Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha

by Richard Monaco

  “Takezo,” he said, calmly. “If I show myself to you I’ll have to slay you. I don’t wish that. Come back to our clan. Yes. Our clan. The one you fled.”

  The finger poked his brain, as usual. Then he had it:

  “You waited almost 30 years to reclaim me? Touching. Why didn’t you tell me when you gave me gold ryo?”

  “Bah. You know better.”

  “Miou told you. She worked for you. You had her murdered. I think you’re the butcher behind it all.”

  They were both silent. Takezo was about to try to spring out and go for the sword. It was probably hopeless. But his disgust was getting the better of him. In the distance there was a faint booming of thunder.

  He heard the other sigh inside his silver helmet. It was strange because nothing showed, not even a careless movement as if, the ronin, thought he was a being made of iron and steel. The torchlight made shadows in the gathering mist. He realized it must be close to dawn.

  “Consider well my words, Takezo.”

  The detective just stood there, waist-deep in the coffin, too angry and disgusted to even react.

  “You’re going to make war,” he said, sadly. “You will kill everybody. Do you drink blood? What are you inside that stupid suit?” Waved one hand. “I don’t really want to know.” He shook his head. “A new world. But can you do it without the mighty ring? You haven’t said much about it. I’m disappointed. Don’t you worry that I’ll go away with it?”

  He was ready now and wondered if the other knew it. He could feel the strength come back into himself. He had things to do and places to go.

  “You are always watched,” said the muffled, purring voice, calmly. “I brought you here to demonstrate the stupidity of your life. And to offer you a new one.”

  He paced away, into the mist, holding the torch. A sudden stir of wind fluttered it and the one stuck on the pole by the grave. Takezo got his leg over the lip of the coffin barrel and stood on the loamy earth. He headed for the grave and his naked sword.

  “This is all theater,” he called after the armored man, half-running, drawing the blade from the dirt and reflexively wiping it clean as he followed him, out of sight now, just the flamelight winking between bushes and tree branches. The thunder sounded a little closer and there were soft shakings of lightning in the distance.

  Wobbling a little, he managed a run, cut around the graves and stones, ducked under low-hanging branches and came out abreast of the torch. The sluggish fog filled the branches and closed him in. The torch was stuck into the earth and he glimpsed the armor glinting faintly maybe 20 feet away behind the wet, gray mist-curtain.

  Takezo leveled his sword and moved carefully forward, trying to feel the man’s strength. Felt nothing.

  “Draw, butcher,” he said. “Maybe you’ll win.” Silence. The outline came a little clearer, standing still, under a twisted pine tree. Then the voice, muffled, this time, by fog and damp earth so that it seemed to come from nowhere:

  “Look around you,” it said. “This is what your life has come to. You stand ignorant, alone in the dark of a graveyard.”

  A roll of mist thickened and gave the impression the figure was retreating. Takezo instantly charged, was on top of it and slashed down in a single terrific burst of movement aware that it was futile, as the blade sliced through in a spray of sparks with barely any resistance. He drew a breath and sighed.

  Worse than a bad dream, he thought.

  Because the armor had been suspended from a limb and he’d cut it in half. The suit had crunched to the earth while the helmet hung there, mask divided in two, swinging. The fog stirred and roiled softly in the pre-storm breezes. The torchlight behind him cast his shadow on the gray air, bending and shifting.

  “More stupid theater,” he said, breathing in and out slow and hard. “You won’t even try to kill me. I’m worthless dead and you are merely worthless. Ninja.”

  “Reflect on your life,” said the virtually directionless, blurry voice. Takezo knew the trick: cup your hands and talk into the ground. “You stand almost on her grave. Take time and reflect. She was one of us. She was sent to learn your secrets. She weakened. Come out of the dark where you stumble like a blind man.”

  Takezo just stood there, staring at the swaying pieces of the helmet and mask. Then he shut his eyes and held one hand to his face and shook his head. He’d already half-guessed even that and had half-buried it.

  Ah, he thought. It’s more than true… my love, my love, I saw nothing… nothing…

  Thirty-Nine

  Mora-by-the-sea

  uMubaya went upstairs to the sleeping loft where the bad-breathed owner was letting him spend the night. He said he liked having a holy man around. The big African wasn’t tired but had decided to wait for darkness before poking around the village. Or maybe go back to poke around the farms. Smiled at the idea.

  Some more poking. He thought.

  Later, the sun was just setting over the hills. He watched it through the wood-barred window that cut up the exquisite, washed-out orange and pink streaks.

  He’d about concluded that dreaming about Mer’ce was like a sorcerer’s curse. He tried to concentrate on the farm woman opening herself up beneath him. He stretched out on the cheap, rough straw mattress, looking at the window that was a magical painting in the rough wall of the rough room.

  Regardless, he found himself thinking about how the same sky was above both of them, that, even now, she was doing whatever she did, maybe eating or laughing or stringing beads for a dress…

  He shut his eyes and drifted into fantasy, mixing up the farm girl and Mer’ce in memory and dream so the barn and the thorn bomba were one and the exquisite, blended naked body sat down on him in the dimness, melting the thin Masai, himself and the resilient, obliging Japanese together…

  “Did I mate with her or not?” he said, in Zulu, frustrated, opening his eyes and seeing, as the paling sunset light faded in the little room, a young woman’s face peered at him above the open trapdoor where the stairs came up. She had a pale kerchief knotted over her head. Her features in the dimness seemed long, aristocratic, very fine. He almost took her for a spirit with a harried, haunted look.

  He thought he knew her as she crouched up to floor level and knelt-walked into the sleeping area. She wore a pale, hempen robe and had particularly long, graceful hands.

  “So the spy-who-drinks was right,” he said, not loud, sitting up. “You live.”

  “I slipped away,” Osan said. “You’re growing a beard.”

  The Zulu rubbed his chin, nodding. The last light glowed pale, pale rose on the wall behind him and showed part of his dark face. She was like an evanescence exhaled by the twilight, lovely, he thought, and unreal as one of their misty paintings of misty things.

  “There’s been some trouble over you,” he said, dryly.

  She inclined her head, gracefully.

  “Which grieves me, uMu-baya-san,” she said.

  “Are they looking for you?”

  “Not yet. One of my guards likes to drink and dozed off. They don’t worry about me escaping. Who would assist me? Most people in this region are one criminal family.”

  “So I heard.”

  “I saw you on the street earlier. You are a very big priest. What happened to Cor-in and Nori?”

  “Nori I do not know. Colin is captured and may be beheaded for your murder. I was sent here to look for you.”

  “Strange choice,” she said, thoughtfully, bowing slightly, again. “You speak even better than before and it has been less than a month since I was taken.”

  The room was nearly dark, now, the barred window a vague luminescence.

  “I was sent here by a spy, Takezo,” he said. “Many things have happened. Few good.”

  “Ah. I recall him. My mother dislikes him so he must be a friend. Will you help me to reach Edo, Ya-san?”

  “This is why I have come.” He mused, a moment. She was a vague blot kneeling close to him. “You are tall,�
�� he pointed out. “You wear my clothes and headpiece. It’s dark. I’ll find something else.”

  There was a commotion outside. He squinted through the window into the already dark street. Torches and lanterns were spraying and shaking light as several clumps of armed men moved rapidly, spreading out into alleys and yards, calling out to one another. An obvious search.

  He got up and went past her kneeling at the open trapdoor.

  “I think your guard woke up,” he said softly to her; then called down into the shop, keeping his face back from the candlelight that gleamed up the stairs. “What’s the noise?”

  A customer had just come in. uMubaya could see he was a big man in dark kimono and a conical straw hat. He called up:

  “Looking for a man. A big black devil from some devil land. Up to no good.”

  “Black?”

  “Black like charred wood,” was the response.

  “Have you seen this devil?” asked the shopkeeper just out of the Zulu’s view.

  “No,” said the newcomer.

  Outside there were suddenly footsteps on the board sidewalk and the gruff voices of men wanting to seem fierce, uMubaya thought. One man burst in the doorway, torch flaring as he held it up to scrutinize the interior. He wore a sword, breeches and a wide-striped tunic. He was missing an ear and front teeth.

  “Seen anything?” he demanded.

  “I see you,” said the big newcomer; he had no weapon visible.

  “A black demon?” asked the shop owner. “How do you know?”

  “Eh? He was seen by a farmer crossing the fields.” Shook the torch around so the flame stuttered and ripped the air. “Better not hide him. The Boss would boil you to death.”

  “Why would I hide a devil?”

  “I see something! Who’s up there?”

  “A Buddhist priest.”

  Screwing up his face in almost a comic scowl, the man started to rush up the stairs, saying:

  “Saying sutras?”

  Except the big man in the hat reacted before the African had to, snatching him by his sash and yanking him back down. The torch dropped, the shopman scurried to pick it up and the one-eared criminal drew his sword with a great flourish and swept it sideways in a flat cut; a dagger-centered jittu was instantly in the big man’s left hand, catching and locking the blade, while his right struck the scowling face with an impact, the Zulu thought, like a coconut hit by a club. The gangster smacked the floor with a whump and less teeth than before. His feet kicked, fanning left and right.

  “Come on, foreigner,” the victor said, slipping his weapon back under his robe. “I’m Taro. Takezo sent me.”

  “Good,” the reply from the shadows above. Outside the voices and footsteps had moved off. “A moment.”

  And almost at once a smaller priest in uMubaya’s baggy robes and wicker headpiece startled the shopkeeper who was crouching with the torch in one hand, the smoke curling and filtering out through the wide spaced planks of wall and ceiling.

  “Un. What’s this?” he wondered, then hopping back as the massive, muscular, ebony prince in just a white loincloth came down, gleaming seven-foot naginaga in one big fist. “Ai!”

  “Delicate hands even for a priest,” said Taro, looking at Osan in the voluminous disguise. “So you found her.”

  “She found me.”

  The policeman was already stripping off his outer garment.

  “Put this on,” he said. “It’s moonless dark. Our best chance is to follow the beach south towards the city.”

  uMubaya grinned, looking at the man on the floor as he shrugged into the robe.

  “I know that beach well,” he commented.

  Taro bowed to Osan.

  “Reverend one,” he said, smiling. “Bless our journey.”

  “Amusing,” she said through the wicker. “It appears I am indebted to Takezo-san. He must have reformed himself and achieved sobriety.”

  Taro liked that. He led them out the back door and, after holding up a cautionary finger to the shopkeeper, he said:

  “Sobriety? Please do not insult my esteemed friend.”

  As they went out the back into the dark yard they could hear him yelling out the front door:

  “Over here! Over here! The devils were just here!”

  As they worked their way around small trees and bristly bushes, then over a low fence, she said:

  “We must get to Edo and help that poor young man. It is my fault. I should not have used him as I did.”

  “Did you not love him?” inquired the Zulu as they reached the sandy, scrub brush area that bordered the beach itself. The wind was steady, onshore, rich with sea scents and washed the voices behind them into the distance. They moved quickly because there were already torches showing back where’d they’d come from.

  “No,” she replied. “I am ashamed. He was my excuse to run away. I should have stayed.”

  “He cares much for you,” uMubaya said, thoughtfully. “Whom do you love?”

  “I have not loved,” she replied, “the way you mean. I sometimes think I am like the ‘grasshopper girl’ in the story. She thought only of studying her insects until a handsome captain stopped by her gate having heard how strange she was.”

  “A tale,” responded the Zulu. “I like tales.”

  “I’ll tell it if fate permits us peace and time. I am skeptical of that.”

  “You are like this girl?” he asked as they ploughed up and over a dune, stiff reeds brushing brittlely at them.

  “Ah. I study my grasshoppers of thought, but where is the captain by the hedge to stir me with a poem?”

  “Ah, ha,” put in Taro from just in front. “She should have stayed with her bugs. Love brought her sorrow.”

  “Nothing is more certain,” agreed uMubaya. “But sorrow is not all of it.”

  “What is all of it?” inquired the girl as they now crossed the wide beach towards the retreating low-tide shoreline. “Were a man or woman born deaf, dumb and blind, they could love only what they touched. What would love be for them?”

  Her eyes were wide, distant, looking out where the moonsheen came and went on the dark sea before them.

  Taro shrugged, looking over his shoulder back towards the village.

  “Can’t say,” he responded. “There’s smell and taste, too, anyway.”

  They went out quite a distance through tidal pools and ridges of sand, much further, uMubaya realized, than the night Takezo and the others had been captured.

  Every time I visit this village, he thought, people want to kill me… when this is over maybe I will explore the hills and forests of the south… Grinned. Get to know more farm women…

  The retreating surf broke in slopping hisses, almost viscous, rills of bubbles faintly visible as the withdrawing sea strung seaweed and other detritus on the slightly curved shoreline. There was a faint fishy scent of decay.

  I’ve come in a circle, the black man thought. Where do I stop?

  Faintly, against the wind, there was a fresh outcry where the inn stood behind the wall of dunes. Out over the sea there was a distant, muted quivering of thunder and faint, shapeless pulsings of lightning.

  Looking back, the twinkling lights around the village might have been part of a festival. Osan threw back the basket-like headpiece and breathed deeply.

  “I fled,” she said to no one in particular, “to save, I hoped, bloodshed. But what is promised by karma is fulfilled one way or another.”

  Forty

  At Izu’s castle – same day

  In his chamber, Lorenzo Gentile was wearing a green and red kimono, pacing in front of the wall-long painting he was working on. His only set of European clothes was wearing thin and was being washed. The third story room had excellent light, shaded by an overhang. He’d been painting, with mixed results all afternoon, waiting for word from Takezo. He’d just received permission to visit Colin in jail at the magistrate’s building.

  At the moment, as the sun set behind the city, he was pacing w
ithout looking directly at the sprawling sketch and daubs of color that covered about 15X6 feet of red silk screen. He’d glance over then away. He knew this work was obsessing him and seemed, somehow, as real as or more real than the wild and bloody events he was embroiled in.

  Her face was still a featureless outline and he was starting to think he’d leave it that way. A mystery. Near the center was another mystery: a cloudy whirlpool-like effect swirling from the mouth of what could have been a severed head or a giant mask of fury, sucking in Takezo, tapping with his naked sword like a blind man, clothes whipping forward in an occult wind, dead men around him, a slim woman holding his free hand from behind, struggling to hold back, holding her the little fellow, Yazu, then uMubaya, naked, a spear defiantly over his head, a warcry on his lips… then other figures… he wasn’t sure yet, the line like medieval depictions of the dance of death… others, maybe himself… Izu… Issa for sure…

  He stood still and sighed. He’d never worked on such a large scale and yet it felt compressed… he wanted the action to vividly burst out at the onlooker… wanted the pain and need… the love that was a fire in the blood…

  He went to the window. The red orange cloud line on the horizon, the pure, darkening blue looked washed clean, the white edges gleamed. He fingered, then opened the little leather pouch on the string around his neck that Takezo had given him. Took out a ring. Turned it, the dark red, flat stone glowing faintly in the fading light.

  Interesting, he thought. This is so important… this was hers’? He held up his hand. It looks like one of mine… so much blood and pain for this?

  Then an idea was there: he began toying, twisting and squeezing around and under the setting.

  Let us see…

  Forty-One

  At Hideo’s

  Takezo decided it was now his turn. He’d been a practice dummy, target and pigeon for the hunting hawks. Now he’d ask the questions. Painful questions.

  So he was standing, this time, in full ninja costume, just his eyes a hint through the rectangular opening in the black, black hood.