Shike, p.46
Shike, page 46
Suddenly she was angry at him. She tried to turn in the saddle and speak to him, but he held her too firmly, and she could not turn all the way around. The wind tore the words from her lips.
"Stop, stop." He heard her and gave the pony another nudge in the ribs. It came to an immediate stop, with the perfect responsiveness the steppe horses were famous for, if you knew how to ride them. Clearly, Jebu did.
"What is it?"
"You were waiting for me. You knew long before I did. All the time I was dying over and over again for both of us, you knew." She struck her fist against his chest.
He smiled down at her. "Until just this morning, I, too, was dying again and again."
Now she was laughing, still turned in the saddle, her hands gripping his cloak, melting against him. "Jebu, I'm going mad, I'm so happy." Jebu said, "In the Order we are taught that those who pursue hap piness are pursuing an illusion. Those who think they have found it have found an even greater illusion. Now I think the Order is wrong. Eor what I feel this moment I would gladly trade all of my life up to now and all that is to come."
Taniko was faint, dizzy with astonishment and joy as she felt his body-real, solid, there for her to lean against.
"You are no illusion."
She turned completely around to him. They held each other tightly, ignoring the slight, nervous dancing of the horse. He bent down and put his lips on hers. His mouth felt strange to her. She had not expected that. The bristles of his moustache scratched her lips. Eor all these years she had been living with a memory. This was a real man, a man in many ways completely new.
They were not the same people any more. It was hopeless. She had been deceiving herself. The Jebu who had lived in her heart all these years was no more real than the Buddha of Boundless Light.
But was not the Buddha a reality? Then she should not lose faith so quickly in this man, whom she had found again after so long. She must not lose him again.
All these thoughts raced through her mind in the interval of the kiss. She drew away from him and looked up into his grey eyes. They had not changed.
"What will we do now?"
He smiled. "Whatever we like. I've had no time to plan. This morning the orkhon Uriangkatai sent for me and told me that the Great Khan had decided to grant my request."
"The Great Khan. He never even bade me farewell," said Taniko, feeling a strange disappointment in the midst of her happiness.
"I saw, when I asked him to reunite us, that it would not be easy for him to do it. Until this morning I didn't believe he would. We have much to talk about, you and I. We can't talk very well on the back of a horse."
"No." She nestled against him. He had not changed so very much after all. He was Jebu.
"If it pleases you, we can go to my yurt. It is in the army encampment."
"It pleases me," she said, squeezing his hand tightly.
They rode slowly down the path under the cypresses. Quail hiding in the underbrush darted away with a thrumming of wings. The trees were full of birds attracted to the woodlands because they were not hunted there. Deer and smaller animals whispered through the trees. Only the Great Khan and those he invited to accompany him were permitted to kill any animals here. He had not chosen to hunt since the park was enclosed, so the birds and animals felt safe.
They spoke no more as they rode out of the woods and down the road to the army camp. Thousands of horses grazed on the gentle, grassy hills.
Riding with Jebu along the rows of yurts, Taniko remembered her first entry into Kublai's camp five years ago. There was the same quiet, orderly buzz of activity. But the camp she entered today was a peacetime camp, and there were many women and children about. Taniko saw them staring at her. Some of the men greeted Jebu with a shout and a wave, eyeing her and turning away with small smiles.
It was hard to believe that he lived in a yurt like any Mongol warrior, but he was opening the wooden door to his round grey felt tent.
"There will be others to greet you in a while," he said. "But I asked them to give us some time alone. Please honour my miserable tent, Lady Shima Taniko."
She smiled, walking daintily through the door. She did not have to stoop to enter a yurt, as most Mongols did. When she was inside she burst into tears again. He was beside her quickly, closing the door. Lamps were already lit.
He held her in his arms. "What is it?"
"It's just that it's been so long since anyone has spoken to me in our language, addressed me so politely as we do at home. I never knew how much I missed it. I would not let myself know. And to think that of all people, the first one to speak to me in my own language after five years should be you, Jebu. It's too much of a blessing. I can't believe my good fortune. Help me to sit down. I feel dizzy."
Jebu took her arm to steady her as she dropped to her knees on the carpet. She looked down and saw that the design in the rug was as elaborate and colourful as any she had seen in Kublai's palaces.
"Let me make ch'ai for you," he said. He lit a charcoal fire and placed a cast-iron pot of water on a tripod over it. He brought a low black jade table out from the wall and set it before her. He sat across from her, waiting for the water to boil.
Taniko looked around the yurt. The floor was covered with layers of rugs as rich as the one on which she was sitting. Silk hangings divided the domed chamber into several small rooms. A statue of a Chinese goddess smiled benignly at her. It appeared to be made of solid gold and was decorated with jewels.
"You seem to have forgotten your austere Zinja ways," she said with a small laugh.
"I had also forgotten how beautiful your laughter sounds," he said, looking at her with shining eyes. "Yes, I've accumulated a great quantity of treasure. I do not plan to keep it. The Great Khan was most generous to his victorious troops. Especially to me."
"Do you want to keep me with you, Jebu?"
"My lady, that will be as you wish."
"You asked the Great Khan to give me to you."
"I phrased my request that way because it is the only sort of request he would understand. In his world, everyone belongs to someone else. What I wanted him to do was simply to release you from captivity."
Taniko made herself look at Jebu carefully to see how much he had changed. She had not wanted to do that, because seeing the changes in him would force her to admit the changes in herself.
His face was thin, with a hard mouth and hollow eyes that could have belonged either to a wild desert warrior or a mountain holy man. The chin was sharp, the cheekbones jutting. There were innumerable tiny creases radiating from the corners of his eyes, wrinkles put there by years of squinting into the sun and wind. Thank Buddha, though, he was free of any horrible battle scars such as so many veteran warriors bore. Deep creases ran from the corners of his nose to his mouth, partially buried by the thick red moustache. The moustache itself and the hair on his head, which was shaved in the middle and gathered in plaits behind his ears, Mongol-style, were beginning to show streaks of grey.
He hadn't aged badly. But what about her? A woman of her age was good for nothing but raising a man's first children while he went out and got some more children on younger women. He had asked for her because he remembered her and felt sorry for her. It was an act of kindness, nothing more.
Jebu said, "Do you remember, ages ago, how we looked over Heian Kyo from Mount Higashi and I swore to you that I would be yours for ever?"
"Yes," she whispered. She was crying again, but the tears were flowing gently, like a soft spring rain, not like the storms of weeping that had gone before.
"And you said to me that the lilac branch would always be there for the waterfowl," he went on.
"I remember that," said Taniko, thinking sadly how little difference those promises had made. He had not been there when she needed him. He had wandered all over the world seeking battle, after the way of his Order. And though she had not forgotten him, she had been there for other men as much as for him. There had been Kiyosi and Kublai Khan. Truly, compared with those two, with each of whom she had been intimate for years, what did this man who sat across the black jade table mean to her?
He, too, had loved a memory. He had risked all to win that memory from the Great Khan. And now, doubtless, seeing her in the timeworn flesh, he was bitterly disappointed.
"I've just been thinking,' Jebu said, "how marvellous it is that we've managed to keep those promises in spite of everything."
"We have?" It was just then, conscious of the tears on her cheeks, that Taniko remembered she was nearly devoid of make-up. The facial paint suitable for a lady of Heian Kyo was just a nuisance on a morning ride. Not only was she aged and ugly, but he was seeing her without the protection make-up might have afforded.
Jebu said, "To think that so many years could have passed and you could be so far from the Sunrise Land, and yet I was able to find you and restore you to your people. To think that after all this time and over all this distance you still wanted to come to me." He paused and looked at her, troubled. The tea water was bubbling. He poured it into a glossy green bowl over a small heap of finely ground leaves. Setting the bowl on the table between them, he whipped the beverage into a lather with a bamboo whisk and offered it to Taniko. All this time he kept his eyes on her.
"I have wondered-there is something I have feared. I must speak of it to you and set my mind at rest. There was a sound of doubt in your voice when you spoke of how we've kept our promises to each other. The thing I fear is that you might have been happy with Kublai Khan, that you might not have wanted to come to me."
"Didn't you think that living among the Mongols was the worst thing that could happen to me? Horigawa did."
"Obviously, he assumed you would be treated as a slave. Did you truly want to go from the palace of the Great Khan to this warrior's yurt?"
"How can you doubt it, Jebu-san?" This was the first time she had called him by that affectionate term since that night at Daidoji.
Jebu shrugged. "I don't know what passed between you and Kublai Khan. He has many, many women. The day he triumphed over Arik Buka, Arghun came within a hair's breadth of killing me. The Great Khan in his triumphant mood wanted to show me some favour to compensate for my suffering. I asked for you. Perhaps he gave you no choice in the matter."
She dabbed at her tear-stained cheeks with the end of her sleeve. "He asked me what I wanted. I told him I wanted to go to you." She sobbed. A lady does not weep in front of a man, let her eyes puff up and her nose turn red. This was hideous.
Jebu poured and whisked more tea for her. She took the bowl from him gratefully.
"Why so much crying? Are you sure you don't wish you were still with him?"
"Perhaps it is you who wants that?"
"I don't understand."
"Look at me, Jebu. Do I look anything like the woman you left at Daidoji? I was sixteen then. That was seventeen years ago. I've lived another whole lifetime. You wanted me back because you remembered what I was then. Look at me as I am now."
Jebu frowned, a sadness coming into his eyes. "Are you trying to persuade me to send you back to him?"
TIME OF THE DRAGONS 329
"I don't want to go back to him," she said violently. "If only I could believe that you want me."
He put his teacup down and took her hand. "Look into the core of your being and see the Self shining there, as I do when I look into your eyes."
"You are deceiving yourself."
"Am I? When Kublai Khan spoke to you of leaving him, did he seem eager to part with you?"
"He was so angry, I thought he was going to kill us both. Jebu, he asked me if I wanted to leave him for you, and I told him the truth. I told him that I had been happy with him. And I must tell you that, too, Jebu. I was happy with Kublai Khan. I did not submit to him unwillingly. But more than anything else in the world, I wanted to be with you. I told him that. He was angry. He sent me away."
"He was just as angry when I spoke your name to him and asked him to let you come to me. Like you, I thought it might mean the end of our lives. Like you, I was overwhelmed when I discovered this morning that he was going to reunite us. Kublai Khan was deeply unwilling to let you go. We may never know why he decided to. Do you think he was deceiving himself?"
"What do you mean?"
"He saw something in you that he did not want to lose. You may think I'm just an impoverished monk whose mind is softened by too much meditation and addled by too many battles, but is the Great Khan of the Mongols such a fool? He who has his pick of hundreds of women? Or is it possible that you are a lady to be desired?"
His words perplexed Taniko. Perhaps she was thinking like a petulant child. He was right. She did kindle desire in men. She felt a warm glow within, rising from that thought. But then another explanation for Kublai's attitude came to her, and the glow died away.
"He didn't want to let me go. He told me so himself. No matter how unimportant or undesirable a place or a thing is, if he doesn't have it, he wants it. He's' like his grandfather. He wants the whole world and every person in it." She looked down at her tea and sipped it. She did not want to look at Jebu.
"There is only one way I can convince you." A smile was in his voice. He stood and moved around the table. He took her in his arms.
At first she didn't want him to see or touch her. She felt old. Her body was used, worn.
A coldness filled her. All right, let him have his way with me, she thought. It's as he said. Everyone belongs to someone. No, that is just how Kublai Khan saw it. I was his toy, his little creature.
Jebu doesn't want to possess me. He wants to show me that I am desirable, I am wise, I am witty, I am beautiful. That's what Jebu is trying to tell me with his hands and his body. But no, it can't be, not after seventeen years. It is not me he is doing this with. He does not see me as I am. There's a vision that only he can see. He wants to find his Buddha in me. Almost always, these things of the bed are things of the mind.
In spite of herself, she was gliding, like a ship that had slipped its moorings, like a horse given its head, like a falcon unleashed. Past and present swirled together until it seemed that she was with Jebu on the hill overlooking Heian Kyo, with Jebu in the murderous, pitch-black night at Daidoji, with Jebu in the tents of Kublai Khan, all at once. This was really happening. Why it was happening no longer mattered.
Joy filled her body and her mind. She was beyond asking any question. The delight of being with him, the only man in the world, was a happiness that consumed her entire being like fire. It was the boundless light she had so often called upon.
She heard voices, hers and his, mingling together, but could not tell what they were saying, if they were saying anything, or if they were just crying out without words. The light within her was dazzling. The yurt around her was plunged into blackness. Her body dissolved.
They lay side by side on the beautiful carpet, each listening to the other's breathing. She felt as if they were drifting across the lake on a dragon barge on a golden afternoon. She could not remember ever having known such peace, such completeness.
Then the doubts crept in again. He had proved to her with his body that he wanted her. But still he might have given himself over to illusion. She could never be sure that he wanted her as she really was.
There were scars, not on his face but on his body. He wore strips of cloth wrapped tightly around his chest. A scar, still red, completely encircled his neck. He had a hideous wound in his left arm. The skin was puckered and blackened around it, drawn together with some kind of stitching. Gingerly she touched his arm.
"What was this?"
He shrugged, looking deep into her eyes with his grey ones. Odd, that eyes of such a colour could radiate such warmth.
"One of Arghun's riders gave it to me during the battle last month." "It was Arghun who killed your father. He was the Mongol warrior you told me about on the journey from Kamakura to Heian Kyo." "Yes, and not long after I left you at Daidoji, he came back and tried to kill me again."
"You have so much to tell me, Jebu. So many years have gone by. I have no idea of the adventures you've had in the years we've been apart. You must tell me everything, from the moment you left Daidoji. Take seventeen years to tell it if you like. We have the time."
A strangely haunted look came into Jebu's eyes. "Yes. I will tell you everything. There is so much. It will take awhile."
"What disturbs you, Jebu-san?" she smiled. "You need not tell me about the women you have known. I'm sure there have been many." He did not smile back. "I must tell you everything. In time."
A shadow had fallen. She did not know what it was, but there was something he did not want her to know. She could not imagine the Jebu she had known on the Tokaido Road wanting to conceal anything. Much had happened to him. He had changed. She had changed. Once we find out how much each of us has changed, she thought, whatever was between us before might be severed.
She was a happy woman, possibly happier than she had ever been at any time in her life. Yet even this happiness was shot through with veins of uneasiness, doubt, fear and sadness. She had not known that happiness would be like that. She must write a poem about it.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
From the pillow book of Shima Taniko:
I have known how the Great Khan lives. Now I am finding out how the warriors of the Great Khan live. Jebu has servants who cook and clean for him. Like the Mongols, he drinks mostly milk and eats cheese. The Mongols eat veal and mutton only on special occasions. Jebu says that cattle, goats, sheep and yaks are their wealth, so they prefer to live on the products of these animals, rather than butcher them.
All of us from the Sacred Islands have had to learn to eat meat, may the Buddha forgive us, but we eat a good deal less of it than the Mongols do, and we buy celery, onions, beets, beans and rice from the farms around Khan Baligh, so we can eat somewhat as we are used to.
I do not believe any woman of my country has had a chance to describe so many different places and ways of life as I have. Of course, this pillow book of mine can have no literary value. How could it, when it is written in the language of women?
