Shibumi

“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…

“Mr. Hel?”

He switched off the radio and beckoned to the young woman standing in the doorway of the gun room. She was wearing fresh khaki walking shorts and a shortsleeved shirt with three top buttons open. As hors d’oeuvres go, she was a promising morsel: long strong legs, slim waist, aggressive bosom, reddish hair fluffy from recent washing. More soubrette than heroine, she was in that brief desirable moment between coltishness and zaftig. But her face was soft and without lines of experience, giving the strain she was under the look of petulance.

“Mr. Hel?” she said again, her tone uncertain.

“Come in and sit down, Miss Stern.”

She look a chair beneath a rack of metal devices she did not recognize to be weapons and smiled faintly. “I don’t know why, but I thought of you as an older man. Uncle Asa spoke of you as a friend, a man of his own age.”

“We were of an age; we shared an era. Not that that’s pertinent to anything.” He looked at her flatly, evaluating her. And finding her wanting.

Uncomfortable under the expressionless gaze of his bottle-green eyes, she sought the haven of small talk. “Your wife—Hana, that is—has been very kind to me. She sat up with me last night and—”

He cut her off with a gesture. “Begin by telling me about your uncle. Why he sent you here. After that, give me the details of the events at Rome International. Then tell me what your plans are and what they have to do with me.”

Surprised by his businesslike tone, she took a deep breath, gathered her thoughts, and began her story, characteristically enough, with herself. She told him that she had been raised in Skokie, had attended Northwestern University, had taken an active interest in political and social issues, and had decided upon graduation to visit her uncle in Israel—to find her roots, discover her Jewishness.

Hel’s eyelids drooped at this last, and he breathed a short sigh. With a rolling motion of his hand he gestured her to get on with it.

“You knew, of course, that Uncle Asa was committed to punishing those who committed the Munich murders.”

“That was on the grapevine. We never spoke of such things in our letters. When I first heard of it, I thought your uncle was foolish to come out of retirement and attempt something like that with his old friends and contacts either gone or decayed into politics. I could only assume it was the desperate act of a man who knew he was in his final illness.”

“But he first organized our cell a year and a half ago, and he didn’t become sick until a few months ago.”

“That is not true. Your uncle has been ill for several years. There were two brief remissions. At the time you say he organized your cell, he was combating pain with drugs. That might account for his crepuscular thinking.”

Hannah Stern frowned and looked away. “You don’t sound as though you held my uncle in much esteem.”

“On the contrary, I liked him very much. He was a brilliant thinker and a man of generous spirit—a man of shibumi.”

“A man of… what?”

“Never mind. Your uncle never belonged in the business of terror. He was emotionally unequipped for it—which of course says a good deal in his favor as a human being. In happier times, he would have lived the gentle life of a teacher and scholar. But he was passionate in his sense of justice, and not only for his own people. The way things were twenty-five years ago, in what is now Israel, passionate and generous men who were not cowards had few options open to them.”

Hannah was not used to Hel’s soft, almost whispered prison voice, and she found herself leaning close to hear his words.

“You are wrong to imagine that I did not esteem your uncle. There was a moment in Cairo sixteen years ago when he risked his safety, possibly his life, to help me. What is more significant, he also risked the success of a project he was devoted to. I had been shot in the side. The situation was such that I could not seek medical assistance. When I met him, I had gone two days with a wad of blood-soaked cloth under my shirt, wandering in the back streets because I didn’t dare try a hotel. I was dazed with fever. No, I esteem him a great deal. And I am in his debt.” Hel had said this in a soft monotone, without the histrionics she would have associated with sincerity. He told her these things because he thought that, in fairness to the uncle, she had a right to know the extent of his debt of honor. “Your uncle and I never met again after that business in Cairo. Our friendship grew through years of exchanging letters that both of us used as outlets for testing ideas, for sharing our attitudes toward books we were reading, for complaining about fate and life. We enjoyed that freedom from embarrassment one only finds in talking to a stranger. We were very close strangers.” Hel wondered if this young woman could understand such a relationship. Deciding she could not, he focused in on the business at hand. “All right, after his son was killed in Munich, your uncle formed a cell to aid him in his mission of punishment. How many people, and where are they now?”

“I am the only one left.”

“You were within the cell?”

“Yes. Why? Does that seem—”

“Never mind.” Hel was convinced now that Asa Stern had been acting in dazed desperation, to introduce this soft college liberal into an action cell. “How large was the cell?”

“We were five. We called ourselves the Munich Five.”

His eyelids drooped again. “How theatrical. Nothing like telegraphing the stunt.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Five in the cell? Your uncle, you, the two hit in Rome—who was the fifth member? David O. Selznik?”

“I don’t understand what you mean. The fifth man was killed in a caf

“I’m sure you were. It’s a variation of the summer vacation romance: one of the fringe benefits of being a committed young revolutionary with all humanity as your personal flock. All right, tell me how far you had got before Asa died.”

Hannah was confused and hurt. This was nothing like the man her uncle had described, the honest professional who was also a gentle man of culture, who paid his debts and refused to work for the uglier of the national and commercial powers. How could her uncle have been fond of a man who showed so little human sympathy? Who was so lacking in understanding?

Hel, of course, understood only too well. He had several times had to clean up after these devoted amateurs. He knew that when the storm broke, they either ran or, from equally cowardly impulses, shot up everything in sight.

Hannah was surprised to find that no tears came, their flow cauterized by Hel’s cold adherence to fact and information. She sniffed and said, “Uncle Asa had sources of information in England. He learned that the last remaining two of the Munich murderers were with a group of Black Septembrists planning to hijack a plane departing from Heathrow.”

“How large a group?”

“Five or six. We were never sure.”

“Had you identified which of them were involved in Munich?”

“No.”

“So you were going to put all five of them under?”

She nodded.

“I see. And your contacts in England? What is their character and what are they going to do for you?”

“They are urban guerrillas working for the freedom of Northern Ireland from English domination.”

“Oh, God.”

“There is a kind of brotherhood among all freedom fighters, you know. Our tactics may be different, but our ultimate goals are the same. We all look forward to a day when—”

“Please,” he interrupted. “Now, what were these IRA’s going to do for you?”

“Well… they were keeping watch on the Septembrists. They were going to house us when we arrived in London. And they were going to furnish us with arms.”

“‘Us’ being you and the two who got hit in Rome?”

“Yes.”

“I see. All right, now tell me what happened in Rome. EEC identifies the stuntmen as Japanese Red Army types acting for the PLO. Is that correct?”

“I don’t know.”

“Weren’t you there?”

“Yes! I was there!” She controlled herself. “But in the confusion… people dying… gunfire all around me…” In her distress, she rose and turned her back on this man she felt was intentionally tormenting her, testing her. She told herself that she mustn’t cry, but tears came nonetheless. “I’m sorry. I was terrified. Stunned. I don’t remember everything.” Nervous and lacking something to do with her hands, she reached out to take a simple metal tube from the rack on the wall before her.

“Don’t touch that!”

She jerked her hand away, startled to hear him raise his voice for the first time. A shot of righteous anger surged through her. “I wasn’t going to hurt your toys!”

“They might hurt you.” His voice was quiet and modulated again. “That is a nerve gas tube. If you had turned the bottom half, you would be dead now. And what is more important, so would I.”

She grimaced and retreated from the weapons rack, crossing to the open sliding door leading to the garden, where she leaned against the sill to regain something of her composure.

“Young woman, I intend to help you, if that is possible. I must confess that it may not be possible. Your little amateur organization has made every conceivable mistake, not the least of which was aligning yourselves with IRA dummies. Still, I owe it to your uncle to hear you out. Perhaps I can protect you and get you back to the bourgeois comfort of your home, where you can express your social passions by campaigning against litter in national parks. But if I am to help you at all, I have to know how the stones lie on the board. So I want you to save your passion and theatrics for your memoirs and answer my questions as fully and as succinctly as you can. If you’re not prepared to do that just now, we can chat again later. But it is possible that I may have to move quickly. Typically in patterns like this, after a spoiling raid (and that’s probably what the Rome International number was) time favors the other fellows. Shall we talk now, or shall we go take luncheon?”

Hannah slid down to the tatami floor, her back against the sill, her profile cameoed against the sunlit garden. After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been through a lot.”

“I don’t doubt that. Now tell me about the Rome hit. Facts and impressions, not emotions.”

She looked down and drew little circles on her tanned thigh with her fingernail, then she pulled up her knees and hugged them to her breast. “All right. Avrim and Chaim went through passport check ahead of me. I was slowed down by the Italian officer, who was sort of flirting and ogling my breasts. I suppose I should have kept my shirt buttoned all the way up. Finally, he stamped my passport, and, I started out into the terminal. Then the gunshots broke out. I saw Avrim run… and fall… the side of his head all… all. Wait a minute.” She sniffed and drew several deep, controlling breaths. “I started to run too… everyone was running and screaming… an old man with a white beard was hit… a child… a fat old woman. Then there were gunshots coming from the other side of the terminal and from the overhanging mezzanine, and the Oriental gunmen were hit. Then suddenly there was no more gunfire, only screams, and people all around, bleeding and hurt. I saw Chaim lying against the lockers, his legs all wrong and crooked. He had been shot in the face. So I… I just walked away. I just walked away. I didn’t know what I was doing, where I was going. Then I heard the announcement on the loudspeaker for the plane for Pau. And I just kept walking straight ahead until I came to the departure gate. And… and that’s all.”

“All right. That’s fine. Now tell me this. Were you a target?”

“What?”

“Was anyone shooting specifically at you?”

“I don’t know! How could I know?”

“Were the Japanese using automatic weapons?”

“What?”

“Did they go rat-a-tat, or bang! bang! bang!”

She looked up at him sharply. “I know what an automatic weapon is! We used to practice with them out in the mountains!”

“Rat-a-tat or bang bang?”

“They were machine guns.”

“And did anyone standing close to you go down?”

She thought hard, squeezing her knees to her lips. “No. No one standing close to me.”

“If professionals using automatic weapons didn’t drop anyone near you, then you were not a target. It is possible they didn’t identify you as being with your two friends. Particularly as you left the check-through line some time after them. All right, please turn your mind to the shots that came from the mezzanine and blew away the Japanese hitmen. What can you tell me about them?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I don’t remember anything. The guns were not automatics.” She looked at Hel obliquely. “They went bang bang.”

He smiled. “That’s the way. Humor and anger are more useful just now than the wetter emotions. Now, the radio report said something about ‘special agents’ being with the Italian police. Can you tell me anything about them?”

“No. I never saw the people firing from the mezzanine.”

Hel nodded and bowed his head, his palms pressed together and the forefingers lightly touching his lips. “Give me a moment to put this together.” He fixed his eyes on the weave pattern of the tatami, then defocused as he reviewed the information in hand.

Hannah sat on the floor, framed in the doorway, and gazed out on the Japanese garden where sunlight reflected from the small stream glittered through bamboo leaves. Typical of her class and culture, she lacked the inner resources necessary to deal with the delights of silence, and soon she was uncomfortable. “Why aren’t there any flowers in your…”

He lifted his hand to silence her without looking up.

Four minutes later he raised his head. “What?”

“Pardon me?”

“Something about flowers.”

“Oh, nothing important. I just wondered why you didn’t have any flowers in your garden.”

“There are three flowers.”

“Three varieties?”

“No. Three flowers. One to signal each of the seasons of bloom. We are between seasons now. All right, let’s see what we know or can assume. It’s pretty obvious that the raid in Rome was organized either by PLO or by the Septembrists, and that they had learned of your intentions—probably through your London-based IRA comrades, who would sell their mothers into Turkish seraglios if the price was right (and if any self-respecting Turk would use them). The appearance of Japanese Red Army fanatics would seem to point to Septembrists, who often use others to do their dangerous work, having little appetite for personal risk. But things get a little complicated at this point. The stunt men were disposed of within seconds, and by men stationed in the mezzanine. Probably not Italian police, because the thing was done efficiently. The best bet is that the tip-off was tipped off. Why? The only reason that comes quickly to mind is that no one wanted the Japanese stunt men taken alive. And why? Possibly because they were not Red Army dum-dums at all. And that, of course, would bring us to CIA. Or to the Mother Company, which controls CIA, and everything else in American government, for that matter.”

“What is the Mother Company? I’ve never heard of them.”

“Few Americans have. It is a control organization of the principal international oil and energy companies. They’ve been in bed with the Arabs forever, using those poor benighted bastards as pawns in their schemes of induced shortages and profiteering. The Mother Company is a wiry opponent; they can’t be got at through nationalistic pressures. Although they put up a huge media front of being loyal American (or British or German or Dutch) companies, they are in fact international infragovernments whose only patriotism is profit. Chances are that your father owns stock in them, as do half the dear gray-haired ladies of your country.”

Hannah shook her head. “I can’t feature CIA taking sides with the Black Septembrists. The United States supports Israel; they’re allies.”

“You underestimate the elastic nature of your country’s conscience. They have made a palpable shift since the oil embargo. American devotion to honor varies inversely with its concern for central heating. It is a property of the American that he can be brave and selfsacrificing only in short bursts. That is why they are better at war than at responsible peace. They can face danger, but not inconvenience. They toxify their air to kill mosquitoes. They drain their energy sources to provide themselves with electric carving knives. We must never forget that there was always Coca-Cola for the soldiers in Viet Nam—”

Hannah felt a chauvinistic sting. “Do you think its fine to generalize like that about a people?”

“Yes. Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals. It is the most accurate way to describe the mass, the Wad. And yours is a democracy, a dictatorship of the Wad.”

“I refuse to believe that Americans were involved in the blood and horror of what went on in that airport. Innocent children and old men…”

“Does the sixth of August mean anything to you?”

“Sixth of August? No. Why?” She gripped her legs closer to her chest.

“Never mind.” Hel rose. “I have to think this out a bit. We’ll talk again this afternoon.”

“Do you intend to help me?”

“Probably. But probably not in any style you have in mind. By the way, can you stand a bit of avuncular advice?”

“What would that be?”

“It is a sartorial indiscretion for a young lady so lavishly endowed with pubic hair as you to wear shorts that brief, and to sit in so revealing a posture. Unless, of course, it is your intention to prove that your red hair is natural. Shall we take lunch?”

Lunch was set at a small round table in the west reception room giving out onto the rolling green and allporte fen were open, and the long curtains billowed lazily with cedar-scented breezes. Hana had changed to a long dress of plum-colored silk, and when Hel and Hannah entered, she smiled at them as she put the finishing touches to a centerpiece of delicate bell-shaped flowers. “What perfect timing. Lunch was just this minute set.” In fact, she had been awaiting them for ten minutes, but one of her charms was making others feel socially graceful. A glance at Hannah’s face told her that things had gone distressingly for her during the chat with Hel, so Hana took the burden of civilized conversation upon herself.

As Hannah opened her starched linen napkin, she noticed that she had not been served the same things as Hana and Hel. She had a bit of lamb, chilled asparagus in mayonnaise, and rice pilaf, while they had fresh or lightly saut

Hana smiled and explained. “Our age and past indiscretions require that we eat a little cautiously, my dear. But we do not inflict our Spartan regimen on our guests. In fact, when I am away from home, in Paris for instance, I go on a spree of depraved eating. Eating for me is what you might call a managed vice. A vice particularly difficult to control when one is living in France where, depending on your point of view, the food is either the world’s second best or the world’s very worst.”

“What do you mean?” Hannah asked.

“From a sybaritic point of view, French food is second only to classic Chinese cuisine. But it is so handled, and sauced, and prodded, and chopped, and stuffed, and seasoned as to be a nutritive disaster. That is why no people in the West have so much delight with eating as the French, or so much trouble with their livers.”

“And what do you think about American food?” Hannah asked, a wry expression on her face, because she was of that common kind of American abroad who seeks to imply sophistication by degrading everything American.

“I couldn’t really say; I have never been in America. But Nicholai lived there for a time, and he tells me that there are certain areas in which American cooking excels.”

“Oh?” Hannah said, looking archly at Hel. “I’m surprised to hear that Mr. Hel has anything good to say about America or Americans.”

“It’s not Americans I find annoying; it’s Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called ‘American’ only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. Its symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experience. In the latter stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun. As for your food, no one denies that the Americans excel in one narrow rubric: the snack. And I suspect there’s something symbolic in that.”

Hana disapproved of Hel’s ingracious tone, so she took control of the dinner talk as she brought Hannah’s plate to the sideboard to replenish it. “My English is imperfect. There is more than one asparagus here, but the word ‘asparaguses’ sounds awkward. Is it one of those odd Latin plurals, Nicholai? Does one say asperagae, or something like that?”

“One would say that only if he were that overinformed/undereducated type who attends concerti for celli and afterward orders cups of capuccini. Or, if he is American, dishes of raspberry Jell-I.”

“Arr Hana said with a slight shake of her head. She smiled at Hannah. “Isn’t he a bore on the subject of Americans? It’s a flaw in his personality. His sole flaw, he assures me. I’ve been wanting to ask you, Hannah, what did you read at university?”

“What did I read?”

“What did you major in,” Hel clarified.

“Oh. Sociology.”

He might have guessed it. Sociology, that descriptive pseudo-science that disguises its uncertainties in statistical mists as it battens on the narrow gap of information between psychology and anthropology. The kind of non-major that so many Americans use to justify their four-year intellectual vacations designed to prolong adolescence.

“What did you study in school?” Hannah asked her hostess thoughtlessly.

Hana smiled to herself. “Oh… informal psychology, anatomy, aesthetics—that sort of thing.”

Hannah applied herself to the asparagus, asking casually, “You two aren’t married, are you? I mean… you joked the other night about being Mr. Hel’s concubine.”

Hana’s eyes widened in rare astonishment. She was not accustomed to that inquisitive social gaucherie that Anglo-Saxon cultures mistake for admirable frankness. Hel opened his palm toward Hana, gesturing her to answer, his eyes wide with mischievous innocence.

“Well…” Hana said, “…in fact, Mr. Hel and I are not married. And in fact I am his concubine. Will you take dessert now? We have just received our first shipment of the magnificent cherries of Itxassou, of which the Basque are justly proud.”

Hel knew Hana was not going to get off that easily, and he grinned at her as Miss Stern pursued, “I don’t think you mean concubine. In English, concubine means someone who is hired for… well, for her sexual services. I think you mean ‘mistress.’ And even mistress is sort of old-fashioned. Nowadays people just say they are living together.”

Hana looked at Hel for help. He laughed and interceded for her. “Hana’s English is really quite good. She was only joking about the asparagus. She knows the difference among a mistress, a concubine, and a wife. A mistress is unsure of her wage, a wife has none; and they are both amateurs. Now, do try the cherries.”

* * *

Hel sat on a stone bench in the middle of the cutting gardens, his eyes closed and his face lifted to the sky. Although the mountain breeze was cool, the thin sunlight penetrated his yukata and made him warm and drowsy. He hovered on the delicious verge of napping until he intercepted the approaching aura of someone who was troubled and tense.

“Sit down, Miss Stern,” he said, without opening his eyes. “I must compliment you on the way you conducted yourself at lunch. Not once did you refer to your problems, seeming to sense that in this house we don’t bring the world to our table. To be truthful, I hadn’t expected such good form from you. Most people of your age and class are so wrapped up in themselves—so concerned with what they’re ‘into’—that they fail to realize that style and form are everything, and substance a passing myth.” He opened his eyes and smiled as he made a pallid effort to imitate the American accent: “It ain’t what you do, it’s how you do it.”

Hannah perched on the marble balustrade before him, her thighs flattened by her weight. She was barefoot, and she had not heeded his advice about changing into less revealing clothes. “You said we should talk some more?”

“Hm-m-m. Yes. But first let me apologize for my uncivil tone, both during our little chat and at lunch. I was angry and annoyed. I have been retired for almost two years now, Miss Stern. I am no longer in the profession of exterminating terrorists; I now devote myself to gardening, to caving, to listening to the grass grow, and to seeking a kind of deep peace I lost many years ago—lost because circumstances filled me with hate and fury. And then you come along with a legitimate claim to my assistance because of my debt to your uncle, and you threaten me with being pressed back into my profession of violence and fear. And fear is a good part of why I was annoyed with you. There is a certain amount of antichance in my work. No matter how well-trained one is, how careful, how coolheaded, the odds regularly build up over the years; and there comes a time when luck and antichance weigh heavily against you. It’s not that I’ve been lucky in my work—I mistrust luck—but I have never been greatly hampered by bad luck. So there’s a lot of bad luck out there waiting for its turn. I’ve tossed up the coin many times, and it has come down heads. There are more than twenty years’ worth of tails waiting their turn. So! What I wanted to explain was the reason I have been impolite to you. It’s fear mostly. And some annoyance. I’ve had time to consider now. I think I know what I should do. Fortunately, the proper action is also the safest.”

“Does that mean you don’t intend to help me?”

“On the contrary. I am going to help you by sending you home. My debt to your uncle extends to you, since he sent you to me; but it does not extend to any abstract notion of revenge or to any organization with which you are allied.”

She frowned and looked away, out toward the mountains. “Your view of the debt to my uncle is a convenient one for you.”

“So it turns out, yes.”

“But… my uncle gave the last years of his life to hunting down those killers, and it would make that all pretty pointless if I didn’t try to do something.”

“There’s nothing you can do. You lack the training, the skill, the organization. You didn’t even have a plan worthy of the name.”

“Yes, we did.”

He smiled, “All right. Let’s take a look at your plan. You said that the Black Septembrists were intending to hijack a plane from Heathrow. Presumably your group was going to hit them at that time. Were you going to take them on the plane, or before they boarded?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Avrim was the leader after Uncle Asa died. He told us no more than he thought we had to know, in case one of us was captured or something like that. But I don’t believe we were going to meet them on the plane. I think we were going to execute them in the terminal.”