The Plum Rains and Other Stories (4 page)

Hasegawa asked the feral boy why he was being punished, and he said because he stole food.

Why did he do that?

When his father was absent, his stepmother denied him his share. And even when his father was home, she gave his
stepsister
the best bits while he got only the worst.

Where was his father?

The boy didn’t know.

Why didn’t his father defend him?

The boy didn’t know that either.

Hasegawa handed him a rice ball and the feral boy bit into it. You want me to cut you out of your rope?

The boy said he didn’t want that.

Because it would anger your stepmother? Hasegawa
squatted
down beside him. At least you’ve got tree shade. And water.

You’re samurai.

That’s right.

You know about things.

Some things.

The feral boy swallowed then said he’d been told that a
stabbing
tool could be fashioned out of a sharpened length of green bamboo. He said it was his understanding that anyone could do it. You just had to get the angle of the bevel right. He said there was said to be a place in a sleeping woman’s neck where her death was easily reached.

Hasegawa glanced up at Old Koda the Viper then turned his attention to the meadow grass heating in the sunlight, with swallows darting above it taking insects, and scarlet clumps of spider lilies growing near a rill. And you want to know where it is?

He bit into the rice ball again. They said you just slide it in.

Who says that?

I forget his name.

And you think you could kill a person?

The boy chewed with his mouth half-open, flecks of rice on his lips, his gaze unwavering. I guess that’s what we’re talking about.

How old are you?

Old enough.

You think so.

The boy pointed at his own neck. Just show me where it is.

Hasegawa rose to his feet. He looked down at the feral boy gnawing on the rice ball in his grubby fist. Did he have any other siblings?

Just the one. The stepmother’s own daughter.

And you want to hurt her too?

Hurt them both. But start with the stepmother. Just slide it in.

You don’t need to know about things like that.

You mean you won’t say. The feral boy grinned up at the two men. You’re some poor kind of samurai, aren’t you. I guess you just chop cabbages with those blades.

Cut him loose, Koda said.

He said he didn’t want that.

I heard what he said. Viper Koda was straddling the boy with a slash knife in his fist, and the hemp rope came open, the severed ends lying on each side of him. You want to be tied up, you do it your own self, he said.

The two samurai continued on into White Rock Village,
accompanied
by the endless cacophony of cicadas shrieking their summer urges. Horses fitted with pack frames were crowded in a corral, all their heads facing the same direction. Hasegawa stopped to scratch one on the nose. Koda stood watching him do it.

I guess probably you don’t even think that a horse has a Buddha-nature, Hasegawa said.

I don’t remember expressing an opinion about it, said Koda.

I was just thinking about last night.

Probably you’d be better off thinking about something else.

Probably you’re right.

They set out walking again.

But, still, I guess you could look at the matter two ways, Hasegawa said. One way, that everything has the
Buddha-nature
. A horse, a dog, a man. Everything. And the other way, that only a man can have a Buddha-nature and everything else has something different. Of course, whichever way you choose, you’d still have the question of how you would know. But then I guess you’d always have that question anyway. How you’d know, I mean.

This some kind of new concern for you? said Viper Koda.

I guess you have to start somewhere, said Hasegawa. But I’m willing to listen to your opinion.

I don’t have one, Koda said.

I regret that.

Koda said nothing.

Because if you did, then we could debate it. I could for
example
assert that a horse does have the Buddha-nature, and you could take the opposing view. So then I would state the reasons why I held my belief, and you would question them and perhaps point out aspects of the situation which I hadn’t considered. So your suggestions would then require me to rethink my original position and perhaps adjust some portion of it. Which I would do. Then you would perhaps state your beliefs, and I would then bring out new arguments in response. And then you could reply as you saw fit. And so in this manner, we could spend the day in pleasant conversation.

You seem like you have it all worked out already, said Koda. No reason for me to get involved.

You don’t see the pleasure in speculating on the nature of things?

I guess not, Koda said.

T
HE INN AT
W
HITE
R
OCK DIDN’T
accept masterless samurai. The innkeeper said he wouldn’t make exceptions. He said that
in his experience, they couldn’t be trusted. Scabbard-brushers ready to brawl over nothing. He said they could eat and drink on the veranda, but not even double cash would get them a room inside.

They established a bivouac just outside the village near a roadside shrine. You never know what might come past, said Hasegawa. They were still there the following morning when the feral boy found them. He had armed himself with a
fish-gutter’s
knife that he carried in a scabbard of his own devising, a crudely-wrought snarl of hemp cords wound around a couple of cask slats.

I guess you didn’t expect to see me again so soon.

The two samurai said nothing.

I guess you must be wondering if I did it already, said the boy, letting his hand rest suggestively on the hilt of his fish knife. But I guess I’m not prepared to discuss the matter.

Which means you didn’t do anything, said Viper Koda.

The boy dropped into a squat in the middle of the road. You know I’m just like you, he said.

Neither of the samurai said anything.

Ready for whatever the world offers. And if it doesn’t offer anything, then you go take what’s yours.

Nothing’s yours, said Koda.

The boy smirked at that. You’d be surprised.

About what?

What I can do and how well I can do it.

They drove him away and were still debating whether to continue on to the next waystation when the merchant’s
caravan
came into view, and this time there was an opportunity for employment. Part of their consignment had to be re-routed to a castle town up in the mountains. It was a day there and a day back. The main body of the caravan would continue on in the
direction they were going, but the merchants had decided they didn’t want to split their defensive contingent.

One silver, said Hasegawa.

The head merchant gazed up the road, once again his expression that of a thoughtful man considering his options although there was nothing out there but forests and rivers, and they all knew it. One silver each, Hasegawa said.

Two days later they were back at White Rock Village with money to spend, but the innkeeper hadn’t changed his opinion of them. He said he wouldn’t tolerate troublemakers. He said he was firm in his principles. The two samurai stood in the slanting orange light at the end of the summer day and were told that the innkeeper’s bullies had caught a sneak thief that very morning and taken him down to an old quarry and crushed him.

What did he steal?

He didn’t get anything.

You caught him in the act?

We caught him before he could even start.

Hasegawa and Koda went down to the quarry. The feral boy lay there still, heaped with a pile of rock slabs that had been added one upon the next. His head had been left exposed for the amusement of his tormentors; and his face was swollen and blackened like an overlooked melon, the eyes encrusted by death, nostrils clotted with dried blood, his gaping mouth active with foraging insects.

That was always going to happen to him, Koda said. One way or another.

Hasegawa said nothing.

Doesn’t make you feel any better about it though.

No, it doesn’t.

Koda hunkered down beside the corpse. He picked up one of the rocks and hefted it like an evil-day compiler confirming a supposition. He replaced it as it had been.

Hasegawa thought that a flask of the local rice wine might improve their mood even if they had to drink it on the veranda.

He poured for Koda and drank his own cup then refilled it and placed it on the table then refilled Koda’s cup too. Both men looked at their cups then picked them up and drank. Hard way to die, Hasegawa said.

Koda sat across from him and said nothing. A squad of drovers had also been denied admission, and they sat at the far end of the veranda sharing a double-flask. The inn’s public room was deserted. Most of the loose tables had been fitted together into a single row down the centre, as if anticipating the advent of banqueters.

So I guess you don’t think about dying like that?

I don’t care about it much, Viper Koda said.

You mean you don’t want to talk about it?

I mean I don’t care about it.

So what do you care about?

Where those bullies are tonight.

I guess we could ask the innkeeper.

I intend to, Koda said.

Hasegawa poured their cups full and they both drank. You don’t ever think about how here you are in the midst of the facts of the world, all of it in its wonder and beauty, and then a rock’s placed on you and you feel it, and then another one and you feel its weight too, and then another one and another one, and then you’re here less, and then you’re here even less, and then you aren’t here at all.

No, Koda said.

I think about things like that, said Hasegawa. About how that gap, that crossing-point, can never be rectified in any way.

Koda looked at him sullenly. I guess yours is chatty wine.

I guess we’re drinking out of the same pot.

Koda said nothing. His anger was like a small vicious animal he was feeding.

Just that I think about things like that, what it’s like…

The innkeeper brought out two bowls of mountain gruel. Koda stared at the portion placed before him as if it were an obstacle to be surmounted.

It’s not like anything, Koda said. Just instant after instant after instant. Each complete in itself. Death’s what people who are afraid call their fear. Something you can use. Like an
implement
, a handle. It’s what scares some fool of a sword-swinger into attacking with his feet placed wrong. Coming in too soon or too high. Follow-through all tangled up in panic.

Hasegawa finished his bowl and set it aside. Koda hadn’t even touched his. Hasegawa drank another cup of wine then poured it full again, but his friend had stopped drinking too. You can’t say it didn’t matter to him, said Hasegawa. Feeling each rock added on.

Of course it mattered. But there’s nothing there. Just a breath that doesn’t finish itself.

Hasegawa drank again then refilled his cup. Most people can’t live that way.

Koda looked down at his full bowl. Most people don’t live much of any way at all.

So then what were you wondering about down there?

Koda shoved his bowl away. How long they waited between rocks.

The innkeeper made it as far as the road but lost his footing and went down hard. He lay there screeching.

Viper Koda landed on him with a slash knife. I asked you to tell me something. You didn’t do it.

I don’t know where they are, the innkeeper cried.

They coming back?

Maybe. I don’t know…

If I cut your neck it help you remember?

Usually they’ll be around for some part of the evening.

Why don’t you send somebody to find them? Why don’t you tell them their presence is required?

I don’t want to be involved in this, said the innkeeper.

You are involved. You got involved on the day you were born.

The bullies knew what it was, but they thought they could handle it. It was six against two. They spread out and came in at odd angles, but Koda the Viper caught the first one and opened him across the midsection with his too-long sword.

The man gasped and dropped to his knees, blood-slobber sliding out between his hands as he tried to catch the slimy loops of intestines that came slithering out over his wrists and down onto his thighs. The man beside him sat down with his head in his lap, his mouth gaped open and blood bubbling up out of his neck-stump.

Hasegawa had blocked any chance for escape, and the four remaining bullies threw down their swords and pled for peace.

Hasegawa and Koda made the innkeeper come too.

They had a couple of hand lanterns to see by, and the bullies were required to use their swords and knives to dig a hole for the feral boy. Once they had it deep enough, they pulled apart the rock cairn then placed his body in the grave.

I want it filled with dirt, Koda said. Then I want those rocks put on it properly.

Afterwards, the two rogue samurai continued up the road in the dark and bivouacked in a grove. They didn’t think the bullies would be coming after them, but the decision not to kill them meant they might.

I didn’t much like him, Koda said, and Hasegawa said, Neither did I.

But it wasn’t right.

No, it wasn’t.

They sat staring in silence at their comfort-fire, then Koda said, We should’ve made that innkeeper forfeit a cask of wine.

We’d have to carry it…

And a horse, too, Old Koda said. Just to get it to wherever we’re going.

U
NDER
B
LOSSOMING
B
OUGHS

O
hasu went upstairs to collect the scarlet underskirts
herself
.

A single wild cherry tree had emerged from the pre-dawn mists shrouding the moorlands, sparsely covered with blossoms and insignificant when compared to the grand cherry trees that grew inside the walls of the pleasure quarters. No one but her seemed even to have noticed the little tree, and Ohasu stood at the railing of the rooftop laundry platform and took comfort in its flowering, for she too often went unnoticed.

A small packet in her robe sleeve contained a gift from her patron. The gel cubes of candied agar-agar were the colour of the spring sea: limpid, glistening, and dusted with honey
crystals
like flecks of sunlight. Ohasu had been a child with neither breasts nor shame-hair when her patron began visiting her. She had wept at first but eventually stopped weeping, and she had learned where to place her fingers and how to use her lips although she was judged too small and too melancholy for an age that celebrated cheerful brightness. Her patron had remained steadfast for the most part, however, indulging himself only
occasionally
with other girls; but the years had passed, his
courting
become feeble, and although Ohasu still tried to encourage him with smutty gossip and loose sashes, sustaining the throb
of love’s urgency was beyond the old fellow now, and most visits ended with him sinking to the bottom of a wine pot.

Ohasu checked the underskirts to make sure they were dry, then selected one of the cubes of agar-agar.

Her patron had watched her copying poems into a pillow book one night and told her that only by seeing into the true heart of a matter could you write about it. He said the great
haikai
poet Bashō himself often said it.

Ohasu had wondered how you could be certain that what you were seeing was really the heart. She pressed the yielding lump of gel against the roof of her mouth and felt it dissolve in a flood of sweetness. What if inside one heart you found another? Smaller, quieter, even more frightened?

There had been a wild cherry tree near her childhood home, and she used to play under it while her mother worked in the fields. She would make twig dolls and wrap them in
mulberry-bark
robes she stained with berry juices. But that world had ended and this one replaced it, and not even the beauty of
seasonal
changes could compensate her for what had been lost.

Ohasu smoothed out the scarlet underskirts they would wear that day then folded them neatly. She popped another candy in her mouth and hurried back downstairs.

H
IS EYES OPENED TO THE GLOW
of a sun not yet risen. The air was dry and cool and still, and he listened for the first stirrings of neighbours then sat up and slid open his white paper doors.

Dew coated the planks of the narrow veranda-corridor. The leaves of the potted camellia were beaded white with it, and Old Master Bashō breathed deeply in the dawn air, his thin chest lifting and falling with the exaggerated effort he
associated
with good health. He lived alone now but still wondered
at times what it would be like to share his cottage with another. His last acolyte had disappointed him by asking to be allowed to apprentice himself to a playwright known for his vivid
imagination
.

The day’s radiance had begun seeping up into low clouds that were strung like peach-coloured banners above the
shogun’s
metropolis. Droplets of water fell back into the communal well, reminding the old poet of the familiar yearning to insert himself into the world and say what could truly be said about it.

Actors stamping and flapping and shouting imprecations. Gaudy costumes. Painted faces. Improbable coincidences
leading
to unlikely resolutions. Better by far to be an old man alone in a hovel, abandoned, gnawing on a fish bone.

He smiled at the hyperbole but also enjoyed the bitterness of it.

So, the sound of the falling water in the well and the sound of rain on the broad, raggedy leaves of the plantain growing at his front gate…

Or the scent of rain arriving in dust. Or the colour of rain shimmering in a hardwood forest. Or the shape of wind-driven rain striding across empty moorlands…

Or of rain lacing the river to the sky. Or pocking sleet
floating
on the surface of an old pond…

Or, rather, how rain in a rooftop collection barrel leaks out onto the roof tiles, the stillness of it understood at the moment of its interruption. Or, better still, the murmur of rain dripping into the tub of scouring ash kept at the scullery door: not what it’s like but what it is…

He turned away, dissatisfied with his inability to resist
endless
elaboration, and sought refuge from himself in the
magnificent
cherry tree blooming in his neighbour’s garden.

One heavily laden branch hung over the back fence, the shell-pink clouds of blossoms glowing in the misty light with
a delicate and preemptive beauty. He studied the unmoving masses of flowers then closed his eyes to see the image more intensely; and as he did so, a temple bell sounded in the
distance
, the long, slow, mournful reverberations like the voice of the Earth itself, reminding him of things he remembered and things he’d forgotten.

T
HE WIFE OF THE TEAHOUSE PROPRIETOR
believed in the virtue of steady accumulation. Those who placed their trust in the possibility of an unanticipated windfall profit were fools in her opinion, although she seldom said as much because her own husband was just such an improvident person, and nothing could be done about it.

Your services have been requested, the wife declared to the three girls kneeling before her. For a picnic outing on the riverbank under blossoming boughs. Merchants. Shogunate officials. And a poet.

The wife knew that pleasure seekers considered Oyuki
indefatigable
and Osome silly but pliable. Little Ohasu had seemed an odd choice, however. Older visitors enjoyed the girl’s
fondness
for linked poetry so probably the presence of the great Bashō explained her inclusion.

If they tell you to dance, sway like willows in a gentle breeze. Let the softness of the season suggest love’s languor. Your time has been purchased, but other arrangements have not been made. Let your sleeves hang long, loosen your bodices. They will wish to feel like superior beings. Ease them into it.

The proprietor’s wife paused to make certain the girls
understood
her instructions.

You are to imply that more is available than might have been thought. Precious secrets, hidden mysteries. You are to suggest
that your natural willingness to conform to the desires of others is impeded by constraints over which you yourselves have no control. You are to assure your guests that only here within the walls of the New Yoshiwara can the deeper hues of the colours of spring be revealed. Is this clear?

No one replied, and the scullery maid waiting in the
doorway
used this silence to announce that morning gruel was ready.

Is there anything about this you don’t understand?

The three girls looked down meekly at their hands, Osome and Oyuki contemplating breakfast, and Ohasu wondering if she would have time to prepare a few stanzas of her own for the day’s linked poem.

O
LD
M
ASTER
B
ASHō DRIBBLED
a splash of water into the well of his inkstone then began rubbing his ink stick on its upper slope, the sour-dark scent of blackness rising into the splendid pink glow of his neighbour’s cherry tree.

He had intended to edit his travel journal from the previous year; but the prose sketches of places visited and the stanzas written in praise of them now seemed lifeless to him, like
objects
draped with cloths so that their shapes remained even as the things themselves became obscured. What he wanted was to make statements about the world that deserved to exist in it. But ideas accumulated, images multiplied, and even as he struggled to cut out unneeded phrases, new ones occurred to him. Better ones. Different ones…

Neighbours began shoving their night shutters into the wooden frame-holders, the swish-crack, swish-crack like the sound of loud counting.

His boy used to complain about it. He said it was too noisy for delicate ears. But the young fool soon would be prancing
about on stage dressed in a woman’s robe and wearing a wig, smirking at shouts of approval from bumpkin samurai and pouting flirtatiously. Delicacy indeed.

Old Bashō bent to his task. He would need a
hokku
head stanza to start today’s poem. The merchants who funded him styled themselves as followers of the way of
haikai
linked poetry, although for them it was just an amusing pastime. He had the last half of an idea –
Nothing you own is yours
– but no good
image
to introduce it; and as he pondered various options, the first tentative squawks of a bean-curd vendor’s horn sounded in the distance, lonely as a heron’s cry and reminding him of his own irrelevance.

B
LOOD-RED SOUL BANNERS HUNG
in a swollen mass under the eaves of the shrine for the unborn, the newer ones still bright with pain.

Osome went on ahead to the baths, but Ohasu waited with Oyuki as she bowed in the sanctuary and clapped twice to call her losses to her. On this day too I ask for your forgiveness.

Ohasu never became pregnant. She didn’t know why and she didn’t know whether she should feel relief or regret, but
suspected
that one day it would be the latter.

You who never were will never cease to be for me. Oyuki’s face was shadowed by the tumourous red bundle suspended above her. Although supplications inked onto the newer strips were still legible, none of the soul banners carried a name. The unborn were like bits of foam floating anonymously as they transited to the yellow springs of hell. On your behalf I call for the relief of the pure promise of the Lotus Sutra. And also in the name of the Jizō Bodhisattva, I request it for you.

Oyuki had been betrayed by a lover she trusted. He was the son of a rich trader and famous in the pleasure quarters for wearing robes and sashes secretly lined with exotic silks. The insides of his sleeves might show a pale apricot when folded back, a dark cinnabar, a rufous gold, or even the luscious gleam of ripe pomegranate seeds. Oyuki had given this Second Genji whatever he asked for – her money, her love, the best of the gifts she received – and he had pledged to redeem her contract one day and set her up in a cottage near his family mansion. But his father had betrothed him to the only child of a soy-brewing magnate from the west; and although the lovers had soaked their sleeves with weeping, Oyuki was left alone in Edo while her heart’s desire trudged off to assume his bride’s name, her father’s fortune, and the duties of family progenitor.

Except Oyuki hadn’t been left quite alone enough, and the abortifacient she took made her sick for weeks.

If the Second Genji had felt oppressed by his new
responsibilities
as adopted heir, he soon discovered the solace that could be obtained in the pleasure quarters of Kyoto. Carnal
novelties
filled his nights and days. Endurance matched invention; observers became participants; and outrageous tales of
concupiscent
glory reached Edo eventually, so that for Oyuki, the memory of the taste of his love on her lips became like that of bitter radish.

It’s not much, said Oyuki as the two young women continued down to the baths. To offer such prayers.

Perhaps not, said Ohasu. But they hear you.

Empty words, said Oyuki.

Perhaps. But there’s comfort in them.

C
HERRY PETALS FILTERED DOWN
like flickering chips of pink light.

Lovely, yes, Oyuki said. She inserted the bridge then twisted the middle tuning peg of her samisen, the plucked note rising as the silk string tautened. But they won’t last the night.

No. Ohasu gazed out at the spring river thudding past, the heavy flow reaching the grassy edge of the riverbank. It’s the end of the season.

Talk that Old Master Bashō’s followers wanted him to take on a housekeeper had reached the ears of the proprietor’s wife, and she had spoken with Ohasu as the girls awaited their
palanquins
.