Autumn Bridge (5 page)

Genji did not invite Heiko to spend the night with him. He was certain she would decline. While in such a state, she was far too elegant to yield to any man, even one on the verge of becoming a Great Lord. Perhaps more to the point for him, it would have been distastefully crude to even ask it of an intoxicated woman. The potential depth of the relationship they had begun called for patience and subtlety. For the first time in the dozen years he had been pretending to be a dilettante, he was truly fascinated by a woman’s character. The opportunity for a genuine exploration must not be destroyed by haste. Would he have been so interested had she not been so beautiful? He knew himself too well to imagine that. He might have had the patience of a bodhisattva, but he was far from being one.

“My lord?”

The housemaid who was preparing his bed stopped and looked at him. He had laughed out loud thinking of his motives.

“Nothing,” he said.

She bowed and resumed her task. The other two housemaids continued to help him undress. When they were done, the three young women knelt at the doorway and bowed. They remained just inside the room, awaiting his further instructions. Like all the women of the inner chamber, they were very pretty. Genji was set apart from other men by being a lord of high rank and great power. But he was still a man. In addition to their mundane duties, they were to provide more intimate attention if he desired it. Tonight, he did not. His thoughts were too much with Heiko.

“Thank you,” Genji said.

“Good night, Lord Genji,” the senior housemaid said. The women backed out of the room on their knees. The door slid silently shut after them.

Genji went to the other side of his room and opened a door facing the inner garden. Dawn was less than an hour away. He enjoyed watching the rays of the rising sun cast their first light onto the carefully manicured foliage, produce intricate shadows in the raked patterns of the stone pool, inspire the birds into song. He sat on his knees in the
seiza
posture, placed his hands in a meditative Zen mudra, and allowed his eyes to narrow nearly to closing. He would let go of all thoughts and concerns as best he could. The sun would bring him out of meditation when it rose enough to light him.

If anyone had occasion to observe him now, they would see someone far different from the drunken idler of just a few minutes earlier. His posture was straight and firm and steady. That he was a samurai was beyond doubt. He could have been preparing for battle, or for his own ritual suicide. Such was his appearance.

Within, it was quite different. As always when beginning meditation, Genji found himself indulging in fancy and conjecture, instead of letting go of them.

His first thoughts were of Heiko, then of her present unobtainability, and quickly shifted to the three housemaids who had just departed. Umé, the chubbiest and most playful of the three, had been quite a diversion in previous encounters. Perhaps he had dismissed her too hastily.

That thought brought to mind a discussion he had recently had with a Christian missionary. The missionary had very gravely emphasized the importance of what he called “fidelity.” He claimed that once married, a Christian man slept with no one but his wife. Genji was utterly astonished. It was not that he believed the missionary, for what he said was impossible. Such behavior was so unnatural, not even outsiders, strange as they were, could adhere to it. What shocked him was that the man so seriously made the claim. All men lied, of course, but only fools told lies no one would believe. What had been the missionary’s motive? Genji wondered.

Guessing at motives did not trouble his grandfather. Prescient from the age of fifteen, and gifted with an amazing stream of accurate visions over the years, Kiyori was one man who knew, and did not wonder. Genji had been told by Kiyori that he himself would have three visions, and only three, during his entire life. He was also assured that these three would be enough. How three visions could enlighten an entire lifetime Genji could not imagine. But his grandfather was never wrong, so he must believe, even if he could not help being concerned. He was already twenty-four and had not yet seen a single glimpse of the future.

Ah, he was thinking, not letting go. Fortunately he had caught himself before he had gone on too long. He took a deep breath, exhaled fully, and began letting go.

An hour or a minute passed. Time had different dimensions in meditation. Genji felt the warmth of sunlight on his face. He opened his eyes. And instead of seeing the garden—

—Genji finds himself among a vast crowd of screaming men, all dressed in the graceless clothing of the outsiders. They wear no topknots. Instead, their hair is in the unruly confusion of madmen and prisoners. Out of habit, Genji immediately looks for weapons against which he may have to defend himself, and sees none. No one is armed. That must mean there are no samurai present. He tries to check for his own swords. But he cannot voluntarily move his head, his eyes, his hands, his feet, or any other part of his body. He walks inexorably down the long aisle, no more than a passenger in his own body. At least, he assumes he is in his own body, for he cannot see any of it except an occasional peripheral glimpse of his hands as he walks toward the podium.

There, an elderly white-haired man strikes the tabletop with a small wooden hammer.

“Order! Order! The Diet will come to order!”

His voice is lost in the torrent of warring words that come at Genji from both sides of the aisle.

“Damn you to hell!”

“
Banzai!
You’ve saved the nation!”

“Show honor and kill yourself!”

“May all the gods and all the Buddhas bless and protect you!”

The voices tell him he is hated and revered with almost equal ardor. The cheers come from his left, the curses from his right. He raises his hand to acknowledge the cheers. When he does, Genji the passenger can see that the hand is indeed his own, though perhaps showing more signs of the passage of time.

An instant later, a shout comes from the right.

“Long live the Emperor!”

Rushing at him from that direction is a young man. He wears a plain dark blue uniform with no emblems or insignias. His hair is cut close to the scalp. In his hands is a short-bladed wakizashi sword.

Genji tries to move defensively. His body doesn’t budge. As he watches, the young man drives his sword deep into Genji’s chest. Passenger or not, he feels the sudden jolt of contact and a sharp stinging sensation as if a huge venomous creature has stung him. Blood explodes into his assailant’s face. It is a moment before Genji realizes the blood is his. His muscles suddenly relax and he falls to the ground.

Among the faces peering down at him is that of an unusually beautiful young woman — unusual both in the degree and quality of her beauty. Her eyes are hazel, her hair is light brown, her features are exaggerated and dramatic and reminiscent of the outsiders. She reminds him of someone he can’t quite place. She kneels down and, oblivious of the blood, cradles him in her arms.

She smiles at him through her tears and says, “You will always be my Shining Prince.” It is a play on his name, Genji, the same name as an ancient fictional hero.

Genji feels his body trying to speak, but no words come. He sees something sparkling at her long, smooth throat. A locket marked with a fleur-de-lis. Then he sees nothing, hears nothing, feels nothing—

“Lord Genji! Lord Genji!”

He opened his eyes. The housemaid Umé knelt beside him, a worried look on her face. He raised himself up on one elbow. While unconscious, he had fallen out of his room and into the garden.

“Are you well, my lord? Forgive me for entering without permission. I was on duty outside and heard a thud, and when I called, you did not answer.”

“I am well,” Genji said. He leaned on her and sat down on the veranda.

“Perhaps it would be best to summon Dr. Ozawa,” Umé said. “Just to be safe.”

“Yes, perhaps. Send one of the others for him.”

“Yes, Lord Genji.” She hurried to the doorway, whispered to another maid who waited there, and hurried back.

“May I have tea brought to you, my lord?”

“No, just sit with me.”

Had he had a seizure? Or was that, at last, one of the visions he had been promised? It couldn’t be, could it? It made no sense. If it was a vision, it was a vision of his own death. What use was that? He felt a kind of deep, cold fear he had never experienced before. Perhaps instead of becoming a visionary, he was destined for early madness. That had happened often enough in his family. Still dizzy from the fall and the vision or dream or hallucination, he lost his balance.

Umé caught him softly with her body.

Genji leaned against her, still very afraid. He would send a message to his grandfather today asking him to hurry to Edo without delay. Only Kiyori could explain what he had experienced. Only Kiyori could find the sense in it, if sense there was.

But before his messenger left, another arrived from Cloud of Sparrows Castle.

Okumichi no kami Kiyori, warrior and prophet, the revered Great Lord of Akaoka for sixty-four years, was dead.

A favorite samurai saying proclaims, “First thought on waking — death. Last thought before sleep — death.” This is the wisdom of fools who have never given birth.
Instead of accepting a weakling who sees only death in blood, find someone who sees life therein.
First thought on waking — life!
Last thought before sleep — life!
Only such a one knows that death comes soon enough.
Only such a one is truly capable of understanding a woman’s heart.
AKI-NO-HASHI
(1311)

Emily Gibson’s yearning was so great, she awoke every morning to the scent of apple blossoms borne on the wind. It was no longer the memory of the Apple Valley of her childhood that caused the painful emptiness in her breast, nor did the imaginary wind bear that lost fragrance from an orchard on the banks of the Hudson River. She missed the other Apple Valley, the dell that sheltered barely a hundred trees a little more than an arrow’s flight from Cloud of Sparrows Castle.

That she was able to feel nostalgic about a place in Japan was indicative of how long she had been away from America. It had been more than six years since she had left, and almost as long since she had last thought of it as home. She had been sixteen then. She was twenty-three now, and felt much older. In the years between, she had lost her fiancé, her best friend, and, perhaps most significantly, her sense of propriety. Knowing what was right and doing what was right were two very different things. Emotions were not as easily controlled as logic would dictate. She was in love, and she should not have been.

Emily rose from her bed, a canopied four-poster in what Robert Farrington, the American embassy’s naval attaché, assured her was the latest style in the United States. It was on his advice that she had ordered it. Her discomfiture with discussing such an intimate article of furniture with a man not related to her was overcome by necessity. There was no one else to advise her on such matters. The wives and daughters of the few Americans in Edo avoided her company. This time, it was not because of her beauty, or, more accurately, not primarily because of it, but because of her excessively close association with an Oriental, which, Lieutenant Farrington told her, was something of a scandal in Western ambassadorial circles.

“What is there to be scandalized about?” Emily had asked. “I am a Christian missionary doing Christ’s work under the protection of Lord Genji. There is nothing improper in the slightest about our relationship.”

“That is one way to look at it.”

“I beg your pardon, Lieutenant Farrington,” Emily said, her shoulders stiffening. “I fail to see any other way.”

“Please. We have agreed, have we not, that you will be Emily and I will be Robert. Lieutenant Farrington sounds so distant and, well, military.”