by India Millar
I nodded. Knowing Akira as I did, that made perfect sense. Who, then, was the poor soul who burned with the kabuki?
“It was Big,” he said softly. I put my hand to my mouth in disbelief. “I was told that he was haunting the theater, waiting for me to come back. Sometimes, he sat in my dressing room for the whole of the performance. Other times, he mingled with the crowd, never looking at the play, but searching for me in the audience. He loved me, you know. Just as, a long time ago, he loved your mother.”
“You’re sure? You’re sure it was Big?” It all made perfect sense, but I had to be convinced. Danjuro nodded.
“I know. When I heard the theater was burning, I went. I had to see it with my own eyes. I was wearing a merchant’s robes, nobody noticed me. I could probably have gone without any disguise and in the excitement nobody would have seen me. I helped throw water on the flames, even though I knew it would do no good. I had to. This was my life, burning in front of me.” He hesitated, and I could see that there were tears in his eyes. I waited in silence for him to continue his tale, frightened that if I spoke it would halt the flow of words. There was so much I still needed to know. He drew a deep breath and continued. “I waited until the next day, when the ashes were cool enough to walk on. It was me who found poor Big’s body. He must have been in my dressing room at the side of the stage and was caught by the flames. I guessed it was him, but when I looked carefully,” he pulled a face, and I swallowed as I thought of the courage it must have taken to examine the badly burned corpse, “I found the amulet he always wore. I broke it off and took it with me. I was deeply sorry for my poor friend, but I had to make sure that people would think it was me. I knew Big wouldn’t mind. If he thought he was helping me, his spirit would be appeased. There was nothing else that I could see to identify the body. I would have dropped something of mine – a ring, perhaps – but somebody saw me bending over Big and obviously thought I was looting. When they shouted at me I had to run.”
“My mother thought Big was her friend,” I said sadly. “She thought he would look after me.”
I was shocked when Danjuro laughed. “Mineko made sure you got your parcel, then.” I stared at him in disbelief, my mouth sagging open. All the questions I wanted to ask crowded on my tongue, bumping into each other so that no sound emerged except an inarticulate croak. Danjuro took my face in his hands and smiled, putting his finger to my lips to silence me.
“I know. So many questions, little one! Wait, and I will tell you. When I found poor Big, I felt I had to do my best for him. Too little, too late, I know. He had lodgings in Edo, away from the Floating World.” I raised my eyebrows in surprise. I – and all the other girls – had assumed he lived the whole of his life between the Green Tea House and the Hidden House. Danjuro nodded his understanding. “I went to pay any rent that he owed, and to tidy away his things. He had few possessions, and what there was I gave to the Shinto shrine to distribute to the poor. Two things only I kept. One was a letter to me, from Big. He said in it that he knew I was not dead, and that he would keep searching for me. That if he didn’t find me, he prayed that I would one day read this letter. That he loved me, and always would. He knew I thought of him only as a good friend, and could never respond to him as he wanted, but it made no difference to him. He loved me, and that was that.” Poor Big. Always doomed to love those who did not love him! And at the same time, I felt a pang of pity for Bigger, who in his turn had loved his fellow geisha. What a miserable tangle! “In that letter, he told me to look in his cupboard where I would find an old furoshiki. He asked that I would make sure that it got to you. I glanced at the letter, and realized that it was from your mother, that it must be important to you. There was money as well. A lot of it, but I knew that it was the letter that would be important to you. I had to get it to you, so I took a risk and bribed one of the old priests from the temple to deliver it to the Hidden House, with strict instructions that it be given to Mineko for you. I had no way of knowing how long it would take to reach you, so I just waited.”
Tears came to my eyes and I brushed them away. Danjuro was watching me, his expression tender.
“All these years,” I managed to say. “All these years, Big had that letter. I’ve grown up thinking my mother didn’t care about me, that she left me because she hated me because I was a freak. He knew, but he let me carry on.” My voice choked and I could not go on.
“I know,” Danjuro said softly. “It should never have happened. Never. Big should have told you as soon as you were able to understand. But he adored your mother. He wanted her for himself. It would have been bad enough if she had chosen somebody of her own race to fall in love with, but a foreigner. A white Barbarian! And to bear his child. I think it was too much for him. He took it as a personal insult, as a huge loss of face. That’s why he hated you so much. But you owe him your life, you know.” I stared at him in disbelief. Danjuro nodded gently. “Poor Big sealed his own fate when he invited me to the Hidden House. I think he thought I would be amused by you girls, but I knew as soon I saw you that you were special. That the gods had bought us together. Big saw my interest immediately, and perhaps it was in hopes of finding favor with me, but he told me that after your mother left, he persuaded Auntie to keep you. Convinced her that if she got your mother back, you would be a bargaining point. And if your mother was never found, then you could be an attraction in the Hidden House. He even persuaded Auntie to get a wet nurse for you.”
“Big did that?” I asked. He nodded. Suddenly, Big was no longer important. I had to ask him. “You never said you cared for me. Never. I thought I was just some sort of distraction to you. Nothing that mattered.”
He shrugged. There was a long pause as he searched for words. The right words.
“All my life, little one, I have lived for the theater. Never did I feel that I was good enough. Never worthy of the honor of my name. I have spent my life mouthing other people’s words. Never my own. It didn’t matter, nobody looked beyond the mask of the makeup and the costumes. Nobody ever thought about the man underneath. But you did. You looked straight through me, into my heart. And I was bewildered. I didn’t know how to respond to you, what to do. So I did what any man of Edo would have done. I treated you badly. I treated you as if you were less than me. As if you didn’t matter. And it didn’t work. I couldn’t even convince myself.” He drew a deep breath. “I love you, Midori No Me. More than life itself. If you wish it, we will spend the rest of our lives together.”
If I wished it! I stared at him, blinking hard as Danjuro the actor and Danjuro my lover blurred together and became one. Became the man I loved. All I could do was nod.
“Then it will be so,” he said. “Shall I finish my tale? Or is it irrelevant now?”
“Finish. I want to know everything.” I was floating – not on water, but on air – but still my curiosity lingered.
“As soon as I found out Akira had taken you into his house, I started to make my plans. I was frustrated at first, when he only allowed you back to the Hidden House with him, but I prayed that you would find a way to come back, alone. I was nearly mad with waiting. I saw you, you know.” He smiled and I stared at him in astonishment. “I told you, I have many very good friends. My patron from Kyoto was kind enough to help me. It didn’t take a lot of persuasion to get him to become a regular client of the Green Tea House. Nor to get him to take me with him on his visits. I disguised myself as his servant, and waited in the carriage for him. Waited and watched. I caught a glimpse of you from time to time when we visited the Tea House. Only from a distance, across the courtyard, but it was enough to give me hope. At least I knew you were alive, and allowed to go to the Hidden House now and then.”
“I knew you weren’t dead,” I said. “I knew it. I felt it.”
“Of course you did. Was life with Akira very bad?”
“Later on, yes.” I had to tell him. I could not live with it on my conscience. “At first, I thought he was exciting. Attractive.” I stared
at him, trying to see what he was thinking. “Even though I was betraying you, I couldn’t help it. If I had known what he had done to you, I would have killed myself before I let him touch me, but I didn’t know.”
“Many women have felt the same about Akira. When he wants to be, he can be a very attractive man indeed,” he said. “But you were the only one he wanted. He has hurt you, he has hurt me. But he is the past. He is gone. I, also, have hurt you, and for that I am deeply sorry. Forgive me, Midori No Me?”
Forgive him? He was asking me to forgive him? I was caught between tears and laughter. I could do nothing but shake my head.
“I even hurt you bringing you here,” Danjuro said. “You must have been terrified, but I had to do it this way. If something had gone wrong and Akira had found you – and he has eyes and ears everywhere – it was essential that you were innocent. That you could tell him nothing except that you had been kidnapped in the street. Until our ship was well out of harbor and I knew we were safe, I had to make sure you knew nothing at all about what was happening to you. If he thought for a second that you had been mixed up in it, he would have killed you. It would have been too much loss of face for him to do anything else.”
I shuddered, knowing that he was right.
“And now?” I asked. “What now? We can’t go back to Edo.”
“Now, we go to America.” I gasped, sure I had misheard him. “Whilst I was gone from Edo, I was not idle. My patron in Kyoto has strong links with America. He is a shrewd man. He says that is where the future lies. Some of the actors who fled from the kabuki in Edo have already gone to America to find their fortune. I am not a poor man, even with the loss of the kabuki. In any event, my patron wants to sponsor me. Us. He has spoken already to friends of friends in America. There is a welcome assured for us there. We will find my actors, and we will make a new kabuki theater. In America.”
He paused, waiting for me to speak. I could see the need for reassurance in his face, but even so, I thought carefully before I responded. The time for lies was long gone. And yet, the more I thought about it, the more attractive the idea became.
“Many of the foreigners…” I was careful not to refer to them as foreign Barbarians anymore. “Many of the foreigners who came to the Green Tea House were Americans. They were very interested in our culture and seemed to enjoy the geisha’s singing and dancing.”
Danjuro smiled. “And many more found their way to the kabuki. I have spoken to them often.” I stared at him in surprise. Danjuro spoke English? “I do not speak English as well as you do. But I will learn more, if you will teach me. Already many Japanese have found their way to America. We will bring memories of home to them, and something new to the foreigners. I think – and my patron thinks – that we will do well.”
Amongst the bewildering rush of new ideas, one word struck me. “We?”
“We. We are going to a new world. Why should a woman not act in the kabuki there?”
I thought I might die with pleasure, then. But one shadow fell across my dreams. “Danjuro, for us, this is a future to welcome. But what of my poor Mineko? She has been a true friend to me, and I have left her in the Hidden House.”
“You left your mother’s money with her?” I nodded. “There is more than enough there for her to buy herself out. Even Auntie will be unable to resist that much. Akira will be too worried about what has happened to you to care, I think. I will get word to her that the money is hers, if that will make you happy. And in time she could even come to us in America. A good friend for you and another fine actress for the kabuki!” The tears came then and would not be stilled. I cried for my lost mother and my father. For myself. For all the years that I had wasted, without even knowing that there could be anything better. Danjuro held me in his arms until I had no more tears to shed, and then he kissed me.
“Do not weep, my own one. Do not weep, for we will be together now until the gods choose to part us by death. We have always been together, in this life and the lives before it. We will be together in the life to come. No more tears, for what is done is done.”
I felt the ship rock beneath us, speeding us on to our new life. Eventually, I fell asleep in the arms of my lover, safe in the knowledge that I had come home.
At last.
About the Author
India Millar started her career in heavy industry at British Gas and ended it in the rarefied atmosphere of the British Library. She now lives on Spain’s glorious Costa Blanca North in an entirely male dominated household comprised of her husband, a dog, and a cat. In addition to historical romances, India also writes popular guides to living in Spain under a different name. Her Romance Noir series is highlighted on her website, indiamillar.co.uk.
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Table of Contents
The Geisha with the Green Eyes
Note from the Author
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
About the Author