Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [54]
Some time passed before the door opened and the doctor emerged, gown smeared with dark patches.
Sharpless got to his feet. He said, in Japanese: ‘May I enquire . . . .?’
‘She is no longer in danger.’
Then, in American-accented English, ‘I guess you know the girl?’
‘I am a family friend. Sharpless, Henry.’ He bowed. ‘And I am addressing . . .?’
‘Dr Sato.’
A long, steady look. Sharpless was aware that awkward questions lay ahead and moved to block them.
‘A most unfortunate accident.’
The doctor appeared to be lost in thought, staring at the floor. He looked at Sharpless, at Suzuki by his side He gave a tilt of the head, eyebrows raised.
‘An accident.’
A pause. ‘We’ll need some details . . .’
Sharpless said, ‘If you want to reach me, you can find me at the American consulate.’
He sensed the hint of a thaw. ‘Right.’ A nod of acknowledgement. ‘I trained in California. UCLA and Irvine med school.’
Sharpless had been surprised by the doctor’s reaction when he saw Cho-Cho’s injury. Now he made a guess – bright boy, packed off to America, returning home a westernised professional, finds himself in unknown territory, confronted with the messy savagery of a traditional suicide.
Sharpless bowed and embarked on the usual, ritualised form of thanks, but the doctor cut in.
‘You can see her later.’ A brief bow and he moved on.
Sharpless and Suzuki, alone again, sat, lapped by sounds of pain, cries, moans, groans; the crisply spoken orders of the staff. For them, now, just the waiting.
Hours passed before they were led to Cho-Cho’s bedside. She lay, bandaged, washed clean, clad now in the white of a hospital robe, not bloodstained kimono, her skin grey against the bleached linen.
He stared down at the face, immobile as carved ivory; tried to think himself into her mind.
Sharpless had seen Cho-Cho’s father’s sword once, unthreatening in its ceremonial scabbard with the inscription ‘To die with honour, when one can no longer live with honour.’ He had used it, when disgrace was the only alternative; had prepared himself for seppuku, found the strength to make the appalling cross-cut of ritual disembowellment, ‘spilling his guts’, as Sharpless had once heard an American describe it, accurately enough.
For a woman, the kaiken, delicate and deadly, was the traditional option. For female suicide, jigai, the jugular vein, not the abdomen. He pictured Cho-Cho alone in the room. She would bow to her father’s sword in its wrapping of dark silk; feel for a certain spot in the neck, almost nerveless, known to all Japanese. Then place the tip of the knife to that spot, and drive the blade inwards . . .
Sharpless was still trying to work out for himself the course of events. Nancy and Pinkerton had presented Cho-Cho with a terrible dilemma. She must weigh up what she wanted most and what was best for the child. Choose. When he last saw her she had been firm in her wish to keep the child, but something had changed her mind. Nancy had told him one thing: the evidence before him told a different story. Where lay the truth?
In Japanese he knew a word for truth: makoto. Ma meaning perfect, and koto, the situation. But how is the perfect situation arrived at? It can be achieved through discussion, analysis, but sometimes there is no time for anything but action.
Cho-Cho could have thought that to kill herself would create makoto, the perfect situation, to save the child and give him a new life. But it seemed too simple a conclusion. He recalled a conversation when they had talked about sacrifice. Her father had sacrificed his own life: ruined, his honour was at stake. Sharpless had said forcefully that he thought that was wrong; her father should have stayed to care for her. And now it seemed that she in turn had decided that to remove herself was the best solution. When had she made that decision? And why?
Sharpless’s predecessor, handing over the office, had said to him, ‘Don’t try and argue with the Japanese.