The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) (6 page)

Cat remembered her father’s arrival in the plain palanquin he used for discreet visits to his outside-wife. As always, the house had been cleaned thoroughly. As always, Cat and her mother, with the servants in ranks behind them, had kneeled on the veranda and bowed in welcome. When Lord Asano stepped from the palanquin, Cat had felt the thrill she always did. He was so handsome and so obviously in love with her mother.

The moon viewing had been a quiet affair, with only Lord Asano’s Chief Councilor, Oishi Kuranosuke, and a few close friends. Lord Asano’s official wife came from a powerful family; and though the marriage had been arranged only for political connections, Lady Asano was not happy about her husband’s outside-wife and child.

Lord Asano’s simple, countrified moon parties had been less extravagant than those of the city
daimyM,
but they had been admired nonetheless. The gardeners had built a high mound of pure white sand, a cone as smooth and graceful as Mt. Fuji. Servants served humble food on plain lacquered trays to remind everyone of the vanity of ostentation. Tasteful presents had been exchanged and graceful poetry composed about the loveliness of the moonlight on the sand.

The silvery light of that full moon had made Cat’s mother and father appear as young as teenagers. They had laughed together and snared looks of furtive passion. And Lord Asano had told them of his decision to legally adopt Cat, over his wife’s objections. Cat couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother look so happy. She had been as radiant as the moonlight.

There had been other news, that night. Cat’s father had just learned that he and a young lord from the province of Iyo had been selected to receive the imperial envoy at the
shMgun’s
court. Lord Asano knew he would have to pay for food and drink and entertainment for the envoy, as well as buy silk court costumes for himself and his retainers. The expense would be extravagant, the ritual complex. But the high councilor had assured him that Lord Kira, the
shMgun’s
master of ceremonies, would instruct him.

Lord Kira.
The name had meant nothing to Cat then. Now she could think of little else. She looked across the moonlit waters to the trees on the far shore. Somewhere over there was Lord Kira’s new villa, the one he couldn’t afford.

Kira was a bannerman, one of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s own retainers. The position was prestigious but not well paid. Kira had built this mansion with presents he had demanded from other lords.

He expected much more than the traditional package of dried bonito in exchange for instruction in court etiquette. Cat knew her father was austere and schooled in the old ways. He was quick to anger. Among the free-spending folk of Edo he was said to be frugal to the point of parsimony. He would not spend great amounts of money to obtain what was Kira’s duty to provide. As a result Kira refused to teach him the intricate moves of court ritual.

Cat squeezed her eyes shut to keep from crying. She knew it was useless to resent fate, but she could not stop herself from going over those tragic events again and again. If only her father’s advisers had secretly given Kira the presents he expected. But they hadn’t. If only Lord Asano’s chief councilor, Oishi Kuranosuke, had been in Edo instead of at the family estate in AkM. But he wasn’t.

Instead, the situation deteriorated until Asano couldn’t ignore Kira’s insults any longer. Asano drew his sword in the
shMgun’s
palace and attacked Kira. It was a terrible mistake. The penalty for such an act was death.

Cat could see it all in her mind’s eye as surely as if she had been there. She knew her father’s headstrong nature.

“Stop, Father!” When she said it out loud her own voice startled her. “Please stop.”

Her only reply was the comforting murmur of the river as it flowed past her on its way to the sea.

The story of Lord Asano’s death soon leaked out and became the subject of gossip. The folk of Edo were outraged at the injustice. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi didn’t punish Kira for his part in the feud, but he did make him move out from behind the moat surrounding his palace and grounds.

Lord Uesugi was Kira’s son. He had put his shrewd councilor, Chisaka, in charge of his father’s defense. Chisaka had sent extra warriors to guard Kira’s more vulnerable new mansion, and all of Edo speculated. After all, one could not live under the same sky with the slayer of one’s lord or father. When would Lord Asano’s men, the warriors of AkM, take revenge?

“Are you afraid, Lord Kira, shut away behind your walls?” Cat whispered. She wondered which lights shining among the thick growths of pines marked her enemy’s villa. She stared until the lights and the sound of the river’s current almost sent her into a trance.

She followed Musashi’s advice and imagined herself as Lord Kira. Kira was the burglar whom Musashi wrote about. Everyone thought of the burglar as a fortified enemy. But what did the world look like to the burglar in the house?

The burglar who is shut inside is the pheasant,
Musashi wrote.
He who enters to arrest the burglar is the hawk.

Now you are inside, Kira,
Cat thought.
And I am outside.

A BEGGAR’S BAG

The full moon had almost dropped beyond the edge of the roofless area over the center of the theater, but its spectral light still illuminated the empty hall and the stage at one end. As Cat walked across the hard-packed earth of the pit, her presence seemed to stir the emotions that always hovered there, waiting for a body, a vehicle to inhabit. Cat felt a ripple in the air, a ghostly echo of shouts and music and the lock of wooden clappers signaling scene changes. A cat’s-paw of sound in the stillness.

Cat thought she saw a fan flutter in the deep shadows of the roofed boxes along the theater’s sides. But the boxes were empty, too. The hair stirred on the nape of Cat’s neck as she found the narrow backstage stairs and climbed to the mezzanine floor.

“Shichisaburo-san,” she called softly. Because of one of Nakamura Shichisaburo’s usual peccadillos, the
shMgun
had forbidden him to leave the theater’s premises. Cat had been certain she would find him here.

“Mmmmph!”
A loud, dull thud followed the muffled grunt from the dressing room on the second floor.

Cat backed slowly down the stairs. She picked up a tall candle holder from the row of them at the rear of the stage. The iron spike that usually stuck into the base of the candle suddenly looked menacing. Cat took off her clumsy sandals, and with the long, heavy rod held ready to strike, she prowled back up the stairs.

“Baka!  Fool!”
More thumping and a loud crash. “You board across a ditch! Radish!”

Cat peered into the actor’s dressing room. By the light of the floor lantern she could see a large, sturdy square basket of the type that usually contained corpses. It was rocking back and forth.

“Shichisaburo-san?”

“Get me out of here.”

Cat put down the candle holder and untied the straw cord holding the lid on. Nakamura Shichisaburo was curled inside like a chick in an egg. His wrists were tied with a soft, blue silk cord, knotted artistically and finished off with thick tassels. Cat untied them and helped him out of the basket.

“Did they ask you about me?” Cat took off her hat and towel so Shichisaburo could see her face. “Did they torture you to find out where I am?”

Shichisaburo stared at her as though at a ghost. He looked behind her for the usual escort of Old Jug Face’s servants.

“You’re a pony from a wine gourd, Miss Cat. Your Ladyship. Kinume-san.” Perplexed, Shichisaburo rubbed the faint stubble on the shaved front portion of his head. Was the young beauty Cat the courtesan, or Golden Plum the gentlewoman and illegitimate daughter of the late Lord Asano?

The complex rituals of proper behavior depended on everyone staying in their place. Cat was most definitely displaced. She had thrown the comfortable, predictable rules of etiquette into disarray.

“Why are you wearing that...” Words failed Shichisaburo.

“That.” He waved his fan at Cat’s shabby hempen coat and trousers.

“Lord Kira tried to poison me, so I fled. Didn’t his lackeys tie you up? Haven’t they been here looking for me?”

Shichisaburo clapped his pudgy hands and laughed, delighted that life was presenting him with a drama at least as fine as any he acted on stage.

“That new apprentice, that insignificant wretch of a boy, was teaching me the art of ‘squeezing-out-of-a-basket,’ “ Shichisaburo grumbled.  “But he must have gone off to rumple a mattress with Ichikawa. The two of them have had their minds between their buttocks since they first laid hands on each other.”

Shichisaburo adjusted the front opening of his robe and made a futile effort to tuck stray ends of hair back into his oiled topknot. Then he sat cross-legged and gathered his enormous black silk robe about his thick ankles and square feet. The cleavage of his plump breasts was visible in the diagonal plunge of his neckline. His robe was embroidered with persimmon-colored crayfish swimming upward from the hem among rolling, silver waves sewn in metallic thread.

His thrashing in the basket had tinted his fat cheeks a vivid pink. He was a mild, rotund little man, affable and effete, with bulging, grasshopper eyes. He hardly looked the part of the dashing young lover, the roles that were his specialty.

“We plan to use the trick in the next play.” He nodded at the basket. “As my esteemed colleague Sakata says, ‘The art of an actor is like a beggar’s bag and must contain everything.’ “

“Isn’t he the same one who says an actor should even know how to lift purses?”

“Yes.” Shichisaburo smiled. He poured two cups of tea from the kettle simmering on the brazier. He handed one to Cat and sipped daintily at the other.

“We constantly have to devise ways to entertain the riffraff in the pits.”
And in the galleries, too,
Shichisaburo thought, though he didn’t say it.

As a whole, the
samurai
of Edo were a coarse, swaggering lot. They preferred Ichikawa Danjuro’s less subtle
aragoto
style of acting, the “rough stuff.” But Shichisaburo knew Cat came from a military family, and so, for once, he kept his opinions to himself.

Shichisaburo’s dressing room was cozy. One entire side was lined with low, battered lacquered shelves containing built-in compartments and drawers. Posters advertising past triumphs decorated the sepia-colored rough plaster walls. Costumes were draped over freestanding racks whose lacquered surfaces were chipped. Scattered helter-skelter in the corners were stacks of the latest presents, still in their wrappings, from Shichisaburo’s fans. The small wooden lantern on the
tatami
spilled light around Cat and Shichisaburo and threw shadows over the rest of the room.

Cat was suddenly exhausted. Shichisaburo’s voice sounded hollow and far away. As though he were in another room, talking to someone else. Talking about someone else.

Cat shook herself. Her chest itched under the tightly wrapped
haramaki,
and she longed to scratch it.

“Are you cold, my lady?”

“No. Just tired.”

“I should think so. Tried to kill you, did they?”

“
With
fugu.”

“Forgive my rudeness, Your Ladyship, but perhaps you should have accepted the adoption arranged by your father’s chief councilor. Kira couldn’t threaten you so easily in KyMto.”

“They would have expected me to marry their son.”

Shichisaburo grimaced. The family that had agreed to take Cat in after the scandal was among the wealthiest in the country. The son, however, was reputed to be lacking in physical, social, and intellectual graces.

“At least you would have been safe and well provided for.”

“A woman’s wisdom only reaches the end of her nose.” Cat stared at the floor as she sipped her tea. In spite of the self-deprecation, her silence said much more.

Like Cat, Shichisaburo was adept at conversing in silences. He knew that in this particular pause Cat was remembering all the factors that had gone into her decision to choose life in the Yoshiwara over marriage to a foolish boy. Cat knew that Kira or his son, Lord Uesugi, would certainly send men to spy on her at the House of the Carp, but all of Kira’s spies wouldn’t amount to the surveillance of one mother-in-law. Even though KyMto was closer to AkM, Lord Asano’s fief, Cat thought she would have a better chance of finding someone to help her take revenge than if she’d been shut away in the isolated women’s quarters of a mansion.

And there was her mother. With Oishi far away in AkM, Cat’s mother had had no one to defend her in those terrible days after Lord Asano’s death. She had been stripped of home, privilege, and possessions. Lord Asano’s wife came from a powerful family. Her steward had taken it upon himself to see that his mistress’s rival was ruined completely. Cat’s mother was proud. She said nothing of the unjust treatment. She shaved her head and became a nun.

Now she and Cat’s old nurse lived in a small house of two rooms. Her former servants, themselves out of work, came by to visit and sweep the bare yard, to fill the water jars at the communal well, and to bring vegetables and small gifts. Cat was consumed by the shame of not being able to provide better for her mother. But to attract patrons a courtesan and her apprentices had to dress extravagantly, although the sumptuous clothes brought Cat no joy. And after Old Jug Face and the owner of the Carp took their percentage from her earnings, not much was left.

On top of all the other humiliations Cat had felt the added shame of ingratitude when she’d refused the adoption offer. She remembered Oishi’s visit to the House of the Carp shortly after she had fled there. He had come alone, disguised as a priest to avoid the gossip his presence would cause.

The interview had been a torment. If Oishi had raged at her, if he had ordered her to go to KyMto, she could have become angry in return. She could have set her jaw and stared icily at him, a technique she had perfected as a child in contests of wills with her nurse. But of course he didn’t give her the chance.

In all the years Oishi Kuranosuke had been her
sensei,
her teacher, in the arts of the warrior, she had never seen him lose his temper. She remembered his calm voice, so familiar, as he asked her to consider her family’s honor. He was asking her to fulfill her duty as Lord Asano’s only child and bear sons to pray for his soul for generations to come. Cat’s duty to both her parents, the one who had died and the one who still lived, had been the most difficult part of her decision.

Cat hadn’t been able to look into Oishi’s eyes. With head lowered she had whispered, “I will not.” As evening shadows gathered around them in the House of the Carp’s large, bare reception room, they had sat in silence, both of them trapped by tragic circumstances beyond their control.

Cat had felt another sorrow added to their shared burden of grief. Oishi had always seemed invincible, infallible. He had always been a man who could command any situation. But he had been managing the Asano estate in AkM, a hundred and fifty-five long
ri
southwest of Edo, when the quarrel erupted.

Of course he couldn’t have prevented it himself, but he knew his master’s frugal nature, and he knew what sort of man Kira was. He should have foreseen Kira’s demands and Asano’s refusal. He should have instructed Asano’s advisers to give Kira extravagant presents, behind their master’s back if necessary. But he hadn’t.

Nor could he provide for the woman who had been his lord’s greatest love. He had paid off creditors. He had given as much money as possible to the three hundred and twenty former AkM-Asano retainers and their families, who were now without prospects. He had bribed officials in an attempt to reinstate the family name. All of that had drained away most of the estate’s resources.

Now he could not even assure his master’s daughter’s future. This was the child Lord
Asano loved and had planned to make his heir. This was the child Oishi had taught since she was old enough to clutch a miniature halberd, a
naginata,
in her tiny hands. And she was defying him.

He knew she was silently blaming him, too, not only for allowing her father’s death, but for turning over the family castle in AkM to the
shMgun’s
officials without a fight. He knew she considered him a coward for not taking revenge or at least following his master by committing
seppuku.

His shame had resonated, pulsing imperceptibly like the lantern’s light in the dim room. He had risen and bowed low, just slightly too low for his station. Cat’s tears had blurred his image as he left, but he had looked old. He had looked defeated. Humiliated.

Now, as Cat listened to Shichisaburo, her face burned and her ears rang with fatigue and shame.

“Have you heard any recent news?” Cat’s calm voice gave no hint of what she was feeling. In a graceful, flowing motion she set the small teacup back on its tray.

“Child, I know only what all of Edo knows.”