Enzan. John Donohue
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glanced at Ito. “Hime? An honorific of some sort?”
He nodded. “Princess.”
I scanned the lines, striving to get an English translation that mirrored the elegance on the page. “Each snow an … echo of this warrior’s promise … heart and sword.”
“Kokoro ken to,” Ito repeated—heart and sword—pleased with my rendering. “You see the signature below, Dr. Burke?”
I said nothing, staring at the calligraphy. It was the product of a younger brush, but the underlying stylistic structure was there. There was no denying I knew the handwriting: it was the same thick sprawl of ink that marked my training certificates as authentic, the signature of Yamashita Rinsuke. My sensei.
I didn’t know what to think or what to say. Yamashita’s past was largely a mystery to me. This note offered a glimpse into his secret life. It was as if a heavy curtain had shifted in a breeze and a shaft of light had briefly flickered across a dark room. I was intrigued, yet felt vaguely guilty. A pledge from the heart. Surely it was meant for only one pair of eyes other than his, and they weren’t mine. Yet the impulse to question Ito was real and irresistible. I gave in, but only a little. “It’s not dated,” I said.
“No, it isn’t,” Ito admitted. “If we were to ask Yamashita Sensei, however, he would surely remember the date.”
I squinted at the man sitting across from me. “Why would I ask him that?”
Ito shrugged. “You wish to know the date.”
“No, I don’t. Not enough to bother him.” But the protest sounded feeble and untrue, even to my ears.
Ito smiled tightly, then sat back and watched me calmly for a time. He leaned forward and carefully rolled the note up and placed it in the narrow bamboo tube. “It was written in the winter of 1962. Your master was twenty, Dr. Burke.”
“And the woman?”
Ito’s eyes widened. “It does seem a heartfelt note, does it not? Terribly sincere. Terribly young.”
“Terribly sad, I think,” I told him.
Ito nodded in agreement. “Oh, very much so. It was the last … well, the only note between them, Dr. Burke.”
“But someone went to great pains to preserve it,” I noted.
“Just so,” Ito agreed. “It must have seemed important. And a pledge is something to honor.” The implication was unmistakable. It had occurred to me even as I read the note. But Ito didn’t know me very well; he wouldn’t suspect that I’d be sensitive to issues of honor. The Japanese tend to believe they have a monopoly on this quality. When he looked at me, despite his polish, Ito looked with Japanese eyes and saw just another gaijin, a foreigner with little or no subtlety.
“I’d like to meet this woman,” I said. “For Yamashita Sensei to write this … She must be a remarkable person. I assume you know her, Ito-san? After all, she gave you this very personal note.” I was needling him a little, letting him know I was wondering how he got hold of something that wasn’t meant for anyone but her.
Ito let out a sigh. “Miyazaki Chika was a remarkable woman, Dr. Burke. A precious child of a cadet line of the royal house. A princess, truly.” He smiled. “It sounds comic to speak of a princess, does it not? But even today, they exist.” He gathered his thoughts. “And even were she not related to the Imperial House, she would have been remarkable. Beautiful. Gifted. But so sad—a woman who knew well the fleeting nature of happiness.”
The mention of the Miyazaki name piqued my interest and got me wondering all sorts of things. But I held myself back and covered the emotion with a tangential comment instead. “Mono no aware,” I said. The Japanese aesthetic of frail and transient beauty that makes life so bitter and so sweet.
Ito’s face brightened in pleasant surprise. “Yes! Exactly. She was a remarkable woman.”
“Was?”
He nodded. “Chika-hime was the mother of my principal, Miyazaki Tokio.”
“And the old man?”
“Her husband, Dr. Burke.”
“He gave you this note? The old man?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no, Dr. Burke. Had he known of it, this note would never have survived. Chika-hime passed it to her son on her deathbed. In time of need, he was to seek out your master for help.”
“Why,” I demanded. “Why, after all these years?”
“It seems a pointless question, does it not, Dr. Burke? There is need. More importantly, there is a pledge. There is honor. These things do not fade with time.”
“My sensei,” I began. But Ito reached out as if he were going to touch me.
“Is not well,” he finished for me. “I understand. Time and old wounds have taken their toll. But surely he would wish his pledge to be honored.” He left the last sentence dangling. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he thought more of me than I had supposed.
I stood, feeling agitated. The trap was swinging shut. I glanced around the room. The clean architectural lines of a traditional Japanese room provided no shadows within which to hide. The space was quiet, but the air was charged with expectation. Yamashita’s favorite sumi-e painting of birds perched on a bamboo stalk was so delicately rendered that the leaves seemed to tremble as I looked at it. When I glanced away, my eyes fell on a table in the place of honor, and the black slash of lacquered scabbards where the swords of my master’s art slumbered. The blades had been polished through a life spent pursuing mastery. And honor.
The thing about training in a dojo is that there is no escape and nowhere to hide. You are there precisely because of that reason. You place yourself there to be hammered into something better. It’s not easy. It’s not pleasant. But it teaches you the importance of even small things and small details. Because, in the Way, all things are important, even a pledge given in the first blush of manhood so many years ago.
I sighed, and turned to Ito.
“OK. I’m in.”
Chapter 4
An elegant cocktail lounge, humming with activity. It was the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and suburbanites were in Manhattan to see the tree in Rockefeller Center, to stroll down Fifth Avenue, and do a little shopping. It was cold outside and it was the holidays, so we weren’t the only people in the hotel lounge having an afternoon cocktail. Deep down, I knew we were being boozers. But we were being stylish boozers.
The waitress brought us our drinks, setting them down on napkins with great care. A glass of Jameson’s is, after all, a beautiful thing and worthy of a certain reverence. Art, however, was having a martini. He saw my questioning look and shrugged.
“I’m expanding my horizons,” he said. He was big and pleasant looking, and above the serious cop mustache his eyes crinkled easily with amusement. They were bright eyes: blue and clear. But if you looked closely, you saw these eyes never stopped moving. He had been a cop for twenty years and, even in retirement, he never lost the habit of watching.
My brother Mickey sipped his drink, taking care not to spill any on his suit. He and Art had been, and still were, partners. Mickey was thinner, darker, and, if I were to be honest, sourer than Art. He, too, had the same cop mustache and the same cop eyes. After leaving the NYPD, the two of them had started their own security firm. In post–9-11 New York, it was wildly successful in a way that left both men mildly astonished. They shouldn’t have been. They made a perfect team. Where one was all heat, the other was calm. They could play good cop/bad cop like nobody else. They were tenacious, and so deeply experienced in the ways of people that nothing surprised them anymore. Except me.
I explained about the visit from Ito, the Miyazaki and their wayward daughter, her sleazy boyfriend, and the family’s need to save her. An old pledge that had to be honored.
“Well,”