“Master?” he said.
“How?”
“Master?”
“How did it happen?”
“Ai, a fool. A fool in a cart.” His voice choked and broke again. Yazu had, in becoming a disciple, despite Takezo’s casual and cynical view of it, given all his feelings to his sensei. “In the street. Run down and crushed… ai …”
“Cart?!”
“Drawn, they say, by two maddened and foaming oxen the drunken fool was beating in a foolish hurry… they say …”
“Run down?”
“Crushed in the filth and mire… ai …”
“Killed by a cart?” His eyes were wide and there were no thoughts in his mind. “This is… this is …”
Shut his eyes. And then his stunned mind spoke:
There is no Takezo… what was Takezo is now gone… gone like smoke… time has eaten him too…
“Oh, master,” said his bony pupil.
“Where is this fool?”
“Fled. After his cart passed over her. Master, I will seek out father Osihatchi who is related to my wife, that arrogant she-dog, and he will have the low-born rascal found, that eta toucher of blood, he will be found as surely as the hunting osprey finds the small fish!”
“Stupid comparison,” gasped Takezo, breathing deep and uneven shocks while he thought his eyes would melt with burning. “Show me her.” He couldn’t say “body.”
We’re all bubbles… rising, floating… popping to nothing…
They’d laid her in a back room on the polished floor so the stains could be mopped easily. Her sheer robes were caked with mud and blood, twisted and torn.
He remembered the clothes from when they’d said goodbye in the afternoon. Incense was smoking in a brass pot beside a pair of smudgy candles.
He couldn’t yet look directly at her. He aimed his blurred eyes at the doubled images of a vase with azaleas under the dark latticed window.
Not chrysanthemums, his mind said, remotely. So she was called… flowers… flowers… what was the other one’s name… killed here too… aiii…
Held his head. One of the petals had fallen on the flower-table. His focus made it two. Shut his eyes and knelt beside her. She was cold. He knew she’d be cold. Yazu was in the doorway to the narrow room. One of the girls was crouching beside him. He heard her intake of breath as he opened and adjusted Miou’s kimono. There were no slash wounds or punctures, he noted, in a professional reflex. A long bruise along the side of her head that could have been from any number of things, not excluding the flat of a sword or a flat stick but (he noted further, trying to hold off grief with observation) fit being struck, maybe, by the yoke and, in any case, there were the bloody tracks that crossed and horribly crushed her legs and her neck.
Ai, so much weight on… on her… he thought. How cruel these marks…
Her face was untouched so he couldn’t bear to look at it at all. She obviously had been perfectly flat in the street on her back when the iron-studded wheels passed over her, breaking her neck and shins. Knocked unconscious by the first impact she’d made no effort to twist away. What must have been a hoofprint had badly bruised one hip.
He closed his eyes again and knelt there with nothing in his mind, now.
Found her hand and held it, shut in his own darkness…
The woman who ran the house came in while he was just sitting, crosslegged, still wearing his sandals while the rest were barefoot. He groped on his person for coins, staring wildly at her lined, over-made-up face.
“Please, see to her,” he said. “I’ll pay.”
“Don’t worry,” the woman said. “It is taken care of.”
Takezo blinked hard and tears broke from his searing eyes.
“Are you so generous?” he wondered. He knew he was clutching at things to think about to put off the real thing, the hollowing reality that was just starting to encompass him. The pain was waiting just outside his brief shield of numbness.
“A gentleman left gold,” she explained, face turned away.
“Client?” Not that it mattered.
“He left no name. Just gold.”
“So quickly?”
She shrugged, almost imperceptibly. He noted a muscle twitch in her cheek.
“I have lost… so many,” she murmured.
He nodded, looking at the floor, now, aware Yazu had gone out – no doubt to look for “father” gangster. There were other people in the hallway; he didn’t look.
“Yes,” he said, “two young girls in a short time.”
The woman shook her head rapidly and slightly.
“Three, now,” she said. “Over a week ago one disappeared with no trace.”
This was good. Something more to think about for a moment. He studied her face. The line in her cheek still pulsed with tension like a water-dimple in a shallow stream.
“Disappeared?” he asked. “Which one?”
“She was called, here, The Lily.”
“Maybe she left with a lover.”
“Maybe. But I’ve never known a girl to run away without taking her possessions.” She shrugged. “Or stealing something.”
He had the coins in his hand, now. Let them slide onto the floor.
“Anyway, I’ll pay. Give him back his money.”
Without actually looking again at Miou’s body, he rolled to his feet and went through the doorway. On the porch he met Yazu who was just standing there. He was wearing the wooden practice sword Takezo had given him for training.
“Where is the cart?” he asked him.
I didn’t see it coming, he thought. I never see…
Yazu held a lantern as they crossed the street from Sanjuro House. The sky was overcast. The cart was half-a-block away. The oxen were gone.
Takezo took the lantern and brought it close to each wheel. The blood was dried and red in the soft circle of light. He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly.
“Who saw this happen?” he asked.
“I know not, master. It was reported by passersby, I think. Many people had gathered by the time I came here.” He was agitated. “The fool ran away. All agreed on that. He seemed as one drunk.”
The spy distantly appreciated Yazu’s genuine sympathy. No doubt the gang boss, Osihatchi, would be able to track down the drunken perpetrator; what good would that do? He’d had enough of everybody’s unsatisfying revenges, including his own.
“He matters no more to me,” he told his disciple, “than the runaway bullocks.”
Strange, he could not help but think, only a single hoofmark on her poor flesh… Charging animals would not pick their steps very carefully.
“Go away, now,” he said softly.
“Master, I …”
“Thank you. Go. I’m going to have some drinks and need no one near me. Not this night.”
Maybe not any night, he thought.
“I’ll find out what I can, master.”
Takezo grunted and sighed, just standing there, the paper lantern forgotten in his hand, the slightly wavering flame half-lighting both their faces in a gentle glow that blurred away marks of age, strain and even grief.
“Now time is done with me, I think,” he told the bony little man. “It can move at any speed it likes.”
“Sensei?”
He handed the illumination to Yazu. Looked at the glowing windows along the street. Thought about all the lives being lived as if death were far away when, in fact, it sat at every hearth.
“Still,” he said, automatically because he couldn’t help considering the problem.
“Yes, sensei?”
“Who was the samurai who slew the other girl …” He said the word bitterly. “I forget her name?”
“I do not know, sir. He escaped.”
“How strange… so much is strange …”
His eyes were leaking burning water, again. His chest was thick with inexpressible feelings. He watched himself, as if he, somehow stood apart, wanting to scream and kill, blindly, as if fat
e could be found in a form that might be cut down.
And then his blade was in his hand, Yazu hopping back, lantern rocking light and shadow, and swinging as he watched, remote, his own cold and futile frenzy. He chopped through the spokes of the rear wheel, like an angry child, sword a chill, supernatural fang chewing up the mere wood, even the big, iron-studded rim, and the massive cart sagged.
And then he stopped, perfectly still. Because it was so obvious and he’d nearly missed it completely. A grim grin twisted his face.
“Sensei!” cried Yazu.
Suddenly a okappiki city policeman was there in his black and gold basin helmet, jittu ready, short sword and wooden bokkuken thrust in his wide sash.
“Stop!” he commanded. “What is this?”
“The mind goes on even after the heart has died,” Takezo said, unenlightingly.
“Drunk?”
“No, no, sir,” said Yazu. “He …”
“Like the lightning-struck pine that still stands, black and bare, against the chill, winter sky.”
“Hmn,” grunted the policeman, “Literary drunk. Sheath your sword and come along. No trouble here, understand?”
Paying little attention, the tall, wide-backed spy took Yazu by one arm and forced him to his knees.
“Lie between the wheels,” he commanded.
“What’s this?” wondered the policeman.
Yazu stretched out, understanding what his master wanted. He put his neck under the front wheel. His feet just reached the other one and he was at least as tall as Miou.
“Aiii,” sighed Takezo.
“Both drunk,” said the official. “Better come.”
The ronin finally noticed him.
“Go away,” he said. “Go talk to my friend Taro at the 5th district house.”
That brought faint amusement.
“A good man. You know him? Has he arrested you?”
“A good friend.”
“Hmn. A good man. He’ll do you little advantage. He’s been suspended for strange misconduct.” Tilted his head. “Why are you angry at the cart?”
As Yazu stood up Takezo was already turning, heading back to Sanjuro house. He didn’t really register what he’d said about Taro.
“Wait!” commanded the policeman. “Sheath your weapon and come with me!”
Takezo kept walking out of the lantern’s soft, uneven ring of light. He wasn’t anxious to go back in there but had to. This “oka” didn’t interest him much.
The man drew his wooden sword, keeping the jittu in his left hand to catch and twist the other’s blade if he should strike, then bang his skull or break his arm with the curved stick. This fellow was very good and had successfully disarmed dozens of samurai, drunk and sober.
Since Takezo didn’t bother to turn and just kept walking along meditatively, wrapped in his gathering sorrow, the policeman simply chopped the wooden blade at the back of his head to stun him – except the target, not seeming to notice, took an extra half-step and gave the officer the impression he’d tried to hit a supernatural being formed of shadow.
Behind him the ronin heard Yazu and the officer. His disciple was saying, vehemently:
“See the blood, sir? Oh, don’t trouble him! His woman was crushed to death on this very spot! A terrible grief for my poor master.”
And the other voice, somewhat conciliatory, now, saying something Takezo didn’t make out or pay attention to as he was crunching up the path to the building, across the polished porch and then inside, reflexively kicking his tabi off, this time. His naked katana was still in his hand.
The hall was empty and the head woman was just coming from the room Miou was laid out in.
“I’ve sent for the coffin-maker,” she told him as he brushed past her. “I am going to Joishi temple in the morning to have prayers said and …”
She looked after him as he went into the narrow, room and skidded to his knees, head down-tilted, beside her crushed body in the dim, shadowy glow.
There was a fine-featured young samurai on the other side of her who looked with steady, muted fury at the intruder. Put his hand on his sheathed short-sword.
“What manners,” he said.
He seemed familiar. Takezo was uninterested. Made himself look at the body, again. Sighed and nodded.
“It’s so,” he whispered.
“Coming in so rudely. Sword in your hand.”
“Yes. I might have disturbed her,” the ronin didn’t quite snarl back. Looked at the blade as if just noticing it, then slipped it back into its lacquered sheath with a sigh. “Ah,” he said. “Pardon me. Who are you?”
“Taramachi Sessu, impudent man in rags.”
“So, impudent, well-dressed man,” Takezo couldn’t resist saying. “What was she to you?” Takezo didn’t look at him. He was, again, putting off really looking at anything. “Something you paid for.”
“Hmn. A fine companion. A good spirit. Intelligent.” Studied the spy closely, hand relented from his shogo hilt. “Are these things that can be bought?”
“You loved her?”
“You do not remember me?”
“Sessu? I don’t want to know you much less remember you.” He held his face in his hands. “Leave me in peace.”
Sessu took this in.
“I see,” he said. “You loved her, too. I was in the inn when you trounced the fat gambler.” He touched her hand where it lay at her side. Someone had covered her with a damask sheet. “She was supposed to meet me there.”
Takezo glanced over at him. Then down at her covered body. There were a couple of bloodstains near where one of her small feet poked out.
Why not? Whose life is so simple? He asked himself, remembering him sitting in the corner while he threatened Yazu over the cheap comb. He’d wondered why she’d shown up there; she’d never actually said she’d been looking for him – which he’d taken for granted. As if it mattered… aii… when was that? Years ago? Time has drained away behind me… Except it mattered because he had to think about all the life she’d lived that he knew nothing about. There was a strange emptiness to that.
“She is not seven feet tall,” he said. “Do you think she is seven feet tall?”
The younger man half-crouched upright, angry, again.
“What are you saying?” he demanded.
“Unimportant.” Sighed. Touched her foot. “Miou… blood on your sweet flesh …” Tears suddenly rained from his eyes and spattered the floor. “She is much smaller than seven feet,” he whispered, feeling a deep, involuntary shudder pass through him. “You see? You see that? Much smaller… very small …”
The other sank back to his knees, across the body from Takezo. Wiped a sleeve at his eyes.
“I don’t …” he began.
“The cart was too wide,” he said, voice dead. “They had to run it over her a second time.”
And the reason, he relentlessly let himself realize, was probably because the first time it missed her neck and only crushed her legs. A miscalculation or intentional cruelty. What matter?
He was sick with anger and then he was just sick without anything.
“I desired her,” Sessu said. “She did not let me possess her.” Frowned. “What about a cart?”
“Did you get back your money?” Takezo wondered.
“What are you saying?” he snapped, irritated again. “I didn’t try to buy her love. You anger a man. How have you lived so long?”
“It seems much longer than it is. I have problems with time.” He sighed, staring at the two candles, thin, dark smoke sluggishly curling up like calligraphic lines spreading in the heavy air, suggesting words that were pictures… dissolving into hints and shadows… so many things seemed to have a message for him…
“You have many problems, I have heard, Takezo-san.”
“I meant the money for the funeral. I told her to return it to you.”
“I left none.”
He looked away from the smoke; no messages there. Glanced at the fell
ow and knew he was telling the truth. Took another uncomfortable breath and scratched his chin where he needed a shave.
Who did? He asked himself. Another man and so quickly… I’ll find out from the woman here…
“Whom do you serve?” Takezo asked.
“Lord Hideo.”
“You must have sinned in a former life.”
“And I trained in the Yoshioka school.”
“Then I dare not fight you. Imagine your skills.”
Sessu waited, alert and ready.
Takezo stood up and turned his back on her body and the samurai. He knew he was just himself, again. The lost, lonely boy, trained to extreme violence and deception who ran away and learned to dream in public, on the stage…
His master, Tengu Hiromachi, a solid journeyman actor, was sitting on the edge of the highly polished, cherrywood Noh stage, leaning his back on the first pillar and watching Takezo, in girl’s clothing, wave a fan and gracefully fold to his knees.
Tengu rubbed his head with both hands. Hummed a grunt.
‘Was that better?’ Takezo asked.
‘Worse,’ was the reply from the stocky actor.
‘This is as bad as learning ninja arts,’ the boy said, giving the adult the feeling he might run away from this life, too.
‘You better master something or you’ll end a bandit.’
‘Maybe that’s not so bad, sir.’
‘And die by the roadside or be executed in some hideous way.’
The boy just sat there and sighed.
‘How can I be a woman?’ he asked, frustrated.
‘You cannot,’ said Tengu. ‘Or a man either. Not on the stage. On the stage you can only be a character made of words and gestures.’ The teacher stood up resting one hand on the smooth pillar. ‘Understand this: you must be like water taking the shape of what you pass over, reflecting what is around you and always know you are none of those things.’
‘It is like ninja training,’ the boy considered, staring out into the dim, empty theater.
‘All beings act: the samurai to seem fierce and fearless, the prostitute to seem tender, the gambling-banker to seem a kindly friend, the tavern-keeper to seem concerned, and so on.’
Takezo liked that.
‘Or the actor,’ he jibed, ‘to seem he has money to pay the bill.’
The teacher laughed and nodded.
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 18