Satori

encouraged him, dug her long nails into his buttocks, and pushed him harder. His sweat mixed with hers, they slid together, and then she announced her petite mort, her hips rose off the bed, she held him inside her and said, “Vous me faites briller. Vous me faites jouir. Come with me. Now.”

Her voice and words sent him over the edge, there was no holding back, and he poured himself into her, then collapsed on her and felt her breasts flatten beneath him. They lay there for quite a while, then he heard her say, “I suppose it would be cliche to want a cigarette.”

Nicholai got up, found a pack, put two cigarettes into his mouth, lit them both, and handed her one.

So lovemaking was added to their daily routine, although the sex was hardly routine.

Solange delighted in dressing up for the boudoir and had a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of lingerie that she enjoyed modeling for him. Nor was Nicholai loath to be the audience for this erotic fashion show, as she changed her hair, her makeup, and even her scent, to suit the outfit. Her taste was exquisite, daringly erotic without ever crossing the line into the burlesque, always stylish, never obvious. Her tastes in bed were eclectic as well, and she gave Nicholai every part of herself, reveled in his taking her. As genteel as she was at the dining table, she was equally, surprisingly earthy in the bedroom.

“You have the mouth of a sailor,” he told her one night without a trace of disapproval.

“But you love my mouth, no?” she answered, and then proceeded to prove to him that he did. Nicholai did love her mouth, her hands, her fingers, sa cramouille, sa rose. He was fast coming to the truth that he simply loved her. One night after a particularly robust lovemaking session, she inhaled her postcoital cigarette and said, “No offense, Michel, but you make love like a Japanese.”

Nicholai was a bit taken aback, but more curious than offended. “Is that bad?”

“No, no, no,” she said quickly. “It is not bad, is just different than… a Frenchman. A bit… comment vous dites… a bit ‘technical,’ no? If you are a Frenchman, you must make love d’une maniere plus sensuelle, a bit more like music than science.”

She knew, sadly, that he would soon leave to perform the errand for the Americans. And as a man, he had needs, and would satisfy those needs, perhaps in a brothel. The girls would talk, and if they talked of a Frenchman who made love like a Japanese, it would not do.

“Is this part of my training?” he asked, staring hard at her. He looked hurt. “Are you part of my training?”

“For all your boyish looks,” she said, refusing to lower her eyes in shame, looking right back at him, “naivete nevertheless does not become you. Are you asking me if I am a whore for the Americans? My darling, we are both whores for the Americans. I fuck for them, you kill for them. Don’t look so hurt, I adore making love to you. Vous me faites briller. You make me shine, no?”

He heard the formal “vous,” as opposed to the more intimate “tu,” and wondered if she perceived their relationship as only business.

In any case, Solange taught him how to make love like a Frenchman.

10

TWO NIGHTS LATER they tried to kill him.

Nicholai was halfway through a difficult kata, “Tiger Burst Through Bamboo,” when his proximity sense told him that he was not alone in the garden. The first assassin – clad all in black, a wicked dagger in his right hand – dropped down the wall in front of him. Nicholai saw his would-be killer’s eyes focus slightly over his shoulder, so knew that there was another assassin coming up from behind.

The dagger thrust came low where Nicholai expected it. He shifted into a cat stance and swung his right hand in a low, outward crescent, sweeping the knife hand away from his body. Then he stepped in, grabbed the attacker by the collar of his gi and pulled him down, pivoted, and slammed his head into the garden wall. He heard the neck break but didn’t stop to look as he ducked under the hatchet blade that the second assailant swung at his head. Nicholai came up and jammed his left hand, poised into a tiger’s claw, into the man’s eyes, the other into his groin. Dropping his left hand, Nicholai locked the elbow of the arm holding the hatchet and lifted himself onto his toes. The arm snapped like dry wood. The hatchet dropped. Nicholai spun so that his back was to the attacker and he drove an elbow into the man’s solar plexus. He released the broken arm, spun again, and delivered a shuto strike to the carotid artery.

The man dropped to the ground.

Nicholai knelt beside him, felt his pulse, and cursed himself for striking too hard. His skill had not returned to the point where he could precisely calibrate the force of a blow, and the man was dead. This was unfortunate, because he would have liked to question him to find out who had sent him and why.

Clumsy, Nicholai told himself, clumsy and imprecise.

You will have to improve.

He went back into the house and used the telephone to dial the number that Haverford had given him for emergencies. When the American answered, Nicholai said, “There are two corpses in the garden. I imagine you will want to remove them.”

“Stay inside. I’ll have a cleanup team there right away.”

Nicholai hung up. Solange was standing in the doorway, looking at him. She wore a simple white silk robe, held in place by a wide silk belt tied in a bow that begged for tugging. A kitchen knife was clutched in her right hand, held low by her thigh, and her amazing green eyes blazed. She looked to Nicholai as if she were indeed ready to kill someone.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I’m fine. A bit more winded than I’d like to be, perhaps.” He wondered at his lack of emotion, then decided that the adrenaline surge had yet to recede and was masking whatever he might feel about his close call, and the killing of two men.

Nicholai looked at the knife in her hand and asked, “Were you going to use that?”

“If I had to,” she answered. “Are they dead?”

“Yes.”

“You are sure.”

“Quite sure.”

Solange walked into the kitchen and came back with two squat glasses of whiskey. “I don’t know about you, but I need one.”

Nicholai took the drink and knocked it back in one swallow. Perhaps, he speculated, I feel a bit more than I thought.

“You are trembling a little,” she said.

“Perceptions to the contrary,” Nicholai answered, “I am not a practiced killer.”

It was true. He had killed Kishikawa-san out of love – something a Western mind would struggle to understand. But that act of mercy could not inure him against the professional dispatching of two sentient beings, who, despite the fact that they tried to kill him first, were still human. As the adrenaline faded, he felt an odd, contradictory mix of elation and regret.

Solange nodded her understanding.

The “cleanup” crew arrived before Nicholai and Solange could finish a second drink. Haverford, uncharacteristically dressed in an untucked shirt and blue jeans, came in through the kitchen door. “My God, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Nicholai answered.

“What the hell happened?” Haverford asked.

Nicholai told him about the assault, omitting the details of his counterattack, only saying that he was sorry to have killed the second man. He could hear the soft sounds of the crew working outside, removing the bodies, wiping up the blood, restoring the pebbled paths to their pristine order. As if, he thought, nothing had ever happened.

The head of the crew came in, whispered something to Haverford, and left.

“They were Japs,” Haverford said.