The Nicholas Linnear Novels (202 page)

This was more or less what Tomi had said to Mrs. Hanami at the beginning of the interview. But that had been before Nangi had adroitly found the key to her spirit. Tomi continued to marvel at the man.

“I understand,” Mrs. Hanami said as she rose. “Shall we go outside? There is so little sunshine these days, only industrial haze, one must take every advantage of it.” She led them out onto a stone porch that overlooked a jewel of a garden. She led them down a path of flat blue-gray river rocks artfully laid to seem naturally scattered.

“My husband, as you no doubt already know, was a perfectly brilliant surgeon. His hands were like those of a master sculptor, and he obsessed over them. He used more hand cream than I did.”

She confessed this as they sat in a tea room across the lush but tiny garden from the main house. It was redolent of dried grass, spice, and wood smoke.

“He never used soap on his hands at home. Indeed, I often thought he had a phobia against it. Of course, that could not be so, since he obviously used soap when he scrubbed up for an operation. Still, he was nervous if he caught even a hint of chapped skin on the backs of his hands. He had the hands of a teenager, of a girl, really.”

Initially Tomi was surprised, not to say shocked, by these revelations unseemly told of the dead, and she found herself feeling a growing antipathy toward the woman. But she soon came to realize that Haniko Hanami needed to unburden herself of secrets she had too long carried unaided in her breast, and Tomi’s heart softened in acknowledgment of her plight.

Whatever faults Haniko Hanami might have, making tea wasn’t one of them. Tomi watched, entranced, as the older woman deftly turned the ash whisk to create a froth the palest shade of green imaginable.

“Well, he was a wonderful surgeon,” Mrs. Hanami said, “but as a husband he was something less than that.” She paused for a moment to take more tea, and seeing her thin face above her lifted hands, the tiny cup, Tomi was given a startling glimpse of the coquette she once must have been. “I had wanted so much from this marriage,” she said. “I had such high hopes. Well, perhaps that was a mistake. But I didn’t know my husband very well at the time we were married. Apparently I never did.”

“Why do you say that, Mrs. Hanami?” Nangi asked.

Haniko Hanami sighed. “My husband grew tired of me over the years. When he was younger, he liked an assortment of women. Later on, there was only one.” She looked at them in turn. “Lack of stamina, or perhaps a sense of—what shall I call it?—stability.” She sipped tea. “You may think that an odd word for an adulterous liaison, but in my husband’s case it was accurate, I assure you.”

“Do you know what it was your husband wanted?” Nangi asked gently.

“Wanted?” Mrs. Hanami blinked. “Why, yes. I’d have thought it obvious enough. He did not want to die. Or, I suppose more accurately, to get old. The parade of women assured him of new faces—and bodies—that, for him, never aged. His women were like a mirror into which he could look, seeing with absolute assurance the man he had once been.”

“But somewhere that changed,” Nangi said.

“What?” She appeared startled, as if he had interrupted a private meditation.

“He went from many to one, you said.”

“Oh, that.” She nodded. “I believe this one was very young, her flesh very firm. Lately my husband had begun to long for more. Perhaps he had come to see the parade for the charade it really was. Perhaps he needed to hold youth in his hand in what would have been for him a permanent way.”

Nangi said, “Was there ever any talk of divorce?”

Mrs. Hanami gave a startled little laugh. “Oh, my goodness no. It is clear you never knew my husband. There was never a hint of that, and there never would be. My husband had no idea that I knew of his liaisons. He would have been mortified had I been cruel enough to tell him that I knew.”

“Why
didn’t
you tell him?” Tomi asked in the same gentle tone of voice Nangi was using.

Mrs. Hanami’s eyes opened wide. “But why would I? We loved each other.”

Into the silence that had wrapped itself around them, Nangi said, “About this last girl your husband was seeing. How do you know she was very young and very firm-fleshed?”

“Well, she was a dancer, wasn’t she?” Mrs. Hanami said.

“You
knew
who your husband was seeing?” Tomi said.

“Not who, dear,” Mrs. Hanami said. “What.” She was perfectly composed now, the mask she had presented to them on their arrival firmly back in place. It was forged of pride, Tomi saw, a family pride of Samurai forebears, a procession of centuries. Nowadays, Tomi thought, that iron-bound tradition must be difficult to shoulder.

Haniko Hanami rose and, with the grace and bearing befitting her station in life, crossed to a dark wood tatami chest. She opened a top drawer, took out something, came back to where they were sitting. She held out her hand, opened it up like a chrysanthemum budding.

“I found this in one of my husband’s suits when he came home very late one night,” she said. “I went through it while he slept. I felt I deserved that much.”

Tomi and Nangi looked at what she displayed. It was a tiny plastic flashlight. Along its side was emblazoned the name of the
tokudashi
club that Tomi had come to know so well, The Silk Road.

Kansatsu said, “I have been sought, I have been defeated, I am now forgotten.” He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the great room of the stone structure he had created in the shadow of the Black Gendarme. “You asked, Nicholas, why I am here in the Hodaka, and this is my answer. Now tell me why you are here.”

“Tell me first if I am dead,” Nicholas said. “I have no idea if this is some afterlife.”

Kansatsu cocked his head. “Do you believe in an afterlife, Nicholas?”

“Yes. I suppose I do.”

“Then this is an afterlife.” Kansatsu waited a moment. “This is what you make of it, Nicholas. After a time, you will give it your own definition.”

“But am I dead? Did I freeze to death on the Black Gendarme?”

“That question has no relevance here,” Kansatsu said sternly. “As I said, it is you who must make the determination. Is this life or death?” The ageless
sensei
shrugged. “I no longer seek to differentiate between the two states.”

“But surely you can tell me if I still live? Is this a dream?”

“When you understand how useless these questions are, Nicholas, you will have the answers you seek.”

Nicholas quieted his racing heart. He no longer felt chilled or numb, but his body still ached and, touching the side of his head, the scar of the incision was as evident as ever. I must be alive, he reasoned. But reason seemed a stranger in this land.

“You did not seem surprised to see me,” Nicholas said.

“Why should I be?” Kansatsu said. “You have come here to me many times.”

“What? I haven’t seen you since the winter of 1963, and I’m certain that I’ve never been here in this house before.”

Kansatsu looked pointedly at the plate in front of Nicholas. “You haven’t finished your meal,” he said. “I suggest you do so. You will need all your strength soon.”

“I know,” Nicholas said. “If I remember correctly, the descent of the Hodaka is every bit as exhausting as the ascent.”

“I was not speaking of the physical,” Kansatsu said.

Nicholas looked from his enigmatic face to the bits of food on his plate. He ate. He slept. And dreamed again of the dominance of the Black Gendarme…

…This recurring image so disturbed him that when he awoke he described it to Kansatsu.

The
sensei
was silent for some time. At last he stirred himself. But his voice was slow, surreal, as if he had been roused from a dream. “Why does this image disturb you so?”

“I don’t quite know,” Nicholas admitted. “Perhaps it has to do with the emeralds, my grandfather’s legacy.”

“Is that so?” Kansatsu’s eyebrows lifted. “Explain.”

Nicholas did, telling him about the box with the fifteen emeralds, about how his mother, Cheong, explained to him that he could use the gems in whatever way he saw fit, with only one caveat: he must never allow the number of stones to drop below nine.

“Did your mother tell you what would happen if this occurred?”

“No,” Nicholas said. “Do you know what these emeralds are?”

“Perhaps I have heard something of their existence,” Kansatsu said. “But I had no idea that you possessed them.”

“They are very powerful.”

“Yes. Extremely.”

“But in what way?” Nicholas asked.

“In the Way of Tau-tau,” Kansatsu said.

“But what have I to do with Tau-tau?” Nicholas asked.

Instead of answering him, Kansatsu said, “The
dorokusai
will want the emeralds. Where are they?”

“Safe enough,” Nicholas said.

“Are they with you?”

“No. I didn’t think that being
Shiro Ninja
I could adequately safeguard them.”

Kansatsu nodded, was quiet for some time after that. At length he said, “You have been here some time now. I expect you are strong enough for us to begin.” He was dressed in a black cotton
gi,
the costume of the martial arts
dojo.
“When I sent you to Kumamoto those many years ago,” Kansatsu said, “you believed that it was to confront your cousin Saigo. I imagine you have believed that self-deception until this moment. Well, you were young then. And just because you are supremely talented does not mean that you are capable of fully
comprehending
that talent.

“Of course, I know this because I have had this conversation with you many times.”

“Why do you keep referring to how often this has happened before?” Nicholas asked. “It’s happening now, for the first time.”

“Time,” Kansatsu observed, “is somewhat akin to the ocean. There are tides, currents, eddies which at certain nexus points overlap, creating a kind of whirlpool of events that repeat like ripples until, having spread sufficiently outward, are spent upon a rocky shore.”

“You have a strange concept of time.”

“On the contrary,” Kansatsu said, “it is
you
whose concept of time is strange. But then, that is to be expected of someone who still sees a difference between life and death. Coming to grips with this illusion is the same as recognizing the Ten Oxen, the stages of Zen enlightenment. Do you remember, Nicholas?”

“Of course. One begins by searching high and low for the ox, one finds it, ensnares it, tames it, rides it back into town only to find that the ox never existed, that it was a part of oneself, a part cut off, lost, confused.”

“Does that remind you of something?” Kansatsu asked.

“Nothing that I can think of,” Nicholas replied.

Kansatsu turned, took an iron pot off the hibachi stove sunk into the floor. He poured them both tea. It was the bitter, dark red tea of northern China known as Iron Dragon. “Listen to me, Nicholas,” he said. “I sent you to Kumamoto in the winter of 1963 to find the ox.”

“But I confronted Saigo and he defeated me.”

Kansatsu nodded. “And in so doing he defeated me as well. That was meant to be. One month later I left Tokyo for good and came here to fulfill the last of my three stages: to be forgotten.”

“I never forgot you,
sensei.”

“No. You were never meant to. And that is why you have come.”

“As I have said,
sensei,
I am
Shiro Ninja,”
Nicholas said. “I came to the Black Gendarme seeking a path to salvation. I thought Akiko’s
sensei,
Kyoki, would help me because I suspected that he was tanjian, but I discovered him dead, flayed alive in his castle in the Asama highlands. Then I discovered that he had a brother. His name is Genshi.”

“I know,” Kansatsu said. “I am Genshi, Kyoki’s brother. I am also Kansatsu. I have many names.”

“You…” Nicholas almost choked on his words. “You are tanjian?”

“Before I answer you, you must understand that your spirit is entangled. You are driven by fear. An exhaustion of the soul has made it impossible for you to distinguish between good and evil.”

“Yes,” Nicholas said. “I understand.
Shiro Ninja
has ensnared me.”

“Shiro Ninja,”
Kansatsu said, “was only able to work on you because you have hidden your true nature from yourself, You are still searching for the ox, Nicholas, unaware that the search is counterproductive because the ox does not exist.”

“What are you saying?”

“Remember the winter of 1963, Nicholas,” Kansatsu said. “In Kumamoto when you believed your cousin Saigo defeated you, took Yukio, the girl you loved, away from you.”

“I believed it happened only because it happened,” Nicholas said.

“Again, you are thinking of the ox when the ox doesn’t exist,” Kansatsu said patiently.

Nicholas looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

“No,” Kansatsu said. “You are not yet strong enough. Sleep now.”

…“I am lost,
sensei,”
Nicholas said when he awoke.

“Outside,” Kansatsu said, “you will gain strength.”

“I am glad you are here to guide me,” Nicholas said, pulling on his waterproof hiking boots, bundling himself in his Gore-Tex parka.

“Your spirit is still entangled,” Kansatsu said, leading the way out onto the Black Gendarme. “No one can guide you.”

“It is night.” Nicholas was surprised.

“This time, you slept all night and all day. Did you dream of the Black Gendarme?”

“No.” But Nicholas had the sense that Kansatsu already knew that. “I dreamt of bulrushes. I was searching for something. I can’t remember what it was. Then I found footprints in the black marshy earth. When I knelt down to examine them more closely, they spoke to me. The voice was like the trilling of a nightbird, almost a song. And then the bulrushes and the marsh were gone. I was back in Kyoki’s castle, passing through the moon gate in his study.”

“What did the voice say?”

“I can’t remember,” Nicholas said.

“Was the voice my brother’s voice?”

“Not his,” Nicholas said, “but the source was close.” He was moving with some difficulty and great effort across the blistered rock wall. “Perhaps,” he added hopefully, “I have succeeded in banishing the image of the Black Gendarme from my dreams.”