Linnear 01 - The Ninja (54 page)

‘Oh, you meant it, Nicholas. I’m quite certain of that. And you’ve a right to say it, I guess. I’ve been frightened these last few days and now you know how I get when I’m frightened. You’ve made me feel - something - I was sure was impossible for me. I still don’t quite - well, part of the time I want to run away from you and hide and never see another human being for the rest of my life. Is it okay to trust you? I keep asking myself. Isn’t it just my cunt and my mouth he’s after? But then I think, he’s already got those so why go into this at all? It must be real even though every instinct that’s still functioning tells me it’s not. The past dies very slowly. I keep hearing echoes all around me. When you talk to me, say things, I hear what you’re saying but, in my mind, other meanings, hidden and secretive like invisible hieroglyphics, burn themselves into my brain and I hear two different things and I begin a debate as to which of those signals is the real one, the one you mean for me to hear.’ She looked at him. ‘Does any of this make any sense to you?”

‘I think so.’

‘I see it doesn’t.’ Her eyes were so bright they seemed to glitter despite the lack of any direct light. ‘I suppose I am trying to tell you I love you.’

Her arms were around his neck, though how they had got there he had no idea. Hadn’t they been at her sides just a moment ago? Had there been any movement since then? What was happening?

They kissed in a kind of timeless moment where even their breath hung suspended, condensed clouds on a chill winter’s morning.

They took their bags down to the ferryboat ticket-taker’s, a ramshackle wooden building no larger than an outhouse with an arched window in its front, glassless and inadequately hooded against inclement weather. One could easily freeze to death within such a place.

A young boy in his late teens took the two rail ticket passes Nicholas handed him, stamped and punched them in several places, handed them back.

‘The next ferry sails in seven minutes,’ he told them. Even here, in such an out-of-the-way town, there was the typical Japanese concern with punctuality.

Yukio was unnaturally quiet until they cast off. But once they were moving, her melancholy seemed to slip away. ‘Perhaps there will be a new show in town,’ she said gaily. ‘Or a riding stable. We could picnic and ride all afternoon.’ It was as if the episode on the near shore had never occurred. Still, Nicholas was disturbed in its wake.

Behind them, Shimonoseki drifted away like a dream, beyond the churning white wake of the ferry. Gulls swung gracefully across their bow, wheeling obliquely like a fighter squadron, calling plaintively to each other.

They passed, quite close it seemed in the mist, a pair of fishing boats lying low in the swells, their black nets hauled up the masts like a moron’s idea of a sail. A young boy on one of the boats waved excitedly as the ferry passed him by but there were none aboard, it seemed, inclined to return the gesture.

Nicholas’s gaze shifted subtly to regard Yukio beside him. Her head was thrown back as if to catch the wan sunlight on the wide planes of her cheekbones, her hair flying to one side, a raven’s spread wing. The long line of her neck was exposed, shadowed softly because of the thrust of her chin in this position. The hard jut of her breasts. Was it his imagination or could he see the slight protrusions of her nipples as they poked, erect, through the lace of her bra?

‘Why is it, do you think, that Satsugai is afraid of the Colonel?’

The wind tore at her words, flinging over the ferry’s side, out towards the bobbing fishing boats, mere black points now, misting to dull grey, and for a moment he was not sure he had heard her right.

‘I was not aware that he was.’

She turned towards him, studied his face. ‘Oh, yes. But of course. You mean you haven’t noticed it? Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised, really. I’ve spent more time with him than you have.’

They argue a lot.’ He put his elbows along the railing, leaned overboard. He felt her hand on his arm.

‘Don’t do that. Please.’ She laughed. ‘If you fell in I’d have to go in after you and I hate the water.” ‘Water and trains.’

‘Water worse than anything. I don’t mind being near it. I like that, in fact. I’m just terrified by the tides and undertow and that.’

‘About Satsugai,’ he said. ‘He and my father are from the opposite sides of the tracks, politically speaking. But that’s, well, just talk.’

‘Do you imagine that they would be together if it were not for Itami and your mother?’

He looked at the water, dark and light. ‘No, I don’t suppose so.’

‘Right. Well, I know Satsugai. That kind of hate only stems from fear and let me tell you he is not a man who is easily frightened. Whatever the Colonel has on him is potent indeed.’

‘I think it’s just that Satsugai, being in the zaibutsu, was under suspicion as a war criminal for a time. You know, during the purges when the Americans disbanded the traditional family structure of the zaibatsu. My father intervened on Satsugai’s behalf. I don’t know the details but that kind of debt would be a heavy burden for Satsugai to bear.’

‘Yes. He prides himself on owing no one and he’s more powerful now than he was during the war.’ She shook her head. ‘To think that’s due in part to the Colonel.’

‘It’s family. That’s something my mother is adamant about. Politics are relatively unimportant next to that. Next to my father and me, Itami is her sole family. There is nothing they wouldn’t do for one another.’

The fog closed in on them and the day turned chill. The ferry’s deep horn sounded at regular intervals, hoarse and mournful. The gulls had gone and now it was even impossible to see the water. They might have been skimming through the air. The whiteness seemed stifling. There was no breeze to speak of. They heard voices, muffled and odd sounding, from the ferry’s far side as if coming to them from across a vast and unfathomable gulf.

All at once the land loomed before them out of the intense mist and, with only a slight bump, the ferry docked against the jute-covered slip. Nicholas wondered how the captain had seen his way across. They could hear the creak of the pilings. Then a dog began to bark hysterically.

To Nicholas the train ride to Kumamoto seemed interminable even though it took merely a fraction of the time it had taken for the bulk of the journey. Perhaps the fog had something to do with it, but he felt now a kind of desperate longing to know what it was that had brought Saigo down here. Kansatsu had been concerned about it. He realized that now, so belatedly. The sensei would never have come out and said such a thing, merely implied it. But what could it be about Saigo’s visits here that would be so disturbing? And why should it concern Kansatsu at all? These questions gnawed at him as they rode across Kyushu and he wished with all his might that he had the answers but, of course, that was a useless wish. In fact, any wish, Cheong had told him more than once, is useless. ‘If you want something badly enough,’ she had said, ‘then you must do it. Those who sit and wish for things accomplish nothing.’

Abruptly, he felt resentment welling up inside him for that part of him which was Western in nature. But even so, he knew that that was his turbulent side, filled with energy and longing, impatience and changeability. It was, in short, what made him different.

Yukio, as usual, was filled with lust and, in the jouncing, empty car, she sat on his lap, lifting her skirt up and making the hot connection. Neither of them needed to move at all.

Kumamoto was a town that no doubt in feudal times had been dominated by the stone and mortar castle perched high on a dun-brown hill that in the spring would turn lushly verdant. In these modern times, however, the castle, though still quite imposing, seemed overshadowed by the industrial plant flung across the valley to the northwest. Its fifteen or so smokestacks seemed like inelegant fingers stretching themselves irreverently towards the heavens.

This afternoon, as Nicholas and Yukio stepped off the smoking train, one could not see their tops and the mist made them seem as if they had been covered by gloves.

Oddly enough, Kumamoto itself was not as modern as this new appendage might lead one to believe. There was little evidence of Western erosion and they saw more traditional Japanese garb than they had seen anywhere else in their travels. Even through the mist, which now appeared to be at last lifting, they could see how mountainous Kyushu was. Dark masses loomed on every side, filling the land with a kind of undulating light and shadow pattern of the kind one might see from an airplane riding high above patchy clouds.

They booked into a hotel along the Street of the Wrestlers. ‘Here,’ the bustling proprietor said, flinging open the doors to their rooms, ‘you will have a perfect view of Mount Aso.’ He put down their bags, crossed to the window of Nicholas’s room. ‘Of course, you’ll need a clear day but no doubt by tomorrow you will be able to view, well, perhaps not all five summits but most assuredly Nakadake.’ He turned around, rubbing his palms together. ‘It’s actively volcanic, you know, and always smoking.’ He waved one pudgy hand towards the mist outside. ‘We get this kind of weather when the wind’s the wrong way.” He walked to the door and his finger touched the knob. ‘We’ve had ash and pumice, the sky so dark you’d think it was night, when it erupts.’ He shook his head. ‘Can you imagine? Coming all

that way.’ He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘Still, one shouldn’t complain. Mount Aso brings many people here every year and where would I be without tourism?’ He shrugged deprecatingly. Nicholas tipped him and he gave them a rather stiff little bow. ‘Anything I can do to make your stay here more pleasant,’ he said, opening the connecting door between their rooms before leaving.

Nicholas phoned Saigo but he was not there. He left a message including the hotel’s number.

They spent some time searching for a stable but there seemed to be no riding, at least within the town’s limits. Yukio could not hide her disappointment.

They ate a light lunch at a tiny teahouse in a square surrounded by trees. Birds called as they flitted from branch to branch. The food was impeccable but Nicholas was not able to eat much. His stomach was tense and he needed to move around.

When they left, they proceeded to walk aimlessly around, through the wide main avenues, down small shop-lined streets, filled with mingled scents and clamouring customers.

They returned to the hotel late in the afternoon with the light receding swiftly from the sky. The mist was gone and the hard shell of the cobalt sky seemed distant indeed.

A message from Saigo was waiting for him. Dinner. Saigo would come to the hotel.

‘How long will we be here?’ Yukio asked as they were dressing. The door between their rooms was open.

‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. Why?’

‘I want to leave. That’s all.’

‘We’ve only just got here.’

‘I know, but it already feels like we’ve been here a year. This is an odd city.’

He laughed, pulling on his trousers. ‘You just don’t want to be here. Listen, we’re not so close to the water here.’ He smiled. ‘No chance I’ll fall overboard.’

Her smile was a bit bleaker than his. ‘Yes. Yes. I know. But haven’t you noticed? The air here smells different, almost as if it were burnt.’

‘It’s only the refinery,’ he said. ‘Or maybe Mount Aso. I’ve never been near a volcano before. Isn’t there one on Hokkaido?’

Saigo arrived promptly just after six. Nicholas opened the door to his room.

‘Well, Nicholas, I didn’t -‘ His dark eyes slid across Nicholas’s face, over his shoulder. The colour seemed to drain from him. ‘What’s she doing here?’ It was said in a hiss but, just as important, in a different speech mode; the polite form had been abruptly dropped.

Nicholas turned his head. ‘Yukio? She decided to come with me. Didn’t you know she was here?’ But of course how could he?

Saigo’s angry eyes flicked back to regard Nicholas. The stare was hard and cold. ‘You set this’up deliberately, didn’t you?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know, don’t you? Don’t lie to me, Nicholas. She told you everything.’

Nicholas felt her presence close and warm behind him.

‘I told him nothing.’ Yukio’s tone was chill enough to freeze the blood. ‘But now that you’ve brought it up like a hysterical child, perhaps you ought to tell him yourself.’ -‘Tell me what? Hey, wait a minute!’ Saigo had begun a lunge around him towards Yukio. Nicholas stepped into his path, using his shoulder and his left arm as a wedge against the doorframe. Yukio stepped lithely away.

‘I think you had better tell me what this is all about.’

Saigo heard the warning note in Nicholas’s voice and he felt his blood boil. Leaned forward with the left side of his body, half-concealing the horizontal movement of his right hand and wrist.

Nicholas brought his forearm down in a blur, striking the exposed bone in Saigo’s wrist. Physical damage was minimal but nerve disruption was considerable. The hand went numb.

They were very close together and Saigo used his foot, aiming for the side of the knee. The doorjamb was his ally; caught in the force of the blow, Nicholas’s knee would shatter like crystal. But he stepped back and the side of Saigo’s foot slammed into the wood with a crack as loud and as sharp as that of a house collapsing.

Saigo recovered enough to whirl around and head off down the corridor before Nicholas had a chance to react. Without a word, Nicholas went after him.

Yukio ran to the door. ‘Nicholas!’ she cried after him. Then she, too, followed in Saigo’s wake.

The angelfish, all grey lace, hovered near the bottom. It’s tiny mouth opened and closed. It might have been trying to eat the algae off the side of the tank.

A pair of gourami passed by it, disturbing its concentration, and it darted off behind a group of three or four water plants twisting gently in the clouds of rising bubbles from the aerator.

They stood across the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway. The street was quiet, every step of the few passers-by discernible.

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘Quiet,’ Nicholas said, thinking, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.