by Ellis Avery
I’D CREPT IN that morning to see all the work Yukako and Tai had done the night before, to admire the shelves of the mizuya backstage, laid out with their carefully chosen utensils, to revel in Baishian at its cleanest, brightest, and purest, the little square door a lush moss vista, the diamond window poised in wait for the moon. “A teahouse is a net to catch the sky,” I murmured.
“Isn’t it?” said a woman’s voice behind me. Tsuko! “I was too excited to sleep, so I came to admire the teahouse before we all started working,” she said.
She didn’t have to say it. As Young Mistress, she could have invented any reason in the world that would have asserted her right to be there and tarred me as an impostor. “Me too,” I said. I brought Yukako her breakfast feeling humbled: Tsuko really was a tea family’s dream come true.
THE DAY HAD DAWNED brightly and the evening promised to be clear and dry, with perhaps even a decorative cloud or two to show the moon in its most poetic aspect. All the food preparation had begun smoothly; the macarons arrived early from Kobe, pert and pastel, not a single one broken. The first problem, however, proved to be Tai’s rash.
Sudden, spotty, and pustular, the rash cropped up that morning for no apparent reason, frightening all who saw it. “But I feel fine,” he insisted, trying not to scratch his face. Standing in attendance as he and his mother spoke, I was careful not to look directly at him.
Yukako bit her lip. “I think it might be visible in moonlight,” she murmured, shaking her head.
Kenji paused in the doorway on his way out. Even he had been roused by the occasion, and had promised to come home early from his vigil to bring the Minister from Advisor Kato’s in the quiet modern jinrikisha. He nodded, straight-faced. “I think it might put the man off his tea.”
Tai laughed and Yukako gave him an aggrieved look. “Well?”
“I think you should take his place,” said Kenji, meaning that he refused to.
Mother and son had planned to work together as helper and host, Yukako talking and passing things while Tai did temae. This way, the Minister would have the honor of tea prepared by the Master Teacher’s own hands, while Yukako would be positioned to actually broach the question of the boys’ schools.
A poxy Master Teacher, however, might be worse than no Master Teacher at all. They determined that when we all bowed to the Minister outside the gate, Tai would lead us, greeting the Minister from behind a gauze mask and apologizing deeply for his poor health; Yukako would do temae and speak as well. It seemed makeshift but dignified enough after we’d all rehearsed it a few times that morning. As it was, tiny Baishian might be better suited to just one host. Tai had never had a problem like this in his life, I mused, bowing at rehearsal in time with all the other servants and students. But if I were nineteen years old and believed my family’s entire future depended on how I looked that day, I might develop a rash too. Yukako accepted the new plan with equanimity and went to check on the tearoom flowers.
The second piece of bad news came after Kenji went to fetch the Minister, after we had assembled once more, this time in our new kimono. Yukako had chosen a solid color for each of us, as her father had for the Minister’s visit so many years before: all together we were dressed in three dozen different shades of blue and green, each embroidered at the nape, shoulders, and sleeves with a crest the size of a large coin, the Shins’ crane, sewn with subtle variations depending on the wearer’s role in the household. When Kuga had pushed against my back to straighten my obi, I could feel the embroidered knots press into my spine like a crane-shaped brand. We looked, lining the street by the gate, like a magnificent willow tree, a shimmering wash of leaves. Nao, I noted, was not present. He had received a kimono like the rest of us, even though he was working for the Shins on just a temporary basis; all the same, I could very well imagine him choosing not to take part. Yukako, too, was missing, but I knew she was in Baishian, in Western dress, poised for the Minister’s arrival. Tai, facemask and all, was doing a fine job of leading us alone. Tsuko stood with the young women students but no longer looked girlish; she seemed both more serious and more content, smoothing her royal blue robe. I saw her raise a hand toward the zone below her obi, and guessed all at once that she might be with child.
We heard a runner’s footsteps and leaned toward the sound: Tai looked alarmed. Why was Kenji running? It wasn’t the Minister, however, but a messenger wearing Advisor Kato’s crest. We stood very still as Tai read the man’s elegantly folded letter.
Kato’s runner, watching Tai’s face intently, seemed disappointed by Master Teacher’s even-keeled reply. “It’s no trouble at all,” Tai said warmly. “Please tell him how much we’re looking forward to it.”
Only when the runner had bowed deeply and gone did Tai turn to address us. “Due to unexpected circumstances, the Minister will not be able to attend this evening. His wife will join us in his stead.” We gasped, and a tiny hissing sound arose as we tried to gossip as quietly as possible. Tai silenced us with remarkable calm. “For my own part,” he said, “I’ll add that for a Westernized person like the Minister, this is not unusual. In the West, husbands and wives go out in public together side by side, and in England, in fact, they are the same person by law. Therefore, however disappointed you are,” he said, fixing his eyes on one or two of his students, “and whatever Madame did for work before she was married”—here he spoke to the whispering girls—“I expect every single one of you to treat the Minister’s wife as if she were the Minister himself. Do you understand?”
We barked our hais and bowed as one, but continued to look back and forth at one another, stunned. Tsuko slipped off to let Yukako know of the change in plan, and without a word to anyone, Mariko Kato left us and hurried down the street after the runner. Instead of rushing after her, Tai enjoined the rest of us to keep our places: “Madame will be here any moment.”
And she was. A minute later Kenji rounded the corner with the rubber-wheeled jinrikisha and we bowed. We made an impressive sight, I know it, a river of reverent silk, a blue-and-green wind. A proper bow is conducted on a count of nine: three to sink, three to rest, three to rise: I could feel us all forcing ourselves to rise as slowly as we’d bowed, not to snap up and stare at whoever stepped out of the carriage. One two three, one two three. In one slow, simultaneous whoosh of silk on silk, we rose with all the self-control a life in tea had taught us, and as we rose we looked.
The elegant slim person bowing in return, though she sported the deep-eaves bun of a modern Meiji woman, looked every part the well-heeled traditional wife. She wore a formal black five-crested kimono with a pattern that climbed to her waist, her obi tied in a modest drum knot. Knowing that she was a former geisha made me inspect her dress more closely: the obi was a tight grid of muted blue and gold, the kimono patterned in feathery pampas grass, which, like the hagi planned for the tearoom, was one of the seven flowers of autumn. Wearing a seasonal pattern into the tearoom was a dicey matter: it could complement a tea master’s choice of images in a delicious way, or it could run the risk of redundancy. If Madame’s kimono had been patterned with hagi, for example, we would have had to find other flowers at the last minute to avoid repetition; expecting a man in a suit, we’d kept no flowers in reserve. Her choice indicated either extreme sensitivity to the aesthetic of tea—and a willingness to take risks—or total insensitivity to the predicament she might pose her host. I saw this all in the three counts it took to rise from the greeting bow, just before glimpsing the face of a handsome woman in her early forties. One, two, three. It was Koito.
I LOOKED AROUND, from Kuga and the sewing-girls to Kenji and the students. I saw curiosity on all sides, but no horror. I was the only one, I realized, who recognized her face. As Tai’s most advanced student scurried ahead to lay the tobacco tray on the waiting-bench, I took a page out of Mariko Kato’s book and ran, without a word of explanation, down the stone path sprinkled in readiness, through the moss garden, around to the backstage side of Baishian.
The only women I have ever seen kneeling on the floor in a bustle and lace were consumptive opera heroines—and Yukako. Her hands were wrapping a little wet cloth around three chips of sandalwood for the brazier, but her face was looking out the door at me. “What?” she said, brusque and panicked. I really was out of place. The guests should feel, entering the garden, as if they were discovering a secluded glade, an effect easily marred by servants rushing about. I should have been in the kitchen, passing food to the solemn young men from Tai’s class who were even now moving into position to bring dishes to the teahouse. “Has he canceled entirely now?”
“No, no, his wife just arrived.”
Yukako stood in one motion, gave the mizuya a last look, and took up a bucket to add water to the hand-washing stone in the garden: the sound would tell the guest to make ready to come down the path. “But Okusama…” I said, and time slowed for an instant; I was painfully aware that I now felt more comfortable calling her Honored Wife of the House than I did calling her Older Sister. She looked at me with flashing eyes, a strand of hair lifting out of place. “Before you go see her, listen.” I insisted.
FOR A MOMENT YUKAKO stood completely still. “This is like a bad dream,” she whispered, blinking very rapidly. “Would you mind repeating yourself?”
I told her again.
Yukako laughed, her voice queer and thin. She held the bucket with both hands, gasping, her corseted torso heaving against its bone case.
“Should I take this?” I offered, reaching for the vessel.
“I need it for the washing-stone,” she said numbly. “Just stay out of the garden, stay where you are.”
I did, though the mizuya for the tiny two-mat room was so small, I was sure I’d be underfoot. Looking for an out-of-the-way spot to slot myself, my eyes fell on Yukako’s charcoal: a big wooden bucket for the mizuya kettle backstage, a dainty basket for the temae, each twig laid just so. Charcoal! All the large tearooms kept their fuel in a great sunken storage bin, the wooden access panel built into the backstage floor. Baishian had such a panel, very large for a tearoom this size. It lay right in front of me, with a thumb-sized hole for a grip, though I had never seen Yukako move charcoal in or out. Was there a chance? Yes: it was empty, perhaps never used, a metal-lined well in the floor some half a mat deep and square. I plonked myself inside and slid the panel shut.
I blinked in the dark, my eyes adjusting to the slim dart of light falling through the thumbhole in the mizuya floor. Long ago, on Jiro’s last night with the Shins, I had hidden facedown on the ground under the Muin teahouse: this was an improvement. I could sit tailor-fashion in my hatch, though not up on my knees without crooking my neck. My only companion in the bin was a lidded wooden box, dusty and forgotten, containing some dozen lengths of charcoal cut long ago, perhaps even in Nao’s time: enough for one tea brazier’s fire.
As I sat, I became aware of something unusual about the little space. It was airier than one would expect: between the mizuya floor and the top of the metal box in which I sat, I felt some three inches of open space, which let in the earthy damp from under the teahouse. How strange; the whole point of a metal bin was to keep moisture away from the charcoal. I groped around overhead, however, and found a second sliding panel that had been left open, an inner liner designed to keep the fuel airtight. I left it open so I could breathe. I further noticed that the metal my back was pressed against was smoother than the other faces of the bin, smooth as lacquer or glaze. I slowly, bulkily, spun my body around to look; the metal surface seemed to be patterned in some dim geometric fashion. Perhaps, like the opulent lining of a merchant’s sober jacket, this was—to an absurd degree—a secret display of wealth, as far from the prying eyes and sumptuary laws of the Shogun as one could have imagined: a lavish ornamental coal bin. I could almost hear Nao’s bitter laughter.
I experienced all this as Yukako poured water into the cup of the hand-washing stone. The host’s next gesture was to open the gate between the inner and outer tea gardens, to give the guest leave to come in. I heard Yukako set down her bucket in the mizuya, heard her murmur, “Now where is she?” She was talking about me, I realized. Before I could respond, I heard her high-heeled shoes tap gravely on the stones, perhaps a little more gravely than even tea ceremony required. I listened. I heard a pause. In the space between one footstep and the next, I saw Akio’s face the night of their Sighting, when a drop of sake fell to the floor and a glance leapt between them. I saw Yukako facing Koito that night in the rain. I saw her burning her sleeve. I saw the Mountain raise his hand to strike her. I saw Jiro crushing tea bowls with a bamboo flute. Clearest of all, I saw Yukako at twenty-one, reading calligraphy by her grandfather’s two daughters: Koito’s mother and her own. And then I heard her footsteps tock-tock-tock their way to the garden. She was at this moment opening the gate and meeting Koito’s eyes.
WHEN I HEARD YUKAKO return to Baishian and slide open the low square door for her guest, my stomach dropped in alarm: I thought I was experiencing an earthquake, that the walls of the teahouse, of the very bin where I was sequestered, had been rent open. There was no other way to account for the sudden brighter light. But then I realized what I was seeing: a dim version of the tearoom overhead, projected onto a mirror. How ingenious! The glassy smooth surface of the bin, I realized, was not quite at square angles with its neighbors: it was tilted to receive an image from overhead. My vantage, I puzzled out, corresponded with the wide slot of a window high on the teahouse wall: so this was the secret room in Baishian that Yukako had once told me about! The Mountain had constructed a mirrored tube by which a bodyguard could observe host and guest unseen. In a teahouse built for just one host and one imperial guest, I could imagine such precautions making sense.
IT WAS EERIE, however, to see Koito’s slim, blurred lineaments in the evening light—clearer when I covered the thumbhole with my hand—and know she could not see me. She entered the tearoom, paused to gaze at the scroll, and took her place. I could see the watery outlines of the two women as they faced each other across the table and bowed, one silhouetted kimono, one S-curve corset and bustle. I do not know what they felt, but I can guess.
What followed, as the light dimmed, was a perfectly choreographed ritual meal, executed as if by mannequins. Aside from Koito’s polite questions and Yukako’s polite answers about the incense box and food, they moved in decorous silence, Yukako’s voice inflected with anger, Koito’s with apology. I could hear footsteps overhead as the students brought each vessel at correctly timed intervals: the tray with three dishes, the pots of rice, the heated sake kettle, the extravagantly lacquered bowl of simmered dainties, the bountiful ceramic trays, the palate-cleansing sip of hot water in its tiny lacquer dish with its tiny lacquer cap, the raw wooden tray with delicacies from the mountains and the sea, one of each meant to fit on that wee lid.
It was the first temae I had witnessed since Tai and Tsuko made iced matcha. When Yukako brought in the last savory course—as tradition required, the clumped brown cakes of almost-fried rice from the bottom of the cookpot, floating simply in hot water—I could hear Nao scoff. Because the Mountain’s holiday meals for the household had only ever included just one course in a bento box followed by sweets, I had never witnessed a full tea ceremony meal from inside the tearoom. The memory of Nao’s laughter—and something about Yukako in her bosomy flounces, solemnly offering Koito a pot of scorched rice—made me uncomfortable. It was a pantomime, ordained by Rikyu, that told the guest, You mean so much to me. Though my fare is humble, I give you all I have. But those of us whose place it was to eat the household’s daily burned rice had only tasted the dishes in Koito’s meal once or twice in our lives, when there was food left over from hosting tea guests: the velvety morsels of fatty tuna, the rare mushrooms brought from remote mountain towns. What’s more, I knew Kuga had made three pots of rice in order to have the best bits of crust to choose from: brown but not black, crunchy but not hard, all the same height and size. As Yukako in the dimmi
ng evening, the very image of serenity and self-control, cleared away Koito’s dish and laid a three-hundred-year-old vessel of fresh moon-viewing sweets before her guest, I found the word that explained my unease. What she was doing, it was affected.
The moment Koito left for the intermission, Yukako’s demeanor changed. Her calm, automatonlike grace loosened into outrage as she spoke to Tai in the mizuya overhead: “All these plans for Western dress and the woman comes in kimono. I want this table out of here and I want the brazier on the floor. She’s wearing pampas grass, so I can’t use this tea box. None of these others will do. Fill me a good black one instead—Rikyu’s if you can find it. Once she’s in the tearoom, clear the cushion and the smoking tray off the waiting-bench, splash the path with more water, and clean the privy by the bench.”
“The teahouse one too?”
“No need, it’s still clean from this morning. She’ll use the one by the waiting-bench; she’s down there now. Before anything else, I need the scroll down, the flowers up, the second sweet tray ready. Hang those flowers lower than we planned. And have Miss Tsuko bring me a kimono.” I had never heard her use the blunt verbs of men’s speech like this before: her voice had dropped to the Mountain’s growl. As Tai and his students, quiet as stagehands, rushed to do her bidding, Yukako slid the windows of the teahouse closed: shoji covered each surface except the moon window. Even as the paper windows shut out the wan light of evening and her shape in the mirror became the dimmest flicker of gray on gray, I could see her stance soften for a moment as she slid Nao’s cunning paper-and-glass moon-pane into place.