The Nicholas Linnear Novels by Eric Van Lustbader

tenant, the care of a multitude of saltwater fish whose brilliant colors electrified the surrounding water just as if they were a flock of boldly plumaged birds flitting through some dense tropical world.
    He watched Justine’s form through this aqueous lens like a primitive peeping through the foliage at an intruding memsahib.
    She wore a red bathing suit cut high along the thighs to resemble a dancer’s leotard and thus accentuate her long legs. She had a white towel around her neck as if she had just come from a gym. She licked at a running egg yolk between her fingers as she mopped at the plate with a last bite of toast in her other hand. Popping this into her mouth, she turned to look at him.
    “Those aren’t yours, are they?” she asked.
    He was finished feeding them but unaccountably remained in his crouched position, fascinated perhaps by the distortions of the soft currents created by the fish and the bubbling aerator. The certain air of unreality was comforting although he might be more inclined to think of it as an aspect of fantasy.
    “Not mine, no,” he said from behind the barrier reef. “They are the house’s true owners.” He laughed and straightened up. “More so than I, at any rate.”
    She stood up, brought the plates to the kitchen. “Christ, it’s raining.” She leaned on the sink with her elbows, stared out the window. “I’d wanted to work outside today.”
    The rain pattered lightly against the living room windows, the flat roof, coming in from the sea. The light was cold and dark, as patchy as marble.
    “Do it here,” he said. “You’ve got your stuff with you.”
    She came out into the living room, dusted her hands. “No, I don’t think so. If I have to be inside, I might as well use the board.”
    She confounded him, and doing nothing was, in its way, just as bad as taking the wrong turn. He despised hesitation.
    “Have you brought any sketches with you?”
    “Yes, I—” She glanced away toward the large canvas bag by the side of the sofa. “Of course. Yes.”
    “I’d like to see them.”
    She nodded, reached out a large blue-paper-covered tablet, handed it to him.
    She wandered around the room while he went from page to page. The bubbling of the tank. The muted-hiss of the surf.
    “What’re these?”
    He looked up. She was standing in front of a low walnut breakfront, hands clasped loosely behind her back. She meant the objects he had hung on the wall one above the other, a pair of scabbarded gently curving swords. The top one was perhaps thirty inches long, the one beneath perhaps twenty.
    He watched the shadowed line of her spine for a moment, compared it with the one in the sketch he held in front of him. “They are the ancient swords of the Japanese samurai,” he said. “The longer one is the katana , the killing sword; the other, a wakizashi .”
    “What’re they used for?”
    “Combat and seppuku : ritual suicide. In ancient times, only the samurai were allowed to wear and use the daisho , the two blades.”
    “Where did you get them?” Still she had not taken her eyes off them.
    “They’re mine,” he said.
    She turned her head and smiled. “You mean you’re a samurai?”
    “In a way,” he said seriously and got off the couch. He stood beside her, thinking about the three hours a day he practiced.
    “Can I see,” she said, “the long blade?”
    Carefully he reached up, took the katana off the wall. “I shouldn’t do this.” One hand on the sheath, fingers of his right hand wrapped around the long hilt.
    “Why not?”
    He pulled slowly, its shining length revealed in a four-inch span. “The katana should be drawn only for combat. It’s sacred. Given in the manhood ceremony, christened with its own name, it is the heart and soul of the samurai. This is a dai-katana , longer than the standard sword. Don’t touch it,” he said sharply and she withdrew the extended finger in alarm. “It would sever your finger.”
    He saw her reflection in