Cloud of Sparrows (19 page)

“My father was virile, yes, but he was also very aware. He would have done nothing to send the curse out of the family line.”

“You keep saying ‘curse.’ It’s usually thought of as a gift.”

“Is that how you think of it?”

Genji sighed and leaned on his armrest. “Having it didn’t make Grandfather happy. Not having it destroyed my father. And you, look what it’s done to you. No, you’re right, it’s no gift. I was hoping someone else would bear the burden. I still do.”

“I don’t understand,” Shigeru said. “If you have it, you know it. You can’t help but know it. How can you have any hope of escape?”

“Grandfather told me I have it,” Genji said. “Beyond that, I have no certain evidence.”

“You’ve had no visions?”

“I hope not,” Genji said.

They were walking deep in the woods outside the castle, hunting for shiitake mushrooms on the shaded bark of the oldest evergreens when Grandfather told him.

“I don’t want it,” Genji said. “Give it to someone else.”

Grandfather tried to keep a stern expression, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Genji saw the old man’s eyes twinkling, a sure sign of mirth.

“You’re talking like a baby,” Grandfather said. “This has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting.”

“I don’t want it anyway,” Genji said. “If my father can’t have it, then give it to Uncle Shigeru.”

“It’s not mine to give or withhold,” Grandfather said. “If it were . . .” Genji waited, but Grandfather didn’t finish what he was saying. His eyes had stopped twinkling, too. “Shigeru already has it. You in turn will have it, too.”

“If Uncle has it, then why must I? I thought it was supposed to be only one of us at a time.”

“One in each generation,” Grandfather said. “I in mine, Shigeru in his, you in yours.”

Genji sat down on the grass and began to cry. “Why, Grandfather? What wrongs did our ancestors do?”

Grandfather sat down next to him and put his arm around his shoulders. The touch surprised Genji. Grandfather didn’t usually show much affection.

“One ancestor is responsible,” Grandfather said, “all the rest of us have only reaped his karma. Hironobu.”

Genji dragged his sleeve across his face, wiping away tears and sniffing to keep the mucus from running down his face. “Hironobu is our first ancestor. He founded this domain of Akaoka when he was six years old. I’ll be six tomorrow.”

“Yes, Lord Genji.” Grandfather bowed to him.

Genji laughed at the mock formality, his tears quickly forgotten. “What did Hironobu do? I thought he was a great hero.”

“No one’s being excludes every possibility.” Grandfather often said things Genji didn’t understand. He was doing it again. “Birth and death occur and reoccur from moment to moment. Some rebirths are better left unborn. But we never know until it’s too late. Hironobu fell in love with the wrong woman. A witch’s granddaughter.”

“Lady Shizuka? I thought she was a princess.”

Grandfather smiled at him and said what he’d said before. “No one’s being excludes every possibility.” Saying it twice didn’t help. Genji still didn’t understand. “She was a princess. She was a witch’s granddaughter. If she’d stayed in the convent where she belonged, she would have had no issue, and no Okumichi would ever have had a single vision, or spoken a single prophecy, or suffered from knowing what is to come. Of course, then there might also be no Okumichi clan by now. Visions have saved us time and time again. Good and evil are indeed not two.”

Grandfather bowed in the direction of the clan columbarium, which was in the northeast tower of Cloud of Sparrows Castle. It wasn’t visible from this point in the forest, but they both knew where it was. They had to know in case of an attack. Genji respectfully followed his example.

“If she was a witch, why are we bowing to her, Grandfather? Shouldn’t we scatter her ashes to the four winds and erase her memory?”

“Then she’d be everywhere. This way, we know where she is. Safely trapped in an urn and guarded night and day by fearless warriors.”

Genji leaned closer to Grandfather and quickly took his hand. The forest shadows had suddenly lengthened.

Grandfather laughed. “I’m joking, Gen-chan. There are no such things as ghosts, or demons, or invisible spirits. Lady Shizuka, witch and princess, has been dead for six hundred years. Do not fear her. Fear instead the living. They are the only danger.”

“Then I’m glad I have the gift,” Genji said, still clutching Grandfather’s hand as tightly as he could. “I’ll know who my enemies are, and I’ll kill them all before they can do me harm.”

“Killing brings killing,” Grandfather said, “yet otherwise changes surprisingly little. You will not ensure your safety that way.”

“Then what use is knowing?” Genji said, pouting.

“Listen carefully, Genji. This is not a matter of use or no use, of good or evil, of choice or no choice. Those are only labels, not the thing itself. They obscure, not clarify. Listen well and strive to understand my meaning. Gift or curse, wanted or unwanted, you have it. You cannot ignore it any more than you can ignore your own head. Either you use it, or it will use you. Do you understand?”

“No, Grandfather. You’re talking like old Abbot Zengen. I don’t understand him either.”

“It doesn’t matter now. You have the Okumichi memory. You’ll remember what I’ve said, and later you’ll understand. Hear me. Visions come in different ways. Shigeru will have many. In your life, you will have only three. Pay close attention. Examine them without fear or desire. Then you will see clearly and those three visions will show you all you need to know.”

Three visions, Genji thought. Only three. That’s not so bad. Maybe they’ll come and go and I won’t even notice. He saw Grandfather looking at him. Everyone said Grandfather could read minds as well as see the future. Genji didn’t believe that, not really. But it was always better to take precautions. He concentrated hard on the clouds in the sky and tried to remember his mother’s face. She had died when he was three. With every passing year, her image grew fainter and fainter. When he tried to remember, there was often only the trying, no more, so that was all Grandfather would find in his mind, if he looked there.

“I understand,” Shigeru said through a tight smile. “If you haven’t had one yet, you think you’ll escape entirely. None of us has been so lucky. Nor will you. Prepare yourself. If my father said you’ll have three, you will. He was never wrong about visions.”

“That’s not the only reason,” Genji said. “I hope what I saw was not a vision, because if it was, I know something no one should know.”

“I know a thousand things no one should know,” Shigeru said.

“Do you know the moment of your own death?” Genji said.

Genji doesn’t recognize the place. He’s retrieved the vision repeatedly, examined it as carefully as a swordsman examines the stance of his opponent, seeking that critical opening, to no avail. It’s not yet a place he knows. That he will know it and be known there is clear by the roaring voices of the assembled multitude. Which are louder and more numerous, the cheers or the curses? It’s impossible to say. If he had to guess, he would guess the curses.

“Damn you to hell!”

“Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!”

“
Banzai!
You’ve saved the nation!”

“Death to cowards!”

“You shame us all! Show honor and kill yourself!”

“May all the gods and all the Buddhas bless you and protect you!”

He walks down the central aisle of a great hall unlike any he has seen. Though it is night outside, it is as bright as midday within. The numerous lamps along the walls emit not the slightest smoky discharge. Their light is steady, evenly incandescent, without a flicker of flame. (A new wick has been invented, or a new source found for a superior oil?) Instead of cushions arranged in rows, there are perhaps two hundred chairs of the outsider pattern facing the raised podium. In the back, a large balcony holds another hundred chairs. No one is sitting. All are on their feet, shouting, gesturing, full of emotion. Perhaps the chairs are symbolic and not for actual use. (That seems likely. Genji, having so recently used one of them for the first time, now knows what excruciating displacements those devices can cause one’s inner organs.)

He sees not a single head with a topknot, nor anyone with the obligatory two swords of the samurai. Like madmen or prisoners, everyone displays an unruly mess of hair, and no one is armed. All the faces are Japanese, but all the bodies are dressed in the graceless clothing of the outsiders. It reminds him of the puppet shows of little children and clumsy peasant pantomimes. He wonders again if anything this ridiculous can truly be a vision.

At the podium, an elderly man with thin white hair strikes the tabletop with a small wooden hammer.

“Order! Order! The Diet will come to order!”

No one pays the slightest attention. (What is the Diet?)

Most of the cheers are coming from his left, most of the curses from his right. Genji raises his right hand to acknowledge the cheers. Just as he does so, a young man comes rushing at him from among the cursers. He’s dressed in a plain dark blue uniform with no emblems or insignias. His hair is cut very close to his scalp. His hands are wrapped around the hilt of a sword.

“Long live the Emperor!”

With that shout, the young man drives his sword deep into Genji’s torso just below the sternum. Genji feels the sudden jolt of contact, a sharp stinging sensation as if a wasp has stung his chest, a sudden relaxation of all his muscles.

An explosion of blood drenches the young man’s face.

Then everything goes white.

Silence descends, followed by darkness.

But the vision isn’t over.

Genji opens his eyes. Worried faces peer down at him. From the angle of their bodies, and the sight of the ceiling behind them, he knows he’s lying on the floor.

He feels blood pulsing from his chest. His entire body feels cold and wet. He feels no pain.

The crowd of faces parts and an extraordinarily beautiful woman appears. Heedless of the blood, she takes him in her arms, cradles his head, and holds him close against her breast. Tears flow down her cheeks and drop onto his face. Sobbing, she presses her cheek against his. For several moments, their heartbeats are synchronous, then his, slowing, drifts away.

“You will always be my Shining Prince,” she says. A play on his name. Genji. The same name as an ancient fictional character.

Two burly men, bodyguards or police, kneel down next to him. They, too, weep shamelessly.

“Lord Genji,” one of them says. “Lord Genji.” These are the only words he can choke out.

“Hold on, my lord,” the other says. “Help is on the way.” The man takes off his coat and presses it against the wound. Genji sees, in a holster high up against his ribs, a flat pistol formerly concealed by the coat. Ah. Pistols replace swords. It makes sense. He wonders whether samurai carry a single pistol, or two. He wonders, too, why the weapon is worn concealed. He would like to ask, but he lacks the strength, the will. He has begun to feel very light.

The woman smiles at him through her tears. She says, “I finished the translation this morning. I wonder whether we should use the Japanese name, or translate the title into English as well. What do you think?”

“He can’t hear you, Lady Shizuka,” one of the men says. “He is unconscious.”

Lady Shizuka was the witch and princess who enchanted the clan’s founder. This can’t be her, unless she has returned in a rebirth. No, Genji doesn’t believe in rebirth. Like firewood once burned does not return from its ashes, a person once dead does not return to life. So this is another Lady Shizuka, namesake of the first.

“He hears me,” Lady Shizuka says.

Genji sees now that her beauty is not entirely Japanese. Her eyes are hazel, not black, and her hair is light brown. Her features are rather sharper and more dramatic than usual, more outsider than Japanese. He doesn’t recognize her. But each time he examines this vision, she seems more familiar. She reminds him of someone. Who? He still doesn’t know. What he knows is this: Lady Shizuka is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. (Or, more accurately, the most beautiful he will ever see.)

“English,” Genji says. He means to ask what she has translated into English, but only that one word passes his lips.

“English it is, then,” Lady Shizuka says. She smiles through her tears. “It will be another scandal. ‘Genji again,’ people will say, ‘and that terrible Shizuka of his.’ But we don’t care, do we?” Her lips tremble, her eyelids flutter, but her smile holds, and for the moment no more tears fall. “She would be so proud of us,” Lady Shizuka says.

Genji wants to ask, Who would be so proud, and why? But he has no voice. Something sparkles at her long, smooth throat. He looks. He sees what it is. Then where he had heard his heart, he hears nothing, and sees no more.

“Abandon any hope of escape,” Shigeru said. “There can be no doubt but that you have had a vision.”

“What I have described is familiar to you?”

“Some of it. The clothing. The hair. The absence of weapons. There is only one possibility. We will be defeated by the outsiders and become a nation of slaves.”