The Courtesan and the Samurai

  ‘My trusty lieutenant,’ her husband had said, slapping the youth on the back so hard he had staggered forward a couple of steps. ‘He’s no beauty but he’s a fine swordsman and he can hold his drink too. I trust him with everything.’

  She swallowed hard, trying to stop her voice from shaking.

  ‘Ichimura?’

  ‘Madam.’ He bowed, recognition dawning in his eyes too.

  Doors slammed in the house behind them and people came clattering down the stairs. It was a party of geishas, taking with them the clients who couldn’t afford to stay the night. As they burst out of the door one of the guests tripped then scrambled to his feet, cursing volubly and sending the geishas into squeals of high-pitched laughter. They disappeared round the corner into the grand boulevard, singing cheerfully.

  Ichimura stared at the ground as though horrified to find his master’s wife in such a place.

  ‘Everyone is dead, Ichimura,’ Hana whispered, her voice faltering, as the singing faded into the distance.

  ‘I know,’ said Ichimura. ‘I went to your house.’

  Hana breathed in sharply, recalling the darkened rooms empty even of cushions, the closed rain doors, the embers glowing in the hearth. She remembered desperately running, wrestling with the rain door with the sounds of crashing and baying just behind, and how she’d run through the woods towards the river, leaving Oharu and Gensuké to fend for themselves.

  ‘It’s not the same any more, madam; it doesn’t look well cared for.’ He stopped and wiped his sleeve across his eyes. ‘The servants told me what had happened. There was a girl there and a crippled old man.’

  ‘Oharu and Gensuké! And they were not hurt?’ Even to think of them gave Hana a feeling of comfort.

  ‘I was supposed to deliver my message to the master’s father,’ Ichimura said, frowning. ‘They told me what had happened in Kano and said the southerners had come for you too and you had had to flee. They hadn’t heard from you since then. They guessed you were dead too, so I gave up and went to the city.’ He glanced around and lowered his voice. ‘We’ve formed a resistance movement now, madam. We’re going to drive out the southerners and put the shogun back where he belongs. Some of my comrades ended up in Edo and they took me in. I kept asking around, just in case you might still be alive, but then I ran out of money. It was a few days ago.’

  ‘And you went to a pawnbroker and met …’

  ‘A woman called Fuyu. She said you sounded very much like the runaway she had met last winter and that she would make some checks.’

  So that was why Fuyu had come in search of her and had tricked her into revealing the address of her house. She probably hadn’t even delivered the letter, Hana realized with a surge of anger, and Oharu and Gensuké still didn’t know she was alive.

  ‘When I went back Fuyu said she had found you and brought me here straight away. I didn’t think it could really be you, madam – but then I saw that it was.’

  In the starlight Hana could see Ichimura’s jaw trembling.

  ‘And my husband?’ she whispered. ‘My husband?’

  ‘I’m sorry, madam,’ Ichimura said, swallowing hard.

  Hana took his arm. ‘Come inside,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll send to the kitchens for food and tobacco.’

  As Ichimura untied his sandals and wiped his feet, Hana remembered that Saburo was in her parlour, sleeping. The house’s grand reception room was empty and she ushered Ichimura in there instead. He knelt in the huge room with its painted ceiling, among the lacquered tobacco boxes, hangings, scrolls and blazing candles, sitting straight-backed as a soldier despite his ragged clothes. When she had seen him last he had been a brawny fellow with a broad face, but now his cheeks were sunken and there were black circles around his eyes. He put his bundle on the floor and fumbled with the knot.

  There were two boxes inside, a wooden scroll box and a metal box with a tightly fitting lid, the sort an ordinary soldier might use to carry provisions. The youth bowed and handed the boxes to her, holding them out reverently in both hands. They were unexpectedly light. She put them down beside her.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Tell me. My husband.’

  Ichimura sat back on his heels and stared at the ground. When he looked up his face was grim.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I can, madam,’ he said slowly. ‘We had been fighting for months but we were heavily outnumbered and by the fifth month we knew we were beaten. It was unbearably hot. It should have been raining but in Ezo there is no rainy season. Men lay where they died. There were too many to bury and the wounded just got bandaged up and went out to fight some more.

  ‘The master was right in front, leading every battle, but he didn’t say much any more. In the evenings he kept to his rooms. Then one day he summoned me. It was the fifth day of the fifth month. He had these boxes. He said, “Ichimura, go to Edo and deliver these to my father. If he is dead, give them to my brothers; if they’re dead, to my mother; and if she’s dead, to my wife.”

  ‘I didn’t want to leave him. I wanted to die alongside everyone else and begged him to send someone else but he had that look on his face. He said, “Do as I say or I’ll cut you down right now.” ’

  Hana could hear her husband’s ferocious bark and see the servants running like chickens to obey his orders. She remembered how she used to run too.

  ‘I waited till there was a lull in the fighting before leaving the fort and as I was leaving I looked back. He was watching me through the gate, making sure I went. I cut through the town to the docks, then got across to the mainland, then walked. It was a long way, madam, and the enemy were all around. Sometimes I had to fight them off, but I always reminded myself that I had my orders and a job to do.’

  ‘And my husband?’

  ‘When I got to Edo, I heard that the enemy had attacked at dawn and closed in on the fort and bombarded it. In the end our leaders surrendered and were arrested and brought down here in cages. I tried to find out what had happened to the master. I knew he would never have let them take him alive but I prayed he might have managed to escape. But then I met men who had seen him fall.’

  ‘He could have been wounded, not killed,’ Hana whispered.

  ‘But he’s not here, madam, and no one has seen him, and no one knows where he is.’

  ‘But what happened to his body? Shouldn’t it be brought down here for burial?’

  ‘You don’t understand how many men died, madam,’ Ichimura said. ‘If the master died in Ezo, then that’s where he’s buried. Myself, I give prayers for his spirit every day.’

  He looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.

  ‘Madam, let me help you,’ he said quietly. ‘The war is over, you are the last of my master’s family and I want to do what I can. Let me get you out of here.’

  Hana shook her head. ‘It’s too late for that. But there’s one thing I have to ask of you.’ She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Here we never talk about the past. My husband died a rebel to the new order – to the emperor – and there are a lot of southerners here. Please, I beg you, keep my secret. Don’t tell anyone who I am. My safety depends on it.’

  Ichimura nodded.

  ‘I served your husband, madam, and I will serve you. I won’t betray you.’

  Hana drew back as a couple of servants came in. She told them to take Ichimura to the kitchens and carried the two boxes upstairs to her rooms.

  She crept through the parlour, casting a sidelong glance at Saburo to check that he was still snoring, then went into her bedroom, sent the maids away and slid the door shut. She took a deep breath and with trembling hands lifted the lid of the scroll box and unrolled the scroll.

  She read the first word: ‘Greetings.’ It was her husband’s hand. Peasant though he was, he had swaggered like the most arrogant of samurai and had read and written like one too. Her eyes filled with tears. It was a while before she could focus on the brushstrokes.

  ‘My revered father,’ he had written
. ‘The end is approaching, but we will fight on to defend the shogun’s name and honour even if our deaths prove futile. It is the right and proper course. Rest assured that I will not bring shame on you or on the family name.

  ‘I send you with this some mementoes. When peace returns, place them in our family tomb in Kano. It is my destiny to rot in this northern land but I want these mementoes to rest alongside my ancestors. These are my last orders. Think of me as one already dead.’

  At the bottom her husband had signed it and marked it with his stamp in faded red ink. Brushing away tears, she prised off the lid of the tin box. A faint scent wafted out: the pungent smell of pomade. Inside was a piece of mulberry paper, neatly folded, containing a hank of black hair streaked with grey, long, glossy and tied with a ribbon. His hair, his smell. Hana held it in her hand, remembering his weight when he lay on her, his salty odour and the sake on his breath. The knot of hair rested in her palm like a dead thing, cold and heavy. When she put it back there was oil on her fingers.

  Underneath it, folded in another piece of paper, was a photograph. The grey and white image seemed to fade in the candlelight even as she looked at it. A grown man, as old as her father. She knew the broad forehead, the strong jaw and powerful mouth, the fierce eyes and glossy hair swept back from the angular face. She looked at the crease between his eyebrows and the lines beside his mouth. It was an angry face, a face that frightened her.

  The first time she had seen that face had been on their wedding day. That night she had stared shyly at his big toes and broad flat toenails as he opened her robes layer by layer, trying not to recoil at the rough touch of his hands and the ripe smell of his body. ‘Let me look at you, my beautiful bride, let me feast my eyes on you,’ he had muttered. Then he had climbed on top of her. She remembered the rasp of his breathing and his skin, hot and sweaty, sliding against hers.

  And now he was dead. He had packed this box with his own hands, knowing that it would be his last act on this earth. But it was not his father or his brother who’d opened it or even his mother, but his wife – his wife, who had betrayed him, lain with other men and felt disgust for him in her heart.

  There was a noise outside in the parlour. Auntie had come to check on Saburo. Frantically Hana threw everything back into the box, pushed it away in a drawer and piled kimonos over it. She would look through it later when everyone had gone.

  28

  Yozo slid the door of Otsuné’s house shut behind him and looked cautiously up and down the narrow lane. Weeds pushed between the stones and along the walls of the rickety houses, a rooster crowed and a half-bald dog was scratching itself in a patch of sunlight. There was no one around as he set off, enjoying the morning hush, the cool air in his lungs and the earth and stones under his feet.

  It was his second day in the Yoshiwara and he had managed to persuade Otsuné and Marlin to let him go out, nodding when they reminded them that he was a wanted man and if he did something stupid it would put them in danger too. He was eager to start work on a plan to rescue Enomoto and there were bound to be comrades here, northern soldiers making themselves at home in this lawless place.

  He turned on to the great boulevard and stared up at the opulent buildings with their curtained entrances, elegant wooden walls, parlours fronted with latticework caging and balconies with women flitting to and fro. He hadn’t seen such magnificence since he’d walked the streets of Europe. Daimyos probably lived in palaces as splendid as these, he thought, but they were hidden behind high walls and closed doors, as everything always was in Japan – except here in the Yoshiwara, where the riches were on display for everyone to see. The place was awash with money – southern money.

  The day was still dawning but the street was not entirely empty. Outside some of the smaller brothels beggars were gathering like carrion, clawing through piles of half-eaten food. Yozo felt a prickling on the skin at the back of his neck and glanced round. In the shadows across the road, a group of tattooed men with oiled topknots was staring at him, narrow-eyed. Bodyguards, he guessed, keeping watch over their pleasure-seeking masters. For them this town was enemy territory. He stared back defiantly; he had every bit as much right to be here as they did.

  He was scrutinizing the sweepers, wondering if any of them might straighten up and prove to be a northern soldier, when he caught a whiff of something familiar – the pungent sweetish smell of opium smoke. It had followed him everywhere, from the teeming alleys of Batavia, in Java, to the brothels of Pigalle. Now it took him back to the streets of London, Paris and Amsterdam, where languid young men chewed balls of the potent brown gum and ladies drank laudanum for their nerves. He’d thought Japan was another world, but the Yoshiwara, it seemed, was not. The dream-inducing drug of Europe, China and the Dutch East Indies could be had here too – and here too men were indulging in their first pipe of the day.

  The seductive smell set him dreaming, thinking back to the days when he had hung around his teacher’s house as a young man, poring with growing fury over news reports of the opium wars, as Britain forced the Chinese to legalize opium and open Chinese ports to British trade so the East India Company could sell it there. The second opium war had finished scarcely two years before Yozo left for the West, in 1860 by the western calendar.

  That same year the British had destroyed the emperor’s Summer Palace in Peking. Yozo remembered discussing the news with his friends, eager young students all, as they realized that their country too could be vulnerable – that Japan might be invaded, its buildings destroyed and its way of life overturned. He knew that was one of the chief reasons he and his fourteen companions had been sent to the West – to commission warships and learn western ways so that Japan would have a better chance of beating the westerners at their own game. And in the end his countrymen had played their cards better than the Chinese, far better, and had managed to keep the foreigners at bay, for a while, at least.

  A thick-set man came puffing towards Yozo, stomach jiggling above his sash.

  ‘He’ll be leaving any moment now,’ the man panted.

  ‘Who?’ asked Yozo, but the man had already padded on up the street and was shouting to the women who leaned over the balconies of the brothels.

  Curtains parted and people began to emerge from houses, yawning. Young girls with eager faces painted white, making them look as if they were wearing masks, ancient pinch-faced crones, laughing children and surly youths poured out, sweeping Yozo up in a mass of perfumed bodies. With a great clattering of clogs, the crowd moved down the boulevard, through a tiled and gabled gate and along a side street, then gathered in front of the biggest and most palatial house of all. On the curtains across the doorway were the words ‘Corner Tamaya’. Yozo scowled as he recognized the name. It was the place where Hana had told him to go and look for a job. He had thought he had put her out of his mind, but he had ended up here despite himself.

  Drawn up outside the entrance was an enormous lacquered palanquin, its gold finishings glinting in the sun. A battalion of servants, porters and guards stood by in silken livery, chests puffed out proudly. Maids in indigo kimonos came hurrying out of the house and formed two long lines flanking the path from the door to the palanquin.

  Yozo kept to the back of the crowd while the mob scuffled and shuffled, elbowing each other, trying to get a better view.

  ‘Any moment now,’ whispered a young woman to another behind him.

  ‘Maybe he’ll spot me.’

  ‘Not you, me. I didn’t get dressed up like this for nothing. He’ll book me, I’m sure of it!’

  There was a sudden disturbance at the edge of the crowd and the mob stumbled back so abruptly that Yozo was crushed against a wall. He heard gasps and shrieks, then angry shouts above the women’s shrill voices.

  ‘You – clear off. What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘The boss will be out any moment. Get him out of here!’

  ‘Hey,’ a rough voice shouted in a thick southern accent. ‘Aren’t you one of
those cowards who were fighting up north?’

  Sensing a fellow northerner in trouble, Yozo forced his way through the bodies, shoving and elbowing people aside, trying to see what was going on.

  Standing with his back against the side gate of the Corner Tamaya was a tall, bony figure, staring fiercely around. He looked like a tramp, scrawny and unkempt, with a scar down the side of his face and a couple of swords stuck prominently in his sash. Guards were beating their way towards him, but when they got close to him they drew back and stood, legs apart, sticks in hands, watching the man warily. They were the real cowards, Yozo thought.

  ‘On your way!’ shouted one, taking a swing at the man, who grabbed at the guard’s stick, twisted it out of his hands, then hurled it contemptuously into the street.

  ‘What were you doing in the Corner Tamaya?’ yelled another, aiming a kick at him. ‘You’re a thief, a cowardly thief!’

  The crowd had been watching, silent and cowed. Then a woman squealed, ‘Leave him alone!’ Voices rose, uncertain at first, then louder, until everyone was shouting, ‘Leave him alone! He hasn’t done anything wrong. There’s one of him and ten of you. Let him be!’

  A clog flew from the crowd and hit one of the guards on the back. The guard swung round threateningly, then turned and whacked the man’s forearm with his stick.

  The man’s face darkened. ‘Coward, you say,’ he said quietly, his hand on his sword hilt. ‘We’ll see who’s a coward.’

  But before he could draw his sword the guards had jumped on him and pushed him against the wall. One punched him in the stomach and another twisted his arm behind his back, shouting obscenities in his face.

  Yozo could see by the man’s bush of hair that he belonged to the Commander’s Kyoto militia; but he was a fellow northerner nonetheless. Shoving people aside, he dived into the mêlée. He landed a punch hard on the ear of the guard who was holding the northerner, then swung round as another guard loomed towards him and sank his fist into the man’s fleshy stomach, knocking the air out of him. As the big guard crumpled, Yozo hurled himself on to a third man, knocking him to the ground with such violence he tore off the sleeve of his silk jacket, then lashed out with the side of his foot and felled a fourth. The northern soldier too was fighting like a demon and had brought down a couple more of the guards.