The Nicholas Linnear Novels (55 page)

“It’s family. That’s something my mother is adamant about. Politics are relatively unimportant next to that. Next to my father and me, Itami is her sole family. There is nothing they wouldn’t do for one another.”

The fog closed in on them and the day turned chill. The ferry’s deep horn sounded at regular intervals, hoarse and mournful. The gulls had gone and now it was even impossible to see the water. They might have been skimming through the air. The whiteness seemed stifling. There was no breeze to speak of. They heard voices, muffled and odd-sounding, from the ferry’s far side as if coming to them from across a vast and unfathomable gulf.

All at once the land loomed before them out of the intense mist and, with only a slight bump, the ferry docked against the jute-covered slip. Nicholas wondered how the captain had seen his way across. They could hear the creak of the pilings. Then a dog began to bark hysterically.

To Nicholas the train ride to Kumamoto seemed interminable even though it was merely a fraction of the time it had taken for the bulk of the journey. Perhaps the fog had something to do with it, but he felt now a kind of desperate longing to know what it was that had brought Saigō down here. Kansatsu had been concerned about it. He realized that now, so belatedly. The
sensei
would never have come out and said such a thing, merely implied it. But what could it be about Saigō’s visits here that would be so disturbing? And why should it concern Kansatsu at all? These questions gnawed at him as they rode across Kyūshū and he wished with all his might that he had the answers but, of course, that was a useless wish. In fact, any wish, Cheong had told him more than once, is useless. “If you want something badly enough,” she had said, “then you must do it. Those who sit and wish for things accomplish nothing.”

Abruptly, he felt resentment welling up inside him for that part of him which was Western in nature. But even so, he knew that that was his turbulent side, filled with energy and longing, impatience and changeability. It was, in short, what made him different.

Yukio, as usual, was filled with lust and, in the jouncing, empty car, she sat on his lap, lifting her skirt up and making the hot connection. Neither of them needed to move at all.

Kumamoto was a town that no doubt in feudal times had been dominated by the stone and mortar castle perched high on a dun-brown hill that in the spring would turn lushly verdant. In these modern times, however, the castle, though still quite imposing, seemed over-shadowed by the industrial plant flung across the valley to the northwest. Its fifteen or so smokestacks seemed like inelegant fingers stretching themselves irreverently toward the heavens.

This afternoon, as Nicholas and Yukio stepped off the smoking train, one could not see their tops and the mist made them seem as if they had been covered by gloves.

Oddly enough, Kumamoto itself was not as modern as this new appendage might lead one to believe. There was little evidence of Western erosion and they saw more traditional Japanese garb than they had anywhere else in their travels. Even through the mist, which now appeared to be at last lifting, they could see how mountainous Kyūshū was. Dark masses loomed on every side, filling the land with a kind of undulating light and shadow pattern of the kind one might see from an airplane riding high above patchy clouds.

They booked into a hotel along the Street of the Wrestlers. “Here,” the bustling proprietor said, flinging open the doors to their rooms, “you will have a perfect view of Mount Aso.” He put down their bags, crossed to the window of Nicholas’ room. “Of course, you’ll need a clear day but no doubt by tomorrow you will be able to view, well, perhaps not all five summits but most assuredly Nakadake.” He turned around, rubbing his palms together. “It’s actively volcanic, you know, and always smoking.” He waved one pudgy hand toward the mist outside. “We get this kind of weather when the wind’s the wrong way.” He walked to the door and his finger touched the knob. “We’ve had ash and pumice, the sky so dark you’d think it was night, when it erupts.” He shook his head. “Can you imagine? Coming all that way.” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Still, one shouldn’t complain. Mount Aso brings many people here every year and where would I be without tourism?” He shrugged deprecatingly. Nicholas tipped him and he gave them a rather stiff little bow. “Anything I can do to make your stay here more pleasant,” he said, opening the connecting door between their rooms before leaving.

Nicholas phoned Saigō but he was not there. He left a message including the hotel’s number.

They spent some time searching for a stable but there seemed to be no riding, at least within the town’s limits. Yukio could not hide her disappointment.

They ate a light lunch at a tiny teahouse in a square surrounded by trees. Birds called as they flitted from branch to branch. The food was impeccable but Nicholas was not able to eat much. His stomach was tense and he needed to move around.

When they left, they proceeded to walk aimlessly around, through the wide main avenues, down small shop-lined streets, filled with mingled scents and clamoring customers.

They returned to the hotel in late afternoon with the light receding swiftly from the sky. The mist was gone and the hard shell of the cobalt sky seemed distant indeed.

A message from Saigō was waiting for him. Dinner. Saigō would come to the hotel.

“How long will we be here?” Yukio asked as they were dressing. The door between their rooms was open.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. Why?”

“I want to leave. That’s all.”

“We’ve only just gotten here.”

“I know, but it already feels like we’ve been here a year. This is an odd city.”

He laughed, pulling on his trousers. “You just don’t want to be here. Listen, we’re not so close to the water here.” He smiled. “No chance I’ll fall overboard.”

Her smile was a bit bleaker than his. “Yes. Yes. I know. But haven’t you noticed? The air here smells different, almost as if it were burnt.”

“It’s only the refinery,” he said. “Or maybe Mount Aso. I’ve never been near a volcano before. Isn’t there one on Hokkaido?”

Saigō arrived promptly just after six. Nicholas opened the door to his room.

“Well, Nicholas, I didn’t—” His dark eyes slid across Nicholas’ face, over his shoulder. The color seemed to drain from him. “What’s she doing here?” It was said in a hiss but, just as important, in a different speech mode; the polite form had been abruptly dropped.

Nicholas turned his head. “Yukio? She decided to come with me. Didn’t you know she was here?” But of course how could he?

Saigō’s angry eyes flicked back to regard Nicholas. The stare was hard and cold. “You set this up deliberately, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, don’t you? Don’t lie to me, Nicholas. She told you everything.”

Nicholas felt her presence close and warm behind him.

“I told him nothing.” Yukio’s tone was chill enough to freeze the blood. “But now that you’ve brought it up like an hysterical child, perhaps you ought to tell him yourself.”

“Tell me what? Hey, wait a minute!” Saigō had begun a lunge around him toward Yukio. Nicholas stepped into his path, using his shoulder and left arm as a wedge against the doorframe. Yukio stepped lithely away.

“I think you had better tell me what this is all about.”

Saigō heard the warning note in Nicholas’ voice and he felt his blood boil. Leaned forward with the left side of his body, half-concealing the horizontal movement of his right hand and wrist.

Nicholas brought his forearm down in a blur, striking the exposed bone in Saigō’s wrist. Physical damage was minimal but nerve disruption was considerable. The hand went numb.

They were very close together and Saigō used his foot, aiming for the side of the knee. The doorjamb was his ally; caught in the force of the blow, Nicholas’ knee would shatter like crystal. But he stepped back and the side of Saigō’s foot slammed into the wood with a crack as loud and as sharp as a house collapsing.

Saigō recovered enough to whirl around and head off down the corridor before Nicholas had a chance to react. Without a word, Nicholas went after him.

Yukio ran to the door. “Nicholas!” she cried after him. Then she, too, followed in Saigō’s wake.

The angelfish, all gray lace, hovered near the bottom. Its tiny mouth opened and closed. It might have been trying to eat the algae off the side of the tank.

A pair of gouramis passed close by it, disturbing its concentration, and it darted off behind a group of three or four water plants twisting gently in the clouds of rising bubbles from the aerator.

They stood across the street, in the deep shadow of a doorway. The street was quiet, every step of the few passersby discernible.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Quiet,” Nicholas said, thinking, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

A young couple turned a corner, came down the street. He gave the man a quick glance, went back to watching the front door of the fish store where Saigō had disappeared moments before. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. When he had reached thirty and there was still no sign, he took her by the hand and went across the street.

A tiny bell rang in the back of the shop like a call to the penitent. It was a narrow, bare-floorboarded place, its walls stocked with glass tanks of varying sizes. Only one or two were dry, cloudy with dust.

A man, thin, worn down by the passage of time, his skin as gray as yesterday’s mist, sat on a high wooden stool in front of a wall filled with filters, rolls of clear plastic tubing and stacked boxes of dried fish food.

No one was in the shop.

“Is there a back way out of here?” Nicholas asked him.

“Hm?” He looked up belatedly. “Oh, yes but—”

Nicholas, with Yukio a step behind him, was already loping past him, through the short, dark passageway and out the unbolted back door.

They found themselves in a dim brick alleyway that was more a cul-de-sac. Only one way for Saigō—to have gone and they followed.

They spotted him, already a block away, heading west. Twice he doubled back and once, when he thought he had lost him altogether, Nicholas began to sweat because he didn’t think now that he would get a second chance; Yukio had seen to that. But they got lucky. He had been hidden within a small jostling crowd around a news kiosk, in plain sight, really. It might have been accidental or an extremely sophisticated maneuver. There was no way of telling. But the question remained. Why was Saigō taking any precautions at all? Why was he concerned about being followed?

Above their heads a full moon rode, blue-white, as large as a hanging paper lantern, harbinger of winter’s first snow. Clouds appearing as flat and substantial as curtains turned the illumination inconstant and, with it, perspective kept changing so that he was obliged to stop them now and again to check their proximity to the dark hurrying figure in front.

Once Saigō turned around, his face a pale blur struck by the moonlight, and Nicholas forced Yukio into a doorway, hearing only the soft rasp of her violent breathing and the hammering of his own heart.

Saigō’s silhouette was fast diminishing down the dark street and he grabbed her hand, pulling her along until, at length, he saw his quarry pause before a narrow doorway in a rather run-down wood-frame building, windowless and hulking. Disappeared like a nocturnal animal.

Nicholas stood perfectly still in deep shadow with Yukio by his side for several moments. “Now,” he said in a low tone and took her, running, across the wide street.

There was no sign on the building’s face to indicate what it might contain; no bells to ring. Nothing. The door was metal, painted in deep red enamel. He grasped the brass handle half-expecting it to be locked. Pulled it open.

Inside, they found themselves in a plain hallway without a true ceiling. A wide industrial-type stairway led upward; it too was metal. There were no doorways on the ground level. Nor were there any on the first floor, they discovered. There seemed to be a lot of empty space, however.

The building seemed silent but for a peculiar kind of intermittent vibration coming through the rough wooden planks of the vast landings.

They found the one door—closed and padlocked—on the third floor. Yukio coughed twice before putting her palm against her mouth; there seemed to be a great deal of sawdust hanging in the unquiet air.

One had an odd feeling here. Not merely the prickly sensation of trespassing but the uncomfortable hollowness in the pit of the stomach that might come from standing in the foyer of a haunted house at midnight.

“I want to get out of here,” Yukio whispered in his ear. She tugged at his arm.

“Shhh.”

He went slowly, cautiously across the landing toward the closed door. He had thought—yes. The light was so dim that he had not been certain. But now as he approached, he saw clearly the sign that had been hand-painted in black ink squarely on the center of the door: a circle within which were nine black diamonds. They in turn surrounded an ideogram,
komuso.

Nicholas stared at the sign. Where had he seen that before? Surely he had—a
ryu.
It was a
ryu.
But which one? He had seen this sign quite recently. Just before he had left Tokyo, in fact. A regional offshoot, perhaps. Or—

Abruptly, he reached for Yukio’s hand, backing away.

“What is it?” she whispered. “Where are we?”

“Come on,” he said. And then, jerking her along with him. “Come
on
!”

Outside in the street he found that he still could not breathe. He began to run down the street with her in tow. The night seemed terribly still, Kumamoto deserted, and he had the impression they were the only people abroad that night, that they fled through a dreamscape from which they might never emerge.

His head pounded as if it might burst and a kind of fever careened through him. His mind whirled uncontrollably and he only vaguely heard Yukio’s panting questions.

He had recognized the sign on the door and, with it, both the reason he had come here after Saigō and the nature of his immediate future.