"Yes!" Hiroki cried.
Now he understood. The light at the end of the vision. It could mean nothing else. But…
"When, sensei?" Yajima said. "When?"
Hiroki too hungered for the answer.
“In our lifetimes. We know no more than that. But we know we can trust the visions. Did they not warn us of the Kanto daishinsai?"
Hiroki bowed. The vision had certainly been correct about the Great Kanto Earthquake two years ago, and for that he would be eternally grateful. He had been able to warn his family and see them moved to the summer residence on Sagami Bay well before the quake struck on the first of September. The devastation had exceeded his worst imaginings. Tsunamis swelled from the seas and swept away the harbor dwellings, toppling even the great Daibutsu, the giant bronze statue of the Buddha at Kamakura. And then the fires—the Flowers of Edo—began. Hot coals from hundreds of toppled hibachi ignited the tinder wood-and-paper walls of the countless houses toppled by the quake. Tokyo ignited like well-aged kindling. Tatsumaki—dragon tails of fire—tore through the city like blazing tornadoes, igniting broken gas mains and spilled petroleum, driving people into the rivers and the sea where those who were not drowned were immolated by burning oil floating on the water. When the fires finally were brought under control days later, over one hundred thousand were dead and three-fourths of the city lay in ruins.
"What is your wish, sensei?"
"We have learned through the visions that the Kuroikaze will be crucial to victory in the coming war."
"Which will heap great honor on the Order!" Yajima blurted.
Hiroki saw a crinkling of the skin around Shimazu's green eyes that he had come to interpret as an indulgent smile. He envied Yajima as a recipient of that rare, hidden smile.
"Yes, Yajima. The Order will once again hold the place of honor in the heart of the Son of Heaven that it earned in the days of the Nobunaga Shogunate. If ...”
" 'If,' sensei?" Hiroki said.
Shimazu sighed. "I have decided to trust the two of you with a secret, the gravest secret of the Order. The outside world knows little or nothing of us. Even the Emperors have paid little heed to us during the past century, and would dismiss us entirely if what I am about to tell you was to become public knowledge. I don't want either of you to answer right away. I want you to consider carefully whether you wish to carry the weight of this secret. Until now, only a handful of fully ordained monks above the level of the Fifth Circle have been privileged with this knowledge."
Hiroki closed his eyes and composed his features into an aspect of careful consideration. Of course he could be trusted with the secret—he craved the burden. He could have told his teacher so immediately, but he wanted to appear properly pensive about the honor being offered. But what could it be? Just before broaching the subject of the secret, Shimazu-san had been discussing the Kuroikaze. Did it concern the Black Winds? Yes. That had to be it.
"I do not want your decision now," Shimazu said. "I will give you both until tomorrow to make up your minds."
Hiroki hid his frustration. Tomorrow? He wanted to know now. But Shimazu's slow nod was a sign that they should leave him. They rose, bowed, and left the small teaching room together.
“What do you think the secret could be?” Yajima said as they walked to the central stairway.
He was heavyset, bordering on fat, with stubby fingers and the start of a belly. But he was not a jovial sort. Yajima was serious, studious, and intensely devoted to the Order.
"I can't imagine. But it sounds ominous. I'll probably be up all night thinking about it."
"I, too," Yajima said softly.
They bowed as they passed a legless monk dragging himself along the floor by his hands. His eyes blinked at them through the eyeholes in his mask. They made their way carefully down the candlelit stairway that wound through the core of the square, five-storied pagoda. The stairs were surrounded by rooms and hallways on each floor. No electricity in the Kakureta Kao temple; no telephone service, either. The windows were latticed and louvered to admit light and air, and to allow the monks to look out upon the city if they so wished, but they permitted no view of the inside. Everything here was much like it was a thousand years ago when the original structure had been built.
"Do you think learning the secret will delay my ascent into the Fifth Circle?" Yajima said.
Hiroki stared at his friend. They had grown up together in the temple, two students of noble lineage, vying for the honor of Shimazu's approval. But it had been a rivalry without enmity. They were too evenly matched for one to dominate the other, so through the years of petty jealousies and spats and scuffles, a firm bond had developed between them. They rarely saw each other outside the temple, but were almost inseparable within it.
"You're really going on in the Order?"
"I've told you that a hundred times, Hiroki."
"I know, but ..."
They bowed again as a monk without arms or legs passed in a wheelchair, giving directions to the eyeless monk who pushed him from behind along a second-floor corridor.
"But I didn't think you really would."
Hiroki shuddered at the thought of moving past the Fourth Circle. That was when they started cutting you up. The students and lay acolytes remained whole, as did the guards and the temple sensei. But the rest submitted themselves to the Order's surgeons. Two procedures were mandatory: castration and the surgical creation of skin folds at the edges of the face to hold the mask in place. Your face was never seen again after that—the mask could be changed at will, but only in the privacy of the monk's personal quarters.
After that, the monk was given some choice as to which of his senses he wished to give up first. If, however, there was a disproportionate number of monks with fused nostrils at that time, he would be instructed to choose another sense for sacrifice. And then it would begin: the incremental whittling away of the body, and with it, the sensory world. And over the years, as the perceptions of each of the remaining senses was enhanced and developed to its maximum potential by drugs and rituals, another was removed.
"I yearn for the chance to start on my path toward the Hidden Face, Hiroki. To actually see it someday."
Hiroki nodded but said nothing. After years with the drugs and the rituals, when a monk's natural life was nearing its end, the final contact with the sensory world was severed and the Kakureta Kao—the Hidden Face of the universe and of all reality—was revealed.
Death followed soon after.
Not for me, Hiroki said to himself as they stepped out of the temple into the red splendor of the sunset. It might be truly wonderful to see the Kakureta Kao, but he was thankful that neither his father nor Shimazu had the Inner Circles of the Order in mind for him. Father had placed him here to learn from the Order things that could be learned nowhere else, and to put that knowledge to work in the outside world. Shimazu, too, wished to save him for the outside world, to be the Order's voice on the Imperial Council.
He waved good-bye to Yajima and went out to the bustling streets to look for a taxi or jinrikisha home. He was lucky that his father and his sensei seemed to be of one mind as to his future. The only area in which they seemed to disagree was the matter of his marriage to Meiko Mazaki. Shimazu was bitterly opposed to any marriage for him. Hiroki sided with his father here: He wanted Meiko for his wife. And if necessary, he would defy his sensei to have her.
Meiko! He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to meet Father at Viscount Mazaki's summer home on Sagami Bay this evening. Time had flown. He hurried on, spurred by a desire to avoid embarrassing Father by being late and by the heated desire to see her.
Meiko's face appeared before him. Meiko with the flawless skin, the full lips, the perfect cheekbones, the huge dark eyes. To think that in a match arranged for purely political reasons he should be paired with one so utterly lovely. Surely all the gods smiled down on him. Meiko . . . so young and delicate, she dominated his dreams at night and haunted his every waking mome
nt outside the temple during the day.
He broke into a run to find a taxi to the train station.
* * *
Shimazu took the final sip of the drug the Seers use and put the cup down. He sat cross-legged and waited as the familiar mustard-yellow fog wafted through his mind and colored his thoughts. He waited for enlightenment. Though virtually impossible for one with eyes and without intensive training to see into the future, he had tried this many times before and had been rewarded with an occasional vague impression of what was to come.
He tried to encourage enlightenment by concentrating on some-thing from the Seers' visions. They said the Emperor Taisho did not have long to live. He dwelled on that. The Emperor's bizarre behavior was an embarrassment to the Imperial Line. He was mentally deranged. Perhaps it was the will of the gods that he not survive the year, clearing the way for Crown Prince Hirohito to—
Something darted through his mind and disappeared. He emptied his thoughts. It would return if he did not search for it. And then he saw it. The yellow mist parted and he was on the Tokyo docks watching a teenage boy and an aging samurai walk down a gangplank. He looked around. The city was in mourning. The mist closed in and hid the boy from view as Shimazu tried to get another look at him.
He opened his eyes. He had not really needed a second look. He had seen enough of the boy to recognize his resemblance to Hiroki. It was the younger Okumo, entering Tokyo. The signs of mourning around the city could mean only one thing. Matsuo Okumo would be coming home shortly after the Emperor's death.
Shimazu took a deep breath through the silk of his mask. Events in the Order's hundred-year plan were beginning to pick up momentum. The younger Okumo's return was a sign of that.
Shimazu felt a spasm of dread shudder through him. His return also meant a momentous decision might soon be at hand. He knew he eventually must decide which of the Okumo brothers would die. For the duty of killing one of them had fallen to him many years ago. He knew he would be faithful to that duty.
He prayed that Hiroki would not be the one.
* * *
Meiko tried to be attentive to the conversation between her father, Hiroki, and Baron Okumo but her mind wandered. It always turned out like this. The baron would invite her and her parents over to the Okumo residence, or her father would invite the baron and his wife and Hiroki to theirs. The visits had become more frequent lately since both families had summer residences here on Sagami Bay. But no matter where they met, the routine rarely varied. The never-mentioned purpose was to allow Hiroki and Meiko to become familiar with each other. But how could she learn about Hiroki when the two fathers drew him to the far side of the garden and entwined him in their incessant talk of politics?
She squirmed slightly in her place on the teak engawa. She had tied her obi too tightly and it was binding a fold of the new furisode kimono against her flank. To distract herself from the discomfort, she looked across the formal garden and down the slope to the bay. With the U-shape of their house's rear blocking off the rest of the slope above and to either side, it was almost as if Sagami Bay belonged to them alone.
She smoothed the apricot fabric of her kimono and traced her finger along the delicate embroidered willow tree branches that swept from the hem up to and over her left shoulder. She counted the birds singing in the branches, and when she was sure she had found them all, she reluctantly tried to turn her attention to the conversation that so intrigued her father, her future father-in-law, and her future husband.
They were talking of America, as usual, a subject that seemed to fascinate her father and the baron. Hiroki was speaking.
"... the United States will need abject lessons in respect. They treat us like eta now. Their immigration laws are a direct slap in the face to the Emperor."
Strong words, Meiko thought. Did Americans really treat Japanese like untouchables?
"On the surface, yes," said the baron. "But the Exclusion Act merely confirmed what we already knew. They have singled us out because of our proven superiority. They fear us. If Japan men go to America and buy a farm, they become the best farmers in the land; if they start a factory, they soon produce superior merchandise for less cost. And that is the key to Japan's future: Anything the Americans can do, we can do better. Just as there is an order among individuals, there is an order among nations. And Japan's place is, as we all know, first in that order."
Meiko stifled a sigh as her attention drifted back to the blue of the bay, flecked with the white of sailboats and the wakes of powerboats. Betrothal had seemed so exciting two years ago when she had been only fourteen and Hiroki eighteen. She had never guessed that marriage plans were in the wind when the two families met for the first time and spent a seemingly casual evening together at the home of a mutual acquaintance. She had become suspicious at the second "chance" meeting at the annual chrysanthemum show in Tokyo, and noticed that all the arrangements had been made by go-betweens so that no breaking off of relations in the early stages would threaten the honor of either family. She knew that her father and the baron, both noble members of the Satsuma clan, had been political allies in the past, but were now becoming fast friends as a result of the meetings. Clearly a link was being forged between the Okumos and the Mazakis. The marriage of Hiroki and Meiko would formalize it.
Meiko studied her future husband. She certainly could not deny that she had been paired with a handsome man. Hiroki's short-cropped hair and chiseled features were pleasing to look at. His smiles were rare, but when one broke through, it brightened his face like a burst of sunshine. He wore a brown haori open over a black kimono. She liked the way it accentuated his broad shoulders. But what thrilled her most was the way he looked at her. Most of the time he was properly diffident, showing no undue familiarity. But occasionally she would find him looking at her and would catch an unguarded emotion in his eyes. Meiko knew she was totally unschooled in the ways of men, but was quite sure she knew desire when she saw it.
The mention of her name made her prick up her ears.
"... and I think your suggestion that she study in America is a good one," her father was saying to Baron Okumo.
The baron clapped his hands once and nodded vigorously. "I knew you would see my point of view. Most excellent."
"Your arguments are most persuasive," her father said.
Meiko listened with mounting unease. Now she understood the visits of the go-between the past two days. Baron Okumo would never have broached such a subject directly; a go-between was dictated to protect himself and her father from slight. And her father was agreeing. It couldn't be.
"You are most wise to perceive their merits," the baron said. "Especially if your beautiful daughter is to wed Hiroki. If Japan is to ascend to her rightful place among the nations of the world, she will have to deal most often with America during her rise. It is a young, vigorous country that will have to be taught respect for its betters. As we all know, Western ways are strange, and few stranger than America's. When Hiroki comes to occupy an important place on the Imperial Council, a wife familiar with American ways will be of great value to him."
"Yes," her father said. "That is quite clear."
Meiko was sure that neither the baron nor Hiroki was aware of the change in her father's tone, but she noticed it immediately. Her father did not share the baron's enthusiasm for an American education and was only paying lip service to it. But apparently the go-between had made it clear that this was part of the marriage package. This was terrible. The baron must have insisted on it, and no doubt had waived a significant part of the dowry in lieu of it. Whatever the arrangement, she realized with a sinking heart that she was going to America.
The thought of leaving Japan horrified her. She was so happy here in the Gakushuin, the Peers' School. To cross the Pacific and live among Americans… she was learning English, but the thought of having to speak and listen to it every day, to learn through it ... she could not do it. She would wither and die in America!
Yet she h
ad to go. The joining of the Mazakis to the old and venerable Okumo house would bring great honor to her father, and she was the link. To question her father's decision would be unthinkable.
She looked at Hiroki and knew from the consternation in his eyes that this was the first he too had heard of it.
"But the marriage." he said to his father.
"All in good time, my son. Meiko would make you a wonderful bride now, but just think how much more wonderful she will be when she returns from America." The baron turned to Meiko's father. "I would not ask of you anything that I would not ask of myself. You may not know this, but I sent the younger of my two sons to be raised in America when he was but an infant. That is how important I believe America will be to the future of Japan. When Matsuo returns, he will share a place beside Hiroki on the Imperial Council, and together they will lead Japan to her proper place in the world."
Meiko saw a shadow cross Hiroki's face and resentment fill his eyes at the mention of his younger brother. It vanished in an instant, but even in the midst of her own anguish at being sent away from her family to an alien land, Meiko could not help but wonder what enmity there could be between two brothers who did not know each other.
The question was quickly overwhelmed by the mind-numbing prospect of journeying across the Pacific to live and learn in America for four years. She was angry with her father, and furious with the baron and his overbearing demands. Why could she not have some say in her future?
She banished the thought immediately. To question her elders on a matter such as this was unthinkable. She must accept their decisions as if they were her own.
But America!
* * *
Hiroki passed through the gate to the Yoshiwara district and hurried along its narrow streets. He averted his face from passersby. Had he been in Yotsuya, the geisha quarter, he would have looked for familiar faces and greeted them warmly. But here in the red-light district he preferred to be just another passing stranger. He did not want anyone to know of his regular visits to Yokiko, or of his special arrangements with her.
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