The Tokaido Road

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Cat and Chikara had caught fireflies on the bank of the river. They had put them in gauze-covered cages and used them as lanterns to light the way home. Cat’s nurse released the fireflies into the rippling, room-size tent of silk gauze that served as Cat’s mosquito net. Their twinkling had amused her until she fell asleep.

  Cat’s mother told her the fireflies were the spirits of the dead, come to light the way for loved ones left behind. The spirit, her mother had said, can travel a thousand ri in a day.

  Cat drew a bundled towel from inside her jacket and unwrapped Kasane’s knife. She pressed her thumb hard against the blade. It was sharp.

  As she held the knife in her lap, Cat remembered the old tale Oishi had told her that summer long ago. He told it during a game of a Hundred Supernatural Stories. As each person told a ghost story he or she extinguished one candle. The party had started in the eerie light of a hundred candles covered with blue paper hoods. By dawn only one had been left. Oishi had snuffed the last light and they all sat in darkness as he told of the warrior who traveled a hundred ri in a day.

  The warrior had left his home near AkM to travel to Izumo on the other side of the country. He promised his brother he would return on. the ninth day of the ninth month. He arrived almost at the end of the appointed day. Everyone had gone to bed except his brother, who waited for him at the front gate. The two men had a joyful reunion, and the returning warrior told of being imprisoned by the cruel lord of Tonda castle.

  As Oishi told the story he took both parts.

  “ ‘Until today,’ the warrior said, ‘I could find no way to escape.’

  “ ‘Until today!’ his brother exclaimed. ‘But Izumo is a hundred ri away.’

  “ ‘Yes.’ The warrior looked at him sadly. ‘Fortunately I was allowed to keep my sword and so could make the journey here in time. Say good-bye to our mother.’ With that, he disappeared.”

  Cat remembered the heat of that summer night and the cool itch of salty tears on her cheeks as she had listened to Oishi’s low, resonant voice in the dark. “He had killed himself,” Oishi said. “So his ghost could travel a hundred ri and keep his promise.”

  Cat opened the neck of her jacket and laid the flat of the cold blade against her breast. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the hard, smooth feel of it as it took on the warmth of her body. It too could release her spirit and allow her to reach Oishi in a day. Her ghost could enlist his help.

  Cat sighed. The story of the two faithful brothers was a tale told to amuse children. Belief in ghosts was for servants and peasants and the very young.

  Cat would have to stay alive. She would have to continue walking along a road that seemed to have no end. She would have to face the officials at the HakMne barrier.

  She pulled her jacket farther open and felt under her ribs for the place where the knife’s blade would enter if she were to commit suicide as her father had. With eyes still closed she turned the knife so she was holding the handle in both hands, the blade poised. She sat like that a long while, breathing deeply and trying to imagine her father’s last moments, his last thoughts.

  Finally a cold gust from the sea caused her to shiver. When she opened her eyes she saw that dawn was just spilling out from the seam where the bay met the sky. As she watched, the pale blue of the water became streaked with iridescent turquoise and lavender and spangled with fire from the rising winter sun.

  The loops and folds of the Sakawa River trailed across the landscape below like a discarded length of metallic thread. Beyond the bare fields and the town on the other side of it were the mountains. At the mountains’ base the tiered roofs of Odawara castle, with their upswept gables, floated on the dark green canopy of firs and pines. The shadows among the trees’ branches looked like shreds of night still caught there. A flock of crows separated from the shadows, cawed, and rose into the sky.

  Cat put away the knife. She took slow, deep breaths of the cold air as she stared at Mount Fuji rising pale as a cone of mist beyond the dark mountains. The sight of Fuji calmed her fearful spirit. She realized she had become distracted by the details of her journey. The feverish tally of ri and cho and towns and days had been clicking in her mind like the beads of a merchant’s abacus.

  Cat had studied Zen with her mother’s mentor, the abbot of Sengakuji. She had sat long hours in meditation; but now, although she tried to eliminate extraneous thoughts, Musui’s mischievous, lopsided grin intruded. His presence was as unstoppable as the sun that would soon appear and brighten the day.

  Sensei, Cat thought, the disciple you named Endurance wants nothing except to behead a man.

  “You must eat the fruits of your own deeds.” Cat heard Musui as clearly as if he were standing at her side, fingering the beads of his rosary and enjoying the fine view. “Don’t worry yourself about life. The world is but a traveler’s inn. The Path is not the means to an end. The Path is the goal itself.”

  Cat let her breath out until she felt empty and light. She paused before drawing more air in. For an instant she felt as though she had no need of breath. She was serene and unafraid.

  “Thank you, sensei,” she murmured.

  She climbed down from her perch on the boulder and crouched next to Kasane, who was still asleep. She looked so young, so innocent, that she reminded Cat of something Basho had written. In his travels he had met a pink-cheeked farm girl, a “darling named Kasane.” “Kasane,” he wrote. “A curious, sweet name.”

  Watching her, Cat realized that Kasane too had lost her home and a loved one and had been pursued by enemies. Cat vowed to make amends for her own meanness of spirit.

  “Elder sister,” she said.

  Kasane jerked awake. She jumped up, grabbed her pack, and began struggling into the straps. “I’m sorry to delay you, mistress. Please forgive me, though I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” In her haste Kasane fumbled with the roll of mats. Cat helped her fasten them in place.

  “While I slept and wasted time your gentleman waits for you in the south country.”

  “Don’t worry yourself. We have time.” Cat settled her furoshiki on her back, then retrieved her staff from where it leaned against the boulder. “Dewa mairo? Shall we go?”

  They hadn’t walked far along the deserted road when Cat felt a shy tug at her sleeve.

  “Forgive my rudeness. . . .” Kasane held out a round white paper fan.

  Someone had written on it in a simple, masculine hand using hiragana, the syllabary of women and the poorly educated. Cat was relieved to see that the writing held neither threat nor warning.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I found it in my pack.” Kasane crowded close to look over Cat’s shoulder. “Who wrote it?”

  “It’s a poem.” And an unpolished and presumptuous one at that, Cat thought, but she held her tongue.

  Cat was rather amused by the flawed but heartfelt attempt at eloquence of a young man caught up in the romance of the road. She read the poem aloud.

  The last maple leaf,

  blasted by an icy wind,

  turns crimson and falls.

  ‘ ‘What does it mean?”

  “You must have an admirer. He probably paid a servant to slip this in among your things.”

  “Dame! Impossible!” Kasane blurted out. She covered her mouth in horror at her own rudeness.

  “Maybe it was written by the handsome young man who was staring at you last night in the See No Evil. I think his poem means that your cold glances wounded him.”

  “Is that so?” Kasane was rattled. She turned her face away and waved her hand, as though to scatter such a preposterous notion. But when Cat gave the fan back to her she held it reverently and stared at it before sticking it into her robe and under her sash.

  “No one ever sent poetry to this unworthy person before,” she confessed shyly.

  Wisps of hair were already escaping from the shimada hairdo Hawk had created on her the day before. Kasane had wrapped a blue-and-white cloth around it
and tied it at the base of the thick looped club of hair. The kerchief made her look again like the commoner she was. She wore her big straw pilgrim’s hat over it. She wore mud-spattered cloth gaiters and straw sandals over bare feet. She had tucked the skirt of the pilgrim’s robe into her sash at the small of her back.

  Her brother’s pilgrim’s robe had gone overboard with him, so Cat had traded his wadded jacket for a pair of used white robes from Wave, the proprietor of the See No Evil. Wave probably had everything she had ever acquired stored somewhere in the inn. She had led Cat to a small storage room and ransacked the trunks there. She had thrown clothing about until she’d found the white robes. They’d been left by two unfortunate pilgrims who had died, and Wave was glad to be rid of them and the bad aura that accompanied them.

  Cat was grateful that fate and Wave had provided two robes. A brother and sister wearing a mismatched pair would have aroused suspicion. Still, she had inspected the style of the weave closely. The cloth had been made in Edo. It was possible that two pilgrims from Kazusa could be wearing it.

  For walking Cat too had tucked up the hem of the robe, revealing Kasane’s brother’s tight-fitting breeches. She also wore his old tabi and gaiters. She and Kasane had tied their spare sandals to their sashes. They carried walking sticks and wore travel cloaks against winter’s cold. To a passerby they did look like brother and sister.

  Cat, however, was still wondering how she could convince Kasane to leave her. If Kasane were caught with her at the barrier, the punishment could be terrible. Cat decided to coax her into talking about her family and the fishing village where she was born. Maybe she would grow homesick enough to agree to return there. In any case, Cat could hear more of her accent.

  “Elder sister, tell me about Pine village.”

  “Excuse my rudeness, but there’s nothing to tell. It’s a poor, dull place.”

  Cat knew Kasane was right, but she tried to think of something she could ask that would start Kasane talking.

  “I have a book.” Kasane spoke in a voice so low, Cat turned around to make sure she hadn’t fallen behind. Kasane rested the pack on a low wall and found the book. She blushed a charming pink as she held it out to Cat.

  It was one of the cheap editions of “spring pictures” bound between heavy cardboard covers. Peddlers sold them throughout the countryside. The wooden blocks from which it had been printed had worn down until even new, the pages were barely legible. The hairdos were months out of style, but the book’s twelve foldout panels contained detailed illustrations of men with penises the size of mackerel copulating acrobatically with women. The books of “spring pictures” were customary presents for brides-to-be.

  Cat leafed through it with amusement. “Was this an engagement gift?”

  “Honorable Go-Between gave it to me.” Normally Kasane would never have talked about this with someone of Cat’s class, but Cat’s insistence on asking personal questions had suspended the rules of proper behavior.

  “My parents hired her to arrange a marriage for me with a gentleman from another village,” Kasane went on. “The go-between said that even though I’m homely, I’m strong and healthy and there is no insanity in my family, so she made a good match for me. We were going to be married after the trip to Ise. His mother wanted me to be there for the spring rice planting.” Kasane’s blush deepened. “I never saw him, and now I never will.”

  CHAPTER 33

  A MOUNTAIN AND SEA CHANGE

  The black tile roofs of the castle of the powerful Okubo clan of Odawara towered over the low roofs of the town below like a lord over his obeisant subjects. Odawara was a major port and an industrial center of about five thousand tile-roofed houses. It had a large complement of carpenters, paperers, plasterers, tilers, and coopers. It also boasted three dyers, five blacksmiths, ten sword sharpeners, two lacquerers, six silversmiths, and a hundred and three sake brewers.

  When Cat and Kasane entered the town midway through the hour of the Hare, its streets were filling with peddlers and bearers laden with boxes and bales. Children carrying trays of homemade snacks for sale wandered out of the small side doors of their tenements.

  With a rumble and clatter apprentices were opening the heavy shutters at the shop of the bean curd maker, exposing the boiling vats and the rank, steamy bustle inside. Fishmongers touted their bream and herring. Coins jingled in the scales of the exchange shops. From one side alley Cat could hear the steady clink, clink of sword makers’ hammers. From another came the frump of the weavers’ mallets as they pounded cloth to soften it.

  Maids were taking advantage of the unusually warm weather to wash clothes in big tubs in the courtyards behind the front gates of inns and houses. Others stretched long, wet rectangular panels of disassembled kimonos onto frames hung horizontally between trees. Still others leaned from the second-floor windows to lay bedding out to air on the first-story roof overhangs. They called teasing invitations to Cat, and she pulled her hat farther down over her face.

  Cat led the way through the twisting streets. At the crossroads on the outskirts she stopped to study the small forest of wooden and stone road markers. Then she turned west onto the broad track of the TMkaidM as it led into the foothills. Just beyond the city, past the Sanmai Bridge, as though they had been discarded there, were small stands selling tea and souvenirs.

  The most plentiful items for sale were slender paper lanterns with wire handles. When not in use they could be collapsed into their round bamboo rims and tucked into the front of a robe. They were the specialty of Odawara, and small groups of pilgrims clustered around the stands selling them. The road to HakMne was long and precipitous, and the sun set early behind the high peaks. Night in the mountains was very dark.

  Kasane lagged behind to inspect the garlands of sedge hats dangling from the beams and corner posts of one stand. When Cat looked back Kasane beckoned to her. “Hachibei. . .” Kasane caught hold of Cat’s sleeve and drew her away from the stand. “Our hats don’t match,” she said in a low voice.

  “I could say I lost mine.”

  “Of course.” Kasane dared not contradict her mistress by pointing out that that would draw attention to them. That it would necessitate more discussion with the barrier guards. Cat figured it out for herself. She traded in the old hats and some coins for two new ones. She handed one to Kasane.

  “Forgive my rudeness, but they should have marks.” Kasane stared at the ground and flushed at her own impertinence.

  “Marks?”

  “A charm. To protect us.”

  Cat sighed. Kasane was right. Pilgrims’ hats always had some pious sentiment painted on them.

  She found a calligrapher. The old man was laying out his faded cushion and setting up his lacquered writing stand under a roof of torn matting thrown over a rickety frame. Cat kneeled on the small straw mat he had laid down for his customers.

  “Oh, honorable Five-Brush-Monk ...” She bowed low. “Our pilgrims’ hats were lost overboard in yesterday’s storm. Will you honor us by inscribing a suitable phrase on these unworthy surfaces?”

  “I am honored that my inferior abilities may be of use.” The old man settled a pair of wire-framed spectacles onto the sharp bridge of his nose. “Since you’re my first customer, I’ll give you a discount.”

  He spoke a refined dialect in a whispery voice, tinged with irony. He was charmed by Cat’s comparison of himself with the great calligrapher Kobo Daishi, the Five-Brush Monk. He was further charmed that she chose to share with him the secret that she was not, in fact, an uneducated peasant.

  As he laid out his brushes and ink stone with spidery fingers, Cat noticed the slight droop of his left shoulder. It indicated a man who had carried the two swords of a samurai most of his life.

  “How much, most venerable sir?” It embarrassed Cat to have to ask the rMnin, reduced in circumstances though he might have been, the price.

  The old man waved a hand, as though payment were of no consequence. “Ten coppers,” he murmured. />
  Cat laid the hats on the frayed mat next to him. She settled back on her heels to wait.

  “Hachibei,” Kasane said, “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To buy rice for your meal tonight.” Kasane bowed and hurried into the crowd at this small morning market.

  The old man added a few drops of water to his stone and methodically ground his ink stick on it. When the water became black and thick he added more, washing the ink into the small trough at one end of the stone.

  Apparently oblivious to Cat’s presence and to the noise of people hawking their wares all around him, he continued the methodical, circular grinding for a long time. Then he took up one of the hats and turned it in his hand. He tilted his head back to study the brim’s wide surface through his spectacles. Two more customers arrived and squatted on their heels to wait, but he ignored them also.

  He sat for several more long moments with his hand poised over the brushes in the earthenware container. Finally he chose one with a bamboo handle and a fairly broad tuft of badger hair. He dipped it gently into the ink. For his ten coppers he painted his words on the cheap hat as painstakingly as if he were fulfilling a commission for the emperor.

  Kasane arrived as Cat was putting ten coppers, plus five extra for luck, into the center of a paper handkerchief. She twisted it so the ends spread out into a shape like the petals of a flower. He bowed when she presented the package to him.

  Cat gave Kasane her hat and led the way to a small open-air tea stand. With their feet dangling, the two sat on the wide bench in front while the waitress fixed their morning tea.

  “What did the honorable writer put on our hats?” Kasane studied the thick black characters as though if she looked at them long enough, they would make sense to her.