Grass for His Pillow (7 page)

He had no idea how different, or how far I had gone from my mother's teaching. Dogs were barking in the distance, roosters announced the coming day. I had to go, yet I was reluctant to leave.

“You're not afraid?” I asked him.

“Often I am terrified. I don't have the gift of courage. But my life is in God's hands. He has some plan for me. He sent you to us.”

“I am not an angel,” I said.

“How else would one of the Otori know our prayers?” he replied. “Who but an angel would share food with someone like me?”

I knew the risk I was taking but I told him anyway. “Lord Shigeru rescued me from Iida at Mino.”

I did not have to spell it out. He was silent for a moment as if awed. Then he whispered, “Mino? We thought no one survived from there. How strange are the ways of God. You have been spared for some great purpose. If you are not an angel, you are marked by the Secret One.”

I shook my head. “I am the least of beings. My life is not my own. Fate, which led me away from my own people, has now led me away from the Otori.” I did not want to tell him I had become one of the Tribe.

“You need help?” he said. “We will always help you. Come to us at the outcasts' bridge.”

“Where is that?”

“Where we tan the hides, between Yamagata and Tsuwano. Ask for Jo-An.” He then said the third prayer, giving thanks for the food.

“I must go,” I said.

“First would you give me a blessing, lord.”

I placed my right hand on his head and began the prayer my mother used to say to me. I felt uncomfortable, knowing I had little right to speak these words, but they came easily off my tongue. Jo-An took my hand and touched his forehead and lips to my
fingers. I realized then how deeply he trusted me. He released my hand and bowed his head to the ground. When he raised it again, I was on the far side of the street. The sky was paling, the dawn air cool.

I slipped back from doorway to doorway. The temple bell rang out. The town was stirring, the first of the shutters were being taken down, and the smell of smoke from kitchen fires wafted through the streets. I had stayed far too long with Jo-An. I had not used my second self all night, but I felt split in half, as if I had left my true self permanently beneath the willow tree with him. The self that was returning to the Tribe was hollow.

When I came to the Muto house the nagging thought that had been at the back of my mind all night surfaced. How was I going to get across the overhang of the wall from the street? The white plaster, the gray tiles, shone in the dawn light, mocking me. I crouched in the shelter of the house opposite, deeply regretting my own rashness and stupidity. I'd lost my focus and concentration; my hearing was as acute as ever, but the inner certainty, the instinct, was gone.

I couldn't stay where I was. In the distance I heard the tramp of feet, the padding of hoofs. A group of men was approaching. Their voices floated toward me. I thought I recognized the Western accent that would mark them as Arai's men. I knew that if they found me, my life with the Tribe would be over: My life would probably be over altogether if Arai was as insulted as had been said.

I had no choice but to run to the gate and shout to the guards to open it, but as I was about to cross the street, I heard voices from beyond the wall. Akio was calling quietly to the guards. There was a creak and a thud as the gate was unbarred.

The patrol turned into the far end of the street. I went invisible, ran to the gate, and slipped inside.

The guards did not see me but Akio did, just as he had forestalled me at Inuyama when the Tribe first seized me. He stepped into my path and grabbed both arms.

I braced myself for the blows I was certain would follow, but he did not waste any time. He pulled me swiftly toward the house.

The horses of the patrol were moving faster now, coming down the street at a trot. I stumbled over the dog. It whimpered in its sleep. The riders shouted to the guards at the gate, “Good morning!”

“What've you got there?” one of the guards replied.

“None of your business!”

As Akio pulled me up into the house I looked back. Through the narrow space between the bathhouse and the wall, I could just see the open gate and the street beyond.

Behind the horses two men on foot were dragging a captive between them. I could not see him clearly but I could hear his voice. I could hear his prayers. It was my outcast, Jo-An.

I must have made a lunge off the step toward the gate, for Akio pulled me back with a force that almost dislocated my shoulder. Then he did hit me, silently and efficiently on the side of the neck. The room spun sickeningly. Still without speaking, he dragged me into the main room where the maid was sweeping the matting. She took no notice of us at all.

He called out to the kitchen as he opened the wall of the hidden room and pushed me inside. Kenji's wife came into the room and Akio slid the door shut.

Her face was pale and her eyes puffy, as though she were still fighting sleep. I could feel her fury before she spoke. She slapped me twice across the face. “You little bastard! You half-bred idiot! How dare you do that to me.”

Akio pushed me to the floor, still holding my arms behind my back. I lowered my head in submission. There didn't seem to be any point in saying anything.

“Kenji warned me you'd try to get out. I didn't believe him. Why did you do it?”

When I didn't reply, she knelt, too, and raised my head so she could see my face. I kept my eyes turned away.

“Answer me! Are you insane?”

“Just to see if I could.”

She sighed in exasperation, sounding like her husband.

“I don't like being shut in,” I muttered.

“It's madness,” Akio said angrily. “He's a danger to us all. We should—”

She interrupted him swiftly. “That decision can only be taken by the Kikuta master. Until then, our task is to try to keep him alive and out of Arai's hands.” She gave me another cuff round the head, but a less serious one. “Who saw you?”

“No one. Just an outcast.”

“What outcast?”

“A leather worker. Jo-An.”

“Jo-An? The lunatic? The one who saw the angel?” She took a deep breath. “Don't tell me he saw you.”

“We talked for a while,” I admitted.

“Arai's men have already picked the outcast up,” Akio said.

“I hope you realize just what a fool you are,” she said.

I bowed my head again. I was thinking about Jo-An, wishing I'd seen him home—if he had any home in Yamagata—wondering if I could rescue him, demanding silently to know what his god's
purpose was for him now.
I am often afraid,
he had said.
Terrified.
Pity and remorse twisted my heart.

“Find out what the outcast gives away,” Kenji's wife said to Akio.

“He won't betray me,” I said.

“Under torture, everyone betrays,” he replied briefly.

“We should hasten your journey,” she went on. “Perhaps you should even leave today.”

Akio was still kneeling behind me, holding me by the wrists. I felt the movement as he nodded.

“Is he to be punished?” he said.

“No, he has to be able to travel. Besides, as you should have realized by now, physical punishment makes no impression on him. However, make sure he knows exactly what the outcast suffers. His head may be stubborn but his heart is soft.”

“The masters say it is his main weakness,” Akio remarked.

“Yes, if it weren't for that we might have another Shintaro.”

“Soft hearts can be hardened,” Akio muttered.

“Well, you Kikuta know best how to do that.”

I remained kneeling on the floor while they discussed me as coldly as if I were some commodity, a vat of wine, perhaps, that might turn out to be a particularly fine one or might be tainted and worthless.

“What now?” Akio said. “Is he to be tied up until we leave?”

“Kenji said you chose to come to us,” she said to me. “If that's true, why do you try to escape?”

“I came back.”

“Will you try again?”

“No.”

“You will go to Matsue with the actors and do nothing to endanger them or yourself?”

“Yes.”

She thought for a moment and told Akio to tie me up anyway. After he'd done so, they left me to make the preparations for our departure. The maid came with a tray of food and tea and helped me to eat and drink without saying a word. After she had taken away the bowls, no one came near me. I listened to the sound of the house and thought I discerned all the harshness and cruelty that lay beneath its everyday song. A huge weariness came over me. I crawled to the mattress, made myself as comfortable as I could, thought hopelessly of Jo-An and my own stupidity, and fell asleep.

I
WOKE SUDDENLY
,
my heart pounding, my throat dry. I had been dreaming of the outcast, a terrible dream in which, from far away, an insistent voice, as small as a mosquito's, was whispering something only I could hear.

Akio must have had his face pressed up against the outside wall. He described every detail of Jo-An's torture at the hands of Arai's men. It went on and on in a slow monotone, making my skin crawl and my stomach turn. Now and then he would fall silent for long periods; I would think with relief it was over, then his voice would begin again.

I could not even put my fingers in my ears. There was no escape from it. Kenji's wife was right: It was the worst punishment she could have devised for me. I wished above all I had killed the
outcast when I first saw him on the riverbank. Pity had stayed my hand then, but that pity had had fatal results. I would have given Jo-An a swift and merciful death. Now, because of me, he was suffering torment.

When Akio's voice finally died away, I heard Yuki's tread outside. She stepped into the room carrying a bowl, scissors, and a razor. The maid, Sadako, followed her with an armful of clothes, placed them on the floor, and then went silently out of the room. I heard Sadako tell Akio that the midday meal was ready and heard him get to his feet and follow her to the kitchen. The smell of food floated through the house, but I had no appetite.

“I have to cut your hair,” Yuki said. I still wore it in the warrior-style, restrained as Ichiro, my former teacher in Shigeru's household, had insisted, but unmistakable, the forehead shaved, the back hair caught up in a topknot. It had not been trimmed for weeks, nor had I shaved my face, though I still had very little beard.

Yuki untied my hands and legs and made me sit in front of her. “You are an idiot,” she said as she began to cut.

I didn't answer. I was already aware of that but also knew I would probably do the same thing again.

“My mother was so angry. I don't know which surprised her more: that you were able to put her to sleep, or that you dared to.”

Bits of hair were falling around me. “At the same time she was almost excited,” Yuki went on. “She says you remind her of Shintaro when he was your age.”

“She knew him?”

“I'll tell you a secret: She burned for him. She'd have married him, but it didn't suit the Tribe, so she married my father instead. Anyway, I don't think she could bear for anyone to have that power
over her. Shintaro was a master of the Kikuta sleep: No one was safe from him.”

Yuki was animated, more chatty than I'd ever known her. I could feel her hand trembling slightly against my neck as the scissors snipped cold on my scalp. I remembered Kenji's dismissive words about his wife, the girls he'd slept with. Their marriage was like most, an arranged alliance between two families.

“If she'd married Shintaro, I would have been someone else,” Yuki said pensively. “I don't think she ever stopped loving him, in her heart.”

“Even though he was a murderer?”

“He wasn't a murderer! No more than you are.”