The Plum Rains and Other Stories (6 page)

The rogue samurai poked at his fire.

She said she and girls like her had been raised among women who sat all their lives in empty rooms and waited for something that they knew would never happen. Younger ones called older women their mothers and were allowed to do so. Sometimes she pretended one of them really was her own mother, and she tried to model herself after the woman she’d selected. But she knew it was foolish. And fraudulent. And she soon learned to hide her feelings, and to force herself to accept not knowing.

And did she ask you to help her?

No.

And did you think of doing it yourself?

I thought of it…

But because she didn’t ask it…

She told me how their mothers were mocked as dreary by those who had displaced them, and their gardens and
reception
chambers and boudoirs had become so unfashionable that even the night visits of violators had dwindled away to
nothing
. Then one day it was announced that a maple tree judged to be the oldest and finest in the palace compound was to be viewed, and the divination of an unfavourable direction on the date selected meant that a circuitous route had to be followed in order to avoid provoking malign influences. The detour would pass directly along the main veranda-corridor in the part of the western chambers allocated to unwanted women. No event could have seemed more auspicious. The sliding doors on the
inside
edge of this corridor were replaced by hanging reed blinds with space left open at the bottom. The women configured their
many-layered court robes in a manner befitting the season, and they practised arranging their sleeve-bundles artfully so that portions of the fabrics might be glimpsed under the blinds. They studied the effects of various combinations, hoping to arrive at a mixture of colours and textures that would stimulate the august curiosity and perhaps lead eventually to an inquiry.

None of them slept well the night before the viewing, so filled were they with yearning. She said all were in place
behind
the reed blinds early, their sleeves positioned as had been agreed. Finally, they could hear the sliding feet of the seneschals on the polished wooden floors and the twanging of bowstrings in the garden as guardsmen saluted what for them could only have been dim shapes moving behind white paper doors. As the procession grew nearer, the women fell silent, their heads down, their hearts pounding. But just as the arrival began to occur, it was remarked by a trailing courtier that the weather was fine that day; and the august attention was awarded to the external side of the veranda-corridor in demonstration of an awareness of the source of the beauty of the afternoon glow. The
procession
passed by. Their display had gone unnoticed.

She told me that after that, the tedium of normal days had returned; and in the weeks and months and years that followed, the women began dying, smothered by the necessity of doing the same thing at the same hour and in the same way, with no possibility for any change ever.

And you were taking her back to that?

Hasegawa said that was what he was being paid to do.

She asked me once if there wasn’t some other way of
managing
things, and when I told her I would do whatever was required to deliver her to her destination, she closed her eyes and never said another word to me. Not even when the men following us found her.

You mean she never called out?

Hasegawa didn’t answer, and the bonze waited until he was sure he had nothing more to say on the subject then got up and went to retrieve his goats. He stood for a moment studying the rogue samurai who seemed to him like a man willing to sit by the edge of the road until the world itself shuddered to its end. Why’d you kill all of them?

Hasegawa poked at his fire.

You have a group like that, and one or two will be the cause of such evil deeds, and one or two will just go along with it. But maybe at least one of them didn’t really deserve to die.

Which one?

Well, I don’t know. No way for me to know.

Me either, said Hasegawa. He looked at him. I guess that’s another thing for me to feel bad about. I already had quite a few.

W
INTER
S
ECLUSION

T
hey were cold, and they were tired; and after reaching the half-way point, they had foundered on:
Night rain at the barrier gate, and along this road walks no one
, an idea that seemed to offer no way out of the gloom they had created for themselves.

Old Master Bashō’s white paper doors still glowed with
reflected
snow light, but the circle of linking poets sat buried in shadows like funerary sentinels. Some moved their lips, considering options or sifting through precedents; some tapped folded fans against the floor mats, checking rhythm against
syllable-count
; and some – deep in thought or chilled into stupefaction – stared blankly at nothing.

Wine?

It’s all gone.

Tea then?

Pot’s cold.

The session scribe offered to read back the half-finished
sequence
from the beginning, but the Old Master said no. If they couldn’t recall their arrival, how could they hope to fashion a departure?

Although they had heard this criticism before, usually in the same or similar terms, the linking poets configured their faces in the manner of thoughtful persons who have just been provided
with unexpected information, delaying, for the moment at least, the burden of the necessity of responding.

Whatever their teacher possessed was provided by them. Rolls of cotton cloth or silk cloth were left on his veranda, and writing paper and ink sticks added to the supply on his alcove shelf. The Old Master would find sacks of rice dumped into his rice bin, pickled vegetables stored in his larder, and packets of tea poured into his tea caddy. Before formal group sessions, a cask of rice wine would appear inside his entryway gate, as would trays of rice cakes topped with strips of pressed fish, and afterwards, a few silver coins would be found tucked away
discreetly
in odd corners.

‘Walks no one,’ a voice intoned, ‘along this road walks…’

‘No one,’ echoed another, but he too could do nothing with the bleak stanza.

Then the only woman in the room, Little Ohasu, swaddled like a bagworm in a winter robe too sombre for her profession and too large for her person, bowed formally, picked up her fan, and, her hand trembling with consternation and the cold,
suggested
a link:

‘A moonless dawn: in the icy clarity of the mountain stream, fingerlings.’

The session scribe leaned forward to observe the woman kneeling demurely at the bottom of the room. Ohasu had never before dared to speak, much less attempted to add a stanza of her own. ‘Along this road walks no one,’ then, ‘a moonless dawn?’ He turned questioningly towards Old Master Bashō. ‘In the icy clarity of the mountain stream,’ the session scribe recited
tentatively
, as if requesting a clarification. ‘Fingerlings,’ wasn’t it? But the old man said nothing, and those around him sat staring straight ahead, their fans lying untouched before them.

Ohasu picked up her fan again. Yes. To extend the
emptiness
of the road at the gate. But then to fill it in, add to it. So no
moon. Because of the rain. And no sun yet either. But the first brightening of the dawn sky means the rain is ending. And with that light you can see enough to have a sense of … of things beginning again. And it’s … like that.

I see, said the session scribe. ‘Fingerlings.’ And there would be a few of them, I suppose. So it moves the tone of the poem from solitude to convergence. A nice change.

Ohasu shot him a quick glance of gratitude then lowered her eyes. But he was no ally; she didn’t have one here.

The silk merchant picked up his fan. Kichiji was a large, well-fed man who had accumulated an immense fortune over the years, and who detected within his talent for shrewd business manoeuvres an overall excellence of perception. It’s as I’ve always said, said the silk merchant. The energising faculty of the engaged imagination generates its own transcendent
experience
. One has been awake all night no doubt, sitting beside a mountain stream and musing on the sadness of the beauty of the nature of things, hearing the changeless change of deep
water
moving deeply, as if welling up from within the mountain’s dark depths…

Kichiji paused, overcome momentarily by the profundity of this explanation. He had paid for the Old Master’s cottage, and he had also bought all its furnishings for him. Kichiji liked
providing
things for those who could appreciate his munificence, and he lifted his elegant fan in celebration of the subtlety of his thought and the generosity of his spirit then let it drop to his knee languidly, much in the way Old Master Bashō himself sometimes did.

The session scribe seemed about to speak so Kichiji pushed forward. And then, he said with certainty, one becomes aware of the far bank of the stream as it emerges from the shadows and brings itself into one’s consciousness, gradually, gradually, like a
butterfly fluttering out of an icy mist as it comes so exquisitely forward…

His voice trailed away again. He smiled to himself and
lowered
his eyes, too moved by his own eloquence to continue.

After a moment Ohasu asked, But how is a stream bank like a butterfly?

It is a metaphor, replied the silk merchant.

Yes. But which for which?

Which for which?

Yes. Is the stream bank a metaphor for a butterfly? Or is the butterfly a metaphor for a stream bank?

Kichiji held himself upright, assembling the full magnitude of his dignity before lifting his fan again. The
image
comes into view
as if
released from the grip of the mountain’s silence. And the trees and the rocks and the water grasses are still only
patches
of darkness even as the surface of the water begins to become visible, gradually, gradually, and then within that icy water, one becomes aware of the ineffable
there
-ness of fish. The silk
merchant
nodded in pleased agreement with himself. And so then thus, as it were, if I may say it, of the melancholy beauty of the burden of being.

I think it’s simpler than that, said the session scribe; and someone else said, So do I.

Old Master Bashō waited, his bald head tilted off to one side like an ancient and imperturbable tortoise. ‘In the icy
clarity
of the mountain water, fingerlings,’ he recited then said: A very good link.

Indeed it is, said Kichiji, always quick to agree with his teacher.

If, for example, the provisional female-member had chosen ‘hatchlings’ instead of ‘fingerlings,’ then the link would have been a failure.

The silk merchant returned Old Master Bashō’s gaze then looked away. Yes, he said. No doubt that’s the case.

No doubt, said the Old Master. The question is why.

Yes. Why. That is indeed a question…

The circle of linking poets sat pondering the distinction between hatchlings and fingerlings or pretending to ponder it, their breaths pluming out whitely in the frigid air like some bizarre form of signalling device.

The Old Master would not force a new link. Nor would he do everything himself, for the method of his art was in the binding together of a group to fashion a poem that no one of them could have managed alone. If you don’t understand why that image is the right choice, he said, then how can you create a stanza that connects to it?

The linking poets sat with their hands stuffed in their sleeves. Hatchlings? one said and glanced around hopefully.

You praise the link but you don’t understand it, said Old Master Bashō. So what is it that you’re praising?

No one answered.

A crow alighted on a pine bough in the garden, knocking loose a glittering fall of ice crystals that dropped from branch to branch in a susurrant cascade and landed with a wet plop on the snow surface below, the sound of it followed by its silence.

Perhaps our little dancing mouse will create the next stanza herself? suggested the silk merchant humorously. Since she seems to understand such things so well.

Such things? said Ohasu.

Slimy things? Kichiji’s people-pointing finger rose
obscenely
erect. Wet slippery things?

But they’re just little fish, someone said; and the silk
merchant
explained that the term could also be used to refer to the generative organ of an adult male, particularly for one of
unusually
modest dimensions. It’s a vulgarity, Kichiji concluded,
apparently
common in the pleasure quarters. He himself wouldn’t know.

Ohasu stared down at her empty hands cupped one inside the other.

Silence settled over the linking poets, all of whom had
decided
to be unaware of the provisional female-member’s
occupation
.

Shall we abandon our poem then? Old Master Bashō said finally. Was it too cold for them to continue? Did they want to go home? Sit by a nice fire? Suck on a jujube?

No one spoke. A scree of snow crystals had begun fanning out from a gap where two of the white paper doors failed to close properly, and the linking poets watched the small wedge grow.

Well, then, said the Old Master, perhaps this is as it must be. He would not save them. The formal winter session would be allowed to end as a failure.

Kichiji the silk merchant took up his fan again. The true path to an understanding of the art of the way of
haikai
linked poetry exists in the ability to perceive the subtlest nuances. He nodded to himself, pleased with this stipulation. It’s not the flower that is precious, said Kichiji, nor the shadow of the flower, nor even the memory of the shadow of the flower, nor, for that matter, the yearning after that remembered shadow. No. Not that one. Nor that other. What must be captured is the
poignancy
of the memory of the yearning. And then, most precious of all, the sense of longing one feels for the loss of the soon-to-fade
remembrance
of that poignant yearning…

A faint wisp of steam still rose from the spout of the kettle, the frail, wavering line breaking apart before reaching the low ceiling.

Ohasu’s hand trembled as she picked up her fan. Because hatchlings are so tiny? Isn’t that the reason? Because the image would be too pathetic?

An appreciation of the pathos of small things, murmured the silk merchant. Based on personal disappointments no doubt.

Old Master Bashō said nothing, but he was watching as the session scribe picked up his fan. I believe the provisional female-member is correct. Hatchlings under a cold, moonless dawn would have been too intense. It would stop the poetic sequence. What is needed is a sense of hope. An affirmation. Her link is successful for that reason.

The Old Master waited for further comments then said, I agree. What could follow an image like ‘hatchlings?’ How could you build from it? But, ‘in the icy clarity of the mountain water, fingerlings,’ is just right. The water is cold but the fingerlings will endure it. So too are the lives of men cold in this cold world, yet we too must endure.

‘Mountain stream,’ said Ohasu, if it’s not improper of me to insist on it; and Old Master Bashō looked at her with
narrowed
eyes, seeing the unwanted daughter, the child sold to the pleasure quarters for a debt, the scrawny girl who would never marry, never become a wife or a mother, her pinched little face pale in the cold air and the rims of her nostrils pink with
inflammation
. Write it that way, he said. And sign it O-ha-su. But in kana. Not the kanji for her name.

T
HE LOW ANGLE OF THE WEAK WINTER
sun gave a slightly beige cast to the naked cherry trees that lined Middle Lane, as if the leafless branches were coated with fine particles of dust.

Ohasu counted the syllables on her fingertips since there was no one to catch her doing it then jotted down:

Evening cherries at full-bloom within the evanescence of dust
…

Next to this she wrote,
under the dust of evanescence
then added,
too delicate to survive the orange glow
.

She studied both phrases then blotted them out. Too silly to survive being laughed at.

Ohasu sat behind the barred widow on the second floor of the assignations teahouse with an extra robe draped around her narrow shoulders. She had decided to end her first attempt at a thirty-six stanza solo sequence with an image of vernal serenity: cherry trees in full bloom at sunset. But now that she had worked her way to the last stanza, the sight of the bare trees on Middle Lane made her uncertain. Wasn’t there an equivalent tranquility in winter? Of course there was in reality, but in poetry? And the blossoms really did get dusty from the feet of strollers. So perhaps because the colour itself would appear drained away, as if exhausted by the need to … to what? Respond to the beauty of the day? The colours wearied by it? Was she really capable of thinking that way?