Since then, all six of them had married Spanish women and gradually assimilated. None of their offspring spoke Japanese, and almost all of the former samurai wore Spanish clothing, albeit of a lowly sort worn by farmers and fishermen. Only one of them made a point of maintaining his original identity, a not unhandsome man from the prefecture of Edo named Akira. We met him the following morning when he came to our inn in his kimono and kami-shimo. Both garments were tattered but clean, and he wore them with a somewhat exaggerated dignity. Wide and thick of build, he had married a shepherd’s daughter, who later died without leaving him any children. Like the other samurai, he worked raising sturgeon in the river, harvesting the roe that fetched extravagant prices in Sevilla.
Even though he was older, he treated Father with deference. Much of Father’s story—his involvement with the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, his friendship with the former king of Spain, and his passion for my mother—was well known to them. More impressive still, they knew he was the favorite of Date Masamune and considered a prince in Sendai. They both begrudged and, in some fundamental way, respected his refusal to convert to Christianity. What was perhaps uppermost in their minds was that it was he who had recommended this village to them, and who had facilitated their acceptance there.
As the most apt representative, Akira came to pay his respects. Father was cordial with him, but not much more than that. I could sense the man’s disappointment. He wanted news from Japan, conversation in his native tongue with a figure of importance, but Father would not oblige him. I did. This man and his comrades were living legends to me, members of the original delegation. Also, with the exception of Father, I had not been with another Japanese person since leaving the Ezochi colony on the west coast of North America. These were men who had grown up faithful to the shogun, men who had followed the warrior’s way. Even though they had given that up, they felt far more familiar to me than men like my Uncle Carlos. As far as I was concerned, and especially then when I had only been in Spain for such a short time, they were more like me than anyone else.
The village priest arrived. Father was warmer with this man who wore a dusty black cassock than he was with his former countryman, and after I was introduced, they walked off together toward the village square. I remained with Akira and told him all I could about the homeland, and I asked him about his life, and the lives of the other samurai in that little hamlet. We spoke in Japanese for a good hour.
In the afternoon I went with Father to the spot where, some twenty years earlier, he had been saved—both his hands a mangled mess. He had washed ashore there before dawn one morning after floating down the Guadalquivir throughout the night. The fisherman who helped him and gave him shelter had passed away, but the man’s daughter, Piedad, was there still, married by then to a Spanish man from the village. She greeted us accompanied by two children and a sister-in-law. I could see by the way she and Father spoke to each other that they had been intimate once upon a time. She had clearly been very beautiful when she was younger, but now she had the appearance of someone that years of child-rearing and hard work had taken its toll upon. I made a point of engaging the children and the other woman in conversation, so that Father and she could speak alone, if only for a minute. I watched them walk to the river’s edge, and I tried to picture them as they had once been. She was dressed in black, Father in a white kimono with a pattern of dark blue cranes.
Finding myself virtually surrounded by former paramours of my father—Rosario, Piedad, Caitríona—my own romantic yearnings were stirred. I sought out Akira that evening and took a long walk with him. Though nothing of note occurred, I returned to the village captivated by him. Strolling along the river path, taking into account the way our respective stories entwined, filled me with tenderness. After I bid him goodnight and entered the inn, Father was angry. He deemed Akira beneath me, and accused his former comrade of trying to take advantage of me, in the hope of getting at my wealth. I found this most unfair and said so, and we fought about it with an intensity that surprised both of us. Francisco was also perturbed by what had been my unchaperoned excursion, and was dismissive of the older man. He and Father’s attitudes were a disappointment to me.
Francisco and Father shared a room that night. I could hear them continuing their conversation, regurgitating their mutual criticism of the poor, widowed Akira. Rosario and I slept in the room next door, and to my relief, she understood me.
“You are too close to him,” she said, speaking of Father. “The two of you have been breathing the same air for months and years on end. Unwittingly, you’ve become a couple. And you must realize that you are a magical reincarnation of your mother for him. It is to be expected that he be piqued and jealous at the thought that someone might take you from him. It also makes sense that you would be drawn to an older samurai, a man so like him, at least superficially.”
“A samurai of lesser rank,” I said. “Having gone through so much to extricate me from the grip of yet another samurai in Sendai,” I continued, “one with a very high rank, I suppose it bothers him immensely to see me expressing sympathy for someone like Akira, who committed the great crime in Father’s eyes of converting to Catholicism. Despite Father’s admiration for the Spaniards and Europeans he has come to know, in their vast majority practicing Catholics to one extent or another, he has never wavered in his view that their dogma reflects a moral weakness, an intellectual embarrassment.”
She was quiet after this. I regretted my speech, for I had probably insulted her. We lay there in silence in the dark for a few moments. Some creature, a squirrel or a cat, pawed about atop the thatched roof.
“People need to believe in something,” she finally said. “Life is too harsh otherwise.”
“I know,” I said. “I understand.”
***
I woke in the dark, disoriented and disturbed from an unpleasant dream. Once again, I heard a small animal gnawing away at something on the roof. The noise delivered me back to where I was. I looked and saw the figure of Rosario.
“Are you awake?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Can I come and lie by you?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said.
I went to her and she put her arm around me. It was not like it had been with Caitríona at La Moratalla. It was not like she was my sister.
“How did you meet Father?” I asked her.
“I was the lover of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia,” she said, “just like my mother had been. He was much older; far older than your Akira. He wished to keep me away from my husband, to keep me in his house. And when your mother arrived with her new husband to visit, the duke made me her handmaiden. Not long after that, your father arrived, and the duke was very taken with him. I believe your father fell in love with your mother the moment he saw her there. After her husband, Julian, left for Sanlúcar, we took a trip to the remains of a Roman village by the sea and stayed a few nights. Your father invited your mother out on a walk one evening—just as you invited Akira. We were all fascinated by him. One morning on the beach he joined a group of fishermen and plunged into the sea practically naked. Your mother pretended to be aloof and refused his advances, and she was displeased when I would sneak out of the tent we shared to spend time with the duke. On one of those nights the duke proposed to me, promising to annul my marriage. It was the last thing I expected. On the way back to Medina-Sidonia, one of his guards, a strong, gruff man who had fought in many battles and thought me still a servant, insulted me. The duke became enraged and challenged the brute to fight, there and then, with his sword drawn. I was terrified I would lose him. Your mother, by simply looking at your father, implored his intervention. He dismounted and severed the man’s head without a second thought. None of us had ever seen anything like it. We were fascinated and appalled. There was blood everywhere. But the duke’s life had been spared. I think, strangely enough, it was then your mother fell in love with him.”
This was a story I had not heard
before, and I was grateful to her for it.
“But what about you?” I asked.
“In what regard?”
“When did you fall in love with him?”
She laughed.
“What makes you think I ever did?”
“The way you looked at him when we arrived at your house,” I said.
“We had all been told he was dead, you and he both. I was overwhelmed to see him again.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know. But I am referring to other looks that passed between you.”
“A long time ago we consoled each other,” she said. “That is not the same thing as falling in love.”
“What about now,” I asked, persisting. “Are you in love with him now?”
“Now it is time to sleep,” she said.
But just after she said it she reached out for my hand and kissed it, and I held onto her that night, until the world we live in once again disappeared.
I woke just before dawn. I listened to Rosario’s gentle breathing. She smelled good. Out the window was the waning moon. What was left of its visage was sad. Then I remembered it was not a being or a spirit, but a sphere, an orb that went around the Earth, the Earth that was a larger sphere, where everything we did took place, as it whirled through space carrying the oceans and the plains with it.
– XXXVI –
Back in Sanlúcar one thing led to another, and I began to sleep with Francisco. He was insistent that our trysts be predicated on a vow to marry. I concluded that this stipulation was what he required to allow his body to do what it wished, and so I agreed, even though it was the farthest thing from my mind. I was confused, and in need of physical affection. The man I felt the strongest attraction to was married, twice my age, and devoted to a life on the high seas. The older samurai Akira was someone I felt empathy for, but nothing else. Father and Rosario resumed their relationship, consoling each other, as she had called it. He no longer slept in the guest room assigned to him, but crept into the master suite each night where his beloved duke had loved and died. I hid what I was doing from him, and he hid what he was doing from me.
Francisco was young and unblemished and beautiful to contemplate unclothed. As a lover he was coltish and clumsy, selfish and impatient. After our encounters, depending on his mood, he either fretted with religious guilt or became poetic. Accustomed as I was to the simplicity of Japanese love poetry, his baroque Spanish style, employing torrents of words that clashed with each other, was difficult to listen to.
But we got on. It was an agreeable novelty to share my body with someone my own age, someone who was, as the Spanish say, simpatico. Despite his occasional eruptions of bluster, there was not a mean bone in his lovely body during those early days. Though I never fell in love with him, I came to love him deeply. I have little doubt the staff and many of the village people soon learned what was going on, and that scabrous and colorful gossip flourished on every street. But the four of us did our best to maintain decorum whenever we were in public, and no one was foolish or bold enough to say anything to our faces.
One of my favorite things to do with Francisco was to ride down the beach to a cove he knew, where we could swim unseen without wearing anything. The pleasure of swimming like that is what I most fondly recall from that month in Sanlúcar. It seems to me one of the sweet advantages of being human—the ability to swim naked with the fish, with the birds flying overhead, to feel oneself as just another sort of animal, and then to retire at night to a comfortable abode close by a fire, dressed and refreshed and fed, and with a book in hand. Each time we went to the cove I thought of how idyllic it must have been for my father and Caitríona when they had their summer together on the island of Paxos. I still hoped Father would end up with Caitríona, for though I came to love and respect Rosario, it was the rebellious, unpredictable Caitríona who held a special place in my heart. It was as if Rosario became a surrogate mother or aunt to me, and Caitríona a sister and friend.
After some three weeks by the sea, Francisco suddenly announced he would be leaving to join a group of friends on a hunting trip. Though I made no effort to stop him, I expressed displeasure at the thought he might find such company and such an activity more stimulating than remaining there with me. He confessed to being too afraid to lose face with his comrades who, if they had to weigh the attractions of hunting against any sort of female companionship, would not hesitate for a second. I told him he would regret it, that if he insisted on leaving, I would return to Coria del Río to visit with Akira. Though I had no intention of doing so, it brought on a confrontation I was sorry for.
***
One afternoon, Caitríona, Carlota, and Inmaculada arrived in the latter’s coach. They brought news. In Madrid my uncle Carlos had petitioned the Count-Duke Olivares to help him take possession of the Casa de Pilatos. The count-duke knew the house well, and initially seemed sympathetic with Carlos’ notion that such an august residence must only have a family member of the highest ranking representing it. But after considering it further, and perhaps after consulting with the king himself, he told Carlos that the late Soledad Medina was someone greatly esteemed by the royal family, and that her will had been most clearly stated and witnessed, and that the young lady she had left it to, though regrettably lacking certain fine points, was also the only living child of Carlos’ departed sister, who had been a great favorite of the former king and queen. Carlos returned to Sevilla furious. He caused such a scene that Inmaculada contemplated leaving the world entirely by retiring to the monastery of Santa Paula. I found it curious that both my grandmothers, despite the vast chasm of space and culture between them, were partial to this form of retirement. In any case, Carlos then took Patrick and headed off to Granada yet again, vowing to never relinquish the boy and to have him enrolled in the king’s army as soon as possible. When Father heard this, he took a horse and left for Granada immediately.
According to Patrick, Father arrived in Granada on a winter’s day just before nightfall. Hermenegildo and his wife lived in a modest palace located near the Alhambra and the palace of Carlos V. My uncle kept a suite of rooms there. The appearance of a samurai warrior in full regalia, one who spoke perfect Spanish with a Sevillano accent, caused such a commotion in the city below that a procession of the curious followed him up the hill toward the Moorish castle.
Father was made to wait outside in the cold while the trio conspired within. Upon gaining entry, he insisted on speaking with Carlos alone, and they did so in my uncle’s sitting room. Patrick managed to sneak outside and position himself by a window where he could hear and observe what transpired within, between the man who had conceived him and the one who had raised him.
“I am here to claim my son,” Father said with his customary forthrightness.
“You are fifteen years too late,” Carlos replied.
“From a certain perspective that may be,” Father conceded, “but seen from another, I have arrived barely in time. Word has reached me of your resolve to ‘never relinquish’ the boy, and to send him off as a conscript to Flanders.”
My uncle kicked a smoldering log in the hearth to bring it aflame.
“My mother exaggerates,” he said, “as women are wont to do.”
“I am relieved to hear it,” Father said, resting his sword and scabbard against a wall. “In that case, you’ll place no opposition to my request to keep the boy with me for a time. It can only be good for him, and it will expand his outlook.”
“An expansion of outlook is not something we are accustomed to here in Spain,” my uncle said. “We’ve no need for it. The outlook we’re born and reared with, aligned with the Holy Roman Apostolic faith, is more than sufficient. It is one the rest of the world should adopt as well. And it is an outlook Patrick adheres to fervently.”
According to my brother, Uncle Carlos said these words in a somewhat listless manner, with more melancholy than conviction. Father ignored the small speech entirely.
“You are not opposed, the
n, to my taking him with me for a while.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” my uncle replied.
“And you’ve no plans to put him in the army,” Father added.
“In fact, I do,” Carlos said. “Military service was the best thing that ever happened to me. It is a necessary rite of passage for a young man, if he is to make his way in this world ruled by our king.”
“Tell me then,” Father said. “In what way has your mother exaggerated?”
Carlos, flustered by the logic of the question, became agitated, but again, in a sad or morose way, absent his customary anger.
“Tell me, Shiro, or however you call yourself, what is it you really want?”
“My flesh and blood,” Father replied. “I was prevented from being a father to him all these years for reasons beyond my control. But now I can. I am grateful to you, grateful for what you have done for him—for him and his mother. It speaks highly of you. Your sister would have been pleased to know of it. But now, the best thing you can do is to see things clearly. I am the boy’s father. I wish to care for him, admit him into my life to the extent he might wish it. I want to provide for his welfare. I am not looking to alter or diminish his faith. I am not looking to speak badly of you, to turn him against you in any way, for you have been good to him up until now, and you are an important figure, a grandee of Spain, a man of influence in what has become his country. But I beseech you not to use him now to get back at me, or to get back at your only sister’s daughter for claiming what is rightfully hers, to get back at Caitríona. I beseech you.”
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