Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha

by Richard Monaco

  “Ah,” she murmured into his ear. “I am glad you are holding me. I think we may die.”

  “No, no,” he said. “Storms end. They …”

  She pressed her cheek against his.

  “No need to talk,” she said. “Just hold me. I understand, now.”

  “Yes?”

  “What are words and ideas? I think, now, there is only this.”

  “Oh,” he whispered. “I …”

  “Just hold me, please, sir.”

  “Lorenzo,” he told her. “Please, call me that.”

  “Ro-enzo,” she whispered in his ear.

  “Yes, Osan.”

  “Just hold me, please, Enzo-san.”

  “But… I want to tell you, I… so much to say, I …”

  “Hush, please, Zo. No more words… no more… for what use were all my words?”

  The blast coming off the wall swirled into mini-whirlwinds around them. On the hillside the soldiers struggled on in strange futility, their shouts and cries audible through the lulls and twists of the violent air…

  Twenty-Two

  Takezo Zato

  “Son,” cried Tanba, from inches away, “important! Hear me! We will rule this country. You will inherit my power! Do not be a fool.”

  Takezo twisted around and managed to press his father (he still hadn’t really taken that idea in completely) up into the soft, bloody belly of the dead horse, at arm’s length. Except, as he tried to push away the wind kept shoving him back into the grip of the wiry man who was his superior in hand-to-hand techniques – and maybe everything else, too.

  “Everybody’s ruling this country,” he yelled back. “I can’t keep track. I want nothing from you. Return to the shadows, murderer of women.” Rolled away but the wind just drove him back into the wiry embrace again. “I want …”

  I’m getting weaker…

  Fragments of buildings, even people blew by. The keening howl was almost no sound, now: a strange, terrible humming, high and far away. It was hard to breathe.

  Broke off as the fever dropped down like a curtain and he was back, half in and half out of the picture that was a gateway to another world. He was still struggling, trying to push the massive demon chief down his stretched-out body and back into the black underworld outside the lucent landscape.

  The female perfection was near him, her form soft, uncertain as a breeze shifting and showing its curves in masses of grass and flowers.

  ‘The soul of a stone,’ he thought she somehow said, wordlessly, ‘is a cloud …’

  The dark from the demon still standing on his abdomen was working its way into the lucid, sweet light of the picture-world leaking from the distorted body and spreading like poison blood in a viscous black stain.

  ‘You,’ she was somehow telling him. ‘You do not belong here. Go back and find me.’

  ‘Everyone wants me to find them,’ he responded.

  The quality of his phrasing told him the fever was already lifting. He was between two worlds for what might have been a long, long moment; time, he was numbly pleased to observe, was as crippled as himself. It went upside down, sideways, backwards…

  The blind dark was back, the dead horse and his supposed father clutching him with fingers like hooks.

  Let me go, he thought, not meaning just him. The wind was a prison, narrow, locking and pressing them together. And there was no one to kill. Fine. If I could open my hand I’d drop the sword…

  He lay there in the violent dark while Tanba went on saying one thing and another as if, in this mad circumstance, persuading Takezo had some tremendous meaning.

  “I want her!” he suddenly yelled, really loud, surprised at the energy that still seemed to pulse within like a heart of flame. “I want to write poetry. I want to sleep for a year.”

  The wind slammed into them so hard, now, it was actually shifting the dead mass of the fallen horse.

  “Son… so… I… want who… you can have… just join… all yours …”

  I am mad or dead… these are earned Hell-world torments or the ghosts and shadows of the blasted mind…

  Riding his strange, new energy he rolled and twisted and kicked and the almost solid-seeming air added leverage so that only one hand was left gripping his wrist as if he were falling into space instead of blowing roughly parallel to the ground. Tanba’s other hand held the horse’s foreleg so that, if anyone could have seen them through the mad storm’s climax, they might have resembled puppets or toys. Their fluttering robes crackled and snapped.

  And then he was free, sailing and rolling out into his contorted darkness and slamming earth. He imagined death was a bounce or two away. Anything, he felt, would be an improvement. He couldn’t tell one world from another, anyway. He might not even notice the difference.

  He seemed to be rolling uphill although he trusted nothing. Ideas rambled through his brain without apparent cause or effect or object. He liked that. It was like relaxing as you dozed off.

  I’ve solved everything, he thought, laughing in his head. Spied it all out…

  Then he went down, not very far and found himself in Hell…

  Twenty-Three

  uMubaya

  He was alone in the middle of wherever he was. He’d locked his left arm around a solid post that had been part of the building’s support system, spear in the other hand. He was patient. He’d hold on until he died or it ended. What could be simpler?

  See what blows my way, he quipped.

  Decided this would be a good time to think about Mer’ce but nothing came to mind. A couple of armored samurai rolled past. He had an impression they were cutting at one another, flailing, soundless, in the storm.

  Determination, he reflected, well misplaced…

  Considered asking the local gods for help but didn’t know their names. Maybe Buddhists were meditating in the center of the violence. Someone else rolled by, almost nude in tattered robes.

  Empty the mind, they say… but you better have something in it first… Smiled, then chuckled. Mer’ce would have something to say on that subject…

  “Hard to breath in this,” he said.

  Be good to live… so much blood to cleanse, so much killing…

  Something tumbled past overhead that might have been a bird. He reflected on the idea that the air had become their enemy. There was a proverb he remembered: when there is nothing to do, do nothing.

  Maybe I’ll get to clean my spirit and tell this tale…

  Twenty-Four

  Reiko

  He leaned on the wind, digging forward on all fours, partly sheltered by the walled, sunken road that curved downhill there. Dust ripped at him. Things sailed past but his concentration was unaffected. The battle was being blown away; if many survived the clan would never unite under him. His mind was clear at the same time it knew it was quite mad. Easy to see that the tortured spirit of Hideo was behind these disasters. Yet, maybe Issa was a supernatural fox taking human form … made more sense… He’d kill her and see if she transformed to her animal shape… yes… Poor Reiko, cursed by this evil being… everything ruined… but words were just bubbles because his concentration now pushed all else aside: get to the castle and seal the gates.

  “The blood can be washed,” he declared to the wind, thinking about the stained floor where the daimio had died. “It signifies nothing… nothing …”

  Get to the castle and unite the loyal. Hold to the end. He didn’t need allies. Who could be trusted? An idea: Get a witch, call up the spirit of Masakado and thus destroy the vengeful fox-spirit. Masakado’s name was used to frighten children. He’d tried to become emperor and was beheaded.

  “Why not? Poison can heal poison. Yes. Wash the blood… kill all traitors… seal the gates… seal the gates… arm myself with friendly demons!”

  Accept what you are; everyone died alone, everyone was bad – cowards, afraid of honest ruthlessness. If you could be a demon after death then you were the same demon alive. Cowards couldn’t face such truths.<
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  His mind circled the main point and enjoyed the anticipation of not quite focusing on the inexpressible pleasures to come. He felt the blood dripping and creasing down his body from Issa’s blade. It didn’t worry him. He just kept on, dragging the weight at the end of the rope that he believed was Osan, the storm too loud for her voice to reach him.

  “Stop holding back,” he said over his shoulder. “Useless to struggle.”

  “She” was just a blur at the edge of his glance. He seemed to see her, all the same, long bare limbs showing through the tatters of her silk robes, a flash of her softly sullen, exquisite face and warm hints of her breasts mixed in with what he’d seen that afternoon in the bath so that the picture was rich and complete and he allowed himself to relish it, shutting his eyes and seeing her in his bedroom on the mat, stretched out, painted, perfumed and perfect.

  “Soon, soon,” he said, nodding. “We’ll be there soon, sweet girl.”

  Twenty-Five

  Takezo Zato

  Yes. Hell. Where was the fever-world when you needed it? Because he’d been blown into what he knew were the wind-wracked and torn armies that, clinging in clumps, were held down by their massed, united weight; many still, absurdly, hacking and smashing at each other.

  The shouting and clashing got through the shrill, absorptive storm-shriek. The effect was soul-ripping.

  Maybe I don’t really want to die… a blind man can do many things… Being Takezo, he actually laughed, even as strange hands clutched at him as if he were the drowning man’s straw and he understood that the situation had made the mass of men insane.

  “A blind man,” he shouted, feeling more than a little mad himself, “can rule this land!”

  “Victory is near!” someone shouted in his ear. “Long live Lord …” The rest was lost as the mass shifted and heaved in a welter of screams and clashing weapons.

  Victory, he thought, not even laughing this time.

  The warriors immediately around him weren’t fighting. Both sides, there, seemed united by the overwhelming storm. He heard fragments of jokes and obscene catcalls along with fragments of agony and pleadings from those wounded and buried under the mass that had to be three or four deep.

  All storms have to end, he thought. Then I’ll…

  “Welcome,” someone shouted into his ear.

  His energy ebbed and flowed. He wanted to sleep. Someone was shrieking underneath him, a body or two down. He smelled vomit and feces and blood.

  “Yes,” he responded. “It’s nice here.”

  There was a struggle beside him, upwind: suddenly someone broke loose from the mass, screaming, bounced and rolled over him and was gone. He wasn’t sure how many hands were now holding him.

  The head closest to his said:

  “Fortunes ebb and flow. Poor fellow. This is a good place.”

  “Who would willingly leave it?” Takezo responded.

  “Exactly. You are wise.”

  “Shut up!” scathed another voice, closer to the blind ronin’s belly. “Or we’ll kick you out!”

  Those close enough to follow this over the insane drone of the storm shouted and laughed. Few of the words came through.

  He’d about decided that the madness of this place was as good an end for him as anything else. At least his “father” couldn’t find him and he could die fighting if he liked — except he didn’t want to. Maybe he’d just compose haiku and wait for death…

  The mass shifted, suddenly and he was lifted and spun with the others; felt the impact of heavy objects crashing mushily into them which sent bone-shattering waves through knotted soldiers. He kicked free for a moment… dropped… was covered and uncovered by the shifting heap… and then he was in a lee, a sudden drop into a shallow ravine. His face splashed into muddy liquid: the smell and taste was blood. As he scrambled and crawled away he sank to his wrists in it, going around and over dead bodies. He kept trying to spit the metallic taste out. The armies had clearly impacted there before the storm had peaked.

  I can’t tell one side from the other, he reflected.

  Tried to imagine how blind men would battle if no one had eyes. Liked the idea. The weariness was pressing down on him again and he rested on top of a heap of the dead. The ravine was narrowing and the wind was just a low, humming shriek above, sucking away the air which made breathing even harder. It was now floored with bodies.

  Tanba’s men on one side, he considered. Nobunaga over here… somebody else there… how do we know which is which? Maybe it doesn’t matter… we all kill on a whim, anyway… or because somebody tells us to… How would we find the enemy?

  He started to laugh and this time he was afraid he really wouldn’t be able to stop. He flopped on his back, half asleep on a couch of the dead. He saw thousands of blind men stumbling into battle, grabbing, clutching each other, groping with sword and spear for the other army…

  Since we already have blind leaders it would produce greater harmony…

  “No wonder my ‘father’ wants me to rule,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “Ninja, in a world of lies, truth is dishonest.”

  And suddenly he was back in the softly gleaming picture and this time he was moving through the landscape and could see what he believed were actual brushstrokes, saw soft, melting tones where the muted ink colors had pooled and seemed to have been subtly spread around dry-edged rocks and cliffs and dense, watery mists gracefully stained with flowers…

  There she was, moving like a soft breeze, perfect outline defined by the shifting leaves and flowers and flows of mist, blurred and floating just ahead of him.

  ‘Wait,’ he called, gently. ‘Wait, please.”

  Because the blurring didn’t matter, the exact face or form… no… she was what was behind the solid women, the essence, the mystery, the link to heaven.

  ‘Go back,’ she seemed to tell him. ‘This world is dying. Cannot you see?’

  ‘I try… I try …’

  ‘Go back in me.’

  Sensing something he looked behind and there was the darkness, spreading like thick black ink, blotting away the lush rills and tones of this ineffable world and, wading forward, dripping and drooling the blackness from himself, came the humpbacked, toadlike shape that had entered through him, melting into shapelessness with each step…

  He was in agony. He wanted to run back and attack it; wanted to rush ahead and enfold her in himself. Agony…

  ‘Go back!’ he cried at the spreading stain. ‘There must exist a place without you!’

  Twenty-Six

  Gentile and Osan

  They were still locked together in the shelter of the wall, faces close. He kept her soft, warm, sweet-scented cheek pressed to his. He wanted to tell her, so much.

  “Osan, I… I want to …”

  “Hush,” she soothed. “No words. I was lost in words.”

  “But I think the wind is lifting.”

  “Yet, will it not come back, sir?”

  “I love you, you understand?”

  “No words, please, Lo-enzo-san.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long, you see… I …”

  “Yes. Say what pleases you, sir. Forgive me my silence.”

  “Angela mia,” he whispered at her ear. “I thought always of painting and… what point if the world can simply blow away? I don’t know… I don’t know …”

  The wind was falling off quickly. There were gusts and spurts. The air was changing from cool to a sweet warm, almost like a spring day. They could now hear the troops on the hill above. He looked past her shoulder: the smoke was mainly back in the heart of the city where they were still masses of smolder. The sky was a strange, powdery blue-green in the center of frighteningly high, curved, swirling cloud-walls of the immense eye of the storm.

  He’d never seen anything like it. It moved vastly and much faster than it appeared. He felt they were in an awesome, magical peace, surrounded by inconceivable violence.

  He sat up, le
aning on the low wall that surrounded the shattered court and jail buildings, holding her into his body. She made no resistance. Her head drooped almost formally on his shoulder. He was faintly reminded of the Noh play he’d watched. All around he heard cries, calls for help, anguish and a vast, wordless, deep roaring that he didn’t realize was the renewing clash of the armies.

  “Look,” he told her, pointing at the sky. “Dio mio! Incredible, I …”

  “Yes,” she said. “We have a short time now.”

  “Should we go to your castle?”

  She didn’t move. Her eyes stayed shut.

  “Why, Enzo-san? I am content to die here, in your embrace.”

  “Well …” he broke off because he was looking at the hillside now, at armored and unarmored men, climbing over and standing on bodies, falling over them, slashing, stabbing, thrusting, raging in a general din that almost approximated the overwhelming, total blast of the re-approaching storm. “Madmen,” he muttered.

  She didn’t look – didn’t have to.

  “Yes,” she said. “Can we stop them with words? Can we stop the storm with pictures?”

  “What can we do, then, dear lady?”

  “I told you.”

  He kissed her exquisite neck. Couldn’t help it. Sighed like someone in some poem. Wanted to rave and reach into flowing, untapped rivers of infinite force and elegance and express what she was to him. Didn’t try. What would that stop either or make happen?

  She is… a wonder… she is true… what does that mean? Words on words…

  “You mean die?” he murmured, keeping his face lost in the scent and texture of her.

  “Not so hard,” she said. “What I ask is hard.”

  “Osan?”

  “To be silent. And just hold one another, please. Just that. There’s nothing left, I think.”