The Nicholas Linnear Novels (64 page)

In darkness there is sin; in darkness there is death. Sin negates spirit; and the killing of beings without spirit can only be looked on as an act of charity.

But, but, but—how could there be love where sin exists? This was a question that had tortured him for years, more than any other one thing, shaping his life. And as he asked himself the impossible question again, he pounded his closed fists against his forehead and cheekbones, seeking to destroy that within himself which remained perversely recalcitrant. He could no more drive the memory of her from him than he could relinquish his name and it was just this terrifying obstinacy within himself which had driven him to the drugs. Besides, he believed now that they enhanced his powers.

But surely it had been Nicholas Linnear who had brought him to this sorry state. If it had not been for him, he would not… they would not… there would not …

Lights blazed against his closed eyelids as he beat himself but even they would not drown out the visions of the gentle pale fish at play in the straits. And, O Amida! How the wind howled on that night, snow swirling down like lace curtains, disappearing upon the changeless waves with the black sky so low that neither Kyūshū nor Honshu was visible. Alone in the rocking boat. Did the howling increase at the heavy splash? Did the Heiké know they were about to receive another unrepentant sinner? Unrepentant they must be or why else lie upon the darkest nights as unappeased
kami?

Ghost lights upon the straits, just as the tales told, and he recited many prayers, as many as he knew, repeating them without surcease until the prow of the boat touched the wooden quay at Shimonoseki and he stood on solid land, shaking and wet with seawater and sweat despite the snow and the chill north wind.

Still today he could hear that eerie howling like demons calling him back, to complete terrors that had somehow been left undone, circling within his head like black kites descending upon a bloody carcass.

At last, his breath heavy with the aftertaste of psychedelics, drenched in so much sweat that he might have just come from the bath, he fell into a sodden sleep filled with dreams and, worse, the trumpeting echoes of dreams.

Nicholas dreamed: of land’s end. And out from the near shore, the very end of it at least, arched a bridge of wood and stone very much like the one at Nihonbashi. And as he started across this bridge, he saw that to either side there was nothing but a hanging mist. He turned around, looking back the way he had come, and was astonished and not a little afraid to see that the strange mist had obscured the land from which he had come so effectively that he forgot which land that was as well as not knowing toward which land he was bound, as if the mist stirred about inside his head as well as without.

When he was approximately halfway across, he thought he could discern a sound, dim and muffled by the mist, but as he drew closer he became more and more convinced that it was the sobbing of a woman.

In time, he was able to make out a darker shape within the mist which, as he approached, coalesced into the form of a young woman. She was tall and willowy and she wore a clinging dress of white silk. It was, he saw now, dripping with water, as if she had just climbed out from the sea, which he supposed this bridge spanned.

She stood with her slim back against the bedewed balustrade, weeping into her hands, and such was the power of her lamentations that Nicholas felt compelled to move closer.

When he was only a few steps from her, he heard her speak: “Oh, you’ve come. At last! At last! I had given up all hope!”

“Pardon me.” His voice reverberated within his chest as if it were a cathedral-like cavity. “My lady, I do not think that I know you, yet you seem to have recognized me. Have you, perhaps, made some error?”

As he said this, he moved his head back and forth in an attempt to get a clear view of her face for, as it was now, he could not truly say whether she was known to him or no. But this seemed quite beyond his present capacity. Between her long dark hair, spread like a sea fan and strewn with small shells and mollusks, and the long-fingered hands she continued to press to her face, she remained hidden from his gaze.

“No, there is no error. You are he whom I have sought for all these years.”

“Why do you weep so bitterly, my lady? What ill has befallen you?”

“A most dishonorable death, sir, and until it is avenged my spirit must wander—wander here.”

“I do not see how I can be of help to you, my lady. But if you will allow me to see your face…”

“It will do you no good to look upon me,” she said so sadly that he felt his heart must break.

“Then I was correct. I do not know you.”

She said nothing and thus he did not know what her answer should be.

“Take your hands away from your face,” he said to her. “Please, my lady. I cannot assist you otherwise.”

Slowly, as if more reluctant, her long fingers drifted down through the mist and he gasped.

Where the features of her face should have been—eyes, nose, lips and the rest—her skin was as flat and smooth as an egg….

“—God, Nicholas, what is it?”

His chest heaved as if he had just struggled to finish a marathon and sweat glistened across his face like rime.

Justine’s face, lined with worry, hovered above him, her long hair draped on either side, an electric curtain, a tenuous link.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. You cried out in your sleep—”

“What did I say?”

“I don’t know, darling. Nothing recognizable, at least not in English. Something like, oh”—her brow wrinkled in thought—“minamara no tat-something.”

“
Migawari ni tatsu
?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Are you certain? Really certain?”

“Yes. Absolutely. You said it more than once. What does it mean?”

“Well, literally, it means, ‘to act as a substitute.’”

“I don’t understand.”

“In Japanese folklore there is the belief that a person may give his or her life in order to save another’s. It needn’t even be a person. It could be a tree, just about anything.”

“What were you dreaming about?”

“I am not certain.”

“Nicholas,” she said with her typical objective intuition, “did someone give their life for you?—In the dream, I mean?”

He looked at her, put his hand up to her cheek, but it was not her soft flesh he seemed to stroke, certainly not her voice he heard in his head then.

In that heated room of perfect death with his toes touching the hem of his mother’s exquisite, perfectly folded kimono and, just a little way beyond, the rivulets of blood dropped like rubies along the floor, Itami said, “We both must leave now, Nicholas. There is nothing left here for outsiders such as ourselves.”

“Where will you go?” His voice was as dull as lead.

“To China.”

His eyes tracked upward to her white face. “To the communists?”

She shook her head slightly. “No. There are others there—who were there long before the communists. Your grandfather, So-Peng, was one such.”

“You would leave Saigō?”

Her eyes were as bright as a bird’s. “Nicholas, did you ever wonder why I had but one child? But no, why should you?” Her lips were turned in a grim smile that chilled him. “I can only say that with me—with
me
—it was totally a matter of choice, though Satsugai believed otherwise. Oh yes, I lied to him. Willingly. Are you surprised? Well.” She stirred slightly like a sapling in a sudden gust of wind, giving way, giving way minutely. “I would not have another like him.” Her dark eyes were slits now. “Do you understand me? I trust you do.”

She looked down briefly at her
katana,
standing on its bloody point. “Do you hate me? I would not be surprised… But no, I see that you do not. That gladdens my heart, I cannot tell you how much.

“I love you, Nicholas. Were you my own I could not love you more but I think you already knew that deep inside yourself.” Her head jerked as if she had been abruptly reminded of something. “These days of
kwaidan
pass through my fingers like so much sand. Time is short and I have much to do.”

He stood in front of her, pale and drawn. He shivered once though no breeze stirred in the room.

“Will you tell me,” he said, “what honor there is in this?”

“What honor there remains in all the world,” Itami said sadly, “resides in this room. There is little enough, I fear. Little enough.”

“You must tell me. You must.” His voice was almost a cry and he was certain then he saw tears standing out like soft pearls at the inner corners of her eyes.

“Ah, Nicholas. These tales are not so easily told. You ask me to expose the soul of Japan. I could sooner rip a blade into my own belly.” Her eyes squeezed shut as if she were attempting to brush away a vision from her mind. Her voice was a whisper. “Ask me anything else. Anything.”

“What will become of you—Aunt?”

Her eyes flew open and she smiled kindly. “In China I shall travel until I reach the place Cheong bade me go in her last breath. I will not be there long.” Her hand tightened on the hilt of her
katana
; another drop of blood rolled from the blade’s smooth steel surface onto the bare wooden floor.

I must see Fukashigi, Nicholas thought now, staring at Justine in the semi-darkness; time to renew the old vows. And she must leave here; she must be out of harm’s way.
Aka i ninjutsu
was the only way now the forces of
Kan-aku na ninjutsu
were stirring, readying themselves to come against him: ancient, implacable enemies arrayed on a modern battlefield. He would need, he knew, all the fearful shades of steel to be victorious this one last time.

When Saigō awoke he was, for just an instant, convinced that it was into death’s dark realm. Death held no horror for him but this might only be because life held so little for him. It was the meanest of gifts and, therefore, it meant nothing for him to part with it.

Then he remembered that he had not yet killed Nicholas and he knew that this was life only into which sleep had yet again deposited him.

There was much to be said for revenge, yes. It was all that kept his heart pumping now. He thought of all the money in his swollen bank accounts; the vast acres of land; the four small but rapidly growing electronics konzerns. What did it all amount to? Not even a part of the smallest steel filing from a master swordsmith’s forge—ah, no!

Money was merely the sere gateway to power, and power, well, all that was good for was maneuverability. Once you could maneuver in this atom age, you could accomplish anything.

Yet there was but one thing that Saigō now wished to accomplish and that was to seek out and expunge a life.

Tonight, he thought savagely, lying naked on the
futon.
Pale gray light filtered through the blinds, traipsing across the ceiling like an itinerant priest, his
koromo
torn and tattered, its ragged ends taken by the wind.

He marveled at the weakness of Americans. Such cowards, they surely could not have powerful spirits. How they had won the war he still could not imagine. It would give him great pleasure to see the look on Raphael Tomkin’s face as he died beneath the blade of steel. To think that he believed a deal could be so easily arranged. No deal was possible; not after the commencement of a buy.

No, death would come to him tonight, just as it would come to Nicholas.

Perhaps, even, there would be a stalemate between them and death would come to both. This did not concern him. On the contrary, he might have even looked forward to it, knowing that the importance of death lay not in the dying itself but in the
manner
of one’s death. How one died was recorded by history and one was remembered as much for the manner of one’s death as for one’s life.

For Saigō, as for all Japanese warriors from time immemorial, there were only two honorable ways to die: in battle or by one’s own hand with calmness and ritual. To die otherwise would mean terrible, insupportable shame throughout eternity, an awful karma brought into the next life or, far worse, carried into the infinity of limbo.

This intimate thanatopsis had made him hard and he almost regretted having killed the Chinese boy. He had been so good. But there had been no choice just as, long ago, there had been no choice—

Somewhere in the night he had been full of hate; a pernicious boiling that had all but swamped his long exquisite training. It is a true measure of how emotions can warp the soul, he told himself now, sitting up on his single black
futon
, and he cursed the day that Yukio had come into his life. O Amida! he cried silently.

But this early hour was like crystal for him. He had thought, in the dark, to blunder into them tonight. To move fast, fast, fast; to catch them both quickly, Nicholas and Tomkin. But while he had slept in the land of death, his mind had been at work and now he knew that there might be more for him than just the death of those two. He thought of the straits and shuddered. Voices seemed to fill his mind, screaming louder as he inhaled, moaning like the autumn wind as he exhaled. He held his breath, squeezed his eyes shut for long moments until the voices faded.

Yes, he thought, rising and beginning to bathe, his training had taught him that there were things far worse for an enemy than merely slitting his belly.

The world, he knew, was one great wheel, an ellipse one was bound to by karma. Wheels within wheels; plans within plans. By day’s end, his mind would be tranquil. Then, if death should come, he would fling wide his arms and welcome it.

It was a splendid day, clear and still cool with just a few touches of gauzy cirrus clouds high up in the west. Far too splendid to spend it hanging around the house, Justine thought, as she threw her bags on the bed.

The beach on Dune Road looked inviting as she went around the side of the house and took the car out on the road.

She went east on the highway, having no specific destination in mind, but seeing the exit for Watermill reminded her of a beach in that area she had heard talked about again and again, Flying Point.

It was no surprise to her that she got lost, but this far out on the South Shore it was difficult to get too lost and at length she found herself at Flying Point beach. She got out and, locking up, went out on the sand.