Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (10 page)

“I have been in Lord Abe's presence numerous times,” Einosuke answered, “but he never remembers me. He knows neither my face nor that we have met before. So if I am to greet him on behalf of father, I first must once again tell him who I am and it infuriates me.”

Clouds had come in during the night bringing warmer temperatures, and it had started to rain, but the eave over the porch had so far kept the brothers dry. The rain sliced into the garden away from them, wetting the boulders and Einosuke's newly raked gravel. Inside the house they could hear others rising, a cough from the baby, Junichiro, and Lord Okubo calling for tea, but neither brother wanted interruption.

“Where did Lord Abe go?” Manjiro asked. Because he was hearing a story set in the early evening and Lord Abe was alone, he expected to find that the great man had disguised himself and would presently do something low. So he was quite astonished when his brother said, “He turned down the street of libraries, and into the Bansho Shirabesho.”

“The Bansho Shirabesho!” Manjiro's hands had strayed too close to the coals and he jerked them back, turning in order to stick them out under the rain. “You must be mistaken, Einosuke. I have been there. It is not a place Lord Abe would go.”

The Bansho Shirabesho was “The Institute for the Investigation of Barbarian Books,” a library of sorts, and it was common knowledge that Lord Abe hated the place and wanted nothing so much as to shut it down. It had been established back in 1811 by the Shogun himself, on “know your enemy” grounds, and whenever it was mentioned in Great Council meetings it made the isolationists furious. But in fact it was just one small room, in a building which also housed the Institute for the Investigation of Chinese Herbs and the Institute of Fish. Only one man worked in the Barbarian Library, and the number of translated foreign books he oversaw could be counted on the two brothers' fingers and toes.

“That's what I thought, too,” Einosuke confided, “so I followed him inside. The building is oddly built, and I suspected he was merely using it as a shortcut, a way of quickly getting to an opposite street.”

“Lord Abe inside the Barbarian Book Room,” mused Manjiro. “What do you know!”

“Listen,” said Einosuke, “Lord Abe paused by the Institute of Fish man for such a long time that at first I thought he had business with him. I had slipped past him and was standing behind a giant jar of ginseng root, pretending to examine its label. In turn Lord Abe pretended an interest in fish. He spoke casually, picked up a newly published study on the migratory and eating practices of sperm whales, and walked, as if reading it, right into the library! He didn't sign in. He didn't do anything.”

“But you can't do that,” said Manjiro, “you have to have special passes. It took me forever to get mine.”

“The Barbarian Book Room was empty,” said Einosuke. “The door was open but the official in charge of it was gone. I waited by the ginseng root until the fish man saw me and asked if he could help. He said he was doing triple duty that day because the other two men were ill.”

“And all this time Lord Abe was in there by himself? Could you see him from where you stood?”

“I could see him, but not well. He hadn't closed the door, but there wasn't much light in the room. When I stepped up to the fish man's table I could just see Lord Abe's back. He was bent and examining something.”

Manjiro shook his head and said, “When I went there it took a week just to get the proper forms.”

“I remembered that,” said Einosuke, “and so I thought the fish official was either incompetent or Lord Abe had somehow given him the forms without me noticing. But I could see no evidence of the first in the man's behavior or of the second among the papers that were stacked around him on his dais. It was a mystery, so in order to stay longer without appearing to spy I assumed a level of friendliness I don't usually have, much as Lord Abe had done. But I'm not a good actor, I guess, for the fish man immediately saw through my ruse. What he thought I was after, however, was not a moment of spying on Lord Abe, but information on the sexual properties of the ginseng root.”

Manjiro didn't want to draw the attention of those inside the house, but he laughed, his heart growing progressively light. “Ginseng cures impotency, Einosuke,” he said. “Did you tell the fish man that your own root had lost its form?”

Einosuke let his thoughts shift back to the night before with Fumiko, but all he said was, “I let him assume what he would. I wasn't aware of it before that visit, but this Chinese Herbs Institute is not purely informational. They also have a selection of ointments and medicines for sale.”

“So you bought ginseng in order to cover your ruse? That's expensive. Let me see it. Let's try some now, do you have it in the house?”

“The fish man got down off his dais and, since he didn't know the Chinese herb section well, took a long time looking around. And when he came back he not only carried a dripping wet ginseng root, but a box of ginseng powder, too. We were both shocked by the prices, but he left the powder on the table when he went to put the root away. And while he was gone this second time, Lord Abe came back out of the Barbarian Book Room. I was no longer comfortable with the subterfuge and had decided to greet him properly, but he hardly looked at me and he didn't slow down until he turned to slip into his
geta
at the door.”

“What had he been reading?” Manjiro asked. “Did you discover the book's name after he'd gone?”

“I thought I would,” said Einosuke, “I thought I might be able to get the fish man to tell me, but when Lord Abe finally looked up I saw that he still had the book in his hand. I was surprised that the book was so small.”

“Those books are to be read in the library!” said Manjiro. “And then only when you've got the necessary stamps.” His voice grew louder. “Even a member of the Great Council… Even the Shogun…!”

“At the time I assumed that a member of the Great Council might be able to go there without the proper stamps, but since then I have found that you are right, no one, not even the Shogun, can take a Barbarian Library book home.” That the Shogun had no interest in the daily machinations of government, let alone the intellectual curiosity necessary to want to venture into the Barbarian Book Room, the brothers acknowledged with a glance.

The charcoal had burned down but Manjiro no longer noticed the cold. The single time he had visited the Barbarian Book Room he had been sent by his tutor to catalogue the books so his tutor would know which of them came from German, which from English, which from Dutch. Manjiro remembered the experience well. Because it had taken the better part of his stay in Edo to get the approval stamps, he had made a day of it, going to the book room early and not leaving until it closed. It had taken him no time to list the books, such a list, in fact, was given to him by the attendant, so he spent his time reading. He read the first chapter of every book in the library, all forty of them, and then went back to three that had caught his interest and read them in their entirety; two books of scientific inquiry and one of poems. The visit had been a defining moment in his life, reinvigorating his interest in studying English, and making him doubly curious about the outside world as a whole.

“What happened next?” Manjiro asked. “Did you find out where he went or which book he took home?”

“No, the fish man didn't know anything, and it would have taken a long time in the book room just to discover the book's name. I was suspicious and curious by then, and decided to be even more careful than I had before. So when the fish man came back to his desk I bought the ginseng powder and followed Lord Abe out into the night. But, unfortunately, I could no longer find him.”

The brothers had grown cold again, what with the rain and the brazier's fire burning down, so when he finished speaking Einosuke opened the
shoji
and they went back inside.

“But what does it mean?” Manjiro asked. “Do you believe Lord Abe is secretly learning about the West, that he isn't an isolationist anymore?

Manjiro himself could never believe such a thing, even after hearing Einosuke's story and observing Lord Abe's strange behavior the night before, but Einosuke was stopped from answering by the sound of a woman's voice.

“One might just as well ask, ‘Do you believe that Japan is not an island anymore?' or ‘Do you believe Lord Abe is a woman under his robes?'”

It was Tsune. She had just returned from Lord Tokugawa's hunting lodge and was sitting there staring at a calligraphy that hung at the room's far end.

“I'm sorry,” said Einosuke. “This room is for contemplation. We should not have interrupted you with our gossip.”

He was angry. He had told Manjiro his story on a whim, without really deciding to do so, and now it seemed possible that everyone in the house might know. Of course he had already told his wife, but what if Tsune told his father, or worse, decided to tell Lord Tokugawa? If that happened Einosuke might be called into the Great Council chambers to explain himself!

“These stamps, Manjiro-san, these permissions one needs to enter the Barbarian Bock Room, once you have them how many times are you allowed to go?”

Tsune had turned away from the calligraphy. She now faced the brothers directly but remained on her cushion, knees together beneath her gown.

“Ah,” said Manjiro, as much in answer to her continued ease as to her question.

“I am asking because it occurred to me that you, Manjiro-san, might be able to return to the room and by simply asking the attendant for another list, deduce which book is gone.”

“It's true, I'm an authorized visitor now,” Manjiro said. He gave Einosuke a glance that he hoped apologized for him thinking that Tsune's idea was a good one, but Einosuke now spoke directly to her.

“A word overheard is a word forgotten,” he said. “I think that's a useful proverb.”

He did not like to be blunt but if Tsune would involve herself so blithely in the affairs of state and if Manjiro could find nothing better to do than agree with her, what else could he do?

“Of course,” said Tsune, “you have my promise, Einosuke-san.”

When he heard that Einosuke saw, yet again, that Tsune was more beautiful and disarming than his wife and, just at that moment, as if catching him in the thought, his wife came into the room.

“Breakfast is ready,” she said. “Did O-bata not call?”

All three of them turned to face her and Manjiro said, “It should be easy. I will go today.”

“Go where?” asked Fumiko, but Tsune touched her sister's hand.

“Do we have any ginseng in the house?” she asked. “When the subject came up just now I realized that though I have heard of its powers often, I have never tried it. It might be interesting to see if its effects are as readily available to women as men.”

It was a harmless joke, meant to tell Einosuke that she was a reliable sister-in-law, but it titillated Manjiro and entirely perplexed Fumiko.

“Have you done your raking this morning, dear?” she asked her husband. “Did you smooth the gravel below the porch?”

Einosuke assured her that he had, and when the others left the garden room ahead of them he slid his hand along the contours of his wife's back, hoping to let her know that he would like to meet her here later, and mess up the rocks again.

At breakfast Lord Okubo was contrite about the shouting he had done the night before. He apologized to Einosuke and Fumiko, but could manage only a nod to Manjiro.

10
.
The Pavilion of Timelessness

TSUNE WAS KNOWN
in Edo society not only because her name had once surfaced on a list of candidates when a previous Shogun needed a wife, or because in recent years she had had two marriage proposals from sons of members of the Great Council and had cut off negotiations with both, but also because of a certain recent and serious indiscretion, word of which had somehow reached Edo. And now that she was back in the capital, now that she had been seen at the treaty-signing ceremonies, people were talking again. What was she up to, this woman with the spotted reputation, this no-longer-quite-so-eligible daughter of the realm? And who was this strange younger brother of her brother-in-law, this usurping young scoundrel, Manjiro?

Such were the public conditions under which the two young people left Einosuke's house the next morning, to search out the Barbarian Book Library. Manjiro had departed first, so was inside the library's main room, in the presence of the official from the Institute of Fish and the previously missing Barbarian Book Room man, when Tsune arrived shortly after him.

“Ah, my husband, I have found you,” she said. “I worried I might not.

Manjiro's face darkened. Wasn't that too bold a comment, too risky a joke? There had been no formal talk yet, nor had there been the slightest private word between them concerning marriage. Was she trying to tell him something, or was she merely choosing the most obvious ruse to fool the book room man?

“Here I am,” he said.

Her entrance drew the man from the Institute for the Investigation of Chinese Herbs, making him hurry over to join the others. He had not heard the exchange and assumed that whenever a woman came into the building she wanted what he had to offer. Exotic Chinese herbs! The constantly whispered-about promise of female sexual pleasure!

“Good morning, madam,” he said, in a slightly lascivious voice. “Allow me to help you find what you want.”

The herb official's greatest joy came when he placed his medicines in front of these young wives or geisha, for years earlier he had discovered that if he leaned into the table while explaining their properties, and if he watched the expressions on the women's faces as he did so, the herbs worked far more quickly for him than if he ingested them.