The Kaisho (21 page)

“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant to depart in peace, according to thy word.”

The words, still only dimly understood, were of such comfort to him that he could not bear to forget them. Of course he had biological parents, he had known his mother, if only superficially, but she had never wanted to know him because in his face she could see reflected all that her life would now never become.

The hymn of the Nunc Dimittis provided the only safety, the only true warmth he had ever known. Impossible to expunge that from his psyche, even after the training the Nungs gave him began.

They liked that he was an outlaw, the Nungs. The first night after he had come upon them just over a high ridgetop, they laughed at his tale, clapped him on the back, and spit in the dust to show their pleasure at what he had done. All except Ao, the eldest man and most respected of the tribe. He crouched still and indrawn, his odd, ginger-colored eyes all but closed as if Do Duc’s words were rays of light that might blind him.

Watching as he spoke, Do Duc caught the impression that Ao was aware of his heartache: the rage, the bitterness, the revulsion, as well as, buried below like a fish in the depths of a muddy lake, the tenderness he felt for the man he had murdered.

After the others broke up, going their own ways in the cool mountain night, Ao opened his eyes, studied Do Duc alone by the fire. A branch crackled, a sudden crack appearing as it settled deeper into the flames.

“People say strange things about the Nungs,” Do Duc said, suddenly shivering. He put his hands on his bent knees, almost a defensive gesture. “They say you roast the flesh of your enemies and eat it.”

“I prefer to eat my meat raw.” Ao waited what seemed a long time to break into raucous laughter. When his face had settled into its former pattern of lines and depressions, he said, “You are safe with us, younger brother.”

This was how Ao, the stoic, opened his psychic arms to Do Duc, gathering him into the Dark.

He was an unusually big man, with a commanding presence. He knew all the Mysteries and he knew the ways of the Caucasian as well. For example, he knew how to break down an American M-60 machine gun, clean it, and put it back together again, all in the dark. He knew the grades of plastique, how to use a white-phosphorus mortar and a CS-gas grenade, he was conversant with the principles of aviation.

One night he took Do Duc down the mountain into the green-and-black-striped jungle. It was so wet and dense it was like gliding underwater. Do Duc noticed that Ao, though old, made no sound at all. He seemed to be following some kind of trail, but try as he might, Do Duc could discern nothing, not even an occasional notch in a tree trunk that might be construed as a path.

They continued this way, wending their way through the night. Utter darkness engulfed them, so that Do Duc, traveling single file behind Ao, was obliged to put his hand on the old man’s shoulder so as not to become lost. All around him were the night chitterings and cries of the jungle. The rank smells of moss and decomposing vegetation were as strong as freshly brewed black tea from the Iron Mountains of China.

Great whirring insects brushed Do Duc’s cheeks and arms, and once, he heard the muffled growl of a great predator. The level ground changed, sloping steadily downward, and at last his eyes could begin to see the wash of pale moonlight drifting down through the jungle’s canopy as it began to thin.

Ao stopped and, crouching down, wordlessly pointed straight ahead. At first, Do Duc could see nothing, then the wind changed direction and he heard like temple bells the deep musical tones of slowly flowing water.

The sounds directed him, and he began to make out the bank on which they crouched and, just beyond, a mountain stream. He heard a sudden splash and saw a great bulk sliding slowly into the water.

Ao made a peculiar noise in the back of his throat that made the hair at the back of Do Duc’s neck stir. The bulk lifted its head, and Do Duc saw the furred head of a black leopard.

He had heard stories about such beasts, rare as they were, but no one he knew had ever seen one. They were said to possess magical powers that turned the orange stripes of their pelt black, as if singed by the force inside them.

Ao made the sound again and Do Duc shivered. Slowly, the black leopard turned, came toward them. Do Duc felt a rippling of his muscles, a firing of his nerves over which he had no control. His head seemed to have developed a tremor so that the beast, as it approached, went in and out of focus. He was so frightened he could feel a chill come over him as his blood drained from his extremities, pooling sickeningly in the pit of his stomach.

The black leopard emerged from the water. It was now close enough to be able to swat Do Duc down with one blow of its massive forepaw. Its body was perhaps eleven feet long, and its thick tail, flicking this way and that, added another three feet.

Do Duc could smell it, heavy, musky, an odor of power and of death. His mouth was so dry his tongue cleaved to the roof and would not move. The beast stared at them, unmoving, breathing in deep purring sighs.

Ao pressed one hand flat against Do Duc’s shoulder, indicating that he should not move. Then, suddenly, terrifyingly, he was gone, back into the jungle.

The black leopard’s bulk was like a planet. His great chest billowed out and deflated. Its huge golden eyes regarded Do Duc with a peculiar kind of intelligence, but for all this it appeared slightly myopic. An American Army colonel who was a frequent visitor at the Frenchman’s villa had told Do Duc that leopards could not see or hear well, that they relied most heavily on scent.

The beast blinked and Do Duc started, despite his best efforts. The black leopard growled low in its throat and its head lowered. Do Duc felt as if his bowels had turned to water. He had to urinate in the worst way.

Ao returned, holding his left arm straight out in front of him. As he crouched down, Do Duc saw the curl of a venomous krait wrapped around his forearm. Ao had its triangular head pinched between thumb and forefinger.

He swung his arm out toward the black leopard, an offering of some kind, and Do Duc saw the beast’s nostrils flare as it caught the scent of the viper. When it moved its head, it did so with appalling speed. Do Duc doubted whether even Ao could have gotten out of the way at such close quarters.

The great jaws gaped wide, engulfing both krait and Ao’s arm. A moment later, Ao pulled his arm out. The krait was no longer wrapped around it.

The small sounds of the black leopard eating was all that could be heard for a time. Then the beast gave a little snuffle, and Ao made that eerie sound in the back of his throat.

He put his hands on Do Duc’s shoulders, thrusting him forward, down the embankment toward the great beast. Those baleful eyes regarded Do Duc with that same myopic intelligence as he came near it. Urine trickled down Do Duc’s leg, and the black leopard snuffled again, more interested now in the smell of him.

He could feel the heat of the beast emanating from it in waves. The animal musk surged upward, into his nostrils so that he felt abruptly dizzy.

Behind the black leopard, moonlight veined the water, turning it into lapis lazuli, on which, Do Duc imagined, it would be possible to walk.

He turned his attention back to the beast and blinked rapidly in outright astonishment. The black leopard no longer crouched before him. Instead, he saw a slender woman with an exquisite face, thick black hair so long it ran in rivulets like the moonlit river behind her. She was in all aspects human in appearance except that her long fingers were the gnarled roots of a tree, and when she shifted her body, Do Duc could see that from the waist down she was a skeleton, no skin, no flesh at all, bones only, glowing palely in the fitful moonlight.

“Who—what are you?” Do Duc could not help himself; he had to ask the question.

“Don’t you recognize me?” the exquisite woman said. She regarded him from out of golden eyes. “I am your mother.”

Do Duc’s heart was pounding so hard in his chest he felt as if it had been he, not the beast, who had swallowed the krait. “Impossible,” he scoffed in a voice thick with terror. “My mother is much older than you.”

“No,” the exquisite woman said, “I am dead.”

“What?”

“The Frenchman’s friends killed me because I would not tell them where you had fled.”

“But you did not know! You could not!”

“And yet, in my heart, I knew. There was only one place left for you to go. You, who should never have been born, whose life had been a terrible mistake. In order to live you must die and be reborn. Your first life was a misunderstanding; now you have a chance at a second.”

He knew who she was now, and that she appeared to him as she had once been—young and exquisite, and now he could understand how they could all desire her, if only for one night, those travelers in the night who congregated like magpies beneath the Frenchman’s roof.

“Mother,” he said, an unaccustomed wetness in his eyes. He had never once before this shed a tear for her or for anyone.

“Do not call me that; I was never such to you,” she said sadly. “I was wicked, never finding the compassion inside myself to love you. You were pariah to me; the Frenchman no doubt loved you more than I.” Her head lowered, and her dark hair cascaded over her silvery face. “It is good I am dead. I prayed to Buddha daily to let me feel the love I should have for you, but my prayers were never answered. My heart was already shriveled, a dead lump beneath my breast.”

“Mother, this was not of your doing.”

Her head snapped up, the cascade of hair falling from her face. Her eyes blazed pale fire, and the grimace she made contained within it the heart of the black leopard, baring its yellow teeth for the kill.

“No. Of course this is true,” she whispered fiercely. “I am Asia, spreading my legs compliantly to be raped by the French, the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans. They have used us so carelessly, enslaved us to opium, turned us into water buffaloes to do their labor, and finally we are as mad as a rabid dog, turning on itself, chewing its own leg off in its insanity.”

She drew up, her skeletonlike fingers clawing the air. “And I am mad, too, so insane that I lacked the capacity to love that which I should have cherished. You are my blood, Do Duc, and I looked on you as they look on us.” She shook her head. “No, do not waste your time mourning for me. I have my karma and I embrace it. Now I am a part of the destruction of Asia. It may be horrible, but it is at least something.”

“But I have killed you!” he cried. “Because of me—!”

The exquisite face shone. “I would not tell them where you went. I kept your secret, Do Duc. Didn’t you think I knew what the consequences would be? Yes, yes. I did it willingly, and it felt good to defy them. At last, oh!” She gave a sigh. “This was the only meaningful act in my life. At the end, I found that my heart was still beating, beating for you.” The golden eyes caught him in their web.

“Now is your time, my son. Make the most of it.”

A cloud must have ridden across the sky because the moonlight faded, the darkness shifted, and blinking, Do Duc found himself face-to-face with the black leopard. Dizzy again with its musk, his eyes closed for a moment, and when he opened them again, the beast had clambered down into the water, was swimming swiftly downstream, away from them.

He lowered his head and wept uncontrollably. Never before this had he been touched by love, and now here it was, so painful that he resolved never to allow it to touch him again.

The hand on his shoulder was firm and steadying. “Yes, younger brother,” Ao whispered in his ear. “Harden your heart until it is like unto a stone in your breast, for your path is as treacherous as it is arduous.”

Do Duc, crouched on the steaming bank of the mountain stream, felt these words rather than heard them, and they filled that nothingness inside him, the emptiness that, back where he had once lived, he had exulted to feel at the cool, silent bottom of the Frenchman’s pool.

When, at length, he raised his head, it was that peculiar hour just before the first dawn light, when the world is devoid of color, etched with the grays of mist and night’s last strands of shadow.

“We have been here all night?”

“Time is unimportant now,” Ao said. “Forget time.”

“What happened?” Do Duc turned to face the old man. “The black leopard, the krait, the ghost of my mother. Was it all a dream?”

Ao’s lips curled into a sardonic smile. “It is Ngoh-meih-yuht, the Crescent Moon. Now listen to me, and I will tell you about the Paau dance.

“In the old days, when the civilization of the Nung was at its height, certain of our city-states revered the leopard. The Nung called the animal Paau and believed that it was a deity. But there were those who coveted the power of the gods and so set about capturing the Paau. This they did with rare courage and cool cunning, trapping it in a camouflaged pit of their own devising.”

Ao had a way of speaking that was almost hypnotic, as if by his voice alone he could conjure magic out of the very atmosphere.

“First, they broke the beast’s legs so that it could not flee—even their evil had its limits, and they would not dare cage it and risk the wrath of the gods. But in breaking its bones they were assured that this soul would remain intact inside it and would eventually become a part of them.

“In the unbroken bones of man and animal alike reside the remnants of the ‘soul’ from which a new life may be reconstituted by the proper rituals and prayers.

“Next, they fed it the living flesh of their enemies to make it strong and increase its divine power. After nine days, they slit the breast of the leopard, prying apart its rib cage in order to remove its still-beating heart. They ate this organ and, naked, wrapped themselves in the open, eviscerated body of the Paau as if they could absorb its blood. It was said the ghastly cloak trembled as it clung to their bare shoulders. This was the Paau dance.”

The predawn mist steamed from the bank, obscuring the stream; even its sound disappeared into the opalescent atmosphere, so that they could have been anywhere, hanging suspended in time.