The Last Tea Bowl Thief
Page 29
“Okuda-san! Uchida-bōsan!”
They both pivot toward the wild-haired foreigner waving and trotting in their direction, then exchange slightly embarrassed half-smiles, now that their suspicions have been confirmed.
Robin slaps to a halt and breathlessly introduces them, then leads them inside, hustling to claim a table that three schoolgirls are just leaving. The priest offers to get the coffees, trundling back to the cashier to order.
Nori is dying to quiz her about what happened today, but as they slide into their seats, Robin asks, “How’s your grandmother? Any change?”
“No, she hasn’t opened her eyes. Yet.” The old faker.
“How are you doing?” Robin is searching her face for the source of her frown. “I mean, is business . . .?”
“Better,” Nori reassures her. “I even made a big sale to a walk-in this morning. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with the medical bills if my grandmother doesn’t come home soon, but I hope—no, I’m sure —she’s going to wake up any day now.”
She’d better. Because it really roasts Nori’s sweet potatoes that she’d been forced to fumble around in the dark when her grandmother got sick, instead of being trusted with the emergency plans. ’Baa-chan needs to start treating her more like a partner.
“When she does wake up,” Nori grouses, “the first thing I’m going to make her tell me is where she hid the savings. It’s ridiculous that I’ve been relying on selling that stupid tea bowl to make ends meet, and it’s high time she started to show a little more trust. I mean—” She breaks off abruptly, hearing a polite cough, feels her face grow hot. How long had the priest been standing there? She hopes he didn’t hear her moaning about money.
“Coffee and tea are on their way,” he announces in his deep voice, pulling out the spindly chair next to Robin. He eyes it dubiously before gingerly lowering his bulk onto it.
As soon as he’s settled, Nori looks from Robin to the priest. “Now that we’re all here, don’t make me wait any longer. What happened?”
They both start talking at once, then they look at each other, and laugh. One green tea, one black coffee, and a latte arrive. Uchida cedes right-of-way to Robin for the first half of the story, taking over at the point where he entered Hashimoto’s office.
“I don’t know what happened after I left, though,” he concludes, sipping his tea. “I assume the press conference was called off?”
“It was, but first Hashimoto-san had to break the news to Mr. Fujimori, and he was anything but pleased. In fact,” Robin says apologetically, “I might be taking you up on that offer to come to Shigaraki and study those boxes a little earlier than you expected. Now that I, uh, don’t have a job anymore.”
Uchida’s cup freezes halfway to his mouth.
“They fired you? After all we . . .”
Robin shrugs. “You’ve never worked for a Japanese company, have you?”
“But . . . how hard will it be for you to get a new job?”
“Without a reference?” She laughs. “Pigs will fly. But with any luck, my next job won’t be at an auction house, so I won’t need one. Once the news of Hikitoru’s recovery becomes public, I’ll have to work day and night to prove that Yakibō’s tea bowls inspired Saburo’s poems, or someone else will get there first. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have a day job to get in the way.”
Uchida still looks worried.
“Yes, but what will you live on?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got some savings. And I’ve been meaning to go on a diet anyway,” she jokes. Uchida doesn’t laugh. She changes the subject. “Hey, I almost forgot to warn you—Fujimori-san might be calling you.”
“Your boss’s boss? Why?”
“I got the feeling during my, uh, ‘exit interview’ that he’s hedging his bets. If your ancestor’s documents check out and he can’t do business with the head priest at Senkō-ji, I’d be surprised if he doesn’t turn around and try to sign you up instead.”
“To sell Hikitoru?”
“Yeah. Or rather, ‘the-tea-bowl-known-as-Hikitoru.’ Which is what they’ll call the dipping bowl, to keep from being sued, in case rumors about it not being the original get out.”
Uchida ponders that.
“If I agree, will they give you your job back? I mean, could I make them give you your job back?”
“Probably.” She smiles. “But I was serious when I said I don’t want it. The best way you can help me now is to be the rightful owner of ‘the-tea-bowl-known-as-Hikitoru’ and let me study it. And,” she adds, lowering her voice, “if you could be regrettably unavailable to show it to other scholars who ask to see it, that wouldn’t hurt either.”
“Got it.” But he’s not giving up quite yet. “What if we sold the other one?”
“What other one?”
“The one I broke. Didn’t I tell you that I know a guy who still repairs pottery the old way, with gold? What if we got the original Hikitoru fixed, and sold it? I know it won’t be as valuable as before it was broken, but I see mended tea bowls in museums all the time, and it ought to fetch something.” He turns to Nori. “The two of you could split the proceeds.”
He did overhear. Embarrassed, Nori tries to protest, but he holds up a platter-sized hand to stop her.
“Look, my life is a simple one,” he says. “If I do my job right, the people I serve will support the temple in return. That’s enough for me. The kind of money I’d get from selling that tea bowl would be a burden on my immortal soul. And,” he bows apologetically, “I owe you—if you’d never taken Hikitoru to Swann-san, I’d never have gotten out from under the obligation that’s been hanging over my family all these years.” He looks at Robin. “And you paid for my vow with your job. If I can sell Hikitoru and help you both stay afloat while you deal with the fallout, it’s the least I can do. So, when Fujimori-san calls, why don’t I ask him what kind of terms he’s offering?”
“No!” Robin yelps. “When Fujimori-san calls, I want you to tell him exactly where he can stick his ‘terms.’ I don’t want him to make one yen off that tea bowl. He tried to give it away to the wrong priest, remember? And he tried hard.”
“Okay, fine. Is there another auction house we could try? An arch-competitor, perhaps?”
“Wait,” Nori says. “Before you do that—” She lowers her voice. “I know a guy.”
52.
Present-Day Japan
TUESDAY, APRIL 15
Tokyo
What the . . .? Nori rounds the corner onto ’Baa-chan’s ward, ten minutes after the start of visiting hours. Is someone having a party in one of the hospital rooms? She can hear it all the way down the hall. Worse, it’s getting louder, the closer she gets to her grandmother’s room.
She reaches the half-open door and discovers why. The other bed is occupied again, this time by a bird of a woman with wispy white hair. She has an oxygen tube clipped to her nose, and an IV line just like ’Baa-chan’s, but she’s holding court propped against her pillows, very much not in a coma. She’s surrounded by a gaggle of women all on the far side of seventy. By the way they’re loudly exchanging baffling non-sequiturs, they’re all a little hard of hearing.
Her first instinct is to shush them, so they won’t disturb the still figure in the window bed, then stops herself. Anything that jolts her grandmother back to reality would be a good thing.
As she steps into the room, the flock interrupts its twittering long enough to inspect her. They apologize for the noise, then the one in a matronly mauve kimono swirls the blue privacy curtain around them.
They lower their voices a little, but by the time she has shed her coat and pulled her chair into its customary spot, they’ve forgotten her and are back at full volume.
She takes her grandmother’s hand.
“Hey, ’Baa-chan. How are you doing today?”
She searches her grandmother’s face for an answer. Doesn’t get one.
“Well, guess what?” She moves closer, so she won
’t have to shout to be heard above the chatter. “I’m not going to be arrested. And,” she brings her mouth right down by her grandmother’s ear, “neither are you.”
She pulls back, searches her grandmother’s face. Nothing.
“Come on, cut the act.” She drops the hand. “I know you’re awake. It’s time to stop pretending. You’re safe. The police won’t be coming back to ask you about Hikitoru. Not ever.” She raises her voice. “Did you hear me? I said, you can wake up now. The police are NOT coming to get you!”
The chatter across the room abruptly stops. A bespectacled face peeks from behind the curtain.
“Sorry.” Nori half-rises from her seat with an apologetic bow. “My grandmother sometimes doesn’t have a very good grip on reality. Sum-imasen,” she apologizes again.
The woman looks unconvinced, but she retreats behind the curtain. Nori eases back into her chair as the chatter resumes.
“’Baa-chan!” she hisses. “I’m serious. There’s no reason for you to fake it anymore. Listen to me. That tea bowl Hikitoru was stolen by someone else, long before it was stolen by you. That’s right, I know all about what you did, and you’ve got plenty of explaining to do. But it turns out that some famous poet beat you to it, by a few hundred years. And the police aren’t going to come after you for stealing something that was already stolen goods.”
She leans closer, willing her grandmother to show some sign she’s heard. Nothing happens.
Enough. She pushes away from the bed.
“Fine. Don’t believe me.” She snatches her coat from the back of the chair and pokes one arm into a sleeve. “I guess you need to hear it from Inspector Anzai himself. I’ll just stop by the police station on my way home and—” She almost misses it.
One eye cracks open, just a sliver.
“’Baa-chan?”
The eye opens a little more, shifts its focus to her.
“’Baa-chan? You’re awake? ’Baa-chan . . . !”
Her grandmother’s lips curve into a smug smile. Nori drops back into her chair, so overcome with relief that she doesn’t register that the smile is bigger on one side than the other.
Everything is going to be all right. Her grandmother is back among the living. Nori is so relieved, she’s . . . she’s furious.
“I knew it! I knew you were faking. How long have you been conscious, anyway? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you trust me? I wouldn’t have told anyone. I wouldn’t have let you get arrested.” The eye slides away as her scolding intensifies, but now her pent-up worry is pouring out in an unstoppable torrent. “It’s high time you started trusting me more, you know. What if I hadn’t figured out where you hid that tea bowl? They’d have switched off the lights, that’s what. And the internet too. Oh no, don’t pretend to go back to sleep when I’m talking to you. You can’t get away with that, not anymore.”
But her grandmother’s face has subsided back into beatific serenity. Nori glares at her. Pokes her. Shakes her shoulder. But ’Baa-chan is the most stubborn person she knows. When no more signs of consciousness appear, she gives up. No use calling the nurse now. Her grandmother will decide when to make her recovery public, and not a minute sooner. She turns to check the weather through the window, buttoning her coat.
“‘Ou din’t need help,” comes a voice from the bed.
Nori spins around.
“I knew ‘ou could figger i’ ou’.”
Her grandmother’s eyes are closed, but she’s smiling even wider than before.
Nori sinks into the chair, overcome with love and exasperation. She takes the thin hand in both of hers again and holds it tight. But just as she bends down to kiss the papery cheek, the good eye snaps open.
“Now tell ’e ev’ything. F’om the ’eginning. An’ don’t leave a’ything out.”
53.
Present-Day Japan
SATURDAY, MAY 17
Tokyo
Nori leaps up the stairs from the subway station, and hits the sidewalk running. A last-minute customer had taken a maddeningly long time to decide between the Green Oribe ramen bowls and the brown ones from Mashiko, so she’s late. If she sprints, she’ll only have to apologize for ten tardy minutes, not fifteen. She pelts around the corner near the Miura pawnshop and spots Robin and Uchida-bōsan loitering out front. Waving, she surrenders to the stitch in her side and slows, apologizing to Robin as she arrives.
“Sorry,” she pants. “Ten minutes to five. Customer. Couldn’t decide.” She swallows and sketches a bow toward the priest. “Uchida-bōsan. Hi. Sorry.”
He says hello and smiles genially in return, unable to return her bow properly because his hands are full. He’s toting two outsize bundles, the angular corners of their contents advertising that three empty tea bowl boxes are packed in one, four in the other.
Robin carries two smaller parcels wrapped in indigo cotton, their faded wave patterns knotted around single boxes.
Nori squints at her. Something’s different. Is she wearing ... lipstick?
“Are you sure about this dealer?” Robin is asking, surveying the pawnshop dubiously.
A flimsy plastic bag tumbles past them in the crisp breeze, catching on the accordion bars protecting the too-shiny kimono and the not-shiny-enough swords in the window. Nori can tell the expert’s eye is flagging half the goods in it as knock-offs.
“Don’t worry,” she reassures Robin, ringing the bell. “Miura-san is too smart to put the good stuff out front.” While they wait, her gaze settles on the boxes in Robin’s hands. “You brought them both?”
“Yep. You said we could trust this guy, right? I thought he might want to see them side by side. ‘The-tea-bowl-known-as-Hikitoru’ arrived by armored art courier last Tuesday. And the other one came back from the goldsmith yesterday. Wait ‘til you see it. It’s—”
The door eases open with the now familiar sticky sound, and Daiki’s suspicious eye appears in the gap.
“Oh, good.” He grins at Nori. “What took you so long?”
The chain rattles and the gap widens. The boy sizes up her looming companions as they step into the cramped shop and clears a wider path through the teetering stacks of clutter, saving the introductions until they can include his grandfather.
“They’re here, O-jii-san,” he announces, sliding open the office door to frame Miura, standing behind the table.
Even though Robin’s words of greeting are absurdly archaic and Uchida’s head accidentally sends the overhead light swinging, the pawnbroker gives them a courtly bow and murmurs the proper honorific welcomes due to sellers of highly desirable goods. He doesn’t allow his eyes to dwell too long on the bundles they carry until all are settled around the table and have steaming cups of tea before them. There are only four cushions, so Daiki resumes his place of honor, standing behind the old man.
Even then, the niceties must be observed before diving into the business at hand.
“How is your grandmother?” he asks Nori.
“Better,” she replies. “Although I feel kind of sorry for the nurses in the rehab wing. The stronger she gets, the more she insists it’s time they let her out of ‘prison.’ They say it’ll be another month before she’s made enough progress on her left side to go home, but she thinks that’s too long. They caught her halfway down the hall yesterday, limping along with her walker, overcoat half on, trying to escape. I suspect that the day she actually makes it as far as the front door, they’ll breathe a sigh of relief and just let her go.”
They all laugh, and Miura shifts his attention to Robin.
“Pardon my curiosity, but are you, by any chance, the Swann-san who was on the team that authenticated that Yakibō tea bowl they discovered at Jakkō-in? The one called Waterlily?”
“Yes,” Robin says, looking surprised that he’s familiar with her work.
“I thought so. Perhaps you can enlighten me on something I’ve been wondering about. Why was that tea bowl named after the species called ‘Gekka Bijin’ in Japanese?”
The old man sits back, satisfied. “Thank you. I’ve always wondered. It’s not easy to find information about Yoshi Takamatsu’s work.”
“That’s because there aren’t many of us studying him. But,” she says, beginning to unwrap the boxes bearing the names of Saburo’s Eight Attachments, “there will be.”
She lines them up before the old man. One by one, he examines them, shaking his head in amazement while she fills him in on their history, concluding with the update that she’d spent the past three weeks in Shigaraki, working with Uchida to document them.
The priest passes her one of the two remaining boxes and clears the others from the table.
The familiar characters spelling hikitoru are brushed across the top. A faint aroma of charcoal emanates as Robin wiggles off the lid and lifts out the wrapped dipping bowl. She places it before Miura.
“May I?” he asks.
“Please do.”
Switching on his lamp, he angles it closer, then peels back the brocade. A look of wonder suffuses his face as he lifts the dipping bowl, examining each side, peering into its depths.
“How is it that no one knew this existed, until now?” he marvels.
“I asked Uchida-bōsan the same thing.” Robin turns to the priest with a smile.