Yazu was concentrating on trying to hear the conversation across the room. Toshiro was saying something like:
“… a fine high-class slut… with that weasel …”
He didn’t look up as the gangster padded heavily over, yawning and stretching. Then the muscular, nearly-naked man bowed ponderously to the table. His eyes were small and narrow, nose a twist of sallow flesh. He had the skin of a man who didn’t spend much time outdoors.
Takezo barely noticed, still straining his brain at the fragmentary message – if message it was. Gentile bowed back while Yazu kept twisting his lips together combining frowns with winces as Toshiro spoke:
“Good day.” Aimed his expressionless face at the little man. “An armed weasel. Dangerous.”
“Insolent,” retorted Yazu. As if surprised by the force of his own words, he stood up, feeling a little floaty but determined, holding his undrawn sword.
His sensei took note, now, tilting his head in a reasonably feminine manner: noted the newcomer’s face was set in a sullen mask.
“So,” Toshiro said, “here I stand unarmed and you wave a sword at me and talk from the belly like a samurai.”
His hung-over half-naked companion shuffled closer on his absurdly thick legs while the whore and the owner looked on.
“What is wrong?” wondered Gentile, alert and tense. He wasn’t getting used to these sudden, violent confrontations. He’d never known such touchy men, not even Sicilians.
“A matter of money,” explained hard-faced Toshiro. To Takezo: “You are lovely, miss. Why associate with this weasel?”
Takezo rolled his eyes. Never a surprise. He remembered his own dealings with his now disciple.
“A matter of lies,” Yazu said, with almost convincing force, gripping his blade tight, like an irritable swordsman.
In the past he would have run by now, his master thought, smiling, faintly. Have I but given the horse soft sandals and done him no favor?
“A matter of a broken neck,” quoth Toshiro, squinting and semi-crouching. “And that blade will be sheathed in your skinny behind!”
This entertained the onlookers considerably. Takezo intervened:
“Good sir,” he soothed in the unnatural, high-pitched voice he was affecting, “I understand perfectly. We’ll resolve this matter easily.”
“But master,” cried Yazu. Caught between showing relief, anger and pride, suddenly, Takezo realized, he was starting to understand the contradictions of being a warrior. “I do not owe this malediction –”
“Master?” overrode the vastly underslung second player who now loomed over the table, glistening with sweat and stinking of sour brew and mouth-breathing sleep. He peered at the Italian.
“You his sensi?” he wanted clarified, for some reason.
“Eh?” Gentile responded.
“Yes,” said the companion, “he teaches him dice-cheat jitsu.”
Takezo inhaled a big cup of sake in a somewhat unfeminine fashion.
“What handsome men,” he fluted. “Don’t injure these poor fellows. Come back later and take tea with me. Thank you.”
“Oh ho,” said Toshiro, “I don’t see tea in your cup, unlicensed one.”
His companion chuckled. The girl at the counter giggled behind her plump hand. The owner frowned.
“No trouble in the place,” he said. “Go outside for argument and insult.”
“Unlicensed?” asked Takezo, taking a fresh pour of rice wine.
“Better be careful,” insisted Yazu, ready to draw, a little giddy, heart working hard, alone in his little island of inner agony.
“Outside,” reprised the tavern-man. “Toshiro, Koji, do you hear?”
“Unlicensed yujo,” inquired the girl, giggling again, “where did you steal such finery?”
Toshiro sank to his knees and sat back near Takezo.
“I like a big woman,” he set forth, reaching for a cup.
“Are you invited?” the Italian wondered, flushing a little with irritation. “I weary of broils,” he went on in his language. “I wish to paint and explore the wonder of the world, not spill blood at every turn.”
“What gabble is that?” asked Koji of the vast hams and thighs.
“I know most of your speech,” responded Gentile, in Japanese, “partly because it’s usually limited to expressing violence.” He knew that wasn’t true but said it anyway. He was angry, now, for the first time. He’d had enough nonsense, pride, face and false face, as he put it to himself. “There’s so much worthwhile in life and all you want to do is fight all the time.”
“Go away sensei,” sneered Toshiro, shifting a little closer to the charming lady, as he perceived it. “Let’s have a drink.” Scrunched his face up at Yazu who was still standing there, uncertainly. “Pay me my money or go away,” he concluded, turning back with a gap-toothed smile, to Takezo.
“I owe you nothing,” protested the skinny gambler. “You shame yourself to claim it.”
“You are a delightful fellow,” the disguised ronin detective said. “Have a drink. I will come back later to see you.”
The delightful fellow put his hand gently on his wrist and Takezo brushed it off coyly, he hoped. He wanted to sustain the role so ninjas wouldn’t be able to track him from there. He also liked the idea that he’d defused the situation.
“You have a strange voice,” said Toshiro. “But tender skin.”
At which Koji of the massive underpinnings began to vibrate with laughter.
“He’s a sissy dressed up,” he guffawed. “Roll over and he’ll plug your rear end hole for you!”
At which the whore’s giggle became a near shriek of joy and the tavernkeeper squinted hard and long at Takezo. Toshiro’s ardor was instantly choked as he groped for the suddenly doubtful beauty’s breasts and managed to discover the steely chest under the flowing, expensive robes before he was brushed away, again, this time hard enough to topple him sideways – no mean feat.
He leapt up into a squat, red-faced, furious. Takezo took up his food picks and poked a last pickle into his mouth. Gentile stood up beside Yazu.
“Queer!” Toshiro shouted. “Let’s view your cock and balls!”
He dove for the ronin, snatching at his outer robe, having learned nothing from the way he was levered over a moment ago. He was met by a pick hitting his forehead with a crack that made the onlookers wince, leaving a round, bloody spot that, Yazu thought, looked like the third eye of the bodhisattvas.
Toshiro sat back on his heels, both hands to his shocked head as the rest watched and Takezo rose, gracefully, and bowed himself and his companions out the tavern door, not neglecting to toss a few pieces of money behind him. He had the ring and the scrap of paper in one hand.
They stood on the porch in wind that had definitely picked up a notch or two. Pedestrians were gripping their hats and shielding their faces from the gusts in the street. Takezo was thoughtful, holding his fluttering, chrysanthemum-patterned uchigi around him.
“Gen-tile-san,” he said, “it’s no poem. Must be code.” Shrugged. “Who can tell? Either I give it to them or destroy it.”
“Code, you think?”
“Bright fish,” he quoted, “three docks… and so on.”
Yazu leaned close, looking past his master into the dim interior of the tavern, half expecting an attack. The wind shook the overhang and sang along the eaves. Leaves rattled.
“Bright fish?” Yazu wondered aloud. “Three docks. Sensi! I know where that is.”
“Where what is?” Gentile asked.
“On the waterfront,” the little man said. “I can take you there.”
Forty-Five
View from the sea near sunset
They weren’t going to make the dock area, uMubaya decided. The current and shifting wind was driving them onshore short and north of the main coves and piers. Another big wave had just lifted them really high and he could see a bright, white beach backed by lines of dark pines packed shoulder-to-shoulder.
The city was sinking into a reddish-gold haze, deepening as the sun melted itself behind the long, undulant, cyclonic clouds. Taro was still green but kept working the oars. Osan was just holding on, head bobbing on her graceful neck. She was considering how to approach her father and thinking, as they crashed up and down through the hissing spume that stung her face and blurred her vision, how the blood-red sunset, the deep, burning richness, seemed to be consuming the entire darkening horizon, as if the land were melting and sinking into a vast furnace…
“I’m a bad swimmer,” Taro shouted, the wind sucking away his words.
“We’ll make shore,” called back the Zulu. He didn’t bother to mention his own negative aquatic skills.
“Look there!” cried Osan, pointing to the city.
They didn’t hear her; didn’t have to because in the deep twilight shadows
where the sea had blended away seamlessly into the land it seemed as if the molten sunset had, somehow, burst up from the edge of the city in a terrific ball of flame, flinging a shattering fire over hundreds of suddenly blazing buildings, burning fragments going up and up and arcing out over the water that reflected the violence, hissing down like fireworks as masses of smoke, sinking and roiling heavily in the twisting winds, covered the dockside area.
It was silent as the stars, Osan more or less thought, and then they heard a muffled crack and boom like nearby thunder, wrung through the uneven gusts.
Those houses burn like dried leaves, the Zulu thought.
And then there was no time for thinking because the waves were starting to break as the shore sloped into shallows. Taro cursed. uMubaya shouted over his shoulder:
“Get up on the next wave.”
Backed off on the oars and the policeman followed suit, not really having heard him. The black man had learned this technique landing on strange shores in longboats: they held the craft on an angle so it would ride up the reverse slope of a wave… then row hard forward to catch and hang on the breaking crest.
To the prince’s surprise, it worked the first time and they were surfing in, falling down the front as it kept sinking away under them; moving fast enough to slow the wind at their backs as the beach and wall of pines, red-lit in strips by the staccato clouds, came up at impressive speed.
Osan was looking back at the spreading flames maybe five miles across the bay. The massed smoke, underlit by the explosively spreading fire, was pumping up, blowing out, down drafting under the last dribbles of sunset that seemed like clotting blood.
Is Hell come to earth? She asked herself, soaked with spray, tilted between heaven and slamming sea, watching what might have been the first spark of the world’s general conflagration and deserved destruction…
*
Somewhat Earlier
Yazu had gone home and come back to rejoin Gentile and his teacher. His wife, amazingly altered, had fallen on her knees and begged him to stay home, citing the coming storm, the rumors of war; then saying she’d seen a diviner who’d read the stars and the cracks in a tortoise shell and determined that he, Yazu the Reckless, she said, was in terrible danger, surrounded by bad and ruthless men, that a great disaster loomed over them all and devils were gathering in shadows all around.
She’d clutched his legs and since she was heavier and stronger than he, he’d struck and levered at her with his sheathed sword to pry her loose, shouting that his honor and loyalty forbade him to desert his master.
‘That drunk who uses you like a toilet stick!’ she exclaimed, weeping, face down in the dirt in front of their house, hands groping for his long feet which he kept just ahead of her fingers as she heaved forward. The wind blew dust over them both. A few neighbors looked curiously at the tableau. ‘I beg you, husband, you are needed here not going to certain death with a madman all mock!’
‘And fear, too,’ he yelled back, stepping forward. ‘Want me to shame myself?’
Stepping forward was an error because her wide, strong, work-hardened hands got a good grip on his lead ankle.
‘Stay with us!’ she cried. ‘Your son needs a father.’
‘Release me,’ he just said, not struggling this time. ‘I won’t go back to what I was.’
So she just let go and he stood there. The sun, past noon, was regularly blotted and freed by the flowing, curving clouds. In effect, they went into and out of the light. She stood up, furious, frustrated.
‘You are no great fighter, no samurai, not even a boss’s captain. They will step on you like a worm on the road.’
‘I know that, woman. But this is the better way. I had no face for anything but cowering and sneaky ways.’ He stamped one foot. The wind fluttered his baggy “knickers” and loose shirt. ‘No more. No more. I’ll shut my eyes and die but never cower, again.’ A cloudshadow covered them and then was past and the baking hot, humid sun went on like a back-mirrored stagelamp. ‘Never.’
So he came back and the three of them worked their way down to the waterfront in the late afternoon, the wind blowing the heat around like an open furnace door.
Takezo was still in the fancy women’s clothes; Yazu had picked up his master’s katana from his place next to the coffin maker and held it for him like a squire.
“There,” said Yazu, pointing at a street signpost which said: BRIGHT FISH.
“Ah,” breathed the ronin, nodding, making little effort to seem feminine, at this point. “Which dock?”
There were men, here and there, securing moored boats, tying down cargo, hatches as was usual in the face of a serious storm. No one paid much attention to the three of them.
“Maybe this way,” the little pupil said, his sensei’s longsword over one shoulder. He grimaced a frown and spat towards the water, the wind breaking the spittle into a mist. “Master,” he said, suddenly, “that evil-faced criminal lied.”
“Which one?” Takezo wondered as they picked their way around barrels, rolls of rope, logs and small boats drawn well up on shore. The curved clouds blotted and wiped dimness over the steeply angled sun, going down behind them and stretching their shadows right out over the water, thinning and thickening as the light changed.
“That shitlump Toshiro, master. I owe him not a mon!”
He didn’t scuttle much anymore, Takezo noted. Didn’t look over his shoulder so much. The good side of learning to kill, the detective reflected.
Sandals on the horse, he said to himself. I’ve made him afraid to run and hide and given him unnecessary ideas instead of armor…
Gentile pointed to another sign stuck on a post at the foot of a long plank dock with fairly large boats moored alongside.
“Doesn’t that say ‘NUMBER 3 DOCK’” he asked.
It did and they went out on it behind their long shadows. The sun was tilting down towards the hills, still gold but tarnishing as if the clouds rubbed the brightness away.
Even in this protected cove around a bend in the bay the swells were lifting and twisting the wharfs, moored craft creaking and scraping their sides. The cloud-cut light seemed to synchronize with the beat of the waves.
The planks tilted and rolled enough to make it interesting. They had no way of knowing that the high decked craft about midway out (maybe 200 feet) was the one often used as a rendezvous by Issa and Reiko, where Yoshi had met them, recently.
“Now what?” Takezo asked himself, aloud, his embroidered robes phut-phutting in the steadying onshore wind. He looked around, getting no ideas.
“What was the rest?” Gentile wanted to know.
“Last ship… something … golden lantern,” the ronin detective answered.
They came near the end of the long pier. The last ship was so big it stood higher from the rocking water than even a Chinese junk and was mastless, roofed over with tented cloth.
No masts, he quoted, mentally.
Looking at it, Takezo found it odd that the sides seemed to undulate slightly as it rolled, scraped and yanked against the tensed, strain-creaking lines that held it close and fast to the pil
ings.
Bends like it might be made of straw or paper, he thought. Puffed out his cheeks and furrowed his high forehead, holding his colorful flowing cape close around himself. Strange… Each time the wave surge drove it up into the timbers the impact was clearly massive compared to any of the other boats: the thick ends were being splintered and gradually rubbed away. The sides bend by the rail and yet the hull is shattering the dock… it must be full of stones…
“Look, master!” cried Yazu, pointing.
As a cloud-shadow passed the reddened sun broke through and glinted on a big brass lantern, bright and polished, visible where an overhanging flap of covering across the deck had pulled away.
In the end, Takezo decided, it is always something ordinary or silly or pathetic that turns the key and opens the door…
They walked to about amidships. There was nothing like a gangplank or even a visible break in the strangely flexible rail section of the maybe fifteen foot high side, there, where it curved down in a long bow-bend. Timing the rise and fall he was just able to jump up enough to catch the top of the rail before it pulled away under his hands and he came crashing down in a rattle of bamboo sticks and torn fabric.
He banged his head on the bulge of the hull but kept his footing on the swaying planks, despite the wind.
More ninja tricks, he was sure. Why disguise this ship? So no one will know what it is or what’s in it… profound, Takezo… the ring leads here and… Paused because he thought he had it. Part of it.
“Was this your ship?” he asked the tall Italian.
Gentile frowned.
“Ours had …” He frowned and touched the curved, weathered, darkwood hull as it rolled up and then slowly back down, chipping at the dock. “Tall masts and a different shape… but this is covered …”
“The masts may have been shattered and cut away,” said Takezo.
“Ah, here!” said Gentile, peering up under where the ronin’s fall had rent the covering of the false side. “The gunwhale! Eh! Look just below the rail.” There was a square hole, just visible. “That’s where the cannon poked out.”
“Cannon?” queried Yazu, leaning close.
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 33
