The Nicholas Linnear Novels (58 page)

It was the reverse of the story she had told him, he thought, his head pounding. Except he was the lady waiting in vain for the broken promises of her lover to come true. Would Yukio, returning to find him gone, become a nun? For the first time, he began to think of America as more than just a country on the other side of the world. Forsake his beloved Japan? Yes, he thought. Yes. But first…

With a raucous burst, the radio broke into renewed life….

It hardly seemed surprising that Nicholas did not go straight home from the station.

He threw his bags in the back of a taxi and, climbing in after them, gave the address of Kansatsu’s
ryu.

Apparently the snow had been falling in Tokyo for some time. There was already more than an inch on the ground and traffic was snarled. This first snow had come so late in the year that everyone had given up on it and so had been taken by surprise.

The heavily laden windshield wipers gave off a hypnotic
hiss-thunk, hiss-thunk
as they crept through the city in maddening herky-jerky fashion. But once on the highway at the outskirts they made better time; the sanding crews had done their job.

He sat slumped in one corner of the backseat and did not open his eyes until they came to a stop outside the
ryu.
The driver called to him and he asked the man to wait until he was certain someone was still there.

The taxi seemed to sit there in the snow, panting, its exhaust expelled in tiny white bursts. He returned in a moment, paid the driver and hauled out his bags.

Kansatsu served him green tea in one of the
ryu
’s back rooms. The
dōjō,
itself, was deserted. There was no one here save the
sensei
and himself.

“You have had a most difficult trip,” Kansatsu said.

Through an open
shōji,
Nicholas could see the snow silently falling, muffling all sound. In the twilight it seemed more blue than white. Fuji was invisible now, in the weather.

“I can see it on your face.”

So Nicholas told him.

There was a great silence after he had finished, or so it seemed to Nicholas.

“Kansatsu—”

But the
sensei
stopped him. “Drink your tea, Nicholas.”

Nicholas threw the gray porcelain cup away from him; tea spilled across the tatamis. “I am tired of being treated like a child! I know what I want to do now—what I
must
do.”

“I think,” said Kansatsu, unperturbed by the outburst, “that you should go home now.”

Nicholas stood up, his face red with rage. “Don’t you understand what has happened? Have you been listening to what I’ve been telling you?”

“I have heard every word.” Kansatsu’s tone was calm, soothing. “I sympathize with you. You have confirmed what I have suspected for some time. But no decision can be made in haste. You may think that you know what it is you want to do now but I doubt that you do. Please take my advice and return home. Take some time to think—”

“There are some answers I want from you,” Nicholas said harshly. “You set me up for this. You knew—”

“I knew nothing. As I said.
Now
I know, as do you. That is better, you will admit, than being unsure. No decisions can be accurately made, no course of action taken, in such circumstances. That is basic. You understand that.” There was a slight interrogative at the end.

“Yes.”

“All right.” Kansatsu sighed and stood up. They faced each other across the low lacquered table. “Let me tell you that which I withheld from you was for your own benefit—”

“My own, bene—!”

Kansatsu held up one hand. “Please allow me to finish my thought. I had, at the time, only conjecture to go on as regards Saigō.” His tone of voice changed, softening somewhat. “As for yourself, I told you what was in my mind. Working here will no longer well serve either of us. That you have survived your journey to Kumamoto is proof enough of that—if you might be inclined to mistrust my word.”

“I would never—”

“No. I know. You would not.” Kansatsu came around the table, touched Nicholas on his biceps. It was the first such gesture he had ever made toward Nicholas. “You have been my finest pupil. But the time has come for us to part ways. You must grow along your own path, Nicholas. Too long in this
ryu
, any
ryu
, can be detrimental to that growth. But”—he raised a long forefinger—“before you decide on where to go, your mind must be clear. And you will admit that you cannot claim such clarity now, hm?”

Nicholas was silent, thinking.

“Take several days, as long as you need, in fact. Then, when you feel you are ready, come to me. I will be here. I shall answer all your questions as best I can. And, together, we will decide on your future.”

“There is something,” Nicholas said at last, “that cannot be ignored.”

“And what is that?”

“I have an enemy now.”
Don’t bother coming after.
“I invaded their territory; ignored their warning. When they come, I must be prepared.”

Beside him, Kansatsu never seemed so old and frail as he stared out at the falling snow.

“I am afraid there’s been some bad news.”

He stood with his bags in the doorway of his house. Immediately he thought of Cheong. “Where’s Mother?”

“At your aunt’s. Come inside, Nicholas.” The Colonel seemed pale and drawn.

The house seemed subtly different. Emptier.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s Satsugai,” the Colonel said evenly. He had his pipe in one hand, unlit. “We tried to reach you in Kumamoto. I finally got hold of Saigō this afternoon. Itami was surprised to learn Yukio decided to stay with him.”

Nicholas felt a knife twisting inside him. There was a silence. He could hear the clock on the mantel in the Colonel’s study. All the way in here. Nothing moved outside. It was as if the world had frozen over in a new ice age.

The Colonel cleared his throat. “Satsugai’s been killed. I’m sorry, it’s a hell of a homecoming. I can see you didn’t have the best of trips.”

Was it so indelibly etched across his face; skywriting that he refused to face?

“How did it happen?”

The Colonel put the pipe stem to his lips, blew sharply outward to unclog it. He looked at the bowl. “Robbery, the police think. Satsugai must have surprised the thief.”

“No one else heard him?”

The Colonel shrugged. “No one else was in the house at the time. Itami was at her sister’s.”

“Which one? Ikura?”

“No. Teoke.”

Nicholas disliked Teoke.

“Well.” He went to take his bags into his room. The Colonel stooped to help him and together they went through the house.

“It’s so quiet,” Nicholas said. “Nothing seems right.”

“No,” the Colonel agreed, something far off in his eyes. “It’s never the same.” He sat on the
futon
, pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids. “The servants have gone with your mother and Ataki won’t come today.”

Nicholas began to unpack, separating the soiled clothes from the unworn ones. “Dad,” he said after a time, “what do you know of the ninja?”

“Oh, not very much. Why?”

He shrugged, looking down at the shirt he was holding. “Kansatsu’s been talking about them. Did you know that when firearms were first introduced here in 1543 by the Portuguese they were immediately incorporated into ninjutsu techniques? No? And because of that, firearms were shunned by the majority of the other classes—most especially the samurai—until the Meiji Restoration.”

The Colonel got up, went across the room to stand beside his son. “Nicholas,” he said gently, “what happened between you and Yukio?” When Nicholas said nothing, he put his hand on his son’s shoulder, said, “Are you afraid to tell me?”

Nicholas turned around to face him. “Afraid? No. I—It’s just that I know how you felt about her. You disliked her from the beginning.”

“So now you won’t tell me—”

“I love her,” Nicholas said in anguish. “And she told me she loved me. And then. And then, it all fell apart just as if it had never existed.” The Colonel’s heart ached at the look he saw on Nicholas’ face. “How could she go off with Saigō? How could she do it?” Tears stood in the corners of his eyes. “I don’t understand any of it.”

When he had seen Nicholas standing there in the doorway, the Colonel had felt an enormous urge to tell him everything; to confess. Now he knew that he would never do that; it would be far too selfish. It was a burden designed for him alone. How unfair to make Nicholas carry it for the rest of his life. But he wanted desperately to say something comforting to his son. He was dumbfounded now by his inarticulateness. Is this how I have been with him all his life? he wondered. I don’t know what to say; what would calm him. He wished that Cheong were here now and was instantly ashamed of the thought. My God, he thought, am I that estranged from my own son? Is this what my work has done to me? It seemed to the Colonel to be the final irony. And now he realized how he had envied Satsugai’s close relationship with Saigō. It was something he could never have with Nicholas. The fault, he saw, lay within himself.

He heard the door chimes ringing. “Come on,” he said, and they both went to answer it.

A detective sergeant of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police stood on the steps. He was a heavyset youngish man, seeming ill at ease; he knew all too well where he was. He saluted smartly as the Colonel opened the door.

“Colonel Linnear,” he said. He had restless brown eyes. “Lieutenant Tomomi asked me to inform you of the investigation’s progress.” He did not have to say which investigation. “Our latest findings indicate that your brother-in-law—”

“He’s not my brother-in-law.”

“Sir?”

“Never mind,” the Colonel said. “Carry on.”

“Yes, sir. We have ruled out burglary. At least, it’s no longer at the top of our list.”

“Oh?”

“The coroner’s report indicates a double fracture of the cricoid cartilage. In the larynx. He was garrotted. And by a professional. Lieutenant Tomomi believes there is now reason to consider a radical leftwing connection.”

“You mean assassination?”

“Yes, sir. We are bringing suspects in now. You know, the usual activists from the JSP, the Communists, so forth.”

“Thank you for informing me, Sergeant.”

“No trouble at all, sir. Good day.” He turned away. Gravel crunched under his high black boots.

In the weeks that followed, the family life slowly restored itself to a semblance of order. But, as the Colonel had remarked, it was not the same.

There was Satsugai’s funeral, of course, a strict formal ceremony, delayed for a time until Saigō returned home.

Nicholas found no sadness inside himself at Satsugai’s death. This, of course, was not surprising. But he also found himself oddly anticipating the funeral and did not realize what it was he was anticipating until he saw Saigō and Itami arrive. Then his heart sank. Yukio was nowhere to be seen. For his part, Saigō neither looked nor talked to anyone save his mother.

With Saigō’s return, Nicholas had expected Cheong to return home. Such was not the case. She continued to stay with Itami for more than a week. She might have, perhaps, stayed indefinitely had not Itami insisted she leave.

The tragedy had aged his mother, Nicholas saw, as much or even more than it had his aunt. She rarely smiled and she seemed distant as if holding herself together by a supreme act of will.

Further, and, to Nicholas, quite inexplicably, something had changed in her relationship with the Colonel. For as long as Nicholas could remember this had been an unwavering bulwark in his life, the backbone he could always count on. True, the shift was subtle and, perhaps, an outsider might not have picked it up, but it was there nonetheless and it frightened him. It was almost as if she blamed the Colonel for the tragedy. He had saved Satsugai’s life once, wasn’t that enough? Nicholas asked himself. He felt she was being unreasonable and, for the first time in his life, he felt himself being pulled by the increasing polarization of his parents.

Itami came almost every day for lunch. On several occasions she brought Saigō along when he was in town. Nicholas missed these meetings, being either at the
ryu
, talking with Kansatsu, or at classes at Tōdai, Tokyo University, but Cheong spoke to him about them when he returned home in the evenings.

The Colonel had taken a week off from work, though he had not taken a vacation in almost a year and a half. He said he was ill and, for the first time since Cheong knew him, he went to a physician. He seemed pale and drawn but she was relieved to find that there was nothing physically amiss.

For his part, Nicholas became engulfed in college life. It was a strange business, Tōdai, but he soon got the hang of it. Once he had passed the enormously difficult entrance exams, he found that he had become a member of the famed
Gakubatsu
, the university clique. He found that Tōdai was one of the world’s most exclusive clubs, grooming its graduates for top-line executive positions in government. Had not five of the postwar prime ministers come from Tōdai?

This period of intense self-involvement took Nicholas away from his family and it wasn’t until weeks later that he recognized something was amiss. The Colonel had extended his leave of absence. He would rise early in the morning, as was his habit, and wander around the house touching objects as if for the last time. Often he got underfoot and the servants, quite good-naturedly, would steer him into another room or, increasingly—as he had a tendency to wander aimlessly back—outdoors. Then he would spend long hours sitting by the side of the Zen garden as if studying the swirling lines of the gravel. For a man who had been both strong and extremely active all his life, this behavior was most out of character.

Itami, when she visited, seemed totally attached to Cheong. Increasingly now, she spent the weekends, often taking long walks with Cheong through the cryptomeria and pine wood to the Shinto temple where she had taken Nicholas that afternoon so long ago. Perhaps they even passed through the spot where he and Yukio had rolled over one another as they had made love. Of what things Cheong and Itami spoke at those times Nicholas had no idea.