Dai-San - 03 (15 page)

‘But eventually the sorcerous wars came and Ama-no-mori was not left unscathed.’ The fish nibbled at the algae along the stone sides of the pool, deep down, far away from the surface. ‘A number of Bujun became involved in the holocaust, lured by the riches of the kingdoms of man. Chagrined, dor-Sefrith, the greatest of the Bujun, pursued them and defeated them. Still, for the world of man, the damage was already done. Dor-Sefrith returned to Ama-no-mori and sadly retold his tale of death and destruction. The Bujun decided instantly and he caused the island to be moved away from the continent of man so that none might again be tempted to cause destruction. Then he said his farewells and left Ama-no-mori to pay his personal debt to man in the City of Ten Thousand Paths. Thus the Bujun sank into the mists of legend.’

‘Surely there is more that you can tell me about dor-Sefrith,’ said Ronin, thinking of The Dolman, not yet wishing to voice his thoughts.

‘So.’ Okami shrugged. ‘Perhaps there are others in Eido who know more of him.’ He watched their dark reflections dance upon the surface of the water. ‘We are a people who learn from history and thus the Kunshin came into being. Not the Emperor of the Sun; not the Sho-gun, but perhaps a combination of both. He is a ruler without the layers of state for he is Bujun just as I am Bujun and this is something that he cannot forget.’

‘And we will find him at the Yoshiwara?’

A brown and orange butterfly came between them, questing.

‘If he takes his pleasure,’ said Okami, ‘yes.’

Down a perfectly straight street, the wooden two-story dwellings narrowing in perspective before them, came the shadows of two tall men, as if they floated on the misty amethyst of early evening. Women in swirling, patterned robes, white-faced, red-lipped, carrying delicate paper parasols over their shoulders, passed them in bunches, giggling, whispering, flicking sidelong glances in their direction without ever turning their heads. Perfume on the air, cherry blossoms and musk.

‘Welcome to the Yoshiwara,’ said Okami as they went through the door of a building. Beautiful women peered down at them like unfurling, phototropic lilies from second-story balconies.

A plump woman with coifed, gleaming hair greeted them, bowing. She wore a robe of mauve and pink silk, patterned in triangles. A pair of ivory pins went through her hair. Her face, plain and flat, was dominated by wide, inquisitive eyes. She smiled as her head lifted. Okami introduced Ronin and they all bowed again.

She held out an arm and Okami removed his sandals, Ronin his boots. They went across the tatamis to a low wooden table, uncarved and unlacquered, sat cross-legged around it. Two robed women came with steaming, fragrant tea and rice cakes. Somewhere, perhaps from the second story of the place, tiny bells sounded, ice flakes glittering through frigid air.

To their left, a soji slid back and three women entered. They were very young with exquisite heart-shaped faces, black-maned, black-eyed, crimson lips like bows. They smiled. The whispering of their silken robes.

‘Not now, Juku,’ said Okami somewhat wistfully.

She nodded and waved a hand. The women disappeared.

‘How may I help you, then?’ she said when they were alone.

‘Has Azuki-iro been here this evening?’

Juku smiled and her soft hand reached out to cover Okami’s for just a moment. ‘You sweet thing. Of all the houses in the Yoshiwara, it is here that you come to inquire after Azuki-iro.’ She laughed. ‘You must know the Kunshin well, Okami. Yes, he was here but much earlier, perhaps, oh, midafternoon. He did not say—but wait—’ She held up a hand, called softly but distinctly: ‘Onjin!’

Almost immediately, a soji opened and a woman came to their table. She knelt beside Juku. She was fine-boned, her skin so delicate as to be almost translucent. Her almond eyes were large, her cheekbones high. Her silk robe was the color of swirled gray ash.

Juku took the woman’s slender hands in hers, softly stroking their backs. ‘Tell me, Onjin, when the Kunshin was with you today, did he say where he was going when he left here?’

Onjin stared at the two men for a moment, then her sooty eyes locked with those of her mistress.

‘The Kameido, lady, is a place he mentioned sometime—after.’

‘Ah,’ said Juku. ‘And no others?’

Onjin thought for a moment, her brow furrowing. Even those lines could not disrupt her enormous beauty. ‘No others, lady.’

‘All right.’ She put a hand to the woman’s cheek. ‘You may go now.’

Onjin rose in a graceful stir of silk and flesh, gliding effortlessly across the tatamis. When the soji had slid shut behind her, Juku said, ‘Lovely, isn’t she?’

Okami nodded. ‘If there is time tonight, we shall return to find out for ourselves.’ His eyes were glittery in the low light.

‘That would make me most happy, Okami,’ said Juku.

‘Thank you.’

The woman bowed her head. ‘You honor this establishment by your presence.’

Out in the bustling street, Okami took them right, then right again, into an area that was close and crowded with merchants. This gave way, abruptly, to a flat garden perhaps two hundred meters long, dominated by gnarled plum trees. There were two small, obliquely roofed teahouses, wall-less on their garden sides, which bordered the place to the south and the west. Sprinkled throughout the garden itself were wide wooden benches on which people sat. Most seemed to be writing.

‘The Kameido is the garden of the literati of Eido,’ said Okami. ‘The poets, the playwrights, come here for inspiration from the wisdom of the ancient plum trees and the extraordinary quietude amidst the bustle of the city.’

Okami spoke to the proprietor of the teahouse but he had just come to Kameido and the day people had already gone for the evening meal. He offered them tea.

They stood on the steps of the building, sipping tiny porcelain cups of tea. A young man approached them. He was tall and slender, his black eyes bright, his sensual mouth smiling.

‘You are looking for Azuki-iro?’ His voice had the ring of metal.

Okami nodded.

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sasori?’

Okami seemed somewhat taken aback, perhaps by the directness of the question.

‘Not at all.’

‘Then there is no reason to tell you.’

‘You approached us.’

The man looked around as if puzzled.

‘So I did. I thought you might like to hear a poem that I—’

‘Listen you—’

But Ronin caught Okami’s arm.

‘I would like to hear the poem,’ he said. He relinquished his grip on Okami’s arm only when he felt the muscles under his fingers relax.

‘Ah, splendid.’ The man glanced down at a small tablet of rice paper that he held. His head lifted. ‘“And morning comes. The raven wakes, still tired.” Well?’ He stared at them.

‘And I thought my poetry was bad,’ Okami muttered.

‘What does it mean?’ said Ronin.

‘I am sasori,’ said the man. ‘Soon the sasori will fly at night, taking what is theirs. No longer will we be forced to live on this small, insufficient island. Soon there will be wealth enough for all on Ama-no-mori, Bujun and non-Bujun—’

‘Enough!’ cried Okami, and this time Ronin did not attempt to stop him. He grabbed the man by the front of his robe. The small tablet tumbled to the earth of the garden. ‘I will hear no more of this. If you know where the Kunshin is now, you would do well to tell me!’

The man looked at Ronin, who said: ‘I think he means it. Tell him and be done with it.’

The man shifted his gaze to Okami, who pulled harder on his robe. The fabric began to rip.

‘There is a Noh performance at the Asakusa tonight,’ he said softly. ‘Perhaps you will find him there.’

The great oiled paper lantern groaned accusingly in the wind. The plovers had disappeared beyond the cherry trees. The top of the Asakusa was already obscured as night rolled in in velvet blues and violets.

The stone courtyard was all but deserted now as the last of the figures disappeared into the wide wooden doorways of the vermilion building.

Okami came up beside him.

‘There is time.’

They went across the courtyard, past the bowing cherry trees.

‘The Asakusa is the most renowned Noh theater in all of Ama-no-mori.’

‘The Noh are plays,’ said Ronin.

‘Of a sort.’

Inside, the sweep of the polished wooden stage dominated the space. Before it, down three steps, was a_ coarse gravel strip perhaps three meters wide, after which began the low-walled polished wooden boxes housing the audience.

They went down the central aisle; Okami chose a box near the front. Within, they sat on the wood floor, cross-legged.

Okami leaned over, whispered to a man in a neighboring box, then said to Ronin:

‘Tonight the Noh is
Hagoromo
.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘
The Feathered Cloak.’

The theater was completely filled.

‘Is he here?’

Okami twisted his head briefly.

‘I cannot tell.’

The thin, harsh notes of a flute heralded the beginning of the Noh. It was not a play but more like an articulated poem. The leading actor played a female part. He was dressed in complex ceremonial robes; he wore a coifed wig and a fabulously carved mask with delicate, chiseled features of such beauty that Ronin was reminded of Onjin. The second actor was maskless.

For a time, they sat on the stark polished wood of the stage, half-singing, half-chanting in a language that Ronin found incomprehensible, moving only their upper torsos, and yet, because of the actors’ consummate skill, he was able to follow the story line.

A goddess, having lost her cloak of feathers, descends into the world of man to retrieve it. The cloak has been found by a common fisherman who nevertheless understood the garment to be unique and of high value. The goddess discovers that the fisherman has taken her cloak and she attempts to persuade him to return it to her, yet all her arguments fail to move the fisherman, who refuses to part with his prize.

At length, the two strike a bargain. The fisherman will consent to return the feathered cloak if the goddess consents to dance for him.

Thus the Noh’s climax was entirely composed of movement, devoid of all speech.

The goddess’s dance commences and it is so unearthly, an intricate gyring so filled with intense emotion, that none within the Asakusa can tear his eyes away from the actor. The dance builds until the very air is charged with a metallic tension born of a beauty beyond mortal understanding. A goddess has taken the stage and now dances desperately for the life of her cloak.

And it is, finally, in that exalted state, with the goddess at the pinnacle of her art, with the walls of the Asakusa gone, with barriers of reality aflutter, with the encroachment of infinity pouring across his mind, that he hears there a stirring out of the immense silence:

Ronin.

The river flowed around them, beneath them, wide and blue. Along both banks, the reeds had been cut down and fat fish swam in idle contentment, nibbling at algae clinging to the submerged rocks. Fireflies danced in the shadows.

Across the river, the other half of the enormous inn spread itself down the embankment for many meters, a mirror image, symmetrical and precise, of the wooden sections, raised on stilts, which jutted out into the bubbling water from the edge of the banks.

Okami had had to pull him away, in the end. The crowd was too thick.

The mist still flung itself across Eido, obscuring the top of Fujiwara. Red paper lanterns hung from the oiled sojis which served to separate the groups of people sipping tea or rice wine while enjoying their food. The lanterns’ crimson glow gave the vast inn a sense of intimacy it otherwise might not have.

Alive! Ronin thought. Alive!

The buzz of low conversation, the sighing of silk as men and women made their way to and from the wooden sections along the water, the brief call of a heron, white against the blue-black water, the surrealistic fire of the lanterns’ light on the river. There was constant motion.

He had jumped up, turning. But the audience was alive with movement. A great rustling sea, indifferent to his anxiety as his eyes darted from person to person. Somewhere there—

‘Rice wine?’

A young woman bent over them. Okami looked at Ronin.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘For both of us.’

Ronin watched distractedly as she swept away from them, gliding between the moving people. Okami asked him a question but he did not hear. In the audience at the Asakusa, his mind opened by the electrifying Noh performance, he had heard her calling to him. It was a sound which he thought he would never hear again. Three men and a woman entered the inn and were making their winding way towards a wooden section on the water. Idly, his eyes took them in. He felt a jolt go through him.

‘Ronin?’

He was standing, staring at the woman as she was seated.

‘Chill take me!’ He was sure. It was Moeru. Miraculously alive and here in Eido. But how?

‘Ronin!’ A hand on his arm.

He bent.

‘That woman.’

‘Where?’

‘In the pink and silver robe. With the tall man in midnight blue—’

‘That is Nikumu. What—?’

‘I know her, Okami.’

‘Know her? But that is imposs—’

Ronin was gone.

‘Ronin, no! Not Nikumu! Wait—!’

Through the sultry night, Eido was like a translucent gem-in-a-mist, lantern-lit, far away on some flat tide, the richly patterned robes nearby, charcoal fumes in the air, through the maze of bodies, smiling women with gleaming hair and white faces, their perfumes mingling, laughing men with long queues and stiff-shouldered robes, past serving women with small lacquered trays on which were precisely positioned pots of tea and rice wine, plates of raw fish and vegetables, like miniature gardens.

On the water, a heron, phosphorescent in the night, skimmed the surface as it took off, its long legs trailing behind.

‘Moeru,’ he called, coming. ‘Moeru.’

A tightening in his chest.

Calmly, the bird climbed into the mist above Eido.

Her oval face, pale and beautiful, upturned at his arrival. Her eyes the color of the sea on a stormy day. The men at her table were in stiff-shouldered robes, two in charcoal gray with the familiar wheel pattern in dark blue, the other, the one Okami had called Nikumu, in the midnight blue robe with wheels of gray. Their faces turned to his.