The Miko - 02 (31 page)

Now he could. Tomkin’s death had shown him the way, and for that he would be eternally grateful to the man. But he knew as well that he had felt far more than hatred toward Tomkin. He had never truly believed him the monster his daughters claimed he was. Always ruthless, sometimes cruel, he could nevertheless display an astonishingly profound love for his children as well as life. Nicholas felt the sorrow bubbling upward, released at last from the iron restraints of his Eastern heritage.

For while he grieved for Raphael Tomkin, he grieved anew for his father as well. Tears fell like stones from his eyes, neatly aligned pebbles from his own inner Zen garden that had forever been diminished by human loss.

After a time, Nicholas rose. His face was calm, composed, and his mind felt clear, free of the ropy restraints of a half hour before. He went back to where Greydon was standing patiently holding the documents, and took them from him. He read the letter all over again, fascinated anew by Tomkin’s insight; he had obviously understood far more than his ugly American exterior had indicated.

When Nicholas got to the paragraph about Angela Didion, he paused. Was Croaker right or wasn’t he? he wondered. How could it be both? Shock after shock. Wheels within wheels. The letter’s overall tone was curiously Oriental in its acute introspection, its hints at deeper developments.

For a long time Nicholas stared at the letter. He had long ago ceased to read. His eyes might even have seemed blank to an uninitiated observer. But the fact was he had begun to look beyond the words, to find the Void, and, in that peculiar form of meditation open only to the greatest of the world’s warriors of the East, the answer to perhaps the largest change in his life.

Abruptly he looked up, and when his eyes made contact with Greydon’s they were focused and sharp. He carefully folded the letter and put it away in his inside jacket pocket. “What happens if I don’t sign?” he said quietly.

“It’s all in the will,” Greydon said. “I cannot tell you the details; that would violate my trust. I am authorized to say only that the board of directors will decide on the new president.”

“But who will it be?” Nicholas asked. “Will he be a good man? Will he be in favor of this merger? Will he manage the company as Tomkin wanted?”

Greydon smiled thinly. “What would you have me say, Mr. Linnear? Obviously Mr. Tomkin wanted you to make your decision without such knowledge.” He looked at Nicholas for a moment. “However, just by your asking those questions I believe you have already come to a decision.” He produced a fountain pen and uncapped it. Its gold nib shone in the light like a sword-blade.

“Tomkin said there was something I must do…if I sign. You know what it is.”

Greydon nodded. “That’s correct. As the new president of Tomkin Industries you are required to seek an interview with a man in Washington. His name is C. Gordon Minck. I am in possession of his private number.”

“Who is he?”

“I have no idea.” The pen was waiting, hanging in the air. Nicholas took it, noting its weight and balance. He put the codicil down on Sato’s desk and wrote his name on the designated line.

Greydon nodded his head. “Good.” He took the codicil, waved it about until the ink dried, then folded it away. “You will receive a copy after the will is read.” He stuck out his hand. “Good luck, Mr. Linnear.” He ducked his head. “Now it’s time I notified the company and began to see to funeral arrangements.”

“No,” Nicholas said, “I’ll do that. And, Greydon, please wait until I speak to his daughters before informing the office.”

“Of course, Mr. Linnear. As you wish.” He left the room.

Nicholas looked across the expanse of Sato’s office. The others were discreetly not looking at him.

He went across to them and said, “Sato-san, Nangi-san, Ishii-san,” bowing formally, “I have been named to succeed Tomkin. His company is now mine.” He lifted his eyes to see their reaction, but they were being very careful and circumspect. Too much had already happened today.

Sato spoke first. “Congratulations, Linnear-san. I am so sorry that your good fortune comes through these tragic circumstances.”

“Thank you. Your concern is greatly appreciated.”

Ishii also expressed his concern in a manner that managed to be sincere without being inquisitive. Nangi said nothing. That was all right. Now it was time to forge ahead. “Unfortunately, I will be forced to return to the States immediately to see to the last rites. Our discussions must be postponed.” They bowed all around.

“
Karma
,” Sato said.

“But I have no wish to forestall our merger,” Nicholas said. “And I will be returning as soon as is proper. But toward that end, I find I must leave with you some information, bizarre though it may seem to you.” Now he had their undivided attention. Good, he thought. Here goes.

“I had decided not to bring it up now because I felt some more evidence was needed. I thought I could be of some help in this. Now, however, circumstances dictate otherwise. Because I am leaving, because I hold sacred our mutual pact and do not want anything to disrupt it, I must now answer Nangi-san’s question fully.

“He asked if I had any knowledge of death linked to the
Wu-Shing.
I said truthfully that I had never seen such a thing. And yet I have heard of it.”

“In what circumstance?” Sato asked. “What happened to Kagami-san, truly? We must know.”

And Nicholas told them the ancient legend he had recounted to Tomkin. Quiet electricity built itself in the air.

“I think it’s time for all of us to go,” Nangi said from out of the silence.

Uniformed attendants, called by the doctor, had arrived, and now they began to wrap Raphael Tomkin in silver-gray plastic swaddling.

Ishii left. Then Sato and the doctor filed past but Nangi, his face as pale as a geisha’s white rice-powdered visage, held back, his dark eyes locked on Nicholas’ face.

They stood side by side. “In three days,” Nangi said, “the cherry blossom springs to life, blooming like a mystic cloud, heaven come to earth for a brief moment. In its opening we find joy; in its fading we console ourselves with the richness of memories.

“Is that not the way of all life?”

With a dry crinkle, the silver-gray plastic enwrapped Raphael Tomkin’s face in its code of eternal silence.

W
HEN TANZAN NANGI RETURNED
from the consequences of war, released from the military hospital in which he had recovered while his country slowly lost the initiative in its desperate struggle against the West, he tried to go home.

He was set free of his antiseptic bed on March 11, 1945, almost a year to the day since he had been rescued from his makeshift raft. The hospital had claimed him, the surgeon’s scalpel probing his flesh time and time again in attempts to repair the nerve and muscle damage done to him. Sight in his damaged eye was totally gone and there was nothing they could do but sew the lids in place to stop the interminable tic that had plagued him.

With his legs it was another matter entirely. Three lengthy operations returned partial use of his limbs to him. He would not, as the doctors had at first feared, be subjected to the indignity of amputation. But, they told him, he would have to learn to walk all over again, and it would be a slow, painful process. Nangi did not care. He was grateful to the God Jesus to whom he had prayed in his darkness and who had seen fit to preserve his life.

Travel in those times was difficult for a civilian, even a hero of the war. If you did not wear a uniform, if you were not on your way to a mobilization center, you were largely ignored. Japan, in dire straits, had more on its mind. The bureaucratic war machine’s hegemony over the country was stronger than ever.

But the spirit of togetherness beneath the billowing clouds of war was everywhere and Nangi found a ride into Tokyo in a farmer’s broken-down truck, rattling over bumps and holes in the roads, stopped seemingly at every turn to allow the military traffic its right of way.

As it turned out, he needn’t have bothered. The sky was black over Tokyo, a dense, acrid pall in no way related to the rain clouds higher up. Choking ash hung in the air, coating face and hands, lining the mouth and nostrils with grit.

Nangi stood shakily up in the back of the trembling truck as they rolled into the city. It seemed as if there was nothing left. Tokyo had been devastated. The high winds made it difficult to see clearly, and he was obliged to blink constantly to keep his eye free of ash. Not whole buildings, not whole blocks, but entire sections of the city had been incinerated. Where Nangi’s family’s house had stood there were now squads of sweepers and shovelers clearing their way through the lumps of blackened structures. No one was left alive, he was told. The intense heat of the igniting napalm combined with the high winds—the same winds that had fanned the terrible Tokyo fire of 1920—to roast fully half the city.

There was nowhere left to go but to Kyoto. Nangi had not forgotten the promise he had made to Gōtarō to see to his younger brother, Seiichi.

The ancient capital had been spared much of the devastation that had turned Tokyo into a smoldering blackened skeleton, but food was still scarce and starvation was rampant. Nangi had acquired a small loaf of black bread, a pot of jam, a bit of butter, and six
daikon
—white radishes. These he brought to the Sato house as a gift against the disruption and inconvenience of his visit.

He found only an old woman at home, a straight-backed, stiff-lipped creature with iron gray hair pulled back flat to her skull and the eyes of an inquisitive child behind a face full of wrinkles.

“Hai?”
The interrogative was somewhat defensive and Nangi recalled what Gōtarō had said about his grandmother. There had been a great deal of suffering and death in this family, and he could not bring himself to be the bearer of more bad tidings. With the current chaos of the war it was all too likely that news of the death of her grandson would not have reached her.

He bowed politely and, handing her the packet of food, told her that he had served alongside Gōtarō and that he sent his best respects to her.

She sniffed, her nose lifted slightly, and said, “Gōtarō-chan never paid me any respect while he was living here.” But clearly she was pleased with this message and, bowing, she backed away from the doorway to allow him entrance.

It was still difficult for Nangi to negotiate, and she turned away in such a natural and graceful way he could never be certain that she had done it on purpose to avoid him embarrassment.

Obā-chama—for Nangi would know her only as others did, as “Grandma”—went to make him tea, a signal honor in those drear days without hope. They sat on opposite sides of the room with the break in the
tatami
between them as was customary between host and guest,
sensei
and pupil, sipping weak tea, leaves that had obviously been used more than once.

Obā-chama spoke and Nangi listened, at times answering her sharp perceptive questions as best he could, fabricating a skein of lies when it came to Gōtarō’s whereabouts.

“The war has destroyed this family,” she said, sighing, “just as it is destroying this country. My son-in-law is buried; my daughter in a hospital from which she will never leave. Japan will never be the same no matter what the Americans do to us.” Her eyes were hard and glittery and Nangi found the idea of being her enemy frightening. “But it is not the Americans I fear.” She sighed again and, shaking her head from side to side, took a delicate sip of her tea.

Just when he believed she had lost her train of thought, she began again, leading him slowly into the rhythm of her life. “The Russians have joined the war.” The words had the pronouncement of a death sentence. “They waited until the last moment, until the outcome was clear even to their slow, bearlike brains. Now they have jumped in with their swords rattling and they will want a piece of us, too.” Her white hands, with skin as translucent as porcelain, gripped the tiny handleless cups with unnatural tension.

“Do you see these cups, my grandson’s friend?” Nangi dutifully looked; they were beautiful, impossibly thin so that light falling through the window penetrated from outside in, turning the material they were made of milky and glowing. Nangi nodded his head.

“They are quite magnificent.”

Obā-chama sniffed again. “They were a recent gift. From a distant relative of mine. It was all that was left of his family. He stopped here on his way out of Tokyo to the countryside. He had become
sokaijin.*
I urged him to stay here, but the bombing of Tokyo had been too much for him and he could no longer tolerate being within a city’s limits. Any city. Poor thing, he did not even understand the nature of his flight, but at least he was smiling.

“‘Obā-chama,’ he said, ‘the fire raids on Tokyo have forced me to move four times in the past three months, first out of my house, which is no more, then from temporary shelter to temporary shelter. With each move my priceless collection of T’ang Dynasty antiques was diminished. Fire took some of the scrolls here, a stumble on the street destroyed a vase there.’ He handed me these cups. ‘Here, Obā-chama, I see that your life is still calm. Please take these. They are the last of my collection. Now I have been freed to start my life anew without dragging my collection behind me like a burdensome hump. The war has made me appreciate other things in life.’”

Obā-chama turned the cup in the light using only her thumb and index finger. “Imagine! It is the T’ang Dynasty I hold in my hand!”

Nangi heard the awe in her voice and was not surprised. He looked anew at his own cup, marveling at its artistry and age. He too felt the common appreciation most Japanese had for this most revered of all the Chinese dynasties.

Obā-chama carefully put down the antique and closed her eyes for a moment. “But of what use is talk of art and antiquity now? The Russians will soon arrive along with the Americans, and then we will truly be undone.” Beneath the despair Nangi heard the deep and abiding undercurrent of rage and fear directed at the Soviets. He felt a violent urge to reach out across the intervening space that tradition and courtesy dictated must forever remain and touch her, assure her that everything would be all right. But he could not. The words stuck in his throat like needles in the knowledge that everything would
not
be all right for them.