The Key to Midnight (29 page)

So they ate sushi two pieces at a time, and Alex thought about how desperately he wanted Joanna. They drank tea, and Alex wanted her more with each sip that he watched her take. They talked, they joked with Toshio, and when they weren’t eating they turned slightly toward each other so their knees rubbed together, and they chewed bits of ginger, and Alex wanted her. He was sweating slightly and not merely because of the fiercely hot
wasabi
in the sushi loaves.

His inner heat was almost acute enough to be painful. That pain was the risk of commitment. But nothing worth having could be had without risk.

More things than sushi came best in twos. A man and a woman. Love and hope.

White faces. Bright lips. Eyes heavily outlined in black mascara. Eerie. Erotic.

Ornate kimonos. The men in dark colors. Other men dressed as women in brilliant hues, bewigged, mincing, coy.

And the knife.

The lights dimmed. Suddenly a spotlight bored through the gloom.

The knife appeared in the bright shaft, trembled in a pale fist, then plunged down.

Light exploded again, illuminating all.

The killer and victim were attached by the blade, an umbilical of death.

The killer twisted the knife once, twice, three times, with gleeful ferocity, playing the midwife of the grave.

The onlookers watched in silence and awe.

The victim shrieked, staggered backward. He spoke a line and then another: last words. Then the immense stage resounded with his mortal fall.

Joanna and Alex stood in darkness at the back of the auditorium.

Ordinarily, advance reservations were required by every kabuki theater in Tokyo, but Joanna knew the manager of this place.

The program had begun at eleven o’clock that morning and would not end until ten o’clock that night. Like the other patrons, Joanna and Alex had stopped in for just one act.

Kabuki was the essence of dramatic art: The act- ing was highly stylized, all emotions exaggerated; and the stage effects were elaborate, dazzling. In 1600, a woman named O-kuni, who was in the service of a shrine, organized a troupe of dancers and presented a show on the banks of the Kano River, in Kyoto, and thus began kabuki. In 1630, in an attempt to control so-called immoral practices, the government prohibited women from appearing on stage. Consequently, there arose the
Oyama,
specialized and highly accomplished male actors who took the roles of female characters in the kabuki plays. Eventually women were permitted to appear on stage again, but the newer tradition of all-male kabuki was by then firmly established and inviolate. In spite of the archaic language—which few members of the audience understood—and in spite of the artistic restrictions imposed by transvestism, the popularity of kabuki never waned, partly because of the gorgeous spectacle but largely because of the themes it explored—comedy and tragedy, love and hate, forgiveness and revenge—which were all made bigger and brighter than life by the ancient playwrights.

As he watched, Alex realized that the basic emotions varied not at all from city to city, country to country, year to year, and century to century. The stimuli to which the heart responded might change slightly as people grew older: The child, the adolescent, the adult, and the elder didn’t respond to exactly the same causes of joy and sorrow. Nevertheless, the feelings were identical in all of them, for feelings were woven together to form the one true fabric of life, which was always and without exception a fabric with but one master pattern.

Through the medium of kabuki, Alex achieved two sudden insights that, in a moment, changed him forever. First, if emotions were universal, then in one sense he was not alone, never had been alone, and never could be alone. As a child cowering under the harsh hands of his drunken parents, he had existed in despair, because he’d thought of himself as isolated and lost. But every night that Alex’s father had beaten him, other children in every corner of the world had suffered with him, victims of their own sick parents or of strangers, and together they had all endured. They were a family of sorts, united by suffering. No pain or happiness was unique. All humanity drank from the same river of emotion; and by drinking, every race, religion, and nationality became one indivisible species. Therefore, no matter what protective emotional distance he tried to put between himself and his friends, between himself and his lovers, perfect isolation would forever elude him. Whether he liked it or not, life meant emotional involvement, and involvement meant taking risks.

He also realized that if emotions were universal and time- less, they represented the greatest truths known to human-kind. If billions of people in scores of cultures had arrived independently at the same concept of love, then the reality of love could not be denied.

The loud, dramatic music that had accompanied the murder now began to subside.

On the huge stage, one of the “women” stepped forward to address the audience.

The music fluttered and was extinguished by the
Oyama’s
first words.

Joanna glanced at Alex. “Like it?”

He was speechless. He merely nodded. His heart pounded, and with each hard beat, he came more awake to life.

They went to a bar where the owner greeted them in English with three words: “Japanese only, please.”

Joanna spoke rapidly in Japanese, assuring him that they were natives in mind and heart if not by birth. Won over, he smilingly admitted them.

They had sake, and Joanna said, “Don’t drink it like that, dear.”

Alex frowned. “What am I doing wrong?”

“You shouldn’t hold the cup in your right hand.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s considered to be the sign of a gross, impatient drunkard.”

“Maybe I
am
a gross, impatient drunkard.”

“Ah, but do you wish everyone to know it, Alex-san?”

“So I hold the cup in my left hand?”

“That’s right.”

“Like this?”

“That’s right.”

“I feel like I’ve been such a barbarian.”

She blew on her sake to cool it slightly. “Later, when the time is right, you can use both hands on me.”

They went to the Nichiegeki Music Hall for a one-hour show that smacked of vaudeville and burlesque. Comedians told low jokes, many of them very amusing, but Alex was cheered more by the sight of Joanna laughing than he was by anything that the funnymen had to say. Between the variety acts, gorgeous young women in revealing costumes danced rather poorly but with unfaltering enthusiasm and energy. Most of the chorines were breathtaking beauties, but in Alex’s eyes, at least, none of them was a match for Joanna.

Back in the hotel suite, Joanna called room service and ordered a bottle of champagne. She also requested appropriate pastries, treats that were not too sweet, and these were delivered in a pretty red lacquered wood box.

At her suggestion, Alex opened the drapes, and they pulled the drawing-room sofa in front of the low windows. Sitting side by side, they studied the Tokyo skyline while they drank champagne and nibbled almond crusts and walnut crescents.

Shortly after midnight, some of the neon lights in the Ginza began to wink out.

“Japanese nightlife can be frantic,” Joanna said, “but they start to roll up the sidewalks early by Western standards.”

“Shall we roll up our own sidewalks?”

“I’m not sleepy,” she said.

He wanted her but felt as awkward as an inexperienced boy. “We have to be up at six o’clock.”

“No, we don’t.”

“We do if we want to catch the plane.”

“We don’t have to get up at six if we never go to sleep in the first place,” she said. “We can sleep on the plane tomorrow.”

She slid against him and put her lips to his throat. It wasn’t exactly a kiss. She seemed to be feeling the passion in the artery that throbbed in his neck.

As he turned to her, she rose to him, and her soft mouth opened under his. She tasted like almonds and champagne.

He carried her into his room and put her on the bed. Slowly, lovingly, he undressed her.

The only light was that which came from the drawing room, through the open door. Pale as moonglow, it fell across the bed, and she lay naked in the ghostly glow, too beautiful to be real.

When he settled down beside her, the bedsprings sang in the cathedral silence, and then a prayerlike hush settled once again through the shadows.

He explored and worshiped her with kisses.

On their last night in Japan, they didn’t sleep at all. They wrapped the hours of the night around them, as though time were a brightly shining thread and they were a wildly spinning spool.

In Zurich, in the magnificent house above the lake, Ignacio Carrera was working diligently on his calves, thighs, buttocks, hips, waist, lower back, and abdominal muscles. He’d been lifting weights for two hours, with little time off to rest. After all, when he rested there was no pain, and he wanted the pain because it tested him and because it was an indication of muscle-tissue growth.

Seeking pain at the limits of his endurance, he began his last exercise of the day: one more set of Jefferson lifts. He straddled the barbell, keeping his feet twenty-four inches apart. He squatted, grasped the bar with his right hand in front of him and his left hand behind, and inhaled deeply. Exhaling, he rose to a standing position, bringing the bar up to his crotch. His calves and thighs throbbed painfully.

“One,” said Antonio Paz.

Carrera squatted, hesitated only a second, and rose with the bar again. His legs seemed to be on fire. He was gasping. His pumped-up muscles bulged like thick steel cables. While Paz counted, Carrera squatted, rose, squatted, and rose again, and the pain was at first a flame and then a roaring blaze.

Other men lifted weights to improve their health. Some did it just to have their pick of the women who pursued bodybuilders. Some did it to gain improved strength for martial arts, some merely to prove their perseverance, some as a game, some as a sport.

To Ignacio Carrera, those were all secondary reasons.

“Seven,” said Paz.

Carrera groaned, striving to ignore the pain.

“Eight,” said Paz.

Carrera endured the torture because he was obsessed with power. He enjoyed holding power of every kind over other people: financial, political, psychological, and physical power. His wealth would have meant nothing to him if he had been physically weak. He was able to break his enemies with his bare hands as well as with his money, and he enjoyed having that range of options.

“Ten,” said Paz.

Carrera put down the barbells and wiped his hands on a towel.

“Excellent,” Paz told him.

“No.”

Carrera stepped in front of a full-length mirror and posed for himself, studying every visible muscle in his body, searching for improvement.

“Superb,” Paz said.

“The older I get, the harder it becomes to build. In fact, I don’t think I’m growing at all. Only thirty-eight, yet these days it’s a battle just to stay even.”

“Nonsense,” said Paz. “You’re in wonderful shape.”

“Not good enough.”

“Getting better and better.”

“Never good enough.”

“Madame Dumont is waiting in the front room,” said Paz.

“She can continue to wait.”

Carrera left Paz and went upstairs to the master suite on the third floor.

The ceiling was high, white, richly carved, with gold-leafed moldings. The fabric wallpaper was a two-tone gold stripe, and the wainscoting had been painted with a gray wash. The Louis XVI bed had a high headboard and a high footboard, and against the wall directly opposite the bed stood a matched pair of Louis XVI mahogany cabinets with painted tole plaques on the drawers and doors. One corner was occupied by an enormous eighteenth-century harp that was intricately carved, gold-leafed, and in perfect playing condition.

Carrera sometimes joked that he was going to take harp lessons in order to be ready for Heaven when he was called, but he was aware that in his elegant bedroom he looked like an ape that had lumbered into the middle of a lady’s tea party. The contrast between himself and his refined surroundings emphasized his wild, animal power—and he liked that.

He stripped out of his sweat-damp shorts, went into the huge master bath, and spent ten minutes baking in the attached sauna. He thought about Madame Marie Dumont, who was surely tapping her foot impatiently downstairs, and he smiled. For another half an hour, he soaked in the big tub. Then he suffered through a brief icy shower to tone his skin, staying warm by picturing Marie down in the reception room.

He toweled himself vigorously, put on a robe, and walked into the bedroom just as the telephone sounded.

Paz answered it downstairs but rang through a moment later. “London calling on line one.”

“Marlowe?” Carrera asked.

“No. Peterson.”

“The fat man’s in London? Put him through. And make sure that Madame Dumont doesn’t get a chance to pick up an extension.”

“Yes, sir,” said Paz.

A scrambler was attached to the incoming line, and it could be activated from any phone. Carrera switched it on.

Peterson said, “Ignacio? Safe to talk?”

“As safe as it ever gets. What’re you doing in London?”

“Hunter and the girl will arrive here tonight.”

Carrera was surprised. “Dr. Rotenhausen swore she’d never be able to leave Japan.”

“He was wrong. Can you move fast? I want you to go to the good doctor in Saint Moritz.”

“I’ll leave this evening,” said Carrera.

“We’ll try to put Hunter on Rotenhausen’s trail, as planned.”

“Are you directing the show in London now?”

“Not all of it. Just this business with Hunter and the girl.”