"Bosh," said Eisen, a twinkle in his eye, having come up to the Shogun. "Sametono is Sametono. Takashi and Muratomo are names and nothing more."

  Sametono laughed, a clear, metallic sound. "No matter how high I climb on the ladder of Truth, Eisen-sensei is always above me."

  "Look up at my rump," said Eisen, "and you'll see the face of the Buddha." He turned casually to Jebu, ignoring the shocked stares of Munetoki and Moko and said, "We meet again, Monk Jebu."

  "My father recommended that I see you, sensei," said Jebu.

  "How is the aged, honoured Taitaro?"

  "Dead," said Jebu flatly.

  Eisen smiled. "The tide rises, the tide falls. We must talk when there is more time, Monk Jebu." He patted Jebu's hand, bowed to Sametono and turned away.

  "There's something I've always wanted to ask a Zinja monk," said Sametono. "I've heard that you Zinja monks can kill at a distance just by pointing a finger at an enemy or shouting at him. Can you really do that? Could you teach it to me?"

  "Those are old stories that go all the way back to the martial arts schools of China, Your Highness," said Jebu with a smile. "We Zinja train very hard, but we can't kill by magic."

  But he looked at Hideyori, Taniko thought, and Hideyori fell off his horse and died. Sitting behind her screen, watching Jebu in conversation with Sametono, Taniko felt a surge of hope. Jebu was his old self, kindly and intelligent. The day before, when he had entered the Shogun's castle for the first time after Yukio's death, he must have felt he was putting himself in the hands of his enemies. Now he knew that all here were his friends, anxious to have his help. Perhaps, next, he would relax a little towards Taniko herself.

  So, let us try again, she thought. She would invite him to have ch'ai with her in her chambers tonight. One more conversation might not rekindle the love he had once felt for her, but at least it could put an end to hate, and that would be a beginning. With her invitation there must, of course, be a poem. As she stared longingly at Jebu she began to compose one in her mind:

  Lonely waterfowl

  Lilac branch bare of blossom, Together again.

  He came to her chambers just before midnight, escorted by a giggling maidservant. As she looked into his face her heart sank. Even though there was now no screen between them, his eyes were as cold and hard as they had been this morning. After he had stared at her for a moment his eyes fell, and he sat there as if alone. The silence seemed to stretch on endlessly. She watched him hungrily, thinking that if he would not talk to her at least he could not prevent her from enjoying the sight of him.

  But at last she could stand the silence and the yearning no longer. "Jebu. Why did you come to Kamakura if you hate me so much?"

  The grey eyes were watchful, unsympathetic. "I do not wish to hate any person. It is not the Zinja way. I came to Kamakura because to refuse to help in this war would be a betrayal of all Yukio fought for."

  She did not know how to answer this. A silence fell again, which she filled by preparing ch'ai. As she handed his cup to him, she noticed with anger at herself that her hand was trembling. She saw him looking at her hand as he took the cup from her with polite thanks. He leaned back on the elbow rest beside him and drank.

  Although he seemed perfectly at ease, the intimacy of the chamber, which she had hoped would draw them together, was making her oddly uncomfortable, as if she had disrobed to seduce him. She looked at the verse Sametono had inscribed on green paper years ago, which now hung on a scroll above her private altar: "Though we speak of goodness, the Tathagata declares that there is no goodness. Such is merely a name."

  What would Jebu make of that if he noticed it? Probably that she was a wicked person who did not believe in goodness, which was apparently what he thought of her already. More than anything else in the world she wanted him to love and respect her. And here he was, so close, but he despised her. The need for him was unbearably insistent; for it to be thwarted was intolerably painful. If only he would talk about the reasons for his hatred of her, instead of sitting there in that dreadful self-contained silence.

  "You think what I did was a betrayal of Yukio, don't you?" she said at last.

  He glared at her. "Must we speak of this? I'm here. I've agreed to help. Let the rest of it alone. Don't write me any more poems."

  How could he be so cruel? "I can't help it. I love you." She was close to tears.

  He stood up instantly. "This conversation must end now. To continue will only cause great pain for both of us, perhaps make it impossible for me to serve you."

  She held out her hand. "Wait. At least let me hear from your own lips what it is you hold against me. Give me a chance to defend myself."

  He sat down again. "Very well. If nothing else, perhaps hearing it will convince you to leave me alone. I will tell you what you have done to me, and you will send me to Kyushu, where we will never have to see each other, and you will never again be so foolish as to mention love to me. Love? Apparently you were able to forget that love for ten years."

  He paused as if collecting his thoughts and took a deep breath. Then he began to speak in a hollow voice, as if he were describing ancient history. He began with their parting, which had happened at her insistence. He reviewed everything that had happened since then, as he saw it. Einally he said, "What you really love is rank and power. When you saw a chance to get them, you forgot about Yukio and me. You did nothing to help us. When Hideyori began to draw his net about Yukio there was no help, no word of friendship, no warning from you. There was only the news that whenever Hideyori appeared in public, you were always at his side. Out of blind ambition you married the man who murdered Yukio and tried to murder me. Can you see now why it is painful for me to be near you? I ask you respectfully, if you want my help, to send me somewhere far away from you."

  By the time he had finished speaking, sobs racked her. Her tears were as much for him and what he had endured as for herself. But she was also astounded at how different his view of events was from hers.

  He seemed to have the notion she could have left Hideyori any time she wanted to.

  "You have no conception of what a woman's life is like," she wept. "We are not permitted to go anywhere, to see anyone, to know anything. After you left me here I was virtually the prisoner of my father and Hideyori. I encouraged Hideyori's interest in me because it was the only protection I had from my father. Once Hideyori had me in his power, I was forced to view the world through his eyes. He surrounded me with his spies and agents. When Moko brought Sametono here, I was so grateful to you I could have walked the length of the Tokaido to tell you. But I couldn't get a message to you. I dared not try. Erom then on, Sametono was my life, and the only way to protect Sametono was to give in to Hideyori and to believe, or try to believe, everything he told me. Yes, I married him. I married him because I was completely alone in the world, because he agreed to adopt Sametono, and because he had Horigawa killed so that he could marry me. Judge me if you must, Jebu, but only after you have tried to feel how I felt then, how helpless I was, how desperately I wanted to protect my grandson.

  "I always thought he was lying to me about some things, but it was not until we journeyed together to Heian Kyo that I learned he had lied to me about everything that really mattered to me. He admitted it all with a smile. He said none of it should be important to me, since I was now the most powerful woman in the Sacred Islands. See, he had the same low opinion of me that you do. He tried to embrace me. Knowing what I knew by then, I would as soon be touched by a giant spider. I took off my slipper and hit him in the face with it."

  Jebu looked amazed. "Your slipper? You hit Hideyori in the face with your slipper?"

  Taniko smiled bitterly. "Who has more right to strike the Shogun than his wife? He would have cut me down on the spot if he had not been such a cold man."

  "You struck him with your slipper," Jebu repeated, as if that, of all the things she had told him, was the most astonishing. "The courage that must have taken! You are a true samurai."

  "It took no courage," she said curtly. "I was angry, and I acted without thinking."

  "It's all very different from the way I thought it was," said Jebu, his grey eyes troubled.

  "Just as the truth about what you did after we parted was very different from what I thought," she agreed. "Oh, Jebu-san, there was so much beauty between us. Why couldn't we have believed in each other?"

  "Because we suffered too much to think wisely," he said. He sat lost in thought, his eyes wandering around the room. They drifted to Sametono's verse, moved past it, then stopped and returned. She watched curiously as he read it to himself in a whisper, frowning. Suddenly a sun seemed to rise in his face. She shivered as she watched his transformation.

  "Yes," he said. "Yes. There is no such thing as goodness. Exactly." She wanted to ask him why the verse affected him so, but she held her tongue. It was obvious that something profound was happening to him, perhaps the moment of discovery Eisen called satori. She was even more sure of this when he started to laugh.

  "It's so obvious," he said. He turned to her suddenly, a glowing smile on his face. "Where did this come from?"

  "Sametono wrote it," she said. "The Zen monk Eisen suggested it to him as a calligraphic exercise."

  "Eisen," he said thoughtfully. "Of course, of course. Who else would select a verse in which the Buddha himself says there is no such thing as goodness? If there is no such thing as goodness, then we must all be devils, mustn't we?"

  "I don't understand," she said, bewildered by his glee. "What is it you learned?"

  "Nothing new. I've just rediscovered something I already knew. So Sametono studies under Eisen?"

  "He and I both do," she said. "You already know Eisen, don't you?" Jebu told her of his first meeting with Eisen, at the Teak Blossom

  Temple. "Before my father died, he told me something about Eisen." "What is that?"

  "Let us say that it does not surprise me that Eisen would assign a student that particular verse as a calligraphic exercise. And, now that I know you are a student of Eisen it doesn't surprise me as much that you struck Hideyori with your slipper. Without thinking, as you put it."

  At Jebu's mention of his father, Taniko said, "I was desolate at the news that your father died, Jebu. He was a wise, kindly man. The kind of man a father should be, not like mine."

  "There is no cause to grieve for Taitaro," Jebu said. "He decided to die."

  "Yes, Moko described his death to me," she said. "How strange and beautiful. What a marvellous man the old abbot was. You can't imagine how happy I was to see him in Shangtu, the night Kublai had himself proclaimed Great Khan. It gave me hope for the first time since Horigawa took me to China. The only time I was happier in China was the day I found you again."

  Jebu nodded. "How odd that one of the happiest times of my life should have been in a foreign country. You and I had been through terrible things. We had no idea that even worse was in store for us. But we lived in our yurt and were content."

  "I was happier cooking and washing in a yurt than I am today living in a castle with hundreds of servants." Her heart beat faster. His anger had vanished and his mood was warm, peaceful. It had something to do with the slipper and with Sametono's verse. There was hope.

  "When you mentioned the Great Wall last night, that brought it all back to me," he said. "Our excursions into the Chinese countryside. That ruined temple where I tried to teach you that love of the body is holy. I thought then that one day you and I might be married and live together in a Zinja monastery somewhere. I remember my father even said that it would please him greatly." She was amazed to see tears coursing down his cheeks, brown as carved hardwood.

  The sight of him crying made her own eyes grow hot and blurred with tears as well. "Jebu, Jebu. It's all my fault," she sobbed. "We could have stayed together. But I had to go on blaming you for Kiyosi's death. How different things would have been, if I'd never left you, instead of coming here to Kamakura. Oh, Jebu, ten years lost because of my foolishness." She threw herself down on a cushion, her face buried in her arms.

  "Don't blame yourself," said Jebu. "Taitaro showed Moko and me the pattern in these events. Things had to happen as they did." "Karma?"

  "Not karma. It has nothing to do with being punished for wicked acts and rewarded for virtue. It's just a pattern. Besides, you would have been quite bored, living in a monastery. I'm sure you've been happier as the Shogun's wife."

  She laughed through her tears. "It was like being married to a mamushi, a poisonous snake. It is a dreadful thing to say, Jebu-san, but I'm much happier as the Shogun's widow. From what I've heard about the monks and their women in the Zinja monasteries, I don't think it would have been boring. Oh, my wild waterfowl, if everything had to happen as it did, then please stop judging me. Stop hating me. Accept me as I am."

  " 'There is no goodness. Such is merely a name.' We are two faces of the same Self, I told you that long ago. How can I judge you? I would simply be judging myself. Many of my own acts won't bear judging. Taniko, when I look into your eyes I want to become one with you. That's why I've been so angry. Being cut off from you is too painful for me, as if I were being cut in two. I did hate you, Taniko, and for that you must forgive me. I hated you because I love you. I don't accept you, I love you."

  At those words Taniko felt a melting warmth spread through her body. I never thought I could still have such feelings at my age, she thought. I feel the same hunger for him, and it feels just as new and strange and wonderful as it did that night when I was thirteen years old and he was seventeen and I lay with this man on Mount Higashi, looking down at Heian Kyo. Oh, Jebu, are we going to be lovers tonight? Oh, please take me in your arms, Jebu, crush me with the weight of your body. But, how can he want me when I am a hag, with a face full of lines, sagging belly, sagging breasts, wrinkled hands? Perhaps if I can get the lamp put out in time he won't notice how age has ruined my body. She reached for the small bronze oil lamp that burned beside them.

  His lean, long hand reached out and seized her wrist. A thrill ran up her arm and through her body. His skin, so brown, against her white skin-beautiful.

  "We want light, don't we?" he said softly. She sighed with delighted anticipation. He did want to lie with her.

  "Darkness creates the illusion of beauty," she said, her eyes downcast.

  "I want no illusions. I want you, exactly as you are." His face was very close to hers, and she reached up and stroked the stiff hairs of the white beard with her fingertips. "We are beyond judgment now, you and I," he said. "Judgment of good or evil, beautiful or ugly, young or old, that's all behind us. Such worries are for youngsters."

  She relaxed with a sigh and lay back, her mouth yielding to the pressure of his mouth against hers, his rough hands massaging her breasts. Indeed, she didn't care whether her breasts looked old and sagging or not. They were able to give pleasure; that was evident from the gentle, lingering movement of his hands on them. And they were very much able to receive pleasure, she thought, drawing in a shivering breath. And they were her breasts, and therefore he wanted them. He wanted her body as it was, and not any other woman's. She now felt sure of that.

  As their love progressed she made another delightful discovery. Somewhere in the years between thirteen and forty-five she had lost all shame. Even that beautiful first night on Mount Higashi had been alloyed by fears of what the world would think if they were suddenly discovered. Now, she thought, if all of Kamakura walked in here and saw us lying in this embrace, our clothes open, our bodies touching everywhere, I would let them watch. I think I might enjoy being watched. I am proud of this. Proud that I can excite this man, this warrior, and draw his passion into me. The years with Kiyosi, with Kublai Khan, in China with Jebu, even with Hideyori who needed so much coaxing-all that experience had taught her a great deal about the art of love. I am as much a master of this flowery combat as Jebu is a master of the sword, and I wish that the whole world could see us.

  She stood up, taking his hand, and drew him with her to the sleeping platform, the untied cords of her mauve silk robe hanging loosely by her side. As she turned to pull him in through the curtains she looked closely at his body under his grey robe, which had fallen open. She gasped, shocked. There were scars everywhere. His neck and chest were covered with large and small marks, slightly paler than his brown skin. She pushed back his robe and saw that his shoulders were also scarred. She stroked the scars with her fingertips, feeling their thickness and roughness. Then she leaned her head against his chest and began to cry.

  "My darling, what have they done to you? How you must have suffered."

  "I never felt most of these wounds," he whispered. "You have caused me far more pain than any of these cuts and gashes." "Don't say that, Jebu."

  "You could not have hurt me if I had not loved you."

  "I will give you pleasure that will more than balance the pain." "You can give me more than pleasure. You can give me happiness." "You have known so much pain," she murmured. "Your body is so scarred, so toughened. Can you still feel my touch?"

  "I may look to you like an old oak at the end of winter," he whis- . pered, laughing softly. "But, miraculous as it may seen, life surges within."

  She pulled him down to the bed beside her. Their movements together were like those of swimmers, graceful and rhythmic. Together they were gliding through a sea of pleasure, a warm sea without a shoreline, rising and falling with the waves. She forgot where she was, she forgot time and age, she forgot that she was the Ama-Shogun and he was a Zinja warrior monk. She was a woman enjoying the body of a man. Nothing more. But nothing less.

  When at last they lay side by side, exhausted in a blissful semi-trance, she patted her old wooden pillow. "I'll have a good story to tell my pillow book tomorrow."

  "You keep a diary? You never told me tilat."

  "It's my deepest secret. I've never told anyone before this. Perhaps I'll read to you from it, if you stay with me for always." The thought brought reality painfully back. "Jebu-san. What are we going to do? How are we going to live?"

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100