Eric van lustbader nic.., p.19
Eric van Lustbader - Nicholas Linnear 06, page 19
been. Then she put the tray down on the art nouveau iron
and lacquer coffee table. Out of her pocket she took a small
vial, shook out a pill. This she put carefully and tenderly
under Nangi’s tongue.
Nangi sighed, his good eye going out of focus for a moment.
“Nangi-san,” Nicholas insisted gently, “we have to talk. I need your advice regarding the Denwa partnership.” “ Nangi spread his hands. “As always, anything I can do, I will.”
“Now don’t tire him out, Linnear-san,” Kisoko said softly as she served them green tea.
Nicholas sipped the pale, bitter brew, then put the tiny cup down. “Nangi-san, you tell me that I must trust Torin-san, but how can I when he helped put this partnership together? You and I have had many offers of partnership in the past and we have refused them all. Neither of us have wanted to be responsible-or answerable-to outside people. For this reason, the Denwa partnership makes me profoundly uneasy. We have gone too far out on a limb. We are so financially strapped that even the smallest miscalculation will end in disaster.”
“You don’t understand,” Nangi said. “The CyberNet is the future. We had to put it on-line in Japan before anyone else managed similar technology.”
“But don’t you see what you have done?” Nicholas cried. “You’ve gambled everything on one roll of the dice. And if we stumble now, it will be the Denwa Partners who gather up the pieces. Everything we have worked for will have come to nothing.”
“This isn’t about Denwa or the CyberNet, is it, Nicholas-san? It’s about Torin-san. You don’t like to see him in a position of such responsibility.”
“It’s true he’s very young to be a vice president, but that isn’t without precedent,” Nicholas said, carefully feeling his way among the minefield of new and unknown relationships. How close had Torin bonded with Nangi while Nicholas had been away? It seemed like years rather than fifteen months.
“Please try to see it from my point of view. When I left for Venice to fulfill my obligation to the Kaisho, I had not even met Kanda Torin. Now, a year and a half later, t return to find he’s not only overseeing our most important project but has helped you structure a deal with outside partners—which is precedent for Sato.”
Nangi nodded, but his good eye had slipped half-closed and Nicholas could see he was tiring. Kisoko flashed him a warning glance.
Nangi said, “I quite understand your apprehension, but the world turns, Nicholas-san, with or without you.” He gave a wan smile as he shifted in the sofa. “This is not meant as a rebuke, merely as a statement of fact. Another fact: I needed you here, but I know you are a man of honor and your father’s giri had become yours. I know you are racked with guilt, but that is wasted emotion. I would have done the same had I been you. Honor above all else, Nicholas-san. This is what marks us, sets us apart, defines the nature of our existence.” His hand began to tremble and Kisoko took the teacup from him.
His blind eye with its fixed stare seemed to give off an air of defiance and empathy. “The fact remains you were not here and I could not do this deal alone. I needed someone younger, with good instincts, a fresh perspective, who knew the playing field and could look into the future as you do. Someone who would not look back, who was not afraid to act-to dare to be the future. I found that in Kanda Torin.
“His dossier had crossed my desk some time ago and I had been keeping an eye on him ever since. His quarterly evaluations had been nothing short of spectacular, so I reached into the resources of our company and pulled him up into the executive suite. Since then, he’s risen to every challenge I’ve set before him.”
There was silence for some time. Like a tableau or an image stuck in time, the three of them ceased to move. It seemed to Nicholas that his breathing, even the beat of his heart, had been suspended, and he experienced an abrupt sense of discontinuity, or tearing free of time, and he thought, No, no! Not now! But the Kshira was rising, ripping through his consciousness like high winds scattering gauzy clouds, and he was falling, falling … seeing, as one does in a dream, his own body, along with theirs, like husks of com in a field, ready for the reaper’s rapacious blade. He experienced then the ascendancy of Kshira, and though it was momentary, it was like an iris opening onto the portal of death, and every dark thing that lay beyond. Deep inside himself he began to scream Nangi was drifting off to sleep. Kisoko sat still as a statue, as if waiting for some unheard signal. Eventually, she stirred. “I’ll see you out,” she said.
Nicholas stood on trembling legs. He breathed silently, trying to center himself, then followed Kisoko to the front door. There, she turned to face him.
“Nangi-san has told you about us, though he has kept me secret from” everyone else.”
This was true. Last year, Nangi had told him a bit about his relationship with Kisoko. They had met eleven years ago and had had a torrid, though ultimately tragic, affair. Nangi had never forgotten her, and when they had met again, it seemed it was, at last, their time.
Nicholas understood her meaning. “I will not speak of you, even to Torin-san.”
She bowed her head in thanks. When she looked up, she said, “Don’t think ill of him. This was hard, having you come here. He had no wish for you to see him like this, weak and ill.”
“But I had a meeting with him yesterday in his car.”
“Yes. But he was prepared for you then, dressed as he has always dressed, buttressed by drugs, and I will bet the interview was brief.” “It was.”
She nodded and smiled. “It is his way, Nicholas-san, do not be downcast. He loves you like a son. Indeed, he thinks of you as his own flesh and blood. Which is why he is ashamed for you to see him old and helpless.”
“I had to come.”
“Of course you did,” she said kindly. “I appreciate it, and believe me, beneath his shame, he does as well.” She looked into his sad eyes. “Six months ago, you were not here when he had his heart attack.”
He nodded. “That has never been out of my mind. I cannot forgive myself-”
“I forgive you,” Kisoko said unexpectedly. “As for Nangi-san, he sees nothing to forgive you for.” She took a step closer to him. “My point was not to make you feel guilty, but to make the confession he could not bring himself to make. The truth is his heart attack was more serious than anyone-even Torin-san-knows. Now, don’t worry. He will recover without any permanent impairment, the doctors have assured us. But it will take time.”
Her voice was reduced to a whisper. “This is what I must ask of you, Nicholas-san, though I know it is rude and presumes too much on a relationship that has just begun. But, after all, I did know your parents and I was very fond of them.”
“I will do what I can, Kisoko-san.”
She nodded with a sense of relief. Oddly, at that moment, he felt as if she were about to touch him. But that was, of course, nonsense. Such a breach of etiquette in a woman of her age was unthinkable.
The moment passed, and she smiled up at him. “You remind me so much of your father. So strong of will, so handsome.” She put her long-fingered hand on the door, opened it so that a dank breeze blew across their faces and entered the house. “Do whatever you have to do, but give him the time he needs to recuperate fully. If this means working with Torin-san, I beg you to do it.”
A gust of wind brought a spray of rain onto the front steps, and a foghorn lowed mournfully out along the river.
Nicholas nodded. “I appreciate your candor, Kisoko-san.”
She smiled. “How could I be otherwise? You are dear to the two most important men in my life.” She gazed into his eyes, and once again he had a flash of the magnificent woman she had been decades ago. “You are my brother’s angel. Isn’t that how Westerners would say it?”
He nodded again. “I will do what has to be done, Kisoko-san.”
She gave him a curiously informal bow. “I know you will and I am grateful.” Again he had the curious sensation that she wanted to reach out and enfold him in her arms.
“Godspeed,” she whispered after him into the wind.
Nicholas caught Honniko as she was coming down the staircase to Pull Marine.
“Isn’t this your day off?” He was perched on his Kawasaki.
Honniko paused halfway down the stairs, then laughed, continuing her descent “It is, but how did you know that?”
Nicholas shrugged. “I asked Jochi, the other maître d’ at the restaurant.”
She came across the crowded Roppongi sidewalk. She was wearing a cool blue-green linen skirt and a crisp pearl-gray
blouse beneath a black-and-green-striped bolero jacket. Her
small feet were in black flats, and a thin gold chain was
wrapped around her throat. “That doesn’t explain how you
knew where to find me.”
“He also told me you’d be coming in for an hour or so today for the staff meeting.”
“Jochi said that?”
“I told him I was in love. I guess he took pity on me.”
“Better him than me.”
She put on a pah-of dark glasses. The sun was beginning to break through a widening rift in the misty clouds, but Nicholas wasn’t at all sure this was her motivation. In tone as well as physical proximity she was keeping her distance.
“Ouch. I’m not all that bad.”
Honniko scrunched up her face. “You want something. Trouble is, I can’t figure out what.”
“I already told you. I’m trying to find Nguyen Van Truc.”
“Oh, yeah. He owes you money.”
“That’s right.”
She took one step toward him. “You’re a liar.”
“I’m not lying.”
She leaned forward. “And I can’t be intimidated.”
“I never said you could. Take off those glasses, why don’t you.”
“Even by a handsome man on a dashing black motorcycle,” she added with a perfectly straight face.
He smiled. “Now that you’ve drawn the line in the sand and stepped across it, the least I can do is take you to lunch.”
Honniko thought a moment “Or I could take you.”
“There’s that line again,” Nicholas said, patting the back
of the Kawasaki. “We’ll eat and then do whatever you say, does that suit you?”
By way of reply, Honniko swung aboard, clasping him tightly around the waist. He could feel the press of her breasts against his back.
She did take off the sunglasses, but only after they were seated in the restaurant, a small cafe called Third Stone From the Sun, after the Jimi Hendrix song, he supposed. It was on the terraced third floor of the Gorgon Building, just down the street from “Little Beverly Hills,” where one could eat at the Hard Rock Cafe or Spago’s.
Nicholas liked this place because it was an unpretentious island in a sea of self-conscious French and Chinese restaurants and because it overlooked the Gorgon Building’s glass-walled wedding hall, where outlandishly hip Western-style
weddings were always in progress. Today, a Japanese couple
improbably dressed as Elvis and Priscilla Presley were in the
midst of their nuptials. These recessionary days, the lavish
excesses of Las Vegas-style bad taste had been replaced by
the curious Japanese propensity to maladroitly appropriate
icons of American pop culture. When the loudspeaker sys-
tem gushed forth the King’s red-hot rendition of “Burning
Love” as the couple walked down the aisle, Honniko burst
into laughter.
“So it seems you have a sense of humor after all,” Nicholas said.
“Jesus,” she sputtered, wiping her eyes, “did you know about this place?”
He nodded, laughing. “I figured with someone who works all night in a top restaurant the show would be more important than the food.”
Her dark, almond eyes regarded him with great care. “That was thoughtful.” Then, as if the small compliment had been some kind of gaffe, she snatched up the menu, buried her head in it. With her blond hair and oriental eyes, she provided a mix as potent as a double sake martini.
After a moment, she noticed that he wasn’t reading his menu. “Aren’t you hungry? Or is the food here that bad?”
“You order for me. I’m sure I’ll like whatever it is.”
Honniko put down her menu. “You are the most self—assured man I have ever met. How do you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the world. There’s no stability anywhere. I used to think, well, that’s one thing Japan has: stability. But look what’s happened in the last four years. We’re plunged into an endless recession, bankruptcies are at an all-time high, our major banks are going under, the strong yen is killing us, our real estate is next to worthless, there’s massive unemployment for the first time in memory, the ruling party gets bounced out of power, people are more concerned with the price of rice than with how government is failing, and now we have resurrected on our doorstep the specter of another nuclear attack.”
Across the terrace, Elvis and Priscilla had come out into the pallid sunlight, surrounded by their joyous guests. “Burning Love” had been replaced by “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You.” Someone had dragged out a microphone, which the groom had good-naturedly grabbed. He swung his hips, lip-synching the lyrics. Priscilla clasped her hands and rolled her eyes. The guests applauded.
Honniko was applauding, too. “That’s why I admire any-one with such self-assurance. It speaks of a strong philosophy of life.” She turned her eyes on him. “It reassures me there’s still a North Star up there in the sky to be guided by.”
“Like the samurai daimyo-the warlords who used to live here in Roppongi.”
“Yes, exactly. Then: purity of purpose seems overly harsh, even at times incomprehensible to most Westerners.”
The waiter came with then-drinks and Honniko ordered goat-cheese- salads and stir-fried vegetable plates for both of them. “I’m a vegetarian,” she said to Nicholas. “I hope you don’t mind.”
He shook his head. “Do you know how Roppongi got its name? Once upon a time, it belonged to six of those daimyo I was speaking of. They all had the Chinese character for ‘trees’ in their names, hence Roppongi-Six Trees. In the middle of the nineteenth century, when their status as samurai ceased to be a shield, their property was confiscated by the Meiji government and given over to the Imperial Army.”
“I know the more recent history. After the war, it was requisitioned by the American Occupation, and gradually it became an entertainment quarter.” Honniko fiddled with her dark glasses. “I know that because my father was stationed here in those years.”
“He was Army, right?”
Around and around the tabletop the dark glasses went. “Military police.” She glanced up at him. “He went after the bad buys, you know, the users: the currency runners, arms merchants, drug dealers, black marketeers.”
It was interesting. She was giving off two conflicting signals. She didn’t want to talk about her father, but she did.
“Tell me about your mother,” he said as the salads were served. Maybe that would take some of the pressure off.
“There’s nothing much to tell. My father met her here in Roppongi.” Honniko was watching a new marriage party—this group in black leather motorcycle jackets and silver studs-make their way across the terrace under the direction of a rather hyper photographer.
“And that’s the end of the story.”
As the photographer placed the party in the sunlight, Honniko looked down at her salad and said nothing.
“Forget it,” Nicholas said. “It’s none of my business.”
Across the terrace, the party was shedding their leather jackets, revealing skin so covered with tattoos that there was hardly a flesh-colored patch anywhere to be seen.
Honniko, studying the array of tattooed flesh like a careful housewife picking over fresh fish, said, “Actually, there is more to the story.”
While the wedding photographer worked in a flurry of movement, Nicholas waited for her to continue.
“My mother worked not far from here, in a toruko,” she said after a long pause. Her eyes caught his, flashed away. “Do you know what that is?”
“Yes. Nowadays, it’s called soapland.” He took up a forkful of radicchio, mache, and goat cheese. “The word is a bastardization of the English Turkish bath.”
“Then you know that men went to a toruko not merely to get clean.”
“I suppose it had to do with how much money they were willing to part with.”
“And the imagination of the woman getting you clean.” She looked down at her untouched salad. “My mother was
a halo.” The word was slang. Literally, it meant box, but the meaning was pussy. It was also the nickname of the women who worked the old-time toruko.
“Your father knew this?”
“Yeah. It was called Tenki.” Tenki was Japanese for a profound secret. “He got a call to raid the place and dig out a black marketeer who was getting his genitals soaped. Everyone in the toruko was hauled out and arrested, my mother included.”
“And they fell in love.”
“Like hell.” Honniko laughed uneasily. “My father was all-American and a pure, cross-eyed romantic. Also, he knew nothing about the Japanese.” Finding no good use for her fork, she finally put it down. “He wanted to take her away from all that”
“And, of course, she went.” He pushed his salad away; he’d had enough. “Because be wanted her to, not because she wanted to.”
“She became his wife.” Honniko watched the waiter take their plates away, “She became what he wanted her to be.”
“Did she have a choice?”
Honniko shook her head. “Not really. He was the one who sprung her from jail. Her family, who lived in Ise, did not even know she was in Tokyo.” The plates of brightly colored vegetables were set in front of them. “He paid her fine, got the authorities to wipe her record dean-so she could start fresh, he told her.” She stabbed a piece of asparagus with more force than was required. “His life, not hers.” She stared at the asparagus on her fork as if it might be alive and squirming. “Still, as you can imagine, she was immensely grateful”
