Part V
Chapter 42
"It's almost possible to see Omi stalking the beach, hear the crew suffering in the pit," Bullitt said, his voice a bare whisper in the twilight. He turned to Fujiko-san, wonder in his eyes: "I have you to thank for this. This is exactly what I wanted to experience. This moment. To feel time as it might have been four hundred years ago, what it might have been like to walk this beach in a time before cars and airplanes..."
Fujiko bowed. "Thank you. I do not deserve such praise."
They were seated on the sand at a small beach south of Ajiro; the beach was aglow in torchlight, a small dinner of fire-roasted vegetables and seafood was cooking on a nearby fire pit, the hissing red embers lending another layer to the colorful sunset.
Evelyn was sitting beside Callahan; she had not smiled all day, had barely said a word - even when asked. If she had expressed any emotion at all, it might have been found in the many covetous sidelong glances she cast - like a fisherman's net - between Harry and Fujiko-san. Now, she was snuggling up to Callahan in an almost brazen attempt to stake a territorial claim, as if she was daring Fujiko-san to repeat last night's waterborne drama.
Callahan, for his part, seemed annoyed by Evelyn's overt manipulations, but he had been growing tired of her all day. This evening's antics had become the last straw on a day filled with childish pouts and churlish moodiness.
So when Evelyn chided Frank for his overt thankfulness, Harry got up from the sand and walked away, down to the gently ebbing surf. Evelyn got up and ran after him.
"I'm sorry," she said as she came up behind him. "I can't help it..."
"It was a mistake to bring you on this trip - you're like a black hole that sucks all the emotion out of the air. You leave stale misery behind, don't you? I mean, you do it deliberately, right?"
She stepped back, sucked in a deep breath like she'd been gut-punched, and then she started to cry...
"Oh, stop it, would you?" he hissed. "Tears are for children who don't know any other way to get what they want."
Her eyes blinked rapidly, her arms crossed reflexively - as if she was preparing to ward off blows...
But they never came.
"Is that what you do?" he continued. "Push and push and push until the people close to you lash out in self-defense? And then you blame them? Why don't you grow up and take responsibility for your actions."
She turned wordlessly and walked into the night; a moment later he felt more than heard Frank walking after her, then he heard Cathy by his side.
"She put on quite a show today, didn't she," Cathy sighed. "Frank is beside himself right now."
"It was that obvious, wasn't it?"
"Yes. He said he wanted to send her home, but then he realized she has no home to go to. She's pushed everyone out of her life, and now she's working on Frank."
"I think all she wants is some kind of sympathy-banquet."
Cathy laughed a little at that. "Well put," she whispered, "but I wonder..."
"How are you feeling?" Callahan asked, changing the subject.
"My feet are killing me. Some kind of circulatory problem."
"Your ankles looked a little puffy this afternoon. Maybe you shouldn't go on so many walks?"
"I'm too old for this, but..."
"But it's the most important thing you and Frank have ever done."
She stepped closer, took his arm and leaned her head on his shoulder. "Life is easier with friends, isn't it?"
"I'm not sure about easier, but it's not much worth living without them."
"I hope he'll be around when she's born."
"He will be."
"What?"
"Just a feeling, Cathy. I just know he'll be here."
She squeezed his arm. "Come on. Let's eat some of those goodies."
When he woke up the next morning Callahan called Didi; an hour later and with fax in hand, he took Evelyn to Tokyo and put her on a Swissair flight to Zurich. Didi planned to meet the plane and take Evelyn to the clinic in Davos. It was, in the end, the only thing he could think to do and he hoped Frank wouldn't be too upset. Dell and Carl and their broods left for California too, their vacation times at an end - leaving Frank and Cathy, Sam and Elaine, as well as Harry the remaining members of the group, and today they were off to the mountains above Ajiro. They were headed to a small inn; after a night there the group would walk along a trail - from inn to inn - for five days and nights, stopping at small shrines each afternoon. The last night would see them visit a small hotel and teahouse, one reputed to be located in the most gorgeous setting in all Japan. Fujiko-san had prepared reading materials and these were needed to cover the importance of the tea ceremony in Japanese life, and to prepare each of them for their own ceremony.
They walked along a ridge-line from north to south, following a sort of spine that divided the Izu Peninsula into wet and dry regions. The path they walked was, Fujiko-san told them, ancient, and had been in use for at least a thousand years, and during the summer it was always quite crowded...
"Why?" Sam Bennett asked.
"You must see for yourself," Fujiko-san said. "Only in that way can you truly learn."
But it didn't take long for the little group to understand why. The trail meandered through dark forests and airy glades, then crossed rocky streams that seemed to be meticulously planned settings for secluded gardens. Every so often they rounded a bend and found the way ahead chiseled into the sides of sheer granite cliffs, and hundreds of feet below the sea crashed into a rocky shore. Just when muscles began to ache and their feet to tire another inn suddenly appeared, and soon rocky baths fed by hot springs soothed away all their aches and pains. Their evening meal was in a forest glade one night, then on a rocky outcrop perched high above the sea the next, and every night Fujiko-san instructed them on the importance of tea - and the tea ceremony - before heading off to bed.
In the middle of the second night, Callahan woke after a particularly unsettling dream. Evelyn was lost in a blinding snowstorm one moment, and the next he was staring down into a grave. Worms were writhing all over a partially decomposed body before unseen men began filling the grave, and when he woke in a sweat he went outside into the cool air and sat on a rock overlooking the sea.
A few minutes later he heard another shōji screen open and close, then he felt Fujiko-san kneeling by his side. She remained there, not saying a word - barely breathing - until he stood, then she took his hand and led him to the hot springs. In the bathhouse she took off all his night-clothes and rinsed him off, then he followed her to one of the rocky pools. They sat in the water; she kissed him once then she very slowly mounted him, and they remained fused in that position for what felt like an eternity, until the moment of the clouds and the rain came for them.
When he woke up he wondered if any of it had really happened, if their joining had been a part of his fevered dreams, but those doubts vanished when he saw the look in her eyes later than morning.
'I cannot fall in love again...not so easily, never so carelessly again...' that cautiously hidden voice said again and again - and just as the trail began descending through a series of narrow, rocky canyons, he began to see the final truth of this walk among the pines. In the distance he could see mist-shrouded spires rising from the sea, and now the air smelled of rocks and pine and sea-blown spray, while a freshening breeze began to chill the sweat on his body. The trail narrowed deeper still, until on the last stretch they were stepping from boulder to boulder, but by then the air around the rocky spires had cleared a little and atop each rocky needle he could just make out a series of cascading wooden structures...
"Is that the inn?" Frank asked, his voice full of wonder.
"Yes," Fujiko-san said, "and on the farthest rock, just there," she said, pointing, "is the Teahouse of Autumn Storms."
The song of wind through pine gave way to mellow notes of rock and sea, and Fujiko-san led them across a narrow bridge, the yawning chasm below a reminder of just how isolated this place really was.
"There is no electricity here, no running water, so be spare with consumption here."
"There's no bath?" Elaine Bennett asked.
"Over here," Fujiko-san said as she led them to an overlook, and everyone in the little group gasped as they looked at several pools set among the rocks, each overlooking the sea. Callahan could just see steam rising from the pools; one just above the crashing surf caught his eye and he thought of Fujiko in the night, and when he looked at her he thought he could see the faintest outlines of a smile within the delicate hint of her lips.
"There are just a few rooms here, so the inn belongs to us for three nights. We will take our meals in the building just there," she said, pointing at a craggy spire on the far side of a fifty-meter gap.
"There's no bridge," Sam said. "How do we..."
Fujiko-san turned and smiled. "Be patient. Time will reveal all you need."
Sam bowed and Fujiko-san returned the gesture, smiling slightly.
A very correct, very traditionally dressed innkeeper appeared and turned to Fujiko; he spoke once and she reminded them to take off their shoes before they entered their rooms, then she turned to Frank and Cathy. "If you will follow this man he will take you to your room. A maid will help you with your clothing and show you to the steps that lead to the baths."
As Frank and Cathy were led off Fujiko turned to Sam; she asked them to follow the innkeeper's wife to their room, then she turned to Harry.
"Follow me," she whispered.
She led him to another narrow bridge and he followed her across the span to what almost looked like an elaborate umbrella-shaped structure, but one that seemed hewn into the rock itself. He had to duck low to enter through the low-slung shōji screen but once inside he found the room simply awe-inspiring. The floor was laid out to perfectly accommodate four tatami mats, but it was the view that staggered Callahan. The seaward-facing walls were open to the sea just now, the screen walls open to the sights and sounds of the sea below. He walked around the space, saw that every joint in the wood was a mitered puzzle of impossible cuts, and just outside the formal space of the room was a cantilevered ledge that served as a terrace. He stepped out carefully, mindful that there was not a railing in sight, and then he looked down to the surf a hundred feet below.
"It's perfect," he said as she stepped out and joined him. He turned and faced her, looked into her eyes. "Is it possible that you might stay here with me?"
"Just here inside this moment, anything is possible."
"I would like this moment to last forever," he said, bowing low.
