The Iris Fan

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Not only was it hard for Taeko to imagine her parents having sex, but they’d been so at odds for so many years that Taeko couldn’t believe they’d ever loved each other.

  “I don’t want the same thing to happen to you,” Midori said.

  Now would be the time to confess that it already had. Taeko longed to unburden herself, but her mother’s moods changed so fast. She kept quiet rather than set off a fit of temper.

  “Things worked out,” Midori said, “or so I thought at the time. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Taeko felt a pang of hurt. “Are you sorry you had me?”

  “No, no.” Midori tightened her arms around Taeko. “You and your brother and sister are the best things that ever happened to me.” She sighed again. “But your father has been so much trouble.” Her manner turned hard and brisk. “Masahiro is trouble for you. Try to forget him. Be glad that after the wedding tomorrow he’ll be his wife’s problem.”

  Now wasn’t the time for Taeko to tell her mother that she was going to be Masahiro’s concubine. “Yes, Mother,” she said unhappily. “I’ll try.”

  * * *

  IN THE SECTION of the guest quarters on the other side of the garden, Lady Yanagisawa unpacked her baggage. Kikuko said, “Mama, where are my dolls?”

  “Here, darling.” Lady Yanagisawa found the dolls in a trunk. Her daughter’s childishness always provoked mixed feelings in her. She was distressed because Kikuko would always remain a five-year-old girl in a woman’s body but glad that Kikuko would always need her, unlike other children who eventually left their mothers.

  Kikuko chattered to the dolls as she changed their kimonos. Lady Yanagisawa smiled fondly at her, thankful that she’d inherited her father’s looks. Putting away clothes, Lady Yanagisawa listened for her husband. She always thrilled to the sight and sound and smell of him, his slightest attention. She loved him with a passion that persisted regardless of his indifference toward her and his revulsion toward their daughter. She often wished she didn’t love him, but nothing could change her feelings—not even the fact that he’d just moved her and her daughter into the same house as her worst enemy.

  She’d admired, envied, and hated Reiko since the day they’d met fifteen years ago. Reiko had everything she didn’t. Reiko was beautiful; Reiko had a loving husband; Reiko had two normal children whom their father loved. Lady Yanagisawa wished with all her heart that she’d managed to kill Reiko when she’d had the chance. She wished Kikuko had managed to drown Masahiro. That would have taught Reiko that she couldn’t be lucky all the time! When Lady Yanagisawa had seen Reiko today, it had been like acid thrown in her face.

  Reiko was as beautiful as ever. Her daughter looked just like her. Masahiro was a man, as tall and handsome as his father. Reiko’s children had grown up, but Kikuko never would. Lady Yanagisawa’s envy was as corrosive as poison.

  A familiar step at the door set her pulse racing. She looked up to see Yanagisawa. A shiver of joy rippled through her. Her body ached with desire. He’d made love to her only a few times, and she couldn’t honestly call it making love; he’d taken his pleasure so fast, with no care for hers. She breathed a sigh that expressed all her hopeless love and yearning. She lived for two things—her beautiful, childlike daughter and her beautiful, cruel husband.

  He spoke to the air above her head. “I’ve arranged for Kikuko to marry Sano’s son, Masahiro, tomorrow. Get her ready.” Then he left.

  A loud, wild howling racketed in Lady Yanagisawa’s ears. She covered them to block out the noise. She didn’t realize it was coming from her until Kikuko ran to her and cried, “Mama, what’s wrong!”

  My daughter is to marry Reiko’s son!

  Lady Yanagisawa clapped her hand over her mouth to suppress the howling. She wheezed, coughed, and retched so hard that the pressure behind her eyes caused a dark tangle, like a scrawl of red-tinged ink, to swim across her vision—blood from ruptured veins. Dizzy and breathless, she collapsed to the floor.

  Kikuko knelt beside her, patting her back. Lady Yanagisawa moaned and writhed, caught in the throes of a savage anguish. Reiko already has everything, and now her son is going to take my only child, the only person in the world who loves me!

  “What did Papa mean?” Kikuko asked in her babyish voice. “Who’s Masahiro?”

  26

  LEGIONS OF ARMY foot soldiers and mounted troops occupied the streets of the daimyo district all night. Concentrated outside the estates of the clans that opposed Lord Ienobu, they prevented anyone from leaving and deliveries of food, coal, and other necessities from entering. They burned bonfires to keep warm. In the guest quarters of the Mori estate, Reiko lay rigid and sleepless in bed. She smelled the smoke from the bonfires, watched the orange light from the flames flicker through the window shutters, and listened to the daimyos’ watchdogs barking. Once during this long night she’d fallen asleep and dreamed that her naked body was drenched in the blood of the man she’d been accused of murdering eleven years ago. She’d not dared to close her eyes again. And the evils weren’t only in her dreams or memory.

  Yanagisawa and his wife and daughter were under the same roof, separated from her only by corridors and paper walls. Reiko felt Lady Yanagisawa’s animosity like a deer scents a wolf’s meaty breath. In the adjacent chamber Masahiro stirred and muttered in his sleep. Reiko heard muffled sobs from Taeko. Her heart ached for the poor girl who was suffering the pain of lost love.

  Reiko looked at Sano, asleep beside her. He thrashed his arms, kicked, then lay still, as if disturbed by intermittent bad dreams. They hadn’t spoken since he’d told her and Masahiro about his deal with Yanagisawa. Whenever she tried to see it through his eyes, she understood that he’d done the best he could in an impossible situation, but understanding didn’t negate the fact that he’d not only pitted himself against Lord Ienobu, he’d inadequately hidden his collaboration with Dr. Ito, and that secret had put him under Yanagisawa’s power. His actions had been based on honor, and their son was paying the price. What Reiko could understand, but not forgive, was that their family would always lose out to Sano’s honor.

  She turned her face away from him; she lay as far from him as possible, so he wouldn’t accidentally touch her. She hated him so much! The fact that she’d once loved him passionately made her hatred all the more strong. She had to get away from him. She didn’t know where she would go or what she would live on, but leave him she must.

  Temple bells rang; it was dawn. The guard that Lord Mori had assigned to the guest quarters spoke at the door, “Excuse me, Sano-san?”

  Sano bolted upright beside Reiko. “What is it?”

  “There’s a message from Lord Ienobu. He wants a meeting with you and Yanagisawa and Yoshisato.”

  * * *

  THE MORNING WAS warmer, cloudy, with a deceptive, springlike mildness. Fog shrouded the hills outside Edo and hung in the air. In the daimyo district, troops formed cordons along the avenue that separated the Mori estate from another, which belonged to an ally of Lord Ienobu. Archers crouched on roofs on both sides. At one end of the avenue, Sano stood with Yanagisawa and Yoshisato. Behind them were fifty of Lord Mori’s mounted soldiers. At the far end, Lord Ienobu and Manabe stood, backed by their own fifty troops from the Tokugawa army. The conditions of the meeting had been specified in the message Lord Ienobu had sent to Sano, Yanagisawa, and Yoshisato. They’d included the stipulation that although their troops could wear armor and weaponry, the four men would not. Clothed in ordinary robes and wicker hat, minus his swords, Sano felt naked and vulnerable. Cold mist filmed his skin as he gazed down the long avenue.

  In the middle, set off to his right, between the two rival camps, stood a tent such as generals used as battlefield headquarters. The tent was made of white fabric, mounted on four poles. Flaps open on all four sides showed a tatami mat, charcoal brazier, and five cushions in the tent. Sano’s mind reeled with disbelief. Never had he imagined attending a war council between rival contenders for the dictatorship, righ
t in the middle of Edo, to discuss the fate of the Tokugawa regime.

  Temple bells rang the hour of the dragon. Lord Ienobu and Manabe stepped forward. Yoshisato, Yanagisawa, and Sano followed suit. Matching pace by pace, trailed by their armies, they advanced through an unnatural quiet disturbed only by a stray cough, a horse’s stomp, and dogs barking in the distance. Sano kept his eyes trained on Lord Ienobu and Manabe. Lord Ienobu shuffled in thick, padded winter robes that disguised his deformities. A broad-brimmed hat enlarged his small head, shadowed his ugly face. Sano was keenly aware of the troops outside the estates, the archers on the roofs. His instincts rang out danger signals.

  This could be a trick. Maybe Lord Ienobu meant to kill him and Yanagisawa and Yoshisato and gamble that he could escape before Lord Mori’s troops killed him. Or Yanagisawa might have secretly ordered the assassination of Lord Ienobu. If either side attacked, Sano would be caught, unarmed, in the crossfire of the first battle in a war.

  Both parties halted at the tent. Lord Ienobu’s, Yanagisawa’s, and Yoshisato’s faces were rigid with their effort to conceal anxiety. Sano felt the same rigidity on his own features. The damp atmosphere was hard to breathe, as if the tension had wrung all the air out of it. Lord Ienobu said, “One of my men will search you.” A soldier from among the troops behind him stepped forward. “One of yours can search Manabe-san and myself.”

  Sano, Yanagisawa, and Yoshisato stood with their arms spread and feet apart as a soldier examined them for hidden weapons. Sano imagined dirty handprints left on him from so many recent friskings. Lord Ienobu flinched as he and Manabe endured the same indignity. Then he gestured for Sano, Yoshisato, and Yanagisawa to enter the tent. He and Manabe followed them in. Manabe closed the tent flaps. The two sides knelt on the cushions, facing each other, the charcoal brazier between them. Gray daylight penetrated the white tent. The space was too close, too full of animosity. Sano, seated between Yanagisawa and Yoshisato, knew he was at a worse disadvantage than the other men: Each of them had an ally present; he was the only one to whom everyone else was an adversary.

  Each side bowed with cold politeness to the other. Lord Ienobu said, “The shogun is weaker this morning. He’s passed more blood, he’s on such a heavy dose of opium for the pain, he’s rarely conscious.”

  Sano hadn’t expected better news, but he hoped Ienobu was exaggerating the graveness of the shogun’s condition.

  “If you’re saying there’s not much time left before he dies, then get to the point,” Yanagisawa said, his belligerence coated with suavity.

  Lord Ienobu ignored Yanagisawa and said to Yoshisato, “You and I are the rivals for the succession. This is between us.”

  “So talk to me.” Yoshisato was calm; maybe he’d attended similar councils with rival gang bosses. He exuded menace toward the man who’d had him kidnapped and imprisoned.

  “I called you here to discuss a peace treaty,” Lord Ienobu said.

  It was as Sano had suspected: Lord Ienobu didn’t really want a war. Cautious hope vied with disappointment in Sano. War was a samurai’s proper element, and Sano instinctively hungered for it, but he had personal reasons for wanting to forestall this one. After destroying his marriage and his son’s happiness, the least he could do was make peace so that his family wouldn’t be killed in a war. Maybe then Reiko would forgive him; maybe she wouldn’t leave him. And if there was peace between Yanagisawa and Lord Ienobu, his alliance with Yanagisawa wouldn’t be necessary and they could call off Masahiro’s wedding.

  Maybe, maybe, said Yanagisawa’s mocking voice in his memory.

  “Why a peace treaty?” Yoshisato said with a tight half smile. “Are you afraid of losing a war?”

  “Indeed not. I have the Tokugawa army, and the most powerful daimyo clans, backing me.” Bravado puffed up Lord Ienobu. “You’re the one who should be afraid.”

  “That’s your idea of making peace?” Yanagisawa said indignantly. “You bluff us into surrendering?”

  Sano surmised that both sides had come to the meeting because both wanted a way out of a war. But he knew they would fight if they had to; their pride was at stake. The peace negotiations would fail if left up to them. Sano said, “Stop.” The other men turned to him, surprised he’d interrupted. He appealed to Yoshisato. “At least listen to Lord Ienobu’s terms.”

  Yoshisato’s and Yanagisawa’s expressions hardened. Sano sensed Yanagisawa remembering that he’d already lost one war. He surely must know he couldn’t afford to lose this one. Second chances were rare.

  Yoshisato flicked a warning glance at Yanagisawa, then asked coolly, “What are your terms?”

  “Smart boy.” Lord Ienobu grinned. “Here’s what I want: You admit you’re not the shogun’s son. You give up your claim on the succession.”

  “Forget it!” Yanagisawa said with a scornful laugh, ignoring Sano’s frown.

  Lord Ienobu and Yoshisato had eyes only for each other. Yoshisato said, “What’s in it for me?”

  “I won’t have you put to death when I’m shogun,” Lord Ienobu said.

  Yanagisawa said, “Hah!” Yoshisato glowered and said, “You insult me.”

  “That’s not good enough, and you know it,” Sano told Lord Ienobu. “Sweeten the deal.”

  “All right, all right.” Lord Ienobu patted the air. “I’ll make you both daimyo. You can each have your own province to rule.”

  “You can’t buy us off!” Yanagisawa exclaimed.

  “At least consider it,” Sano urged. The carnage that would result from a war was dreadful to contemplate, and so was the outcome—Ienobu or Yanagisawa in power. Whoever won, Sano and his family would lose their lives. Sano had to keep both sides in play, to check each other. And this was a better deal than he’d thought Ienobu would offer.

  “What, and be Lord Ienobu’s subject?” Yoshisato’s voice filled with disdain. “And pay him tributes every year? While he keeps my family in Edo as hostages to my good behavior? Never!”

  Lord Ienobu shrugged with a false nonchalance that didn’t hide his consternation. “Well, it was worth a try.”

  “Here’s my counterproposal.” Yoshisato leaned toward Ienobu. “You step down as Acting Shogun. You give up your claim on the dictatorship. You crawl back in your hole, and when I’m shogun, I won’t dig you out and step on you.”

  Ienobu reared up on his rickety knees. “You insolent young bastard!”

  Yoshisato laughed, a breathy sound like tinder bursting into flame. “I’m a bastard? That’s the skunk calling the tiger striped.”

  Morbidly sensitive about his illegitimacy, Ienobu wheezed and turned purple. Yanagisawa smiled, proud of Yoshisato for giving as good as he got. Frustrated because the men were foiling his attempts to save them and their country from themselves, Sano said, “Quit the personal remarks! The fate of Japan is the issue!”

  “You’re not just insolent, you’re naïve,” Lord Ienobu told Yoshisato. “You’re so eager to go to war, but you don’t know what war is like!”

  “How would you know? How many battles have you fought?” Yoshisato’s superior manner said he’d fought in plenty. His gaze raked Ienobu’s scrawny physique, noted the shame on Ienobu’s face. “Just as I thought. Not a single one.”

  “I’ve studied history,” Ienobu huffed. “War destroys cities and crops and leaves thousands dead, both samurai and commoners. And you would risk that, on the small chance that you could beat me?” Scorn twisted his features. “You’re a fool.”

  Manabe began to look anxious, for the first time Sano had ever seen. Yanagisawa lost his smile. Sano said, “That’s enough!”

  “You’re a hypocrite,” Yoshisato retorted. “Do you really expect me to believe you care about the crops or the commoners or anybody but yourself? But supposing you do, here’s how to settle this: We fight a duel, one-on-one. Just you and me.” He stood and flung his open palm at Ienobu. “Right here, right now.”

  “It’s not a fair match,” Manabe protested.

  Even as he utter
ed a disdainful laugh, Ienobu recoiled from Yoshisato’s hand. His involuntary reaction betrayed how much the challenge terrified him. “Don’t be silly.”

  Yoshisato’s lip curled with contempt. “Coward! You’re not fit to be shogun.”

  Infuriated by the worst insult that anyone could level at a samurai, Lord Ienobu scrambled to his feet. His eyes bulged so large that they strained at the mesh of red veins across their whites. Manabe jumped up and reached for his sword; he’d forgotten he wasn’t wearing it.

  “And you think you are fit to be shogun? I at least have Tokugawa blood.” Ienobu thumped his chest, then pointed a shaky finger at Yoshisato. “You’re just Yanagisawa’s dirty, stinking spawn.”

  Yanagisawa lunged at Ienobu. Sano stood and caught Yanagisawa. “How about a compromise? You both rule Japan—as co-shoguns.”

  Everyone stared at him in disbelief. “Are you insane?” Yanagisawa asked.

  “In all of history there have never been two shoguns at the same time,” Lord Ienobu said.

  “There’s not enough room at the top of the regime for both of us,” Yoshisato said.

  “A truce, then,” Sano said in desperation. “To think this over. While I find out who stabbed the shogun.”

  Yanagisawa narrowed his eyes. “And give the shogun time to die, and Lord Ienobu time to steal the regime for good? Whose side are you on?”

  “That would only postpone the inevitable.” Yoshisato stood shoulder to shoulder with Yanagisawa. He said to Ienobu, “You won’t be a battle virgin much longer.”

  White with rage now, Lord Ienobu spoke in a low voice that hissed through his bared, protruding teeth. “You won’t have your head much longer.”

  27

  AN EERIE HUSH lay over the guest quarters of the Mori estate. It seemed to Reiko as if the world were holding its breath in suspense while she waited on the veranda for Sano to come back from his meeting with Lord Ienobu. She didn’t want to see him or speak to him, but she was anxious to know what was happening.