After lunch when I had presented the painting to him, he stood stunned for a moment, then bowed so low I thought he would fall forward. “I am very honored,” he said quickly, his eyes directed to the floor in formality.
I returned his bow. “It isn’t half as good as having the real garden, but I thought you might enjoy it anyway.” Then I took the chance to tell him, “I don’t think anyone else could have done a better job taking care of me.”
He never lifted his eyes from the floor, but his voice was firm and clear. “I sometimes think it has been the other way around,” Matsu said.
We returned to the Tama Shrine in the afternoon. Matsu was surprised when I chose to go there. I was anxious about leaving and I wanted to walk somewhere. Somehow I felt going to the shrine might give me the sense of peace that I needed. This time after I entered the three torii gates, I went through the ritual of washing, removing my shoes, and bowing three times without taking any cues from Matsu. It wasn’t that I had gone there with any special intention to pray at the shrine. I knew all the praying in the world wouldn’t stop the war from continuing, or make my parents love each other again. I wanted to leave a message on the wall by the altar, tacked alongside all the other hopeful requests so that even if I never returned to Tarumi, something of me would remain.
OCTOBER 29, 1938
Last night Matsu prepared salmon and sliced cucumbers topped with miso paste. I watched him prepare the entire meal with the delicacy of hand which has always amazed me. All the while, he sipped from a glass of beer and acted as if it were just another evening in a series of many more. I tried to act normal, too, though the anxiousness gnawing in the pit of my stomach was a constant reminder I was leaving.
After dinner Matsu didn’t remove the bowls as usual, but stayed at the table talking as we had done the evening before with Sachi. I told him I hoped to begin taking classes again once I was back in Hong Kong. He said he might eventually go to Tokyo to visit Fumiko for a few days. She’d been trying to get him to go for years, and it might be a good time. I agreed that it would be a perfect time for him to make a visit. After that he would spend time with Sachi, maybe eventually move to Yamaguchi. I saw him watch me closely as he told me this, but I simply agreed with a smile. Then when we had exhausted our conversation, Matsu stood up and took the daruma doll I had given him down from the kitchen shelf. He turned its face toward me so I could see he had plainly drawn in one eye. “When you return, I’ll draw in the other,” he said. “Now you should get some sleep, you have a long journey tomorrow.”
I was up very early, moving quietly through the house and out into Matsu’s garden. Fall had deadened some of the colors, but there still remained the quiet beauty I would always miss. Nothing had given me more solace those first few days I was in Tarumi than sitting in the garden. In it, life seemed to have stopped, and a separate life contained itself in its beauty. I sat by the pond for the last time, remembering. I had learned the difference between a Japanese flowering cherry tree and a weeping Higan cherry tree. I could almost see Sachi again when she came down from Yamaguchi after I’d been hurt, leaning over with Matsu as they planted a new tree. I felt Keiko’s white blossoms that flowed over the fence and dusted my head. These images turned around and around in my mind as I listened to the wind crying through the bamboo fence.
I was about to go inside when I heard a small sound by the front gate. I had grown accustomed to checking on these ghostly occurrences with hopes that they might be real. I moved quietly toward the gate, so I wouldn’t scare whoever or whatever it was. I couldn’t see any shadows between the bamboo slats as I strained to listen for another sound. Except for the wind, there was nothing out of the ordinary. I grasped the handle of the gate and quickly swung it open. The road was empty, but this time Keiko had really been here. Attached to the gate was a single pressed white blossom.
Even if you walk the same road a hundred times, you’ll find something different each time. It was dark and overcast when we started out for the train station. The air felt heavy with rain. For the first time, the road ahead of us looked dark and menacing. Gray waves pounded hard and loud. I strained to take one last glimpse of the garden before Matsu closed the gate behind us. Then he turned around and began to walk down the road at a quick pace. Even loaded down with my possessions, he didn’t slow his pace.
By the time we reached the station, it had begun to rain lightly. Matsu and I put down my suitcase and boxes and waited in silence. My throat was so dry, it was all for the best that we didn’t talk. I could barely swallow. Suddenly I wanted Matsu to leave at once. His waiting only made it more difficult.
“Why don’t you go back before it really begins to rain? The train will be here any minute. There’s no use our both being here,” I said, swallowing hard.
Matsu looked uneasily around the station. “What about all the boxes?”
“I’ll get the porter to help,” I answered. “You’d better go,” I strained, my voice breaking.
Matsu looked at me and understood. “I think you will be fine, Stephen-san,” he bowed.
But instead of bowing back, I waited for Matsu to stand straight again before I put my arms around him in a hug. For a moment, he simply stood there frozen, but I didn’t back away until I felt him lift his arms around me.
Only then did I let go. “So we’ll write. And you’ll take care of Sachi?” I asked, my voice sounding high, much younger as it searched for reassurance.
“As always,” he answered.
I thought of what a fine father he would have been. “I hope the war …” I began, trying to say something about it, but not finding the words.
“It is another life. It will never have anything to do with us,” he finished. “I wish you a safe journey, Stephen-san.”
Matsu bowed low, then looked at me a moment longer before he left. At the edge of the station he paused. I was tempted to run after him, but my legs wouldn’t move. I could only lean forward and watch him disappear from sight.
I sat back in the train, and wanted to cry. Outside, a splattering of rain ran across the window. Though it was only half-filled, the car felt hot and airless. I noticed the people settling in their seats, and it was only then that I saw a brown parcel tucked in among my belongings. I knew immediately it was from Matsu. I unwrapped the paper to find two black leather-bound books. There was no note. I let my hand run over the thick, soft leather covers before flipping through the empty white pages. Then as the train rattled toward Kobe, taking me away from Tarumi, I took out my fountain pen, opened one of the books, and began to write.
THE SAMURAI’S GARDEN. Copyright © 1994 by Gail Tsukiyama.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Book design by Ellen R. Sasahara
ISBN: 978-1-4299-6514-9
First eBook Edition : July 2011
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Tsukiyama. Gail.
The Samurai’s garden/Gail Tsukiyama.
p. cm.
1. Japan—History—1926-1943—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.S84S26 1995
94-44996
813’.54—dc20
CIP
A Reading Group Guide
The title of the novel obviously alludes to Matsu’s garden, but could anyone else in the book be considered a “samurai”? Why?
All three central characters–Stephen, Matsu, and Sachi–?nd some sense of comfort in tending the garden. What are some of the metaphors for the garden and how are they worked out in the novel?
Loneliness, solitude, and isolation are all themes that permeate the novel. How do the three central characters’ approaches to these feelings vary, resemble each other, and evolve?
It appears as though Stephen and Sachi ar
e somehow juxtaposed. How is this connection represented and developed?
How is the politically turbulent time at which The Samurai’s Garden takes place approached in the novel? Is it a strongly political novel or does the world of Tamuri somehow defy and avoid the political turmoil of the era?
How do you regard Kenzo’s suicide? What prompted it—feelings of dishonor, shame, or betrayal—and how does it affect the characters left behind?
How is Stephen and Keiko’s relationship represented? Examine it in relation to the courtships of the past–Kenzo and Sachi, as well as Matsu and Sachi.
As the novel progresses, Stephen stops longing to return to his home and in fact dreads having to leave Tamuri. What provokes this change of heart? How does this sentiment affect the ending of the novel?
Consider the kinds of beauty and strength explored in the novel. How are the contrasting characters of Sachi and Tomoko, Matsu and Kenzo illustrative of the differing natures of beauty and strength?
For more reading group suggestions, visit www.readinggroupgold.com
Turn the page for a look at Gail Tsukiyama’s new novel
Available August 2012
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Copyright © 2012 by Gail Tsukiyama
Also by Gail Tsukiyama
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
Dreaming Water
The Language of Threads
Night of Many Dreams
The Samurai’s Garden
Women of the Silk
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A HUNDRED FLOWERS. Copyright © 2012 by Gail Tsukiyama. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
ISBN: 978-0-312-27481-8
For Tom
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my editor, Hope Dellon, along with Sally Richardson, George Witte, Joan Higgins, Merrill Bergenfeld, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press who made this book possible.
I’m very grateful to Jane Hamilton, Nancy Horan, Elizabeth George, Anne LeClaire, Thrity Umrigar, and Carol Cassella for their support and sustenance along the way. Thank you to Walter Shui Heng Yong for answering my numerous questions, and along with Jack Dold, showing me China.
For their ongoing care and encouragement, many thanks to my family and to my agent, Linda Allen, and to Abby Pollak, Blair Moser, Cynthia Dorfman, and Catherine de Cuir, who continue to guide me through those difficult first steps.
Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.
—Mao Tse-Tung, 1956
The Kapok Tree
July 1958
Tao
THE COURTYARD WAS STILL QUIET SO EARLY IN THE morning, the neighborhood just waking as Neighbor Lau’s rooster began to crow. The air was already warm, a taste of the heat and humidity that would be unbearable by midday. Seven-year-old Tao knew he had little time to climb the kapok tree before he’d be discovered. He glanced down at the gnarled roots of the tree and felt strangely comforted, a reminder of the crooked ginger roots his ma ma sliced and boiled into strong teas for her headaches, or when his ba ba complained of indigestion.
Tao wasn’t afraid as he shimmied up the kapok tree’s slender trunk toward the broad branches, avoiding thorns on the spiny off shoots of the same tree his father had climbed as a boy, his heart thumping in excitement at the idea of seeing White Cloud Mountain from up so high. From the time he was two, his father would lift him up to look out his bedroom window, or from the second-floor balcony, as they searched for the mountain in the far distance. His ba ba always told him that if he looked hard enough, he could see all of Guangzhou and as far away as White Cloud Mountain on a clear day. With its thirty peaks, the mountain was a magical place for him, and his eyes watered with an effort to glimpse just a shadow of an elusive peak.
Tao could still feel the rough stubble of his father’s cheek against his, like the scratchy military blankets they used at school during naptime when he was younger. But last July, just before his sixth birthday, everything changed. Angry voices filled the courtyard early one morning, his father’s voice rising above them all, followed by the sound of scuffling. He looked out the window to see his ba ba’s hands bound behind his back as he was dragged away by two unsmiling policemen in drab green uniforms. He saw his grandfather trying to push closer to his father, only to be roughly shoved back by one of the policemen. “Where are you taking him?” his mother’s lone voice cried out from the gate. But all he heard was a roar of the Jeep, and then they were gone.
After his father was taken away, when his mother and grandfather thought he was still asleep, Tao heard their low whispers, but when he made his way downstairs, the whispering had stopped. He saw his mother crying and his grandfather sitting in the shadows as still as stone. He wanted them to answer all his questions. “Where did ba ba go? Why did those men take him away? When will he come home again?”
Before he could say a word, his mother pulled him toward her and hugged him. “Ba ba had to go away for a little while,” she told him. He smelled the mix of sweat and the scent of boiled herbs in her hair and on her clothes and he blurted out, “Why didn’t ba ba tell me he had to go away?” But she held tightly on to him and a strange sound came from her throat. Only then did he understand his father was really gone and his questions would remain unanswered. He squeezed his eyes shut so he couldn’t see her crying.
From that day on, his father was no longer there to tell him about White Cloud Mountain. At first Tao was scared and confused, wanting only to feel his ba ba’s warmth beside him and to hear his laughter coming from the courtyard. Tao searched for his father in all the places they had gone together; down by the tree-lined canal, through the alleyways that separated the redbrick apartment buildings, in and out of the crowded, narrow streets lined with restaurants, and in the small shop where his father always bought him sweets filled with red bean and rolled in sesame seeds on their way to Dongshan Park. It was as if they were playing a game of hide-and-seek; he thought his ba ba would have to come out of hiding sooner or later. But he never did.
Mr. Lam, the shopkeeper, brought Tao safely back home, but not before he reached up to the shelves and took down a glass jar and slipped him a piece of candy, the same sugar candy that his mother’s patients often sucked on after drinking an especially bitter tea.
“Don’t worry, your ba ba will be back soon,” he said reassuringly.
Tao nodded, but all he tasted as he sucked on the hard candy was grief.
For a whole year, his ba ba returned to him only in dreams. Tao felt his presence in the shadows, the calm of his voice, the safe, solid grasp as he lifted him up and into the air, and the sweet scent of his cologne. The idea of climbing the tree had come to him in a dream just that morning: he was perched at the top of the kapok tree and could finally see all the way to White Cloud Mountain and there on one of the peaks stood his father waiting for him.
Tao suddenly heard the slow whine of a door opening and peered anxiously at the balcony. He held his breath and waited, but no one emerged as the air seeped slowly back out from between his lips. Sometimes his mother stepped out in the mornings to check the weather, or to see if she had any patients waiting. On this particular morning, he was relieved to see that the neighborhood was slow to wake.
His mother, Kai Ying, was something of a well-known herbalist and healer in their Dongshan neighborhood, where the quiet streets were lined with once-stately red and gray brick villas that surrounded their courtyard. She was known for her restorative teas and soups that cured many of the neighbors’ ailments. People came and went through the courtyard all day long, wanting her advice to treat some pressing malady. On any given morning there would likely be a patient or two already waiting
anxiously at the gate to see her. But only after his mother fed him and his grandfather breakfast did she walk out to unlock the gate and let the first patient in. And it wasn’t until she ministered to the last person waiting that she locked the gate again at night.
According to Tao’s grandfather, it was his great-grandfather, a wealthy businessman, who built one of the first villas in the Dongshan area, once a remote and isolated part of Guangzhou where mostly military families lived. By the 1920s, there were hundreds of villas in the area. Most were two or three stories, designed in the European style with high ceilings and columned balconies. Tao’s family still lived in the same brick villa that was built by his great-grandfather, whose portrait hung on their living room wall. And though his great-grandfather had died long before Tao was born, he felt as if he knew the white-haired, stern-looking man wearing a dark blue silk changshan, standing tall in his long mandarin gown as he gazed down at him. He always thought of his great-grandfather as an intrinsic part of the house, just like the faded redbrick walls, the sweeping stairway and square-paned windows, the second-story balcony, and the wide-open courtyard that was specifically built around the kapok tree. Dongshan was the only district in Guangzhou that had houses with large, open courtyards.
After the Communists came into power in 1949, the two-story redbrick villa had been divided among three families. Tao’s now lived on the top floor that opened up to the second-floor balcony. Auntie Song lived in a smaller apartment facing the backyard, and Mr. and Mrs. Chang, an older couple who were currently away visiting their daughter in Nanjing, lived in the rooms downstairs. They all shared the kitchen, though the Changs kept to themselves and usually took their meals in their room. Auntie Song occasionally ate with them, but preferred to cook the vegetables she grew in her backyard garden on a small hot plate in her apartment. Tao’s grandfather often told him that when he was a boy, the entire house belonged exclusively to his family. Tao couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have so many rooms to run through.