The Nicholas Linnear Novels (38 page)

He stood up so abruptly that he felt rather than saw her start. Reaching down for her hand, he pulled her up and, opening a
shōji,
took her outside.

Unmindful of the cold, he took her to the periphery of their property, along the verge of the cryptomeria wood, searching for the half-hidden path Itami had shown to him years ago.

At length he found it and plunged with her headlong into the forest. There was no light to speak of, just dim luminous patches like odd floating flora where the moonlight penetrated the green canopy high above their heads. Cicadas called shrilly and, to one side, came a soft scuffling of leaves, a pair of bright red eyes.

They flew along the jungle trail, Nicholas guiding them unerringly as if he were a bat with radar. They leaped over roots, ducked under black swinging branches and, at last, broke through into the moon-drenched clearing. Before them was the circular path and the closed double doors of the rearing shrine.

She dragged him back to the grass verge, pulling him down beside her. “Now,” she whispered fiercely. “I can’t wait anymore.”

Her robe parted slightly. She was incredible. Her flesh glowed as if with an inner light. He could not keep his hands off her. He leaned forward, parting the robe farther. He stroked her thighs until she moaned and reached out with both arms, drew him over her. Her panting was hot in his ear as his mouth opened, enveloping one nipple, as much of the surrounding breast as he could take. He sucked hard, felt her indrawn breath, the hot scoring of her nails on a line down his ribs. Her thighs surrounded him, her flesh scorching, drawing him inward to her moist center. She sounded as if she were choking. He could smell her strongly on the night air. Moving snakelike down her writhing body, using his tongue and his lips until he reached her high mound. He raised up, then descended to the soft flesh of her inner thighs. He moved so slowly that, at length, he heard her cry out in longing, felt her fingers in his hair, pulling him up her.

Her buttocks were off the soft damp ground in an attempt to get him to suck her there, where she desired it the most. But he held on, circling, circling, so hard he thought he might never be soft again, until finally he moved, stabbing through the wet dark hair, spreading the flesh beneath. Her hands turned to fists and the cords of her neck tautened. She screamed again and again. There was no stopping the convulsing of her sweat-flecked body.

“I was born to be something,” she said much later, “more than what I am now.”

The cryptomeria rustled contentedly above their heads. The earth was soft beneath their spent bodies.

“I’m nothing now.” Her voice was so soft it could have been the night wind. “Nothing but a reflection.” He did not understand that. “All my life no one has said one word to me that’s meant anything.” She turned her head in the crook of his arm. “It’s all been lies.”

“Even your parents?”

“I have no parents.” She turned over, her buttocks against his thighs.

“Are they dead or…”

“Did they leave me, do you mean? My father died in the war. He was Satsugai’s brother. My uncle never approved of the marriage in the first place.”

“What happened to your mother?”

“I don’t know. No one ever said. Perhaps Satsugai gave her a sum of money to leave.”

A whippoorwill trilled, seeming far away. The air was dense with mist though there seemed few clouds in the sky. The moon was low, bloated, tinctured orange.

“I’m surprised Satsugai didn’t take you in,” he said.

“You are?” She gave a tiny bitter laugh. “I’m not. Itami wanted me, I know that. But Satsugai arranged for a couple to take care of me in Kyoto.” She was silent for a time, thinking. “I asked Aunt Itami once and she said that Satsugai thought they would have many children of their own and he didn’t want anything to interfere with his family. It didn’t turn out that way, obviously.”

“Then you do have parents.”

“There’s something odd about that household.” She was still talking about her uncle. “I can’t put my finger on it. It involves Satsugai and Saigō. Itami’s not part of it, though I’m sure she knows what’s going on.” There was a dry fluttering over their heads as a plover took off southward. “I think it has something to do with where Saigō goes.”

“In Kyūshū.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a
ryu
, I’ll bet.”

She turned over, her eyes luminous and huge in the dark. The heat of her body, its musk penetrated him. “But why travel so far? There are plenty of
ryu
in the Tokyo area.”

There are many
ryu
in Japan.
Kansatsu’s words came to him as clearly as a tolling bell. Did he know? Good and evil. White and black. Yin and yang.
One must explore the darkness, too.

“It must be a very special
ryu
.”

“What?”

He’d said it so softly, thinking out loud, that even this close she had not heard him. He repeated what he had said.

“But what kind?” she wanted to know.

Nicholas shrugged. “I’d need to know the town he is going to.”

“But I can find out!” she said excitedly, sitting up on one elbow. “He leaves tonight for Kyūshū. I’ll only need to take a peek at his train ticket.”

“Would you do it?”

She gave him a little conspiratorial smile. Lights danced in her eyes. “If you wanted me to.”

He watched her for a moment, then lay back, hands underneath his head. “I want to know something.” His throat felt tight. “I want to know if what you said… before is true. Did you sleep with Saigō?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters.”

She threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Nicholas. Don’t be so serious always.”

“Did you?”

“It might have happened—once.”

He sat up, staring at her. “Might?”

“All right. Yes. But—it just happened.”

“The way it just happened with us,” he said nastily.

“Oh no.” Her eyes looked into his. “That’s not the way it happened at all. He’s nothing like you.”

“You mean you planned the whole thing with me?” His voice was demanding.

Her eyes flickered down for a fraction of a second. “I—didn’t know what to think when Aunt Itami told me she was taking me here. I remembered I wanted to fuck you that night on the dance floor but that was—”

“You told me you didn’t remember that!” His tone of indignation concealed his inner delight.

Her eyes danced. “I lied about that.” She smiled and stuck out her tongue, a very un-Japanese gesture. “I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. I knew the moment I saw you again what I wanted to do.”

“I had no hint when we went out in the garden.”

She shrugged. “I’m two different people. You’ve seen both sides.”

“What was it like for you, growing up?”

“Why do you ask?”

He burst out laughing. “Because I’m interested in you. Why? Do you think I’m after something?”

“Everyone’s always after something.”

“Not everyone,” he said softly, pulling her close. “I’m not.” He kissed her with closed lips. “I care about you, Yukio. A great deal.”

She laughed. “Well, at least you didn’t say you love me.”

“I might,” he said seriously. “I don’t know yet.”

She tossed her head. “Oh, come off it. You know you don’t have to say those things with me. They’re meaningless. You’ll get what you want, don’t you know that?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I told you before,” she said patiently. “I don’t need to hear those things. I don’t need that illusion. We give each other pleasure. That’s enough for me.”

“Is that how it was with Saigō, too?” he said harshly. “I meant what I said. I do care about you. About what happens to you. How you feel. If you’re happy or if you’re sad.”

She stared at him for a long time as if she could find no words to utter. She was watching him carefully. At length she settled back onto the grass.

“When I was a little girl,” she said in a small voice, “we’d go into the mountains for the summer, to a small town perched high up on the sloping wooded side. The houses, I remember, were all on stilts. It was the first time I’d seen anything like that. It looked like a town out of a storybook.

“My foster parents never had much time for me though Satsugai gave them enough money each month. They never wanted children. So I had a lot of time to myself. I remember that during the days I’d sit in the tall grass, hearing the cicadas in my ears—the shrill metallic sound of the locusts late in the summer…” She breathed deeply, staring up at the nodding foliage of the cryptomeria. “The afternoons seemed endless. I’d sit on the mountainside, overlooking the valley. There were two long furrows etched into the foliage, brown and sere, mysteriously bare, as if some giant had scored the land in anger. I used to spend hours wondering what had made those cruel marks.”

“The war, perhaps,” Nicholas said.

“Yes. I never thought of that.” She turned her head away from him. “But I’d get beaten for staying away so long even though I knew they didn’t want me around. There was never any compassion. Never even any understanding. I was like an alien to them, some freak, a miniature adult. It seemed as if they had never been children themselves, had no conception of what it was like to be a child.”

“Yukio,” he said softly, leaning down to kiss her tenderly.

When they broke apart, she said, “And then there was the bamboo grove. It was somewhat farther down the mountainside. I discovered it quite by accident, early on, when I was lost one afternoon. I used to creep out of the house at night; the darkness stifled me as I lay in bed, sleepless. It became solid, a crushing weight pressing against my eyelids until I had to get out of there.

“It was quite near a stream which bubbled constantly. When there was a moon it looked like it was made of silver. The water was so frigid, it numbed your mouth.

“It was like being at a shrine, standing in that grove, the tall straight bamboo rising like columns over your head. Their tops sometimes speared the huge orange harvest moon late in the summer, when the locusts were at their most shrill.” She moved against him as if making herself more comfortable. He felt her bare flesh against his. “It was the only place I could call my own. My secret place. I had sex there for the first time.” He felt the musculature of her body beginning to tremble as if she were cold. “I brought a boy there. He lived on a nearby farm. It was his first time, too, I think. He’d only seen the cattle do it and he wasn’t very good. He was so nervous, wanting to do it the way he’d seen the horses performing. He was so excited, he went all over my thigh.”

“In the West,” Nicholas said, “they say, ‘I’m coming.’ Here, we say, ‘I’m going.’ There’s a complete reversal.”

“With death, too,” she whispered, “I’ve heard it said. Westerners don’t understand
seppuku
, do they? They’ll turn outward, instead of inward, jump off a building—”

“Or blow some poor bastard’s head off before they turn the gun on themselves.”

“Odd, isn’t it?” She giggled. “Perhaps they’re barbarians, after all.” But she shivered nonetheless.

“Don’t let’s talk of death,” he said, holding her.

“No,” she whispered. “We won’t.” She reached between his thighs, caught gentle hold of him, stroking.

“Is that all you can think of?” he said thickly.

“It’s all I have,” she said in a moan.

N
O, NO, NO, NO!”
she said, laughing. “Let’s just forget all about it.”

She ran at him instead of away from him as she had been doing. She leaped in a shallow dive, skidding across the top of a sand dune, wrapped her arms about his ankles, bringing him down.

Justine laughed again, half atop him. Nicholas spit sand out of his mouth, rolled over on his back.

“Very funny!”

She jumped on him, on all fours, and they spun about on the dark sand. A cool breeze came in off the sea, ruffling their hair. The porch lights from the house were diffused by the ground mist, haloed, comforting.

Her face was very close to his, her eyes wide. He could see the red motes as they caught the light. Her long hair was like a bridge between them. Her long delicate fingers were on his cheeks. They had the firmness, the lightness of touch of a sculptor’s hands. “I don’t want you to be sad, Nicholas,” she said softly.

He kissed her lightly.

“I’m here.”

“I know you are.”

“It’s a big thing for me to say. And mean.” She was totally serious now, the playful mood had slipped away. “I had a lot of time to think about… things.”

“You mean in bed.”

She shook her head. “No. In the water. It wasn’t my life that flashed before me.” She laughed but it was a rueful sound. “There was one time when I didn’t think I was going to come back up. I had been fantasizing about you while I was swimming. You know, a harmless kind of thing.” Her eyes were almost out of focus, she was so close to him. “That’s not what I thought about when I was under. I thought about what it would be like never to see you again.” Her voice was so soft now that, despite her nearness, he could barely make out what she was saying. She swallowed hard as if the words were sticking in her throat. “I’m frightened. Frightened of what I’m telling you. It’s one thing to admit to the feeling, quite another to voice it, you know?” She gave him a long hard stare. “I love you,” she said. “I can’t think of anything else when I’m near you. I usually like to go to certain places, be with specific people, but I don’t care about any of that when I’m with you. I know that sounds juvenile and romantic but—”

He laughed. “Romantic, yes. Juvenile, no. And anyway, what’s so terrible about being a romantic? I am. Maybe there aren’t many of us left, though.”

Her eyes were clear and searching. “Do you love me, Nick? I want you to be honest. It’s all right if you don’t. I just need to know the truth.”

He did not know what to say. His mind was alight with memories both pleasurable and painful and he knew then that. Yukio was still not gone from him. He felt like a salmon struggling upstream, fiercely fighting the current. But he was no fish and he wondered why he was doing it. What was he fighting, anyway? And what made it so important?