The Courtesan and the Samurai

by Lesley Downer

  Unrolling a scroll of paper, Hana picked up a brush and wrote, forming the characters carefully. ‘What’s the address?’

  Tama clicked her teeth. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with Auntie and Father,’ she said. ‘Ten-year-olds who’ve worked their way up the ranks have more idea than you. Mataemon works in some sort of government office; it would wreck his career if he started receiving letters addressed in a woman’s hand. Chidori, run and catch the messenger. Get him to write the address.’ Tama turned to Hana and sighed loudly. ‘You’ve so much to learn.’

  Hana looked at the tatami mats. There were worn patches, she noticed, and some of the silk edgings were threadbare. The luxury was just a veneer, as were Tama’s ways. The letter writing had been a test, she saw now – a test in which she had not done badly.

  10

  Hana was warming her hands at the brazier in Tama’s large reception room while Tama, who had just had her bath, knelt in front of a mirror. In a corner of the room a wispy old woman hunched over a shamisen, plucking out a tune. With her grey hair tugged into a bun and wearing the sombre colours of a geisha, she was so tiny and thin she seemed to merge into the shadows.

  ‘If you were ten years younger we could give you a thorough training,’ Tama was grumbling. ‘But at your age there’s no time to waste. Father will be wanting a return on his investment.’ She beckoned Kawanoto over to massage her shoulders. ‘I wanted to ease you in gradually but I’ve too many clients. You’ll have to come along tonight and see how things are done.’

  ‘But you don’t need me,’ said Hana, panicking. ‘I can write. There must be letters to write.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool,’ snapped Tama. ‘How else are you going to survive? How else do you think you’re going to repay your debt? All you’ll have to do is watch, watch and be seen, that’s all.’

  Tama summoned an elderly maid, a tough old woman with work-roughened hands and frizzy white hair, who grumbled quietly in a Yoshiwara accent. She sat Hana in front of a mirror, pulled her kimono off her shoulders and tucked the top half round her waist. Beside her was a brass tray with a ewer and a small bowl on it. Hana wrinkled her nose as she smelt the familiar sour odour of sumac-leaf gall, vinegar and tea. Like every respectable woman she had blackened her teeth ever since she got married.

  But Tama shook her head. ‘No teeth-blackening for you,’ she said. ‘You’re starting life all over again. You’re worth more as a virgin. No one will know you’re not until it’s far too late.’

  Hana opened her mouth to protest but Tama had already turned away.

  A woman had come in, bent under a huge bundle. She opened it up and laid out combs, bottles of fragrant oils, tubs of pomade, sheaves of paper and rows of hair ornaments on the floor and put crimping irons on the brazier. The acrid smell of burning hair filled the room as the irons heated up.

  ‘We have a new recruit,’ said Tama. ‘It’ll be a job to get her hair into shape.’

  Hana was used to putting her hair up by herself. As a girl she had practised until her arms ached, separating it into sections and folding each section up and forward and back, then tying it in place with gilt thread or coloured paper twine. She had become quite good at the elaborate shimada style that girls of her age wore, with a heavy coil of stiff glossy hair at the back of her head.

  Now she knelt, gazing at her reflection in the tarnished silver rectangle while the woman set to work, wrenching and pulling with a fine-toothed comb. Soon tears were running down her cheeks. She let them flow. Let them think it was from the tugging, she thought. Only she must know it was for everything she’d lost.

  ‘It’s bad enough when you’re a child,’ murmured the woman, heating a block of wax and applying it to Hana’s hair with the crimping irons. There was a sizzle and a sharp oily smell every time the wax touched the hot metal. ‘But it’s a lot worse when you’re grown up and have known another life. You’re not the only one, there’s a lot of us here – wives, concubines, women who’ve lost their husbands or their lovers and have nowhere else to go.’

  Startled, Hana looked in the mirror. The woman was dressed like a maid in a plain brown-check kimono with a purple collar, with her hair tied back in a bun. Something shiny sparkled on her hand and there was a metal clasp at her throat.

  ‘It’s best to forget the past,’ the woman continued. ‘That’s the only way any of us survive. If you ever feel lonely, come and visit me. Ask for Otsuné. Everyone knows me here.’ She tugged Hana’s hair so hard Hana thought a clump would come out.

  ‘They won’t let me out.’

  ‘They will, once they trust you. You’re no use to them stuck here.’

  Otsuné combed and crimped and waxed until Hana’s hair gleamed like silk. She combed in globs of white pomade and musky-smelling camellia oil, then parted and sectioned it and tied, rolled, combed and folded it strand by strand until Hana’s floor-length hair had been transformed into a towering pile of loops and coils, smooth and shiny as polished lacquer. Gingerly Hana raised her hand. Her hair was stiff and slightly sticky to the touch. She hardly dared breathe in case the enormous edifice came tumbling down.

  For a moment Otsuné rested her fingers on Hana’s shoulder.

  ‘Here,’ she whispered, pressing something into her hand. ‘It’s a charm. Tuck it backwards into your hair before you go out there, but make sure Auntie doesn’t see it or she’ll take it away. It’s to protect against being chosen.’

  Hana closed her hand around a small comb. She had no idea what Otsuné was talking about but she was grateful anyway.

  As Otsuné moved on to the next attendant, the elderly maid-servant took a knob of soft white wax and kneaded it in her fingers. She rubbed it over Hana’s face, then painted Hana’s throat, chin, cheeks, nose and forehead chalky white, puffing clouds of white rice powder over the top. Hana watched in the mirror as her face became a perfect white oval with just a narrow line of flesh at the hairline.

  Wielding her brush, the maid coated Hana’s chest and shoulders and upper back with white, then held up a second mirror so that Hana could see the nape of her neck. There were three points of unpainted flesh there, stark against the matt white of her back, like a snake’s forked tongue.

  ‘It drives men wild,’ the old woman said, chuckling, ‘the nape of a woman’s neck. The shape makes them think of … Well, you’ll see.’

  She painted in Hana’s eyebrows, curving them like two crescent moons, and outlined her eyes in red, then in black, extending the line out at the corners. Then she puffed rouge on to her cheeks.

  ‘Up you get,’ she said. Naked and shivering, Hana stood like a statue while the maid laced her into a perfumed petticoat of scarlet crêpe, helped her into a white under-blouse with a red collar and long red sleeves, then tied another petticoat in place with silk ribbons. She laid a stiff embroidered collar around her neck and helped her into an embroidered red kimono with long sleeves and a quilted hem. On top of that went another kimono, then another and another, each tied in place with ribbons. Then she took a long brocade sash and wound it round and round her. Hana twirled round and turned her back to her. The old woman chuckled.

  ‘What does she think she is – a virgin? An old maid? A stay-at-home housewife? She thinks I want to tie her obi at the back!’ Everyone turned and there were peals of laughter. ‘Things have changed, dear. Haven’t you noticed?’

  Silently Hana turned to face the maid. The woman tugged and tugged until the sash was so tight that Hana could hardly breathe. Then she brought the two ends together at the front and, fumbling, holding pins in her mouth, tying ribbons here and ribbons there and tucking in folds of fabric, shaped it into a huge ornate knot. The ends reached nearly to Hana’s feet.

  The red silk reminded Hana of her wedding day, when Oharu had done her hair and helped her dress, and her throat tightened. She was dressed like a bride, as if she was to be married all over again. The only thing that was wrong was the obi. Even geishas tied their obis at the back. Only one sort of woma
n tied her obi at the front in an ostentatious bow, as if daring any man who crossed her path to try to untie it. She shivered as she thought what sort of woman that was.

  The maid clicked her teeth and dabbed at Hana’s face, then adjusted her collar, checked that the hems and cuffs of her kimonos were evenly aligned, tucked a sandalwood comb into the front of her hair and studded it with hairpins. Finally she put a crown of silk flowers on the top.

  ‘You’d better put that charm in,’ she muttered. Hana handed the small curved comb Otsuné had given her to the maid and felt her tuck it firmly into the back of her hair. Then the maid took a stick of safflower paste, moistened a thin brush with it and painted a petal of red in the centre of Hana’s lower lip, leaving her upper lip white.

  Everyone turned – the attendants, naked-breasted, their kimonos tucked around their waists, Otsuné, comb in mouth and crimping irons in hand, and Tama, who was tying her obi in place. Even the wispy old geisha stopped strumming her shamisen and looked up.

  Voices murmured, ‘Lovely. Beautiful!’

  Hana took a few uncertain steps. Not even on her wedding day had she been so encumbered with heavy garments. Awkwardly she turned, hardly daring to look at herself in the mirror. When she did, she gasped. She had become a painted doll. It was not her at all – and yet it was. She had become a woodblock print of herself, not a person but a painted image.

  Behind the mask she was still Hana, she told herself fiercely. But despite everything, she couldn’t help being just a little enchanted. It was almost as if she had sloughed off her old self and left it behind, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. She was not Hana any more, no, she was not Hana at all. She was a brand-new person.

  ‘We’ll find a new name for you,’ said Tama, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I’ll talk to Auntie about it. Now, walk. Pick up your skirts with your left hand and walk. From over there to over here.’

  Hana took hold of the heavy fabric and took a few steps in her bare feet, trying not to trip over her skirts. The ungainly train and the huge knot of her obi pulled her off balance. She was not used to carrying so much weight. She stumbled and nearly fell.

  ‘Kick,’ said Tama. ‘Kick your skirts out of the way. Nothing wrong with showing your ankles.’

  Tama too had been transformed and had become the mysterious creature Hana had seen the first time she met her. Her hair was divided into two gleaming wings on which rested a crown studded with gilt and tortoiseshell hairpins like the rays of the sun, decorated with silk flowers and foliage, dangling mother-of-pearl ornaments and strings of coral weighted with gold leaf blossoms. The bow of her magnificent brocade obi, tied flam-boyantly at the front, all but concealed her thick quilted kimonos.

  ‘That’s all you have to do this evening,’ said Tama. ‘Walk, then sit. Concentrate on doing that as well as you can. Don’t speak. Watch and listen, that’s all.’

  It was nearing dusk, the hour of the monkey. In the distance a deep-toned bell tolled, the melancholy sound booming out across the hills of the city. As if in answer, small bells began to peal, some further away, some close at hand. One was so loud it sounded as if it must be right in the house itself.

  Tama rose grandly to her feet. With her magnificent pompadour and hairpins radiating like a halo, she was more a divine being than a woman. It would take a brave man to try to undo her obi, Hana thought to herself.

  ‘They will be surprised,’ Tama announced archly, raising her eyebrows and glancing in a mirror with a nod of satisfaction.

  ‘You’re not coming with us, are you, Big Sister?’ clamoured the attendants.

  ‘I am indeed,’ said Tama, smiling just enough to reveal the black lacquer glinting on her teeth. ‘They’re in for a treat tonight.’

  The attendants crowded around her, lining up in pairs in height order. Little Chidori was looking crestfallen. Together with Namiji, the other child attendant, she had to stay behind.

  Kawanoto, the attendant with the large innocent eyes, grabbed Hana’s hand and pulled her next to her at the front of the line. The eight were like dolls in matching red kimonos, with matching white faces and crowns of flowers on their hair. The older ones had sleeves that hung to the waist to mark their adult status, while the younger ones wore kimonos with sleeves that hung nearly to the ground.

  ‘That’s my place,’ said a sulky voice. The girl who spoke was about sixteen, the same age as Kawanoto. Her face was painted whiter, her eyes blacker, her lips redder and her hair piled higher than anyone else’s. She wore the same kimono as everyone else, but hers was more loosely tied, revealing a glimpse of a white-painted bosom, and the bow of her obi dangled invitingly.

  ‘I don’t know why I have to go,’ she complained. ‘I’m booked up this evening already.’

  ‘You go because I tell you to, Kawayu,’ snapped Tama.

  The door to the corridor opened and a swell of music and singing surged into the room as a mask-like face appeared, accompanied by a swirl of perfume.

  ‘Auntie!’

  Everyone, even Tama, tumbled to their knees and pressed their faces to the floor. Remembering the storehouse, Hana glanced fearfully at the old woman.

  Auntie was in an elegant pale blue kimono with a glossy black wig fitted over her hair. She carried herself tall, as if in her mind she was still the proud beauty she had once been, but her thick white make-up threw every wrinkle into hideous relief. Her black-rimmed eyes sank into her cheeks and the scarlet paint on her lips seeped into the lines that surrounded them. She walked straight over to Hana.

  ‘On your feet,’ she said. She tugged at Hana’s kimonos and tucked in a hair. Then she spun Hana round and her hand sought out the charm tucked into the back of Hana’s coiffure. Hana froze, fearful that she would take it, but Auntie gave a knowing smile.

  ‘Let’s wait awhile with this one,’ she announced. Tama bowed and nodded. ‘We’ll see what offers we get. We might have something good here.’ Auntie bent towards Hana. ‘Come,’ she said in kindly tones. ‘It’s time for the world to see you.’

  As they filed out into the corridor, the sound of music, voices and laughter grew until the house was throbbing with it. The maids led them along corridor after corridor, holding up lamps and candles to drive back the encroaching shadows. Darkness licked at the edges of the pool of light as doors slid open and women glided out, moving like sleepwalkers drawn by the music. The corridor was filled with the rustling of kimonos and the mingling of perfumes. Hana kicked out her bare feet, so concerned with not tripping over her skirts that she barely noticed where they were going.

  They pattered down a staircase and around a veranda. Then Hana felt a draught of cold air and smelt dust and roasting foods and woodsmoke – the smells of the street. She looked up and realized they were near the entrance. They stopped outside a door. Shamisens twanged somewhere near by, a young clear voice was singing a ballad and wooden sticks beat a tattoo, like in a kabuki theatre when the play is about to start.

  Then a voice gave a yell, the door slid back and light flooded out, so brilliant that Hana hesitated and covered her eyes.

  Hands on her waist, Kawanoto steered her forward. Hana stumbled out into the brightness, feeling icy air swirl around her as Kawanoto shoved her to her knees. She heard breathing and felt the warmth and perfumes of women’s bodies crowding in around her. There was a moment’s silence, then a roar went up, like the roar that greets an actor when he steps out on stage.

  Hana raised her eyes and gasped. She was not on stage at all but in a cage, a huge cage with wooden bars along the front, like the cages she had seen when she arrived at the Yoshiwara. Then she had been outside, staring in at the occupants. Now she was inside. She was one of them.

  The roar died down and a man’s voice sang out, ‘A new girl! A beauty! Hey, darling, look over here!’

  Another voice butted in, ‘She’s mine. Hey, new girl, what’s your name?’

  A chorus of voices demanded, ‘New girl, what’s your name?’

  B
eyond the bars the darkness was alive with eyes, some big, some small, some round, some almond-shaped, all staring – staring at her. Hana made out the shadowy figures of men, some with their noses pressed between the bars, others lurking behind, stopping to peer. Horrified, she edged back, glad of all the other women around her, and put her hand on the charm in the back of her hair. She knew now what it was for.

  Like wax figures, gorgeous in their silk and gold and silver, the women knelt, silent and still, as men strolled by, gathered round, peered in. Some stayed, their noses glued to the bars, trying to attract the girls’ attention, while others moved on.

  Tama was at the back of the cage, facing the audience, along with a couple of other women as extravagantly dressed as she. As Hana turned to look at her, she took a long-stemmed pipe and began to puff, as cool and relaxed as if she was in the privacy of her own rooms. Casually she blew a smoke ring, as if unaware of the men a few steps away who shuffled their feet, blew on their hands and gawped at her.

  She took a scroll from her sleeve, unrolled it and slowly ran her eyes across it as if it was a letter from an adoring admirer, smiling every now and then, narrowing her eyes and running her tongue across her lips. Then she turned and whispered to a fellow courtesan, gracefully bending her head and hiding her face in her sleeve as if stifling a peal of laughter.

  She glanced slyly towards the men and inclined her head ever so slightly. A murmur rose from the crowd as she turned back languidly and took a puff on her pipe.

  Hana watched, mesmerized. Tama was like the puppet master controlling the crowd, making them do whatever she wanted.

  As the time dragged by, the attendants started whispering together and giggling.

  ‘Ooh, look at him, he’s handsome.’

  ‘That’s Jiro. Don’t you know him? He’s always here.’