Linnear 03 - White Ninja (19 page)

Nicholas waited thirty minutes in a room lacquered to a glossy grey. He sat upon a grey tweed couch at right angles to six matching grey tweed chairs and across from the receptionist's grey metal desk. On the walls were two contemporary lithographs clumsily playing upon the delicacy of traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints, combining them with images of the West: the Statue of Liberty, the front end of a vintage Corvette, a hamburger dripping ketchup. Nicholas hated them.

He got up, strode nervously to the window. Shards of the city could be seen through vertical grey metal blinds. He could not see the streets. The fog had left a film on the glass that turned a lurid rainbow hue in the dull shadowless light. He stared out across the plunging vertical canyon between the buildings. The fluorescent lights in the windows of a nearby skyrise burned through the haze with the lambent glow of an acetylene torch.

Nicholas heard the receptionist call his name.

Dr Hanami was a small, dapper man in his early fifties. He sported an immaculately-groomed moustache, and his iron-grey hair was shiny with cream. He wore a white medical smock, open over a grey pinstripe suit. His office was thick with cigarette smoke.

He took a last drag, stubbed out his busily burning butt in an overflowing ashtray, and waved Nicholas to a seat. He was punctilious about conforming to Nicholas's wish that he should not smoke in Nicholas's presence, but he seemed unaware that they often spoke through a noxious pall. After his visits to Dr Hanami, Nicholas invariably threw his clothes in the linen basket as soon as he got home.

'So,' Dr Hanami said, 'how's it going?' He said this

in English. Dr Hanami, who most often lunched on Bigu Makus from the local McDonald's, fancied himself a student of Americanisms.

Nicholas, slumped in a chrome and grey rubber chair, stared at him.

Dr Hanami played with his pewter lighter, turning it around and around between forefinger and thumb. 'I notice,' he said, 'that this isn't one of your regular visits.' He opened Nicholas's chart, scanned the pages. 'Everything looks just great here. The X-rays, the lab tests. Couldn't be better.' He looked up. 'Is there a problem?'

'Yes,' Nicholas said, resisting the urge to leap out of his seat. 'You could say that.'

'Um. And what form, may I ask, is this problem taking?' Around and around went the lighter, its dark pewter face catching the light of the overheads.

Nicholas, unable to bear sitting for a moment longer, sprang up. With a great clatter that startled Dr Hanami, Nicholas pulled aside the metal blinds, pressed his face against the window glass. It was still as foul as a petrochemical furnace out there; he could not get the burned smell out of his nostrils.

'Tell me, Doctor,' Nicholas said without turning around, 'have you ever been to Nara Prefecture?'

After a moment's silence, Dr Hanami said, 'Yes. Four years ago, I took my wife for a week's vacation to a spa in Nara. Hot mineral baths.'

'Then you know how beautiful it is there.'

'Yes, indeed. I often find myself thinking that we ought to go back. But, of course, there's never any time.'

Nicholas turned around; there was no point staring into that soup any longer, prolonging the agony. 'Doctor, have you ever wondered what life would be like if you suddenly could no longer perform an operation?'

Dr Hanami looked puzzled. 'Well, naturally, when I retire, I'll have to give this up - '

'No,' Nicholas said, his impatience betraying him, 'I mean now. At once. One moment to the next.' He snapped his fingers. 'Bang!'

'I can't say that I - '

'Well, the beauty of Nara, Doctor, where I studied martial arts for so long, is what I cannot live without. Not the beauty you and your wife see when you go to take your waters. Not that that beauty is inconsiderable. No, I'm talking about the beauty I've learned to see through Getsumei no michi. Do you know it? Hie Moonlit Path.'

Dr Hanami nodded. 'I've heard of it, of course. But I didn't know - ' Something either in Nicholas's face or his bearing caused the surgeon to pause. 'You're very different today,' he said. 'What has happened?'

Nicholas, feeling the pounding of his heart, sat back down facing Dr Hanami, but this time he was perched on the edge of the seat, leaning forward so that his head and upper torso crossed the intervening space between them. He was aware that his body was very tense. He rubbed his palms together, appalled that they were sweating.

'You asked what the problem is, and I'll tell you,' he said into Dr Hanami's face, the emotion bubbling up now so that he knew he could no longer control it. He pointed to the side of his head still healing from the operation. 'I can't fucking remember any of my martial arts training. It's gone, vanished, just as if it had never been there. I was up all night thinking about how this... impossibility... could have happened. And again and again I came back to the same answer, Doctor. The only answer that makes sense.' He was up on his feet now, his corded arms gripping the edge of Dr Hanami's desk. 'You and your trusty little scalpel did it to me. You took too big a slice out of me or maybe you nicked some adjacent tissue, I don't know which. But what I do know

is that my memory is gone, and you're to blame.'

Into the ringing silence, Dr Hanami said in Japanese, 'Perhaps some tea is called for.'

When faced with a crisis, Nicholas thought, fall back on the old traditions. The rage was so strong inside him, that he was trembling. He watched Dr Hanami ring through on his intercom, order the tea. When it came, on a black lacquer tray, the surgeon dismissed his receptionist, set about brewing the tea himself; taking pinches of the cut green leaves, dropping them into the boiling water, using the reed whisk at just the right speed to stir up the froth, turning the tiny porcelain cup around and around to ensure an even distribution.

There was something soothing, even comforting about the process. Its orderliness, its lack of spontaneity, its formality, even its stylized movements served to bring a sense of normalcy, of the patient procession of past to present to future firmly into focus.

Nicholas felt himself relaxing, the enormous tension that had built up overnight dissipating like air leaking from a punctured tyre. He sank back by degrees into the chair.

At that moment, Dr Hanami served him the tea. When they had both drained their cups, the surgeon said, 'Now, from the beginning, tell me everything.'

'I want to talk about some details of the subject's history that have, until now, eluded me.' Dr Muku said this as soon as Senjin sat down.

It was unlike Dr Muku to seize the initiative in these psychoanalytic sessions. Senjin was like those strange and eerie fish that live near the bottom of the sea, that see without light and, often, without eyes. He knew without having been given any visible sign that Dr Muku was coming close to the truth.

Senjin was quite certain that the psychiatrist had begun

to suspect that there was no psychopathic 'subject' and, further, that this mythical 'subject' was, in fact, Senjin himself.

There were, of course, dangers inherent in his knowledge. But even had Senjin suddenly stood up and confessed everything, Dr Muku would be helpless to do anything about it. Certainly, he was constrained by the dictates of his profession from divulging anything they had discussed. Senjin had made it clear in their first session that whatever information exchanged hands was strictly confidential, and could not be repeated outside the confines of the room in which they met.

Dr Muku had readily - if, in retrospect, somewhat foolhardily - agreed, as Senjin suspected would be his wont. Now the relationship between them had taken on a new and, to Senjin's way of thinking, exciting dimension. There was a subtle struggle for control forming between the two of them, a kind of skirmish line as yet amorphous and, therefore, mutable.

It was akin to living on the edge, the length of cloth twisted around Senjin's neck, being pulled tighter by Dr Muku's pudgy hands as the two men drew closer in a deadly dance. Senjin felt himself growing hard. A pulse in the side of his forehead beat a hasty rhythm with the heating of his blood. This kind of lethal game was what he lived for.

'For instance,' Dr Muku was saying, 'what kind of upbringing did the subject receive? Was his family life normal?'

'What do you mean by normal?' Senjin could not keep the sneering tone out of his voice. 'Doesn't psychology shun the term "normal" as being false?'

'Psychology might,' Dr Muku said in an assuring tone, 'but psychotherapy may not. It all depends.' He provided Senjin with a smile so contrived that, as far as Senjin was concerned, he might just as well have said, You

should know. You're not normal, are you, Senjin-san? 'Of course,' Dr Muku went on amiably, 'you're right. In the abstract - that is, statistically - there is always a norm. However, the real world is quite different. Still, it is often the case that psychosis has its roots in early family life. And here, for the purposes of our discussion, we may use the word "normal", because I would be willing to bet that our subject did not have a normal upbringing.'

Senjin sat forward. 'In what way?'

Dr Muku shrugged. 'Perhaps his mother was a whore, or he believes that she abandoned him in some way. This would account for his obsession with Kiyohime and the demon woman.' Dr Muku shrugged. Because they were, sitting in the small, close room, facing one another, and because Dr Muku's back was to the window, his face was in half-shadow. In that soft light, Dr Muku's face seemed made of putty. 'Our subject could even have harboured incestuous feelings towards his mother. That kind of guilt would be too heavy a burden for a child's developing psyche to bear. It would be natural for him to "get rid" of those unwanted feelings by projecting them outwards, away from him, by turning them into something else - namely, the innate evil of the female. He would conveniently believe that his mother caused by action or word those taboo sexual feelings.' Dr Muku's eyes glittered behind his round glasses. 'Is any of this making sense? Does it have a familiar ring?'

'How would I know?' Senjin said blandly.

'Well, you are far more familiar with the subject than I am.'

'Am I?' Senjin raised his eyebrows. 'I'm beginning to wonder if either of us knows him sufficiently.'

Dr Muku shifted in his chair. 'What makes you say that, Senjin-san?'

'Well, for one thing, the mystery of sex. That is, the suspect hasn't, to my knowledge, raped any of his victims.'

'Yet they have all been women, his victims, yes?'

'Yes,' Senjin lied.

'All young. All beautiful.' Dr Muku was nodding at the appropriate visual prompts Senjin was giving him. 'Well, he must have come close. Very close. It is just a matter of time before he spills his seed over them.' Dr Muku pointed, as if Senjin were, indeed, the subject. 'You see, our friend must feel that the act of ejaculation is akin to pulling the trigger of a gun. He'll see his sperm as the bullets.'

Senjin sat very still. 'You're very sure of yourself, Doctor.'

Dr Muku shrugged again. 'Nothing is sure in my field, Senjin-san. One tries merely to make the proper educated guesses. Like a detective, I carefully walk amidst the rubble of a ruined psyche. I imagine that my modus operandi is quite similar to yours at a murder site. We are both looking for clues that will allow us to piece together the whos and whys that led to tragedy. And, in order to solve the mystery, don't you sometimes take a leap of faith or two?'

Senjin recognized the direction in which this was going. Not only had Dr Muku begun questioning him, instead of the other way around, but the psychiatrist was also bringing Senjin himself directly into the conversation. We are both... and don't you sometimes?... This methodology was part of the clever interrogator's procedure of involving his subject in the interrogation in order to elicit truthful answers to his questions.

Senjin said, 'I have found that the leaps of faith of the kind you describe are best left to films and novels where an author controls the destiny of all the characters.'

Dr Muku cocked his head, looking at Senjin quizzically. 'But is it not the same here in real life? Life controls our karma. Surely our destiny is not in our own hands.'

Senjin smiled. The balance of power had begun to

shift, if ever so subtly. The more Dr Muku continued in the interrogation, the more sure of himself he became, the more he revealed of his own strategy, and the less threatening he became, the less control he maintained over the situation.

It was time, Senjin thought, to further enlighten the doctor. 'Muku-san,' he said, 'have you ever heard of Kshira?'

'No. I don't believe I have.'

'Kshira is a form of physical and mental discipline,' Senjin said. 'But it is more encompassing than even a philosophy. It is its own reality. Kshira is the language of the sound-light continuum.'

Dr Muku blinked. 'The what?'

Senjin lit a cigarette, but he didn't seem to draw on it deeply or often. 'The sound-light continuum,' Senjin repeated. 'You have no doubt heard of ki, the underlying energy of all things - humans, animals, the sea, the forests, the earth itself. WeU, the Kshira sensei have made a remarkable discovery, and it is this: that there are different forms of ki. By recognizing them, and harnessing them in series, an engine of enormous psychic and physical energy is created.'