Enzan: The Far Mountain (19 page)

I handed Chie over to the roshi and the thin man had me sit down on a bench. He pulled off my boots and removed my coat with an easy, efficient technique that suggested lots of practice. He noted the extra weight in my pocket and removed the pistol, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t say anything, but he racked the action back, noted the missing magazine, and double-checked to make sure that there wasn’t a round left in the chamber. Then he smoothly hit the safety and the slide sprung home. He set the gun down and looked at me.

“Sig Sauer .45. Modeled on the old 1911 Colt,” he said. He saw my expression and smiled. “I wasn’t always a Buddhist, you know.” He turned my head this way and that, shining a small flashlight in my eyes.

“I could tell,” I said. The light made my head hurt more.

He watched my pupils for a few seconds, then nodded. “Tenth Mountain Division,” he said, answering my unspoken question.

“Light infantry,” I commented through gritted teeth. He was poking my ribs.

“Medic,” he added. “Afghanistan.”

“That must have been a learning experience,” I added.

He nodded. “Uh, yeah. Learned lots of things. Mostly I learned I never want to go back to Afghanistan again. That’s for sure.”

He stopped jabbing and probing and I sank back against the wall and closed my eyes.

“Somebody gave you quite a beating,” he said. He wasn’t surprised or even curious. It was a diagnosis, a flat statement of what was. I just nodded. “From what I can see you may have a minor concussion. Probably some fractured ribs. Extensive bruising.” He gestured toward the door and the storm beyond it. “Best place for you would be a hospital, but none of us are going anywhere tonight. I can tape you up so you get a little relief from the ribs. We’ll get some fluid into you …” He hesitated for a minute. “You ever been hurt like this before?” When I nodded, he seemed relieved. “OK, then you know what’s up. Rest, fluids, painkillers. But basically …”

“There’s not much for it except time,” I finished for him. “I’ll feel like the walking dead for a week or so, but it will get better.” He nodded. We both knew the drill. Contrary to the movies, nobody takes a major beating, manfully wipes the blood off his lips, and limps away with determination that grows as the soundtrack swells behind him, basically shaken but OK. Ask any boxer: even the fights you win take a toll.

He reached out. “Let’s get you into bed.”

“In a while,” I told him. I asked where the roshi had gone and they took me to his office. It was empty and I sagged down into a chair. When he entered, his face was filled with concern. “Connor,” he said, and reached out to touch my shoulder.

“It looks worse than it really is,” I assured him. He seemed skeptical. “Chie?” I asked.

“She’s settling in upstairs.”

“Yamashita?”

“In the far rooms by the garden. Reading,” he told me with a look filled with significance.

“I need to see him.”

“Yes,” the roshi said, although he did not sound happy about it. “Chie as well, I assume.”

I nodded. “Me first, though.”

They gave me another of the grey novice’s uniforms to wear. It was cut in the traditional Japanese manner: drawstring pants and a top that wrapped closed. It was like a karate gi and I felt at home in it. I shuffled down the quiet corridors in my socks, listening to the wind whistle and the grainy wash of snow against windows. The storm pushed at the building, but it held steady—a rock, a refuge.

Yamashita occupied a suite of rooms at one end of a wing of the building. I found him in a type of sunroom. Broad French doors opened onto a garden that was now just a white space with indeterminate humps that lay like victims smothered by the blizzard. He was kneeling, a long swath of rice paper before him, and the tools of the calligrapher’s trade lay alongside him. I knocked on the doorjamb and he sat back and set the brush down carefully.

I bowed. “Sensei.”

He swiveled and his usually remote face brightened for an instant, then darkened with concern. “Burke,” he said, gesturing to a spot next to him. “I have been thinking about you.”

I came into the room and saw Mori’s journal resting on a table beside a chair and a floor lamp that spread a warm pool of light across the floor. I knelt down and bowed again to my teacher.

He bowed slightly in response and reached out to turn my head back and forth, letting the light play on the damage. His touch was light, but authoritative, much like the medic from the Tenth Mountain Division.

“I see you have been busy,” Yamashita commented.

I closed my eyes and nodded in agreement. Then I opened them and glanced at Mori’s journal. “Sensei …,” I began.

He cut me off, gesturing at the calligraphy drying before him. “I thought we might benefit from some new inspiration at the dojo, Burke.” He sat back. “You are familiar with the saying?”

“
Enzan no metsuke
,” I read out loud. “Looking at a far mountain.”

“Just so,” Yamashita commented. “How often have we heard that, over the years? The warning to keep focus on important things, to not be distracted …”

“Sometimes easier said than done,” I told him. We were both looking toward the table and Mori’s journal now, talking about it without talking about it. I shrugged. “It’s why we keep training.”

Yamashita didn’t seem comforted by that idea. “And when the training comes to an end? What then? When we look back at the long path we have walked?” I had never heard him like this before. Was it the product of the meditation? The days of introspection? I wasn’t sure but it struck me for the first time that my teacher sounded old. Yamashita let the question dangle there, and then smiled wryly when he saw the look of consternation on my face. “But at least you have learned this, Burke: you endure well.”

He stood up and I followed suit. We both moved like men with injuries, old and new.

“
Honto desu
,” I answered.
It’s true
.

“It takes a toll, does it not, Burke?” He almost sighed. He seemed lost in thought. If I didn’t know him better, I would have wondered if he were experiencing regret. It was a side of my teacher I had rarely seen.

“You’ve taught me that there is always a price to be paid, Sensei. And sometimes, it brings reward …”

The roshi knocked and came in, Chie at his side.

I bowed to her and to my teacher. I swallowed, suddenly nervous to say the words. “Yamashita Rinsuke, Miyazaki Chie. Miyazaki Chie, Yamashita Rinsuke.”

I looked at my teacher. “Meet your granddaughter.”

Chapter 19

Mori’s Journal

The world was nothing but different shades of white and grey. The snow filled the air and blanketed the land; the roads were indistinct, virtually impassable. The sea was gone from sight and even the sound of the waves was muffled under the relentless weight of snowfall. I staggered through it, a dark smudge lurching across a world without hard edges or landmarks to guide me. I finally collapsed on the veranda of a house on the edge of a village. They took me in and thawed me out. The skin on my face felt stiff and made it hard to talk. My fingers and toes burned.

A neighbor had a phone, and in time the prefectural police arrived, swaddled to the eyeballs: thick suspicious men who weren’t sure what to make of my tale. My urgency seemed only to confuse them more. They radioed their superiors, who in turn made further calls from headquarters. My clothes thawed and dripped and I pleaded for action. But the policemen stolidly waited for direction from their superiors.

In the meantime, the storm raged. It would not let up for days.

When the orders eventually made their way down the chain of command, I could hear hysteria in the voice on the radio, even at a distance. The two local policemen looked startled, guilty, alarmed. They gazed out through windows that were sheeted with ice, felt the wind rocking the building, and then gave a shrug and headed back out, wading through the drifts to their patrol car, taking me with them as a guide. We were a long time gone.

We reached the inn eventually, but night was coming on. They called for an ambulance. Not so much for the old couple that ran the place; it was obvious their instructions were focused on Miyazaki.

I led them to the room where he lay. One policeman checked Miyazaki’s vital signs and began a frantic conversation with his dispatcher. Someone was reluctant to send an ambulance out in the weather. Other calls were made and the heavy hand of higher-ups intervened. The ambulance was on its way.

The other policeman had checked the two other bodies we had left there. “Tell them no need to rush for these other two,” he told his partner. They began what first aid they could on Miyazaki, trying to staunch the bleeding, working to keep shock at bay.

I was amazed he was even alive. When you disappeared into the snow with Chika-hime, we all thought he was dead. By this time I had digested the rumors about an unhappy marriage. I had felt something between the two of you. It was obvious in the way the woman clutched at you as you headed out into the storm. So perhaps the idea that Miyazaki was dead was all wishful thinking. I know it was on my part.

The ambulance arrived with nightfall. The attendants trundled him out into the dark, ramming the gurney through the snow. I asked one of the policemen whether Miyazaki was still alive. He said nothing, but looked at his partner, the senior man, whose reply was not encouraging.

“Still alive? Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He peered outside, where the storm gave no sign of abating. The ambulance’s flashing light whirled faintly, almost smothered in the driving snow. “Even if he is, the ride to the hospital will probably kill him.”

“And his wife is out in this,” the other policeman commented, shaking his head in disapproval. “Your friend should have known better.”

I looked at the two of them. “When do we go after them?”

“We don’t,” the senior man replied. “We wait for first light and see.”

I argued with them, but without success. Priorities had been established: they were to do what they could to save Miyazaki. But they were not about to risk themselves any further. I thought it curious that there was not more concern for the princess. But I was naïve then. I did not realize the extent to which the imperial family was wrapped in the strong, thick coils of a system designed to keep them remote and uninformed and powerless.

I had also not come to realize just how powerful the Miyazaki had become, and how their responses could outstrip the speed and efficiency of the very government.

First light brought no pause in the blizzard. It was another whole day before they were able to bring a ski rescue team into the area. In the meantime, the police fidgeted, uncomfortable with inaction, but dreading the fact that some higher-up might eventually order them out into the hills to search. So they took my statement of what had happened. They were polite, but skeptical. They took careful notes and left me for a time. Then they returned and started with the same questions all over again, asked in different order. Who did I think the men in the boat were? Why would they be here? What did they want? How had you and I managed to overcome an armed party?

They questioned me on where I thought it likely you had gone. I traced the path into the hills on a survey map for them. They asked about the terrain. Any survival equipment you might have carried. They all shook their heads, resigned to eventually having to head out into the storm but not optimistic about what they might find. They were politely concerned for you and the princess, Rinsuke, but it was a professional’s concern: little real emotion, even less optimism. They weren’t looking forward to searching for anyone in this blizzard; they were not very hopeful that any good would come of it. But they would do their duty. Yet from the looks they gave one another, they were certain it would not be enough: I think they were worried about having to report failure to their superiors.

Because now officials were said to be on the way from Tokyo.

The police used the inn as their command post. Men trooped in, stamping the snow off their boots and glad to be out of the weather. There was tea and quiet talk, the endless smoking of cigarettes. Occasionally, someone would get up to check equipment that had been checked multiple times already. I sat with them and listened to the crackle of radios. The wind howled. Night came again. There was no word on Miyazaki. There was little hope the ski patrol would find you alive the next day.

In the end, the storm blew itself out. We woke to silence, the world shrouded in snow and frozen fast. In time, the sun came up over the mountains, dawn a late arrival on that coastline. But light eventually came and the sky was revealed: a hard blue like deep and ancient ice.

The search party would not let me go with them. They strapped on skis and slowly made their way up into the hills. They pulled sleds that carried emergency clothing, food, and shelter. They also carried long, bright yellow rubber bags. For the bodies. I watched the team disappear into the tree line, wondering how long they would be gone. How long it would take to find two huddled forms, stiff and motionless in a drift.

They were, in fact, only gone for three hours when the police radios crackled to life, the silence thawing with the heat of excitement. The words coming across were indistinct, but the tone was one of amazement, incredulity. There was a small crowd of policemen in the inn gathered around the communications station, and I pushed my way through. The radio operator looked up.

“They found them. Alive. They’re bringing them down.”

It wasn’t quite true, of course. You found them, Rinsuke, not the other way around. And you carried the princess back down, in much the same way you had carried her up. You both seemed dazed, and your movements were robotic, like a man unsure of the ability of his limbs to fully respond to the command of his will. She clung to you, even then. I remember that. Eventually, the two of you sat, collapsed in the warmth of the inn. You looked at me, your face red and abraded from the cold wind. You reached for a proffered cup of tea, but your fingers moved stiffly, still reluctant to acknowledge the ordeal was over. Slowly, the innkeeper’s wife pried Chika-hime away from you, cooing about a hot bath and a change of clothes.

“Come,” the old lady said. “We need to make you presentable when you visit the hospital.”

The two of you were stunned and remote, as if the time in the storm had taken you to a place where the world of people and warmth and shelter was nonexistent, a backdrop of vague forms and distant sounds. Your universe seemed to have tightened down to just the two of you.

I watched Chika-hime processing the old woman’s comments, saw the world slowly thawing its way into her awareness. “Hospital?” the princess whispered.

“Ah yes,” the old lady said, smiling, her skin wrinkling in pleasure. “To see your husband. He’s asking for you.”

You cast a despairing look at me, Rinsuke, and it was then the princess fainted away.