The Plum Rains and Other Stories (10 page)

Late that night, Hasegawa was sitting up alone in his cubby pondering the hundred-stanza sequence they’d made when Ohasu crawled in, reeking of wine and tobacco smoke.

I won’t tell you what I did tonight. She held out her arms for him to unwind her obi sash.

What did you do?

I won’t tell you.

He draped her gaudy-robe and scarlet underskirt to air on a robe rack then tucked her into his quilts. You don’t have to, he said.

I know.

He stirred up the coals in his brazier and added a few chunks of fresh charcoal. Somewhere upstairs a woman was singing, the frail melody drifting aimlessly in the frozen night. Hasegawa inked his brush and began copying out a portion of the sequence he particularly liked, skipping the links attributed to the ‘Solitary Rambler’ then revising his own and Ohasu’s stanzas to fit the newly truncated pattern until he had a sustained run that held together from beginning to end, the male voice and female voice braided together seamlessly.

Hasegawa slid open the outside door. Snow had begun falling again, filling the empty garden behind the assignations teahouse. He draped an extra winter robe over his head and sat in the cold, reciting to himself the sequence he had just made. It felt tight to him, stripped and simplified, in keeping with the self-reliant rigour of the old samurai poets during the civil wars. He should have lived then. The hard life of the battle-camp would have suited him, with the possibility that any moment might be your last.

Hasegawa glanced back at the shape of Little Ohasu buried under his quilts then returned his attention to the fat wet flakes of snow falling steadily, the descending net of whiteness and the space it occupied producing both depth and immediacy.

Hasegawa awoke just at dawn. He raked up glowing coals banked in white ash, added fresh charcoal and fanned it into flames. The assignations teahouse was silent. He picked up what he’d written the night before. It was probably the best thing he’d ever done. The surface of the language shimmered with
transformation
. Each phrase flowed down into the next one, and each change stimulated the ensuing changes.

What are you doing?

Nothing.

Ohasu settled beside him, still draped in the sleeping quilt she’d dragged with her. She peered down at the open scroll. That’s like one of mine, she said, that stanza. Except not quite.

I thought it needed to be … stronger.

Stronger? She read down through the sequence. That one too, part of it…

It’s how I thought a man might have done it. My version of your style.

Your version of me…

I didn’t say that.

No. You haven’t been able to. But if you could…

Ohasu picked up the writing brush then deftly stroked in a variation on one of his new female stanzas. That’s more like my version of me.

I was just pushing words around, trying to use what we made to make something different.

Ohasu scanned down through the scroll like a person
looking
for the name of a loved one on a list of victims.

Then she picked up the writing brush again. Probably you should just keep your version of me as it is, she said, and blotted out the variation she had added.

T
HE
E
MPTINESS
M
ONK

I
t was too big. Koda cleaned off the blood and tried it on anyway. He could see well enough through the looser weave at the front of the basket-hat, but he didn’t like the way his lateral vision was blocked, making him vulnerable to attackers coming at him from the side.

I guess I’ll just have to smell you first, he said to no one – to the cold, empty air, to the trampled and bloody snow, to the promise that each killing is nothing more than a gateway to the next one.

He removed the basket-hat then pulled the Emptiness Monk’s ink-black winter robe on over his own. It was too big too. There were bloodstains on the neck band, but he thought no one would notice. He wound the black obi sash around his shrunken belly.

Monks of Emptiness were a fighting order, and members were allowed to possess a single sword which they carried in a sack. Koda retrieved this monk’s blade from where he’d dropped it then tossed it into the canal. He loaded his father’s empty scabbards and hilts into the black cloth sack and tied it across his back. He wrapped his too-long sword in the monk’s leggings and slung it over his back too. He knew trying to hide it was what an assassin would do. I guess you are one now, he said, his
words puffing out in the frozen air. I guess it’s what you always were.

The monk’s head had sunk to the bottom of the canal, but his pale corpse floated low in the water like a thing formed out of the coldness of winter itself.

Koda continued down the canal bank. The monk had caught his knee with the point of his blade. He had bound the wound tightly, but he couldn’t put much weight on that leg.

You wait too long and you get hurt, Koda said aloud, talking to himself a habit he’d developed from being alone too long.

The road passed through a row of bone-white storehouses, the heavy wooden entry-doors set in thick walls and sheathed with iron plates icy with rime. Few people were out. Those he encountered hurried past, muffled up within winter robes. Shops were sealed against the frigid day, market stalls shuttered, and the gate guards at residency blocks huddled around scrappy bonfires, on duty only for as long as fuel supplies lasted. Some looked up at Koda as he hobbled past and some didn’t. It was too cold.

The berm road leading out to the pleasure quarters of New Yoshiwara ran straight as a bowstring across an empty expanse of wild moorlands. Softly undulating snow fields stretched off in all directions, the whiteness broken only by an occasional tangle of brambles or the leafless copses of alders or cottonwoods.

Koda slowed as he came to the first of the squalid wine shops that had been established in the moorlands for the
benefit
of those who couldn’t afford the pleasure quarters itself. Bonfires set in iron baskets on tripods burned in the middle of the road, and besotted celebrants staggered through the ragged firelight as they went from wineshop to wineshop, some merry, some maudlin, some becoming belligerent. One degenerate pair danced to a music heard only by themselves. A rascal with a goitre on his neck the size of a summer melon tried to show
his penis to a woman who couldn’t be bothered to look at it. Tucked off in odd corners here and there were true-style
drinkers
, solitary cup-lovers who had settled themselves into a state of perfected incapability.

The New Yoshiwara occupied a low rise of ground
surrounded
on all sides by empty moorlands. The dull white walls of the pleasure quarters were bleak and featureless in the winter gloom; and Koda stood looking at it for a long moment then turned away and hobbled back into the berm-road hamlet, dragging his bad leg through the maze of alleys and waste grounds, following whichever road he happened to find himself on until he came to an abandoned wineshop with streaks of light showing where rain shutters were fitted imperfectly. He slid open the entryway door and stepped inside. A troop of gamblers had taken over the building. They’d built a hot blaze in the big room’s sunken fire pit and were stripping the interior, ripping out wooden fixtures and floorboards and shoving them into the flames.

We’re closed for repairs, one of the gamblers said; and the others regarded Koda, their faces solemn with malice.

Viper Koda lifted off his basket-hat but stayed in the
entryway
.

A tall man sat alone on the single remaining floor mat. He had a tray table with a wine flask and cup on it while the
others
shared a communal wine pot heating on a trivet set at the edge of their fire. A padded robe was draped loosely over the tall man’s head and shoulders; and in the tossing shadows of the firelight, he looked like a moray eel peering out of its hole. Some of the ruffians were wearing the two swords of a samurai although the crests on their robe sleeves had been removed or defaced. You don’t know where you are, said the tall man.

I guess not, Koda said.

Speak up, said the tall man. My hearing is poor. He shoved back the winter robe. Both his ears had been sliced off close to
the skull, leaving only crimped buds of flesh, pink and shiny as a newborn baby’s lips.

I said I guess I don’t where I am.

But it doesn’t worry you.

No.

The man nodded to himself. There are thirty of us here. All armed and willing. He gazed around as if inviting a
confirmation
of this estimation. That doesn’t create a sense of anxiety?

Do I look anxious?

The tall man smiled. No, he said. You don’t. Which means you haven’t guessed who I am.

Koda the Viper said nothing.

I hope you aren’t trying to insult me…

Koda remained where he was just inside the door. I’ve heard of an easy-way gambler out here. A man called Earless
Gompatchi
.

That’s better. And what do you know of him?

Koda said nothing. He swung off his elongated carry-sack and leaned it against the entryway wall, the clack of the empty scabbards sounding against the wooden pilaster.

The gamblers had noticed the shape of his too-long sword protruding above his shoulder and knew that no real Emptiness Monk would ever carry such a field-harvester.

Let me guess then. That the beloved hero Gompatchi is fair in all things? Is that not it? Brave in street-brawls? Dauntless in love? A friend to the poor and a scourge on the rich? And a clever master of the new art of flower-card gambling?

Maybe that’s it, Koda said.

Then perhaps you would like to tell me who you are.

Koda said nothing then he said, A cold person.

Earless Gompatchi smiled. A cold person? Nothing more?

A person alone.

I see. Then tell us about your holy vows.

My vows?

It’s not permitted to wear the garments of an Emptiness Monk if one has not taken the vows of the order. Some might wonder if you are a true follower of the way. Some might accuse you of committing an impersonation.

Koda shifted the weight off his bad knee and continued to watch the man addressing him.

Where did you get your disguise?

I found it.

You found it… Earless Gompatchi smiled affably, but his eyes were two frozen stones. So perhaps you met a monk who no longer needed his robes and basket-hat?

Maybe that’s it.

Why didn’t he need them? Had he changed his way of life?

Koda said nothing.

I think you robbed him. Earless Gompatchi smiled again then said, I think you waylaid him and took his possessions unlawfully.

You can think whatever you like.

Earless Gompatchi sat musing for a moment then said, Listen to this. There was a difficulty a few years ago, one that could not be resolved, and my associates and I found ourselves condemned to mutilation. Our card-men lost hands, and our bullies were blinded. I was given a choice. The shogunate officers said they would cut off my ears and sever my man-parts. But if I could cut off my ears myself, the rest of me would be left intact. The knife they gave me had a dull blade. And even though I gripped my belly-spirit tightly, the sound of the ear-sawing, the pain and the bleeding… He smiled at the memory and said, Even if you can cut through one, the blood making your grip on the knife handle slippery, even if you can manage it, you still have the other, with all the pain of the one you just cut
screaming
at you, and the memory of that pain and the anticipation
of the same pain to come again… Trust me, this is not a thing most men can do.

He moved his head from side to side again, displaying his ear buds.

But look how well I did it. Clean slices, friend, clean cuts both. First the left, then the right. So what do you say to that?

How do I know you still have your man-parts?

Gompatchi stared at him then laughed and said, Very good! Come and sit by the fire and get warm.

Koda hung back for a moment then came forward and found a place among them. I’m a Koda, he said. Of the Koda samurai that used to be in service to Lord Dewa.

Dewa is far away.

Yes it is.

You also said you’re alone.

Yes.

What did you mean? That you prefer the solitary life?

Koda looked at him. Just that it’s how I am.

All right. Gompatchi had noticed the ulcerous wounds on the small man’s wrists, the way his hair had been hacked off; and he asked if his tonsure hadn’t been inflicted in a punishment gaol.

Something like that.

Samurai aren’t usually treated so disrespectfully.

Koda said nothing.

My understanding is that samurai should be killed or
forgiven
, said Gompatchi, but never imprisoned. He referred the question to one of the samurai in his employ, a large, sombre man from the Ishida Clan whose drooping eyelids and heavy features gave the impression of someone burdened by the world.

Or allowed to kill themselves, said the Ishida man.

Yes. Of course. Cut the belly like a good boy. Gompatchi looked at Koda. But that hasn’t been your understanding of such matters?

I guess not, Koda said.

You guess not. Earless Gompatchi adopted a thoughtful manner. Perhaps you could describe your own views? Share with us your Dewa samurai heritage?

Koda remained silent for a moment, staring into the crackling bonfire. He looked at Gompatchi. Samurai kill people, he said. That’s what they do.

By which you mean kill those deserving of death.

Koda’s expression didn’t change. People. Whoever is
available
.

Gompatchi returned his challenge. You’re all alone here.

Fighting many opponents is no more difficult than fighting one, Koda said.

You could be overwhelmed.

I don’t think so.

You don’t think so…

The many will wish to co-ordinate themselves because each man hopes to survive. The man alone has the advantage. And his strategy unremarkable.

You are threatening us?

No.

But you feel you could defeat us?

Yes.

Gompatchi sat pondering this for a moment. I don’t believe you could do it, he said finally.

One of the gamblers sitting near the communal wine pot wore a matchlock pistol shoved in his sash in the manner of the southern barbarians. Start with him, Viper Koda said. Slash him across the eyes. You’ll hear his cries, see his blood, smell his fear. It will change you. You may spread yourselves apart more
widely than you should. I’ll cut down the men in the middle. If you close in for support, I’ll swing around from the outside and you’ll impede each other’s sword space. He smiled. Or perhaps I’d start it another way entirely.

But you’d start it?

We’re just talking, Koda said.

What about this? The samurai with the matchlock jerked it out. It’ll shoot a hole right through you!

Koda returned his gaze. I don’t like guns, he said, and the man looked down uncertainly at what he held.

Once you begin, you do it all, Koda said. Any weeper you take pity on will never forgive you the humiliation of it. You’ll be required to confront him eventually. Better to do it now. If a man has brothers, kill them too. If you kill the husband, kill the wife. If you kill the parents, kill the children. Do not insult them by allowing them to survive. Koda looked at the men sitting around him in the flickering firelight, all of them silenced by his snakelike certainty. Then he returned his attention to Earless Gompatchi. What you said is true. No samurai should ever be imprisoned. Cut him down or let him go.

Gompatchi said nothing, but the dour Ishida samurai rinsed his wine cup then poured it full and held it out to Koda.

I don’t drink wine anymore, Koda said.

Not even for the warmth?

Warm yourself.

Ishida held the full cup, unsure what to do with it. I guess you got out of the habit of being with other people, he said.

T
HEY WERE GONE BY THE TIME
Koda got back there, the floor boards stripped out and burned, all the fixtures burned for the heat that could be found in them. Even the little tray table had been thrown onto the fire, and the tatami mat had been hacked apart and burned, leaving dense wads of powdery ash in places,
some of which still bore a few charred shreds of the binding brocade.