AHMM, January-February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She told him of her childhood in this house, of running in the garden when she was very small, splashing stones into the pond, calling loudly and frantically to the gardener's daughter when she hid. She told of the end of all this childish boisterousness when she became older, of her hatred of calligraphy lessons and poetry drill, of plans for dressing her in layers and layers of matched colors of silk, of reciting quotations to her mother, who knew perfectly well that her daughter remembered by now every poem in every book and scroll in the house, for this was one part of her training she had taken to; hatred especially of being secluded from sight and kept indoors, but hating nothing so much as talk of possible husbands to be discreetly allowed access behind her curtain and even, after proper exchanges of enthusiastic poems, to her bed.

  "You were frightened,” he said.

  "No, I just hated."

  "It is what is done, to trade our women for family advancement, and often we don't ask your permission. You knew it all your life, but you never thought of it as something to do with you."

  "It was hateful. I was hateful. I tried to make myself unsuitable."

  "You needn't tell me about it."

  "No. I won't. But you must understand..."

  "Ah, yes, I do. And I am here, knowing—"

  "You know these terrible things already?"

  "I was about to say I know your heart. Because when you play that music, I listen. I am very good at listening."

  * * * *

  On that same night, the woman who was known as the Lady Aoi lay in another house not too far away. She said to the man beside her, “When you are gone—"

  "I was not gone, I was away."

  "When you are gone, my spirit sinks and practices grieving."

  He lay without moving, breathing into the frigid night, as present as he could make himself. She did not mean all this, he knew her strength. She was tired and upset by the trouble in the streets.

  "Perhaps it was just that I was here in your house, where you are usually...” She let the sentence die, as not worth finishing, she gave up complaining, recognizing that she had succumbed to an impulse to seek comfort. Yet one finger moved under the silk-wadded cover until it touched the outer robe of the Great Minister of the Right, father of the princess she served and her own special friend.

  The house of the princess had been damaged by robbers, who were made bolder by pervasive confusion caused by continuing trouble with the militant monks. Under cover of raids and processions and hectoring protests, intruders were scaling walls and forcing gates at all hours. Many residents had left the capital for outlying peaceful temples or country estates. The husband of Aoi's princess had come noisily with a parade of carriages and taken off the whole household. All except Aoi, who was required here, he said. But when she arrived, the house had been left in charge of the minister's steward, besides whom there were only servants and the guards.

  "Ah, lady!” the steward had said, greeting her. “There is an urgent conference at the palace, and he must stay there. And then he thinks he will have to go east and bring back soldiers. He knew it would comfort me if you were here to consult."

  As with all the minister's people, he was competent and modest and had no need to flaunt authority. So she was welcomed and established in her own space, along with O-hana, her maid, and they all worked together to plan how best to protect the house: armed guards making a proper show, tradesmen eased in and out of half-opened doors, fire baskets burning in the grounds at night. Now the minister had managed to break away from the panic around the emperor, but only for a short time, and then he would mount his horse.

  "Listen,” he said out of the darkness. “There is a certain situation. It involves the Young Nun and you must go there."

  "Oh no,” Aoi said.

  The woman who was still called the Young Nun had not actually taken any vows. At least, that is what was believed. It was a vague story of some outrageous behavior when she was just at marriageable age, almost fourteen, and her family was scouting for suitable young men. Some said she had attacked her mother; some said she had merely screamed and cried, but so shamingly that the parents considered her mad; some said she had cut herself and scattered blood all over the house. Whatever it was she did, her reputation for instability spread, and she was taken away somewhere. And then the parents died, of grief and distress, it was said, of embarrassment, of helpless rage. There were two funerals, the empty house sat for a year, and she came back to it, found some of the old servants, and lived on what an uncle sent monthly, never, it was said, practicing religion. The garden fence was rotting, weeds grew on the paths. She played the koto very well, it could be heard in the late evenings, and so people knew that she was there. Yet no one breached that crumbling fence, and the Young Nun lived undisturbed by suitors.

  "Why must I go?” Aoi said to the minister.

  "It is only a feeling I have about the Other Minister."

  Traditionally the Minister of the Right was subordinate to the other top minister, he of the Left. But the present Minister of the Left was a useless fop who gloried in official duties and the fine clothing and exquisite ceremony required for such display. He had no stomach for actual governing and left all such unpleasant duties to his counterpart. And so it was with tact, shrewdness, circumspection, and care that the lesser minister ruled the country of Japan, the emperor having no practical power.

  "The Other Minister is afflicted with an honest man. That man has developed an attachment to the Young Nun. And I am worried."

  Aoi sighed.

  * * * *

  But with only such scant information, she went in the morning with O-hana, riding in a modest carriage that creaked and squealed in the cold. O-hana had packed a few simple robes, the warmest ones, and she had wrapped and tied Aoi's chest of medicines with all the tiny drawers and packages and lacquer boxes, holding it in her lap as she did whenever they traveled. It was early morning. The minister had left before dawn because business at the palace started in the dark. The streets were almost empty, only carpenters and tofu sellers about, a few men with charcoal in baskets hung from poles.

  Arriving, Aoi had to brace herself to go in. These old houses, they breathed such odors. Two women bowed and scuttled before them, one very old, one almost a child. She would be available after the morning meal, they said. She was never up this early.

  The odors were there, as odors are in a strange house, but were not unpleasant. And glancing sideways as they hurried through cold gloom, Aoi saw no dilapidation, though a great deal of bareness. Which could be interpreted as serenity, she thought. Simplicity, she thought, is not a bad thing. Nor is selling off the furniture when you are poor. Nor is trying to think positively about an unwelcome situation.

  * * * *

  In mid morning, they were summoned. But they were not to see the Young Nun just yet, it seemed. She received them from behind a curtain of patterned brocade, the first rich item Aoi had seen in the house.

  "Can you tell me why you are here?” said the hidden woman.

  Aoi was struck dumb. Hadn't she been asked for? Hadn't someone explained that a palace-wise woman was needed here, for propriety? For protection? For—Not sure herself what she could do, or was expected to do, Aoi took a leap. “I understand that he is a warrior."

  Such a cutting through of all the usual careful sentences expected in any situation between strangers seemed to take away the breath of the woman behind the curtain screen. There had been anger, resistance, hostility, and incipient rudeness in her one question. But Aoi knew—for she was a palace-wise woman—how to deflate these windy poses.

  "They are not as other men you may have—” Here she paused. This girl? Woman? How old were those stories? Would she have ever known any man except her father? “—other men you may have heard of or read of. I have always found them more direct, more—"

  "I am afraid of him,” came in a small voice from behind the folds of red and sounds of weeping.

  Aoi turned a littl
e toward O-hana, who sat with the household's old woman beside the door. She commonly consulted with her sensible maid, who now looked back with no expression except a slight stirring of one eyebrow. The old woman made no gesture of help toward the red curtain. Aoi raised an open fan to cover her face, an impulse to remove herself from a situation she did not understand.

  This girl, she thought—she must be still a girl—has been watched, corrected, supervised, picked apart her entire life, until she rebelled in some extreme way. She will not hear any advice, she will not let anyone teach her. So. Let her teach herself.

  "Tell me what he is like."

  "He doesn't talk."

  "I see. And that is what frightens you."

  "No. He listens. He likes my music."

  Aoi felt more and more adrift. She could assume some parts of the story: He passes by her house late and hears the Young Nun playing; the music moves him; he stops to listen, goes closer, comes another time, makes himself known, sends in a poem or two, is admitted by the old woman after many entreaties. Typical. But then?

  "He threatens you, menaces?"

  "No, no. He is attentive. We speak, he listens."

  "But you are frightened."

  "I am afraid he won't come back. It is not every evening because he has duties."

  "Ah.” It was all Aoi could manage.

  "One night I will go with him, when he leaves."

  "He mentions such an idea? He has plans?"

  "This is not a house for living in. It is a house to be dead in. I will go with him, to some other place. I will not stay here.” There was steel in her voice. So she was the one with plans.

  Aoi thought of the many questions a responsible parent would ask, but she knew that anything implying doubt of the girl's judgment would be a mistake.

  "I should like to know this man so sensitive to music, this strong person who does not talk. It is indeed my experience that attentive silence is a positive trait in man or woman."

  "Oh thank you!” And the girl, unnerved by approval, wept again.

  "Tell me his name,” Aoi said

  It was the old woman who answered, her voice heavy with the bitterness of having been the one to admit him. “He is called—"

  "Don't say it!” cried the Young Nun. “It would be bad luck."

  * * * *

  Aoi and O-hana busied themselves with unpacking. The house was a large one and they explored empty spaces, all bare and chill. O-hana went to offer help in the kitchen and found there an old man thrashing about with violent whacks of a knife at cabbage and leeks, poking at a fire, fanning away smoke. He was unwelcoming.

  "Will the warrior come tonight?” Aoi said to O-hana when she returned.

  "They don't know,” she said. “It is always late and they are asleep."

  "We will have to keep watch."

  It had been a long and trying day, and Aoi gave in to sleep, trusting O-hana to waken her when she, too, felt overwhelmed. She could not tell how long she had been unknowing when a series of vibrating tones on the koto brought her back into consciousness. The girl was sounding a simple melody, the old folk song that begins “Off on that far hill,” dropping elegant little embellishments between phrases, the mode of tuning a minor one. She played without display of unusual skill, but with a depth of sadness that touched Aoi. And a man of strength had responded with a protective instinct, she thought. This is a man worth knowing.

  That night and the next there were commotions outside. The light of fires colored the sky, shouts came from the next road, men ran with heavy steps and jarring breath down the alley behind the house. O-hana checked that raindoors were secure, that intruders did not roam within the grounds. In one back corner of the veranda was a small solid door painted black. Both Aoi and O-hana found it unlatched, locked it, and were puzzled to find it opened again. This happened often enough that they mentioned it to each other, but did not bother to question the old woman. Mostly they listened, and both nights, very late, the girl played. But they saw no visitor.

  By daylight, the city quieter, they slept. Thus two days passed and they still had not seen the Young Nun. On the third night they both gave in to exhaustion. Light rain dripped from the eaves, it was a little warmer. In the morning there were cries and wails, not from outside but from within the house. When they saw at last the actual form of the Young Nun, it was as a dead body.

  * * * *

  The old woman had run shouting for them to come, but when they arrived, grasping their night robes about them, in the small screened-off space where the Young Nun lived, the woman had fled, and the crumpled figure of the girl lay among twists of a blue robe, thrown backward from where she had been kneeling at her writing desk. A livid streak of bruise marked her throat and Aoi knew, from the horrifying angle of her head, that a severe blow had broken her neck. The desk had collapsed, ink and paper littered the floor.

  Undisturbed by any person of the house—the young serving girl crouched by a sliding door ready to flee if noticed but avid to see what had happened—Aoi sat to consider the scene. She looked around, suppressing her sorrow, rising above shock and anger. This was a place they had not been invited to, the true home of the Young Nun, furnished with a few simple chests and folding screens that were beautifully decorated. These were the finest things from a formerly rich house, the few that had not been sold. On the veranda side of the space, a long koto instrument lay under its cover of brocade.

  Just in front of the shattered desk was a smear of mud and gravel, in its center, a single yellow ginkgo leaf. She signaled to O-hana to pick it up.

  "Let us see,” she said, “what happened here. I don't think that it was robbers. Such a house as this would not attract them. That door, the small black one at the corner of the veranda, was traditionally left open for the man who visited, we can assume that, since we found it unlatched so many times."

  O-hana nodded.

  "He came in wearing shoes. A man intent on murder does not bother about clean floors. The leaf on his foot made him slip, just as he moved to strike. He fell onto the desk, but still he—Hmm. That is a warrior's blow, perhaps the back of a sword or the flat of it. It did not cut, but hit with such force..."

  She looked at O-hana, who said, “He would not use the edge? Or did it turn because he fell?"

  "That depends,” Aoi said, “on who he was."

  O-hana stepped carefully into the wreckage and held up the inkstone for Aoi to see. They examined it. The girl had ground quite a lot of ink, and the little trough for mixing it with water must have been full, to have spilled so much when it was upset by the man's fall. The front of her robe was black with it. And clear on the grinding surface were the prints of fingers.

  "Check her hands,” Aoi said to O-hana.

  "Clean. It's all on her clothes and on the floor just there."

  Aoi sat for a long time. The Young Nun had been young, of slight figure. The face was slack in death, but Aoi could see the strength in it, the mouth firm in outline, the brow high above natural eyebrows, which she had scorned to pluck as she had scorned any makeup. Her hair, that most prized of female attractions, was exceptionally long and full, surely her one good feature. It had not been cut, not even shortened at the sides in token of full cutting for religious vows, as was so fashionable to do for those less than serious about leaving the world. And she had not tied it with ribbons for sleeping, so she had expected him. But then, she had probably always expected him.

  Holding the ginkgo leaf, observing the inkstone, Aoi considered what to do. Whatever it was, it must be done quickly.

  "What was she writing?” she said to O-hana.

  They found several sheets of paper with abandoned lines of poetry. All used images of a crane, an awkward bird, long lived, beautiful in flight, of raucous voice, solitary, but much admired, much spied upon, never a pet.

  Still Aoi sat thinking. The minister is not here, but he put me in his house to give me vicarious authority. He suspected trouble from the Other Minister.
Because of an honest man. Aoi understood fully the kind of trouble an honest man would cause. Someone who saw that peasants were not taxed beyond legal limits, someone who respected boundaries, gave true lists of stores and accounts of harvest to inspectors, would not approve hidden rice granaries, paid his men—for this man was a warrior and probably head of his troop—their full wages and kept nothing back for himself. He had come into the city to protect the property of the Other Minister. Or he had been brought with his men to control the priests, to fight ... To Aoi, this seemed more likely. A troublesome honest man. Put him to fighting armed priests, and he may be killed and we are rid of him, the Other Minister would have thought.

  But...

  He becomes attached to a strange girl, one no person in the capital would encourage him to know. This would be good news to an enemy, grist for criticism and unflattering rumor. But why kill her?

  Suddenly Aoi realized that she was not blaming the warrior suitor, but the master who did not want an honest man in his service. She was intuiting a whole situation that could be entirely false: That the warrior friend of the Young Nun was the honest man. That he was head of armed men, put daily in danger. That there had been efforts to control his thwarting respect for the law. And finally, that the killing of this girl was to take away someone he valued, and to prove that they could do it, to convince him of their intent to master him, and to frighten him.

  Well, she thought, I have only intuition, but if we are to act, it must be at once. To O-hana she said, “Go back to the house and bring the steward."

  * * * *

  He came, but not alone. Other men would deal with the body, taking upon themselves the uncleanness of death. They would close the house and send the young serving girl back to her grandparents. The steward himself went to see the steward of the Other Minister, who, unable to counter the strength of influence from this direction, had his master's armed men assembled in the courtyard. Aoi arrived in an elaborate carriage the steward had sent for her, which was so obviously from the Great Minister of the Right that the men suppressed their muttering. They had heard something, and they had no patience for dealing with a useless woman. The something had been a bad thing for their captain and they wanted action. But this lady, concealed so properly within ornamented lacquer and layers of curtains, must not be offended. The two stewards faced them down and they subsided.