The Courtesan and the Samurai

by Lesley Downer

  Just as she had decided to tell Fuyu that she’d changed her mind and must leave at once, Fuyu clamped her fingers tightly around her arm and pushed her down a dark side street and through an open door. They had arrived.

  An elderly maid in a shapeless brown jacket over an indigo kimono ran out to greet them, bringing a basin of water for them to wash their feet. As Hana stepped inside, she caught a glimpse of long corridors and men disappearing through doors from which came sounds of music and laughter. Fuyu hurried her along verandas lit with lanterns, past room after room, then slid open a door.

  A woman knelt beside a low table, writing in a ledger by the light of an oil lamp. From the back she looked elegant and refined. She was wearing a plain black kimono tied with a red obi and her hair was coiled in a gleaming knot. She had a pipe and a cup next to her and there was a kettle humming on a ceramic stove.

  But then she turned towards them and Hana had to stop herself recoiling as she saw that her face was a network of wrinkles, plastered with thick white powder that sank into every crack. Her lips were painted scarlet, her red-veined eyes were liverish, and there was a mole on her chin with a hair poking out of it; yet she still held herself as proudly as if she was a famous beauty.

  The woman eyed her soiled kimono and the grimy shawl she had wrapped around her face, and Hana shuddered, realizing that she had been lured in by all the noise and colour and exoticism of the Yoshiwara. Now she felt its icy chill. She had allowed herself to be led into a trap.

  ‘So sorry to intrude,’ Fuyu whispered, her shoulders obsequiously rounded, pushing Hana to her knees.

  ‘Not you again, Fuyu,’ the woman said wearily. Her voice was deep and throaty and she spoke with a sing-song lilt, in a dialect that Hana had never heard before. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, business is bad? You keep bringing me these women, but all they do is eat and sleep. They don’t earn their keep. Now if you were to bring me a child I could train up, then we could talk business. But an untrained adult – they’re more trouble than they’re worth. Don’t go bringing me any more.’ She turned back to her ledger and picked up her brush.

  Suddenly Hana was consumed with rage. She had no intention of kowtowing to this ugly old woman. ‘I may be bedraggled but I’m not untrained,’ she said fiercely, careless of the consequences. ‘I’m a person of good family, I’m educated, I can read and write. I’m here to ask for sanctuary. I can teach and earn my keep in an honest way, but if you can’t offer me a job that doesn’t dishonour me I’ll leave and try my luck elsewhere.’

  The woman stared at her, her black eyes peering out from the painted folds of withered skin. ‘So she has a voice,’ she said in surprised tones. ‘And pluck.’

  A strand of Hana’s hair had escaped from her shawl and was snaking around her face. The woman grabbed hold of it and tugged and Hana winced as it snagged against the rough skin of her fingers.

  ‘Good hair,’ said the woman. ‘Good and thick. And black. No kinks.’

  ‘Your shawl,’ hissed Fuyu, snatching at Hana’s scarf. Hana tried to hold on to it but Fuyu had already pulled it off.

  The woman leaned forward sharply, peering at her hard. Her eyebrows rose and her eyes opened wide, then she reached out and gripped Hana’s chin with a horny thumb and forefinger, breathing heavily. Shocked, Hana recoiled from the smell of stale make-up and sweaty clothes doused in perfume.

  The woman sat back on her heels and narrowed her eyes, a cunning look on her face.

  ‘Of course she’s not a classic beauty,’ she said to Fuyu, ‘but that’s no bad thing. Nice round face, slightly oval.’ She drew back and called out, ‘Father, Father.’

  Footsteps shuffled across the tatami and the door slid open. A man with a square face and a belly that ballooned above his low-slung sash bustled into the room in a cloud of sake and tobacco fumes.

  ‘A new one?’ he enquired, clamping his mouth shut after each syllable. ‘Not taking any more. Business is terrible, hardly a customer. Can’t afford any more mouths to feed.’

  The woman tilted her head and glanced up at the man through her lashes.

  ‘You’re quite right, Father,’ she said in a girlish warble. ‘But this one …’

  ‘You do nothing but waste my time, woman,’ he grumbled, lowering himself to his knees, taking out a pair of glasses from his sleeve and balancing them on his nose. He leaned over Hana and the woman took a candle from the low table where she had been sitting and held it close to Hana’s face. The man’s eyes, small behind the thick lenses, widened then narrowed. He sat back on his heels and stared at Hana as if he was appraising a painting or a tea ceremony bowl or a piece of fabric.

  ‘Not bad at all,’ he said finally. ‘Almost melon-seed-shaped. Good skin too, white, no blemishes. Well, none that I can see. Wide eyes, fine nose, small mouth, slender neck. It’s all there.’

  Shocked, Hana stared back. She was opening her mouth to protest when the man grabbed her chin, gripping it so hard it hurt. He wrenched it down with one big hand and pulled back her lips with the other. Hana tried not to retch as she tasted the tobacco on his brown-stained fingers.

  ‘Good teeth,’ he grunted.

  Fuyu was on her knees, her eyes darting back and forth as she took everything in.

  ‘Off with your jacket,’ she snapped.

  The man gripped Hana’s hand, turned it over and stroked the palm, then bent the fingers back until she thought they would break. Hana blinked hard, holding back tears.

  ‘You won’t get another one like this,’ said Fuyu, hard-voiced. ‘With a child you don’t know how she’ll turn out. With an adult you know what you’re getting. I don’t mean to contradict you, Auntie, but you can see for yourself. She really is a beauty, a classic beauty.’

  Hana looked around at the heavy-jowled man, at the old woman with her painted face and at Fuyu, watching her with hungry eyes. It was no good trying to appeal to their better natures, she could see that only too clearly. But she would not give in without a fight. She took a deep breath. She had to remind them she was a person just like them, not an object to be bought and sold.

  ‘This isn’t why I came here,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘My face has nothing to do with it. I can read and write. I can teach.’

  ‘Listen to that, Father,’ purred the woman. ‘She’s got spirit. And class. How she talks! Listen to that!’

  The man put his glasses back in his sleeve and heaved himself to his feet.

  ‘Too old,’ he said, raising his shoulders in an expansive shrug and turning towards the door.

  ‘Give her a chance, Father,’ said the woman in wheedling tones. ‘Singing and dancing, anyone can do. But reading and writing, those are rare skills. Let’s see how she writes. Girl, come over here. Do us a sample.’

  But Fuyu was already scrambling to her feet, her kimono skirts crumpled. ‘I’ll go somewhere else. This is an excellent young girl. I can easily find someone who’ll take her,’ she said in silky tones.

  The candles sputtered and a globule of wax trickled slowly down the side of one. The man was staring at Hana with his small hard eyes.

  ‘On your back,’ he said abruptly.

  Before Hana knew what was happening, the old woman had grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her down. She screamed and fought but the woman was unexpectedly strong. Fuyu clamped her hand over her mouth to keep her quiet and helped hold her down.

  The two women leaned on her hard while the man pushed up her kimono skirts and shoved her legs apart. Hana heard the tatami creak as he knelt between them. Then rough fingers were pulling and probing and pinching at her. She could hear the man’s rasping breath and feel it hot on her thighs. There was a sharp pain as a thick finger prodded deep inside her and she shouted out and recoiled.

  Finally the man released her and sat back on his heels.

  ‘Good specimen,’ he said. ‘Firm, good colour. Rosy. Fresh looking. Good shape.’ He chuckled. ‘Our customers will enjoy it.’

  Hana sat
up, pulling her clothes together around her bare legs. Breathless with shock, her face burning with humiliation, she swallowed hard as hot tears spilt down her cheeks.

  ‘Well?’ said Fuyu.

  ‘We’ll do you a favour,’ said the man in measured tones. ‘We’ll take her off your hands.’

  ‘You’re too kind-hearted, Father,’ said the woman, her lips curved coquettishly. ‘No one else would take someone as old as this. Of course, it all depends on …’

  Fuyu looked at one, then the other.

  ‘Let’s talk outside,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. I’m sure you can find a way to offer this girl a job of some sort.’

  Hana knelt, huddled, hardly daring to breathe, as the door closed and the footsteps pattered away. Too late, she saw how naive she’d been. She put her head on her knees and sobbed.

  After a long while she looked up. The house echoed with singing, the jangle of shamisens and talk and laughter, but the sounds were muffled, as if they came from far away, through many walls. Steam puffed from the kettle and the charcoal in the brazier glowed. The teacups and writing brushes and vase of winter branches, the small things that lay around the room, shifted in the flickering lamplight as if they were alive. She drew a long shuddering breath and dabbed her face with her sleeve. It seemed she might have a chance – a small chance – to creep away. She picked up her bundle and pushed the door open a crack.

  The veranda outside was empty. Lights glowed from behind the paper screens that walled the rooms around the courtyard and shadows moved about, plump rounded ones carrying trays and slender ones dancing with graceful gestures. Here and there the silhouette of a man jigged furiously. It all looked charmingly festive but Hana knew it wasn’t. She glanced cautiously to left and right, checked a second time, then slipped out. For a moment she felt a surge of hope, then realized she had no idea even which way to go. Closing the door behind her, she crept along the veranda as softly as she could.

  She had passed a couple of rooms when a door slid back and a figure glided out in a swirl of silk, wafting musky perfume. Hana stopped dead, her heart pounding. The woman’s face hovered in the darkness. It was a white mask, smooth and flawless, glowing in the pale light that filtered through the screens. Her eyes, etched in black, were expressionless and there was a petal of red in the centre of each lip, making her mouth into a tiny pursed rosebud. She looked like a porcelain doll.

  Stunned, Hana shrank back, staring, as the woman addressed some incomprehensible words to her in a breathy warble.

  ‘Of course,’ the woman said lazily, forming the syllables with care as if speaking a language she rarely used. ‘You don’t speak our tongue. That’s the first thing you’ll have to learn. Don’t stand gawping. I was just coming to fetch you.’

  As she spoke, Hana realized that beneath the thick make-up the woman was actually quite ordinary-looking. She had a protruding mouth and her hair was not straight but frizzy. Strands had come loose and hung round her face, and big thick-fingered hands poked from the sleeves of her dazzling red kimono.

  But none of it mattered. The make-up transformed her into a mysterious apparition, a being from another world.

  ‘I don’t know who you think I am,’ Hana blurted out. ‘I don’t live here. I’m … I’m on my way out.’

  Even as she spoke she knew how ridiculous she sounded. There was only one reason women came to places like this, and it was not to visit.

  ‘You fancy samurai wives – you’re all the same,’ said the woman. ‘You think you’re too good for us, but you’re lucky to be here at all. A lot of girls get turned away. This is a good house. I’ve been told to take charge of you. You can call me Tama, that’s my name.’

  Ignoring Hana’s protests, she took her elbow and shepherded her along the veranda and down a corridor. Through the gaps in the paper doors Hana caught glimpses of parties in full swing. She could hear singing and dancing and smell mouth-watering aromas that reminded her of how hungry she was.

  A group of young women in magnificent kimonos came sweeping towards them like a flock of brightly coloured birds, their white-painted faces shimmering in the lamplight.

  ‘I hate these southerners,’ one was saying fiercely. She spoke in piercing high-pitched tones, but her accent was much like Hana’s. Hana gazed at her in surprise. ‘I hate having to open my legs for them.’

  ‘These days they’re the only ones with money,’ said another. ‘They’ll be gone soon, with any luck.’

  They brushed past Hana without even noticing her, like a river flowing around a rock. Hana blushed, ashamed suddenly of her dirty travelling clothes.

  ‘The southerner I’ve been entertaining keeps telling me that Edo’s finished,’ the first woman grumbled with a snort. ‘He says the only thing that makes it bearable is the Yoshiwara. He calls our men rebels.’ Her voice had become an angry growl. ‘Rebels! The cheek of it! He says the “rebels” who are still alive went to Sendai and joined up with the navy, our navy.’

  Hana’s heart gave a leap. Sendai was where her husband had said he was going in his last letter.

  The women were disappearing round a corner.

  ‘They’re headed north, a big force,’ came the shrill voice, faint in the distance. ‘Of course, I didn’t tell my southerner what I really thought. I flattered him, I told him how clever he was. That way he’ll be sure to tell me more. But I already know the most important thing: the ships have sailed. Our ships.’

  Hana heard the words as clearly as if she’d been right next to her. Unless he’d been killed, her husband too was on one of those ships.

  So there was still hope. She would just have to do her best to stay alive and pray that, when the war was over, he would come to the Yoshiwara and rescue her.

  7

  Yozo had never known such cold. One moment the sky was blue and the sun was glittering off the rocks, sparking shards of light from the spears and bayonets of the men trudging in front of him, the next it was as if night had fallen and snow was blowing in great flurries and gusts. The wind was so strong he could hardly keep his footing. The only sounds that broke the silence were the creak of branches as snow piled up more and more heavily and the occasional muffled thump as a mound fell from a branch and crashed to the ground.

  By the end of the first day, Yozo was frozen to the core and wet through. His toes and fingers were numb and his teeth chattering. Grimly he plodded on up the mountain along with Kitaro and the other marchers, scrambling across the rocks, batting the damp snow off their clothing, on their painfully slow progress through the pass towards the Star Fort and the city of Hakodate.

  As evening fell they began to make out the shadowy shapes of buildings, clustered beside an ice-covered lake, surrounded by trees. Around the village square were big houses with steep thatched roofs, from which came appetizing smells of woodsmoke and cooking. Scrawny dogs with thick white fur slunk around. The villagers cowered when they saw the soldiers and their guns. They were tall big-boned men with bushy hair and long beards, in thick quilted robes or bear skins – Ezo people, it seemed, native inhabitants of the island. As far as any of the soldiers knew, they were savages who fished for salmon and hunted bears.

  Yozo heard the murmur going around the troops: ‘The Commander says we’re to billet here tonight.’

  He stepped inside one of the houses with Kitaro on his heels. A strong fishy smell pervaded the place but at least it was sheltered and warm. As his eyes got used to the darkness, he made out a fire pit in the middle with rough straw mats spread over the damp earth floor and a couple of rolls of birch bark burning in holders, giving off a fitful light. Soon a good fifty men had piled in behind them and were squatted around the smouldering logs, blowing on their hands and rubbing them together. The smell of woodsmoke mingled with the stench of sweat and dirty uniforms.

  Anxious to keep the soldiers happy, the Ezo ran about making food.

  Yozo crouched on the rough mats, cradling a bowl of soup in his hands
. It was a thick broth with an unfamiliar smell, oily and a little rancid, with fishbones floating in it. He wrinkled his nose, took a sip and was relieved to find that it was hot and filling. By now his companions were talking raucously and shouting with laughter.

  ‘You remember that time we stormed the Ikedaya Inn?’ came one voice. ‘I cut down sixteen of the southern bastards. I counted them.’

  ‘That’s nothing,’ yelled another, slamming his fist on the floor. ‘My tally was twenty.’

  ‘I’d like to feel my sword cutting through bone again,’ grumbled another, a swarthy man with a broad nose and fleshy peasant’s face.

  ‘Tomorrow, with any luck,’ said the first. ‘When we get to the Star Fort.’

  A woman was piling logs on to the fire. At first Yozo thought she was smiling, then realized she had a design tattooed around her mouth, like a moustache. Beneath the hubbub he heard a tuneless humming. One of the women had picked up an instrument and was twanging it and singing softly.

  Through the smoke, in the dim light, Yozo could see Commander Yamaguchi. He was sitting very straight on a raised platform at the far end of the room, talking to a couple of his lieutenants. It was the strangest sight, this great military leader in a peasants’ hut, holding himself as proudly as if he were in a king’s palace.

  Yozo glanced at Kitaro. He too was staring at the Commander with a bemused expression, as if, like Yozo, he was wondering what on earth they were all doing here, at the ends of the earth, in a land fit only for savages.

  By early afternoon the following day Yozo was stumbling along, too frozen even to speak, trying to keep an eye on the Commander striding out in front. They were marching through a forest and the towering pine trees and silent white landscape made Yozo think of the great cathedrals of Europe. He’d never seen such magnificent buildings, soaring so high.

  He let his mind wander back to the paddle steamer, the Avalon, which had taken him from Rotterdam to Harwich and the most powerful nation on earth. From there he had taken the train to London and had walked the streets, awestruck by the mighty stone buildings with their aura of wealth and history, the public squares and the places of worship, so tall it made his neck ache to look up at the pointed roofs dwindling into the sky.