The Plum Rains and Other Stories (5 page)

Make yourself agreeable, the wife had told her. Show them how well you can obey.

Disposing of Ohasu while recovering the cost of her
contract
would be viewed as a double blessing by the teahouse, for undesired pleasure providers soon became a burden.

Speak in a mild voice, the wife had said. Don’t interrupt the gentlemen when they are composing their poems, and don’t
offer
any ideas of your own. But do try to find out who will make the final decision.

Oyuki flipped her sleeves back then began adjusting the top and bottom pegs, sending those tones too soaring upwards into the pink light of the cherry blossoms above them. Osome must be lost, she said, and Ohasu nodded but said nothing.

She would not disturb the Old Master in any way. She would rise early and do her chores quickly and quietly. She would clean and cook and serve food arranged beautifully on decorative platters; and when other poets visited, she would tuck herself away in a corner and listen as they discussed literary matters. Probably they wouldn’t even notice her. But if someone did ask her opinion about an image or a phrase, she would reply
modestly but forthrightly, and they would realise that she was a person of substance.

Oyuki loosened her bodice as the merchants began
arriving
then shoved the neckband of her robe back away from her nape. Make them want it, she said, and plucked out the opening bars of a popular old remorse ballad, embellishing the arpeggios shamelessly, her skirt flap parting open as she swayed from side to side, revealing the inner slope of a white thigh.

Their guests were ruddy, well-fed men, each secure in the magnitude of his own accomplishments. The merchants’ robes were muted shades of beige and lavender, taupe and pale grey, as required by sumptuary regulations; but cunningly wrought ivory baubles dangled from silk cords on their sash pouches: a grinning skull, a rat on a rice bale, a sleeping cat, a sack of coins, a snake tied in a knot, and a rare hinged one of a pair of baboons squat-fucking, the realistic action of which was much admired by connoisseurs, who detected in the intricacy of its design and the audacity of its mechanism the epitome of the style of the Edo townsman.

The merchants had sent servants at dawn to encircle the area around one of the larger cherry trees with red-and-
white-striped
barrier curtains. All down the length of the riverbank other parties had done the same. Red felt ground-mats covered the grass, casks of rice wine stood against the trunks of every cherry tree, and black lacquer stacked-boxes of seasonal
delicacies
dominated the centre of each picnic site, along with tray tables arranged for the convenience of pleasure seekers.

At last! Osome pushed her way through the barrier curtains, her plump cheeks rosy. I couldn’t find a good bush! she cried breathlessly. Then I got lost coming back!

Osome waved a flowering branch of cherry blossoms like a dancer in the new-style kabuki theatre. And all these cherry trees look alike!

Oyuki whacked her samisen as if punctuating a dramatic entry, and Osome cocked her hip in a saucy pose then began singing, ‘Oh, come and look! What won’t you see?’ in a sweet if reedy voice.

Start again, said Oyuki, struggling with the unfamiliar melody; but Osome continued with, ‘
Rice
crackers,
salmon
crackers and…’ and I forget the rest of it.

She flopped down beside her companions, jarring apart the elaborate brocade mass of her front-tied sash knot. Next time I’ll just piss in those reeds down there, Osome said, smirking at her own foolishness.

The grassy scent of rice wine greeted Ohasu as she began filling the long-handled pourers. People thought she seemed older because she was so thin. But she would let it be known that she rarely became ill and still had all her teeth. And that because she was small, she wouldn’t take up much space.

A scattering of cherry petals spangled the lid of the wine cask, the pale pink flakes lovely against the reddish-brown
lacquer
surface. Ohasu was careful not to disturb them as she
replaced
the lid.

Osome came over to help, her collapsing sash knot clutched up against her midriff. Which one’s your poet? she whispered, then slipped in behind the tree to reconfigure herself.

He’s not here yet, Ohasu said.

And these are the ones who will decide it?

Perhaps some of them.

And you’ll go if requested?

It’s a matter of the price for my contract…

Of course. But if you do go, then you’ll have lots of
opportunities
to practice your poetry. Osome struggled with the stiff, new oversized knot, jerking it tighter then backing it off slightly. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Yes.

P
ETAL FALL CONTINUED STEADILY
throughout the afternoon. Every cherry tree on the riverbank had its crowd of revellers regretting the passing of the year’s most precious season, and consoling themselves with music and laughter, dancing and wine. The rising wind riffled the surface of the river, blew up dust on the cart tracks, and sent latecomers scurrying through pink swirls of cherry petals as they searched for an open space where they too could celebrate what was so poignantly ending.

Old Master Bashō accepted wine when it was offered but didn’t seem to mind when the pourers were commandeered by others. Osome heaped a dish with fish salad for him, and he smiled at the excess and declared he couldn’t finish even half that amount. Ohasu interceded. She selected a few of the
choicest
titbits and arranged them nicely for him.

Bashō sat by himself at the edge of the red felt ground-mat. He replied politely to queries about his well-being and
commented
on issues of local concern but volunteered nothing about himself and asked no questions about others. Ohasu watched him covertly. She thought he seemed exactly as he should be: subtle and self-assured.

You don’t need to control the source of supply, a provisioner to the shogunate claimed loudly, the wine making him
boisterous
, but you do need to control distribution. He held out his cup and Ohasu refilled it. Manage your carters, said the provisioner, watching Oyuki as she worked out the complexities of the rice crackers song. And your dockers too. Keep them sweet.

‘What
won’t
you see…’ Oyuki picked tentatively at the opening phrases, mistiming the tricky up-pluck syncopation. ‘Lips and … and
tongue
…’ She tried it again. ‘A husband’s lies
and a something something and lips and … lips and …
tongue
…’ I just can’t get that part!

You’re too tentative, Ohasu said, starting around with the wine pourers again. Just jump at it.

Jump at it?

You have to make it bigger. Up quick then down hard.

Are you talking about me? asked a cotton merchant, his face flushed pink and his smile loose and easy.

Or you could cheat and finger-pluck it with your left hand, said Osome; but Ohasu said no, the next stroke still had to be timed properly. Up big then down. Ohasu chopped the beat with her free hand as if wielding a plectrum herself, and the cotton merchant tried his joke again. So, it’s a thing that goes up and gets hard then comes back down again? Whatever can it be?

Oyuki stroked out the first notes of a love song and sang, ‘Some men yearn to discover a shy beauty waiting under the blossoms…’ Then she released the tension in her centre string so the tone wilted in comic deflation. ‘And some to find her shame-place pink and slimy as the gill slits of a sea bass…’

What! shrieked Osome, and Ohasu laughed too. That’s smutty! she cried, glad that Old Master Bashō seemed not to have heard it.

You’re too much for me, said the cotton merchant, glancing around for allies. For all of us, the provisioner concluded
approvingly
. Girls swollen with the juices of spring.

Osome snapped off the tip of a blossoming branch then dropped to her knees beside the cotton merchant, wrenching her sash knot open and releasing it in a sudden surge of
brocade
that spilled down onto the man’s lap. ‘Oh, come and look, what won’t you see!’ Osome inserted the spray of pink flowers in his topknot. Who can be moderate under the blossoms? She twisted sideways then leaned against the cotton merchant to
reconstruct her sash knot again, emitting little grunts of
consternation
at the effort required.

‘Orange and
pink
on the…’ No, it’s, ‘orange
and
pink on the … this
and
this!’ Oyuki hit the up-twang perfectly. She began it again, but no one seemed to be listening so she retuned her samisen and began strumming out the lugubrious opening bars of
Green Willows Pink Blossoms
, holding each note cluster
solemnly
before sliding on to the next.

‘Spring rain sad in the dripping green of the willows,’ Ohasu sang; and Oyuki joined in at, ‘Wetting my sleeves and the hems of my skirts, wetting the path as I walk on my weeping way;’ then Osome came in as they sang, ‘Sad spring rain in the lonely sadness of the willows,’ their plaited voices rising sweetly
plaintive
within the flickering pink lattices of falling cherry petals, while the merchants sprawled on their red felt mats discussed forward contracts and funding strategies as they sipped from their elegant wine cups, and the old poet on his own seemed aware of everything and nothing.

T
HE MERCHANTS CARRIED
O
SOME
off to see the evening cherry blossoms illuminated by bonfires suspended in iron baskets, but Old Master Bashō stayed behind at the picnic site. Ohasu poured for him. Despite the wife’s advice, she had prepared a few ideas on the chance that she might be invited to participate in the merchants’ linked poem that day; but they had tossed out stanza after stanza with the casual ease of boys flipping pebbles into a cistern, and the poem was quickly completed.

It seemed too easy, Ohasu said.

It was what they wanted. Old Master Bashō had made
suggestions
for improvements here and there, and he reworded a
few awkward phrases, but the finished poem had met the
aesthetic
requirements of the fee payers.

Ohasu sat so as not to block his view of the river. Didn’t you hope for more?

The Old Master held out his cup and she poured for him. Does it matter?

Just that the blossoms will be mostly gone by tomorrow…

He drank again and thrust out his cup. That too is
something
over which I have no influence.

The rest of their party returned subdued. There’s a baby, Osome said.

A baby?

Floating in the shallows.

Ohasu and Oyuki followed Osome back to an inlet filled with rubbish and river foam. Servants at a nearby party had
already
waded out to retrieve the little corpse. It lay on the grassy bank, its umbilical cord still attached and the dead grey flesh spangled with cherry petals.

Osome clutched the front of her robe closed. It was a girl.

Yes.

Someone went to inform the abbot of a nearby Pure Land temple, and the others who were there soon began drifting off. Osome and Oyuki returned to the merchants’ party, but Ohasu remained, kneeling beside the tiny body, the two of them wound within the blowing swirls of falling cherry blossoms as the
evening
wind continued to strip the trees.

The Old Master came up behind her, his carry sack hooked over one shoulder. You couldn’t leave her here alone.

No.

She wouldn’t know.

I’d know.

Bashō told her he had waited all year for this day,
determined
to say what he truly felt about it. But all that had occurred
to him were things remembered, phrases borrowed, images salvaged from previous failures. So his page remained blank. Perhaps it was better that way.

You don’t mean that, Ohasu said.

You’re telling me what I mean?

Ohasu gazed up at him then lowered her eyes. No, she said meekly.

If you love something in the way you describe it, then all you love is words.

Ohasu placed one hand on the baby’s chest. How would you describe her?

Bashō stood for a moment longer then began trudging up towards the embankment road, and Ohasu called after him. They said you might need a housekeeper…

Who said it?

Ohasu looked down at her hands, embarrassed by her
boldness
.

I need no such thing.

I would do what I was told. Then just sit in a corner and learn from what you taught others.

About what?

The art of poetry. So I can write truly about my life.

Who would read it?

My mother.

Then what you want to write is a letter, not a poem.

She’s dead.

He looked back at her. And that’s what you think poetry is?

Because I had no chance to say I forgave her…

Old Master Bashō regarded her silently then said, We all need forgiveness. But he also asked if she understood the
requirements
of the seasons, and Ohasu said she thought she knew most of them.

T
HERE WAS DANCING THAT NIGHT
, but it was the merchants who danced. They threw themselves about wildly, hopping and pivoting and waving their sleeves, executing clever steps and complicated figures, not all of which came off as intended.

Oyuki played the same tunes again and again, always willing to do whatever was asked of her, and Ohasu and Osome tapped on small hand drums and cried
Hoi
!
Hoi
! to encourage the
merchants
in their mad capering.

T
HE
P
ALACE
O
RPHAN

M
ugen Bonze carried a walking staff with a cluster of metal rings fitted at the top as a jingle warning for insects, and he halted when he reached the rogue samurai squatting alone by the roadside. Mugen’s pair of piebald goats stopped too.

Autumn’s the season for mountain rambling, said Mugen Bonze. High skies.

Hasegawa Torakage looked up at him then returned to tending his small comfort-fire.

Lean as a wind-dried mackerel, his robe patched and faded, the rogue samurai could have been mistaken for a common vagabond were it not for his matching pair of swords.

A good season for napping, too, said the bonze, and for reading instructive books.

Hasegawa’s feet and shins were flecked with dried blood, and the skirts of his robe were stained with it.

Mugen Bonze moved his goats over to the lush grass on the road verge opposite. He had a rice straw rope, and he tied the hind leg of one goat to the hind leg of the other. Good for
eating
yam gruel, too, said the bonze, and fried dumplings.

That keep them there? asked the samurai.

It confuses them. Makes them easier to catch.

Samurai without masters were unpredictable, and sensible people avoided them. But Mugen Bonze was on his way back
to his solitary hermitage; and although he had chosen the life of a recluse and wanted no other, he was a garrulous sort who enjoyed contact with his fellows.

You can carve a Buddha-image out of rotten wood, said Mugen whenever questions arose about his sociability. It’s still rotten. But it’s also still a Buddha.

The bonze told Hasegawa that he’d gone to preside at the funeral of a relative and come away in possession of the man’s goats. No one else had wanted them. They’d all just stood there looking at them. He said he hadn’t wanted them either, but the only other solution seemed to be to turn them loose or maybe kill them for food, and he didn’t want that. It wasn’t appropriate for a follower of the Way of Zen to own anything so he
considered
himself a guider of wayward goats. He said the word ‘
wayward
’ described them well, as it did all sentient beings. If the goats were a nuisance at times, there was also a certain amount of pleasure to be gained from their company. Of course they get a little reeky, said the bonze, particularly when wet. But then I guess I get that way too.

Mugen dropped into a squat in the middle of the empty road. The stubble on his head was the same length as the stubble on his cheeks and chin, and his black monk’s robe was even shabbier than the robe worn by the rogue samurai.

Of course, they might become a hindrance on begging rounds. You could be standing there at the gate with your alms bowl held out in this irresistible manner … and then realise your goats were back there in granny’s garden munching on radish tops.

The bonze waited for Hasegawa to laugh or smile or say something then said, On the other hand, they might become a curiosity. He nodded in self-agreement. Hard to predict how a person might feel about a goat.

The road through the barrier mountains led down to the shogun’s capital city of Edo, still several days’ walk away. The mountains were covered with dense conifer forests, and the silence of the autumn morning was broken occasionally by the distant belling of a stag somewhere on the upper slopes. The road had been improved and extended after the civil wars ended in 1601, and the military outposts that had guarded
strategic
passes were replaced by travellers’ inns, public wineshops, teahouses and brothels. Commercial traffic flowed where armies had once rampaged. Craftsmen fashioned arrows but now sold them as souvenirs. There was a certain amount of brigandage still in the remoter areas, and the remains of malefactors
decorated
gibbets at bridge plazas or crossroads and served as a warning to others. Hamlets grew into villages where pleasure providers could be found who wore their sashes knotted loosely in front, offer-makers lured the unwary, easy-way boys followed drunks into shadows, and entertainers sought paying audiences at the sites of famous battles so that the spirits of local warriors who had died in the struggle against the Tokugawa family were obliged to find what comfort they could in plangent ballads,
accompanied
by the rattle of copper coins in collection cups.

Of course, a lot of people don’t even know that we have goats in this country. Probably came from Korea originally, or maybe China. Or Mongolia. He scratched himself. Or some other such place.

Mugen Bonze waited for the morose samurai to say
something
then got tired of waiting and said, I came from a funeral, but you look like the one in mourning.

Hasegawa poked at his fire but said nothing.

The goats had moved off in opposite directions, each
following
his own inclination as to where the grass would be sweetest, and they were soon kicking and hauling at each other so the bonze had to go restore order.

He squatted back down where he’d been. I guess you don’t want to talk about it.

Hasegawa added a stick to his fire. He told him he’d killed some people.

All right.

I mean just recently. This morning.

In a fight?

A fight. He thought about it. An unfair fight.

You said some people?

Five men.

And that was the unfairness? Five against one?

The unfairness was that I knew how to kill them, but they didn’t know how to kill me.

I see, said the bonze. He gazed around at the dense forest that lined both sides of the road. You don’t seem remorseful.

I’m not.

But you aren’t pleased about it either.

Hasegawa poked at his fire, sending up a flurry of sparks. I’d do it again. But I’m sorry I did it. He levered one burning stick up onto another. But I’d kill them again. So I guess that doesn’t make much sense.

The bonze watched him. You hated them that much?

Hasegawa began shoving the unburned ends of sticks onto the centre of his fire. I guess I thought I did.

But now you have doubts?

I guess I knew that doing it wouldn’t make me feel any
better
about things, but I did it anyway.

Because not doing it would have been worse?

Maybe that’s it.

You don’t sound sure.

No. I don’t.

They harmed you?

They killed a woman who was in my care.

I see. So it was a serious matter then.

Yes.

But you aren’t satisfied with your decision.

No. I am.

You don’t seem it.

I guess not.

The bonze nodded to himself, as if squatting on a mountain road with a melancholy assassin was an occupation for which he suspected he might have an affinity. Crow thinks he’s a
cormorant
. Until he gets in the water.

I guess that must just about be the case of it, said Hasegawa. And when Mugen asked why the men had killed the woman, he told him they’d fucked her without permission and were afraid she would tell someone who could do something about it.

Meaning you.

Meaning me.

And this all happened this morning?

Last summer. I just found them this morning. He poked at his fire, cracking it open. They were hard to find.

Because they knew you’d come looking for them?

Hasegawa poked at his fire.

I always heard that samurai kill for pride first.

Some probably do.

But not you?

I guess that’s something else I haven’t quite worked out yet.

The bonze picked out a stick and began arranging his side of the fire, moving things around in a helpful manner before tossing the stick back into the flames.

So now their souls are getting ready for the hovering part, said the bonze. Forty-nine days of shivering with anticipation. Lined up like ants in a food file. Although probably they won’t come back very well. He watched Hasegawa staring into the shifting architecture of his fire. Probably you won’t either.

All right.

All right. The bonze shoved his hand into the front flap of his robe and scratched himself thoughtfully. So, a flea, a
horsefly
, a wasp, something such as that might be about as good as you wrathful types can hope for. You were told the truth of the dharma but you didn’t hear it. Do the right things. Live the right way. Simple enough when you think about it. But even if you’re only a horsefly on the next loop through, you can still be a good one.

A good one?

A horsefly has a horsefly’s virtues, said the bonze.

Probably you’ve never had horses in warm weather. The way they’re tormented by them.

Horseflies are a horse’s fate.

I’d kill every one of them if I could.

Well! Another step down the slippery road to hell.

Hasegawa looked at him then looked away. Probably I’m just missing what I used to have.

Such as?

Things to look forward to.

All right.

People to be with, I guess. Occurrences and events. Or even just something that I can say I chose for myself. The rogue
samurai
sat poking his fire then said, You really believe that about their souls?

All our souls.

All our souls? That it’s a return to the next turn? Each
connected
to the one coming?

Thread has to go where the needle went, said the bonze.

That didn’t answer my question.

I’m not sure you really asked it yet.

The rogue samurai poked at his fire. He said he did not
believe
that there was a place for him other than the one he
occupied
.
He said he awoke to the sun in the morning and went to sleep with the moon at night. He said he’d heard things said. Promises and justifications and warnings. But he’d never found anything he thought more true than the simple assurance that when spring comes, grass grows.

By which I guess you mean you think you can’t change.

I guess that’s just about it.

The bonze watched his goats like a person confirming an hypothesis then turned back to the rogue samurai and his fire. Tell me again why you killed them.

I told you.

Tell me better.

Hasegawa stayed with his fire, adjusting it, scraping it around, the smoke rising up into the dark green shadows of the cedars.

Because she was unacknowledged. An orphan of the palace, unwanted and unprotected. With no hope for a future and no reason even to wish for one. And because I was being paid to take her to a place she didn’t want to go. And then one night I found her in some bushes in a ditch. What she looked like lying there. Slashed and hacked. Her face mostly gone. Bloody gouts of long black hair. Gauze robes shredded like war
banners
shrieking in the wind. Throat cut so deeply her head hung sideways…

So she did mean something to you…

Some evenings we had to bivouac by the roadside. I listened as she told me things. She said she wasn’t asking me to do
anything
differently. She just wanted me to know what I was doing.

To her?

To her.

Hasegawa said the palace orphan told him she had been born into a world that a country samurai could never even imagine. It was a world of unwavering requirements and ancient
precedents
,
a world of women without function, women who waited behind screens in anticipation of moments of formal intensity that they would assess with an antique rigour, demanding the same of others and admitting no deviations. She told him there were combinations of colours that if worn together would result in a humiliation that could never be erased. She said there were notes plucked on a koto that would illicit endless jeers, written words misshaped in such a way that the woman with the brush in her hand would be ostracised, and not even her death could atone for the shamefulness of such ineptitude. She told him that for women like her, redemption lay in the perfection of the art of the way of withholding. Women like her lived in harmony with the dead, and their only necessity was to refine the
expression
of their acceptance of the inevitable.

One night we got caught in a rainstorm and took shelter in an old shrine. I woke up to find her close beside me, raised up on her elbows, her long black hair combed straight back over her shoulders like ink-dark wings. No sneak assassin with a slash knife could have crept up on me like that but she had done it.

He told him how he’d traced the shape of her nose, the curve of her lips, the soft swelling of her cheeks and the hollow under her jaw. The rain was pounding the roof tiles and bits of spray bounced in through gaps on the side walls. He told him that her eyebrows had been removed in the old style of the original court. He said her ears were small and lay flat against her head. Her neck and nape tasted faintly of the salt of her body. Her tongue touched his, invited it, moved with it; and he eased her back and sank down beside her, her vulva moist under his hand. She sighed at the offer of his finger sliding into her and drew one scented sleeve up over her face. The silver-white haze of her night-wrapper lifted away as her legs came apart. Her thighs and belly were damp and warm in the summer darkness. She had found him with her hand and guided him inside her, and
she had asked him to go slowly and feel it with her and not hurry anything, the promise he was building with the woman he had been paid to deliver was being built by her back up to him, seeking him, grasping him as he held her, asking him not to rush the wordless questions he was asking her.