The Last Concubine (32 page)

Shigé – Genzaburo’s brother’s wife and the young bride of the inn across the road. Sachi remembered how much in awe of her she had been. She had been the queen of the village, so pretty and full of gaiety. Now her face had grown thick and fleshy, her cheeks were cracked and blackened from the sun, her forehead was furrowed and her back was already beginning to bend at the waist. How had she grown so old so fast?

Kumé, the crippled bride of the clog-maker’s son, came limping over. She too had turned into an old woman. Only Oman from the inn next door to Sachi’s retained a little of her youthful prettiness. Her face still had some of its soft roundness but she too looked tired and worn. Her hands were swollen and chapped and her cheeks criss-crossed with red veins.

Sachi looked at them all, standing around smiling and laughing. They did not need to say a word. She knew exactly how their lives had been in the six years since she saw them last. They had had children year after year. Some had died; they had reared the rest. They had taken care of the guests at their inns, cooked, cleaned, lugged water from the well, washed clothes in the river, dug their vegetable patches. And her life? They could not begin even to imagine it.

‘Look at you,’ exclaimed Shigé. ‘So young, like a princess in a fairy tale!’

‘When people passed through we always asked how things were in Edo. We wanted to make sure you were safe,’ said Oman. ‘We worried about you, hearing about the troubles up there. But we’ve had troubles of our own here too.’

They asked no more about what she had done or where she had been. Perhaps they too were afraid to look too deep into the chasm that divided them. Sachi thought of Urashima, the handsome young fisherman in the fairy tale, who was wooed by the dragon king’s daughter. He had frittered away three years at her palace under the sea, dancing and feasting and love-making. When he returned to his village, everything had changed. Finally he met an old, old woman who remembered hearing, when she was a little child, of the man who had disappeared into the sea. Not three but three hundred years had passed.

Sachi had been away too long. Too much had happened in all their lives. They had moved too far apart ever to close the gap. She had wanted so badly to go back, just as Urashima had, but it was too late. The village had been like an anchor for her, the place she had thought of as home. But it was not the place she remembered. She really was Urashima.

The story had had a bad ending. The dragon king’s daughter had given Urashima a box and told him on no account to open it, no matter what. Sitting disconsolate on the beach, it occurred to him that her gift was the only thing he had left. He decided to open it. A wisp of smoke curled out. It was those three hundred years. As he sat on the beach his hair grew white then his body crumbled away. In a moment there was nothing left but a pile of dust.

III

Sachi’s father, Jiroemon, was sitting, legs crossed, by the hearth when she got back. Shinzaemon and Genzaburo were with him. Threads of smoke coiled from three small long-stemmed pipes. The faces that gazed at each other across the coals were very serious.

‘Declared a traitor, huh?’ said Jiroemon. ‘They’ll be asking for his head next.’

‘They already have,’ grunted Shinzaemon. Sachi lingered in the doorway. So they were talking about the retired shogun, Lord Yoshinobu, she thought. She stood motionless, listening to Shinzaemon’s deep tones. She loved the sound of his voice when he thought there were no women around, the rough men’s language he used, the way he growled out the syllables. ‘They’ve got armies on all three highways, closing in on Edo,’ Shinzaemon was saying. ‘They’re sweeping up the domains as they go. The lords are all declaring for the south. They’re afraid of being branded traitors if they don’t.’

They stopped talking when they saw her.

‘I’m back,’ Sachi said simply.

Taki had been kneeling silently in a far corner of the room. Otama had given her some sewing to do; she only felt comfortable when she had a needle in her fingers, she said.

In the morning, after the last of the soldiers had left, Taki had gone to sit in the great inn for a while. She said she felt more at home in the big rooms with their gold-edged tatami, old and worn though it was. She had also been to gaze at the ornamental garden. But she wouldn’t go out and mix with the people. Sachi wouldn’t have expected her to. She was a court lady, used to living hidden away in shadowy interiors.

Now Taki slipped forward and joined them quietly. She made a pot of tea and poured out a cup for each of them, then sat down.

Jiroemon bowed as if he was slightly bemused at having a court lady make him a cup of tea. Then he turned to Sachi.

‘It’s good to see you, my girl,’ he said. ‘My little princess. You bring sunshine.’

He poked the coals and put another plug of tobacco into the
small bowl of his pipe. He at least had not changed. He looked older, stiffer, slower. His thatch of hair, tugged back into a bristly horse’s tail, was streaked with grey. But he was still the large, dependable father she remembered, his voice as deep and reassuring as ever. She looked at his huge hand, the nails blackened and chipped, and remembered how safe it had made her feel when she held it as a child.

‘These are dark times,’ he said slowly. ‘Very dark. I knew things were changing but I never thought they would change so much. We’ve all been hungry, some years worse than others. The price of rice has gone through the roof. And our taxes too. Half our young men have gone to fight. Most haven’t come back. I do my best to keep order, but it’s hard.’

He looked around at Shinzaemon and Genzaburo.

‘Some of our young men come back and they’re even more trouble when they get here,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘And other young men turn up bringing trouble in their wake. Genzaburo here, he’s been gone for a long time, he has. The gods know what he’s been up to!’

‘I ran away,’ said Genzaburo, grinning his impish grin. ‘Joined the militia. Didn’t fancy being an innkeeper for the rest of my days or chopping down trees either, just to hand it all over in taxes to this lordship or that lordship. Was a time you had to be a samurai to join up but they’ll take anyone these days, even a peasant. I can fight better than a samurai now.’

‘Is that so?’ grunted Shinzaemon, giving him a sideways glance. ‘We’ll see about that.’

‘I can ride a horse. I fought in Kyoto. I’ve seen the world.’

‘And Shin,’ said Jiroemon. ‘Quite a legend round here. We never thought we’d meet you.’

‘We knew each other in Kyoto,’ said Shinzaemon, ‘Gen and I. Fought shoulder to shoulder a few times. It was a big surprise to find him up there in the attic. But I’m afraid neither of us were much use last night.’

‘And you, Sa?’ said Genzaburo. ‘The village was empty without you. Look at you – so beautiful. Who would have thought it? Our own little Sa. You’re like a fairy creature.’

Sachi looked down, flushing, conscious of Shinzaemon’s eyes
on her face. There was a wistful note to Genzaburo’s voice, as if he was aware she was no longer the person she had been.

‘I’ve come home too,’ she said.

Jiroemon looked at her gravely. ‘We don’t have much to offer you here, my girl.’ He turned and stared at the fire as if he didn’t want to meet her eyes. ‘You’re a fine lady now. You don’t belong here any more. We’re humble folk, we can’t provide the things you’re used to. Stay as long as you like, but when this war is over you must go to your father.’

The last words were like a sigh.

Sachi had been filling their teacups. She stopped and slowly lowered her arm. Surely she had misheard, she thought. She looked at him blankly.

‘My father?’ she said slowly.

‘Didn’t Mother tell you?’ Jiroemon had a cup of tea halfway to his lips. He put it down on the edge of the hearth without tasting it.

Otama had just come in. Painfully she folded her legs and knelt. It brought tears to Sachi’s eyes to see how bent her back was. She leaned forward till her head was very close to Sachi’s.

‘Your father passed through,’ she whispered. ‘Just a few days ago. I should have told you, but I couldn’t bear to, not when we’d only just got you back.’

The words jolted through Sachi like a physical blow. The room seemed to shift around her. Shinzaemon sat staring at the embers, taking everything in. Genzaburo was drawing circles on the tatami with his thin brown finger. Sachi suddenly noticed how cold it was.

Smoke lingered in the air, drifting towards the blackened rafters. Tobacco smoke mingled with the woody scent of the pine cones burning in the hearth. The old house creaked.

‘My father? But . . . But you’re my father,’ she stammered.

‘Your real father,’ said Jiroemon heavily.

Sachi stared at the coals. All those years that she had been at the palace, in the middle of chaos and despair, the threat of war, the horror of His Majesty’s death, she’d always been able to think back to the village, to conjure up memories of her happy childhood. Maybe she had remembered it as more idyllic than it
really had been but she had clung to the memory like a lucky charm, something solid and real in the midst of so much change.

Taki had put down her sewing. She was staring at her, her thin face tilted to one side as if she could see something Sachi couldn’t see herself.

‘What are you talking about?’ Sachi said angrily, biting back tears. ‘You’re my father.’ She glared at Jiroemon. ‘I don’t need any father except you!’ She could hear her own voice shrill in the silence, echoing from the high rafters of the room.

It was not a big surprise to learn that she was adopted; so was half the village. Children got passed around to whoever needed a son or a daughter. But everyone else knew who their real parents were. They had filial obligations to them as well as to their adoptive parents. She was the only one who had never known her real parents. She had assumed they had died when she was a baby and had cleaved all the more closely to Jiroemon and Otama. They were all the parents she had ever had.

She put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to hear any more.

But at the back of her mind she couldn’t stop those niggling thoughts that had been bothering her for so long. The way she looked – that white skin people made such a fuss about. And the brocade that she had brought back all the way from the burning palace, all the way from Kano. Maybe it was connected. The bundle containing it was piled carelessly in the corridor along with the rest of the luggage. She had not dared even unpack it. She could almost see it glowing, radiating heat as if it would burn a hole through the flimsy silk square that wrapped it.

‘The brocade,’ she breathed. ‘That robe you gave me when I went off to the palace.’

‘It’s yours,’ said Otama. ‘You came wrapped up in it. Isn’t that right, Father?’

Jiroemon took a puff of his pipe and tapped it out on the edge of the hearth, sending showers of sparks flying.

‘Daisuké, he said his name was,’ he said heavily. ‘He was a distant relation. From a side branch of the family who’d moved to Edo a couple of generations back. We’d never heard a word of them since.’

‘You were the tiniest, most perfect little thing,’ said Otama, smiling wistfully. ‘Like a fairy child we’d been given to take care of. And such skin, so white and soft, like silk. He’d come walking through the mountains, carrying you wrapped in brocade. Can you imagine! A man walking through the mountains with a baby. He’d found wet nurses along the way, he said.’

She stopped and poked the glowing embers in the hearth, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

‘But . . . my mother,’ said Sachi. ‘My real mother. Where was she?’ Her voice was breathless, shrill, like a lost child.

‘He said, “This baby, I know she’s only a worthless girl and of no account. The last thing you need is an extra mouth to feed, and a girl child at that. I should have killed her, I know. But I couldn’t do it. She’s very precious to me. She’s all I have.” Those were his words, I remember them exactly. “She’s all I have. Please do me this favour. This baby. Please take care of her for me.” ’

‘He was in quite a hurry, wasn’t he, Mother?’ said Jiroemon.

‘He was a townsman, a real dandy. His clothes, so fancy. And so handsome, such a gentleman – we’d never seen anything like it in this village. And as for the brocade . . .’

‘He said he was going to Osaka to look for work. He’d come back to fetch you when he had found some. But weeks passed, then months, then years and he never came back.’

‘We thought he was dead,’ murmured Otama. ‘It’s a terrible thing to say but – we hoped he wouldn’t come back. You were our little princess. We wanted to keep you. We still do.’

Sachi pressed her sleeve to her eyes. It touched her heart to know how much her parents cared about her. But there was still a question nagging at her.

‘And my mother?’ she whispered. ‘So you don’t know . . . So no one knows . . .’

Otama and Jiroemon looked at each other. ‘That comb you have, the one you love so much,’ said Otama softly. ‘He gave us that too. It belongs to your mother. He said one day, if you wanted to find out who she was, you could show people the crest. Someone would know it.’

Sachi reached into her sleeve and found the comb, ran her fingers up and down the tines. She could feel the mysterious crest
embossed there. She closed her small hand around it and held it so tightly she could feel the tines pressing into her palm. It was the only link she had to her mother.

Otama took a deep breath. ‘And then, just a few days ago, he turned up again.’

A tear ran down her faded face. She was staring into the fire as if she knew that if she told Sachi this she would lose her. ‘After all those years. Isn’t that right, Father?’

‘He stayed at our inn,’ said Jiroemon, sighing heavily, nodding his head. ‘Imagine that. Used to be lords we had staying here. Now it’s Cousin Daisuké, your father.’

‘You should have seen him,’ said Otama, shaking her head in wonder. ‘The clothes he was wearing! The sort of things you hear that foreigners wear. And his hair. Not like any hairstyle I’ve ever seen. Cropped short. Still handsome. Bit older; had filled out a bit but still quite a man.’