Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha

by Richard Monaco

  A ninja in love, his father used to say, is a three-legged horse… Loyalty should be enough…

  Twenty-One

  The following night

  Takezo was, literally, wrapped in thick rope. They’d leaned him against an inside log wall of a rough mini-fort on a rocky promontory maybe 20 miles along the coast from Edo. There was one window looking out over the great bay. The window wasn’t even barred because it faced the sea side and was in an outbuilding. He could see the stars through his one good eye. His other was swollen closed, nose full of dried blood, lip split and his ribs ached from the kicks he’d taken from Yoshi whose orders reined him short of actually killing him.

  He understood there would be more to come. They really wanted the ring. They’d let Yoshi enjoy himself but next time would be serious. How fragile their scheme must be, he reasoned, to hinge on so small a point. Well, he wasn’t going to send them to Miou’s where he’d hidden the deadly trinket.

  Or how afraid they are, he said to himself.

  Blinked his working eye at the stars because a chunk of them – in the shape of a man’s head – seemed to be gone, and, despite his sick soreness, he was interested. Then wasn’t.

  “Don’t block the view,” he muttered.

  He let himself slide down into a kind of stifled sleep where violent dreams jarred him… where Miou melted her body into his and then eyes, like ice picks, jabbed into his aching mind… there were flames everywhere and her perfect body was burning, charring, melting down into a tottering ruin…

  And then he was awake and there were flames near his face, the heat and light blinding and there was a voice he knew beyond the flames:

  “Why endure such pain?”

  Takezo worked his lips, licked them, and muttered:

  “This is normal for me.”

  “See what you have come to, Sir Jiro Takezo,” Reiko said with false sympathy.

  “I might have had a worse fate,” the battered detective croaked. “We might have had the same mother and been raised in the same sewer.”

  “Brave growls from a caged tiger.”

  “I was born in dragon year.”

  “A non-existent creature.”

  “As you will be.”

  “Why did you betray your employer?” asked the chamberlain, moving the torchfire closer to his face.

  “Did I?” he answered, wincing away from the heat. “Which employer? I lose track.”

  “You will suffer much before you die.”

  “How is that new?”

  “You are eccentric. Give up the ring and you will be freed, in time.”

  “Is that time that goes forward or sideways?”

  “What? Give up the ring and you may have sake. You’d like sake?” His voice was soft and concerned. He kept the flames close to the bound spy’s face, the heat stirring his shoulder-length hair.

  “I was hired by Izu. Or was it Nobunaga. Still, Hideo is in the soup I stir, too.” Speaking hurt. His lips hurt. His head hurt.

  The heat went away and there was just a glaring violet afterglow of Reiko’s outline.

  “I give you until the sun is well risen,” the chamberlain told him. “Speak and I grant you relief.”

  “You mean cut off my head? Will Lord Nobunaga approve?”

  Something glinted: Reiko was holding up the golden pass the ronin had been given.

  “You seem to have lost this,” he told him. “Sunrise, anyway.”

  And left, the torchglow shaking his shadow around him as he went out the door and banged it shut.

  “Who killed her, chamberpot?” he called after him.

  The only reply was the bar sliding into place outside with a final clunk.

  The whole story is in his sneaky head, thought the aching detective. Maybe Issa’s too…

  His consciousness was draining away; his brain hurt and his body felt like crumpled paper. And there was a sinking dread that hit him in a reflex of reasoning: if that Ninja had come to Miou’s to kill him, Reiko certainly hadn’t sent him. The chamberlain wanted him alive until he found the ring that didn’t fit anybody…

  And then he was onstage, long ago, a boy dressed as a girl while an adult, holding a sword, stood over him in formal samurai dress, music crashing, a single flute going higher in a kind of agony… and then his head was cut off… he watched it bounce across the pale boards of the main stage, hitting the name-saying seat and rebounding off the pillar of Shite, the Noh protagonist who often comes back as a ghost in the drama… the blood on the floor from the head formed a picture of a woman and he sensed she was dead and that he was, himself, the ghost coming back onstage and now soundlessly screaming, in a spirit’s eerie wail, her name, over and over and over until he woke, shuddering in his bonds and there was again the window full of stars and a real voice (he knew it) saying in a shout-whisper:

  “Takezo? Is this you?”

  “Aaah,” sighed the ronin, “who’s Takezo?”

  “It is uMubaya.”

  The blot shifted in the window, humped-up and was gone. The black man was beside him.

  “How can you be here?” wondered the Japanese.

  “I followed.” He was already cutting away the ropes with a dagger. “One of the men in dark clothes attacked me.”

  “A ninja.” The detective groaned and moved his stiffened arms and legs. “Pleased that you came.”

  “I believe that,” the Zulu said with a quick grin. “He hurled sharp objects at my head.” He helped the battered man to his feet, now. “They missed.”

  “Ah … ” He hobbled to the window. Outside the sea glimmered; the wind and shatter of waves sucked away any sound they might make. “I feel… like a cart missing a wheel … ”

  After the short drop to rock and sand he went to his knees and swayed for a moment. uMubaya held his shoulders.

  “Around the side, here,” he said, close to his ear because of the sea noise. “There’s a path down to the beach.”

  “Amazed you found me,” said Takezo lurching to his feet and gathering the strength in his “belly,” as buke liked to say.

  “I follow like a hyena,” he said. “An animal like a dog but rarely tamed.”

  “Ah… the best men are rarely tamed … ”

  They reached the surf which was much higher here. The dark rocks with the low roofed stronghold were out on the high reef. The ronin, turning his good eye on it against the moonshot background of low clouds and stars, judged it could be held against many by a few determined men. Torches burned along the 10 foot, steeply sloped wall.

  Determined to do someone’s bidding or for some muddily conceived, selfish purpose, to plot and kill and trick, he couldn’t help thinking. How we waste what we’re given…

  “I need a sword,” he muttered. “In a few days maybe I’ll be able to swing it.”

  “Are you that injured?”

  They were heading up the beach a little inland into the shadow of the windswept trees. The Zulu prince handed him a short sword which he thrust in his belt. He’d recovered the naginata he now prized above all other weapons.

  “I exaggerate,” Takezo said. “One of my few good qualities.”

  A few years ago he’d been in the middle of a fight with two very skillful samurai who’d trapped him in a garden. He’d been sliced twice already despite his superior physical strength and technique. Having come in a little drunk, he’d insulted one of them in a teahouse and was outside in the garden, paying for his folly among the spring blossoms and swaying clumps of bamboo. The setting sun threw soft, reddish light and shadows everywhere.

  He thought this was where he was going to die and he didn’t like that. Life seemed sweet as it faded away because all his skill couldn’t pry one enemy loose from the other long enough to score before the other was attacking, again. This was new to him. They were too calm and precise without being the least careful or reckless. One of his teachers (that he’d met on the ronin road) had said that someday his ability would get in his way and he would
learn the truth or die on the spot. It looked like that was the spot and the day. He was tired, bleeding and discouraged. His sweeps, cuts, parries, evasions, witnessed by fighting men and commoners who were watching with general admiration for his style, were beautiful and almost eloquent as ballet; but the step and chop opponents who seemed so crude were about to defeat him.

  He was tired as they closed in and he knew it was over. He felt he was going to die and he felt (though he was there) far away, remote, objective without any ideas about anything, without even fear or fury, and he moved, for a few moments, as if he were alone and fencing with shadows because he was already dead and so merely wordlessly curious about it. He looked at the rich, almost tender light, the hush of blossoms and the soft stirring of the spring air in the way he saw the two men ripping their swords at him and it all blended and he moved in that contented curiosity while his blade swept and stopped as naturally as an infant breathing and he had no idea what it might do next… except the two men rolled and ducked back, one already crease-cut across the forehead and the other with a razor-sliced vest and they were, incredibly, kneeling among the flowers and gathering darkness, saying:

  “Sensei, we apologize for our rudeness. We hope you will teach us something.”

  “Can you walk well enough?” uMubaya was asking.

  Takezo shrugged.

  “We will float well enough,” he said. “Have you seen the others?”

  “I hid among the rocks here until night. I heard men talking. They said the monks were released on their word and that the blue-eyed demon was sent back to the city.” uMubaya grinned, wide and bright in the moonlight. “They said you would suffer and be fed to the –”

  Struggled for a word. Tried a couple and amused Takezo whose lips were in no shape to smile.

  “Crabs,” he said.

  “That’s it,” the prince agreed. “What are crabs?”

  “Reiko’s children.”

  There were small boats pulled up on the beach just below the stronghold for the fishermen who supplied the place. Takezo knew the bosses would have to have their sashimi.

  It was close enough to pre-dawn for there to be a fisherman working by the light of a lantern on a pole that bent his skinny shadow over the pale strand. As they quietly approached, black man first, any sounds they made were blown away by the prevailing on-shore wind so that by the time the stooped, almost fleshless, middle-aged man looked up it seemed a dark demon from some unimagined hell loomed above him, holding the sword-bladed, redly gleaming naginata. The man fell to his knees in the wet sand as the apparition spoke in strangely accented Japanese:

  “We need your boat.”

  The fisherman’s condition was not improved much by the sight of Takezo moving into the illumination showing one shut eye, cut and swollen lip and cheek laced with dried blood. The man quickly gave himself up for dead and softly moaned.

  “You will be rewarded,” said the detective. “I won’t let him drag you to the first hell and eat you.”

  The following day the Zulu and the Japanese parted. With the wind behind them they’d rowed the fisherman’s boat all day along the northern coastline of what in the future would be called Tokyo bay. Takezo had given the fisherman enough coins to buy two new boats. Since samurai rarely stole money (and had contempt for those who directly worked for hire) no one had touched his purse.

  He’d drawn a simple map for uMubaya, who was delighted, of course, and even made suggestions as they camped for the night on a beach of pure white sand literally walled by pine trees in a solid, dark mass. They put in at sunset. As the map showed they were now further north. They’d entered a fold in the bay. This was where, in the morning, the black prince would set out on foot in his monk’s disguise to return to Osa village where the ninja detective was now certain Osan or maybe her body was hidden. As a monk in the countryside he would be left to himself and be able to listen and spy for signs of the young woman.

  Takezo said when he dealt with some matters in Edo he’d meet the African warrior in Osa. He didn’t explain because it wasn’t logical: he was nervous about Miou. And he missed her in a new way. He’d had lovers; when he was an actor he’d had them like the lucky fisherman who’d burst his net. But this was new.

  Twenty-Two

  The winds were picking up and there were thunderheads out over the sea so he decided to walk the coastal road and leave the boat beached. The area was familiar, a few miles out from the city. He sent the Zulu on a northwest road he knew would bring him close to the village.

  Remembered a good inn he’d reach by nightfall that had a beautiful teahouse on the grounds. With the extra gold he’d been picking up, plus his generally battered state, he thought he deserved a little self-indulgence. A bath. Massage. Tea… sake?

  When you don’t drink, he observed, blows hurt more…

  It was dark before he realized he’d misjudged the distance and was already in the outskirts of Edo. Without a pass to get through the checkpoints and too miserably tired and stiff to climb walls and swim canals, he went to a gate where he knew the guards. They passed him.

  He was pondering the dead ninja outside Miou’s room. There was some connection there which took him back to his miserable childhood in the clan.

  I did well to flee, he reflected. They kill with less honor than most of us…

  Remembered his nemesis Osa-kame. Saw his long ax-face, bending over him as he struggled to free himself from knotted ropes during a test. The sneering, teenage bully-face:

  ‘You are weak. Pitiful. You ought to drown yourself like a common woman.’

  ‘Osa,’ he’d snarled back, straining to dislocate his shoulder and loosen the bindings. ‘I will dismember you, you little frog!’

  I did well… can she be a spy… an assassin?

  Shrugged it away. Don’t take yourself too seriously, consider the world.

  Late now, the moon high, ducking in and out of prestorm clouds that resembled fish-scales he’d gone about half a mile along a canal and found the small house he wanted. Two lanterns glowed softly on the porch. He banged on the door and was let in by a dwarf girl with a big head and bowed legs who, after a start, recognized him through his bruises. She took him to the healer, witch and mistress of the place.

  There’s been too much drinking and getting banged on the skull, in any case, he said to himself, an hour later, lying on a hard mat as the middle-aged woman whose face was dominated by a long, sharp, pointed nose and a blind eye, that always reminded him of a cooked egg, fine wrinkles spiderwebbing her face, was engaged in rubbing him down with a slightly numbing salve. She was called Ri-ru. “You are ever in difficulties, Takezo-san,” she pointed out, judiciously. “You should find sensible employment.”

  He sort of groaned, looking away from her and staring at the partly shuttered window of the low-roofed shop where the light was a general fuzziness. There was a composite smell of spices, medicines and flowery incense.

  “Women like to tell me that,” he muttered.

  “Women are right, then.”

  She rubbed something across his split and swollen lip and he winced and grunted at the sting.

  “Naturally,” he said.

  “Strong fighter,” she chuckled. “You always come here when you fall from your horse.”

  “I fell –” he broke off as she put something searing under his cut and battered eye. “From my pony. My skills availed me little.” Sucked in a deep breath. “What have you heard, noble Ri-ru?”

  “Strong fighter, better if you go away. So many against you.”

  He grunted. The stinging was fading.

  “Nothing new,” he sighed. “But what have you heard, wise Ri-ru?”

  “Lord Hideo is going to Wakishi shrine today to pray for his daughter.”

  “Mmm. That is Buddhist.”

  She sat back on her heels.

  “The shrine is famous for its chi. All sects go there to seek holy effects.”

  He levered himself to his feet, st
iffly. The aching was reduced and the potion she’d given him to drink with tea seemed to be building his energy.

  “Give me more of the tea,” he said.

  “Crazy man. You should sleep.”

  “Have things to do. Give me tea and a prayer.”

  Ri-ru was already up and preparing what he wanted.

  “It will wear off in half a day,” she warned, “and then you’ll be twice as weak.”

  He went to the window and peered out into the busy street. The sun’s shadow cut it in half. The passers-by winked into and out of the light. In the middle distance was a high-arched bridge; because of the dip of the hill beyond it seemed to forsake the earth, arcing up into the greenish-blue horizon haze.

  I have a very bad idea, he considered, perfect for me…

  Twenty-Three

  He was just leaving the grounds, pausing in the cool shade of a massive, low-spreading pine tree. He felt the strange cooling energy all pines seemed to have in addition to their shade. Many people felt it as a form of chi.

  The thing about true poetry, he was thinking, apropos of Miou, a feeling engendered by the rich, invigorating scent of the tree, you never say I love you or I hate you or show a need, loss or longing directly but through touching on things that make your own self seem petty, somehow… Touched and stroked a smooth, slightly sticky bunch of bluish-green pine needles on a near branch, for a moment, These needles are not sharp… He stared at the busy street beyond the tile-topped low cement wall across to where a two-storied wooden building was under construction, the workmen, in colored loincloths with bright headbands, just winching up a stack of lumber. The hot, hazy sunlight left half the structure in angled shadow. Not sharp, he went on, murmuring, now:

  “Yet they pierce my heart in the memory of their scent … ”

  “Sir,” a woman’s voice surprised him at his elbow.

  “Hmn?” he reacted, looking down at a round, lovely face he recognized after a moment. “Ah, so it is you. I’m pleased to thank you again.” He bowed, slightly as did she.