Man with No Name: A Nanashi Novella (3 page)

Late in the afternoon, they left the highway and followed a single lane along a fast-moving stream that had carved a gorge of black stones and flint-ribbed cliffs over the aeons. Rushes swirled along the cut-banks where the churn and froth subsided to misty vapor. Bamboo trees swayed, and the shadows of bamboo trees swayed also, and when Koma stopped the car so Haru could snap a few photographs of the waterfalls, Nanashi went to the edge of the road and stared down into the gulf of trees and bushes and rocks. The rain had slackened to a drizzle. His hair hung lank across his eyes; his tie drooped, a sodden cord.

Birds called angrily from the forest depths. Or ghosts made angry bird cries from the forest depths, urging trespassers to turn away, to make for the well-traveled roads, the safety of highway markings, telephone poles and lights, the comfort of multitudes. Nanashi had come here once before in the tenure of Uncle Kojima, had stood in this very spot on the crumbling precipice while his brethren took photos and smoked cigarettes and passed around hip flasks of brandy, and he'd listened to the strange arboreal chorus. He thought this time there were more voices out there among the trees. He tapped his prosthesis against his silver eyetooth.

The lodge itself crowded the summit of a butte overlooking the upper falls of the gorge. Matasui Hot Springs was an amalgam of old eastern pagoda and Nineteenth Century French chalet; very rustic and very exclusive. The parking lot notched the hillside; a rusty guardrail demarcated a sheer drop of at least sixty meters. Theirs were the only vehicles in the lot.

Mossy flagstone steps made a series of switchbacks up to the main building. The seven went single file, Nanashi at the rear. He gripped the slick wooden rail and scanned the road until it dwindled far below into the misty woods. He didn't think they'd been followed, but it paid to be cautious. Powerful forces surrounded Muzaki, after all.

*   *   *

Nanashi disliked the proprietors, an obsequious, elderly couple from Tokyo. The couple presided at the front door with a contingent of young men who fought amongst themselves over a handful of valises and overnight bags the Herons had brought along. Nanashi overheard Haru explain to Muzaki that the Herons owned a significant stake in the lodge. The details were cloudy; Nanashi knew the establishment made a nice honest front for the syndicate, and a terrific place for the bosses to relax and conduct business far from prying eyes in the city. Indeed, the city literally crawled with spies; they scuttled in every nook and cranny,
like cockroaches
, as Uncle Kojima had said a dozen times a day. He'd been right, too. Old, stately Kojima, collector of walking canes, fingers, and women -- shot ninety-six times by a pair of goons wielding Chinese submachine guns, right there in his own satin sheets on his own enormous bed. What an ignominious end for a modern day warlord.

The twins were given custody of Muzaki. They flanked him like attack dogs while he inspected the rather expansive foyer as it opened into a common room decorated with plush furniture, bamboo pots, and a stone fireplace already crackling behind ornamental grates. Here and there were marble lamps and apparently authentic statuary (arms and heads were broken off!), and on a carpeted dais, a baby grand piano gleamed like a piece of black ivory. A long, shiny bar formed an L near sliding doors that led onto a patio, which extended beyond the cliff and into open space. Of course, Koma, Amida, and Haru made directly for the bar where a tall, bald man in a silk shirt and suspenders was already lining the counter with shots of whiskey.

Nanashi stepped out to make a brief tour of the grounds. He followed the crushed stone path around the perimeter of the lodge and several outbuildings. These latter were private bungalows, and all appeared empty, their doors locked and windows shuttered. He peered through the glass, and was greeted by darkness and silence. Behind the central building was a storage shed and a low timber building that snugged into the hill. A sign on the door marked it as the bath house. More paths spiraled from the central axis into the shrubbery. It was rapidly becoming too dim to appraise the situation much further, so he went inside. He selected a table adjacent the terrace and told the unctuous proprietor, who’d slithered over with a bottle and glasses, to away with the booze and fetch him green tea and honey. His companions were enjoying themselves immensely -- they clustered around Muzaki, who seemed to be involved in teaching them a card trick, or passing around a wallet photograph.

A few minutes later, Jiki and Mizo came over, their captive in tow. “Hey, you watch this guy for a while,” Jiki said, pointing to Muzaki.

“Yeah,” Mizo said. “We're going to get wasted.”

Muzaki settled his hulk across from Nanashi. He smiled, cave-like.

The proprietor returned with tea and poured it for Nanashi and Muzaki and hung around rubbing his hands together entirely too long until Nanashi drew his revolver from its shoulder holster and set it on the table. The proprietor went away.

“So.” Muzaki sipped his tea. “We wait.”

Nanashi nodded. He holstered the gun and smoothed his wet hair against his skull.

Darkness slipped over the land. The rain was back and it had brought the wind. He shivered despite the warmth of the lodge. The guffaws and raucous cries of his comrades at the bar reminded him of the jeering birds, and he felt strangely alone.

“I like you, Nanashi,” Muzaki said.

“Thank you. I admire you, as well.” In the awkward silence that followed, Nanashi poured the remainder of the tea. He snapped his fingers at the proprietor, who carefully lurked just beyond eavesdropping vantage. The man scurried to fetch another pot.

“You’ve seen my fights?”

“Oh, certainly. My father never missed one. We watched them together.” Nanashi didn’t think about his previous life when he could avoid it. This memory knifed through the fog, the denials, and incised itself upon his mind.

“Ah. I am glad to hear such things in my declining years,” Muzaki said.

“In fact, my father was something of a scholar regarding the lives of the great wrestlers. He intended to write a book one day. He studied your biography closely. And the documentary that was done in the 1980s.”

“Such a bit of nonsense and fluff. I was vainglorious in my youth.”

“With reason.” Nanashi was impressed with the big man’s recovery from the anxious journey. He appeared altogether more relaxed and collected than his circumstances warranted. The Herons possessed a reputation for casual malice and sadism. Every gang in the land knew of the ghouls Mizo and Jiki, the Terrible Two. Surely Muzaki knew, as well. “How do you come by fearlessness?”

“Is such a thing possible?”

“Well, then. How do you come by the illusion of fearlessness? That is arguably a more formidable accomplishment.”

“Fear arises from the unknown. I now understand my situation perfectly. Besides, I am not truly here in the larger sense. None of us are. I am curious, though. Why is it that most gangsters talk with their mouths closed? All that grunting makes it difficult to understand what they are saying.”

“Makes them sound tough. Like bad guys in the movies.” Nanashi glanced at his associates--gibbons, snarling and strutting. Saddened, he flicked his gaze toward the darkness beyond the terrace. “It has occurred to me, more and more, that this existence is one of reckless waste. We labor in futility.”

“Ha! My friend…such a morose comment. And you’re completely sober.”

“I think we were all better off when I was a happy drunk.”

“The world adores happy drunks and it deifies fools. Did I not play the buffoon in the ring? No one really loved me until the costumes, the play acting and charades that replaced the real blood and tears of my sacred profession. When I abandoned sport and became a caricature, I ascended unto that most sublime tier of entertainers. I once dressed as a bat, like a
luchador
. Oh, the agony.”

Nanashi remembered the bat costume, indeed. And the fake metal chairs used as bludgeons, the fake blows, red dye and caramelized sugar. His father had stopped watching by then, had stuffed his notes and papers into a box and pretended he’d never been particularly interested in the first place.

“It is strange that you ended up with these thugs,” Muzaki said. “Something wondrous and terrible occurred in your youth.”

“I was discovered living a vagrant’s life in an alley. Heron family rescued me, redeemed me.”

“Like baby Moses discovered in his basket. What came before the basket?”

“I’m the Man with No Name. I drink, brood, kill. The past is immaterial.”

“Ah. Fuck the past!”

“Fuck the past!”

There was a scuffle at the bar. Mizo, red-faced and swearing, clutched Haru’s tie. Haru waved a flip knife. There was laughter as the others pulled them apart and shoved glasses into their hands in an attempt to drown their whiskey-fueled aggression by the counterintuitive method of killing fire with fire. Nanashi said, “The future is unwritten. I could stand and walk through the door and disappear in any direction. Why is that so difficult to remember in the present?”

“Because death and destruction follow the Man with No Name wherever he goes. This is the natural order of the universe.” Muzaki’s smile was strange. His scars seemed to become more livid and to stretch in discomfiting ways. For a moment, the essential atavism of his countenance was accentuated; its intelligence and
humanity,
receding into the pits of his eyes.

Nanashi concentrated on the darkness. “Koma keeps me around because I am steady. I never lose my head when trouble comes.”

“A helpful talent in your business.”

“Yes.” Nanashi shifted his gaze and all was again well with Muzaki’s face. “There are six bullets. I could fire them in the order of the danger my brethren present. Two for Amida. Two for Haru. If I were lucky, I might strike Jiki in the heart or neck and need but a single shot. That would leave Koma and Mizo. Could you cross the floor and take one of them before he gathered his wits? I would suggest Koma as he has fewer to gather.”

Muzaki signaled. “Mr. Innkeeper, bring my friend and I a drink. Something strong. Something to fuck the past before it fucks him.”

Nanashi’s drink came -- a cup of jet, pungent alcohol. “This is my seventh year sober.” He balanced the cup in his palm, then gulped the whiskey all at once. Sweet ever loving hell, it was good. He trembled. The innkeeper promptly poured again. “Uh, oh,” Nanashi said and made the booze disappear.

“To the hells with sobriety.” Muzaki upended his cup into a mouth missing several teeth. “We cannot afford the luxury of a clear mind.” He removed a piece of paper from his pocket. He leaned across the table. His breath was foul. “Take this. It’s different from the bad one I showed your brothers. Keep it under your pillow when you sleep tonight.”

Nanashi examined the paper. It had been crumpled and smoothed a hundred times. It was yellow and spackled with oil spots, or water stains. “What is this?”

“The beautiful thing that awaits us all. Focus on the imperfections in the paper and slowly count to five. Then close your eyes, but gently, don’t squeeze them shut, and turn your face toward the lamp over there.”

“I wonder what the point of this is.”

“Haven’t you ever faced the sun and traced the veins inside your eyelids?”

“Not recently.”

“You’ll understand. Start counting.”

“Perhaps now is not the time for riddles, Muzaki-san.”

“Yes, it is. Here’s one -- I once had seven brothers. Like Saturn, father ate my brothers, but my mother was clever. She swaddled a suckling pig and fed it to him in my place.”

“That seems more like a mystery than a riddle…or a joke of poor taste.”

“Ha! And as Polyphemus was taken with Odysseus, your mirth delights me.”

“You should decide between the Romans and the Greeks. Will you devour me last?”

“Are you drunk already, brave Ronin? Come, indulge me. Look at the paper and count.” He gave Nanashi a friendly slap to help him concentrate.

Nanashi concentrated on the blotches on the paper -- some were dark and sufficiently ominous to have escaped from some doctor’s inkblot book. He counted to five, then closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the lamp hanging near their table. Its light chased shadows across his eyelids. “Shit!” He caught the edge of the table to keep from toppling.

“Most people see Jesus.”

“Where did you get this? What is it?”

“An American gave me one of those when I was a boy. He was one of my father’s associates -- a military person, I suspect. So many of father’s friends were, after all. We’d retired outside after dinner on a pleasant summer evening. The man asked me if I liked magic. He showed me a piece of paper much like this one, and told me what to do. My father wasn’t pleased. They had an argument and the man apologized. He winked at me behind Father’s back and let me keep the paper to play with, to show the other boys at school.”

“I didn’t see Jesus.” Nanashi’s vision still swam red. “Or the Buddha.”

“No? Not everyone does. What was it, then?”

“The other one.”

“You are the kindest of them. You are also the worst of them. It would be easy to love or hate you, Nanashi-san. That is why I am going to give you a rabbit’s prayer. My gift to a fellow traveler.”

“A rabbit’s prayer.”

Muzaki nodded gravely. “Remember not to fuck up when the moment arrives. You’ll have one chance.”

“Huh?” Nanashi said. The booze was hitting him like a truck.

“Hey, Nanashi!” Amida called from the bar. His collar was open, his usually immaculate hair was disheveled. “Come join us in the springs. Hurry up!”

“Oh, do let’s,” Muzaki said as Amida staggered away through an open panel on the opposite end of the room.

Through this side doorway and down some steps, they exited the lodge and made their way along a path to the timber bathhouse. Inside was a low-ceilinged cave Nanashi was sure he’d dreamt of before. Steam rose from an oblong pool. The bottom and sides of the pool were composed of smoothed, natural stone. Green and blue light rippled against the walls and the men’s shadows capered there, like silhouettes cast by a magic lantern.