The Tokaido Road

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Hanshiro considered their kind the bane of the TMkaidM. Serene in the unswerving belief that their piety would protect them, they clogged the road. They slowed traffic. They filled the inns. They interfered with commerce. And like the annual summer hatching of mayfly nymphs with dampened, crumpled wings, they encouraged swarms of sharp-toothed pike to feed on them.

  Hanshiro wanted to turn on them and shake his fan at them. He wanted to admonish them to stay home and let their sons support them, their daughters-in-law wait on them, and their grandchildren crawl over them. But that would have been disrespectful. And he would have had to listen to their apologies and their self-recriminations and, worst of all, their thanks.

  CHAPTER 22

  GETTING DRUNK AND WEEPING

  Hanshiro walked along Totsuka’s crowded main street, past the government office and the big, roofed board out front with the latest of the government’s notices. He stopped to see if anything had been posted about the Asano affair or die fugitive holy man. The only placards hung up, however, were the usual platitudes that everyone had memorized by now. They admonished families to be harmonious, servants to be faithful, and masters to be just. For good measure, they exhorted all citizens to be frugal, industrious, and mindful of their stations in life.

  Hanshiro heard the clatter and squeal of wooden shutters being slid across doorways in the darkening alleys. Flocks of children ran laughing down the narrow streets. They darted through the openings left before the last heavy panels were slammed into place. Hanshiro smelled the mélange of odors from a hundred evening meals. From the upper story of a house he heard the hesitant notes of a samisen’s strings being strummed by a beginner.

  Totsuka’s inns and tea houses and rice shops were just rousing for the evening’s business. Hungry travelers clustered around the itinerant peddlers of noodles and tea and rice cakes. Totsuka was fourteen ri from Edo, and it was where people usually spent their first night. It was bigger than the other villages. It had more inns and restaurants and back streets. More places for a fugitive to hide.

  Hanshiro passed the street of the medicine-box makers. He would not be enjoying the light-hearted favors of the Bamboo Inn’s mistress or the soothing skill of her nimble fingers. He shook off the waitresses who darted out from the doorways, begging him to sample the hospitality of their establishments.

  He walked to the Wisteria tea shop, a large, open building in a less crowded part of town. Rice paddies reached almost to its rear door. The tea shop and the inn behind it were built near a marshy stream. A granite column stood next to a stone lantern at the foot of a wooden bridge over the stream. It marked the turnoff for Kamakura to the southeast.

  The place was bigger, busier, and costlier than Hanshiro would have preferred, but it was located where he could watch the crossroad. Besides, five or six of Kira’s men were staying here. If they should catch Cat first, Hanshiro wanted to be nearby so he could take her from them.

  The front of the tea house and the side wall nearest the stream were open to the weather, with tracks for the wooden shutters that closed it off at night. The view there was obscured only by the double sets of posts. They supported the second story and the narrow roof extending from the first floor to keep rain from blowing in on the customers.

  The front part of the tea house was earthen-floored so travelers in a hurry didn’t have to remove their sandals. It had five long, low, scarred tables for them to sit on. In the rear was a raised area of tatami mats for those who wanted to dine with more style and leisure. At center front the open kitchen formed a square, steamy island. Bream splashed with soy sauce were grilling, and a huge pot of red bean soup simmered fragrantly.

  A squat, perspiring man performed at the stove. The sleeves of his brown cotton jacket were folded up over his shoulders and the collar opened wide. He had tied a knot in each of the four corners of a small square white cloth and now wore it as a cap.

  He snapped his big round paper fan with a rhythmic syncopated popping as he fanned the flames under the fish. At the same time he tossed noodles in a huge pan over a flame that roared and leaped. As he worked he carried on an irreverent banter with the customers and the waitresses. The sizzle of the noodles and fish blended with the waitresses’ cries and the hum of conversation. Whenever a customer left, the staff sent him off with shouts of “Good luck!” and “Good-bye!” and “Thanks!”

  A line of kago bearers waited to discharge their passengers at a narrow gate between the far wall and the bamboo fence that extended out from it. Travelers who wished anonymity could exit from the kago through the gate. Without being seen from the road they could walk through the garden behind the fence to the inn’s rooms in back. Today, however, a pair of policemen checked the passengers before allowing them to pass.

  Hanshiro dipped a ladle of water from a bucket at the well and rinsed his mouth and hands. Then he sat on a small platform while a waitress washed his feet. But he still smelled decay over the aroma of the noodles and grilled fish.

  A large bench was positioned on the other side of the room so one end of it stuck out beyond the eaves. A bowing, perpetually smiling waitress stood next to it and welcomed mounted customers. Two merchants were using it to climb stiffly down from their rented horses while the postboys held the reins.

  Hanshiro chose a wide, low bench near the open-sided front corner. He laid his short-sword next to him and sat cross-legged on one end and glared at the merchants when they tried to sit at the other. They bowed and muttered apologies, then moved on. They lowered themselves gingerly to a rear table’s wooden surface. They weren’t used to riding horseback.

  “Irasshaimasu. Welcome, honored guest.” The waitress spoke in the falsetto chirp so beguiling and indispensable to her trade. She bore above her head a footed tray of tea things, which she set down in front of Hanshiro. She poured an aromatic, straw-colored tea into the cup. “What would you like, Your Honor?”

  Hanshiro grunted and studied the list of house specialties and prices posted above the flaming stove. “Sake, if you please. And writing materials.”

  “Shall I bring you sake at thirty-two coppers, or at twenty-four?”

  “Mix them half and half.”

  Hanshiro’s appetite had deserted him. He felt as though the stench of old death clung to his clothes and the lining of his nostrils. It coated the inside of his mouth and throat. To wipe out the taste of evil he would need quantities of sake, the stuff called “hot water of transcendental wisdom.”

  He decided that when the outside lanterns were extinguished and he could no longer see the passersby, he would take a bath. He would have the attendants scrub him until he was as red as a boiled lobster. Then he would soak in the steaming water through the hour of the Dog. He would soak away the clinging odor of death and deceit.

  Since leaving the temple across the river from Kawasaki, Hanshiro had spent two days in fruitless questioning. He had canvassed Totsuka thoroughly and discreetly. He had heard many versions of the exploits of the naginata-wielding priest, but no information.

  The rainstorm the previous night had driven to shelter even those travelers who were on grass-pillow journeys, who camped along the way. The only roof available had been pilgrims’ lodging at a small temple that claimed miraculous cures. Rather than lie elbow to elbow with the diseased, the raving, and the lice-infested, he had slept on a roofed-over woodpile behind a potter’s shop. So far this had been a tiresome, grass-pillow journey for Hanshiro, too. He was ready to spend some of Old Jug Face’s money on a proper bath, clean bedding, and a room shared with no one.

  A servant arrived carrying a small brazier with a kettle of sake warming on it. The waitress brought a long-handled tray of smoking supplies and set down a second tray containing an ink stone and a bowl of water, a small bamboo mat with two brushes rolled inside, and several rolls of heavy, pliant paper. “Do you want me to prepare the ink for you, sir?”

  “No. But bring me another jar of wine. And tell me, are the police looking for tha
t fugitive priest from Edo?”

  “Yes, sir.” The waitress glanced toward the police and the line of kago whose bearers were complaining loudly about the delay. “But you needn’t concern yourself. This is an honest establishment. There are no criminals here. Although ...” She leaned down to whisper. “The young westcountryman at the third table over, the one with his head bandaged, he actually fought with the rogue priest.” The waitress bowed and retreated to the kitchen area.

  The artist was sitting by himself also. Like Hanshiro, he had left his long-sword on the rack in the entryway. His pole, festooned with collapsed pleated painted lanterns, lay under the bench on which he sat.

  Not much of the man’s face was visible through the swathing of bandages, but his eyes and nose were dark purple. He was using a reed to take his nourishment in liquid form, fermented bean paste broth and a lot of sake.

  From the comer of his eye Hanshiro studied him. He had fought with Lady Asano, if the mendicant priest had indeed been she. By now Hanshiro had his doubts. He was beginning to think she really was in hiding and the priest was just another madman loose on the TMkaidM.

  With deliberate, circular motions of his wrist, Hanshiro rubbed the block of pressed black powder against the moistened, polished slate. While the ink collected in the trough at the end of the stone, he composed his letter to the police at the government office.

  A murderer lies with the evidence of his crimes. Pass through the bamboo grove behind the distillery. Look for a cave in a thicket of azaleas by the big pine tree at the foot of the mountain. The cave entrance is covered by rocks.

  Not very poetic, Hanshiro thought. He didn’t mention the old couple who were the intended victims. They wouldn’t want to become involved with the police. No one wanted to become involved with the police. Tsunayoshi’s justice had a way of turning and biting those who sought to set it on someone else.

  Death by horror. Karma piled up. Maybe the thief would be alive when the authorities found him, and maybe he wouldn’t. His trip to hell would be unpleasant in any case. Perhaps his fate was to return as a maggot, Hanshiro thought, to spend another lifetime living off the dead.

  Hanshiro folded the letter. Then he balanced two small silver coins in the palm of his hand. They weren’t worth much since Tokugawa Tsunayoshi had debased the currency to pay for his eccentric extravagances. But one of them would still be more than the waitress earned in two or three days. He laid the coins inside one of his paper handkerchiefs, twisted the ends, and gave both to her.

  “Pass the letter to a servant to deliver to the police station,” he said. “Divide the contents of the other paper with him.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  “Tell the servant that a traveler gave you the message, then continued his journey toward Edo. You don’t know who he was.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When she left, Hanshiro unrolled a second strip of paper. He anchored the top corners with the polished river stones supplied for the purpose and renewed the supply of ink. With firm strokes he drew the characters, spelling out part of an ancient poem. The words had been rattling in his head for two days.

  I call myself

  a man of spirit,

  but on this journey,

  grass for a pillow,

  my thoughts keep going back.

  But his thoughts went back only two nights, to the abbey and to the boy and to the look that had started an aching warmth in his loins. Hanshiro was chagrined to realize that the heat was spreading to his heart. It was ridiculous. He was too young for infatuation with boys. He completed the poem.

  And like the fires that burn

  when fishergirls of Ami bay

  boil down their salt, these memories burn

  deep within my heart!

  The waitresses were lighting the small lanterns inside and the big square ones outside when Hanshiro heard music approaching. It was a courtesan’s song. And a very old one at that. The melancholy of courtesans went back a long time.

  Things that pierce the heart:

  night travel, boat travel, being on the road,

  a roadside inn,

  a voice reciting sutras from a mountain temple in a dark wood,

  a lover who leaves you before you’re tired of him.

  The lanterns outside cast an artificial light on the facade of the buildings across the way and on the street between. They gave the TMkaidM the appearance of a stage. The travelers were extras entering and exiting. Dancers were about to open the program.

  When the seven women passed, drumming and singing and dancing, several of the tea house customers applauded. Musui had taken off his big hat, and it hung against his back. His page’s face was still covered by his hat, but Hanshiro recognized his clothes and the lithe body inside them. He took deep, slow breaths until the merry caravan passed and the music and laughter faded.

  It was time to forget about boys. It was time to see who the bandaged painter of lanterns really was. Hanshiro picked up his kettle of sake and affected the exaggeratedly upright manner of someone drunk trying to appear sober. He wove a tipsy course to the bench where the artist sat brooding.

  “ ‘To keep silent and act wise,’ ” Hanshiro recited, holding up the kettle.

  “ ‘Still not as good as drinking sake, getting drunk, and weeping.’ ” The artist finished the poem through clenched teeth. He was in pain from the blow inflicted by the butt of Cat’s naginata.

  Hanshiro introduced himself as the Cup No Man Can Finish, rMnin and underpaid fencing instructor for the spoiled brats of minor nobility. The westcountryman confided that he was called Mumyosai, Nameless, rMnin and underpaid painter of Benkei on the Gojo Bridge.

  As the evening progressed Hanshiro and Nameless drained a few more jars of sake and drank toasts to the old days. They were waving their bowls in rhythm and chanting ancient Chinese poetry about overflowing wine when the inn’s servants closed the big front shutters. They were still chanting when teams of waitresses heaved them to their feet and half carried them, half led them to the steaming bath.

  CHAPTER 23

  MEETING A BUDDHA IN HELL

  “ I’d like to be called a traveler in the mist. . . ” As Musui recited the opening of Basho’s famous poem, he bowed to the group of men shuffling on their knees across the tatami of the reception room of the Four Heavenly Kings Inn in Totsuka.

  Again lodging under sasanqua from place to place. Cat silently finished the famous verse.

  She didn’t care that the men had interrupted her calligraphy lesson. She despised having to make crude, wobbly strokes with the brush. She found it difficult to look blankly at Musui when he recited poetry she knew as well as her own family lineage. Several times she had almost blurted out the classical references that were the sign of her breeding.

  She especially missed her books, bound in rue-scented silk covers to protect them from insects. She longed for the authors in whose company she had spent so many pleasant, solitary hours. After she moved to the Yoshiwara she had treasured them for the escape from loneliness and sorrow they had provided her.

  This evening, Musui’s visitors included three more innkeepers, the manager of an employment agency, and an ancient cloud dweller, as the nobility were sometimes called. This one had been a courtier to an emperor long retired. The nobleman now eked out a living teaching calligraphy and the art of distinguishing scents. There was also a manufacturer of high-grade hair oil, a fish broker, and a maker of brocade borders and ties for mosquito nets. Each one carried his lacquered writing box and a scroll of his own poetry.

  The margins on most of the scrolls were filled with commentaries made by Totsuka’s professional literary critics at one copper a verse. The hair oil magnate carried a much thumbed recent edition of the five-hundred-year-old text, Good Poetry of Modern Times. Besides examples of superior poems, it listed poetic phrases that could be used frequently with impunity. In composing poetry, creativity was not admired nearly so much as the ability to incorporat
e the classics into one’s verse.

  The innkeeper bowed apologetically to Musui. “My friends heard you were honoring us here, sensei. They beg your candid opinion of their attempts at verse.”

  You mean you sent servants on the run to inform them, thought Cat.

  She watched closely, to be sure the host showed the proper respect for Musui in the seating arrangements. In their efforts to appear cultured, many of the townsmen foolishly hired mountebanks to instruct them in the Ogasawara school of etiquette. As far as Cat was concerned they had no more idea of refined behavior than a chicken. But the host gave Musui the seat of honor in front of the tokonoma, the tall niche for displaying flower arrangements and scroll paintings. The others settled back on their heels and arranged their robes and writing materials.

  Musui smiled graciously through the introductions. This happened almost everywhere he stayed, which was why he hadn’t minded spending the previous night in the abandoned chapel.

  “Would you be so kind, sensei, as to forgive my presumption and inscribe my fan with a few words?” The fish broker folded at the waist until he touched the tatami with his forehead, then slid the paper folding fan toward Musui.

  “You honor me.” One of Musui’s seemingly endless supply of rules of the road was “Never refuse a request for calligraphy, but never offer it unless asked.” He dipped his brush into the ink and quickly, effortlessly, wrote:

  The joy of meeting,