Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show

by Richard Wiley

  “MOTHER!”

  Fumiko dropped the blade and ran toward her running daughter, both of them screaming now. Her arms tore her obi off and pulled at the sides of her kimono, flinging them out, as if trying to make wings of them, as if trying to turn her kimono into a cape with which she could block her daughter’s view of this absolute horror. She felt the wind of her running and saw the ground surge upward and the castle swirl above her and crash down upon them both.

  “AIAIAI!”

  Mother and daughter came together with such force that Junichiro popped out of Masako’s grasp and tottered off by himself, going toward his father and the horse and the crowd. The laborers fell on their faces again, beating the ground around them with fists like hail, and the guards marched around. “Revenge!” they screamed. “War against the enemies of Odawara!”

  Those words moved everyone else, but it was the vision of Junichiro staring at the covered neck of his dead and headless father that made Fumiko jump up again, finding herself. She ran back and scooped him up like an eagle might a kitten and clutched him to her and spun around, drops of blood from her own wounded chin surprising and quieting him by spilling into his mouth. And when she got to Masako again she picked her up too, tucked her under her other arm and staggered off with both her children, raging madly back toward the castle.

  It was the end of the world as she knew it, it was true, but as soon as the door closed behind them Fumiko knelt and looked at Masako. “Go and wash,” she said. “And change your clothes and find someone to take your brother. Where is O-bata? If you see her send her to me. And tell the guards to keep the American away. We cannot see him now.”

  She hardly knew what she was saying and knew less what might await her in the weeks and months to come, but her intention, as soon as she was alone, was to write a note to Lord Okubo, calling him home. When O-bata came she would send her for a runner, and then she would have Einosuke brought inside the castle and kneel beside him, in a vigil that would last until her own life left her body, and all thoughts save those of him were once and forever washed away.

  She stood and started walking and was surprised when her movement was encumbered by Masako, who had not done anything she’d been told to do but clung to her mother, her mouth wide and silent, tears flowing like rivers from her eyes.

  So Fumiko knelt again then, and held her daughter, until so much darkness descended that they couldn’t see each other. No one interrupted them, no one came from the upper floors of the castle or from outside.

  And though they surely wanted to, no one asked what should be done with the waiting corpse of their husband and father, of Lord Okubo’s eldest son and heir, of Einosuke, Manjiro’s difficult and beloved older brother.

  35.

  Is It Easier to Go or Be Left Behind?

  THE NOTE WAS ON a single sheet of crumpled paper. Fumiko’s calligraphy wasn’t elegant like Lord Abe’s. It had, in fact, so much shock in it that her characters ran down the page like words escaping a fire.

  She sent the note by runner, after all, and while she waited she tried to think of nothing save its progress, and then, when she felt sure it was in Lord Okubo’s hands, she occupied her mind by trying to decide whether it was better to give tragic news or to receive it, whether the sharper pain involved opening such a note, or if the purest agony resided in writing the words down in the first place.

  As she thought about it she also watched Masako, who had taken a sleeping potion and lay at her feet, like the corpse of her father, which had finally been brought into the castle and resided in the next room, the one in which they had first heard news of Manjiro from Tsune. Fumiko had bathed and insisted that Masako bathe, too, and now, like two of death’s brides, they were dressed in fresh kimono.

  There happened to be a collection of ancient battle implements at the far side of the room where Einosuke rested, an entire shelf of helmets and lances and swords. Fumiko’s intention had been, when earlier she went into that room alone, to place one of the helmets where her husband’s head had been, and then to kneel and speak her farewells through its faceplate, asking his forgiveness for her recent betrayal. But when she got close enough to do it, she saw that her husband had been laid out well, his hands folded across his middle, his bare feet side by side. So instead of kneeling at the top of his body, she was drawn to his hands again, as she had been outside. There, on the one closest to her, she could see the odd angle that his little finger always seemed to want to take, caused by a childhood injury, and there, all across that same hand’s back, stood a random line of emerging liver spots, which Einosuke used to insist represented the arguments and troubles he had had, over the years, with Manjiro. There was no facility in these hands, nothing of the living one that scorched her memory now, with its fine and foreign dexterity.

  When she touched his nearest forearm it was warmer than she thought it would be, and when she closed her eyes and walked her fingers along his lower body she could feel his presence growing. His legs seemed solid to her, not stiff but muscular, and when she bent to kiss his feet the room became infused with the distinct and pleasant odor of flowers.

  Fumiko was meditating, praying, searching for the strength to move up again, to properly fix that helmet at the top of her husband’s shoulders, when she felt herself transported out of this death room and placed before the open shoji above their newly built garden room, back in their house in Edo. The garden was littered with leaves from their neighbor’s tree and Einosuke was before her, bending and standing, bending and standing, throwing the leaves back over the wall.

  “It would have been an unending battle,” he said.

  He showed her wet leaves but she knew he was speaking of everything in life. All that had gone between them, all they had left unsaid.

  “Is it easier to go or to be left behind?” she asked her husband.

  “It is easier to go, of course,” he said. “That’s what I have always done, is it not, put the greater part of the burden on you? I was lucky to have had such good children, such a fine and understanding wife.”

  “I have not understood much,” Fumiko admitted. “All this newness, all these recent alterations. I should not have been born on time’s cusp like this, but would have better done my duty had I lived a century ago, when our country was insulated. Is that not true for both of us?”

  It wasn’t nearly so true for Fumiko as it had been for Einosuke, but he nodded, agreeing, taking his way of seeing things from her one last time.

  That was all. He seemed about to speak again, but the clarity of her vision faded and when she opened her eyes she was back in his death room, everything but the scent of flowers gone.

  So she closed her eyes again and let the flowers guide her.

  She put the helmet where her husband’s head had been and went to sit beside her sleeping daughter.

  36.

  Incense or Prosthetics

  AT HIS WORKSHOP, which was housed in an old incense factory at the edge of another of the Izu Peninsula’s ubiquitous streams, Denzaimon the prosthetics artisan had been showing examples of his work to Lord Okubo’s assembled entourage. He talked for a while about its intricacies and then opened dozens of boxes and drawers, exposing a series of prototypes. In one there were ears, larger than life but so perfectly rendered that light showed through their delicate membranes, and in another there were feet, this time done in miniature, as if for Chinese women or children. He opened a third box to show them hands, with various lengths of blanched-wood forearms, and in others they saw teeth and eyes, fingers and toes. He found examples from everywhere and put them on the table, as if laying out an abstract human form. But there were no noses. He had carved only two in his life and they were sniffing out the world—who knew where?—on living human faces.

  Outside the workshop, when they finally left poor Ned alone with Denzaimon, Lord Okubo walked away from the group, in order to relieve himself in the stream at the back of the building. He stood at its edge, and when he und
id his clothing he could not help noticing that his own slight wounds, those minor cuts and scratches he had recently made in his abdomen, were already healing well. That was the nature of things, he supposed, they would often get better if you left them alone. And though he didn’t believe that Ned would grow another nose, he wished now that they’d been satisfied with the precautions they had taken in the stables, with guarding against infection and clearing those two incredible blow holes. As he tied up his pants again, he even had the thought that incense, after all, probably provided a greater overall social good than prosthetics. If one had to make such a choice.

  In front of the workshop Tsune and Manjiro were standing together with their fingers touching while Keiko and Ichiro strolled and chatted timidly nearby, when Fumiko’s exhausted runner arrived in the village. He called out Lord Okubo’s name first, and then Manjiro’s. Lord Okubo had just come to join the others, so it was Manjiro who took the message and opened it, somehow thinking it would be further evidence of a mending, perhaps a word of kindness from Einosuke.

  The note was on a single sheet of paper and crumpled in a way that reminded both Manjiro and Tsune, who continued to touch his arm as he read it, of that other sheet of paper, the one with Lord Abe’s offending paragraphs on it. Fumiko’s hand wasn’t elegant like Lord Abe’s, her characters, in fact, had so much shock in them that they shook and wandered down the page, but their message was more powerful than anyone’s philosophy.

  “Einosuke monstrously killed. Come back to the castle with your swords out!”

  Manjiro moaned and his knees weakened, and Tsune saw her sister’s face quite clearly, her calligraphy brush held out in front of her like a dagger. She grasped Manjiro’s arm, to keep them both from falling, but when a curious Keiko came over to read what had arrived Tsune regained herself enough to push her roughly back again, surprising her niece.

  “Auntie, my goodness,” said Keiko, embarrassed and glancing at Ichiro. She considered herself an adult now, and would not be treated like Masako.

  It was only when Tsune cried out, “Oh evil world, leave this child alone!” that Kyuzo, who had been standing a few yards off watching both the young couples, came forward and took the paper from Manjiro and read its message aloud. “Einosuke monstrously murdered. Come back to the castle with your swords out.”

  He read so quietly that it took a second for Keiko’s irritation to freeze on her face, and shatter and fall.

  Lord Okubo took the note from Kyuzo and folded it and slipped it into his kimono until its sharp corners poked against his healing abdomen.

  “Prepare our horses,” he told Kyuzo. “We will go back to the castle, but will keep our swords sheathed for a while.”

  Kyuzo bowed and when he moved to follow the old lord’s order he pulled Ichiro with him, not because he needed help, but lest the younger man make the mistake of trying to approach Keiko.

  Lord Okubo himself was chilled by the news of Einosuke’s death, but otherwise oddly distant from it, though at the same time he knew that when the pain finally did arrive it would be his constant companion for the rest of his life. He began doing calculations, trying to remember how long it had been since he’d raised a sword in anger, while Manjiro knelt in front of him, piteously crying, blaming himself. When Lord Okubo put a hand on his head, however, it was not so much to console Manjiro as to steady himself, to keep from joining his sole remaining son on the ground.

  “Not yet, not yet,” said a voice within him. “Now is the time to act.”

  “Come,” he told the others. “We mustn’t leave Fumiko alone.”

  When the horses were assembled the men left quickly, and when the workshop doors opened a short time later, and Denzaimon and Ned came out, they were greeted only by a cloud of dust and a grieving aunt standing beside a grieving daughter, and a bunch of bearers, ready to take them off again in the waiting palanquins and sedan chairs.

  THE NOSE DENZAIMON had made for Ned came more from the carver’s imagination than from any of the measurements he had taken. Still, it was a fine nose, the length of it derived from his sense of Americans, its shape from one of the most beloved Kabuki characters of the era. He would continue his work on a more precise product; he saw no reason, in fact, why Ned shouldn’t have several more noses at his disposal, for use on various occasions. But for now there had only been time to make this one, from selected scraps of quality Japanese cypress, and glue it to the end of a long stick.

  The nose was not designed to touch Ned’s face. He was to peer from behind it delicately, which he did now for those who awaited him, like a court lady might from behind a fan.

  37.

  Irony Provides Relief

  “TAKE A LETTER,” said Lord Okubo, in a loud voice.

  His scribe was surprised for it was five o’clock the following morning and Lord Okubo himself had awakened him. But he dressed quickly and brought his brushes to the castle office, where he hurriedly ground his inkstones. Manjiro was there, too, waiting with his head bowed, but Lord Okubo only spoke to him to ask, “Do you still have those paragraphs you told me about, the ones which encourage deceit, the ones Lord Abe so stealthily copied down?”

  The paragraphs had been pestering Manjiro, certain words and phrases from them running through his mind ever since the arrival of Fumiko’s note in the village, so he was surprised.

  “Tsune had them last, I think,” he said, but he really had no idea where the copied page had gone.

  The scribe had his brush ready, with clean paper on the table before him, but Lord Okubo kept his eyes on Manjiro. He knew his son was beset with the idea of killing himself, that were he to speak harshly to him now he might leave the room and pitch himself from the roof of the castle. He knew it and was of two minds; first understanding that he had but one remaining son in this world, and should do what he could to keep him alive, and second that they both ought to do it, that he really should take Manjiro into that secret room, and show him its pair of waiting knives.

  Lord Okubo turned to face the castle wall, not speaking for some minutes, and when he turned back again he looked only at the scribe. “This letter is addressed to Lord Abe’s erstwhile aide, Ueno,” he said. “Stop me if I go too quickly, we have to get it right.”

  He walked to the room’s window and looked out at the dark forest, suddenly remembering Masako’s marsh and the odd fact that, since he’d ordered its gates repaired a year ago, he had not been there to inspect them. He started dictating without a salutation:

  “I believe that things have gone too far concerning the Americans,” he said. “I also believe that no one, not Lord Abe in the beginning, nor any of the members of the Great Council, not your worthy self, nor even my pitiable and recalcitrant son, Manjiro, could have foreseen how far they would go. Indeed, if anyone should have done so it was I…”

  He paused when he heard Manjiro’s breath catch behind him, but continued without looking around.

  “Though my mistakes weigh heavily on my heart, however, confessing them is not the purpose of this letter. Its purpose, rather, is to propose that we work toward the return of the Americans to their ships without further embarrassment to anyone. The government needs that to happen, I do not, that is the truth of the matter as it stands now.

  “Therefore I will be traveling to Shimoda soon, where I will deliver the Americans to some representative of the realm, just as you will, at that same instant, deliver to me my eldest son’s severed head, as well as the man or men who murdered him.”

  Lord Okubo stopped again, shocked at the sound of his own voice. He asked the scribe to read back what he had written. Except for the words “your worthy self” in the first paragraph, however, he thought the whole thing read well enough. He had the scribe remove those words and went on:

  “I propose we meet four days hence and a day or two after Commodore Perry’s arrival in that rainy and overburdened town. I did not choose Shimoda because of the American arrival, but because it is close and I am too overb
urdened with grief and rage not to take ease where I can find it.”

  When he stopped this second time Lord Okubo was wounded anew by the visions his words brought into focus. He drank some cold tea and stared at the scribe but could not go on. Rather, he saw Einosuke as a young boy leaning over his books in the castle; as a young and serious man, awaiting his father in the Great Council corridor. He had been strong when receiving the heinous news, but to actually speak the words, to put it all down on paper—this was more than the old lord could bear.

  As the silence extended, from one minute to three and then longer, and as the first dead streaks of dawn came up through the rain, it was Manjiro, therefore, not Lord Okubo, who braved his own unending sorrow, cleared his throat, and spoke a few lines to finish the letter:

  “We can no longer be held responsible for the safety of the two Americans, if Einosuke’s murderers, as well as his missing part, are not delivered to us,” he said. “The details of everything can be worked out later, by a personal meeting if necessary, but preferably by runner.”

  Manjiro closed the letter with a high degree of formality, then waited until his father came back to himself, found his seal on the scribe’s table, and applied it to the paper.