Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show

by Richard Wiley

  Fumiko was older than her sister, and not so beautiful, but she had at least as much skill with words. Her own voice had remained calm.

  “How can you attack me after such a day!” Einosuke shouted, knowing even as he spoke that if he couldn’t find better words to fight with he should opt for silent indignation and continue looking for his rake. He glanced up at the flat side of their house, at the second floor window behind which his children were supposed to be sleeping. He imagined the maid, O-bata, crouched there listening, her eyes as large as plums. Tomorrow, he knew, she would repeat every word he said to the awful neighbor’s maids.

  Fumiko understood that Einosuke’s upward glance was his best argument, but she was too angry to worry about what people thought. “Why was I crying?” she heard herself ask. “You are my husband. If you know me so well, tell me why I did such a thing.”

  Her words remained steady, but they had come out as loudly as Einosuke’s own, so the next thing he did was hurry back inside the room and close the doors.

  “Can’t we be a little circumspect?” he asked, but her look told him that she expected an answer to her question. She had cried because the foreigner was terrifying and ugly, she had already said that much, yet it could also be something unrelated, like how much work was left for her to do before they left Edo for Odawara. Einosuke busied himself with an arrangement of his obi and his netsuke and then sat down and poured the waiting tea, but Fumiko was waiting, too, for his reply. He wanted to find the deeper reason for her tears before he once again committed himself by speaking, but however much he thought about it, all he could come up with was the ridiculous notion that she was crying over that made-up aunt who had died.

  Fumiko herself was desperately sorry she had asked the question. What did she expect him to say? And why couldn’t she deal with this strange abnormality of hers alone?

  “The death of an invented relative reminded you that life is short?” he tried. “Strange though it is, it reminded you that you don’t have such a long time left with your children and me, not so much time to spend with the living, uninvented, ones?”

  What a feeble and stupid thing to say! He knew he would have fared better either to admit his ignorance of why she was crying or simply to slump there awaiting sympathy, like a defeated and puffed-up frog. Now that the words were spoken, however, he stood behind them, bravely hoping that exhaustion would get her and she would not go on.

  Fumiko sat down and leaned forward, putting her hands around her teacup in order to get hold of herself. Einosuke believed that that was a good sign, for her deepest level of anger would not allow her to touch a cup of tea poured by him.

  “Go on,” she said, “what else?” She simply couldn’t stop herself.

  My God, he thought, what else? What else could there be? But softly now he spoke as if he had been sure of his first answer all along. “Not only the children, but our way of life. Whatever will become of our daughters and our baby boy when they learn that men with such ugly faces control the world, roaming it in black ships and stopping wherever they like to force themselves ashore? How can we deal with such barbarians?”

  To speak this way had begun as a supreme act of daring, but now he let himself be grave, captured by the words that his own heart so deeply believed. What would happen to their children under conditions such as those? Einosuke hadn’t forgotten the speech of reconciliation he had only that afternoon made, but tonight he remembered all the reasons he had had for opposing the Americans in the first place, and when he looked at Fumiko now, there were tears in his own eyes.

  “Oh, my husband!” Fumiko cried. “Of course I understand that just as my teeth are black and my face is powdered white out of a sense of decorum, so that man’s face was made up contrarily, to give us pleasure, not pain. But when he looked at me I saw the future too clearly. Oh, Einosuke, you and your father were right after all! We should have been steadfast from the beginning! That we and the Americans are op-posites, that we can never understand each other, was reflected in that man’s face tonight! Whatever will happen now? Whatever will become of the life we know?”

  Fumiko’s voice cracked as she let tears more completely spoil her face than they had earlier, but she also crawled around to Einosuke’s side of the table and fell against him, wetting his chin and mouth, sorry for her earlier disloyalty, but satisfied with her lie. And as she wept Einosuke’s own posture improved, his own eyes dried. Oh, he had a most wonderful, most perfect wife, a wife who could see into the center of an issue while men, especially the scoundrels in the Great Council, spent their time fighting over semantics, over phrases in a document that would do nothing, in the end, but gain entry into Japan for the outside world as a whole. Oh, why had he not been adamant when he had the chance, why had he not been firm? Never mind that his voice was small, why hadn’t he spoken with its full volume anyway, casting his father’s lot with the pure isolationists, just as his father, in his deepest heart, also wanted?

  Einosuke was ashamed of himself as Fumiko was of herself, though for utterly different reasons. He was ashamed of his calculation, his earlier devotion only to discovering how to soothe his wife. But had he not known the true answer to her question after all, had he not said it right? He knew his wife’s heart even without knowing he knew it, and as an expression of his love he threw the doors open again and flung his tea into the night. The gesture was wonderful, and so unexpected that it made Fumiko sit back up. They both saw the tea arch, cut sharply through the reemerged moonlight, and splash against the nearest of Einosuke’s boulders, a lighter blemish of darkness trailing along the interceding ground.

  “That is what has happened to Japan!” Einosuke cried. “By letting the Americans in we have marked our islands far more deeply than I have marked my stones!”

  He didn’t care about the neighbors anymore. He pointed out at the remaining dry boulders, unstoppable now. “But look, we are still unblemished in the larger part, and I swear right now that that larger part will forever belong only to our infant son and our two girls, only to the children of Japan. I swear on my ancestors’ graves that the foreigners will go no farther than the harbor where they reside at this moment, no farther than Shimoda and Hakodate, those unfortunate and already lost towns!”

  Oh, how he thanked his wife for what she had done! She had moved him back to his center again, making his own former resolution return! He was out of breath from the passion of it, and the tea, as it dried and faded on the nearest boulder, was quickly losing its power as metaphor, but when he moved to close the shojizgûn, Fumiko touched his hand. And after that another kind of passion came into his heart.

  “Our house is nearly empty, my dear,” she whispered. “That’s unusual, don’t you think? It has not been nearly empty in a good long time.

  Of course, of course, this was how she would purge herself, she thought.

  “Father and Manjiro will be back soon,” Einosuke said, but when he reached around and touched her obi he found that she’d already loosened its knot. Einosuke had forever been proud of the solid beauty of his wife, which he knew had at first been aimed at a level of society higher than his own, but when she opened her kimono, shifting her weight to make it slip off her shoulders until it puddled about her on the floor, he let such knowledge go, along with his sense of propriety and discomfiture, of worry over what the neighbors might think were he to make love to his wife with the shoji open.

  Fumiko’s right breast was in the moonlight, her left one still in the dark.

  “Your own clothing now looks too warm,” she told her husband, “and I will not be cold alone.”

  Oh, with what happiness Einosuke undid his sash, crawled out of his own stiff clothing, and set aside his favorite little erotic netsuke carving. He stood in the shadows and reached down to take Fumiko’s outstretched hand. Both of them thought they would closet themselves among the extra futon at the end of the upstairs hallway, or sneak into an unused maid’s room near the kitchen, but when they stoo
d close together Einosuke’s penis knew no such protocol. Unleashed as it was from the constraints of his clothing, it moved up to touch his wife’s abdomen, stiffly knocking twice, like the outstretched beckoning of a small baby’s arm. For the briefest instant both of them laughed, but when Fumiko took it in her hand, pushing it down and raising herself up to slide upon it at the same time, Einosuke’s knees buckled and both of them fell onto the pile of kimonos on the floor. The parts of their bodies fit together of their own accord, slippery with excitement, but as they cried out, bucking and heaving, they also began to roll. Einosuke started it, thinking it would be beautiful were they to end such grand lovemaking with their torsos on the porch, but alas he confused the speed of their roll with the speed of their motion up and down, giving Fumiko barely enough time to throw a hand back to grab a kimono, before they tumbled off the porch and into the garden. For some good reason the kimono twisted under them, softening their landing, cushioning the blow.

  For a second everything was still, until Fumiko, whose fall had also been broken by Einosuke, said, “Shh. Listen carefully, be quiet before you speak, my love.”

  Oh, she was fine now! Back to her earlier self. Oh how she loved her husband!

  “My dearest one,” moaned Einosuke, but Fumiko shushed him again. She pushed herself up just enough to reach back through the open doorway and pull Einosuke’s kimono down. She hoped it would hide them, since it was not only larger than hers but also russet, in the darkness surely the same color as the ground.

  “I think my gown is ruined,” she whispered, putting a hand over his mouth lest he say he didn’t think so.

  They let another minute pass while they listened for sounds from the next-door neighbor’s yard. Einosuke was dismayed by their behavior, sure that they had never before been so noisy. But the outside world seemed to surround them again without much shock or comment, applause coming only from the wind, slight, to be sure, and freezing cold.

  “We should go back inside,” said Einosuke, and Fumiko asked how she would explain, to the laundryman, how her kimono has been savaged by stones.

  “Maybe it’s beyond repair,” said Einosuke, a hopeful note in his voice. “If that is the case we shall simply have to throw it away.”

  Considering that this kimono was her favorite it was odd solace, but Fumiko nodded, also hoping so. And then they wrapped themselves in their messed-up gowns, and sat back up on the porch.

  “Look at your poor garden,” said Fumiko, “not only have we ruined my kimono but we’ve pretty severely altered the garden’s flow.”

  “We have improved it,” Einosuke replied, “by taking it out of perfection for a while.”

  That was a very fine thing to say, and after he said it they were both not only content, but proud.

  It took another fifteen minutes for the feeling to pass, and during that time, as they leaned into each other, snug in the tents they had made, the wind rose and maple leaves blew over the neighbor’s fence in bunches, and the moon went to stand behind a cloud. It appeared that the coldness of winter was returning, that the good weather had come only for the treaty signing, and when Einosuke finally said, “Why does he insist on keeping such terrible trees right at the edge of his land?” Fumiko knew his mind was on his raking again, that he’d had enough of imperfection and not only wanted to step out and pick up the leaves, but to fix the damage done by their bodies as well.

  She pushed a hand more deeply into the folds of her kimono and wrapped it around that part of him that she had thought of only moments earlier as a small baby’s arm. Oh, she was herself again, thank God! Had she known a proper poem she would have recited it, to try to keep the blessed mood for a little while longer, but, alas, the mood was at that instant strained, not by the sound of poetry, but by a rattle and a shaking, a shouting coming from the front door. They both leapt up like burglars, bolted down a narrow hallway and tore up the stairs. They were out of breath and panting, dragging their kimono behind them, but Lord Okubo had come in so angrily that, lucky for them, his voice was the only thing anyone with him could hear.

  “I don’t care!” he shouted. “As soon as this thing is over you will forget these barbaric languages! I was wrong to have allowed it in the first place. I’ve been soft! I should not have given you such free rein!”

  Lord Okubo was so angry that he might have ordered Manjiro out of the house right then and there, so, ruined or not, Fumiko put her kimono back on and ran down the stairs saying, “What in the world is the trouble? What’s going on?”

  And that, not the old lord’s shouting nor the sounds that had come from the garden before, brought O-bata out of the room across the hall. She was sleepy and disheveled, and didn’t seem to notice Einosuke hiding in the closet.

  She only went downstairs to ask who wanted tea or if anyone required anything from the kitchen, following her mistress’s voice like a dog.

  8.

  Don’t Get Up on My Account

  THIS IS WHY Lord Okubo was so angry:

  Earlier that evening, after the last of the minstrel shows, Manjiro went in search of Ace Bledsoe and found him sitting behind that misplaced curtain at the back of the stage, peering into a hand mirror and swabbing the last of the paint from his face. Manjiro was not searching him out on his own, but had been sent to find both minstrels on Lord Abe’s order. Commodore Perry had asked for them, also.

  “Forgive me,” he said, “but our leaders want you at the treaty house.” He was nervous to be alone with the American again, without the artificial intermediary of makeup and a show. Still, he had practiced the sentence and said it well.

  “Me?” asked Ace, watching himself speak the word in the mirror he held. “I’m not one of the powers around here, are you sure they don’t want someone else?”

  He had been looking at his own broad forehead and high cheekbones, wondering what there was about him that had so distressed the woman in Manjiro’s group. His English was like it had been when he’d tried to greet Fumiko, also, cleaner and easier for Manjiro to understand, unaffected by the fiery inflections necessary to draw a crowd. And seeing that he was far less ugly, less sharp-featured and more serious than he’d been before, Manjiro wished that Einosuke and Fumiko had not so quickly hurried home. Ace’s cheeks were narrow and his eyes, Manjiro could have pointed out, were the same brown color as Fumiko’s.

  “I am only their messenger,” said Manjiro.

  Ace got off the stage, retrieved his satchel from somewhere, and followed Manjiro into the clearing. Manjiro was pleased that on this, the occasion of his second private conversation with the man, his English had held up, but at the same time he was disappointed to find the crowd substantially diminished, that far fewer people were there to see them walking together toward the treaty house. The steam engine still chugged in its circle, a slow silver bullet defining the ceremonial space, but that space was now occupied almost entirely by Americans.

  “Where is everyone?” asked Ace. “Did your family go home already? For once in my life I was in a mingling mood. Where did all of your countrymen go?”

  He had not seemed to Manjiro to be in any kind of mood other than tired and contemplative, but all he said was, “They are sleeping. These days exhaustion is rampant among the Japanese.”

  He wasn’t sure why but he felt ashamed, as if, though the American was speaking normally now, he had let artifice sneak into his reply. To be sure, he didn’t want to say that there were edicts and curfews posted everywhere, strictures against interaction with the foreigners, but what he had said sounded arch, and he tried to think of something more genuine.

  “I don’t like Dutch,” he said. “English is the language of the future. Dutch clogs everything up!”

  Ace looked at him, thinking to say “London, England! Paris, France!” in order to determine if it might have been Manjiro who had called out from shore the other night. But because most of the people had gone home and their walk between the minstrel stage and the treaty house didn’t take l
ong, he didn’t respond at all. Though the ground was strewn with the crates and wrappings that had earlier held the American gifts, it otherwise no longer looked like it could have contained such a large crowd. Rather, it appeared desolate again, as if it, like the Japanese people, were prone to exhaustion.

  Directly in front of the treaty house stood four guards, two Americans and two Japanese. The Japanese were young samurai, sure and steady in their gaze, but the Americans looked like giants, this time no doubt chosen because they were large. The Americans stood at stiff attention, the Japanese with their legs spread wide. Because the treaty house had an open front, the two men could see directly into it as they approached. Lord Abe and Commodore Perry were sitting behind the table again, alone but for the company of a solitary whiskey bottle, and looking so unhappy in the dim light that had Manjiro not known the treaty was signed, he’d have called it a light in which negotiations had failed.

  When Perry saw them, however, he tried to stand, and to recover the earlier booming quality of his voice. “Ah,” he said, “Bledsoe, is it? Come in, come in, young man!”

  He pushed himself away from the table as he spoke, but his knees were stuck beneath it and he couldn’t get up. Lord Abe sat next to him, calm and oblivious, while his Dutch translator and the grim-faced Ueno stood against the back wall.

  “Yes sir,” said Ace, as he stepped into the treaty house, “Bledsoe, it is. What can I do you for? I sorely hope it’s not another song.”

  This was Ned’s way of speaking, not his, but he used it anyway, in an effort to achieve nonchalance. He owed Commodore Perry a lot and, of course, would sing if that was what he wanted.

  “Listen, your show was a success, outstanding,” said the Commodore, hardly hearing what Ace had said. “It’s been the subject of much of our talk. More, actually, than I had hoped.”

  He gave up the idea of standing and waved the musician over. “And now this man here, I mean Lord Abe, seems to be asking if he can borrow you and your partner for a while. He brings it up every other minute no matter what else I try to talk about. He says he wants you to perform for the congress, for the national assembly or whatever they call it, the House of bloody Lords.”