Taka knew she was breaking all the rules but that only made it all the more thrilling, most of all the fact she was defying Eijiro. She was full of excitement. She had a project at last.
5
SUMMER WAS AT its height, when people ate oily dishes like grilled eel and braised aubergine and kept cool by going to the kabuki theatre to watch gruesome ghost stories that sent shivers down their spines. The servants had taken out the wooden rain doors that formed the walls of the house and the painted fusuma doors between the rooms, turning the mansion into a vast pavilion floored with cool tatami smelling faintly of rice straw, with nothing but slender wooden pillars to mark where one room ended and the next began. From time to time a breeze wafted through. Fujino lounged inside, mopping her brow and flapping her fan.
Nobu was out in the grounds, helping the gardeners put up a trellis to support the overgrown branches of an ancient pine. The ear-splitting buzz of cicadas filled the air – min mi min mi droned from one tree, wa wa, tsuku tsuku from another. He took off the rolled-up towel he’d wrapped around his head and wrung it out, sending sweat splashing on to the dusty ground. He’d knotted his happi coat around his waist and pine needles scratched his skin. Mosquitoes buzzed around his face.
He hummed as he tied the bamboo frame in place and looped rice-straw ropes around the branches. He was happy, happier than he’d ever been since he left his home country. He’d found a new home. Fujino was kind to him, the other servants were friendly and he had a roof over his head and decent clothes to wear. Above all he was studying. His reading and writing were coming on apace.
Whenever Okatsu had a chance, late in the afternoon when Taka was back from school and Nobu was in the kitchens or sweeping the gardens, she would appear and say, ‘Nobu, we need to pick something for dinner.’
Taka had discovered that Nobu knew all the wild plants that grew in the grounds. One day, not long after they began their studies, they’d sneaked off to the woods with their books. He kept half an eye on the ground, as he always did, looking out for edible roots, shoots, buds and leaves springing up in the moss and under the pines. They were stepping across the stream that meandered between the trees when he spotted a delicate beige shoot peeking out from the fringe of grass and wild plants along the edge.
He pushed the undergrowth aside, reached down to the base and snapped it off. It was moist and shiny with a honeycombed oval head and fronds around the tiny stem. He put it to his nose. The faint earthy smell reminded him of his northern home, of saucepans simmering on the soot-blackened stove. He held it out to Taka, beaming as he looked around and saw tiny pale shoots poking up everywhere.
‘Horsetail shoots! I didn’t know they grew here. We must get something to put them in. The cook can fry them up for dinner.’
Taka sniffed the frail stem then wrinkled her nose. He laughed aloud. ‘Up north we eat everything – fiddlehead ferns, coltsfoot, burdock, butterbur, there are so many delicious things that grow in the woods and mountains.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said with a giggle, looking at him wide-eyed.
He nodded as seriously as he could. ‘We eat bee grubs too, and locusts, and bear meat when the hunters manage to catch one and bring some back.’ He licked his lips at the thought. ‘But that’s for special occasions. Of all the spring foods, horsetail shoots are the best. You sauté them with soy sauce and a bit of sake. They’re really tasty. We’ll need lots.’
They went back to the house for containers and later in the day brought a basketful back to the cook. He was soon eagerly experimenting.
Okatsu was put in charge of finding wild vegetables and Nobu went with her because only he could identify them.
It was the perfect excuse. Nobu and Taka would meet in their secret place in the woods and sit side by side to pore over their books. There were always new characters to learn and text to read. Taka was a strict teacher, testing him and telling him off when he forgot something.
Whenever he had a spare moment he’d practise the latest characters, scratching them on the ground when he was working in the gardens then quickly smoothing them over, writing them with his finger on his hand again and again as he cleaned the house. At night in the servants’ quarters he’d take a lantern, bury his head under the bedclothes and work through the books Taka had given him. Even if it was instructions on how to be a good housewife, every new word added to his vocabulary.
He’d begun to discover there were things he could teach her too – old stories his mother had told him, tales from ancient history that she didn’t seem to know. And sometimes they just talked – about the house, the family, her teachers, her school, her hateful schoolmates, about history, geography, poetry, painting, the Chinese classics and the English books she was starting to read.
‘I’d like to be a poet or an artist or a scholar,’ she told him one day. They were sitting side by side, leaning against a tree. She wriggled closer to him and rested her shoulder against his arm. He sat as still as he could, feeling her warmth and smallness, her body touching his. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than to be sent off as a bride, like my sister Haru was,’ she whispered, looking up at him. ‘I’d rather stay here with you.’
And once, to his intense delight, she danced for him, singing softly, moving to her song, telling a story with her hands – reading an imaginary letter, wiping away imaginary tears. When he applauded she blushed and laughed and threw herself down next to him on the leaves.
Okatsu kept watch and on the way back to the house they looked for fern heads or butterbur to fill their baskets with. No one challenged them or seemed suspicious and they started getting bolder. When Fujino and Eijiro were out, Taka and Nobu sometimes sat swinging their legs on the veranda outside the large airy room where Taka did her writing and painting, looking out at the trees and rocks and flowers shimmering in the heat, kicking their feet together.
It was not all good. Nobu still didn’t get paid so he had no money to send to his family, though he heard from them from time to time. When he had a day off he tramped across town to visit his mentor, his father’s old friend Hiromichi Nagakura, who had given him the fateful note and sent him off on the journey that ended at the Black Peony. There were letters waiting for him there.
He read them himself now, Nagakura didn’t have to read them to him. His two eldest brothers were doing well, they wrote, he had no need to worry about them. He could see they wanted to reassure him. Yasu, the oldest, was still out of work but Kenjiro, the brilliant one, who spoke and read English, had found a job interpreting for some foreign technicians in some remote area, though his health was still poor. Both, being older than Nobu, had had time to complete their education before they found themselves out on the streets. They were hoping to get back to Tokyo and find somewhere to live so they could see him from time to time. There was no word from Gosaburo or Nobu’s father, living in poverty in the far north of the country. Nobu had to assume that they were all right, that if they hadn’t been his brothers would have told him.
Eijiro was a worry too. He was almost always out, doing whatever it was spoilt young men of twenty did. But when he was around he made Nobu’s life a misery. He’d come into the kitchens shouting, ‘Nobu, you lazy dog, where are you? The shoe cupboards need cleaning,’ or ‘The toilets are disgusting. Give them a good wiping out.’ Nobu did whatever he wanted, trying not to give a hint of resentment, to make sure Eijiro had not the slightest excuse to throw him out. They both knew where they stood. Eijiro was a Satsuma, Nobu an Aizu, and the Satsuma were at the top of the dung heap, for the time being, at least.
He frequently reminded himself that his life here was too good, it couldn’t last, but he might as well enjoy it while he could.
He tied the last branch of the pine to the trellis, made sure it was firmly in place, straightened up and wiped his sleeve across his brow. Tomorrow, the seventh day of the seventh month of the old lunar calendar, was a holiday – Tanabata, the festival of the weaver princess and the c
owherd. Even inside the high walls of the estate he felt the excitement and heard the noise from the road outside where people were putting up lanterns and hanging out huge paper streamers.
That evening Nobu strolled out into the grounds. The trees were like ghostly black sentinels. He walked away from the house until he was swallowed up in the silence. A lone cicada let out a piercing whirr and mosquitoes whined around his head. He found an open space beside the lake and gazed up at the sky. The moon had not yet risen and a band of stars swirled across the vast black dome, from one side to the other: the River of Heaven. He thought of another moonless night and remembered his mother’s voice. He could almost hear her talking to him.
Usually he tried never to think about it but now, despite himself, memories came flooding back. It had been a balmy night, though summers in the northern mountains were never as hot and sticky as in Tokyo. He’d been a little boy then, standing with his mother in the garden of their big house with Aizu Castle rising above them, huge and black, filling the sky, blotting out half the stars.
‘Look, little Nobu,’ his mother had said. He could almost smell her perfume and hear her cool northern tones. ‘Up there, all those stars – that’s the River of Heaven.’ He’d looked and seen a shimmering ribbon of stars cutting across the sky, even brighter up north than here in the south. ‘See those three big stars?’ He’d tipped his head right back and looked and looked until he made out three points of light marking a vast triangle to each side of the river, right at the pinnacle of the great dome.
‘The brightest one is the weaver princess,’ his mother had said, pointing. ‘And there in the opposite corner, across the River of Heaven?’ He’d followed her finger and picked out a star sparkling on the other side of the crowded swathe of stars. ‘The cowherd.’
‘What’s the third one?’ he’d asked.
‘That’s not part of the story,’ she’d said, laughing.
‘Tell me, tell me!’ She knew how he loved stories. Kneeling down, she took him on her lap and began, ‘Once long, long ago …’
Once long, long ago, so his mother’s story went, the weaver princess lived in the celestial palace. She was the daughter of the king of heaven and spent her days sitting by the bank of the heavenly river weaving silks in all the colours of the rainbow to make clothes for the gods. Then one day her eyes fell on the handsome young cowherd who herded his cows on the opposite bank. They fell in love and married. But they were so engrossed in each other they had no time for anything else. The princess stopped weaving her beautiful cloth and the cowherd let his cows stray all over the skies. Finally her father, the king of heaven, had had enough. He decreed they should be punished. Henceforth they would be separated for ever, made to live on opposite sides of the River of Heaven and never see each other again. Then he relented. Perhaps the princess’s tears touched his heart. They could cross the river and meet just once a year, he said, on the seventh day of the seventh month.
The lovers pined and yearned for the day they could be together. But when that day came they discovered there was no bridge. They gazed at each other across the river of stars, weeping. Just then a flock of heavenly magpies flew by. Seeing them weeping, they felt sorry for them and made a bridge with their wings so the two could meet.
Every year thereafter they did the same. But when it rained the magpies could not come and the lovers had to wait another year before they could meet again. And that was why everyone prayed for fine weather at Tanabata. When it rained, his mother told him, that was the tears of the star-crossed lovers.
Every Tanabata Nobu had laboriously written wishes on strips of paper in his childish hand and gone with his mother, sisters and brothers to the local temple. There they knotted the papers around swaying bamboo branches to make the wishes come true.
Nobu wrenched himself back to the present. Six years had passed since then. He looked up through a blur of tears at the brilliant stars and dashed his hand across his eyes and blinked hard. The pain of the memory was almost too much to bear. Then the moon began to rise and flood the gardens with light and he couldn’t see the weaver princess or the cowherd any more.
Early next morning Nobu was tidying away the last of the breakfast dishes when Okatsu came running into the kitchens, her cheeks flushed with excitement. ‘Madam wants you to find some taro leaves and collect the dew on them.’ She gave him a flask.
Nobu smiled. He knew the old Tanabata custom of writing wishes with ink made using the dew that collected on taro leaves. He washed his hands and went outside. The cicadas were shrilling and trees and rocks and flowers shimmered in the heat. It was going to be another stifling day. He found a patch of taro plants. The huge heart-shaped leaves, like great cups or outstretched hands, were brimming with dew. Carefully he tipped the dew off till the flask was half full.
Taka was on her knees on the veranda, dressed for summer in a simple blue and white cotton yukata. With her hair knotted away from her face and her fresh young skin, wide-spaced eyes and delicate features, she was utterly bewitching. Nobu caught his breath. He felt his face burning. He lowered his eyes and scuffed the ground with his foot. He shouldn’t be looking at her like this, he told himself. She was his mistress and teacher and to think of her in any other way, even for the space of a breath, was utterly disrespectful. Such a girl was not for the likes of him.
Forcing himself to concentrate, he tipped the dew into the well in the ink stone, took the ink stick and started to grind. For the rest of his life, he thought, whenever he smelt the sweet fragrance of fresh-ground ink he would always remember this day. Taka picked up her brush, dipped it in the ink, wiped it off on the edge of the stone then wrote in an elegant scrawl down the paper.
‘Nobu, you must make a wish too,’ she said, smiling at him as she laid the brush down on a rest. ‘Then we’ll all go to Sengaku Temple and tie them on the bamboos.’
Nobu picked up a brush. His studies had come on so well that he didn’t need help any more with his writing. Boys were supposed to ask for success in their schoolwork and girls that their needlework be as beautiful as the weaver princess’s, but he had something different he wanted to wish for. He put his brush to the paper, covering it with his hand so no one but the gods who grant wishes would be able to read his words. Then he folded the paper in half and in half again, into a long narrow strip.
Suddenly Nobu heard heavy footsteps running across the big empty rooms towards them. Engrossed in their writing, they hadn’t noticed the commotion inside.
‘Mother, come and see.’ It was Eijiro. There were bangs and thuds. He was kicking tables out of the way, sending lanterns, teapots and teacups flying.
Nobu looked around, frozen with horror. He thought of jumping off the veranda and hiding under the house but there was no time. Eijiro would have been able to see them from halfway across the house through all the open rooms. He had been out last night. How could he possibly be back at this hour? They’d become so relaxed they’d almost forgotten they were doing something forbidden. They hadn’t even bothered to keep watch.
A moment later Eijiro came charging out, his face flushed. A stale smell of tobacco and sake wafted along with him. He stood, catching his breath, glaring down at them. ‘I’ve been waiting to catch you. I’ve had my suspicions for a long time.’ Nobu, Taka and Okatsu sat, unable to move. They’d been caught in the act, no amount of excuses would save them.
Eijiro lashed out with his foot. The flask that Nobu had collected dew in flew off the veranda and smashed on the gravel.
Fujino was panting across the tatami behind him, her plump face dripping with sweat, dark stains on the front and under the arms of her cotton kimono. ‘Eijiro, by all the gods … Whatever are you thinking of? You’re a grown man.’
‘Aizu dog. You’ve overstepped the bounds,’ Eijiro shouted. ‘I always said we shouldn’t bring people in off the street. We’ve repaid our debt to you a thousandfold. You’re not hanging round my sister a moment longer.’
Fujino step
ped out on to the veranda. As she saw Taka, Nobu and Okatsu sitting together, her eyes widened and her shaved eyebrows shot up. Like all adult women, she shaved her eyebrows and painted her teeth black using a polish made of gallnut powder and iron dissolved in vinegar or tea. It would have been eccentric beyond belief if she hadn’t. That day it was still so early that her maid hadn’t painted her face yet. She was entirely without eyebrows, which made her look even more surprised. She took her fan from her obi and started flapping it very fast.
Taka was staring down at the floor. She set her jaw. ‘We were just writing our Tanabata wishes, Mother. Nobu rescued us, didn’t he? He’s one of the family. You’re fond of him too.’
Eijiro snorted. ‘The gods know what you’ve been up to. What will people think? What are we going to do when we need to find a husband for Taka, when people start saying this precious sister of mine spends all her time with a servant boy and an Aizu? We’ll have her on our hands for ever.’
Nobu bent his head and tried to pretend he wasn’t there. He knew he’d committed an unforgivable offence. Then he realized he was still holding the paper with his wish on it. He crumpled it up as small as he could and furtively tried to slip it into his sleeve. Eijiro must have seen the movement. He grabbed Nobu’s wrist and snatched it from his hand. It nearly tore but he managed to get hold of it. Nobu’s heart plummeted. He wished he could disappear through the floorboards, jump off the veranda and race away and never come back again.
‘So the dog can write,’ said Eijiro, unfolding it. As he read it his lips began to curl. A strange look – triumph mingled with glee and contempt – crossed his face. ‘Just listen to this. “May I stay in this house near to Taka-sama for ever.”’ Nobu’s face was burning. How could he have been so stupid as to write such a thing? He glanced at Taka. She was avoiding his eyes, gazing studiously at the floor.