Meanwhile Kawabata finished pushing his brush around the sheet of paper, blew on it and showed it to Serdyuk. It was a large chrysanthemum drawn in black ink.
‘What is it?’ asked Serdyuk.
‘Oh,’ said Kawabata, ‘it’s a chrysanthemum. You understand, when a new member joins us, it is such a great joy for the entire Taira clan that it would be inappropriate to entrust it to marks on paper. In such cases, we usually inform our leaders by drawing a flower. What’s more, this is the very flower of which we were just speaking. It symbolizes your life, which now belongs to the Taira clan, and at the same time it testifies to your final awareness of its fleeting ephemerality…’
‘I get it,’ said Serdyuk.
Kawabata blew on the sheet of paper once more, then set it in the crack of the fax machine and began dialling some incredibly long number.
He got through only at the third attempt. The fax hummed into life, a little green lamp on its corner lit up and the page slowly slid out of sight into the black maw.
Kawabata stared fixedly at the fax machine, without moving or changing his pose. Several long and weary minutes went by, and then the fax began to hum again and another sheet of paper slid out from underneath its black body. Serdyuk understood immediately that this was the reply.
Kawabata waited until the full length of the page had emerged and then tore it out of the fax, glanced at it and looked slowly round at Serdyuk.
‘Congratulations,’ he said, ‘my sincere congratulations! The reply is most propitious.’
He held out the sheet of paper to Serdyuk, who took it and saw a different drawing – this time it was a long, slightly bent stick with some kind of pattern on it and something sticking out from it at one side.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘It’s a sword,’ Kawabata said solemnly, ‘the symbol of your new status in life. And since I never had any doubt that this would be the outcome, allow me to present you, so to speak, with your passport.’
With these words Kawabata held out the short sword he had bought earlier in the tin-plated pavilion.
Perhaps it was Kawabata’s fixed, unblinking stare, or perhaps it was the result of some chemical reaction in his own alcohol-drenched metabolism, but for some reason Serdyuk became aware suddenly of the significance and solemnity of the moment. He almost went down on his knees, but just in time he remembered that it was the medieval European knights who did that, not the Japanese – and not even the knights, if he thought about it, but only the actors from the Odessa film studios who were playing them in some intolerably dreary old Soviet film. So he just held out his hands and took a cautious grip on the cold instrument of death. There was a design on the scabbard that he hadn’t noticed before: it was a drawing of three cranes in flight – the gold wire impressed into the black lacquer of the scabbard traced a light and dashing contour of exceptional beauty.
‘Your soul,’ said Kawabata, gazing into Serdyuk’s eyes again, ‘lies in this scabbard.’
‘What a beautiful drawing,’ said Serdyuk. ‘You know, it reminds me of a song I know, about cranes. How does it go, now? “…And in their flight I see a narrow gap, perhaps that is a place for me…” ‘
‘Yes, yes,’ Kawabata cut in. ‘And why would a man need any greater gap? The Lord Buddha can easily fit the entire world with all its problems into the gap between two cranes. Why, it would be lost in the gaps between the feathers of either of them…How poetical this evening is! Why don’t we have another drink? For the place in the flight of cranes which you have finally occupied?’
Serdyuk thought he sensed something ominous in Kawabata’s words, but he paid no attention, because Kawabata could hardly have known the song was about the souls of dead soldiers.
‘Gladly,’ said Serdyuk, ‘in just a while. I…’
Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door. Kawabata turned and shouted something in Japanese, the panel slid to one side and a man’s face, also with southern features, appeared in the gap. The face said something and Kawabata nodded.
‘I shall have to leave you for a few minutes,’ he said to Serdyuk. ‘It seems there is some serious news coming in. If you wish, please look through any of the print albums while you are waiting,’ – he nodded in the direction of the bookshelf – ‘or simply amuse yourself.’
Serdyuk nodded. Kawabata quickly left the room and closed the panel behind him. Serdyuk went over to the shelves and glanced at the long row of different-coloured spines, then went over to the corner of the room and sat down on a bamboo mat, leaning his head against the wall. He had no appetite left for all those prints.
It was quiet in the building. He could hear someone hammering on a wall somewhere above him – they must be installing a metal door. Behind the sliding panel he could hear the whispers of the girls swearing at each other; they were very close, but he could hardly make out any of their obscenities, and the muffled voices mingled together to produce a gentle, calming rustling sound, as though there were a garden behind the wall and the leaves of the blossoming cherries were murmuring in the wind.
Serdyuk was woken by a low moaning. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been asleep, but it must have been quite a long time – Kawabata was sitting in the centre of the room, already changed and shaved. He was wearing a white shirt and his hair, so recently tousled and untidy, was combed back neatly. He was the source of the moaning that had woken Serdyuk – it was some kind of mournful melody, a long-drawn-out dirge. Kawabata was holding the long sword in his hands and wiping it with a white piece of cloth. Serdyuk noticed that Kawabata’s shirt was unbuttoned, and his hairless chest and belly were exposed.
Kawabata realized that Serdyuk had woken up and turned to face him with a broad smile.
‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.
‘I wasn’t exactly sleeping,’ said Serdyuk, ‘I just…’
‘Had a doze,’ said Kawabata, ‘I understand. All of us are merely dozing in this life. And we only wake when it ends. Do you recall how we forded the brook when we were walking back to the office?’
‘Yes,’ said Serdyuk, ‘that stream coming out of the pipe.’
‘Pipe or no pipe, that is not important. Do you recall the bubbles on the surface of that brook?’
‘Yes. They were big ones all right.’
‘Truly,’ said Kawabata, raising the blade to the level of his eyes and gazing at it intently, ‘truly this world is like bubbles on the water. Is that not so?’
Serdyuk thought that Kawabata was right, and he wanted very much to say something so that his companion would realize how well he understood his feelings and how completely he shared them.
‘Not even that,’ he said, raising himself up on one elbow. ‘It’s like…let me think now…It’s like a photograph of those bubbles that has fallen down behind a chest of drawers and been gnawed by the rats.’
Kawabata smiled once again.
‘You are a genuine poet,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt at all about that.’
‘And what’s more,’ Serdyuk went on, inspired, ‘it could well be that the rats got to it even before it had been developed.’
‘Splendid,’ said Kawabata, ‘quite splendid. This is the poetry of words, but there is also the poetry of deeds. I hope that your final poem without words will prove a match for the verses that have brought me so much delight today.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Kawabata carefully set his sword down on a bamboo mat.
‘Life is uncertain and changeable,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In the early morning no one can say what awaits him in the evening.’
‘Has something happened, then?’
‘Oh, yes. You know, of course, that business is like war. The Taira clan has an enemy, a mighty enemy – Minamoto.’
‘Minamoto?’ echoed Serdyuk, feeling a shiver run down his spine. ‘So what?’
‘Today news came that cunning treachery on the Tokyo stock exchange has allowed the Minamoto Group to acquire a controlling inter
est in Taira Incorporated. A certain English bank and the Singapore mafia were involved, but that is not important. We are destroyed. And our enemy is triumphant.’
Serdyuk said nothing for a while as he tried to work out what this meant. Only one thing was clear, though – it didn’t mean anything good.
‘But you and I,’ said Kawabata, ‘we two samurai of the clan of Taira – surely we shall not allow our spirits to be overcast by the shifting shadows of these insignificant bubbles of existence?’
‘Er…no,’ Serdyuk answered.
Kawabata laughed fiercely and his eyes flashed.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Minamoto shall not behold our degradation and dishonour. One should leave this life as the white cranes disappear into the clouds. Let not a single petty feeling remain in our hearts at a moment of such beauty.’
He swung round sharply where he sat, turning the bamboo mat with him, and bowed to Serdyuk.
‘I wish to ask you a favour,’ he said. ‘When I rip open my belly, please cut off my head!’
‘What?’
‘My head, please cut off my head. We call this rendering the final service. And a samurai who is asked to do this may not refuse without covering himself in great dishonour.’
‘But I never…That is, before…’
‘It’s very simple. One stroke and it’s done. Wh-oo-oosh!’
Kawabata waved his hands rapidly through the air.
‘But I am afraid I won’t manage it,’ said Serdyuk. ‘I don’t have any experience of that kind of thing.’
Kawabata pondered for a moment, then suddenly his face darkened as though he had been struck by some exceptionally unpleasant thought. He slapped his hand against his tatami.
‘It’s good that I am leaving this life soon,’ he said, looking up guiltily at Serdyuk. ‘What a coarse and ignorant brute I am!’
He covered his face with his hands and began rocking from side to side.
Serdyuk quietly stood up, tiptoed over to the screen, silently slid it to one side and went out into the corridor. The cold concrete felt unpleasant under his bare feet, and Serdyuk suddenly realized that while he and Kawabata had been wandering around dark and dubious alleyways in search of sake, his socks and shoes had been standing in the corridor by the door, where he’d left them in the afternoon; he couldn’t remember what he’d been wearing on his feet at all, just as he couldn’t recall how he and Kawabata had got out on to the street or how they’d got back in.
‘Split, I’ve got to split right now,’ he thought as he turned the corner in the corridor. ‘First I split, then there’ll be time for a bit of thinking.’
The security guard rose from his stool as Serdyuk approached.
‘And where are we off to at a time like this?’ he asked with a yawn. ‘It’s half past three in the morning.’
‘We got a bit involved,’ said Serdyuk. ‘You know, with the interview.’
‘Okay then,’ said the security guard. ‘Let’s have your pass.’
‘What pass?’
‘To get out.’
‘But you let me in without any pass.’
‘That’s right,’ said the security guard, ‘but to get out, you need a pass.’
The lamp on the desk cast a dim glow on Serdyuk’s shoes standing over by the wall. The door was only a yard away from them, and beyond the door lay freedom. Serdyuk took a small step towards the shoes. Then another one. The security guard cast an indifferent glance at his bare feet.
‘And then,’ he said, toying with his rubber truncheon, ‘we’ve got regulations. The alarm’s on. The door’s locked until eight o’clock in the morning. If I open it the pigs’ll be round in a flash. That means hassle, official statements. So I can’t open up. Not unless there’s a fire. Or a flood.’
‘But this world,’ Serdyuk began ingratiatingly, ‘is like bubbles on the water.’
The security guard laughed and shook his head.
‘Sure, sure,’ he said. ‘We know what kind of place it is we work in. But you’ve got to understand where I’m coming from. Just imagine that along with those bubbles there’s a set of instructions drifting along on the water. And just as long as it’s reflected in one of those bubbles, we lock up at eleven and open the door at eight. And that’s it.’
Serdyuk sensed a note of uncertainty in the security guard’s voice and he tried pressing his point home a little harder.
‘Mr Kawabata will be very surprised at your behaviour,’ he answered. ‘You’re supposed be responsible for security in a serious firm, and you need such simple things explained to you. It must be obvious that if the world is only a mirage…’
‘A mirage, a mirage,’ said the security guard in a thoughtful voice, and he focused his eyes on a point that was obviously a long way beyond the wall. ‘We know all about that. We haven’t just started here, you know. And we have training sessions every week. But I’m not trying to tell you that door’s real. Shall I tell you what I think?’
‘Go on then.’
‘The way I reckon, there isn’t any substantial door at all, there’s nothing but a provisional totality of essentially empty elements of perception.’
‘Precisely!’ said Serdyuk, delighted, and he took another little step in the direction of his shoes.
‘But there’s no way I’m opening up that totality before eight o’clock,’ said the security guard, slapping himself on the palm with his rubber truncheon.
‘Why?’ asked Serdyuk.
The security guard shrugged.
‘Karma for you,’ he said, ‘dharma for me, but it’s all really just the same old crap. The void. And even that doesn’t really exist.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Serdyuk. ‘That’s some serious training they give you.’
‘What’d you expect? The Japanese security forces run it.’
‘So what am I supposed to do?’ Serdyuk asked.
‘What can you do? Wait until eight. And ask them to write you out a pass.’
Serdyuk cast a final glance at the security guard’s burly shoulders and the truncheon in his hands, then slowly turned on his heel and started trudging back to Kawabata’s room. He had the unbearable feeling that there were words which would have made the guard give in and open the door, but that he had failed to find them. If I’d read the Sutras, I’d know what was trumps, he thought dejectedly.
‘Listen,’ the security guard called out behind him, ‘better not go walking about without your geta. The floor in here’s concrete. You’ll get a chill in your kidneys.’
When he reached Kawabata’s office again and noiselessly slid the panel open, Serdyuk noticed there was a strong smell in the room of stale drink and female sweat. Kawabata was still sitting there on the floor, his face in his hands, rocking from side to side, as though he hadn’t even noticed that Serdyuk had gone out.
‘Mr Kawabata,’ Serdyuk called quietly.
Kawabata lowered his hands.
‘Are you feeling bad?’
‘I feel terrible,’ said Kawabata, ‘I feel absolutely terrible. If I had a hundred bellies, I would slit them all without a moment’s delay. Never in my life have I felt such shame as I am feeling now.’
‘Why, what’s the problem?’ Serdyuk asked sympathetically, kneeling down to face the Japanese.
‘I made bold to ask you to render me the final service without thinking that there would be no one to render the service to you if I commit seppuku first. Such monstrous dishonour.’
‘Me?’ said Serdyuk, rising to his feet. ‘Me?’
‘Why yes,’ said Kawabata, also rising and fixing Serdyuk with his blazing eyes. ‘Who will cut off your head? Not Grisha, I suppose?’
‘Who’s Grisha?’
‘The security guard. You were just talking to him. He’s no good for anything except breaking heads with his truncheon. The rules say it has to be cut off, and not just any old way, it has to be left hanging on a scrap of skin. Imagine how terrible it would look if it went rolling across the floor! But sit down, sit do
wn.’
There was such hypnotic power in Kawabata’s gaze that Serdyuk involuntarily lowered himself on to a bamboo mat. It was all he could do to tear his eyes away from Kawabata’s face.
‘And anyway, I suspect you don’t know what the doctrine of the direct and fearless return to eternity tells us about seppuku,’ said Kawabata.
‘What?’
‘Do you know how to slit open your belly?’
‘No,’ said Serdyuk, staring blankly at the wall.
‘There are various ways of doing it. The simplest is a horizontal incision. But there’s nothing special in that. As we say in Japan, five minutes’ dishonour and Amidha’s your Buddha. Like driving into the Pure Land in an old Lada. A vertical incision is a little bit better, but that’s the lower-middle-class style, and it’s a bit provincial too. You can use crossed incisions, but I wouldn’t advise that either. If you cut vertically, they’ll pick up a Christian allusion, and if you cut on the diagonal, you get the St Andrew’s Cross, which is the Russian naval flag. They’ll think you’re from the Black Sea Fleet – but you’re not a naval officer, are you?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Serdyuk confirmed in an expressionless voice.
‘That’s what I’m saying, there’s no point. Two years ago a double parallel incision was all the fashion, but that’s difficult. So what I would suggest is a long diagonal cut from the lower left to the upper right with a slight turn back towards the centre at the end. From the strictly aesthetic point of view it’s quite beyond reproach, and when you’ve done it, I’ll probably do it the same way.’
Buddha's Little Finger Page 22
