their reputation, their standing in the community. He wanted some remuneration for his information and, because I got to him before he had a chance to speak to my parents, I paid him off myself. Why not? His information was valuable to me, although not in any way he could suspect, the poor fool. I saw it as a lever to keep you in line, just in case you rebelled at some point, willful girl that you are, against my true lifestyle." He drew the thin young man back to him, lovingly embraced him. "Now, hinoeuma woman, get out of here, so I can finish what I've started!"

Honno wanted to cry out, but she could not. Just like that, with the thunderclap of Eikichi's voice, reality was brought home to her. She turned away, too horrified, too out of control, to answer him.

She tore past Big Ezoe, raced back down the stairs, through the entryway, out into the courtyard. Running barefoot into me darkness beneath the maples, where the tiny sounds of the koi pool could comfort her, where the lazy, somnolent fish could soothe away the fever burning inside her.

Then she turned away and, to her horror, vomited in a series of wracking convulsions. She gave a little moan, and crawling to the edge of the pool, lowered her face beneath the water. Coolness surrounded her, and she opened her eyes to the darkness, the life beneath me water.

When she rose, gasping, from below, she saw Big Ezoe sitting on the other side of the pool. He handed her her shoes. She was so humiliated she could not face him.

"You bastard," she said, "you knew about Eikichi all along." She was gasping for breath, as if she had been running for a very long time. "How long has he been coming here?"

''Three years,'' Big Ezoe said. ''Nothing about meeting you, courting you, marrying you, changed his schedule."

"Because I am hinoeuma, born in the year of the husband killer," Honno said miserably.

Big Ezoe looked off into the night. There were fireflies out, and here beside the koi pool, beneath the maples, it was possible to forget all about Tokyo, the hypermodern superstructures, the official bribery and corruption, the race into the twenty-first century, which was the national task that the Japanese had set for themselves. Now only the essence remained, the hard, cruel lessons of a far simpler time, the time of the warrior for which Yukio Mishima longed, about which Big Ezoe knew so much.

''It has nothing to do with what you think you are," Big Ezoe said. "It is him. What Eikichi Kansei is: a product of the times. As Mama-san tried to tell you. She knows your husband far better than you do."

Eikichi's sadistic invective echoed in her mind. The humiliation of her pathetic lot in life overwhelmed her, and she thought she was going to be sick again. She had been systematically beaten down at home, first by her father, and then by Eikichi, whom she could see now was the only kind of man she could have chosen to be her husband: rigid, brutal, repressive. How could she have mistaken such inhumanity for honor? Obedience had blinded her.

And as for her job? Now she understood her role there, as well. She served the same purpose as the wallpaper in the halls: she was elegant, soothing, ever obedient. This was not only the definition of what she was, but what she would always be. She had as much knowledge and schooling as the male executives beside whom she served daily. But no one would listen to her opinions or ideas. What place did a woman have in business? Kunio Michita had given her the answer to that when he had ignored her idea for Tandom Polycarbon. Again she had been betrayed by her sense of obedience. And she realized in a thoroughly disheartening moment that she had always known what her place was in business, and at home.

Home? What home? Her childhood had been a cruel mockery, and her marriage an absolute sham.

She felt as if she had just awakened from a long dream, from a sojourn in a world where she must hold her tongue, underutilize her brain, instead look cool and beautiful, be the whipping girl for her bitter father, be an obedient automaton for Michita and a walking billboard for Eikichi.

Honno at last gathered the strength to look up at Big Ezoe. "Now I see there are worlds within worlds," she said. "Like this private bower within the city. And worlds within those worlds, like this koi pond within this bower. Which is the real world?"

Big Ezoe, sitting across the expanse of dark, lapping water, said, "You have just learned that lesson, Mrs. Kansei. There is no real world. There is only your world."

FIVE

LLANO NEGRO

On a tree at the near edge of the llano negro, Tori discovered a series of carvings. They were crude yet powerful. They depicted a baby; a bent, old man; a man with no legs; a man nailed to a cross; a man with no eyes: a dead man.

"What the hell does this mean?" Russell said.

"Myth," Estilo said.

"I don't believe in myths," Russell said, turning away. He was scanning the immediate environment, a quadrant at a time.

Estilo said, ''Jorge Luis Borges, our most famous poet, wrote that myth is merely reality simplified to a point where it can be understood."

Russell turned around. "And you believe that?"

Tori, coming up to Russell, said softly, "It's important to believe it here in the field. Especially here in the jungle we don't know. It's dangerous to assume that reality and myth are two separate entities, because out here they serve the same purpose."

"Why do you always feel the need to show me how superior you are?'' Russell said.

"Because," Tori told him, "you're a man and I'm not."

"So what?"

"So isn't that part of why you think I 'm unreliable?''

"You're out of your mind.''

"Am I ?"

He looked at her for what seemed a long time. "It's getting late."

They pushed on past the carvings, through the trees and the encroaching underbrush, until they were swallowed up by llano negro, the black jungle.

Toward midday they paused for a break. It was hideously hot and humid, and all of them were drenched in sweat. They passed around food and water. Russell said, "Estilo, what did those carvings signify?"

Estilo grunted. "We are born, we age, are maimed, are punished for our sins, and die." He chewed on some dried beans. "It was a warning, I suppose. There is a great deal of superstition among the campesinos out here. This is the edge of the world as they understand it. The llano negro defines the boundary of what is known and what is unknown."

"Who d'you think put the carvings there?" Russell said.

Estilo nodded in the direction they were headed. "Whoever this land belongs to."

"Any idea who that might be?"

"Why speculate?" Estilo got up, dusted himself off. "We'll soon find out."

They set out again, and within the space of twenty minutes came to the bank of the Manacacias River. It was brown, sluggish, muddy. Downed trees, a forest of branches, clogged its flow, and it was not difficult, using these, to ford the water.

"According to Cruz's flight jockey, the cocaine factory shouldn't be far now," Russell said when they had gained the far shore.

"Estilo," Tori said quietly, "listen to me carefully. Don't move. And don't-don't-turn your head.'' She walked around so that Estilo could see her. She could see Estilo's eyes opened wide with fear. "Look at me. Look at me! There's a stone beetle on you."

Estilo's lips barely moved. "Where?" He barely breathed it.

"The base of your neck."

"Tori.'' Estilo's eyes closed and a tiny tremor passed through him.

Tori could see he was praying. She could also see, out of the corner of her eye, Russell walking up behind Estilo. Without a word Tori reached out, caught him by the wrist just as he was about to pluck the stone beetle off Estilo. It was very large, almost the length of her forefinger, blunt and ugly, its articulated carapace black and as shiny as chrome.

"I'm just going to get it off him," Russell said.

"If you try it, Estilo will die." Tori indicated the insect. "Do you see those forward pincers? They're already buried in his flesh. Even if you were fast enough, it would, at the point of death, reflexively release its poison." She looked at him. "Do you know why this is called a stone beetle? Its venom paralyzes the central nervous system of its prey. It's as if they've turned to stone."

"Just like Circe's gaze," Russell said. And when she did not answer, "I was thinking of the merging of myth and reality." He looked at her. "What are we to do? I have no experience with stone beetles."

"There's only one way," Tori said. "Don't move and, no matter what, don't make a sound." She turned toward Estilo, contemplated the giant insect at the base of his neck. It crouched there, dark and deadly. She could see its pincers with their lethal poison embedded in Estilo. She began to sweat.

She lifted her right hand and, separating her fingers, lowered the little finger toward the beetle's back. When the long, curved nail was millimeters from the creature, she paused. A tremor went through her; she knew she would have only one chance to paralyze the insect through the single chink in the armor of its carapace. If she missed, if she used too little or too much force, Estilo would die.

Tori, too, said a little prayer. She went into prana, extending her breathing, slowing down, allowing her wa, her intrinsic force, to expand, to explore the environment around her, and to wash away her apprehension and fear. Then, with a soft exhalation, she slid her nail through the slit between the plates of the beetle's carapace. There was some kind of obstruction, and she pushed on through it. For an instant she panicked, thinking she had gone too far and, in its death spasm, the beetle would shoot its venom into Estilo's bloodstream. Paralysis and death. She took another deep breath.

In a moment she said, "Estilo, are you all right?"

"Get that thing off me, damnit!''

Tori almost laughed in relief. The stone beetle was paralyzed. She grasped its sides with her left hand and, making sure to keep her fingernail in place, pulled on the beetle. She saw its pincers emerging from Estilo with agonizing slowness. At last

the pincers were out. In a blur Tori flung the insect away from them, into the underbrush.

"It's gone."

"Well done," Estilo said, clapping Tori on the back. Color was slowly returning to his face. "My God, that was too close by half." He kissed Tori on both cheeks.

"That was very impressive," Russell said to Tori as they prepared to move out.

"I didn't do it to impress you.''

"Give it a break, okay?" he said. "What you did took a lot of guts, that's all I meant."

Russell walked away from her. He took point. He had gone over the terrain with Cruz's pilot, but he also must have completely memorized the topographical map in the helicopter, because he had not needed to refer to it once they were on the ground.

"This way," he said, pointing into the emerald and black jungle, and they pushed on through the dense foliage. Green light and darkness; shadows lying in layers, dense with mystery. It was slow going because they needed silence more than speed now. They could not afford to hack their way through with their machetes because the men guarding the factory would surely hear them coming.

They soon came to a huge tree. Again there was a carving on it. This time it was very large. It showed a man bound upside down to what appeared to be some sort of circle.

"The black wheel of death," Estilo said. "Endless pain, eternal torment."

"Another warning," Russell said. He took out his KA-BAR knife and, in three wide slices, gouged out the carving. "This time it's ours."

The first sign they had that they were close to their goal was a sight of an army patrol. They were bivouacked in a small clearing in which a campesino's shack had been constructed. There were twenty soldiers.

As the three of them crept closer to the perimeter they could see that groups of soldiers were taking turns going inside the shack. It had been outfitted with a small generator, a TV and a VCR. The soldiers were watching a videocassette of Apocalypse Now, absorbing several scenes at a time before emerging like blinded owls into the intense sunshine, jabbering excitedly, swaggering like Colonel Kilgore or blowing out their cheeks like Colonel Kurtz.

Russell guided the others with hand signals, and they gave the encampment a wide berth. It appeared that Cruz was correct about the army's use here-this detachment seemed to have no orders to patrol. They were within five thousand yards of a major cocaine factory, and they seemed happily on vacation. Who could command so much power? Tori asked herself as they headed toward the factory.