The Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai (23 page)

My degradation, locked into a room with a guard, meant I slept little and endured nightmares of Hitomi’s hut, scars and funerals.

The storm persisted undiminished night after night, day after day, until it ended.

V. Treachery

It ended like this.

Early snow arrived in the Godless month, concealing colourful leaves and grasses with an icy brightness that hurt my eyes. It was even more bleak and bitter since I slept alone. I had none of Akio’s exercises to distract me. In such a winter my family would have been sowing barley, perhaps on the extra land I had given them. That thought made me sad. I recalled a lullaby, the smell of barley cooking and a grinding stone, although I no longer remembered the faces of my parents or siblings. I wondered if they remembered me.

Had I forgotten Tashiko’s face? No! I remembered her loam-brown eyes, her wispy hair and especially her voice, which soothed my anger and despair. How could I go on? She was the one with whom I awakened and with whom I slept. I shared my triumphs with the bow and failures with the
bokken
. She listened to my stories, then told me whether or not they would work with clients. She was often correct. I spoke with no one now, except clients, and all that was dissembling.

Twenty-three prolonged days and nights in a locked room, only allowed out, like an ox, to work. I counted the remaining days until I could be with Tashiko. I did not even have with me my pink festival smock, and I had never slept without it since my father had sold me. I searched for Tashiko’s presence in my mind to ease my pain.

Rin usually brought my rice bowl each morning, her eyes gloating. That morning – it was not her footsteps that came towards my hut. The lock’s heavy metallic
clunk
mixed with the buntings’ early-morning prattling, ‘
tseewee-tseewee-tseewee-tseewee
’.

The door opened. Scents of rice and the last of the summer’s vegetables floated into my prison. The back of a head on hands in five-point. I glanced for the samurai who guarded me and saw only the empty corridor to the big room is Main House. Where could he be?

‘I bring you your morning meal, honourable Kozaishō.’

Misuki’s voice. Why would she speak so formally? I tugged at her hair playfully. ‘Thank you, Misuki.’ Then I realised her voice had sounded flat and empty.

She stayed silent and on the floor. I pushed aside the bowl and placed my hands over hers. Our heads almost touched. ‘What, Misuki?’

Motionless. Silent.

‘Please sit. Misuki, tell me,’ I whispered, my insides tightening to the breadth of a chopstick.

Misuki’s tears fell to the floor. Thin cries bubbled from her lips.

I waited.

Something was wrong. What hideousness had a man perpetrated on one of the Women-for-Play now?

Misuki’s cries slowed, and the words dribbled out: ‘Kozaishō. Honourable Kozaishō.’

‘Yes.’ I stroked her thick, coarse hair.

‘Kozaishō. I cannot believe I must tell you this.’

Those words sounded familiar – too familiar. I froze. ‘Tell me.’

‘Oh, Kozaishō.’

With one hand I continued to stroke her hair. With the other, I lifted her chin. ‘Who, Misuki? Me? Aya? Emi? How bad is the harm?’

She shook her head with each name, her makeup dripping in her tears on to my hand.

I trembled, like an earthquake. ‘No! Not—’

She nodded only with her eyes. ‘Tashiko is dead. Do you want to see her before they prepare her?’

‘Prepare her? Who is
they
?’ Rage charged through me. I bolted from my prison. No one else must touch her!

This had to be an evil joke. Had Hitomi played a terrible trick for punishment? I rushed into Tashiko’s work room. Disarrayed. Table, lamp, bamboo tree. All splayed out. No Tashiko.

I whirled back to Misuki. Outside the hut Emi and Aya wrapped their arms around each other. With tearful faces, my family stared at me. There was now a grinding stone on each of my feet.

With one hand I pointed to the chaos of her hut. I opened my mouth to scream— No words. No sounds. My legs did not touch the ground. I grew smaller. The room’s commotion expanded and I dropped to the floor. No blood. Before, I argued with myself, there had been much blood. I saw no blood.

I pleaded with Kannon-sama, the Goddess of Mercy, for the health and safety of my precious one.

My three sisters came towards me. I heard Aya’s bawls. I recognised Emi’s gulping sobs. They circled me: hands stroked me, voices said my name. They pulled me to my feet.

‘Do you want to see her before they prepare her?’ Misuki could not look me in the face.

I ran to the unclean room set aside for such.

Tashiko lay on the floor, her lustrous hair swirled across her favourite pale blue costume. With the heavy makeup she wore, she appeared available for work, but it could not hide the line of raw flesh that twisted around her neck.

I ran out, vomited and retched over and over. On that day, the Goddess of Mercy – and all the Gods – abandoned me.

Wet leaves wiped my lips. ‘Sip the water, Kozaishō,’ Misuki murmured.

I did, although the sickly smell of vomit remained.

‘Kozaishō, Madam Hitomi says you are not to touch her. You are not to defile yourself, she says.’ Misuki’s fingers squeezed my upper arm, as if that might stop me.

I flew into the Pollution Hut. My fingers traced Tashiko’s face and neck. I placed my cheek against hers, her skin, soft, yet chilled. Her hair still smelt of brush clover. Her long neck, now torn, destroyed by a stranger’s hands. By a stranger whose life I would hold in mine – soon.

Misuki touched me and joined me in the defilement. ‘The human fire has already left her body, Kozaishō. Her spirit is gone. When this happened, the Lord Buddha came down to earth on a cloud. He has accompanied Tashiko to Heaven.’

A myth. My dear one, gone from my life. Misuki clung to my hands with both of hers. I did not know if this abomination had resulted from fun, a joke or part of a tale. I would find out.

My tears washed my beloved. Misuki anointed her body with pungent herbs, especially her neck. How could anyone have hurt Tashiko so? My desolation fought with my disgust. I shaved her head and took her favurite blue
takenaga
to bind her hair. Would I be allowed to have her
takenaga
and hair as a keepsake? Misuki and I wrapped her in white gauze. It roughened the pads of my fingers. Stronger, I rolled Tashiko back and forth. Together Misuki and I encased my loved one’s body in the gauze until she appeared like the chrysalis of a caterpillar. If the Buddha accompanied anyone’s soul to heaven, that soul would be Tashiko’s.

I glanced around me. No one. I put my hands on Misuki’s shoulders and whispered, ‘Madam Hitomi has a samurai who lurks around me. Please, take the coins under my cleaned defilement cloths and pay someone, with a good brush, to write a
sutra
epitaph on a piece of wood or a stone. My brush is too poor or I would write myself. You can touch the coins now because you and I are already unclean.’

A few months before a customer had told me the courts had prohibited the use of coins. Perhaps officials would take me far away. Perhaps that would relieve the pain that continuously pierced my skin.

When Misuki left, I spoke to Tashiko: ‘My beloved, I must undertake the honourable action. This I promise on my family and ancestors’ honour. Know that I shall do everything I can to believe in your Buddha and your Bodhisattvas. Know I will avenge your murder.’

I wrote:

Tashiko, my soul

Press your essence into mine

Only tears remain

Until we can both return

To love each other again

Out of the next morning’s mists, the priest entered the Village, parading like a courtier in white and purple silk. Tall and thin, like late harvest straw.

BOOK 7

I. Knowledge

The one I hated, Goro.

He strolled to Main House. His purple and white silk robes swirled about him, like rapids around a rock. He hesitated, his thin hair slick against his skull. Our eyes met. His eyes, like water on a moonless night, the eyes of a man who feasted on others’ pain.

He would not feast on mine.

‘Tomorrow is the most propitious day for the funeral.’ Goro’s shrill voice scratched along the
watadono
in front of Main House.

Misuki and I, with Emi and Aya, stood far from the others because we were polluted by death. I searched the women, one by one, with my eyes. Who had killed Tashiko? Who looked guilty? Who did not return my gaze? Who kept their head turned away? Whose hands were not loosely at their sides?

Later that day I performed the purification rituals to clear myself of the death pollution. All night I remained with my cherished one, a noxious, cloying scent mixed with the aromatic herbs I had rubbed into her stiff skin. Shrikes landed in naked paulownia trees their eyes banded black for grief, like mine. These birds shrieked against the silence of my Abstention while I could not.

I attended to the world’s silence without Tashiko’s heartbeats.

The funeral seemed remote, like thunder before clouds are seen.

My three sisters dressed me in the chief mourner’s black clothes. The coarse hemp irritated my neck, arms and nipples, reminding me to show no misery to this priest. Misuki placed the bamboo staff in my hand. She brought little flags with Tashiko’s virtues written on them. Women-for-Play and servants also carried flags with virtues. They had loved her, too, but I had loved her with my entire soul. She had loved me in the same way.

The bamboo staff and the little flags were cold in my hands. My feet tripped on the smallest pebbles. Misuki supported me on one side and the staff on the other.

The gravesite altar was undressed, no flowers, now in the deep death of winter. The wooden tablet inscribed with Tashiko’s name lay on the ground next to the shallow pit. Misuki had written the inscription, an exquisite brush. I recognised her writing. Four
eta
carried her body wrapped in the white cloth and lowered her into the ground. They carried my life wrapped in that white sheath to the grave.

Something shone in the shallow pit. Misuki nudged me and whispered, ‘All the Women-for-Play donated to buy
gofu
.’

Seeing my confusion, she said, ‘You know. The round jars. To protect from evil spirits.’

In the frosty air, Goro fussed with his robes and leered at the women huddled around Tashiko’s body. His breath smoked in front of his face, like a dragon’s.

He turned to the altar, placed his prayer book on it and nodded at Hitomi. Then his eyes flickered across my face. His hand signalled for the lighting of incense, and he chanted another prayer.

Each mourner was supposed to light incense at the altar. As chief mourner, I went first. Wretchedness stabbed my chest. All my coins had bought the tablet but there had been none for incense. How could I meet Goro’s eyes without an incense stick? Such shame. Such dishonour to Tashiko and to me. As I rose, a thin stick was pushed into my hand. My hand pressed Misuki’s in thanks. After me, each person went to the altar and lit incense in the burner.

A gust of wind ruffled pages. He put the book of prayers on the altar and, with both hands, patted the book open to its place again. He frowned, shifted his eyes to Hitomi and turned more pages.