Angel Eyes (25 page)

Eikichi often worked so late that rather regularly he went out afterward with some of his fellow prosecutors to eat, drink, and unwind. But on the nights he was home at a more or less normal time, he expected his dinner to be prepared and waiting for him when he walked in. If it was not there and, worse, neither was she, no explanation would be adequate.

Consequently, Honno told Eikichi that she was going to Osaka for several days to visit her aunt who was taken ill. Eikichi knew that this aunt was Honno's favorite relative, the only member of her family with whom she had a normal relationship, and he had not questioned her decision.

Big Ezoe shook his head. "You look even more nervous sitting down than you did pacing about." He came around from behind his desk. "This isn't the place for us." He touched his hip beneath his suit jacket. "I have a beeper. As soon as anything breaks, I'll be notified. In the meantime, let's go somewhere where you can get rid of some of that excess energy.''

He took her in his gray steel-plated Mercedes to the Ginza, not to the great wide avenues clogged with tourists and traffic, enormous department stores, and neon signs, but to a quiet side street lined with ginkgo trees and wooden walls. Behind one wall Honno found a minuscule garden, immaculate, with a stand of mini-bamboo, moss-laden rocks and a wellspring of tinkling water.

This was the home of Tokyo's most exclusive club, on a street of exclusive clubs. There was a great deal of bowing and deferential treatment from the staff and from the managing director himself, who was immediately summoned from his inner sanctum on the second floor, which overlooked a stunning diamond-shaped atrium composed entirely of white marble slabs.

A man in a tuxedo was playing Erik Satie on a white concert grand piano. An enormous spray of red peonies was artfully arranged in a white porcelain vase on the piano's top. Behind him a very modern combination of glass and rice paper and ash shoji screens gave way to an inner courtyard of water, moss, ferns, and dwarf azalea, all amid rocks that suggested mountains, time, and great distance.

They were taken downstairs in a stainless-steel elevator. There Honno and Big Ezoe split up. "See you in the dojo," he said. Honno was escorted by a woman attendant into a rich, cedar-lined changing room, given a white cotton gi-the traditional martial arts attire, loose-fitting and comfortable. She was shown where to bathe, and afterward she returned to the changing room, donned her gi.

Big Ezoe was waiting for her in a magnificent dojo. The walls and ceiling were paneled in kyoki wood, the space below the ceiling hung with banners of the ancient daimyo, the feudal warlords of old Japan. The floor was tatami mats, and the lighting was indirect, making the dojo evenly lit wherever one happened to be on the tatami.

"What do you think you're doing?" Honno asked. "How do you know I've had any martial arts training?"

"I'm good at this," Big Ezoe said. "Trust me." And when Honno burst out laughing, he said, "That's better. Let's get rid of some of your nervous tension, hm?" He began to circle her, watching her react to him as he did so. "Jiujitsu," he said. "Some tai chi. And, judging by the way you hold your hands, some aikido."

He moved in low and fast, going for her knees, but Honno used a basic irimi, a neutralization technique. Big Ezoe countered this, and Honno automatically went into a counterattack. As she did so, she felt the expansion of her wa, her central core of intrinsic energy. It was a wonderful feeling, a sudden release, an elation like a balloon rising into the air currents or a big fish breaking free of a line that had hooked it.

"That's better," Big Ezoe said, attacking again.

Despite his girth, he was light on his feet, agile and frighteningly quick. But Honno soon had a handle on his strategy. He liked to attack endlessly, giving no respite, figuring that eventually fatigue would cause his opponent to make a mistake. Soon after, she discovered the flaw in his strategy. The endless stream of his attacks left minute openings for a counter. One had to be so quick as to anticipate his next attack, or one would have no chance of getting through before its onset. But it could be done.

Honno bided her time, using one irimi after another to neutralize him, while dropping her earlier strategy of counterattack-ing. She needed the extra time to try to anticipate his next move.

She found him in a series of attacks familiar to her, and she thought. Now is the time. She deflected the first, the second, then, anticipating the third in the series, launched herself at the gap as it began to open.

But when, using the spirit of dawn, she came through the opening in his defense, she found him ready for her. Too late, she recognized the trap he had deliberately, patiently set for her. She could only marvel at his expertise as he took her down to the tatami, the callused edge of his hand against her throat.

He grunted, came up, pulled her off the that after him.''Very good, Mrs. Kansei. But not good enough."

They met an hour and a half later, at the club's third-floor restaurant. In the interim Honno had been bathed, oiled, massaged, bathed again. She had found her clothes waiting for her, cleaned and pressed, in the fragrant changing room.

The restaurant was, in cool contrast to the club's white marble entrance below, a sea of gray unpolished granite, almost colorless, but vibrant with texture. A long line of narrow windows that ran its length overlooked the rigid grid of the city, the restricted view refining Tokyo's geometrics into a pattern that was so intense it became almost abstract, a kind of art.

"Has your office been in touch with you yet?" Honno asked as she sat down opposite Big Ezoe.

"You must learn patience, Mrs. Kansei," he said. A uniformed waiter poured chilled white wine into their glasses. "It was your lack of patience that betrayed you in the dojo.''

Honno put aside the elegant menu, said, "I want to know what's happened to Giin. And I want to get the ledgers back."

Big Ezoe sipped at his wine, contemplated her. "Just so we get something clear-because this is quite important-is it your late friend Sakata's ledgers you care about or this professor Giin's life?"

"Well, both, of course!"

"But if it came down to it, and you could only retrieve one, the ledgers or Giin,'' Big Ezoe said as patiently as if he were explaining this to a child, "which would you choose?"

"Are you serious," Honno said, "or is this another one of your jokes?"

"I assure you, I am quite serious."

"But it's an impossible question to answer."

"It is not."

"What kind of creature are you?" Honno said angrily. Then, "All right. There's only one answer possible. Giin's life is far more important than a couple of books with chicken scratching all over them."

"Is that so?" Big Ezoe eyed her over the rim of his glass. "And what about your promise to Sakata-san, Mrs. Kansei? What about giri?'

Honno felt shame flood through her. In her anxiety over Giin's safety, she had completely forgotten about the burden of debt she owed Sakata. "But of course this is a moot question," she said hurriedly. "You're giving an imaginary example. It doesn't matter how I answer.''

"Oh, but it most certainly does matter." Big Ezoe put down his glass. "I have given you a Zen riddle, and if you think answering it is a pointless exercise or it is merely complying with a whim of mine, you are gravely mistaken. Zen riddles, Mrs. Kansei, are meant as doorways through which one may resolve the contradictions of one's own spirit.

"I told you earlier that you must be prepared for anything. You assured me you were, you gave me your word. Now, when we come to the first difficult fording of a stream, you balk or give me an ill-considered reply. This is not the way of the warrior, Mrs. Kansei. What would your late friend, Sakata-san, think of your behavior?''

With that, Honno put her face in her hands, and began to weep. Big Ezoe watched impassively until her shoulders ceased to shake. Then he said, "Why did you do that?"

"I was a fool to attempt to act out of giri," Honno said. ''The weight of burden is not meant for a woman. It takes a man's strength."

"Nonsense," Big Ezoe said. "What the performance of giri takes is a warrior's spirit. And a warrior is bound neither by age nor by sex. You have the warrior's spirit, Mrs. Kansei. I felt the expansion of your wa in the dojo. I felt how fiercely you fought. And I know just how much pleasure it gave you. Because I feel the same way."

''But poor Giin,'' she whispered. ''I can't stop thinking about him. I can't stop worrying . . . What if-"

"A warrior's heart is pure," Big Ezoe said. "It is forged in the crucible of combat, in the vise of giri, in the glory of honor. These are all that matter. Giin is only a man.''

"But I loved him once and, yes, perhaps as you have said, I still do. But I love Eikichi as well. And I am married to him."

"Eikichi, too, is only a man. But the warrior's ideals are immutable, perfect, pure. Once you become one with them, they are yours for all time. There is no need to depend on anything or anyone else.''

"But I am married to Eikichi," Honno said miserably. "I owe him my honor.''

"Men-and women, too, Mrs. Kansei-are fallible. They lie, cheat, steal, betray. It is human nature, a way of life. To depend on a man-or a woman-is to invite disaster. A warrior avoids this, and therein lies his-or her-ultimate strength."

"These are just words," Honno said. "Hollow words."

Big Ezoe regarded her for a long time. At last he said, ''You're perfectly right." He picked up his menu. "And tonight I think it's high time we turned them into reality."

First there was the moss garden, verdant, lush, glowing like an emerald in the reflected light beneath the yellow and green cut-leaf maples. Then there was the pool, deep, dark, mysterious, in whose depths from time to time could be discerned the speckled back of a lazy koi. Like the arc of a curve, the koi's back appeared and disappeared, as full of meaning as the first brush stroke on rice paper, black ink spilled across the white page, a book yet to be written, yet to be read.

"Mama-san reads the portents here," Big Ezoe said, as if divining Honno's thoughts. "The koi dance and, in so doing, speak to her of the future. So she says."

They had come to the northern outskirts of Tokyo, where there were still wooden houses from before the war, like this one. At this time of the evening the most extraordinary light existed in the bower beneath the carefully pruned maple trees, fusing leaf and pond, moss and butterfly, making even time seem to stand still.

"How do you know this place?" Honno said. "Is this where you come when you need sexual release?" It was that kind of place, an outpost of the water trade, the euphemism used to describe Japan's vast underworld of pleasure gardens, where even the forbidden was accepted.

Big Ezoe smiled. He led her away from the koi pool, across the courtyard, into the house. Mama-san was in the doorway, as if she expected them. She bowed to Big Ezoe and, when he introduced Honno, she was warm and welcoming. They took off their shoes, which were stored in a beautiful kyoti wood cabinet in the stone and wood entrance. Fresh flowers were everywhere. Some almost hid the shunga, erotic woodblock prints, hung on the walls. Mama-san showed them into a six-tatami room, dominated by a massive red-painted tansu chest with a great deal of intricate ironwork. A simple porcelain vase held a single yellow chrysanthemum amid a spray of dark green leaves. She had tea brought, but almost immediately Big Ezoe excused himself.

"Does he come here often?" Honno asked.

"Oh, no," Mama-san said. She seemed almost sad at the thought. She had gray hair, a round, pleasant face. She was dressed immaculately in the old fashion. The edge of a yellow under-kimono was visible beneath a kimono of spring green. Gorgeous wooden combs kept her hair in its complex pattern. Her face was white, black, and crimson with traditional make-up. "He almost never comes."

"How do you know him?"

Mama-san cocked her head, looking like a mockingbird on a branch. "My dear, Big Ezoe owns this establishment." She gave Honno the tiniest, most ingratiating smile. "Tell me, did he take you to his club in the Ginza for lunch today?"

"His club?"

"Oh, most assuredly." Mama-san's head bobbed, and her expression was that of a mother proud of the accomplishments other son. "Big Ezoe owns many, many things. But he acquires nothing." She cocked her head again. "Do you understand?"

"I'm not sure."

"Well." Mama-san settled her hands in her lap. The light from the next room, filtered by the rice-paper shoji screens, fell obliquely across her face, softening it and, at the same time, making an abstraction of it, so that Honno was reminded of the restricted view of Tokyo from the Ginza club's restaurant. ''Here is what I mean. A man acquires wealth, but of what use is wealth if he has no wisdom? Oh, he may ride in the grandest Mercedes, have his clothes made for him abroad, live in a house in Kojimachi, but if he owns no respect, then he is nothing, and his life is but coins sifting through his fingers."

"This is how you define Big Ezoe?"

''But I wasn't speaking of him, not in any direct way,'' Mama-san said. "I was trying to make you understand the nature of

things. Events, often shocking, require an underlying logic so the mind can understand what the eyes cannot."

At that moment Big Ezoe reappeared. ''We must go upstairs now, Mama-san."

The old woman bowed. "I understand."

"Have you finished?''

She gave him an enigmatic look. "Well." The patterns shifted, black-white-black, across her face as she moved. "There won't be a finish to this."

Big Ezoe watched, as if suddenly wary, then he returned her bow and gestured for Honno to follow him. There was a man standing in the hallway, at the foot of the stairs. He had about him the air of one of Big Ezoe's men. He looked studiedly away from Honno as she followed Big Ezoe up the stairs.

"Where are we going?" she asked. "Why are we here?"

It was dark on the second floor. Their feet made no sound on the tatami mats. Sliding shoji screened off one room from another, so that the place had a sense of communality that spoke to the heart of the Japanese culture, where individuality was an uncomfortable concept.