“In two months your tenure with me is over, Hana.”
“Hmm-hmm.” She did not want to break her languor by speaking.
“Have you considered my suggestion that you stay on with me?”
“Hmm-hmm.”
“And?”
“Unh-nh-nh-nh-nh.” The prolonged sound through slack lips meant, “Don’t make me talk.”
He chuckled and turned her over onto her back, continuing the thrill massage with close attention to technique and detail. Hana was in a perfect state. She was in her midthirties, the youngest a woman can be and still possess the training and experience of a grand lover. Because of the excellent care she took of her body and because of the time-annihilating effects of her ideal blend of Oriental, Black, and Caucasian strains, she would be in her prime for another fifteen years. She was a delight to look at, and to work on. Her greatest quality lay in her ability to receive pleasure completely and graciously.
When the Delight of the Razor had closed to her centers and had rendered her moist and passive, he concluded the event with its classic quick finish. And for a time they lay together in that comfortable lover’s twine that knows how to deal with the extra arm.
“I have thought about staying on, Nikko,” she said, her voice buzzing against his chest. “There are many reasons that might prompt me to do so. This is the most beautiful spot in the world. I shall always be grateful to you for showing me this corner of the Basque country. And certainly you have constructed a life of shibumi luxury here that is attractive. And there is you, so quiet and stern when you deal with the outside world, so boyish in lovemaking. You are not without a certain charm.”
“Thank you.”
“And I must also confess that it is much rarer to find a well-trained man than an accomplished woman. But… it is lonely here. I know that I am free to go to Bayonne or Paris whenever I wish—and I have a good time when I do go—but day to day, despite your attention and the delights of your conversation, and despite the bawdy energy of our friend Le Cagot, it is lonely for a woman whose interests and appetites have been so closely honed as mine have been.”
“I understand that.”
“It is different for you, Nikko. You are a recluse by nature. You despise the outside world, and you don’t need it. I too find that most of the people out there either bore or annoy me. But I am not a recluse by nature, and I have a vivid curiosity. Then too… there is another problem.”
“Yes?”
“Well, how shall I put this? Personalities such as yours and mine are meant to dominate. Each of us should function in a large society, giving flavor and texture to the mass. The two of us together in one place is like a wasteful concentration of spice in the course of an otherwise bland meal. Do you see what I mean?”
“Does that mean that you have decided to leave when your tenure is up?”
She blew a jet of breath over the hairs of his chest. “It means that I have not yet made up my mind.” She was silent for a time, then she said, “I suppose I would really prefer to have the best of both worlds, spending half of every year here, resting and learning with you, and half of each year out there, stunning my audience.”
“I see nothing wrong with that.”
She laughed, “It would mean that you would have to make do for six months each year with the bronzed, long-legged, mindless nymphs of the Côte Basque. Actresses and models and that sort. Could you do that?”
“As easily as you could make do with round-armed lads possessing excellent muscle tone and honest, empty eyes. For both of us, it would be like subsisting on hors d’oeuvres. But why not? There is some amusement in hors d’oeuvres, though they cloy without nourishing.”
“Let me think about it, Nikko. It is an attractive idea.” She raised herself onto one elbow and looked down into his half-closed, amused eyes. “Then too, freedom is also attractive. Maybe I won’t make any decision at all.”
“That’s a kind of decision.”
They dressed and went to shower beneath the perforated copper cask designed for the purpose by the first enlightened owner of the château nearly three hundred years before.
It was not until they were taking tea in the cream-and-gold east salon that Hel asked about the visitor.
“She is still asleep. When she arrived yesterday evening, she was desperate. She had walked from the village after flying in to Pau from Rome and hitchhiking to Tardets. Although she tried to chat and follow the forms of politeness, I could tell from the first that she was very distraught. She began weeping while she was taking tea. Weeping without knowing she was doing it. I gave her something to calm her and put her to bed. But she awoke during the night with nightmares, and I sat on the edge of her bed, stroking her hair and humming to her, until she was calm and dropped off again.”
“What is her problem?”
“She talked about it while I stroked her hair. There was a nasty business at the airport in Rome. Two of her friends were shot and killed.”
“Shot by whom?”
“She didn’t say. Perhaps she didn’t know.”
“Why were they shot?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did she tell you why she came to our home?”
“Evidently all three of them were on their way here. She had no money, only her plane ticket.”
“Did she give you her name?”
“Yes. Hannah Stern. She said her uncle was a friend of yours.”
Hel set his cup down, closed his eyes, and pushed out a long nasal sigh. “Asa Stern was a friend. He’s dead. I am indebted to him. There was a moment when, without his help, I would have died.”
“And this indebtedness, does it extend to the girl as well?”
“We’ll see. Did you say the blow-away in Rome International happened yesterday afternoon?”
“Or morning. I am not sure which.”
“Then it should be on the news at noon. When the girl wakes up, please have her come and see me. I’ll be in the garden. Oh, and I think Le Cagot will take dinner with us—if he finishes his business in Larrau in time.”
Hel worked in the garden for an hour and a half, trimming, controlling, striving for modest and subtle effects. He was not an artist, but he was sensitive; so while his garden, the major statement of his impulse to create, lacked sabi, it had the shibui features that separate Japanese art from the mechanical dynamics of Western art and the florid hyperbole of Chinese. There was that sweet melancholy, that forgiving sadness that characterizes the beautiful in the Japanese mind. There was intentional imperfection and organic simplicity that created, then satisfied, aesthetic tensions, functioning rather as balance and imbalance function in Western art.
Just before noon, a servant brought out a battery radio, and Hel listened in his gun room for the twelve o’clock broadcast of BBC World Service. The news reader was a woman whose distinctive voice has been a source of amusement for the international Anglophone community for years. To that peculiar pronunciation that is BBC’s own, she adds a clipped, half-strangled sound which the world audience has long taken to be the effect of an uncomfortable suppository, although there is lively dispute and extensive wagering between those who maintain that the suppository is made of sandpaper and those who promote the ice-cube theory.
Buried among the trivia of collapsing governments, the falling dollar, and Belfast bombings was a description of the atrocity at Rome International. Two Japanese men, subsequently identified from papers on their persons as Red Army members working in behalf of the Black Septembrists, opened fire with automatic weapons, killing two young Israeli men, whose identities are being withheld. The Red Army assassins were themselves killed in an exchange of gunfire with Italian police and special agents, as were several civilian bystanders. And now for news of a lighter note…