Gai-Jin (133 page)

Dmitri twisted and turned in his bed, striving to put the pain for his nation away from him but could not.

In the Club a noisy, drunken row was still in progress amongst the few remaining traders at the bar. A few naval and army officers, Tweet and others were at tables scattered about the room, having final nightcaps.

Near the window, Count Zergeyev and the newly arrived Swiss Minister, Fritz Erlicher, sat at a table. The Russian hid his amusement and leaned over their glasses of port. “They’re all fools, Herr Erlicher,” he said above the hubbub.

“Do you think this young Struan means it?”

“He means it, but whether or not the policy is ever implemented remains to be seen.” They spoke French, and Zergeyev explained the conflict of mother and son within Struan’s. “That’s the current rumor, she pulls the strings though he has the title quite legally.”

“If it’s implemented it would be good, for us both.”

“Ah! You have a proposal?”

“An idea, Count Zergeyev.” Erlicher untied his cravat and breathed easier, the air in the Club smoky and close, the smell of beer and urine heavy,
and the sawdust of the floor in need of replacement. “We are a small, independent nation with few resources but plenty of courage, and skills. The British, for whom you have no love, monopolize most arms manufacturing and sales throughout Europe—though Krupp’s factory looks promising.” The bearded, heavyset man smiled. “We hear Mother Russia already has a substantial interest there.”

“You astonish me.”

Erlicher laughed. “I astonish myself sometimes, Herr Count. But I wanted to mention we’ve the beginnings of fine gun and cannon foundries, privately I can tell you we are negotiating with Gatling to make his machine gun under license, and can supply you liberally with any arms you might need on a long-term basis.”

“Thank you, my dear sir, but we’ve no such need. Tsar Alexander II is a peace-loving reformer, last year he emancipated our serfs, this year he’s reforming the army, navy, bureaucracy, the judiciary, education, everything.”

Erlicher grinned. “And meanwhile he’s presiding over the biggest land conquest in history, with the subjugation of more peoples in history, except for Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes. Genghis rode westwards,” his smile became a beam, “while your Tsar’s hordes spread eastwards. Over the whole continent! Imagine that! Over the whole continent to the sea, through Siberia to the Kamchatka Peninsula. And that’s not the end. Is it?”

“Isn’t it?” the Count said, smiling.

“We hear the Tsar’s hoping to pass through your new fortress of Vladivostok to the Japans, then north to the Kuriles, north again to the Aleutians, at last to join with Russian Alaska that rolls down to northern California. While the world sleeps. Astonishing.” Erlicher brought out his cigar case and offered it. “Please—they’re the best Cuban.”

Zergeyev took one and smelt it and rolled it between his fingers, and accepted a flame. “Thank you. Excellent. Are all the Swiss dreamers like you?” he asked pleasantly.

“No, sir, Count. But we are peace lovers, and good hosts to peace lovers, but we stay in our mountains, well armed, and watch the world outside. Happily our mountains are prickly to those who come uninvited.”

Another burst of shouting distracted them for a moment, Lunkchurch, Swann, Grimm and others more vociferous than usual.

“I’ve never been to Switzerland. You should see Russia, we have many sights there to feast the eye.”

“I’ve been to your beautiful St. Petersburg. Three years ago, I was in our Embassy there for a few months. Best city in Europe I think, if you are nobility, wealthy, or a foreign diplomat. You must miss it.”

“I bleed for it, more than you can imagine.” Zergeyev sighed. “Not long now and I’ll be there. I’m told my next posting will be London—then I will visit your mountains.”

“I would be honored to be your host.” Erlicher puffed his cigar and blew a smoke ring. “Then my business suggestion doesn’t interest you?”

“It’s certainly true that the British monopolize all manner of enterprises, all sea routes and seas, all manner of wealths from subjugated lands”—now there was no warmth in Zergeyev’s smile—“which should be shared.”

“Then we should talk again, in quieter surroundings?”

“Over lunch, why not? I would certainly inform my superiors of any discussion. If there is ever a future need, where should I contact you, or your superiors?”

“Here is my card. If you ask for me in Zurich, I’m easily found.” Erlicher watched him reading the superb calligraphy of the miraculous new printing process they had just developed. Count Zergeyev had elegant features, patrician in every pore, with perfect clothes where he knew his own were mediocre and that his forebears were peasants. But he did not envy him.

I’m Swiss, he was thinking. I’m free. I don’t have to bow a knee or doff my cap to any king or tsar or priest or man—if I don’t want to. This poor fellow’s still a serf in a way. Thank God for my mountains and my valleys, and my brothers and sisters and living amongst them, all free as I am free and will remain free.

Near the bar, half drunk and swaying, Lunkchurch was comically squaring off against another man, shouting at the top of his voice, “That there eff’ing Struan’s blown his eff’ing rocker wot ever way you eff’ing want and no eff’ing …”

“For goodness’ sake, Barnaby, stop your foul language,” the Reverend Tweet shouted, pushing through the crush for the door, his collar slightly askew and his face flushed and sweating. “When you think about it from a fair, English point of view you have to agree, morally, young Struan has the right approach!”

Lunkchurch drunkenly made a very rude gesture in his face. “Stuff your eff’ing santimonio eff’ing doodle do!”

Purple with rage, the Reverend Tweet bunched his fist and threw an ineffectual blow. Those near Lunkchurch jerked him out of the way as usual, as others surrounded Tweet and soothed his soaring tirade, and then Charlie Grimm, always ready to take up the gauntlet, any gauntlet, roared above the noise and through his own sodden haze. “Barnaby, prepare to meet thy Maker!”

Helpfully, those nearby gave them room and, to cheers, the two men began battering each other with abandon.

“Drinks on the ’ouse,” the chief barman ordered for those still remaining. “Scotch for the Rev, port for the Count and ’is guest. Now you two, stop fighting!”

Tweet accepted the drink and tottered to a table well away from the
fighters who were now rolling on the floor, their belligerence undiminished. The barman sighed, emptied a bucket of slops over them, walked around the bar, picked up one in each hand and, to more cheers, cast them into High Street. “Gents, it’s time, gents, please!” he said to howls that were quickly muted. Everyone finished their drinks and began to leave. Zergeyev and Fritz Erlicher raised their hats politely to the clergyman.

“Rev,” Swann said—he was the thin trader who acted as the deacon. “How about looking in on the sinners in Drunk Town?”

“Well, Mr. Swann, it is, how shall I say, on the way.”

In her little house in the Yoshiwara, Hinodeh waited. Furansu-san had said he would arrive tonight but he might be late. She was dressed to undress, her night kimono and under-kimonos the finest, her hair shining, tortoise-shell and silver combs decorating the swept-up coiffure that showed the nape of her neck perfectly, the combs only there to take away—to allow her hair to fall to her waist, hiding the erotic.

I wonder what is so erotic about the nape of a woman’s neck to men, she asked herself, and why is hiding it erotic too? Men, how strange! But she knew that letting her hair fall excited Furansu-san like any client and this was her only concession to their pact. This alone she would do in the light.

In the dark before dawn, when he was with her, her
maiko
would softly awaken her and she would dress in the dark, if he awoke or if he did not. Then she would move to the second room and close the door, her
maiko
guarding the door, and would sleep again if she was tired. He had agreed never to enter this sanctuary—after the first time she had insisted: “In this way the privacy of the night may extend into the day,” she had said.

“Please?”

“In this way that which you saw once will never change, whatever the gods decree.”

A tremor went through her. Much as she tried, she could not cast out the sensation that the seed of the vile Sore God he had implanted within her was gathering strength, growing, readying to burst forth everywhere. Daily, she scrutinized herself. Minutely. Only Raiko was trusted to make sure those places she could not see herself were examined as closely and were, as yet, blemishless. “Daily is too much, Hinodeh,” Raiko had said before she had agreed to the contract. “Nothing maybe happen for years…. ”

“So sorry, Raiko-san. Daily, it is a condition.”

“Why are you agreeing to this at all? You have a good future in our World. You may never reach first class, but you are educated, your mama-san says you have a long list of clients who are pleased with you, she said
you could marry a well-to-do merchant or farmer or sword maker, that you are sensible and would never be wanting for a good match.”

“Thank you for your concern, Raiko-san, but you agreed with my mama-san that you would not question me or pry into my past, where I come from or to seek reasons. In return you share with her a percentage of the money I will earn for this year, and perhaps another. Let me say again, the reason I accept the possible contract is that I wish it.”

Oh, yes, I wish it and how lucky I am.

Now she was twenty-two. Born on a farm outside Nagasaki in the province of Hizen on the South Island, and when she was five, she was invited into the Floating World by one of the many women intermediaries who travelled the country, seeking children who could become possible geisha, art persons, those who would be trained, like Koiko, in the arts and not purely as a
netsujo-jin
, a person for passion. Her parents agreed and were given money and a promissory note for five yearly payments, beginning in ten years, the amount depending on the child’s success.

As an art person she had not been successful—at the samisen or singing or dancing or as an actress—but as a person of passion from fifteen when she made her debut, better educated than her contemporaries, she soon became important to her mama-san and to herself. In those days her name was Gekko, Moonbeam, and though there were many foreigners in Nagasaki at that time, she knew not one of them, her House catering only to Japanese of the highest order.

One October, the Month Without Gods, she received a new client. He was a year older than her, eighteen, a goshi and the son of a goshi—an average swordsman, average soldier but to her her dream person. His name was Shin Komoda.

Their passion blossomed. As much as the mama-san tried to curb their mutual magnetism—the youth was poor, his bills remained unpaid—nothing she could say or do had any effect. Until the spring of the following year. Without telling Gekko, the mama-san went to the youth’s home and bowed before his mother and, politely, asked for payment.

There was no money to pay. The mother asked for time.

The youth was forbidden to see Gekko again. Outwardly he obeyed his parents, but inwardly nothing they said or did had any effect. Within a week, disguised, they ran away together, disappearing into the sprawling port. There they changed their names and with some money she had saved, and jewelry she brought with her they purchased passage in steerage on a coastal ship sailing that day for Yedo.

Within the week Shin Komoda was dishonored in his village and declared ronin. Again the mama-san went to see his mother. It was a matter of face, of honor, that their son’s bills were paid. His mother’s only possession
of value and her pride, was her long and beautiful plume of hair. With her husband’s agreement she went to a wigmaker in Nagasaki. Without hesitation the man bought. The money was just enough to pay their son’s bills. So, for them, honor was satisfied.

In Yedo, at the limit of their money, Gekko and Shin managed to find safe lodgings in the slums of the city. And a Buddhist priest to marry them. Without papers, either of them, and their real past obliterated, life was difficult, almost impossible, but for a year they lived happily, keeping to themselves, on the threshold of poverty. That did not matter for they basked in each other’s company and their love increased and was fruitful, and though her money dwindled to nothing, however much she tried to be prudent and his pay hardly fed them—the only work he could find was as a guard at a low-class brothel that was not even in the Yedo Yoshiwara—it did not matter.

Nothing mattered. They were together. They were surviving. And she kept their two tiny rooms spotless and made of them a palace and sanctuary for him and the child and as much as she offered and offered, he refused and refused. “Never! Never never never again will any other man ever know you, swear it!” She swore it.

When their son was a year old Shin was killed in a brawl. With his death the light went out of her.

A week later the brothel mama-san propositioned her. She thanked her and refused, saying she was returning to their home in Nara. In the market she bought a bright new candle, a red one, and that night when the child was asleep, quietly she lit it, to watch it and to think what she should do until the flame died, petitioning the gods, promising them that when the last fluttering was gone she would decide what was best for her son, asking for their help to make the decision wise.

The flame had died long since, the decision so simple, so correct: She must send her son back to his father’s parents. Her son must go alone—she must pretend she and her husband had committed
jinsai
, joint ritual suicide, in apology to his parents for the hurt they had done them. To be accepted the child must have at least a year of money, preferably more. He must be clothed well and travel well with a trusted nurse, more money. Only in this way could he gain his heritage, samurai. Last, there was no point obeying an oath to the dead when the future of their living child was at stake.

In the morning she left her son with a neighbor and with the last of her money bought the best kimono and parasol she could find in the thieves market, then, penniless, went to the best hairdresser near the gates of Yedo’s Yoshiwara. There she bartered a month’s future earnings for the best up-to-date hairstyle and massage and facial and manicure and pedicure and other intimacies—and information.