The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 42

Callahan stepped into the narrow beam of sunlight and Fujiko looked at the blood running down his leg. "When did this happen?" she asked, pointing at the wound.

"At the entry - when I stepped through the gap."

"We must wrap this quickly," she said urgently, "and get the blood off your leg. Follow me."

She led the group back down the treacherous steps and met Harry on the rocky shelf above the surf; she washed his leg with seawater and then, using a sliver of fabric from one of the dry towels, she tied a sort of tourniquet around Callahan's knee, hopefully sealing the wound from the sea. "Swim quickly," she said directly to the group, "and Mr. Callahan, try not to lose the wrap; there are more than a few sharks in these waters."

Callahan nodded. "Swell," he said, grinning at Frank. "Care to see who can swim faster? Me, or a shark?" Elaine dove from the rocks and began swimming like a real pro, then Fujiko dove in, making good time, too. "Frank? Go ahead."

"No, I'll bring up the rear, Amigo. Go for it."

"You know, this feel like that last swim after the final run at the academy. Kind of momentous, ya know?"

Bullitt was looking at the water, but he turned to Harry and nodded. "Sharks are probably a little less careful than academy instructors, Harry. You ready to do this?"

"No." And then Harry turned to the little cliff and dove into the water; when he surfaced he turned to see Frank still on the rocks, still staring at the sea. "Frank! Come on!"

Then Frank was pointing at something in the water, shouting "Move your ass, Callahan!" before he too dove into the sea.

He dove under and looked where Frank had been pointing, and the outlines of the shark were unmistakable, like a dark blue shadow within a lighter blue shadow. He began swimming slowly towards the shore, stopping once to tighten the sliver of towel around his knee, and when he looked up he saw the shark was now about ten yards away and staring intently at him. In the next instant Frank was beside him...

"It's a Tiger shark, Harry. They don't mess around," Bullitt said anxiously.

"No, he looks like he means business. You go on; I'm gonna swim along facing him."

"No way, Callahan. He won't go after you if there are two of us. Now, let's move it."

"How far away are we?"

"I don't know," Bullitt said, spitting out seawater as he spoke, "call it fifty yards?"

Callahan stuck his head back under the water and his heart shuddered; the shark was now almost close enough to reach out and touch, it's cold, black eye now about five feet from his bleeding knee. He was lost and he knew it, yet he was almost mesmerized by the animals sheer beauty - the subtle striated markings along its side, the broad snout, the white underbody...all of it, simply gorgeous.

'So, this is what death looks like,' he heard an inner voice say...

Then he swam for the shark, his arms out ahead now, reaching out to touch death.

The shark rolled a little and turned abruptly, circling Callahan once while avoiding his hands, but Harry turned, his hands still out, still reaching, still trying to touch the darkness.

Then the shark turned on Callahan, its mouth open now and coming on with cold hard rage.

Still reaching out, he placed his hands on the shark's snout and closed his eyes; then, visualizing a keyboard he played a chord in his mind and the shark seemed to give way, rolling on its side again, but in the next instant Harry was eye-to-eye with the animal. He placed his hands on the shark and filled his mind with his mother's music and time seemed to stop, to spiral inward on itself...

Then he felt hands on his arms and a sour burning in his lungs; he opened his eyes and understood he was still far beneath the surface. He kicked and pulled against the weight with all his might, then he burst free of the water and into the air of the living...

Frank and Fujiko surfaced beside him and soon they were pulling him through the surf up to the rocks; Sam and Elaine were waiting at the water's edge and they helped pull him free of the water and onto the rocks.

Then Fujiko was staring at Harry, the stone-cold astonishment she felt now clear to see in her eyes.

Frank was shaking his head, looking at Callahan but still not understanding him at all.

"What happened?" Cathy asked, now a part of Callahan's ever-growing circle of confusion.

"I would like to know the answer to that, as well," Fujiko-san added with her hands on her hips, almost smiling as she took-in deep breaths. "Yes, I would very much like to understand what I just witnessed."

"Wouldn't we all," Bullitt said, turning to the sea once again, looking at the wave tops and lost in the memory of the impossible things he had just witnessed.

And then Fujiko bent to look at the wound on Callahan's knee - and she found that the skin had closed completely, that there was no evidence of any injury at all. She stared at Callahan, lost in confusion, then she stood and helped him walk to the rock staircase the led to his room.

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The hotel's fabled chashitsu, or tea room, was constructed completely of cedar, yet seemed to have grown out of the amber rock spire atop a soaring ledge. In many ways a traditional four and a half mat Sukiya-zukuri design, the room was nevertheless unique. Entry here was from below, access was through yet another narrow, winding staircase within the supporting spire, so there was - obviously - no space for a garden outside the main room. Instead of a meditative space outside the tea room there was only the cliff-lined shore, a few rocks far below and then the sea beyond. Here it was most common to lose oneself to the all-embracing winds that rushed in from the sea.

Typhoons had of course destroyed the tea room many times over the centuries, yet each time the cherished space was rebuilt exactly as before. As such, masters of the tea ceremony regarded this chashitsu as the very best in Japan - because the space adhered to tradition just as it seemed to cling resolutely to the rock itself.

Masters of the ceremony had already taken Frank and Cathy, then Sam and Elaine through the intricacies of an informal ceremony earlier in the evening; now in near darkness Fujiko-san lit candles and was soon leading Harry through the more rigid pageantry of a formal ceremony. And by now, even Callahan understood that the ritual cadences of the formal ceremony were reserved for only the most special occasions.

She presented the implements she would use that night, telling Callahan the history of each piece and then, as proscribed, allowing Callahan to pick up and admire them. She then made tea, and she poured with a grace that left Callahan feeling lost, like he was wandering through time.

When the ceremony was complete she led Callahan to the surrounding terrace and they sat inside a preternatural stillness...even the sea was a mirror that night...

The moon had not yet come for them and vagrant stars cast glancing reflections off the water - and to Callahan the shimmering echoes almost seemed like an illusion. Though he looked and looked it was almost impossible to find the line between the sea and the heavens, and perched up here on this lonely spire he felt immersed in vertiginous weightlessness.

"I can't believe what I'm seeing," he whispered.

"I have heard this could happen here but never imagined it might happen to me. This is very auspicious, Harry Callahan."

"Auspicious?"

"That you and I would be here tonight, of all nights. Do you not feel the stars?"

"I feel love, if that's what you mean."

"Yes, exactly so. That is what I mean. But who do you love, Harry Callahan? Really?"

"You. There is only you now."

"So, will you move to Japan - or shall I move to California?"

He smiled. "You should come to California and see the house that I have built, then I will let you decide."

"Do you truly understand what I am talking about, Harry Callahan?"

"I understand that I will never see this opportunity again, that I will never meet another soul like yours. I understand that I am at a crossroads, that I am ready to embrace the change I think you will bring to my life. I do not understand you yet, but I think that will change one day, and I will try to make you happy until that day comes. So yes, I think I understand what I need to understand. I have seen you; now you should come and see what I am, what I was and what I hope to be, then we can decide what to do and how we want to go about making a little piece of the future our own. Does that sound fair - to you?"

"I think I would be happy wherever you are, Harry Callahan."

"Then you will be happy, Fujiko-sama. We will be happy together."

"I will be leaving tomorrow. Another guide will be taking my place."

"What? Why?"

"I can no longer serve the rest of the group adequately. I can hardly breathe when I see you but cannot touch you... The owner of the company has been told; she wonders if she should terminate my employment but I have told her I do not care."

"Fujiko...I am so sorry..."

"What? How could you be sorry? For bringing love to me, to us? I was lost here, Harry Callahan. Born overseas, destined to always be on the outside, forever looking inside on a world that barely accepts who I am. No, things will unfold as they must, and whether I am here or not. Like you, I have found my crossroads, because you were here to help me find it. Like you, it is time to find my way home, because I too believe in a future we can make together."

There was a pale lightening along the eastern horizon and Callahan held Fujiko as both watched in awestruck silence while the faintest sliver of moon peeked over the edge of the universe, though in truth two moons came that night. One rose into the sky while the other fell towards a wall of rocky cliffs, down into the arms of two souls adrift on a windless sea and who had just happened along, waiting to dance within the shimmering echoes of a million stars.

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Callahan stood on a small balcony off his hotel room, watching the Valley Forge enter Osaka Harbor, making for the docks. His bags were packed, and even all his gifts and souvenirs were ready to go, too. He'd picked up a small camera bag and now kept that with him wherever he went, so his last chore before going to the ship was to drop by his favorite camera shop and pick up his developed rolls of film. All seventy-three of them.

Once Fujiko left the group he'd spent most of his time photographing the things that most called out to him, though he still managed a few snapshots from time to time. He found he enjoyed taking black and white photographs most of all, though the colors he discovered within Fuji slide film enticed him, too. A few cherry blossoms appeared their last few days on the road, and the delicate pinks pulled him in new directions; as a result of all this he and Cathy had become almost constant companions, their Nikons blazing away as they worked to capture every emotion each new excursion presented.

Yet Cathy was an architect, and as she roamed temples, shrines and castles she did so with sketchbooks never far from hand. She moved to photograph buildings everywhere they went, and if something really interested her, pencil and paper soon appeared. Little houses and tea rooms captivated her interest most of all, and she worked on these sketches whenever she could.

"I'd love to buy the lot next-door to the house and have you design a tea house, maybe create a real Japanese garden," he mentioned one afternoon, and she began presenting him with an evolving series of sketches for the remainder of the trip. Frank let on that she had grown consumed with the idea, and Callahan was fascinated with the ideas she came up with.

The group boarded the Valley Forge at noon, though Harry had moved to a larger suite for the return voyage. Carrying but a single, small suitcase, Fujiko-san arrived an hour later, and Harry helped her settle-in before taking her to meet his father.

© 2020 adrian leverkühn | abw | and as always, thanks for stopping by for a look around the memory warehouse...[and a last word or two on sources: I typically don't post all a story's acknowledgments until I've finished, if only because I'm not sure how many I'll need until work is finalized. Yet with current circumstances (Covid-19) waiting to mention sources might not be the best way to proceed. To begin, the primary source material in this case - so far, at least - derives from two seminal Hollywood 'cop' films: Dirty Harry and Bullitt. The first Harry film was penned by Harry Julian Fink, R.M. Fink, Dean Riesner, John Milius, Terrence Malick, and Jo Heims. Bullitt came primarily from the author of the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, Alan R Trustman, with help from Harry Kleiner, as well Robert L Fish, whose short story Mute Witness formed the basis of Trustman's brilliant screenplay. Steve McQueen's grin was never trade-marked, though perhaps it should have been. John Milius (Red Dawn) penned Magnum Force, and the 'Briggs'/vigilante storyline derives from characters and plot elements originally found in that rich screenplay, as does the Captain McKay character. The Jennifer Spencer/Threlkis crime family storyline was first introduced in Sudden Impact, screenplay by Joseph Stinson, original story by Earl Smith and Charles Pierce. The Samantha Walker television reporter is found in The Dead Pool, screenplay by Steve Sharon, story by Steve Sharon, Durk Pearson, and Sandy Shaw. I have to credit the Jim Parish, M.D., character first seen in the Vietnam segments to John A. Parrish, M.D., author of the most fascinating account of an American physician's tour of duty in Vietnam - and as found in his autobiographical 12, 20, and 5: A Doctor's Year in Vietnam, a book worth noting as one of the most stirring accounts of modern warfare I've ever read (think Richard Hooker's M*A*S*H, only featuring a blazing sense of irony conjoined within a searing non-fiction narrative). Denton Cooley, M.D. founded the Texas Heart Institute, as mentioned. Of course, James Clavell's Shōgun forms a principle backdrop in later chapters. The teahouse and hotel of spires in Ch. 42 is a product of the imagination; so-sorry. Many of the other figures in this story derive from characters developed within the works cited above, but keep in mind that, as always, the rest of this story is in all other respects a work of fiction woven into a pre-existing cinematic-historical fabric. Using the established characters referenced above, as well as the few new characters I've managed to come up with here and there, I hoped to create something new - perhaps a running commentary on the times we've shared with these fictional characters? And the standard disclaimer also here applies: the central characters in this tale should not be mistaken for persons living or dead. This was, in other words, just a little walk down a road more or less imagined, and nothing more than that should be inferred. I'd be remiss not to mention Clint Eastwood's Harry Callahan, and Steve McQueen's Frank Bullitt. Talk about the roles of a lifetime...and what a gift.]