The Samurai Strategy

by Thomas Hoover

  "Not bad." He glanced at the blossom in his hand. "I don't know why,but the camellia makes me think of you." He rotated it carefully, thenlooked back. "Let's dedicate tonight to our own sunrise."

  He inspected the flower again, then impulsively leaned forward andplaced it onto the _tatami _in front of her. Next, with the samecontrol in his powerful hands that had touched the glaze of the teabowl, he gently gripped the shoulders of her loose _yukata_. She felther body flush with warmth as slowly, gently, his strength once moreheld in check, he carefully slid back the cloth off her shoulders untilher breasts were free. Then plucking a petal from the bud, hereverently brushed one nipple, then the other.

  It was an erotic game she knew he loved, one of many. Games. Sometimesshe had imagined them inhabiting an eighteenth-century _shunga_, thosewoodblock prints picturing lovers in what she had once thoughtimpossible embraces.

  He'd once declared that the kimono was actually the most sensualgarment in the world. Take a look at some of the _shunga_, he said, andthe possibilities become obvious. Though it seems cumbersome,entangling, yet it lifts away like a stage curtain to invite all sortsof dramatic possibilities. The human nude is only interesting when halfconcealed.

  Games. She reached and took the petal from him, then ran it along thesilk of his own _kimono_, over his muscular thighs as he sat, Japanese-style, feet back. Next she lifted away the silk from the flawless ivoryskin she knew so well. She drew it along his thighs to tease him.

  "Tam . . ." He reached to slip away her _yukata_, but she

  caught his hand. Then she touched his lips with her fingers, silencinghis protest. She pushed away his kimono and trailed the petal upward,lightly brushing his own nipples. Finally she pushed him gentlybackward and smoothed her cheek against his thigh, drawing back hiskimono even more.

  The glow of the coals was dying now. As the last shadows played againsthis face, she laid the petal on the _tatami _and moved across him. . ..

  They lingered till the moon was up, then strolled back through thegarden wearing their antique wooden clogs. The air was scented, musicalwith the sounds of night. Later that evening they downed an eight-course meal off antique stoneware plates, drank steaming sake on theveranda, then made love for hours on the _futon_.

  Around midnight he ordered one more small bottle of sake, a _go_, andsuggested they move out onto the veranda again, this time to watch themoon break over the trees. She slipped on her _yukata_ and padded out.She'd just decided.

  "Tamara, I want to tell you something." He poured her small porcelaincup to the brim. "You are everything Matsuo Noda is seeking. The wayyou held the tea bowl tonight, tasted the tea. The _cha-no-yu _doesn'tlie. You have discipline, our discipline. That's very, very rare."

  "You mean, 'for a _gaijin'_?"

  "For anyone. Besides, I don't think of you that way. You are one of usnow."

  She looked into his eyes, dark in the moonlight. Then she rememberedthe _tokonoma_ alcove in the teahouse where a rugged vase had held thesingle white bud, its few petals moist as though from dew. Not abouquet, a single bud--all the flowers in the world distilled into thatone now poised to burst open.

  Kenji Asano lived that special intensity, that passion, which set Japanapart from the rest of the world.

  "Ken." Her voice was quiet. "I'll do it."

  "You mean Noda?"

  "Noda."

  He said nothing for a moment, then finally he spoke.

  "The game begins."