The Nicholas Linnear Novels (122 page)

Stricken, fanners were forced to put their wives to work sewing or weaving and to send their young children to toil in the city. Yet even this was not enough, and so often one female child was selected to be sold to the brothels in order for her family to survive.

There was no loss of face in this: On the contrary, these young girls were looked upon with a mixture of great respect—for submitting to their
giri
of filial piety—and pity, for it was generally known that while a prostitute might on a very rare occasion become the mistress of a wealthy
samurai,
once she crossed the moat that surrounded the
Yoshiwara
she surrendered all hope of becoming a wife and creating her own home. So there was always an air of mystery tinged by the purity of sadness that drew men into the arms of
geisha
in the same way it drew them to Ueno each spring to view the cherry blossoms.

Ikan began life at
Fuyajo,
the most ancient of such establishments in the
Yoshiwara
, as a
kamuro
, a kind of apprentice who fetched for the
oiran,
the higher-level prostitutes, when she was not busy cleaning and polishing.

In this capacity she was constantly busy yet she always found time to observe and to learn from her observations, often imitating the motions and delicate swirls of the
oiran
early in the mornings before, exhausted, she fell on her
futon.

When she was twelve, Ikan took a strenuous examination and passed on to the level of
shinzo
, where she began her courses in the study of
baishun.
These included singing, the difficult art of
haiku
,
ikebana
,
chano-yu
, dancing, a study of literature, and, of course, lovemaking.

Her training took five years, at the end of which she was required to take another exam. This was the crucial one for, if she failed to pass it, she would return to the level of
kamuro
and spend the rest of her days at
Fuyajo
doing nothing more than taking out the garbage.

She had no serious trouble and, at the age of seventeen, rose to the exalted station of
oiran.
For four years she plied her difficult and complex trade diligently and well, her open, inquisitive mind allowing her to absorb the best from the more experienced women around her, her innate sensitivity to creating all forms of pleasure in a man, intellectual, esthetic, as well as physical, creating an ever-expanding world that she alone could explore.

And on the day of her birth, twenty-one years after she was born, Ikan became
tayu
, the loftiest of the three stations of
oiran.
Never in the history of the Castle That Knows No Night had there been a
tayu
of such tender years, and a celebration was thrown in her honor.

And it was in that most festive of atmospheres, when the sakē was flowing freely and the
samisen
spangled webs of music in the steamy air, that Ikan first encountered Hiroshi Shimada.

He was a man of quiet intensity, not a handsome man by any but the broadest of standards, yet possessed of a strength of spirit that she found most attractive.

For his part, Shimada had singled her out almost at once. His eyes fell upon her stately alabaster beauty and his heart turned to water. He felt a great cry rising up from within him, and for a moment he had to put a hand out to grasp the knurled wooden stairpost for support. When his knees stopped shaking, he began to breathe again. His head felt light, as if he had been drinking sakē long into the night; there was an odd metallic taste in his mouth as if he had bitten down into a piece of tinfoil.

It never occurred to him that he might be falling in love. One did not fall in love with a
geisha
, one came to her for comfort, relaxation, and a night of total enjoyment. And yet at the moment he first saw Ikan, her awesome physicality struck from his consciousness any thought he might have held of any other woman, his wife included.

There was an aura about Ikan that was undeniable. Even the other
oiran
whispered of it in clandestinely envious tones among themselves. For she had achieved what all members of the floating world aspire to: that ineffable merging of the ethereal and the animal that unfailingly set men under its almost magic spell; an aphrodisiac for all the senses, all the pleasures. For her clients loved her just as strongly when she was reading to them from
Genji Monogatari
, when she arranged day lilies just for them or wrote a
haiku
in their honor, as when she bedded them.

Thus Shimada found himself drawn to Dean’s side, his gaze lovingly caressing each elegant fold of her glittering kimono, the three translucent tortoiseshell
kanzashi
angled through the gleaming black pile of her hair, the
kushi
, the simple traditional comb of
tsuge
wood at the back of her head.

And when he spoke his first word to her through cracked lips, merely the gesture of her turning her head in his direction sent flutters of desire through his chest.

There was, of course, no chance for them to be alone at the party and, in any event, a proper assignation had not been arranged beforehand as was the strict policy at
Fuyajo.
But the next week, when Shimada could take time out from his busy schedule, he returned to the
Yoshiwara.

On the threshold of the pale green and caramel structure he paused, trembling. Rain pattered on the conical shelter of his
amagasa
and he looked up, watching it drip off the eaves just beneath the curved tiles of the roof. As the
samurai
in olden days had done he had disguised himself somewhat before setting out on his trek to the red-light district.

It was not that he was ashamed of coming here or that he wished to hide his presence at
Fuyajo
from his wife. On the contrary, it was to her that the Castle That Knows No Night sent the bills for his sojourns of pleasure.

Rather it was the unsettling political and economic climate within the bureaucracy that caused him to act with caution. As vice-minister of MCI he had many enemies and he had no wish to present his ill-wishers with fodder for his political demise.

A chill gust of wind bowled down the street, making him shiver and pull his long capelike raincoat closer about him. That SCAP hound, Colonel Linnear, was already sniffing around for incriminating bones and though Shimada was quite certain he had buried his deeply and well, he nevertheless refused to relax his vigilance, for he knew that in the wake of the war’s end he could not rely on his Prime Minister for refuge if the truth were to come out. In fact, knowing Yoshida, he would be among the first to deliver Shimada up as a sacrificial lamb to the
gaijin
war crimes tribunal.

War. The thought made Shimada shiver. Always it came back to the war. How he wished now that Japan had taken another course. In retrospect, he saw his own rabid ideas of expansionism, his close ties to those warmongers in the
zaibatsu
as tantamount to slashing open his own belly. And yet there was no dignity in the association. His hands were soiled by the clandestine work he had done for his friends in the
zaibatsu
both before the war and during it. Shimada had been a key figure within the Ministry of Munitions and had been saved from the war crimes tribunal by a mixture of his own cunning in hiding his past and the decision of his superior to break apart the ministry at the last moment, turning it into the Ministry of Commerce and Industry before SCAP had set itself up and begun its own purge.

Shimada looked down at his hands. His palms were slick with sweat. He took a deep breath, calming himself. He resolved to stop by the Shinto shrine on his way home and petition the gods and
kami
for the gift of confidence and the blessing of forgetfulness. If not for the
gaijin
Linnear, all would be peaceful, he knew.

Abruptly, the door to
Fuyajo
opened and cool illumination flooded over him like a spotlight. Shimada hurried inside.

At first he wanted nothing more from her than for her to serve him tea. The complex ritual of
chano-yu
was as soothing as a massage or a soak in a steaming tub.

Watching Ikan perform the ceremony just for him caused all the problems, fears, and doubts that snapped at his heels in the world beyond the happy field to dissolve like tears in a pool. In their stead he found himself filling up with a delicious contentment, a clarity of mind he had thought he could never achieve.

And because every movement Ikan made no matter how minute or trivial—turning a teacup or touching a wisp of her hair—was the epitome of grace and fluidity, he found his enjoyment multiplying geometrically as he unraveled each layer of meaning from what she did or spoke. For her words were never trivial or mundane. She made no small talk. Rather, each question she asked or each answer she gave to his questions were both fascinating and eloquent.

In the world beyond
Fuyajo
memories transformed Shimada like a growing cancer into a man old beyond his years. But here, Ikan had the ability to banish that haunted quality of his life and, like a serpent shedding its skin, he was reborn in her presence as he was enchanted by her awesome ethereal prowess.

For her part, Ikan never saw the man that Shimada was in the outside world for with her he had no need of scheming, he had no need of fiercely keeping his enemies at bay. She saw, rather, the man he might have been in another time, another place.

He was gentle with her, and warmhearted. And his obvious delight at all she did warmed her. She recognized in him a deep need to be nurtured and loved, and since it was her belief that all men were at their core nothing more than infants, she felt no need to probe too deeply into the source of this need.

But, it must be said that another factor entered into this self-deceit. Ikan knew there was something special about Shimada when on his second visit he brought her a set of old traditional
kanzashi
made of
tsuge
wood in a similar design as her
kushi.
Now she had a complete set for her hair.

Her manner was calm, her smile sweet, small, and proper, her eyes properly downcast, her murmur of thanks soft and brief as he presented her with the magnificent gift. But inside her heart was pounding and she could feel her blood singing through her veins. This was a completely new feeling for her and she was inwardly bewildered.

But later than night, when she lay entwined with him on the lushly fabricked
futon
, as their sweat commingled, as she felt the double-beat pulse of his heart close to hers, as he gently entered her after the careful and delightful hours of sensuous preparations, Ikan knew what that feeling was. She was in love.

The decision to have the baby was entirely hers. It was her privilege as
tayu
—at least that was the custom established years ago by those who ran
Fuyajo.
The decision had been an entirely pragmatic one. Like champion racehorses who are put out to stud, it was felt that many of the
tayu
’s unique qualities were innate, needing only the proper training to emerge and be enhanced.

But this usually happened somewhat further on in a
tayu
’s career because there was fear of markings or disfigurement from the rigors of childbirth as well as the months of enforced idleness and thus lost revenue to think of. However, Ikan was of such stellar quality that the greed of those who ran
Fuyajo
eventually overcame their initial doubts.

Ikan was certain that she wanted to bear Shimada’s child. Already he insisted that she see no one else and paid for the privilege of her exclusivity through the nose. He did not care, although what his wife thought of the increasing level of the bills was quite another matter.

But Shimada’s wife was someone Ikan never thought of. Why should she? That woman was part of another world, a world in which Ikan could never participate. What use such thoughts? Too, she was acutely aware of how she affected Shimada, and she suspected that after the birth of their son—for she had no doubts that she would bear him a son—his elation would be so extraordinary that he would grant her any wish. And she had only one: to become his mistress. He would have to buy her freedom, of course, but he could well afford the price.

It never occurred to Ikan that she would bear a daughter who would bind her to
Fuyajo
forever, and who would herself be bound to the Castle That Knows No Night.

And yet it was a female child to which she gave birth, a squalling, hairless infant with nothing between its legs but a slit.

For three days Ikan wept on her
futon
, her dreams of a glorious future destroyed in an instant. She saw no one, spoke to no one, ignored all the notes sent up to her by a worried Shimada. These last she burned instantly as if by handling them she could be contaminated.

During this time she did not sleep. Rather, she lay curled on her left side, her face to the wall. Her shame was overwhelming, and her face burned with it. At first her hatred for her daughter was overwhelming, so powerful that she shuddered to its bitter taste in her mouth. And this, too, caused her to decline all food, wanting perversely to subsist wholly on her hate.

But by the middle of the second day, she found that she could no longer sustain such a harsh and cruel emotion. It went against all her training and, after all, the child was so helpless and alone.

She was weeping again, hot, bitter tears that swept down her cheeks, depleting her strength. For she began to understand—as one begins to see a red, swollen sun appear after a long, debilitating storm—that her hatred was for herself. A terrible despair began to engulf her, and with that awful feeling rose the shame, a black, baleful raven in her tortured mind.

Oh, how her love had warped her, how her own selfish desires had driven her to this shameful reality. For in her egotism she had been confident of bearing a male child—had she not spent two hours every day at the Shinto shrine two blocks away, propitiating the gods, seeking their aid?—and had thrust to the dark back recesses of her mind the consequences of bearing a daughter. For all female offspring of
tayu
became the property of
Fuyajo,
to train when they came of age to replace their mothers as new
oiran
and, if the gods favored them, eventually
tayu.