The Miko - 02 (23 page)

Images enwrapped him. He had been dreaming of Yukio. A marriage ceremony before the tomb of the Tokugawa, a black kite wheeling in the sky, gray plovers darting for cover. Yukio in her white kimono with the crimson edging, the two of them facing a Buddhist priest. Low chanting filling the boughs of the pines like snow.

“Nick, are you there?”

Taking her hand, the chanting growing, loudening, her head turning, the shock of a yellowed, drowned skull. Recoiling, stumbling backward, then seeing that it was Akiko…Akiko or Yukio. Which one?
Which one?

“Sorry, Justine. Sato’s marriage was yesterday. The reception went on until—”

“Never mind that,” she said. “I’ve got fantastic news.” It was only now that he heard the note of excitement like a line of tension feathering her voice.

“What is it?’

“I spoke to Rick Millar the day you left. Remember he’d been romancing me for that dream job? Well I took it! I was so excited I started Friday!”

Nicholas ran a hand through his hair. It was barely light out, dawn was not far away. Still he seemed enmeshed in the events of yesterday much as if a new day were not dawning; he seemed somehow trapped back at that heartstopping moment when Akiko had slowly lowered her fan. That face! He felt haunted, an outcast from time, doomed to relive that terrible moment over and over…until he found the answer.

“Nick, have you heard anything I’ve said?” There was an edge to her voice now, all the elation punctured out.

“I thought you wanted to work for yourself, Justine,” he said, his mind still far away. “I can’t see why you’d want to tie yourself—”

“Oh, Christ, Nick!” Her voice, sharpened by anger, broke in on him. It was all abruptly too much for her: his taking that loathsome job, his being so far away from her, her fearful loneliness through the long nights while the deathless ghost of Saigō returned to hover over her, and now his inattention, mirroring her father’s self-absorption when she needed him the most. And, oh, she needed Nicholas’ support now! “Congratulations. That’s what you’re supposed to say. I’m happy for you, Justine. Is that so hard to say?”

“Well, I
am
glad, but I thought—”

“Jesus, Nick.” It exploded inside her like a burst dam. “Go to hell, will you?”

Nothing at the other end but dead space, and when he tried to dial her number it was busy. Just as well, he thought sadly, slowly. I’m not in much condition to make a success of apologizing.

He lay back in bed, naked on top of the covers, and wondered in how many ways his memories were betraying him.

Miss Yoshida’s discreet knock on his hotel room door came at precisely nine
A.M.
She was right on time.

“Good morning, Linnear-san,” she said. “Are you ready to go?”

“
Hai.
But I confess I haven’t had time to purchase—”

Her arm came around from behind her back, producing a long, wrapped package. “I took the liberty of bringing you joss sticks. I hope you will not be offended.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I’m delighted.
Domo arigato,
Yoshida-san.”

It was Sunday. Greydon was up in Misawa visiting his son and Tomkin was in bed trying to shake the fever his flu was gifting him with. Now there was time for family obligations.

In the smoked-glass-windowed limousine, heading out of the city, Nicholas saw that she had changed her makeup. She could have passed for twenty, and he realized that he had no clear idea of her age.

She was very quiet, almost withdrawn. She sat on the other side of the backseat, deliberately leaving a space between them that might as well have been a wall.

Several times Nicholas was about to say something, then seeing the look of concentration on her face, thought better of it. At last Miss Yoshida settled her shoulders and turned to him. Her eyes were very large. She had chosen to wear traditional Japanese attire, and somehow the formal kimono,
obi
, and
geta
served to further transform her, peeling back the years.

“Linnear-san,” she began, then, apparently overcome, closed her mouth. He saw her take a deep breath, as if screwing up her courage, in preparation to begin again.

“Linnear-san, please forgive what I am about to say, but it is disturbing to me that you use
anata
when you speak to me. I entreat you to use what is proper,
omae.
”

Nicholas considered this. What she meant was that no matter how far the emancipation of women had come in Japan—and there was certainly a good degree of lip service, at least, paid to this concession to the changing ways of the modern world—women and men still used different forms when speaking. In effect, men ordered when they spoke, women pleaded.

Anata
and
omae
meant the same thing,
you.
Men used
omae
when speaking to those on their level or below. Naturally women fell into that category. Women always used
anata,
the more polite form, when speaking to men. If they were ever allowed to use the less polite form it was invariably the
omae-san
version.

And no matter what anyone said, Nicholas knew, this divergence engendered in women a certain subservient way of thinking.

“It would make me happy, Yoshida-san,” he said now, “if we were to both use the same form. Can you deny that you as well as I deserve the same politeness in conversation?”

Miss Yoshida’s head was down, her liquid eyes in her lap. The only outward sign of her agitation was the constant twisting of her fingers.

“I beg you, Linnear-san, to reconsider. If you ask this of me I cannot of course refuse. But consider the ramifications. How could I ever explain such an egregious social breach to Sato-san.”

“This isn’t the feudal past, Yoshida-san,” Nicholas said as gently as he could. “Surely Sato-san is enlightened enough to understand.”

Her head came up and he saw the tiny sparks that might have been incipient tears at the outside edges of her eyes. “When I joined Sato Petrochemicals, Linnear-san, I was the Office Lady. That was my title, no matter my functions. One of the requirements for Office Lady was that I possess
yoshitanrei
.”

“A beautiful appearance? But that was ten years ago. These days I cannot imagine that the same holds true.”

“As you say, Linnear-san,” she said softly, bobbing her head in obvious acquiescence. She could not have made her point more forcefully.

“All right,” Nicholas said, after a time. “We’ll settle on a compromise. The
anata
form will just be between us, when we are alone together. No one need hear this blasphemy but us.”

A small smile curled at Miss Yoshida’s lips and her head bobbed again. “
Hai.
I accept.”

After a time, her head turned away, her gaze stretching out to encompass the dimly flowing countryside beyond them. “You are very kind.” Her whispered voice was very soft.

Miss Yoshida was a barely seen stick figure in the misty distance.

Nicholas turned and confronted the gravestones of his parents. So many memories, so many terrible deaths. The quick, hard jerk of his mother’s shoulders then the short
seppuku
sword did its work. And Itami, Cheong’s sister-in-law, dutifully wielding the
katana
that would end his mother’s pain forever.

“She was a child of honor,” Itami had told him.

Nicholas knelt and began to light the joss sticks, but no prayer came to his mind. He thought he would remember it all against his will and for no discernable purpose. Instead, he was overwhelmed by another set of memories.

As a teenager he walked the steep forested hillside of Yoshino, beloved of all the Tenshin Shoden Katori
ruy
’s
jonin.
There was, he had come to understand, a mystical connection between this land and the men of arcane profession who had made it their home.

Blue mist drifted off the cypress and cryptomeria like veils, the colors of dawn shading in pastels of green, blue, pink, and white like chrysanthemum blossoms dissolving in the distance. A sharp-eyed thrush followed them in intervals, the white blobs on its wingtips flashing now and again like the swift opening and closing of a fan as it flitted from tree to tree, twittering at them.

Nicholas and Akutagawa-san strode side by side, the one in the simple black
gi
of the student, the other the pearlescent gray cotton kimono edged in earth brown of the
jonin sensei.
At their backs, the stone walls and green tiled roofs of the Tenshin Shoden Katori
ryu
sprang into light as the slowly rising sun broke the plane of the horizon.

Oblique strokes of new sunlight broke through the branches, picking out pinecones and brown needles with the delicacy of a master’s brushstroke.

Akutagawa-san was still in shadow when he said, “The mistake we all make before we enter here is the notion of civilization. History, ethics, the very concept of law itself depend for their existence on this one crucial underpinning.”

Akutagawa-san’s long, melancholy face with its wide lips, rather sharp nose, and Mandarinesque eyes, was even more serious than usual. Among the students—who, in the tradition of students the world over, had created nicknames for their
sensei
in order to regain at least a semblance of the control that the
ryu
took from them—he was known as “the smileless man.” Perhaps it was not so unusual then for these two to have recognized in one another an aspect of themselves and be thus drawn together.

Both in their own way were outcasts in a
ryu
of outcasts, for the legend of the ninja had it that they had evolved from the
hinin
, the basest level of Japanese society. And, as in many levels of Japanese society, legend often became history. Whether or not those origins were true now seemed irrelevant, since existing ninja had taken that legend and turned it to their advantage, using it to further their mystique among people already steeped in mysticism.

Akutagawa-san was half Chinese, it was rumored among the boys, the initiates always curious about why he was allowed to be a part of such a secret society within a society. Their question was answered when they found out the origins of
aka-i-ninjutsu
were to be found in China.

“The fact is,” Nicholas remembered Akutagawa-san saying, emerging into the light, “there is no such thing as civilization. It is a concept the Chinese confected—or, if you prefer the Western mode, the Greeks—simply in order to give a certain moral credence to their attempts at dominion over the other peoples of the world.”

Nicholas shook his head. “I don’t understand. What about all the minute aspects of Japanese life that set us apart from everyone else: the complexity of the tea ceremony, the arts of
ukiyo-e
,
ikebana
,
haiku
, the concepts of honor, filial duty,
bushido
,
giri.
All the things we are.”

Akutagawa-san looked in that young open face and sighed. He had had a son once who had died in Manchuria at the hands of the Russians. Every year he made a pilgrimage to China to be closer. To what or to whom he had never been sure. But now he thought he knew.

“What you speak of, Nicholas…all these things are an accretion of a
culture.
They have no relation to the word
civilization
save what today’s conditioning superimposes on them.”

They moved out along the hillside, the thrush keeping a stuttering pace, expecting perhaps that his breakfast might be strewn in the wake of these mighty shadows.

“If a society were truly civilized,” Akutagawa-san continued, “there would be no need for the
samurai
; and it would surely not abide warriors such as we. There would simply be no need, do you see? But the concept of civilization is like that of Communism. Pure in the mind, it nevertheless cannot exist in reality. It is too absolute a concept for man. Like the theory of relativity it is best thought of, food for contemplation, for a
civilized
man would harbor no warlike tendencies. He would not spy on another, he would not be an adulterer, a slanderer, a destroyer.”

Akutagawa-san put his hand on Nicholas’ arm to stop him. Together they stared out at the partially hidden valley, the tops of trees protruding through the sinuously winding mist like the stones on a
Go
board.

“For most people, Nicholas, this is what life consists of: the clear and the hidden, the knowable and the arcane. But for us here, it is different. When we set the concept of civilization aside, we free ourselves.

“And in plunging into the mist, we learn to ride the wind, to walk on water, to hide where there is no hiding place, to see where there is no light and hear when our ears are bound. You will learn that one breath may sustain you for hours, and you will learn how to deal with your enemies.

“None of this is to be taken lightly. You understand this, I know. Yet it must be repeated. For with the knowledge of how to take life comes the responsibility of a god. Control is the essence of it all. Without it there is only chaos, and given a chance, that kind of malignant anarchy will voraciously engulf our culture…all culture.”

Nicholas was silent, his body still and attuned in his attempt to understand all that Akutagawa-san was saying. Much of it seemed beyond his ken for the moment, larger than life and thus unknowable. But he stored it all in his memory, understanding that if he showed patience all would be made clear to him.

Akutagawa-san stared out at the ancient countryside, inhaling its sharp, clean odors as if they were the mingled perfumes of the country’s most accomplished courtesans.

“What you must understand now—now before it is too late, while you still have time to make the decision—is that
aka-i-ninjutsu
is just one form of an entire discipline. And as in all such disciplines, there are the negative aspects.” His head turned and his black stone eyes gripped Nicholas’. “In donning our mantle you may also become a target for these negative…forces.

“One of the reasons I am here is that I am
sennin
in a number of these. Have you heard of
Kuji-kiri
, the nine-hands cutting?”