Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha

by Richard Monaco

  When he first saw her she was leaning on the side of a building with one arm, seemingly frozen in the act of staggering – then she reeled sideways (he sped up his strides) and went down into the semi-frozen street mud. Was she ill?

  He lifted her and sat her under an overhang out of the rain. Noted the condition of her clothing as she moaned and blinked and shivered.

  ‘Drunk?’ he’d asked her.

  ‘Eh?’ She’d sighed. ‘A man attacked me… I fought him… ran away … ’

  ‘A thief?’

  ‘What matter?’

  ‘It matters if he took your property.’

  He was on one knee over her. Her scent, in the wet, cold dirt and wood smell was indescribably rich, sweet and warm and he was reminded of lying back on crushed spring wildflowers and being bathed in fresh perfume. He studied her curving cheeks, small ears, slightly parted, perfectly shaped lips and eyes that seemed softly trusting, hinting at some total surrender: all this in a flash impression that included her runny and blotched makeup and two scratch marks on her neck that he had no way of knowing were self-inflicted.

  ‘He took nothing,’ she’d said, looking into his face as if to read it.

  ‘Come with me,’ he’d said. And she had.

  Now she stared out through the wicker interstices at the outlines of softly lit buildings, the gardens between them widening as they went upslope into a wealthy area, bigger houses now often set back behind walls or fences.

  They think I am weak, she was thinking, and for him I am… it will end badly…

  She banged the knocker on the big, round paneled door in Chinese style with bronze characters for luck and happiness. It opened and, instead of a retainer, “Tanba” himself came out and stood beside her on the stone porch in the gentle light of one big golden lantern hanging above the door. She knew that meant he was aware she was coming, so she said:

  “You honor me, Sandayu-san.”

  The moon was down, the stars softly bright in the humid air.

  “Formal,” he said.

  His eyes were still as dark stones, she thought, and noted he was wearing a sword – very unusual. The lanternglow softly painted his angular, expressionless face on the night.

  “You were watching me?” she asked. “Is there danger?”

  “When is there no danger? Why are you here, ‘Chrysanthemum?’” he asked, using her work name.

  “Why was the woman killed?”

  “Which woman?”

  “Cherry Petals, at the house.”

  “Cherry blossoms are brief.” He shrugged, moving slightly. Now the light was behind him and his features blotted-out. “What should I know of this?”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “What? A great deal. We are surrounded by mysteries. I detest mysteries.”

  “She was killed horribly.”

  “There are few pleasant ways.”

  “Why was she killed?”

  He grunted.

  “You press me,” he said.

  She couldn’t even see his eyes, now; not that it would have told her much. He turned his head again and took a step away from her, looking out across the dark garden to the dimly pale wall half an acre away. The lantern now showed part of his harshly ascetic expression as if it were being formed from the soft shadows.

  “What can I do?” He shrugged. “I cannot help you.”

  “So. Do I need help, Tanba?”

  “Just go, now, Miou.”

  “Please do not hurt him.”

  “Why would I? He has little to fear from me.”

  “Who must he fear?”

  Another shrug. He walked to the edge of the porch and looked out beyond the wall over the small city in the middle distance… the gleaming lights… the stars…

  “His enemies,” he told her. “As we all must.”

  Fourteen

  At the temple

  The morning was hot. No wind stirred. The sun rose and was like an open oven in a closed room. No one had slept well except uMubaya. He felt alert and ready for anything.

  With three fighting monks as an escort, they went out the gate before the sun was much above the temple wall; they immediately stopped because a man was leaning against a thick plum tree, obviously waiting, a small horse nuzzling the grasses nearby in the golden, broken light. He had on a well-worn kimono, bare-legged underneath, and long, somewhat shaggy hair, a longsword slung over his back.

  “Are we discovered?” uMubaya wondered.

  Nori stepped forward, squinting, intent.

  “I know this man,” he said loudly. “Who can say who he works for?”

  Takezo watched them come through the temple gate. Despite his disguise (the monks had re-stained his face and hands to a more Japanese hue) he identified the Scot at once by his build and movements. As uMubaya hadn’t yet donned his beehive head covering that settled matters. He recognized Nori as a Hideo vassal and excellent swordsman.

  Osan’s strongly built former bodyguard reached him first, sun fragments winking over him as he came under the branches and sketched a bow which the ronin returned in kind.

  “Who set you on our trail?” Nori asked.

  The taller man shrugged and rubbed his chin, thoughtfully.

  “I am actually not sure,” he replied. “What do you think?”

  They didn’t say what to do except find them, Takezo thought. I’m truly sick of everything… I need my bag of gold ryo and then to take her south to Honsho province… find a nice town not too big, not too small… maybe teach sword and write poetry… why not?…

  “I’m not thinking,” Nori said.

  The others came closer and waited.

  “Yes,” Takezo responded. “You are a Hideo clan samurai. Why would you think?”

  “Why would you?”

  “And I see you have no fear,” the tall man said, looking at the group in the spreading, golden stillness of the heavy, hot morning. “Do you have children?”

  “What?” countered Nori. One monk, the strong one uMubaya had dueled with, came up beside him. “A question? No.”

  “Neither do I, yet, I see now that I want them. I’ve been given some gold to locate you.” Pointed with his chin. “And him and him. The man made of darkness.”

  “So you’ve earned your money. What more must you do for pay?” He said the word with a samurai’s contempt.

  Takezo chuckled and relaxed.

  “Not fight the Yamabushi at their temple, for one thing,” he stated.

  “Do you mean to keep following us?” Nori wanted to know.

  Takezo nodded.

  “Yes,” he answered. “I know he did no murder. I will travel with you.”

  “Where?”

  “Back to the city.”

  They were all around him now, where he leaned, relaxed and easy, on the tree bole. uMubaya was impressed by his demeanor and took him for a man to be reckoned with. They stood there bathed in broken light and shadow.

  “Is that where we go?” Nori asked, hand on swordhilt.

  “There’s nowhere else,” the ronin pointed out. “Priests,” he went on, “should a man not marry when he feels the urge? What was the Buddha’s view?”

  The first priest had a round face and a jolly look, with distant eyes.

  “Oh,” was the reply, “he might ask: ‘what is it that marries?’”

  “What is it that marries?” he responded, as they all started walking together. “Not the common sense.”

  This produced general laughter as they waded through the dust onto the road that headed back east. uMubaya got the joke with a little help from Nori. Colin didn’t care.

  “Who this man?” he asked.

  “There are many points-of-view,” answered the ronin. “Few favorable. My future wife thinks I’m a walking sake keg.”

  “A spy and assassin for hire,” Nori added.

  “Those are the good points,” Takezo said and the round-faced priest laughed.

  And that is how I will probab
ly end, Takezo thought, with an internal sigh. This time I’ll play all sides, be cold as ice… take with “ten hands,” as the saying is… no more drunken vows at night and half-measures in the morning…

  “And poet, it is said,” put in the priest.

  “There’s the worst point,” grunted Nori.

  “Yes,” agreed Takezo, nodding, grinning, as they marched into the gathering, broiling day. “I’m swearing off it.” Rolled his shoulders and neck to relax them.

  Fifteen

  About sunset that day

  Lorenzo Gentile looked into his brimming teacup and saw his lidded eyes reflected back at him in the rounded-off half of his face that showed there. When he’d first met her he’d been shocked that all her teeth were missing while her daughter had a perfect smile. His serving girl had covered her mouth and quivered with suppressed laughter before explaining that samurai married women blackened their teeth to enhance their beauty and wore short-sleeved kimono.

  Hot drinks in this weather, he thought.

  The Lady sat on her heels across the low table, a serving girl beside her who’d just prepared the tea. Issa had poured it herself to honor him.

  “The more I learn about your daughter,” he said, “the greater my admiration.”

  The graceful, long-limbed, aquiline-featured woman inclined her head, a picture of modest decorum, he thought, except for her eyes which, some said, had an icy wildness in them. The effect was to make you very careful in how you dealt with her. Well, the samurai women, he’d quickly learned, all carried a dagger which they used with skill to match any Florentine assassin. He’d been told that, after battles, these women gathered and washed the heads of important enemies to present to their victorious warlords.

  “Ah, Gentile-san, we all mourn her loss. And, sadly, it may bring war.”

  “So I have heard.”

  “Gentile-san, why did you ask to see me? Is it to plead for your friend whose guilt is so plain?”

  “My lady, if he is guilty of this hideous crime then it must come out.”

  “Ah,” she said like a sigh, moving with that soft grace again belied only by her dark, remote eyes like those, he thought, in a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia he’d seen in Florence. “Has not that cloud already passed the moon?”

  He hesitated… then got her meaning. He was slightly more fluent than uMubaya in this new speech, but still, subtleties were always difficult and these people depended on them.

  He raised both open hands to his shoulders in a pure Italian shrug that she understood instantly. He glanced towards the west window where the red sun seemed to have broken like an egg over the mountains into a shapeless pooling of cloudy blood. The astonishing effect held him: the deep, bluish-green, shadowed landscape, the darkening night, the bleeding sky…

  An emblem of this world, he thought, all beauty and horror…

  *

  Three weeks ago

  Osan was in her room kneeling at a low table, brush-writing on a paper scroll with crisp delicacy, quick and even strokes running fluidly down the sheet. Like her mother, she had finely chiseled-in features; unlike her, the eyes were large, well-opened and showed her feelings, her intensities and sympathies.

  She faced the door, the long, low window on her right. Rain was falling straight down from a dark gray sky, pattering steady on the overhang and streaming from the gutters down several stories to the moat. The diffused light gleamed softly on one side of her face, blending it into an almost painted appearance like an exquisite porcelain doll. She wore outer and inner robes of faintly blue, unpatterned silk with a plain white obi cinched around her slender waist.

  Her mother, whose eyes were long, very tilted, narrow and (as has been noted) seemed unconnected to the rest of her – not even remotely so – as if an artist had sketched one person’s face and used another’s eyes. She slid open the painted doorscreen with the mysterious, moon-shot landscape (admired by Gentile) painted in black and white on the panels.

  Issa just stood there motionless, tall, haughty and composed. Her daughter looked up and bowed.

  ‘Writing things,’ Issa said, without inflection.

  ‘Greetings, mother. I hope you are well, today.’

  ‘Sweet to hear.’

  ‘You seem surprised, mother.’

  ‘Surprised you paused in your incessant calligraphy.’

  ‘I do not write for beauty. For meaning.’

  ‘How bold you are.’

  She stayed framed in the doorway, a dim, huge central chamber behind her, faintly lit by streaks of grayish daylight from high, narrow windows. The weak, soft glow blended away all but Issa’s strong, pointed chin and long, slightly beaked nose which resembled pale, polished stone – accentuated by her shaved eyebrows, symbolic of marriage.

  ‘Shall I cease writing, mother?’

  Still as stone her mother replied:

  ‘Write until your fine fingers stiffen and drop off. How many read your words?’

  ‘Mother,” Osan responded, thoughtfully, ‘words have a power to gather meaning and make it solid as a brass statue.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘From meaning, do we not find truth?’

  ‘Or lies.’

  ‘Because a true thing has been formed in words it may live long beyond the one who uttered it.’

  ‘So, also, may not lies live?’

  ‘How have I lied, my mother?’

  ‘If you would please me, take the habit of a nun and offer the Buddha your silence save when holy sutras break from your lips instead of dangerous and disrespectful sayings.’

  ‘How have I spoken ill?’

  Osan set down her brush a little like a samurai placing his sword beside him.

  ‘Your father is easily misled,’ her mother told her.

  ‘That is clear, else things would not be as they are.’

  ‘You suggest I mislead him?’

  ‘Only you know that, mother,’ Osan said, shrugging. ‘When my father asks a thing I answer as best I can.’

  Issa looked, delicately, at the window where the rain was dinning steadily. The air smelled cool and fresh.

  ‘He asks about the Chamberlain?’ she wondered, too softly.

  ‘He asks many things. The Chamberlain seems to favor bloodshed above most earthly pleasures, mother.’

  ‘Daughter, more than ever, I believe you should renounce worldly things. More than ever, I feel the life of a solitary nun beckons to you.’ Her mother seemed to be watching the rain. But, her daughter more or less thought, who could tell what she was looking at. ‘Chamberlain Reiko,’ she said, ‘is our most trusted vassal. What can be said against him?’

  ‘What is your opinion, mother?’ The beautiful girl picked up the long, slim brush and began writing again, not looking up. ‘What do you want?’

  Issa turned back to her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Perhaps I meant why? Why do you want?’ Her graceful fingers worked the brush as if she were carving the sharp-edged strokes into stone. ‘People who live for drink dance and sing but wake up sour and sorry. Those who live to eat awake swollen and strain their bowels. If I ask them why they want, what might they say?’

  Already turning to leave, Issa responded over her shoulder.

  ‘They drink because what they want cannot be had,’ she said. ‘They eat from a hunger that cannot be appeased. Do not put yourself between the parched and starving and their ferocious need.’ And, as the last word, blending away into the inner dimness of the high chamber, voice barely audible over the rushing downpour, said: ‘Remember, daughter, I am all appetite.’

  *

  The Present

  The stained light painted Issa and Gentile’s shadows on the opposite wall, edges blurred and uncertain.

  “My Lady,” he said, not looking at her, “many of Lady Osan’s writings are missing. Can they be found?”

  “Who can say? Many of her ideas might have been better left in her mind.”

  Staring at the window he
noticed the serving girl going out and sliding the door shut. He glanced over. On the door was a painting in red and black of Mount Fujiyama. He thought the line exquisite.

  “Lady, might she have had enemies who struck her down and not the man who seems to have loved her?”

  “You have many ideas yourself, Gentile-san.” She shifted around the low table as smoothly and softly, he thought, as flowing water or wind. She was close to him, suddenly, her face in the blood red glow, eyes in deep, twilight shadow. “Choose among them, carefully.”

  “I hope to.”

  He looked back at the window where the red was curdling into near-black. Was startled to feel her hand touch his knee, hold a moment, then lift away as he looked at her.

  “A gift,” she said, picking up a red silk robe and handing it to him.

  He was almost startled by the smoothness, the exquisite workmanship. Slightly baffled, he responded:

  “Thank you, Lady. You are so kind.”

  “You must put it on. It is our custom with such a gift.”

  “I … ”

  She giggled, softly, like a sigh, folding herself into a bow like a drooping flower. Again, the eyes stayed apart from all her body-language. There was, he realized, an avidity showing there, a naked hunger…

  “Behind the screen provided for you,” she said, indicating one set catty-corner behind him. He nodded.

  “Your custom,” he murmured.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded, again, getting up.

  Che fa, he thought.

  As he came back out, he was barefoot in the long, watersmooth robe with just his linenshirt and Italian-style linen underwear underneath. He’d worn Japanese costume before, but nothing as light and comfortable as this. His long, bony feet made him slightly self-conscious.

  He started to thank her and then paused because there was only one lantern still lit, she was totally nude in the dim reddish gleam, reclining on several silken pillows, smiling faintly, graceful and relaxed, the eyes still detached from everything else, but softer, this time and fixed on his.

  She motioned him over without looking away. He was literally stunned by her beauty, wanted to speak, not speak, flee, stay… instead he dropped to one knee for physical and other reasons, managing to say: