Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (5 page)

Because Manjiro had not known what to do with the chocolates he had hidden them in his father's room, behind a screen and beneath a window that was kept open at night to accommodate Lord Okubo's love of cold air. He had been afraid to speak of the unexpected gift before Tsune arrived, for neither Lord Okubo nor Einosuke had visited a foreign vessel yet, and he knew they would be angry with him for accepting the gift at all. But the presence of Tsune gave him some latitude. Until quite recently everyone had said she was destined to marry high, an opinion that, by bestowing a foreign gift like this, Manjiro, rather than promoting his own vague hopes, oddly seemed to magnify.

“I know you remember our meeting in Kyoto, Manjiro-san,” Tsune said. She had taken the chocolate box from him and placed it on the tatami. “I know you remember the occasion, but do you remember our conversation? I do. I remember what we talked about that day, but I think you do not.”

In fact Manjiro remembered every second of his time with Tsune, not only what they had said, but that he had hoped against hope that when they got older there might be a marriage arrangement for them. Einosuke had talked with him about it once or twice several years ago, but with the advancing wealth and stature of Tsune's clan, the possibility had grown slight. So Manjiro's tendency was to dismiss this small resumption of such talk now, wondering only what had changed to once again make him a more likely candidate. That Einosuke had successfully married her sister meant little because Einosuke was Lord Okubo's eldest son and heir.

“We spoke of lots of things,” he said, “and I remember them all. What seems ironic now is that for a while we tried to guess what people in foreign countries might be like. I remember that your interest was as keen as my own.”

He was ashamed of it, but Manjiro wanted to work the conversation around to his time aboard the foreign ship, so that he might tell Tsune about his private conversation with that strange and black-faced entertainer. And since he had not been able to do it with the chocolates, he was now trying to use the past.

“Ah, then you do remember,” she said. “You bragged that you would travel, that you would subdue foreign enemies and one day know the world. I did not believe you then, but how proud we all are now.”

Manjiro reddened and looked down. By speaking so directly wasn't she saying that his maneuver had been too obvious, that he was too brazenly asking for the compliment he had received? She gazed at him steadily, and just then Lord Okubo entered the room. Einosuke and Fumiko were with him, O-bata behind them, trying not to trip under the weight of a tea and
sembei
tray. When Einosuke opened the
shoji
, the March air played upon the replica garden as if to further remind the two potential lovers of their conversation at the edge of the original one. The raked lines of gravel and the garden's mauve walls added definition to the moss that clung to each of Einosuke's boulders, both large and small. Manjiro was so taken by the sight, and by the nearness of Tsune, that he failed to notice everyone else focusing on the strange-looking box.

“Manjiro has given me his welcoming gift,” Tsune mildly said. “Whatever might it be?”

The box seemed dismal and battered in the good new light, a poor welcoming gift if one didn't know it had come from an American. Both Lord Okubo and Einosuke looked at it with critical eyes. The box had no doubt been quite lovely once, and a close inspection would even now show that it was strongly made. But its edges were turned down, the straight line of its bottom bent up at the midway point, and on the side that was most easily visible to them was that crisp black thumbprint.

“What's in it?” asked Lord Okubo. “Its weird look is not an act of kindness to the eye.”

“It's got a smudge,” Einosuke said.

Manjiro was stung by their remarks and spoke gravely. “When I was leaving the American ship a man gave this to me. He was one of the singers I told you about. Inside this box are ‘chocolates,' an after-dinner sweet.”

Even as he spoke the box improved before their eyes. Now they could see that it might as easily be called “old” as “battered,” and age became an asset, just as it would be in a box that held an antique tea bowl.

“We didn't know about this!” Lord Okubo said. “Did you report it to anyone at the Shogunate? Did you put it on the list with the gifts man?”

His father's words were stern, but they still contained awe, so before another family argument could begin, Tsune picked the box up and turned it in the chilly air, focusing everyone's attention on the thumbprint.

“What an odd idea,” said Lord Okubo. “The Americans place their seal on things by directly touching the inkstone with their hands. Look how clean the mark is, how well practiced, see the ornate articulation of the lines.”

Indeed, it was a perfect thumbprint, an accident of the moment, perhaps, but from the point of view now favored by all of the men in the room, it seemed to seal the box, to warn against its opening. When they tried to focus on the way the lines of the thumbprint traversed the box's seam, it made them a little cross-eyed.

“What does chocolate taste like?” Tsune asked. While she'd been holding the box she had noticed not only the thumbprint, but an inlay of satin flowers on its top, one a rose, another perhaps a chrysanthemum. “After all, the design is too busy, don't you think?” she said, and then to everyone's dismay she placed the box back down on the tatami and opened it. It was an extraordinary thing to do. No one else would have done it. A box that came from an American ship was a gift that should be given many times, passed up high. At this early stage of the American presence, in fact, Lord Okubo was of the opinion that no one should consider opening it save the Shogun himself.

“Chocolate is edible, is it not?” she asked. “If it is an after-dinner sweet can I assume it is an edible thing?”

The odor of the chocolate, faint but clear, rode out on the cold air and made them all stare at the individual candies that had appeared. Manjiro did not know it but he had stored the candies well. Because he had kept them directly under his father's window the designs that covered each piece had remained intact and intricate. There were twenty-eight candies, in alternate rows of sixes and fives. Under their ornately carved caps, they were uniformly shaped domes, about the size of mushrooms.

“Look,” said Fumiko, who was first to recover from the shock of what her sister had done. “Each piece has an individual design, like
netsuke
. Here I see a leafy pattern, there a cluster of grapes.” She didn't touch the candies, but put a finger so close to them that Einosuke thought she had.

“Don't do that!” he hissed. “Let's replace the lid now. Maybe there is something here to salvage.”

He only meant that maybe the thumbprint could be realigned, that they might still be able to pass this rare gift along, but he should not have spoken. The gift, after all, now belonged to his sister-in-law. Lord Okubo grumbled and Manjiro stared out at the garden where his brother's boulders were like fifteen large chocolates in a box of their own, but Tsune acted quickly, and saved Einosuke from embarrassment. She had taken a tiny knife from her
obi
a moment before. Her intention had been to cut one of the chocolates into wedges, so that each of them might have a taste, but she changed her intention without changing the movement of her hand.

“As usual Einosuke is right,” she said. “But before we close it let me arrange these things so that their designs all point the same way.”

She handed the lid to Fumiko, then used the tip of her knife to turn the chocolates until the cluster of grapes on the top of one moved in congress with the filigreed pine needles on another. She made the oval acorns atop the chocolates at the corners of the box look like sentries with fat round guns.

“That's better,” she said. “Now it is more pleasing to the eye.” She would have closed the box immediately then, but Keiko and Masako came into the room, Keiko struggling under the weight of her fat baby brother.

“What's better?” asked Masako. “Let's see.”

The side of the box's lid with the thumbprint on it was facing Fumiko, but the thumbprint on the box's base was not. That misalignment was the only thing that kept her from instantly slamming the lid down. Tsune might be destined to marry higher than she, but unlike the three men in the room, she would not hesitate to interfere. Just as her sister's self-absorption had nearly let her cut one of the chocolates apart, so her second daughter's curiosity would surely send her hand out to mess up the order of the chocolates again, maybe even spilling them onto the floor.

“Stay a little back, dear,” she said. “Satisfy your curiosity with your eyes this time.”

Because it was unlike her mother to speak abruptly, Masako did as she was told, but Fumiko's words also served to bring Keiko around.

“Okay then, what is it?” she asked. “Here, Masako, take our Jun-chan.”

A stream of liquid was drooling from the baby's mouth, and when Masako took him from her sister's arms a fine line of it arched out into the air, falling down across the nearest corner of the chocolate box. It settled over the guardian acorn like a thick strand of spider web.

“Chikusho
, “said Lord Okubo. “What do we do now?”

“Is it bean paste?” asked Keiko. “If it's bean paste simply give that one to Junichiro. If it's bean paste I don't want any at all.”

“It is not bean paste, dear,” said Tsune. She still had her knife in her hand but she was looking directly at Manjiro. Her look seemed to say, “Don't you agree that we have no choice now but to eat the piece that the baby has spit on?”

Manjiro had been sitting pretty glumly all this time. He had given the chocolates to Tsune because there was something in it of the flirtation they had had in their youth, and, of course, because he wanted to show off, but the reactions of the others had brought him down. Now, however, Tsune was giving him a chance to find his previous mood and he smiled. “Let's eat it,” he said out loud. “After that we can close the whole thing up again, pass it on.”

Tsune laughed, and as soon as she heard the easing of tensions, Keiko laughed too, taking her aunt's free arm. Masako, however, who had been struggling under the baby's weight, finally sat him down. She enjoyed mischief more than anyone, but she also had her mother's sense of protocol. “Such a plan will leave a hole in the box,” she said, “an empty space at its corner while all the other spaces are full.”

The idea really was too frivolous, even Tsune knew it, but how would it be to leave the corner chocolate as it was, covered with baby drool?

“Maybe we could put something in its place,” said Lord Okubo, “a piece of fruit or an actual
netsuke
, if we can find one that small.”

He began touching his clothing as if he might right then come up with a
netsuke
just the right size, and Junichiro, whom no one was caring for, fell over onto his side. It was then that Tsune stuck the ruined chocolate with her knife, pulling it from the box. The knife was in the chocolate's heart and when she applied a little pressure it split into two equal halves.

“I don't want any,” said Masako. “I don't like bean paste, either. On that, at least, I can agree with Keiko.”

Tsune quickly cut each of the candy halves into thirds. “Without Masako there are six of us,” she said. “Isn't that nice?”

The acorn adorning the top of the chocolate had not broken apart as well as its body had. When the chocolate was initially halved the acorn had been halved too, but now each acorn half affixed itself to a one-sixth piece. The center of the candy was softer and apparently stickier than the candy's outside, for when Tsune held up her knife they could all see bits of the white stuff stuck to the blade. She put the knife in her mouth, letting Manjiro see the sharpness of it against her tongue.

“What does it taste like, Auntie?” asked Keiko. “Tell me, does it truly taste like bean paste?”

Tsune pointed the knife at the ceiling. “Not like bean paste,” she said, “nothing like beans at all.”

That was enough for Keiko. She took a one-sixth piece of chocolate and popped it into her mouth. It was rude to go first and she only hoped her mother would notice that she had stayed away from the pieces with the acorns. Pretty soon worry about her mother went away, however, when the taste of the candy came over her like a wave.

“It's good,” she told her aunt. “It makes me want to close my eyes.

After that Manjiro and Fumiko and Tsune took the other three pieces without the acorns, rolling them around in their mouths. When they were finished Fumiko picked up the two acorn pieces, placing one each in the hands of her husband and father-in-law.

“It's a strange thing,” she told them. “I think it's overly sweet. Perhaps one small piece like this is enough.”

When Masako heard her mother's words and surprised everyone by starting to cry, her father and grandfather each offered her his piece of candy, Lord Okubo even joking that, though it was all right for the others, until the treaty negotiations were done, he felt it best that he stay clear of anything that might be construed as foreign trade.

“Please, Ma-chan,” he said, “eat mine.”

Masako took the candy from her grandfather and ate it before her mother could intervene. And since her father still had his hand open, she took his piece, too, broke the acorn off its top and pushed it into Junichiro's still drooly mouth. The baby looked surprised. He closed his mouth and flapped his arms and fell over on the tatami one more time. “Now we've all had some,” Masako said, and though that wasn't quite true, Lord Okubo and Einosuke both felt satisfied.

As for the candy itself, none who had eaten it had liked it very much. They had all lied. Maybe they thought that to tell the truth would be a reflection on Manjiro, who, so far as they knew, was the only man in Japan to have thus far received a personal gift from America.