Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (27 page)

As a child, in that distant time before Manjiro was born, Einosuke had had another brother, only a few years older than himself. This brother's name had been Toshiro, and he had seemed to Einosuke to be a young god, able to run like the wind and strong enough to move these boulders around like they were made of papier-mâché. Had he lived Toshiro would have been the next Lord Okubo, and though when the torch of ascension fell to him Einosuke had not shrunk from its flame, he had always known in his heart that it was Toshiro, not he, who could have lifted the clan into national prominence. In Einosuke's memory Toshiro had everything; both Manjiro's curiosity and spirit and his own good discipline, his everyday seriousness of mind. Just as Masako liked to play at the castle's marsh now, it had been Toshiro's greatest joy to play among these boulders, and every time Einosuke returned to the place he felt his elder brother's presence.

Einosuke had dismounted and looked at the head laborer, now, who walked behind him waiting to hear which boulder they would have to dig out. He remembered that when his father came to him one night to tell him Toshiro had died, of something so simple as a fever, he did not believe his father, and there were ways in which he did not believe him still. When their mother died a few years later, giving birth to Manjiro, he had had no trouble knowing that was true, but his mother had been weak like himself while Toshiro had been invincible, like no one else he had ever known.

Einosuke found the boulder he wanted and peered at it, looking for fissures and unseemly angles. He stood on it and jumped and felt the boulder take his weight, just as an ambushed Toshiro used to do when Einosuke jumped upon his shoulders.

“This one,” he told the head laborer. “Unless we find that its buried part is ugly, we'll take it home.”

A voice behind him said, “Yes, it is the buried part we must always watch out for.”

Einosuke turned around to stare at Ueno. He recognized him immediately but asked, “Who travels on this rocky piece of our shoreline?”

“I'm not traveling but have come to seek you out,” said Ueno. “We followed you down here from the castle. We haven't been very quiet, you should have heard us coming before now.”

The waves were crashing about him and Einosuke had been awash in thought, but he decided not to say so. His laborers were standing close together by then, Numbers 75 and III herding them like dogs. He decided to be magnanimous, not to taunt Ueno with the still surprising fact that Lord Abe had been deposed and that he and his ridiculous private army were of no use to anyone anymore. But the words that came out of his mouth were taunting anyway.

“We have always given transit rights to everyone,” he said, “so be on your way. Go and lick your wounds somewhere else.”

“You are the heir to the fiefdom, are you not?” asked Ueno. “You spoke with the haughtiness of one, at least, in the Great Council garden on the day that your brother's treachery came clear to us all. Do you remember when we met below Lord Abe's window?”

Einosuke's memories of Toshiro were still so strong that he wanted to say that he wasn't the heir, but instead he said, “I remember that you were rude, sir. While I, at least, have the status of family, you are a usurper, a servant who mistakes his lord's position for his own. And though Lord Abe has fallen, you still haven't found a civil tongue.”

It was not until Ueno came closer, ignoring the insult, that Einosuke finally saw that he carried something in a teacup. It was difficult to determine what it was because he wrapped it top and bottom with his hands.

“What do you have there?” Einosuke asked. “Are you selling some family treasure? How much do you want for it?”

It had been fairly common in past years for desperate men to approach the sons of lords with something semiprecious, and he knew that to pretend that Ueno was doing it now would be a grievous insult. But he couldn't help himself. He saw Ueno's face harden, yet he lifted the lid to the teacup and held its contents out. Ned Clark's nose bobbed in a pool of stinking yellow liquid, so pungent that Einosuke's eyes watered and his own nostrils flared.

“We have cared for it well and would like to make amends by returning it,” Ueno said. “Maybe it's still possible to put it back where it belongs.”

The nose was as wrinkled as a prune, and as injurious to the eye as a gangrenous toe. Oh where was Einosuke's sought-after magnanimity? All he had to do was be half as civil as Ueno was trying to be and he could mend something that might otherwise stay torn for decades into the future. And he would be able to tell his father and brother about it when they returned from the prosthetist's village.

“Why come to me?” he asked, mitigating his tone. “You've obviously been watching the castle. Why didn't you simply follow my father? He would have welcomed its return more than I.”

Those were good questions but Ueno didn't answer them. Instead he pushed the nose closer, like one child showing another a dead mouse. It was a move that angered Einosuke not only because of its impertinence, but because of the truly horrible smell. He drew his head back and, quite without planning to, slapped the bottom of Ueno's outstretched hand, sending the teacup high into the air. The putrid liquid spilled into the rain and the nose flew out of the cup to dive, like a seabird, into the ocean.

“Hey!” Ueno yelled. He started to reach for his sword, then called one of his hirelings, who dashed into the freezing water and began frantically splashing around.

“Not there,” said Einosuke, “a little to your left and farther out.”

The nose was still visible, and when the samurai looked where Einosuke pointed he had no trouble retrieving it. “Salt won't hurt it,” said Einosuke. “I'll bet it's a more effective preservative than that offensive brine.”

Einosuke was a better swordsman than he appeared to be, better than either his father or Manjiro, and he knew the chief laborer would run for help if a fight really started. So he pulled his sword out slowly, watching as the rain hit its blade. Number III was soaked and embarrassed but stomped across the rocks to the flung-away teacup. He put the nose inside it again and sat it down on the top of the very boulder Einosuke had intended taking home. Ueno, meanwhile, brought his sword from its scabbard with greater deliberation than that used by Einosuke.

“I came here today to mend things,” he said. “It had seemed to me before I met you that the time for petty insults had passed.”

Einosuke let his eyes move back to the laborers who were huddled, more like ducks than dogs now, their leader missing from the front. Good, he thought, he's gone for help. He backed up, edging toward the water. He would teach this man a lesson and tell his father about it when the party returned to the castle that night.

“A lord's advantage isn't only with words,” he said, “but in having excellent fighting instructors.”

Even as he spoke he knew he should stop, that one neutral word, just a syllable of civility, would disarm the situation. Where Ueno was concerned, however, he had no civility, and he cocked his sword above his head. What he'd said about his fighting instructors was a blunder, though, for it made Ueno come at him with more care than he might

otherwise have shown. He stepped up and stopped, stepped up and stopped, balanced and searching for the right moment.

Einosuke heard a cough and when he glanced toward the laborers again he saw his older brother, Toshiro, sitting atop the boulder he had chosen, right beside that teacup. He attacked Ueno when Toshiro nodded, running at him and bringing his sword down fast, glancing it off Ueno's blade and narrowly missing his shoulder. Ueno stumbled sideways and, in order to keep from falling, stuck his sword in the sand. Einosuke laughed and took the position Ueno had held before. He could see the laborers easily now but Toshiro was gone from the boulder.

Ueno closed the distance between them carefully, cocking his sword as Einosuke had earlier. He led with his right leg, but at the last instant backed off a half-step and sliced his sword quickly under Einosuke's, in and back out again, dragging it across Einosuke's left thigh. Einosuke's sword hit the sand and he took his hand off its grip in order to touch the wound he'd been given. It was a long and shallow slice, a wan and enigmatic smile, with blood overflowing its lower lip. He grasped his sword with both hands, put his weight on his uninjured leg and charged, but Ueno deflected his thrusts and turned to watch Einosuke stumble past him, down toward the water again.

“While a samurai is practicing
kendo
, young lords are drinking saké,” he said, “while a samurai perfects his riding, young lords…”

But his mind was slower than his sword and before he could find the proper analogy Einosuke attacked again, cutting Ueno's belt and nicking his abdomen. The belt fell partly to the ground, where it caught on his leggings. In order to free it Ueno had to pull his short sword out, and at just that moment Einosuke hit his buttocks with a swift sword slap.

The stretch of ground on which they stood had narrowed as the tide came closer. Einosuke knew that had Ueno not shown up they would have had the boulder freed by then and he would be on his way home to his family. He considered yelling instructions to his laborers, telling them to start work even while the fight went on. Both men, however, would have been better served by fighting single-mindedly, and not by trying to think up insults or give instructions; that was a lesson Ueno seemed to learn more quickly than Einosuke. He moved to take the upper part of the beach again, backing Einosuke toward the water. Einosuke could feel the sand give way beneath his feet, and he looked down at its change of color. If he moved to his right Ueno moved with him, and he could not so easily go left, without widening the bloody smile in his thigh.

Ueno's next assault was so slow at its beginning that Einosuke wanted to run at him. But his left leg complained, and when he put his weight on his right leg, his heel sunk into the sand. And then Ueno's speed increased, his sword held parallel to the tide. He knocked Einosuke's blade away twice, down and then down again, and came in above it with the short sword he had rescued from his belt, cutting both of Einosuke's biceps in a single powerful stroke. Einosuke's arms began to fall in front of him, quite as if they belonged to someone else, and as Ueno prepared to make a proper final thrust, there was Toshiro again, standing in the surf to Einosuke's right.

“Where have you been?” asked Einosuke. “Can't you do something to help me?”

Ueno's last maneuver was textbook, as if he had a practice dummy before him, and not a living, breathing man. He brought his sword from its highest position, poised with its tip pricking the sky, then let it speed through the air horizontally, passing through Einosuke's neck without slowing down, or as if there had been only the slightest turbulence against it, like an unexpected gust of wind from the bay. Einosuke saw the blade pass through Toshiro on its way to him, cutting his brother in half, and he felt it, too, the way it hit him so abruptly, like that irritating slap he had previously given Ueno on his buttocks.

Ueno completed his move by dropping both swords and catching Einosuke's head in midair, grabbing it by its topknot. His face was wild as he swung around toward the laborers, shouting, “Behold your defeated lord!” But the laborers could behold very little from their prone and terrified positions on the ground.

Ueno retrieved his swords and walked across the sand, Einosuke's head bouncing down low against his thigh, and when he looked toward the horses and those other horrified riders, he shouted, “Come to me! Do not make me walk!”

But, in fact, he did walk, to swagger among the laborers, dripping blood from Einosuke's head upon each one.

When the younger of his hirelings, Number III, got closer to him, Ueno gave him Einosuke's head, lest his own horse grow frightened and run, but once he was mounted he took it back again, and twirled it by its topknot, so the others could get a look at his prize. He watched them closely, searching for fear, and then handed the head to Number 75.

“Keep this for me,” he said, then he rode into the forest by himself.

For his part the older man gave the head a gentle touch, clasping Einosuke's cheeks like one might clasp the cheeks of a child. He brought the head up so he could look directly into its eyes, and whispered, “I have lived for more than sixty years but I didn't know what my fate would be until today.”

He trotted to a spot where he could reach into his satchel and take out his grooming implements and begin recombing Einosuke's hair. It was a proper gesture, a respectful one, his hope being that someone might do as much for him, that someone might take a few moments to make him look presentable too, in the unhappy days to come.

34
.
We Can't Have This

TOO MUCH TIME
had passed, and as the tide came in Einosuke's body began to move in such a way that the laborers, even in their terror, feared it might get loose from the fragile grasp of the sand, slide under the water's rough blanket, and be gone. Their leader should have been back by then with castle guards, but since he was not, one man, and then a second, found sticks from the edge of the forest and pressed them against Einosuke's clothing, their eyes nearly closed against the sight of the headless man. They weren't pleased with themselves but they held on and hollered, using their muscles against the tide.

And that was what the castle guards saw when they came running behind the chief laborer, some ten minutes after Ueno and his samurai had gone.

“What have you found?” one of them barked, and the chief laborer let out a relieved sigh, thinking the fight had ended well and the laborers, in the meantime, had discovered some dead creature, perhaps a sea lion, for dead sea lions had washed up along this beach before.

But when the laborers saw the guards and fell on their faces, moaning and crying, the guards, in turn, noticed the Okubo family crest on the sea lion's shoulder, and then the viscera that had launched themselves from the creature's stomach, unfurling out of its neck like enemy flags, and they fell too, next to their subordinates in the sand. It took a full five minutes for them to stand again, to pull out their swords and thrash about screaming for vengeance, and another ten before they found the necessary courage to pull poor Einosuke out of the apathetic and steadily advancing tide. One of the guards walked down the beach and brought back Einosuke's horse which, inexplicably, had not run away, another covered his neck with a laborer's shirt and lifted him up across the horse's saddle, and in an hour they had walked him through the forest, around the southern-loop road to the castle gate.