Blood and Chrysanthemums (23 page)

Mark Frye locked the door of Domano Sports and tucked the key back into his pocket. Banff Avenue was quiet, just a few tourists heading back to their hotels after dinner, a few locals on their way to the video store or favourite bar. He caught his glance at the sky with a rueful grin. Now that he had no reason to care whether it was clear or not, most nights seemed to be cloudy.

He was in no particular hurry to get home. Peter, his roommate, was entertaining his girlfriend and would no doubt be just as happy if Mark didn’t show his face until the next morning. He checked his watch. It was nearly ten-thirty. Too late for a movie or to pick up a magazine at the bookstore, but he had yesterday’s
Globe and Mail
in his pack and he might be able to make that last a while in a coffee shop. . . . 

His mind registered the footsteps behind him just before he heard his name. He knew who it was before he turned around but disbelieved it anyway, until he saw her. She was standing a few feet behind him, smiling awkwardly. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he managed.

“I saw you were working late, so I waited for you to come out,” she said, answering a question he hadn’t thought to ask.

“Oh. When did you get back?”

“Last night. Thanks for returning my stuff.”

“No problem.” The silence hung between them, as palpable as fog. When Mark decided he couldn’t stand it anymore, he said: “I guess you know that I met your . . .”

“My old man?” Ardeth quoted with a smile that was part amusement, part embarrassment. “Yes. Dimitri told me.” She looked down for a moment. “I did tell you that my life was rather complicated.”

“You did,” he acknowledged. “It wasn’t my plan to make it worse. If I did.”

“I know. It wasn’t your fault. Look,” she seemed to take a deep breath, “can we go somewhere and talk?”

Mark found himself looking awkwardly around the half-empty street as if there was an answer to her question there. He was still attracted to her, no denying that. That part of him wanted to say yes. But the part of him that remembered the disappointment and confusion of seeing the grey-haired man standing in her doorway urged him to turn back and walk away as fast as he could. He had enough problems in his life: was he really in the market for more?

“I’m not planning to drag you into the middle of a lovers’ quarrel or anything like that,” she promised. He looked back at her. There were shadows under her eyes. Her hair looked like it needed to be cut . . . or at least brushed back from the black tangle the breeze had made of it. Not so hard to walk away from, he thought rationally.

“My roommate’s got claim to my place.”

“So has mine.”

“Coffee shop?”

“Is there any place more private?”

They ended up sitting on a bench by the river. Mark was grateful he had decided to wear his polar fleece jacket under his windbreaker and had tucked his gloves into his pockets. Ardeth, as usual, seemed to be oblivious to the cold.

“I want to tell you what happened to me, why I had to go away. You’ll have to forgive me if not all of it makes sense; there are things I
can’t
tell you. But I think we could be friends.” He saw her glance flicker away from her contemplation of the water to touch his face. “I’d like us to be friends. And if . . . if we ever get to be more than that, you deserve to know at least some of the truth about me.”

He nodded and kept his mouth closed over his questions about how exactly she thought they could be more than friends without causing even more complications than she had already said existed.

“Also,” she shrugged awkwardly, “I need to tell somebody. I guess I need to think out loud about it.”

“Think away.” She gave him a brief smile and returned her attention to the river. After a moment of silence, he asked: “Are you all right?”

“Yes. But suddenly I don’t have any idea how to start,” she answered with an apologetic laugh.

“That’s OK. I’m good at asking questions, remember. Where did you go?”

“Back to Toronto.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to go home. Of course, I got there and discovered I don’t have one anymore. My sister is living in my condominium. My old lives are gone. I tried to go back to both of them but it didn’t work. To live them, I’d have to tell myself lies I can’t make myself believe anymore.”

“Why did you go?”

“Dimitri and I had a fight.”

“About me?”

“About us. About who we are and what we expected of each other. About what we have to do to survive.” He waited for her to go on and, when she didn’t, forced himself not to ask all the dangerous questions every word she said seemed to spark. He settled for a safe one.

“Why did you come back?”

“There was someone here I thought could help. I thought he might know all the answers that we couldn’t see.” Her lips curved in a sad, self-mocking smile. “He had answers—but they weren’t the ones I wanted to hear. No secret formula, no ancient Oriental wisdom, no promises. Just the old hard truths: there are no easy answers; everyone has to figure out their own path; in the end, everything dies. Still, I got a few things out of my system. Not very noble things, I admit. I got my revenge on Dimitri.” Her voice dropped away on the words but the bitter self-contempt was as clear as if she had shouted it out.

“What did he do to you?” Mark asked carefully.

“That’s the sad thing about it. He didn’t do anything to me. I did it to him for doing in a sensible fashion what I almost did in a stupid one on the top of Tunnel Mountain that night. I blamed him because this life turned out to be nothing like the mythology said it would be.” She crossed her arms across her chest, huddling in on herself as if she suddenly felt cold. “You know how you said that night in the mountains you can see the bones of the world, the bones of life?” He nodded, even though she hadn’t really been asking. “I can see the bones of my life. They’re so simple. We need
this
or we die. We must do
that
to be safe. The price of our lives is the loss of what we love, one way or another. I have no problem with the bones. The thing I seem to have trouble with is everything that goes between the bones, with all the things that make up the moments of existence.” She fell silent again. Mark saw the gleam of something on her cheek before she touched it away. “I don’t suppose that made any sense to you.”

“Not all of it. But some of it did.”

“It’s hard to believe but eight months ago I was so certain of everything. I knew where everything in my life went. Anything that didn’t fit, I just pushed back down into the darkness in my mind as hard as I could. Then the world blew apart and when I put it back together it had all changed forever.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Mark suggested tentatively. Her glace at him was quick but not angry. “Being too certain of things is usually bad for you.”

“That’s just what my sister used to say . . . still says.” He watched as she leaned forward, seemingly entranced by something in the river. “I wonder if he was certain. Maybe that emptiness I felt was certainty. Or maybe it was something beyond that, beyond everything.”

“He?” The slippery sense of the conversation was eluding him again.

“The man I came back to see. He . . .” she paused for a moment, as if debating whether to finish her sentence. “He killed himself tonight.” Mark swallowed. What was there to say to that? What did she expect? Platitudes of regret? Noises of sympathy? She looked at him over her shoulder and he saw the faint flash of her smile. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything. He was very old and very tired. He decided to die in a way that would bring him comfort and he did. I think I’m mourning more for what I could have learned from him than I am for him. Dimitri . . .” she stopped suddenly and turned her face away. “Dimitri is mourning him,” she said softly at last.

“You’re right,” Mark said after a moment. “Your life is very complicated.” Ardeth kept her gaze on the river but he felt the tension that stiffened her back.

“Do you want out of it?” she asked quietly. Mark looked at her profile. He thought about the night they had climbed Tunnel Mountain, remembering her laugh of pure pleasure as she found her rhythm, the heat of her mouth as she kissed him. He thought about the convoluted, sorrowful story she had just told. He saw Dimitri Rozokov’s tall shape outlined against the apartment doorway.

She was bad news, that was certain. He could see her strange, complicated life dragging him off the safe paths he walked, away from a life that was ordered in its own unconventional fashion. He could see the possibility of trouble and heartache, as unmistakable as clouds promising snow on the high peak.

But what the hell, it was never healthy to be too certain of anything. Risks were good for the blood circulation. He put his hand on her back and stroked the line of her spine in a simple gesture of comfort. “No. Not as long as you agree to hear my philosophy on life.”

Her head was bent but he heard the smile in her voice.

“All right.”

“Always check the ropes.”

Under his hand, her body shuddered for a moment; then she sat up and looked at him. “OK.” The word sounded like a promise and a prophecy. When she leaned back into the curve of his arm and put her head on his shoulder, he decided to believe it was both.

Akiko was waiting for him in the doorway of the lodge, baggage piled around her feet. Rozokov let the driver open the back door of the limousine for him then stepped out to stand on the gravel driveway. Behind him, the engine purred back to life and he glanced over his shoulder to see the car begin its journey back down the narrow road.

“Don’t worry, Rozokov-san. He will return shortly. He is going to pick up Ardeth.”

“She’s not at the apartment,” Rozokov felt compelled to point out. When the driver had arrived for him at dusk, waking him from his heavy sleep and politely insisting that Ms. Kodama needed to speak to him, Ardeth had already gone out.

“It has been arranged,” Akiko assured him and Rozokov could not help but wonder how. Though in truth, there was no reason he should know about it, he acknowledged. By mutual consent, he and Ardeth had not spoken much during the hours since Fujiwara’s death. He knew she had gone out to look for Mark Frye. He assumed she had found him. But it did not matter. When the dawn came they had gone to the shelter of the darkened bedroom and, still without words, gone to sleep in each other’s arms.

“Are you leaving?” he asked, returning his attention to the woman standing in front of him. She nodded. “What will you do now?”

“Go home.”

“What about Yamagata? Will you work for him?”

“No. I worked for Fujiwara-san, not Makato-gumi. I think that I will take some time and decide what I wish to do.” She smiled slightly. “Fujiwara-san was very generous.”

“And you did not want as much as Yamagata did.” It was half-statement, half-question but she understood.

“No. But, as I told Ardeth, I am young. I might feel differently when I’m old. If I did . . .” Her gaze lowered and then lifted. Rozokov looked into her eyes, feeling vaguely shocked. The woman he had met two nights earlier had seemed like a quiet functionary, quite incapable of flirtatious humour. He smiled, understanding for the first time why Fujiwara had loved her.

“If you do, I would be honoured if you would consult me. I don’t promise anything, of course.”

“Of course not,” she agreed and then, businesslike again, withdrew an envelope from her purse. “This is for you.” Rozokov turned it over in his hands for a moment, curious at its thickness, then looked at her. “Open it now if you wish. They are papers signing over one of Fujiwara-san’s Swiss bank accounts to you. I believe everything is in order but, if there are any problems, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will do my best to assist you.”

“This isn’t necessary,” Rozokov said automatically before his mind registered the folly of protesting.

“Please don’t be concerned. It is what he wanted.” Rozokov sighed and put the envelope into the inner pocket of his coat where it rested against the diary.

“I think I will walk up to the lake,” he said and she looked for a moment at the trailhead, dark and shadowy, then nodded.

“I have some business with Ardeth, then I must leave for Calgary. I will have a driver remain to take you home. If we do not meet again, I wish you well, Rozokov-san.”

“And I, you.” He returned her bow and then walked towards the trail.

When he emerged from the dark embrace of the trees out onto the bank, the moon had risen and was resting against the curve of the far mountains. A scatter of stars, those strong enough to pierce the thin veil of high clouds, drifted over his head.”

Rozokov walked to the edge of the bank and sat down. He could hear the slap of water on the rock below him. Somewhere in the forest, a nightbird cried.

How strange it is, he thought. He gave me so many gifts: the diary, that long talk by the fireside, his trust in my sword arm and, least important, a portion of his wealth. Any of those would have been more than I deserved. Yet his greatest gift to me is the one thing that should have caused me the most grief. I do grieve for his death. I mourn that I shall never know him better than I do at this moment. I sorrow at the passing of something so old and fine from the world.

But it was Fujiwara’s death, perhaps even more than the other vampire’s life, that seemed to have swept away the fog in which he seemed to have wandered these last months. As he stood over the kneeling figure and lifted the beautiful, deadly sword, something had burst and flared inside him, like a star going supernova.

I can do this, he had thought with piercing clarity.

When the time comes, I can do this too.

There was no sin in what Fujiwara had done. Child of another world, product of a different culture, he bore none of the burdens of the faith of Rozokov’s childhood. There was no question of sin or evil, no agonizing over damnation or salvation. There was not even despair or defeat in it. There was only the will and the knife and the ultimate moment of self-assertion. There was only honour.

He was not required to endure an immortality for which he had never asked. He did not have to allow the black hole of his need to warp him beyond recognition. Any moment that he chose, he could follow Fujiwara into whatever might exist—or not—beyond the final cut of the knife.

And now that he knew this, he had not the least desire to die. The night air was full of the scent of pines. The stars, hidden behind their curtain of clouds, had secrets he had not even begun to understand. Even his love for Ardeth, complex and untidy and painful as it was, was sweeter than he had imagined possible.

He stood up, brushing dead grass from his coat. Yamagata had taken the body away. He did not know how the
yakuza
would explain the death or what kind of funeral they would hold. Whatever it might be, he would have no part to play in it. So he had decided on a ritual of his own to give what solace such rites could offer.

Rozokov reached inside his coat and withdrew a small piece of paper. He had cut it from the back of Fujiwara’s diary and carefully copied the words onto it. He had no doubt that they had looked very different when Fujiwara had originally written them in the fifteenth century, soon after his encounter with the playwright Hidekane. He knew the words by heart but still paused to read them again.

Autumn chrysanthemums bloom

Twice lovely for their sweetness

And the shadows that lie below them

Waiting for the fall.

He refolded the paper into precise quarters and looked around. A short distance from where he stood was a tree. He supposed it must have once been a pine. Some time in the past, lightning must have found it, for now it was nothing but a thin, black staff thrusting from the earth.

Walking to the tree, he ran one hand slightly up the burned wood. Just above the level of his eyes, the trunk had split open with the force of the lightning. A narrow crack began there and widened until the trunk was two sharp spikes.

“Goodbye, Sadamori,” he whispered, as he slid the paper into the dark heart of the tree. “I am grateful for your life. I was saved by your death. Rest in peace, wherever you may be.”

Then he turned around and saw Ardeth standing at the top of the trail.

He walked forward, so did she, and they met somewhere in the centre of the moonlit bank. “I came to say goodbye to him too,” she said, after an uneasy silence.

“Has Akiko left?”

“Yes.” Her mouth twisted a little in wry amusement. “He left me some money.”

“To me as well.” He had suspected Fujiwara might do that. It was an acknowledgement of their separateness that seemed to have pleased Ardeth. He felt a stab of pain but it surprised him by fading almost at once. “What will you do with it?”

“I don’t know yet. Mark asked me to go climbing in California.”

“Will you go?”

“Maybe. I’d like to do more climbing. But there’s a lot of sun in California,” she said with a small smile. “And I’ll have to decide whether Ardeth Alexander is officially dead or alive. What about you?”

“I haven’t thought about it yet. Will you stay in Banff for a while?” She met his gaze with serious eyes.

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes.” She turned away for a moment, staring across the lake at the dark outlines the mountains.

“I can’t stay for long. You know that.”

“Yes.”

“There are a lot of things we’ve never quite resolved between us. I don’t think we can do it just yet. Fujiwara was right—I’m too young.”

“You are,” Rozokov acknowledged. “I knew that our paths must part so that someday they can come together again. But I would delay the parting for a while.”

She was quiet for a long moment. He watched her profile and suddenly longed with terrifying intensity to touch her, to smooth the hair the breeze ruffled around her head, to feel the cool curve of her cheek. At last, she turned to look at him. “So would I,” she said softly. “I don’t want to leave you again. Not yet.” She reached out and laid her hand against his chest, her fingers moving to grip the lapels of his coat.

On the mountain, in the moonlight, they kissed in welcome and farewell.