Fudoki (31 page)

This is the way of war—of this war, anyway. Perhaps somewhere in the world, among the barbarians beyond India or across the great ocean, there are civilized wars with rules of engagement and judges to determine proper behavior. Perhaps strategies are clever and complicated and minimize unnecessary deaths. Perhaps the only people who die are warriors sent to the scene of battle for no other purpose than to kill or be killed. Perhaps there is somewhere that chroniclers can tell the plain truth about a battle without shocking even the most delicate of sensibilities.

But I rather doubt this. We are a civilized people, in our way (dare I say it?) more sophisticated even than China; and yet I cannot forget the stories of the men from Yoshiee’s war. Even for us war is unpleasant; surely it must be more so elsewhere.

Kagaya-hime understands war, accepts it as I do not. Why would she not? She is a cat, a killer by nature. She has seen children killed before this: the males of her race have been known to kill the kittens of a
fudoki
when they claim its territory. Perhaps this is the way of all males, to kill. They have no
fudoki
and so all that is left to them is life and death and their children. But I am forgetting; this is Kagaya-hime I am speaking of. Human males, men—D
mei—surely they are more than this.

The cries ceased after a time, or were drowned by the fire. The screaming infant that had been crying fell silent; the heap of bodies before the door smoked, smelled of cooking meat. The war band’s shouts stopped, and as it became certain that there would be no last-ditch escape—no one was left alive in the buildings to attempt one—men left the fire. Some wept or vomited as they walked, or collapsed as if they had fought for their lives, or shivered as if ill or injured. Some stayed: Kagaya-hime, Kitsune, Takase, others.

“Why are they sick?” she asked Takase. A man—the one who had laughed at the fire—had fallen to his knees, body wrenched with dry retching.

Takase turned to look at her, his expression harsh. “It takes some people this way. We’ve killed a lot of people.”

“Wasn’t that why you did this?”

He barked a humorless laugh. “Clever girl. We chose to kill them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t suffer for it.”

“Why? You’re alive, they’re dead. This is what you wanted, and this is the way of things for you, is it not?” she asked: reasonably, she thought, but he eyed her as if she were a stranger found suddenly standing beside him.

“Yah,” he said, and spat on the ground; smoke leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. “We watch death and imagine it as if it were ours, our comrades’. Because it could have been. Will be, someday.”

“Is that why he vomits?”

“Maybe. Yes. No. Ask him, why don’t you.”

“Why don’t they
all
turn away?” She gestured.

“Some lost family,” Takase said. “They want to see these others die.”

“It doesn’t bring them back.”

“You lost your family, girl. Didn’t you want to kill someone, anyone, after that?” Takase rubbed his eyes. “Gah, I’ll go blind from this smoke. There are people who love death, who kill because it fills them with joy.”

“Oh, yes,” Kagaya-hime said softly. “Because the killing reminds them that they, at least, are alive.” A timber broke and collapsed inward, and a flame as tall as the trees shot up from the building’s interior. They stood in silence for a while. “Why do you watch this?”

Takase said. “I watch because—” He gave a short laugh. “I’m dying; I might as well tell you the truth. I’m here because I’m better at war than at anything else.”

“I also,” Kagaya-hime said. Cat and commander understood one another.

Fire in the night: the priest from the nunnery has been with me, and tells me to contemplate the sutras when I cannot sleep, as happens increasingly. It is my salvation, he tells me: my hope for rebirth into enlightenment.

But tonight I cannot. It is the tenth month now (can I have written for two whole months? I recall beginning these notebooks in the eighth month). I have been cold for so long, but for some reason tonight, when winter’s first frost glitters under the nearly full moon, I am sweltering as much as I did when my courses stopped, all those years ago. I do not hurt so much tonight, but earlier this evening the flush of heat drove me out walking a little, leaning on Shigeko until her back creaked. Now Shigeko sleeps, and I shift restlessly, pulling my sweat-sticky robes away from my skin.

D
mei. His skin felt good, tasted better. Like any civilized man, he wore scent, and I remember he smelled of Chinese oranges and sandalwood; but beneath that was something rich as pheasant-meat, musky but sweet. I can remember it so vividly; if I close my eyes, it is so strong that I can imagine him in my room, and see him untying his
hakama
-trousers behind my eyelids. He looks across the room at me, his eyes glinting with humor and passion. My heart pounds; I am choked with longing, sweet and hot and tart, like biting into sun-warmed fruit. He always loved to touch my throat, even lay his cheek and lips against it as we made love. My hand (the memory of his hand) reaches up to touch my neck and I feel—this. Skin as fragile and furred and folded as much-used mulberry paper. This is an old woman’s throat. My throat. D
mei is gone, and I am dying, and I will never never never be young again and feel his touch.

In my secret heart, I curse all the gods and Buddhas who permitted me to become old, who let D
mei go.

D
mei could not sleep nights, or did not sleep well, at any rate. Dreams haunted him, dreams he could never (or chose never to) tell me when I awakened him, unsettled by the inarticulate sounds he made, the sweaty thrashing as he fought the bed robes.

It is not a bad thing to have a lover who does not sleep well, when he may only visit you in the hours between dusk and dawn. Nights, we made love frequently and slept seldom, and I dozed my days away. I wonder (now, with the wisdom that has nothing to do with contemplation and everything to do with age) whether we had sex so often and so enthusiastically because he wished to batter himself against my body until he was too exhausted to dream.

But there was a night I had forgotten until this moment. It was winter, and snow was falling. This numbed the air, muffled it as thoroughly as summer humidity ever did. I had a bet with D
mei about making snow mountains, so two of my women and D
mei’s two attendants chased around the peony courtyard throwing up plumes as they pawed the snow into heaps. D
mei and I and the rest of my attendants watched, feet close to the braziers we had brought onto the veranda. The men were faster and more efficient, of course, so I sent Shigeko out to assist my team. D
mei protested the cheat, and when I only laughed and tossed my head, he waded into the snow himself, tossing snow between his legs, dog-style, onto his mountain.