Linnear 01 - The Ninja (38 page)

‘It was quite near a stream which bubbled constantly. When there was a moon it looked like it was made of silver. The water was so frigid, it numbed your mouth.

‘It was like being at a shrine, standing in that grove, the tall, straight bamboos rising like columns over your head. Their tops sometimes speared the huge orange harvest moon late in the summer, when the locusts were at their most shrill.’ She moved against him as if making herself more comfortable. He felt her bare flesh against his. ‘It was the only place I could call my own. My secret place. I had sex there for the first time.’ He felt the musculature of her body beginning to tremble as if she were cold. ‘I brought a boy there. He lived on a near-by farm. It was his first time, too, I think. He’d only seen the cattle do it and he wasn’t very good. He was so nervous, wanting to do it the way he’d seen the horses performing. He was so excited, he went all over my thigh.’

‘In the West,’ Nicholas said, ‘they say, “I’m coming.” Here, we say, “I’m going.” There’s a complete reversal.’

‘With death, too,” she whispered, ‘I’ve heard it said. Westerners don’t understand seppuku, do they? They’ll turn outwards, instead of inwards, jump off a building -‘

‘Or blow some poor bastard’s head off before they turn the gun on themselves.”

‘Odd, isn’t it?’ She giggled. ‘Perhaps they’re barbarians, after all.’ But she shivered none the less.

‘Don’t let’s talk of death,’ he said, holding her.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘We won’t.’ She reached between his thighs, caught gently hold of him, stroking.

‘Is that all you can think of?’ he said thickly.

‘It’s all I have,’ she said in a moan.

Fourth Ring

THE FIRE BOOK

I

West Bay Bridge/New York City, Summer Present

‘No, no, no, no I’ she said, laughing. ‘Let’s forget all about it.’

She ran at him instead of away from him as she had been doing. She leaped in a shallow dive, skidding across the top of a sand dune, wrapped her arms about his ankles, bringing him down.

Justine laughed again, half atop him. Nicholas spat sand out of his mouth, rolled over on his back.

‘Very funny!”

She jumped on him, on all fours, and they spun about on the dark sand. A cool breeze came in off the sea, ruffling their hair. The porch lights from the house were diffused by the ground mist, haloed, comforting.

Her face was very close to his, her eyes wide. He could see the red motes as they caught the light. Her long hair was like a bridge between them. Her long delicate fingers were on his cheeks. They had the firmness, the lightness of touch of a sculptor’s hands. ‘I don’t want to be sad, Nicholas,’ she said softly.

He kissed her lightly.

‘I’m here.’

‘I know you are.’

‘It’s a big thing for me to say. And mean.’ She was totally serious now, the playful mood had slipped away. ‘I had a lot of time to think about … things.’

‘You mean in bed.’

She shook her head. ‘No. In the water. It wasn’t my life that flashed before me.’ She laughed but it was a rueful sound. ‘There was one time when I didn’t think I was going to come back up. I had been fantasizing about you while I was swimming. You know, a harmless kind of thing.’ Her eyes were almost out of focus; she was so close to him. ‘That’s not what I thought about when I was under. I thought about what it would be like never to see you again.’ Her voice was

so soft now that, despite her nearness, he could barely make out what she was saying. She swallowed hard as if the words were sticking in her throat. ‘I’m frightened. Frightened of what I’m telling you. It’s one thing to admit to the feeling, quite another to voice it, you know?’ She gave him a long, hard stare. ‘I love you,” she said. ‘I can’t think of anything else when I’m near you. I usually like to go certain places, be with specific people, but I don’t care about any of that when I’m with you. I know that sounds juvenile and romantic but -‘

He laughed. ‘Romantic, yes. Juvenile, no. And anyway, what’s so terrible about being a romantic? I am. Maybe there aren’t many of us left, though.’

Her eyes were clear and searching.“‘Do you love me, Nick? I want you to be honest. It’s all right if you don’t. I just need to know the truth.’

He did not know what to say. His mind was alight with memories both pleasurable and painful and he knew then that Yukio was still not gone from him. He felt like a salmon struggling upstream, fiercely fighting the current. But he was no fish and he wondered why he was doing it. What was he fighting, anyway? And what made it so important?

He felt that he had the answers to those questions inside him if only he could pin them down. He still stung from the jibe Croaker had given him in the restaurant and he was angry at himself that it had affected him so. What if Croaker had been right? How deeply had he been affected by Terry’s and Ei’s deaths? Surely he felt something. He must. He was no machine. But he could summon no tears. Perhaps there were other ways to grieve; he knew he was like his mother in that respect. He was far too controlled to allow certain emotions to surface. But with that he was denying a part of himself and that could prove to be disastrous. Without full understanding of himself, he could control no situation. He could be champion of nothing, not the light, nor the dark that thought made him jump as if someone had pricked him. An idea rippled like a banner at the edge of his consciousness…

‘What are you thinking?’

His eyes focused to see her. There was concern on her face. ‘You shouldn’t make sacrifices,’ he said. ‘Not for me, not for anybody. It can be dangerous.’

‘Damn it I I’m not making sacrifices. Not any more. I’m through with all that. I won’t give anything up for you. Not until I’m quite certain it’s what 7 want.’ Her eyes glittered, fine pinpoints of energy in the darkness. ‘Is it so awful that you satisfy me? That I’m content with that? Does part of you rebel against that notion?’

She had cut him to the quick without realizing it. ‘Christ, what made you say that?’ He sat up, feeling his heart hammering.

‘Because it’s true?’ She tried to look in his eyes. ‘I don’t know. But I do know how your body reacts to mine. That’s communication on the most basic level, the way it was done a million years ago before there were books to talk about or films or plays, any entertainment. When people just had each other. I want to know why you reject that out of hand. Don’t you trust your body to tell you what’s right? It knows better than your mind what’s good for you.’ She laughed. ‘I can’t believe it. You of all people. You’ve been working with your body all your life and still you don’t trust it.”

‘You don’t know anything about it,’ he said shortly.

‘Oh, I don’t?’ She sat up. ‘Then you tell me. Explain it to me simply so my poor female brain can understand.’

‘Don’t be childish.’

‘It isn’t me who’s being childish, Nick. Just listen to yourself. You’re terrified of revealing anything of yourself to someone.’

‘Didn’t you ever think there’s a good reason for that?’

‘Oh yes. That’s why I’m asking you what it is.’

‘Maybe it’s none of your business.’

‘Right. All right,’ she flared. ‘I can see how far I’m going to get with you.’

‘Nowhere, Justine. You don’t own me.’

‘This is what I get for being honest with you.’

‘You want honesty?’ Knew he shouldn’t do it and didn’t care. ‘I met your father in the city today.’

Her head came up. She looked incredulous. ‘You met my father? How?’

‘He picked me up in his limo outside the station. I got the first-class treatment.”

She stood up. ‘I don’t want to hear about this.’ Her voice was abruptly harsh. She remembered San Francisco all too clearly. Rage built up inside her. She felt impotent against him. Always had. Always.

‘I think you should,’ he said cruelly. Some part of him egged him on, reveling in the pained expression on her face.

‘No!’ she cried, putting her palms against her ears. She wheeled away from him. .

He got up and went after her, across the cool sand. ‘He wanted to know all about us. He knows all about you. What you’ve been doing. What you haven’t.’

‘God damn him!’ She slipped at the crest of a dune, pulled herself up, whirled on him. Her eyes were feral sparks, as large as beacons. She was white with rage.

‘Christ but you’re both bastards! Him for doing it and you for telling me. You’re a real sonovabitch, you know that?’

All he could think of was pushing her away now. ‘He thought I might be another one like Chris -‘

‘Shut up! Shut up, you cocksucker!’

But he pursued her relentlessly. ‘He offered me a job, and you know, the joke of it is I took it. I’m working for him now.’

‘How could you do this to me?’ she cried. She wasn’t talking about the job. ‘My God! My God!’ Weeping, she hurled herself from him and, stumbling up the sandy steps to her house, she disappeared from his view.

Nicholas broke down and cried, falling to his knees in the unforgiving sand.

‘He will soon be here,’ said Ah Ma. ‘Is everything in readiness?’

‘Yes, Mother,’ Penny said from her spot at Ah Ma’s feet. ‘Flower has just returned with the last of the … ah, items.’ Penny’s perfect, white face bent over a leather-bound ledger book in which she was writing Chinese characters in vertical lines. She used a thin brush which she dipped periodically in

an open bottle of Higgins ink. Her movements were deft and sure.

She considered her mistress’s silence, then made a decision. ‘Do you think we should be letting this man in here?’ She kept her eyes on her writing and, for just an instant, felt her heart contract coldly in her chest at the thought of Ah Ma’s possible outburst.

Ah Ma did nothing more, however, than sigh. Penny was quite correct, of course. In days gone by she would never have allowed this to happen. She shrugged mentally. Ah well, times had changed for them all and one must accommodate oneself as best one could. Her voice, when she spoke, conveyed none of this inner dialogue.

‘Penny, my precious one, there is, as you well know, a great deal of money involved. I am not a prejudiced person; neither should you be.’ But she knew these words to be false, although Penny never would. Ah Ma, now in her late sixties, was Fukienese, from that district of coastal China midway between the cities of Hong Kong and Shanghai. She was one of fifteen children but she had always felt quite apart from them. Perhaps her name had something to do with that. There was a legend of a poor Fukienese girl by that name who sought passage on a junk. In all the port only one would grant her request. Out of port they were beset by a furious typhoon and it had been Ah Ma who had brought the junk safely through. There was a temple to her, Ah Ma knew, at the base of Barra Hill on the island of Macao.

She shifted in her chair and it creaked. She felt the slide of silk against her arm. Through the open window she could clearly hear the clatter from Doyers Street. There was a fish market on the corner which stayed open late. They sold marvellous squid at this time of year. She heard several voices raised in argument and she winced at the Cantonese. Up here in the large suite of apartments which took up the entire third floor of the building only Mandarin was spoken. That was the way it had been in Ah Ma’s house when she was a child; that was how it was now.

Ah Ma got up, padded silently over to the window, peering down at the narrow, crowded street. She could, she knew, have had her pick of virtually any location in Manhattan. Over the years there had been many attractive offers to move elsewhere. She had always refused. It seemed right to her that her business should be square in the heart of Chinatown. The area was dim and slightly seedy but it was atmospheric. In many ways it reminded Ah Ma of home. That was what she wanted. Now a millionairess, she was still no more comfortable among the steel and glass towers of uptown Manhattan than she had been with structures like the Chrysler Building when she had first arrived in New York.

Yes, Ah Ma thought now, looking down at the night-dark street, the bright, bustling clutter of the throng, the intermittent odours of fresh fish in the early morning when the catch was brought in downstairs, the delicacy of the steamed dim sum from the dumpling house next door, I am very comfortable here. Very much so.

She sighed again. Of course, the Chinatown Planning Council might not be too pleased with her if they knew her real business. But the police were certainly happy with the thousand dollars they picked up each month. She was careful to perform this duty herself and to serve them tea each time they came; it increased her face.

Her home in Foochow was always with her but, oddly, more so as she grew older. Being in Chinatown gave her some small illusion of being home. Not that she would ever consider going back now. She had no great love for the communist Chinese and even now, when it might be feasible for her to return for a visit, she could not bring herself to contemplate the reality of it.

No, she had all that she wanted of Foochow right here.

Around the corner the red and blue neon lights of the restaurants turned the darkness watery with reflected light. It was the Japanese, of course, whom she had learned to hate long before the communists. They had come down the coast, those wealthy, arrogant businessmen, from their deals in Shanghai, already jaded with that city’s nightlife or just wanting to see a bit more of China. They are so different from the Chinese, Ah Ma thought wonderingly. But of course they do not have our centuries of history to learn from. The Japanese are a relatively new people. When we had already forged dynasties, were experimenting with gunpowder, their islands were inhabited only by the barbarous Ainu - unintelligent savages. If the modern Japanese are descended directly from those people, it’s no wonder they’re so warlike.

She turned away from her window on Doyers Street, said, ‘I want to see him, now, Penny. There must be no mistake.’

Penny nodded, put aside her ledger and pen, stood up and crossed the room.

‘Penn…’

She stopped short, her hand on the doorknob. ‘Yes, Mother?’

‘He is not from here?’

‘No, Mother. He’s from uptown.’