She made the first of nine phone calls to Kimura on a Tuesday. Kimura was a Japanese professor who had taught philosophy and martial arts at the American School. It took several phone calls to learn that he was now a Shinto master and that he lived in Kyoto. There was a phone number where she could leave a message. But, she was told, Kimura-san was strange, sometimes he did not return phone calls.
When he finally called back on Thursday morning, she said, ‘I am interested in acquiring an akita. Some friends have a puppy they got from you. The Smiths in San Francisco?’
He was abrupt. ‘I have no friends in San Francisco. It is a mistake.’
‘They got the dog from you, according to the kennel club.’ There was a long pause, and then: ‘Miss Gunn, you are not interested in a dog.’
She was flustered by his honesty. Then she decided to be honest too. ‘Please — dozo —1 am a journalist with an American television station. I am trying to find Frank O’Hara. We are peers, O’Hara and I.’
‘O’Hara-san has many peers, but his friends are fewer than the months of the year,’ the voice on the other end of the line said. It was a soft voice, almost a whisper—his English perfect, his diction impeccable — and yet she felt intimidated by it.
‘I have good news for him. Please see me, talk to me?’
‘I have heard the same story before - There is one difference, however. You are a woman. They have never sent a woman before.’
‘Please, just talk to me. If you don’t believe me, you’ve only lost an hour or so of your time.’
‘I have not said I even know his whereabouts. I was one of his teachers in high school. That was...’ He hesitated a moment, trying to remember.
‘... seventeen years ago,’ she said. ‘He graduated the summer of 1963.’
‘Hal. And I am over seventy. I doubt that I can be of help.’
‘Dozo, Kimura-san. I am desperate. Just have tea with me. I will convince you I’m sincere.’
‘You have a denwa in your room?’
‘Hai.’
‘And the number?’
‘Uh ... it’s 82-12-571.’
‘I will call you back. Konnichi Wa.’ The line went dead.
‘Well, damn,’ she said and hung up. She went to the window and slid the panel back and watched a young gardener, his hair tressed in a tenugui headband, raking the sand garden outside her room, picking up every leaf and twig until the beige island surrounded by moss was spotless. He worked soundlessly and seemingly without effort. She stared back at the phone. Her shoulders ached and she felt like going down to the ofuro to take a bath, but she was afraid she would miss his call. Eliza had overcome her modesty in the public bath very early in the trip. Now she found that the hot waters not only were rejuvenating but cleared her mind and helped her think.
A half-hour passed, and nothing. She fluffed up the futon quilt and lay down, but her mind was much too busy for napping.
When the phone finally did ring, she snatched it up before the second bell. ‘Yes... this is Eliza Gunn.’
‘Miss Gunn, this is Dr Kimura. I will meet you but the time will be short. And it must be today. Can you leave now?’
‘Yes. Right this minute.’
‘The train station is ten minutes west of the Hishitomi Ryokan. You may take the local train from the ekion the San’in Main Line and get off at the Hanazano station. From there it is only a few blocks to the Tofuku-ji temple. I will meet you at the hail of the Ashikaga shoguns next to the temple. It is now nine forty-five. Eleven-thirty should give you ample time.’
‘Thank you,’ she said sincerely. ‘Arigato ... arigato very much.’
‘You have nothing to thank me for yet, Gunn-san. Sayonara.’
‘Sayonara, Dr Kimura.’
The gardener, who had worked his way to the shrubs outside Eliza’s room, turned abruptly and left the courtyard. He went down the hail and knocked on a door. A big man with a beard opened it. ‘What’s happening, Sammi?’ he asked.
The gardener went in. ‘She’s leaving now,’ Sammi said, changing into his black jogging suit and sneakers.
‘Good,’ the big man said. ‘I’ll give her a few more minutes.’ Sammi worked quickly but he was not worried about losing her. He knew where she was going. When she left the hotel he was in a pachinko parlour nearby. He watched her go by and waited several more minutes before leaving. He was more interested in the man who was following her.
II
During the twenty-minute ride from Osaka, Eliza leafed idly through one of her travel books, but she had the attention span of an amoeba. Was Kimura leading her on? Or was she coming close to the end of almost two months of hard work? The Japanese countryside flashed by, a dizzying patchwork of lush green farms separated by mini-forests. She knew very little about Kyoto, except that it had been the capital of Japan during the rule of the shoguns, which lasted for a thousand years, and that many Westerners believed it to be the most beautiful city in the world. But she paid little attention to its beauty as she rushed through the giant arched torii at the park entrance. She could see Tofuku-ji, rising above the other pagodas, and she ran toward it. Statues of shogun warriors crouched in the shadows of the curved eaves of the temples and lurked under cedar and pine trees. The grounds and stone gardens were immaculately manicured and every building, every tree and pond and garden, seemed perfectly placed and in tune with nature. The rain clouds had passed, now, and soft sunlight bathed the heart of the park.
When she reached the garden of the Tofuku-ji, the grounds were deserted and quiet. A breeze rattled gently through the cedar and fir trees. Somewhere, from inside one of the buildings, she heard the soft ping of wind bells. A fish jumped in one of the ponds. Then it was silent again.
The hail of the shoguns was a small, dark, forbidding hail near the main temple, a startling and strange place, out of context with the peaceful aura of the rest of the park. It was as if they were there to guard the integrity of the place, two long rows of wooden statues, the Ashikaga shoguns, sixteen of them, seated facing one another, their fierce glass eyes aglow in the dim light. She walked timidly into the place, squinting her eyes to get accustomed to the dark, peering nervously from one row to the other as she walked down the highly polished wooden floor, her heels clacking hollowly until she finally rose on her tiptoes and hurried to the other end of the room. She was relieved when she got outside. She stood under the curved pagoda roofs of the Tofuku-ji, wondering whether it would be sacrilegious to smoke.
Behind her, inside the darkened hallway of warriors, there was movement. A man stepped from behind one of the statues, his mean eyes glowing almost as fiercely as the agates in the faces of the statues. He moved closer, then stopped finally and waited, as still as the statutes that protected him. A man was approaching her from the other side of the stone garden. He stepped farther back into the shadows.
He was an ancient Japanese man, erect and proud, his delicate beard and wispy hair the colour of snow, his skin almost transparent with age, as if cellophane had been wrapped around his fragile bones to keep them together. He wore a traditional kimono of dark-blue silk, zori sandals, a wide, flat thatched hat that looked like a platter, and he was carrying an umbrella, which he used as a cane. He came to her silently, as if his footsteps left no mark behind them. He stopped in front of her. He was taller than she had imagined he would be and he stood for a moment looking down at her.
‘Well, Gunn-san, you do not appear very dangerous.’
‘Me? Dangerous?’ She laughed. ‘I just ran through that museum of statues over there like a four-year-old running in the dark.’
She knew Japanese businessmen were sticklers about exchanging business cards and she offered him hers. Kimura looked at it for a moment and put it away in the folds of his kimono. ‘I am sorry, I do not have a card,’ he said. He gazed down at her through fading brown eyes, and added, ‘You are certainly prettier than the others who have come looking for Kazuo.’