Falling From the Floating World

by Nick Hurst

  I decided to head to Ginza – I’d met Tomoe there not more than three months before. She’d sauntered up with a smile brighter than a supernova and a kiss that radiated through me. She’d acted as though there was nothing unusual. I’d had to ask why her hair was set like a geisha’s and she was wearing a kimono of clouds swirling around blue-green hills.

  ‘I felt like it,’ she shrugged. ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘I love it – you look sensational. It’s just a little different to what you normally wear.’

  She’d just lifted her shoulders again, angled her head and given me another heart-stopping smile. I’d spent the rest of the day in her glow, admiringly despised by male passers-by.

  But there were no hidden messages there either. Or in Daikanyama the next day, or Shimokitazawa the one after that. It was no good. There were memories aplenty but no missives from beyond. I hoped the opportunities Takata was expecting were presenting themselves with greater haste to him. I was at the point of giving up.

  The next day, when boredom struck, instead of reaching for my psychic’s hat, I grabbed a matinee ticket to the first thing about to start. I settled in as the room faded to black.

  EIGHT

  Dreaming of the Floating World 5

  It was a day much like any other. As had been the day before, the one prior, in fact all of them since she met Ezoe. She could have exploded with frustration but restricted herself to making faces at the cat.

  ‘Mi-chan, what are my appointments for the day?’ she asked the apprentice when she’d finished breakfast.

  ‘You have a booking in the early afternoon,’ Michiko began.

  ‘Mm, and the evening?’

  ‘The evening’s a little more complicated. You were to see a paper merchant but the Izumiya ageya sent their apologies – their premises won’t be available for entertaining after all.’

  ‘What do you mean? An ageya can’t do that. That client’s been waiting months – to cancel now would be unbearably rude. Surely they’re not proposing that?’

  ‘I’m afraid they are, Onēsan,’ said Michiko. ‘Our proprietor was most unhappy. He rushed straight over but they were adamant. He’s been trying to find an alternative but with it being so late he hasn’t had any success.’

  As Michiko was speaking Katsuyama’s expression had changed.

  ‘Perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing after all.’

  ‘I thought you’d be upset.’

  ‘Mi-chan, as you’ll be free this evening, could you find one or two other apprentices to help with a task?’

  ‘Saikaku-sama,’ Michiko cried, grabbing at the stranger’s arm. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again after such a long time. I hope you’re planning to stay in town.’

  ‘Let go of me,’ the stranger barked from under his deep-brimmed straw hat. ‘I’m Wada and whether I stay is not your concern.’

  Michiko retreated to side of the road and the other apprentices. Uncovering the names of those who preferred not to announce themselves was part of what an apprentice did. Usually it was to pass the time and feed the gossip that sustained Yoshiwara. Today she had a sense her mistress wanted the information for something else.

  One of the other apprentices went to inform Katsuyama. Michiko settled back, apparently in playful conversation, but in reality watching the street for any other visitors heading towards Izumiya.

  Lord Wada. So it could be true. Katsuyama hurriedly prepared some ink and wrote out a note. Once finished she called for a servant to have it dispatched. It was just a warning so he would be prepared. But if what she suspected was happening, it would be followed by another letter that would require a more immediate and dramatic response.

  As the servant departed another of the apprentices arrived with a different name. Fifteen minutes later and there was one more. It tallied with her suspicions but the most important was still missing from the list.

  *

  ‘Saikaku-sama,’ Michiko cried, grabbing at the stranger’s arm. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again after such a long time. I hope you’re planning to stay in town.’

  ‘Get out of my way, you filthy whore.’

  With his deep-throated reply, the stranger thrust Michiko from him with such force that she tottered and fell. He and his assistant continued towards Izumiya at pace. But Michiko’s relay was already in action, nodding forcefully at the monk selling tea-whisks as she raced to catch up.

  ‘Sir, sir,’ the monk slurred as he staggered forward. ‘Not only the very best tea-whisk, but a wonderful reminder of Yoshiwara.’

  He tripped, falling into the man’s assistant who, despite his best efforts, careered into his master beside.

  ‘Let me help you – I’m so sorry for this offensive drunk,’ said Michiko’s friend as she caught up. ‘He’s an embarrassment to the quarter. We try to have him barred, but he must have an arrangement with the guard at the great gate as he always finds his way back.’

  The assistant was caught between attacking the monk, who was backing away in haste, and bowing at his master as he was steadied by the apprentice at his arm.

  ‘Get away with you!’

  The man shrugged the apprentice off and turned his ire on the monk.

  ‘You’re fortunate I have business to attend to or I would test my blade on you,’ he snarled. The monk retreated even further at the threat. ‘If I find you here when I return, you’ll be in two pieces before the day is out.’

  He stalked towards Izumiya, his assistant hurrying in his wake.

  ‘Did you get a look?’ asked Michiko when she reached her friend.

  ‘It never fails,’ said the apprentice, flipping away the small mirror she’d held at her side to see under the stranger’s hat. ‘I don’t know who he is but he’s the man you were looking for. The one with the mole on the left side of his face.’

  ‘He’s here,’ exclaimed Michiko as she burst into Katsuyama’s room. ‘Lord Genpachi, he’s here.’

  ‘It’s as I thought.’

  Katsuyama hurried to her writing table and wrote out a note.

  ‘Mi-chan, I need you to have this dispatched to Lord Ezoe with the greatest of haste. Use Itō, he’s the fastest, and tell him he will be paid double if he has the message delivered within the quarter-hour.’

  Michiko took the letter and darted from the room.

  So it was happening. The events had come to their climax. And they were to reach their conclusion here. For all the searching outside, the walls of the quarter hadn’t been obstructing her. The path to retribution lay within. They had those who had destroyed her family entrapped.

  ‘It all comes back to Yoshiwara.’

  NINE

  Samurai leapt from the darkness, slashing at one another and splattering blood. I started and looked around. A student eyed me warily from the seat beside and I realised where I was. I rubbed my eyes and settled back. Another strange dream, this one sparked by the soundtrack of warriors.

  Or possibly not.

  The words struck me.

  ‘It all comes back to Yoshiwara.’

  Except it wasn’t really the words, it was the voice. There was no mistaking it. Tomoe had spoken to me as I slept.

  I burst from the cinema into bright sunlight and bolted towards Ikebukuro Station. Or at least I tried. Tokyo isn’t a place you move fast – there are too many people and with centimetres at a premium, no one’s willing to spare an inch.

  But I wasn’t going to bow to decorum. I weaved and pushed my way down the street, cursing under my breath and over it but getting nowhere fast. A murder of crows exploded in a black cloud of beating wings, their screaming caws an echo of my desire to bawl at the crowd. Even the jazz blasting from lamppost speakers was frenetic, howling out in saxophonic alarm. But no one picked up on the urgency and my progress remained painfully slow.

  The crowds were even worse at the station. I gave up all notions of etiquette, shouldering my way onto a densely packed train whose occupants surged with every acceleration
and brake.

  It didn’t make sense, this need of mine to move so quickly. Tomoe had been gone over a month – an extra ten minutes would make no difference here or there. But I just had the feeling I needed to be fast. The solution was at my fingertips but it felt fragile, as though it could be ripped from me at any time.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  That couldn’t be right. She had to.

  ‘I don’t believe you. Tell me what you know, and not the lies and half-truths Takata tells you to say.’

  ‘I promise – I’ve told you everything. Nothing else happened here.’

  I was back at Matsubaya. I’d taken a risk. I’d come out of the station and run there directly, taking no precautions at being seen. The owner had been unpleasantly surprised.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she’d whispered at the door. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘I have to see Sakura.’

  ‘She’s with someone,’ she said. ‘And there are people in here you wouldn’t want to be seen by.’

  I think she was genuinely on my side but I was beyond empathy by that point.

  ‘Pull her out,’ I demanded. ‘I’ve got to see her – it’s a matter of life and death.’

  She gave me a sharp look but then her eyes softened just a little. She took me by the arm and led me quickly to a room at the side.

  ‘Wait here, and when Sakura comes make sure you’re quiet. If you’re heard, your “life and death” will more likely end in the latter, and maybe not only for you.’

  Sakura had turned up a few minutes later, wrapped in a yukata decorated in the flowers of her name.

  ‘Something else happened,’ I said. ‘I know it did.’

  ‘I promise you, I don’t know anything else.’

  It wasn’t going as I’d expected. I decided to change tack.

  ‘Sakura, I like you, but things have happened over the last month that have changed me. If I think I have to hurt you to get the answers I need, I will.’

  ‘Stop,’ she said, taking hold of my hands and cutting short what I thought was a bone-chilling threat. ‘You’re not going to do anything. Whatever’s happened to you, I know you’re still a decent guy.’

  She gave my hands a squeeze.

  ‘I’ve told you everything I know. Whatever else happened, wherever it happened, I don’t know anything more.’

  I grasped back as though I might wring something from her hands or at least draw strength. I tightened my jaw to prevent the cry of frustration fighting to come out. The answer had to be here. Tomoe had told me herself. If I was ever going to get a message, that had been it.

  ‘If you’re in a rush in Tokyo, the only way to get where you’re going more quickly is to leave earlier than you did.’

  Johnny had told me that. He also insisted on having a cold shower in the gym as it ‘wasn’t a place for weakness’ and had countless other pearls of wisdom he was ready to share. But this was a rare occasion when he was right. If you’re desperate you can weave your way through some of the crowds, but it’s an illusion of haste, as much use as hurrying to the front of a moving train.

  ‘You just have to accept you’ll get there when you get there,’ he’d advised. ‘It’s impossible to make up time.’

  Except I was going to try. I’d put down 10,000 yen by the taxi driver and told him it was his plus the fare if he could get me to Ningyōchō in ten minutes flat.

  ‘But you have to know. It all comes back to Yoshiwara. It has to be here.’

  My voice sounded desperate. Sakura gave me a sideways look, but she knew enough about my recent history to cut me some slack.

  ‘Yoshiwara?’

  ‘I was told I’d find the answer in Yoshiwara – don’t ask me how. I think it’s unlikely Takata and Onishi did a round robin of soapland meetings and I don’t think Tomoe did any entertaining here. So it has to be in Matsubaya.’

  She lifted her head at the sound of Tomoe’s name.

  ‘Your girlfriend’s Katsuyama II, isn’t she?’

  ‘That’s how some people knew her,’ I said, my tone prickly. ‘But her name was Tomoe.’

  She ignored my pique.

  ‘This area was Shin, New, Yoshiwara,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I know – that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Katsuyama I was never in Shin Yoshiwara.’

  I didn’t know that.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Shin Yoshiwara opened in 1657 after The Meireki Fire. Katsuyama I was no longer a courtesan then. She only ever worked in Moto Yoshiwara – Old Yoshiwara – and that was in a different place.’

  I’d told the taxi driver to head to The Great Miura Hotel. When I’d asked Sakura if anything remained of Moto Yoshiwara, she’d told me most probably not. But The Great Miura and Hamadaya restaurants were the only long-standing establishments she knew of, and they were probably on plots that went back to Moto Yoshiwaran time.

  The traffic was thick as we approached Ningyōchō. I was still trying to do Tokyo’s impossible, so the taxi driver got lucky just short of ten minutes when I had him let me out one hundred yards from where the great gate would have stood. I cut off the main road into a side street. Based on Sakura’s explanation this put me in Moto Yoshiwara proper, within the area a moat would once have closed off.

  When I came to a small shrine guarded by two foxes I took a left along a narrow street. Fifty metres down, an ancient wooden gate broke the line of a high wall. Exquisite roofs peeped over it, their swooping tiled outlines giving the impression of rolling waves. It was how I imagined the area’s architecture in the distant past. If I were a newly deceased courtesan sending messages through a dead tayū, it would have been my choice of venue for the big reveal.

  I passed through the gate and crossed a gravel river on stepping stones that looked like reflections of clouds. Moving through the sliding door of the entrance I found an interior as impressive in elegant grandeur as the outside’s ornate lines.

  As I took off my shoes, a kimono-clad assistant hurried to greet me in a small-step rush. My head was so mixed up I half expected her to start speaking in ancient Japanese.

  ‘Welcome to The Great Miura. Please let me know how I can help.’

  She addressed me formally but the words seemed contemporary enough.

  ‘Um …’

  I stopped. I was now almost certain I was in the right place but the situation was so unusual I couldn’t think of an obvious way to begin.

  ‘Er, I believe a message may have been left for me here by a young lady. She went by the name of …’

  I weighed the possibilities.

  ‘… Katsuyama.’

  I wondered how much the receptionist knew of the history of the place. She gave nothing away.

  ‘Katsuyama-sama? But of course,’ she said with a smile.

  I looked at her look, trying to work out if it was knowing or if she was just being polite.

  ‘Please, come with me to the front desk.’

  We walked down the hallway past dark wooden beams and paper doors exploding with colour; birds and flowers bursting from hand-painted scenes.

  ‘And you would be Tokugawa-sama,’ she said once behind the desk, showing no sign of nerves at facing a Caucasian descendent of the shōgun.

  ‘Erm, yes, that’s right.’

  I hoped it was just Tomoe being playful and I shouldn’t expect even stranger dreams.

  She smiled.

  ‘You’re slightly early. Your room’s not booked until later in the week. But for a friend of Katsuyama-sama and a man of your stature I’m sure we can find a way around that.’

  She took me by surprise. I could only assume I’d unravelled things more quickly than Tomoe had expected. The thought made me feel good. I was starting to believe I really had reached the end, that the final answers would be in the room.

  ‘Would you be so kind as to take a seat while we have the room prepared? Perhaps you might like to peruse the package Katsuyama-sama left for you as you wai
t.’

  My eyes snapped from their glaze and locked on the envelope she held out. I reached for it. This was the moment. Everything would be explained in that file.

  TEN

  Ray-kun,

  I know you must be upset reading this because by the time you do I will be dead. But please try not to be too distressed – every life is different and they all end in different ways at different times. I’ll die earlier than I expected, but the time I had was good. And while I’d have preferred to live longer, my death isn’t a waste.

  I suppose deep down I knew the path I was taking would lead to this, even if I didn’t admit it to myself. When I think why I followed it I think of principle, of not being walked over by others. And I think of justice, for my father and for myself. I suppose if you add them up they equate to honour and that seems a ridiculous reason to die, as though I’m living out a samurai drama from the past. Yet at the same time it’s the most logical of reasons, because if you don’t have any honour or codes to live by, what purpose is there to life?

  As for my father, I won’t try to express the pain his actions caused me – although I’m grateful I had you to comfort me at the time. But beneath whatever he became, or maybe always was, traces of a decent man remained. He wrote me a letter, as I am doing to you now, so he could speak to me from beyond his grave. I won’t bore you with the details but he knew the magnitude of what he did. And while it was too late to make amends, he did what he could to belatedly redeem me from his sins.

  For all his good or bad he was my father and I was his daughter and that bond can’t be broken or denied. To have him act as a father at the end, and know the man I’d loved still existed within him, helped bring me the peace I need now.

  Most people don’t get to choose the manner of their death, so to be able to die with honour means in some ways I’m blessed. But my redemption isn’t complete – it only will be when past wrongs have been put right. I wanted to do this without involving you but I ran out of luck and I ran out of time. I suspect you may have suffered as a result and I’m truly sorry for that, Ray-kun – I hate the thought of you being hurt because of me.