The Nicholas Linnear Novels (161 page)

Instead he was obliged to release Koten’s arm prematurely to deliver an
atemi
, a percussive strike, with his left elbow. Heard the answering crack as ribs caved in beneath the blow.

Koten cried out, twisting his body up and away, at the same time slashing back toward Nicholas’ body with the
dai-katana.

Two attacks at once and Nicholas was able to handle only one at a time. The steel blade was his first priority. He made contact with Koten’s forearm, gliding his left hand along the flesh. At the point of the bone protrusion along the bottom side of the wrist, he broke inward, twisting with the fingers of his left hand. Because it was
aikido
, he was combining his own strength with that of Koten’s own momentum. It was power enough to snap the bone.

Now they were even in a way; Koten was obliged to drop the two-handed grip on the sword, his right arm hanging loose at his side as the broken joint began to swell.

But his second attack could not be stopped, and he used a shoulder throw to Nicholas’ right side. This time Nicholas cried out with the pain directed at his dislocated shoulder.

He rolled away, scrambling. He knew that he would be done for if he allowed Koten’s bulk to dominate him while he was off his feet. This was the danger with
sumai
, and it was enormous. Their territory was bringing their weight and strength to bear in an area close to the ground.

Nicholas was moving away when he felt the presence of the blade swooping after him. He leaped aside, directly into a powerful
tsuki
that forced all the air from his lungs. His head went down and he began to wheeze reflexively as his lungs tried desperately to regain the oxygen denied them.

A second vicious
tsuki
to his sternum rocked him backward awkwardly so that he sprawled on the floor. In an instant Koten was over him, his weight pressing oppressively on Nicholas’ chest, further denying him air. Nicholas began to cough, bile rising into his throat.

Koten brought long, gleaming
Iss-Hōgai
crosswise along Nicholas’ chest, drawing a horizontal line, peeling back his black cotton blouse.

“The next stroke will pierce skin, drawing blood,” Koten said, his voice silky. “Stupid
iteki
Protorov wouldn’t let me at you in Hokkaido. Lucky for you; unlucky for him. But now I have you. Unlucky for you; lucky for me.” Koten leaned forward, bringing more pressure down on Nicholas’ chest. “Next this
katana
of yours will slice through flesh. Finally, bone and organs.” He grinned fiercely. “Tell me, barbarian, how does it feel to know that you are going to die by your own
dai-katana
?”

Beginning the first cut, skin rupturing, peeling back like the rind of a fruit. Blood welling, dark and hot.

Nicholas’ mind was screaming for surcease. Reaching back for the “no mind” of the Void, he allowed the organism to work on its own. His left arm shot straight up, the fingers together and as rigid as any swordblade ever forged. Into the soft spot of flesh joining Koten’s chin with throat.

Nicholas struck as he had been taught
kenjutsu,
as he would have done a sword strike: with all his muscle, mind, and spirit. He thought not of Koten’s flesh but rather of what lay beyond it.

The
kite
struck through flesh and cartilage, ripping through Koten’s larynx, his mouth and sinuses.

The
sumō
’s eyes opened wide, more with shock than with fear. There was no time for anything else. He was dead before sensation could reach the brain and register.

Sirens screaming. Inside the ambulance, Lew Croaker lay on a stretcher unconscious, in mild shock. The paramedics had kept the makeshift tourniquet he had fashioned, afraid to remove it lest the bleeding begin again.

Nicholas sat next to him, one shoulder lower than the other. He had refused a shot and now sat staring at his stricken friend and his ruined left hand that was no more than a stump.

Across his lap lay
Iss-Hōgai
in its black lacquer scabbard. He gripped it so hard his left hand was white.
For life.
Its name seemed ironic to him now.
There’s magic in a Japanese forged blade,
he had once told Justine. But what use was magic that could do this?

At the hospital he climbed painfully down after Croaker had been wheeled inside the emergency room. Leaning the
dai-katana
against a pale green cinderblock wall, he dug a coin out of his pocket and dialed the hotel.

“Justine,” he said wearily when the connection was made, “come and get us. We’re at Toranomon Hospital.” He put his forehead against the cool wall. An intern was calling urgently to him, coming across the crowded corridor to take him away.

“Everything’s all right,” he said into the phone. “But I miss you.” He put down the phone and began to cry.

O
N A CLEAR DAY
in late spring, three weeks after the incident at the
dōjō
, Nicholas and Justine returned from jampacked Narita, where they had seen Lew Croaker off to America.

His arm was healing well. The operation, an attempt to sew back the hand that had been so cleanly sliced off, had been a failure. Too much time had elapsed. But otherwise the news had been good. No complications, no infections. The tourniquet he had fashioned from strips of cloth blouse had quite possibly saved his life, the surgeon had said. He was very encouraged about the prognosis.

Instead of heading back into the choking riot of Tokyo, Nicholas drove them northwest, skirting the city itself. In the backseat of the Nissan sedan
Iss-Hōgai
lay scabbarded and quiescent, its presence an ever-constant weight.

They went past the lake above which Sato had gotten married, where Akiko had first revealed herself, where Yukio had returned from the grave. Bright sunshine turned the water to gold and glass. Herons rose near the inlet to the stream that fed the lake, their white bodies bright and sharp against the deep translucent blue.

“What a beautiful place!” Justine exclaimed. Nicholas said nothing.

Just outside the gate to Itami’s property he stopped the car and they got out. He wanted to walk the rest of the way. It was as if the modern conveyance did not belong there; he felt strongly that he would defile the grounds by driving in.

Together they strolled down the flagstone path, Justine holding lightly to his left hand.

“How are your fingers today?” she asked.

“Better,” he said. It was what he always told her.

“Has feeling come back yet?”

“They’re better.” His voice was gentle. “Just better.”

Justine looked at him, wondering what it might take now to set his spirit at rest.

They passed a stone basin in the shape of an old coin. It was round, carved on its top with one character at each cardinal direction. Rock. Rain. Fire. Cloud.

Justine wanted to walk over to it and they went off the path. Water filled its square central well, a handmade bamboo ladle resting on the stone.

“I’m thirsty,” she said, and Nicholas took up the ladle. They both drank from it. The water was cold and sweet. For a moment the well was less than full, and as Nicholas bent to return the ladle to its resting place, he saw that there was an ideogram carved into its bottom.
Michi.
A path; also a journey.

Miraculously, the house and grounds had sustained no major damage in the aftermath of the earthquake. One outer wall at the southerly end of the house had collapsed, and several trees nearby had been split. But that was all.

Still, it was hardly the same. Without Itami and her legion of servants the place seemed deserted indeed. She had died sometime during the day and a half he had been at the hospital. The funeral had taken place two days later, when Nicholas was healed sufficiently to attend. She was buried in a plot quite near Cheong’s and the Colonel’s, as she had wished.

There had been no pain in her dying, the white-haired physician had told Nicholas. He had attended to Itami’s medical needs for more than thirty years. “One moment she was there,” he said. “The next she was gone.” Nicholas was at least grateful for that.

Justine watched him as he wandered the house. Something had come over him the moment he had alit from the car. She had felt it when she had taken his hand, when she had looked at his strong, handsome profile as they had walked the gravel path to the house.

In the small room where only
chano-yu
had been performed, he sank down onto his knees. He winced a bit as pain flicked through his shoulder. Then, by some process that was totally mysterious to Justine, he flicked it off, and his face cleared.

She knelt at his side, bending her head a bit to see more of the beautiful garden than the half-screen permitted. “Why is it like that?” she said. “There’s so much more to see out there.” But even when he explained it to her, she was not certain that she understood. If it’s there, she thought, why not take advantage of it?

“I’ve met with Nangi several times,” he said, his voice drifting. “He’s anxious that we stay, at least for a time. There’s so much to do.” He turned his head. “Would that be okay with you, a month or six weeks? Tokyo’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, watching him still. There was a wistful look on his face, and a calmness young boys have after a long day’s exertion, when, happily exhausted, they return home to a secure rest.

“Well, really, he’d like us to stay here permanently. I told him that that was out of the question.”

“Why did you do that?”

He looked at her quickly. “Why? It’s not possible. And you wouldn’t like it. You’d miss New York. And your new job.”

“I’d miss you more if we went back to the States and I saw you longing to be here. Besides, I think I could talk Rick into letting me start up a branch office in Tokyo. He’s fascinated by Japanese ad methods.”

“I don’t want to be here,” he said. “Besides, where would we live?”

She smiled at him. “Why not right here?”

“Oh, no,” he said immediately. “There are too many memories here. The past’s all around, hanging in every corner like a spider web.”

“I like it here,” she said, regaining her feet. “I’m sorry that you don’t.”

On the way back, they stopped by the side of the lake. The birds were trilling sweetly, and the air smelled very fresh.

Justine gently stroked the back of his injured hand. “Why won’t you smile, Nick. You’ve been brooding for weeks. It worries me to see you like this.”

Nicholas spread out his hands, palms up. “I look at these, Justine, and wonder what they’re for besides inflicting pain and death.”

She put one of her hands in his. “They’re also gentle hands, Nick. They caress me and I melt inside.”

He shook his head. “That’s not enough. I can’t help thinking what they’ve done. I don’t want to kill.” His voice trembled. “I don’t believe that I ever could have.”

“You never sought out death, Nick. You’ve always killed in self-defense.”

“Yet I sought out the training, first
bujutsu
, then
ninjutsu.
Why?” His eyes were pleading.

“What answer do you think will satisfy you?” she said softly.

“That’s just it,” he cried in anguish. “I don’t know!”

“I think that’s because there
is
no answer.”

His head went down and he said in a muffled voice, “Then I have no answer for how I maimed my friend.”

“Oh, Nick,” she said, pressing her lips against his cheek, “Lew doesn’t blame you; why blame yourself?”

“Because without me he’d still have two hands!”

“No, without you he’d be dead. And he’d never have found out who really murdered Angela Didion.” Nicholas had told her as much as he could during their long vigil during Croaker’s operation. “You know how obsessed he was over that.”

With a little cry Nicholas tore himself away from her loving embrace. He went around the car, reached into an open back window, and took the
dai-katana
up.

He kissed Justine hard on the lips. “I’ll be back in a little while. Wait for me; listen to the birds, watch the sunlight drift through the leaves.”

He went away from her up the small grassy knoll and down toward the lake. The water sparked and danced as ripples creased its surface. Water lapped softly at his feet, running into his socks. It felt good on his feet, and he waded in up to his thighs, unmindful of his clothes.

There was a pain like a stone in his throat.
Iss-Hōgai
had been the Colonel’s gift to him to commemorate his passage from child to man.

But, he thought now, there was another passage he must make that came after that one. He was ready for it now; prepared in every way he could imagine. Yet it would still hurt, he knew. Not as much as his hurt for his friend, but it would be bad enough.

“Thank you, father,” he mouthed as he lofted the
dai-katana
high over his head in his good hand and threw it with all his strength out into the middle of the lake.

It hit the surface point on, and there was no splash at all. Soundlessly, it disappeared into the depths.

For a long time after that Nicholas stood thigh deep in the cool water, feeling its life-giving lap surrounding his body. He breathed deeply of the air; heard birds calling behind him. He saw a pair of snowy herons lift off from the water’s surface and wheel into the white sky. He watched their flight until they, too, were lost to sight.

He recognized the lightness in his spirit when it came, like a fresh breeze after a humid summer’s day. It had been time to put away the lethal toys that had dominated his life for so long. It was time to get on with living.

He turned at last and waded the short distance to shore. Just beyond the small crest of the knoll, Justine waited for him. His heart expanded at the knowledge.

As he went toward her, he thought that she might be right after all, just as Nangi had been right. Japan was his home. Did he really want to leave it now?

For the first time he could feel the real force of the calmness he experienced in Itami’s
chano-yu
room. There his spirit was truly at rest. He could imagine
tsukimi
—moon viewing—there; celebrating New Year’s with traditional
mochi
rice cakes;
hanami
in April when the cherry blossoms fell rich and radiant, reminders of all that life was: exquisite and fleeting.
Sakura
were, after all, as mortal as men and women.