Floating City (34 page)

Nicholas, who had been too long alone with his memories of his father, felt an inner door unlocking. “I can see my father here.”

“Sooner or later, everything exists in the garden,” Tsunetomo said, obviously pleased. He watched Nicholas drink his bitter green tea as he crunched on a sweet. In the silence that ensued Nicholas imagined that both of them were thinking of the Colonel.

Tsunetomo, kneeling on the tatami with the regal aspect of a shogun, said, “I want to tell you a story about the past. When I am finished, I want you to tell me what it means to you.” He cleared his throat. “In the days before the first Tokugawa shogun united Japan, there was a feudal lord who was a great wencher. In all ways, he was an honorable man, and his retainers loved him. He had many sons out of wedlock, but he had only one legitimate son. This boy had won his father’s heart when he had pushed himself out of his mother’s womb despite being turned the wrong way. ‘He should have died,’ the astonished doctors told the lord, ‘and your wife with him, but his will to live was too great.’

“The lord watched as his son grew from childhood into young adulthood. During times of war, the lord protected his son with his own forged armor and his own valorous heart. But there were times when the lord could not take his son with him on long and dangerous trips, and at these times he left him in the care of a young retainer who the lord trusted as if he were a member of his family.

“On his twenty-first birthday, the lord’s son took ill, and despite the lord’s pleas and imprecations, nothing the doctors did could save him. On the day of his funeral, when the incense burned with a steady glow and all the priests of the lord’s fiefdom were at the burial site, the young retainer rode to the temple grounds and, dismounting, proceeded to commit ritual suicide before the altar of Buddha.”

Three plovers flew into the garden. Two of them alighted on a sheared azalea, but the third, who sat above and apart from the others, twittered on the curving top of the highest rock.

Nicholas watched the lone plover for a moment before he said, “What the story tells me is that duty is not only familial. It is a sense of time and place; but mostly it is a definition of self.” He looked at Tsunetomo. “Is this the right answer?”

The
oyabun
smiled. “I am no Rinzai Buddhist priest. There is no right or wrong answer by which I must judge you. I merely wished to know your response when my words touched your mind.”

Over the years, Nicholas had cause to remember many times this story of feudal Japan. While it was the Colonel and his mother, Cheong, who had instilled in him his sense of honor, it was Tsunetomo who honed that sense as Nicholas reached for maturity.

In the autumn of 1971, when Nicholas was a young man, he entered Tsunetomo’s house just as he had twice weekly for eight years. But this time, Tsunetomo was not alone in the six-tatami room he used for tea and the business of life. A young woman was with him. She seemed not much more than a girl, really, and Nicholas was surprised to learn that she had just reached her majority.

His experience with women had been both stormy and ultimately disastrous. He was therefore understandably somewhat withdrawn around them, and these days rarely dated.

Tsunetomo turned when Nicholas entered the room. “Ah, there you are. Nicholas, I want you to meet the daughter of an old friend of mine. Her name is Koei.” He rose. “I wonder if you would make tea for her. Unfortunately, I have been called away for an hour or so. Do your best to entertain her in my absence.”

Koei was not an immediately striking woman, especially when one looked at each feature in turn. Her mouth was small and expressionless, her large eyes were withdrawn, and the angles of her face seemed too hard and unforgiving. Her skin was as pale as that of the legendary nineteenth-century geisha who never went out in sunlight without the protection of an umbrella.

As she knelt with her hands primly together in her lap, she gave the impression of frailty or, if one was not in the mood to be charitable, infirmity. Nicholas initially wondered whether she might be crippled.

Nicholas bent to his task of preparing the tea. While he did so, he was silent, as was customary, but when they drank, he spoke to her of the sheared azalea and the rocks of the garden, and how only light and the occasional bird were free to move about in it.

“I suppose this must be difficult for you,” Koei said as if she had not heard a word he had said. She did not meet his eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Being left alone with someone you don’t know and being told to entertain her.”

“Well...”

“Especially since Tsunetomo is not someone you can say no to.”

He smiled. “That’s right. But even if he were not
oyabun
of the Shikei clan, I would have done what he asked.” He cocked his head to one side. “It’s not difficult... or onerous.”

She was still bent over, her eyes lowered. When she spoke, she barely moved her lips, and her hair, bound tightly to her head, reflected the light from the garden as if it were a lantern. She possessed a kind of ethereal stillness he had only previously seen in accomplished
sensei,
but there was a subtle difference here he could not pinpoint.

“I do not want to be a burden on anyone.”

“What makes you think you would be?”

“Who am I?” She put her cup back on the table. “I am not pretty, or particularly clever. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to be in my company.”

“But surely that can’t be true. Obviously, Tsunetomo cares deeply for you.”

She raised her head, her expression a bit bewildered, as if she were a doe caught in the beam of a headlight. “Do you really think so?”

“Of course. He invited you here to his tea room. He doesn’t do that with just anyone.”

“He invited you here as well.” She seemed to become aware of him for the first time, like a snail emerging from its shell just after a predator has passed close by.

“Tsunetomo is like my second father.” Nicholas told her about Colonel Linnear and his death. She seemed oddly unmoved, as if he had told her a bird had flown through the garden.

She shivered, said to him, “I am uncomfortable here.”

Tsunetomo had not yet returned. Nicholas decided to take Koei home; she seemed so fragile he could not imagine her being able to manage it on her own. They passed through the layers of bodyguards surrounding the o
yabun’s
compound. Outside on the street, he discovered a limousine complete with driver and two burly Yakuza waiting for her. These were not Shikei clan members. So Koei was the daughter of another Yakuza
oyabun.
An old friend, Tsunetomo had said, leaving it at that.

She stood still as stone on the sidewalk, staring into the interior of the limo as if it were an open grave. “I don’t want to get in there.”

“I’ll take you home.”

For some time, she did not move or indicate that she had heard him. What he liked about her was that she obviously disapproved of what her father did. When Nicholas was with Tsunetomo and was a beneficiary of his great wit, generosity, and affection, it was impossible to dwell upon his profession. And, after all, some of the Colonel’s closest friends had been Yakuza
oyabun.
And yet deep inside him Nicholas heard a voice of warning, felt a hard lump of sin forming like a pearl within an oyster’s flesh. Most days, he ignored both and continued with his life.

Koei lived within a walled compound not too dissimilar to that of Tsunetomo. Her father, Tokino Kaeda, a saturnine man of prodigious size, was chief under
oyabun
of the Yamauchi clan, which, since the untimely death of Katsuodo Kozo, had been in turmoil. Katsuodo’s eldest son, Tomoo, who was in his early thirties, was still too inexperienced to assume the
oyabun’s
mantle. Thus, Koei’s father, as the senior of the under
oyabun,
had been elevated to head the clan until Tomoo came of age. Until then, part of his responsibilities was to teach Tomoo everything he knew.

Koei’s mother was a neat, small woman, nearly as delicate as her daughter. But she had not aged well. There were unmistakable lines in her face, her hair was gray, and her eyes were turned inward. As she served them tea, she spoke of her flowers—she taught ikebana, flower arranging—and how each season was marked by what lived and died. She seemed neither happy nor unhappy when Koei introduced Nicholas, merely vaguely surprised. But then, considering Koei’s innate shyness, perhaps that was to be expected. On the other hand, she never directed her words to either of them, but spoke as if into empty air, or to herself.

Tokino Kaeda had the look of a stern disciplinarian. He returned to the compound with one of his sons. He glanced at Nicholas and his daughter, handed his briefcase to his son, and told him to take it into his study. “Work until you get it right,” he said to the young man. “If you make another mistake, you’ll pay dearly.” He never looked at his son as he spoke, but gazed fixedly at the couple having tea. His wife retired into the kitchen, presumably to make him something to eat.

“What have we here?” Kaeda said, coming toward them.

Koei looked down into her empty teacup and introduced Nicholas. “He is a good friend of Akinaga-san’s,” she added hastily. “We met at Akinaga-san’s house.”

“You are not Yakuza,” Kaeda addressed Nicholas. “By the look of you, you’re not even Japanese.”

“I am half-oriental, half-Western. My father is Col. Denis Linnear.”

“I suppose saying that has gotten you into many a door that should have been closed to you.” The big man stabbed a quick glance at his daughter. “I am not Akinaga. It won’t do you any good here.”

Nicholas said nothing.

“I am cautious about who my daughter spends time with.”

“Father—”

“I understand,” Nicholas said, trying to head off a family argument. “Most
oyabun
feel the same way. It’s part of the territory.”

“I am not most
oyabun.
And my daughter is special.”

“I am only trying to be her friend.”

The big man grunted, then went into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Koei whispered. She seemed to be trembling.

“For what?”

“My father’s manners. He was brought up on the street. I am his only daughter. He lives with blood and death all the time and it...” She broke off, shuddering. “It frightens me. What if he should be killed? There is so much infighting among the Yamauchi, so much envy and jealousy. Someone could slip a
katana
through his ribs and puncture his lung or his heart. It would be terrible.”

There was a kind of quickness to her breathing, to the rhythm of her words, that could be mistaken for vibrancy. Intense fear could do that to a person, Nicholas knew. It could animate even the half-dead. He was startled by this thought. Is that how he thought of Koei?

In the weeks that followed, he saw Koei with increasing frequency, and in that time the only thing he could say for certain about her was that she was a complete enigma. He was also falling in love with her. Perhaps that love was not perfect, touched as it was by the intrigue of the unknown, but what young love is without the imperfections of lust and a strong sense of danger?

The truth about Koei was that the longer one spent with her the more beautiful she became. She was like a camellia that has opened its dew-spattered petals slowly to an insistent sun. He no longer saw each feature separately, but had become entranced by the whole. Now the angles of her face seemed neither hard nor unforgiving, but rather an exotic backdrop that perfectly set off her eyes and mouth.

And then there was the darkness of her enigma. It hung above her brows, shuddered in the shadows as they sat huddled together against the autumn wind sweeping through the streets, clearing rust and gold leaves from the maples. It was always with them, and it drove Nicholas farther down a path he should have abandoned long before.

Koei looked into the cloud-filled sky. “Have you ever wondered why life is as it is? Why there is so much pain and suffering? Why people can’t find peace?”

“I suppose it’s part of the human condition.” She was often inexplicably melancholy, like an old woman who has come to the end of her life and, looking back upon it, weeps bitter tears. “There would be no religion, otherwise. Besides, humans need to struggle. Without it, they’d wither and die.”

Koei hugged herself. With any other woman Nicholas would have put his arm around her, but not Koei. She did not like to be touched. In fact, their sitting so close was something of a novelty. Nicholas did not mind; he’d already had his fill of promiscuous women.

“When I look at the future I see nothing,” Koei said.

“You mean you have no profession? Surely, you’ll get married, have children, your own family.”

She shuddered, looked bleakly at the crisp leaves dragged along the ground by the wind. “I don’t think I could ever...” She shook her head from side to side. “I don’t even like being with men, except for you. I feel comfortable with you, Nicholas. I...” She seemed unable to continue. He could feel her breathing, the quickness of her pulse. “Put your arm around me.”

“Koei...”

“Please.”

He did as she asked. Her eyes closed. Her breasts rose and fell beneath her coat. Then tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes. They rolled down her cheeks, fell into her lap.

“Koei, what’s the matter?”

Her eyes opened, stared into his. “Oh, Nicholas, I like you near me.”

It went further, slowly, painfully. He remembered vividly the moment when their lips first met. It was a night when the moon was dark. The sky, swept clean of clouds, was drizzled with stars. An owl hooted from across open fields. On the outskirts of Tokyo, away from her house and his, they felt the giddy freedom of explorers setting foot on a new continent.

He was aware of her trembling flesh beneath his, and a tiny whimper caught in her throat. Then, she broke away, as if she could not bear their shared heat a moment longer. She took deep breaths as if she had just completed a marathon run.