The Flower Master (Rei Shimura #3) (2 page)

"Ah, at last it is Rei-san!" chirped Eriko, who had known me long enough to greet me by my first name.

Aunt Norie put down her ikebana scissors with huge, scary blades and looked me over. "Did you have some trouble getting out at the correct subway station?"

"No, I'm just late. Sorry," I said, perching on a hard stool next to her.

"Your hair looks nice. But such big, ugly shoes!" Norie winced as she regarded my running sneakers. I'd once pointed out that trendy teens were wearing Asics like mine with everything from jeans to dresses, but she countered that a twenty-eight-year-old antiques dealer had no business looking like and eighteen-year-old."

If it weren't for these shoes, I'd be even later. They allow me to run," I said defensively.

"You haven't missed anything!" Eriko soothed. "There is plenty of time to make an arrangement before Sakura-san starts the lecture. Just take a container from the shelves the way you did last time."

If I'd been at home, I would have arranged the three branches of cherry within a few minutes. But the school environment made me nervous, and the branches wouldn't lean the way I wanted. In the narrow earthenware vase I'd selected from the classroom shelf, they fell against one another instead of stretching up gracefully the way Aunt Norie's and Eriko's flowers did. Was I the only one who couldn't do it? I looked over at the next table.

Lila Braithwaite, a tall Canadian who was president of the foreign students' association, had mixed cherry with azalea in a very professional arrangement. Nadine St. Giles, her French friend, had chosen the same materials but wasn't quite as confident using them. I most admired the work of a student called Mari Kumamori. Mari was working with heather, its pale purple blossoms making a delicate contrast with a celadon bowl.

"I like Mari-san's bowl. Are there any more?" I asked Aunt Norie.

"It's not the school's property. She makes her own pottery and must have brought it from home. Anyway, the container you have is correct for your particular arrangement. Just make a slanting fixture, and your branches with stand straight."

Slanting fixtures, I'd learned the week before, had something to do with cutting a gash into one of the branches before inserting a second, shorter branch into the cut. It was an act of precision that I barely managed before turning to my aunt for help with the next step. After all, she had earned a Kayama teaching degree more than thirty years ago and was in class primarily to be with her friends.

"I can't get it to look like the picture in my book. And I can't read the directions." Because I was a beginner, I had to form my arrangements after models in the Kayama School handbook, earning a stamp for each of them before I could progress to the next one. I could understand the diagrams, but very few of the words.

"Oh, I didn't know you couldn't read Japanese." Eriko sounded mournful. "Let me see if I can find a lesson book with an English translation. That's how Lila-san and Nadine-san are able to study."

"Rei-chan, it's up to you to make your arrangement," my aunt reproved. "If I move the branches for you, you will not have the confidence you need. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. And very soon, when you progress to freestyle, you will have to follow your own intuition."

I was working slowly, distracted by my aunt's conversation, when the class was called to order by Mrs. Koda, director of the teaching program. "Sakura Sato has graciously agreed to demonstrate to us today the challenges and joys in working with one floral material. After she speaks, I will provide an English translation for our visitors."

Mrs. Koda spoke English loudly, as if the foreigners in class were not only language-impaired, but also deaf. I was pretty sure this wasn't meant to be malicious, but it was unfortunate that she'd labeled Lila and Nadine visitors instead of bona fide members of the school. I understood why Aunt Norie had been adamant that I sit with her and Eriko. She didn't want me to get stuck in the gaijin ghetto.

I hastily finished off my arrangement by throwing in a few asters. My aunt was smiling at Mrs. Koda— she had known her for more than thirty years, ever since my aunt began studying ikebana. I'd seen photographs of Mrs. Koda from that time and found it amusing that she still had not updated her hairstyle from the hard black beehive of her younger days. Despite her thick, upswept bouffant, Mrs. Koda had a drawn, weary-looking face. She had moved slowly when she gave me a tour of the school the previous week, using a cane to help herself along. She'd been apologetic that the school's headmaster, Masanobu Kayama, was away in Luxembourg, and she promised I'd have the chance for an audience with him some day.

Mrs. Koda bowed deeply to Sakura Sato, a woman of Aunt Norie's age dressed in a pale pink suit. As Sakura stepped briskly to the lectern and slapped down a notebook, her elbow flew out, causing Mrs. Koda to lose her balance and bump the edge of a student table. The crowd of ladies murmured with concern, and Aunt Norie came forward to take Mrs. Koda's arm. Seeing no more stools in the classroom, I stood up from mine so the elder lady could take it. Aunt Norie gave an approving glance. Feeling vindicated, but realizing I no longer had a place to sit, I retreated to the back of the classroom. A young man in a Greenpeace T-shirt and jeans was rummaging through a drawer. I perched in a corner that was not in his way and still offered a view of the teacher. "Could someone please lower the blinds? The sun distracts me," Sakura said, and Eriko, who was close to the window, slipped over and drew the Venetian blinds across the view of the Tokyo skyline.

"As many of you have heard already, the iemoto chose the name Sakura for me when I was selected to become a teacher twenty-four years ago." Miss Sato delivered a thin, superior smile to us, cementing my instinctive dislike of her. "I had made an arrangement entirely from cherry blossoms that actually was contrary to the mixed materials required for the lesson. I could not help myself—the cherry was so beautiful. It was as if nature had entered me and taken hold."

Everyone in the room appeared rapt. Some women were writing down her words in their Kayama School notebooks. "Kayama-sensei laughed when he saw my arrangement and said that since I liked cherry blossoms so much, he would give me the formal teaching name Sakura, to celebrate the flowering cherry tree that is our national treasure. And whenever sakura are in bloom, he asks me to come up with something special to decorate our headquarters."

Aunt Norie had been given the flower name Hasu, meaning "lotus." She used it only for identification in ikebana exhibitions. I doubted I'd be part of the Kayama School long enough to receive a flower name. Dealing with my own Japanese name, simply pronounced "ray," had been a complication during my California childhood. There were even troubles in Japan, since the name was written with an unusual kanji character meaning "crystal clarity."

"As you know," Sakura said, "it's a great challenge to communicate the essence of ikebana—heaven and God above man—when the flowers in question are all identical. How does one guard against massing the same color and shape? That is our question for today." She glanced at the table in front of her, which was bare except for an industrial-looking black container. "My flowers do not seem to be here, nor are my ikebana shears. Could someone please bring them?"

I glanced at the casually dressed young man, since he looked to be the most likely candidate for gofer in the room. He wasn't bad- looking, with his high cheekbones, golden skin a little darker than mine, and eyes the color of espresso. He stared back at me blankly when I gave him an inquiring look. He clearly didn't feel obliged to help Sakura. Feeling embarrassed, I looked away but stayed put. I wasn't doing Sakura any favors, not when she'd caused Mrs. Koda to trip.

Mari Kumamori, the woman who had brought her own celadon dish from home, stood up and spoke softly, using a supreme honorific. "Please, Sakura-sama, exactly what may I bring you?"

"Cherry," Sakura barked. "Or have you been sleeping while I was talking?"

Mari blushed, and hurried to the outer room where I'd chosen my flowers. She was gone for a long minute, and Sakura filled the time by chattering about how the headmaster had personally asked her to arrange flowers for a big installation in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel. When Mari came back, she hurried up to the front of the room, and whispered something to Sakura, who laughed shortly and addressed the room.

"Apparently cherry is such a popular flower that all of it has been taken for use by the class members. Well, I shall improvise. That is the challenge that faces us when we create ikebana. Remember, the term literally means living flowers. We must endeavor to make the most realistic arrangement with the natural materials to which we have access."

Her curt words made me feel guilty. I'd been the one to take the last bunch of cherry blossoms from the bucket in the hall. I could race to my flower arrangement and retrieve the few inferior branches that I hadn't yet cut up, but I could imagine how nastily she would accept them.

"I shall use forsythia," Sakura said to Mari, who ran out again to bring a big bunch of green-and-yellow branches to the head teacher. "Please strip the bottom foliage," Sakura commanded her volunteer assistant. Mari had given her own scissors to Sakura, so she was forced to rip off the offending leaves with her bare hands.

"With this design, I am creating a contrast between light and dark," Sakura lectured. "The container is a length of industrial drainpipe that I painted black—an unorthodox material that reflects Kayama innovation. Any material, from drainpipe to wire netting or paper, may be combined with fresh materials. In all situations, the characteristics of the materials must be vividly expressed. If the container and flowers do not truly relate, the work will not be beautiful."

I was skeptical about whether Sakura could succeed in making the crude drainpipe beautiful. She thrust forsythia branches into holes she had punched at various places in the pipe, and in the end created something that looked remarkably like a black centipede with long, funny yellow legs. Had the cherry branches been available, the centipede would have been pink.

Sakura showed her versatility by arranging more forsythia in an antique stone container, a fairly classic arrangement that made everyone sigh in relief. She took a few softball questions from the audience, then set out to evaluate each student's arrangement, the entire cluster of women following her to hear the verdict. She praised the first few students profusely, but was surprisingly cool to Lila Braithwaite.

"By stressing the idea of shape, you are losing the truth in the flower's nature," Sakura told Lila, who nodded, looking unhappy when she heard Mrs. Koda's translation of the words. On the other hand, Lila's friend Nadine's lopsided arrangement of cherry blossoms received a sweet smile and a compliment on her sense of color. Both women had identical flowers. Why did one get praise and the other criticism?

Sakura dismissed Mari Kumamori's heather arrangement by saying the pale green of the celadon was wrong for the flowers. Mari bowed very low and thanked Sakura for her wise criticism. I was curious what Sakura would say about Aunt Norie's arrangement. Last time Norie had mentioned that she, Eriko, and Sakura had begun studying together the same year, but Norie and Eriko had both taken off for more than a decade to care for their young children. Sakura had never married, so she stayed active in the school, rising to become a staff teacher. My aunt had a second-degree teaching certificate, and Eriko had a third-degree one, which meant that both of them were entitled to teach classes in their homes but not at headquarters.

Aunt Norie had assembled a mass of fluffy white rhododendrons accented with loganberry vines. The arrangement in a blue glass container had a snappy feeling, like my aunt herself.

"Well, Shimura-san. You used rhododendron." Sakura paused. "It is such a common bush." She bowed slightly, and Aunt Norie responded in kind. When Norie's face came up, I read the irritation. Sakura had not criticized her outright, but she had refused to give anything that could be regarded as praise. She had said rhododendrons were common. Nothing more.

Eriko received similar treatment. "What a classic container," Sakura said, tapping the smooth length of bamboo springing with long grasses and camellia blooms. She moved on, not saying anything about the flowers. It was hard for me to understand why my aunt and Eriko even bothered with the class, except that Sakura Sato wasn't always the lecturer. The previous week Mrs. Koda had given an interesting talk on hanging arrangements, and her comments when she'd come around the room had been helpful.

Now it was my turn.

"You are Shimura-san's niece from California? I see the family resemblance." Sakura took in my clothing, then the cherry branches I'd arranged. I wondered if she'd deduced that I'd taken the last bunch.

"May I touch your arrangement?" Without waiting for my answer, Sakura reached in and touched the branches making up my slanting fixture. They fell apart, but she wasn't interested in that. "The parts of these branches that are underwater still have some foliage." She tapped the tiny cherry blossom buds that I hadn't removed.

"I didn't want to cut off anything that might bloom later," I explained. There was such a deathly silence in the room, I wondered if I'd accidentally used an impolite word. Then I realized the mistake. I was the first person who'd made an excuse for doing something wrong.

"As you arrange more flowers, you will notice that water contaminated by plant matter will begin teeming with bacteria, thus cutting short the life of your arrangement." Sakura whisked sharp scissors out of her suit pocket and began snipping away the buds. "The lines are wrong in this arrangement. Isn't this lesson eight, basic slanting style?"

"It's lesson three, actually. Basic upright style," I said.

"How far your branch leans! Much greater than fifteen degrees."

She removed my branches and rearranged them according to her desire. "It's surprising to have junior-level students in this advanced class. Normally one must have completed the beginner's book to enroll in this class. I suppose family connections make such things possible, neh?"