The Plum Rains and Other Stories

by Givens John

  In a moment of hubris, Ox-Blossom told the fragrant princess that when he returned to Edo, she would come with him, attached to his entourage, and a place would be found for her at the Sotobayama Family Compound, with appropriate duties and an older member of the household staff to look after her.

  The banquet that second night was as sumptuous as had been the one the night before; and the good humour shared among the editors was sincere, for the conservatives had found in Ox-Blossom a tractable Tokugawa bureaucrat who would yield when pressed; while Ox-Blossom himself felt that he had preserved enough of the poems in their Old Master’s late manner to satisfy the requirements of his obligation. Celebratory wine cups were exchanged again and again, with the pleasure providers scrambling to fill and refill them; and there was a point late in the evening when Ox-Blossom felt he had at last grasped the truth of the manner of lightness. He sent for an inkstone and brush, and he retrieved the scroll of poems he had composed with Ohasu then added a concluding stanza at the bottom:

  A misty spring night and no one shares the sadness: silk robes draped forlornly on a pine tree.

  That was it: the simple clarity of an honest emotion, perfectly capturing the soft wistfulness of a spring evening. He smiled to think that if he hadn’t lost his little friend, then such an understanding might never have occurred to him.

  From her place in the corner, the fragrant princess gazed shyly at her new benefactor. Her coif was enhanced with a few additional silver baubles although her weepy eyes and runny nose had not improved. Ox-Blossom wondered for a moment if taking her into his service hadn’t been precipitous. No doubt it would all work out in the end.

  THE ARSONIST’S WIDOW

  Jirobei blindfolded the arsonist and lead him down onto the dry riverbed.

  Edo constabulary officers watched from the embankment, their hands stuffed into the sleeves of their thick winter robes. Behind them a crowd had gathered.

  I’ll show you something you haven’t seen, Jirobei said. He was a huge fellow, half-again larger than normal men, and his massive badger-belly hung out over the wide leather belt he wore instead of an obi sash and strained the fabric of his robe.

  The arsonist waited with his head tilted off to one side like someone listening for distant music. He had burned down the home of a moneylender, intending to destroy both the account book and the man; and in the shogun’s city of wooden buildings with paper doors and rice-straw floor mats, there could be only one punishment for such a crime.

  We know what you do, said the city constable.

  Jirobei moved the arsonist onto a flat patch of sand for the better footing there. But you don’t know how well I can do it.

  Jirobei untied the arsonist’s hands. Everybody walks the same road, he said to him. But it’s the rare man who knows the date and time of his departure. Jirobei began stripping the arsonist’s robe off his shoulders, much the way a bridegroom might prepare a shy bride.

  The arsonist said he needed a moment to compose himself, but Jirobei just loosened his sash knot then shoved sash and robe down together until the wad of garments hung low on his hips.

  Don’t move, Jirobei said.

  But I’m not ready…

  Don’t move.

  Jirobei preferred a stiff blade, heavier than was common, one with an oversized hilt thickened by a layer of horsehide that was held in place by a spiral of sinews wound on fresh then allowed to contract as they dried, creating grooves that improved the gripping surface and also added what he thought of an aesthetic note to the otherwise utilitarian tool.

  Twentieth day of the twelfth month, Jirobei said. He used a white under-sash to tie his own sleeves back out of the way. And as for the time, it’s the middle of the hour of the ram.

  The arsonist said he thought more might be learned from his case, a cautionary lesson that would help others avoid the mistakes he had made. The world was changing. New times required new methods. He said he thought some kind of testament might be composed, the details of his malfeasance described by him in vivid language blazing with the authenticity of remorse. Who knows the shame of crime if not the criminal? Who better feels the sting of ostracism? He said he felt certain that the credibility of such a document would more than compensate for the slight delay writing it would require…

  But Jirobei just dug in with his back foot and bent his knees. He raised his blade with both hands and waggled it back and forth as a timing-mechanism then drove forward off his plant leg, rotating his hips as he hit through, swinging across low and hard and flat, and with both arms fully extended at the point of impact so that the arsonist – a man loved by his wife despite the flaws in his character – flipped apart in a spray of entrails that flared up like a handful of flung eels.

  That’s a thing it’s said can’t be done to a standing man, Jirobei said. But as you have seen, I can do it.

  The arsonist’s widow was led away from the execution site by persons who understood that no woman should have to see such a spectacle, and Jirobei watched her go, the offal at his feet steaming on the frozen sands of the riverbed.

  The Edo city constable stared down at the sundered corpse. What do you want?

  Jirobei plucked up the hem of the arsonist’s robe and wiped clean his blade. To be among those who enforce the laws of the shogunate.

  The city constable glanced at his junior officers. They feared and hated this pariah executioner, a foul creature whose existence seemed to impinge upon them and blight their prospects. Impossible, said the city constable.

  Blood flow had reached Jirobei’s sandals. He made no attempt to evade it.

  Don’t ask for what can never be given!

  The huge pariah remained as he was, ponderous, offensive, his heavy red arms hanging down like the skinned carcasses of slaughtered dogs.

  Never! cried the city constable. Never! You have no family, no ancestor registry, nothing to certify you. He gazed up at the low white sky, at the bones of the trees on the opposite bank silhouetted against it. You’re not even fully a person. You have no name.

  I’m called Jirobei. As you know.

  Called by whom?

  All who encounter me.

  The city constable glared at the men with him, samurai whose grandfathers had followed the way of the warrior but who had themselves become brazier-lovers, cushion-choosers, petty bureaucrats gone soft on the generosity of the shogunate. Ask for something else, he said.

  There was nothing else Jirobei wanted. He told him it was his ambition to go inside buildings and ask questions and require answers.

  This city is becoming disorderly, Jirobei said. Scabbard-brushers brawl in the wineshops and alleyways, robbers waylay drunks, gamblers cheat the unwary, and sneak thieves hover outside doorways, and when caught with things not theirs, claim they found them. He studied the row of constabulary men hunched like jackdaws on the wintry riverbank. I need permission to hurt malefactors whoever they are. Permission to hurt artisans and tradesmen and farmers. Hurt samurai.

  Not samurai.

  Samurai gone rogue then.

  Not them either.

  Jirobei said nothing.

  There’s no person in this world who would ever approve that, said the city Constable.

  I can’t serve you if I’m not allowed inside your buildings.

  Your service is not required.

  Jirobei smiled to himself and said: Typical urban habitations, savouring the sound of each word, the taste of it on his lips.

  Why do you care about a city that despises you?

  I don’t care about it. I care about compliance.

  There’s no reason for you to pursue such matters.

  There is no reason for anything, Jirobei said. Other than in the doing of it.

  ONE HEAVILY LADEN BRANCH of cherry blossoms hung over the brushwood fence that separated his cottage from the animal rendering grounds. The shell-pink cloud glowed in the misty light with an ethereal beauty, and Jirobei closed his eyes to feel the flowers more intensel
y, the morning calm broken only by the occasional scream of a sick horse or spavined ox, or the clatter of the iron stirrers used in their vats by the tallow-makers.

  The authorities had granted part of the huge pariah’s request. He carried a hemp rope with which he could bind wrongdoers, and a heavy oak cudgel for when he needed to subdue them. Jirobei strolled through the shogun’s metropolis wearing a robe printed all over with engorged hibiscus flowers in indigo and cinnabar, a bold design he considered flattering to his physique. The arrival of spring had invigorated Jirobei. He felt the sap of anticipation rise up through him. It left him agitated, unsettled, stimulated, at one with the new green of leaves unfurling on the city’s hardwoods and the dewy freshness of fern shoots sprouting in the moorlands.

  Quelling urban miscreants was not without risk. During an altercation with a gang of street toughs, Jirobei had been badly slashed in the face. He had overcome them eventually, cracked their necks and left them stacked like cordwood ready for collection. But their knives had been unclean; striate scars furrowed the pariah’s ruddy visage now; and the rictus crimping his upper lip meant forming words required effort.

  Friends informed the arsonist’s widow that her husband’s executioner had himself been assaulted. The news brought her no comfort. She still wept easily, still awoke in the middle of the night trembling, still jumped at every sharp noise or sudden shadow.

  Unlike her, Jirobei had no friends. But he bathed daily in celebration of the season of cherry blossoms, picked his teeth clean with bamboo slivers, scraped the dirt and dried blood out from under his fingernails, and wiped himself carefully each time after shitting. Everywhere were instances of regeneration to be embraced and extended; and he welcomed them all, after his bath sitting naked in the spring sunlight and combing out his long black hair with a hand-cut boxwood comb then shaping his coif with camellia oil – applied too heavily, he knew, but the pleasure of the scent was difficult to resist, as was the satisfaction of using an extra-long binding cord to hold his topknot in place: bright pink in honour of the season.

  The arsonist’s widow understood that Jirobei was drawing nearer. Friends had been interrogated near the ward gate. He has nothing better to do, they told her. Don’t worry about him, they said, but she did worry.

  Jirobei was the product of a misogynist’s spasm. His father, a large and taciturn man, was skilled at buckling the knees of opponents and throwing them aside. In his prime, he was seldom bested although his victories were praised only grudgingly; and as he aged and slowed, younger men learned to evade the grasp of his arms and dance around him until a weak spot in his defence was exposed. He fell hard sometimes. His ears bled, his sight dimmed, he tasted sand; and those watching greeted his defeats with mocking laughter.

  Jirobei’s father had washed ashore as a youth. He was larger and paler than the people living there, and he spoke a language no one had ever heard before, guttural and harsh and leaving flecks of spittle on the lips. Because of this, carnal access was restricted to members of the despised class of non-human pariahs. This humiliation created in Jirobei’s father a hatred of his wife and other women. Only the men he fought against earned acceptance in his eyes, and only the moment of impact as two naked male bellies slammed violently together gratified him.

  His first child – a small, sickly boy with the vulpine features of his mother – had died after a year spent swaddled in hemp cloths that stank of faeces and urine. But his second boy was large and sanguine and greedy at the teat. The old grappler studied Baby Jirobei as he grew. He watched for any trace of his mother and found none. It was as if this infant had been formed wholly from his own male seed, as if he had merely used his mother as a chute, with nothing of her adhering to any part of him, other than a faint stench from the bloody lubricant of his birth slime.

  When the boy Jirobei was old enough to totter about on his fat little legs, his father taught him how to unbalance other children by delivering sudden blows to the side of the head; and when the boy’s legs became strong enough to support him and his growing belly, he showed him how repeated thrusting chops delivered to the throat of an advancing child would force that child upright, limit his ability to counterattack, and ultimately topple him. And when little Jirobei – hardly little even at three and four years of age – was old enough to appreciate subtlety, his father taught him how to come in at unexpected angles, how to feign vulnerabilities that he did not in fact have, and how to drop down onto a defeated opponent as if by accident and gouge his eyes or crush his testicles or perhaps chew off part of an ear, doing it in such a manner that those watching would not notice while making certain that the screeching victim knew it was as intentional as it was unnecessary. Maybe one day you fight him again, his father had said. Maybe he is dreading what you might do.

  Despite Jirobei’s new authority, permission to enter the residences of townsmen had not been granted although workshops and stables and quays were made available to him, as were the streets and alleys and bridges of the shogun’s metropolis. Troublemakers sometimes hid themselves, and Jirobei learned to rely on surveillance. He would position himself outside open widows or doorways and watch residents with their petty crafts and household chores. He would smile benignly as women and men chatted together or dozed alone. He studied the way they drank wine and ate dumplings, the way they dandled their children, the way they laughed and sang, chanted sutras and whispered curses, bathed, wept, pissed, squabbled, and fucked. He noted consistencies and variations, and he felt himself almost included among them, almost fully human.

  Despite warnings from her friends, the arsonist’s widow was unprepared for the evening when Jirobei’s round red face appeared above her fence, peering in at her like a blood-filled moon. She slammed the door shut then slapped closed the rain shutters and cowered in her darkened interior, hardly daring even to breathe.

  Jirobei began visiting her neighbourhood frequently. He chose odd moments and unanticipated vantage points. He followed the widow when she went shopping and tried to see the world as she saw it. At the vegetable market, he asked vendors what she had bought there then bought it too. He did the same thing at the fishmonger’s. One afternoon, he came upon her alone in a small shed making candles.

  The widow looked up from feeding the flames heating her wax pot.

  It was the shape of him blocking the doorway that terrified her; and in a gesture of reassurance, Jirobei sank down into a squat, his fat red thighs spreading apart as he levered up his immense badger-belly and rolled it forward.

  You have perhaps misunderstood the nature of mourning, Jirobei said. Forty-seven days are required. Nothing more.

  It’s not for you to decide…

  Jirobei said nothing; his eyes narrowed to slits then he said: Please. Dip your candles. Add the next layer.

  The widow’s hands trembled as she lowered her candles into the bubbling wax pot, holding them there then lifting them straight up to form the fresh layer evenly.

  Well. Then. A woman’s husband dies. She feels lost, abandoned. Some men might try to take advantage of such a situation. To neglect to do so might even seem like an anomaly to them. Jirobei savoured the elegant word on his mutilated lips, and he pronounced it again with exaggerated care: An anomaly.

  You’re no man.

  Jirobei smiled at her crookedly. That layer is now dry.

  A foul creature like you is not allowed…

  That layer is dry. Dip your candles.

  The widow did as she was told. But she also began to describe aspects of her husband’s character she thought exculpatory. Good deeds. Thoughtful remarks. Simple observations others had found useful. Poignant moments shared. Gifts. Alms. Insights on the true nature of things…

  He was a criminal.

  The widow defended the conventions of the connubial quilts. She described the pleasure of snuggling close together during the frigid dawns of winter and that of sprawling naked and exposed in the hot darkness of a summer night…

  A cr
iminal, Jirobei said again, his voice like that of a man calling into a room he’s not sure is really empty; and he rose to his feet, the monstrous shape of him blocking the entryway even as he held himself scrupulously outside the shed. And you aren’t. But can that mean you believe you won’t also suffer?

  NO RAIN FELL.

  Dung from dogs and dray beasts dried in the sun and rose in billowing clouds of faecal dust that settled over the city in a foul yellow miasma. It was an awful season, a time for recriminations and regrets. Residents ventured outdoors with dampened cloths wound around their faces, leaving only narrow slits for their eyes. People coughed continuously; skin lesions wouldn’t heal. Duties were neglected, punishments cancelled, celebrations allowed to wither into insignificance. Drought led to contagion; the ill groaned in their quilts; and at the height of the worst of it, the arsonist’s widow abandoned her home and fled west.

  Jirobei went after her. He wore only a cuirass of his own manufacture, an imbrication of pink and purple leather strips studded with steel rivets and laced together with scarlet cords, the monstrous expanse of it curving out over the swollen bag of his badger-belly. As he walked, the pair of skirt flaps attached to the groin band of his cuirass swung apart, revealing flashes of his loincloth with the pucker of his small penis tucked inside, for Jirobei enjoyed the reluctance felt by those whom he encountered to acknowledge in any way the diminutive size of this organ.

  The carry-sack slung over Jirobei’s shoulder held bladed tools. Extra rice-straw sandals were attached to the groin-band of his cuirass. A water gourd also hung there, as did a slash knife removed from the hand of a man about to die. You won’t need it, he’d told him. Others do the cutting in hell. Inside Jirobei’s carry-sack was a large flask of camellia oil for his hair, the excessive potency of which he alone seemed not to find cloying. A leather pouch contained various small items for personal use: an ear spoon and a cosmetic tweezers, pinch-scissors and a face razor and a needle. He had a focusing lens, a few sea-urchin spines still tipped with sufficient toxins, a claw-hook useful for working in tight spaces or doing impromptu dentistry, a shard of obsidian glass sharper than any knife, and a flint and steel for starting cloudy-day pyres.