Now the sky is black to the east, purple over China. Out in the floating city the orange and yellow lanterns are winking out, as people make up beds on the canted decks of sampans heeled over in the mud. The air has cooled on the dark plains of inland China, and breezes are no longer drawn in from the sea. The curtains no longer billow inward as the General balances his stone on the nail of his index finger, his mind ranging far from the game before him.
It is two months since Alexandra Ivanovna died, and the General has received orders transferring him. He cannot take Nicholai with him, and he does not want to leave him in Shanghai where he has no friends and where his lack of formal citizenship denies him even the most rudimentary diplomatic protection. He has decided to send the boy to Japan.
The General examines the mother’s refined face, expressed more economically, more angularly in the boy. Where will he find friends, this young man? Where will he find soil appropriate to his roots, this boy who speaks six languages and thinks in five, but who lacks the smallest fragment of useful training? Can there be a place in the world for him?
“Sir?”
“Yes? Oh… ah… Have you played, Nikko?”
“Some time ago, sir.”
“Ah, yes, Excuse me. And do you mind telling me where you played?”
Nicholai pointed out his stone, and Kishikawa-san frowned because the unlikely placement had the taste of a tenuki. He marshaled his fragmented attention and examined the board carefully, mentally reviewing the outcome of each placement available to him. When he looked up, Nicholai’s bottle-green eyes were on him, smiling with relish. The game could be played on for several hours, and the outcome would be close. But it was inevitable that Nicholai would win. This was the first time.
The General regarded Nicholai appraisingly for some seconds, then he laughed. “You are a demon, Nicholai.”
“That is true, sir,” Nicholai admitted, enormously pleased with himself. “Your attention was wandering.”
“And you took advantage of that?”
“Of course.”
The General began to collect his stones and return them to the Gô ke. “Yes,” he said to himself. “Of course.” Then he laughed again. “What do you say to a cup of tea, Nikko?” Kishikawa-san’s major vice was his habit of drinking strong, bitter tea at all hours of day and night. In the heraldry of their affectionate but reserved relationship, the offer of a cup of tea was the signal for a chat. While the General’s batman prepared the tea, they walked out into the cool night air of the veranda, both wearing yukatas.
After a silence during which the General’s eye wandered over the city, where the occasional light in the ancient walled town indicated that someone was celebrating, or studying, or dying, or selling herself, he asked Nicholai, seemingly apropos of nothing, “Do you ever think about the war?”
“No, sir. It has nothing to do with me.”
The egoism of youth. The confident egoism of a young man brought up in the knowledge that he was the last and most rarefied of a line of selective breeding that had its sources long before tinkers became Henry Fords, before coinchangers became Rothschilds, before merchants became Medici.
“I am afraid, Nikko, that our little war is going to touch you after all.” And with this entrée, the General told the young man of the orders transferring him to combat, and of his plans to send Nicholai to Japan where he would live in the home of a famous player and teacher of Gô.
“…my oldest and closest friend, Otake-san—whom you know by reputation as Otake of the Seventh Dan.”
Nicholai did indeed recognize the name. He had read Otake-san’s lucid commentaries on the middle game.
“I have arranged for you to live with Otake-san and his family, among the other disciples of his school. It is a very great honor, Nikko.”
“I realize that, sir. And I am excited about learning from Otake-san. But won’t he scorn wasting his instruction on an amateur?”
The General chuckled. “Scorn is not a style of mind that my old friend would employ. Ah! Our tea is ready.”
The batman had taken away the Gô ban of kaya, and in its place was a low table set for tea. The General and Nicholai returned to their cushions. After the first cup, the General sat back slightly and spoke in a businesslike tone. “Your mother had very little money as it turns out. Her investments were scattered in small local companies, most of which collapsed upon the eve of our occupation. The men who owned the companies simply returned to Britain with the capital in their pockets. It appears that, for the Westerner, the great moral crisis of war obscures minor ethical considerations. There is this house… and very little more. I have arranged to sell the house for you. The proceeds will go for your maintenance and instruction in Japan.”
“As you think best, sir.”
“Good. Tell me, Nikko. Will you miss Shanghai?”
Nicholai considered for a second. “No.”
“Will you feel lonely in Japan?”
Nicholai considered for a second. “Yes.”
“I shall write to you.”
“Often?”
“No, not often. Once a month. But you must write to me as often as you feel the need to. Perhaps you will be less lonely than you fear. There are other young people studying with Otake-san. And when you have doubts, ideas, questions, you will find Otake-san a valuable person to discuss them with. He will listen with interest, but will not burden you with advice.” The General smiled. “Although I think you may find one of my friend’s habits of speech a little disconcerting at times. He speaks of everything in terms of Gô. All of life, for him, is a simplified paradigm of Gô.”
“He sounds as though I shall like him, sir.”
“I am sure you will. He is a man who has all my respect. He possesses a quality of… how to express it?… of shibumi.”
“Shibumi, sir?” Nicholai knew the word, but only as it applied to gardens or architecture, where it connoted an understated beauty. “How are you using the term, sir?”
“Oh, vaguely. And incorrectly, I suspect. A blundering attempt to describe an ineffable quality. As you know, shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is… how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that.”
Nicholai’s imagination was galvanized by the concept of shibumi. No other ideal had ever touched him so. “How does one achieve this shibumi, sir?”
“One does not achieve it, one… discovers it. And only a few men of infinite refinement ever do that. Men like my friend Otake-san.”
“Meaning that one must learn a great deal to arrive at shibumi?”
“Meaning, rather, that one must pass through knowledge and arrive at simplicity.”
From that moment, Nicholai’s primary goal in life was to become a man of shibumi; a personality of overwhelming calm. It was a vocation open to him while, for reasons of breeding, education, and temperament, most vocations were closed. In pursuit of shibumi he could excel invisibly, without attracting the attention and vengeance of the tyrannical masses.
Kishikawa-san took from beneath the tea table a small sandalwood box wrapped in plain cloth and put it into Nicholai’s hands. “It is a farewell gift, Nikko. A trifle.”