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 breasts 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 cumbersome,
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, Japanese-
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 brushing 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 passion, which set Japan
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."