Dream of a Spring Night (Hollow Reed series) (21 page)

He would kill himself.
 
That would show them.
 
They would be sorry then.
 

So much for being made a son, for being called Hachiro instead of Boy, for having a home.
 
What a fine father!
 
He hadn’t even waited a day before beating him, shaming him before that hateful witch Otori and the smirking Togoro.
 
It had been nothing but lies, and he’d been a fool for having believed.
 
Shit and lies and hate.
 
That’s all he would ever get.

The pain blistering his backside was nothing to the despair in Hachiro’s belly.
 
He ran from the house and flung himself in front of a passing horseman.
 
That got him a bloody knee and another lash from the rider’s whip.
 
With a sob, he got up and limped away.
 
He roamed the streets as he used to, determined never to return to the doctor’s house.
 
But his old haunts, filled with ragged street children and thieves, no longer welcomed him.
 
People raised their fists at him and chased him off when he asked for work.
 
When he got hungry, he traded his jacket for a meal.

Some time later he came across an unattractive fat girl who sat on the steps to a shrine and bawled like a baby.
 
“I’m gonna kill myself,” she sobbed.

He stopped, surprised that someone else was bent on self-destruction, and asked why she wanted to die.
 

It was the old story.
 
A boyfriend got her pregnant, and her father had beaten her and thrown her on the street.
 
Hachiro thought her too ugly for any man but did not say so.
 
Any man, except maybe someone like Togoro.
 
He told her to blame it on the man who’d been in the fire.
 
If she’s been raped by such a monster, he argued, her father would feel sorry for her.
 
She cheered up and thanked him.
  

The satisfaction of having made trouble for Togoro was temporary.
 
He forgot the incident quickly, and when night came and he nearly froze without his jacket, he slunk back home.

Nothing changed over the subsequent weeks.
 
The doctor favored Sadamu no matter how hard Hachiro tried to please him.
 
They hardly ever looked at him, and Otori never missed a chance to call him devil’s bait or worse.
 
It seemed her hatred for him had grown.
 
Despair and grief became Hachiro’s daily fare, causing the fierce belly ache to return.
 
He wished he could run away, but there was no place for him to run to.
 
This time he made up his mind to drown himself.
 

The Kamo riverbed was empty of life during the cold season.
 
Dark water moved slowly and sluggishly between ice-encrusted banks.
 
Hachiro kicked off his boots and waded in.
 
The ice cut his feet and the cold water caused agonizing pain to his legs.
 
This eased the pain in his belly a little, but tears ran down his face.
 
He hated the tears as much as what he had become.
 
Vaguely aware that drowning would be unpleasant, he told himself that in this cold the end would come quickly and splashed on.

But the cursed river was shallow and his strength left him before the ground dropped away under his feet.
 
When he could not feel his legs any longer, he let himself fall forward, embracing the icy darkness.
 

Rivers flow into the sea.
 
The water would take him to a better world.

But he did not succeed this time either.

Rude hands pulled him out, pummeled him,
shook
him.
 
Loud voices shouted at him.
 
The dull sleepiness receded, and the pain returned.

It took all of his strength not to weep in front of his rescuers.
 
They — young men in plain blue robes — carried him off to a strange house where they took off his sodden clothes so roughly that he wanted to whimper, and then they left him, wrapped in someone’s robe, near a large kitchen fire.
 
To his icy skin, the heat felt as if the flames were consuming him like Togoro.

But the pain eventually receded, and a woman held a cup of warm sake to his lips.
 
She had a soft voice, and though he did not want to live, he drank.

*

“What did you think you were doing?” the man asked, sounding angry.

He gave him back the anger.
 
“What business is it of yours?
 
They had no right to bring me back.”

The man’s face softened.
 
“You were going to kill yourself?”

He did not bother to answer.
 
He thought how hard it had been to reach oblivion and that now he must do it all over again.
 
Perhaps jumping from the pagoda would do the trick.
 
Yes, that way nobody could stop him.
 
Once he took off from the top like a bird, he would plummet down to be shattered so quickly and completely that there would be no going back.

“Why?” asked the man.
 
“Answer me!
 
Why did you want to die?”

He shook his head.
 
Too much trouble to explain.

“What’s your name?”

“Boy.”

“Boy?”

He looked away.
 
The other name was not his any longer.
 
He knew well enough that it had been offered unwillingly.
 
Of all the names they called him — scum, guttersnipe, thief, demon, devil, lout, and laggard — boy was the least offensive.
 
As for being the adopted son, the doctor had proved that that had also been a lie.

A painful lie because it had shown him that he was nothing.
 
Less than nothing.

“Where do you live?”

“Nowhere.”

“Your clothes are good and you look well fed.
 
What happened to make you run away and want to kill yourself?”

Boy glanced at his clothes where they dried beside the fire.
 
The woman had spread them there after feeding him.
 
Then she had gone to get the man.
 
As soon as the clothes were dry, he would go to the pagoda.

The man sighed.
 
“Will you come and watch me teach my students?” he asked.

Boy did not answer but he got to his feet.
 
It did not matter what he did until he could leave.

But he did not go to the pagoda that day.
 
Instead he went home, silently and sullenly.
 
He had not been missed, proof that he did not belong, that he was unloved, the lesser of two sons.
 
But he had shelter, food for his belly, and clothes to cover his body.

And a dream.

The pagoda could wait.

Bald Hen Powder

Leaving a note outside the palace women’s quarters, along with tracks clearly made by a man, had been a very stupid thing.
 
Anyone checking the small private courtyard would become suspicious and report the matter.
 
But though the doctor realized his mistake right away, he could not go back and retrieve the note because someone was coming.
 
He walked home very disturbed, praying in his heart to Buddha and all the gods that the snow would melt quickly and no harm would come to Toshiko on his account.

As soon as he got home, he consulted his medical books about suitable prescriptions for His Majesty’s complaint.
 
The books were thorough on sexual advice, dealing not only with the diagnosis and treatment of conditions in both men and women, but also with the proper and curative performance of the sexual act.
 
Most of the prescriptions were very old, having been passed down by Chinese physicians who, he suspected, had consulted even older sources of Indian origin.
 
They seemed to have been gathered and compiled with the same fervor that marked the transmission of Buddhist scriptures.

He located quickly the sections dealing with medicines that improved sexual performance.
 
The prescriptions were manifold, the amounts variable, and several of the substances so exotic that he had no access to them.
 
Besides, as a physician he had little faith in any of them.
 
One of the concoctions was called Bald Hen Powder.
 
The explanation stated that, having been left accidentally
outside,
it was eaten by a rooster who promptly climbed on a hen’s back where he stayed for several days, pecking the hen bald.
 

Yamada skipped over this one with a smile.
 
The consort would object.
 
After some thought, he settled on a combination of fairly harmless substances and went through the garden to his pharmacy to prepare the medicine.

As he passed the fishpond, he saw the small footprints in the snow and a few crumbs by the side of the pond.
 
Sadamu had been feeding the fish again.
 
This reminded him that he had a family now, and he felt comforted by the thought.
 
There would be two boys to
raise
.
 
Hachiro went to school with the monks every day, but Sadamu could keep him company a little longer.

He noticed that the path to the pharmacy had not been swept and made a note to speak to Togoro later.
  
In his studio, he laid down his notes and began to assemble, grind, and weigh the ingredients of the aphrodisiac:
 
dried Chinese yam, cinnamon bark, licorice root, hyssop, parsley seeds, all wholesome – unlike that recipe which used dried lacquer and could cause a stomach upset.
 
After some thought, he added ground deer’s horn and doubled the parsley seed.
 
These ingredients he mixed and sifted carefully, then he added honey as a binder.
 
The resultant thick dough, he formed into small pills which were to be dissolved in warm wine and taken on an empty stomach.
 

To make certain that they would not leave an unpleasant taste on His Majesty’s tongue, he heated a little wine and took a dose himself.
 
He found the taste very satisfactory.
 
The wine had merely an agreeably sweet and herbal flavor.
 
His Majesty, he was convinced, needed only strength of mind to succeed in his endeavors with his consort.
 
Something mildly stimulating was all that was necessary.
 
It would never do to experiment with stronger drugs on an emperor.

By now, Yamada felt pleasantly warm himself in spite of the chilly air in the pharmacy.
 
He placed the pills into a fine white porcelain jar.
 
Around its neck he tied a small piece of paper bearing the simple instructions.
 
It looked very plain for an emperor, he decided, and after a moment’s thought, he carried it into the house to look for a silk ribbon.

Otori heard him in the corridor and put her head out of the kitchen.
 
“Togoro’s gone,” she announced.

“What?”
 
The doctor paused, trying to understand.
 
“Gone where?”

She came a few steps toward him, glowering.
 
“How should I know?
 
Nobody ever tells me anything.”

“I expect he’ll turn up,” Yamada said indifferently and turned toward his room.
 
On second thought, since she seemed to blame him, he added, “I’ll have to leave again in a little.
 
Back to the palace to deliver some medicine.”

She nodded.
 
“Good.
 
We can use the money.
 
That Hachiro’s bought himself new clothes.
 
It took all my household money to pay the shopkeeper for them.
 
You might have told me.”

That explained her ill humor.
 
“He didn’t tell me,” he said defensively.
 
Seeing her eyes widen at Hachiro’s newest outrage, he added, “It’s all right.
 
I forgot that they need new clothes now that they are my sons.
 
Come in and I’ll give you the money.”

“He’s got his nerve doing such a thing without permission,” she muttered, following him into his study.
 
“Maybe it’s time for another whipping.”

He shuddered.
 
“No.
 
Let it go this time.”
 
She told him the cost — not insignificant — and he gave her the money.
 
“What about Sadamu?” he asked.

“He could use new clothes more than that Hachiro.”

“I’ll see about it tomorrow.”

When Otori had left, Yamada sat down and worried about Hachiro.
 
First the business with Togoro, and now the new clothes.
 
The boy was sullen and far too concerned with his new status.
 
The fact that Otori did not confront him herself meant that she was afraid to, and that troubled him more than Hachiro’s shopping spree.
 
But perhaps the fault was
his own
.
 
He had changed the youngster’s life too abruptly.
 
How could he expect Hachiro to be an obedient son when he had never had a father or a home?
 
No doubt, he would settle down in time, especially now that his days were taken up with lessons.

With a sigh, the doctor searched for the ribbon, found a nice green one, and tied it around the jar.
 

It was time to make the delivery, but a strange lassitude had seized him, and he stretched out beside his desk, his arms behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling.
 
In a way, the audience with His Majesty had been amusing.
 
As long as the emperor did not have his eye on Toshiko, Yamada wished him every success in the bedchamber.
 
Not with Toshiko, though.
 
He flushed hotly at the thought of it and was suddenly so aroused that he jumped up.
 
He paced for a while without finding relief, then threw wide the doors to the cold garden and gulped some winter the air.
 
Maddening images of naked, intertwined bodies, hers and his own, crowded his mind.
 
He ran down into the garden, looked for a broom, and swept the path to the studio with vigorous strokes.

Halfway through the job, he realized that he had just proved the amazing efficacy of His Majesty’s medicine and paused to laugh.
 
By the time all the paths around his house had been cleared, the effect of the medicine had worn off sufficiently for him to return to his room.
 
There he rewrote the prescription for half the amount he had taken, and then he carried the emperor’s pills to the palace.

Strangely, although his body behaved itself now, he could not quite rid his mind of desire for hours afterward.