The Kaisho (7 page)

He carried with him an old-fashioned straight razor. She had caught a glimpse of him their first night on the road, shaving his arms while she was tied to the bed, twisting on one side so that part of the mirror over the sink in the bathroom brought her his reflection. He had very little hair on his body, but apparently he was happier with none.

The bathroom was the only place he allowed her to be alone, but she could not lock the door, could not even close it all the way. And squatting on the seat, she was always aware of his breathing, his bulk just out of her sight.

Also, she worried about Francine, who was sleeping in the grip of the liquid he would force down her throat each morning. He had a bag of phials and small canisters tucked away in the kit bag in which resided, like a death’s-head, her savior the razor. Every night, he would spend an hour or so grinding what looked to her to be roots and herbs and unidentifiable dried things in a stone mortar, adding at times liquids from his phials. What was he doing? These alchemical constructs, which, by degrees, perfumed the close air of their mean motel rooms, seemed the most menacing part of him. She was certain she could feel an almost primitive heat emanating from them, a kind of power that frightened her.

She was not, by nature, a superstitious person, but his almost cabalistic absorption in these ceremonies in the dark unnerved her. It was as if he possessed a power to make real the stuff of nightmare. She could imagine him extending himself into a dark corner, wrenching out a shadow, and turning it inside out, making it real.

“Lights out,” he had said to her, stretching toward the bedside lamp.

“Wait,” she had whispered. “I have to use the bathroom.”

Her face taut with fear, she had crossed the room, shut the bathroom door just enough to block him out. As she lifted her nightgown, she could hear him getting out of bed, padding after her to stand, breathing shallowly, behind the door. Hearing him without seeing him was in some ways worse because her imagination, working overtime, conjured up his presence, ghostly and evil, as if he had the power to drift through solid objects to reach her.

She peed noisily, wiped herself, then flushed the toilet. Under that meager cover, she twisted toward the sink, turned on the tap with her left hand. With her right, she picked out the straight razor from his open kit bag.

She experienced an instant of panic then because she had not thought it through. Where was she going to secrete the thing so that he would not see it? She could only imagine one place, and she quickly bent her knees and spread her legs, inserting it into her warmth. It was not easy, but the pain served as a tangible confirmation of her will to do this terrible thing.

With a trembling hand, she turned off the tap, went out to where he waited for her in the semidark.

“Finished?”

She nodded at him, too terrified to speak. In bed, she pulled the covers over her, turned away from him. He extinguished the light. She felt him—she imagined that she would always feel him: that curious sense of menace and arousal that confused and appalled her.

She put her hand on the thatch of hair between her thighs, moving her forefinger over the end of the razor. She forced herself not to shudder. She closed her eyes, trying to still the hammering of her heart, but surely it was only her imagination that warned her this might betray her.

All the same, she started when she felt the press of his hand on her shoulder.

“You’re vibrating.”

She had given a little moan.

He knew what she was thinking.

“What do you mean?”

“I can see the energy boiling off you like smoke.”

She turned around in the dark to face him. “You can see what?”

“I can see auras. There’s a way. I’ve been trained.”

“Okay. So you can see I’m frightened. What did you expect? I’m all alone here with my little girl.” Had her voice cracked? She bit her lip, determined to keep better control over herself. But she could feel the rivulets of sweat under her arms, in the small of her back at the idea that he had the ability to see inside her, to know her very thoughts.

He said, “We’re all alone, in the end, with our sins.”

She shuddered. “I was never alone. Ever since I can remember I’ve been in the company of men: my father, my uncle, then boyfriends, lovers, a husband. What must it be like to be alone. The freedom it must—”

“I’ve always been alone,” he said thoughtfully. “Even in the most crowded city street I am isolated.”

“Don’t you have
any
family… friends?”

“Who can I really count on,” he said, “but myself?”

For the first time she thought she could see behind the dangerous shell of him, and she thought,
He’s been damaged.

“What family I had is dead. Dangerous.”

Margarite turned toward him, clearly fascinated. “Dangerous?”

He continued to stare at the ceiling, striped by pale, phosphorescent light. “Family,” he said after a time. “Family is dangerous.”

“No, no. You’re wrong. Family is the only solace in times of tragedy.”

“Not if the tragedy destroys what family you had.”

“All the love you missed.”

Damaged.

“We rise at dawn. Go to sleep,” he said.

She watched him, afraid now to turn away. “How in Christ do you expect me to sleep?”

What would it be like to see mother and father, sister destroyed in front of one’s eyes? she asked herself. The very idea was impossible to imagine. If she were an actress, perhaps, weeping bitter tears she contrived to well up out of her, the bodies strewn in front of her, blood that would never coagulate or turn brown smeared over them, weeping, until the director yelled “Cut!” and the cameras stopped rolling. Only then. But in real life? No, never.

“Come here,” he said in a voice that floated over her like a buzzard crossing a ravine.

It took her a moment to realize that he was holding his arms out to her.

She wanted to laugh, to spit in his face, but she also felt the razor, warm inside her—and there was something else, a mysterious emotion, elusive as mist, that locked her lips together.

In retrospect, it still surprised her that she crawled into his embrace, as meekly as a child; stunned her that in the grip of that embrace she felt more protected than she had ever felt before.

What was happening to her? She had no answer. Had he somehow managed to enchant her with one of his magic potions? She thought back to when she had eaten or taken something to drink. Had he secreted something at those times? Terrified, she could not say.

“How like his signature these bruises are.”

With his fingertips on her purple flesh she could not speak; her mind was blank save for the warmth she felt flowing from him, entering her where she hurt the most.

His head bent and his mouth opened against those bruises, and she felt his tongue, a pressure, and then nothing, as if even the memories that had lingered in those painful places had been exorcised.

She shivered when she felt his lips on her neck, at the tender place where her carotid artery softly pulsed. He did something then with his tongue that sent ripples of desire through her. She felt her nipples stiffen, and she grew damp between her thighs. It was then that she reached down. The razor thus lubricated came out without the difficulty she had had in sliding it in. It lay in the palm of her hand, gravid with its promise of death, warm as a living thing.

Margarite closed her slender fingers around it, and her lips opened to expel a soft groan. She used her forefinger to swing open the blade, and now she was ready.

His tongue slipped into the hollow between her breasts, a place that had always been a spot of intense arousal for her.
He knows,
she thought.

The blade moved as if of its own volition, a beast hungry to taste blood, to slice through flesh and sinew.

Kill him now,
said a voice in her mind.
It’s what you want. It will get you out of the trap.

She squeezed her eyes shut and, grunting with the effort, swung her arm across the space between them. The edge of the blade struck him dead on, but instead of cutting him, the steel slid harmlessly along the skin of his lower belly.

She could see him grinning, his teeth large and white in the dimness as he held up her hand with one of his, clasped the opened razor blade with his other one.

Margarite gasped as he opened his fingers. They were uncut.

“Touch it,” he said. “The blade is unsharpened. The one I use is locked away.” His grin broadened. “I could feel you watching me, your eyes following the track of the blade as it scraped away my hair. I know greed, Margarite, and I could feel your greed. You wanted my razor… and I gave it to you.”

“No,” she said faintly, dropping it on the sheets between them. “You gave me nothing.” The acrid taste of bile was in her mouth. She thought she might be sick.

“On the contrary,” he said, taking her in his arms again. “I have given you what is most important: a taste of your revenge.” His tongue touched her skin again. “I wonder, Margarite, was it as sweet as you had imagined it to be?”

She had refused to answer him, instead swallowing heavily to try to rid her mouth of the awful taste. And again she thought,
He knows.

“Answer me!” his voice so sudden, so harsh that she started.

And said, “Yes.”

“I suspected as much,” he said with a curious satisfaction that caught her. “You would have killed me; you have it in you.”

She could smell his breath, a scent of cloves, hear his heartbeat. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

“And what else have I given you, Margarite? Do I need to tell you? Now you know you have the strength of purpose... to do
anything.”
He touched her nipples, setting them on fire. “Now you see that I know you better than you know yourself.”

Lying there, quiescent, the impotent razor digging into one buttock, she tried to summon up her revulsion of him and, shockingly, could not. She was dizzy with a longing she could not name, with a desire she could not acknowledge.

Slowly, as if her body weighed a thousand pounds, she turned over, away from him, into the darkness.

Outside the window, cars passed, whirring like insects.

Home. Once it was all the comfort he required. Nicholas’s house was located on the outskirts of Tokyo. It had been a strictly Japanese structure inside and out when he had first bought it from the estate of his late aunt, Itami, but gradually Justine had transformed the inside, ordering tiles, wall coverings, fixtures, and furniture from the States, Italy, and France, until he no longer recognized the place with which he had originally fallen in love.

The camphor-wood beam exterior and the surrounding landscape had so far been spared her hand, but lately she had been making noises about wanting to turn the expanse of painstakingly manicured rare miniature parviflora and cryptomeria into a traditional English perennial garden. Denying her what she really wanted—to return to her home in America—Nicholas had been loath to deny her these smaller concessions that would surely make her feel more at home here.

Not only had these transformations failed to assuage her essential unease, but, he realized now as he spun around the dangerous hairpin turn near the house, they had made him uncomfortable in the one place he had once felt most at ease. Even the construction going on two lots farther down the road hadn’t dampened his love for the place, but he took the last half mile at a slower than normal speed. It was a good thing he did because just before the driveway to the house he came upon one of the gigantic earthmovers being used to excavate the new house’s foundation, and he was obliged to pull into a neighbor’s driveway so that the monstrous vehicle could safely pass.

Justine was waiting for him. He saw her as he went up the rough-hewn stone path from the gravel parking area. Her hazel eyes were the green they turned when she was upset or under stress, and the red motes danced in her left eye.

“Seiko called,” she said even before he had a chance to kiss her hello. “Were you too busy to phone me yourself?”

She turned on her heel, went inside, where he followed her into the kitchen.

“The truth was I was too upset,” he said. “I had to work out to calm myself down.” He went past her, began the preparations for brewing green tea.

“God, you’ve become just like all your Japanese friends. When only talk will do, you go ahead and brew your foul-tasting green tea.”

“I’m happy to talk to you,” he said as he measured out the finely cut leaf, took up the reed whisk.

“Why did you ask Seiko to call me?”

“I didn’t. She saw it as her duty.”

“Well, she was wrong.”

The water was boiling in the ceramic pot. He took it up, poured it carefully into the cup. “Why can’t you understand? Here, efficiency is the most prized—”

“Damnit!” Justine’s outflung hand slapped the cup across the counter. It skidded into the wall, smashed to pieces. “I’m tired of hearing about what’s important to the Japanese!” She ignored the reddening mark on her wrist where the boiling water had scalded her. “What about what’s important to this
American!
Why is it always a matter of
my
having to adapt to
their
way of doing things?”

“You’re in their country, and you—”

“But I don’t want to be here!” Tears were coursing down her cheeks. “I can’t stand it anymore, being the outsider, feeling no emotion from them but this subtle hostility. It’s freezing my bones, Nick! I can’t memorize one more minuscule custom, ritual, protocol, formality, or courtesy. I’m fed up with being shoved out of the way on the streets, pushed aside when I’m trying to use a public washroom, elbowed on a subway platform. How a people who are so insufferably polite in their own homes can be so rude in public is beyond me.”

“I’ve told you, Justine, if a space doesn’t belong to any individual—like a public space—the Japanese feel there’s no need for politeness.’’

Justine was trembling and weeping all at once. “These people are nuts, Nick!” She turned on him. “If I’m going to be left alone with these madmen, at least I should have heard it from you.”