"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 03 - The White Ninja" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

AUTHOR'S NOTE
White Ninja is the third novel in a series - beginning with The Ninja and
continuing with The Miko - about the life of Nicholas Linnear.
All the books are interrelated, but they are by no means interdependent. Still,
the novels may be seen as being akin to concentric circles, and are meant to
complement one another.


This is for Henry Morrison,
my friend as well as my agent,
without whom . . .


The winds that blow -ask them, which leaf of the tree will be next to go!
soseki
He that fleeth from the fear
shall fall into the pit;
and he that getteth up out of the pit
shall be taken in the snare . . .
JEREMIAH 48:44


AUTUMN
Tokyo
He awoke into darkness. Outside, it was noon. In the Kan, a businessmen's hotel
on the seedy outskirts of Tokyo, with the steel shutters closed like a raven's
claw over the window, it was as black as the grave.
The image was apt. The room was hardly larger than a coffin. The ceiling and the
floor were both carpeted in the same deathly shade of grey. Because there were
only four feet separating them, any light created an unwholesomely vertiginous
effect upon the unwary guest when he awoke.
But this was not the reason why, when rising from the futon bed, Senjin did not
light a lamp. He had a far more compelling reason to remain in the shadows.
Senjin thought of his mother as he always did when he was either drunk or
homicidal. He'd had two mothers, really, the one who had borne him, and the one
who had raised him. The second mother was his aunt, his mother's sister, but he
always referred to her as Haha-san, mother. It was she who had suckled him at
her breast when his blood mother had had the effrontery to die a week after he
was born from an infection his long labour had caused. It was Haha-san who had
cooled his childhood fevers and had warmed him with her arms when he was
chilled. She had sacrificed everything for Senjin and, in the end, he had walked
away from her without even saying goodbye, let alone thank you.
That did not mean that Senjin did not think about her. With his eyes open, he
remembered venting his anger against the white, marshmallow-like softness of her


breast, of her giving while he took, of his overstepping his bounds time and
time again, and of her loving smile in response. He hit out, wanting only to be
hit back in return. Instead, she drew him again into the softness of herself,
believing that she could swallow his rage in the vastness of her serenity.