“Ah. Yes. Easier for me as I love you.”
Eh. Te amo… aiii… beyond all credence… Io t’amore…
“Still you ask words of me, Enzo-san?”
He forced himself to stop looking and listening to the senseless and insane conflict outside the walls. Kept his face close to her. Understood.
“This is enough,” he told her.
“No. This is all.”
Twenty-Seven
Little Yazu
He was sore and felt the dried blood cracking his wounds as he levered himself to his shaky feet and swayed there, half-crouched. He had two thoughts at once.
My family… ai… is all destroyed?
He was scanning the area, littered with shattered stuff and dead bodies, for any sign of his master. The sun blasted down again.
“The world is gone,” he muttered.
What do I do? What do I do? Is all gone? My son… my woman… my master… my…
He’d been driven by fighting and forced by wind some distance away from the walled buildings down the same road that Reiko was now plodding along, bent into the weight of the corpse he was dragging through puddles and mud, all alone now, face set, eyes wide and not really seeing the ruins around him, the dead, the massively towering cyclonic eye seeing only what his mind screened over it…
Yazu’s jaw dropped as the Chamberlain went by. He just stared.
Like a dog with a dead cat tied to his tail…
“What does this mean?” he asked himself. “Ai.”
Home, he thought. Yes… I must go home…
He looked up at the oncoming other side of the eye and wondered if he’d have time. From what he could observe the whole city must be flattened or, at least, crushed badly. What chance had his frail house? And it was coming again.
Oh, my master, he thought. I have no choice…
Twenty-Eight
Takezo Zato
So he slashed the sword that seemed to grow from his arm and ripped through the center of the black shape that was melting into formless splashes and dribbles as it spread, blighting and blotting the environment. The slash went right through it and the sticky, cold stuff got on his hand and arm. He watched it start to spread into his substance, darkening him.
He shuddered and stumbled away. Woke up.
He lay on his back, softly comfortable. He automatically opened his eyes, as much as the thick swelling allowed. A stir of wind like a cat playing with a crippled bird: a light buffet, an almost gentle, tentative touch. Clashing sounds of violent chaos further away, now. Down below him in what he immediately remembered was a heap of dead and dying men someone was whimpering and keening in dreadful pain.
“Still fighting,” he murmured.
Fever’s one thing, he considered, but I haven’t been drunk in years… Smiled, partly to see how much his face hurt. All his memories were there in an almost unique continuity. Knew he’d slept just long enough to feel temporarily restored.
He was startled because there was light and color and, for a moment, he thought he was sinking back into the fever dreaming. Didn’t want that. And then realized his left eye had just seen something, however blurred and senseless. Tried to focus but went blank, again.
He would have rested there except for the agony somewhere below, that, and the distinct smell of blood and shit. He partly sat up, struggling, sword still locked in his right hand, rocking on the uneven corpses.
“Sorry,” he said, trying to open his hand and release the hilt. “What can I do?”
Rolled and stood up, feet slipping and skidding on slick armor, sinking into soft flesh, causing gurgles and blurps of flatulence from the cushion of dead. Knew there was blood on his feet. Well, there was blood on all of him. Nothing new. A puff of air scattered a little sandy dust, already dried in the terrific sun pressure, over the side of the corpse-choked ditch.
Climbed up the side of the ravine, a foot or two, and tried to see again: a hint of glow, nothing too specific. Felt the breeze tug a little harder at him. Realized it was the other side of the storm, hitting from the opposite direction.
I should stay in this ditch since I have no goal, he thought, kneeling on the soft earth in the strong, sudden, near noon sun. Ah… wonderful… no one to kill… nothing to find…
Yet, there was something because the beautiful flow of perfect grace soundlessly said:
‘Find me.’
How could I forget? he sighed to himself. Even in mad dreams I get hired…
As he started to stand a random gust tipped him back onto the mass of men. It was comfortable and disgusting. Sighed. Rolled to hands and knees and started creeping along on the uneven heap. Prepared to clamber up again and this time stay low. One arm sank down between bodies and dropped his face into a mess of blood and stink he knew were ripped intestines. Not a new smell.
Enough. He threw himself upright and jumped up over the edge on to solid earth. Rubbed his face on the grass, spitting and gagging.
Shut his eyes and they stuck…
He was running, this time, up a slope into the dense, blurred, wet mists of the rich, fragrant landscape of brushstrokes and washes of soft colors… so pure… so pure… the darkness spreading, widening at his heels, encircling now… she was just ahead, her being revealed by the gestures of the wet air, the soft fronds, the stirred mists… hints he tried to touch with his stiff, clumsy, groping hands…
‘You must escape,’ he cried in silence.
‘I am not here,’ replied the exquisite grace that just eluded him.
The darkness was a wave, gathering, rising, cresting, closing, crashing down…
Shuddered back to the world of stiff pain. Tried to open his right hand, prying the fingers with the left. It hurt. Then, on a fresh gathering of wind opposite the raging combat that was slowly spilling away south, he heard a woman cry out. It was not exactly fear or hurt, in that voice. A kind of righteous rage and immense disgust overriding pain. He flopped the sword around until it flew from his swollen hand, tearing open the scabs so that blood dripped, again.
The light he vaguely perceived was dimming. He knew what that meant even before the next, increasing shove of the reviving typhoon that staggered him.
Here we are, he thought. Always a woman…
He got up and angled towards the voice, trying to reactivate the left eye. He kept catching blurs… grass… scattered debris… broken trees…
Heard men laughing and mocking, arguing, too. Didn’t like those voices. Caught a flash, a narrow strip of field and litter, some bodies, dead horses… turned his head and lost it. The voices were closer. The woman was scathing:
“Pigs! Go to your filth!”
Sounded familiar. Of course. There was never any chance he’d be able to walk past anything. All he wanted to do now was sleep until the end of the present age of the world and then go far, far away and sleep some more.
Then the world was slammed and went sideways… tripped… rolled and managed to get to his knees. The voices were close, blown into garble.
“Issa!” he yelled.
“What’s this?” someone called back.
“A blind man,” another said.
“Save him a taste of her,” advised a third.
Laughter.
“He can lick her behind,” recommended a third.
“He can lick mine too,” declared another to stupid laughter.
“We better get to cover,” was another opinion. “Looks bad.”
“Bah,” scoffed the first speaker, as Takezo homed in, creeping sideways on his knees. The wind had gone flat, for the moment, but that meant nothing.
He sighed. No storm or war, no holocaust could change the way men went about being cruel and stupid when they believed they were momentarily safe.
He almost tripped over a dead girl, glimpsing her in a fragment of sight. Her head was half cut off. Dark blood set it in a pool of mud. He saw where the men had Issa in a blot of shadows. He sighed again.
“How many a
re they?” he asked, closer. Counting to kill.
“Takezo,” she said. “Too many.” Her voice was controlled disgust and anger. “Ten pigs.”
“Shut up!” one yelled, smacking her.
Takezo heard the impact, but his sight was worse when he tried to see. He was among them now, though. Someone gripped his arm. He didn’t resist. Not yet.
“Blind man,” he said, reedy-voiced, “strip off your loincloth. Enjoy this Hideo clan whore.”
“Only ten?” he said.
This is my life, he thought.
He blinked hard and got a twisted blur of vision for a moment. They were all around her. One was holding each limb so she was starfished on the ground.
“Go on, blind man,” a guttural voice inveighed. “Stick it in the bitch.”
“She’s a lady,” he told them.
“Go away, Takezo,” she said. “These pigs are nothing. Have you seen my daughter?”
“Daughter?” reedy-voice said. “Let’s find her for the ‘lady.’”
General approbation. Laughter.
“Have you no fear of justice?” Takezo wanted to know.
“Ha, ha,” said a deep voice. “All the fools are dead. The world is upside down. We do what we want.”
Takezo knew where they all were, now. He could feel them, too. The man holding him and another who started pulling his loincloth off and forcing him down on her.
“I found you,” he told her. “I’m a first-rate spy, after all. I find everything, in time.” Laughed; that should have warned them. “Justice surprises one.”
Laughter all around.
“A blind spy!”
“What does he see?”
“Put his face down there and he’ll find her hole with his nose!”
Laughter and then a scream as Takezo disarmed the man clawing at his undergarment and stabbed the one holding him through the body; then a gurgling as he sliced the other’s throat with a slow, long backcut.
“Eight left,” he said, already whipping the sword in a kind of figure-eight back and forth between the ones holding her ankles and felt the satisfaction of chipping bone hits and awful screams of agony. “Six.”
But he heard them already up and running and her voice:
“Is life so sweet, cowards?” To him: “Look out, your left!”
Because one had paused to hurl a dagger, point-blank, at the deadly swordsman.
A good throw, Takezo thought, sensing and partly seeing the glint as the blade flashed at him, deflecting it with his blade without even knowing how. That sped them all on. Then a massive wave of dirt-clotted air crashed into and over them like a tremendous surf. Everyone went down, including Takezo. He managed hands and knees.
“Come back,” he called after them. “The world is yours.”
She was holding him, her long, soft, perfect nakedness under his swollen left hand.
“Who is like you?” she asked, pressing her head softly under his chin. She smelled like blood, dirt, sweat and flowers. The wind rocked them.
“The world deserves to end, I think,” he said.
“Not with men like you in it, sir. No. Not yet.”
“Blind men? Fools? Slaves to lust and mad notions?”
“No, Takezo-san. Men like you.”
“I saw you, for a moment.”
“You’ll recover, I think. I know a Korean master of healing. We can —”
“We. Are you alright? Did they …?”
She shrugged with her body.
“They disgusted me,” she responded. “But what could they do that I have not done already? I am no hypocrite. When they were finished I would have killed some before they killed me.” Shrugged, again. Kissed his neck, gently.
“We need to find your robes,” he said.
“I like to be naked with you,” she murmured. “No secret. Anyway, the storm is nearly come again.”
“We need shelter.” He worked the left eye some more. A blur… a blot… a flash of color. “Better head for Hideo stronghold. What else?”
Again, he realized how relaxed he always was with her, his former enemy. For all the passion of himself and Miou he’d always been unsure of what she was and wanted. With Issa secrets didn’t matter. And she wasn’t mean, afraid or especially selfish. She had drives and beliefs and could be ruthless. So could he. They had common ground.
She put her mouth near his ear.
“Anyplace else,” she told him. “Impossible. If I return, then I must cut my belly as a man would. Too much shame there.”
“Yes,” he said. “Anyway, I found you.” Sighed a laugh. “I find everybody. Everything. Sooner or later. Makes it worse.”
Too bad about the rest, he thought. Too bad about my entire life… Thought about his new-found father, Yoshi, Miou, Yazu, Osan, others, and all the dead lining the road behind. It was like waking from a dream. Good and bad. If I go back I might as well kill myself, too…
“You still can’t really see,” she said. “So I trust you to take us somewhere. It doesn’t matter. Do you believe that, Takezo, my love?”
There it was. No sense of surprise. This was his life. The storm and darkness fell, tore, flatteningly, across the landscape, re-smashing the already crushed.
“Takezo, my love,” he echoed. “So here you are.”
“Like you,” she told him, “I am an exile. Why not be honest, Ezo-san?”
Kneeling there, against the overwhelmingly gathering force, hammer of heaven that vibrated them together, he suddenly felt like a young man and crushed her into himself, laughing and almost crying too, running his dulled, clumsy ruined hands up her back, across her shoulders, cradling her long, sweet neck, kissing deeply as if he could inhale the magic from the fever dream that he understood was hidden in her flesh, too…
“You understand?” she asked with a slight sob, pressing into him.
“No,” he said, cried. “No… no, no, no …”
“Ah,” she responded.
“No… no… no …”
And then he effortlessly lifted her into his arms and started carrying her across the field he only saw in sudden, distorted glimpses, tilting, staggering, tacking, pushing as the wind was building into an explosion that would flatten almost any human construction or resistance.
“Ah,” she repeated. “It was always you. Irritating man.”
“We can’t escape,” he told her.
“Why try?” she wondered, in return.
“I mean the storm,” he amended.
“I do not.” She touched his face with her lips. “Carry me past memory. We will start there or die there.”
The wind flung him forward and sideways in a semi-stagger. He had flashes, seeing grass, rubble, bodies and a bamboo grove ahead.
Be like bamboo, the great masters often said, he recalled. No wind can flatten it… bend and come back…
Twenty-Nine
uMubaya
When the wind died he’d walked away from the fighting and found himself drifting back towards the sea, passing the desolation and the dead, following descending lanes through the choked, flooded, corpse-strewn city’s outskirts.
He could hear the sea for a long time before he got close enough to see the massed mist and enormous surf pounding the shore as if to grind it away. He had only vague ideas about what to do; he’d never seen a storm like this; could tell it wasn’t over yet.
He sat on a bluff that overlooked the flat shoreline that stretched away from the city. The way they’d come after the boat broke up on the beach. Distant mountains were depthless gray, running out into the great bay. Studied the swirling, incredible circular wall of the eye. Estimated when the far side would hit. Decided where he was would be as good as anyplace else: he’d wedge himself up between the great rocks.
He lay back with his weapon beside him. He decided he’d survive and find a ship. Everything was possible. He rolled up to his feet in a single movement. Yes. Take the sea and fury of the sky into himself. After all, he was a king. Le
ave this fragile, precious, murderous land and find his home.
Inhaled the wind as it started to pound and press, gutter and twist, again. Began to find the pulse of it… held the spear in his hand and started to move, feeling, listening… his flesh and bones were total flimsiness, shadows… yet, like sails the air, the force, the beat of time and the power of heaven and earth could fill them… the old magic… the true magic…
So he turned… stopped… bent… moved, first with the regular pulse of the huge waves… next the arrhythmic gusts and heaves of air… found the key to bind it to him… smiled, dark, remote eyes full of dimming sky, contorted clouds, sudden punctuations of slashing rain, last, lost, fading threads of sunlight…
Thought about nothing. He was part of it. Suddenly couldn’t tell himself from the mounting tempest. Felt as if flesh was wind and bones were water.
And then, as the air began to scream and boom he found that sound, too, and shouted and sang with the storm’s voice, indestructible as a cork on a wave or a feather in the wind…
And she was there, without words or a name… no more a memory than a dream growing out of itself; no more a dream that what’s seen when eyes open in the morning.
It wasn’t loss or love or hope or lack… or need… she was just there as his voice and body danced with the vast gathering of obliterating force…
She was there. He hummed and sang and drove his feet as if he were the weight of the world and the lightness of air. She was there. He understood. Didn’t dare stop, now, as the gust and buffets slammed around and the waves were being churned and slapped into mist and foam… in a moment he might be ripped into the air or banged to mush on the rocks… but not while his flesh was wind and water.
After this he would be clean; if he died, he would be clean and if he came together with his love he would be clean…
Thirty
Osan and Gentile
The air streamed over them in the opposite direction, now, sealing them in strange isolation behind the wall. Things were flying overhead the opposite way. They were entwined, breathing one another’s breaths.
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 41
