The Plum Rains and Other Stories (19 page)

His father held him until he stopped quivering then laid him on his back and straightened his garments.

The younger boy had to be prepared by his mother. He
buried
his face in her bosom. She shielded him and calmed him then shifted him around, still holding him in her arms but presenting his throat. The younger boy’s blood soaked into the front of his mother’s death robe as she drew him back into her embrace and cradled him as he died then allowed his father to place him beside his brother.

Hori’s wife had worn two inner sashes, as befits a samurai’s wife, and she removed the extra one now and bound her legs together across the thighs so that her skirt would not part open
indecorously. Her husband removed the purification paper from the short dagger then touched the naked blade to his
forehead
in acknowledgement. He bowed to her. She returned his bow, both her palms pressing down on the hard earth that her forehead also touched. She straightened herself and regarded him. Well, then, if it must be so, she said, and took the short knife in both hands. She held it reversed in front of her breast so that the blade was pointing upward. She was not a strong woman, but what strength she had would now be the final gift she could offer, and she threw herself forward, diving onto the blade and driving the point of it up under her jaw for the death to be found there.

Her thrust cut off-centre, and she lay shuddering on her side, the knife embedded under her jaw and pinning her tongue to her palate but not deep enough to reach the brain. One hand had been knocked off the hilt and it grabbed at the dirt of the courtyard, scraping at it as if digging there, forming ridges the way the receding tide leaves wave-patterns in the sand, then doing that less and less then no longer doing it.

Old Hori smoothed down the hem of her robe. He let his hand rest for a moment on her ankle. Then he sat back and stripped off the top of his death robe by lifting his arms out. He tucked the sleeves under his feet to help keep his body aligned. His assistant came up behind him with his sword unsheathed. Hori wrapped a thick white hand cloth around the blade of his small sword so that he could grip it below the hilt. He instructed his assistant to permit him to finish the entire ritual. I thank the shogunate for this opportunity to redeem my son and myself, Hori said. He sat for a moment very still. Then he inhaled and with a shout of praise stabbed the blade into the side of his
abdomen
, gasping like someone plunged in cold water. Using both hands he dragged the blade across slicing deeply. In the spill of the blood slobber, the first blue loops of intestines slithered
out squirming onto his thighs. His face drained to white and his eyes locked. He pulled out the blade and stabbed inwards a second time, straining against the shriek of it, and his
attendant
hit him perfectly. His head landed between his knees and his corpse remained kneeling upright, blood draining out of his neck-stump, both hands still gripping the blade locked in his belly.

The steward leaned back to listen to the man behind the screen then turned to Aoi again. He stared at her for a long moment then signalled for her ropes to be cut. Aoi was pulled to her feet and held upright by her guards, her legs too weak to support her.

You are not to be given a Buddhist name. You have no
family
name. You will continue to be called Aoi, but this word will be written with kana syllables only. You will stay all your life where we put you. No other activity will be allowed, no travel, no visits, no walks in the hills. You are only a thing waiting to die. Is there any part of this you don’t understand?

Aoi said nothing at first then lifted her head slightly with her eyes still on the earth before her and said, I understand it.

You will travel tomorrow on your last road. You will take the Hori funerary plaques with you. And each morning and each evening you will offer prayers for the repose of the souls of the Hori. That is what you will do. And it is all you will ever do.

T
HE SHOGUNATE OFFICIAL STOOD
alone beside the trunk of an immense cedar that was girded by a sanctity rope, its sodden white paper streamers hanging limply in the steady drizzle. Ox-Blossom told her he had been sent as an emissary of the Tokugawa family. Changes had occurred which would affect her. He said a writer from Edo had also come with him.
Chibi-kun
is admired for his imagination, said Ox-Blossom. He’ll join us once you and I have reached an agreement.

Chibi-kun?

The writer. His stories are popular in the pleasure quarters.

When Aoi seemed to have nothing to say to this, Ox-
Blossom
explained that the shogun had begun reviewing policies established by his predecessors.

It’s been decided to rehabilitate the Hori clan, Ox-Blossom said. Their death plaques will be moved to the family’s mortuary temple.

Ox-Blossom bowed in polite recognition that this news might come as a surprise to the nun, and rain-flow on the front brim of his round hat slid off in a smooth arc as he did so. He straightened up and said, Your own name will also be restored to you.

Aoi turned away. She followed a path that led around the edge of the forecourt and up towards the nunnery’s cemetery. A brook flowed beside the path, the far bank lined with purple irises beaded with rain. She stopped as if concerned with the flowers then looked back at the emissary.

I decline it, Aoi said.

She continued on up the path, rain rattling on her oil-paper umbrella, and Ox-Blossom trailed after her.

I’ve been buried here, Aoi said. I have no wish for a name to survive me.

Probably I have expressed myself poorly, said Ox-Blossom. By granting you your name, the shogun is also restoring your access to the world.

Aoi didn’t respond, but her head tilted forward under the amber rain-light of her umbrella, and the shadows on her face darkened.

Ox-Blossom continued cheerfully. You can go where you wish. Do whatever you choose. Young Chibi-kun has ideas. He
wants to write the story of your amorous life. He feels there is money to be made.

Aoi stared at him. My life…?

Chibi-kun is clever with words. He says he appreciates the dramatic possibilities of women who loved too passionately, for he himself has experienced such moods.

Aoi said nothing. But her face softened with sadness at memories of the past; and unsure as to whether or not she seemed about to reconsider her refusal, Ox-Blossom tried again to encourage her, promising that she would be surprised by the changes in the world, for nothing she had known was as it had been.

Poems that separate sections of ‘The Plantain’, ‘Under Blossoming Boughs’ and ‘Winter Seclusion’, and the poem Ox-Blossom writes on his travel hat, are my translations of haiku by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694). Other poems and poetic fragments in these stories are pastiches of my own devising, sometimes based on well-known Japanese originals.

John Givens studied art and Japanese literature in Kyoto for four years and worked in Tokyo for eight years as a writer and editor. He received an MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers’
Workshop
where he was also a Teaching/Writing Fellow. Givens has
published
three novels in the United States,
Sons of the Pioneers, A Friend in the Police
and
Living Alone,
as well as numerous short stories and poems in a variety of literary journals in the US, Asia and Europe. His nonfiction books include
A Guide to Dublin Bay: Mirror to the City
and
Irish Walled Towns,
both published by The Liffey Press.
Givens
currently lives in Howth, County Dublin.