Shibumi

“And when was this to take place?”

“The morning of the seventeenth.”

“That’s six days away. Why were you going to London so soon? Why expose yourself for six days?”

“We weren’t going to London. We were coming here. Uncle Asa knew we didn’t have much chance of success without him. He had hoped he would be strong enough to accompany us and lead us. The end came too fast for him.”

“So he sent you here? I don’t believe that.”

“He didn’t exactly send us here. He had mentioned you several times. He said that if we got into trouble we could come to you and you would help.”

“I’m sure he meant that I would help you get away after the event.”

She shrugged.

He sighed. “So you three youngsters were going to pick up your arms from your IRA contacts in London, loiter around town for six days, take a taxi out to Heathrow, stroll into the terminal, locate the targets in the waiting area, and blow them away. Was that your plan?”

Her jaw tightened, and she looked away. It did sound silly, put like that.

“So, Miss Stern, notwithstanding your disgust and horror over the incident at Rome International, it turns out that you were planning to be responsible for the same kind of messy business—a stand-up blow-away in a crowded waiting room. Children, old women, and bits thereof flying hither and yon as the dedicated young revolutionaries, eyes flashing and hair floating, shoot their way into history. Is that what you had in mind?”

“If you’re trying to say we are no different from those killers who murdered young athletes in Munich or who shot my comrades in Rome—!”

“The differences are obvious! They were well organized and professional!” He cut himself off short. “I’m sorry. Tell me this: what are your resources?”

“Resources?”

“Yes. Forgetting your IRA contacts—and I think we can safely forget them—what kind of resources were you relying on? Were the boys killed in Rome well trained?”

“Avrim was. I don’t think Chaim had ever been involved in this sort of thing before.”

“And money?”

“Money? Well, we were hoping to get some from you. We didn’t need all that much. We had hoped to stay here for a few days—talk to you and get advice and instructions. Then fly directly to London, arriving the day before the operation. All we needed was air fare and a little more.”

Hel closed his eyes. “My dear, dumb, lethal girl. If I were to undertake something like you people had in mind, it would cost between a hundred and a hundred-fifty-thousand dollars. And I am not speaking of my fee. That would be only the setup money. It costs a lot to get in, and often even more to get out. Your uncle knew that.” He looked out over the horizon line of mountain and sky. “I’m coming to realize that what he had put together was a suicide raid.”

“I don’t believe that! He would never lead us into suicide without telling us!”

“He probably didn’t intend to have you up front. Chances are he was going to use you three children as backups, hoping he could do the number himself, and you three would be able to walk away in the confusion. Then too…”

“Then too, what?”

“Well, we have to realize that he had been on drugs for a long time to manage his pain. Who knows what he was thinking; who knows how much he had left to think with toward the end?”

She drew up one knee and hugged it to her chest, revealing again her erubescence. She pressed her lips against her knee and stared over the top of it across the garden, “I don’t know what to do.”

Hel looked at her through half-closed eyes. Poor befuddled twit, seeking purpose and excitement in life, when her culture and background condemned her to mating with merchants and giving birth to advertising executives. She was frightened and confused, and not quite ready to give up her affair with danger and significance and return to a life of plans and possessions. “You really don’t have much choice. You’ll have to go home. I shall be delighted to pay your way.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do anything else.”

For a moment, she sucked lightly on her knee. “Mr. Hel—may I call you Nicholai?”

“Certainly not.”

“Mr. Hel. You’re telling me that you don’t intend to help me, is that it?”

“I am helping you when I tell you to go home.”

“And if I refuse to? What if I go ahead with this on my own?”

“You would fail—almost surely die.”

“I know that. The question is, could you let me try to do it alone? Would your sense of debt to my uncle allow you to do that?”

“You’re bluffing.”

“And if I’m not?”

Hel glanced away. It was just possible that this bourgeois muffin was dumb enough to drag him into it, or at least to make him decide how far loyalty and honor went. He was preparing to test her, and himself, when he felt an approaching presence he recognized as Pierre’s, and he turned to see the gardener shuffling toward them from the ch

“Good afternoon, ‘sieur, m’selle. It must be pleasant to have the leisure to sun oneself.” He drew a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his blue worker’s smock and handed it to Hel with great solemnity, then he explained that he could not stay for there were a thousand things to be done, and he went on toward the garden and his gatehouse, for it was time to soften his day with another glass.

Hel read the note.

He folded it and tapped it against his lips. “It appears, Miss Stern, that we may not have all the freedom of option we thought. Three strangers have arrived in Tardets and are asking questions about me and, more significantly, about you. They are described as Englishmen or Am —the village people wouldn’t be able to distinguish those accents. They were accompanied by French Special Police, who are being most cooperative.”

“But how could they know I am here?”

“A thousand ways. Your friends, the ones who were killed in Rome, did they have plane tickets on them?”

“I suppose so. In fact, yes. We each carried our own tickets. But they were not to here; they were to Pau.”

“That’s close enough. I am not completely unknown.” Hel shook his head at this additional evidence of amateurism. Professionals always buy tickets to points well past their real destinations, because reservations go into computers and are therefore available to government organizations and to the Mother Company.

“Who do you think the men are?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do?”

He shrugged. “Invite them to dinner.”

* * *

After leaving Hannah, Hel sat for half an hour in his garden, watching the accumulation of heavy-bellied storm clouds around the shoulders of the mountains and considering the lie of the stones on the board. He came to two conclusions at about the same time. It would rain that night, and his wisest course would be to rush the enemy.

From the gun room he telephoned the HAm up to the ch not the fault of the Dabadies that the strangers decided at the last moment to dine with M. Hel. Business is business. And considering that waste of food is abhorrent to God, perhaps it would be best if the Dabadies ate the dinners themselves, inviting the abb

He found Hana reading in the library, wearing the quaint little rectangular glasses she needed for close work. She looked over the top of them as he entered. “Guests for dinner?” she asked.

He caressed her cheek with his palm. “Yes, three. Americans.”

“How nice. With Hannah and Le Cagot, that will make quite a dinner party.”

“It will that.”

She slipped in a bookmark and closed the volume.

“Is this trouble, Nikko?”

“Yes.”

“It has something to do with Hannah and her problems?”

He nodded.

She laughed lightly. “And just this morning you invited me to stay on with you for half of each year, trying to entice me with the great peace and solitude of your home.”

“It will be peaceful soon. I have retired, after all.”

“Can one? Can one completely retire from such a trade as yours? Ah well, if we are to have guests, I must send down to the village. Hannah will need some clothes. She cannot take dinner in those shorts of hers, particularly considering her somewhat cavalier attitude toward modest posture.”

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.”

* * *

A greeting bellow from the allporte fen that rattled the glass, a noisy search to find Hana in the library, a vigorous hug with a loud smacking kiss on her cheek, a cry for a little hospitality in the form of a glass of wine, and all the household knew that Le Cagot had returned from his duties in Larrau. “Now, where is this young girl with the plump breasts that all the valley is talking about? Bring her on. Let her meet her destiny!”

Hana told him that the young woman was napping, but that Nicholai was working in the Japanese garden.

“I don’t want to see him. I’ve had enough of his company for the last three days. Did he tell you about my cave? I practically had to drag your man through it. Sad to confess, he’s getting old, Hana. It’s time for you to consider your future and to look around for an ageless man—perhaps a robust Basque poet?”

Hana laughed and told him that his bath would be ready in half an hour. “And after that you might choose to dress up a bit; we’re having guests for dinner.”

“Ah, an audience. Good. Very well, I’ll go get some wine in the kitchen. Do you still have that young Portuguese girl working for you?”

“There are several.”

“I’ll go sample around a bit. And wait until you see me dressed up! I bought some fancy clothes a couple of months ago, and I haven’t had a chance to show them off yet. One look at me in my new clothes, and you’ll melt, by the Balls…”

Hana cast a sidelong glance at him, and he instantly refined his language.

“…by the Ecstasy of Ste. Therese. All right, I’m off to the kitchen.” And he marched through the house, slamming doors and shouting for wine.

Hana smiled after Le Cagot. From the first he had taken to her, and his gruff way of showing his approval was to maintain a steady barrage of hyperbolic gallantry. For her part, she liked his honest, rough ways, and she was pleased that Nicholai had a friend so loyal and entertaining as this mythical Basque. She thought of him as a mythic figure, a poet who had constructed an outlandish romantic character, and who spent the rest of his life playing the role he had created. She once asked Hel what had happened to make the poet protect himself within this op

All that remained for the Cagots were the artisan trades. For many centuries, both by restriction and privilege, they were the land’s only woodcutters, carpenters, and joiners. Later, they also became the Basque masons and weavers. Because their misshapen bodies were considered funny, they became the strolling musicians and entertainers of their time, and most of what is now called Basque folk art and folklore was created by the despised Cagots.

Although it was long assumed that the Cagots were a race apart, propagated in Eastern Europe and driven along before the advancing Visigoths until they were deposited, like moraine rubble before a glacier, in the undesirable land of the Pyrenees, modern evidence suggests they were isolated-pockets of Basque lepers, ostracized at first for prophylactic reasons, physically diminished in result of their disease, eventually taking on distinguishable characteristics because of enforced intermarriage. This theory goes a long way toward explaining the various limitations placed upon their freedom of action.

Popular tradition has it that the Cagots and their descendants had no earlobes. To this day, in the more traditional Basque villages, girls of five and six years of age have their ears pierced and wear earrings. Without knowing the source of the tradition, the mothers respond to the ancient practice of demonstrating that their girls have lobes in which to wear earrings.

Today the Cagots have disappeared, having either withered and grown extinct, or slowly merged with the Basque population (although this last suggestion is a risky one to advance in a Basque bar), and their name has all but fallen from use, save as a pejorative term for bent old women.

The young poet whose sensitivity had been cauterized by events chose Le Cagot as his pen name to bring attention to the precarious situation of contemporary Basque culture, which is in danger of disappearing, like the suppressed bards and minstrels of former times.

* * *

A little before six, Pierre tottered down to the square of Etchebar, the cumulative effect of his day’s regularly spaced glasses of wine having freed him from the tyranny of gravity to such a degree that he navigated toward the Volvo by means of tacking. He had been sent to pick up two ensembles which Hana bad ordered by telephone after asking Hannah for her sizes and translating them into European standards. After the dresses, Pierre was to collect three dinner guests from the Hfigue at him.

Pierre brought the Volvo to a bucking and coughing stop in the center of the Place of Tardets and clawed his way out. After bruising his toe against the battered door, he set about his commissions, the first of which was to share a hospitable glass with old friends.

No one thought it odd that Pierre always delivered a kick to the car upon entering or leaving, as Volvo-bashing was a general practice in southwestern France, and could even be encountered as far away as Paris. Indeed, carried to cosmopolitan centers around the world by tourists, Volvo-bashing was slowly becoming a cult activity throughout the world, and this pleased Nicholai Hel, since he had begun it all.

Some years before, seeking a car-of-all-work for the ch

Having observed Pierre’s skills as a chauffeur, Hel thought to shorten his torment by allowing Pierre to drive the car whenever he chose. But this plot was foiled because ironic fate shielded Pierre from accidents. So Hel came to accept his Volvo as one of the comic burdens of life, but he allowed himself to vent his frustration by kicking or bashing the car each time he got in or out.

It was not long before his caving associates fell into the practice of bashing his Volvo whenever they passed it, at first as a joke and later by habit. Soon they and the young men they traveled with began to bash any Volvo they passed. And in the illogical way of fads, Volvo-bashing began to spread, here taking on an anti-Establishment tone, there a quality of youthful exuberance; here as an expression of antimaterialism, there as a manifestation of in-cult with-itness.

Even owners of Volvos began to accept the bashing craze, for it proved that they traveled in circles of the internationally aware. And there were cases of owners secretly bashing their own Volvos, to gain unearned reputations as cosmopolites. There were persistent, though probably apocryphal, rumors that Volvo was planning to introduce a prebashed model in its efforts to attract the smart set to an automobile that had sacrificed everything to passenger safety (despite their use of Firestone 500 tires on many models) and primarily appealed to affluent egotists who assumed that the continuance of their lives was important to the destiny of Man.

* * *

After his shower, Hel found laid out in the dressing room his black broadcloth Edwardian suit, which had been designed to protect either guests in simple business suits or those in evening wear from feeling under— or overdressed. When he met Hana at the top of the principal staircase, she was in a long dress of Cantonese style that had the same social ambiguity as his suit.

“Where’s Le Cagot?” he asked as they went down to a small salon to await their guests. “I’ve felt his presence several times today, but I haven’t heard or seen him.”

“I assume he is dressing in his room.” Hana laughed lightly. “He told me that I would be so taken by his new clothes that I would swoon amorously into his arms.”

“Oh, God.” Le Cagot’s taste in clothes, as in most things, ran to operatic overstatement. “And Miss Stern?”

“She has been in her room most of the afternoon. You evidently gave her rather a bad time during your chat.”

“Hm-m-m.”

“She’ll be down shortly after Pierre returns with clothes for her. Do you want to hear the menu?”

“No, I’m sure it’s perfect.”

“Not that, but adequate. These guests give us a chance to be rid of the roebuck old M. Ibar gave us. It’s been hanging just over a week, so it should be ready. Is there something special I should know about our guests?”

“They are strangers to me. Enemies, I believe.”

“How should I treat them?”

“Like any guest in our house. With that particular charm of yours that makes all men feel interesting and important. I want these people to be off balance and unsure of themselves. They are Americans. Just as you or I would be uncomfortable at a barbecue, they suffer from social vertigo at a proper dinner. Even their gratin, the jetset, are culturally as bogus as airlines cuisine.”

“What on earth is a ‘barbecue’?”

“A primitive tribal ritual featuring paper plates, elbows, flying insects, encrusted meat, hush puppies, and beer.”

“I daren’t ask what a ‘hush puppy’ is.”

“Don’t.”

They sat together in the darkening salon, their fingers touching. The sun was down behind the mountains, and through the open porte fen they could see a silver gloaming that seemed to rise from the ground of the park, its dim light filling the space beneath the black-green pines, the effect rendered mutable and dear by the threat of an incoming storm.

“How long did you live in America, Nikko?”

“About three years, just after I left Japan. In fact, I still have an apartment in New York.”

“I’ve always wanted to visit New York.”

“You’d be disappointed. It’s a frightened city in which everyone is in hot and narrow pursuit of money: the bankers, the muggers, the businessmen, the whores. If you walk the streets and watch their eyes, you see two things: fear and fury. They are diminished people hovering behind triple-locked doors. They fight with men they don’t hate, and make love to women they don’t like. Asea in a mongrel society, they borrow orts and leavings from the world’s cultures. Kir is a popular drink among those desperate to be ‘with it,’ and they affect Perrier, although they have one of the world’s great waters in the local village of Saratoga. Their best French restaurants offer what we would think of as thirty-franc meals for ten times that much, and the service is characterized by insufferable snottiness on the part of the waiter, usually an incompetent peasant who happens to be able to read the menu. But then, Americans enjoy being abused by waiters. It’s their only way of judging the quality of the food. On the other hand, if one must live in urban America—a cruel and unusual punishment at best—one might as well live in the real New York, rather than in the artificial ones farther inland. And there are some good things. Harlem has real tone. The municipal library is adequate. There is a man named Jimmy Fox who is the best barman in North America. And twice I even found myself in conversation about the nature of shibui —not shibumi, of course. It’s more within the range of the mercantile mind to talk of the characteristics of the beautiful than to discuss the nature of Beauty.”

She struck a long match and lighted a lamp on the table before them. “But I remember you mentioning once that you enjoyed your home in America.”

“Oh, that was not New York. I own a couple of thousand hectares in the state of Wyoming, in the mountains.”

“Wy-om-ing. Romantic-sounding name. Is it beautiful?”

“More sublime, I would say. It’s too ragged and harsh to be beautiful. It is to this Pyrenees country what an ink sketch is to a finished painting. Much of the open land of America is attractive. Sadly, it is populated by Americans. But then, one could say a similar thing of Greece or Ireland.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve been to Greece. I worked mere for a year, employed by a shipping magnate.”

“Oh? You never mentioned that.”

“There was nothing really to mention. He was very rich and very vulgar, and he sought to purchase class and status, usually in the form of spectacular wives. While in his employ, I surrounded him with quiet comfort. He made no other demands of me. By that time, there were no other demands he could make.”

“I see. Ah—here comes Le Cagot.”

Hana had heard nothing, because Le Cagot was sneaking down the stairs to surprise them with his sartorial splendor. Hel smiled to himself because Le Cagot’s preceding aura carried qualities of boyish mischief and ultra-sly delight.

He appeared at the door, his bulk half-filling the frame, his arms in cruciform to display his fine new clothes. “Regard! Regard, Niko, and burn with envy!”

Obviously, the evening clothes had come from a theatrical costumer. They were an eclectic congregation, although the fin-de-si impulse dominated, with a throat wrapping of white silk in place of a cravat, and a richly brocaded waistcoat with double rows of rhinestone buttons. The black swallowtail coat was long, and its lapels were turned in gray silk. With his still-wet hair parted in the middle and his bushy beard covering most of the cravat, he had something the appearance of a middle-aged Tolstoi dressed up as a Mississippi riverboat gambler. The large yellow rose he bad pinned to his lapel was oddly correct, consonant with this amalgam of robust bad taste. He strode back and forth, brandishing his long makila like a walking stick. The makila had been in his family for generations, and there were nicks and dents on the polished ash shaft and a small bit missing from the marble knob, evidences of use as a defensive weapon by grandfathers and greatgrandfathers. The handle of a makila unscrews, revealing a twenty-centimeter blade, designed for foining, while the butt in the left hand is used for crossed parries, and its heavy marble knob is an effective clubbing weapon. Although now largely decorative and ceremonial, the makila once figured importantly in the personal safety of the Basque man alone on the road at night or roving in the high mountains.

“That is a wonderful suit,” Hana said with excessive sincerity.

“Is it not? Is it not?”

“How did you come by this… suit?” Hel asked.

“It was given to me.”

“In result of your losing a bet?”

“Not at all. It was given to me by a woman in appreciation for… ah, but to mention the details would be ungallant. So, when do we eat? Where are these guests of yours?”

“They are approaching up the all

Le Cagot peered out through the porte fen but he could see nothing because evening and the storm had pressed the last of the gloaming into the earth. Still, he had become used to Hel’s proximity sensitivity, so he assumed there was someone out there.

Just as Pierre was reaching for the handle of the pull bell, Hel opened the door. The chandeliers of the hall were behind him, so he could read the faces of his three guests, while his own was in shadow. One of them was obviously the leader; the second was a gunny CIA type, Class of ‘53; and the third was an Arab of vague personality. All three showed signs of recent emotional drain resulting from their ride up the mountain road without headlights, and with Pierre showing off his remarkable driving skills.

“Do come in,” Hel said, stepping from the doorway and allowing them to pass before him into the reception hall, where they were met by Hana who smiled as she approached.

“It was good of you to accept our invitation on such short notice. I am Hana. This is Nicholai Hel. And here is our friend, M. Le Cagot.” She offered her hand.

The leader found his aplomb. “Good evening. This is Mr. Starr. Mr. … Haman. And I am Mr. Diamond.” The first crack of thunder punctuated his last word.

Hel laughed aloud. “That must have been embarrassing. Nature seems to be in a melodramatic mood.”

Part Three

Seki

Ch

From the moment the y had the heart-squeezing experience of driving with Pierre in the battered Volvo, the three guests never quite got their feet on firm social ground. Diamond had expected to get down to cases immediately with Hel, but that clearly was not on. While Hana was conducting the party to the blue-and-gold salon for a glass of Lillet before dinner, Diamond held back and said to Hel, “I suppose you’re wondering why—”

“After dinner.”

Diamond stiffened just perceptibly, then smiled and half-bowed in a gesture he instantly regretted as theatrical. That damned clap of thunder!

Hana refilled glasses and handed around canap

There was a palpable silence after she left, and Hel allowed the slight discomfort to lie there, as he watched his guests with distant amusement.

It was Darryl Starr who found a relevant remark to fill the void. “Nice place you got here.”

“Would you like to see the house?” Hel asked.

“Well… no, don’t trouble yourself on my account.”

Hel said a few words aside to Le Cagot, who then crossed to Starr and with gruff bonhomie pulled him from his chair by his arm and offered to show him the garden and the gun room. Starr explained that he was comfortable where he was, thank you, but Le Cagot’s grin was accompanied by painful pressure around the American’s upper arm.

“Indulge my whim in this, my good friend,” he said.

Starr shrugged—as best he could—and went along.

Diamond was disturbed, torn between a desire to control the situation and an impulse, which he recognized to be childish, to demonstrate that his social graces were as sophisticated as Hel’s. He realized that both he and this event were being managed, and he resented it. For something to say, he mentioned, “I see you’re not having anything to drink before dinner, Mr. Hel.”

“That’s true.”

Hel did not intend to give Diamond the comfort of rebounding conversational overtures; he would simply absorb each gesture and leave the chore of initiation constantly with Diamond, who chuckled and said, “I feel I should tell you that your driver is a strange one.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. He parked the car out in the village square and we had to walk the rest of the way. I was sure the storm would catch us.”

“I don’t permit automobiles on my grounds.”

“Yes, but after he parked the car, he gave the front door a kick that I’m sure must have dented it.”

Hel frowned and said, “How odd. I’ll have to talk to him about that.”

At this point, Hana and Miss Stern joined the men, the young woman looking refined and desirable in a summer tea dress she had chosen from those Hana had bought for her. Hel watched Hannah closely as she was introduced to the two men, grudgingly admiring her control and ease while confronting the people who had engineered the killing of her comrades in Rome. Hana beckoned her to sit beside her and managed immediately to focus the social attention on her youth and beauty, guiding her in such a way that only Hel could sense traces of the reality vertigo the girl was feeling. At one moment, he caught her eyes and nodded slightly in approval of aplomb. There was some bottom to this girl after all. Perhaps if she were in the company of a woman like Hana for four or five years… who knows?

There was a gruff laugh from the hall and Le Cagot reentered, his arm around Starr’s shoulders. The Texan looked a bit shaken and his hair was tousled, but Le Cagot’s mission was accomplished; the shoulder holster under Starr’s left armpit was now empty.

“I don’t know about you, my friends,” Le Cagot said in his accented English with the overgrowled r of the Francophone who has finally conquered that difficult consonant, “but I am ravenous! Bouffons! I could eat for four!”

The dinner, served by the light of two candelabra on the table and lamps in wall sconces, was not sumptuous, but it was good: trout from the local gave, roebuck with cherry sauce, garden vegetables cooked in the Japanese style, the courses separated by conversation and appropriate ices, finally a salad of greens before dessert of fruit and cheeses. Compatible wines accompanied each entrrelev and the particular problem of game in a fruit sauce was solved by a fine pink wine which, while it could not support the flavors, did not contradict them either. Diamond noted with slight discomfort that Hel and Hana were served only rice and vegetables during the early part of the meal, though they joined the others in salad. Further, although their hostess drank wine with the rest of them, Hel’s glass was little more than moistened with each bottle, so that in total he drank less than a full glass.

“You don’t drink, Mr. Hel?” he asked.

“But I do, as you see. It is only that I don’t find two sips of wine more delicious than one.”

Padding with wines and waxing pseudopoetic in their failure to describe tastes lucidly is an affectation of socially mobile Americans, and Diamond fancied himself something of an authority. He sipped, swilled and examined the pink that accompanied the roebuck, then said, “Ah, there are Tavels, and there are Tavels.”

Hel frowned slightly. “Ah… that’s true, I suppose.”

“But this is a Tavel, isn’t it?”

When Hel shrugged and changed the subject diplomatically, the nape of Diamond’s neck horripilated with embarrassment. He had been so sure it was Tavel.

Throughout dinner, Hel maintained a distant silence, his eyes seldom leaving Diamond, though they appeared to focus slightly behind him. Effortlessly, Hana evoked jokes and stories from each of the guests in turn, and her delight and amusement was such that each felt he had outdone himself in cleverness and charm. Even Starr, who had been withdrawn and petulant after his rough treatment at Le Cagot’s hands, was soon telling Hana of his boyhood in Flatrock, Texas, and of his adventures fighting against the gooks in Korea.