Red Chrysanthemum

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “It is you who has done me the honor of receiving me,” Reiko said, equally polite and formal. “I thought I would like to make the acquaintance of the important ladies in society.” She couldn’t very well say that she’d come in search of a child that the woman’s husband had stolen and might have harmed.

  “How very gracious of you. Many thanks for choosing my humble self as the object of your attention.” Lady Mori smiled; her eyes sparkled with pleasure. She seemed a nice woman, and Reiko felt a twinge of guilt for exploiting her. “May I offer you refreshments?”

  Tea was served by her maid, an older, gray-haired woman who looked vaguely familiar to Reiko. But Reiko couldn’t think where she’d seen the woman, who showed no sign of recognizing her. Perhaps the maid had once worked for someone Reiko knew.

  “The weather is quite lovely, don’t you think?” Lady Mori said while she and Reiko sipped their tea and nibbled cakes.

  “Yes,” Reiko said. “It’s not too warm yet.”

  This type of trivial conversation was the reason that Reiko usually avoided visits to women of her class. Custom prevented them from saying anything interesting until they’d known one another for a longer time than Reiko wanted to spend. Laboring to make small talk, she looked through the open door at the garden and noticed that the large screen of embroidered silk that stood behind Lady Mori depicted the same landscape of pond, bridge, and trees as outside.

  “What a beautiful screen,” Reiko said.

  “Do you like it?” Lady Mori said eagerly. “I made it myself.”

  “Very much. How impressive,” Reiko said with honest admiration.

  “Do you embroider?” Lady Mori asked.

  “I’m afraid not.” As a child Reiko had taken lessons, but she hated sewing.

  The talk progressed to clothes, food, and the shops that sold them. Lady Mori discussed these topics with enthusiasm until Reiko wrenched the conversation to the subject of Lord Mori. “How long will your husband be in Edo?”

  “He leaves for Nagato Province in late summer.”

  Reiko knew that the law of alternate attendance required each daimyo to spend four months of each year in the capital and the rest in his province. The feudal lords were divided into two groups, one of which was in Edo while the other was in the country. This restriction kept them from staging a rebellion together, as did the fact that their families remained in town as hostages. Reiko hoped she could find out what Lord Mori had done with Lily’s son before he got away.

  “What has Lord Mori been doing?” Reiko said.

  “Oh, the usual things,” Lady Mori said, vague and surprised that Reiko should ask. “He doesn’t speak of them to me, of course.”

  Most men didn’t discuss their business with their wives. “He must find more entertainment here than in the country?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Reiko couldn’t very well blurt out, Do you know that jour husband beds little boys? What happens to them all? Perhaps Lady Mori didn’t know. Arranged marriages were the norm, and many couples maintained separate personal lives.

  “How long have you and Lord Mori been married?” Reiko said.

  “Sixteen years.”

  Maybe that was enough time for Lady Mori to have noticed her husband’s sexual practices even if she didn’t share them. She wasn’t blind; she must have been aware of those boys who frequented her home. But Reiko realized that her visit had lasted so long that unless she departed now, she would abuse Lady Mori’s hospitality. She wished she could have a look around the estate, but couldn’t think how to ask without arousing suspicion. She must get Lady Mori to invite her back.

  Her gaze lit on the embroidered screen. Inspired, she said, “How I wish I could embroider as well as you do!” She gave Lady Mori a hopeful, bright-eyed, encouraging look. “How I would love to learn!”

  “I would be delighted to teach you.” Lady Mori seemed flattered, and as eager for a better acquaintance as Reiko was. “Why don’t you come again tomorrow?”

  Every day thereafter, Reiko went to the Mori estate for embroidery lessons. Lady Mori taught her how to sketch a design on silk and fill it in with colored thread. Reiko’s chance to explore the estate was when she went to and from the Place of Relief, but the estate was so heavily populated with servants and guards that she could never sneak past them. After five days, all Reiko had to show for her efforts was a silk square with lilies embroidered on it in crooked stitches, dotted with blood from pricking her fingers with the needle.

  When she visited Lily at the teahouse and apologized because she hadn’t found Jiro, the dancer tried to hide her disappointment. “That’s all right,” Lily said. “I guess I never really expected to see him again.” Her brave acceptance of her loss made Reiko more determined than ever to rescue Jiro, or at least find out what had happened to him.

  The sixth month came, bringing the wettest rainy season that Reiko could remember. She and Lady Mori sat sewing. Lady Mori worked on a large landscape panel, assisted by her ladies-in-waiting. Reiko hid her frustration as her thread snarled. She decided that this was the last time, and she must ask Sano for help despite her reluctance.

  “My, it’s getting late,” said Lady Mori. “I believe we’ve had enough for today.” She set down her embroidery. “Will you do me the honor of staying for dinner?”

  “That would be wonderful,” Reiko said, thrilled because night would be better for her detective work than day.

  Maids brought in a lavish meal of sashimi, grilled seafood, dumplings, steamed greens, and sweet cakes. Wine enlivened the chatter between Lady Mori and her attendants. They grew loud, boisterous, and laughed at the slightest joke.

  “Have some more wine,” Lady Mori said, her eyes feverishly bright from the liquor.

  “Thank you.” Reiko held out her cup for the gray-haired maid to refill. She drank to keep up the pretense of enjoying the party. By midnight, the other women were too drunk to pay much attention to her, and she slipped out the door.

  The rain had momentarily stopped. Smoke from a fire somewhere billowed in the darkness, veiling the wet air. Hazy lights shone through it. Reiko hurried across the garden. Trees dripped water on her and the wet grass drenched her hem and socks. She heard men talking in the distance, but she couldn’t see them through the smoke. Although not in immediate danger of being caught, she soon found that searching for a lost boy was harder than she’d anticipated.

  The estate was vast, the mansion a labyrinth of wings connected to countless more wings. Lanterns shone in windows here and there, like glowing eyes. As Reiko circled buildings, two guards loomed suddenly out of the murk. She hid in a doorway, holding her breath until they passed. The house would be full of people, relatives of Lord Mori. Reiko didn’t dare intrude, and she doubted that he would quarter a boy prostitute with his family anyway. She groped through courtyards immersed in smoke and humidity, hazy and unreal. The odor of wet earth and drains filled her lungs. She evaded patrolling guards near the immense stables, where horses stomped and neighed. Dogs barked, and she fled to the martial arts ground. Ghost-warriors seemed to duel on the combat field. After some two hours, she realized the impossibility of exploring the whole estate by herself. Yet there remained one place that she most needed to see, the place where Lord Mori would most likely keep a nighttime companion.

  If this estate had the typical layout, then the daimyo’s private chambers must be located at the center. Reiko navigated there by instinct. Fear drummed inside her. The private chambers would be the most heavily guarded section of Lord Mori’s domain, where a trespasser would be killed on sight, no questions asked first. She wished she could bring Lieutenant Asukai with her, but he was with her other guards in the barracks, and she had no time to fetch him. This might be her only chance to find Jiro, if he was still alive.

  Ahead of Reiko towered a stone wall. A guard carrying a torch walked past it. She waited while his footsteps receded. Then she slipped through the gate. Some hundred paces distant, a building
floated in the smoke, as if upon a misty ocean. Windows formed rectangles of yellow light. The eaves curved upward like dragon wings above the dark, gaping entrance. Reiko crept toward the building, around boulders that rose like reefs in fog, past a pond whose waters gleamed black and bottomless. At the entrance, the shadowy figures of two guards came into view; they conversed and gestured. Reiko thought she sensed someone else nearby, watching her. Her skin prickled. She almost lost her courage, when she heard a sudden, loud cry.

  Shrill, human, and filled with pain, it pierced the quiet, vibrated the smoke. It resounded inside Reiko, evoking memories of nights she’d been awakened by Masahiro’s cries. This cry belonged to a little boy; she knew with every maternal fiber of herself. A boy was inside that building, and in distress.

  She forged onward, aiming for the side of the building, away from the guards. She was almost there when two more patrolling guards suddenly materialized a few paces from her. She ducked under the veranda. From above her came more cries from the child, and fast, rhythmic thumping noises. She cowered in the dank, dark space while the guards’ legs passed by. Then she bolted out and climbed onto the veranda. She crawled across the wet, slick floorboards. Praying that the guards wouldn’t spot her, she huddled beside the lit window.

  The child’s cries rose to panicky, desperate squeals.

  Reiko took out the dagger she wore strapped to her arm beneath her sleeve in case she needed to defend herself. She poked it through the wooden grille that covered the window and cut a small hole in the paper pane. The noise inside was so loud, no one there would hear the blade rasping. She glanced furtively around her, but saw only dense, drifting smoke. She peered through the hole.

  The cries abruptly stopped.

  She was looking into a room in which lanterns suspended from the ceiling lit white chrysanthemums that bloomed in a ceramic vase in the alcove. Giant, gilded chrysanthemums adorned a black lacquer screen. A mural depicted naked men and small boys coupling, in various lewd positions and colorful graphic detail, amid more chrysanthemums. Reiko recalled that the flower was a symbol of male love because its tightly gathered petals resembled a boy’s anus. Then her attention riveted on the tableau in the corner of the room.

  Atop a quilt-covered futon hunched a man that she presumed was Lord Mori, propped on his forearms and spread knees. He was nude and thickset; black hairs stippled him like bristles on a boar. His body heaved with fast, loud breathing. His mouth was open, his eyes closed, his complexion sweaty and flushed. A wine jar and cup sat on a nearby table. A small, bare leg and foot protruded from beneath him.

  Lord Mori pushed himself upright. His penis was erect and gleaming wet. Where he’d lain on the futon was a naked boy, perhaps nine years old. His short black hair stuck up in a cowlick. Reiko couldn’t see his face; it was buried in the quilt. Her eyes widened with alarm at the red bruises around his neck. He didn’t move; he didn’t utter a sound.

  Lord Mori smiled to himself, an ugly grimace of sensual satisfaction. He picked up a dressing gown and put it on. “You can come in now,” he called.

  For one disturbing moment Reiko thought he was talking to her. Then a door inside the room opened. Two samurai entered.

  “Get rid of him,” Lord Mori ordered. He had a voice so lacking in expression that it seemed inhuman.

  The samurai bundled the boy into the quilt. Handling him as carelessly as if he were a sack of garbage, they carried him out of the room. Reiko turned away from her spy-hole, stunned because Lord Mori had apparently killed the boy during sex and had his retainers cover up the death.

  Had he done the same to Jiro?

  If so, Reiko couldn’t save Lily’s son. She couldn’t help the child she’d just seen murdered. But wrath flamed inside her. She mustn’t let Lord Mori get away with this, no matter that it was legal for a samurai to kill a peasant boy. This was an atrocity that went beyond the limits of the law. Lord Mori mustn’t hurt any more children. Reiko must tell her husband what had happened. Sano would punish Lord Mori even though he was a powerful daimyo and ally of Lord Matsudaira.

  But as Reiko rose to head for home, dizziness unsteadied her. She staggered, her knees wobbly, and dropped her dagger. It hit the veranda with a clatter that sent odd, ringing echoes through her ears. The world spun in another, worse dizzy spell. Blackness engulfed her. She felt herself falling, but she was unconscious before she hit the ground.

  A chill woke her from a deep, dead sleep. Reiko stirred groggily. Eyes still closed, she turned onto her side and reached down to pull the quilt over her. But her fumbling hand couldn’t find it. Sano must have yanked it onto his side of the bed. She could feel the bulk of his body, sleeping behind her. A headache pounded in her skull. She felt sticky wetness on the bed, underneath her, between her knees, in the crooks of her arms. A rotten smell crept into her nostrils. Instinctive alarm fluttered her eyes open.

  In the dim light of dawn she saw that she wasn’t in her own chamber. This room had plain, masculine teak furniture and cabinets that she didn’t recognize, and stark white walls instead of the landscape murals she had at home.

  Where was she?

  Confused, she spoke her husband’s name. Sano didn’t answer. She reached behind herself for him. Her hand touched bare, unfamiliar flesh, cold as stone. An inkling of fear crept through Reiko. Wide awake now, she turned over on the bed.

  And found herself face-to-face with a stranger. He lay on his back, his head twisted in her direction. His eyes were half open beneath their bristly brows; they stared vacantly. His heavy features sagged with stupor. Dark drool that filled his mouth had run down his parted lips onto his cheek.

  Reiko screamed and recoiled. She scrambled to her hands and knees. Dizziness whirled the room around her. Pain thudded in her head as she crawled away from the man. Now she recognized him as Lord Mori. Images of bright chrysanthemums, the dead boy, and the men carrying out the shrouded body flashed in her mind. She noticed deep stab wounds that punctured Lord Mori’s bulky torso. Blood from them stained his skin. Shock and horror paralyzed Reiko as her gaze moved to his groin, where his male organs were absent and only a grisly red mass of blood, mutilated tissue, and pubic hair remained.

  What on earth had happened?

  The blood had flowed onto the bed. It was the source of the odor she’d smelled and the wetness she’d felt.

  How in heaven had she come to be here?

  Distraught, Reiko looked down at herself. She was naked, smeared all over with Lord Mori’s blood. It clotted her hair; she could taste its salty, iron flavor in her mouth. Retches and sobs burst from her. She felt an urge to cleanse herself, to cover her nakedness. Where were her clothes? She looked around and saw them on the floor. Beside them were Lord Mori’s severed organs, and a bloodstained dagger.

  Her dagger.

  Terror assailed Reiko. Even while panic, bewilderment, revulsion, and sickness hindered rational thought, she knew that her investigation had somehow landed her in the worst predicament imaginable. Thunder boomed; rain pattered on the roof. Whimpers, sobs, and gasps came from Reiko that she couldn’t stop. In a blind, hysterical effort to make things not so bad, she knelt beside Lord Mori, patted his face, and shook him, desperately trying to revive him. But he didn’t respond: She’d known he was dead as soon as she’d touched his cold flesh.

  4

  “That’s when Hirata-san came in and found me,” Reiko said.

  Sano had listened to her story with such amazement and consternation that he’d had trouble keeping silent while she told it. Now he studied her closely. She was calmer and lucid; some color had returned to her cheeks. She huddled in the quilt and eyed him with trepidation as she awaited his reaction.

  He hardly knew what to think; his emotions were in turmoil. Predominant among them was relief that Reiko had a logical, honorable explanation for what she’d been doing in the Mori estate. Even though her story was fantastic, he believed it because he trusted her. Yet he also felt shock at her behavior. He accepted h
er tendency to venture into places and take on challenges that no other woman would, but this time she’d gone too far.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?” he said.

  “I should have. I’m sorry,” Reiko said, contrite. “But I didn’t want to involve you and get you in trouble with Lord Mori or Lord Matsudaira.”

  “I’m not talking about just your search for the stolen boy,” Sano said. “I mean this private inquiry business you’ve been running. Why haven’t you ever mentioned it?”

  Reiko looked surprised. “But I have. I told you about all my investigations except this one.”

  Now Sano recalled nights when he’d come home late from his work, Reiko had talked to him, and he’d been so tired that what she’d said hadn’t sunken in. Guilt and regret stabbed him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t pay enough attention.”