The Nicholas Linnear Novels (82 page)

Here in the Asakusa district, people sought the sanctuary of the great and beloved Buddhist temple of Kannon, the goddess of Pity. Built in the seventeenth century, this was thought safe because it had survived all the great fires of Tokyo as well as the most infamous earthquake of 1923. But as hundreds crowded inside, the long, arching timbers, so lovingly wrought by artisans of the fabled past, caught fire. The gray slat roof which had been such a staunch landmark for hundreds of years collapsed inward, crushing the already burning throng. Outside, the ancient stately gingko trees of the surrounding gardens burst into crackling torches, pinwheels of sparks arcing into the howling crimson night, running along street gutters like voracious predators.

Asakusa, like the rest of the city, bore no scars from that time, Nicholas realized. The Japanese had been very careful about that. In this downtown area of Tokyo, more than in any other place in the city, perhaps, the ethos of Japan’s splendiferous Edo period still held sway.

Crowds clouded the gates of Kaminarimon, streaking its great two-story vermillion face with their darting shadows. A scarlet and ebon rice-paper lantern of gigantic proportions swung between the two red-faced wooden statues of the gods of wind and thunder, the bodyguards of Kannon, who, though she failed her people once in the incinerator of the war, was worshiped and loved still.

Dodging those Japanese on the run, Nicholas took the stone-paved Nakamise-dōri, passing sweet and souvenir shops piled high with wares.

On impulse he turned down a near side street, strolling slowly through the relative gloom. He stopped abruptly in front of a tiny storefront that spelled out “Yonoya” in
kanji.
Inside, glass shelves were lined with the slightly oily boxwood combs.

Nicholas remembered Yukio slowly, rhythmically stroking her hair with such a comb. How soft and long and shining were those tresses, thick and lustrous. Once he had asked her if all Orientals had such beautiful hair and she had laughed, embarrassed, pushing him from her.

“Only the ones who can afford these,” she said, still laughing. She showed him the exquisitely hand-carved implement. “Feel it,” she offered.

“Sticky,” he said immediately.

“But guaranteed never to tangle your hair, Nicholas,” she had said in her singsong voice. “This boxwood is brought all the way from Kyushu, the southern island. It is cut and steamed to remove any imperfections and then dried for more than a week above a boxwood-shaving fire. Then the lengths are tied together and bamboo hoops slipped over the bundles, and they are left to dry for thirty years to ensure that they are completely dry before being carved.

“In the shop in Asakusa where I buy these, their craftsmen have studied for twenty years. They sit for ten or twelve hours at a time, immobile except for their working hands, to shape these combs.” Nicholas had been fascinated then just as he was fascinated now. Even with such an everyday implement as a comb, he thought, we take exceptional care and artistry in its manufacture. Could a Westerner—
any
Westerner—ever fully understand the reasons why. Or would they think us mad to devote such time and intense effort to such a small and seemingly insignificant matter.

Again on impulse, he entered the shop and bought a comb for Justine. As he waited for the saleswoman to reoil the boxwood, carefully wrap it in three separate layers of high-grade rice paper, and then place it into its hand-sanded cedar box, his eyes traced the forms of the combs lying in artistic display. With each meticulously rounded corner, with each matched tooth end, he again saw Yukio in front of the mirror, her pale hand rising and falling like a tide through the river of her dark hair. He saw that ebon cascade highlighted against the snow-white kimono, its crimson edges moving like flowing blood.

He leaned forward and, hands on her delicate shoulders, turned her around, lifting her so that she rose. Soft rustle of silk like the bittersweet drift of heavenly cherry petals in mid-April when, it seemed, the ancient gods of Japan returned, filling the scented air with their ethereal presence.

The feel of her, the sight of her, the scent of her, all combined to transfix him, so that he experienced again his deep-seated fear of what she brought out in him: the intensity of sexual feeling. He was barely eighteen, it was 1963. He had had no experience with women, especially one as powerful as Yukio.

It was as if she held him in a tender spell, and now her palm came up to stroke his cheek and he shuddered at the fiery lick the caress engendered in him.

As was usual with them, she had to take the first few steps, sliding her fingertips back along her own body, pushing the rim of the kimono away from her shoulders. It parted with a rustle, revealing the inside slopes of her hard-nippled breasts. Nicholas’ breath caught in his throat and his belly contracted painfully.

With a slither the soft white kimono slid down her arms, the line of crimson along its verge flickering like flame. And now she was bare, the light striping her, throwing into deep shadow the erotic dells of her torso, hiding as it revealed.

Nicholas felt the terror filling him up as, like a sorceress, she moved, freeing his own sexuality, drawing out his own ribboning desire. He could deny her nothing at moments like this.

And yet there was a deeply buried sadness in her as she reached between his thighs, caught gentle hold of him, stroking.

“Is that all you can think of?” he said thickly.

“It’s all I have,” she said in a moan, guiding him.

Slowly refocusing, Nicholas’ gaze lit upon the empty space in the display case caused by the present he had bought Justine. Yukio was gone just as the boxwood comb was gone from the case.

The spotlights’ glare was harder in just that spot, magnifying the nothingness. He wondered what had ever become of Yukio’s magical boxwood comb. Had Saigō hurled it after her into the Straits of Shimonoseki? Had she been wearing it when he clubbed her, stunning her, then binding her for the long rowboat ride across those haunted waters? Or had some small child found the artifact among her abandoned belongings and was wearing it today?

Nicholas found that his eyes were full of tears. Despite his vow never to relive the moment when his evil cousin had told him of Yukio’s death, he had done it. His heart was breaking anew; he felt her loss as keenly this moment as he had a year ago. Perhaps this was one wound that time would never heal.

Blindly he received the exquisitely wrapped package, signed the American Express receipt. It was as if Yukio’s
kami
had appeared at his side, linking arms with him, and, standing by his side, was now looking down at the display of boxwood combs with him.

And for that moment it was as if death had been banished from the world of man, as if there was no dark barrier between life and death, the unknown becoming suddenly known and accepted. Did he walk with the dead, or had Yukio crossed over to live again at his side?

With a start, Nicholas found himself alone again in the shop. The saleswoman was looking at him oddly, not certain whether to smile or frown at the peculiar expression on his face.

Back on the Nakamise-dōri, he returned to the precincts of the Sensoji Temple, where rice crackers and tortoiseshell sticks were still sold just as they had been a hundred years before. He wanted to stay immersed in the past, unwilling as yet to let go of the last sweetly painful tendrils of his waking dream. At a streetside stall he paused to buy a confection made of egg and flour poured into a doll-shaped mold before bean jam was squeezed on and the whole was grilled with the deftly economical movements of the ancient vendor.

But, once holding the tiny cake in his hand, he found that he had no taste for food, especially sweets. The past was like the taste of ash in his mouth. He had thought that with Saigō’s death the detritus of his earlier life would dry up and blow away like the soft shed skin of a snake. But he saw now on his return to Japan that this was not so. It could not be. There was a certain continuity to life that was not to be denied. As Nicholas’ father, the Colonel, had often said: this is the only true lesson of history, and those who do not heed it, perish because of their ignorance.

Now, at the doorway to the Sensōji Temple, he gave the unwanted food to an old man with a back as thin and bent as a sapling’s trunk in a high wind. The old man, in a black snapbrim hat and Western dress, nodded his thanks but made no effort to smile.

As Nicholas went into the temple itself, echoes and the ripples of history seemed to reach out from the dim incense-filled interior with its high vaulting ceiling and cool stone floor, to remind him once again of all that he dare not forget.

When he reemerged into the spangled night of
shitamachi
, Tokyo’s downtown, the old man was still where Nicholas had left him, one hand curled around the thick copper rim of the huge vessel used to burn incense.

Nicholas had had enough of old Japan and the tangled web of memories it had unearthed in him. He longed for the spark and dazzle of the new Tokyo, the soaring, ugly buildings so new the lacquer had not yet dried in their towering gallerylike lobbies; he longed for the bustle of the young Japanese, so chic and beautiful in their wide-shouldered jackets, their loose blousey shirts, and their high-waisted trousers.

Underground, he took the Ginza Line nine stops, transferring to the Hibiya Line for the short trip to Roppongi. He emerged from the subway exit and went west, toward Shibuya. He took the all glass elevator in the Ishtbashi Building to the top floor and entered the ironclad doors of Jan Jan. From its southeasterly facing floor-to-ceiling windows he could make out the floodlit stone walls of the Russian embassy.

The air was alive with the percussive rhythms of rock music: The Yellow Magic Orchestra and an English group called Japan. It was well after midnight and the place was jumping. Cigarette smoke blued the pale walls. The intense spot lighting striking like arrows straight down from the enormously high acoustic baffled ceiling dappled the springy wooden dance floor, turning it into a rippling tiger’s pelt.

Around the central dance floor rose three tiers of clear Plexiglas tables and midnight blue velour-covered banquettes. Waitresses moved quickly and efficiently in amongst the crowd. There was movement, heat, sound in crushing waves. The electricity of modern life.

Nicholas’ mind was engaged as he moved slowly through the bouncing energetic throng. His eyes roved across the sea of young painted faces, seeing the laughter, the self-engrossment; observing slick-winged hairstyles, arms entangled around waists and buttocks, whirling torsos, dervishes of the night, enraptured by a combination of the musical pulse, the boost of liquor and, perhaps, illicit drugs, and, above all, the narcotizing sense of eternal youth. The concept of mortality had no place here and, if it came, would never be recognized.

For just an instant Nicholas wondered what it was he was searching for. Then he thought of Justine and knew that he would not find it here.

When Akiko Ofuda saw Nicholas walk in through Jan Jan’s high Edo period portals she turned her head partly away into the shadows. Her heart was beating fast. Bewildered, she fought to understand the reason for his abrupt appearance. Did he know anything?
Could
he?

But no, she thought, calming herself. It was too early. His presence must be merely a coincidence. A jest of the gods. She rose from where she had been sitting at a table along the second tier and walked slowly, lithely, circling the perimeter of the light-streaked dance floor.

She kept him in sight all the while, watching him clandestinely but carefully. What she saw was a ruggedly angular face that had nothing of the classical beauty about it. It was far too odd and distinctive for that. The long upswept eyes hinted of his Oriental blood, as did his prominent cheekbones. But he had a good solid Anglo-Saxon chin that was as Western as his father.

He was black haired and wide-shouldered, with the odd narrow hips of a dancer and the thickly muscled legs of the serious athlete.

Akiko found herself longing to strip him naked to admire the sight of those overlays of long, sinewy muscle. But other than this, it was difficult to say what she thought of him on first sight. So many conflicting emotions swirled inside her, contending for ascendancy.

How she hated him! She was struck anew by the force of it. Seeing him so abruptly, in so unforeseen a manner brought the full shock of the secret emotions she had been harboring for so long into the forefront. She trembled in rage even while her eyes drank in the emanations of his power. It was evident even from such a distance: the lift of his head, the rolling liquid stride, the minute movements of his shoulders and upper arms. These all spoke of the extreme danger leashed tightly inside this man.

But as she herself moved, keeping pace with him, she felt an odd elation begin to suffuse her and she thought, What extraordinary
karma
I must possess to gain this added advantage over him from the start! Her pulse beat hard within her as her eyes drank him in, noting his strength, the intensity of his spirit. Oh, but she longed for that moment when he first saw her. Unconsciously, her fingers rose to her cheek, softly stroking the taut flesh there. She experienced an almost giddy sensation at the intensity of her longing, and a part of her wanted to draw it out as long as possible. After all this time, she did not want the end to come so soon, certainly not until the time of her own choosing.

Oh, yes, it had been a stroke of genius suggesting to Sato that he invite the
gaijin
to the wedding. “Especially this Linnear,” she had whispered in his ear late one night. “We all know his family’s history. Think what face it will give you to have him present at such an event!”

Yes, yes, Nicholas, she crooned silently as she stalked him high above his head, the time is coming soon when I will look directly in your eyes and see that strength crumble and fly away like gray ash in the wind.

She felt intoxicated, her throat constricted, the muscles in her thighs trembling with the flutter of her heart as she felt herself drawn inexorably toward him. But she used all her training to restrain herself from destroying in an instant of ecstatic gloating everything she had worked for for so long.