The Scent of Sake (44 page)

“We can get control of some of their shipping contracts now that they have less sake to ship. They won’t be expecting it.”

Yusuke sucked in his breath and closed his eyes. “I see. . . .” Yamaguchi looked at his aging clerk, face grown lean, shoulders hunched. Was he losing his aggressive push? “Get to the port tomorrow, first thing,” Yamaguchi ordered. “Make sure you get the Omura shipping contracts.”

Yusuke bowed. “Certainly.”

“I’m going over to see Fumi,” Rie announced loudly as she took up her parasol and walked out the entrance to the office where Yoshitaro and Kinnosuke were working. Yoshitaro nodded curtly. What little gains she had made with him after the amputation had disappeared after her decree that Kinnosuke divorce his wife. She could only hope that this too would pass. She had done the right thing. The necessary thing. And yes, for the house. The house was the point.

Rie had called Seisaburo to Fumi and Eitaro’s. She wanted to talk to her children without having Yoshitaro present, and Fumi offered the best pretext. It would be the first time she had un-dertaken a family discussion of a problem in the house without involving Yoshitaro.

Rie twirled her parasol and listened to the sound of her wooden geta on the cobblestones and the raucous voice of the tofu man going house to house with his cartload of bean cake.

“I’m here.” The bell on the slatted gate tinkled as she slid it open and hurried to the entrance.

“Come in, Mother.” Fumi gave a quick bow.

“And here’s my precious grandchild,” Rie said, patting the head of Hirokichi’s sister, Mie, who peered around her mother at her grandmother.

“Sei is already here,” Fumi said. “They’re in the parlor.” She placed slippers on the floor in front of her mother and led the way

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to the room she had decorated with a special ikebana arrangement for her mother’s visit.

Eitaro stood and took Rie’s arm. “Please have a seat, Mother.” He bowed and indicated a zabuton backing to the tokonoma alcove.

“And how are you, Sei?” Rie asked her son. “What new surprise have you for us today?” She smiled.

“I think it’s you who has the surprise today, Mother. Eitaro tells me that you ordered Kinnosuke to divorce his wife.”

Rie flushed at the accusation. “I just didn’t see any alternative, when I learned that she had been speaking ill of Fumi and Hiro at Yamaguchi’s. It was a dishonor, and worse, disloyal.”

“What exactly did she say, Mother?” Eitaro asked. Fumi moved closer to her mother.

“According to O-Natsu’s friend, she accused me of favoritism to you and Hiro, over Yoshi and Ume.” Rie frowned, at the same time feeling a twinge of guilt.

Eitaro pursed his lips and looked at his hands on the table. Fumi leaned toward Rie. “And has he divorced Nobu?”

“He did so, of course,” Rie replied, feeling a deep regret. “She has left.”

“I hope it won’t affect Kinno’s work,” Seisaburo said.

“I doubt it,” Rie replied. “You know how close he has always been to Yoshi, and Yoshi is totally dependent on him since his accident. Kinno has been extremely attentive to Yoshi lately, even more than usual. Yoshi has particularly urged him to stay, and they have always been so close.”

“Well, I hope it doesn’t create a problem for you. Will it be uncomfortable for you to work with him now?” Eitaro asked.

Rie fingered the teacup in front of her. “I’m convinced his support of Yoshi won’t waver.” She hoped her words didn’t reflect a hint of doubt.

“What about his children?” Fumi asked.

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“They’re still with their father, at least the two sons are,” Rie said. “I think Nobu may have taken the daughter with her.”

Fumi frowned and hugged Mie.

Rie took out her comb and twirled it in both hands. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s not a disaster. We mustn’t let it paralyze us. This is an exciting time, with so many new opportunities. We need to move in new directions, not be stalled over something that’s past.” She did not mean to sound cold. She simply had to refocus them away from the personal and onto business. “There’s a bigger problem. Now it seems that Yamaguchi has captured our shipping contracts with three of our shippers. We have to do something.”

Seisaburo leaned forward. “Well, I’ve been thinking about shipping anyway. We have to negotiate our charters every winter.”

“That’s so,” Rie agreed.

“Wouldn’t it be better if we had more control over shipping?”

“Of course. And now with Yamaguchi’s move it’s a crisis. Could we buy ships of our own?” Rie asked, taking out her fan.

Sei glanced at his mother. “Buy ships? No brewer has done it yet, which might give us a real advantage, to be independent of the charter agents.” He looked at his mother, then Eitaro.

“There’s still the question of the loaders, the stevedores,” Eitaro said, “but as shippers we’d definitely have more control over costs.”

Rie lit up at the news. “Well, what are the risks? What will the long-range effects be? This is something new. We need to think of what would happen if we lost a ship in a storm.”

“We’re so diversified, Mother, as you have always urged, that I think we would survive the loss of a ship,” Eitaro said.

“Then that’s decided. Now I have to persuade Yoshi and Kinno,” she said, frowning and tapping her chin with her fan.

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“Of course Kinno has always looked ahead. It may not be a problem. Why borrow trouble, Father always said.”

Eitaro cleared his throat. “I was thinking. Could we start wholesaling? We have good sources of Yamada Nishiki rice. This would give us extra funds we could use for buying a ship or two.”

“We have no choice about ships. We have to counter Yamaguchi’s move,” Rie said. “It’s true that wholesaling is more traditional, but also the dealers and routes are entrenched. With ships we won’t have that kind of opposition, at least from other brewers. None of them has gone into buying ships.”

“Ships are the key to our biggest markets,” Seisaburo urged. “And we have stayed ahead because of our willingness to inno-vate and take risks.”

“I’ll go back and talk to Kinno and Yoshi. Give them something to think about besides Nobu.”

A few weeks later Yoshitaro hobbled into the number one kura on his new crutches. It was his first venture there since he lost his leg. It was winter, brewing was in full swing, and the kurabito were hurrying from one part of the compound to another. Yoshitaro paused to rest against the wall near the entrance.

“
Ah,
Master. How good to see you again. We were all so concerned.”

Yoshitaro looked around. It was Toji, bowing repeatedly, his ruddy face beaming. “Do you wish to,
ah . . .
may I help you?” He glanced at Yoshitaro’s one leg, then looked down and bowed.

“Thank you, Toji-san. I’ll manage. I just want to look at the filter.”

Yoshitaro hopped toward the boat-shaped wooden press where the final stage of brewing took place, the residue of lees filtered out from the brew to leave the liquid clear and nearly colorless. Minutes later two kurabito stopped to bow and ask if he needed help. He shook his head and murmured, “No, thank

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you.”
They’re obviously embarrassed,
he thought. He felt an angry flush move from his neck toward his forehead. And the missing leg still pained so that he often bit his lip. The slash of the samurai sword across the back of his thigh was still agony. He leaned against the filter, his crutches resting against it, grateful that the two kurabito had gone elsewhere.

If these men, people he had worked with for years and knew him so well, could not bear to look at him on his crutches, how would he ever face O-Sada? How would she be able to look at the stump, the remnant of his leg? It was so grotesque that he himself could barely stand to look at it. Tama had tried to keep from wincing when she had to change the dressing, but Yoshitaro could sense her distaste. Kinno had been so supportive, a real savior. And his mother treated him as if nothing had happened. He was still Kinzaemon XI of the Omura House, she kept reminding him.

It would be too painful to go again to the Sawaraya. It was possible that O-Toki and O-Sada would welcome him again. They probably would, but it would not be the same. He was still O-Sada’s patron and O-Toki’s natural son and benefactor. He would not forget their financial needs. They would probably pity him, but pity was not what he craved when he went to the Sawaraya. It was easy to understand why his father had gone there so often over the years. There they accepted a man as he was, made him feel important, even attractive. Attractive. He could never be considered so again. The Sawaraya was the only place a man could totally relax. But nothing could induce him to go back now. How he would survive without those visits, without O-Sada’s soft ways, he could not imagine.

As for children, he had no wish to approach Tama. There was no need for further exploration of a possible pregnancy. That meant that Ume, the miracle of O-Sada’s love, would be his only child and would represent the next generation. Like Rie,

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she would one day have an adopted husband. The history of the house would repeat itself. Yoshitaro reached for his crutches to return to the office. He must make sure that Ume became the focus of attention, not only his own and Kinnosuke’s, but also his mother’s.

As Rie walked toward the kitchen one morning she heard excited voices in the inner office. She hurried along the corridor and opened the shoji.

Kinnosuke glanced toward Rie and said, his thin voice higher than usual, “The loyalists have won, Oku-san. It’s happened, just as Seisaburo predicted.”

Yoshitaro struggled on his crutches to move closer to his mother. “They say there was fighting in the streets of Kyoto between Sat-Cho samurai and Bakufu forces,” he said. “Now they’re saying the shogun has relinquished power to the emperor, and the emperor has gone to Edo with his court.”

Rie hooked her thumbs in her obi and looked at Yoshitaro, then at Kinnosuke. “Well! The end of the Tokugawa shoguns! I never thought I would see the day. What does this mean for us, I wonder?”

“Too soon to tell, but we’ve got to be on guard,” Kinnosuke

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said. “There’s going to be an emergency meeting of the Brewers Association this afternoon.”

“Make sure Eitaro and Seisaburo know, Yoshi,” Rie said, feeling a sense of urgency.

“We’ll all go,” Yoshitaro said.

Rie tapped her fan on the table. “I want to know everything that’s discussed. In detail.”

Yoshitaro dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Don’t worry, Mother. We’ll give you a full report.”

Rie spent the rest of the day in agitated activity. She followed O-Natsu and the maids around the house, at one point grabbing the feather duster from O-Yuki and flourishing it furiously in the parlor at each item in the Butsudan and tokonoma. Early in the afternoon she bustled out to the compound, tied back her sleeves, and attacked the barrels with a brush. Then she hurried back into the inner office, took the ledgers onto a worktable, and turned pages, following columns of figures with her fingers. “Don’t overlook anything,” she muttered to herself. She sat there long after all the clerks had left, unaware of the time until O-Natsu called her to dinner.