The Plum Rains and Other Stories (15 page)

On the day before his departure from Edo, Ox-Blossom had ordered that a sum of money be packed in a box and delivered to the proprietor of an assignations teahouse in the pleasure
quarters.
The Sotobayama-clan samurai who carried out this task had also been charged with conveying to the teahouse-master what might happen should he behave inappropriately. The
message
was grasped, and ownership of the right to her person was restored to the little pleasure girl Ox-Blossom had befriended.

The satisfaction of doing for another what she could not do for herself had filled Ox-Blossom with tenderness and nostalgia and regret. They had parted badly. Poor little Ohasu had been left kneeling before him in the late-summer dawn, a gaudy-robe draped over her naked shoulders. She had wept when he said
he wouldn’t visit her again. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong. It had pained him to hear her asking for an explanation; and he had written in his journal about the disappointment he felt, expressing himself vividly and honestly so that his prose reflected a heightened appreciation of the poignancy of remorse, as well as of the necessity to embrace the inevitability of the
sadness
of love lost, love betrayed, love undone by the vicissitudes of the world, thereby also creating in him a deeper understanding of the nature of human emotions. He felt certain it would make him a better poet.

The Sotobayama family was one of the most prominent in the Tokugawa bureaucracy although Ox-Blossom’s
contributions
to statecraft were seldom praised. He was slow to decide matters and even slower to act on them. He had been cautious as a child, too. At temple school, his ponderous way of copying out lessons was said to be like that of a boy pressing words into sheets of drying mud. You’re a plodding ox, one of his fellow
pupils
had hissed at him. Maybe so, the young Sotobayama scion had replied, but on festival days, oxen are garlanded with the best blossoms.

Ox blossoms! The boys had laughed; and the nickname
became
so established that he adopted it as his poetry pseudonym, a pose of rustic simplicity indicating the innate superiority of the urban samurai aristocrat.

Ox-Blossom would have preferred to excuse himself from the task of editing the poetry group’s final compendium, but others had already begun to define Old Master Bashō’s way of linking in terms that advanced their own interests. They wanted secret teachings, a catalogue of enigmas, a codification of arcane rules and requirements, access to which would be restricted to fee payers. Schismatics had already begun campaigning for a return to the ‘profound-depth’ style of linked poetry in
repudiation
of the ‘lightness’ of the Old Master’s late manner, and only
the prestige of the Sotobayhama name could prevent them from taking over the valedictory publication entirely.

Once he had rested, Ox-Blossom continued out through a tenth-day market that was arranged along the banks of the river. Old Master Bashō had mentioned this market in one of his travel journals, and Ox-Blossom wished to see it as if with the eyes of his teacher. Yet as he watched itinerant pedlars pick through heaps of cabbages, checking for worm damage and leaf burn and the depredations of fungal rot – aware that their own customers would do the same – whatever aesthetic value might be found in the bucolic scene eluded him. No doubt an
intensified
understanding was required, an appreciation of nuance that he seemed not to possess.

At the river ferry’s quay Ox-Blossom paid his copper and joined the other passengers. A young wife with a pale
complexion
took the seat beside him. She was well-dressed for someone living in such a rural district; and she carried a pheasant cock in a bamboo basket-cage, the bird’s long tail feathers protruding through a gap in the weave. The young wife told him her
husband
had snared the pheasant in the moorlands that morning. She was on her way to the retirement villa of a connoisseur who would pay two silver for the opportunity to paint a true image of it.

Is that so? A true image?

He is an artist who creates the exact likeness of what he sees placed before his eyes, and who condemns as frivolous the city painters in Edo or Miyako, with their phoenixes and dragons and venerable Chinese sages.

A painter of integrity, said Ox-Blossom.

Stew it with ginger and onions in a sweet-wine broth, called an oarsman from his perch at the fore transom; and the young wife smiled and glanced at Ox-Blossom in a way that reminded him of how whenever poor little Ohasu had become amused by
something, she would check surreptitiously to see if his dignity would permit him to share it.

Being in a narrow boat on a swift river made the young wife anxious; and as they caught the current, she distracted herself by describing how she was obliged to manage two small children, a flock of ducks, an aged father-in-law, who wandered in the lanes and became confused, and a husband who, although
enterprising,
had a fondness for squandering his time and money in the wine shops and brothels of the provincial castle town. The ducks, in particular, were a burden to her. There’s no end to the ways they find to sicken and die, she said.

A difficulty indeed, said Ox-Blossom. He enjoyed seeing the first traces of autumn colours in the maples and rowans and lacquer bushes sliding past, the reds and yellows and oranges reminiscent of the gaudy-robes his little friend had worn, with her nape exposed and vulnerable, and the hem of her scarlet underskirt showing.

They will eat mouldy grain and collapse from bloating.

Is that so?

And rapeseed meal! How can they be so stupid as to eat something poisonous to ducks?

A difficult question indeed…

Possession of her person meant that little Ohasu could now live wherever she wished. He had wondered how she might
support
herself and instructed his seneschal to keep track of her once she left the pleasure quarters. Nothing too overt; he didn’t require further access himself nor wish to deny it to others – the superior man accepts the inevitable – but he was curious about her fate. He might even try writing about her.

I’d imagine you’ve heard of the tail-bobbing disease? said the young wife.

Tail bobbing?

Wheezing is another symptom.

I see, said Ox-Blossom.

Maggoty vent, too, although by then it’s too late.

Ohasu had been taught the rudiments of calligraphy, and Ox-Blossom used to enjoy the way her little pink tongue
protruded
between her lips as she concentrated on writing her
poems.
Perhaps a use might be found for her as a copyist.

And castor beans! Don’t say a word to me about castor beans!

No. But he had to say something. You raise them for their eggs then?

Eggs and feathers. Then later duck meat. The wife’s small face shone serenely, all fear of the swollen river current
forgotten.
I’ll get a good price in the city.

You will take them there yourself?

I will. For my husband wouldn’t make it past the first wine shop.

A difficult situation.

Difficult, yes. But she would be the one visiting the new dry goods emporiums in Edo while her husband remained behind in their village, with one snotty child tied on his back and the other stumbling along whining for a suck dummy. An obi in the new, extra-wide style will be my first purchase, said the wife, and perhaps even a silk robe like the kind they wear in the pleasure quarters.

I see.

And tortoiseshell hair ornaments, mottled yellow and brown. I know exactly the ones I want.

Indeed. And he too knew them, decorations like those his little friend had once shown him shyly; and it occurred to
Ox-Blossom
that perhaps this, too, was a kind of lightness, these simple correspondences, expressed without embellishment.

Ox-Blossom had always assumed that he understood Old Master Bashō’s way of linking in his late manner, but perhaps all
he’d done was understand the words he had used to describe it. But now that he was able to recall with tranquility his days and nights of doubt and desire in the pleasure quarters, he detected within his reconfiguration of what had been lost an abrupt
easing
of the pain of separation, like the moment when, after a protracted struggle, the curved worm is at last extracted from the helical cone of the winkle shell.

And clogs with scarlet toe cords! Can you imagine?

He could; and after wishing the young wife a safe journey, Ox-Blossom set off on the road to the remote mountain villa where the final edit of the Bashō Group Compendium would be made. He hiked up through the dry heat until he reached a roadside rest shelter. Wind shifted the tops of the cedar trees
although
the forest floor was still. He drank from his water gourd then held it cradled in his palms, the damp surface slick as
catfish
skin. The idea of the sadness of the end of love was in many ways more satisfying than the girl herself had been. He drank again then got out his writing kit and sketched a prose heading:

The true image of things: a bird in a cage and a skiff on a river. What else is there but this? Unsure of my feelings, and unable to seek the advice of my little friend left behind in Edo, I devised this poor offering for her.

Then he dashed off a quick haiku, the words dropping down each out of the one before in a single, sinuous line of black ink:

Clogs with scarlet toe cords forgotten under a cherry tree; spring arrives in the barrier mountains.

It was wrong for the season – poems written in autumn should be about autumn – but it exhibited the kind of logical authenticity he found satisfying. And of course spring was
particularly
appropriate for the melancholy yearning felt by parted lovers.

T
HE
C
LOUD
T
ERRACE
P
AVILION
was a medieval villa erected high on the eastern peaks of the mountains that formed the central spine of the main island of the archipelago. It had been constructed by an eminent family whose descendants chose the wrong side during the civil war, resulting in the slaughter of their persons and the forfeiture of their estates. In the decades that followed, the Cloud Terrace had become a favourite venue for Tokugawa connoisseurs in search of the pleasures of the past. The main structure was a large hall with a massive roof of grey tiles. Removing the wooden sliding doors on the outside walls converted it into an open-air pavilion perched dramatically at the edge of a cliff, with an external porch thrust out over the void and supported by a trestle-work of pillars, each pier of which had been fashioned from a whole cedar tree. Attendant buildings and cottages were dispersed among the surrounding groves and crags, and covered walkways connected the complex together so that upright granite scarps and dramatically twisted pines seemed to form part of the architecture.

Aesthetes were drawn to the Cloud Terrace by its simulation of a way of life that had long since ended. The villa’s Tokugawa masters – susceptible themselves to the lure of nostalgia and the seductions of self-indulgence – ensured that no hint of
modernity
obtruded in any obvious way. The cushions, screen
paintings,
tray tables, and crockery were recent masterworks
modelled
on cherished originals; and the robes issued to guests were self-consciously archaic in style although newly made from fine silks and brocades, authenticity of effect being more important to the Tokugawa than actual authenticity.

Ox-Blossom was greeted by his fellow editors in the main assembly hall. You have been here for a few days then?

We have indeed. You are our only laggard.

I decided to walk, said Ox-Blossom, the simplicity of this assertion meant to suggest the true spirit of the literati artist.

We too had wished to emulate the Old Master’s habits, said the editors, but we found the convenience of palanquins difficult to resist.

The pleasure providers selected for the occasion of the final edit radiated an aura of sweet wistfulness intended to
complement
the furnishings. Their hair was styled in an antique
manner
and their eyebrows plucked out to create the broad smooth forehead of the classic Heian-era beauty. They were costumed in multiple layers of silk robes, the combinations of colours where they overlapped meant to exemplify the elegance of the old court; and they hid themselves simpering behind robe-draped screens, and veiled their faces when on outings amidst the cliffs and grottoes or even when transiting between buildings, their timidity considered charmingly erotic although this semblance of reluctance was relaxed during the long and liquid banquets that filled the afternoons and evenings at the terrace – the
managing
of modesty-veils during such lively celebrations judged a nuisance – and abandoned wholly during night frolics in the outdoor thermal baths, when the illusion of the disinclination felt by refined ladies to expose themselves to the gaze of the world dissolved in the unsubtle ambience of sulphurous fumes and hot water.

Stacked against the inside wall of the main pavilion
building
were panniers filled with hand scrolls, printed books, bound manuscripts, and bundle upon bundle of loose sheaves of poems tied together with silk cords. A few of the panniers had been opened already and their contents arranged in piles of
association
although this seemed premature since the criteria of
assessment
had not yet been determined. Ox-Blossom was prepared to defend ‘lightness’ as an ideal. He would have his supporters. But he knew that the cabal of poets who wished to return to the ‘profound-depth’ style of linked poetry would make demands requiring compromise if not outright capitulation.

The first day was spent sorting through the mass of
materials.
The participants broke into groups, some choosing views of the autumn sky and mountains, others preferring the
ambience
of gardens and grottoes. Senior Editor Ox-Blossom
occupied
the central position in the pavilion. Behind him in the tokonoma alcove hung an ink painting depicting their teacher’s old brush-wood gate with the plantain growing beside it. Tea was supplied throughout this initial process, and trays of little cakes made available. The pleasure providers also functioned as couriers, carrying scrolls and manuscripts between editors and scribes, their mounds of silk robes rustling seductively as they moved about the pavilion, conveying questions and comments and, upon occasion, clever witticisms which they pretended not to understand and often didn’t.