The sword stuck to me, he concluded.
Four
One day ago
uMubaya had suggested heading to Izu’s when they left the inn, but Nori explained that Hideo’s samurai and, worse, hired ninja stalkers would be covering the ways back to Edo. Without help they’d be taken. Izu would have to die.
“They will attack Izu?” uMubaya had wondered.
“No. he will commit seppuku, Nori had explained.” The polite word for belly-slitting, hara-kiri. “The shame of her death will rest with him. We should go inland. They’ll be watching the ways to the city.” Jerked his chin at the two of them. Colin was just sitting on a dark rock in the gray rain. “We should escape for the sake of justice,” Nori went on. “And for my lady who must be truly avenged.”
They could hear the villagers gathering. Someone was beating the wooden alarm gong-wood: bright, musical, muffled by the heavy air. The surf crumpled softly into the unseen beach behind the drizzly mist.
“I won’t leave her,” said the Scot, in Spanish.
Nori was puzzled and uMubaya translated.
“Then you can die for nothing,” said Nori, looking at uMubaya. “We must head for the monastery of Ichi-wisi. Otherwise we will never elude the ninja. There, we will not have to fear them.”
“Ninja?” wondered uMubaya.
“Dangerous men who can vanish in plain sight. Live underwater. Seem to be shadows, silent, until they strike. Masters of all ways of death.”
That’s interesting,” said the African. “Few animals and no men could track me in my land. Save, maybe, the bush people who are closer to animals in nature. I’d like to meet one of these ninja.”
Nori scowled and shook his head.
“They don’t introduce themselves,” he said. “They are spies and assassins. The one you meet is already killing you.”
There is much to learn here, uMubaya considered. Many challenges…
They’d half-dragged the distraught Colin up the foggy beach and away from the village…
*
The Present
They were now on a road miles inland, the sun bright and hot, crossing down into a perfect little valley, lush, with glittering rice paddies and soft-looking hills all around, a few huts showing. On an overlooking slope there was a stone wall and the top of a temple with a gracefully arched roof showed above the trees.
“What are these monks?” wondered uMubaya.
“Great warriors. Friends of the great ninja clans. It is said they taught them many of their skills, in past times.”
“But you said these ninjas seek us?”
Nori was looking, uneasily, back the way they’d just come to where the road bent out-of-sight into dense foliage. He thought something had moved through one of the uneven patches of brilliant sunlight that broke through the overhanging branches.
“There are many clans,” he explained to the African. “The main ones will not serve Nobunaga and his allies. He fears them, if he fears anything. They support the priests.”
He turned and went on walking. He felt they were being observed but it might mean nothing. Monastery security, most likely.
Five
Back in Edo
That night, Takezo laid up in the sleeping loft of The Pine and Crane inn which wasn’t far from Hideo’s. It was a place frequented by poor ronin, laborers from the market, gamblers and part-time, unlicensed prostitutes.
Takezo drank moderately and watched the main room below through the spaced boards. He knew the little, limping man would reconnoiter before coming in. In one corner four gamblers in loincloths and open tunics were playing a kind of domino game; a samurai wearing clan colors was drinking from a cup and seemed to be waiting for someone. In the back he heard splashing in the tub room and women’s giggles.
Maybe a whore, Takezo considered. Anyway, he doesn’t look so strong…
His plans for tomorrow were laid. Meanwhile, he kept thinking about Miou. Kept having imaginary conversations with her. Close to falling asleep, he stared up at the boards an arm’s reach from his face where the flamelight flickered and shifted shadows. He heard a reedy and familiar voice.
Ah, he thought rolling on his side and watching the furtive fellow insinuate himself inside and squat by a low table. Yazu…
“Cheap brew,” Yazu called out to the pot-bellied tavern keeper. “That cursed woman. I think she’s finally asleep.”
The tavern keeper made a covert gesture up towards the loft. Yazu didn’t get it; too late anyway as Takezo, with surprising ease, rolled and horizontally vaulted over the loft’s two foot fence (as on a child’s bed) and dropped, soundlessly in front of the startled thief.
“Don’t get up, Yazu,” he recommended as the small man scrabbled backwards across the room, sliding on his bony rump. The samurai looked over, incurious, self-absorbed. “No need for politeness.”
He noted that he might have underrated the clan samurai. Up close there was something about him like, he thought, steel under silk.
The gamblers took an interest.
“He looks like a rat in the garbage,” one declared, a big, potbellied man with mean, small eyes. His bald head gleamed in the lantern light, leaving his face in shadow.
Yazu had backed into the wall, now talking steadily.
“I swear, good master, I –”
“I see your head before me,” Takezo said, “as in a dream or vision. Close to the surf. The waters break softly. The moon sails in a breathless hush. The moonbeams fill your unshutting eyes. Instead of lies there is sand in your silent mouth.”
“Pretty poetry,” boomed the same bald gambler. “If I’m a judge.”
A skinny companion in just a loin cloth, sweaty, with more spaces than teeth, cackled:
“You? You’re a good judge of horsedung.” Pleased with his wit, he went on. “A good judge of farts, Hachi.” Doubled up with delight as the square-headed, proprietor hovered uneasily in the doorway to the next room where his wife was rattling plates and jugs.
“Good master,” pleaded the worried but not really afraid Yazu, “I trust in your famous good nature.”
“Famous? When you sold me that –”
“Your money is as good as back in your hands, Takezo-san. Your money –”
“Idiot. The money is not the point.” More or less what she’d told him. “You humiliated me!”
“I was deceived, sir.” He was hoping not be kicked or pummeled. “By a lowlife gambler.”
“What’s that?” inquired Hachi, the big-bellied poetry enthusiast. “You have the face to insult honest gamblers?”
“Be still,” advised Takezo. “Replace this.” He dropped the bad comb into the small man’s lap.
Pot-belly liked to say he could have been a sumo wrestler. He rolled to his feet and sidled over. He was big and strong, up close, the ronin noted. The seated samurai was studying them now, expressionless.
“Be still?” the wrestler inquired.
His three companions were on their feet, now, two holding short knives, the skinny one a bo staff.
“I swear, sensei,” said Yazu, “I’ll satisfy you.”
“You’ll satisfy a cripple,” declared Hachi, the wrestler, weaving slightly from the night’s drinking. “When I’m done.”
“Are they lovers?” asked the one with the staff.
“Too much noise,” said the clan samurai, smiling faintly, however.
“If you fail, Yazu,” promised Takezo, “I’ll give you to this fat dung-beetle, here.”
The bony one liked that. Nodded, vigorously.
“He must know you, Hachi,” he chortled. “Dung-beetle.”
“No trouble in here,” said the proprietor from across the room. His son was peering at the action around the doorframe, just half his face showing. “Settle down.”
“You dress like a dirty beggar, samurai,” Hachi added on.
“My sword is clean, thank you,” the ronin responded. “Who said I was a samurai?”
The seated
clan warrior nodded, judiciously, watching.
“Kill them outside,” he suggested.
Yazu took the opportunity to scuttle for the door but was blocked by Hachi the wrestler who bent his squinty eyes on him.
“Are you lovers?” Hachi wanted to know.
The pointless jibe fell flat, even with his companions. Takezo sighed. He’d had enough. Being sober made him irritable.
“Stupid nonsense,” he said. “Let him pass and go back to your dung.”
“Kill them sensei, Jiro,” Yazu chirped. “Cut off their heads.”
“Jiro Takezo?” the skinny staff-wielder said, easing towards the other room where the tavernkeeper stood. The clan samurai took additional interest. Nodded as if to confirm an opinion.
“Coward!” cried bald Hatchi. “Where do you slink to?”
“From harm,” said the seated man.
Takezo went, empty-handed, up to Hachi and as the fellow reached to grapple he stepped alongside him like a shadow, spun his unbalanced weight and sent him spinning out the door, much as he’d done with the violent-natured Yoshi in the barn. There was a crash as he tripped and fell cursing in the moonlit yard. He knelt up, holding his head.
Yazu darted out and away as Takezo stepped onto the porch, meditative. The groaning man didn’t matter; the others inside; the comb… the dead girl… For a moment there was just the hush of the night, the setting three-quarter moon above the low buildings and soft tree shapes… lanterns like stars, a gleam of lake water where the road bent around the shoreline.
He sighed, deeply. If time didn’t go forward but time did… yet there was something that didn’t go forward or in any direction. The poet’s place. The stillness within and without, utterly untouched by the stain of life, the daily, dull, brutal nonsense of mankind…
Miou. he thought. Would you were here with me…
Six
A few hours ago
Miou was naked under a thin robe, reclining among soft pillows. She was on a low, four-poster bed brought from China. The naked man was cross-legged on the floor, wiping a sword down with blacking, covering the silvery sheen completely. Through the open window the sunset was deep and dark as dried blood and the lantern light now gleamed brighter in the room. Behind her was a Chinese scroll painting of Buddha preaching to a black demon with razor cheekbones surrounded by circles of flame and smoke, a wavy-bladed sword in each hand. The room was un-Japanese, in that it was almost cluttered with rare artifacts, paintings, sculpture, pottery and always made her slightly uneasy. It was a rich man’s Chinese room, she knew. He was a powerful lord and had spent years in China. And there was more.
“Tanba,” she said, using part of his nickname title, Tanba no Kami. “I will not hurt this man.”
“Um. You love him.”
“Perhaps.”
“No reason to kill him. He is, more or less, on our side, for the moment.”
He studied the sword. She studied him. She had never been able to read him, clearly. He gave you one level of his plotting maybe two, but there was always more. She was his mistress in a casual way. After all, he had two or three wives and complete families living in separate locations across Japan. Multiple identities. She’d learned that much without really trying because the details were obscure. His power was immense because he controlled a major ninja clan. He was a great threat to Nobunaga.
“What do you want me to do, Tanba?”
He studied the sword, which would be invisible in darkness. He looked like a coiled spring of flowing muscles. She’d been attracted to him from their first meeting when she was still a teenager. He’d seduced her and eventually trained her as a female spy. Trained her in detail: ‘use your mouth on it like a baby at the breast; make your mouth deep as a well; lick it like a stick of crystalized honey – men will become addicted to you and you will ride he who thinks he rides you.’
“Do what is necessary to learn what Hideo’s captain knows about the plot.”
“Sessu?” she said, with contempt.
Sessu would take tea and sake with her; importune; leave haiku; sigh and lament; swear his love. Yes, he was a desirable, generous yet difficult customer.
He shrugged.
“You are a talented spy,” he said.
“I won’t sleep with him. I’ve slept with enough men, for you.”
“Do what is necessary,” he shrugged and repeated. “The girl’s assassination is a critical matter.”
She watched his ax-shaped face, as he worked on the weapon. Read nothing.
“I won’t sleep with him.”
He looked up.
“You are in love with the drunkard,” he told her, amused, perhaps. He always liked the fact that she didn’t resort to tears. Not that it would have helped.
“He’s… in any case, he will improve.”
He laughed, this time.
“Improve a drunkard who thinks he’s a ninja?” Shook his head. “Not so easy.”
“He’s a great fighter.”
“Perhaps. We’ve had no reason, yet, to kill him.”
“Don’t find one, please.”
He looked at her. Her eyes were intense, dangerous. He liked that.
“Come here,” he said. “I’ll accept your petition.” Might have sighed, she thought, surprised. “I hope to never hurt him.” With emotion, she took in. What seemed real feeling. She was truly slightly baffled.
Seven
Later that night at the Pine and Crane
Takezo thought about going to see her, now. Wake her up. Make love. Except she was there, coming across the moon-tinted yard, holding a lantern that winked part of her face in and out of shadow in time with her steps.
“I knew you’d be in some tavern or other,” she opened with, after hesitating as if surprised at having found him.
“I’m not the least drunk,” he pointed out.
“Must I applaud?” she wondered.
They stopped a little way from the entrance where the sumo man was half-creeping back into the place, his companions all watching from just inside the door.
“Why are you looking for me?” he asked. “I thought I wasn’t worth a frog’s fart.”
“Don’t overvalue yourself,” she advised. “I want you to come back with me.”
“You don’t hate me?”
“I’m used to you. And I’m worried. We need to talk.” He ran one hand across her back and shoulders, tenderly as they started walking away. “I’m worried about what you’re doing.”
“Ah. How do you know what I’m doing, woman? I barely know, myself.”
“A girl,” she told him, “saw you coming from Hideo’s stronghold.”
He shrugged.
“Many saw me.”
“They are your enemies. Why visit them?”
“I’m being paid. For working on a difficulty.”
“Come home with me. Forgive my sharpness.”
He kissed her forehead.
“I prefer a keen blade, Miou,” he said. “You are remarkable.”
“You can be nice even when you’re sober.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“Unnecessary.”
“No,” he said.
At her house he refused sake, much as he wanted a drink. Had tea and sat on the mat with her in the soft flamelight in a cloud of subtle incense and the perfume from the flower garden just without. He clunked a pouch down next to his two swords.
“Keep these,” he said. “An advance. 10 gold ryo.”
“So much?” Weighed it in her hand, then knee-walked and slipped it into a sliding panel with a false bottom where she kept her best jewelry. “How dangerous must it be, my love?”
I do love you, she said to herself. I cannot help it… you deserve someone… ah, well… what can a woman do? My life is not my own and I can say nothing… they mean him ill… They’ll use him and dispose of him like a shattered sword…
He sighed. He was thinking about Yoshi’s attempts to provoke and kill him in
the barn. Stared at the dark lacquered wall behind her where their reflections were dim, underwater-like hints. Lord Mask, whoever he really was, didn’t want him dead; so, maybe, just tested.
“I’m pleased you came to find me,” he told her. Something about Yoshi didn’t fit, suddenly. “What did you hear around the… ” Didn’t like saying it. “… where you work?”
“Something is going on,” she responded. He sensed she was being careful. “Between the clans. I don’t know what. No matter how many ryo they give you, I don’t think it is worth it.”
Suddenly she parted her loose robe and, in a subtle, graceful gesture, it seemed to float away from her and she was close to him, golden, nude, exquisite; her perfume a cloud of sweet excitement.
With an almost formal movement she opened his garment and dropped, graceful as a drooping flower – Jitsu of love, he thought – and took his gathering erection into the delicate thrill of her mouth.
“Aaahh,” came from him as he both melted and hardened. “Oh … ”
A privilege, his mind said as he further melted to his knees, a nearly helpless captive of her sweet suction…
Later, beside her on the futon and silky pillows, inside the gauzy mist of mosquito netting, he felt her heated body gradually cooling as she drifted into a child-like, soft slumber, murmuring vaguely and holding him with a softly fading grip…
He bussed where her eyebrows were shaved away. The drawn-on ones were smeared and asymmetric like a caricature of surprise or maybe curiosity.
Adorable, he thought, kissing her nose which wrinkled at the tender touch.
He was tired but still sober, so he had to lie there and let his mind run on: it reached Yoshi.
He was pushing too hard… he wanted an excuse to cut me down… why? We’d never met before? Could he be a ninja? Not strong enough fighter…
He stared out the open window, soothed by her regular breathing where the three-quarter moon was just setting through the distant webbing of pine branches that backed the depthless, nearly all dark buildings.
Unbidden, his thoughts went to childhood as he floated near the borders of dreaming: he was thirteen, winter snow everywhere, bitter wind, dark hills, pines and bare trees under a dead gray sky. He was wrapped in a snow-white, form fitting body suit – winter ninja garb. He’d been trained in a ninja clan from age six to thirteen. At the age of nine he’d been told that when he was an infant his low-ranking samurai father had committed suicide after being wounded and defeated in a duel with a man who’d taken away his mother; they said she’d died of a fever not long after. The head of the ninja clan had taken a direct interest in the boy and said he knew his father. Takezo had only blurry memories of this man: he was rarely seen and, they said, never looked the same twice. There was a story some believed that the leader had been raised by wizard-monks and had developed supernatural skills. The boy’s first response when he heard about his family was that he’d never kill himself because there might always be a chance to recover whatever was lost and that he’d make sure not to lose fights. His answer had pleased his ninja teachers because they said samurai pride was stupid suicide; the idea was to always survive, do your job and succeed in any way possible. Never waste your training. Die only as last resort. The boy’s fighting talent was admired, but his discipline was considered lax.
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 5