Heaven's Net Is Wide

by Lian Hearn

  She bowed again and went on her knees to the door, where she called quietly to the maids. Her voice was soft, yet she spoke with complete authority. A few moments later he heard the soft pad of the maid’s socked feet, and the women exchanged a few words. Then Akane returned with a tray of food and wine, bowls and shallow dishes.

  She gave him one of the dishes and he held it with both hands as she poured wine into it. He drank it in one gulp; she refilled the dish and then, when he had drunk a second time, held out her own so he could pour wine for her.

  The food was chosen and prepared to increase the sensitivity of mouth and tongue: the orange melting flesh of sea urchin, slippery oysters and scallops, a delicate broth flavored with ginger and perilla. Then fruits, cool and juice-filled: loquats and peaches. Both of them drank sparingly, just enough to set their senses on fire. By the time they had finished eating, Shigeru felt he had been transported to an enchanted palace where a princess was bewitching him completely.

  Watching his face, Akane thought, He has never been in love. He will fall in love for the first time with me.

  She was also beginning to ache with desire.

  He had not known it would be like this—the driving compulsion to lose himself within the body of this woman, the complete surrender to her skin, her mouth, her fingers. He had expected there would be the physical release—as in dreams or by his own hand—under his control, swift, pleasurable but not overwhelming or annihilating. He knew she was a woman of pleasure, a courtesan who had learned her craft with many men; he was unprepared for the fact that she seemed to adore his body and took the same delight in it as he did in hers. He had never known intimacy, had barely talked to a woman since his childish conversations with Chiyo: it was as if half his self, which had been asleep in darkness most of his life, had suddenly been caressed and startled into life.

  “I have been waiting all summer for you,” she said.

  “I have been thinking about you since I saw you at the bridge,” he replied. “I am sorry you had to wait so long.”

  “Sometimes it’s good to wait. No one appreciates what is easily acquired. I saw you ride away. People said you were going to teach the Tohan a lesson! I knew you would send for me. But the days seemed endless.” She paused for a moment and then said very quietly, “We met once before, you will not remember. It was so long ago. It was I who helped you when your brother nearly drowned.”

  “You will not believe how many times I dreamed about you,” he said, marveling at the workings of fate.

  He wanted to tell her everything: the torture of the Hidden, the dying children, the courage of Tomasu and Nesutoro, the fierce satisfying skirmish with the Tohan; Iida Sadamu; his disappointment and anger at his father’s reaction; his distrust of his uncles. He knew he should be guarded, that he should trust no one, but he could not help himself. He opened his heart to her as to no one else in his life and found her mind as receptive and willing to accommodate him as her body.

  He knew he was in danger of the very thing his father had warned him against—becoming infatuated with Akane. You will not fall in love with her, his father had told him. Yet how could he prevent that happening when she delighted him completely? At midnight it seemed impossible, but when he woke again at dawn, he lay thinking about his father’s words, making a huge effort to pull back from the edge of the pit, as dangerous and inescapable as the Ogre’s Storehouse. He told himself that she was not beautiful, that she was a prostitute, that he could never trust her: she would never bear his children; she was there only to give him pleasure. It was unthinkable to fall in love with such women: he would not repeat his father’s weakness.

  She opened her eyes, saw he was awake, and drew him to her again. His body responded and he cried out again at the moment of release, but afterward he spoke to her coldly, told her to leave after the first meal was served, without saying she was to come again or what future arrangements might be made.

  He spent the rest of the day in some turmoil, wishing she was still with him, hoping he had not offended her, longing to see her again, yet fearing becoming entrapped by her. He wished he was back in Chigawa—dealing with the Tohan seemed simple and straightforward.

  AKANE SENT FOR her palanquin and left with as much dignity as she could muster, but she was offended and mystified by his sudden coldness.

  “He doesn’t like me after all,” she said to Haruna. “He seemed to at first, very much. He even talked to me, as if he had never talked to a woman in that way in his life. But he sent me away this morning.” She frowned. “It was almost insulting,” she added. “I won’t forget it.”

  “Of course he liked you,” Haruna said. “There isn’t a man alive who wouldn’t like you. But he is the heir to the clan: he’s not going to fall in love with you. Don’t expect him to. He’s not another Hayato.”

  But Akane still missed Hayato. She liked having men in love with her. She had been flattered by Lord Shigeru’s interest in her, and she found him very pleasing. She wanted to be with him again; she wanted him to love her.

  “I don’t expect we’ll be hearing from him again,” she said. “Everyone knows I spent the night at the castle—and why. It’s so humiliating. Can’t you put it about that I spurned him?”

  “I give him three days,” Haruna replied.

  Akane spent the next few days in a very bad temper, quarreling with Haruna and being spiteful to the other girls. It was still very hot—she would have liked to walk to the volcano, but she could not go out in the sun. The business of the pleasure house went on all around her, day and night, sometimes arousing her desire, sometimes her scorn for the insatiable lust of men. On the evening of the third day, after the sun had set, she walked to the shrine to see the flowers and shrubs planted by the old priest. Some exotic yellow flower whose name she did not know gave out a heavy sweet fragrance, and huge lilies gleamed white in the dusk. The old man was watering them with a wooden bucket, his robe hitched up into his sash.

  “What’s up with you, Akane? You’ve been alone all summer! Don’t tell me you’ve gone off men!”

  “If I had a grain of sense, I would,” she replied.

  “You need one of my amulets! It’ll spark your interest again. Or better still, come and live with me. I’d make you a good husband.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said, looking at him fondly. “I’ll make you tea and scrub your back, clean the wax from your ears, and pluck your beard.”

  “And keep me warm at night, don’t forget that!” He laughed so much that he began to cough and had to put the bucket down.

  “Don’t excite yourself, grandfather,” Akane said. “It’s bad for your health at your age!”

  “Ah, no one ever gets too old for that, Akane! Here.” He took a knife from his sash and carefully cut a spray of the yellow flowers. “Put this in your room; it will perfume the whole house.”

  “Does it have a special power?” she said.

  “Of course. Why else would I give it to you?”

  “Do you have spells to make men fall in love?” she asked idly.

  He looked curiously at her. “Is that your problem? Who is he?”

  “No one. I just wondered.”

  He leaned toward her and whispered, “Spells to make them fall in love and charms to bind against love. The plants have many powers, and they share them with me.”

  She walked back, carrying the spray, conscious of the fragrance enveloping her. She walked past Haruna’s room and called mockingly, “Three days, eh?”

  Haruna stepped out onto the veranda. “Akane! You’re back! Come up for a moment.”

  Still holding the yellow flowers, she stepped out of her sandals onto the veranda. Haruna whispered to her, “Mori Kiyoshige is here.”

  She went into the room and bowed to him. “Lord Kiyoshige.”

  “Lady Akane.” He returned her bow and studied her frankly, his eyes glimmering with amusement and complicity. His courtesy told her everything. She did not allow herself to smile bu
t sat with impassive face and lowered eyes.

  “Lord Otori was very satisfied with our last collaboration,” Kiyoshige said. “He has another assignment for me. I am to arrange for a house to be built for you. Lord Otori thought you would prefer to have your own establishment rather than moving to the castle. I’ve spoken to Shiro, the carpenter. He will come tomorrow and discuss the design with you.”

  “Where is it to be built?” Akane said.

  “There is a suitable piece of land near the castle, by the beach, in a small grove of pines.”

  Akane knew the place. “Is it to be my own house?”

  “You understand the arrangement, of course?”

  “It’s far too great an honor for me,” she murmured.

  “Well, everything is written down—servants, money, and so on. Haruna has read it and says she approves.”

  “Lord Shigeru is extremely generous,” Haruna said.

  Akane pouted. “How long does a house take to build?” she demanded, irritable.

  “Not long, if the weather holds.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  “You may return to the castle now with me, if you have no other plans.”

  It irritated her further that he should think she had nothing else to do with her life. “It’s almost dark,” she said. “No one will see me.” She did not want to appear to be smuggled into Shigeru’s rooms.

  “I will provide torches,” Kiyoshige said. “We will make a procession, if that is Lady Akane’s wish.”

  He made me wait, Akane thought. I will make him wait for me. But only for one night.

  “I should read the agreement,” she pleaded. “And discuss it with my mother. I will do that tonight, and tomorrow, if you would be so kind, you may return—a little earlier, I think, before sunset.” She was already imagining how it would look, the palanquin, servants with huge sunshades, the Mori retainers on horseback.

  Kiyoshige raised his eyebrows. “Very well,” he agreed.

  Haruna brought tea, and Akane served him. When he had left, the women hugged each other.

  “A house!” Haruna exclaimed. “And built especially for you by the best carpenter in Hagi!”

  “I shall make it so beautiful,” Akane replied, now visualizing the house under the pines, surrounded by the constant sighing of the sea. “I will see Shiro first thing in the morning. He must show me the site—or does that appear too eager?”

  “There is no hurry,” Haruna said. “You can take your time.”

  The building of the house was delayed by the first typhoons at the end of the summer, but it was sheltered in the lee of the mountain range and was not damaged. It rained hard for a week, and umbrellas replaced the sunshades when Akane made her thrice-weekly visits to the castle. As her relationship with the heir to the clan progressed, she became more flamboyant, and people began to line the street to watch her palanquin go past as if it were part of a festival.

  By the time the nights had begun to cool and the maples to put on their brocade, the house was finished. It was built facing south to catch the winter sun, thatched with grass-reed stalks, with wide eaves and deep verandas of polished cypress. The screens were decorated by an artist who had long been one of Haruna’s clients. Akane herself had slept with him several times, though neither of them referred to the past. At her request he painted flowers and birds according to the seasons. Akane chose beautiful bowls and dishes in the local earthenware, made by the most famous craftsmen; mattresses and quilts filled with silk cocoons; carved wooden headrests.

  When the house was complete, she had a ceremony performed to purify and bless it. Priests came down from the shrine and performed the rituals, sprinkling water and burning incense. After they had departed, late that night when she lay next to Shigeru, listening to the sea, she marveled at what fate had given her and what her life had become.

  19

  Shigeru now came from the castle every day around dusk. They ate and talked or played Go, which Shigeru had learned from childhood and was now reasonably skilled at; he taught Akane and she grasped the game quickly and intuitively and came to love its intricate and implacable essence. Usually after they made love, he returned to his own apartments; occasionally he stayed with her for the whole night. He did this rarely, for it was then that he felt most in danger of falling in love with her, in the surrender of self that came with falling asleep in her arms and waking in the night and in the early morning to make love again.

  Usually after staying the night he would go away for several days; there were always matters to attend to: he wanted to keep an eye on the borders, visit Tsuwano with Kitano Tadao to reinforce that family’s loyalty, oversee the harvest in his mother’s estate across the river—as well as the everyday affairs of the clan, in which he now immersed himself. He tried not to think of her during that time. But he did not want to sleep with anyone else, and when he returned, his heart thumped with as much excitement as on their first night.

  He frequently visited his mother at her house by the river to tell her what he was doing with the fields and forests that belonged to her. She came from a high-rank family: her brothers had died within months of each other, leaving no children; the estate had passed to their sister to be held for her sons. The castle possessed many other lands, but this estate was especially dear to Shigeru: it seemed to belong to him personally, and it was here that he could put into practice all he had learned from Eijiro’s writings, which he still kept with him. His mother said nothing about his arrangement with Akane, though she could hardly be ignorant of it—Akane had made sure the whole city knew of her new elevated status, with all the honor and prestige it entailed. However, some time after the house under the pine trees was finished, around the middle of the eleventh month, when the first frosts were beginning to silver the rice stubble, Lady Otori announced to Shigeru that she intended to move to the castle.

  “Why?” he said, astonished, for she had often expressed pleasure at the warmth and comfort of her house compared to the castle in winter.

  “I feel it is my duty to take my place there and to look after Takeshi and yourself, especially if you are to be married.”

  “I am to be married?” He had known, of course, that this would happen sooner or later but had not been told of any firm arrangements.

  “Well, not immediately, but you turn seventeen next year, and there is a very suitable young woman. I have been discussing it with Ichiro and with Lord Irie. They have broached the subject with your father, and he is inclined to give the match his approval.”

  “I hope she is from the Otori,” he said. “I do not want my wife selected from the Tohan.”

  He had spoken lightly, partly joking. His mother pursed her lips and looked sideways; when she spoke, her voice was lowered.

  “Of course she is from the Otori—from one of the oldest families. And she is a relative of mine: her father is a distant cousin. I agree with you, the Tohan have no right to decide whom you will marry. . . .”

  “Surely everyone is agreed on that?”

  “I’m afraid your uncles are of the opinion that a political marriage might prevent further difficulties with the Tohan. Apparently the Iida have a girl in mind.”

  “Absolutely not!” Shigeru replied. “I will not be married to anyone from the Tohan—above all, not to anyone chosen by the Iida.”

  “Lord Irie said this would be your reaction. Of course, I have to follow my eldest son’s wishes and my husband’s. But to avoid misunderstandings, the betrothal might take place before the Iida make a formal request. That way they will not appear to be insulted.”

  “If that is your desire, I will obey you and my father,” Shigeru replied.

  “YOUR MOTHER is jealous of me,” Akane exclaimed when Shigeru told her about this conversation.