Shibumi

The arm of the garden extending toward the Japanese building had been designed for listening to rain. Hel worked for weeks each rainy season, barefoot and wearing only sodden shorts, as he tuned the garden. The gutters and downspouts had been drilled and shaped, plants moved and removed, gravel distributed, sounding stones arranged in the stream, until the blend of soprano hissing of rain through gravel, the basso drip onto broad-leaved plants, the reedy resonances of quivering bamboo leaves, the counterpoint of the gurgling stream, all were balanced in volume in such a way that, if one sat precisely in the middle of the tatami'd room, no single sound dominated. The concentrating listener could draw one timbre out of the background, or let it merge again, as he shifted the focus of his attention, much as the insomniac can tune in or out the ticking of a clock. The effort required to control the instrument of a well-tuned garden is sufficient to repress quotidian worries and anxieties, but this anodyne property is not the principal goal of the gardener, who must be more devoted to creating a garden than to using it.

Hel sat in the gun room, hearing the rain, but lacking the peace of spirit to listen to it. There was bad aji in this affair. It wasn't of a piece, and it was treacherously... personal. It was Hel's way to play against the patterns on the board, not against fleshy, inconsistent living opponents. In this business, moves would be made for illogical reasons; there would be human filters between cause and effect. The whole thing stank of passion and sweat.

He released a long sigh in a thin jet of breath. 'Well?' he asked. 'And what do you make of all this?'

There was no answer. Hel felt her aura take on a leporine palpitation between the urge to flee and fear of movement. He slid back the door panel to the tea room and beckoned with his finger.

Hannah Stern stood in the doorway, her hair wet with rain, and her sodden dress clinging to her body and legs. She was embarrassed at being caught eavesdropping, but defiantly unwilling to apologize. In her view, the importance of the matters at hand out-weighed any consideration of good form and rules of polite behavior. Hel might have told her that, in the long run, the 'minor' virtues are the only ones that matter. Politeness is more reliable than the moist virtues of compassion, charity, and sincerity; just as fair play is more important than the abstraction of justice. The major virtues tend to disintegrate under the pressures of convenient rationalization. But good form is good form, and it stands immutable in the storm of circumstance.

Hel might have told her this, but he was not interested in her spiritual education, and he had no wish to decorate the unperfectible. At all events, she would probably have understood only the words, and if she were to penetrate to meanings, what use would be the barriers and foundations of good form to a woman whose life would be lived out in some Scarsdale or other?

'Well?' he asked again. 'What did you make of all that?'

She shook her head. 'I had no idea they were so... organized; so... cold-blooded. I've caused you a lot of trouble, haven't I?'

'I don't hold you responsible for anything that has happened so far. I have long known that I have a karma debt. Considering the fact that my work has cut across the grain of social organization, a certain amount of bad luck would be expected. I've not had that bad luck, and so I've built up a karma debt; a weight of antichance against me. You were the vehicle for karma balance, but I don't consider you the cause. Do you understand any of that?'

She shrugged. 'What are you going to do?'

The storm was passing, and the winds behind it blew in from the garden and made Hannah shudder in her wet dress.

'There are padded kimonos in that chest Get out of those clothes.'

'I'm all right'

'Do as I tell you. The tragic heroine with the sniffles is too ludicrous an image.'

It was consonant with the too-brief shorts, the unbuttoned shirt front and the surprise Hannah affected (believed she genuinely felt) when men responded to her as an object that she unzipped and stepped out of the wet dress before she sought out the dry kimono. She had never confessed to herself that she took social advantage of having a desirable body that appeared to be available. If she had thought of it, she would have labeled her automatic exhibitionism a healthy acceptance of her body—an absence of 'hangups.'

'What are you going to do?' she asked again, as she wrapped the warm kimono about her.

'The real question is what are you going to do. Do you still intend to press on with this business? To throw yourself off the pier in the hopes that I will have to jump in after you?'

'Would you? Jump in after me?'

'I don't know.'

Hannah stared out into the dark of the garden and hugged the comforting kimono to herself. 'I don't know... I don't know. It all seemed so clear just yesterday. I knew what I had to do, what was the only just and right thing to do.'

'And now...?'

She shrugged and shook her head. 'You'd rather I went home and forgot all about it, wouldn't you?'

'Yes. And that might not be as easy as you think, either. Diamond knows about you. Getting you safely home will take a little doing.'

'And what happens to the Septembrists who murdered our athletes in Munich?'

'Oh, they'll die. Everyone does, eventually.'

'But... if I just go home, then Avrim's death and Chaim's would be pointless!'

'That's true. They were pointless deaths, and nothing you might do would change that.'

Hannah stepped close to Hel and looked up at him, her face full of confusion and doubt. She wanted to be held, comforted, told that everything would be just fine.

'You'll have to decide what you intend to do fairly quickly. Let's go back to the house. You can think things out tonight.'

* * *

They found Hana and Le Cagot sitting in the cool of the wet terrace. The gusting wind had followed the storm, and the air was fresh and washed. Hana rose as they approached and took Hannah's hand in an unconscious gesture of kindness.

Le Cagot was sprawled on a stone bench, his eyes closed, his brandy glass loose in his fingers, and his heavy breathing occasionally rippling in a light snore.

'He dropped off right in the middle of a story,' Hana explained.

'Hana,' Hel said. 'Miss Stern won't be staying with us after tonight. Would you see to having her things packed by morning? I'm going to take her up to the lodge.' He turned to Hannah. 'I have a mountain place. You can stay there, out of harm's way, while I consider how to get you back to your parents safely.'

'I haven't decided that I want to go home.'

Instead of responding, Hel kicked the sole of Le Cagot's boot. The burly Basque started and smacked his lips several times. 'Where was I? Ah... I was telling you of those three nuns in Bayonne. Well, I met them—'

'No, you decided not to tell that one, considering the presence of ladies.'

'Oh? Well, good! You see, little girl, a story like that would inflame your passions. And when you come to me, I want you to do so of your own will, and not driven by blinding lust. What happened to our guests?'

'They've gone. Probably back to the United States.'

'I am going to tell you something in all frankness, Niko. I do not like those men. There is cowardice in their eyes; and that makes them dangerous. You must either invite a better class of guests, or risk losing my patronage. Hana, wonderful and desirable woman, do you want to go to bed with me?'

She smiled. 'No, thank you, Benat.'

'I admire your self control. What about you, little girl?'

'She's tired,' Hana said.

'Ah well, perhaps it's just as good. It would be a little crowded in my bed, what with the plump Portuguese kitchen maid. So! I hate to leave you without the color and charm of my presence, but the magnificent machine that is my body needs draining, then sleep. Good night, my friends.' He grunted to his feet and started to leave, then he noticed Hannah's kimono. 'What's this? What happened to your clothes? Oh, Niko, Niko. Greed is a vice. Ah well... good night.'

* * *

Hana had gently stroked the tension from his back and shoulders as he lay on his stomach, and now she