Autumn Bridge (42 page)

Given the condition of the parts, and the usual inebriated state of the undertaker, it was impossible to be more precise.

“Goro,” the Reverend Abbess Jintoku said.

Her eyes opened. She had been roused from meditation, not by the striking of a temple bell, but by her own voice speaking out of a distant memory.

The other nuns in the hall continued in stillness and silence. They knew for themselves that surrendering to Buddha’s compassionate guidance allowed imprisoned experiences and emotions to percolate to the surface. Random words sometimes sprang spontaneously out of meditation, as well as the occasional sobs, laughter, and even snores — the last from those who had allowed their attention to lapse. If any action was required, the monitor on duty, armed with a stick, would see to consciousness being refocused where it belonged.

The Abbess bowed respectfully toward the altar, then to her companions on the Way. She silently thanked Buddha and the guardian deities of the temple for granting her the peace in meditation that she had experienced. She left the hall and stepped outside. The night had passed. Early morning light came from the east. The Abbess bowed in deep gratitude for the blessing of another day.

Mushindo Abbey, Lady Emily had said so many years ago, when it was only a ruined monastery, and an abbey Mushindo had once again become. How swiftly the years passed.

One breath and it was then.

The next breath and it was now.

As the Reverend Abbess crossed the courtyard, it began to rain.

Makoto Stark sat on the windowsill of his room and rolled a cigarette. He was on the fourth and highest floor of the hotel, a large and mostly empty new building in the Tsukiji district, an area reserved for foreigners. He could see heavy gray clouds settling over the mountains at the northwestern edge of the Kanto Plain. If his sense of direction served him properly, it was raining at Mushindo Abbey and would soon be raining in Tokyo. The cigarette rolled, he put it in his mouth and let it dangle the way he imagined it dangled from the lips of the gunfighters he had read about in the dime novels of his boyhood.

What had he expected by going to Mushindo? He had hoped for something other than what he got, which was more disappointment and confusion. It may have been a little thing that the battle story Matthew Stark and his mother had told him did not match what the nuns at the abbey said. But any and every discrepancy now took on disproportionate importance. He had come to Japan looking for a single truth — his parentage — and now feared that one truth would fall far short of what he needed.

Cigarette still casually on his lip, he left the hotel and went walking out into Tsukiji. It was difficult to believe that only a little more than a dozen years ago, when the Imperial capital of Tokyo was still the Shogun’s Edo, this area was home to the great palaces of the
daimyo
— the samurai warlords who ruled Japan for a thousand years. Those palaces were now all gone, replaced by this hotel and various shops and establishments catering to foreigners. Or so the intention had been. Foreigners had not flocked here as the new government had hoped. They had continued to prefer the fuller amenities and livelier society of the port of Yokohama, twenty miles to the west. Tsukiji was virtually empty, an eerie condition in the otherwise teeming city. The policeman at the gate, dressed in a Western-style uniform, bowed to him as he left the district. He was not there to prevent the entry of ordinary Japanese into Tsukiji, but his presence there certainly did nothing to encourage free intercourse.

During his passage across the Pacific, Makoto’s thoughts at first centered entirely on Genji Okumichi and the matter of paternity and abandonment. Rapid as the steamship was, the trip was still to be measured in weeks. Anger and bitterness could fuel only so much singular concentration. Time was a benefactor. So were the free sea air, the cleansing alternation of sunshine and rain, the vastness of the oceanic view, with its unbroken and unobstructed horizon, the buoyant rhythm of the ship itself. He was surprised to find himself growing increasingly optimistic. Not about the reaction he expected from Genji. He had rejected Makoto twenty years ago, and had continued to reject him since then. There was little reason to believe his mere arrival would change any of this.

His rising hope attached, not to Genji, but to Japan itself.

Makoto could not remember a time when he did not enjoy the abundant benefits bestowed by his family’s wealth and political power. He had never been without the protection of dedicated bodyguards and the care of attentive servants. In every establishment he ever entered, he was treated with the utmost deference. His social circle consisted exclusively of those with similar backgrounds and, of course, the children of the household staff. In these ways, he was like all of the select few who belonged to the elite of San Francisco. When he was a child, he had thought that he was exactly like them. That this was not so became apparent only after his passage out of childhood into youth, when the gatherings which he attended transformed themselves seemingly overnight from childish games to dances and flirtations. Reserve and distance now characterized his relationships, particularly with his female friends, even those whom he had known all his life. He understood the reason without being told. He did not, after all, have to look very far. It was in every mirror.

He thought he did not dwell on it. Yet awareness was never very distant. This became violently clear during his brief, exciting, and ultimately tragic tenure as the Chinatown Bandit. He felt a strange and joyous thrill every time he uttered mock Chinese imprecations, brandished the Chinese meat cleaver, and saw the fear in the eyes of those who took him for what he was not — a violent, unpredictable, opium-crazed coolie. These were the very same people who preferred to minimize his existence because they could not accept what he really was. Fine. Then let them fear what he pretended to be without them ever knowing that what they feared did not exist.

Satisfaction arising from such twisted emotions could not endure. The crude blend of jest and revenge emphasized rather than diminished his isolation. Besides, no matter how much of an entertaining distraction it was for him, he could not be the Chinatown Bandit forever. Makoto had arrived at no solution when Matthew Stark uncovered his criminal farce and brought it to an immediate conclusion. His subsequent presence aboard a Japan-bound steamer was entirely fortuitous. He had intended to go to Mexico — young women there often took him for a wealthy mestizo and did not disdain him — but the SS
Hawaiian Cane
was departing just as he arrived at the harbor. Haste was more important than destination.

During the voyage, horror at the deaths behind him lost their immediacy, and anger directed toward a man he didn’t know grew vague. He began to recall the stories he had heard about Japan all his life from Matthew Stark, his mother, the household servants, visitors from Akaoka Domain and Tokyo. They described a society founded on ancient tradition, loyalty, order, and, most prominent of all, an established and unshakable hierarchy in which each and every person knew his place. He began to believe that if he was not truly at home in California, perhaps it was because it was not his true home. When the ship finally docked at Yokohama, his hope had metamorphosed into expectation.

What he subsequently found in Tokyo reminded him of the trip he had made to Montana the previous year. At Matthew Stark’s insistence, he had gone to visit the Red Hill Company’s Canadian mines. Being in the vicinity, he decided to visit the Sioux and Cheyenne reservations just south of the border. The danger thrilled him. He had been reading Wild West novels which glorified gunfighters and Indian fighters. Custer’s Last Stand against Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull at the Little Bighorn had taken place only six years earlier. So his disappointment was keen when he saw unarmed, poorly dressed, and often sick Indians shuffling around dusty reservations. No war ponies, war paint, feathered headdresses. No ferocity. He couldn’t picture these people destroying the famed Seventh Cavalry. They were the ones who had so recently had all America in an uproar?

He felt the same disappointment here. No one wore topknots, no one was armed with the emblematic two swords. The only swords were the Western-style sabers in the scabbards of military officers, who themselves wore Western-style uniforms. Most people wore kimonos, elaborate ones in some cases, particularly among the women. But almost everyone also wore one or more articles of Western clothing, most commonly, hats, boots, shoes, belts, or gloves. Many women carried parasols. The combination was utterly bizarre. If he did not know who he really was, he was not much different from everyone else here. The whole country didn’t seem to know who it was anymore. At least, they dressed as if they didn’t. The Japan he had heard about all of his life was as unreal as the Wild West of the dime novels.

Makoto turned abruptly and walked back to the hotel. Genji had replaced Quiet Crane Palace with a new one on the banks of the Tama River outside of Tokyo. He would delay no more. He asked the desk clerk for directions there.

“Lord Genji’s estate is not easily accessible,” the clerk said, “and there isn’t really much to see out there. Why not visit the Imperial Palace? You can’t go in, of course, but the view of the exterior is quite magnificent.”

“
Lord
Genji?” Makoto said. “I thought all the domains were abolished, and along with them, their lords.”

“The domains have been abolished, but some Great Lords have become Peers of the Realm, and are still entitled to the honorific. Some also have been appointed provincial governors of their former domains. Lord Genji, of course, is one of them, because of the important role he played in the Restoration of His Imperial Majesty.”

“There are no Great Lords anymore,” Makoto said, “and the domains have been abolished. But Lord Genji is still a lord, and he still rules his domain, but now it is called a province.”

“Yes,” the clerk said. “Japan is modernizing very quickly. At this rate, we will have caught up completely with the outsiders by the turn of the century.”

“No doubt,” Makoto said. “I want to go to the estate not for sightseeing but to meet with Lord Genji.”

The clerk gave Makoto a doubtful look. “That may be difficult. And anyway, he is not at his Tama River estate but at Cloud of Sparrows Castle in Muroto Province.”

“I take it Muroto Province is the new name for Akaoka Domain.”

“Yes.”

“Cloud of Sparrows Castle is still called Cloud of Sparrows Castle?”

“Yes.”

“How comforting,” Makoto said, “to know that some things don’t change.”

The young lord asked, “Where will I find words to say what I feel in my heart?”
“The deepest feelings are impossible to express in words. They can only be hinted at.”
“Then it is hopeless,” the young lord said. “No one will understand me, and I will understand no one.”
“That is not so. Those who are closest to you will know you best by what you do not say, and you will know them in the same way.”
AKI-NO-HASHI
(1311)

Smith rode out of the castle at an easy canter, reins loosely held, no particular destination in mind. His horse took him to the shore and paused, nose pointed southeast across the ocean in the exact direction of Hawaii. Smith noted the coincidence but his thoughts did not alight on any remembrance of home. They were too involved in another, more pressing matter. After a time, he encouraged his mount into movement with a light tap of his heels. It turned away from the water, trotted inland, up a rise, and, sniffing the air, halted rather abruptly.

Smith also caught the scent. It was an unfamiliar one. Growing up in the fecund tropics, he had learned to distinguish the bouquet of different fruit, especially mango, guava, and papaya, for which he had a particular fondness. This was not any of those, but it was a fruit. Smith could tell that much, not from the acuity of his nose, but from the sight of the well-ordered stand of perhaps one hundred trees in the small valley below. He rode down for a closer look.

Apples. He had sampled one while in Virginia, a gift hand-carried from a New England orchard by a cousin he had never met before.

New Yorkers claim theirs are the best, the cousin said, but I aver Vermont’s are second to none. Go on, Cousin Charles. Have at it.

He did, and it required his entire store of self-control to maintain a pleased expression upon his face and the bite of apple within his mouth. This was not the soft, wet, yielding succulence to which he was accustomed with the fruit of Hawaii. His cousin had promised him the apple would be sweet and juicy. Sour was a more accurate description of its flavor, and it was not juicy in the dripping sense that a ripe mango was juicy, but juicy only as compared to desiccated. While he may have succeeded in concealing his dismay, he was unable to display a pretense of actual enthusiasm.

You have been too long in the pagan tropics, his cousin said. It is just as well you have come to William and Mary, before your taste and judgment suffered permanent degeneration.

Smith was back in Hawaii before Christmas. He told his parents he could not withstand the cold and dreary winter of Virginia. In truth, what exceeded his toleration was all the idle talk and irrelevant thinking that went on so endlessly at the college. His grandfather had survived and prospered under the first King Kamehameha, though they had been religious adversaries. His father, God rest his soul, had helped the fourth Kamehameha preserve the integrity of the kingdom from the depredations of the European imperialists. How could the grandson and son of such men of action spend valuable years of his young manhood in distant Williamsburg talking and thinking instead of doing?

While there, he had read — at least the better parts of —
Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities
, and
Great Expectations
, because Dickens was said to be the greatest living writer in the English language. Smith thought him entertaining; he had experienced no noticeable expansion of his mind, his taste, or even his facility in letter-writing, however. Nor did he consider the Englishman particularly insightful. That honor he gave to Austen, though he could not publicly say that a woman had exceeded a man in any endeavor. Indeed, he had never even admitted reading her to anyone until he had said so to Lord Genji.