Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (24 page)

He dressed and followed her out into the hall, several times glancing over to make sure the door to that golden inner room was closed. On the ground floor he woke a guard, sending him for the castle physician, and when he passed down the long stone stairway he thought of the late night rain as a pleasant accompaniment to the unexpected cheerfulness that rose from his bosom the moment Tsune mentioned Manjiro's name. It was extraordinary, for wasn't it only yesterday that he had been so ashamed of that name that he'd nearly taken his life? Yet now he hurried across the castle grounds to do what he could to help. Tsune's intuition, it seemed, had been right.

Lord Okubo pushed open the stable doors with the kind of authority he had not felt in years, as if the spirit of Kambei had somehow alighted, not so much upon Manjiro, as on himself.

“What misfortune befalls you this time?” he asked, but Manjiro was in the background and what he saw before him was difficult. Three strangers, two poorly dressed warriors and one of the foreign musicians, stood beside a sight both strange and humbling, touching and repulsive at the same time. The second foreigner reclined on a bed of hay, his legs bent under him like those of a newly born foal. He had uncovered his wound only seconds earlier, relinquishing, as a kind of first experiment, the pressure of the towel. When he heard Lord Okubo's voice he said, “It still don't hurt at all. I seem to be allergic to pain.”

Indeed, the serious bleeding had stopped, leaving only a slow bubble coming from the middle of his face, like one might find on the surface of a stew pot on a low boil. Lord Okubo came closer, and when he put his hand out the foreigner took it, pulling him down next to him in the straw. Tsune knelt too, peering at Ned with sympathetic eyes, and when the castle physician came hurrying in, only a minute behind them, Manjiro stepped out of the darkness. The physician was as old as Lord Okubo and had feared his liege had had a heart attack or a stroke. He didn't hesitate, though, when he saw Ned's face.

“Someone light a fire,” he said, “and someone else bring the detached appendage. The wound looks clean, so maybe if we hold it in place long enough it will remember its allegiance and grow back.”

Lord Okubo glanced at Manjiro but now his eyes were hesitant. His son was harder to look at than the foreigner's ravaged face.

“Alas, the nose is gone,” said Kyuzo, “taken, as a prize, I'm sorry to say, by the villain who cut it off.”

“Well, then, has someone seen to the clearing of his air passages, to extracting the blood and mucus so he won't drown?”

No one had seen to anything and when Kyuzo said so, the physician reached out to turn Ned's face in the dim light.

In the corner of the stable farthest from the horses Ichiro had found a small pit and started a fire. And when he came back the physician gave him several tools to sterilize: a steel prong, old and dark from repeated bluings, two long knives, and something that looked like a pair of garden scissors. When Ned said, “What's the use of them devices?” Lord Okubo listened with all his heart, as if he, and not his son, could interpret the foreign tongue.

“First I need to know what blockage there is,” the physician explained. “After that I'll clear the nostrils, if we can call them that now, and then I'll cut away the bits of excess flesh. Finally, I want to sear the entire wound, and douse it with my healing powder.”

“Will it hurt?” Lord Okubo asked. “Should we hold him down like we would a wounded pig or a foaling mare?”

“Well, at least he's got to keep his head still,” the physician said.

Ned's head was anything but still, as he turned it between the physician and Lord Okubo, but when the physician approached him again he did seem to try to cooperate. He closed his mouth, which had been gulping at the stable's stale air, and even found the courage to blow a little of the carnage from the front of his face, like a whale.

“Good job,” said the physician. “Now don't move young man, let me see what's left inside to take away.”

There was an oil lamp by the door, which Kyuzo picked up and held as close to Ned as he dared. In the meantime Ichiro had brought the sterilized tools back from the fire, setting them quietly on a blue ceramic plate, the last of the items pulled from the physician's bundle. When the physician touched him Ned clenched his jaw, but the man's touch was light. He removed whatever blockage there was with easy, graceful movements, then picked up the scissors from the plate.

All this time Tsune had stayed behind Lord Okubo, steadily watching everything, but when Masako called her, from just outside the stable door, she nearly fell forward onto the old lord's back. She didn't want to leave again, for the presence of her lover and her prospective husband really did seem to keep her in balance, and she hoped the guards would have enough sense to keep the girls away. But despite her hope the stable door opened and the heads of both her nieces appeared in it, one above the other, their eyes as bright as candles. They had gained a clear view of Ned, who said, “This ain't no carnival show.”

The girls were quiet for such a long time that Tsune thought their reactions might be like the American's pain, and simply not come. But when she stood to get the clothing they had brought, both girls finally did open their mouths, leaking out a sound that rose in two falsetto screeches, reaching a horrible crescendo, like barn owls fighting over the remains of a field mouse. Ned flinched when he heard them, and tried to jump up. Ace and Kyuzo were strong enough to keep him from standing, but they couldn't make his head stay still, so Ichiro fell upon him, too, locking his arms around his forehead and throat. Tears sprung from Ned's eyes and the hole in his face began to bleed again and he looked wildly about. The two girls ran back out of the stables, but their screams had so unhinged the physician that he was now afraid to use that smoldering prong. First he feared it was too hot, then he couldn't find the steadiness of hand to burn the wounded part of the Ned's face without burning the rest of it. On his first approach he touched Ned's cheek. On his second he burned one of Ichiro's arms.

“Give me that thing!” said Lord Okubo. “What kind of way is that to act in a crisis? Put your hands in your lap and tell me what to do, we mustn't be defeated by the fears of a couple of girls!”

The strength of the old lord's command not only worked to good effect on the physician, but on everyone else as well. The physician sat down, Ace and Kyuzo held Ned more calmly, and when Ichiro loosened his grip on his forehead Ned stopped thrashing, once more understanding that the best thing he could do for himself was hold still.

“Now tell me how to proceed,” said Lord Okubo. “And you, Manjiro, make yourself useful by speaking English. Soothe this wretched fellow.”

It was the first time he had spoken to his son since Keiko's dance recital.

“Without blocking his nostrils, burn everything lightly,” said the physician. “Let the prong rest on each bloody place for a second and then move on.”

Lord Okubo held up the instrument, showing it very deliberately to Ned. “It isn't as bad as it looks,” he said.

“That's my father speaking now,” said Manjiro. “He will touch your wound only once, in order to make the bleeding slow down.”

Maybe Ned had forgotten about Manjiro's English, for as soon as he heard it he jumped again, and looked away, toward the stable's far wall. But when he turned his face back again it came against the side of Lord Okubo's prong. There was a hissing sound, slight, as promised, like meat when it first hits a pan. And as quickly as that the prong was gone.

“Good,” said the physician, “that's a third of it already.”

“That didn't hurt either,” said Ned, and Lord Okubo burned him twice more.

“Now the cleanser,” said the physician. “In that bottle next to you. Dab the wound with it and try not to push anything back into those blow holes.”

There was the kind of muslin cotton wrap that women used under their kimono encircling the botde, and the physician tore a piece of it and doused it with the liquid when the lord didn't see where he'd pointed. “Hold it on there gently,” he said. “Dab it like a geisha might, when reapplying makeup at a party.”

Lord Okubo tried to do as he was told but Ned defeated the idea of dabbing by resting his entire face against the old lord's hands. So it looked to everyone like he had his nose back and was crying into a towel.

OUTSIDE THE STABLE
most of Lord Okubo's guards were awake by then and milling about. Tsune was with them, she had gone out to tend to the girls and had not wanted to interrupt things by going back inside, but the girls had not only run across the grounds and reentered the castle, they had gone up the main inside stairs, as well. Einosuke and Fumiko had been sleeping on the top floor, but a minute after the girls awakened them Tsune saw lanterns burning in their window, and then she saw Einosuke and Fumiko looking out. Both of their faces were easy to read. Einosuke's looked pained that he had not been consulted immediately upon his brother's arrival, and Fumiko's looked wild, almost wanton, like she'd been having some horrible dream and was having trouble waking up to reality.

When the doors to the stable opened again some five minutes later, Lord Okubo emerged first, in magnificent slow form, the wounded American by his side. He was not much taller than Lord Okubo, but people could now see that he was leaner and more muscular, and that he walked with a litheness most often present in animals. That he was maimed was as plain as the rain that wet them. That he was foreign, however, in the light of that maiming, did not seem to occur to anyone.

29
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Einosuke's Anger

INDEED
, Tsune had been right. Einosuke was deeply angered by his father's change of heart toward Manjiro, and stunned by the fact that he had not been consulted the moment his brother and the others arrived at the castle. And so to spite them all he got up at dawn the next morning and, without greeting Manjiro or asking a single question about the foreigners, threw himself into working on his garden. That is why he was the first to get news, brought by a runner from Keiki in Edo, that the Great Council had in fact removed Lord Abe—for the moment, at least—from all dealings with the Americans. It was a situation that was aided greatly, Keiki's note strongly hinted, by the advent and wide distribution of his now famous Kambei posters. A man by the name of Lord Hayashi had been put in charge of any remaining talks with Commodore Perry, and Manjiro could therefore continue on to Shimoda with the musicians or return them to Edo, whichever he wished. Lord Abe's dislikable aide, Ueno, though probably still unaware of the altered political climate, would soon be ordered to disband his illegal army and go on about his private business, no more threat to anyone.

Einosuke did his best to dismiss the importance of the news and rode on horseback to the edge of the sea, where, with an unerring eye and profound concentration, he selected the necessary boulders for his garden. But then he sat down on one of them to brood and think things over. Now it seemed his brother could return the Americans to their vessels freely—never mind that one of them had lost his nose!—even strut around as a hero of the realm, if he had that much bombast in him. It made Einosuke both glad and furious to contemplate such a thing, glad because it meant his father's resignation from the Great Council would not be accepted, that his family could return to Edo when their house was done with few remaining clouds of disgrace, but furious because, just as he'd done innumerable times since childhood, irresponsible Manjiro had bumbled into prominence while he, Einosuke, had worked behind the scenes without the slightest accolade from anyone.

ON THE SECOND MORNING
after Manjiro's arrival, when talk of Lord Abe's demotion was everywhere, all over the castle and surrounding town, Einosuke was up and off at dawn yet again, before anyone could speak his name. This time he traveled to a mountain village known for the production of superior sand and gravel. He found just the grade of pebble he wanted for his garden—each one about one-eighth the size of those American chocolates—and paid the village elders the asking price on the condition that the loading and delivery of his purchase take place that day. When the elders agreed and offered him tea, he accepted, and when the tea was gone he asked for lunch and a quiet place to take a nap.

In this way, though he could not control his anger, he stayed away from Odawara Castle two days running, until late at night.

30
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Japan's Conundrum

MEANWHILE
, from the rooms they had been given in the row of buildings that stretched out beside the castle's gate, Kyuzo and Ichiro, the recent defector, could watch Einosuke at work on his new garden, with Keiko walking around its perimeter, relief over her uncle's amazing good fortune everywhere on her face and in her pace. Ichiro tried not to stare at Keiko, to whom he was drawn, and instead hefted a pot full of tea. Kyuzo had had enough to drink but nodded anyway when offered more, holding out his cup.

“It is good to rest,” he said. “The other night's fighting was harder on me than I like to admit. I still enjoy the idea of fighting, but my body doesn't seem to want to cooperate.”

Kyuzo counted Ichiro's defection as his doing, but even though the entire situation now seemed disarmed, he was having trouble finding a way to talk about it. He wanted to make the young man feel welcome, but he also needed to gain a better understanding of why Ichiro had so readily changed sides. It was an unusual act and very modern. Kyuzo himself would not have done it, even if some other great man had been able to show him that the path he had chosen was wrong.

“Resting and waiting,” mused Ichiro, who wanted the same discussion. “We enjoy the first but dislike the second, yet often have a great deal of trouble telling them apart.”