Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha

by Richard Monaco

  “Insect,” she whispered, meaning Reiko, rushing at him where he struggled to spin her daughter from his back as uMubaya stood off his attackers. There was shame in her fury. She knew she’d not outlive this day, one way or another.

  As he twisted around she glimpsed his face, streaked with blood from Osan’s ripping nails as he rammed his elbow into her ribs and she dropped away but managed to clutch his knees.

  “Crazy girl!” he cried, trying to kick free as Issa reached him.

  There was no help or time. The various factions were still fighting. The Zulu had knocked one man down and stabbed the other and was turning to the Chamberlain. He’d have to kill Issa to save his life. His sword went up…

  Sixteen

  Takezo Zato

  He was at the foot of the jet black, shiny platform where the frog-like lord in darkly gleaming armor and red-eyed mask of a beautiful, softly smiling, somehow feminine face, moved in a very slow, stately dance. He was singing. His dwarfish minions were all around among the blade-edged rocks and steely trees.

  Takezo understood the song. Understood the façade. Understood many things there were no words for. Like the beautiful female clothed in a cloudy exquisiteness. The frog was beckoning and singing to Takezo. Behind him the vague beauty seemed to have blended onto a giant screen painting of vast cliffs lifting up into a wild, heavenly skyscape of formally wild clouds and golden beings. Below were dark, multi-armed fiends. The black, gleaming frog was in his face, dancing, gesturing.

  “You are one of us,” he said in a croak and hiss. “Come.”

  Except Takezo was already up on the platform and running for the screen, aware if he got there fast enough he could blend into it, the space, sweet, soft, infinite colors, tender shades of edgeless love…

  Gone.

  Wind like a wall falling on him, rolling him and he heard the thunk of missed swordcuts and the clink as his blade met another, Yoshi’s. He was flat on his belly, the erratic blasts ripping at his kimono.

  “Still here,” he grunted.

  “Blind dog!” he thought he heard Yoshi snarl.

  Another voice, just above his head, the one he wanted to hear, a hissing purr of command:

  “Yoshi! Do nothing!”

  A muffled response. Takezo groped around with his blade as if it were a cane. The numbing pain and exhaustion was starting to press him down flat like a vast stone.

  “What else from him?” he responded. Touched something and twisted to snap a cut which hit nothing.

  The voice was on the other side, now, and close.

  “Wait!” he said.

  Is he a snake? Takezo wondered.

  “Why, killer of the innocent?” he returned. “More speeches to come?”

  Takezo crawled back and to the left to maybe flank him.

  This is the last man I mean to slaughter, he said to himself. Assuming I can…

  “Just this,” was the response, audible over the incredible roaring that blotted almost all other sound away. “Why did I hire you?”

  “What?”

  What? Good question…

  Their heads were very close, now, so that the shouting was, strangely intimate and, still, barely heard.

  “I already had the answers, Takezo. That was the point. So why did I hire you?”

  The weight was pressing him down into darkness, again. His mind moved ponderously. He wanted the fever back where things were clearer.

  “Why? Ah …”

  “To find me. To find me.”

  “Find …”

  He was on the stage trying to reach the immense screen painting where the female shapes vied with giant flowers and undulant waterflows for sleek, curved and graceful perfection; the dwarfish, frog-looking leader blocked him, arms held out wide with fire-dripping ragged-edged swords in each. They were dancing and he was aware of music, this time, almost too deep to separate from the overall roar that sounded like mountains of fire and torrents of wild wind out in the surrounding darkness.

  It might have been Miou, face and form blurred, veiled by sweet mists of perfume and the filmy translucence of those infinitely pale blossoms. The clash of fire and steel didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but reaching her, slipping away, melting into that impossible forest where the only meaning was silence.

  ‘Stand aside,’ he demanded.

  ‘Embrace me, my son,’ was the response. ‘Leave dreaming to sleepers. Awaken with me.’

  ‘No! There’s only she. Shit on all the rest.’

  Dozens of the tiny, machine-like creatures, spitting sparks and rasping, discordance swarmed around him. Metallic shrieks, rasps, clanks, bangings and long howls that might have been a storm-wind itself blowing through their empty skulls.

  He tried to run and was tripped and held by the pack of them. He writhed and rolled and kicked. Got a hand on the master’s leg and yanked him down. The ineffable picture loomed over them, and his sight flowed up and back into it, into the misty hints and partial forms and…

  He was back in the howling darkness but his left hand agonizingly gripped what seemed a wristbone. That was good. Better to be holding something because they were rolling with other debris in some direction with, it seemed, nothing to check them…

  Seventeen

  Gentile

  Felt the blood trickling behind his ear where he’d been hit by something. He realized he’d been unconscious. Came back… to a ripping-screaming, as the roof and walls tore apart under the incredible pressure of the storm. As he became aware of the blurred struggles of Issa, Reiko, Osan, the Zulu and others in the room that was suddenly open and roofless, he felt the strange fear (that children feel) of being bereft of protection, betrayed into an orphan’s undefended world.

  A flash and he was rolling to his feet and lunging, once more, to defend Osan. He felt like a boy because he actually shouted, in Italian:

  “A, madre mia! Madre mia!”

  And then, in an explosion of shattered wood, they were all scattered, tumbling, staggering, flopping the length of the vanishing building.

  Is not the solid world a dreaming? his mind asked even as he flipped end over end with the rest.

  So no blow landed and they all went out into the storm-blasted street. Reiko gripped Osan while two of his men looped and tied a rope around her neck and handed it to him. Issa was out of sight in the smoke and dirt blinded landscape and semi-solid rain. uMubaya was behind a mass of logs which left him in an eddy of relative calm. Gentile crawled closer, intent on Osan. He noted the wind was actually ripping clothes off people. He noted that Reiko was dragging her behind him as he clawed forward. It seemed mad. Where was he going? The world was blowing away.

  Eighteen

  Issa

  Was going the wrong way because she hadn’t seen her newly-exed lover dragging

  her child towards the gate, the wind at his back. She groped along on her knees, eyes mainly shut as the wind clawed and rain slapped across her face.

  Insect, she kept thinking. I will stamp you to pulp…

  Yet, her mind was not entirely focused on that alone. Which peripherally surprised her. Her daughter yes, and the treachery of Reiko, yes; but she wanted to find Takezo. Desperately. Made no sense; desperately.

  Free my child… help me, Takezo…

  “But what can that blind fool do?” she retorted into the blotting howl. “What disturbs my mind?”

  First help Osan… then find him? Why? He has no power, no prospects… I have no reason to persist… put an end to this… this life is stupid… what could that masterless samurai do for anyone? Are there not many lovers his equal? No power, no wealth… no…

  Nothing but the ripping wind, sucking her breath away, stinging, blasting her down into the saturated earth.

  “Osan!” she yelled, futilely. “Osan!”

  In the end we are so simple, she saw. Hunger… fear… and need for those we need… and what we need…

  The poison pin was back in her hair. It belonged in Reiko’s heart
. That was where she would sheathe it, in the end.

  Reiko, she said in her mind, I am hungry for you…

  Crawled, half-stood… fell… rolled… crawled on…

  Nineteen

  Takezo Zato

  Their foreheads were touching where they clutched each other. Their shouts were audible as whispers. The storm pressed them flat like bugs under clear crystal. Isolated on little islands of blinding force and intolerable, ear-popping sounds, maybe moments from sudden death or wounding by wind-whipped objects. Driven glops of water and mud spattered.

  “I have you,” Takezo pointed out. “Explain.”

  “Simple,” yelled the purring, voice. “You hid. You were found.”

  “So what? Why care? You, a great lord.”

  Something hit his back and Takezo grunted. Something soft. No damage.

  “So are you,” was the shouted whisper of an answer. “So are you. I test you. You fled the test when you were young. Could not flee this time, Takezo.”

  “You killed her,” Takezo replied. “I now kill you. Is that the test?”

  “It is good you are strong. Much stronger than your unruly brother.”

  “I am blind. Lost everything. No need to live. So, we both die.”

  “What about your brother? Want him to rule our clan?”

  “I have no …”

  “No?” The face was close. Takezo could feel the heat of his sourish breath. “Think another time. You took the name Jiro. What was your true name?”

  “Who cares? What was yours?”

  Are we really talking like this?

  Because the storm was reaching a peak that seemed a notch away from blowing away the world. The earth bubbled; they were soaked; muddy pools seethed around them. They kept flopping into the air together, banging back and part-rolling. He wondered how far they’d been driven, already. Everything was catching up and his consciousness was slipping; he didn’t want the fever, now. Wanted to finish this. He’d probably never get another chance, even if he survived to try again. Anyway, he didn’t really want to survive.

  So he twisted around between rolling bounces and ripped the blade, glued by blood to his swollen right hand, in an arc that would split the smaller man’s spine… except he was half in and half out of the strange painting in the coal-lit, harsh blackness of the underworld. The metallic little creatures had him by the legs and held him halfway dragged out of the lyric wonder of that magical landscape, an amazing world where the air, the plants, the sky, light, soft and soothing sounds all caressed him and the female was there, moving like a heatless flame among the rich, graceful fronds.

  The boss devil was standing at the border, the subtle barrier that blocked him from the picture-world except he stepped on the prostrate ronin and started walking up his body. He was suddenly a bridge for it to enter.

  Already, the dark outline was staining the shimmeringly pure atmosphere. He struggled in nightmare. Cursed:

  ‘You can’t come here! You can’t come here!’

  ‘I am part of you. Where you go, I will be, my son.’

  ‘Go back. You are a stench of darkness. When next I move my bowels you will be gone forever.’

  The fever-dream broke as his sword stroke cut sand and the wiry ninja master shifted aside. Then a gust flipped them both end-over-end, still locked together.

  “Fool,” Tanba shouted in his ear. “I am your father.”

  Why not? he thought, gathering himself to strike again. Why expect sense?

  “How do I test it?” he demanded. “Ask my mother?”

  “You can, she’s not dead.”

  “Ha, ha. No one’s ever dead. Miou is just in hiding.”

  “She betrayed our clan.”

  “You betray everyone!” Gritted his teeth. “You made me an orphan of lies!” Dead mother… dead father… “Why?”

  The mouth, breath at his ear:

  “Great ninjas should have no real history.”

  Takezo tried stabbing up along his own body this time and got a slice in.

  “Idiot!” yelled his putative father. “Are you deaf as well as blind? You are my son.” He gripped Takezo with steel fingers and shook him. “No one but me knows my history!”

  ‘How wonderful you are.”

  The wind slammed at them. He let go his aching left hand grip and tried to break free. Tanba held him with hooked, steely fingers. The rain hurt, driven into his face.

  “No more,” he shouted, not even to the other; not even to himself. Just no more. “I can’t even kill you.”

  He was trying to toss the sword loose, feeling it pull and tear at the raw flesh of his palms. His fingers stayed locked. His left hand shoved futilely at the wiry weight that clawed into his arm and body. A blast rolled them again, over and over.

  He realized how weak he was getting. Fading. Why not?

  Can’t kill him… so… so… break away… why not? Can’t… no place left… no place…

  Because it wasn’t really the picture either, not the fever, not… not…

  “Let go!” he demanded, both skidding now, pelted by small objects that might have been pebbles; rolling and splashing, then hitting something big and soft that stopped them. A horse. Dead and bloody. The ripping downpour suddenly slackened.

  “You found me,” said Tanba.

  “Have you no other children? Leave me in peace.”

  “You are the best one. I need you.”

  Orphan of lies…

  He kicked and struggled, twisted, battering softly against the soft horse belly, blood thickly spatting.

  “Let go! Great ninja my great ass!”

  He wanted to sail out into the nowhere of the impossible storm. He wanted to let himself be cast like dice. He wanted to find Issa. It kept coming back to that. No reason, no logic, no sense: just that. As sensible as the raging, random air.

  Twenty

  uMubaya

  Bleeding, he half-crawled out of the rubble, following Reiko who was dragging the girl behind him, covered by his loyal men, blurring, then going sharp as the streaming smoke and sandy soil whipped past.

  Spotted Gentile crawling ahead of him with mad intensity.

  He desires her, as I desire my other… this is as good a time to die as any… I will spear this dog and my name will never be known and that is fine, too…

  Gentile stood up and dove forward into the wall of wind, digging in madly, getting close enough to grab the Chamberlain’s leg and wrestle with him as his nearest henchmen closed in.

  The Zulu’s spear was in his right hand; his left touched the trussed, headless body of Colin.

  “Aiiiii,” he sobbed into the overwhelming fury; an idea was clear and was necessary.

  While the Italian struggled with Reiko, the black man sliced the rope, freeing Osan and in almost the same motion he looped and tied the free end under the armpit of the dead Scot with a sailor’s knot.

  Gentile was dragged aside by one of the henchmen. Reiko, in a mad, intense, violent explosion of monomaniacal energy, dug in and plowed on.

  “To the castle,” he cried. “We wait out the storm. Then we destroy all enemies.”

  No one was close enough to actually hear him or wonder why he was dragging the dead body behind him into the typhoon’s full fury.

  Twenty-One

  Gentile

  Gentile kicked loose from the samurai, sailed several feet in the air, flopped and slammed into the thick wall at the end of the compound hard enough to jar a brief blackout.

  As the blurring sheets of rain puffed away and were gone the wind thinned out the smoke so that he could see a lot more of the hillside where the armies were now clinging to the ground in lines and heaps, yet, incredibly, were still fighting in sporadic flurries, swords and spears whipping around as men were tossed and spun. He saw a mass of riderless horses galloping broadside to the wind in desperate panic, then they were suddenly blasted into a tumbling wave of flesh that broke over the struggling warriors in a crushing pile. A line of m
en were whipped together by a coil of wind.

  It made a picture. He could see sprays of blood whipped into mist. Imagined the chaos of cries and agony.

  “The painter is a madman,” he said, meaning God, the words sucked away at his mouth,

  And then a body hit him, soft and hard.

  Ma, he thought. Mano di divino…

  “Osan,” he said.

  He held her. There was no way he wasn’t going to. The wind eddied and shifted but was softened by the backwash effect of the wall.

  “You,” she said.

  “I keep trying,” he told her, faces close, hair plastered flat.

  “Yes,” she responded.

  “Maybe we’re lost.”

  “Storms end.”

  “As do we.”

  “Yes. Are you afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am as well,” she said, shouted. “I am afraid I have much less character than I believed.”

  This conversation, as the world was tearing itself to pieces, seemed perfectly reasonable. The feel of her, the scent, the clasp of her long fingers on his shoulder made him not want to move. There he was, bleeding, exhausted, trapped and probably doomed and was closer to being happy than he had any memory of.

  “Less?” he wondered.

  She looked at him from inches away. Her face was bruised, dirt-stained with a trickle of blood creasing down her forehead, eyebrows washed-away, soaked hair knotted and twisted by the wind. His breath caught in his throat, looking at her. He wanted to physically draw her into himself, press their lips together and melt flesh-to-flesh like blending sweet wines in a cup. His long, fine-featured face stayed close.

  “What use are fine words?” she countered.

  He put his lips to her ear, saying:

  “Not words. The soul they express.”

  So she just looked at him in silence. Her other hand, volitionless, touched and caressed his cheek. The wind pulled and pushed. Smoke clouds opened and closed. Past her face he could see the warriors on the hill in the mad and absurd turmoil, knotted in confusion, blended by the varying air, chopping and stabbing without strategy or tactics, for no loss or gain, just fighting in a terrifying yet tawdry reflex.