The Diamond Chariot

by Boris Akunin

  Erast Petrovich decided to wait a little with the other questions – his head was already spinning as it was.

  Their second conversation took place in the evening, at the same spot, only this time the two of them sat facing the opposite direction. Watching the sun slipping down on to the summit of the next mountain.

  Tamba sucked on his eternal pipe, but now Fandorin was also smoking a cigar. The selfless Masa, who was suffering morally because he had slept right through the night battle, had spent half the day supplying all of his master’s needs by bringing his baggage from the ravaged camp through the underground passage, as well as using a cable hoist (it turned out that there was one of those too). The only thing left on the other side was the untransportable Royal Crescent Tricycle, and there was nowhere to ride that in the village in any case. The mule, set free, wandered through the meadows, dazed and delighted by the luscious mountain grass.

  ‘I have a request for you,’ said Erast Petrovich. ‘Teach me your art. I will be a zealous student.’

  He had spent most of the day observing the shinobi training and had seen things that left his face frozen in an expression of dumb bewilderment entirely alien to him in normal life.

  First Fandorin had watched the children playing. A little six-year-old had demonstrated quite incredible patience in training a mouse – teaching it to run to a saucer and come back again. Every time the mouse coped with its mission successfully, he moved the saucer a bit farther away.

  ‘In a few months’ time the mouse will learn to cover distances of four hundred or even five hundred yards. Then it can be used for delivering secret notes,’ explained the ninja called Rakuda, who had been attached to the vice-consul.

  ‘Rakuda’ meant ‘camel’, but the ninja was nothing at all like a camel. He was a middle-aged man with a plump, extremely good-natured face, the kind of man that people say ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’. He spoke excellent English – which was why he had been assigned to accompany Erast Petrovich. He suggested that the titular counsellor call him ‘Jonathan’, but Fandorin liked the resounding ‘Rakuda’ better.

  Two little girls were playing at funerals. They dug a little pit, one of them lay down in it and the other covered her with earth.

  ‘Won’t she suffocate?’ Fandorin asked in alarm.

  Rakuda laughed and pointed to a reed protruding from the ‘grave’.

  ‘No, she’s learning to breathe with a quarter of her chest, it’s very useful.’

  But of course, the young man was interested most of all in eight-year-old Yaichi, whom Tamba had designated as his successor.

  The skinny little boy – nothing exceptional to look at – was clambering up the wall of a house. He fell off, scraping himself so that he bled, and climbed back on the wall again.

  It was incredible! The wall was made of wooden planks, there was absolutely nothing to cling to, but Yaichi dug his nails into the wood and pulled himself up, and in the end he climbed on to the roof. He sat there, dangled his legs and stuck his tongue out at Fandorin.

  ‘It’s some kind of witchcraft!’ the vice-consul exclaimed.

  ‘No, it’s not witchcraft. It’s kakeume,’ said Rakuda, beckoning to the boy, who simply jumped straight down from a height of two sazhens. He showed them his hands and Erast Petrovich saw iron thimbles with curved talons on his fingers. He himself tried using them to climb a wall, but he couldn’t. What strength the fingertips must have to support the weight of the body!

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Rakuda called to him. ‘Etsuko is going to kill the daijin.’

  ‘Who is the daijin?’ asked Fandorin, following his guide into one of the houses.

  There were four people there in a large empty room: two men, a girl with broad cheekbones and someone wearing a tunic and cap, sitting over by the wall at one side. When he looked more closely, Fandorin saw it was a life-sized doll with a painted face and luxurious moustache.

  ‘“Daijin” means “big man”,’ Rakuda explained in a whisper. ‘Etsuko has to kill him, and Gohei and Tanshin are his bodyguards. It’s a kind of test that she has to pass before she can move on to the next level of training. Etsuko has already tried twice and failed.’

  ‘A sort of exam, right?’ the titular counsellor asked curiously as he observed what was happening.

  Pock-faced Gohei and sullen, red-faced Tanshin searched the girl thoroughly – she was obviously playing the part of a petitioner who had come for an audience with the ‘big man’.

  The search was so scrupulous that Erast Petrovich blushed furiously. Not only was the ‘petitioner’ stripped naked, all the cavities of her body were explored. Young Etsuko played her part diligently – bowing abjectly, giggling timidly, turning this way and that. The ‘bodyguards’ felt the clothing she had taken off, her sandals, her wide belt. They extracted a tobacco pipe from a sleeve and confiscated it. In her belt they found a small cloth bag with hashi – wooden sticks for eating – and a jade charm. They gave back the sticks, but turned the charm this way and that and then kept it, just in case. They made the girl let down her hair and took out two sharp hairpins. Only then did they allow her to get dressed and go through to the daijin. But they wouldn’t let her get really close – they stood between her and the doll: one on the right, one on the left.

  Etsuko bowed low to the seated doll, folding her hands together on her stomach. And when she straightened up there was a wooden hashi in her hand. The ‘petitioner’ made a lightning-swift movement and the stick sank straight into the daijin’s painted eye.

  ‘Ah, well done,’ Rakuda said approvingly. ‘She carved the hashi out of hard wood, sharpened the end and smeared it with poison. She has passed the test.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t have allowed her to get away! The bodyguards would have killed her on the spot!’

  ‘What difference does that make? The commission has been carried out.’

  Then Erast Petrovich saw training in unarmed combat, and this, perhaps, made the strongest impression of all on him. He had never imagined that the human body was capable of such things.

  By this time Masa had finished carrying things about and he joined his master. He observed the acrobatic tricks of the Stealthy Ones with a sour face and seemed thoroughly envious.

  The training was supervised by Tamba himself. There were three students. One of them, the youngest, was not very interesting to watch: he kept getting up and falling, getting up and falling – backwards, face down, sideways, somersaulting over his head. The second one – the pock-faced Gohei, who was one of the gaijin’s ‘bodyguards’ – hacked at the jonin with a sword. He attacked with extremely subtle and cunning thrusts, swung from above and below, and at the legs, but the blade always sliced through the empty air. And Tamba didn’t make a simple superfluous movement, he just leaned slightly to the side, squatted down or jumped up. This entertainment was frightening to watch. The third student, a fidgety fellow of about thirty (Rakuda said his name was Okami), fought with his eyes blindfolded. Tamba held a bamboo board in front of him, changing its position all the time, and Okami struck it with unerringly accurate blows from his hands and feet.

  ‘He has intuition,’ Rakuda said respectfully. ‘Like a bat.’

  In the end Masa could no longer bear the expressions of admiration that Fandorin uttered from time to time. With a determined sniff, he walked over to the jonin, bowed abruptly and made a request of some kind.

  ‘He wishes to fight with one of the pupils,’ Erast Petrovich’s guide translated.

  Tamba cast a sceptical eye over the former Yakuza’s sturdy figure and shouted:

  ‘Neko-chan!’

  A wizened little old woman emerged from the hut near by, wiping flour off her hands with her apron. The jonin pointed at Masa and gave a brief order. The old woman smiled broadly, opening a mouth that had only one yellow tooth, and took off her apron.

  It was clear from Masa’s face just how terribly insulted he felt. However, Fandorin’s faithful vassal demonstrated his self-control b
y walking up politely to the matron and asking her about something. Instead of answering, she slapped him on the forehead with her hand – it looked like a joke, but Masa squealed in pain. His flour-dusted forehead turned white and his face turned red. Fandorin’s servant tried to grab the insolent hag by the scruff of her neck, but she took hold of his wrist, twisted it slightly – and the master of jujitsu and connoisseur of the Okinawa style of combat went tumbling head over heels to the ground. The amazing old woman didn’t give him time to get up. She skipped towards the defeated man, pressed him down against the ground with her knee and squeezed his throat with her bony hand – he gave a strangulated wheeze and slapped his palm on the ground in a sign of surrender.

  Neko-chan immediately opened her fingers. She bowed to the jonin, picked up her apron and went back to her duties in the kitchen.

  And that was the moment, as Fandorin looked at the dejected Masa, who didn’t dare raise his own eyes to look at his master, that the titular counsellor decided he had to learn the secrets of ninjutsu.

  When Tamba heard the request, he was not surprised, but he said:

  ‘It is hard to gain insight into the secrets of ninjutsu, a man must devote his entire life to it, from the day he is born. But you are too old, you will not achieve complete mastery. To master a few skills is all that you can hope for.’

  ‘Let it be a f-few skills. I accept that.’

  The jonin cast a quizzical glance at the stubborn jut of the titular counsellor’s jaw and shrugged.

  ‘All right, let’s try.’

  Erast Petrovich beamed joyfully, immediately stubbed out his cigar and jumped to his feet.

  ‘Shall I take my jacket off?’

  Tamba breathed out a thin stream of smoke.

  ‘No. First you will sit, listen and try to understand.’

  ‘All right.’

  Fandorin obediently sat down, took a notebook out of his pocket and prepared to take notes.

  ‘Ninjutsu consists of three main arts: monjutsu, the art of secrecy, taijutsu, the art of controlling the body, and bujutsu, the art of controlling a weapon …’

  The pencil started scraping nimbly across the paper, but Tamba laughed, making it clear that he was imitating the manner of a typical lecturer only in fun.

  ‘But we shall not get to all that for a long, long time. For now, you must make yourself like a newborn child who is discovering the world and studying the abilities of his own body. You must learn to breathe, drink, eat, control the functioning of your inner organs, move your arms and legs, crawl, stand, walk, fall. We teach our children from the cradle. We stretch their joints and muscles. We rock the cradle roughly and rapidly, so that the little child quickly learns to shift its centre of gravity. We encourage what ordinary children are punished for: imitating the calls of animals and birds, throwing stones, climbing trees. You will never be like someone raised in a shinobi family. But do not let that frighten you. Flexible limbs and stamina are not the most important things.’

  ‘Then what is most important, sensei?’ asked Erast Petrovich, using the most respectful Japanese form of address.

  ‘You must know how to formulate a question correctly. That is half of the task. And the second half is being able to hear the answer.’

  ‘I d-don’t understand …’

  ‘A man consists of questions, and life and the world around him consist of answers to these questions. Determine the sequence of the questions that concern you, starting with the most important. Then attune yourself to receive the answers. They are everywhere, in every event, in every object.’

  ‘Really in every one?’

  ‘Yes. For every object is a particle of the Divine Body of the Buddha. Take this stone here …’ Tamba picked up a piece of basalt from the ground and showed it to his pupil. ‘Take it. Look at it very carefully, forgetting about everything except your question. See what an interesting surface the stone has; all these hollows and bumps, the pieces of dirt adhering to it, the flecks of other substances in it. Imagine that your entire life depends on the structure and appearance of this stone. Study this object for a very long time, until you feel that you know everything about it. And then ask it your question.’

  ‘Which one, for instance?’ asked Erast Petrovich, examining the piece of basalt curiously.

  ‘Any. If you should do something or not. If you are living your life correctly. If you should be or not be.’

  ‘To be or not to be?’ the titular counsellor repeated, not entirely sure whether the jonin had quoted Shakespeare or whether it was merely a coincidence. ‘But how can a stone answer?’

  ‘The answer will definitely be there, in its contours and patterns, in the forms that they make up. The man who is attuned to understanding will see it or hear it. It might not be a stone, but any uneven surface, or something that occurs purely by chance: a cloud of smoke, the pattern of tea leaves in the bottom of a cup, or even the remains of the coffee that you gaijins are so fond of drinking.’

  ‘Mmm, I see,’ the titular counsellor drawled. ‘I’ve heard about that in Russia. It’s called “reading the coffee grounds”.’

  At night he and she were together. In Tamba’s house, where the upper rooms existed only to deceive and real life was concentrated in the basement, they were given a room with no windows.

  Following lingering delights that were not like either ‘Fire and Thunder’ or ‘The Love of Two Moles’, as he looked at her motionless face and lowered eyelashes, he said:

  ‘I never know what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking about. Even now.’

  She said nothing, and he thought there was not going to be any answer.

  But then sparks glinted under those eyelashes and those scarlet lips stirred:

  ‘I can’t tell you what I’m thinking about. But if you want, I’ll show you what I’m feeling.’

  ‘Yes, I do want, very much!’

  She lowered her eyelashes again.

  ‘Go upstairs, into the corridor. It’s dark there, but close your eyes as well, so you can’t even see the shadows. Touch the wall on the right. Walk forward until you find yourself in front of a door. Open it and take three big steps forward. Then open your eyes.’

  That was all she said.

  He got up and was about to put on his shirt.

  ‘No, you must not have any clothes on.’

  He walked up the stairway attached to the wall. He didn’t open his eyes.

  He walked slowly along the corridor and bumped into a door.

  He opened it – and the cold of the night scalded his skin.

  It’s the door with the precipice behind it, he realised.

  Three big steps? How big? How long was the little bridge? About a sazhen, no longer.

  He took one step, and then another, trying not to keep them short. He hesitated before the third. What if the third step took his foot into the void?

  The precipice was here, right beside him, he could feel its fathomless breathing.

  With an effort of will he took a step – exactly as long as the first ones. His toes felt a ribbed edge. Just one more inch and …

  He opened his eyes – and he saw nothing.

  No moon, no stars, no lights down below.

  The world had melded into a single whole, in which there was no heaven and no earth, no top and no bottom, There was only a point around which creation was arranged.

  The point was located in Fandorin’s chest and it was sending out a signal full of life and mystery: lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.

  Sunlight parts all things,

  Darkness unites everything.

  The night world is one

  SPILLED SAKE

  Tamba said:

  ‘You must fall as a pine needle falls to the ground – smoothly and silently. But you topple like a felled tree. Mo ikkai.’1

  Erast Petrovich pictured a pine tree, its branches covered with needles, then one of them broke away and went swirling downwards, settling gently on the grass. He jumped up, flipped
over in the air and thudded flat out into the ground.

  ‘Mo ikkai.’

  The pine needles fluttered down one at a time, the imaginary branch was entirely bare now and he had to start on the next one, but after every fall he heard the same thing:

  ‘Mo ikkai.’

  Erast Petrovich obediently pounded himself black and blue, but what he wanted most of all was to learn how to fight – if not like Tamba, then at least like the unforgettable Neko-chan. But the jonin was in no hurry to get to that stage; so far he had limited himself to the theory. He had said that first it was necessary to study each of the three principles of combat separately: nagare – fluidity, henkan – mutability, and the most complex of all, rinki-ohen – the ability to improvise according to the opponent’s manner.

  In the titular counsellor’s opinion, the most useful part was the information about blows to vitally important points. In this area, it was quite possible to make do with the skills of English boxing and French savate while one was still struggling to grasp the unpronounceable and inexplicable principles of ninjutsu.

  The pages of his cherished notebook were filled with sketches of parts of the human body with arrows of various thicknesses, according to the strength of the blow, and mysterious comments such as: ‘Soda (sxth. vert.) – temp. parls.; not hard! – or inst. Death’. Or: ‘Wanshun (tric.) – temp. parls arm; not hard! – or fracture’.

  Surprisingly, the hardest thing proved to be the breathing exercises. Tamba bound his pupil’s waist tightly with a belt and Fandorin had to inhale two thousand times in a row, deeply enough to inflate the lower section of his abdomen. This apparently simple exercise made his muscles ache so badly that on the first evening Fandorin crawled back to his room hunched over and very much afraid that he couldn’t make love to Midori.