The Plum Rains and Other Stories (16 page)

In the middle of the room three piles were established: one for poems and linking stanzas that had been accepted, one for the obvious rejects, and one for those still undecided, with a rationale for each decision entered into a log which could be reviewed should disputes arise later.

By the end of the afternoon, the process had been completed. The undecided pile was larger than the senior editor would have preferred, but he had won debates he’d anticipated losing and retained submissions he’d thought doomed. Disputatious camps had formed within the ‘return to profundity’ clique; small differences had become magnified, egos swollen; and specific characteristics of the profound manner of
haikai
linked poetry had so risen in importance in the minds of their defenders that the acrimony which billowed up around the appropriateness of including the image of a pine tree in a poem on autumn hills rich with coloured leaves seethed so violently, so grew in
intensity,
that all the work done before was almost lost as one group of disgruntled conservatives threatened to renounce all further co-operation and return immediately to Edo if such
vulgarities
weren’t repudiated. A compromise was reached finally, and an otherwise inoffensive poem on spring mists sacrificed in a gesture of amelioration.

Some of the poet-editors hiked up to a small viewing
platform
higher in the mountains while others strolled down to the thermal baths, where a few of the bolder pleasure
providers
were known to be awaiting them, naked as peeled willow wands in the crisp autumn air. Only the senior editor remained on the terrace, assisted by a scribe and the youngest and least experienced of the pleasure providers, an undernourished young woman with rheumy eyes and a nose pink with inflammation.

Ox-Blossom was near the end of his review of the selections still in dispute when he came to a single hand scroll containing a series of poems he and Ohasu had done together. Memories of the past flooded him with nostalgia. He read through the scroll then chose one of Ohasu’s poems and recited it to the girl kneeling forlornly in the corner.

She said she thought it was nice.

And this? He read another of Ohasu’s poems.

It’s nice too, replied the uncertain young pleasure provider, twin pearls of mucus expanding and contracting on the bottom rims of her nostrils as she sniffled in quick little snorts.

Ox-Blossom held the scroll for a moment longer then placed it on the alcove shelf behind him rather than consigning it to one of the piles in the middle of the room. Some things were too precious to expose.

The evening banquet began with rare delicacies, and it
rumbled
forward in a spirit of fellowship. Wine flowed and
agreements
were reached, ruffled feathers smoothed, slights
forgotten.
It occurred to Ox-Blossom in a moment of inspiration that few aesthetic principles could be more ambiguous than ‘
lightness
.’ He pointed this out to the conservative faction. Could any
man among them define it? Of course not. Surely a lifetime of fees lay within such an amorphous concept.

The conservatives celebrated his insight, pondered the
pleasures
of promoting the ineffable, held their wine cups up to be refilled, and eventually tottered off to the various cottages they had been assigned, some accompanied by pleasure providers and some not.

Ox-Blossom ordered paper lanterns placed along the path leading out to one of the more secluded thermal pools. Pale wisps of steam rose from the dark surface of the sulphurous
water
and dissolved into the inky blackness of the night sky. He hung his clothing on the stubs of branches of a nearby pine trimmed for that purpose then used the old-fashioned dipping gourd to rinse off and warm his skin before settling into the murky pool, clutching himself against the shock of the heat of the water.

The autumn night was clear and bright with the silver river of stars, and the tiny voice of a single cricket sang nearby, adding to his sense of well-being.

Ox-Blossom noticed that the young pleasure provider was hovering uncertainly in the glow of the nearest paper lantern. She said she didn’t know what she was supposed to do. No one seemed to have any use for her. She said she was called the
Princess
of the Chamber of the Fragrance of Lilies although that wasn’t her real name, and she struggled with the multiple layers of her unfamiliar costume and the various sashes and ties that held it all together, searching out a separate branch stub for each garment as she removed it so that the silk robes and underskirts and dangling sashes formed an exotic backdrop to the austere simplicity of the mountain grotto.

The girl squatted at the edge of the pool. Judging it
presumptive
to touch a gourd dipper that had been used by the
senior
editor, she rinsed herself by splashing up palmfuls of water
in a foolish and ineffective manner. Her chest was concave, her nipples still those of a child, and the patch of shame-hair at her little jade gate was hardly more than a tuft of black floss. She crept forward then sank into the hot water, emitting strangled little gasps of dismay at the heat, two lines of snot depending suddenly from her nostrils.

Ox-Blossom returned his attention to the stars flowing above them, the milky beauty of it flooding across the
unimaginable
depths of the sky.

It’s lovely up here in the mountains, he said, and the fragrant princess responded with a constricted squeak of assent.

Had she been here before?

She had not.

Probably you are unfamiliar with such gatherings.

She was unfamiliar with most things.

So a new experience for you, Ox-Blossom said in an
avuncular
manner; and when they retired to his personal chambers and the quilts spread there for them, he gave her instructions and gently corrected misperceptions; then once matters had been resolved to his satisfaction, he lay back and made himself comfortable then asked if she couldn’t stop snuffling, at least long enough for him to fall asleep.

T
HE
BATTLES
O
X
-B
LOSSOM HAD
anticipated were joined throughout the day of the final cull; he won some and lost some. But the content of the compendium was finally agreed, and they could begin arranging the poems into sequences, a task that would take several more days.

In a moment of hubris, Ox-Blossom told the fragrant
princess
that when he returned to Edo, she would come with him, attached to his entourage, and a place would be found for her at the Sotobayama Family Compound, with appropriate duties and an older member of the household staff to look after her.

The banquet that second night was as sumptuous as had been the one the night before; and the good humour shared among the editors was sincere, for the conservatives had found in Ox-Blossom a tractable Tokugawa bureaucrat who would yield when pressed; while Ox-Blossom himself felt that he had preserved enough of the poems in their Old Master’s late
manner
to satisfy the requirements of his obligation. Celebratory wine cups were exchanged again and again, with the pleasure providers scrambling to fill and refill them; and there was a point late in the evening when Ox-Blossom felt he had at last grasped the truth of the manner of lightness. He sent for an inkstone and brush, and he retrieved the scroll of poems he had composed with Ohasu then added a concluding stanza at the bottom:

A misty spring night and no one shares the sadness: silk robes draped forlornly on a pine tree.

That was it: the simple clarity of an honest emotion,
perfectly
capturing the soft wistfulness of a spring evening. He smiled to think that if he hadn’t lost his little friend, then such an understanding might never have occurred to him.

From her place in the corner, the fragrant princess gazed shyly at her new benefactor. Her coif was enhanced with a few additional silver baubles although her weepy eyes and runny nose had not improved. Ox-Blossom wondered for a moment if taking her into his service hadn’t been precipitous. No doubt it would all work out in the end.

T
HE
A
RSONIST'S
W
IDOW

J
irobei blindfolded the arsonist and lead him down onto the dry riverbed.

Edo constabulary officers watched from the embankment, their hands stuffed into the sleeves of their thick winter robes. Behind them a crowd had gathered.

I'll show you something you haven't seen, Jirobei said. He was a huge fellow, half-again larger than normal men, and his massive badger-belly hung out over the wide leather belt he wore instead of an obi sash and strained the fabric of his robe.

The arsonist waited with his head tilted off to one side like someone listening for distant music. He had burned down the home of a moneylender, intending to destroy both the account book and the man; and in the shogun's city of wooden buildings with paper doors and rice-straw floor mats, there could be only one punishment for such a crime.

We know what you do, said the city constable.

Jirobei moved the arsonist onto a flat patch of sand for the better footing there. But you don't know how well I can do it.

Jirobei untied the arsonist's hands. Everybody walks the same road, he said to him. But it's the rare man who knows the date and time of his departure. Jirobei began stripping the arsonist's robe off his shoulders, much the way a bridegroom might prepare a shy bride.

The arsonist said he needed a moment to compose himself, but Jirobei just loosened his sash knot then shoved sash and robe down together until the wad of garments hung low on his hips.

Don't move, Jirobei said.

But I'm not ready…

Don't move.

Jirobei preferred a stiff blade, heavier than was common, one with an oversized hilt thickened by a layer of horsehide that was held in place by a spiral of sinews wound on fresh then allowed to contract as they dried, creating grooves that improved the gripping surface and also added what he thought of an aesthetic note to the otherwise utilitarian tool.

Twentieth day of the twelfth month, Jirobei said. He used a white under-sash to tie his own sleeves back out of the way. And as for the time, it's the middle of the hour of the ram.

The arsonist said he thought more might be learned from his case, a cautionary lesson that would help others avoid the mistakes he had made. The world was changing. New times required new methods. He said he thought some kind of
testament
might be composed, the details of his malfeasance
described
by him in vivid language blazing with the authenticity of remorse. Who knows the shame of crime if not the criminal? Who better feels the sting of ostracism? He said he felt certain that the credibility of such a document would more than
compensate
for the slight delay writing it would require…

But Jirobei just dug in with his back foot and bent his knees. He raised his blade with both hands and waggled it back and forth as a timing-mechanism then drove forward off his plant leg, rotating his hips as he hit through, swinging across low and hard and flat, and with both arms fully extended at the point of impact so that the arsonist – a man loved by his wife despite the
flaws in his character – flipped apart in a spray of entrails that flared up like a handful of flung eels.

That's a thing it's said can't be done to a standing man,
Jirobei
said. But as you have seen, I can do it.

The arsonist's widow was led away from the execution site by persons who understood that no woman should have to see such a spectacle, and Jirobei watched her go, the offal at his feet steaming on the frozen sands of the riverbed.

The Edo city constable stared down at the sundered corpse. What do you want?

Jirobei plucked up the hem of the arsonist's robe and wiped clean his blade. To be among those who enforce the laws of the shogunate.

The city constable glanced at his junior officers. They feared and hated this pariah executioner, a foul creature whose
existence
seemed to impinge upon them and blight their prospects. Impossible, said the city constable.

Blood flow had reached Jirobei's sandals. He made no
attempt
to evade it.

Don't ask for what can never be given!

The huge pariah remained as he was, ponderous, offensive, his heavy red arms hanging down like the skinned carcasses of slaughtered dogs.

Never! cried the city constable. Never! You have no family, no ancestor registry, nothing to certify you. He gazed up at the low white sky, at the bones of the trees on the opposite bank silhouetted against it. You're not even fully a person. You have no name.

I'm called Jirobei. As you know.

Called by whom?

All who encounter me.

The city constable glared at the men with him, samurai whose grandfathers had followed the way of the warrior but
who had themselves become brazier-lovers, cushion-choosers, petty bureaucrats gone soft on the generosity of the shogunate. Ask for something else, he said.

There was nothing else Jirobei wanted. He told him it was his ambition to go inside buildings and ask questions and
require
answers.

This city is becoming disorderly, Jirobei said.
Scabbard-brushers
brawl in the wineshops and alleyways, robbers waylay drunks, gamblers cheat the unwary, and sneak thieves hover outside doorways, and when caught with things not theirs, claim they found them. He studied the row of constabulary men hunched like jackdaws on the wintry riverbank. I need
permission
to hurt malefactors whoever they are. Permission to hurt artisans and tradesmen and farmers. Hurt samurai.

Not samurai.

Samurai gone rogue then.

Not them either.

Jirobei said nothing.

There's no person in this world who would ever approve that, said the city Constable.

I can't serve you if I'm not allowed inside your buildings.

Your service is not required.

Jirobei smiled to himself and said: Typical urban habitations, savouring the sound of each word, the taste of it on his lips.

Why do you care about a city that despises you?

I don't care about it. I care about compliance.

There's no reason for you to pursue such matters.

There is no reason for anything, Jirobei said. Other than in the doing of it.

O
NE HEAVILY LADEN BRANCH
of cherry blossoms hung over the brushwood fence that separated his cottage from the animal rendering grounds. The shell-pink cloud glowed in the misty
light with an ethereal beauty, and Jirobei closed his eyes to feel the flowers more intensely, the morning calm broken only by the occasional scream of a sick horse or spavined ox, or the
clatter
of the iron stirrers used in their vats by the tallow-makers.

The authorities had granted part of the huge pariah's request. He carried a hemp rope with which he could bind wrongdoers, and a heavy oak cudgel for when he needed to subdue them. Jirobei strolled through the shogun's metropolis wearing a robe printed all over with engorged hibiscus flowers in indigo and cinnabar, a bold design he considered flattering to his physique. The arrival of spring had invigorated Jirobei. He felt the sap of anticipation rise up through him. It left him agitated, unsettled, stimulated, at one with the new green of leaves unfurling on the city's hardwoods and the dewy freshness of fern shoots
sprouting
in the moorlands.

Quelling urban miscreants was not without risk. During an altercation with a gang of street toughs, Jirobei had been badly slashed in the face. He had overcome them eventually, cracked their necks and left them stacked like cordwood ready for collection. But their knives had been unclean; striate scars furrowed the pariah's ruddy visage now; and the rictus crimping his upper lip meant forming words required effort.

Friends informed the arsonist's widow that her husband's executioner had himself been assaulted. The news brought her no comfort. She still wept easily, still awoke in the middle of the night trembling, still jumped at every sharp noise or sudden shadow.

Unlike her, Jirobei had no friends. But he bathed daily in celebration of the season of cherry blossoms, picked his teeth clean with bamboo slivers, scraped the dirt and dried blood out from under his fingernails, and wiped himself carefully each time after shitting. Everywhere were instances of regeneration to be embraced and extended; and he welcomed them all, after
his bath sitting naked in the spring sunlight and combing out his long black hair with a hand-cut boxwood comb then
shaping
his coif with camellia oil – applied too heavily, he knew, but the pleasure of the scent was difficult to resist, as was the
satisfaction
of using an extra-long binding cord to hold his topknot in place: bright pink in honour of the season.

The arsonist's widow understood that Jirobei was drawing nearer. Friends had been interrogated near the ward gate. He has nothing better to do, they told her. Don't worry about him, they said, but she did worry.

Jirobei was the product of a misogynist's spasm. His father, a large and taciturn man, was skilled at buckling the knees of opponents and throwing them aside. In his prime, he was
seldom
bested although his victories were praised only grudgingly; and as he aged and slowed, younger men learned to evade the grasp of his arms and dance around him until a weak spot in his defence was exposed. He fell hard sometimes. His ears bled, his sight dimmed, he tasted sand; and those watching greeted his defeats with mocking laughter.

Jirobei's father had washed ashore as a youth. He was larger and paler than the people living there, and he spoke a language no one had ever heard before, guttural and harsh and leaving flecks of spittle on the lips. Because of this, carnal access was restricted to members of the despised class of non-human
pariahs
. This humiliation created in Jirobei's father a hatred of his wife and other women. Only the men he fought against earned acceptance in his eyes, and only the moment of impact as two naked male bellies slammed violently together gratified him.

His first child – a small, sickly boy with the vulpine
features
of his mother – had died after a year spent swaddled in hemp cloths that stank of faeces and urine. But his second boy was large and sanguine and greedy at the teat. The old grappler studied Baby Jirobei as he grew. He watched for any trace of his
mother and found none. It was as if this infant had been formed wholly from his own male seed, as if he had merely used his mother as a chute, with nothing of her adhering to any part of him, other than a faint stench from the bloody lubricant of his birth slime.

When the boy Jirobei was old enough to totter about on his fat little legs, his father taught him how to unbalance other children by delivering sudden blows to the side of the head; and when the boy's legs became strong enough to support him and his growing belly, he showed him how repeated thrusting chops delivered to the throat of an advancing child would force that child upright, limit his ability to counterattack, and ultimately topple him. And when little Jirobei – hardly little even at three and four years of age – was old enough to appreciate subtlety, his father taught him how to come in at unexpected angles, how to feign vulnerabilities that he did not in fact have, and how to drop down onto a defeated opponent as if by accident and gouge his eyes or crush his testicles or perhaps chew off part of an ear, doing it in such a manner that those watching would not notice while making certain that the screeching victim knew it was as intentional as it was unnecessary. Maybe one day you fight him again, his father had said. Maybe he is dreading what you might do.

Despite Jirobei's new authority, permission to enter the
residences
of townsmen had not been granted although workshops and stables and quays were made available to him, as were the streets and alleys and bridges of the shogun's metropolis.
Troublemakers
sometimes hid themselves, and Jirobei learned to rely on surveillance. He would position himself outside open
widows
or doorways and watch residents with their petty crafts and household chores. He would smile benignly as women and men chatted together or dozed alone. He studied the way they drank wine and ate dumplings, the way they dandled their children,
the way they laughed and sang, chanted sutras and whispered curses, bathed, wept, pissed, squabbled, and fucked. He noted consistencies and variations, and he felt himself almost included among them, almost fully human.

Despite warnings from her friends, the arsonist's widow was unprepared for the evening when Jirobei's round red face appeared above her fence, peering in at her like a blood-filled moon. She slammed the door shut then slapped closed the rain shutters and cowered in her darkened interior, hardly daring even to breathe.

Jirobei began visiting her neighbourhood frequently. He chose odd moments and unanticipated vantage points. He
followed
the widow when she went shopping and tried to see the world as she saw it. At the vegetable market, he asked vendors what she had bought there then bought it too. He did the same thing at the fishmonger's. One afternoon, he came upon her alone in a small shed making candles.