The Samurai's Daughter (12 page)

‘You’ll get used to it,’ Okatsu said gently, taking the tray of tea utensils. ‘Everyone does. People always cry when the time comes to marry and leave home. “To catch a tiger cub you have to step inside the tiger’s den.” Wasn’t that what Nobu used to say?’ She said his name as though they talked about him every day, glancing questioningly at Taka as she spoke.

Taka smiled, nodding. Nobu, who had appeared so suddenly at the Black Peony, like a breeze blowing in from another world. That was when she had realized that the world was far bigger than she could ever have imagined. An image of a boyish face with sunburnt cheeks and slanted eyes and funny sticking-out ears rose before her eyes.

‘He had a better one,’ persisted Okatsu. ‘“Once fallen, the blossom doesn’t return to the branch …”’

‘“Once broken, the mirror never reflects again.”’ Taka finished the proverb. ‘Yes, he liked those quaint sayings, didn’t he? But that’s not it either. It means once something’s done it can’t be undone. But nothing’s decided yet, the knot hasn’t been tied. There must be another saying that’s more hopeful.’

‘What about “Don’t put a price on your badger skin before you’ve caught your badger”? No. “When winter comes, spring can’t be far behind.” That’s the one. Keep thinking of that.’

Taka laughed. ‘That Nobu. What a ragamuffin he was, even after Mother gave him clothes. I used to smile whenever I saw him, the way his arms and legs stuck out of his stripy footman’s jacket.’

Okatsu’s face had softened. ‘Do you remember how you helped him study?’

‘I gave him books, that’s all. He was so proud. He never said a thing about wanting to study until that time I offered to teach him characters. It was really just a way to help myself remember them. Then I caught him peeking at my textbooks. It wouldn’t do any harm to give him the ones I’d finished with, I thought. After that, every spare moment he was poring over mathematics or history. He wanted so badly to better himself.’

Okatsu sighed. Taka looked at her. They both had tears in their eyes.

‘He was a good lad.’

‘He should have been a samurai,’ Taka said. ‘It was terrible that all he could be was a servant.’

But in the new Japan lots of people were not what they appeared. Even Gonsuké, the rickshaw boy, had once let slip that his life had been quite different before the war. It was as if everyone had been tossed in the air and come down all mixed up. People who had been on top were at the bottom now and people like her family who were of lowly origin had ended up on top. No doubt Nobu would have had a saying for that too.

Once a samurai girl passed ten she was not supposed to mix with boys. But Nobu hadn’t been a proud young samurai or a wealthy boy of her own class. He was only a servant, he hadn’t really counted as a boy at all. She remembered how he’d cleaned the house and tidied the garden every day and run behind her rickshaw, carrying her books and lacquer lunch box to school and back again. One way or another, she’d often ended up in his company. How she wished he were here now so that she could talk everything through with him, as she used to. But there was no point wishing. He’d long since disappeared.

8

‘HERE, COME OVER
here,’ twittered a girlish voice in the sultry lilt of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter, soft and insistent as if coaxing a cat. ‘Yes, you, big brother. What’ya doing hiding in the corner like that?’

Another voice, fruity and ripe with innuendo, rasped, ‘There’s fun for servants as well as masters here, y’know, son!’

Nobu groaned. ‘
Trois petites truites cuites, trois petites truites crues
,’ he muttered, his jaw aching as he tried to shape his lips around the difficult French syllables. ‘Three little cooked trout, three little raw trout.’ He still couldn’t distinguish ‘i’ and ‘e’ or ‘ri’ and ‘ru’ or make anything that sounded remotely like a French ‘r’ but, in these long days of summer, he’d managed to find a corner where the last shaft of light filtered through a hole in the paper screens, though the rest of the room was in near darkness. He knelt, long legs folded under him, his book in the patch of brightness, poring over his French grammar. ‘
A coeur vaillant rien d’impossible
,’ he murmured, repeating one of the endless list of proverbs he was supposed to have learned. ‘To the valiant heart nothing is impossible.’ The other students were so far ahead, he had no chance of ever catching up, but he had to keep trying.

‘If you want to capture a tiger cub, you have to step inside the tiger’s den.’ He could almost hear his mother’s cool voice, admonishing him. She had had a proverb for every occasion. The well-worn syllables reminded him of how she had drilled them into him when he was a little boy in a distant northern town.
Trying
to learn French was more daunting by far than stepping inside a tiger’s den; but it was the only way if he wanted to get anywhere in life. And that was what he had to do. He owed it to his family, if not himself.

It hurt to think of his mother and sisters, his father and brothers, all dead or in poverty. Time had eased the pain but he still felt a wrench of sadness. He could hardly even picture his mother’s face any more.

And Taka …

After he’d stumbled away from the gate of the Kitaoka house, it had taken a long time to get back on his feet. Eijiro had done him more damage than he’d realized. He’d ended up at the house of his father’s kindly old friend, Nagakura. He’d handed over the contents of the purse Okatsu had given him – he’d found ten yen in it and some clean clothes in the bamboo travelling case – and holed up there like a dog, licking his wounds.

As soon as he could he moved out. Nagakura’s house was overflowing with family, students and refugees from up north. He couldn’t impose for ever. He found a job as a live-in servant, then as a delivery boy for an eel restaurant, then worked as a bathhouse attendant, carrying shovels of hot coals and scrubbing backs. But even after his wounds had healed and his bruises had faded and he no longer looked like a soldier back from the wars, sometimes when he was on his own he’d come back to the present with a jerk and realize he’d been staring into space, sunk in misery.

The most unexpected things set him back – the way the light fell, the smell of cooking, the sound of a voice. The thought of Taka was a pain just as real as physical pain, as real as Eijiro’s beating had been. Sometimes it was a dull ache, sometimes a spasm like a punch in the stomach that stopped him in his tracks and brought tears to his eyes.

Once he was delivering a letter when he glimpsed a slight young girl in a modest kimono, her hair tied back, walking with someone who looked like a chaperone. He’d sped after her and nearly
caught
up with her when he realized it was not Taka at all. How could he possibly have thought it was her, he asked himself angrily, in the low city dives where he spent most of his time these days?

And once he was sent on an errand that took him through the Ginza. There were rickshaws lined up outside the Black Peony and he found himself looking for Gonsuké and the Kitaoka crest, a feather in a circle. Then some women came out in lavish western gowns and he gawped at them till he was told to move on, but of course Taka was not among them. What a fool he’d been to let his guard down, he told himself, to let himself be seduced into believing that it was possible to be happy, that there was more to life than struggling to survive. And now he had to pay the price.

And then one day something happened that changed everything. He’d dropped in on Nagakura, to see how he was and pick up letters from his brothers. To his surprise the rather grand, slow-moving ex-vice governor of Aomori came racing out to the entryway to meet him. He was usually morose, permanently bemused at the disasters that had befallen them, but that day he was beaming.

‘They’re having examinations for the Army Cadet School soon,’ he said, before Nobu even had his sandals off. ‘You’re from a samurai family, fighting’s in your blood. Why don’t you apply? If you pass, you’ll be trained to be an army officer. I’ll be your guarantor. I don’t have much to hold my head up about these days but it’s the least I can do for an old friend’s son.’

Nobu had dropped the package he was carrying in shock. He was thunderstruck and then, as he thought about it, by turns thrilled, nervous and afraid. He knew that the troops of samurai that had made up the clan armies had been disbanded. There was a national army now, formed only a few years earlier, and even someone like him, from one of the defeated clans, could apply. It was virtually the only job that an Aizu could get. Government positions were monopolized by men from the ruling clans – the Choshu, the Tosa, the Hizen and the hated potato samurai,
the
Satsuma. He would have somewhere to live in termtime at least and, coming from a poor home, he’d have his costs paid; he’d even get a little pocket money. He’d be able to hold his head up again. He’d have a future – if he managed to get in, that was.

The light was fading. He could hardly see his book any more. He took a pull on his pipe, remembering the wintry day when he had set off for the Bureau of Military Education to sit the entrance examinations. He had taken his place on his knees on the freezing tatami in a large bare room, along with the other applicants, all lads his own age, shivering as the cold cut through his thin clothes. His fingers had been so stiff it had been hard to manipulate his brush.

When his turn came, he had been asked to read aloud from Rai Sanyo’s
Unofficial History of Japan
and had silently offered up thanks to Taka for helping him with his studies. There’d also been arithmetic tests and he’d had to compose and write a letter to a friend in his home town, explaining why he wanted to pursue a military career, and then there’d been an interview and a physical examination.

Then silence. He’d taken one menial job after another, trying to keep a roof over his head and put aside a bit of money, trying not to despair as time passed and no news came. Five months after he had sat the examinations, a letter had arrived. He’d taken it, his hands trembling, not daring to look, then held his breath as he slowly unrolled it. At first he could barely take in what it said. He’d been accepted.

He could hardly believe it. Surely his luck couldn’t have changed so radically. He’d read the words again and again until he was sure it really was true, he wasn’t mistaken, then shouted and leapt in the air and clapped his heels together for joy and rushed off to send notes to his brothers and father and everyone he knew. He’d scraped together all the money he could to buy a French-style uniform of grey trousers, navy blue jacket with yellow braid and tassels, undergarments, military cap and shiny leather shoes.

When the first day of school came he’d marched up to the
Ichigaya
section of town, through the great gates, across the grounds, to the intimidating three-storey building on the hilltop – the Military Academy, a vast stone structure with white walls like a storehouse but glass windows and hinged doors like a western building. The echoing rooms and corridors filled him with excitement and dread. He was sure that from this moment on his life would change for ever.

But he soon found that getting into school was just the beginning. He was at the bottom of the lowest class. He was busy morning to night studying, exercising and learning martial arts. All the teachers and military instructors were French, for, as they boasted to the students, the French army was the best in the world and their aim was to make the new Japanese army just as good. The first task was to learn French and all about France – its history, geography, mountains, rivers and cities. Only then could the students start on the manuals of military theory and tactics, all written in French.

Nobu lived like a Frenchman. He slept in a dormitory on a hard bed, not a futon, sat on a chair at a table and ate French meals – soup, bread and meat, with rice and curried meat on Saturdays. It took a bit of time to get used to eating meat but all the same, while the other students complained about the food, Nobu felt as if he’d been reborn in Amida Buddha’s western paradise.

But then the holidays had come. All his schoolfriends had somewhere to go but he had nowhere and once again had to find a job as a servant to tide him over.

‘
A coeur vaillant rien d’impossible
,’ he muttered.

There was a giggle and a small hand with grubby fingers and bitten nails slapped down on his page. He started. The sweet-voiced girl leaned her soft body, moist with sweat, against his, enveloping him in the heady scent of sandalwood and aloe. He laughed, acknowledging defeat. The lanterns in the corners cast long shadows and a thick fug of tobacco hung in the air. It wasn’t worth trying to read any longer.

‘My, but he’s the studious one,’ the girl trilled. Under the white make-up, thick enough to plaster a storehouse wall, she had an impish face with a pointed chin and questioning eyes. She was young, no more than thirteen. ‘But I like them studious,’ she said in wheedling tones, looking up at him with big eyes. ‘And such a nice-looking boy. Reading, are you? Your master’ll be a long time gone, you know. Mori-
sama
, isn’t it? It’s a big party he’s having, he has twenty guests. He won’t be asking for you, not for a long while.’

‘You know who he’s booked tonight?’ said the second voice, snickering. ‘Our Segawa. Only the best will do for Mori-
sama
, only our Segawa, the most famous courtesan in the whole Yoshiwara – no, the whole country. She’s like the cherry blossom, there’s none to equal her. She’ll keep your Mori-
sama
busy till dawn, I can tell you now! She’s a toppler of castles, a ruiner of men, she can bring a nation to its knees with a swish of her skirts, have men tearing at each other’s throats.’ The old woman gave a chortle. ‘Of course, we know you can’t afford a castle-toppler yourself. I can’t see you bankrupting yourself for anyone, my son, you’ve nothing to bankrupt yourself with. But you could run to a maidservant or a waitress or a bathhouse girl. We have ladies for all budgets and we can make a special price for a handsome lad like you. We wouldn’t want you to end up down some stinking alley with a night hawk or a river duck or a hundred-
mon
woman now, would we? That would be a waste, nice young fellow like you.’ The woman cackled and the girl purred with laughter.