The Courtesan and the Samurai

by Lesley Downer

  ‘The teahouses are very important,’ Otsuné continued. ‘They’re where men go to arrange meetings. Some always visit the same woman, some try lots of different ones and some are eager to book a famous courtesan. They’ll need plenty of money if that’s what they want. If they don’t know who to ask for, the teahouse owner recommends someone. Even men who see you in the cage still have to book you through a teahouse. Mitsu used to be the most famous courtesan in the entire district and she’s still a legend. After she retired, her patron set her up in her own business and the Chrysanthemum Teahouse is the most popular in town now, with the best customers and the best connections. If Mitsu likes you, you’ll be fine.’

  Spring breezes wafted through the cracks in the walls and around the door frame and Hana pulled her jacket closer round her. If she was going to stay in the Yoshiwara, she would have to find a way to make it bearable. Tama for one didn’t seem to lead a bad life.

  ‘I’ve noticed Tama doesn’t lie with every client even if they’re paying her,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’ve seen her sit and drink sake with someone and chat to him and tease him, then pack him off after an hour without anything else.’

  ‘Ah, but Tama’s been here a long time, ever since she was a child, and she’s very clever. She’s mastered everything – how to talk, how to behave, how to please the old ladies who run things here; she can dance and write poetry and sing and do tea ceremony. But in the end none of that makes any difference. She still has a huge debt and she’d give anything for someone to buy her freedom. She sleeps with rich clients, I can tell you that. Women in our profession can’t afford to be too fussy.’

  ‘In our profession …’ Hana stared at her.

  The door slid open and a thin face poked round, grinning enquiringly, followed by a scrawny neck and a thin chest. Otsuné jumped to her feet, took out her purse and gave the boy some coins. He disappeared and returned a moment later with a couple of bowls of steaming noodles.

  ‘I read that in the olden days some courtesans never slept with anyone at all unless they liked them,’ Hana said, cradling the bowl in her hands and inhaling the savoury aroma. If she had to stay in the Yoshiwara, she thought, she’d like to be that sort of courtesan.

  Otsuné put down her bowl and rocked with laughter.

  ‘That’s what everyone hopes for and with your face you might just manage it, but the chances are small. Most of us accept whatever clients come our way. You remind yourself it’s just a job and keep topping up his sake cup and hope he’ll fall asleep before anything happens. That’s always a good ploy. There are plenty of ways to get it over with quickly. Tama’s an expert on those and even I can teach you.’

  She put her thin hand on the shiny clasp she wore on her kimono collar and stroked it, smiling quietly, as if at some secret thought that pleased her.

  ‘The key thing is, never forget it’s just a job, that’s what we always tell the new girls. Above all, don’t ever give your heart away. The big danger is not the awful men you have to lie with sometimes, but when you lose your heart to someone. It’s always the wrong fellow – the young handsome one who can’t afford your fees. That’s when you’ll come crying to me, asking what to do. As for sleeping with a client, you might even start to enjoy it. You had a husband and slept with him, didn’t you?’

  Hana shifted uncomfortably. ‘I … I hardly even knew him,’ she whispered. ‘All he ever said to me was, “Run my bath! Bring my tea!”’

  She pictured his face, dark and angry. She could almost smell the pomade he wore on his hair and thought of how her heart used to sink when she caught a whiff of it. She heard his voice barking, ‘Bath!’ ‘Tea!’ ‘Dinner! What? Not ready?’ and remembered how she had pressed her forehead to the floor while he slapped and kicked her. At night he had thrust his body against hers so fiercely she had to grit her teeth to stop herself crying out in pain, and whenever he was home for a day or two he would demand if she was with child and explode with rage that she had not produced a son for him yet.

  She had been nothing but a servant in his house, Hana could see that now. She had cleaned and cooked and been scolded and beaten by his mother, until war had erupted, as if a god had ground his heel on their small ants’ nest and put an end to that world and all its certainties. Treacherous though it had seemed at the time to think such a thing, it had been a blessed relief when he had gone off to fight. Being a courtesan could not be worse than being his wife.

  ‘He didn’t care about me at all,’ she muttered.

  ‘Mine did,’ Otsuné murmured, stroking her clasp. Hana was startled to see tears glistening in her eyes. ‘He cared about me.’

  Footsteps pattered up and down the alley and women’s voices broke the silence of the little house, chattering shrilly. The lid of the kettle hanging over the brazier jiggled.

  ‘Your husband, Otsuné?’ Hana asked softly.

  ‘My patron.’ Otsuné took off the clasp and showed it to her. It was a small faded square of fabric, ragged at the edges, embroidered with a black bird with a green snake in its beak, and a silver coin hanging from it with a wreath embossed around the edge. On one side were words, too worn to read; on the other, the profile of a man with a sharp nose and pointed beard. Hana had never seen anything like it.

  ‘He gave it to me to remember him by,’ said Otsuné, her voice muffled. She spoke so softly that Hana had to lean forward to hear her. There was a long silence. ‘Before I came here I was the concubine of a man who worked for the Lord of Okudono. I hated him but my parents were poor and had sold me to him. It was the only way we managed to survive.’

  Hana stared at the clasp, listening to Otsuné’s soft tones. She’d never in her life heard so much pain in a voice.

  ‘Three years ago my master was ordered to move back to the country and left me in Edo, with no money and nothing to eat. I wandered around for three days, then found an empty house and curled up and waited to die.’

  Otsuné’s face was small and white in the shadowy room. ‘A man saw me and gave me some rice balls. He said he’d give me more if I slept with him, so I did, and I ended up here. I was a lower-class whore at the Yamatoya on Kyomachi 2 – a cheap place, not like the Corner Tamaya. I used to sit in the cage like you do, but all the men wanted younger girls. I wasn’t like Tama; I didn’t know how to make them desire me.

  ‘Then one day a man came along. He was …’ She hesitated.

  ‘He was … ?’ prompted Hana breathlessly.

  Otsuné shook her head, took the clasp and held it for a moment, then pinned it back on her collar. ‘He asked for me again and again, then he said he didn’t want me to lie with anyone except him. He bought me my freedom and bought this house for me. Everything I have he gave me.’ She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and refilled the teapot.

  Hana stroked her arm. How thin she was, a frail bundle of bones inside the wadding of her jacket. She was burning to ask what had become of her patron and, if he had cared for her so much, why he was no longer there, but Otsuné was silent. Perhaps he too had been caught up in the war, Hana thought. She looked around. Now her eyes were accustomed to the gloom she could see signs of a man’s presence – an enormous pair of boots pushed to the back of the shoe rack and a dark blue obi that looked as if it must have been a man’s.

  There were fates worse than being a star courtesan at the Corner Tamaya, she was beginning to see that now. She thought of the ruined buildings she’d passed in the city and the women offering themselves to every man that went by. Here, inside the Great Gate, at least business was thriving.

  She remembered how she used to collect woodblock prints of the courtesans of the Yoshiwara, how she’d read about their love affairs and fashions and hairstyles, admired them and even tried to imitate them. She thought of her favourite romance, The Plum Calendar, of that intense world of feeling in which Ocho and Yonehachi lived, and how she had yearned for a life as romantic as theirs. That was how she had always imagined the Yoshiwara to be.

  And
now she was here.

  There was another thing too – the man at Kaoru’s. She knew he was a southerner and an enemy but, like Otsuné’s patron, he had been kind to her. She could still see his broad face and full mouth curved in a smile and his delicate long-fingered hand. She’d met so few men in her young life and had imagined that any client she had to lie with would be a monster; but it wouldn’t be so terrible to lie with this one, surely.

  Hana took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. This was her life now, at least for the time being. Perhaps she could even find a way to be happy.

  16

  By the time Hana slid open the door of Otsuné’s house and stepped out into the narrow lane, the shadows were beginning to lengthen. On the grand boulevard the lanterns were already lit and early visitors were strolling up and down or disappearing through the curtains of teahouses. Men turned to stare curiously after Hana as she passed and she quickly lowered her head and shrank away from their gaze.

  As she reached the Corner Tamaya, a hand with pink-tinted nails pushed the curtains apart and a mask-like face appeared. Black eyes glinted behind the white paint as Kaoru brushed through with a rustle of fabric, kimono hems swirling at her feet.

  ‘I’m so sorry I intruded,’ Hana whispered, bowing as low as she could, remembering how she had burst uninvited into Kaoru’s rooms a few months earlier. She hadn’t seen her since then.

  Kaoru gazed haughtily past her. In her lavishly embroidered kimonos with her hair piled into a gleaming coil, crowned with combs, jewels and hairpins, she was a magnificent spectacle. The high clogs she wore made her taller than everyone else, like a goddess on an altar commanding reverence. Men stopped to stare, keeping a respectful distance.

  Her red-painted lips opened, revealing immaculately polished black teeth, like a dark well in her mouth. ‘You wanted news from the front, you said?’

  ‘The first night I arrived here I heard you say the ships had sailed,’ Hana whispered, aware that Kaoru’s face had softened. Kaoru carried herself like the wife or concubine of a daimyo warlord, as if she had once commanded a great household, and Hana wondered if she might even have been one of the shogun’s ladies. To have fallen from such high station and ended up in the Yoshiwara must be hard to bear. If that really was the case, the only thing she could possibly have left was her pride, which perhaps was why she clung to it so fiercely now.

  ‘Well, I can tell you something else,’ Kaoru said. ‘They’ve landed in Ezo and taken over half the island. They may even come back one day to look for us.’ A spasm of pain crossed her beautiful face. ‘And what do you think they’ll do when they find us? When they find we’ve been making love to their enemies? Whether we win or lose, we’re finished. Our lives are over, yours and mine.’ She composed her face and drew herself up disdainfully. ‘From now on, stay on your own side of the house and keep away from my clients. If you’re lucky you might even find some of your own.’

  Miserably Hana trailed through the house to Tama’s rooms. As she slid open the door she was engulfed in a cloud of perfume, make-up, wax and the vinegary tang of teeth-blackening lacquer. Charcoal glowed in the huge brazier in the middle and candles and lamps burned. Tama’s most splendid kimonos were spread on racks along the walls with the thick quilted hems fanned out to display the exquisite embroidery. The luxurious brocades threaded with gold and silver glimmered in the flickering light, making the room look breathtakingly opulent.

  Hana smiled. To samurai taste it was shockingly vulgar and showy. She remembered how dark and austere the rooms had been in even the grandest samurai residences she’d visited. Even the shogun’s palace, she thought, could not be as luxurious as this. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before she came to the Yoshiwara, more like the dragon king’s palace under the sea than any earthly dwelling. But now, unexpectedly, she’d come to like it.

  The attendants were getting ready for the evening, chatting cheerfully to each other. When they saw Hana they moved up to make space in front of one of the mirrors. She fancied they glanced at her strangely but no one asked where she’d been.

  Tama was sipping a cup of tea, a robe flung casually around her shoulders. Her large-boned, rather plain face was flushed as if she had just come from the bath. She yawned and took a puff on her pipe as if she hadn’t even noticed Hana had been away.

  ‘So you met Mitsu,’ she said.

  Hana got down on her hands and knees and bowed. Tama was her ally, she saw that now. She needed desperately to keep her on her side.

  ‘You certainly weren’t made to be a wife,’ Tama said, looking at her hard. ‘I knew it as soon as I saw you. You look like a domestic pussy cat, but you’re not. You have claws, like me. That’s what’ll make you a good courtesan.’

  Hana took a breath. Tama was cunning and wily. It wouldn’t do to speak to her too directly.

  ‘I know I can never be as good a courtesan as you,’ she said, knowing she had to be cunning too if she was to survive in this new world. ‘But I’d like to learn. Will you teach me?’

  Tama looked at her out of the corner of her eye and smiled. ‘I’m so glad you’re coming round to my way of thinking.’ She took another puff on her pipe. ‘But I thought you were supposed to be the clever one. You can read and write, can’t you? Anything else?’

  ‘I can dance, well enough, and sing and play the koto. I can do tea ceremony and play the incense game …’

  ‘What else do you need?’ said Tama nastily. ‘There’s nothing else I can teach you.’

  A vendor shouted outside and she called to Chidori to run out and buy some medicine.

  ‘Aren’t there special things a courtesan needs to know?’ Hana whispered, her face blazing.

  Tama tapped her pipe out on the tobacco box and gave her a knowing look.

  ‘You want to learn how to sing in the night, is that it?’ Hana nodded. ‘Well, we caged birds certainly know a bit about that. Shosaburo has booked me tonight. Take a peek through the bedroom doors. He’s a skilled lover, very passionate, a real adept. You can watch all night if you like. That’s what all the other girls do.’ She narrowed her eyes until they were two slits in her face and ran her tongue around her lips. ‘And you’re right, there are techniques that I can teach you. How the Jade Stalk moves through the Lute Strings, the forty-eight positions, all the secrets of the way of love. You can become an adept. And even if you don’t, I can certainly show you how to enjoy yourself.’

  She took a wad of tobacco and moulded it between her fingers, then pressed it into the tiny bowl of her long-stemmed pipe, picked up the tongs, took a piece of charcoal from the brazier and lit it.

  ‘But what most men want is just to dream,’ she said.

  In the light of the fire her face was serious, almost sad. Hana could see the lines appearing in her brow, the heaviness in her cheeks, the sagging flesh around her eyes. Tama was already losing her looks, she realized.

  ‘They want to feel young and handsome and desirable, no matter how old and ugly they really are. They want to believe that they’re brilliant and witty, the most irresistible men on earth. They want you to gaze into their eyes as if you can’t bear to be apart from them, as if you’d give anything just to be with them for one moment. Make a man feel that and he’s yours for ever.’ She puffed reflectively on her pipe. ‘You’ll learn fast and with your face and that way you have about you, men will be fighting over you. But a little polish will make you even more desirable.’

  Footsteps padded towards the door and Tama’s eyes widened and her forehead wrinkled. Hana recognized the tread and panic lurched in her stomach. Father must have discovered she had been roaming the streets and was coming to punish her.

  As the door slid open, the women fell to their hands and knees, faces pressed to the ground.

  ‘Wasting time again!’ growled a familiar voice.

  Trembling, Hana looked up, trying not to recoil as she saw the paunch, jowly face and small greedy eyes encased in folds of skin.

  �
��Not dressed yet, young lady?’ He was looking straight at her. ‘We have several gentlemen eager to make your acquaintance.’

  Hana threw a desperate glance at Tama, but Tama was staring at the floor. Even she seemed cowed.

  ‘We’ve told them you’re a virgin,’ said Father with a lascivious grin.

  Hana’s heart was banging hard. She tried to speak but her mouth was dry. ‘But …’ she croaked. ‘But … I’m not.’

  ‘No one worries about that,’ snapped Father. ‘It’s standard practice.’

  Tama sat back on her heels, lifted her pipe to her mouth, took a defiant puff and blew a smoke ring. It hung above her head, slowly dissolving into the air.

  ‘She’s my protégée,’ she said, looking Father in the eye. ‘You put her in my care and I’ve just begun her training. We can charge a lot more if we wait a while.’

  ‘But she’s not a child. Who’s going to believe she’s still a virgin if we wait any longer?’

  With Tama on her side Hana could face anyone, even Father. She thought of what Tama had said about men wanting to dream.

  ‘Let me entertain these gentlemen,’ she said softly. ‘Let me drink and talk and dance and sing and do tea ceremony. I can make them feel I really want to get to know them, and then if I decide to lie with them it’ll make them feel much more special. If they can’t lie with me straight away, they’ll want to come back again and again till they can. Can’t I be properly introduced to the district? Isn’t that the usual way?’

  A withered face had appeared behind Father’s shoulder. The candlelight flickered, picking out the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, hideously painted. Then the light changed and for a moment Hana caught a glimpse of the beauty Auntie had once been.

  ‘I told you, Father, she’s got spirit, this one,’ the old woman purred. ‘She’s quite right, she needs a proper début. Business is down, right down. We need something to bring back the sparkle, to remind customers of the days when the Corner Tamaya was the glory of the Yoshiwara. With a bit of training she’ll be our star courtesan. We’ll find an excellent patron for her, who’ll pay a lot.’