Across the Nightingale Floor (3 page)

The servants were full of gossip,
and I liked listening to them. They were deeply interested in a woman who had
arrived the night before and was staying another night. She was traveling alone
to Inuyama, apparently to meet Lord Iida himself, with servants, naturally, but
no husband or brother or father. She was very beautiful though quite old,
thirty at least, very nice, kind, and polite to everyone but—traveling alone!
What a mystery! The cook claimed to know that she was recently widowed and was
going to join her son in the capital, but the chief maid said that was
nonsense, the woman had never had children, never been married, and then the
horse boy, who was stuffing his face with his supper, said he had heard from
the palanquin bearers that she had had two children, a boy who died and a girl
who was a hostage in Inuyama.

The maids sighed and murmured that
even wealth and high birth could not protect you from fate, and the horse boy said,
“At least the girl lives, for they are Maruyama, and they inherit through the
female line.”

This news brought a stir of
surprise and understanding and renewed curiosity about Lady Maruyama, who held
her land in her own right, the only domain to be handed down to daughters, not
to sons.

“No wonder she dares to travel
alone,” the cook said.

Carried away by his success, the
horse boy went on, “But Lord Iida finds this offensive. He seeks to take over
her territory, either by force or, they say, by marriage.”

The cook gave him a clip round the
ear. “Watch your words! You never know who's listening!”

“We were Otori once, and will be
again,” the boy muttered.

The chief maid saw me hanging about
in the doorway and beckoned to me to come in. “Where are you traveling to? You
must have come a long way!”

I smiled and shook my head. One of
the maids, passing on her way to the guest rooms, patted me on the arm and
said, “He doesn't talk. Shame, isn't it?”

“What happened?” the cook said.
“Someone throw dust in your mouth like the Ainu dog?”

They were teasing me, not unkindly,
when the maid came back, followed by a man I gathered was one of the Maruyama
servants, wearing on his jacket the crest of the mountain enclosed in a circle.
To my surprise he addressed me in polite language. “My lady wishes to talk to
you.”

I wasn't sure if I should go with
him, but he had the face of an honest man, and I was curious to see the
mysterious woman for myself. I followed him along the passageway and through
the courtyard. He stepped onto the veranda and knelt at the door to the room.
He spoke briefly, then turned to me and beckoned to me to step up.

I snatched a rapid glance at her
and then fell to my knees and bowed my head to the floor. I was sure I was in
the presence of a princess. Her hair reached the ground in one long sweep of
black silkiness. Her skin was as pale as snow. She wore robes of deepening
shades of cream, ivory, and dove-gray embroidered with red and pink peonies.
She had a stillness about her that made me think first of the deep pools of the
mountain and then, suddenly, of the tempered steel of Jato, the snake sword.

“They tell me you don't talk,” she
said, her voice as quiet and clear as water.

I felt the compassion of her gaze,
and the blood rushed to my face.

“You can talk to me,” she went on.
Reaching forward, she took my hand and with her finger drew the sign of the
Hidden on my palm. It sent a shock through me, like the sting of a nettle. I
could not help pulling my hand away.

“Tell me what you saw,” she said, her
voice no less gentle but insistent. When I didn't reply she whispered, “It was
Iida Sadamu, wasn't it?”

I looked at her almost
involuntarily. She was smiling, but without mirth.

“And you are from the Hidden,” she
added.

Lord Otori had warned me against giving
myself away. I thought I had buried my old self, along with my name, Tomasu.
But in front of this woman I was helpless. I was about to nod my head, when I
heard Lord Otori's footsteps cross the courtyard. I realized that I recognized
him by his tread, and I knew that a woman followed him, as well as the man who
had spoken to me. And then I realized that if I paid attention, I could hear
everything in the inn around me. I heard the horse boy get up and leave the
kitchen. I heard the gossip of the maids, and knew each one from her voice.
This acuteness of hearing, which had been growing slowly ever since I'd ceased
to speak, now came over me with a flood of sound. It was almost unbearable, as
if I had the worst of fevers. I wondered if the woman in front of me was a
sorceress who had bewitched me. I did not dare lie to her, but I could not
speak.

I was saved by the woman coming
into the room. She knelt before Lady Maruyama and said quietly, “His lordship
is looking for the boy.”

“Ask him to come in,” the lady
replied. “And, Sachie, would you kindly bring the tea utensils?”

Lord Otori stepped into the room,
and he and Lady Maruyama exchanged deep bows of respect. They spoke politely to
each other like strangers, and she did not use his name, yet I had the feeling
they knew each other well. There was a tension between them that I would
understand later, but which then only made me more ill at ease.

“The maids told me about the boy
who travels with you,” she said. “I wished to see him for myself.”

“Yes, I am taking him to Hagi. He
is the only survivor of a massacre. I did not want to leave him to Sadamu.” He
did not seem inclined to say anything else, but after a while he added, “I have
given him the name of Takeo.”

She smiled at this—a real smile.
“I'm glad,” she said. “He has a certain look about him.”

“Do you think so? I thought it
too.”

Sachie came back with a tray, a
teakettle, and a bowl. I could see them clearly as she placed them on the
matting, at the same level as my eyes. The bowl's glaze held the green of the
forest, the blue of the sky.

“One day you will come to Maruyama
to my grandmother's teahouse,” the lady said. “There we can do the ceremony as
it should be performed. But for now we will have to make do as best we can.”

She poured the hot water, and a
bittersweet smell wafted up from the bowl. “Sit up, Takeo,” she said.

She was whisking the tea into a
green foam. She passed the bowl to Lord Otori. He took it in both hands, turned
it three times, drank from it, wiped the lip with his thumb, and handed it with
a bow back to her. She filled it again and passed it to me. I carefully did
everything the lord had done, lifted it to my lips, and drank the frothy
liquid. Its taste was bitter, but it was clearing to the head. It steadied me a
little. We never had anything like this in Mino: Our tea was made from twigs
and mountain herbs.

I wiped the place I had drunk from
and handed the bowl back to Lady Maruyama, bowing clumsily. I was afraid Lord
Otori would notice and be ashamed of me, but when I glanced at him his eyes
were fixed on the lady.

She then drank herself. The three
of us sat in silence. There was a feeling in the room of something sacred, as
though we had just taken part in the ritual meal of the Hidden. A wave of
longing swept over me for my home, my family, my old life, but although my eyes
grew hot, I did not allow myself to weep. I would learn to endure.

On my palm I could still feel the
trace of Lady Maruyama's fingers.

———«»———«»———«»———

The inn was far larger and more
luxurious than any of the other places we had stayed during our swift journey
through the mountains, and the food we ate that night was unlike anything I had
ever tasted. We had eel in a spicy sauce, and sweet fish from the local
streams, many servings of rice, whiter than anything in Mino, where if we ate
rice three times a year we were lucky. I drank rice wine for the first time.
Lord Otori was in high spirits—“floating,” as my mother used to say—his silence
and grief dispelled, and the wine worked its cheerful magic on me too.

When we had finished eating he told
me to go to bed: He was going to walk outside a while to clear his head. The
maids came and prepared the room. I lay down and listened to the sounds of the
night. The eel, or the wine, had made me restless and I could hear too much.
Every distant noise made me start awake. I could hear the dogs of the town bark
from time to time, one starting, the others joining in. After a while I felt I
could recognize each one's distinctive voice. I thought about dogs, how they sleep
with their ears twitching and how only some noises disturb them. I would have
to learn to be like them or I would never sleep again.

When I heard the temple bells toll
at midnight, I got up and went to the privy. The sound of my own piss was like
a waterfall. I poured water over my hands from the cistern in the courtyard and
stood for a moment, listening.

It was a still, mild night, coming
up to the full moon of the eighth month. The inn was silent: Everyone was in
bed and asleep. Frogs were croaking from the river and the rice fields, and
once or twice I heard an owl hoot. As I stepped quietly onto the veranda I
heard Lord Otori's voice. For a moment I thought he must have returned to the
room and was speaking to me, but a woman's voice answered him. It was Lady
Maruyama.

I knew I should not listen. It was
a whispered conversation that no one could hear but me. I went into the room,
slid the door shut, and lay down on the mattress, willing myself to fall
asleep. But my ears had a longing for sound that I could not deny, and every
word dropped clearly into them.

They spoke of their love for each
other, their few meetings, their plans for the future. Much of what they said
was guarded and brief, and much of it I did not understand then. I learned that
Lady Maruyama was on her way to the capital to see her daughter, and that she
feared Iida would again insist on marriage. His own wife was unwell and not
expected to live. The only son she had borne him, also sickly, was a
disappointment to him.

“You will marry no one but me,” he
whispered, and she replied, “It is my only desire. You know it.” He then swore
to her he would never take a wife, nor lie with any woman, unless it were she,
and he spoke of some strategy he had, but did not spell it out. I heard my own
name and conceived that it involved me in some way. I realized there was a
long-existing enmity between him and Iida that went all the way back to the
battle of Yaegahara.

“We will die on the same day,” he
said. “I cannot live in a world that does not include you.”

Then the whispering turned to other
sounds, those of passion between a man and a woman. I put my fingers in my
ears. I knew about desire, had satisfied my own with the other boys of my
village, or with girls in the brothel, but I knew nothing of love. Whatever I
heard, I vowed to myself I would never speak of it. I would keep these secrets
as close as the Hidden keep theirs. I was thankful I had no voice.

I did not see the lady again. We
left early the next morning, an hour or so after sunrise. It was already warm;
monks were sprinkling water in the temple cloisters and the air smelled of
dust. The maids at the inn had brought us tea, rice, and soup before we left,
one of them stifling a yawn as she set the dishes before me, and then
apologizing to me and laughing. It was the girl who had patted me on the arm
the day before, and when we left she came out to cry, “Good luck, little lord!
Good journey! Don't forget us here!”

I wished I was staying another
night. The lord laughed at it, teasing me and saying he would have to protect
me from the girls in Hagi. He could hardly have slept the previous night, yet
his high spirits were still evident. He strode along the highway with more
energy than usual. I thought we would take the post road to Yamagata, but
instead we went through the town, following a river smaller than the wide one
that flowed alongside the main road. We crossed it where it ran fast and narrow
between boulders, and headed once more up the side of a mountain.

We had brought food with us from
the inn for the day's walk, for once we were beyond the small villages along
the river, we saw no one. It was a narrow, lonely path, and a steep climb. When
we reached the top we stopped and ate. It was late afternoon, and the sun sent
slanting shadows across the plain below us. Beyond it, towards the East, lay
range after range of mountains turning indigo and steel-gray.

“That is where the capital is,”
Lord Otori said, following my gaze.

I thought he meant Inuyama, and I
was puzzled.

He saw it and went on, “No, the
real capital, of the whole country—where the Emperor lives. Way beyond the
farthest mountain range. Inuyama lies to the southeast.” He pointed back in the
direction we had come. “It's because we are so far from the capital, and the
Emperor is so weak, that war lords like Iida can do as they please.” His mood
was turning somber again. “And below us is the scene of the Otori's worst
defeat, where my father was killed. That is Yaegahara. The Otori were betrayed
by the Noguchi, who changed sides and joined Iida. More than ten thousand
died.” He looked at me and said, “I know what it is like to see those closest
to you slaughtered. I was not much older than you are now.”

I stared out at the empty plain. I
could not imagine what a battle was like. I thought of the blood of ten
thousand men soaking into the earth of Yaegahara. In the moist haze the sun was
turning red, as if it had drawn up the blood from the land. Kites wheeled below
us, calling mournfully.

“I did not want to go to Yamagata,”
Lord Otori said as we began to descend the path. “Partly because I am too well
known there, and for other reasons. One day I will tell them to you. But it
means we will have to sleep outside tonight, grass for our pillow, for there is
no town near enough to stay in. We will cross the fief border by a secret route
I know, and then we will be in Otori territory, safely out of reach of Sadamu.”