The Samurai Strategy Part 27

"I like the poetry."

"Then you know, Tam, our poets excel in feeling. We've always celebrated emotion over logic." He smiled. "Which one said, 'Love is the pa.s.sion in the heart of man--those who will not listen to reason'?"

"What does reason have to do with love?" She took a gla.s.s. "Didn't Shakespeare say 'love and reason keep little company together'?"

"My turn. That's from Midsummer Night's Dream, which was . . .

sixteenth century. You're pulling out the moderns on me." He laughed with delight. "You know, in Heian times, eight hundred years ago here in Kyoto, I'd be expected to make a linked verse about the night now."

He looked out the doorway, then back. "How about . . .

_The moon in veil,

Perfumed with night,

Who can deny love

At a time like this?"

_

Then his visage quickened, another mood switch. His eyes mellowed as he turned and carefully lifted the bud from the vase behind him. It was a camellia, purest white. He held it before him as he turned back, its long stem still dripping.

"You know, there's a haiku by Basho I love very much. Let me give it in j.a.panese . . . a haiku only sounds right in the original.

_time ga ka ni

notto hi no deru

yama ji kana."

_She paused to let the meaning sink in, to feel that open- ended sensation a good haiku always sends your imagination spinning off into.

"How's this for the English?

With the scent of plums

on the mountain road--suddenly,

sunrise comes."

"Not bad." He glanced at the blossom in his hand. "I don't know why, but the camellia makes me think of you." He rotated it carefully, then looked back. "Let's dedicate tonight to our own sunrise."

He inspected the flower again, then impulsively leaned forward and placed it onto the _tatami _in front of her. Next, with the same control in his powerful hands that had touched the glaze of the tea bowl, he gently gripped the shoulders of her loose _yukata_. She felt her body flush with warmth as slowly, gently, his strength once more held in check, he carefully slid back the cloth off her shoulders until her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were free. Then plucking a petal from the bud, he reverently brushed one nipple, then the other.

It was an erotic game she knew he loved, one of many. Games. Sometimes she had imagined them inhabiting an eighteenth-century _shunga_, those woodblock prints picturing lovers in what she had once thought impossible embraces.

He'd once declared that the kimono was actually the most sensual garment in the world. Take a look at some of the _shunga_, he said, and the possibilities become obvious. Though it seems c.u.mbersome, entangling, yet it lifts away like a stage curtain to invite all sorts of dramatic possibilities. The human nude is only interesting when half concealed.

Games. She reached and took the petal from him, then ran it along the silk of his own _kimono_, over his muscular thighs as he sat, j.a.panese- style, feet back. Next she lifted away the silk from the flawless ivory skin she knew so well. She drew it along his thighs to tease him.

"Tam . . ." He reached to slip away her _yukata_, but she

caught his hand. Then she touched his lips with her fingers, silencing his protest. She pushed away his kimono and trailed the petal upward, lightly brus.h.i.+ng his own nipples. Finally she pushed him gently backward and smoothed her cheek against his thigh, drawing back his kimono even more.

The glow of the coals was dying now. As the last shadows played against his face, she laid the petal on the _tatami _and moved across him. . .

They lingered till the moon was up, then strolled back through the garden wearing their antique wooden clogs. The air was scented, musical with the sounds of night. Later that evening they downed an eight- course meal off antique stoneware plates, drank steaming sake on the veranda, then made love for hours on the _futon_.

Around midnight he ordered one more small bottle of sake, a _go_, and suggested they move out onto the veranda again, this time to watch the moon break over the trees. She slipped on her _yukata_ and padded out.

She'd just decided.

"Tamara, I want to tell you something." He poured her small porcelain cup to the brim. "You are everything Matsuo Noda is seeking. The way you held the tea bowl tonight, tasted the tea. The _cha-no-yu _doesn't lie. You have discipline, our discipline. That's very, very rare."

"You mean, 'for a _gaijin'_?"

"For anyone. Besides, I don't think of you that way. You are one of us now."

She looked into his eyes, dark in the moonlight. Then she remembered the _tokonoma_ alcove in the teahouse where a rugged vase had held the single white bud, its few petals moist as though from dew. Not a bouquet, a single bud--all the flowers in the world distilled into that one now poised to burst open.

Kenji Asano lived that special intensity, that pa.s.sion, which set j.a.pan apart from the rest of the world.

"Ken." Her voice was quiet. "I'll do it."

"You mean Noda?"

"Noda."

He said nothing for a moment, then finally he spoke.

"The game begins."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Over the last three weeks I'd spent long hours on the phone handling Matsuo Noda's new hedging in the currency markets. The play started out modestly, but as his Eight Hundred Year funds became bloated with cash, it grew into an avalanche of speculative positions.

His guiding principle was to keep a low profile in order not to spook the markets, same as any good trader would do. Whenever the FOREX desk of one market-maker bank on his list would start getting nervous, I'd just hit the next place in line. Finally after everybody on this side of the ocean began backing away, he went international. Zurich, in particular, loved the action and took everything he threw in its direction. I guess the Swiss are used to high rollers, since their financial casino never got cold feet and invented a house limit.