The Kaisho (22 page)

“They became united in this grotesque ritual, these men, and their power, whether real or imagined, grew. Their enemies were invariably found naked with their digits broken and turned backwards so that they could no longer hold on to their own power, and their feet could not function to make their escape.”

Ao’s ginger eyes seemed to take on a peculiar cast. “And most important of all, their hearts had been ripped from their chests and sewn to their navels so that their souls could not emerge at the moment of death.”

His head swung away for a moment, and it appeared to Do Duc as if he stared through the walls of mist to another place, another time.

“The Paau dance. The gateway to power and more power—this is what I will teach you because it is why you have come to me from the lowlands.” Ao lifted a hand. “Now you must take a creature to represent you, to be your spirit familiar. Choose!”

Do Duc said the first thing that came into his mind. “I want the white magpie.”

“The white magpie.” Ao turned his head in Do Duc’s direction, and Do Duc could feel the heat in his eyes. “Are you certain?”

Do Duc nodded. Oddly, he
was
certain, for the first time in his life.

Ao’s expression was grave. “You have spoken, let it be so. Your familiar shall be the white magpie.”

Ao’s words seemed to penetrate Do Duc’s flesh like a flurry of darts, making him twitch with momentary pain.

Ao’s eyes were like black stones at the bottom of the river, smooth and unknowable. He hesitated but a moment. “It is done! You will become Ngoh-meih-yuht, and by Ngoh-meih-yuht alone can you be tracked down.”

“What does this mean?” Do Duc whispered.

A sardonic smile curled Ao’s lips. “You will become another person. Does this frighten you? No? Good. For yours will be a thirsty soul. Soon—very soon—food and drink will no longer be of interest to you.”

“What will sustain me?”

“That will depend,” Ao said gravely, “on what remains after you become Ngoh-meih-yuht.”

“But I will be mortal.”

Ao did not answer him at once. At length, he said, “If you are delivered a mortal wound, then yes, you may die. In that sense, you will be mortal. But you will be Ngoh-meih-yuht, and your body will possess remarkable recuperative and regenerative capabilities.”

“I will be close to immortality.”

Ao’s eyes were hooded. “In the end, that will be for you to determine.”

Now he was aware that Ao was studying him with keen attention. The old man held one hand out between them, palm up.

A bird called shrilly, its voice echoing through the jungle, against the walls of mist with an eerie tone.

Ao was waiting for Do Duc to slide his hand over his. When Do Duc did, he felt Ao’s grip all through his body. And when Ao spoke, it was already as if through a different kind of veil or mist.

“Are you ready to continue your journey from one world to another?”

Do Duc opened his mouth to speak, but Ao was nodding, as if already aware of the response forming in his mind.

Nicholas was awakened by the deep rumble of boats on the Grand Canal. He opened his eyes into darkness. He looked at his watch; it was not yet dawn. But as he padded across the room, he could already see a thin strand of not-quite-darkness making its way between the wooden shutters. He threw them open to find a pale light of a color he could neither describe nor name staining the marble facades of the palazzi along the
rio.
In the water was the reflection of a seabird, all too soon gone from sight. It left, cool and distinct, the sight of the Santa Maria della Salute.

He went into the bathroom, relieved himself, splashed cold water on his face, dressed, and went out of his room. He had no idea where he was going, he only knew that he must walk the streets, breathe the air, feel the city on his skin like a cloth of gold.

He pulled the collar of his jacket up around his cheeks as the first bite of the wind off the
rio
struck him. Then we went out of the small square, down a
ruga,
a street with shops. No one was around at this early hour, and most shops were still closed. His nose led him toward a small bakery, where he purchased a cup of coffee and a delicious hard roll, which he munched on delightedly as he crossed over a small bridge that led to the Piazza San Marco.

He paused for a moment, as he liked to do, at the apex of the bridge’s arc, looking down the
rio
at the play of light off the silken water. Commercial boats lay tied up, bobbing slightly, patiently awaiting their owners upon whose doorsteps they floated.

He passed over two more bridges without seeing a soul, then went beneath the arch that led to the piazza. Ahead of him rose the Doges’ Palace and, to his left, the bell tower that still struck the hours as it had for decades. The vast space, bordered on either side by arcaded shops and cafés with their outdoor setups, seemed so private at this hour, it was as if he had entered the drawing room of the gods.

He walked out onto the cobbles, and soon enough he heard the cooing of the well-fed pigeons that flocked to the floods of tourists who would begin to appear some hours before lunchtime.

All at once, Nicholas heard a voice raised in song. He listened, transfixed, as he heard “Nessun Dorma,” Prince Calaf’s beautiful aria from Giacomo Puccini’s
Turandot.
“No man shall sleep,” the baritone sang, and coming toward him, Nicholas saw a street sweeper, pulling his wheeled garbage can behind him, his thick-bristled brush pushed rhythmically ahead of him. His head was thrown back as he sang, and Nicholas, hearing this ancient song in the sublime amphitheater of the doges of Venice, felt that no matter what troubles he had left behind him in Tokyo, no matter what dangers he was about to face, on this morning, at this hour, it was good to be alive.

He saluted the de jure opera singer as he passed him, and the burly man smiled without missing a beat, moving on, his passionate voice resounding through the piazza.

Nicholas turned the corner, walking through the Piazzetta toward the wharf and the Grand Canal. The first colors of dawn had risen from the bosom of the ocean to stain the sky and the buildings along the water the same hue so that there seemed no distinction at all between sea and land.

The quay—actually the Riva degli Schiavoni—was beginning to fill with schoolchildren climbing onto
vaporetti
bound for morning class. Their high-pitched voices rang across the
pizzetta
as they ran to buy their tickets and climb on board. There, they laughed and shoved each other, filling the narrow outside decks of the boats while bleary-eyed workers inside the cabins buried their head in local papers.

There were few people about. The tourists were probably only now rolling out of bed to order their croissants and cappuccinos. He strolled toward the
traghetti
where the
vaporetti
pulled in and departed. To his right was the statue of St. Theodore, to his left the winged lion. It seemed altogether fitting to him that the doges of Venice should have chosen a mythical animal to represent their city.

Popping the last of the roll into his mouth and finishing off his coffee, he reflected that the longer he was here the more he understood how Venice was a true modern-day city-state. The people here might be Italians by nationality, but there it ended. Many areas within a country had their own argot such as the Venetians did, but none thought differently, as the Venetians did. Their way of life was unique unto themselves, and Nicholas found himself responding to that iconoclasm on the deepest level.

As he came closer to the statue of the winged lion, he saw a young woman in a short, fur-collared jacket sitting on its base. The first wave of schoolchildren had been swept off along the Grand Canal, and, for the time being at least, the broad arc of the Riva was deserted.

The woman was quite striking. She had one of those long-nosed, wide-mouthed Mediterranean faces that was just as much Phoenician as it was Roman—her thick red hair drawn back off her face, her skin the color of a North African desert. As he drew abreast of her, Nicholas saw that her deepset eyes were the color of aquamarines. Her cameo face, far from perfect or even symmetrical, nevertheless possessed a kind of breathless ardor, as if it were the result of an enchantment. She sat with her knees drawn up, her elbows on them. She was holding a chocolate-filled pastry, which she was eating with evident delight.

She looked up as Nicholas’s shadow fell briefly across her, the sunlight firing the translucent blue of her eyes. Her smile told him who she was.

There were tiny smudges of chocolate at the corners of her mouth. “Would you mind moving? I’ve been enjoying this view.” She spoke in English, but there was the hint of an accent that led him to believe it was not her primary language.

Nicholas sat down beside her.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

“Not for too long, I hope. It’s a pleasant surprise to see you without your mask.”

She bit into her pastry, her smile broadening as she chewed. “All Hallows’ Eve is past. In the daylight we can all be ourselves once again.”

“Even Mikio Okami?”

She gave him a sharp glance. “Okami-san is under unbelievable pressure. This life would surely have killed lesser men by now.”

Nicholas said nothing. He rubbed his hands together to rid them of the early-morning chill.

“You
will
help him?”

“What was he doing in partnership with Dominic Goldoni, America’s most powerful Mafia don?”

“Trying to save himself.” Then Celeste added, “Do you know anything about Goldoni other than that he was Mafia?”

“What more is there to know?”

She gave him a sad smile. “For one thing, Goldoni was half-Venetian; that made him unique among the
capi
of the Sicilian-dominated Mafia. For another, he had a vision that went beyond anything the Mafia ever dreamed of. He saw that the days of Sam Giancana and the others like him were numbered, and he did his planning for a new era. His contacts in America were crucial for Okami-san to implement his plan to stifle the Godaishu.” Her clear eyes regarded him. “Does this mean you won’t help Okami-san?”

Nicholas was aware of the concern in her voice. “Tell me,” he said, “do you know the identity of Okami’s nemesis, who has forged the link between the Yakuza and the Mafia?”

“No. I wish I did.”

“What could his power be—his hold—on all these other powerful men?”

Celeste was silent so long that Nicholas felt compelled to change the subject. “What is Okami-san to you? Employer? Father figure? Lover? All three, perhaps?”

Celeste laughed. “How full of pride Okami-san would be if he heard you say that. Do you know he is over ninety?”

“I didn’t.”

“Um-hmm. Well, he’s been here in Venice a long time now—and even before he moved here he’s had—ah—ties to some of the important Venetian families.”

“I take it yours would be one of those.”

“My father gave his life for Okami-san.” She wiped her hands on a piece of paper. “I imagine that sounds odd to you—and perhaps a little bizarre.”

“Not at all. I’m half-Eastern. I understand the meaning of debt.”

“Yes, of course.” She turned her head away, stared out at the sun rising over the lagoon. To their right, across the Grand Canal, the Santa Maria della Salute glowed in the shell-pink light, and above them, the wings of the Venetian lion seemed afire. “My people, or some of them at least, came from Carthage,” she said after a time. “They were seafarers but also philosophers and, it has been said, great scientists. Their home was burned, their city razed, so they set out on the only friend they had left: the sea. And at last, they found themselves here, in Venice.” Her head swung around and she looked him full in the face. “These are stories my grandfather used to tell. He swore they were true, just as he swore he knew where the boat they came in was buried beneath the palazzo you were in last night.”

“That was your house?”

“It is Okami-san’s now,” Celeste said without a trace of melancholy or bitterness. “I live elsewhere now—away from the Grand Canal where it is more secluded.”

“And the rest of your family?”

“Okami-san bought my mother her own apartment, one she could take care of on her own. As for my sister, she no longer lives in Venice.”

She turned her head a little, and the sunlight struck the bridge of her nose so that he could imagine her at the bow of an ancient ship, setting sail from Carthage, across the Mediterranean, heading for this sheltered place that would become Venezia.

“I suppose, in light of Venetian history, my family’s fate is not so atypical. Here, we have learned to be adaptable, to the times, to fate, and most importantly, to politics.

“My father’s business was fabrics: Fortuny velvets, laces, silks, and the like. My grandfather invented a specific process for creating a certain kind of moiré brocade that is still ours alone. Okami-san’s people came from Osaka and were once also in the dry goods business. He and my father understood each other right away. Both were honorable; both were pragmatic. My father’s family was very Eastern, and he could see why Okami-san would want to buy his company. In the end, they worked out a partnership.”

“So the partnership was strictly legitimate, a perfect cover for Okami being here in Venice.”

“I am concerned only with what Okami-san has done for my family.” He could tell that she did not care for his tone of voice. Softly she said, “Please answer my question. Will you help him?”

He thought back to last night when Okami had told him that his life was in danger.

“Here are the problems,” he had said to Okami. “There is the question of identity: we don’t know who will be sent to kill you. There is the question of time: we must assume that we have very little of it. Under these extreme conditions our options are severely limited. It will do no good to set you to ground because you need to continue to work and you cannot do that in hiding. It will do no good to guard you day and night because whoever is sent will have the advantage of setting the time if not the place, and I will be at a disadvantage. In these desperate circumstances I cannot afford any disadvantage. I am already at a disadvantage because I have no idea who I’m up against.”