Read Butterfly's Shadow Online
Authors: Lee Langley
Butterfly's Shadow
LEE LANGLEY
Chatto & Windus
LONDON
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781407084589
Published by Chatto & Windus 2010
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Copyright © Lee Langley 2010
Lee Langley has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
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First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Chatto & Windus
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The quotation on page ix is from
Requiem for a Nun
by William Faulkner, published by Chatto & Windus. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.
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Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
To Neil Vickers
The past is never dead, it’s not even past.
William Faulkner
The Only Person
Sunday Girl
From the Broken Tree
The Dying Art
Changes of Address
Persistent Rumours
A House in Pondicherry
False Pretences
Distant Music
A Conversation on the Quai Voltaire
Nagasaki 1925
From the window Cho-Cho saw the rickshaw come to a stop at the bottom of the slope. Watched them climb out and start walking up towards the house, he in his white uniform, buttons catching the sun; she, yellow-haired, in a short dress printed with green leaves. They looked like an illustration in one of the foreign magazines she had seen: a perfect American couple.
At one point, when the blonde woman stumbled slightly in her unsuitable high heels he took her arm, but she disengaged, and continued to walk up the hill, unaided.
Kneeling by the low table the child was trying to master his new wooden spinning top, throwing it on to the lacquered surface to set the red and yellow bands whirling. Trying and failing. Trying again, lips thrust out in concentration. For this meeting she had dressed him with devious care in one of the few family heirlooms she had managed to hold on to: a tiny silk kimono, intricately hand-painted and embroidered in rich colours threaded with gold. On his feet, white socks with a separation for the big toe. A stiff silk bandeau circled his brow.
In a niche on the wall she had placed a scroll, the bold brushwork of the calligraphy glowing in the dimness of the alcove. Beneath it lay a neatly folded length of dark silk, long and narrow, enveloping her father’s ceremonial sword. In her head, her father’s voice:
Bushido, the code of the samurai: to fight with honour. To die with honour when one can no longer live with honour
.
Honour was on her side today, she knew that. And she intended to fight. She touched the dark cloth, felt the steel within the silk; she must be like steel within her weak body. Her hands shook and she bent to stroke the child’s head, as though touching a talisman.
Approaching the house, Pinkerton looked up as the door slid open. He heard Nancy give a small gasp of surprise.
Cho-Cho wore a gleaming white kimono swirling out at the hem, her hair intricately dressed, smooth ebony interwoven with pearls. Her face was whitened with make-up, her lips scarlet. The rims of her eyes were red, not from weeping, but outlined, according to tradition, with crimson. Framed by the doorway she glowed, as though lit from within. Next to him, Nancy, in her undersized frock and little hat seemed awkward, ungainly. He cut off the thought, guilty to be making such a comparison. Nancy was his fiancée; Cho-Cho a leftover from a regretted past.
Nancy sensed the tension in his body; she glanced up at him, and back at Cho-Cho. She dwelt on this vision, the woman in white, gleaming like a marble statue, her neck frail as a flower stem. Oh, she’s a clever one, she acknowledged with reluctant admiration. She tugged instinctively at her skimpy skirt, straightened her spine: back home she was considered the pretty one of the family.
When they reached the door, Cho-Cho bowed silently, motioned them inside.
‘We should take off our shoes,’ Pinkerton muttered.
Nancy silently kicked off her high sandals, her expression darkening. The instruction had the effect of linking him to the woman and the place, with Nancy a mere visitor ignorant of local custom.
The boy held out the wooden top to his father: ‘
Komo!
’
Pinkerton’s stiff features creased into an uneasy grin. He took the top. ‘
Komo?
’ he repeated, ‘Right.’
As the two women watched, he squatted next to the lacquered table.
‘Okay Joey, here we go!’ He set the top spinning. The child clapped his hands, laughing, demanding more: ‘
Motto!
’
Only the clatter of wood on table surface broke the silence while Pinkerton repeatedly spun the top for his son. Mirrored in the lacquer, the sphere appeared to be balanced on its own tip as it twirled.
Nancy studied the child: the stiff band tied round his brow partly concealed the blond curls. In the richly patterned kimono he seemed very Japanese.
She said, formally, ‘What a beautiful . . . outfit that is.’ Adding, to fill the continuing silence, ‘So colourful.’
Cho-Cho said, ‘In a family, such a robe is passed from father to son.’ She spoke slowly, spacing the syllables with care, aware of the pitfalls of this alien tongue, where consonants jostled each other disconcertingly, giving her words an odd inflection. ‘It is called
takarabune
, treasure ship design. On the ship, if you look, there are ten precious ob-u-jects connected with happy marriage.’
Once again Nancy felt upstaged. Was this woman trying to make out that she had enjoyed a
happy marriage
with Ben? She felt anger building within her but her features remained as expressionless as Cho-Cho’s mask-like face.
She touched Pinkerton’s shoulder. ‘Ben, will you leave us for a little. I want to speak to – the lady, in private.’
Pinkerton hesitated, but Cho-Cho decided the matter. She gave the tiniest of movements, a twitch, a turn of the head, and he got to his feet. He slipped on his shoes and the child followed him out into the patch of garden. Together they studied the plants, and Joey methodically identified them one by one, in Japanese, then in the English his mother had taught him.
A snail was slowly making its way across the path of moist earth in front of them, and the man and the boy watched,
crouching to observe the steady progress of the creature, its antennae waving this way and that.
Pinkerton reached over and gently removed the bandeau from around the boy’s head; ruffled his hair, freeing the curls. From the dark rectangle of the doorway he heard the murmur of Nancy’s voice. A silence. Cho-Cho responding, barely audible. Then Nancy. A longer silence. Nancy again, a murmuring stream. As his father watched, Joey picked up the snail and tilting back his head, held the shell and squirming body above his open mouth. Horrified, Pinkerton knocked it from the boy’s hand, startling him. The small pink mouth curved into a downward arc.
‘You don’t eat a live snail, Joey!’
Pinkerton wondered queasily if perhaps they did. They ate fish with hearts still beating, and shrimps jumping on the plate.
The snail had moved on, leaving a shining trail. Pinkerton tried to think of something cheerful to say; he smiled at the boy but no words came. How long would the women go on talking?
The child was growing bored and fretful: he was hungry, he said, tugging at Pinkerton’s sleeve. Then Nancy appeared in the doorway, and hurried over to them.
‘Let’s go!’
Pinkerton stood up, brushing his knees, and glanced questioningly towards the house.
Nancy said sharply, ‘It’s okay. Everything’s settled.’
‘Settled? What d’you mean? What’s going on?’
She took the boy’s hand and crouched beside him. She said, speaking with exaggerated care, ‘Joey: you come. With us. Now.’
Pinkerton said, irritably, ‘You don’t have to speak so slow, he understands just fine.’
She leaned closer: ‘You are coming on a visit with your daddy.’
Pinkerton could see no sign of Cho-Cho. Nancy stood up; she seemed very much in control of things.
‘You’re sure this is okay?’
Her nod was decisive. The child between them, each holding a hand, they set off, walking slowly down the hill away from the house, until, with an exclamation, the boy broke free, pulling away.
‘
Koma!
’ He ran back towards the house.
‘Joey!’ Nancy called. ‘Wait!’
Pinkerton said, ‘He forgot his spinning top.’