The Master, his right hand behind him and his left arm on an armrest,
was unconcernedly fanning himself with his left hand. From time to time
he looked out into the garden. He seemed cool and very much at ease. I
could almost feel myself straining with the young Otaké, but the Master’s
strength seemed quiet, its center far away.
There were beads of oily sweat on his face, however. Suddenly he
brought both hands to his face and pressed at his cheeks. “It must be fearful
in Tokyo.” His mouth was open for some moments afterwards, as if he
were remembering the heat of another time, of a distant place.
“Yes,” said Onoda. “It turned hot very suddenly the day after we went to
the lake.” Onoda had just come from Tokyo. On the seventeenth, the day
after the preceding session, the Master, Otaké, and Onoda had gone fishing
on Lake Ashi.
Three moves followed inevitably when, after long deliberation, Otaké
had played Black 59. The stones were as if echoing one another. The
situation in the upper reaches of the board was stabilized for the time. The
next Black play was a difficult one, the range of possibilities being wide,
but Otaké turned to the lower part of the board and played Black 63 after
only a moment’s thought. He had planned ahead, it seemed, and given
himself over to his next assault, a slashing one of the sort that characterized
his game. Having dispatched a spy against the White forces below, he
returned to the upper part of the board. There was an aggressive impatience
in the click of the stone.
