Linnear 01 - The Ninja (64 page)

‘Will you tell me,” he said, ‘what honour there is in this?’

‘What honour there remains in all the world,’ Itami said sadly, ‘resides in this room. There is little enough, I fear. Little enough.’

‘You must tell me. You must.’ His voice was almost a cry and he was certain then he saw tears standing out like soft pearls at the inner corners of her eyes.

‘Ah, Nicholas. These tales are not so easily told. You ask me to expose the soul of Japan. I could sooner rip a blade into my own belly.’ Her eyes squeezed shut as if she were attempting to brush away a vision from her mind. Her-voice was a whisper. ‘Ask me anything else. Anything.’

‘What will become of you - Aunt?’

Her eyes flew open and she smiled kindly. ‘In China I shall travel until I reach the place Cheong bade me go to in her last breath. I will not be there long.’ Her hand tightened on the hilt of her katana; another drop of blood rolled from the blade’s smooth steel surface onto the bare wooden floor.

I must see Fukashigi, Nicholas thought now, staring at Justine in the semi-darkness; time to renew the old vows. And she must leave here; she must be out of harm’s way. A\a i ninjutsu was the only way now the forces of Kan-aku na ninjutsu were stirring, readying themselves to come against him: ancient, implacable enemies arrayed on a modern battlefield. He would need, he knew, all the fearful shades of steel to be victorious this one last time.

When Saigo awoke he was, for just an instant, convinced that it was into death’s dark realm. Death held no horror for him but this might only be because life held so little for him. It was the meanest of gifts and, therefore, it meant nothing for him to part with it.

Then he remembered that he had not yet killed Nicholas and he knew that this was life only into which sleep had yet again deposited him.

There was much to be said for revenge, yes. It was all that kept his heart pumping now. He thought of all the money in his swollen bank accounts; the vast acres of land; the four small but rapidly growing electronics konzerns. What did it all amount to? Not even a part of the smallest steel filing from a master sword smith’s forge - ah, no!

Money was merely the sere gateway to power, and power, well, all that was good for was manoeuvrability. Once you could manoeuvre in this atom age, you could accomplish anything.

Yet there was but one thing that Saigo now wished to accomplish and that was to seek out and expunge a life.

Tonight, he thought savagely, lying naked on the futon. Pale grey light filtered through the blinds, traipsing across the ceiling like an itinerant priest, his korom torn and tattered, its ragged ends taken by the wind.

He marvelled at the weakness of Americans. Such cowards, they surely could not have powerful spirits. How they had won the war he still could not imagine. It would give him great pleasure to see the look on Raphael Tomkin’s face as he died beneath the blade of steel. To think that he believed a deal could be so easily arranged. No deal, was possible; not after the commencement of a buy.

No, death would come to him tonight, just as it would come to Nicholas.

Perhaps, even, there would be a stalemate between them and death would come to both. This did not concern him. On the contrary, he might have even looked forward to it, knowing that the importance of death lay not in the dying itself but in the manner of one’s death. How one died was recorded by history and one was remembered as much for the manner of one’s death as for one’s life.

For Saigo, as for all Japanese warriors from time immemorial, there were only two honourable ways to die: in battle or by one’s own hand with calmness and ritual. To the otherwise would mean terrible, insupportable shame throughout eternity, an awful karma brought into the next life or, far worse, carried into the infinity of limbo.

This intimate thanatopsis had made him hard and he almost regretted having killed the Chinese boy. He had been so good. But there had been no choice just as, long ago, there had been no choice -

Somewhere in the night he had been full of hate; a pernicious boiling that had all but swamped in his long, exquisite training. It is a true measure of how emotions can warp the soul, he told himself now, sitting up on his single black futon, and he cursed the day that Yukio had come into his life. O Amida! he cried silently.

But this early hour was like crystal for him. He had thought, in the dark, to blunder into them tonight. To move fast, fast, fast; to catch them both quickly, Nicholas and Tomkin. But while he had slept in the land of death, his mind had been at work and now he knew that there might be more for him than just the death of those two. He thought of the straits and shuddered. Voices seemed to fill his mind, screaming louder as he inhaled, moaning like the autumn wind as he exhaled. He held his breath, squeezed his eyes shut for long moments until the voices faded.

Yes, he thought, rising and beginning to bathe, his training had taught him that there were things far worse for an enemy than merely slitting his belly.

The world, he knew, was one great wheel, an ellipse one was bound to by karma. Wheels within wheels; plans within plans. By day’s end, his mind would be tranquil. Then, if death should come, he would fling wide his arms and welcome it.

It was a splendid day, clear and still cool with just a few touches of gauzy cirrus clouds high up in the west. Far too splendid to spend hanging around the house, Justine thought, as she threw her bags on the bed.

The beach on Dune Road looked inviting as she went round the side of the house and took the car out on to the road.

She went east on the highway, having no specific destination in mind, but seeking the exit for Watermill reminded her of a beach in that area she had heard talked about again and again. Flying Point.

It was no surprise to her that she got lost, but this far out on the South Shore it was difficult to get too lost and at length she found herself at Flying Point beach. She got out and, locking up, went out on the sand.

She was still far too full of energy to lie down so she walked.

The beach was wide, surprisingly free of debris, with sand, of a very pale colour.

The surf was up, curling high in a translucent green arc crowned by white spume before tumbling forward onto the sand in a dazzle of silver spray.

It was far from crowded this early in the morning, though the beaches this far out were never jammed the way places like Jones Beach always seemed to be.

It was quiet, peaceful with the repetitive sounds of the sea and the gulls calling as they wheeled into the sun.

The character of the beach changed so subtly that for a long time she was not even aware of any difference, but presently it seemed to her as if it had become somewhat more familiar. For instance, she knew that she was coming upon a narrow spit of land before she turned the curve of “the beach and saw it lying before her. As this began to happen more frequently she began to wonder -where in fact she was.

Then, as she happened to look up from the beach to the houses she was passing on her right, she saw the familiar spires. She Kit a brief twist in her stomach as if she was plunging downward in a high-speed elevator, wondering how she could have been so stupid. Flying Point was just east of South Hampton and Gin Lane.

There it stood in all its looming splendour. The family house.

As she stared, she saw the wooden, gate swing open and a figure come down the slatted redwood stairs onto the dunes.

My God, she thought. It’s Gelda!

Her first instinct was to turn round and simply walk away but she was rooted to the spot, thinking: what the hell is she doing at the house?

On the sand, Gelda had poised and now she took off her sunglasses.

She’s seen me, Justine thought, panic-stricken. I can’t walk away now.

Gelda came towards Justine. They stood facing each other on the near-deserted beach at a distance at which a pair of duelists might stand preparatory to firing at each other.

‘Justine!’

‘Well!’

‘What a surprise.’ Her eyes had gone dull, as if an iron gate had come crashing down behind them. They talked as stiffly as if they were two strangers awkwardly thrown together at a party neither of them had wanted to attend.

‘Are you here with … anyone?’

The wind whipped about them, making streamers of their hair as if they were pennants on a field of battle.

‘No, I’m waiting for someone.’

‘I am too.’

‘Well.’

‘Yes.’ She did not want to admit to herself how much Gelda had changed. How beautiful she was now. How gracefully she moved. And behind that, a kind of confidence that - well, she had always had enough confidence for them both. It was Gelda who always had the boyfriends, who was always asked to parties and to football games. It was Gelda who could ice-skate so exquisitely - her movements on the ice totally belying her weight - her dates soon clung to the side railings, watching her with unabashed awe.

Justine was always too young for this or for that; too skinny for the boys to notice her; too clumsy for sports. She drew instead and became more isolated, her envy feeding upon itself like a ravenous cannibal.

‘Is Father here?’

Gelda shook her head. ‘No, he’s in the city.’ She hesitated a moment, debating with herself. ‘He’s in some kind of trouble.’

‘That’s nothing new.’

‘No, but I thought you would be concerned - at the very least. You always were with Mother.’

And there it was, staring at them both in the face like an ugly red sore.

‘I can’t help the way Mother felt,’ Justine said defensively. Anger began to fill her up, and if she had ever entertained the thought of telling her sister about Nicholas it fled now.

‘And I can’t help being the way I am.’

‘That was always your excuse for doing just what you wanted.’

They stared at each other silently. Justine was appalled yet unable to initiate any action. My God, she thought despairingly, we’re kids again. We can’t think like adults when we’re around each other, just intent on hurting each other all over again.

Gelda squinted into the sun. ‘D’you want to come inside for a while?’

‘No, I -‘

‘Oh, come on, Justine. You can unbend that much, I imagine.”

‘You have felt it, also.’

‘Yes. During the night. This morning. I don’t know when.’

‘It is important that you are here.’

‘There was nowhere else to go,’ Nicholas said.

Fukashigi smiled thinly.

There were no classes today and the dojo seemed enormous in its emptiness. Sadly, it reminded Nicholas of the last time he had seen Kansatsu on the ryu outside Tokyo. And it occurred to him that much of his life since then had been spent simply floating, the days and nights gently rocking him as they blended together, lulling him to sleep on the tide of their passage.

What had he really accomplished in America? What could he have done with that time had he stayed in Japan? So much time. And if he had never begun his studies in bujutsu? What then? What would he be now? Some high government functionary, no doubt, with a high salary and a perfect garden. Two weeks each year in Kyoto or somewhere on the seashore, even Hong Kong, perhaps, in a season when it was not overrun by Western tourists. A loyal wife and a family. Children to drool on him and laugh with.

The void, he realized, is only noticeable when it is no longer there. Justine. Justine. Justine. His reward for at last swatting down the past. He very much wished to see again the graves of his parents, to kneel before their sokoba, to light the incense sticks, to say the litany of prayer over them.

‘You have brought it?’ Fukashigi said.

‘Yes, I knew I must one day, though I don’t know why.’

‘Come.’

Fukashigi led him through the abandoned dojo, striped with shadow and pale sunlight bleeding through the ragged rents in the flying lengths of oblique cloud that marbled the summer sky.

At the threshold to the back rooms, Nicholas shed his shoes, Fukashigi his geta, and the old man took him to the very rear of the building, to a room with a raised floor of tatamis. He pushed aside the shoji and they entered.

Sitting cross-legged, Fukashigi waved his hand gracefully. ‘Please place it between us.’

Nicholas put the parcel he had been carrying down onto the tatami and unwrapped it. There was the dragon and tiger box that So-Peng had given to his parents.

‘Open it.’ Fukashigi’s voice held a certain reverence.

Nicholas obeyed, lifting the heavy lid to display the nine cut emeralds.

All of Fukashigi’s breath seemed to go out of him as he gazed at those nine bits of mineral which seemed to glow and spark in the low light.

‘I never thought,’ the old man said softly, ‘that I would see such a sight.’ He sighed. ‘And they are all here. All nine of them.’

He looked up. The square room was immaculate, spacious, harmonious, calming.

‘Time changes many things. When you came to me so many years ago in Kyoto it was, I think, only the letter from my friend Kansatsu that stopped me from dismissing you out of hand. Oh, so you did not know that. Well, it is true. And, to be completely truthful, even after I had read the letter, I thought that I might be making a grievous mistake. After all, Aka i ninjutsu, history informs us, is no acquired trait but a serious calling -quite as serious, quite as mysterious as the calling to serve Amida Buddha - to which one is born and bred.

‘I can tell you that I had grave doubts concerning your entrance into Aka i ninjutsu, despite what Kansatsu wrote. He is no ninja, I thought, therefore he cannot know. But a breach of our security had already been created and, of course, you came to me appearing a Westerner. I knew only that Kansatsu had not lost his mind.

‘Of course, to have sent you away would have been, I know now, a mistake.’ His fingertips caressed the box before him. He smiled. ‘You see, I am not, as I understand was so often said of me in those days, omniscient.’

‘It is still said.’

The old man inclined his head slightly. ‘So? It is, as you can see, an untruth. It was through Kansatsu’s intuitiveness that you became the first student of mixed blood at the Tenshin Shoden Katori ryu. The only one such. A signal honour; an unorthodox decision on my part. Still, I do not regret it. The ryu has had no finer student in all the years that it was mine.’