by T. Cook
Life sprung up hopeful in every corner. Green shoots and lavender blossoms opened bravely, trusting me in spite of everything. And I meant them well and tended them faithfully. Seated on the ground, measuring their growth, the seedlings stood in for priests, and I confessed to them.
I was as sane as I ever was. No voices, no ghosts. Only my heart of ash and the tiny shoots…and perhaps some listener somewhere. Someone always bears witness to confessionals.
In my way, I reached out to Shin. The growth was a bridge, and I planted my thoughts and wishes into the earth as though the roots might spring out and travel the great distance from me to him.
Madame returned—not completely empty handed. Instead of silk, she brought a koto, of all things.
“Madame, I do not play.”
“No one else is playing it. It belonged to my daughter, Fuyuko.”
“You and your daughter are noble. Peasants never play it.”
“Only because the nobility have leisure for learning such things. Perhaps you do not have the leisure, but you are quick—if you have an ear anything like your eye.”
She knelt, threw back her head, uncoiled her hair and let it spill like a stream of water down to the small of her back. The loose strands fell forward, concealing her eyes as she bent over the instrument. Nothing, however, could conceal her emotions as her fingers played nimbly across the strings. Emotion opened up nakedly as the song built toward climax. I held my breath and nearly gasped to hear the pain vibrating from those dead strings.
This was Madame’s confessional. When she finished, we were both in tears.
Over the next several weeks, Madame taught me musical notes and a few simple songs. I made a start toward learning, and Madame seemed satisfied with my application, but we both knew it was not so much what we did as much as what we felt. We both were in mourning. There was no hurry.
In time, Madame supplied me with more raw silk, without any instructions for urgency, but I was by then hungry for my familiar creative medium and I wove it quickly into fabric. It felt good to pass the glistening yardage to her and see the light in her eyes as she examined my workmanship.
“This is very well, Furi, but I do not like you to push yourself too hard. Take your time. Work in the garden, play the koto. Let yourself grieve. The weaving will come.”
Still, Madame supplied me with more silk and if not comfortable, at least I was able to bear the pain of my memories, and I felt that the work did me good.
Soon, Madame began to visit the house with greater frequency. To my own surprise, I didn’t mind her intrusions. They were always intrusions. Madame was a noblewoman. Everything she did came wrapped in grace and ritual. I couldn’t receive her without serving her a ceremonial tea first.
Madame took her tea beautifully, perched in the noblest seiza I had ever seen, her eyes low, her fingers and hands moving without excess. As much as she liked to talk, she liked to watch, and me she took in expansively.
“Perhaps tea seems to you an over bourn tedious rite, does it Furi?”
“No, Madame,” I said, though I knew she would detect my evasion.
“It is an effort to observe the formula, and to do it well, but once having mastered it, your vision can become so acute—as if observing through a magnifying lens. Do you understand me?”
“No, Madame.”
“Grace is not only about prettiness—although something pretty is very nice by itself. More important, however, is observation. Awareness. When you discipline your movement, you focus just so, and reach a new state of being. You can connect to your peers at tea in a new way—detect even minute distraction, deception… focus and loyalty. Call it a sixth sense.”
This kind of focus or awareness was not a complete mystery to me. I often felt I reached the same state when I was at work at the loom. “I think I understand you, Madame.”
“So you can see how a ceremonial tea might become very important between rivaling warlords,” Madame said. “The same applies when you are entertaining guests, or even sitting down with your own sons and daughters. It is well to observe them.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I think I will stay here tonight, Furi. A rainstorm is brewing.”
“No, indeed! Madame,” I coughed on my tea, in a complete loss of composure. “I cannot let you stay here. It is too high a risk!”
Madame paused, indicating I should collect myself. “Furi. You do not come to be my age, survive complicated childbirth, overcome deadly plagues of illness and outlive four healthy children by living in fear. If I am to die now, so be it. But I do not think you will harm me.”
“Madame, I beg you to reconsider.”
“No, Furi. I will send my servant home and tell him to come back when the weather clears.”
But Madame, I…” I gestured in frustration. “I don’t even know how to cook.”
* * *
That evening, Madame prepared what she called: a simple meal. It was the most elegant of my life.
Soon after, Madame made up her futon in the single bedroom. I didn’t know whether I dared lie down to sleep with Madame present, but sleep would come, invited or not.
20
I loved the wall around my little farmhouse, but it was an illusion. I believed it kept me well hidden—that it obscured me within it as well as it obscured the world without. It didn’t.
Others knew of me.
Madame kept me well supplied in fuel. And the garden was plentiful with stone lanterns. Every once in a while, when in an extravagant mood, I lit them all. Branches of the plum trees dressed in full blossoms seemed to dance in the lantern’s glow, casting the whole garden in a gorgeous purplish light.
It did not occur to me that anyone else was observing the glow, or took any particular interest in it.
But there he was, almost unchanged from our youth, on top of the wall, staring at me in my midnight lantern-lit garden.
“Yoshi?”
“Is it really you, Furi?”
I jumped to my feet and laughed open mouthed. “Unbelievable! It really is you. How did you find me?”
He hurried forward a step. Then stopped, bowing low. In closer proximity, I could see how he had grown. He was not the same bashful youth I remembered.
“I didn’t know it was you,” he admitted. “I only suspected. There were rumors about a woman with an extraordinary gift with silk. Supernatural, almost! And I remembered you at the reel. Your speed and dexterity, always so impossibly quick.”
“But how did you find me?”
“Everyone knows there is an eccentric weaver closed within this wall. I thought I might scale the wall and see.”
I gasped. “Everyone knows?
Yoshi frowned. “But no one identifies you with the weaver—even my parents.” Yoshi smiled bashfully, “I had another motive. I hope you will forgive me.”
“You’re my brother,” I said, frankly. “And how many times did you save me from going hungry?”
“A few too many for my mother’s credit.”
I stiffened. “How are your honorable parents?”
“In good health, but…they are very upset with me…and my life choices.”
“Yoshi. What do you mean?”
“I am engaged to marry—against their wishes.”
I laughed. “It would be hard to satisfy them. I don’t know whether to congratulate you or console you.”
“I feel so close to happiness, but there is a shadow always looming. It’s why I’ve sought you out.” He frowned with worry and I wished to help him but was sure I couldn’t.
Yoshi cleared his throat. “Eiko is the daughter of a fisherman. She and I are very suited in social class and temperament—but Mother hoped I would marry someone more…someone who would help the family business grow even larger. The girl who my father and she had arranged for me to wed from my youth did not survive…”
“So many have perished in the plague. And yet she forbade your new match?”
“Yes. But
I stood my ground. And Eiko’s family approved of me. And would welcome me into the family trade. And you know how I always felt about sericulture.”
I took a short breath. “But your parents have no one else.”
“Yes, exactly. No one to take care of them and no one to keep the butsudan shrine when they die.”
“I would keep it, but I don’t think it would please them,” I said.
“No. It wouldn’t,” he agreed. “But you could do something else for me.”
It cost me something to ask it, but I did. “What’s that?”
“Make Eiko’s wedding robe.”
I could feel my face fall. “Yoshi. You cannot ask me for that.”
“I know you work silk, but I can provide a linen thread. Weave her robe and you will honor her above the whole of our community. If my parents see and hear Eiko praised by our village neighbors, they will soften toward her.”
“Your parents don’t really deserve you, Yoshi.”
“No. I am a rebellious son for choosing my bride against their wishes. This, when I am all they have.”
They might have kept me, but that was well in the past, and I did not speak the thought aloud.
“I would be eternally grateful if you would do this thing for us.”
“Yoshi. You don’t know what you’re asking. Let me provide the thread and let some other artisan weave the cloth.”
Yoshi’s face fell, but he bowed low. “Never mind. I had to try. It was very good to see you, Furi. I wish you health.”
I said goodbye and I let him go. I had no desire to go anywhere near Yoshi’s wedding. My best gift was to stay far, far away from him.
“You are not going to let him go like that?” Now Madame was at my side, watching Yoshi retreat up the wall.
“Madame. I’m sorry to have disturbed your sleep. Please.”
“He is the closest thing to a brother you have.”
“Yes. And that is why—”
“No. That is why you will not let him go,” Madame said. “Stop! Boy, Stop!”
“Yoshi paused on the top of the wall.
Madame called to him, “I will provide linen thread. Furi will weave the wedding robe! Send your bride to be measured in the morning!”
I frowned at Madame. “Madame, you have no right to interfere.”
“I think I have a right. And I will risk your disapproval on this matter,” Madame muttered as she shuffled back up the steps to the house.
* * *
Madame stayed at the farmhouse now as often as she stayed in her own home. I was not quite used to her presence, but my episodes of losing consciousness seemed to become less frequent. Whether I liked her frequent company or not, my mind was easier.
My mind may have been easier, but my temper was not. Madame taxed me constantly, demanding compliance with her aristocratic rites. As a servant, I had no need or occasion to practice the complex maze of ritual language and observances, and yet she insisted upon my learning. At first, I thought it was a matter of her own vanity, but I gradually learned there was more to Madame than appearances.
“Madame. Please,” I begged. “I’m sure I could finish much more weaving if you would permit me to forgo tea and music lessons occasionally.”
But Madame made an imperious gesture and changed the subject. “You never met my daughter, Fuyuko, did you?”
“No, Madame.”
“She was only sixteen last year when she died.”
“I know you were very fond of her. I’m sorry.”
“Let me show you a sketch an artist did of her.” Madame shuffled off to retrieve the picture and knelt beside me again. “It is one of few things I have kept of hers. Is she not lovely?”
“Yes, Madame.” And she was.
“Women and children live such retired lives, there are few who remain who even knew her. Even the artist who drew this perished. So I have heard. She left a great crater in my heart, but that wound is almost all that is left of her in this world.”
“I am sorry.”
“Love is agony, Furi.”
“Yes, Madame,” I whispered, and tears pricked the lens of my eyes.
Madame smiled. “You know, you remind me of her.”
“Not at all.”
“Yes. You do. And sometimes it is a dagger to my heart to watch you playing her koto.”
“Then I shall never play it again!”
“No, indeed,” Madame shook her head. “You must play, and play often. The secret to happiness in this life is to learn to savor the agony. It is well worth savoring.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Have you ever loved anyone, Furi?”
I started at the question, but answered, “I believe I have.”
Madame seemed surprised. “No. I don’t believe it. Another may have once loved you. But if it had been your own heart laid across love’s alter, you could not help but understand me.”
Madame was a puzzle, but I began to miss her when she stayed away.
21
As wealthy peasants, the Ishiyama family would have a delicate line to walk in making preparations for Yoshi’s nuptials. Good fortune demanded a grand statement at an only son’s wedding. It would be the single greatest display of hospitality the family would ever make, and they had money to do it. Important customers must be dignified with gifts and an appropriately lavish banquet. They had friends to remember, and officials to bribe.
But as peasantry, Father Ishiyama must not go too far, lest he provoke the anger of local samurai, many of whose prosperity was inferior to his. Gold was out of the question. The same was true, of course, for silk—my single greatest medium of creation. A peasant wedding disarmed my skill, and I despaired of my ability to do anything fine for Yoshi and his bride, but I need not have worried.
* * *
Eiko was a slight girl, with a small smile and polite manners. She was not a classic beauty, but elfish. A pretty waif. From our first meeting, I knew exactly what to do with her.
I asked Madame to purchase deep gray and pale dove colored thread for the robe. Cobalt blue for embroidering the obi sash. Subdued colors, befitting a humble occasion. There would be no brilliance, as was almost always true of silk, but I knew enough about nature and contrast to compensate for the lack of richness.
My object was not to make Eiko look wealthy. My aim was to transform her into a spiritual vision—like a fog rising from a tempestuous winter sea. She was small, and her size would only increase the drama and lend a sense of mystery to her origins. If all went well, her appearance would seem a blessing from Mazu, Goddess of the Sea.
I knew it was possible. For our people, a veneer of mysticism already glossed any natural phenomenon. Both peasants and gentry readily believed in Nature granting and withdrawing her approval. I knew how to encourage this association. In this way, I truly might change public perception, and hence, Yoshi’s parents’ prejudice toward his bride.
* * *
On the wedding morning, Madame dressed Eiko at her family’s home near the sea. Madame was cautious to dress informally, as not to overawe her hosts, but her manner could not be helped. And they were indeed struck with the dignity conferred by this noblewoman dressing their daughter.
I dressed Mother Ishiyama, the only mother I ever knew. She received me coldly as ever, but she was eager to look as well as she could at Yoshi’s wedding, so she consented to let me tie her obi and see to her cosmetic. These tasks, I performed quietly, as though I were a hired servant. While I worked, I noticed my adoptive mother seemed to take some pleasure in giving me orders in front of her attendants.
“The mother of the groom looks very well,” I proclaimed, smoothing imaginary lines out of the skirt of her kimono.
“It is hardly worth the trouble,” she sighed. “She will bring bad luck with her fishmonger’s odor and ill health.”
“She is small, but not unhealthy.”
“She will die before her first child is born,” Mother Ishiyama predicted.
I bore my former mother’s cruelty toward me without a tremor, but the barbs aimed at Eiko and Yoshi lodged painfully in my heart, and I left the house in tears. How would Eiko bear her mother-in-law’s abuse? How could Yoshi let her? My own help seemed so slight. Would it even matter at all?
I wondered all this at the time, but as things happened, my assistance proved as much as Eiko needed and more.
* * *
I watched from a distance, but even from my remote position on a hill above the observing guests, the wedding procession transported me. Eiko was not regal, for the regal must be material. And poised in her simple wedding robes, Eiko ascended to the spiritual. A gray sky loomed low, and great billows of mist rolled in from the wine dark and torpid sea, encompassing Eiko all around like a water nymph, and hypnotizing us all.
She trod as though borne upon a cloud. The subtle drama of her sea-storm wedding robe heightened the effect. No one could escape associating her with Mazu herself. I didn’t need to hear the guests and their whispers. Eiko was not a mere lovely bride. She was the form of spiritual beauty.
Father Ishiyama hosted the feast at a large and reputable tavern within the village. The event lengthened through the evening and long into the night. The Ishiyama family could afford to feed their guests well, and did so.
I stayed only long enough to see Eiko much admired and Yoshi quite saturated with sake and the pleasure of his new domestic comfort. I left with a stomach half full of rice and the smallest sip or two of wine.
Even after seeing Eiko’s impression upon all present at the wedding, I left the tavern unsatisfied that my involvement would bring no inauspicious consequences to the wedded couple. I couldn’t really celebrate. When everyone was well settled, I would be as happy as the bride herself, but until then, I brooded.
By the time Madame returned to the farmhouse, I had already slept once and risen to do my garden chores.
Madame was precisely the right amount of intoxicated to do proper credit to the Ishiyama’s hospitality, and she sat down heavily next to me on the veranda to make her report.