The Samurai's Daughter (11 page)

Ever since Fujino had burst in with her extraordinary announcement, Okatsu had been rushing back and forth, pulling out armfuls of dresses. They hung around the walls, stiff and flouncy and brilliantly coloured, like exotic birds – day dresses heavy with ruffles and ribbons, shaped gowns with bodices and draped and trimmed skirts, floaty frocks with trailing overskirts, and a couple of thoroughly uncomfortable whalebone corsets, purchased direct from Mr Kawakami of the Ebisuya emporium, who had brought trunkfuls of them to the house.

‘I’d knock over the teapot in one of those,’ Taka said, laughing, opting for a simple pale blue kimono with a subtle design of gentians across the sleeves and hem.

‘You’ll look like an old lady in that,’ Okatsu complained as she helped her tie the under-kimono and collar in place. ‘Why not something more bright and girlish?’

‘He’s been in America, he won’t even notice,’ said Taka. The truth was, she half hoped someone as progressive as this Masuda-
sama
would turn his nose up at a woman dressed in traditional costume.

Now Okatsu was on her knees, her face pressed to the shoji screens that closed off the room, hiding them from view. She’d pushed the screens apart just enough to peek through. ‘Taka-
sama
. The honourable guest is arriving!’

‘Okatsu, don’t peek. It’s not dignified.’

‘He looks like a real gentleman,’ Okatsu squeaked breathlessly.
‘And
his clothes – just like a barbarian’s. Madam, come and see. You know you won’t be able to once you’re serving tea.’

She was right, it would be quite unseemly. Taka hesitated, then took Okatsu’s place. She held her breath, closed one eye and pressed the other to the crack between the screens. Her heart was pounding. It must be because she would be mortified if this unknown youth were to catch a glimpse of her, she told herself.

In the dazzling afternoon sun, the footmen were closing the gates and servants clustered around three splendid upholstered rickshaws with painted wheels and the hoods pushed back, emblazoned with the circle and half moon of the Shimada family crest. A young man was stepping down from one. He turned towards the house and for a moment his face was in full view. Light sparked off something metallic – a watch chain. Taka drew back, fearful he would see her, then took a breath and put her eye to the crack again.

It wasn’t so much his face she noticed as the lordly way he carried himself, as if he owned the world. He stood very straight, looking around with a disdainful air, his eyebrows arched and a distinct downward curl to his mouth, as if to suggest that this sort of place was really rather below him. His hair was glossy, cut in the modish
jangiri
style, cropped short with a side parting like a westerner’s and sleekly combed. While her brother and his friends mixed Japanese and western – a western jacket over flowing hakama trousers or a Japanese robe topped with a bowler hat, Masuda-
sama
was western from head to toe. He was wearing a suit that looked very expensive, with a waistcoat, a neatly folded handkerchief poking from his top pocket, a necktie and shiny leather shoes, and seemed perfectly at ease in it all.

The cicadas droned, the sun beat down and the courtyard shimmered in the heat. Beads of sweat were trickling down his face. He scowled and took a big handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wiped them away with the ferocity of a warrior beating back the enemy.

‘He must be sweltering in all those clothes,’ Taka whispered to Okatsu. She could see he was the sort of man her mother would
think
quite perfect – young, cocky, well dressed and extremely rich.

Besides Masuda-
sama
there were a couple of bewhiskered men who Taka guessed must be the marriage broker, Hashimoto-
sama
, and Masuda-
sama
’s father, and a broad-faced younger man with a determined expression who, according to protocol, was probably his brother. She was taken aback to see a woman too. Women didn’t usually attend these formal events. It showed the family must be really very progressive indeed. The woman was in her middle years, a forbidding-looking dowager with a scowl, a noticeably receding chin and a pair of glasses on a stick which she held to her eyes as she looked around. They were all dressed in formal western clothes, the men in high-collared suits, the woman in a day dress with a train and a large bonnet.

Taka knew very well that once she was married to this youth, it would be his mother, not him, whom she would see on a daily basis. She would have to serve her until the day one or other of them died. If she was kind, Taka’s life would be easy; but most mothers-in-law were far from that. Taka watched, her heart sinking, as the woman swung round and snapped at a servant who apparently wasn’t holding the parasol precisely where she wanted it.

As for Masuda-
sama
, it really didn’t matter what he looked like or what sort of person he was. Of course, it would be a brilliant match. Her friends would be eaten up with envy. When they left school, they all bragged about the wealthy young men they had captured and their expensive wedding kimonos and lavish palanquins; and she, Taka, it seemed, was to marry the wealthiest and most eligible of the lot.

But once they were married she’d hardly ever see him any more. Somehow they would produce children, but other than that he’d amuse himself in the pleasure quarters and geisha districts and no doubt keep a flotilla of mistresses, as men of his wealth and standing did – as her own father did. That was why all the other girls accepted whatever husband their parents chose for them, partly because it was what they were expected to do and also because in the end all that mattered was that he should be a man who could
support
a wife in the proper style. His character was irrelevant. Their relationship would be purely formal.

But in that case she could make the same compromise – except that while he was busy with his work and his mistresses, she would be imprisoned at home with his mother. That was the future she dreaded – and there was no escaping it.

Peeking through the screens, she felt such a sense of inevitability that she sank back on her heels, speechless. She was utterly trapped. Before, her life had stretched ahead of her, full of possibilities. Now that freedom, those possibilities, had all come to an abrupt end.

The little group was walking across the courtyard, servants scurrying alongside, holding parasols over their heads.

‘Okatsu, go and welcome them. I can’t,’ said Taka. She’d suddenly had a wild idea. Her brother and his friends all seemed to find Okatsu irresistible. Whenever she went to serve them, all eyes turned on her. She had to endure endless teasing and occasionally wriggle out of their clumsy embraces. Maybe she could work her magic on this young man too.

Okatsu covered her mouth with her hands and squealed with laughter. ‘That’s absurd, madam. I can’t do that.’

‘You’ll do it so much better than me. Anyway, it’s not proper for this Masuda-
sama
to see his bride before the wedding day. It’s not the way things are done.’

‘But that’s why he’s here, madam, to see you. Isn’t that what your honourable mother said?’ Okatsu might be her loyal maid, but she knew where the real power lay – with Fujino.

‘Can’t you tell Mother … Please, tell her I’m ill,’ Taka said, beginning to panic.

Okatsu laughed till her shoulders shook and remained firmly on her knees. Taka gave her a last beseeching look and rose reluctantly to her feet. She hadn’t felt so nervous since her entrance examination for Kijibashi. This was far worse. This was how condemned men must feel when they were on their way to have their heads cut off, she thought.

The doors at the great front entrance had been pushed right back and a large screen painted with a tiger filled the space. Gold eyes glinted in the gloom. Taka knelt behind her mother, pushing herself as far back into the darkness as she could and keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the ground as the young man stepped out of his shiny leather shoes and up into the cool shadows of the entrance hall. An unfamiliar foreign scent mingled with the distinct whiff of sweat as a pair of feet, clad in fine silk socks, stopped before her. She flushed till her ears were on fire.

‘Apologies for the short notice,’ he said. His voice was rather high-pitched, with a hint of a drawl, reminding Taka that he was just back from abroad and probably not used to speaking Japanese. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, I know this is all rather sudden. I haven’t been back for long and I guess I’ve acquired foreign habits. Your mother’s told me all about you.’

Taka’s mother answered for her. ‘Welcome. Our house is small and dirty but please come in.’ It was the most conventional of phrases and she would have said it whether they lived in a hovel or a palace. The fact was that their house was not that small but not overly large either, rather modest in fact for the house of the second family of General Kitaoka.

In the kitchens, the maids had laid out tea utensils. Taka had learned tea ceremony as a child in the geisha district in Kyoto. Now that everyone was modern and progressive, it was considered laughably old-fashioned but she still loved it. Fujino had insisted that Taka perform just a simple summer tea ceremony, enough to show that she had all the traditional accomplishments but was not at all old-fashioned. It was a difficult balance to maintain.

‘Hurry,’ said her mother. ‘I don’t know why you’re wearing such a dowdy kimono. I can’t imagine what Madame Masuda will think.’ She was even more nervous than Taka was.

As Taka knelt and put the tray on the floor beside her and slid open the door, the conversation stopped. There was silence as she rose to her feet, her mother behind her. The room glowed with a muted light, glimmering through the shoji screens.

She glanced at her brother Eijiro, kneeling in what should have been her father’s place. His square face, the very image of her father’s, was flushed and puffy and his large dog-like eyes half shut. Hungover again, Taka thought, but at least he had made it back from the pleasure quarters. He fanned himself morosely, head drooping. His robe was hanging open and there was a huge gold timepiece protruding from the breast pocket. He looked positively slovenly compared to the dapper Masuda-
sama
, wriggling one expensively trousered leg, then the other, as if he wasn’t used to sitting on the floor.

Taka warmed the tea bowl, measured out powdered green tea, whisked it and slid the bowl across the tatami to Masuda-
sama
’s father, sitting cross-legged in the place of honour, in front of the tokonoma alcove with its elegantly carved shelves, hanging scroll and tall bamboo vase containing a single camellia blossom, perfectly placed. He took the bowl and cradled it in both hands as he drank, taking the requisite three sips followed by a slurp.

‘It’s been a long time since I tasted green tea. Delicious,’ he said with a grunt, licking his lips.

‘It’s good to see these old arts preserved,’ said Madame Masuda. Perhaps she was not as supercilious as she looked. ‘I learned tea ceremony myself when I was a girl. We struggle so hard to make ourselves western that we’re in danger of throwing away our own culture.’ She turned to Fujino. Taka could see she was hesitating as to the proper way to behave towards her, with precisely what degree of respect or familiarity. Her mother was the number two wife of the ex-chief counsellor of the realm, once the most powerful man in the country, though he had now retired; but she was also a geisha, by definition – according to the traditional class system, at least – beneath contempt, the lowest of the low.

‘I’m a townswoman myself,’ Madame Masuda ventured. ‘I hear you’ve taught your daughter the geisha arts. Tell me, to what school of dancing do you belong?’ She gave a bland smile. So she’d decided familiarity was in order. Taka heard the undertone of contempt and bristled. How dare this dry old snob sneer at her mother for being
a
geisha? She would never have dared mention it if General Kitaoka had been here.

Fujino could take care of herself. She gave a tinkle of laughter. ‘We wanted to give our daughter as broad an education as possible,’ she said serenely. ‘She’s studying at Kijibashi High School. Perhaps you haven’t heard of it. It’s the first high school for girls in this country. We enrolled her as soon as it opened. She was in the very first intake.’

‘I know it well,’ said Madame Masuda silkily. Drops of sweat stood out on her forehead. Her skin clung to her face like a mask. ‘You must find the weather pleasant here after the heat of Kyoto. You’re from Gion, I imagine.’

Taka smiled to herself. A mere townswoman could never outdo her mother. Fujino was impervious to barbs.

‘I hear you studied in America, Masuda-
sama
,’ Fujino trilled. ‘Our Taka has learned mathematics and English and history and French. Say something in English, Taka.’

Taka’s heart began to pound and she stumbled as she murmured the English phrase, ‘You are welcome. Our house very small.’ Her face was burning as she stared at the tatami.

Masuda-
sama
drawled, ‘Our house
is
very small. Thanks. You speak English well.’

Taka raised her head. She was aware of a pair of brown eyes appraising her. She’d have expected Masuda-
sama
to be nervous too, but he seemed disconcertingly relaxed and confident. He was actually quite handsome and she had to concede that his eyes were kind. But it didn’t make any difference. She hated the idea of being forced to marry anyone.

‘What did they say?’ cooed Fujino. ‘It sounded delightful.’

As Taka tidied away the tea things and beat a hasty retreat to the kitchens, she could hear her mother’s voice. ‘We’ll have many years to get to know each other. Taka’s an excellent girl and a good housekeeper. As you can see, I’ve brought her up in the traditional way. Above all, she’s obedient, I can promise you that.’ That was far from true, Taka thought, smiling to herself. ‘If you’re happy to
go
ahead,’ Fujino concluded, ‘we’ll make plans for the wedding straight away. It’ll be a splendid affair.’

Suddenly Taka saw her life stretching in front of her – an eternity of enduring this man’s patronizing ways and his mother’s sarcasm, always smiling, standing in line with the servants to bow when her strutting, immaculately dressed husband came home and when he left the house. She’d be number one among the household staff. She couldn’t imagine anything more lonely. So that was what her expensive education had been for. She bit her lips, blinking back tears.