The Nicholas Linnear Novels (205 page)

Branding was horrified. “It’s sick,” he said. “Why didn’t you escape?”

“It was impossible while he was with me,” Shisei said. “And when he was gone, he chained me up.”

“But surely you must have tried to get away.”

Shisei let out a breath, and he felt her beginning to tremble. “You still don’t understand, Cook. Without him I had nothing. I would have been lost. I might have died.”

“But, my God, Shisei, how he treated you! How you must hate him!”

“How easy life must be for you, Cook,” she said sadly. “Everything is either pure or perverted.”

“Well, there’s no mistaking what went on between you and the tattoo artist.” His voice was righteous, filled with moral outrage.

“But that’s the point, you have no idea what went on between us. Zasso saw me in the street and recognized in me a perfection he had been seeking all his life.”

“You’re wrong,” Branding said. “He thought he could
make
you perfect. But perfection is God’s province, not man’s. The fact is, this man needed you. What he did to you was a consequence of his own inner perversion, nothing more. He did to you what his own demons forced him to do.”

Shisei, looking into Branding’s face, was reminded of the quote from Nietzsche she had discovered in Douglas Howe’s library. “All idealism is falsehood in the face of necessity.” And for the first time she came face to face with doubt, the lurker in the shadows, the enemy.

What if Branding was right? she asked herself. What if her whole life was a facade of that perversion, if her karma were not in fact her own, but one she had been duped into accepting? A chill raced through her. It would mean that her whole life was a lie. She used her discipline, turned her mind away, unable to face the horrific possibility.

“How does this story end?” Branding asked her.

She put her face into the hollow of his shoulder. “Cook,” she whispered, “I want you in me. Now.” When she felt him hesitate, she said, “I need to know that you still love me, that you’ll love me when all this has been said, when you know what I have been and what I am.”

She felt his powerful body fit against hers, covering the shadows that pooled in the dells of her flesh. She was wet, and he entered her easily. The pleasure began to pool in her lower belly, and she gasped. She kissed his shoulder, shuddering. Then she said, “When Zasso ‘saved’ me from degradation, when he judged me purified, ready, he said to me, ‘I have performed the
matsuri.
Now it is time to transform you into the Dread Female of Heaven, to make you into that which pleases the gods.’

“He lay me down on a straw pallet and began his masterpiece. He did not chain me up after that. He did not have to. And each day, he would work on my back, giving painful birth to the giant spider.

“When, after two years, he was finished, Zasso believed that he had transformed me, that the soul of the spider had sunk into me as his inks had, that he had conferred on me a kind of godhood, or”—she shuddered—“something far more frightening. Zasso said to me, ‘Now you may stay or go, it makes no difference to me. You are no longer human. You are a weapon. The Dread Female of Heaven, the demon woman who destroys all men she entangles in her web.’”

There was silence for a time. Then Shisei, feeling him slipping out of her, clutched Branding. “Don’t leave me, Cook! Oh, please!”

“Is this what you believe, that you are a demon woman?”

“Dear God, if you leave me now I’ll die!”

Branding, attuned as he was to her, felt the fear emanating from her in waves. “I want to know if you believe this nonsense.” He seemed angry.

Shisei was bewildered. “It’s not nonsense. It’s Shintoism.”

“No,” Branding said firmly. “It’s the product of one man’s sick mind, that’s all.”

To contemplate such a thing, Shisei knew, was to look into an abyss beyond understanding. It was to contemplate the thought that her life was a hideous parody, warped beyond all comprehension. The product, yes, of one man’s mind.

“Cook,” she gasped suddenly, “I want to be with you tonight. I cannot stand the thought of being alone. Take me to the dinner with you.”

Branding looked at her. He had been certain that knowing the origin of the spider tattoo would unlock for him the mysteries of this fascinating, enigmatic woman. But now he became aware of the many layers of mystery that overlaid Shisei’s personality. Perhaps he would never be able to understand her fully, but that knowledge only drew him on, a seductive siren’s song as ancient, as irresistible, as the one that had lured Odysseus.

“Oh, God, Cook!” Shisei was crying.

Nicholas thought, I have dreamed it all: my rescue, the warm house, Kansatsu-san. Panic gripped him in its icy fist and he shuddered. A blast of wind hit him full on and his rear foot slipped off the rock groove. He could feel his position deteriorating. If he fell off the Black Gendarme, he had no way of knowing how far he would drop. Mist occluded his vision. He could not see Kansatsu’s stone house built into the side of the rock. There was no trace of Kansatsu himself, and Nicholas was frightened that the bone-chilling cold had combined with his deteriorating condition to make him delirious. In that case, there was no Kansatsu, no warm house on the mountainside that would provide him with shelter, no salvation from
Shiro Ninja.

Falling, endlessly falling…

Desperately he reached up, feeling with his fingertips for purchase, but the rock had turned to glass. He encountered only layers of black ice which, indifferent to his plight, shrugged off his grip.

He could not see: snow, lying long in the dark hollows of the Black Gendarme, swirled up by the wind, blinding him. He could not hear: the howling of the wind in the crags was incessant. He could not feel: the cold penetrated his gloves, numbing his fingertips. In the thin frigid air he could smell nothing, not even himself or the matted fur collar of his parka. He opened his mouth, put his lips against the stone, trying to taste the minerals which would tell him where the Black Gendarme was most solid, where there were dangerous fissures that might crack beneath his weight. He sucked on the dark granite but he could taste nothing. Now, with
Shiro Ninja
blocking his sixth sense, he was truly defenseless.

He clung to the rock face like a fly on a windowpane, with a blind tenacity that came solely from instinct. But the wind was increasing in intensity, its gusts raging, scouring all in its path. His foot slipped again and he almost pitched headfirst into the abyss. It was at precisely that instant, with the sensation of being jerked awake, that Nicholas knew that he was not ready to give up.

I am strong, he thought. I am weak. It isn’t that the two are indistinguishable, it is that they don’t matter. And then he understood what Kansatsu-san had said about life and death. They did not matter.

This is what mattered: the Darkness.

His heart hammering painfully in his chest, Nicholas looked into the Void. He was so far up he could not see the base of me Black Gendarme. He was terrified, but he knew that this was what he had to do. The Path lay in only one direction. Or, all directions were the same. They led to this terrifying place. The Black Gendarme. They led to this moment in time.

Then the wind, howling in fury, tore him free from his tenuous grip upon the rock. In a sense, perhaps, he let go. He would never know.

Into the abyss he fell. Falling, endlessly falling…

Justine was on her way to church, backing her car out of the long driveway to her house, when she almost ran right into a man on a bicycle. He had appeared out of nowhere, emerging, it seemed, from the thickets lining the road.

She braked hard as, startled, he swerved into a stand of cryptomeria. He lost his balance, was flipped head over heels into the underbrush.

Justine said “Oh, God” under her breath, put on the parking brake and jerked open the car door. She ran to where the cyclist was lying, knelt beside him. She could see that he was conscious, said a little prayer for that.

“Are you all right?” she said in passable Japanese.

The cyclist nodded, immediately groaned, rubbed the back of his head. He got up slowly, and Justine rose beside him. He was a relatively young man, handsome, smooth-skinned, with the kind of face Justine had seen many times on Japanese TV and posters. There was something slightly feminine about the fullness of his lips, the flare of his delicate nostrils, but this merely made him seem gentle, in need of help. He wore black shorts, a loose short-sleeved white shirt, American sneakers.

He bent to pick up his bicycle, gave another little groan, and Justine instinctively reached out to steady him. He looked at her sharply and she dropped her hand, abruptly remembering the Japanese prohibition against members of the opposite sex touching in public.

She wondered what she should do. Obviously, the man was shaken up—at the very least—and it was her fault. She was at once wary and eager to do the right thing, to not walk away from an incident she had caused. Then she understood that she was thinking like an American. Here in Japan there was so little crime that one did not worry about strolling around any area of Tokyo at night. Tokyo was perhaps the safest city in the world, and the Japanese thing to do, of course, was to offer the cyclist rest and some tea. It was the polite, the civilized way to act.

“I-I’m sorry,” she said, flustered. “Would you like to come up to the house for some tea? I live right here.”

“Thank you, no,” the cyclist said. “I’m all right.”

The denial was also the Japanese way. The polite, the civilized way to act.

“It would be no trouble at all,” Justine said. “In fact, it would make me feel a good deal better. Don’t you think we should make sure you aren’t really injured?”

He turned to her, nodded somewhat stiffly. “How can I refuse such hospitality?”

He followed her at a sedate pace up the driveway.

“Why don’t you make yourself comfortable on the porch,” Justine said. “I’ll bring the tea out.”

“I guess I am a bit more bruised that I thought,” the cyclist said. “Perhaps there are some pillows inside I could use.”

Justine hesitated only a moment. “Of course. It will be more comfortable for you inside.”

They removed their footwear in the small stone-paved entryway, and Justine placed them within the bamboo cabinet against the wall. She led them into the living room.

The cyclist said nothing until the tea had been brewed, served, and they had both finished a cup. As Justine was pouring more tea, he said, “You have a beautiful home.”

“Oh, but it isn’t much,” Justine said in ritual response. “Are you feeling better?”

“Much better, thank you,” he said.

“I wonder if you speak English. It is easier for me.”

“But of course.” This elicited a smile from him. He really was quite handsome, quite striking. “It would be my pleasure, Missus—”

“Oh, I forgot,” Justine said. “My name is—” She had to stop herself from giving him her Christian name. That would have been most impolite. “Mrs. Linnear.”

“I am Mr. Omukae,” Senjin said. “I think we found the worst possible way to meet, don’t you?”

Justine laughed, grateful that he could speak lightly of her almost hitting him with the car. “I’m afraid so. I can’t think why I didn’t see you until the last minute.”

“The driveway bends and so does the road,” Senjin said diplomatically. “It is difficult to see traffic coming from that direction. If I may make a suggestion…”

“Yes, of course.”

“A mirror hung on that large cryptomeria would show you enough of the road to give you warning.”

“Why, that’s a wonderful idea,” Justine said. “Thank you, Mr. Omukae.”

“It is my pleasure,” he said around his teacup. He looked around. “This is a large house for one person,” he said.

“Oh, I don’t live alone,” Justine said. “My husband and I live here.”

Senjin sipped his tea. “What does your husband do, Mrs. Linnear?”

“He runs my father’s company. It’s diversified: computer-chip manufacture, steel, textiles. My husband’s taken it a step further, into advanced computer research.” She cocked her head. “And what’s your line of work, Mr. Omukae?”

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s nothing so innovative or interesting as your husband’s,” Senjin said. “I’m a bureaucrat. I work at the Industrial Location and Environmental Protection Bureau, in the safety section.”

“That sounds interesting enough,” Justine said.

He gave her an odd smile. “Actually, it’s quite dull.”

When he got up, she said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, Mr. Omukae, you certainly don’t look like a bureaucrat. My husband studies the martial arts, and your body is much like his. It looks like a well-tuned instrument.”

He turned, gave her a little bow. “Since you are Western I can assume that is a compliment,” he said. “Cycling is a hobby almost anyone can benefit from. But to me it is more. It is a sport; an obsession, perhaps, one could uncharitably say. Did I say that right? I am often not certain of my English.”

“You said it better than most Americans would have.”

“Thank you, although I’m sure you are merely being polite.” That smile came again. “My obsession keeps me fit in mind as well as in body. I find that my obsession is akin to meditation: it is in constant motion, providing a cleansing of the spirit.”

“The way you put it,” Justine said, “I could use an obsession like that. Too much time alone with nothing to do, nowhere to go, breeds its own kind of inertia, which seems at times impossible to break.”

Senjin nodded. “If I were your husband I would not leave you alone so often.”

“His…work is often difficult, demanding,” Justine said, abruptly annoyed at having to defend Nicholas to a stranger. Didn’t Japanese have better manners?

“Of course,” Senjin said. “That is most understandable. Life is never perfect. One must often make sacrifices.” He shrugged. “This is natural; it is to be expected.”

Justine, close to him, was suddenly curious. “What is it, I wonder, that I see behind your eyes?” She was stunned that she had spoken in such an intimate way to a virtual stranger. What, she wondered, had made her do that?