Shogun - Clavell James - Страница 168

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"Yes." She translated to Toranaga.

"He says, 'Good, Anjin-san. Karma is the beginning of knowledge. Next is patience. Patience is very important. The strong are the patient ones, Anjin-san. Patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear. If you don't give way to the seven, you're patient, then you'll soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity.'"

"You believe that, Mariko-san?"

"Yes. Very much. I try, also, to be patient, but it's hard."

"I agree. That's also wa, your harmony, your 'tranquillity,' neh?"

"Yes."

"Tell him I thank him truly for what he did for Old Gardener. I didn't before, not from my heart. Tell him that."

"There's no need, Anjin-san. He knew before that you were just being polite."

"How did he know?"

"I told you he is the wisest man in the world."

He grinned.

"There," she said, "your age has fallen off you again," and added in Latin, "Thou art thyself again, and better than before!"

"But thou art beautiful, as always."

Her eyes warmed and she averted them from Toranaga. Blackthorne saw this and marked her caution. He got to his feet and stared down into the jagged cleft. Carefully he jumped into it and disappeared.

Mariko scrambled up, momentarily afraid, but Blackthorne quickly came back to the surface. In his hands was Fujiko's sword. It was still scabbarded, though muddied and scarred. His short stabbing sword had disappeared.

He knelt in front of Toranaga and offered his sword as a sword should be offered. "Dozo, Toranaga-sama," he said simply. "Kara samurai ni samurai, neh?" Please, Lord Toranaga, from a samurai to a samurai, eh?

"Domo, Anjin-san." The Lord of the Kwanto accepted the sword and shoved it into his sash. Then he smiled, leaned forward, and clapped Blackthorne once on the shoulder, hard. "Tomo, neh?" Friend, eh?

"Domo." Blackthorne glanced away. His smile faded. A cloud of smoke was drifting over the rise above where the village would be. At once he asked Toranaga if he could leave, to make sure Fujiko was all right.

"He says, yes, Anjin-san. And we are to see him at the fortress at sunset for the evening meal. There are some things he wishes to discuss with you."

Blackthorne went back to the village. It was devastated, the course of the road bent out of recognition, the surface shattered. But the boats were safe. Many fires still burned. Villagers were carrying buckets of sand and buckets of water. He turned the corner. Omi's house was tilted drunkenly on its side. His own was a burnt-out ruin.

Fujiko had been injured. Nigatsu, her maid, was dead. The first shock had collapsed the central pillars of the house, scattering the coals of the kitchen fire. Fujiko and Nigatsu had been trapped by one of the fallen beams and the flames had turned Nigatsu into a torch. Fujiko had been pulled free. One of the cook's children had also been killed, but the rest of his servants had suffered only bruises and some twisted limbs. They all were overjoyed to find that Blackthorne was alive and unhurt.

Fujiko was lying on a salvaged futon near the undamaged garden fence, half conscious. When she saw also that Blackthorne was unscathed she almost wept. "I thank Buddha you're not hurt, Anjin-san," she said weakly.

Still partially in shock, she tried to get up but he bade her not to move. Her legs and lower back were badly burned. A doctor was already tending her, wrapping bandages soaked in cha and other herbs around her limbs to soothe them. Blackthorne hid his concern and waited until the doctor had finished, then said privately, "Fujiko-san, yoi ka?" Lady Fujiko will be all right?

The doctor shrugged. "Hai." His lips came back from his protruding teeth again. "Karma, neh?"

"Hai." Blackthorne had seen enough burned seamen die to know that any bad burn was dangerous, the open wound almost always rotting within a few days and nothing to stop the infection spreading. "I don't want her to die."

"Dozo?"

He said it in Japanese and the doctor shook his head and told him that the Lady would surely be all right. She was young and strong.

"Shigata ga nai," the doctor said and ordered maids to keep her bandages moist, gave Blackthorne herbs for his own abrasions, told him he would return soon, then scuttled up the hill toward Oni's wrecked house above.

Blackthorne stood at his main gate, which was unharmed. Buntaro's arrows were still embedded in the left post. Absently he touched one. Karma that she was burned, he thought sadly.

He went back to Fujiko and ordered a maid to bring cha. He helped her to drink and held her hand until she slept, or appeared to sleep. His servants were salvaging whatever they could, working quickly, helped by a few villagers. They knew the rains would be coming soon. Four men were trying to erect a temporary shelter.

"Dozo, Anjin-san." The cook was offering him fresh tea, trying to keep the misery off his face. The little girl had been his favorite daughter.

"Domo," Blackthorne replied. "Sumimasen." I'm sorry.

"Arigato, Anjin-san. Karma, neh?"

Blackthorne nodded, accepted the tea, and pretended not to notice the cook's grief, lest he shame him. Later a samurai came up the hill bringing word from Toranaga that Blackthorne and Fujiko were to sleep in the fortress until the house was rebuilt. Two palanquins arrived. Blackthorne lifted her gently into one of them and sent her with maids. He dismissed his own palanquin, telling her he'd follow soon.

The rain began but he paid it no heed. He sat on a stone in the garden that had given him so much pleasure. Now it was a shambles. The little bridge was broken, the pond shattered, and the streamlet had vanished.

"Never mind," he said to no one. "The rocks aren't dead."

Ueki-ya had told him that a garden must be settled around its rocks, that without them a garden is empty, merely a place of growing.

One of the rocks was jagged and ordinary but Ueki-ya had planted it so that if you looked at it long and hard near sunset, the reddish glow glinting off the veins and crystal buried within, you could see a whole range of mountains with lingering valleys and deep lakes and, far off, a greening horizon, night gathering there.

Blackthorne touched the rock. "I name you Ueki-ya-sama," he said. This pleased him and he knew that if Ueki-ya were alive, the old man would have been very pleased also. Even though he's dead, perhaps he'll know, Blackthorne told himself, perhaps his kami is here now. Shintoists believed that when they died they became a kami....

'What is a kami, Mariko-san?'

'Kami is inexplicable, Anjin-san. It is like a spirit but not, like a soul but not. Perhaps it is the insubstantial essence of a thing or person . . . you should know a human becomes a kami after death but a tree or rock or plant or painting is equally a kami. Kami are venerated, never worshiped. They exist between heaven and earth and visit this Land of the Gods or leave it, all at the same time.'

'And Shinto? What's Shinto?'

'Ah, that is inexplicable too, so sorry. It's like a religion, but isn't. At first it even had no name - we only called it Shinto, the Way of the Kami, a thousand years ago, to distinguish it from Butsudo, the Way of Buddha. But though it's indefinable Shinto is the essence of Japan and the Japanese, and though it possesses neither theology nor godhead nor faith nor system of ethics, it is our justification for existence. Shinto is a nature cult of myths and legends in which no one believes wholeheartedly, yet everyone venerates totally. A person is Shinto in the same way he is born Japanese.'

'Are you Shinto too - as well as Christian?'

'Oh yes, oh very yes, of course....' Blackthorne touched the stone again. "Please, kami of Ueki-ya, please stay in my garden."

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