grandchildren; the great temple of Kinkaku-ji, where they had met, and which had since been burned to the ground by a mad Buddhist monk; the giant weeping cherry tree in Maruyama Park under which he had asked her to be his wife; and the gold-and-silver Lotus Sutra scroll, which contains the fundamental text of the Tendai, the definitive teachings of Buddha, and where he had spent three days in meditation before becoming a Master of the higaru- dashi.
This park was full of sweet memories, and as he walked through the giant torii and left it, he dedicated his happy thoughts to the gods.
He walked past the sprawling International Hotel and the American Culture Centre to the Gion district, two miles away. This was the old world, the world he loved. The alleys were narrow and spotlessly clean and bordered by high bamboo fences, the shops were true to the architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here, among the people he knew best in the world, the Kyoto dialect had not yet been bastardized, and there was harmony in the symmetry of the houses and among the people who lived in them.
He did not go straight home. He turned instead and walked down a bamboo-walled alley to a house that sat back from the rest of the homes on the street. It was a handsome structure, two hundred years old and perfectly preserved, its handmade latticework oiled and shiny.
The owner of the house was known as Mama Momo, Mother Peach, because her complexion was still smooth, unwrinkled and unblemished despite the storms of sixty-odd years. Kimura had known Mama Momo since the year after his wife died; she was an old friend, and an understanding one. He came to the house twice a week, and each time he brought her 5,112 yen, which is $22.54, in a rice paper bag that was hand-painted by an artist in one of his kendo classes. And each time she would wait until he went to the back before she opened the bag and counted the money.
He walked down the hail to the rear of the house and entered a room which was decorated with chrysanthemums, and with sprig of plum and cherry blossoms. The house was built in a rectangle with its rooms facing a stone garden in the courtyard. Kimura sat on a tatami, stared at the single stone boat near its centre and waited.
How much of Eliza’s story was true,, he wondered, and how much was hidden from view? Was she what she seemed? Kimura’s instincts told him to trust her,, but looking at the stone boat, he was forced to consider the posibi1ity that she, too, had come to kill 0’ Hara.
His thoughts were interrupted by a young girl, no more than twenty, who entered the room with a tray of oils and knelt beside him. She bowed and then smiled at him and ran her fingertips down his cellophane cheeks.. Kimura took her other hand in both of his and smiled back.
‘Ah,’ he said, in the dialect of Kyoto, ‘Miei, my favourite.’
She giggled and answered in the same dialect, ‘We are all your favourites, Tokenrui-san.’ She knelt behind him and slipped off her kimono. Her voice was a bird’s, soft and melodic, and she began to caress his chest and shoulders.
There was a knock on the door. Kimura sighed and leaned back on his arms. The girl put the kimono back on.
‘Who is it?’ he asked,
‘It’s me.’
‘Dozo.’
A big man slid the panelled door open, left his shoes beside the door and entered the room. He was a shade over six feet tall, Caucasian, with a great shock of black hair, a full beard and slate-gray eyes. He bowed to Tokenrui-sari and sat cross-legged in front of him. Miei slipped behind the old man and began massaging his shoulders.
The big man, too, spoke in the dialect of old Kyoto. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he said,
‘I have plenty of time.’
‘You met the girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘I found her refreshingly exuberant arid naive for a Westerner.’
‘In what way?’
‘A certain desperation to get the message to you. But death was not in the desperation. There was.. . innocence? I played some games with her. Reciting abstractions as if they were written in the Tendai. By now she probably thinks everyone in Japan over fifty speaks like a bad American movie.’
‘But you trust her?’
‘Ah, an interesting question. Let us say I am willing to convey her message to you. I am not sure I am willing to advise you to listen.’
‘I read the correspondence in her room. There are two letters. One from the Winter Man lifting the sanction. The other from Howe, verifying its validity. There is also a document from a man named Falmouth in which he swears under oath that the Winter Man offered him twenty thousand dollars to carry it out.’
‘So, it would seem her story is true.’
‘There’s a catch,’ O’Hara said.
‘Ah?’
‘She’s got a shadow.’
‘Anybody known to us?’
‘No. In fact, judging from his manner, I would say he is not even of the Game. He acts more like an American gangster.’
