by Spence, Alan
‘Straight to the point!’ said Glover. ‘But how do I know you won’t turn your guns on the foreigners?’
‘You have Ito’s word of honour.’
Ito’s face was clenched in a grimace, an exaggerated bunraku mask of determination, integrity, the corners of the mouth turned down. It could have been ludicrous, but it wasn’t. He meant what he said, truly felt his word was guarantee enough, and Glover, for no good reason other than the feeling in his gut, believed him.
They talked, over more sake, tentatively sounded each other out, haggled.
‘I have to give the matter some thought,’ said Glover, ‘make enquiries. Perhaps we can meet again to discuss things further.’
They stood up to go. Glover bowed, Ito reached out and shook hands. Ito glanced across at the old man in the corner, the artist. The old man beckoned him to come over, see what he’d been doing. Ito looked at the piece of paper, laughed. He gave the old man a few coins, picked up the paper and showed it to Glover. It was a drawing, recognisably Glover, but a vicious caricature – the westerner as seen by the Japanese. The eyes were bulging and demonic, facial hair sprouting grotesquely.
‘How the Japanese see you!’ said Ito. ‘The barbarian!’
Glover laughed. ‘Devil, more like!’
He rolled up the drawing, put it in his coat pocket, nodded to the old man, who threw back his head and laughed, his ancient face crinkled.
*
Mackenzie was uneasy about Glover’s dealings with Ito, told him so.
‘It’s not so long since this man was shoulder-to-shoulder with Takashi,’ he said, ‘pledging to rid the country of all barbarian scum. You’ll mind your first night in Dejima?’
‘How could I forget it?’
‘That was only two years ago, Tom. And rumour has it Ito orchestrated the attack.’
Glover minded the night, the powerful figure he’d seen restraining Takashi, telling the mob to fall back. That could have been Ito right enough. In fact the more he thought about it, tried to visualize it, the more certain he was.
‘Was that really just two years ago?’ he said. ‘It seems longer.’
‘No time at all,’ said Mackenzie.
‘Time enough for folk to change.’
‘There was more than just a bit of rabble-rousing, Tom. Ito was involved in a damn sight worse. I’m sure of it.’
‘And I’m sure he’s a man of his word, Ken. I trust him.’
‘Aye, well,’ said Mackenzie. ‘That’s as may be. But keep your wits about you.’
*
He arranged another meeting with Ito, at Ipponmatsu, by night. Matsuo, armed with his two swords, stood guard outside the door.
‘Can not be too careful,’ said Ito. ‘May be watched by omet-suke, Shogun’s men. Or Takashi may take interest. Even your own government have spies.’
‘The place is probably surrounded!’ said Glover. But he took Ito’s point, respected the need for caution, especially as he knew his own movements were under the same scrutiny.
Once again he was impressed by Ito, his strength of character, a resolute hardheadedness that didn’t preclude a wry humour. He could see that in his eyes, a readiness to laugh. He was close to Glover’s age, and right from the beginning they were at ease in each other’s company. The respect was mutual.
Ito spoke passionately about the need for change. The Tokugawa clan had ruled for two hundred years and would be happy to keep things just as they were for two hundred more.
‘Japan, you say, backwater? But should not be. Japan is great nation, ancient nation. But must be modern nation also. Can be powerful, like your country.’
‘I see that,’ said Glover. ‘I feel it.’
‘We make it happen,’ said Ito. ‘First step, Shogun must go.’
They drank to it, first in sake, then in the finest malt whisky that Glover opened specially.
Glover agreed to supply an initial consignment of rifles, brought in through the same source in Shanghai. This time he didn’t go in person, let Wang-Li negotiate the deal. Another night delivery, another payment lodged in Glover’s account, this time from the Choshu clan and their representative Prince Ito Hirobumi.
‘A prince among men!’ said Glover. ‘It’s an honour doing business with you!’
‘Honour is good,’ said Ito.
The next consignment was larger, and Glover decided to make the run to Shanghai himself. Ito asked if he could accompany him.
‘You want to meet my contact?’ said Glover. ‘Next time cut out the middle man!’
Ito worked out what he was saying, looked offended. ‘Not so. Just want …’ He struggled to find the word. ‘Adventure.’
Glover laughed. ‘Yes!’
6
RONIN
Nagasaki–Edo, 1861
The baby was born too soon, while Glover was away on another run to Shanghai. He was told when he disembarked and he ran up the hill to the house. He entered the bedroom, quietly. The windows had been opened to let in air, but the atmosphere still cloyed with the heavy metallic tang of blood and struggle. Sono, pale and drained, sat up in bed, nursing the baby. She looked up at Glover from very far away, her forehead furrowed in concentration. Then as if suddenly recognising, remembering him, she managed a sad, tired smile and held the baby up towards him. This ragged scrap of life was his son, red face puckered and angry, eyes gummed shut, tiny hands clenched, hanging on to existence. His son. He felt the emotion surge in his chest, choked it back as a sob rasped out of him. As gently as he could, he took the child from Sono, was overcome by the lightness of this wee creature, fragile, barely there, twitching and floundering in this new element, a fish out of water. He smiled at Sono, saw it all in her eyes, the exhaustion and pain, the desperate hopeless hope.
*
The coffin was so small, so light, a simple white pine box. Glover cradled it in his arms. It weighed nothing at all, might as easily have been empty. But what a weight was in that nothing, that empty. He walked ahead of Sono, carried it up the path to the tiny grave. They had given the baby a name, Umekichi. Weeks premature, he had only survived a few days.
The day was mild, the air smelled of newness and spring, the damp of the clay, the turned earth. It was a small gathering. Mackenzie was there, all sober gravitas, and Ito with that rigid samurai dignity.
Even Walsh looked sombre and subdued, gave Glover a nod, put a consoling hand on his arm.
The Minister read a prayer. The monk from the temple burned incense, chanted a mantra, invoking the Buddha of the Pure Land.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Namu Amida Butsu.
Glover stepped forward, kneeled by the edge of the grave and eased the box in, straining as he leaned forward with it, felt the shake in his arms. For all its lightness, that almost-nothing took work to hold steady, to lay down gently in its resting place with only the slightest bump at the last, a wee dunt.
Almost nothing. Dust to dust. The Pure Land. In sure and certain hope.
Namu Amida Butsu.
Glover stood up, took a handful of soil from the little heaped-up mound by the grave, threw it down on the lid of the box. Even the sound was small, a patter, a hollowness. He nodded to Sono and she did the same, threw a handful of dirt, watched it scatter. Then she turned away, kneeled in front of a statue of Jizo. She bowed and placed a single white flower at the foot of the statue, wrapped a child’s woven shawl around its shoulders. Then she placed a few pebbles in a line on the ground, bowed again and clapped her hands once in front of her face.
‘Is to help make pathway for our baby,’ she said. ‘To cross Sai no Kawara. River of Hell.’
He put his arm round her thin shoulders, and only then did she break and cry, the sobs shaken out of her.
She left the next day, said she was sorry but she had to go, back to her family in Kagoshima, she was sure he would understand. Her face was composed when she spoke to him, a mask, all feeling held in check. There was nothing he could say.
Even if he’d had the language, there were no words for this. He walked with her to the harbour, carried the small sad bundle of her few belongings. At the jetty he made to embrace her but she turned away. He thought he understood; if she gave way to the emotion it would swamp her completely, so she had to stay composed, not cave in on herself. He thought he understood, but still it pained him, that turning away, the swish of her kimono, waft of her perfume. At the top of the gangplank she stopped and turned back towards him. He waved and she bent her head, bowed to him one last time and was gone.
He walked back slowly, along the waterfront, past shian bashi, hesitation-bridge, up the hill to the empty house. He poured himself a whisky, sat a long time in his armchair, staring out, not seeing, at the pine tree in the garden. He didn’t light the lamps, just let the room darken as the evening passed, his mind empty, numb.
When at last he stood up to go to bed, the dark had settled on everything, and he’d sat so long without moving he was stiff and cold. He fumbled to the sideboard, lit a candle, saw his sudden, troubled reflection in the glass of the windowpane. Back where he came from, that was supposed to be bad luck, seeing your reflection by candlelight. Back where he came from, in another life.
Through in the bedroom, the flame glinted on something that flashed a moment, bright. He bent and picked it up. Sono’s hair-clasp with its silver inlay. He pressed it to his lips, kissed it.
*
Mackenzie had told Glover there was increasing disquiet at the highest level over his links with Ito, with the rebel clans. Official directives had been sent out from the British Consul at the Legation in Edo, not mentioning Glover by name, but warning against any action which might undermine the Shogun and the official government of Japan. The baby’s death, Sono’s departure, had left an emptiness in him, rendered him numb, sullen. He would have to jolt himself awake, move on. He made up his mind. He would go to Edo, to the Legation.
‘I have to speak to these people,’ he said to Ito, ‘make them see sense.’
They stood in the garden at Ipponmatsu, looking out across the harbour, the trading ships at anchor, the blue hills beyond.
Ito nodded. ‘Is good. But the journey will be dangerous. Matsuo will go with you.’
Matsuo was standing respectfully in the background, knowing his place. He stood to attention, bowed from the waist.
‘So, you still think I need protection?’ said Glover.
‘Is still hostile territory,’ said Ito. ‘There are many ronin like Takashi who would prize the head of a barbarian.’
Glover laughed, but the image chilled him, and he knew Ito was right.
‘Besides,’ Ito continued. ‘We need you for the work. I can’t do it alone.’
‘So your concern for my welfare is utterly selfish?’
‘Of course!’
This time they both laughed. But it was agreed. Matsuo would travel with him as his bodyguard and guide. They would sail as far as Yokohama, continue on horseback to Edo.
*
Yokohama was busier than Nagasaki, messier, given over entirely to servicing foreign trade. Its growth had been rapid and largely unplanned; it was a sprawl, a clutter, thrown up along a half-mile stretch between a creek and a swampy marsh, between a river estuary and the vast Pacific. Part of the intention, according to Mackenzie, had been to contain the foreign invasion, limit expansion through the sheer inhospitable nature of the place. ‘A prison settlement,’ he’d said. ‘Dejima on a grand scale.’
But some things refused to be contained. The ratification of the treaty had seen to that.
Glover and Matsuo disembarked at the granite jetty, shouldered their baggage and set out on foot. They passed by the solid stone-built Custom House, made their way along Main Street, past ramshackle godowns and sturdier bungalows, a mishmash of stores and warehouses, flimsy wooden homes. In one clear space, charred by a recent fire, a family sat down to a picnic of rice and fish, a flask of sake, while carpenters started rebuilding the house round about them.
Mackenzie had told Glover to head for the Bluff, the cliff-top area at the far end of town where most of the incomers had settled, looking down on the overcrowded waterfront. At the foot of the Bluff, by the entrance to a guarded causeway, an Englishman in a grubby frock coat, a clerical dog collar, stood on a wooden crate, a Bible in his hand, ranting at passers-by. He caught Glover’s eye, started haranguing him directly.
‘Take care, young sir, lest you fall into evil ways! This place is a cesspit, a sink of iniquity, awash with vermin in human form. They all gravitate here – disorderly Californian adventurers, Portuguese desperadoes, the refuse and scum of the earth. I have made it my business to count the number of grog-shops, and believe me, sir, it is excessive in the extreme. And out there at the edge of the swamp …’ He pointed over Glover’s head, the rage making his hand shake, ‘… is a vile establishment known as the Gankiro Teahouse where two hundred women are employed to provide every facility for profligacy and vice.’
‘Have you made it your business to count them also?’ asked Glover.
‘I have heard reports,’ said the man, fixing him even more intently with his gaze, ‘and I have no reason to doubt their veracity. It has become common practice for a young man simply to buy a woman for the purpose of living in sin, in unholy matrimony.’
He thought of Sono, saw her face clear, remembered what they’d had, what it had become. And he knew this man would never ever understand, and he felt a sudden anger, felt his hand clench, make a fist, as if he might actually strike the man down in the dust. Instead he asked him, ‘Could you maybe show me the way to yon teahouse – Gankiro is it? I may be of a mind to pay it a visit.’
He walked on, Matsuo following, and the man called after him, outrage choking his voice. ‘The wages of sin is death!’
*
They stayed the night at a ryokan, built in the narrow gap between a warehouse and a temple. Glover’s room was small, the size of six tatami mats, and the futon mattress rolled out on the floor took up almost the whole space. Matsuo paced the corridor, settled himself outside the shoji screen door, indicating that he would take rest, but that he slept light, would be alert to any intrusion. Glover thought the precaution excessive but he was learning not to argue with Matsuo’s ferocious sense of duty. He understood it, respected it.
He lay down, let the background noise of the settlement wash over him – voices calling out, scatter of laughter, the bittersweet twang of a koto. He drifted off, breathing in the smells of fish and incense.
*
The Right Reverend Robert James, Episcopalian preacher, was done ranting for the day. He climbed down from his fishbox pulpit, kicked it irritably to the side of the road. That young Scotsman had put him in a foul humour, blackened his mood. The arrogance of it, paying no heed. Well then, let him rot in hell.
He was so caught up in his anger that at first he didn’t notice the figures coming towards him, four men walking with that samurai swagger, lords of the dung-heap, kings of the midden. By the time he did notice, they were almost upon him, not slowing their pace but expecting him to scramble out of the way.
With the righteousness still strong in him, he raised his right hand, brandishing the Bible at them. For the second time that day he began quoting. ‘The wages of sin …’
But the verse was cut, punctuated, by a slash of the sword, a single, eviscerating swipe across his belly. He felt his entrails shift, managed to complete the quotation – ‘is death’ – before another stroke took off his head.
Takashi looked down at the slumped form, wiped his blade on the man’s coat and re-sheathed his sword. With his foot he rolled the body into the drainage ditch by the roadside and, with his three companions, walked on.
*
Glover slept deep, woke at first light. Matsuo had already been out, negotiated the hire of two horses – iron-shod – and stocked up on provisions for the journey: a batch of cooked rice, pickles, dried fish. They rode out through stree
ts already bustling with commerce and haggle, all manner of trade and marketeering, headed out towards the Tokkaido, the Edo road.
Through a gap between two buildings, Matsuo pointed into the far distance. The low cloud cover had cleared and there, suddenly revealed, stood a mountain the like of which Glover had never seen. Its singularity lay, in part, in its symmetry. Its sides sloped up to form a perfect cone, but truncated at the apex, a volcano, its colour a deep, dense blue.
‘Fuji-san,’ said Matsuo, bowing his head.
Glover had no idea how far away it was, or how high, but the look of it was impressive. Matsuo spoke of it with reverence, as if it were a living being. Fuji-san. They rode on and Glover turned to take another look, but the mountain had disappeared, was lost again in cloud and mist.
Throughout the day they caught glimpses of it, always different. It rose above the clouds again, or poked through a thicket of trees. It stood framed by bamboo scaffolding on a building site, or planks of timber in a woodcutter’s yard. They saw it in the window of a teahouse where they stopped along the way, through the massive red gateway of a temple, reflected in a puddle by the roadside.
At one point, where the curve of the road brought them into open country, it loomed suddenly large, dominated the horizon, and Matsuo stopped his horse and dismounted, prostrated on the ground. Then without saying a word, he remounted, nudged the horse forward again.
*
Glover had a sense they had changed direction, were going the wrong way. He mentioned it to Matsuo, who grunted, said, ‘Kamakura. Daibutsu.’
That seemed to constitute a full and adequate explanation, and Glover decided to trust. It must be a necessary detour.
They reached a small town an hour later, a settlement surrounded by hills and facing out across a bay.
‘Kamakura,’ said Matsuo.
This time it was Glover who grunted.
Yokohama had been so thronged with foreigners that nobody had given him a second look. Here it was different, and everyone stared at him the way folk had on his arrival in Nagasaki, on his visit to Kagoshima, with that mix of curiosity and open hostility, trepidation, dread of the barbarian. The children played the same old round-eye game. He half-expected to see Takashi come striding along the narrow street.
