Ninja, p.46
Ninja, page 46
“What’s happened?”
“It’s Satsugai,” the Colonel said evenly. He had his pipe in one hand, unlit. “We tried to reach you in Kumamoto. I finally got hold of Saigō this afternoon. Itami was surprised to learn Yukio decided to stay with him.”
Nicholas felt a knife twisting inside him. There was a silence. He could hear the clock on the mantel in the Colonel’s study. All the way in here. Nothing moved outside. It was as if the world had frozen over in a new ice age.
The Colonel cleared his throat. “Satsugai’s been killed. I’m sorry, it’s a hell of a homecoming. I can see you didn’t have the best of trips.”
Was it so indelibly etched across his face; skywriting that he refused to face?
“How did it happen?”
The Colonel put the pipe stem to his lips, blew sharply outward to unclog it. He looked at the bowl. “Robbery, the police think. Satsugai must have surprised the thief.”
“No one else heard him?”
The Colonel shrugged. “No one else was in the house at the time. Itami was at her sister’s.”
“Which one? Ikura?”
“No. Teoke.”
Nicholas disliked Teoke.
“Well.” He went to take his bags into his room. The Colonel stooped to help him and together they went through the house.
“It’s so quiet,” Nicholas said. “Nothing seems right.”
“No,” the Colonel agreed, something far off in his eyes. “It’s never the same.” He sat on the futon, pressed his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids. “The servants have gone with your mother and Ataki won’t come today.”
Nicholas began to unpack, separating the soiled clothes from the unworn ones. “Dad,” he said after a time, “what do you know of the ninja?”
“Oh, not very much. Why?”
He shrugged, looking down at the shirt he was holding. “Kansatsu’s been talking about them. Did you know that when firearms were first introduced here in 1543 by the Portuguese they were immediately incorporated into ninjutsu techniques? No? And because of that, firearms were shunned by the majority of the other classes—most especially the samurai—until the Meiji Restoration.”
The Colonel got up, went across the room to stand beside his son. “Nicholas,” he said gently, “what happened between you and Yukio?” When Nicholas said nothing, he put his hand on his son’s shoulder, said, “Are you afraid to tell me?”
Nicholas turned around to face him. “Afraid? No. I—It’s just that I know how you felt about her. You disliked her from the beginning.”
“So now you won’t tell me—”
“I love her,” Nicholas said in anguish. “And she told me she loved me. And then. And then, it all fell apart just as if it had never existed.” The Colonel’s heart ached at the look he saw on Nicholas’ face. “How could she go off with Saigō? How could she do it?” Tears stood in the corners of his eyes. “I don’t understand any of it.”
When he had seen Nicholas standing there in the doorway, the Colonel had felt an enormous urge to tell him everything; to confess. Now he knew that he would never do that; it would be far too selfish. It was a burden designed for him alone. How unfair to make Nicholas carry it for the rest of his life. But he wanted desperately to say something comforting to his son. He was dumbfounded now by his inarticulateness. Is this how I have been with him all his life? he wondered. I don’t know what to say; what would calm him. He wished that Cheong were here now and was instantly ashamed of the thought. My God, he thought, am I that estranged from my own son? Is this what my work has done to me? It seemed to the Colonel to be the final irony. And now he realized how he had envied Satsugai’s close relationship with Saigō. It was something he could never have with Nicholas. The fault, he saw, lay within himself.
He heard the door chimes ringing. “Come on,” he said, and they both went to answer it.
A detective sergeant of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police stood on the steps. He was a heavyset youngish man, seeming ill at ease; he knew all too well where he was. He saluted smartly as the Colonel opened the door.
“Colonel Linnear,” he said. He had restless brown eyes. “Lieutenant Tomomi asked me to inform you of the investigation’s progress.” He did not have to say which investigation. “Our latest findings indicate that your brother-in-law—”
“He’s not my brother-in-law.”
“Sir?”
“Never mind,” the Colonel said. “Carry on.”
“Yes, sir. We have ruled out burglary. At least, it’s no longer at the top of our list.”
“Oh?”
“The coroner’s report indicates a double fracture of the cricoid cartilage. In the larynx. He was garrotted. And by a professional. Lieutenant Tomomi believes there is now reason to consider a radical leftwing connection.”
“You mean assassination?”
“Yes, sir. We are bringing suspects in now. You know, the usual activists from the JSP, the Communists, so forth.”
“Thank you for informing me, Sergeant.”
“No trouble at all, sir. Good day.” He turned away. Gravel crunched under his high black boots.
In the weeks that followed, the family life slowly restored itself to a semblance of order. But, as the Colonel had remarked, it was not the same.
There was Satsugai’s funeral, of course, a strict formal ceremony, delayed for a time until Saigō returned home.
Nicholas found no sadness inside himself at Satsugai’s death. This, of course, was not surprising. But he also found himself oddly anticipating the funeral and did not realize what it was he was anticipating until he saw Saigō and Itami arrive. Then his heart sank. Yukio was nowhere to be seen. For his part, Saigō neither looked nor talked to anyone save his mother.
With Saigō’s return, Nicholas had expected Cheong to return home. Such was not the case. She continued to stay with Itami for more than a week. She might have, perhaps, stayed indefinitely had not Itami insisted she leave.
The tragedy had aged his mother, Nicholas saw, as much or even more than it had his aunt. She rarely smiled and she seemed distant as if holding herself together by a supreme act of will.
Further, and, to Nicholas, quite inexplicably, something had changed in her relationship with the Colonel. For as long as Nicholas could remember this had been an unwavering bulwark in his life, the backbone he could always count on. True, the shift was subtle and, perhaps, an outsider might not have picked it up, but it was there nonetheless and it frightened him. It was almost as if she blamed the Colonel for the tragedy. He had saved Satsugai’s life once, wasn’t that enough? Nicholas asked himself. He felt she was being unreasonable and, for the first time in his life, he felt himself being pulled by the increasing polarization of his parents.
Itami came almost every day for lunch. On several occasions she brought Saigō along when he was in town. Nicholas missed these meetings, being either at the ryu, talking with Kansatsu, or at classes at Tōdai, Tokyo University, but Cheong spoke to him about them when he returned home in the evenings.
The Colonel had taken a week off from work, though he had not taken a vacation in almost a year and a half. He said he was ill and, for the first time since Cheong knew him, he went to a physician. He seemed pale and drawn but she was relieved to find that there was nothing physically amiss.
For his part, Nicholas became engulfed in college life. It was a strange business, Tōdai, but he soon got the hang of it. Once he had passed the enormously difficult entrance exams, he found that he had become a member of the famed Gakubatsu, the university clique. He found that Tōdai was one of the world’s most exclusive clubs, grooming its graduates for top-line executive positions in government. Had not five of the postwar prime ministers come from Tōdai?
This period of intense self-involvement took Nicholas away from his family and it wasn’t until weeks later that he recognized something was amiss. The Colonel had extended his leave of absence. He would rise early in the morning, as was his habit, and wander around the house touching objects as if for the last time. Often he got underfoot and the servants, quite good-naturedly, would steer him into another room or, increasingly—as he had a tendency to wander aimlessly back—outdoors. Then he would spend long hours sitting by the side of the Zen garden as if studying the swirling lines of the gravel. For a man who had been both strong and extremely active all his life, this behavior was most out of character.
Itami, when she visited, seemed totally attached to Cheong. Increasingly now, she spent the weekends, often taking long walks with Cheong through the cryptomeria and pine wood to the Shinto temple where she had taken Nicholas that afternoon so long ago. Perhaps they even passed through the spot where he and Yukio had rolled over one another as they had made love. Of what things Cheong and Itami spoke at those times Nicholas had no idea.
One day he came home from his studies earlier than usual and found the Colonel still outside. He was huddled inside his old English greatcoat. It seemed far too big for him now.
Nicholas skirted the house, went to sit beside him. He was appalled to see the sharp bones standing out along the ridges of the Colonel’s cheeks.
“How are you?” he said. His breath frosted in a miniature cloud in front of him.
“Fine,” the Colonel said. “I am just—tired.” He smiled wistfully. “Just tired, that’s all.” His thin hands fluttered like birds. The backs were dark with liver spots. They settled restlessly on his thighs. “Don’t worry about me. You know, I am thinking of taking your mother away somewhere for a rest. She’s still not gotten over this thing. She needs to get away from here for a while. Forget all about grief. Your aunt hangs on to her now as if she were her only lifeline. It isn’t fair.”
“It’ll be all right, Dad.”
The Colonel sighed. “I don’t know about that. The world is changing. It’s become too complex. I’ll never understand it. Perhaps you will. I hope so.” He rubbed his palms up and down his thighs as if they ached. “Nothing’s the way it once was.” He looked away, into the sky. The last of the geese were moving south in giant vees; two fingers lifted triumphantly: the victory sign. “I had such dreams when I came here. There was so much I could have done.”
“And you have. You’ve accomplished so much.”
“Like ashes,” the Colonel said. “I feel as if I’ve done nothing, merely slid with the tide, taken by forces I knew nothing of.” He shook his head. “I cannot escape the feeling that perhaps I didn’t try hard enough.”
“How can you say that? You gave them everything. Everything.”
“I thought it was the right thing to do. Did I do wrong? I can’t say now. I’m pulled in two directions. I wish I had given them more, gone to Washington, pleaded our case there. I wish I had given them less, spent more time with you and your mother.”
Nicholas put his arm around the Colonel’s shoulders. How thin they had become. Where had all the hard muscle gone? Not even to fat. It had just disappeared.
“It’s all right, Dad.” Such an inane phrase, connoting nothing. He seemed tongue-tied. “It’s all right.”
What was it he really wanted to say?
But something irrevocable had taken place in the Colonel’s life and it wasn’t all right.
Despite repeated trips to the physician, despite a prescription of potent pills, eating and, finally, injections, he continued to lose weight until there was nothing more anyone could do to sustain him. Ten days after his talk with Nicholas in the Zen garden, he died in his sleep.
The funeral was immense. Most of the arrangements were taken care of by the American military in Tokyo. Mourners came from all over the Pacific and President Johnson sent a personal envoy from Washington. Nicholas thought this man’s presence highly ironic, given what he knew of his father’s failed ambitions. The Americans had been unwilling to listen to him in life but were anxious to extol him in death. He could not help but resent the man, despite his charm and extreme courtesy, seeing in him not a little of Mark Antony.
The Japanese government, as was its wont, was somewhat more honest. The Prime Minister himself attended, as did many members of the Diet. The Japanese would not forget the Colonel’s awesome contributions to their country and they paid their debt—some time later, after a decent interval, Nicholas was approached for training for a high-level governmental post. He politely declined, pleased nonetheless.
As requested in the Colonel’s will, the American Army rabbi conducted the ceremony, which no doubt nonplussed many of the attendees, especially those who had believed they knew the Colonel well. The rabbi had known the Colonel for a long time and when he spoke the eulogy it was with enormous conviction. It was, in retrospect, quite a beautiful ceremony.
“The Tenshin Shoden Katori ryu is the only answer now.”
“I believe that is so. Yes.”
“I want to leave and I do not want to leave.”
“I understand this fully, Nicholas.”
Kansatsu’s cat’s eyes were bright and alive.
He and Nicholas knelt facing each other. Around them was the gleaming empty expanse of the dōjō, a deserted beach in the sunlight.
“What will happen to me—there?”
“I am afraid that I cannot tell you. I do not know.”
“Will I be safe?”
“Only you can answer that. But the strength to be so is within you.”
“I am glad you came to the funeral.”
“Your father was a fine man, Nicholas. I knew him well.”
“I did not know.”
“No.”
“Well…”
“I have prepared your letters of introduction. These include your graduation certificates—with highest honors—from this ryu.” His eyes, focused on Nicholas’ face, were unwavering; bits of flashing jet. He withdrew from his wide sleeve three tightly rolled sheets of mulberry paper tied with a thin black cord. He extended them and, when Nicholas touched them, it was the only physical link between them. “Remember,” he said, “there is a chain. Thin. Link by link it goes. Take care you discover the identity of the next link on lest the chain break in your hands and you are left defenseless.” Then he handed over the sheets. His hand lowered with a kind of grave finality.
“Sayonara, Nicholas.”
“Sayonara, sensei.” Tears filled his eyes so fully that he could see only a blur rise and leave the room. I love you, he thought. It was what he had wanted to say to the Colonel that day in the Zen garden and hadn’t.
He heard no door click shut but abruptly he knew that he was alone in the house of cedar.
Oddly, the first thing he noticed was that the woodbine had died. Ataki no longer came, and during the last weeks the Colonel had been too ill to think of hiring a replacement. The hedges, always so carefully pruned even in winter, were spiky with branches left unchecked. The ground was hard with ice and frozen snow.
He felt a rising desire to run inside and tell Cheong that he was leaving but he was so uncertain of her response that he lingered awhile outside.
Above him the sky was a rich cobalt blue with just a few tracings of high cirrus clouds and, farther down, orange along the horizon where the sun slid through the thick haze. Far away, he thought he could hear the rumbling drone of a 707 coming down at Haneda.
Now he might have regretted canceling his dinner date with a couple of school chums in the city; he had told Cheong he’d be home late this morning. But, the decision being made to leave for Kyoto where the new ryu was located, he had felt the need for completion. And that would not come until he had told her.
Inside, the house was quite still as it had been since the moment he had returned home from Kumamoto, as if that had become some inexplicable nexus point in all their lives. Loss had followed gain and he wondered now if it had been worth it. He thought once more of the lady of Roku-No-Miya and her certitude of the implacability of fate. Thought, too, of the Colonel’s conviction that he had been taken by forces he knew nothing of. Life could not be so cruelly unfathomable.
He went through the darkened hall, wondering that none of the lights had been lit.
The kitchen was deserted. No one answered his call. He shrugged off his coat, threw it over the back of a chair, went toward the back of the house. Stillness nodded deferentially to him, ancient as time.
He came, at length to his parents’ room. The thin paper shōji was closed but, beyond, a light was on and he caught the edge of a shadow, moving.
He hesitated, reluctant to disturb Cheong if she was about to rest. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he would take her to the grave and together they would kneel before the marker of new cedar, lighting the incense and saying the prayers in English and in Japanese.
The shadow moved again and he called out her name softly into the falling night. No answer came and cautiously he opened the shōji.
He stood perfectly still, one foot in, one out, staring. All the breath had gone out of him. His head pounded and he felt a shock at the base of his neck as if from contact with a live wire.
All the tatami save one had been taken outside. The futon was folded in a neat pile in the far corner. One round white paper-shaded lamp was on against the right wall. Beyond, outside the glass panels of the far wall, lay the blue-whiteness of the snow, virgin, without one footprint to mar its granular surface. It seemed unnaturally pale against the black backdrop of the cryptomeria and pine forest. There were no lights in the sky.
The one remaining tatami had been placed in the center of the room; the surrounding wood floor seemed naked, like raw flesh with the skin stripped away. On it Cheong knelt with her back to him. She wore a formal light gray kimono with obi. The one with the pink roses embroidered across it. Her back was bowed, her head down as if in prayer. The light gleamed on her blue-black hair, immaculately coiffed.
At her right side tiny Itami knelt, sitting at right angles so that he could see her profile. She, too, was dressed formally in a midnight-blue kimono, sleeves edged in crimson, milk-white obi.
The absolute stillness of the room was a tangible force, a rigid barrier holding him from further movement, even from speech.
