Himself, Herself
Move. March.
Where?
What does it matter? All good roads are within. Mine has been a long one and perhaps your march must be long as well.
—Adzhar to a leader of the 1927 Communist uprising in Shanghai
One September morning shortly before dawn a procession of black limousines was seen approaching Tokyo from some point to the south, perhaps Kamakura, where they had apparently gathered during the hours of darkness. The limousines entered the city and moved slowly down a main thoroughfare keeping themselves bumper to bumper, all of them empty save for a driver.
The funeral procession crept around the streets in a wide curve until by mid-morning the entire center of the city was blocked off in a gigantic circle of mourning. By then the first limousine had come up behind the last to form an unbroken chain, making it impossible to estimate how many thousands of vehicles there might be in the solemn parade.
Since neither traffic nor pedestrians could pass through the mysterious black ring, the stores and offices of Tokyo eventually closed and the government declared an unofficial holiday. Twelve million people came out to watch the unannounced and nameless event while around the world many millions more pondered the total inscrutability of the Orient, bewildered that the death of one unknown person could cause a funeral of such magnitude. In fact it was the most magnificent funeral celebrated in Asia since the death of Kublai Khan, but only one man understood this completely, that other wanderer from the thirteenth century who called himself Father Lamereaux.
From the lawn of an elegant inn, amid stone lanterns and stone paths, twisted pines and miniature bridges, the two surviving half-brothers watched the procession. Kikuchi-Lotmann knew now that the woman he had described on the highbar in the abandoned warehouse was indeed his mother, but that his father had not been the circus master of that story but of another, one that began on a houseboat in Shanghai when his father and Quin’s father had been introduced to each other by the woman they both loved eight years before their deaths, eight years before the circus and Nanking, eight years before the conception of the third half-brother, whose funeral was now being celebrated in the world’s largest city, the cause of the black ring around Tokyo twenty years after the end of the war known only to them and the Kannon Buddha and the aging Emperor who had long ago found homes for the sons of Maeve and Mama.
Quin nodded to himself, Kikuchi-Lotmann changed his necktie. They watched the procession until sunset, when a servant appeared with a picnic basket and spread a tablecloth on the grass with lox and winter sable, white-fish, pickled herring and herring in cream, rollmops, pickled tomatoes, cream cheese and chives, olives, chopped liver, a tray of bagels.
In front of the array of food two small figures in ice were set up, the one a man in frock coat with whip and megaphone, the other a boy with a dented shoulder.
At the foot of the hill the procession of limousines was at last coming to an end, and although it was cold for September the two ice figures were already beginning to melt. Kikuchi-Lotmann gazed at the sun sinking out of sight.
A little of this, he said, and a little of that. Or put another way, we sit in the East and watch the sun go down in the West. But if we were to reverse ourselves?
The ice figures were pools of water. Kikuchi-Lotmann’s head wagged. He blew the water and sprayed it over the grass, fogging his glasses. A sad smile came to his face as he spread a slice of fish on a bagel.
Mixed buffet, he said in the half-light. Help yourself.
The elderly Emperor sat thin and erect in his ornate Victorian parlor, one hand gripping each horsehair arm of his throne. His black habit hung loosely around him, the cloth worn, the celluloid collar unstudded and awry. On the table in front of him stood a bottle of Irish whiskey.
Uncertain weather, he whispered. I’ve always enjoyed the latter part of September here. The air is uneasy as if hiding some secret, yet we all know typhoons are in the natural order of things. Is that bottle what it appears to be?
Yes, said Quin.
Father Lamereaux sighed.
It’s been a long time since I’ve tasted that, nearly a quarter of a century. When I first came to Japan I had my cats and the Legion and the flowers of Tokyo, and there were the temples in the lovely hills above Kamakura with their gongs and rituals and the periods set aside for contemplation. The Legion met at that long table behind you and we had discussions on No plays after the closing prayer and the passing of the secret-bag. But then in the 1930s they took those ugly cannons they captured from the Russians in 1905 and placed them around the shrines. How did that bottle get there?
It’s a present for you, said Quin. I’ll be leaving soon and we might not meet again. I thought we might have a drink together.
No, we probably won’t meet again.
I remembered that Geraty said you and he had a glass of Irish whiskey together the last time he saw you, when he left for China before the war.
Did he say that? Perhaps we did, I’ve forgotten. After that I lost the cats and the legionaries. The flowers of Tokyo weren’t so beautiful during the war when the whole city was burning down. Since then I’ve been a strict vegetarian, honey and eggs excepted. Rice has a peculiar effect on the bowels of the Japanese, which is one reason they prefer the out-of-doors. I prefer it myself, especially my own garden, but I can’t do it when it’s raining.
Can I pour you a drink?
I think so. I think I just might have one today because there’s going to be a typhoon and because I lost everything a quarter of a century ago, too long a time to have nothing. I believe we should emulate the Virgin, a human soul must not resign itself to imperfection. The Emperors of Japan were great men until military dictators forced them into retirement in the thirteenth century. The Emperor was simply thrown out in the streets and told to barter pickles and bugger his autograph for rice. Then in the 1920s I went to study in Kamakura. Once on a spring afternoon there I heard the music that had tempted the sun goddess from her cave, exquisite music played on a koto a thousand years old. Elijah and the sun goddess played it for me as I nodded with the flowers, as the shoemaker’s son sat at his shoemaker’s bench and sang a dragon’s epic so strange and sanctifying it surely must have been a gift from the distant Lapps. Did you know Elijah or the shoemaker’s son? Did you know Henry Pu Yi? He was a very naughty man and his mythical country never really existed. But for all that, he was still the last emperor I had an opportunity to talk to. I suppose I’ve already mentioned the Peram and their necronym system, Father of Uncle Dead and the rest. Even among simple tribesmen relationships can be quite complex. Quite complex when we look into it.
The old priest unbuttoned his coat the wrong way. He took the glass of whiskey and studied it. The windows were rattling violently. Gusts of air shot across the room. Although it was only early afternoon the sky was already dark. The whole house seemed to be swaying in the wind.