“Not so fast,” Lord Okubo told Einosuke. He could feel the scratches that the knife blade had made on his belly and adjusted himself on his cushion, to make himself more comfortable. Tsune was sitting in that direction, so he appeared to be focusing entirely on her, and scolding his elder son for his outburst.
“Tell us what else you know, my dear,” he said.
“At first I was incredulous, too,” said Tsune. “You will perhaps remember that on the evening that the American musicians came ashore, on the night Lord Abe and Lord Tokugawa had their now infamous meeting at that geisha house, I was not at home with you, but had gone to spend the evening with Keiki, who had said he might leave Edo early. When I got to the hunting lodge, however, Keiki wasn’t there for he had accompanied his father.”
Tsune looked at Lord Okubo steadily, but felt her own duplicity. It was true enough that Keiki had mentioned leaving Edo early, but she had not expected to find him at the hunting lodge that night. Rather, she had gone there expressly to see her former lover, Kyuzo, and to discover what he had thought of Manjiro.
“Because it was too late to travel back across Edo I stayed at the hunting lodge that night,” she continued. “I was tired from all the recent intrigue and slept soundly in one of the inner rooms, completely unaware of what might be happening outside. I didn’t hear Lord Tokugawa and Keiki return from the geisha house, nor, several hours after that, did I know of the arrival of Manjiro and the two Americans musicians, out in the bamboo grove, at Lord Tokugawa’s Pavilion of Timelessness.”
“So that’s what happened!” said Lord Okubo, slapping his knee. “Instead of following Lord Abe’s orders, Manjiro took the Americans to Lord Tokugawa. Not to his actual hunting lodge, which would put Lord Tokugawa in an awkward position, but to the pavilion in its garden.”
“Yes,” said Tsune. “It is I who introduced Manjiro to the Pavilion of Timelessness, I’m afraid. I remember telling him that I felt it to be detached from Lord Tokugawa’s aura of power, that I liked it because it had a kind of separate integrity. I’m sure he thought that if he remained only there, then welcome or not, Lord Tokugawa’s name would not be sullied.”
When Einosuke heard that he scoffed even more emphatically than he had the first time. “Are you saying that Manjiro took the Americans on a whim, on the spur of the moment, all on his own, and not because Lord Tokugawa instructed him to do so earlier that evening? Are you saying that upon leaving the geisha house my brother knew only that he would disobey Lord Abe, but otherwise had no idea what he would do with the two musicians?”
The truth was that Manjiro had not known even that much, Einosuke understood it even as he spoke. It was quite like Manjiro and it made him angry all over again.
“They arrived late but got up early,” Tsune said. “I was finally awakened by the extreme commotion.”
As Lord Okubo listened he was glad he hadn’t killed himself but doubly sure he would have to do it all again later on. Kambei indeed! Einosuke was right about that, how ridiculous! Kambei was a military strategist of the first order and in each of the stories about him one thing was always certain; however great the odds against him, however impossible his task, long before he made his move, Kambei had a plan.
Lord Okubo looked at Einosuke and then at Tsune. “It isn’t every day that a man wakes up to find foreigners in his teahouse,” he said. “Lord Tokugawa must have been surprised.”
Tsune bowed in acknowledgment of that surprise, though it was she who’d had the most of it. It had been her intention to get up early that day and ask Lord Tokugawa to proceed with the marriage arrangements concerning herself and Manjiro. She had prepared for it the night before, talking the whole thing over with Kyuzo. Imagine her amazement, then, when she found the four of them—Keiki, Lord Tokugawa, Kyuzo and Manjiro himself—all sitting together in the courtyard in the morning.
“How was Manjiro’s demeanor?” Fumiko asked. “Was he excited or calm, glum or cheerful? Did he seem beside himself or was he resolute and thoughtful? What was the demeanor of the American who made me cry that day? Was he worried for his life, or calm?”
Fumiko believed that in the end the answer to the first of her questions would be important to both her husband and father-in-law, so she persisted though both men clearly disliked the interruption now. She was chagrined to understand that she had asked the last of her questions for herself.
“Manjiro was quite calm,” said her sister, “and he answered Lord Tokugawa’s inquiries with the utmost seriousness. I have always admired Manjiro, as you know, but he was at his best that morning. I don’t mean to belabor the point, but he was gallant and Kambei truly did come to mind.”
Tsune let her voice drop, feeling something move inside her when she listened to the words she herself was uttering. She had resolved to marry Manjiro for reasons that still seemed sound—because she might as well have him if she couldn’t have Kyuzo—but now, as she described his conduct, another reason came to her, unbidden yet fully realized. She could be happy with Manjiro. She could love him with the largeness of her heart, not merely with her mind and her sense of practicality. She looked at the others and began to cry.
“We know you are tired,” said Lord Okubo, “but you can’t stop now. We have waited, knowing nothing, for four long days. Skip to the end if you must, but tell us how things sit with my youngest son now? What’s going to happen next and how is he going to survive the scandal?”
“What he intends to do is simple,” Tsune said. “Perry knows nothing of what has happened to his musicians and, indeed, has just set sail for Shimoda. Manjiro intends to do a similar sailing, only overland, with his own unfortunate cargo. And once in Shimoda he will return the Americans to the fleet from which they came. That’s all, but to that end he is intractable.”
“Oh, who taught him to act like this?” Einosuke moaned.
Tsune glanced at him and then looked down. “There is more, my brother-in-law,” she said. “It’s difficult to tell, but I think you should hear it all.”
“We know Lord Abe’s opinion only too well,” said Einosuke.
“Yes,” she asked, “but do you know his henchman, the shadowy character who always seems to stand by his side?”
Einosuke and his father both nodded as the specter of Ueno appeared in their minds. Lord Okubo, who resided above Ueno in the circle of power, thought him humorless and dull, while Einosuke remembered the violent verbal attack on him recently in the castle garden.
“Well it is he,” said Tsune, “with a group of masterless hirelings, who is going after Manjiro. He has pretended to resign his post with Lord Abe because the Great Council, unlikely as it may seem, really has censured the lord at least insofar as to not let him use the Shoguns troops. So while Lord Abe fights his political battles, Ueno has formed a small private army, with revenge and punishment as his primary goals. They are currently scouring Edo, tearing down Keiki’s Kambei posters as they find them. There is little doubt that they will soon come down here, however, toward Odawara and Shimoda.”
They were quiet again. It hadn’t occurred to any of them that Lord Abe might actually send soldiers after Manjiro, and it hadn’t occurred to them, either, that Manjiro would try to return the Americans to Perry in Shimoda. Nor, of course, had they thought that the Great Council would find the courage to take Lord Abe to task. It did occur to more than one of them that if Manjiro had only waited, if caprice had not once more alighted on his shoulder, Lord Abe’s demotion might have made it possible to return the Americans to their ships right there in Edo Bay, with no harm done to anyone.
“We have to do something to help him,” said Keiko. It was the first time she had spoken since her aunt arrived.
“We do, indeed, my dear,” said Tsune, “and luckily there is already someone with him who can help greatly. His name is Kyuzo. He was in Lord Tokugawa’s employ until yesterday but resigned his post in earnest, so that his actions would not cast a bad light on Lord Tokugawa. He has made it his busines
s to act as Manjiro’s protector, to see that he succeeds in his endeavors, and that he stays safe.”
It made her heart ache to say such things but she kept her voice even, unencumbered by the tumult of her emotions. She had promised Kyuzo she would say less than she had already said. His face came to her mind’s eye, but she sent it away.
The dirt of the long trip insisted itself upon her then, riding up out of her pores to streak across her body. She squeezed her nieces’ hands and leaned against her sister until they got the message and stood up.
They would not all bathe, but they would leave the men alone. The girls would prepare their aunt’s bath and sit around its edges, watching her and thinking things over, before the strangeness of everything caught up with Tsune and she asked to be alone.
22.
Angelface
EINOSUKE WAS RIGHT about Manjiro. He had indeed taken the Americans to the Pavilion of Timelessness on the night after the geisha house meeting entirely on a whim—because he could no longer stand Lord Abe’s duplicity, the dishonorable nature of his plan. And Tsune was right, too, in telling the others that now that he had acted he was intractable. But as to Manjiro himself, oh how he wished he hadn’t acted at all! Oh how he wished he could undo everything, rolling his life back to when he lived in Shimoda with his tutor and worried only about his studies and the ordinary loneliness that played upon him during countless lonely nights! What did he care what happened to these Americans, whether Perry got them or Ueno jailed them or even cut their heads off, if he, in the meantime, lost his father’s goodwill, his brother’s respect and friendship, and maybe even the chance to marry the only woman he had ever loved? Oh, he had acted without thinking what his actions would mean in the long run! And damnable Keiki was turning him into a hero for it, too, in these ridiculous posters that were beginning to appear everywhere, even on the back roads!
For their part the two Americans didn’t react in a uniform way to the news that they had been falsely invited ashore, but when they were finally made to understand that their lives were in danger, that rogue swordsmen hunted them, and that Manjiro was trying to return them to their fleet at great risk to himself, Ned, at least, grew serious and helpful, putting on the monk’s clothing that his new friend Keiki had given them (in exchange for his harmonica). He remembered that he could act as well as sing, and took to acting like a Buddhist monk. Coming ashore for a day or two had been okay with him, since it had gotten him away from those rank-smelling sailors and unending card games, but now he was ready to go back. So he walked out of Edo wordlessly, hair and eyes hidden under a sloping hat, and each night he waited in the darkness while Kyuzo, who was also with them, hurried off to some nearby village for food and drink. He put his trust in Mangy, and thought about home.
For Ace, however, all of this was an entirely different matter, and though he acted like Ned did during their daytime walking, he was convinced that he was where he should be, that the itch he’d been feeling his whole life long was about to be scratched by Japan.
For three days they made good progress, but on the fourth exhaustion caught up with them, and as they sat rubbing their feet by the side of some stream, the tongues they had held during the day began to waggle. And to make matters worse, Kyuzo sat beside them like a curious owl, and insisted on having everything translated for him.
“I figure it this way,” Ned said, when Ace expressed surprise that no one had tried to talk to them as they walked along. “People here don’t much cotton to religious folks, they ain’t drawn to ’em like we all are at home.”
“Not everyone cottons to religious folks at home,” said Ace.
“What?” asked Kyuzo. “What did he say?”
Manjiro’s thoughts were awash with what his own fate might be, and he was continually fighting off showing disgust for all three of his traveling companions. What he really wanted to say was, “To hell with monks and to hell with you, see how my life is ruined?” In actual fact, however, all he did was drink from a bottle of saké that Kyuzo had purchased in a nearby village, sometimes translating properly, sometimes not, while Ace told them the story of his life, of growing up in the forests of Pennsylvania.
This is how the story went:
As a boy Ace had loved the forests. He had trapped and hunted in them often with his father, and by the age of nine had learned their pathways and clearings far better than he’d learned the workings of his own young mind. He knew how to make a rabbit snare from the leafy branches of a willow tree, how to turn hemlock bark and river mud into a salve for cuts and bruises, and he could recognize vast varieties of mushrooms, the deadly from the delicious, no matter how insignificant the differences.
Soon after Ace’s thirteenth birthday his father was killed in the forest behind their house, mauled by a thin and sickly bear who at first had appeared to be dead herself, lying among the springtime wildflowers. Ace’s mother had always disliked the forests and after his father’s death moved the family—herself and Ace and his little sister, June—to Philadelphia, where she quickly found work putting up preserves in a building that June insisted on calling “The Apricot Factory.” Ace was at first inconsolable with the move—he missed the forests desperately and he missed his father more, but in Philadelphia something unexpected occurred. They were living in a room near the city’s central market, in the same building that housed “The Apricot Factory.” In some of that building’s upper floors there was a music school, and when spring came and the weather grew mild, Ace and June would often wait on the stairs for their mother to finish work, and pass the time by listening to the music school students singing and playing various instruments. Most of the students were women, with one boy among them, not much older than Ace, and by the end of a single day of listening to him, Ace made June laugh by ascending the steps until he was staring in the school window, all the while singing along, his mouth a perfect zero and a perfect imitation of the music teacher’s surprise.
The school gave Ace a scholarship. He became the teacher’s protégé, the pride of everyone, and worked so hard and well that by the time he turned sixteen he had not only gained a reputation as the best young tenor in Philadelphia, but had begun building a name for himself, the tendrils of which stretched off toward the more demanding singing world of New York Ace’s life seemed set, and he began to believe that his father’s death and the subsequent loss of his beloved forest served the unknown purposes of fate, of God’s mysterious plan for him.
But then, on a cold March morning in 1847, the building that housed the music school burned down, razed by a fire that started in a bucket of burning apricot pits, something someone had lit on purpose in order to keep warm.
There were dozens of advertisements, bills and posters, nailed along the panels next to the building’s front door, but the only one untouched by the fire’s savage tongue, the only one unsinged even at its edges, announced the coming auditions for a traveling minstrel show. Before that day Ace had had no interest in minstrel shows. He had never even seen one. But this was no ordinary show and Ace came to believe that the poster advertising it had not been saved from the flames for ordinary reasons. The show was called “Colonel Morgan’s Dark and Mighty Abolitionists,” and its single purpose, so said the ad, was to “help eradicate the abomination of slavery in these United States.”
Ace passed his audition and during the first of his almost seven years with Colonel Morgan, studied the issue of slavery until a vehement opposition to it was born in his heart. He came to believe that slavery was not only a great enough evil to bring down the United States, but anathema to God himself, and that the ttue purpose of his life, the single reason he had been taken from the forests and given his wonderful singing voice, was to fight against it. So he not only sang in the shows, but began to write them as well.
Then one clear fall evening, during a midnight show in Boston, Colonel Morgan was killed by an up-from-the-South slave owner who stood out of the audience, shouted a string of curses, and coc
ked and fired his gun. The slave owner tried to shoot others, too, but his pistol jammed and Ace and Ned, who was also in the show, jumped down from the stage, lyrics still leaking from their mouths, to wrestle with the man until the pistol unjammed, clefting Ace’s chin with a passing bullet that wedged into the slave owner’s brain.
As it happened Commodore Perry, himself an abolitionist, was in the audience that night, sitting two rows behind the slave owner. The Commodore had missed most of the show because he had been preoccupied, busy considering what aspects of American culture he might take as entertainment for the Imperial Court of Japan.
But though he missed the show, he didn’t miss the shootings, and when Ace and Ned stood out of all that smoke it was he who used his naval rank to escort them out of there.
When they arrived in Japan Ace didn’t know anymore whether his life was to be led as an outcast, whether he’d been born merely to kill some no-account slave owner, or whether God had got him through all his troubles so that he could serve some higher purpose, the essence of which, he now felt certain, would one day soon, quite miraculously, unfold.
THAT WAS ACE’S STORY, or at least the version of it that Manjiro translated for Kyuzo, and it had a surprising effect on Manjiro, making him think about his own fate in more stable ways than those which had infected his mind on the first three days after their departure from Edo. It was nevertheless Ned, not Ace, who caused his thinking to take an even more radical turn, forcing him to consider stopping at his father’s castle, to see if there wasn’t some action he could take to salvage his ruined life.
He had gone to stand away from the Americans after Ace’s story, lettting Kyuzo and Ace work out a rudimentary way of communicating without him, and was absently writing Tsune’s name in the dirt with a stick when Ned came up to ask what he’d written down.
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