The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) (7 page)

Shichisaburo picked up an abacus from the tumble of objects on the shelf next to him. In the silence he clicked off beads with his chubby index finger, as though he could quantify tragedy. As though he could add and subtract the betrayals and deaths and sorrow and arrive at an answer for it all.

“You must have heard that your father’s younger brother has been sent to Hiroshima to live with his cousin there.”

“Yes.” Cat also knew the implications. After a year the
shMgun
finally made his decision to strike the AkM-Asano name from the list of
daimyM. A
vendetta would no longer imperil Lord Asano’s younger brother’s future, since he could not assume the title in any case. But in the five months since then, Oishi and the former AkM retainers had done nothing to redeem their dead master’s honor.

Shichisaburo debated telling Cat the latest rumor. She might have heard it already, and if she hadn’t, it would only make her more unhappy. Still, it was a most succulent morsel of gossip. Shichisaburo relished gossip more than sex, and he relished sex a great deal. His enthusiasm for sex, especially sex with forbidden partners, had put him in Cat’s debt, which was why she could come here for his help.

“Have you heard about Oishi’s divorce?” he asked finally.

“No!”

“Rumor says he divorced his wife, abandoned his children, and is enjoying a heroic debauch in KyMto. They say he hasn’t been sober or had his sword out of a woman’s scabbard since your uncle was sentenced to life in Hiroshima last summer.”

“I don’t believe it.” Cat was stunned. No one had dared tell her this. Surely there was some mistake. Oishi loved his wife and treasured his children.

“Perhaps the stories are only lies.” Shichisaburo was sorry he had brought it up.

“Shichi-san, I need your help.”

“Ah, child, how can I help you? The government calls me a riverbed-beggar and confines me to this shabby quarter.” But Shichisaburo was only stalling. He owed Cat a debt, and he knew she was here to collect on it.

“How is our friend?” Shichisaburo figured he might as well get the subject of Plover out in the open.

Cat had pretended to accept Shichisaburo as her guest at the Perfumed Lotus so he could sneak in to see his real, if temporary, love, Plover. Part of Plover’s allure was that a certain highly placed official was infatuated with her, too. He was very powerful and very possessive, which made the ruse necessary and the affair piquantly dangerous.

“She has not been feeling well lately.”

“Affairs have kept me busy. But I must go see her soon.”

If Shichisaburo had a fault, it was self-indulgence. He didn’t mention that an illicit exchange of love letters with one of the attendants of the
shMgun’s
wife was what had distracted him. Shichisaburo was straying closer to the mouth of the tiger’s den.

“Just how did you slip past Centipede?” The improbability of Cat’s escape finally occurred to him.

“Someone’s straw raincoat caught fire and caused a diversion.”

Shichisaburo smiled wickedly and quoted the poet Basho. “ ‘How does the firefly see the path ahead, when it’s his own ass that’s alight?’ “ He added tea to Cat’s cup. “Who caught fire?”

“Kira’s cousin, the
metsuke.”

Shichisaburo whooped with glee and spewed tea all over the
tatami.
He mopped at it with a paper handkerchief. “Kira’s cousin! The one who bites off women’s nipples?”

“Yes.”

“Kira will perfume his underwear when he hears his cousin’s been grilled like a sweet potato. He’s terrified that Oishi will come after his head, you know. Rumors say he hasn’t been able to satisfy his wife or his mistress or his new boyfriend since the . . .” Shichisaburo hesitated. “Unfortunate incident. His bodyguards follow him into the privy and check the hole before he squats.”

“Shichi-san, I must get to KyMto.” Cat had no more time for socializing.

“You’re planning to travel the TMkaidM alone?”

“Yes. I need a disguise. I need papers to take me past the barriers.”

“Not easy.” Shichisaburo guessed that Cat intended to find her father’s councilor, Oishi Kuranosuke. This could mean big trouble indeed. Very exciting. Helping her with this would definitely wipe out his debt to her.

Shichisaburo studied Cat’s pale, lovely face. Now that she was a fugitive and a danger, her beauty started a sensual throbbing in his loins.

“I haven’t time for that, Shichi-san.” Cat knew him well.

Shichisaburo sighed. Lady Asano’s small ears were as perfectly shaped as the winkle shells on Suruga Beach. Even without rouge her full lips were red as a persimmon bud. High on her smooth forehead, her hairline formed a lovely inverted peak, like the silhouette of the sacred mountain, Fuji. And her toes, ah, her toes.

It was said that beauty and luck rarely went together. If that was so, Lady Asano would have no luck at all.

No, this wouldn’t be easy. Shichisaburo got up suddenly and began rummaging through the costumes in the big chest nearby.

“So, let’s see what we can find in our beggar’s bag, for a stray Cat.”

ENDURANCE AND NO DEFECTS

With her heavy, striped paper travel cloak pulled over her, Cat lay curled up behind the stone dais in the small chapel to Kannon-sama, the goddess of mercy. The chapel stood among the trees of Sengakuji, Spring Hill Temple, less than a
ri
from Shinagawa, the first of the government’s fifty-three post stations on the TMkaidM Road.

Cat’s short sleep had been harried by sinister dreams. Not until the black sky above the growth of ancient pines began to fade did her mouth stop twitching, her face become serene. Cat’s dreams had taken her home.

Others might have thought that Lord Asano was overly concerned with his account books, but he had always been generous to Cat and her mother. The garden at their modest mansion had been his greatest joy. Cat’s happiest times had been there.

Now she dreamed she was standing in a flurry of fragrant white cherry blossoms at the edge of the biggest pond. When her shadow fell across the water, hundreds of carp swarmed to meet her. The sun glinted on their golden scales.

Cat knelt on a silken cushion and tossed crushed acorns into the turbulence. She dipped her fingers in the water to feel the nibbling of the fish’s hard mouths and to hear the chuffing sounds they made. But the cherry blossoms turned to snow and piled up around her. An icy wind began to blow. Cat tried to pull her thin spring robes closer around her, but they shredded under her fingers and fell away.

She heard loud voices and the heavy tread of men’s feet in the quiet corridors. She turned to see that the paper panes of the door panels beyond the garden veranda were ripped. Their torn edges flapped in the sudden wind. Tall weeds had sprouted among the flat gray stones of the pathways.

As Cat slept, she drew her knees up tighter and jerked in a spasm of terror. She tried to scream but could only whimper.  She awoke with a start and lay there, orienting herself and remembering.

She remembered the stifled sobbing in distant rooms, as the servants hurried to empty the storehouse and pack the household goods. The
shMgun
had granted them only a day to leave the house that had been Cat’s home since birth. By the time Cat’s father committed
seppuku,
in a distant garden, the house had been turned over to government agents.

Forgive me, Father. I wanted to bid you good-bye.

Cat hadn’t been allowed to watch him carry out the
shMgun’s
sentence, but she knew the ritual well. He had dressed in the white robes of death that every
samurai
kept ready. He had knelt under the cherry tree with blossoms blowing around him. A trusted swordsman, blade poised, stood behind him. He had pulled his arms out of the wide sleeves and tucked them under his knees so he would fall forward instead of sprawling in an undignified way. He had reached for the dagger on its tall, ceremonial tray and held its paper-wrapped hilt steadily in both hands, the blade turned toward himself.

Cat couldn’t see what followed, though. Even if she had been present, the act would have happened too swiftly for the eye to see. The sword descended in a flash of light. Cat could only picture her father’s head hanging from the piece of skin the swordsman left so it wouldn’t bounce away. To keep from crying out, Cat bit down hard on the heel of her thumb.

Everything that happens in life is reward or punishment for what we have done. Only the ignorant resent their fate.
Cat’s mother had said it often. It had been her soft admonition throughout Cat’s rebellious childhood. But Cat did resent the cruelties of fate. That was why she hadn’t become a nun as her mother had. She could not sit in a small room copying
sutras
for the rest of her life. A hunger for revenge was gnawing at her soul. Religious piety wouldn’t satisfy it.

Still shivering with the cold, she stood stiffly. In the cramped space she tried to brush out the wrinkles in the baggy hempen trousers of her priest’s costume. She straightened the tattered, belted overcoat whose frayed lower edge reached just below her knees. The pale hem of the short priest’s robe showed below it. Then she walked around in front of the statue.

She put her palms together, fingers pointed heavenward, and draped Shichisaburo’s rosary over them, holding it in place with her thumbs. She bowed her head and asked the goddess, Kannon-sama, to bless her. The statue was ancient, carved from a camphor log in some forgotten time by some forgotten hand. The gilt paint that had covered it had mostly worn away.

This particular image of the thousand-armed goddess had only four hands. Two were folded in prayer. One was raised toward heaven. The fourth held a lotus blossom. Kannon-sama’s lovely face looked no older than Cat’s own. She smiled down so serenely that Cat almost smiled in return.

Cat looked out from under the dripping eaves of the small chapel. A gray veil of mist twined through the grounds of Spring Hill Temple, as though the old stone monuments themselves were dissolving. Jewels of dew covered the dark green moss on the crowds of monuments and statues and the tall stone lanterns.

The sky was as gray as the mist and the breasts of the pigeons flying about the wide eaves of the main temple building. The dawn bell began ringing. Night was opening. Cat had overslept.

She took deep breaths to push back a momentary panic. This was where her father was buried. The police and Lord Kira’s men would certainly search here for her. She had to hurry.

Close to Cat’s shelter was the stone marker of her father’s grave. His last poem had been incised into it. Cat had memorized it, but through her tears she read it anyway.

Far more fragile than

Tender blooms, so soon scattered

By the fresh spring winds,

Must I now bid you farewell

And leave gentle spring behind?

Oishi Kuranosuke had made arrangements for erecting this monument to his lord. He had contributed the funds to assure that the priests here performed the rituals for Lord Asano’s soul at the proper intervals. The grave was covered with fresh cedar boughs, a fragrant expression of grief. Someone had set out offerings of persimmons and rice. Cat could see the stubs of hundreds of joss sticks burned in her father’s memory.

The temple bell continued tolling, its booming notes following one on the other like waves against a rocky shore. With a heart so full of grief that Cat feared it would break, she picked up the bamboo ladle lying on the stone basin. She filled it and rinsed her mouth to purify it. Then she poured more water over her hands and over the grave. She put her palms together and rubbed the beads of the rosary as she bowed her head and chanted a scripture for the repose of her father’s soul.

In front of the statue of Kannon-sama lay a heap of wooden strips. Mourners had painted on them the names of dead loved ones. Cat had none for her father, but at least she could leave something.

She took out the paper-wrapped coins from the dead guest’s purse and the blue scarf with its coiled hank of her shorn hair. This was the last money she could give her mother. Cat didn’t expect to live to see her again.

She looked for a place to hide them and decided on the squat brass censer with its lid perforated in a design of autumn grasses. Cat recognized the urn. It had sat for years in the ornate altar cupboard in the main reception room of the inner apartments of her father’s mansion. Oishi had said it belonged to him so that Lord Asano’s wife would allow it to stay at the grave.

When Cat emptied the ashes and blew out the residue, their aroma reminded her so strongly of home that she became disoriented for an instant. The incense was called Smoke of Fuji, a blend of camphor and sandalwood and secret ingredients mixed by the master, Wakayama. The subtle, magical smell had pervaded everything belonging to Cat’s mother. It had permeated her clothing and the
tatami
and bedding and screens of the inner chambers where she spent her days.

As Cat breathed in the lingering traces of Smoke of Fuji, she breathed in her mother’s essence. She heard her soft voice, her laughter, like delicate wind chimes in another room. Cat longed to see her. Just a glimpse, a word. She could bear any danger then and any hardship. She could bear even the loneliness.

As she was laying the scarf and the coins inside the censer, a clamor of bells and voices and small hand drums sent the pigeons flapping in all directions. Out of sight in the courtyard behind the temple the monks were kneeling in a line on square mats. They had begun their morning devotions. The time had come to start for Shinagawa, and the barrier set up to regulate travel.

Cat reached into Kannon-sama’s chapel, picked up the flat brass bell lying there, and slipped the hemp cord over her head so the bell hung at her chest. Next, she pulled out a tall, bulbous cylinder of a basket with a section of latticework woven in. She settled the inner frame onto her head, tied the cords, and adjusted the hat so she could see through the open weave. Her face was unrecognizable behind it. The basket made her look taller than she was.

Dressing Cat as a
komuso,
a priest of “empty nothing,” was Shichisaburo’s solution to the problem of a disguise.
Komuso
were mendicants, often former
samurai,
who traveled alone. At times they engaged in sorcery and exorcism. The fact that people expected them to behave strangely might cover the mistakes Cat was sure to make on the road.

Shichisaburo had ransacked his theater’s costumes and props and had been rather proud of the result. Cat’s cropped hair was pulled into a shaggy horsetail near the top of her head. Even belted, the short white hemp robe and black coat were so big and shabby that they disguised Cat’s body. The bottoms of the rough, straw-colored trousers bloused out at the knees, below which they were gathered into black canvas gaiters and black
tabi
that buttoned up the back. The
tabi
socks hid her aristocratic feet and cushioned them from the chafing of the ties of her straw sandals.

Best of all was the six-foot-tall bamboo walking staff that had been a prop from one of Shichisaburo’s plays. It contained the slender oak shaft for a halberd, a
naginata.
Holes had been bored through the solid joints of the bamboo. The rigid partitions at the joints held a
naginata
shaft in the bamboo’s hollow center and kept it from rattling around. A wooden stopper fit tightly into the opening at the top. Fastened over it was a cap of ornate iron filigree in the shape of a paulownia leaf. Three iron rings hung from each side loop.

Housed in a leather sheath, then swaddled in cloth, was the long, gracefully curved blade that attached to the
naginata
shaft. The government forbade the use of metal in stage swords, but Shichisaburo’s troupe had skirted the law by rationalizing that a
naginata
wasn’t a sword.

Cat would have preferred to carry a weapon she didn’t have to stop to assemble, but this was far better than nothing. The
naginata
was unadorned, but solid. Musashi would have approved of it. He wrote that just as a horse must have endurance and no defects, so it was with weapons.

The
naginata
was the weapon of choice of women of the
samurai
class. Several of them had hung over the front doorway of Cat’s mother’s house. In these times of peace neither Cat nor her mother would have been required to defend the mansion against invaders, but the
naginatas
hung there anyway. They were symbols of the days when the women of a
samurai
household were a castle’s last defense.

Shichisaburo also had given Cat a priest’s wicker backpack with the bamboo framework extending below the bottom to form feet. Usually such packs were filled with religious articles, but Shichisaburo had ransacked the actors’ dressing rooms for useful items and stray food that hadn’t been nibbled by cockroaches.

Cat’s pack contained the
naginata
blade, spare straw sandals, a rain cloak of paper soaked in persimmon juice, an extra coat made of heavy paper, and a well-worn pair of
tabi.
Packed on top of the clothes was a dried bonito wrapped in oiled paper, a comb in a charm bag, a peck of uncooked hulled rice, and most important, a packet of powder that Shichisaburo had assured her would discourage fleas.