We taste the tea. Not bad.
“How long has it been?” he asks.
“Fourteen years—almost fifteen,” I tell him. “Back in the eighties.”
“Yes.”
He rubs his jaw. “I’d heard you’d retired.”
“You heard right. It was about a year after our last encounter.”
“Turkey—yes. You married a man from your Code Section.”
I nod.
“You were widowed three or four years later. Daughter born after your husband’s death. Returned to the States. Settled in the country. That’s all I know.”
“That’s all there is.”
He takes another drink of tea.
“Why did you come back here?”
“Personal reasons. Partly sentimental.”
“Under a false identity?”
“Yes. It involves my husband’s family. I don’t want them to know I’m here.”
“Interesting. You mean that they would watch arrivals as closely as we have?”
“I didn’t know you watched arrivals here.”
“Right now we do.”
“You’ve lost me. I don’t know what’s going on.”
There is another roll of thunder. A few more drops spatter about us.
“I would like to believe that you are really retired,” he says. “I’m getting near that point myself, you know.”
“I have no reason to be back in business. I inherited a decent amount, enough to take care of me and my daughter.”
He nods.
“If I had such an inducement I would not be in the field,” he says. “I would rather sit home and read, play chess, eat and drink regularly. But you must admit it is quite a coincidence your being here when the future success of several nations is being decided.”
I shake my head.
“I’ve been out of touch with a lot of things.”
“The Osaka Oil Conference. It begins two weeks from Wednesday. You were planning perhaps to visit Osaka at about that time?”
“I will not be going to Osaka.”
“A courier then. Someone from there will meet you, a simple tourist, at some point in your travels, to convey—”
“My God! Do you think everything’s a conspiracy, Boris? I am just taking care of some personal problems and visiting some places that mean something to me. The conference doesn’t.”
“All right.” He finishes his tea and puts the cup aside. “You know that we know you are here. A word to the Japanese authorities that you are traveling under false papers and they will kick you out. That would be simplest. No real harm done and one agent nullified. Only it would be a shame to spoil your trip if you are indeed only a tourist. . . .”
A rotten thought passes through my mind as I see where this is leading, and I know that my thought is far rottener than his. It is something I learned from a strange old woman I once worked with who did not look like an old woman.
I finish my tea and raise my eyes. He is smiling.
“I will make us some more tea,” I say.
I see that the top button of my shirt comes undone while I am bent partly away from him. Then I lean forward with his cup and take a deep breath.
“You would consider not reporting me to the authorities?”
“I might,” he says. “I think your story is probably true. And even if it is not, you would not take the risk of transporting anything now that I know about you.”
“I really want to finish this trip,” I say, blinking a few extra times. “I would do anything not to be sent back now.”
He takes hold of my hand.
“I am glad you said that, Maryushka,” he replies. “I am lonely, and you are still a fine-looking woman.”
“You think so?”
“I always thought so, even that day you bashed in my teeth.”
“Sorry about that. It was strictly business, you know.”
His hand moves to my shoulder.
“Of course. They looked better when they were fixed than they had before, anyway.”
He moves over and sits beside me.
“I have dreamed of doing this many times,” he tells me, as he unfastens the rest of the buttons on my shirt and unbuckles my belt.
He rubs my belly softly. It is not an unpleasant feeling. It has been a long time.
Soon we are fully undressed. He takes his time, and when he is ready I welcome him between my legs. All right, Boris. I give the ride, you take the fall. I could almost feel a little guilty about it. You are gentler than I’d thought you would be. I commence the proper breathing pattern, deep and slow. I focus my attention on my hara and his, only inches away. I feel our energies, dreamlike and warm, moving. Soon, I direct their flow. He feels it only as pleasure, perhaps more draining than usual. When he has done, though . . .
“You said you had some problem?” he inquires in that masculine coital magnanimity generally forgotten a few minutes afterward. “If it is something I could help you with, I have a few days off, here and there. I like you, Maryushka.”
“It’s something I have to do myself. Thanks anyway.”
I continue the process.
Later, as I dress myself, he lies there looking up at me.
“I must be getting old, Maryushka,” he reflects. “You have tired me. I feel I could sleep for a week.”
“That sounds about right,” I say. “A week and you should be feeling fine again.”
“I do not understand . . .”
“You’ve been working too hard, I’m sure. That conference . . .”
He nods.
“You are probably right. You are not really involved . . . ?”
“I am really not involved.”
“Good.”
I clean the pot and my cups. I restore them to my pack.
“Would you be so kind as to move, Boris dear? I’ll be needing the poncho very soon, I think.”
“Of course.”
He rises slowly and passes it to me. He begins dressing. His breathing is heavy.
“Where are you going from here?”
“Mishima-goe,” I say, “for another view of my mountain.”
He shakes his head. He finishes dressing and seats himself on the ground, his back against a treetrunk. He finds his flask and takes a swallow. He extends it then.
“Would you care for some?”
“Thank you, no. I must be on my way.”
I retrieve my staff. When I look at him again, he smiles faintly, ruefully.
“You take a lot out of a man, Maryushka.”
“I had to,” I say.
I move off. I will hike twenty miles today, I am certain. The rain begins to descend before I am out of the grove; leaves rustle like the wings of bats.
11. Mt. Fujifrom Mishima-goe
Sunlight. Clean air. The print shows a big cryptameria tree, Fuji looming behind it, crowned with smoke. There is no smoke today, but I have located a big cryptameria and positioned myself so that it cuts Fuji’s shoulder to the left of the cone. There are a few clouds, not so popcorny as Hokusai’s smoke (he shrugs at this), and they will have to do.
My stolen ki still sustains me, though the medication is working now beneath it. Like a transplanted organ, my body will soon reject the borrowed energy. By then, though, the drugs should be covering for me.
In the meantime, the scene and the print are close to each other. It is a lovely spring day. Birds are singing, butterflies stitch the air in zigzag patterns; I can almost hear the growth of plants beneath the soil. The world smells fresh and new. I am no longer being followed. Hello to life again.
I regard the huge old tree and listen for its echoes down the ages: Yggdrasil, the Golden Bough, the Yule tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Bo beneath which Lord Gautama found his soul and lost it. . . .