Like to not kill anymore… maybe I’ll stop tomorrow… take a vow…
At the next landing Reiko was closing the door behind him in a room just off the stairs. Coming closer Takezo could hear a woman’s voice. Cupped his ear to the wood. Issa was just saying:
“So you spare me some time? How kind.”
“Things are in turmoil.”
“Yes. There is deceit everywhere.”
“What are you implying, woman?”
“You weary of me.”
“Not true. Not true.” He sounded very tired to the spy who felt like a ghost condemned to imperfectly overhear the trivial, dull and commonplace shames of the living. “I feel… well …”
Their voices faded as they moved to some other part of the room. Going partly up the next flight of steps he saw he could swing himself up to the rafters of the dropped ceiling. Sheathing his blade he managed to do it, and crept flat out over the paper ceiling on the wide timbers. He could make out their conversation, again.
“Future?” she was asking, sarcastically. “If we fail there will be none for us.”
“I don’t wish to disgrace my lord.”
She didn’t quite laugh.
“How noble,” she told him, with great control. “You think you can dispense with me and rule alone.”
“Nonsense. We’ll rule nothing if we divide our purpose.” He was sighing his breaths, almost directly under Takezo as he, obviously paced back and forth. “I am not cold, my love. There is turmoil.”
“There is deceit. That I love you, Reiko, is the deceit I practice on myself. The heart, if you are cursed with one, makes need seem reason and wins all arguments.”
“I say, again, I love you. Nothing is changed. I have none but you.”
“I think you have none but you. I am wanton and willful but my heart is not easily given. Like the whore in the old tale.”
His voice receded as he went to the door.
“You say all this,” he said. “Not I. Meanwhile, your husband will return tomorrow for the trial of the foreigner. We must be discreet. We must work as one.”
“So you leave me, now?”
“I must. There’s too much at stake and much to do by morning.”
“Ah. Yes. Be warned. Do not betray me.”
“Foolish. I love only you.”
And went out. Takezo thought:
My poor noh play now writes itself… in blood and farce…
As he eased himself back across the boards he turned around in the almost black space and cracked his head on a supporting post; pulling back, his knee missed and his leg went through the paper ceiling. Unbalanced, he clutched for the unseen post, missed, and rolled through, hitting on his back with a slam that bore little relation to the catlike, noiseless drop of a ninja.
Nothing broke and his head hit just hard enough to stun him. There was a dim, tall, outline looming over him, depthless, a dagger coming down that a moment later, still trying to find out how to move himself, he saw was a shadow on a bare paneled wood wall that might have been a brush sketch except it was moving and then his growing focus included two smoky oil lamps set on either side of a futon. Then he raised his head far enough to see Issa bent over him, her long dagger, glinting the dim, red-orange light as it pressed just above his genitals. Any other spot and he would have blocked and swept her down.
“So poor a spy,” she said, with easy scorn, “ought not to reproduce himself, in any case.”
Forty-Three
On the coast
Between the in-and-out moon and the gusting glow from the burning fishermen’s huts they could see bodies lying along the beach. uMubaya counted about a dozen before they came to a long, narrow fishing boat pulled up just clear of the low, slapping surf of this cove. The wind was hard and steadying, blowing south and a little west towards Edo.
“How stupid and sad,” said Osan.
Taro shrugged.
“Always,” he agreed. “Yet, what can be done? This is man’s way.”
“I am a sailor,” said uMubaya, studying the craft. It seemed sound. Strangely, he’d just realized he really was a sailor and not just a prince of warriors.
“Blood and the curse of blood,” she said. “This sickens our land.”
“All lands, lady,” put in the Zulu, leaning his massive shoulder to the boat and testing the weight. It gave, slightly. “We can launch this.” Grunted as Taro moved beside him to help. “In my country,” he went on, “a warrior who spills blood must purify himself for days before seeing his family again.”
“Ease in killing makes death slight as a mortal wound struck in a play,” she said, looking at the dead in the dull light of the middle-distance flames that wobbled shadows as the soft and subtle moon painted the scene.
“You have eloquent words for anything,” remarked Taro. “Can words move a boat?”
“Words move all beings. The words of Buddha can enlighten. The words of a fool can bathe the world in blood.”
What point, she thought, to be reborn if only pain and grief turns time’s wheel? Like someone rushing out of freezing winter into a burning building…
An hour later they were scudding down the coast at a good clip with the wind almost at their back. The slim craft was stable and quick to the helm, slicing across the angled and growing waves. No lightning showed or thunder echoed, yet; just a gathering surge as the tide began to turn and the wind pulsed, uMubaya considered, like a leopard toying with a hare.
Looking at the vague shoreline, the scattered lights like soft stars, Osan thought about what she had to do with really no idea of what was actually going to happen.
Should not have run away, she said to herself. Caused more suffering than I sought to avoid… I longed to complete my work in peace instead of facing ugliness and now my father’s house is threatened as civil war smolders…
“Ahhh,” she sighed, watching the vast, obscure darkness of the country flowing past in the changing, insubstantial moonglow…
*
Gentile
He was back in his chamber with all the lamps and lanterns lit. He was wearing just a loose kilt skirt, sweating, blinking, rubbing his beard, colors staining, smearing his fine-featured face.
I am like the astronomer who, entranced by the glory of the heavens, cares not where his feet fall until he trips and the dull earth hits him, he thought, stepping back to consider the unfolding shapes that seemed to be growing out of the saturated brush-strokes.
Somehow the pain and violence, treachery and vile intentions became a pure design the way the spiritually polluted world itself might be viewed by an archangel or some other timeless god as pure composition, utterly beautiful.
Overall, the sky was darkened with towering, glossy-looking clouds, black-red in places, showing lightning streaks, with gaps here and there where sunbeams broke through like spotlights highlighting a stage scene. On each panel main figures repeated. On the first, still faceless Osan stood tall with a brush and scroll in her hands looking towards the viewer… middle-distance showed a road lined by groveling peasants in bright clothing as a long, elaborate procession passed with captives or prisoners yoked together, seeming to form their shapes from a swampy mist or blowing smoke under the lash and kicks of masked, armored men… a headless woman lay in an exquisite garden of pink and white blossoms accented by her blood… there was even Takezo, in torn and burning clothing, eyes swollen shut, dueling with a man made of smoke and flame, skinny Yazu kneeling, arm flung up heavenwards as a sooty rain poured down…
All that and the blank spaces. The blank spaces worried him because he was blank, himself, looking at them… and the still, hardly touched, final panel.
He went and leaned out the open window overlooking the fairytale, almost too-precious city.
“Storm, fire and blind war,” he murmured. “That’s the third panel.” The blanks had to be filled, somehow, with moonlight, romance and poetry. It all had to balance: the more extreme the grotesque agonies of existence,
equally extreme must be the wonder. “Balance,” he whispered.
Italians have so little, as persons and so much as a people, he considered, amused. Rubbed his face and eyes. Reason is wishful thinking…
“She must be like me,” he whispered. Smiled. “Someone must.” His hair was tugged by the thick, hot, unceasing wind. He could hear banners snapping and popping down below over the low, soft humming soughing. “It seems she lives so she must be… somewhere… out in this same night.”
He had no idea where to look for Takezo. He wanted to show him the apparent secret of the ring. It seemed trivial. Seemed a kind of haiku.
Maybe only here, he thought, could so much blood be shed over a poem… His mood was still wry. In Italy, the cause would be cheese and pastry…
The moonlight faded off and on across the choppy, white-flecked dark bay.
“They say the storms are coming early,” he said out into the windy night. “But, perhaps, they are always on time.”
*
Under the knife
“I mean you no hurt, lady,” Takezo assured Issa, trying to add sincerity to his pain and trepidation.
“I mean you much,” was the unsettling reply, “assassin and spy.”
“Ah. But I am your ever-obedient Jiro Takezo.”
“Then I mean you still more. Unmask.” He did. “I should have known you by sheer clumsiness alone.”
The knife blade stayed where it was.
“My private parts displease you?” he inquired, tugging off the hot, confining hood.
She didn’t quite laugh.
“Worse are known,” she said.
Her humor reminded him of Miou. He blinked, hard. His head pulsed, dully from the blow and it had been a long time since his last drink. He was sure there’d be a jug somewhere in this surprisingly bare chamber, not an aristocrat’s private room so, obviously, a place to meet Rieko where few would think of looking.
“I’m not angry because of the poison needle,” he told her, trying to read her face; with the light behind it was mostly shadow. “I learned a great deal as a result. I met the great one.” Sighed and rubbed his eyes. “You don’t trust me. I meant to come in the main gate but I never have much luck seeing you, that way.”
“This way is far better. You should try it from a higher ceiling, next time.”
“Hmn. How fickle you are. I’d like to both sit up and keep my manhood.” Sighed, again. “Maybe. Anyway, you gave me money for my services. You recall that morning?”
“Did I receive them?”
“I couldn’t tell you much because I knew nothing.” She pulled back, folded herself onto her heels and set the bright knife beside her. He sat up, staring at the two candles framing her from behind, painting in just the outside of her face in gentle uncertainty. Her eyes were obscured.
“Now you know something, Takezo?” she inquired.
He realized he was seeing her in a different way. It wasn’t that they’d been intimate because, really, they hadn’t; they’d merely had sex – if memory served. It was her surprising vulnerability with Reiko that had affected him.
“Let me ask you one thing,” he responded. “Why are you so deep in this mad and confused plotting? Why conspire to betray your rightful lord? You are too mature to chase wild dreams of the heart.”
“You mean old,” she returned, deadpan. “What is the age? Have you passed it?”
He sighed and rubbed his face and head, shaking it, slightly.
“Alright,” he muttered.
“Life is too hard, Takezo. Stubbornness can destroy us. I mean no harm to my husband. In great matters to choose wrongly is ruin. I wish my house to endure. It was dearly bought.”
He nodded, reluctantly.
“And your stubborn husband will stubbornly cut his belly to keep his oath.”
Shook his head. “Do you all really think you’ll undo Nobunaga with some ‘magic’ ring?”
One eye on her and the other on the doorway. He half-hoped the chamberlain or somehow, Yoshi would come in and make life simple for a moment. He realized he was starting to treat her as a friend. And he had to respect Hideo. Whom did he now serve?
Maybe I’m working for everybody, he had to think. Interesting…
“Some Chinese wizard claims the ring is from the gods, once worn by a divine warrior in ancient times.” She shrugged her hands. “Who possesses it cannot be defeated.”
“Shrewd Reiko believes this?”
“So he says.”
The spy rubbed his back and hoped he’d find a masseur tomorrow. Knew he’d be black and blue.
“There’s nothing like pursuing a sacred vision to blunt all pity and sense,” he said. “Since I’m supposed to have this talisman, how dare they oppose me?”
“You can’t know its secret,” Tapped the dagger softly on one silk-covered knee.
“How can they be sure?” he wondered, standing up, feeling the twinges as new pains manifested around his spine. Grunted.
“Theirs is the side to choose,” she said, “in any case.”
“I better go. I have people to kill.”
“You’re a great fighter,” she said, amused, “but not a man to enlist for cold-blooded work.”
“I can improve,” he said.
“Why? Because your lover was murdered?”
“Because of many things.”
“Don’t kill mine.”
“Which one?” he wondered.
He saw she was amused but serious.
“The one I love,” she told him. “Remember I just spared you.”
“Only my manhood, lady. A thing that always points me to fresh troubles.”
“Take off that outfit. You’ll never get past the extra guards. There’s a threat of war.” She stood and came over to him, dagger at her side. He thought about climbing back down that wall. Started undressing. “All your guile and skill will avail you little,” she concluded, not-quite-not laughing.
He grinned.
“My arrows will miss their mark and I’ll topple from my pony, great lady. But won’t it be worse at dawn?” he asked.
“I will get you out, Takezo-san.” She came close enough for him to see her ambiguous eyes and take in her subtle perfume. “Do you still have enough gold to serve me a little more?”
“There’s nothing to buy, my lady. For either of us.”
“Ah.”
“I think we’re like people falling from a high place. We have time to cry out or think and watch.” He shrugged. “How quickly the ground arrives.”
He stood there in his loincloth, now, sweating all over in the thick air.
“Find my child and bring her back,” she told him. “Whatever else you do, do that.”
He nodded.
“Yes, lady,” he agreed. “We both need to ask her things.” Bowed. “You surprise me.”
“Maybe I am a bad woman, but I love my child. I cannot help the ways of my heart any more than I can stop the wind by wishing.”
“I understand.”
He moved so more of her long, oval, smooth face showed in the weak illumination.
“Or the burning in my body,” she continued.
“Yes, I itch myself, sometimes. But, you know, it was a nasty trick. Using that actress.” Going back to the Miou imitator. “I cannot do much with my heart, either.”
She looked at him and seemed quite guileless.
“It might have been she,” Issa said, “and you would have been certainly slain if you’d tried to leave that place.”
“You thought only of my well-being.”
“I need you because no one controls you.”
She looked demurely down. His impression was that Issa demure was like a basking cobra. She sat again and then uncoiled onto the futon, silks swishing in a soft hiss. It was hard not to think about that golden flesh barely covered.
“What were you before you were a great lady? What clan? Or might you have been a merchant’s daughter mounting on steps of silver? I’m insult
ing but I can’t control it.” He leered a grin. “Like the burning in my body. Or my windy heart.”
She laughed and supplely stretched. He felt she was too good and too deadly to be a farm girl and far too free to be a samurai’s offspring. Didn’t like where that was going, either: please not another ninja woman. Again, he felt like he was in a play where he wasn’t sure of his lines and had half-forgotten the plot.
“You think I’m some kind of spy, too?” she asked, as coy as a viper could manage. She moved and a line of flesh showed honey-pale, diagonally creasing down her long torso where the robe just pulled away a little. “Bolt the door, Takezo and let us beguile the time a little. While we, as you deeply observed, fall from a high place together.”
He breathed slow in and out. Outside the wind had picked up again and puffed and whistled; the pressure shifting wavered the twin lamps whose soft shadows caressed her.
Yes. Let time lose itself for now… He went to the door and slipped the bolt shut. As every soldier knows, great causes and battles recounted in one dramatic sweep, are always dotted with pauses and sleep…
“Sake?” he had to ask, coming back and kneeling beside her, feeling the inevitable thickness in his throat, chest and loins as if the blood swelled and slowed, letting himself succumb, again. She turned to him, eyes close and clear and, of course, seemed no more connected to intimacy than if she were pondering a coup in a game of go.
And then her mouth, hot breath stunning and overwhelming his ear with raw intensity, whispering:
“I burn, you see… I burn with hunger …” Her teeth closed down hard on his ear, then neck and he winced but he didn’t pull away. Sighed with excitement and sweet defeat. “I am all appetite,” she whisper-hissed…
Forty-Four
Storm Before the Calm
Issa actually escorted him to the moat at daybreak, with two servant girls, and it caused no stir at all. He’d left the sword inside and had only a short dagger under his outer white and blue robe ironically featuring chrysanthemums. His long hair was gathered up and fell straight behind. He’d done his own makeup, eyebrows shaved and drawn in on his forehead. She said that he’d break the hearts of the guards.
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 31