Linnear 02 - The Miko (9 page)

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.

Now she broke away from his orbit, walking more quickly, ignoring the glances of those she passed, the lust of the men, the envy of the women; she had become inured to that. It was time to pick up Yoki; Sato would soon be home from the wars.

Akiko watched Yoki out of the comer of her eye as they sped through the center of Tokyo and out again. She is a magnificent creature, Akiko thought. I have chosen well. She had found Yoki some weeks ago and when she was certain of her choice had struck up a conversation with her. That had led to an oddat least Akiko saw it as thatkind of friendship. Its borders were the night when, as far as Yoki was concerned, they both emerged like nocturnal birds.

Akiko had once asked Yoki what occupied her during the day. “Oh, on and off, I’m a saleslady,” she had said. “You know, door to door. Perfumes and cosmetics. Otherwise I watch television. Not only dramas but programs where I learn calligraphy, flower arrangingeven the tea ceremony.”

In a culture where 93 percent of the population watched TV at least once a day that was, perhaps, not surprising. Yet it nevertheless chilled Akiko that her country was teaching its population by proxy. She had learned the tea ceremony from her mother, and she remembered watching the older woman’s face, listening to the tone of her voice, seeing the patterns on her kimono moving just so here and not at all there, resolving to memorize every detail no matter how tiny for those, her mother had once told her, were all that would be noticed.

Could the emissions of an electronic cathode ray tube provide such teaching? She was sure it could not, and she found herself disgusted when she thought of the number of women being taught in such an impersonal manner.

But outwardly she showed none of this disdain. Yoki was important to herat least for the next several hours.

The limo pulling up onto the gravel verge of the two-story house pushed her thoughts back to the present. Seiichi Sato lived just north of Ueno Park in Uguisudani in Taito-Ku. A block and a half to the southwest was wide Kototoi-dori, the avenue that curled like a serpent around two sides of the park. Beyond, the high tops of the carefully pruned cypress stood stark and utterly black against the faintly pink and yellow glow from the Ginza and Shinjuku nightspots. The trees were the natural markers of the Tokugawa Shogun graveyard across the myriad railroad tracks in the northern end of Ueno.

Sato’s house was large by Tokyo standards, built on the ken principle, the standard six-foot unit of construction. It was made of bamboo and cypress; the three-layered roof was of terra cotta tile. The far end of the house contained a great notch to accommodate a more-than-one-hundred-year-old cryptomeria whose boughs overgrew the sheltering eight-foot fence, swaying over the road itself.

The driver came around and opened the rear door for them, and Akiko took her charge inside.

*

Seiichi Sato sipped hot sake from a tiny porcelain cup and contemplated the Void. He did this, sometimes, in moments of intense stress, to clear his mind. But mainly he used this form of mental exercise when he was impatient. In a land where patience was not merely a virtue but a way of life, Sato had had to teach himself this attitude as if he were some form of alien in his own culture. Yet he had worked diligently, even obsessively at it, and he knew that his patience had won him all that he held dear today.

He was in the six-tatami roomspace being defined in Japanese houses by the number of reed mats the wood floor could containwith only a small table, a cotton futon and a drawered naga-hibachi of burl paulownia wood dating from the early part of the nineteenth century. A recess in the right top of the long brazier allowed for the heating of sake as well as food.

Sato wore only a white cotton kimono. Its bold crimson square reproduced the crest of the Danjuro line of kabuki actors. He looked calm and assured, his cool eyes staring at a spot not within the realm of the physical world.

A soft knock on the fusuma made him blink but otherwise he did not move. Now he unlocked his thoughts and allowed the keen sense of anticipation to enfold him like a cloak on a chill winter’s eve.

He reached out and moved the paper door an inch to the right. Just the pronounced curve of the front half of Akiko’s eye gazed at him from beneath a half-lowered lid. The sable darkness dusted along the delicate flesh was like the painting of dusk across a changing sky. The coal black iris was like the heart of some deeply buried treasure. Despite himself, Sato felt the quickness of his pulse, the heat of his own breath firing in his throat.

“You are late.” His voice was breathy as he began their ritual. “I thought you would not come.”

Akiko heard the thickness in his voice and smiled to herself. “I always come,” she whispered. “I cannot do otherwise.”

“You are free to walk away.” Sato’s heart constricted as he said those words.

“1 give my love to you freely and I am bound by it. I will never leave you.”

The script had been developed over a period of months to provide them both with a degree of excitement and intrigue within the carefully prescribed boundaries of societal courtship. Of course, there were aspects about their courtshipminor ones, to be sure that had Sato’s mother been alive she would have disapproved of in the most vociferous language.

Sato bowed his head and, opening thefusuma farther, moved back on his knees and shins to allow her entrance. As Akiko entered, the dual kanji ideograms for sobi hovered in the center of Sato’s being like a feudal daimyo’s banner, for she did indeed possess sublime beauty. And, despite their ritualistic dialog, he knew it was he who was bound to her for all time, body and spirit.

For a time they knelt facing one another, Sato’s large, capable hands held palms up, Akiko’s smaller ones resting lightly in his. Locked, their eyes stared within and through. Sato, contemplating the karma that had brought them together, felt the essence of her stirring, a lacquered kite rising above rooftops and rustling crowns of cypress and pine. A strong gust took it suddenly and it shot straight for his heart, lodging there like a broken wing.

“What are you thinking?”

The question startled him. Was it just because of the abrupt sound from out of the silence of the beating of their hearts, he asked himself. From deep within him came a secret fear that somehow, in some unfathomable way, her mind had pierced his flesh, peering into his inviolable thoughts. And in that split instant, a brief shudder contracted the muscles ridged along his gently arched back and he blinked, his eyes searching hers as if she were a stranger.

Then her lips bowed into a smile and her white, even teeth showed. “You are so solemn this night.” She laughed, and he saw the play of light along the side of her throat, the small shadow lying in the hollow like a teardrop.

He said nothing, and after studying his granitelike countenance for a moment she made a move to rise. “I will”But his fingers curled around her wrist stopped her and, perched like a bird, her lips opened. “Sato-san.”

Slowly he brought her back down to her knees, then drew himself upward. The fabric of his kimono winked and rippled as his shoulders squared and Akiko was abruptly aware of his strength and, even more, his power.

“This night is special,” he said thickly. “There will only be one like it in all our lives.” He paused for a moment as if collecting his thoughts. “So our lives will be truly bound by the laws of the Amida Buddha.” His eyes raked her face. “Does this mean nothing to you?”

“I have thought of little else all day.”

“Then stay.” At that moment his fingers let go their grip and her arm, freed, drifted down to her lap. Her perfect, lacquered nails overlapped as her fingers interlaced, a streak of light lying

along the gleaming surface of each beyond which he could not see. “On this most special of nights, send my gift away.”

Her face, as composed as a porcelain mask, disclosed nothing of her inner feelings. Sato could scarcely discern the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed. Her wa was as unruffled as the still skin of a mountain lake, reflecting rather than revealing.

He was disconcerted. “Surely you must know it is you who I desire.”

Akiko turned her head as if he had struck her a physical blow. “Then you hate the gift I bear; you have hated all the gifts that I have brought you since”

“No!” Trembling, Sato silently railed against the trap he had entered.

“I have dishonored you with my desire to please you.” Akiko wrung her hands like an aggrieved little girl.

Sato leaned forward. “I have loved each and every gift; I have treasured the thought behind them.” He had regained control of his voice if not his emotions. “There is only honor in what you have brought me, knowing” His eyes slid away from her, staring fixedly at the tatami between them. “Knowing that you have never… been with a man, understanding my desires”he took a deep breath”and wanting to bring me happiness in this sphere.”

Her head lowered. “It is my duty. I”

But his hand shot out again, covering hers. “But tonight we are so close to being joined. Seeing you and”

“What you ask” Her head snapped up. “And then what of our wedding night? Will we make a mockery of tradition? Will we degrade the path that is ours? Do you want that?”

Sato felt her nails digging into his calloused flesh and knew she was right. He grasped at the fluttering of his intense desire for her, choking it off. His head nodded on his thick neck and he whispered through dry lips, “It is your gift that I desire.”

Akiko stood by the naga-hibachi, feeling its heat suffuse her. She paid only the most minimal attention to the work her hands were doing, cooking the soba, the buckwheat noodles, preparing the soy-based sauce in small porcelain cups, pouring the rest into a tiny matching pitcher, setting out the green horseradish and chopped cucumber on a saucerlike plate.

The soba, when done, was lifted in tiny portions into rectangular stacking trays of black lacquer. Normally, she would be waited upon as would be Sato. But this was part of her gift to him, and at this time of the night servants were enjoined from this side of the house.

Akiko served the food and more hot sake. She observed thai Sato and Yoki were talking in low, intimate tones. She had prepared the girl well. Yoki knew what to expect and what was expected of her.