Angel Eyes (32 page)

"She's awake," Dr. Kalinin said, broaching the subject they both knew was so fragile. "I'm sure she'd be delighted to see you."

Why does he keep doing this? Valeri asked himself. Why draw the veil of illusion over any of this? And then he had his answer. It was obvious, really. How else could Dr. Kalinin live with himself in this hideous den of horrors. Some sense of normalcy needed to be imposed on the abnormal, the heart of anarchy, the eye of chaos, otherwise the madness that crept through these corridors would one day curl around your spinal cord and infect you.

That explanation notwithstanding, Valeri would be goddamned if he'd allow this man to impose his lunatic set of rules on him. He said, "Doctor, my daughter hasn't been delighted by anything in her entire life. She isn't capable of delight-although, God knows, the poor thing certainly feels despair. I'm aware of it as soon as I come near her." It's as palpable as the scent of a rose, he thought. It haunts my dreams.

"Perhaps these visits would become easier to handle if you could manage to come more often."

Valeri stood stock-still, his hands clenched into white fists. Do you understand me at all, Doctor? he thought. Do you know that there are times-like now-when I'd cheerfully shoot you between the eyes, and never feel a moment's remorse? Of course you can't know. Otherwise you wouldn't be standing here with that prissy superior expression on your face. It's true I pity you; but I also hate your guts. Your daughter is normal and healthy, and mine is ...

"I come as often as I am able."

"Of course you do, comrade. I was only making a clinical suggestion. One that I think would be helpful for your daughter."

You idiot! Don't you understand that my daughter is beyond the help of your antiquated theories? Valeri wanted to shout. But, of course, he could do no such thing. He was here as a private citizen. Comrade Kolchev, a machinist with no ties to anyone in government, let alone to the Politburo. In his position-with so many enemies circling him at a respectful distance-Valeri knew that his daughter could only be a liability, a fatal weakness he could not afford, her existence a pry bar to lever him out of power. Otherwise, he thought, why in the name of all that's holy would I have allowed her to be put in a backwater pesthole like this?

Valeri said in a perfectly normal voice, "My daughter does not know who I am, Doctor. It makes no difference to her whether or not I come to see her, let alone how many times a week I come. She absorbs nothing from her surroundings. Am I getting through to you?''

"It's true that she has no manifest reaction, comrade, but can we really presume to know what goes on in her mind?"

Doctor, you're a bug, a worm, a slimy toad, Valeri thought. The way you look down on me makes me want to puke. But, you know what, I'll never let on that's how I feel. Through a complex set of circumstances even I can't undo, you're in charge of my daughter, and I don't want to antagonize you even a little, because even with a mind empty of thought, my daughter is precious to me.

"You're right, of course," Valeri said. "One mustn't give up hope, must one?"

Dr. Kalinin smiled. "Now that's the spirit. Why don't you wait here, comrade, as is your custom, and I'll fetch her for you."

"That's very kind of you," Valeri said, though he was quite certain that even one glance at his daughter's blank face today would set him to screaming. "I appreciate all your help."

"I'm glad to be of service," Dr. Kalinin said, striding off purposefully back to his house of horrors.

Valeri strolled farther down the lawn until he came to a large birch tree. There was a slat-backed wooden bench facing it, and he sat in it. Beside him, a slender young man sat with his face turned up to the sun. His hair was long and lank, and he had a strawberry birthmark on his cheek.

"Have you heard the latest, comrade?" the young man said. "The nationalist group, White Star, has forced the administration to abandon its underground nuclear testing in Semipalatinsk."

"Is that so?" Valeri said. "I thought it was stopped because of the protests of a Kazakhstanian environmental group.''

"Hah!" the young man said. "Government propaganda. It was White Star, I tell you."

White Star. Everywhere he went, it seemed, Valeri heard the name White Star. He did not look at the young man, stared instead at the birch tree. He liked this spot; principally, he thought, because the old birch reminded him of the one outside his childhood home in Kiev. But then seeping into his thoughts: the gunshot, his uncle's blood staining the streets, the Russian soldier kicking the still-warm corpse, saying, A lesson learned, eh, comrade? And Valeri's father opening his mouth, about to say something, then turning away, tears in his eyes. How many times had his father told him that story, until it seemed that he had been there at his father's side, holding his hand.

Father.

How could they have done that to you?

Far better not to think of what had happened. So many years ago. But, as Jung would say, no time at all. Pain beat like a hammer on an anvil in Valeri's soul; a Russian as well as a Ukrainian soul, it never forgot.

Five minutes later Dr. Kalinin appeared. By that time Valeri was alone, the young man with the strawberry birthmark having wandered away. At Dr. Kalinin's side was a pale-skinned young girl.

It occurred to Valeri that it was impossible to tell his daughter's age from either her face or her unformed body. She was eighteen, but her years on this earth had been nothing more than a dream, a whisper of the wind, a cry for help, lost in the forest, echoing so far away that Valeri did not even know where to search.

Looking at her thick golden hair, her blue eyes, her pristine beauty, he resolved again to come to grips with the fact that she was beyond his help. But more than anything in the world, he wanted to communicate with her, and he, Valeri Denysovich Bondasenko, supreme pragmatist, could not reconcile himself to this reality.

Dr. Kalinin turned Valeri's daughter to face him, and Valeri said, "Koshka." Darling. And, despite himself, despite the presence of Dr. Kalinin, a tear leaked out of his eye, ran down his cheek to drop at his feet.

"My granny once told me a proverb, 'Strangers begin with your own family,' " Big Ezoe said. "You would do well to remember that."

Honno said, "There are only strangers in my world now." She used the word hito, which could be translated as "people," but always with a pejorative twist to it. Hito were never insiders; they were always strangers.

''I want to thank you for moving me out of Eikichi's house,'' Honno went on. ''I have asked nothing of him except that I never see him again."

They were sitting on a sofa in an apartment of considerable size. Big Ezoe was in a dark business suit, Honno in a pair of natural silk city shorts and long shirt-jacket, an outfit she had just bought. Lamps of various sizes and shapes illuminated a room filled with chic contemporary Western furniture. They had just returned from a long, leisurely dinner in a rough, smoky restaurant, surrounded by sumo wrestlers busily consuming everything in sight.

Outside, the last vestiges of moonlight were about to be obscured by scudding storm clouds.

"I trust you're pleased with your new accommodations," Big Ezoe said, spreading his arms wide.

"It's magnificent,'' Honno said. She got up, went to the windows. "I always dreamed of having an apartment that overlooked the Sumida. Look! Moonlight on the river! It's like a woodblock print." She felt as if she were seeing the city from an entirely new perspective.

She turned to face Big Ezoe. ''I'm still in something of a state of shock, and part of that, I suppose, is intimidation. The size of this place is immense, so very American."

Big Ezoe laughed. ''It's true that my American friends feel at home here. They always feel so crowded and cramped in Tokyo, they tell me. They're grateful to stay here."

"You needn't worry," Honno said, immediately concerned. ''I won't be here long."

Big Ezoe waved a hand. "Stay as long as you need to," he said. "I have many such apartments all across Tokyo."

"Well, there's the expense to think of."

"Why should you think of it?" Big Ezoe said. "I don't." Honno looked at him, and he nodded. "Now you're thinking, Why is he doing this? What does he want from me, and when is he going to exact his price?"

"No, I-"

"It's perfectly natural to have such thoughts. First, I am Yakuza. Second, you hate my guts. You yourself said as much when we met again. This is not a combination to inspire a sense of trust, is it?"

Honno found it impossible to answer. She had never before encountered anyone who had the temerity to be so direct, to cut through the layers of ritualized fabrication that seemed an integral part of every conversation.

''But the fact is that my interest is a simple one: the evidence of wrongdoing your friend Kakuei Sakata left behind in those cryptic ledgers. I have many important ties to the business community. I don't know what Sakata knew, what he had gotten hold of, but it is important for me to find out, before anyone else does and leaks it to the authorities, such as your husband.''

"But-"

"It is time to get on with things. Are you ready, Mrs. Kansei?" Big Ezoe produced a memo pad, tore off the top sheet of paper, handed it to her. "This is your itinerary for tonight. Please follow it. I promise you will be neither disappointed nor bored. There's a car waiting for you downstairs. The driver has a copy of the itinerary, and he's familiar with all the venues."

' 'But what about Giin and the ledgers? "

"I'll meet you at the Ginza club at six tomorrow morning, and we'll discuss everything then." Big Ezoe rose. "Now I must leave you. Enjoy yourself tonight, Mrs. Kansei."

There was, indeed, a driver waiting for Honno outside. He bowed, opened the back door of a pearl-gray 560 SEL Mercedes with tinted windows. The night air was already heavy with hints of the coming bad weather. Honno ducked into the cool, dimly lit interior, found someone already in the backseat.

"Good evening, Mrs. Kansei," a thin young man said pleasantly. He wore his thick hair slicked back over his delicate ears; a pair of wide, masculine sunglasses was wrapped around his eyes. He was dressed in an immaculate dove-gray summer-weight suit, with a starched white shirt and a rep tie. Honno noticed gold cuff links and a ring that appeared to be a nugget of gold. "I am Fukuda," he said. "Big Ezoe asked me to be your guide tonight. Will that be convenient." There was no interrogative at the end of the sentence, and therefore it lost its usual meaning.

The enormous Mercedes was already slipping effortlessly through the choked Tokyo streets. How it was able to do that, Honno could not imagine. It was as if she had entered another world, someplace that most people never knew existed, let alone ever got to see; a world where the natural laws of physics, economics, and social customs were void, a world of smoke and dreams. Honno put her head back, luxuriating in the feel of the German leather, and thought of nothing.

Their first stop was in Shinjuku. Honno and Fukuda rode the high-speed elevator to the fortieth floor. He led her down a corridor filled only with the hushed whisper of the air-conditioning.

Fukuda produced a key. They slipped through a small door just down the hall from a set of imposing double doors on which was painted one character in kanji, kaga, along with the corporate logo in three-dimensional bronze, which was as universally known as that of Mitsubishi or Panasonic.

The rooms through which they passed like ghosts were silent, save for the battery of fax machines running, now and again, like arcane radios, picking up the random conversation of the cosmos, sending out their own messages in timed sequence to Australia, West Germany, me United States, on and on, a bizarre automated communication among masses of electronic circuits and silicone chips, whole cities of a new civilization.

At length Fukuda turned a doorknob, and as he did so, he put his forefinger briefly across Honno's lips. Shhh. Honno found herself in a secretary's anteroom. The window behind the empty desk had its blinds up, and a brilliant shaft of light shot outward. Fukuda led her around to an area of shadow where they could stand and peer into the inner office, assured of not being seen themselves.

Inside, a heavyset middle-aged man was busy on the sofa with a woman who had her skirt up over her hips. Fukuda put his lips to Honno's ear. "The man is Kaga's senior vice-president of finance. Does the woman look familiar?"

Honno looked, was stunned to recognize Mama-san from the house that Big Ezoe owned, where they had discovered her husband with his lover.

Honno watched, fascinated, as the Kaga vice-president worked assiduously on his own pleasure. It was odd, she thought, how incongruous, even grotesque, the act could appear without the elusive ingredient of sexual attraction. The one true magic potion-passion-was the great leveler that cut through race, religion, even class. Honno considered it the most powerful force on earth. How many great men had been laid low by their lust?

Fukuda gestured, and Honno followed him silently back through the maze of offices, the whining fax machines.

Downstairs, the streets were slick with moisture. A kind of precipitation was falling on Tokyo that could not quite be called rain. It had picked up so much of the industrial pollutants in the air that it fell like sleet, though the temperature was warm. One day the Japanese would find a term for it, just as they would find a way to describe the automatic nocturnal conversations between faxes.

The purring Mercedes took Honno and Fukuda onward, through the nocturnal traffic, deep into the heart of Shinjuku, dark with forbidden pleasures despite the sprays of brilliant neon shooting up the sides of buildings, reflected endlessly in glass towers, spreading like dye along the wet tarmac of the streets.

The Mercedes slid to a stop in front of an udon-a noodle parlor. Fukuda took Honno through the dingy, steamy restaurant, down a long dark hallway that echoed with the tiny sounds of the city seeping through the walls like sweat.

They entered what was obviously a Yakuza gambling house. Long low tables were set out upon the floor, around which were arrayed an interesting melange of men. They were illuminated by wide-shaded lamps hung by cords from the ceiling.