So he minced along as he’d been trained and nearly perfected long ago; a too-tall, wide-backed, striking, acceptably graceful woman with a nose enough like Issa’s to pass for a relative. Their garments fluttered in the hot wind that seemed to have fallen off a little, uneven gusts stippling the sour-smelling moat as the sun rose behind a wall of dark clouds.
“Sure you don’t want me to stay on as a court maiden?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, smiling. “Your beauty would detract from mine.”
Looking up he could make out the curve of a vast storm-pattern in the clouds. It wouldn’t be long.
“I’ll be back when I know more,” he told her.
Which may be never, he thought.
“You cannot stop the war,” she said after him as he crossed the narrow bridge. “You might as well find Osan.” She followed a couple of steps. “I want you in my service.”
“I’m too beautiful, lady,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll be back, though.”
“Stay off the ceilings, next time,” she advised. “And hide yourself because they think you have the ring. I don’t wish them to torture you to death for spite.”
He guffawed and shook his head, liking her, again. It annoyed him but he kept liking her. It made him try to understand her point-of-view. He realized she’d never told him, in the hours they’d just been together, where she actually had come from; never answered the question she’d put herself: “Do you think I’m a spy?”
No point in caring, he told himself. It goes nowhere…
It wasn’t so far to the front of the Pine and Crane inn to tire him walking like a woman in those restrictive garments. As he tilted along across whirls and puffs of dust and straw from the street he passed a group of disheveled and bleary-looking young men, the well-off scions of merchant families or lesser nobility - probably just turned out of some whorehouse. They looked him over as he went demurely past, head downtilted. He didn’t respond to their comments; the last one he heard he thought was: something… something “… but big feet.”
And then he crossed the dusty, unfenced and unimpressive yard to the steps and sagging overhang of the inn that creaked with every turn and push of wind. He glanced back up at the sky: where the blue showed it seemed wet and clean. You could feel the storm. Every dog he’d seen was still, chin on forepaws and few birds were flying.
And there was Yazu sleeping with his back to the outside wall in the shelter of the thick-barred fence that ran close to the front of the building, sheathed sword tucked in the crook of his left arm, samurai style. His ragged-toothed mouth was open and the ronin detective half-expected a couple of flies to circle up from it. His bare legs poked out from his tunic; his snores were uneven, racking and seemed to presage suffocation.
Wonder if his wife has a lover… he certainly doesn’t … yet he has a son… Miou came to mind. Aii, if only she had gotten pregnant, maybe we might have…
“Nonsense,” he sighed. “Think like that and you have to get drunk.”
Stood over his sleeping pupil. Adjusted his partial veil. Reflected on the fact that Yazu’s skill had been improving.
Useful in a land of killers… Well, what next? Look for the girl, again? Warn Nobunaga? Hah. If he needs me to protect him he’s doomed… talk to Hideo and sink in embarrassment? What? I don’t even feel like cutting down Yoshi, he didn’t kill her… and endlessly scheming Reiko’s like my brother in shame, now… He knew he was just circling around the real issue: find the ninja lord. The master of shadows. The one who’d used her and betrayed her to a dog’s death. Find him and sleep in peace. Maybe. That damned ring… they don’t want to take on Nobunaga without it… she’s right, they’ll boil me alive for spite… and if I give it to them they’ll probably be kind and cut off my head… I can’t defeat them all even without the ninjas who’ve spared me serious attention so far… you can’t defeat everybody… I better get it back and try to buy something with it… He hoped a plan was starting to form; waited for a flash but nothing much happened. Yazu snored. The wind gusted and turned back the leaves on the surrounding trees, showing the lighter green; dust and bits of stuff lifted, swirled in eddies and dropped back down.
He stooped and gently started to ease his pupil’s blade free of the black-lacquered scabbard. He felt it was a teacher’s obligation.
Surprisingly, the little bony man reacted without even opening his eyes, levering the weapon free, rolling away and kneeling up with the glinting tip aimed at what he took for a tall woman in fine clothing.
“Beautiful lady,” he said, “have a care!”
“You be careful,” was the reply in a moderately successful fluty voice, “or I’ll steal your heart instead of your sword.”
“I am a married man, lady,” Yazu returned with some conviction.
“No surprise. You’re a fine-looking man.” Tried a hand-stifled giggle with mixed results. “Has your house no back window?”
Yazu took that in. Cocked his head and showed a slight smile. Scratched one ear, thoughtfully.
“But, lady,” he cautiously said, “I am not of your rank.”
“Ah,” returned Takezo, nodding his head, trying to be delicately bold. “Passion is reputed to cross over all boundaries, good sir.”
The little man, sword re-sheathed, came closer with almost a swagger. Takezo lidded his eyes, he hoped, coyly.
“Well, beautiful lady,” he said, “I suppose these are the kind of things that happen to swordsmen.”
A twist of wind sucked his half-veil aside, his exposed face drawing Yazu into ambiguities.
“You seem… well,” he groped.
This is a good disguise, he considered. Lets me see life in a new way, too…
“It’s Takezo, master of deception,” he explained, looking over as maybe a dozen mounted men in armor trotted by, followed by half-a-hundred spearmen moving at a run, dust filling around them, blowing to the side.
They’re really getting ready… in the end, all wars are fought just because someone wants to…
“Amazing, master,” Yazu had just said. “I was deceived.”
“More amazing that you reacted so quickly. Maybe you’re learning something.”
“I try to concentrate on the hollowness of life, master,” he responded, standing up and resheathing his blade. “Life is a candleflame in a strong wind.”
“Something about the sword induces bad poetry,” Takezo commented.
“If a man strikes at me I tell myself his blade is a mere straw.”
“By the time you tell yourself you’ll be split in half,” Takezo advised, looking after the troops that were now lost in the dust of their passage.
Trouble with a sword is you can’t cut anything worth cutting… try slicing despair or lust or loss to shreds…
“The city is full of warriors,” Yazu said. “Something’s up.” He cocked his head. “Strange to talk to you in those clothes.” He scratched his ear and yawned. A fat bald man in white and red wearing string-tied straw sandals came out and glanced at them then at the sky, adjusting the pouch at his belt. “I worried, master, seeing you high on that dreadful wall like a bug. Yet here you are.” The man looked over, wincing at a puff of dust and, obviously, wondering where the “master” was. “What follows now?” Yazu concluded.
The man went on into the street stepping around some fresh horse droppings. Two small women passed holding straw bags trailing bright ribbons with writing on them, the ends fluttering in the wind. A closed palanquin jounced along, swaying. An open chair came in the opposite direction bearing a beautiful young girl in green silk holding up a stick with a paper head on the end, the round face, fierce mouth and the bulging, staring eyes of a Dharuma Bodhisattva…
“What, indeed? What… I stumble blindly along. Eyes wide open and vacant of any light.” He rubbed the side of his neck and felt the sore bumps where her teeth had fastened. Hungry? He said to himself. No more than a wolf in winter… The things we do and say “well, why not …�
�� How indulgent… She wants her clan secure yet runs more risks than a one-armed spearman in a battle…
“Master, look,” Yazu pointed towards the fairly busy street.
The pale skin and beard were unmistakable. The tall, lean Italian was dressed Japanese in a loose, dark, zigzag printed big sleeved shirt, floppy, pantaloon-like knickers bound just below the knee. He had a katana and his rapier stuck through his sash. He had two pistols underneath lost in the billowy folds.
He flicked a bow to the woman he didn’t know wasn’t, and addressed Yazu:
“You serve Takezo,” he said. The little man nodded, glancing at his disguised master. “Greetings, Miss.”
Takezo downtilted his head and spoke in the fluty voice:
“Thank you. I know that clever spy, sir.”
Gentile studied the exquisitely made-up face.
“You should wear a mask, Takezo-san,” he said.
“Ah. Master, he sees through your disguise.”
The ronin detective shrugged, a little sourly.
“He has an artist’s eye, Yazu.”
“Your features are striking,” said Gentile. “And I’ve studied them. I came to find you. About the ring you gave me.”
“They all looked at the street as more horsemen crashed by, scattering the pedestrians. Dirt flew and dust billowed. The trees and bushes shook and whooshed as the wind picked up, again.
“I hope you threw it into the sea,” Takezo said. “It’s a curse.”
I need sleep, he thought. Can’t go home… even if I stay dressed as a woman…
“It’s here,” said Gentile, taking out the unimpressive-looking piece of jewelry and holding it on his palm. “It is not a curse, it’s a poem, I think.” His long, delicate fingers popped open the flat, dull-red stone to expose a hollow with a rolled-up paper fragment folded into it which he shook into Takezo’s hand. “There. It makes little sense to me.”
The ronin unfolded it and read the tiny characters written in red ink. Not many.
“Bright fish… three docks… last ship… no masts… golden lantern.”
Looked up; blinked his tired eyes; went back to thinking about how to find the master ninja… then went back to thinking about nothing…
*
All at sea
It was going to be close, considered uMubaya, as the narrow-beamed skiff plunged and twisted as the waves bounced them closer to the visible dark rock jutting like fangs from the shattering waves, spray blowing back in the wind like smoke.
He and Taro strained at the oars, facing forward, digging in violently to port. The Zulu’s massive muscles cracked and wrenched, eyes vibrating with strain. Osan crouched calmly in the dipping bow as the rock fangs ripped past, mad foam like drool, seaweed like writhing snakes. She held on, composed, in the flopping, tent-like monk’s robes.
The deadly bite just missed as they reeled, broached and tilted up and over one of the suddenly huge waves that had been showing up for the past hour – additional evidence, beyond the curving clouds overhead and the deep, wet, gray churning horizon, of a massive storm rolling closer to the coast.
At least, uMubaya thought, with Osan back, Colin will be freed…
The city was visible now, blurred-over by the fogging spray. Another boat, a mile or so ahead, was rocking wildly, mast kicking back and forth as it rushed towards port.
Gods of these yellow men, support us, he more or less prayed, as they surfed down the far side of the massive wave that wasn’t quite breaking this far out. Include too the Italian and Colin’s Christ spirit and great Unkulunkulu to bring us safely in…
Taro was behind him. He glanced back and saw the strained, unhappy countenance of the powerful policeman, flecks of vomit on his face and loose shirt.
The Zulu knew how that went and turned away. He’d been sick for almost the entire first month at sea.
*
A Week Ago
In deference to her rank, Osan had one of the best rooms with a double door to the corridor and a single door opening onto a tiny garden of rock, sand and a few scrubby bushes with sharp, hard-looking leaves and a little rock fountain that barely gurgled a trickle.
Unable to sleep, she’d gone out in her pale slip during the recent full moon nights and written by the brilliant silver light, staining the ghostly paper with dark, fluid symbols.
Freedom, she wrote, is but appearance like the masks of actors or the seeming water in a dry, hot plain that is only dust. The moonlight here is the same that falls on those imagining they are not prisoners. Yet, are they too not bound? Still, the perfect sky and moonlight, the distant sounds of the sea, the whispers of the wind frees me from all the walls men or myself can build around me…
And then she’d stood up and walked around the little area, pausing by the far wall that had no building behind it. She inhaled the sea air and touched the smooth, damp stone and wood, reflecting on how some barriers were palpable and others of the mind.
‘In any case,’ a voice was saying on the other side, as one who delights in giving the news, ‘the farmers are ready to revolt.’
A deeper, tough voice responded:
‘Yes. And the fishermen in a panic because of raids. The blame falls on local lords. They’ll think about nothing but survival. We have brigands and ronin, thousands of them, attacking villages all along the coast between here and Edo. Tanba says the moment for war is approaching.’
‘I think Lord Nobunaga will have much to …’
And then they went on, their conversation was lost in the shifts of breeze and sounds of crickets. She’d understood enough. Looked up at the moon and ice-point stars, her lovely, calm face lit as by magic light.
‘I think I’d like to stay here,’ she whispered – because all the ugly, senseless, savage things she hated were about to unfold; and she’d have to confront Reiko, her mother and father… open wounds - cut new ones. She sighed and leaned on the wall. ‘But I cannot stay,’ she finished.
*
On the Water
The narrow boat reeled and pitched as the wind picked up, again and quartered around.
“I have to warn my father,” she said into the splash and rush, hanging on. “I was silent too long.”
*
Back at the Pine and Crane
Inside, at a floor table, the three of them were eating rice balls and pickles. Yazu and his master were taking sake; Gentile was content with bitter tea. The wind sucked steadily around the windows and door, fluttering the curtains as the sunlight outside went off and on in the almost regular rhythm of the passing clouds.
Takezo, in his female disguise, was attracting attention because of the “castle" quality of those rich, brocaded robes. The tavern keeper, who knew him and Yazu well, was talking with a sleepy looking, round-faced whore as he cleaned up the serving counter across the good-sized room.
“Look at that uchigi,” she said, meaning the unconfined, flowing outer robe that spilled around the ronin detective. “Were it night I’d ask Ichiro of the Allys to snatch them from her for me.”
“Ho, ho,” responded the owner, stacking cups, “you think he’d do it for a taste of your charms?”
“Why not?” She frowned a pout. “What are you saying?”
“What man who’s already full can be tempted by rice?”
She tossed her head and looked back at the table.
“That one with the beard,” she said, “he’s queer-looking.”
“A foreigner,” shrugged the dour man. “Maybe Korean.”
Takezo had spread out the little piece of rice paper on the dull, battered table near a sake spill. He poked the tiny puddle with a forefinger and drew the characters for boat, then fish. He got nothing back. His brain felt like morning porridge.
Gentile was looking at the round-faced yujo beside the tavernkeeper. He thought he might use her face in his picture. Her age was obscure, face wary, puffy under the eyes… something in her features he couldn’t read, a secret, knowing quality that might ha
ve been, equally, merely dullness, the dullness of the routine of life rolling over her like a millstone. The changing light from the window lit the side of her face so that it seemed to float from vagueness to solidity.
At what point is it she? He asked himself. At what point is it merely an effect? How much paint would be enough to show the truth? Shrugged.
He shut his eyes and tried to imagine the presently blank, soft, romantic sections of the triptych. He wanted to go back and work on it. Because the mystery was waiting there; what would he find, what would the shapes and hues and hints reveal as unexpected forms emerged from the confusion of what he tried to see?
His legs felt cramped from floor-sitting. He shifted and scratched an itch on his knee, losing the thread of his thoughts…
Yazu looked up as two men in loincloths came in from the back where they’d obviously been sleeping it off. They were all yawns and bleary eyes. One had such thick thighs he waddled, the other was blocky, muscular, with a stringy beard and thin moustache. The bony outlaw-turned-pupil knew him. Uneasily touched the hilt of his sword beside him on the worn floor. That helped. He repeated to himself like a litany that life was but the shadow cast by a flame, wavering, uncertain and easily blown out. Still, his heart was beating a little fast and his appetite was instantly gone.
He hoped the man, called Toshiro, door guard for a neighboring brothel, would, somehow not notice him. A matter of 20 mon and a disputed throw of the dice.
The tavernkeeper brought them a bucket of water and they splashed their faces, grunting and spitting. The covetous prostitute was still vaguely observing Gentile since he’d glanced at her while she softly poked a fair-sized boil that graced her jawline under one ear.
Takezo was intent on the “poem” he’d decided was a message, maybe a ninja code.
Here’s the great secret, he thought. From the ring worn by a god… Shook his head and tapped his fingers on the table.
“What shit,” he ejaculated.
“Eh?” reacted Gentile.
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 32