Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (12 page)

Lord Tokugawa again! Oh, why did Manjiro feel like a student, his many accomplishments dimming, when confronted with a mind more beautifully housed and of firmer resolve?

“If we show it to him it will be out of our hands,” he said.

“On the contrary, showing this document to Lord Tokugawa may be the only way to keep it in our hands,” Tsune said. “Do you not see that? Otherwise we will be able to do nothing. Knowledge without power is a weakly burning light.”

That she had said he would be allowed to decide for himself made Manjiro calm. He thought about it for a while but soon he asked whether Lord Tokugawa was at home that morning, and, if he was, whether Tsune could arrange an audience.

11
.
Where Has My Heart Gone?

WHEN THEY LEFT
the Pavilion of Timelessness it was just after noon and raining. Manjiro carried the smoothed-out sheet of paper inside his kimono, and Tsune carried a
bangasa
, one of those thickly waxed paper umbrellas that seemed permanently stationed by the teahouse door. The bamboo forest was quiet as they walked. The tops of the trees swayed in the rising wind, but the leaves on the pathways were as sodden as the ones from Einosuke's neighbor's yard.

Some of Lord Tokugawa's samurai had come out to practice their skills in the rain and were strutting about in a clearing close to the lodge. A few made passes at each other with bamboo swords, while others exchanged insults in the dialects of fiefdoms that were most often politically opposed to their lord's. They wanted to be ready with words as well as with weapons, on the off chance that interfiefdom warfare should break out.

All Lord Tokugawa's samurai knew Tsune and all, save the older of the two men at the door, had at one time or another fallen into gossiping about her, saying that her father had been lax, that he and Lord Tokugawa should have married her off years earlier. The older man who had not gossiped about her was the famous swordsman Kyuzo, originally from Kyoto and in Lord Tokugawa's employ for just this last half year or so. He had come not only out of respect for the lord, but also because he hoped, as the end of his life approached, to be at the center of the action should there be a war with America. Tsune had not expected to meet him, standing as if on guard duty, and seeing him made her face grow flushed and her feet stumble on the path.

“Will his lordship allow me to present this nobleman?” she asked the younger samurai, and while he went to inform Lord Tokugawa of her arrival, she introduced Manjiro to Kyuzo, who bowed but did not speak, though Lord Okubo's crest, plainly visible on Manjiro's sleeve, seemed to require him to do so. When he came out of his bow the older man examined Manjiro thoroughly, with engaged and honest curiosity. Manjiro felt like one of the three-legged toads that Masako had been finding lately, hopping along in front of their disrepaired home, yet there was no rudeness in Kyuzo's glance, no hostility. Manjiro stared back at him but soon grew comfortable enough to begin thinking about those paragraphs again. Tsune, however, could not bear what was happening and left the men quickly, tripping up into the lodge, to run down the nearest hallway before the “chirping” floors called to her in a strong enough voice to make her slow down. There was a bench in the hallway and she fell upon it, slumping there with none of the presence she had shown in the Pavilion of Timelessness. Her chest heaved and tears gathered in her eyes. She said, “Oh this complicated, mixed-up life of mine!”

Despite the outside world's view of her, Tsune believed her life to be painful and unlucky. She had first met the older Kyuzo just a few months earlier, when he'd arrived in Mito from Kyoto. He had been teaching
kendo
to Lord Tokugawa's younger samurai and reading Confucian doctrine for a fortnight before she truly noticed him. She had heard stories of his earlier exploits, of course, of his great accomplishments with a sword, but because she was by nature dismissive of such tales it was not until she felt a certain lassitude one night, and hoped to confront it by reading
Empty Chestnut
, an old collection of Basho poems, that she came upon the man direcdy. The room that contained the volume—another library!—was one Lord Tokugawa's samurai rarely entered, so she was surprised not only to find him there, but to discover that he had that very collection before him,
Empty Chestnut
, and was reading it aloud. As usual she had come with her maid, but when she heard Kyuzo's halting voice she left the girl outside.

Kyuzo stopped his recitation when the door opened, but she had already recognized the poem and said, “What I have come for, sir, is that which you hold in your hand.”

Kyuzo barked out a laugh, so fearing she had been rude to him she offered a kind of explanation. “I often take a book to my bed chambers and the one you are reading best suits my mood tonight.” After that she waited. She would not speak again, nor would she give up the volume. Let him read fighting manuals if he had to read something, or if he wanted to broaden himself let him read one of those ridiculous new popular novels.

Kyuzo seemed to understand that he couldn't beat her by waiting, so when a small amount of time had passed he simply bent to the book again and resumed, as if she were not there, in the same unmodulated voice.

Tsune was insulted, but felt that to show her anger would be unseemly and also grant this man what he was after. So since she knew the poem better than he did she strode up to him and spoke its second verse in a far more suitable tone. She hoped it would offend him on several counts, not the least of which because he was old.

There was a third stanza, and if he looked down to read it, if he did not immediately close the book and recite it from memory, she would snatch the volume from his hands, declare victory, and march back out the door. She stared at him, but while she waited she began to remember that her maid was shivering on the porch, and in the instant her attention shifted Kyuzo slammed the volume shut with a startling crack. He stepped off the dais to land in front of her quietly, like a ghost from worlds past.

At first she wanted to slap him, to make the same noise the closing book had made with the palm of her hand on his face, but his look was quizzical now, not victorious, as if he only hoped he'd said it right, and the voice he had used was so opposed to the despair of the poem that she abruptly lost her anger and started to laugh. Kyuzo puffed up again, letting air whistle out through his mouth.

“What?” he asked. “Why in the world are you laughing?”

“Forgive me,” she said. “Your rendition was adequate, I guess, but had I taken it to my bed chambers I think I would have captured a little more of the poet's original intent.”

Kyuzo's reply was immediate. “Because my rendition was frivolous or because your bed chambers harbor despair?” His voice, like his stare at Manjiro, did not easily carry insult and Tsune was not offended. Rather she considered the question seriously, succumbing to a long pause.

“‘Despair' is too strong for what I always feel. Is there not another word that carries just a bit of it, in the midst of something easier to bear?”

“Loneliness,” he said. “Not only another word but a better one. You are entirely too young for despair.”

“I'm not too young for it but too strong,” Tsune responded. “And while loneliness might feed on strength, despair despairs of it.”

They were both quiet for a moment, proud, despite themselves, of the exchange. And then Kyuzo handed her the book and left the reading room by a back door.

That was all, but later in her bed chambers, dressed in gauzy white and sitting before a fickle candle, Tsune couldn't concentrate. The poems had always before served to alleviate her sadness, reinforcing her view that the world's nature was harsh, but on this night she put the volume down and was abstractedly thinking things over when her maid came in with a note, folded and cross-folded, as if by a teenage girl.

Tsune had never before thought of taking a lover so much older than herself, but she bid the maid wait and penned a quick reply and sent it off.

It was too enigmatic, she did not know herself whether she was telling him to come or stay away, but she waited beside that fickle candle, until the maid had time to deliver the poem, until Kyuzo had time to read it, until he was either stealing toward her or limp with indecision, hung up, like a younger man would be, on that final question mark.

Was it the midnight wind that blew the candle out, waking her? The question came from the same frame of mind that had let her write the poem, but her eyes snapped open, searching the incredible dark. Kyuzo's thumb and index finger had come down upon the flame, making it hiss in his spittle, and then he was beside her, removing her gown. They didn't move or roll, like Fumiko and Einosuke had done, but seemed to find an unreachable stillness, one inside the other inside the other. And then the coming tremor, like the shivering surface of water in a broad-mouthed jar.

Every night after that when the sun went down and the lamps at Lord Tokugawa's main house closed in upon darkness, they were together. Kyuzo sang to her, his voice deep and haunting, nothing like his recitation of the poem, and she danced the dances she had learned as a girl. They read books aloud, poetry sometimes, but more often erotic tales of how Prince Genji had stolen into countless maidens' rooms, wooing them with words and glances nine hundred years before. They read freely, always after they made love, never before, but they stayed away from
Empty Chestnut
, which they both cherished for bringing them together, but which they both also greatly feared because they no longer understood it, could no longer fathom its despair.

Why such a thing could not go on forever was a question others might have pondered, but neither Tsune nor Kyuzo asked it of themselves. She was an aristocrat and he, by comparison, was nothing much at all. They weathered one fearful storm when two months after the beginning of their affair Tsune turned down another marriage proposal, but that was all. Lord Tokugawa let her know that the next time someone approached them with a good match he would accept on her behalf, whether she liked it or not, after the investigations were done.

Maybe because he was older and had been in love before, Kyuzo was more philosophical about it than Tsune, for, in the end, it was he who insisted that they stop at a moment chosen by them, that they do so out of strength, before the day of the awful ultimatum. He also suggested something that was at first unbearable to Tsune, but that took root over time: that she strike first, that she find her own suitable husband, someone she could respect and admire. And so, very slowly, she had begun to think of her sister's brother-in-law, whom she had not seen in years but would see again soon, when she visited Edo to attend Keiko's dance recital.

And now, while she waited in the hallway, benched like a censured maid, Manjiro and Kyuzo faced each other just inside the main door of Lord Tokugawa's hunting lodge.

12
.
A Fly in the Ointment

BUT NO MATTER WHAT
his mood about her marital status, Lord Tokugawa always received Tsune when she came to visit, and when he heard she was waiting now, he got up from his futon where he'd been pondering Lord Abe's minstrel invitation, and dressed in a casual gown.

On his way out of his rooms he stopped to get Keiki, his son. It had earlier been Tsune's father's hope, and the primary reason why he had not pressed her into some other obligation, that she might one day marry Keiki, but aside from the fact that she was far too old for him, Lord Tokugawa was against the match. Though he loved Tsune like a daughter, he wanted to marry Keiki into one of Japan's “hereditary” families, actually have him adopted into one of them, so that Keiki might someday be Shogun. That, no matter what the political issues of the day, was what Lord Tokugawa constantly worked toward.

Tsune had just got up from her bench and gone back to join Manjiro—Kyuzo had left some moments before—when Keiki came around the corner to say that his father awaited them in his study. Keiki's hair was mussed, his kimono askew—Tsune was like a sister to him, so he didn't feel the need to better his appearance—but when he saw Manjiro and heard her say his name, he gave a hearty laugh and tried to straighten his clothes.

“How splendid to meet the newly famous man!” he said. “Come in, come in, tell me the latest! What's the news? What goes on? What do they really look like, these foreigners?”

Keiki was overweight and energetic and had a ready smile. His exuberance reminded Manjiro of the American Commodore.

“Nothing but sun in the morning, rain in the afternoon,” Keiki continued, “and if more cold is on its way it's sure to make the cherry blossoms late this year. I've been hearing recently that there are parts of the world where summer comes in winter or doesn't come at all! Do you suppose that's possible, Manjiro-san? I know we've only just met but if you find the opportunity, ask one of the Americans. Try to get the names of the places that are constantly warm.”

The hallway they were walking down was opposite the one Tsune had recently sat in, and was in grave disorder, as if no maid had yet cleaned it from the night before. But its floors “chirped” under their feet again, just like the famous ones in Kyoto. Keiki, who was in bare feet, did his best to make the floors sing louder as they progressed toward Lord Tokugawa, and when they entered the study he said, “Ah, father, we really must rediscipline ourselves. We are rising later every day we are in Edo. Both of us need to try harder, you know.”