Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha

by Richard Monaco

  “You accept me, master?”

  “Tell her to avoid going to work.” He was serious now. “Not for the reasons you avoid it. Tell her I fear treachery. Do not fail me.”

  “Master, I will not.” Yazu literally hopped from one bony foot to the other with happiness. “When I learn this two-jug style,” he effused, “so will I defeat that fat Hachi from the inn.”

  “No question. Hear this: I saw a poster saying the actor Seki is in the city. Where are the performances?”

  “Yes, yes. There was one already. Hitachi Theater two days past. I longed to go but could find no tickets.”

  “Steal, you mean.”

  “Master, I sincerely love the Noh. These folk of common taste and their Kubuki and puppets are –”

  “You are all refinement, Yazu. When is the next performance?”

  “There is another tonight and tomorrow. But the one tonight is closed because the great lords will attend.” He nodded and clasped and unclasped his hands. “They say you –”

  “Yes, yes. I resemble Seki. Go now.” Grinned. “Pupil.”

  Yazu nearly bowed himself in half with frantic delight. He brandished the comb.

  “I will not fail you, sensei!” he called back as he darted across the busy street into the market crowd.

  Except he stopped dead as a broad-faced, stout, woman about 40 with small, stony eyes and a sternly set mouth, wearing a dull gray kimono loosely tied, blocked his way. The stony eyes were on his face. The smileless mouth showing one missing front tooth was moving rapidly. He had a sinking feeling.

  “… and here you stand,” were the first words he actually registered. He really hadn’t had to listen to most of what she told him for years.

  “Good news,” he interjected into her first breath pause. “Good news!”

  “Aha. Good news. You found honest work? My best robe has been redeemed at the pawnbroker’s? Your older brother gave you back the silver coins he stole from his dead mother?”

  “Now, Yoko, I –”

  “Soon I’ll be dead. Meanwhile your daughter’s ribs are showing and your son was beaten by a fruit seller for theft! Good news.”

  Yazu hopped from one bony foot to the other. Still, she could tell he was genuinely excited about something. She was trying to deflect what she assumed would be another disappointment or a fresh absurd idea of her husband’s. Which would it be, she asked herself?

  It proved to be the latter as he cried:

  “Yes, yes, I am officially apprenticed to a great swordmaster!”

  “Ha, ha!” she laughed, the missing front tooth evident. “You’re mad. Good news. Soon you’ll be invited to serve the clan. Bah! Madman. Soon I’ll be dead.”

  “But, my dear,” he protested, backing away into the busy street in case she struck a blow at his head. “With real skill I can become a leader of –”

  But that was too much for her. One hand went up, fist knotted. A few citizens had paused to watch the discussion develop.

  “Leader of a pen of pigs!” she declared. “Soon I’ll be dead and the dogs will water my stone! Fool!” She advanced on him as he backed up. “Idiot! Bad gambler! Poor thief! Shameful man!” There were tears in her small eyes as well as rage. There was hurt along with frustration. “Go to your sensei swordmaster Takezo Jiro, a greater drunkard than even yourself!”

  “A man has ambition,” he cried back, baited. “A man wants to rise!”

  Yazu ducked behind a laughing ronin spearman who was eating a piece of fruit, bright sun glinting on his weapon’s tip.

  “Oh, how you will rise,” she prophesied, gap-tooth winking. “You will be crucified on a tall pole!” He was already half-running to general laughter, feet slapping up the dust. “Worthless coward!” was her final opinion as he ducked into the shadow of the opposite street. She was crying, now, standing, shaking a little, shielding her eyes from the sun with one chapped, big-fingered hand.

  Takezo went to his quarters. It was sunset and the small, second-floor room was full of soft, haunting rose-tinted light that made a square on the white wall. The shadow of a pine branch was projected there in a soft blur of needle-clumps and knottings and, for the moment, was as still and breathless as a painting…

  Looking there, he felt a strange, deep, almost-longing – a longing for something he couldn’t identify much less express – a feeling that flowed neither forward nor back: like a warm summer evening in childhood, the promise of rich, mysterious, unending life like a hush within and without… an outline from some world beyond the world.

  He thought about her. With Miou, for the first time, no women from the past arose in his mind, as the Buddha might put it. She filled something that had long, long been empty; something that the boy dreams of and the man forgets…

  Some things, maybe, children see before their eyes are ruined by seeing too much, he thought.

  He sighed and opened the closet door and went back to the dull process before him. The almost imperceptibly deepening tinted light seemed to be sucked into the racks of clothing he kept there for disguises.

  He had to stir things up.

  Maybe I’ll get paid, he said to himself as he picked out some very special clothes from his acting days.

  He stepped outside to look at the deep fire of the sunset above the hills where the buildings were submerged in dimly glimmering shadow under an incredibly lyric, looping line of rose-white and dark clouds that crossed the entire sky.

  There was a voice below him in the vegetable garden under his window. And the vague figure he knew was Taro, the policeman, stood there, looking up. His normal, strange life was back, again.

  “Takezo,” he called.

  “Yes?”

  “I have the actors you requested.”

  He could see them, two blurry forms well behind Taro in the rising tide of twilight. There was a sound of crickets and the trill of a bird in the solid obscurity of trees that lined the road. There was a rich smell of earth and ripening. The wet heat was steady.

  “Good,” he said. “I have the play.”

  By the time they got to the theater the sky was blanked by clouds with flickers of distant lightning, the faint thunder booming over the sea. He’d shaved his hair and darkened his eyebrows to look more like Seki and, under his peasant-style straw raincoat he had on an actor’s robe and sash. His face was masked by a drooping hat and hanging cloth.

  The air was leaden and almost stifling. Now and then a few big drops would spatter the street and low-roofed buildings. The four of them ducked into the alley between the theater and a busy teahouse and went around to the actor’s entrance. Bodyguards for the nobles inside would be posted at the front and in the theater space itself.

  “You better have authority, as you claim,” Taro said, grimly amused, “or I’ll be sleeping in a ditch and begging for rice.”

  There was one six-foot doorkeeper in back with high cheekbones, wide shoulders and squinty eyes. He reminded Takezo of the description of the murderer turned Buddhist monk in the “Three Priests” story where it’s revealed that he’d murdered his companion’s young lover for her clothes and lustrous, long hair. The big-headed young man looked bored, eating a bun and staring at the incoming lightning.

  The saturated, heavy air made Takezo feel he was almost swimming up the two steps to the door. The laconic, lad, still chewing a bite, peered at him.

  “Cannot go in here,” he said in an unpleasant voice. The effort of speech seemed to make him yawn.

  The ronin shrugged off his straw coat and flipped back his hat on the string, exposing his subtlely made-up face in the soft, uncertain, shadowy glow.

  “Cannot?” he wondered.

  “Excuse me!” the boy said, standing and bowing as Takezo and his companions went on past him into a corridor where he could enter the “mirror-room” unseen; the main door from there led directly onto the covered “bridge” to the stage, itself. One of the plays was underway and there were only three actors and two female assistants in
side. One girl was preparing refreshments. The men were preparing for the farce that followed the formal drama. They were shocked to see him and his companions.

  “Master,” one actor, small and intense, dressed as a servant, said, “how can you be here?”

  “I should have remained on the stage,” Takezo said, reflective, looking around with pleasure.

  “Of course,” the second actor said, in disbelief. He was tall, thin, with a long and comical nose – his own.

  “What a life I might have had as an actor.” Let out a sigh of breath. The others looked nonplussed.

  “You just were called “master,’” pointed-out the Buddha-bodied Sakura, already putting on a samurai outfit while graceful and delicate Rensai took up a woman’s gown and a female middle-aged mask.

  “Master?” the one with the nose inquired.

  “What praise and admiration might have been mine,” continued Takezo.

  “Or what groans and catcalls,” suggested Rensai, observing himself in the mirror, flouncing his hips, a little.

  “You are almost a woman, anyway,” darkly observed his fellow actor while the solid ippukki, Taro, grinned and seated himself before a mirror, pretending to preen.

  “Meet me later in the garden,” he offered. “I’ll compose a haiku while you sing.”

  “This is not Seki unless it’s a spiritual manifestation,” said the woman not making tea. She was petite with smiling eyes. “I hear his sweet voice even now on the stage.”

  “Taro will protect you,” Takezo said, absently, “while we give a brief performance.” Looked at her. “Bring sake,” he ordered.

  “Who are you?” asked the long-nosed actor. “His brother?”

  “I think this may be an assassination,” said the other man, uneasy, sweaty.

  Outside the thunder was closer and the booms clear though the heavy air remained dead and still. The girl handed Takezo and then Taro a square wooden cupful of wine. The others demurred.

  “This is theater,” declared the detective, emptying his. “We risk only displeasing the great lords with our poor play.”

  “As I thought,” said long-nose, “a foolishly ambitious playwright.” Shook his head. “I think you will suffer for this.”

  “I suffer already,” said Takezo. “What’s one more nail to a crucified man?”

  “Ready,” said Taro. “Hope you know your lines.”

  “We’ll be fine. Just follow my lead. Improvise.”

  “Improvise Noh?” ejaculated the startled long-nose. “Impossible! You’ll be exposed in the streets and beaten,” he prophesied.

  “They won’t get violent,” Rensai said, assuringly, “until he sings.”

  “You too?” said Takezo. “Musical taste is lost.” He’d been listening to the play and knew the actors would now be leaving the stage through the rear “quick door” and, so: “Come on.”

  They followed him out onto the “bridge” that led to the main stage. It was walled off from the audience by a fine-meshed set of screens with two pines painted on it. You could see through it but only a featureless, blurry image showed.

  He had a moment of nostalgia, at the sight of the red-lacquered pillars supporting the roof of the stage, the gleaming floorboards, the scents and sounds…

  The audience came to attention as they emerged. The chorus and musicians (seated along the stage left) looked baffled as Takezo stopped and dropped a sack of coins, requesting them to play some well-known accompaniment music before taking his place stage rear off the bridge, at Shite’s pillar. The ‘woman’ and the samurai with a demon facemask went front and left.

  “We beg your indulgence,” Takezo declared. “Something just for the great lords here present.”

  Takezo began to dance, falling right back into the slow, exaggeratedly graceful movements that had been his stage strength. The unsure but well-tipped musicians came in with a rattle and bang of drums plus a long, wavering, high-pitched, keening string note. Then he broke into semi-spoken singing:

  “I am Lord Ill-temper, known to be honest and feared in battle. I am coming home from the wars where I fought beside the great lord ‘Uniter,’ who seeks calm and order in the land even if all must die to achieve it.”

  There was a stir in the audience at this. The musicians paused.

  “What play is this?” someone called out.

  “Is this the farce?” from another.

  “I am the manager!” cried the manager from the audience where retainers were visible sitting on their heels in neat rows. “Are you ill, Seki? What happened to your voice? What is this? Stop at once!”

  “Unheard-of, this talking,” someone in the chorus wearing a gold robe just offstage right, shout-whispered to the man beside him in red and black.

  Takezo heard a brief commotion and voices back in the “mirror room.” By now the real Seki and then others had been cautioned into calm by the formidable Taro.

  “No,” said a commanding voice in the audience. “Let it continue.”

  “I am the wife of Ill-temper,” spoke-sang Rensai. “We are forbidden lovers. My husband will soon be back. This is his trusted vassal, Chamberlain Pot. We have great ambition. What matter that the world is transient as a cherry blossom in May? The commoner may go to a birth in hell as surely as a noble. Better to drink good wine for one day than sour sake for life.”

  The devil-faced samurai embraced her.

  “Fairest lady, our plans are laid. Our once hard daimio has been softened by peace and watery counsel. A samurai woman must be steel as polished as her man. Like the great Kesa Gozen, herself. Together we will control the clan for war and victory! We will unseat the upstart, “Uniter.” First chaos, then our order!”

  “Yet I fear my child had revealed suspicions to her father before she fled this great castle and took, in seeming disguise, to the outcast road. Only to be slain, her poor body found unrecognizable. Ah, my eyes burn to weep and yet stay dry for I am out of tears. I dread to think what evil rebirths await me!”

  “We have agreed,” expressed portly Sakura behind his snarling mask, embracing Rensai, again, “we must be cold and sharp as a blade from the three smiths of Bizen. What men call treachery is applauded when success is won!”

  “That’s an ill line,” hissed Takezo under his breath. “Don’t be so flowery!”

  “Yes,” responded Rensai as the wife. “Flowers are sweet but a samurai woman must have spiky thorns. “Uniter” who would eclipse us all must, himself, be darkened.”

  “You too,” Takezo whispered. “Keep to the point!”

  The chorus could hear his interjections and gold robe commented, with scorn:

  “If part of a fish is bad throw out the whole.”

  “Still,” demurred his red and black companion, “it has a certain literary style, I think.”

  “Bad fish style?” wondered the first.

  “Imprison my husband but do not slay him,” Rensai went on. “Later he may approve our deeds.”

  “Or, if things go badly, we can lay the blame on his orders,” put in Sakura.

  Not a bad point, thought Takezo, whispering: “He’s back!”

  “I hear his voice in the garden,” Rensai reacted, hand to ear. “I must await him within.”

  She moved stage left to Waki’s pillar and froze. Takezo danced upstage.

  “I am home,” he explained, looking around. “On the road I met a priest who said: ‘If the poor complain of poverty; if the rich rejoice in wealth, both are doomed to evil rebirths.’ I mean to renounce this empty life. I will lay aside all ambition and pass the clan on to my chamberlain since my daughter is now dead and I have no son.” He made formal gestures of weeping. Then noticed Sakura. “Chamberlain, where is my wife?”

  “In her quarters, my lord. Welcome home.”

  “I would see you both. I want no more war. No more blood. There is no end to it. Lord ‘Uniter’ is pitiless but he is the best plug in a sinking boat.”

  And the commanding voice from the audi
ence, again: “Well put, actor.”

  Then Sakura stabbed his lord from behind with his short sword.

  “I am slain,” Lord Ill-temper cried, falling, as gracefully as he could. “Base treachery!”

  It was mostly improvisation anyway; the semi-rehearsed material had been lost in the new turnings that developed. Takezo hadn’t expected to get this far without some violent confrontation.

  “As you fall into unending darkness,” melodramatically added Sakura, “know that your child lives and is in my power! Know that the clan is mine as is your wife!”

  “He wouldn’t say that,” hissed Takezo, under his breath. “This isn’t a puppet show.” Then, loud enough for the audience: “All grows dark… curse you, villain… may you be reborn as a jellyfish… aiii… I die …”

  A commotion in the seats that wasn’t approval crashed forward and then Chamberlain Reiko and master swordsman Akira leaped onto the stage as one, swords drawn.

  “Kill him!” yelled Reiko, slashing at Takezo who glided backwards and pulled a silken hanging down over the raging chamberlain as Rensai and Sakura fled.

  “The acting wasn’t that bad,” Takezo said, grinning, circling, watching the lean, wide swordsmaster, Akira, approach. “Anyway, Reiko, your shames are known.”

  Akira took one long swipe and, in the same blur, Takezo countered and shifted, then both stopped and stood there, thoughtful because when the ronin detective wiped his sleeve across his sweaty forehead it came away streaked with blood while the other, touching his ribcage through the slashed, baggy fabric, discovered he was bleeding a little, too. Nodded, impressed. Scratched around his drooping Mongol-like moustache with one finger.

  “Enough!” called the authoritative voice from the audience as Hideo now stepped up onto the stage, squinting at Takezo.

  “Akira,” Hideo ordered, “step away.” Peered closer. “You are Seki?”

  “Ha,” put in gold-robe from stage left, “this hack has no more yugen than a mouse has money. An imitator.”