‘The answer will definitely be there, in its contours and patterns, in the forms that they make up. The man who is attuned to understanding will see it or hear it. It might not be a stone, but any uneven surface, or something that occurs purely by chance: a cloud of smoke, the pattern of tea leaves in the bottom of a cup, or even the remains of the coffee that you gaijins are so fond of drinking.’
‘Mmm, I see,’ the titular counsellor drawled. ‘I’ve heard about that in Russia. It’s called “reading the coffee grounds”.’
At night he and she were together. In Tamba’s house, where the upper rooms existed only to deceive and real life was concentrated in the basement, they were given a room with no windows.
Following lingering delights that were not like either ‘Fire and Thunder’ or ‘The Love of Two Moles’, as he looked at her motionless face and lowered eyelashes, he said:
‘I never know what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking about. Even now.’
She said nothing, and he thought there was not going to be any answer.
But then sparks glinted under those eyelashes and those scarlet lips stirred:
‘I can’t tell you what I’m thinking about. But if you want, I’ll show you what I’m feeling.’
‘Yes, I do want, very much!’
She lowered her eyelashes again.
‘Go upstairs, into the corridor. It’s dark there, but close your eyes as well, so you can’t even see the shadows. Touch the wall on the right. Walk forward until you find yourself in front of a door. Open it and take three big steps forward. Then open your eyes.’
That was all she said.
He got up and was about to put on his shirt.
‘No, you must not have any clothes on.’
He walked up the stairway attached to the wall. He didn’t open his eyes.
He walked slowly along the corridor and bumped into a door.
He opened it – and the cold of the night scalded his skin.
It’s the door with the precipice behind it, he realised.
Three big steps? How big? How long was the little bridge? About a sazhen, no longer.
He took one step, and then another, trying not to keep them short. He hesitated before the third. What if the third step took his foot into the void?
The precipice was here, right beside him, he could feel its fathomless breathing.
With an effort of will he took a step – exactly as long as the first ones. His toes felt a ribbed edge. Just one more inch and…
He opened his eyes – and he saw nothing.
No moon, no stars, no lights down below.
The world had melded into a single whole, in which there was no heaven and no earth, no top and no bottom, There was only a point around which creation was arranged.
The point was located in Fandorin’s chest and it was sending out a signal full of life and mystery: lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.
Sunlight parts all things,
Darkness unites everything.
The night world is one
SPILLED SAKE
Tamba said:
‘You must fall as a pine needle falls to the ground – smoothly and silently. But you topple like a felled tree. Mo ikkai.’ [xviii]
Erast Petrovich pictured a pine tree, its branches covered with needles, then one of them broke away and went swirling downwards, settling gently on the grass. He jumped up, flipped over in the air and thudded flat out into the ground.
‘Mo ikkai.’
The pine needles fluttered down one at a time, the imaginary branch was entirely bare now and he had to start on the next one, but after every fall he heard the same thing:
‘Mo ikkai.’
Erast Petrovich obediently pounded himself black and blue, but what he wanted most of all was to learn how to fight – if not like Tamba, then at least like the unforgettable Neko-chan. But the jonin was in no hurry to get to that stage; so far he had limited himself to the theory. He had said that first it was necessary to study each of the three principles of combat separately: nagare – fluidity, henkan – mutability, and the most complex of all, rinki-ohen – the ability to improvise according to the opponent’s manner.
In the titular counsellor’s opinion, the most useful part was the information about blows to vitally important points. In this area, it was quite possible to make do with the skills of English boxing and French savate while one was still struggling to grasp the unpronounceable and inexplicable principles of ninjutsu.
The pages of his cherished notebook were filled with sketches of parts of the human body with arrows of various thicknesses, according to the strength of the blow, and mysterious comments such as: ‘Soda (sxth. vert.) – temp. parls.; not hard! – or inst. Death’. Or: ‘Wanshun (tric.) – temp. parls arm; not hard! – or fracture’.
Surprisingly, the hardest thing proved to be the breathing exercises. Tamba bound his pupil’s waist tightly with a belt and Fandorin had to inhale two thousand times in a row, deeply enough to inflate the lower section of his abdomen. This apparently simple exercise made his muscles ache so badly that on the first evening Fandorin crawled back to his room hunched over and very much afraid that he couldn’t make love to Midori.
But he could.
She rubbed his bruises and grazes with a healing ointment and then showed him how to banish the pain and fatigue with ketsuin – the magical coupling of the fingers. Under guidance Erast Petrovich spent a quarter of an hour twisting his fingers out of joint to form them into incredibly complicated shapes, after which the absolute exhaustion disappeared as if by magic and his body felt strong and filled with energy.
The lovers did not see each other during the day – Fandorin strove to comprehend the mysteries of falling and correct breathing and Midori was occupied with some business of her own, but the nights belonged entirely to them.
The titular counsellor learned to manage with two hours of rest. It turned out that if one mastered the art of correct sleeping, that was quite sufficient to restore one’s strength.
In accordance with the wise science of jojutsu, each new night was unlike the one before and had its own name: ‘The cry of the heron’, ‘The little gold chain’, ‘The fox and the badger’ – Midori said that sameness was fatal for passion.
Erast Petrovich’s previous life had been coloured primarily in white, the colour of the day. But now that his sleeping time had been reduced so drastically, his existence was dichromatic – white and black. Night was transformed from a mere backdrop to the stage of life into an integral part of it, and the universe as a whole benefited greatly as a result.
The space extending from sunset to dawn included a great many things: rest, passion, quiet conversation and even rowdy horseplay – after all, they were both so young.
For instance, once they argued over who was faster: Midori running or Fandorin on his tricycle.
They didn’t think twice about crossing to the other side of the crevice, where the Royal Crescent was waiting for its master, then going down to the foot of the mountain and holding a cross-country race along the path.
At first Erast Petrovich shot out in front, but after half an hour, tired from turning the pedals, he starting moving more slowly, and Midori started gaining on him. She ran lightly and steadily, without increasing her rate of breathing at all. After almost ten versts she overtook the tricyclist and her lead gradually increased.
That was when Fandorin realised how Midori had managed to deliver the healing maso herb from the southern slope of Mount Tanzawa in a single night. She had simply run fifteen ri in one direction and then the same distance back again! So that was why she laughed when he pitied the overworked horse…