I began by explaining, without too many grim details, why the brilliant young woman who’d composed this prize-winning composition could not be here. I said that I carried a message from her: that she was grateful for this honor and hoped that her work would promote better understanding between the United States and the great nation of Japan. This got a small round of applause. When it ended, I stood silently for a moment. Nearly ten years of singing to dance crowds had forever inoculated me against stage fright. If I could perform at the Carpenters and Joiners Union Cotillion Ball of 1938 in Granite City, Illinois, this bunch would be a piece of cake.

“Now is a time,” I began, inserting a throb into my voice, “of great international tension. War is raging in Europe. Accusations are made, fingers are pointed, voices are raised in the harsh discord of anxiety, suspicion, and anger. The remarkable woman who composed what you are now about to hear has tried to capture the despair, the hopelessness, the ugly, feeble, insane, laughable, loathsome madness of war. These sounds are not easy to hear. For some among you, they may be almost painful. It matters not. These are the sounds that will torture the world if we do not endure each other, embrace each other, cherish each other. We must swing the pendulum away from the hideous cacophony of conflict and toward the soothing murmur of international peace.”

I looked at the audience soberly. “Our composer has asked that, as a prelude to her composition, we listen carefully to thirty seconds of our serene surroundings. And she requests that, when the performance of her composition is over, there be no applause for another thirty seconds, while we hear and savor the silence of tranquillity that denotes an alternative to war. She prays that this work be remembered for the restfulness that surrounds it rather than the turmoil within it. And now . . . let us listen to the sound of . . . Peace.”

I held up my arms in a stance not unlike Pacifica’s. There was a large koi pond just beyond the garden of the samurai house, and we could hear the light and lovely trickling of its gentle fountains. A breeze stirred some wind chimes, and the water of the lagoon lapped sensually against the side of the castle.

Then I gave a sudden, aggressive nod to Kat, who, having bought into my spiel, threw himself into the downbeat.