Blood and Chrysanthemums by Nancy Baker Page A

had the night of their first parting.
    “You do not have to go.” For the first time, she heard something other than icy anger in his voice. She paused, torn between hope and contempt at her inability to resist even the faintest signs of a thaw in his coldness. “Have your climber. Do what you want. There is enough for both of us here.”
    For a moment, she tried to imagine it. To imagine living as vampires, preying on the people of the park instead of its animals. To imaging that she could have Mark and Rozokov would not care. To imagine that he could have his mysterious lover and she would feel nothing.
    But she could not.
    She was on her way to the front door when he caught her arm. She felt the pressure of his will, closing over her mind, seeking to nail her feet to the floor, her heart to his command. Rage fuelled her resistance and she jerked her arm out of his grasp. When she was safely at the door, she turned, knowing she should just go, but wanting to hurt him, hoping that the angry, despairing words might wound him as much as his betrayal had wounded her.
    “I believed you. I thought you knew what the meaning of this existence is, that you were so much wiser than me. But you’re not. You’re just a scared, tired old man.”
    Then she was running down the outside staircase, down the street, through the town. Even though she knew with painful, aching certainty that he wasn’t following her, she did not stop to put on her shoes until she reached the highway.

 
    Upon your leaving
    I would have that stretching road
rolled and folded up
    And burned to destruction—
    had I but flames from heaven!
    —Lady Sano

Chapter 10
    Lisa Takara heard the rustle of cloth, then her sister-in-law’s hissed whisper. She didn’t need to open her eyes to guess what happened; Paul had been squirming, unable to keep his six-year-old-boy body still for more than five minutes. And the priest had been praying for a good deal longer than five minutes . . . the numbness in her own ankles could attest to that.
    She moved as discreetly as she could, easing the pressure on her knees and heels as she knelt with her family in the shrine. She knew that she was supposed to be praying too, mind if not lips echoing the Buddhist prayers for the dead, but it was hard to keep her mind on the ceremony. Still, it must be worse for Angela, whose Japanese was rudimentary at best. Of course, her sister-in-law had Paul to keep herself occupied.
    She herself had only memories. She tried to focus on the good ones, the old ones. Her father’s smile as she ran to greet him in the doorway of their old suburban home, the sweets he would slip her behind her mother’s back, his proud eyes watching her during the convocation ceremonies that marked her progress through high school, university and graduate school. But at the end of each waited a more recent vision: her father in his sober suit, elderly and dignified, herself pouring tea, the visitor’s suit sleeve slipping back to reveal the tattoo winding on his forearm. Words like debt and honour and behind them, subtle threats that came and went like the dragons on Mr. Moro’s wrist.
    Lisa caught herself, clenching her fists inside the sleeves of her jacket. Your father is dead and you owe it to his memory to honour him this last time. He was a good father and he loved you. No matter what happened at the end.
    The cadences of the final prayers tugged her back to the ceremony again and she opened her eyes, taking the priest’s cues to guide her final bows. As her brothers rose around her, she found her feet awkwardly. The procession past the coffin was about to begin. She waited behind Robert and Derek, as each bent by the open casket and placed a flower by their father’s head.
    Then it was her turn. She forced herself to look down at the still, empty face. She had heard all the polite platitudes of the mourners: he looks so lifelike, so peaceful, just like he’s sleeping. None of them were true, or