The Teahouse Fire

by Ellis Avery

  Yukako gave me a meaningful look. “You see? O-Chio never could stand her: I have my grandfather Toshio’s eyes,” she mocked. “Little Hazu has my grandfather Toshio’s chin. Of course we weren’t going to take that woman’s child.” She shook her head, and I winced when she chuckled. “Really, we kept putting the woman off, but it became awkward. You came along just in time.”

  Yukako poured me some tea, and I hurried to return the favor. “Poor cuckolded Grandfather Toshio,” she concluded with a sigh. “And poor o-Fujie, really,” she reflected, in an expansive moment. “So you can see why those two would be heading up the mob to get the foreigner out, to cover up their own bad blood.”

  It was hard to hear her talk this way. “Did you ever think I might be an eta when you found me?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I mean, the thing about them is that they look just like Japanese.” They were, in fact, Japanese: they weren’t shunned until Buddhism came to Japan. “But they weren’t allowed to marry out until Meiji, so they really all look like each other. And you look nothing like them. So.”

  I looked over at Aki daydreaming in the doorway, tray in hand. Ashamed, I quietly repeated what Hazu had said about the foreigner’s whore.

  Yukako lowered her voice to match mine. “When I found you, you looked so much like a little foreign thing, a little stray cat from the spirit world. I never thought you were Japanese, though with time and training you seemed more and more like a human being. I know it must have been hard for you. I know the other servants must have thought you were half water-child,” she said, meaning a miscarriage, “or maybe half sheep.” My eyes widened again, to hear her use the slang word for women willing to sleep with foreigners: I’d never heard her say sheep, either.

  “Even daughters-kept-in-boxes have ears,” she said, with a self-mocking smile. “But whatever the others thought, they couldn’t have thought you were an eta,” she consoled, “because no one would issue an eta a license for prostitution. Even if there were those who consorted with foreign sailors who didn’t know any better, no eta would have been allowed to travel far enough to leave a child in Miyako. No eta would have been able to afford those foreign clothes. You see? No one could have thought that about you.”

  I felt so soft with gratitude for all the attention at last, and yet Yukako’s words were small red bites under my skin. It upset me to hear her working so hard to make this clear. “Thank you,” I mumbled, uncomfortable.

  “Sa,” she said pensively. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to bathe with the students, so why don’t you bathe with me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I wouldn’t want to deal with what their parents would say.”

  “What would their parents say?” I pressed, still itchy from what she’d said.

  “Well, I don’t know,” hemmed Yukako, hearing the accusation in my voice. “But very possibly they’d feel the way the others at the bathhouse do.”

  “Is this why you don’t take me on errands anymore?” I asked, scratching for blood.

  “Is that what you’re upset about?” Yukako asked. “Ura-bo, what’s gotten into you?” She cupped my face as if I were a child again, and I looked away, embarrassed, not wanting Aki to see, or see how much it meant to me. Fortunately, the girl in the doorway looked half-asleep, her tray dipping in her drooped arms. “Don’t you see, I’ve been doing the most difficult work a mother can do?”

  “Sorry?” hat was she talking about?

  “What do you think I’ve been doing, spending all this time with these frothy young things? I’ve been choosing wives for my sons.”

  What? Those boys? In all my moping, the thought had never crossed my mind. “Really?”

  “Of course!” Yukako laughed out loud. “Any daughter-in-law of mine will just have to put up with an unexpected bathmate. She’ll have no choice,” she assured me. I felt a little hurt to hear her say put up with, and a little left behind as her demeanor changed. She stretched, her long trunk expanding with confidence. The soft windy flute of our nights together in her dark room had fallen away, replaced by drummers, bright and proud. “Why, tomorrow I’ll have this letter carried to Great Teacher,” she said, meaning Jiro. I wondered if Yukako used his title as often as she did in order to get around saying my husband, a phrase that really meant my master. “Once I get his approval, I’ll have go-betweens request Sightings.”

  “Wives?” I blinked.

  “Well, Sono’s a dream come true, no? Good family. Excellently positioned in Tokyo. Supports the arts, and lavishly. Great Teacher never cottoned to the idea of the railroad, but I’m sure he’d like having access to the man’s collection.” It took me a moment to realize that Yukako was evaluating Tsuko Sono’s father as a potential in-law. “Sono really jumped at the chance to send his daughter here, so it isn’t crazy to hope he’ll accept. Besides, his son just married that geiko. Even Sumie was angling for that boy for her youngest, but everyone’s disappointed now. We look very good indeed.” How strange, that Sumie’s baby—the one the geisha house had once offered to buy—should grow up to be passed over for a geisha.

  “As for the girl, she’s smart but accommodating. Gracious, hardworking, wants to be liked. Nice clean temae, learns quickly. She’s so eager to start working in the girls’ schools, it’s touching. And she’s pretty enough that Master Teacher won’t be mad at me,” ukako added with a knowing smile. As she paused, thinking, she drummed her fingers on the rim of her teacup and I refilled it. “I know, I know, on the other hand some will say I’m burning my bridges, not taking Kato’s girl,” she mused, pouring tea for me in return. “I mean, that’s the obvious alliance. But she could do the family a lot of damage as the Master Teacher’s wife. And while Kato can help us in Kyoto, we need roots in Tokyo too.” She nodded in the direction Tsuko had left.

  “So, what I did was make sure a little breath of gossip made its way to Kato about Miss Mariko’s drinking, so he’ll know what I’ve had to cope with here and be grateful I’m taking her at all. It’ll be fine if she marries Kenji instead.”

  I had only a moment to marvel at Yukako’s confidence—was Jiro so dependent on her money that he’d take Kato for an in-law?—before a tray clattered to the floor. Aki seemed to shake herself awake and bowed deeply, embarrassed. “Go take your bath, Miss Aki,” soothed Yukako. “And get some sleep. I have Miss Ura here; no need to stay up on my account.”

  I sat up with Yukako as she wrote to Jiro, then followed her to the family bathhouse. In all our years together, I had never seen her wash herself. In place of my bran bag she had a cake of Western soap from Kobe, and used a set of seven washing towels that varied in width and texture for the different expanses of her skin. Quickly and thoroughly, she attended to each limb just once, flicked a few dippers of cold water across it, and moved on. I was still scrubbing when she sank into the hot bath, her face loosening with pleasure.

  Her nakedness rendered her unfamiliar to me. When I joined her, I realized I had never seen the way her hair wisped up in the steam, the way her small breasts lifted in the water. The things she’d said still grated at me. Suddenly my foreignness made me something for a daughter-in-law to put up with. Wasn’t I more important to her than some daughter-in-law she wasn’t even related to yet? I fished a crumb of macaron out of my cheek and tasted meringue. It seemed extraordinary to me that I had ever tasted this before, that I had ever lived anywhere but here. Was I even really a foreigner? Did I ever eat meringues with strawberries, some long-ago June? I saw a pair of hands and an eggbeater, my mother’s small sallow fingers against the glossy white peaks. I could not see her face.

  The hot water did its slow work. Yukako’s body glowed in the dark bath like the moon-lamps of the shrine. Her beauty and her kindness confused me. She was right next to me, and yet she seemed to be slipping away, the Yukako I thought I knew. I had not seen it so starkly before, that if I had been born eta, I would not have been permitted to share this bath with her. I felt as if I were balanci
ng a teacup on the back of my hand, sitting gingerly beside this woman. “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  “Iie,” she said, smiling. Think nothing of it.

  30

  1891

  SINCE OKUSAMA’S MOVE to the dormitory, my morning tasks had shifted accordingly. Stealing between the two rows of sleeping girls, I now brought Yukako her breakfast in the sewing house, where she slept upstairs behind her screen. After a first cup of tea, Yukako would rise, dress for the day, and eat while I opened the shutters. While I folded Yukako’s screen and futon and wiped down her side of the floor, the girls would wake and groan, stack their bedding, wipe their tatami, and dress silently under Sensei’s watchful eye. Then they’d file down to breakfast, Yukako following behind a minute or so later while I brought her dishes to Kuga.

  The morning after I prayed at the shrine, Aki followed me to the sewing house. “You’re up early,” I said.

  “You didn’t hear him, either?” Aki drowsily brandished a packet for Yukako. “That messenger woke me up,” she groused. “I hope nothing bad happened.”

  After I woke Okusama with her first tea, Aki gave her the little package, stamped with a familiar seal. “I’m sorry, the man said to give you this in person as soon as possible,” she said.

  Yukako rubbed her eyes and looked at the seal. “Great Teacher,” she murmured. We all looked at one another, alarmed. Why was Jiro sending a message so early? “Kenji!” Yukako fretted aloud, all but ripping the paper. Inside was a small bag of coins and a letter; as she read, Yukako’s worry faded into annoyed amusement. “He needs his jar of water from Upper Kamo Shrine, properly transported, as soon as possible.” He’d included a sketch of where to find the jar in the fireproof tower, and money for the jinrikisha.

  She sighed with exasperation. “He must have some surprise guest he needs to impress. Well, this can wait until after I’ve eaten, and then we’ll go to the tower together. Miss Aki, we’ll need a young maid to handle the sacred water; why don’t you bring it? And you can take my letter to Great Teacher as well. We’ll get these boys married faster than I thought.”

  Aki chirped assent and let Yukako tuck the money into her sleeve. A younger girl, I realized, would have gone giddy over the jinrikisha ride, would have preened a little over having been chosen to carry the sacred water. Aki’s mien, however, was not that of a child facing a special outing but of an adult pausing over a small, pleasant task, like choosing flowers in a shop. She bowed crisply to go, a grown woman facing the day.

  Yukako nodded and took a last rueful look at the letter, her expression more indulgent of Jiro than it had ever been when they lived together. “He always had such lovely handwriting.”

  WITH THE END of the long rains of June had come the heat of true summer, and a shift in the everyday household drink from hot green tea in iron pots to barley tea in ceramic jugs, kept cold in the kitchen well. All that day I ferried cold tea to Nao as he began work in Baishian. Yukako was clearly anxious about the visit from Tokyo: she had set him to work in the teahouse before he’d even finished glassing the upstairs room. All day, as I set each cold full flask down in place of the one that Nao had emptied, I tried not to hate him. All day he steamed the paper off the doors in patient sheets, working tenderly at the excess glue with a soft damp cloth: I tried not to like him, either.

  Later, as I helped Kuga chop the dinner greens, a runner came from Sesshu-ji, just before Yukako and Tai left for a full moon tea event. I found Okusama waiting in the garden study, shoji doors thrown open to the long evening light. “Excellent,” she said, reading Jiro’s letter. “He’s not happy, of course, but I knew he’d be no trouble. I’ve started speaking to the go-betweens; we can have them send out the Sighting requests tonight. And Kenji’s coming to visit, no?” She raised her eyebrows and I realized that had she lived a generation before, that sly, emphatic gesture might have been lost on a face with shaved brows. “He probably wants to get another look at Miss Kato for himself. Well, at least she’s pretty.”

  “Have you told Master Teacher about your choice?” I wondered aloud.

  “I’m looking forward to the jinrikisha ride tonight,” she said. A hesitant look came over her, and we both remembered a day in the northern geisha quarter, a hard blow to the face. “I think they might even be happy together,” she said softly.

  Before I could ask another question, Tai loped in, a cloth-wrapped gift box dangling from either hand. “Mother, the cart’s here.”

  When I went back to the kitchen, Kuga set me to snapping the ends off a bowlful of long beans. “Did Okusama’s letter say anything about Aki?” she asked. “Is she coming home tonight or tomorrow?”

  THE NEXT MORNING, while the students were in their lessons, I was startled by the loud clamor of wooden sandals and grunting porters halting just outside our gate. I set down Nao’s cold tea and went to look: four men were setting down a wooden palanquin the likes of which I hadn’t seen in years. They were led by a jinrikisha from which a woman younger than myself, but much faded, scrambled down and minced toward the front gate. Pudgy in her fawn-dappled kimono and rich brocade obi, she seemed familiar; who was she? I bowed and looked at her kind round face, her tired pretty mouth, the high wispy pouf of her deep-eaves bun, the cross dangling from her neck: it was Mariko’s mother, Lady Kato. “Good morning,” I said humbly. “Miss Mariko’s in her lesson now; should I get her?”

  “I’d like to speak with your Okusama,” she said. I remembered her as a new bride with the first Western woman’s coiffure in town, telling Yukako, in a piping little whisper, that her husband wouldn’t let her touch his tea utensils. Her voice had dropped an octave.

  “I’m afraid she’s teaching right now. But if it’s an emergency…” I trailed off, which in Kyoto meant There’s no way you can see her now.

  “I think you should go find her,” she said. I went.

  I SERVED YUKAKO and her guest sembei crackers and cold barley tea, almost bludgeoning young Jade when she offered to do it instead, I was so eager to hear what had happened. From her tone of voice, Lady Kato was obviously not just dropping by to thank Yukako for the Sighting request. And what had her bearers brought, or whom?

  Lady Kato complimented the sembei without eating any, and then said, “Sensei, my lord is in Osaka and I am left to deal with this matter on my own.”

  “I hope the go-between gave you no reason to think this couldn’t wait until Advisor Kato came back.” Lady Kato was silent. “I hope he takes all the time he needs to consider my request, but if he tells the go-between he’s not interested, I fully respect his decision. I only hope the friendship between our families remains as warm as ever.” ukako’s voice was cordial, with just a hint of anxiety. Why was this woman here? If they already had another boy in mind, why not simply tell the go-between? And if not, why not wait until Kato came home? And the palanquin?

  “I see,” said Lady Kato. “There is another matter.”

  “Yes?”

  Mariko’s mother spoke, at first as prim and formal as the knot of her brown-and-gold obi. “My lord’s parents and I received your request yesterday evening and we were very flattered. It was in fact Mariko’s first offer, and we were doubly happy that it came from your house. Under ordinary circumstances, when my lord came home, I think I can say with confidence that we would have given it our most serious and warm consideration.” She paused. “As of this morning, however, I have reason to believe that the marriage would not be a happy one.”

  This was what I’d wanted to ask Yukako the night before, when she’d said she thought Tai and Tsuko might be happy together: the back of my neck prickled with foreboding. “What are you saying?” Yukako asked.

  Lady Kato’s accusation swelled her voice in its banks. “I should have known you had no idea where your child was.”

  Yukako, though she did not know why, knew she was being attacked. “Kenji’s father wants him by his side in his retirement,” she said hotly. “Who am I to oppose him?”

 
“Your son is not by his father’s side. This morning he was by the side of a young girl whom he evidently prefers to my daughter.”

  Aki! I thought, and I could tell the same thought occurred to Yukako. Of course: all those reading lessons! Why hadn’t I seen it before? Yukako’s face went hard with anger. How boorish, how utterly unnecessary, of her son to allow himself to be discovered at his fun. Had he learned nothing from his father? “Is that so?” she asked, with suppressed emotion.

  “Indeed,” Lady Kato replied dryly. “Usually one tries to overlook such attachments. But—” Her voice broke here, and she sounded, for a half second, vulnerable and frail.

  “Yes?” ukako said.

  “When we found them, the children had tied themselves together and tried to drown themselves in the garden. I believe they were trying to tell us something.”

  KENJI CAME TO US with a broken leg. Aki remained at the Kato home, unconscious. By the end of the day, her father had packed up his glass and vanished, the Baishian windows left gaping wide. After Yukako went to sleep that night in the sewing house room, I slipped away from the other servants by the kitchen and went to the shrine again. I blamed myself. They said Aki’s face was like a broken plum.

  BY THE END of the week, a letter came from the go-between for Baron Sono, to say His Lordship was delighted by our offer, and was prepared to send, with Tsuko’s bridal goods, both a chest of gold koban and a selection of antique tea utensils Jiro was known to admire. Also by the end of the week we learned that Aki was neither unconscious nor at the Katos’: she was missing.