by Steve Cash
At the far end of the great room we walked through wide double doors into the kitchen area, then beyond and through a smaller door into Koki’s apartment. The room stank of stale tobacco and the scent of sardines. He pushed back a curtain in the corner of the room and opened a heavy wooden door reinforced with three iron straps. The door led to a dark stone passageway. There was a flimsy string of electric lights along the wall, but the electricity was out. I found another candle in the room and lit it, using Koki’s candle. He walked ahead of me. The air in the passage became cooler and slightly damp. We took two right turns and passed by three doors, all reinforced in the same manner. At the fourth door, Koki came to a halt. The door was no different from the others except for a long iron key hanging from the wall next to the door. Koki spun around and grinned. “Hello, mister. Yes.”
“Yes,” I said, grinning back, “yes, Koki, yes!” I handed Goya’s skull over to him and said, “Hold this.” Koki’s mouth dropped open, but he nodded his head and began rocking back and forth, holding his candle high in one hand and Goya tight against his chest with the other. I slipped the ancient key off the hook and inserted it in the lock, then turned it once to the right and heard the click. I pushed on the heavy wooden door. The hinges groaned and creaked from the weight. I held up my candle and took a step inside. I could see a Persian rug beneath my feet, but that was all. Then I heard a match being struck and a small bloom of flame flared in the darkness. In its light I saw her sitting on a bed ten feet away and looking up at me. She lit a candle next to the bed, then looked back at me. She wore black cotton pajamas and slippers. Her hair was cropped close to her head, and her skin was as black as her pajamas. She wore no jewelry, but her eyes sparkled in the candlelight like two brilliant green emeralds. In one second I knew in my heart and mind that she was much, much older than all the rest of us. Susheela the Ninth.
“Ta ifi dite ifsaah, dite kaa mabayisa,” she said softly.
I took another step forward. “I’m sorry, but I’m not familiar with your language,” I said. “Do you speak English?”
“Most certainly,” she answered, smiling slightly and reminding me a great deal of Opari, not only in her features, but also in her speech and manner. She rose to greet me. We were exactly the same height. “My words were these,” she said. “ ‘And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehend it not.’ ”
“My name is Zianno Zezen, Egizahar Meq, through the tribe of Vardules, protectors of the Stone of Dreams, and I have come to take you out of here.” I looked into her intensely green eyes. Inside her gaze there was a deep calm and stillness I had never seen before in anyone’s eyes. I was sure it was this utter and complete serenity within her that had frustrated the Fleur-du-Mal to the breaking point. “I know who you are,” I said, “but what do I call you?”
“Long ago, in my youth, I was called ‘Sheela.’ Would that do?”
I smiled and told her that would do just fine, then I told her we must leave immediately.
“I understand,” she said. She grabbed a few loose items from the table next to her bed, shoved them into side pockets in her pajamas, and reached for a light shawl draped over a chair, but nothing else. She turned to me. “Shall we?”
I paused at the doorway. In the passage Koki was still rocking and holding Goya tight. Behind me, she asked, “Do you know of a secret exit?”
“Not exactly, but I’m pretty sure he does.” I nodded toward Koki.
“Koki?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “You are depending on Koki?”
“Yes. If I know the Fleur-du-Mal, there is another exit from this level of the shiro, a hidden one, probably dating from when the level was used as a torture chamber and prison. That’s what would have attracted him to the property. I’m betting Koki knows where it is.”
“And you believe Koki will lead us to this exit? He is not capable of such behavior.”
“He is today.” I pulled the door shut and placed the key back on its hook. “Koki,” I said, “show us the way out … the other way.” Koki looked at me and acknowledged me, but didn’t respond. He seemed confused. I reached out and took Goya’s skull from him. I was worried I had scared him and fear was the last thing I wanted him to feel.
Suddenly Susheela the Ninth stepped forward. “Dedoko,” she said quietly. “Dedoko … kakushigoto … kakushigoto, Koki.”
Koki wiped his chin, pushed his glasses up, and grinned. His stained teeth looked black in the faint light of the candles. “Yes, hello,” he said, and turned around, shuffling away through the darkened passage, not waiting for us.
I glanced at Susheela the Ninth. “I don’t know what you said, but thank you … Sheela.”
She smiled at hearing her childhood name. “I told Koki you wanted the secret exit, and you are welcome … Zianno.”
“Call me Z,” I said, then motioned her ahead of me. “Shall we?”
Koki picked up the pace and we walked by three more doors before the passage came to a T. We took a left and stopped in front of another door, which resembled the others in every way, except that when Koki opened the door there was no bedroom or cell inside. This door led to an iron spiral staircase winding up and disappearing into darkness.
“Yes, hello,” Koki said.
“Hello, yes, Koki!” I replied, glancing up. “Follow me.” I held the candle high. Susheela the Ninth fell in behind me and we started up. After climbing one full revolution, I looked down and noticed Koki still standing at the bottom of the stairs. He hadn’t moved. Then I realized he couldn’t. Climbing up and out of the shiro was too much for him. He had done what he was told, but leaving the shiro was out of the question. Tomorrow he would likely forget that he had helped at all. Tomorrow he would remember nothing about the incident, including Susheela the Ninth and me, and yesterday, for Koki, was inconceivable. He was looking up through the steps of the spiral stairs, watching us. He wiped his chin once. “Good-bye, Koki,” I said. “You play a great game of chess.”
His face widened into his biggest grin and he nodded his head, however, I’m not sure he comprehended a word. “Yes, mister,” he said. “Hello.”
I glanced at Susheela the Ninth. Her smooth black skin was shining in the glow of the candles. “Let’s go,” I said, and started climbing, almost running up the spiral stairs. With every step I thought of Opari — her eyes, her lips, her voice. I decided not to stop until we got to the last step, wherever it might lead. Behind me, Susheela the Ninth kept pace easily.
After what I guessed to be five or six stories, we came to the top of the spiral. The final step led directly to a low and narrow hallway about ten feet long and lined with cedar. At the end of the hallway was a square window with louvered shutters. I pushed open the shutters and looked out. We were three stories above the courtyard, and the only way down was across and over the curved, sloping roof of the third tier, then a drop to the second tier, then the first tier and on down to the graveled courtyard. If this had been an “escape hatch” in the past, it had not been a good one. We crawled onto the tiled roof and carefully made our way to the edge. I looked up and breathed deeply. The early morning fresh air felt cool and wonderful. Below us, to the south and west, fog spread over the Urakami Valley all the way to the sea and beyond. Nagasaki was not visible.
We took turns hanging and dropping from tier to tier, and each time, I tossed Goya’s head down to Susheela the Ninth before I dropped. When we reached the courtyard, she asked, “Why do you carry this skull? What is its significance?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I mean … I’m not sure.” It was a stupid answer, yet it was true.
As quickly and quietly as we could, we covered the distance to the gatehouse and gate, which was locked. I paused long enough to look inside the gatehouse. It was empty. Within the last five days, someone had removed the body of Shutratek. Just then something made me turn and look back at the shiro. For a split second, in an open window on the highest tier of the stone tower, I thought I saw two green
eyes staring down at me, but they disappeared instantly. Susheela the Ninth was already over the gate and waiting for me on the other side. Could it have been the Fleur-du-Mal? Had he been watching us from the beginning? Was he letting us escape?
“Why do you hesitate, Z?” she asked. “We must make haste.”
“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head once and tossing Goya to her. I scrambled up and over the gate. In another minute, the shiro was out of sight and we were on our way out of the hills and down to Nagasaki.
We ran, walked, and ran some more. I had no certain destination in mind, but unconsciously I was heading toward the railway and Urakami Station. Even in the hills, we passed many people, some with nothing, some with their meager belongings piled on a wagon or cart. Whether young or old, man or woman, their faces and expressions were devoid of all feeling and life. None of them paid any attention to us. We were invisible to them. They were living and walking, yet their eyes were dead. I kept thinking of Opari to keep from thinking about Sailor and Sak. I could not imagine the kind of unspeakable mass destruction and death these pitiful people had witnessed. I knew many were also dying from radiation as they walked, and for those who lived on and survived, even into old age, life would never be the same.
At one point, we paused to rest in a small open-air shrine by the side of the road. We sat on one of two stone benches inside. Below us, the morning fog blanketing Nagasaki and the Urakami Valley began to slowly burn off and dissipate.
Susheela the Ninth turned to me. “Who is this one you think of repeatedly, Z?”
Her question startled me. “What? How did you know what I was thinking? I never said a word.”
“It was unnecessary. Your heart and mind were shouting.”
I stared at her with brand-new wonder and respect. As far as I knew, this was an “ability” no other Meq had ever possessed. “Is it mental telepathy? Is that what you did?”
“Not quite; however, it is an ancient trait common to my tribe. Another form of communication, if you will — older, simpler. The trait has been a great aid in my survival.”
I looked long into the emerald green eyes of Susheela the Ninth, once again amazed at how little I truly knew or understood about the Meq. I cleared my throat and said, “Opari. Her name is Opari … she is my Ameq.”
“I see.” She paused and glanced away, then smiled to herself. “Opari,” she said slowly, one syllable at a time. “A beautiful name. I believe it means gift in the Basque tongue. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“Where is Opari now? I do not suspect she is near.”
“No, she’s nowhere near, and I give thanks for that. As far as I know, before the bomb, she was still somewhere in China.”
Susheela the Ninth dropped her smile. “Bomb? To what bomb are you referring?”
I looked out over the thinning fog. Spreading out below us, the Urakami Valley or what was left of it was gradually becoming visible, and it was worse than I imagined. “He didn’t tell you? The Fleur-du-Mal didn’t tell you what happened five days ago in Nagasaki?”
“No. Xanti never speaks of the Japanese war. He only speaks of Mahler, and painting, and the Sixth Stone, of course. Now, what do you mean, Z—‘before the bomb’?”
The fog had almost cleared. From our angle in the hills, it now appeared that all of Nagasaki had been annihilated, leaving nothing but a sprawling black scar, a dead zone of vast proportions. “Look there, Sheela,” I said, “look down there and try to conceive of a bomb causing that devastation in a split second, a single bomb with the power of a thousand suns. Eight days ago, the Americans dropped the first one over Hiroshima. Five days ago, they dropped another one on Nagasaki.” A few moments passed. “I knew someone … someone who was in Nagasaki.”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
“You know? How could you possibly know that?”
“Never mind,” she said. “What do they call this bomb?”
“An atom bomb … they call it the atom bomb.”
She gazed out and down at the nightmare of Nagasaki in the distance, then rose to her feet without changing expression. “Take us down there, Z.”
For the next forty-five minutes, Susheela the Ninth and I did not speak, not to each other or to anyone else. Nor will I speak of it now. I will not desecrate the countless missing souls of that place, or the burned and broken bodies and vacant stares of the survivors. We walked among and through a true hell on earth. Without realizing it, I dropped Goya’s skull somewhere along the way. Even if I tried, there are no adequate words for what we saw, and it must never happen again.
Incredibly, the Urakami Station was open and trains were running. No plant, tree, or structure anywhere near the station had survived. I looked up and the giant statue of Shofukuji was gone forever. The stench of death was ever present all the way to the entrance. Suddenly, in my mind I had a “vision” of the Fleur-du-Mal. He was sitting in his kitchen with Koki, polishing various pieces of ancient copper kitchenware and listening to Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, and he was grinning. His perfect white teeth sparkled. I blinked several times, then cleared my eyes and continued walking. Not twenty feet away, the bloated carcass of a dead horse was the last thing I saw as we entered the station.
Once we were inside, Susheela the Ninth seemed to slow down and lag behind. I thought nothing of it and walked ahead five or six paces, then just as suddenly as the “vision” had come, I felt an extremely strong presence jolt my mind and body like a live current. The presence was Meq and very familiar. I never thought I would feel his presence again, or see him again, but this one had surprised and amazed me many times over. I turned the corner and there he was. He stood with arms crossed, leaning casually against the tiled wall, waiting. He wore a cone-shaped straw hat pulled down low on his forehead. When I approached, he pushed the hat up slowly and shook his head from side to side, as if he were slightly annoyed with me. It was Sailor.
“You are late,” he said.
“I am?”
“Yes — we must hurry. The train to Kobe and Osaka leaves in less than five minutes.”
Susheela the Ninth walked up silently beside me. Even though she was a black girl in black pajamas, people passing by paid no attention to her or to us. Nagasaki was too grim and surreal for us to be noticed. I gazed into Sailor’s eyes. He had never looked so good, and his “ghost eye,” which ever since the death of his Ameq, Deza, had been a gray, swirling cloud was now absolutely clear. “I thought you were—”
“Dead?” he finished.
“Yes. How in the world—”
“I will explain later,” he said, then glanced at Susheela the Ninth for the first time. “Now we must move, and move quickly.”
“Sak?” I asked.
Sailor shook his head back and forth once.
“But—”
“I am somewhat like the cockroach, Zianno. I shall survive, regardless of the circumstances.”
My mouth dropped open. “You know the Cockroach?”
Sailor gave me a quizzical look, then shook his head and led the three of us away toward the trains, talking about a merchant in Osaka as he walked. He reached for Susheela the Ninth’s hand and she gave it to him without hesitation. Somehow, I knew he had been expecting her. As we were buying our tickets, Sailor turned to me and whispered, “No, I do not know the Cockroach. The only cockroach with which I am familiar is an insect, and to the best of my knowledge, unable to speak.” He paused for a heartbeat. “Do you happen to know a cockroach that speaks, Zianno?”
I smiled, following him through the turnstile. I thought of Koki still deep inside the shiro in the hills above Nagasaki, probably smoking a cigarette or playing another game of chess, wiping his chin and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. By now, I was sure Koki had completely forgotten Susheela the Ninth and me and what he had done for us. Whether or not the Fleur-du-Mal had allowed it to happen became moot and meaningless. Sailor stopped and waited for an explanation. I walked by Sailor and whispered
, “Yes. Yes, I do know a cockroach that speaks,” then added, “he is a good friend of mine … and the best chess player in the world.”
2. Zori (Luck)
Luck, like beauty to the eye, is truly in the mind of the believer. Consider the tale of the Basque shepherd who one morning left to tend his flock. By midday, while crossing one of the highest and most treacherous passes, a sudden blizzard blinded them for hours. When the storm passed, the shepherd found a lamb stranded on a precarious ledge. As he crept out to save the lamb, he dislodged a hawk’s nest hidden in the cliff. The angry mother hawk flew at the shepherd and plucked out his right eye with one sweep of her talons. The shepherd lost his balance and grabbed for the lamb, dragging them both over the ledge. They dropped nearly twenty feet to another ledge and rolled over as they landed, crushing the shepherd’s left leg and making it useless. He cried out in agony, but miraculously crawled off the ledge with the lamb. Using his walking stick for a crutch, he was able to gather the rest of his flock and make his way out of the pass and down to the meadow near his home. He later lost his leg and wore an eye patch for the rest of his life. Whenever asked to recount that horrific day, the shepherd would always smile and gladly tell his tale, ending with the words, “It was the luckiest day of my life.” Then with a quick wink of his one good eye, “After all, my friend … it could have been night.”
The train was crowded and chaotic. Sailor led the way, followed by Susheela the Ninth, then me. We slipped through and around each person like sleight-of-hand magicians, barely touching anyone or even being seen until we’d already passed. Sailor and Susheela the Ninth were ancient masters of the trick, and I was getting better. Inside the train the air was stifling, even though every window was wide open. We squeezed into a narrow seat at the rear of our compartment, along with an old woman carrying a pumpkin in her lap. The pumpkin was wrapped in a ragged blanket, and she had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. She saw the face and hands of Susheela the Ninth and asked Sailor in Japanese if the great bomb had turned the girl’s skin black. Sailor waited a moment, then told her, yes, it was true, the bomb had done it. The answer satisfied the old woman and seemed to confirm something in her mind. She glanced once more at Susheela the Ninth, then looked away from us for the rest of the time she was on the train.