That day, 13 years old, he was supposed to walk 30 miles across that ragged, bitter landscape in a day. An adult would be expected to cover 50 miles. He was to follow a trail, marked by seemingly random blazed trees, chipped stones and so on, to a camp in the hills.
The training was relentless: he’d showed ability throwing weapons and with spear and staff. He was only fair with bow and arrow; a good climber but disliked underwater work, like breathing through a reed or using an air bag with a pipe snorkel for long, submerged swims. He totally hated the jitsu for escaping from bonds and manacles by dislocating limbs and in a week he was going to be tested by being tied and left in the snow until he got loose. He knew he probably wouldn’t manage it. He imagined himself, freezing, desperate, watched by Osa-Kame, a fellow apprentice who excelled in unarmed combat. He was nearly impossible to hold and Takezo insisted it was because he was part swamp-frog: naturally slimy. The boy had a narrow face, deep-cut cheekbones and long jaw. He was a natural bully. For some reason he hated Takezo and (with two others) had ambushed him one recent night in a vicious fight…
As he’d started cross-country, the blades strapped to his tabi chukking as he moved lightly over the icy drifts, he made up his mind to keep going. It didn’t matter where. He felt strangled by the clan, the rules, the unrelenting training discipline…
He enjoyed things like the woods in spring and summer, watching sunlight filtering through the massed pine boughs into the cool, sweet-smelling hushed air. Sometimes he imagined the light was writing a message on the misty atmosphere and brownish matting of fallen needles…
After 3 days he’d actually covered maybe 50 miles of freezing mountain forest, living on preserved foods like salted plum and miso. While he certainly would have failed the test, he discovered true endurance and could meditatively catnap while walking and push himself on…
He’d reached a road and sat, above it, on a rock to rest, looking down into a valley where smoke from many small fires rose into the icy, clear, winterbright sky above the next steep hill and suggested brush stroked calligraphy. He idly tried to put meaning, identify written characters in the breeze-twisted, slowly unfolding lines and shapes. The number of fires meant a large town – he had no idea where he might be.
A few minutes later, with the snowy hillside at his back, he’d startled a bundled-up, itinerant actor who thought a ghost spoke from the sunglare and blinding whiteness.
‘Where are you going?’ young Takezo had asked.
The roly-poly, overdressed man stared around in near-panic.
‘Who asks?’ he said. ‘I am an honest actor and respect all spirits, high and low and –”
Then he’d seen the boy’s eyes where the mask-like hood had a rectangular opening, which brought his form out from the dazzling background and seemed convincingly supernatural. The man dropped to his knees on the road’s rutted snow.
‘Are you praying?’ the boy asked, standing up and coming down the short slope.
‘Save me!’ the man cried, then identified the outfit and actually gained fear. ‘I’ve done nothing! Spare me, Sir ninja! I’m a poor, wandering actor. I have mocked no great persons… who would have me slain? I’m not a bad actor, though some have said one thing yet others have said another so… ’
Takezo ended up going to the city with him and apprenticed in their small acting troupe. And, like a true Ninja, he’d vanished like a chameleon… most assumed he’d died somewhere in the snow and let it go at that… a long time past, now…
What would have my life been if I’d stayed on stage? he asked himself, finally closing his eyes. The moon was gone. His breathing was regular. Probably no better… He touched her hand and she stirred slightly and snored softly. He went on walking into his past, for a while…
And then Yoshi was standing over him where he was lying on his back, grinning, holding an oversized sumi-e painting brush, leaning down and writing on his naked body while he tried to get up but couldn’t move at all… then he was awake and sitting up in the dark room. He felt someone else there. Listened, tried to see… Miou seemed deeply out… thought there was something near the door, darker than the shadows.
He silently moved from the pallet-like bed, opening the folds of mosquito netting, holding his undrawn sword – his blade would gleam; the assassin’s wouldn’t. He felt as if his entire body was reaching out and touching into the air like an electric field as when you combed your hair or rubbed silk…
He sensed the unseen ninja was suddenly motionless, alert, listening, each aware they’d met at least an equal.
He’s hesitating, he thought. Why? Cannot risk failure? So important to kill me?
Moved slightly and thought he felt the other withdrawing. A sound would draw a thrown weapon which might miss and hit Miou. He kept himself between her and the door, trying to make out any hinted outline against the faintly luminescent night.
Was that he? I think he’s gone…
Knelt back to the futon and reached for her. Gone.
“Miou?” he whispered.
“Did he leave?” Her voice came softly from the back of the room. He hadn’t heard her move.
“Yes.” He groped carefully around to make sure. “He made no sound. What woke you?”
“You.”
He grunted.
“I made no noise either.”
“So you say. Of course, you are a ninja.”
“I was trained. I ran away.”
He was by the window, peering carefully, alert for poison, smoke, fire…
“I was told if you leave a clan,” she said, voice back by the bed, now, “they find you and kill you.”
“I’ve been dead for years.”
“Which clan was it?”
“Who knows.”
He thought he saw movement across the garden in the faint, hinted starlight. Relaxed his eyes and looked indirectly. Absently touched his ear where the scythe had cut it. Slightly sore. A line of crusty scab.
“Was it Sandayu clan?”
“I don’t remember.”
He went back and sat on the mattress beside her.
I know little and yet they want to kill me? Do I know something and not know I know it? He touched her, softly, watching the door and window. Maybe I’ll get enough money to find a new way of life…
“Did you ever have a child?” he asked her, in a whisper.
“Eh?” She was caressing his chest and stomach. “I don’t remember.”
He chuckled.
“Memory plays tricks,” he said. “It certainly doesn’t go in a straight line.”
“You say you were an actor. Then you say you were ninja.”
“All ninja are actors.”
Her hand went lower.
“Are you playing the part of a priest, now?” Smiled. “I’ll pretend I’m a young boy alone in the depths of the temple.”
He pressed his cheek to hers. Bit her lip.
“No taste for boys,” he murmured, automatically checking his feelings to be sure. “Monjushiri is not my saint. Pretend to be a nun.” Bit her lip, again. “Anyway, we are not safe,” he pointed out.
“You said he was gone.”
She seemed totally confident in him, this time, and it didn’t really bother him until later. She dipped her head down except he moved aside and stood up.
“Wait, crazy girl,” he cautioned.
Still naked, holding his sword, he felt his way outside, inch-by-inch, into the steady, soft din of summer night-bugs. He crouched and faced into the garden, squinting at rock shapes and blots of bushes and the humped outline of the Camilla tree all blended into darkness.
He’s watching, I think…
“Coward,” he said, in a normal tone. Nothing. He felt no presence. Moved around the side of the building. Circumnavigated. Believed the intruder was gone and went back in without exploring further.
She’d put on the dim lantern and had shuttered the window. He slid the bolt to the door, looking at her lush, incredible lovely bod
y, gleaming softly where she rested on the mat, graceful and open. She’d already wiped off her smeared eyebrows, enlarging her face, in effect.
So beautiful, was his reaction.
All other ideas drained away and there was only promise and magic left; scent and soft sounds and immeasurable smoothness that first his hands, then the rest of him followed as if her flesh were water and he floated into love and dreams…
The night was warm and he half-dozed, mixing concerns, alertness, memories and strange landscapes…
*
When she woke up the sun had risen and the beams tilted in the wooden latticework that closed like an awning over the wide window, the blinding slashes, raising an odor of hot straw and linen. She knelt up on the futon, pulling a sheet around herself. Her other hand reached just under the edge of the mattress as if to locate something.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Leave!”
A bearded, stooped older man limped into the sunbeams, wearing a spotless, bright, neat robe and hamacha semi-kilt in the style of an entertainer, holding a wooden flute in one hand. His cheeks were puffy and his right eye was covered by a patch. Fat, painted lips and a tilted straw hat completed the unsettling picture.
“May I play for you, beautiful one?” His voice was raspy.
“Who are you?” she asked, fingers of her right hand reaching under the futon where she gripped it as if to rise. He noted this as she called out: “Takezo!”
The man laughed.
“He is sodden with drink, sweet one. No doubt unconscious. Consider me as a suitor. I have skills with my flute that will surprise you.”
“Leave! Whose fingers will stop,” she said, automatically responding with haiku, “the old, bent reed pipe, cracked by the winter?”
Instead of leaving he began playing. She had a good ear. While he got most of the old tune right, the tones wavered when they should have been steady.
“Do you mean to assassinate me with your music?” she asked.
He stopped and moistened his lips.
“You didn’t enjoy it?”
“You do this for a living? I’m surprised you are not thinner.”
“Let me play some more.”
“I don’t deserve it,” she said, studying him closely. “Your voice just changed.”
“I can sing, too.”
“And raise demons? I have heard you sing, Takezo. Though the makeup is skilful. Why do you dress like this? To amuse me? Come back to bed like a man instead of a madman. Did you just empty a sake jug?”
“I am as sober as a sword, as the saying is.”
“Fine,” she said, lying back and loosing the sheet. “How like you this?”
“So my appearance excites you.”
“It’s the eye patch. It loosens my virtue.”
“A knot rarely tied tight,” he commented, picking up a cane and heading back through the sunbeams towards the door to the porch. As he expected the wooden pillow sailed close to his head though he didn’t have to duck. “I can never leave you unless you’re angry,” he went on, sliding open the door.
“Where are you going?” she called after. “If you play they’ll beat you. And if you sing they’ll kill you.”
He liked that.
“I’ll deceive my enemies,” he called back, going out into the brilliant day, wincing blinks.
“You’ll madden them, anyway,” she concluded, petulant and concerned. Watchful. Thoughtful.
As he stepped off the porch onto the white-graveled walk he saw something sticking out from under the raised boards. A man’s foot and not a pretty one: splayed and bent toes. He went over and found the rest of him lying on his back. He was covered in form-fitting black ninja clothes from his ankles to the hood covering his face. The eyes showed, half-closed.
If he’s asleep it’s the deepest known, he thought. He must be the one last night but… how? Who did this? Why? Do I have a secret protector?
He pulled back the hood. Didn’t know the face. Checked the body for blood and wounds. Nothing. Odd. Poison? There were even poisons that gave the appearance of death, no breath, no pulse, from which people could be revived. He knew about it from his childhood training. It was a last resort for a trapped ninja. The substance was sometimes used in kidnappings.
Makes no sense, he thought.
The shape of the face reminded him of someone… ran his memories… yes… there it was, the childhood bully, Osa-kame.
Turned the body over and discovered a tiny puncture wound at the base of the skull that might have been made by a pin. That was a death-point and perfectly struck, but by whom? And in the dark of night? He had been unable to even locate the assassin, in the darkness, and someone had struck him dead with a perfectly placed needle-thrust… then shoved the body under there? I must have a supernatural protector, he concluded, shaking his head. Smiled, faintly. At least, I hope it’s a protector… She’s safe, anyway…
Glanced at the window. She was in it, looking at him.
“Our friend is under here,” he told her. “From last night.”
“Our friend.”
“He’s very unwell. I’ll send help.”
“What help? The undertaker?”
“He won’t keep long in this weather.”
“So, you killed him?”
“Someone did. Very strange. Say nothing.”
“What would I say? Where are you going?”
“To a funeral. I need to relax.”
“Don’t let it be yours,” she suggested. “I worry. I’ll tell someone about the body. Just be careful.”
Strong woman, he thought, walking away. But why did she assume he was dead? I didn’t tell her…
*
A half an hour later he was digging his cane into the roadway, heading up the hill to the cemetery, sweating in the gathering, mid-morning heat. At least there were big, billowy clouds, intense white against the blue shimmer, their passing shadows a cooling relief. This was the hottest summer he remembered.
The ceremony was in progress. He limped over to where the family stood, semi-enclosed by armed retainers and other mourners. Several Shinto priests were in attendance, in pale robes and stiff, squarish, tasseled caps.
She would have wished a Buddhist ceremony, I suspect, he thought. Just to annoy them…
The Buddhists and their ninja allies resisted the growing rule of Nobunaga and his vassals. Takezo knew that Osan had spoken out, many times, in favor of “unifying the religions before unifying the clans.”
“What is accomplished by mere violence,” she’d written, “can only be sustained by violence.”
They might have doffed her head for those notions, alone, he said to himself. He just didn’t accept the idea of the maddened foreign lover decapitating her. He’d know more when he found the foreigner. Better him than Hideo’s men who’d probably kill him at once to leave Izu facing suicide or war…
He hobbled up behind the mourners until he stood near Lady Issa, Hideo and their other daughter. Issa was not really beautiful but magnetically sultry, wide-mouthed with fierce, deep, dark eyes. Her husband was almost as tall as Takezo, frank-looking with a well-kept mustache. A cloud shadow was just passing over, dimming and cooling the scene.
Two swordsmen turned and confronted him, scowling.
“Low-born dog,” hissed one, “get away from here!”
Seeming to stagger, miss with his cane, he fell near the lord, he said:
“Ai, forgive me.”
“Idiot!” shouted one bodyguard.
Everyone there was hot and irritable. The samurai began kicking at the crippled musician who just avoided the blows as if by chance.
“Stop,” cried Hideo. “Unseemly fool!”
“Accept my condolences for your dear child, my lord and lady,” the cripple cried.
He was on one knee, now, cane gripped in his left hand while he produced the ring and held it up towards Issa.
“Is this not your daughter’s?” he asked.
Her
momentary expression interested him.
“How rude you are. Are you a thief?” she asked him, remote, cool.
He noted she looked at him and not the jewelry.
“No,” he replied. “A man gave it to me, my lady.”
“My daughter did not wear strange, foreign baubles. What man?” she demanded.
“An unkempt samurai. Tall and good-looking.”
“Sounds like the criminal, Takezo,” put in Hideo. “Companion of the machi-yakko.” (Meaning commoners who straddled both sides of the law, collectively resisting official repression. Rebels who actually had no wish to overthrow anything, just improve what existed.)
“It is not your daughter’s?”
“Hand it over, dog,” Issa said.
She reached but he closed his hand. Watched her husband watching her, closely.
He’s a strong fighter, Takezo thought. Bad temper, so he can be influenced and led by tricks and lies… he lets her lead… and he listened to his daughter, too…
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 6