Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show

by Richard Wiley

  “We spoke of lots of things,” he said, “and I remember them all. What seems ironic now is that for a while we tried to guess what people in foreign countries might be like. I remember that your interest was as keen as my own.”

  He was ashamed of it, but Manjiro wanted to work the conversation around to his time aboard the foreign ship, so that he might tell Tsune about his private conversation with that strange and black-faced entertainer. And since he had not been able to do it with the chocolates, he was now trying to use the past.

  “Ah, then you do remember,” she said. “You bragged that you would travel, that you would subdue foreign enemies and one day know the world. I did not believe you then, but how proud we all are now.”

  Manjiro reddened and looked down. By speaking so directly wasn’t she saying that his maneuver had been too obvious, that he was too brazenly asking for the compliment he had received? She gazed at him steadily, and just then Lord Okubo entered the room. Einosuke and Fumiko were with him, O-bata behind them, trying not to trip under the weight of a tea and sembei tray. When Einosuke opened the shoji, the March air played upon the replica garden as if to further remind the two potential lovers of their conversation at the edge of the original one. The raked lines of gravel and the garden’s mauve walls added definition to the moss that clung to each of Einosuke’s boulders, both large and small. Manjiro was so taken by the sight, and by the nearness of Tsune, that he failed to notice everyone else focusing on the strange-looking box.

  “Manjiro has given me his welcoming gift,” Tsune mildly said. “Whatever might it be?”

  The box seemed dismal and battered in the good new light, a poor welcoming gift if one didn’t know it had come from an American. Both Lord Okubo and Einosuke looked at it with critical eyes. The box had no doubt been quite lovely once, and a close inspection would even now show that it was strongly made. But its edges were turned down, the straight line of its bottom bent up at the midway point, and on the side that was most easily visible to them was that crisp black thumbprint.

  “What’s in it?” asked Lord Okubo. “Its weird look is not an act of kindness to the eye.”

  “It’s got a smudge,” Einosuke said.

  Manjiro was stung by their remarks and spoke gravely. “When I was leaving the American ship a man gave this to me. He was one of the singers I told you about. Inside this box are ‘chocolates,’ an after-dinner sweet.”

  Even as he spoke the box improved before their eyes. Now they could see that it might as easily be called “old” as “battered,” and age became an asset, just as it would be in a box that held an antique tea bowl.

  “We didn’t know about this!” Lord Okubo said. “Did you report it to anyone at the Shogunate? Did you put it on the list with the gifts man?”

  His father’s words were stern, but they still contained awe, so before another family argument could begin, Tsune picked the box up and turned it in the chilly air, focusing everyone’s attention on the thumbprint.

  “What an odd idea,” said Lord Okubo. “The Americans place their seal on things by directly touching the inkstone with their hands. Look how clean the mark is, how well practiced, see the ornate articulation of the lines.”

  Indeed, it was a perfect thumbprint, an accident of the moment, perhaps, but from the point of view now favored by all of the men in the room, it seemed to seal the box, to warn against its opening. When they tried to focus on the way the lines of the thumbprint traversed the box’s seam, it made them a little cross-eyed.

  “What does chocolate taste like?” Tsune asked. While she’d been holding the box she had noticed not only the thumbprint, but an inlay of satin flowers on its top, one a rose, another perhaps a chrysanthemum. “After all, the design is too busy, don’t you think?” she said, and then to everyone’s dismay she placed the box back down on the tatami and opened it. It was an extraordinary thing to do. No one else would have done it. A box that came from an American ship was a gift that should be given many times, passed up high. At this early stage of the American presence, in fact, Lord Okubo was of the opinion that no one should consider opening it save the Shogun himself.

  “Chocolate is edible, is it not?” she asked. “If it is an after-dinner sweet can I assume it is an edible thing?”

  The odor of the chocolate, faint but clear, rode out on the cold air and made them all stare at the individual candies that had appeared. Manjiro did not know it but he had stored the candies well. Because he had kept them directly under his father’s window the designs that covered each piece had remained intact and intricate. There were twenty-eight candies, in alternate rows of sixes and fives. Under their ornately carved caps, they were uniformly shaped domes, about the size of mushrooms.

  “Look,” said Fumiko, who was first to recover from the shock of what her sister had done. “Each piece has an individual design, like netsuke. Here I see a leafy pattern, there a cluster of grapes.” She didn’t touch the candies, but put a finger so close to them that Einosuke thought she had.

  “Don’t do that!” he hissed. “Let’s replace the lid now. Maybe there is something here to salvage.”

  He only meant that maybe the thumbprint could be realigned, that they might still be able to pass this rare gift along, but he should not have spoken. The gift, after all, now belonged to his sister-in-law. Lord Okubo grumbled and Manjiro stared out at the garden where his brother’s boulders were like fifteen large chocolates in a box of their own, but Tsune acted quickly, and saved Einosuke from embarrassment. She had taken a tiny knife from her obi a moment before. Her intention had been to cut one of the chocolates into wedges, so that each of them might have a taste, but she changed her intention without changing the movement of her hand.

  “As usual Einosuke is right,” she said. “But before we close it let me arrange these things so that their designs all point the same way.”

  She handed the lid to Fumiko, then used the tip of her knife to turn the chocolates until the cluster of grapes on the top of one moved in congress with the filigreed pine needles on another. She made the oval acorns atop the chocolates at the corners of the box look like sentries with fat round guns.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Now it is more pleasing to the eye.” She would have closed the box immediately then, but Keiko and Masako came into the room, Keiko struggling under the weight of her fat baby brother.

  “What’s better?” asked Masako. “Let’s see.”

  The side of the box’s lid with the thumbprint on it was facing Fumiko, but the thumbprint on the box’s base was not. That misalignment was the only thing that kept her from instantly slamming the lid down. Tsune might be destined to marry higher than she, but unlike the three men in the room, she would not hesitate to interfere. Just as her sister’s self-absorption had nearly let her cut one of the chocolates apart, so her second daughter’s curiosity would surely send her hand out to mess up the order of the chocolates again, maybe even spilling them onto the floor.

  “Stay a little back, dear,” she said. “Satisfy your curiosity with your eyes this time.”

  Because it was unlike her mother to speak abruptly, Masako did as she was told, but Fumiko’s words also served to bring Keiko around.

  “Okay then, what is it?” she asked. “Here, Masako, take our Jun-chan.”

  A stream of liquid was drooling from the baby’s mouth, and when Masako took him from her sister’s arms a fine line of it arched out into the air, falling down across the nearest corner of the chocolate box. It settled over the guardian acorn like a thick strand of spider web.

  “Chikusho, “said Lord Okubo. “What do we do now?”

  “Is it bean paste?” asked Keiko. “If it’s bean paste simply give that one to Junichiro. If it’s bean paste I don’t want any at all.”

  “It is not bean paste, dear,” said Tsune. She still had her knife in her hand but she was looking directly at Manjiro. Her look seemed to say, “Don’t you agree that we have no choice now but to eat the pi
ece that the baby has spit on?”

  Manjiro had been sitting pretty glumly all this time. He had given the chocolates to Tsune because there was something in it of the flirtation they had had in their youth, and, of course, because he wanted to show off, but the reactions of the others had brought him down. Now, however, Tsune was giving him a chance to find his previous mood and he smiled. “Let’s eat it,” he said out loud. “After that we can close the whole thing up again, pass it on.”

  Tsune laughed, and as soon as she heard the easing of tensions, Keiko laughed too, taking her aunt’s free arm. Masako, however, who had been struggling under the baby’s weight, finally sat him down. She enjoyed mischief more than anyone, but she also had her mother’s sense of protocol. “Such a plan will leave a hole in the box,” she said, “an empty space at its corner while all the other spaces are full.”

  The idea really was too frivolous, even Tsune knew it, but how would it be to leave the corner chocolate as it was, covered with baby drool?

  “Maybe we could put something in its place,” said Lord Okubo, “a piece of fruit or an actual netsuke, if we can find one that small.”

  He began touching his clothing as if he might right then come up with a netsuke just the right size, and Junichiro, whom no one was caring for, fell over onto his side. It was then that Tsune stuck the ruined chocolate with her knife, pulling it from the box. The knife was in the chocolate’s heart and when she applied a little pressure it split into two equal halves.

  “I don’t want any,” said Masako. “I don’t like bean paste, either. On that, at least, I can agree with Keiko.”

  Tsune quickly cut each of the candy halves into thirds. “Without Masako there are six of us,” she said. “Isn’t that nice?”

  The acorn adorning the top of the chocolate had not broken apart as well as its body had. When the chocolate was initially halved the acorn had been halved too, but now each acorn half affixed itself to a one-sixth piece. The center of the candy was softer and apparently stickier than the candy’s outside, for when Tsune held up her knife they could all see bits of the white stuff stuck to the blade. She put the knife in her mouth, letting Manjiro see the sharpness of it against her tongue.

  “What does it taste like, Auntie?” asked Keiko. “Tell me, does it truly taste like bean paste?”

  Tsune pointed the knife at the ceiling. “Not like bean paste,” she said, “nothing like beans at all.”

  That was enough for Keiko. She took a one-sixth piece of chocolate and popped it into her mouth. It was rude to go first and she only hoped her mother would notice that she had stayed away from the pieces with the acorns. Pretty soon worry about her mother went away, however, when the taste of the candy came over her like a wave.

  “It’s good,” she told her aunt. “It makes me want to close my eyes.

  After that Manjiro and Fumiko and Tsune took the other three pieces without the acorns, rolling them around in their mouths. When they were finished Fumiko picked up the two acorn pieces, placing one each in the hands of her husband and father-in-law.

  “It’s a strange thing,” she told them. “I think it’s overly sweet. Perhaps one small piece like this is enough.”

  When Masako heard her mother’s words and surprised everyone by starting to cry, her father and grandfather each offered her his piece of candy, Lord Okubo even joking that, though it was all right for the others, until the treaty negotiations were done, he felt it best that he stay clear of anything that might be construed as foreign trade.

  “Please, Ma-chan,” he said, “eat mine.”

  Masako took the candy from her grandfather and ate it before her mother could intervene. And since her father still had his hand open, she took his piece, too, broke the acorn off its top and pushed it into Junichiro’s still drooly mouth. The baby looked surprised. He closed his mouth and flapped his arms and fell over on the tatami one more time. “Now we’ve all had some,” Masako said, and though that wasn’t quite true, Lord Okubo and Einosuke both felt satisfied.

  As for the candy itself, none who had eaten it had liked it very much. They had all lied. Maybe they thought that to tell the truth would be a reflection on Manjiro, who, so far as they knew, was the only man in Japan to have thus far received a personal gift from America.

  Keiko stood up and stepped down onto the pathway that surrounded her father’s rock garden. She bent without looking and picked up a small stone.

  “Here,” she said, passing it up to her Aunt Tsune.

  The stone was perfect, precisely the size of the candy they had eaten, and when Tsune put it in the box’s empty corner its solid calmness seemed to settle the remaining candies down.

  Tsune closed the box and turned it in the air, letting everyone see how well the thumbprint realigned. She placed it on her lap, sliding half of it under the folds of her kimono.

  They all stood then, as if the morning had suddenly grown too cold. The women left the room first, hopelessly followed by Manjiro. When Keiko stooped to pick up the baby, Masako said it was her turn and began pulling on his arms.

  “Stop that,” said their grandfather. “Here, I will carry the little boy.”

  Argument often invaded the household when it came to other things, but when their grandfather spoke both girls still knew enough to obey.

  It was only then, after all this time, that Junichiro opened his mouth again. He had been sucking on the chocolate acorn, and, despite what the others thought, enjoying it well. He smiled at his grandfather and his grandfather swung him high, letting another line of thick brown drool come out of his mouth, to swing through the otherwise empty air like a vine.

  5.

  Approach of the Outside World

  THE RECENTLY COMPLETED TREATY house sat on a gentle rise of land, at Kanagawa, a quarter of a mile back from the waters edge. It was a simple structure, closed on three sides but open where it faced the sea. Six thick beams supported its roof along the front, yet it had within it only a single large room with a single low table at its center. Unlike the banquet table on the American flagship, this one was not surrounded by chairs, but the walls were hung with scrolls, bold black ink on long white paper, poetry and slogans about casting the barbarians out.

  In order to find a good spot Einosuke had insisted that his family, minus his father but including his brother and sister-in-law, arrive earlier than anyone. The interests of most of the Shogun’s other guests were elsewhere, however, on the less formal aspects of the American arrival, and the girls were irritated to have to stand for so long. Over the last few hours sailors from the fleet’s cargo ships had come ashore to lay a mile of circular railroad track, and now, while people hurried over to watch the arrival of an actual one-quarter-scale railroad train, all the family could do was stand on tiptoe. It was ridiculous and Masako fumed, angry with her father and trying to pull away. Manjiro saw what was happening and offered to take her closer. “Come, my beautiful nieces,” he said. “Only comport yourselves well. That strange American beast eats children, I am told.”

  Masako held her uncle’s sleeve but Keiko moved only enough to place herself closer to her Aunt Tsune. She disdained being thought of as a child, even by her favorite uncle, and in any case did not want to appear to be rushing anywhere. The kimono she wore, of yellow silk with white cranes upon it, was too formal for speed, and made to be slowly admired.

  But in another moment it became apparent that they had missed their chance to get very near the train, so Manjiro briefly lifted Masako high. She could see a silver engine and a black coal car, a caboose and eight passenger carriages which, rumor had it, they would actually be allowed to ride upon later in the day. The engine, winking at her in the morning sun, had a steam whistle whose shrill voice horrified her and made her ask her uncle to put her back down.

  Because Commodore Perry had not yet arrived, the official Japanese contingent had not appeared yet either, but Einosuke nevertheless earnestly searched the crowd, hoping to find his father near the great Lo
rd Abe, so he could point out both men to the girls. When the steam whistle blew again, however, in three measured notes accompanied by three puffs of pure white smoke, the strangely unbrassy sound of military music came to them from the far side of a stand of scrub pine. All could hear the music from wherever they stood, but no one could see its source. It wasn’t the same sound that had serenaded them from the bay these last long days, but was rather the strung-out strains of whistles and drums.

  Einosuke and Fumiko, the girls and Aunt Tsune, strained their eyes, trying to match a vision with the cacophony, but when Manjiro touched them they all looked back inside the treaty house to find five of the eight lords who’d attended the American banquet, Lord Abe in the middle, already sitting behind the table. It was as inspiring a sight as it would have been if the Shogun himself had come. There was an area directly beside the treaty house that had been roped clear, but now that area, too, was packed with lesser members of the Great Council. To have these lords in attendance but not inside the treaty house seemed an unprecedented public demotion, and while Manjiro bowed toward their father, whom they all could see among the outcasts, Einosuke only stood there, embarrassed and appalled. Just then, however, the whistles and drums grew louder, and when the musicians came coughing into view everyone was united again, watching the approach of the outside world.

  “He does know how to make an entrance,” Tsune said. “I’ll give him that much.”

  The musicians had burst from the stand of pines with such power and muscle that they made the trees look small. It did not seem likely to Manjiro that the American Commodore could have picked these men for size alone, since the first requirement of musicians, even in America, had to be their ability to perform, but the drummers were as thick of body as young sumo wrestlers, with necks that looked like the beams that held up the treaty house. They played their drums as if they were trying to break into them, and the flute players, too, seemed to want to pry the music out of their instruments as if it were enclosed in jars. Even so, they didn’t play badly, and for the first time both brothers understood how directly connected music was to war.