Shogun - Clavell James - Страница 153
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"Please, Anjin-san, would you tell it again, just once, for my husband?"
He heard the careful pleading under her voice so he relented. "Of course. Which do you think he'd like?"
"The one in the Netherlands. Near 'Zeeland'-is that how you pronounce it?"
"Yes," he said.
So he began to tell the story of this battle which was like almost every other battle in which men died, most of the time because of the mistakes and stupidity of the officers in command.
"My husband says it's not so here, Anjin-san. Here the commanding officers have to be very good or they die very quickly."
"Of course, my criticisms applied to European leaders only."
"Buntaro-sama says he will tell you about our wars and our leaders, particularly the Lord Taiko, over the days. A fair exchange for your information," she said noncommittally.
"Domo." Blackthorne bowed slightly, feeling Buntaro's eyes grind into him.
What do you really want from me, you son of a bitch?
Dinner was a disaster. For everyone.
Even before they had left the garden to go to the veranda to eat, the day had become ill-omened.
"Excuse me, Anjin-san, but what's that?" Mariko pointed. "Over there. My husband asks, what's that?"
"Where? Oh, there! That's a pheasant," Blackthorne said. "Lord Toranaga sent it to me, along with a hare. We're having that for dinner, English-style-at least I am, though there'd be enough for everyone."
"Thank you, but . . . we, my husband and I, we don't eat meat. But why is the pheasant hanging there? In this heat, shouldn't it be put away and prepared?"
"That's the way you prepare pheasant. You hang it to mature the meat."
"What? Just like that? Excuse me, Anjin-san," she said, flustered, "so sorry. But it'll go rotten quickly. It still has its feathers and it's not been . . . cleaned."
"Pheasant meat's dry, Mariko-san, so you hang it for a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks, depending on the weather. Then you pluck it, clean it, and cook it."
"You - you leave it in the air? To rot? Just like-"
"Nan ja?" Buntaro asked impatiently.
She spoke to him apologetically and he sucked in his breath, then got up and peered at it and prodded it. A few flies buzzed, then settled back again. Hesitantly Fujiko spoke to Buntaro and he flushed.
"Your consort said you ordered that no one was to touch it but you?" Mariko asked.
"Yes. Don't you hang game here? Not everyone's Buddhist."
"No, Anjin-san. I don't think so."
"Some people believe you should hang a pheasant by the tail feathers until it drops off, but that's an old wives' tale," Blackthorne said. "By the neck's the right way, then the juices stay where they belong. Some people let it hang until it drops off the neck but personally, I don't like meat that gamy. We used to-" He stopped for she had gone a slight shade of green.
"Nan desu ka, Mariko-san?" Fujiko asked quickly.
Mariko explained. They all laughed nervously and Mariko got up, weakly patting the sheen off her forehead. "I'm sorry, Anjin-san, would you excuse me a moment...."
Your food's just as strange, he wanted to say. What about yesterday, the raw squid-white, slimy, almost tasteless chewy meat with nothing but soya sauce to wash it down? Or the chopped octopus tentacles, again raw, with cold rice and seaweed? How about fresh jellyfish with yellow-brown, souped tofu-fermented bean curds-that looked like a bowl of dog puke? Oh yes, served beautifully in a fragile, attractive bowl, but still looking like puke! Yes, by God, enough to make any man sick!
Eventually they went to the veranda room and, after the usual interminable bowings and small talk and cha and sake, the food began to arrive. Small trays of clear fish soup and rice and raw fish, as always. And then his stew.
He lifted the lid of the pot. The steam rose and golden globules of fat danced on the shimmering surface. The rich, mouth-watering gravysoup was heavy with meat juices and tender chunks of flesh. Proudly he offered it but they all shook their heads and begged him to eat.
"Domo," he said.
It was good manners to drink soup directly from the small lacquered bowls and to eat anything solid in the soup with chopsticks. A ladle was on the tray. Hard put to stop his hunger, he filled the bowl and began to eat. Then he saw their eyes.
They were watching with nauseated fascination which they unsuccessfully tried to hide. His appetite began to slip away. He tried to dismiss them but could not, his stomach growling. Hiding his irritation, he put down the bowl and replaced the lid and told them gruffly it was not to his taste. He ordered Nigatsu to take it away.
"Should it- be thrown away then, Fujiko asks," Mariko said hopefully.
"Yes."
Fujiko and Buntaro relaxed.
"Would you like more rice?" Fujiko asked.
"No, thank you."
Mariko waved her fan, smiled encouragingly, and refilled his sake cup. But Blackthorne was not soothed and he resolved in the future to cook in the hills in private, to eat in private, and to hunt openly.
To hell with them, he thought. If Toranaga can hunt, so can I. When am I going to see him? How long do I have to wait?
"The pox on waiting and the pox on Toranaga!" he said aloud in English and felt better.
"What, Anjin-san?" Mariko asked in Portuguese.
"Nothing," he replied. "I was just wondering when I'd see Lord Toranaga."
"He didn't tell me. Very soon, I imagine."
Buntaro was slurping his sake and soup loudly as was custom. This began to annoy Blackthorne. Mariko talked cheerfully with her husband, who grunted, hardly acknowledging her. She was not eating, and it further irked him that both she and Fujiko were almost fawning on Buntaro and also that he himself had to put up with this unwanted guest.
"Tell Buntaro-sama that in my country a host toasts the honored guest." He lifted his cup with a grim smile. "Long life and happiness!" He drank.
Buntaro listened to Mariko's explanation. He nodded in agreement, lifted his cup in return, smiled through his teeth, and drained it.
"Health!" Blackthorne toasted again.
And again.
And again.
"Health!"
This time Buntaro did not drink. He put down the full cup and looked at Blackthorne out of his small eyes. Then Buntaro called to someone outside. The shoji slid open at once. His guard, ever present, bowed and handed him the immense bow and quiver. Buntaro took it and spoke vehemently and rapidly to Blackthorne.
"My husband - my husband says you wanted to see him shoot, Anjin-san. He thinks tomorrow is too far away. Now is a good time. The gateway of your house, Anjin-san. He asks which post do you choose?"
"I don't understand;" Blackthorne said. The main gate would be forty paces away, somewhere across the garden, but now completely masked by the closed shoji wall to his right.
"The left or the right post? Please choose." Her manner was urgent.
Warned, he looked at Buntaro. The man seemed detached, oblivious of them, a squat ugly troll who sat gazing into the distance.
"Left," he said, fascinated.
"Hidari!" she said.
At once Buntaro slid an arrow from the quiver and, still sitting, set up the bow, raised it, drew back the bowstring to eye level and released the shaft with savage, almost poetic liquidity. The arrow slashed toward Mariko's face, touched a strand of her hair in passing, and disappeared through the shoji paper wall. Another arrow was launched almost before the first had vanished, and then another, each one coming within an inch of impaling Mariko. She remained calm and motionless, kneeling as she had always been.
A fourth arrow and then a last. The silence was filled with the echo of the twanging bowstring. Buntaro sighed and came back slowly. He put the bow across his knees. Mariko and Fujiko sucked in their breaths and smiled and bowed and complimented Buntaro and he nodded and bowed slightly. They looked at Blackthorne. He knew that what he had witnessed was almost magical. All the arrows had gone through the same hole in the shoji.
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