Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show

by Richard Wiley

  20.

  Saved from the Realm of Absolute Calamity

  AH, BUT INSIDE ODAWARA CASTLE, things were far more serious than Masako wanted to believe. It was true enough that they had all come down from Edo in a state of shock over what Manjiro had done, true also that they stayed that way during these three days, going about their business without speaking, crouched inside their own disappointment, but even when they came back to themselves they still couldn’t speak his name. When first they tried, over breakfast on the fourth morning, Einosuke and Fumiko found it clogged their throats, making them so rude to each other that they ended up fighting as they had not fought since the night of the treaty signing ceremony. It was horrible, and Keiko, who overheard everything, ran out of the castle with her brother in her arms, in search of Masako, who was impossible to find.

  And what made things even worse for Fumiko was that at Odawara Castle there were servants and attendants everywhere. Oh, how she missed the privacy of her Edo house with its unfinished rooms and clutter! After her fight with Einosuke she sought refuge on the castle’s fourth floor and then on its fifth, as high as she could go without flying into space, but each time she believed she’d found a sanctuary where she could decide for herself the level of calamity in what Manjiro had done, or try, once again, to purge the foreigner from her thoughts, she was forced to leave it again when some maid came in to sweep the tatami or inspect the walls for mold. Once she dug into a packing crate in search of her ikebana tools, hoping she might cover the awful feeling she had by arranging flowers, only to discover that two of her favorite Bizen vases were broken.

  “O-bata!” she screamed, but O-bata was five floors below, asleep in a room off the kitchen, her own loneliness to contend with—no more fish-seller’s son—her head stuck beneath a pillow.

  EVERY BIT AS ANGRY as Fumiko but even less capable of finding a solution, Einosuke ran outside when he saw Keiko at the edge of the forest, carelessly carrying Junichiro.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Be careful, won’t you?” But Keiko ignored him, and when he turned back toward the castle he, too, saw a packing crate from Edo, with the words “Garden tools” written on its side. Einosuke was luckier than his wife had been, though, for when he tore open the crate he found everything he needed, not only his shovels and various rakes, but also coats and hats and watering cans. As he looked at them he let himself forget why he’d come outside in the first place, and rummaged around, trying to find his favorite three-pronged digger. There was a good spot of land near the castle wall, he thought, and a better one off toward the forest where he could now see Keiko walking more carefully with the baby. He had his rock garden’s measurements locked in his memory, so why not build another one? He took a moment to find his measuring stick and his rope, before walking over to calculate the slope of the land with his expert eye.

  “Keiko, I need your help,” he called. “Come here, won’t you? Bring Junichiro over and lend me a hand for a while.”

  He used a kinder voice than he’d used a moment earlier, and looked up and smiled, but Keiko was careful to keep her back to him, lest he see the way her tears were wetting her baby brother’s clothes.

  “Did you call me, Father?” she managed to ask, but her voice, like her whole inner spirit, was strangled.

  “Yes, I think what I’ll do is rebuild my rock garden on this patch of unused ground,” said Einosuke. “Don’t you think that would be nice?”

  When she walked toward her father she turned Junichiro in order to keep the sun out of his eyes. She most certainly did not think it would be nice, when everyone was torn with shame and anger. What a stupid idea and how like her father to think a new rock garden would solve anything at all! Rock gardens! She let the words take the form of curses in her head, but she kept her thoughts to herself.

  “I’ll drive the stakes and measure the distances,” he said, “you tie this rope around them and follow me. Be mindful to keep the rope taut, and put your brother down, it won’t hurt him to get dirty for a while.”

  Junichiro waved his arms, as if celebrating this return of civility, and though Keiko looked to make sure her mother wasn’t watching from a high-up castle window, in a moment she did come closer, to do as she was told.

  “You don’t remember the original garden, do you, Keiko?” her father asked. “Let me see, how old must you have been when last we visited Kyoto?”

  Because of her father’s kind smile, Keiko smiled too, wanting to apologize to him for her earlier irritation, even though he hadn’t known about it. But she remembered the visit to Kyoto clearly and would have told him so at any other time. She had been seven or eight and had sat on her Uncle Manjiro’s lap whenever he would allow it. She remembered most clearly that she liked to keep her head wedged under his chin while he talked with her Aunt Tsune, both of them dangling their legs over the garden’s walkway, letting their feet swing out. It renewed her heartache to think of such things and she sighed.

  Einosuke, in the meantime, had taken up his hammer and a single sharp stake, and then, for a full five minutes, seemed to focus all his attention on the chosen space. His eyes turned inward and his mouth moved as if engaged in a calculation. Keiko allowed herself to be caught up in it too, for a minute, persuading herself that to work on such a garden would provide just the necessary regimen to defeat all those other horrible thoughts.

  But when her father raised his hand and pointed his hammer, her sense of sadness returned. There would be no marriage now, she suddenly understood, between the two people she loved most in the world, no chance for such a splendid happiness for her aunt and uncle. Tears came to Keiko’s eyes again and when her father spoke again she let out a cry.

  “Yes,” he said mildly, “that will do.”

  Once more he hadn’t noticed her tears, but only bent to pound the first of his stubborn stakes in the ground.

  THE FAMILY’S SHOCK over Manjiro’s behavior was so great, really so overwhelming, that in an odd way it had saved them from the realm of absolute calamity. That is, had Manjiro done something less distressing, had he found some way to discredit them less completely, they might have acted sooner, done more to make up for it, to clear the family name. But as it was the enormity of what he had done seemed to be keeping the sharpest pain away, letting them do little save argue and plan gardens and cry. Such was the principle, at least, that worked for all of them except Lord Okubo.

  Fumiko didn’t know it, but as she sat trying not to think that the man who had most bothered her piece of mind since she was a girl was now in the country somewhere, under the protection of her own brother-in-law, Lord Okubo was in a room not far from the one in which she had sequestered herself. It was a secret room, built to hide the family’s ancestors from marauders, a windowless room in the fifth floor’s center, surrounded by walls that were plain and heavy. Lord Okubo had gone in there on the morning after their arrival, but had sealed the room again and stayed away from it, hoping that time and deeper thought would provide him with a better solution than the one that room provided.

  But deeper thought eluded him and time only made his first impulse seem inevitable, so on the morning of this fourth day he opened the room again and quietly slipped inside.

  The room was gold, fitted with golden cushions and with gold-colored panels painted by Lord Okubo’s father, a lighthearted man who did not like simplicity, even in a sanctuary. There were gold futon in the room’s closet, a golden altar with sweet-smelling incense ready to light, as well as selected remembrances of past Lords Okubo, bits of poetry by the current Lord’s great-grandfather, a silk-threaded fan favored by some other past Odawara Castle master, and an old gold ring worn by yet another.

  When Lord Okubo closed the door behind him he lit the candle that sat on the floor and used it to light an old oil lamp that, judging from the way its flame danced in the stilted air, was surprised by what it had to illuminate. From a drawer he took a heavy wooden case, placed it lightly on the altar and then sat down and pr
ayed.

  The knives in the case were golden too, but the whetting stone next to them was black, making Lord Okubo smile, glad for a break in the color. He had not seen these knives in a dozen years, but chose the shortest one because he thought he remembered his father telling him that though they were a set, it had a better blade. When he picked it up he was surprised by its lightness, but did not test the blade against his thumb. Rather, he put the knife in front of him, on a small white pillow, and reached back into the case for the whetting stone. He waited for his calmness to return and then picked up the knife again and sharpened it.

  Lord Okubo hadn’t thought whether or not to leave a suicide note until he put the whetting stone back in the case and saw its similarity to an inkstone. He would not leave a note, he decided, not only because he could think of nothing to say, save more recriminations of Manjiro, but also because he did not want to leave the room again, to steal back down the stairs for paper and brushes. As it was he wondered how long it might be before Einosuke, the unfortunate heir to all his troubles, would think to look for him up here. He knew that when he did not appear for dinner Einosuke would know what had happened, but he couldn’t be sure how many years it had been since he’d shown his son this room and he worried that he might have forgotten it. It had been a family tradition for a century that the only people privy to the room’s existence be the current lord and his heir, yet Lord Okubo decided that he could not chance the greater dishonor of having his body rot undiscovered. So he walked across the room again and cracked open the door. It would still likely be Einosuke who found him, but now, at least, someone was sure to see the surprising new fissure in the otherwise seamless wall.

  When he sat back down Lord Okubo loosened his obi and pulled open his kimono, baring his chest and belly to the tepid air. He didn’t like to think of the pain but it was important to do a good job, to be thorough, at least, in his departure, so he pressed his abdomen here and there, searching for a soft spot. It wasn’t that he was firm of muscle but that, over the last few years, he had noticed the appearance of certain tumors, rigid knots of fiber under the skin, and he worried that the blade, whatever its sharpness, might pass through them only with difficulty. There was one such knot just above his groin on the left. He wanted to make two incisions, one across his lower belly from left to right, and a second, vertical cut, from below his navel moving upward. He would die proudly, he decided, if he could do that much.

  Lord Okubo washed himself along the lines of the imagined knife thrusts with one of two rolled towels he had thought to bring along. The feeling of the cloth on his skin was pleasant, somehow reminiscent of his earliest youth when his mother used to bathe him, so he said a prayer to his mother, who he knew would be sincerely grieving now. After that he unrolled the cloth and let it travel down to scrub his genitals so they would be clean if he fell over in a way that left him unsightly and exposed.

  The second towel was for the just-honed knife blade, and he took it up only after folding and setting aside the first one. With the second towel in one hand and the knife in the other he could feel a slight deepening of his breath, and an increase in his pulse rate, but otherwise he remained determined and calm. He searched himself for fear but found little. Well, some, perhaps, for the pain involved, but none concerning what would come to him in the afterlife.

  Lord Okubo squared himself on the cushion and opened his left hand and drew the knife blade across the towel, a gentle second honing. He noticed that a long rectangle of soft light had come into the room through the door he had opened, settling itself upon a corner of the altar and the wall behind it. Also, there now seemed to be less pressure in the room, as if it breathed, for once, with the rest of the castle. And where before the room had been soundproof, now he could hear voices, even distinguish, if he turned his mind to it, one voice from another.

  Ah, but enough. Lord Okubo had found the necessary courage to do what he had to do, yet he did not think that courage would wait for him to sate his curiosity, even though someone was certainly shouting. He took the index finger of his left hand and pushed it into his abdomen just to the inside of his left hip bone. He closed his right fist around the knife’s handle and crossed his body with it until the knife’s point came down and replaced his finger. In order to be successful the whole thing, the first cut and the second one also, should take no longer than a few quick seconds, and he decided to occupy his mind with counting those seconds away, plunging the knife into himself at number one and so on, until he could count no more. He took a breath, let the faces of his children and grandchildren flow down a kind of river in the center of his mind, and then, just as his lips formed the first number, he heard Fumiko’s voice echoing loudly through the outside halls. Had he not cracked the door he wouldn’t have heard her at all.

  “There is a runner!” she cried. “A message! My sister is coming with news! We can expect her tonight!”

  News? thought Lord Okubo.

  His right fist was shaking, the tip of his knife making little nicks in his flesh, nibbling at it like the sharp tooth of a hungry dog, but instead of speaking the number and ending his life, Lord Okubo willed his fist to ease away again, to open up and release the knife so that he could use that hand to cup his ear and better hear what Fumiko said. News of any kind must mean news of Manjiro.

  Lord Okubo got up and hurried over to the door to close it, lest the castle’s biggest secret be relinquished without the central prize of his golden corpse inside. He returned the knife to its box, next to its unhoned sister, and adjusted the whetting stone so that the box’s lid would close. He blew out the lamp and crossed the room to put away the knives and before he reopened the door he blew out the candle.

  Oh, his heart was lighter than it had been.

  “What news? What news?” he said.

  21.

  “Kambei”

  MASAKO HEARD the crier, too, but stayed in the forest until the activity of her aunt’s arrival let her slip out of hiding, joining the others unnoticed. Tsune’s entourage was small, just the one palanquin with her inside of it, a couple of attending samurai and six exhausted bearers, the last of those who had relayed her down from Edo. When they came under the castle gate Lord Okubo received the samurai greeting, in the name of Lord Tokugawa, while Fumiko and Keiko rushed over to the palanquin to help Tsune get out.

  “Are you well my sister?” asked Fumiko. “Was the trip not overly tiring?

  To Masako her aunt looked both well and rested, while her mother and Keiko looked awful, as if they were the ones who’d endured the horrible ride.

  “I’m fine but am I welcome?” Tsune answered. “I would have come straight down yesterday had I been sure.”

  Fumiko opened her mouth and closed it again, while Einosuke looked away, back toward the thin perimeter of the new garden he had started. Lord Okubo waited until a servant took Tsune’s samurai off to feed them before their return journey, but once they were alone he asked the question that was on everyone’s mind. “What word have you of Manjiro?”

  It was so direct, so much without the usual delays, that it made Tsune pause. The lord, however, had not put his suicide on hold merely to pay attention to form. Already such vacillation had done irreparable harm.

  “I have some news, my lord,” said Tsune. “I wish I knew everything but Edo is in confusion now. So many opinions to listen to. People are taking sides.”

  “Let’s have some tea,” he said, “or if it’s late enough for dinner let’s have that. Tell me everything slowly if you must, but you must tell me everything.”

  Inside the castle O-bata was waiting to lead the bearer of Tsune’s trunk up to the family quarters, but Lord Okubo impatiently ordered tea brought to a main room on the first floor. None of them liked this room, which was typically reserved for audiences with petitioners and representatives from Edo, but at the lord’s insistence they arranged themselves on cushions on the floor.

  “Now,” he said, “speak clearly. Don’t wor
ry about Edo’s confusion, so long as it is not your own.”

  Tsune understood she would not be allowed a respite, but rested her lips against the rim of her teacup, taking a short one anyway, while deciding how to proceed with the story she had to tell.

  “First, there has been a surprise of sorts, a groundswell of support for Manjiro among merchants, and, to some degree, among the peasant class,” she said. “There is a division of opinion among court ladies and lower-ranking bureaucrats, and even among some members of the Great Council. The gist of their talk is that Lord Abe went too far, that he should not have brought the foreigners ashore without a consensus. They are charging him with arrogance, calling for his censure once again, and, as the story of what Manjiro did leaks out, some people are beginning to see his motives as selfless, based upon the old ideas of moral integrity and right action. They are casting him as a hero, and Keiki, always the clever one, has ordered some very inventive posters made depicting Manjiro as someone like the Kambei of old. The posters are everywhere in Edo, the absolute talk of the town.”

  She turned to her sister. “You remember the Kambei stories, don’t you? We used to hear of his daring exploits when we were children.”

  Lord Okubo stared at her uncomprehendingly, and Fumiko leaned her weight against Keiko, unable to grasp what she had been told. Only Einosuke answered, and he barked out a terrible laugh.

  “Kambei!” he said. “Oh, that’s just wonderful! I don’t know much anymore, but I don’t think what we need just now is another titillation, another such as Kambei with irresponsible Manjiro at its center! Keiki started such a thing, you say?”

  No one was entirely sure whether he had ever truly lived or not, but Kambei was indeed a famous folk hero, a ronin or masterless samurai from the sixteenth century, a man of great character and forbearance, who gave up everything in order to fight for the peasantry of a particular village, against a gang of bandits. There were drawings of Kambei in children’s books, occasional references to him in Great Council speeches, and he was the hero of several Kabuki plays.