The Samurai's Daughter (5 page)

As they stepped further in, the trunks and chests cast enormous shadows that swayed menacingly in the light of the swinging lanterns. They brushed the cobwebs off some of the chests and started to open them up. Fujino pulled out kimonos in paper wrappers, boxes of porcelain, dolls and ancient books, lacquerware, scrolls and tea-ceremony utensils, shaking her head distractedly and groaning, ‘This won’t do. No, not this either.’ She was supposed to be planning Haru’s trousseau, but she seemed quite overwhelmed by the task.

Okatsu, with her round face and pretty smile, was on her
knees
, putting things away as quickly as Fujino pulled them out. She was Taka’s special maid and had been ever since they’d come to Tokyo five years earlier. She was ten years older than her. When Taka’s brother’s friends came to visit they teased her relentlessly and Taka often had to rescue her as they chased her around the house, grabbing at her and trying to tickle her. Once one of them had knocked over a lamp while he was grappling with her and broken the paper shade and soaked the tatami mats with oil. She put up with it all with cheerful good humour. Good humour was her speciality. Whatever chaos might be going on around her, Okatsu could always be relied upon to sort it out.

‘Here’s the one I was looking for.’ There was a rustle of paper as Fujino folded back a wrapper and lifted out a kimono. Taka held her breath and stretched out her hand to touch it. In the dim light, wild chrysanthemums embroidered in gold, pink and indigo scrolled across the pale mauve silk of the sleeves, shoulders and hem.

‘And this one.’ Her mother held up an over-kimono with a thick quilted hem and a design of bamboo leaves woven into the pale ivory silk. It was embroidered with olive-green bamboo fronds, and a little green heron with an orange beak peeking from the foliage. The cuffs and shoulders and hem were a glowing shade of persimmon orange. ‘They’re heirlooms. I haven’t seen them for years.’

Taka lifted the soft fabric reverently. It was smooth and heavy.

‘These were my mother’s too.’ Dabbing her eyes, Fujino reached into another chest and brought out ancient tea-ceremony bowls, tea caddies in woven silk bags and bamboo tea whisks and ladles. She took a tea bowl in her plump hands, feeling the weight of it, then passed it to the maids. ‘Your grandmother was the most famous geisha in all Kyoto. The imperial princes used to come down from the palace to be guests at her tea ceremonies and see her dance.’

Taka and Haru nodded. Their mother had told them many times how one of the princes had fallen in love with their
grandmother
and wanted to take her as his concubine. But the palace authorities had forbidden it and to defy them would have meant exile and disgrace, maybe even death. Their grandmother had been in love with the prince too but as a good geisha she put his well-being before her own and forbade him ever to see her again. Later she had been the mistress of merchants and sumo wrestlers and then had had a long relationship with a famous kabuki actor, but she never forgot the prince. When the mistress of her geisha house died, she was given the keys and became the mistress herself, and so achieved what was every geisha’s dream in those days – financial independence.

Taka had been terrified of her. She remembered her as a small, stern woman who had seemed very, very old. She held herself very straight and used to clamp her bony fingers around Taka’s arm and fix her with her piercing eyes whenever Taka did anything wrong. The skin of her wrists was so thin it was almost transparent. She ran the geisha house with a rod of iron but was kind to her grandchildren and used to tell them stories in a husky whisper.

Haru was on her knees, her hands folded in her lap, her chignon perfectly oiled. She gestured at the pile of kimonos and pottery and lacquerware. ‘I don’t need these, Mother. I’m going to another house, they’ll be lost to ours. You keep them.’

‘ “Going to another house”.’ Their mother shook her head and laughed sadly. ‘The daughter of Fujino of Gion, getting married. Whoever would have imagined that? Some of my friends married their lovers but not me, your father never chose to take me as his wife. I’ll always be a geisha. But my Haru a bride, imagine! And you too, Taka. You’re going to school and you will be a bride too. Soon no one will ever know we’re of geisha stock.’

Kneeling with her back gracefully rounded, Haru looked more like a great lord’s daughter than a geisha. Taka couldn’t believe she could be so grown up, so calm and collected. ‘If it was me going off to be married I’d be desperate to know what my new husband was like!’ she cried.

‘They’re a respectable family, they’re of the highest rank and
he’s
an upright man with excellent prospects. The go-between assured me of it.’ Fujino savoured the word ‘go-between’. Taka knew how proud her mother was that she’d had Haru’s marriage properly arranged, just as respectable samurai families did. It was a union of families, not a spur-of-the-moment geisha alliance. ‘He’s had the family thoroughly investigated, through several generations. There are no financial problems, no hidden scandals, no insanity, no reasons for worry.’

‘I’m looking forward to putting on my wedding kimono and going off in my lacquered palanquin,’ said Haru quietly. ‘Though I am a little worried that I might not meet the family’s expectations. I hope I’ll be able to satisfy my mother-in-law.’

She twisted her small hands. She was actually very nervous, Taka could see that now. To be sent away to marry a man she wouldn’t even meet until her wedding day … Taka knew that her mother had only the best of intentions for both of them but it was a terrifying prospect all the same.

Secretly, in her heart of hearts, Taka wished her own life might turn out more like her mother’s, or like the lives she read about in romances and the diaries of court ladies of long ago. She daydreamed about exchanging verses with a mysterious gentleman on a moonlit night, as Lady Sarashina had done hundreds of years ago, or having a secret tryst in the overgrown grounds of a ruined mansion, like Ocho and Tanjiro in
The Plum Calendar
, or being consumed with forbidden passion like the lovers in kabuki plays who killed themselves because it was the only way they could be together.

Or perhaps she would run away with one of the imperial guards, the dashing young men with their cropped haircuts and uniforms with shiny buttons who had filled the house when her father had been there. She used to admire them from a distance. There was one in particular who’d been tall and quiet and rather intriguing. She could see that he was her father’s special confidant, though he was far too grown up to pay the slightest attention to a child like her.

She knew that in reality geishas were no happier than wives, that her mother was often lonely and missed her father and wished she could go back to Gion. But at least she and Taka’s father cared for each other. From what Taka’s schoolfriends said, samurai wives hardly ever saw their husbands. But in the end it made no difference what Taka wanted. Her life was not in her own hands. Soon she too would be sent away, like Haru, to marry a man she didn’t know. That was what happened to samurai daughters, which was what she’d now become.

‘I’m going to miss you, Haru-
chan
,’ said Fujino, sighing. Her eyes swam with tears. ‘It’s going to be so quiet when you leave. First your father, now you. I don’t know how I’ll bear it.’

‘Will Father come back for Haru’s wedding?’ Taka asked softly. She knew the answer. Of course he wouldn’t.

It seemed so long since she’d seen her father. She did her best not to think about it, to forget his absence, but now, unexpectedly, she remembered his big comforting hands and bulky body and large square face, as sharp and clear as if he were there. She saw him prowling the empty rooms, smoking pipe after pipe, talking in his gruff voice with his colleagues, laughing his booming laugh. Sometimes she’d peek into his quarters when she knew he was alone and find him kneeling at his table in front of a pile of papers, his brow furrowed. He’d scowl and tell her he was busy; but then he’d break into a grin and beckon and she’d run in and perch on his huge thighs. She remembered the rough feel of the cotton robes he wore at home. Cocooned in the curve of his arm, she’d felt protected from anything.

She’d tell him about her day, what she’d read, what she’d done, and he’d listen and nod and say gravely, ‘Is that so, little Taka? Is that so?’ Then he’d tell her about his own childhood, growing up far away at the very tip of the distant island of Kyushu, in the city of Kagoshima among palm trees and blue skies, with Sakurajima volcano rising in the middle of the bay, rumbling and belching smoke. Thinking of him made her feel empty inside.

When her father had been there, people had crowded the house
night
and day, filling the public rooms and hallways. She remembered soldiers standing around in knots, heads pressed together, discussing earnestly, petitioners lined up with gifts to give and favours to beg and people arriving to ask advice. Everyone, it seemed, was eager to meet the great general.

In the evenings stern-faced men with moustaches, in full pleated hakama trousers and knee-length haori jackets elegantly knotted at the front or crisp western-style uniforms, would drive up to the great main entrance by rickshaw or carriage. Taka’s mother hired geishas to entertain them and many of the men brought geisha mistresses. They didn’t bring their wives. It would have been unthinkable for a samurai woman to mingle with men other than family members. That was the role of trained professionals like geishas; and Taka’s mother was one of the most famous geishas of all.

The men drank, talked and dined and, when enough sake had been consumed, the geishas played their shamisens and danced and sang and the guests too rose unsteadily to their feet to show off their dancing and musical skills and later still played drinking games, just like in the old days in Kyoto. Taka’s father, handsome and gallant, freshly shaved and invariably in traditional haori and hakama, would hold court.

Taka loved hearing his low voice and booming laugh when she peeked into the lamp-lit banqueting hall, though now she was no longer being trained as a geisha she was seldom called upon to serve the guests. When she did have a chance to take in drinks or food, she was supposed to behave like a proper samurai lady – keep her eyes modestly lowered, place the trays before the guests, bow and slip away. It was depressingly unlike the old days when she’d been encouraged to sit with the guests and charm them with her girlish chat. The life of a samurai lady, it seemed, was going to be a lot less fun than life as a geisha had been. In fact she was beginning to suspect that now her status had changed, fun would no longer come into it at all. From now on life would be all duty and obligation.

Then one day, shortly before they went to the Black Peony, her
father
had stormed in early from work and she’d heard him and her mother talking in low voices. The imperial guards in their splendid uniforms had arrived shortly afterwards, fifty or sixty of them, and she’d heard talking and shouting and the clang of steel. For five days there had been impassioned meetings, day and night. Then the servants had packed her father’s bags. When Taka asked, her mother had snapped, ‘Your father’s going to Kyushu,’ in a tone of voice that forbade further questions. She’d looked pale and tense, even though he often went away.

They’d lined up to say goodbye. When her father came to Taka, he took her chin in his big hand and looked at her hard and she saw tears in his eyes. ‘Well, little Taka,’ he’d said. ‘Take care of your mother.’

Then he was gone, along with all the young men, in a long line of rickshaws kicking up dust. Suddenly the house fell utterly silent.

Taka wondered why her father hadn’t taken them with him. In the Satsuma capital, Kagoshima, down at the tip of Kyushu island, he had a wife and children, that was no secret, but he could perfectly easily have set Fujino and her children up in a house there too. Most people’s fathers kept several households. But he’d chosen not to, perhaps because he’d left in such a hurry. Besides, Fujino would have been bored to death in the countryside.

Geishas were used to their men being absent. They all knew their lovers had wives and children, which made it all the more vital to obey the first rule of the demi-monde – never to forget that love was a game. Taka had had it drummed into her from a young age. Geishas twisted men around their little finger and made them fall hopelessly in love with them – that was their job – but they always took care never to be swept off their feet themselves. Most geishas juggled several men, who all thought they were their sole lover and supported them, and as a result the women enjoyed handsome livings.

But Taka’s mother didn’t play-act as a geisha was supposed to do. She really was devoted to General Kitaoka. She relied on him
to
support her and her children. There was no second lover. She paid no attention to that most fundamental tenet. That made Taka afraid for her. It was all very well being a geisha, but only if you were careful never to lose your heart.

The maids were packing away vases, kimonos and lengths of silk for Haru’s trousseau when the storehouse door slid open, letting in the darkness, along with a blast of icy air that whipped around the room. The lantern flames flickered and went out, loose kimono wrappers skittered across the floor and lacquer tea caddies rolled around, clattering. It was Eijiro, his kimono flapping. He brushed aside Okatsu and the other maids and stood over Fujino and the two girls, a triumphant grin on his large face.

‘I told you so!’ He paused dramatically. Taka groaned inwardly, wondering what trouble he was brewing up now. Ever since their father left he’d been strutting around the house, playing the lord and master, telling everyone what to do. ‘You know the sword with the gold inlay hilt that I brought back from Aizu, that I keep in the alcove in the men’s living quarters?’

‘The Matsudaira sword?’

‘I had my suspicions about that Nobu of yours from the very start. He does his best to hide his accent but I pick up the northern twang every now and then. You’re so fond of him I knew I’d need solid proof so I called him in and said, “I have something for you to polish.” Then I showed him the sword. You should have seen his face. He clenched his fists. He was shaking. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. He knew exactly what it was and where it came from and how I must have got it. I thought he was going to rip it out of its scabbard there and then and have a go at me, the way his eyes were flashing. I’d finally broken through that servile pretence of his. I knew then for sure.’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘I must say, I wasn’t surprised. I never liked him from the moment you brought him into the house. He’s a surly fellow. The way he swivels his eyes, taking it all in from under that heavy brow of his.’