The Courtesan and the Samurai

by Lesley Downer

  She had been fortunate, she realized that now, but she knew that her success as a courtesan depended on maintaining her mystique. As long as she remained out of reach, she could enjoy the sort of life Tama had, but the moment her allure faded her life would be over. To bob along like a paper boat on a stream, oblivious to the sludge on the bottom – to the grimness of life outside the city walls: that was the floating world. Here in the Nightless City, she and her fellow courtesans lived a gilded story-book existence where time stood still. That was the reason men came, to forget the harsh reality on the other side of the wall, beyond the Moat of Black Teeth.

  There were plenty of men eager to spend whatever it cost for a few hours with the new star courtesan. Some were old with seamed faces and floppy bodies, but so witty and amusing that she saw them again and again. Others just wanted to chat or have her hold them and cuddle them as if she was their mother. One high-flying government official told her his woes and cried like a baby.

  Hana picked and chose among them and a few became her lovers. Some were sexual virtuosos, eager to try different techniques, energetically twisting their limbs into every possible position, determined at all costs not to spill their seed. Others wanted to explore every orifice or ordered an extra woman or a boy. Some brought manuals and made sure they tried everything. But most just wanted to enjoy themselves.

  She was careful to follow Tama’s instructions to avoid conceiving a child. She knew the times of month when she was most likely to fall pregnant and refused to sleep with customers on those days, or put folded paper tissues inside herself as a protection. She had also had moxa herbs burnt on her belly for two successive days, a procedure which was supposed to provide protection for the following year. She knew that most of the serving staff and many of the courtesans were children of women of the quarter; but she also heard of women who died in childbirth or in clumsy attempts to terminate the pregnancy and, all in all, pregnancy was to be avoided as far as possible.

  Some of her lovers Hana liked more, some she liked less, but she never forgot Otsuné’s warning that it was just a game, nothing to do with romance or deep-seated feeling but only with fun, with sensation; and above all she remembered never, never, to lose her heart to anyone. It was all to do with bodies, not hearts, she told herself. And of course it was always a commercial transaction and the exchange of money coloured the whole relationship.

  The men who paid to spend time with her – the older ones among them, at least – knew as well as she did that when she said she loved and adored them and that they were the only man for her, they were paying her to say so. They knew that she was acting and she said the same to every man. Nevertheless, some of the younger men were so dazzled by her that they fell entirely under her spell and bankrupted themselves in order to see her as often as they could.

  Hana knew that for all these men the Yoshiwara was a fantasy place, where they could escape from the dull world of wife, children, house and job. All the men had wives, of course; but with her they could behave entirely differently. Their wives were chosen for them by their families and they had to keep a proper distance, but with her they could relax – tease, laugh, flirt and behave like little boys. They didn’t have to maintain their dignity or worry about how they appeared in public. They were paying for the freedom to be anything they wanted. No one was under any illusion, which was what made the game so perfect.

  When Masaharu asked for her, she always made sure she was available and reminded herself that for him too it was only a game – though sometimes she caught herself wishing that things could have been different.

  Now Hana slid open the door of Otsuné’s little house, making the flimsy wooden slats grind and judder in their grooves, and stepped inside, snuffing the smells of burnt hair and dye appreciatively. Otsuné was always busy about something. She had a spinning wheel and a loom at the back of the house and when she was not cleaning her tools or working on a wig she would be carding or spinning or weaving.

  But today the house was silent. The loom was not clacking and the charcoal in the brazier had gone out. Otsuné was at her table in the middle of the room, her head in her hands. She looked up as Hana came in. Her face was pale and her eyes swollen and red.

  ‘What is it?’ gasped Hana, rushing to her side, then stopped as she saw the newspaper on the table. She knew the new government had outlawed newspapers because they supported the northern side and that the most outspoken editor had been arrested and put into prison. No one had any idea any more what was going on.

  For a moment Hana dared not even look, then she knelt, gripping the edge of the table to support her, and stared at the tiny characters uncomprehendingly.

  ‘A French ship has arrived at Yokohama,’ whispered Otsuné, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve.

  Hana looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘Does that mean … it’s all over?’

  Though it was a hot day, she shivered. If the war really was over, it could only mean that their men had lost and the southerners had won. It would also mean that she’d find out what had become of her husband. The thought of him made her recoil with fear. Suppose he came looking for her and found her here in the Yoshiwara? He wouldn’t stop to ask why she had ended up here. He would kill her, that was for sure.

  Otsuné’s hands were shaking. She looked helpless and lost, so unlike herself that Hana felt even more afraid.

  ‘These names are so difficult.’ Otsuné’s voice was dull with despair. ‘I’ve been trying to decipher them. It says there are prisoners on board – the French who fought with our men. Not all were captured; some were killed.’ She was staring at the tiny print. ‘No, not captured, they surrendered. They say terrible things about them. See, it says here: “The French cowards abandoned the northern troops …” How could they say that? It’s not true. They’re brave, loyal men: they stayed with their men and fought with them when they could easily have left and gone back to their own country. Now it says they’re to be sent back to France and put on trial. I suppose they’ll be ordered to commit harakiri or whatever they do in France.’

  She laid her head on her arms. ‘I keep going through this list of names but I can’t find his. It’s so terrible not to know,’ she whispered.

  ‘Your patron …’ Hana gasped, suddenly realizing why Otsuné was so distressed.

  ‘If he’s dead I want to know,’ Otsuné sobbed. ‘I can’t bear to think that he’s somewhere in Ezo being eaten by animals. If he’s dead he should be brought back here to be buried.’

  ‘Your patron was a foreigner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hana stifled a gasp. She’d seen tall, gawky foreign sailors with pinkish faces and huge noses lumbering down the central boulevard in outlandish uniforms and turning off into the back alleys. They had a reputation for trouble-making and tended to head for the cheapest houses. She’d always thought it was only the lowest-class girls who accepted their business and she’d certainly never heard of anyone taking a foreigner as a patron.

  Otsuné opened a drawer in one of the large chests along the wall of the room and brought out a small wooden box. She put it on the table, opened it up and took out a lock of pale brown hair. It lay on her palm like a skein of silk, not robust and strong like Japanese hair but rather fine and delicate.

  ‘When I was at the Yamatoya foreigners used to come sometimes, though there weren’t so many then. Military types, sailors. I remember I was in the cage one day – I’ll never forget that day – and this man appeared, a big man with big round eyes. He was staring at me. I thought, Why me? All the men gawped at the other girls, the young ones, but he seemed to like me. Then he booked me. The other girls used to refuse foreigners because they were afraid of them and they didn’t want to run the risk of their regular clients refusing to bed them because they’d been with a foreigner. But I wasn’t in great demand so I said I’d lie with him. At first I was afraid too, but he was kind and gentle.

  ‘After that, every time he came he asked
for me. He looked grotesque to me too till I got used to him. It wasn’t so much sex he wanted, but comfort and tenderness. He wanted to feel someone cared about him. And he could speak our language. He didn’t bark at me or boss me around or hit me, he didn’t behave like a man at all, and that made me like him more and more.

  ‘Then he bought me my freedom. He said I should find a small house and he’d buy it for me. But then things got bad, as you know, and he was ordered to go back to his country, but he refused. He said he wanted to stay with the men he’d been training.’

  Otsuné reached up to her collar and undid her clasp, then rested her elbows on the table and gazed at it, her hands trembling. For a moment she held it to her lips.

  ‘One day he came to me and told me he was going away for a while. And he gave me this, the clasp he used to wear on his jacket. Then he cut off a lock of his hair and told me to keep it too. He also gave me money – all the money he had. And that was it. I never saw him again. And now I can’t even find out whether he’s alive or dead. I miss him so much – his big hands, his funny nose. I wish I could find his name here …’

  She turned away, her face glistening with tears, and started fumbling with the teapot.

  ‘Maybe he escaped,’ Hana said. ‘Maybe he’s on his way back. Don’t despair yet.’

  ‘But they’re tightening up on security,’ Otsuné said, looking fearful. ‘Haven’t you noticed? People are being stopped outside the Great Gate. It can only mean that the war really is over and northern soldiers are on the run. You know as well as I do there’s only one place where the police don’t come – here, in the Yoshiwara. It’s where everyone comes when they need somewhere to hide.’

  Hana took her hands and stroked them. Perhaps Otsuné’s patron was on his way here too. She hoped so.

  Hana hurried through the gate at the entrance to Edo-cho 1, her eyes on the ground, her thoughts far away. By now it was late afternoon and the street was teeming with people. Women were already filing into the latticed parlours and here and there shamisens jangled. Men surged along the boulevard, gawping and whispering as she slipped by. Then little Chidori burst out of the Corner Tamaya, red sleeves flying, carrying a letter in her hand. She saw Hana and bowed, then flew off through the gate towards one of the teahouses, the bells on her sleeves tinkling.

  The crowd fell silent and drew back as a couple of foreigners ambled by in their outlandish costumes. Hana looked at them curiously, remembering everything Otsuné had told her. It was hard to imagine lying with such strange-looking creatures, let alone coming to care for one.

  She was about to push between the curtains of the Corner Tamaya when she noticed a young woman perching nervously on the bench outside. Her dress and hairstyle were those of a townswoman, though her kimono was rather bright and showy and her hair studded with hairpins. The woman turned towards her and blanched as if she had seen a ghost. Hana stared at her, puzzled. There was something familiar about her.

  Then it all came rushing back and Hana turned and fled in horror. Footsteps pattered behind her and a hand gripped her sleeve. She gasped, back in the nightmare, on the Japan Dyke causeway, being dragged down the slope to the Yoshiwara.

  ‘What do you want?’ she cried, her voice shrill with panic. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Hana-sama, Hana-sama,’ said the woman. ‘It’s me, Fuyu.’

  Hana shuddered, remembering the look Fuyu had given Auntie. She could still hear her words: ‘I’m sure we can come to an arrangement.’ Then there had been the storehouse, the ropes, and the horror of realizing she’d been sold.

  She swung round. The full face, wide-spaced eyes and shapely mouth were almost pretty, but Hana couldn’t help seeing the cunning glint in Fuyu’s eyes and the way she twisted her lips.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’ Fuyu demanded. ‘It was me who brought you here.’

  Hana wrenched her sleeve out of Fuyu’s grip. ‘You sold me!’ she said. ‘You took money!’

  Fuyu stared at the ground. ‘I didn’t take money,’ she mumbled. ‘I helped you.’

  Hana scowled in disbelief. ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she said, beginning to walk towards the Corner Tamaya. But Fuyu pattered along beside her, chattering breathlessly.

  ‘Don’t you want to hear how things are in Edo? My master’s a pawnbroker. People pawn things when times are hard, so he does OK, and he hears a lot of news too.’

  Hana walked faster, trying to shake her off. She couldn’t imagine why Fuyu was pursuing her.

  ‘The city’s half empty,’ said Fuyu. ‘It’s not easy living under the occupation. You’re better off out here in the paddies, where business is booming. You must get plenty of people coming here, wanting your services.’

  Hana was nearly at the door of the Corner Tamaya, but Fuyu was still at her heels, still talking.

  ‘The government’s pretty well installed now. I can’t see our men doing much to dislodge it. There was talk of a Republic of Ezo, but no one thinks they’re going to put the shogun back in the castle, so it looks like we’ll have to live with the southerners. I hear you’re popular with them.’

  As Hana pushed aside the curtains, Fuyu stepped in front of her. ‘Isn’t there anything I can do for you to make up for everything I did? Anyone I can take a message to?’

  With a pang Hana thought of the big empty mansion she had left behind in the city and of Oharu, her maid, and Gensuké, the elderly retainer. She needed desperately to get a message to them, to let them know that she was all right and find out if they were. She knew she would be taking a risk. If her husband was still alive he would undoubtedly go home and ask them where she was. But she had a responsibility to Oharu and Gensuké, she couldn’t just let them go on thinking she was dead.

  ‘Come inside,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll write something if you promise you will deliver it safely.’

  21

  Yozo opened his eyes and moved his lips. There was a bitter taste in his mouth. His limbs were stiff and sore, his clothes were soiled, his hair felt matted and filthy and he was sticky with sweat from head to toe. But he was alive, that was the main thing. He was alive.

  He was in a bamboo cage, that much he knew, so small that when he tried to straighten his back he hit his head on the top. Outside he could hear the shuffle of feet and porters grunting in unison with the sway of the cage. Shadows flickered on the other side of the slats and light burst through a slit in the bamboo wall. He leaned forward and put his eye to it. Figures in black jackets with straw hats, bristling with swords and spears, marched along silhouetted against the sun, framed in fuzzy halos of light. Dazed though he was, he knew those southern uniforms all too well. He scowled and clenched his fists, feeling the ropes he was bound with cut into his wrists. Beyond the soldiers, tree trunks faded into the distance, tall and straight like prison bars.

  He tried to work out where he was and where he was being taken – in a train of cages somewhere in the mountains on the northern part of the mainland, he guessed, heading for Kodenmacho Prison in Edo, then trial and the execution grounds soon after that. With luck he would die before they got there.

  A mosquito settled on his cheek. Yozo shook his head fiercely and fixed his eyes on the triangular weave of the bamboo and the tiny dots of light dancing through the gaps. Even under the trees the heat felt stifling.

  At least the terrible pain that had seared through his head had sunk to a dull ache and the throbbing in his arm and shoulder was bearable. He thought back to the last battle, how in his fever he had rounded the corner of the ruined house again and again, and seen the Commander ducking along the street. He saw him turn, saw recognition flash across the dark face, heard his rough tones challenging him. He remembered raising his rifle, hearing the gunshot, seeing the Commander fall. Then he had realized there was another man there. He recalled seeing a black uniform and a conical helmet, and not caring that he himself was going to die too.

  But what had happened after that? That was the real nightmare. What ha
d become of Enomoto and his comrades-in-arms, all those friends with whom he had fought shoulder to shoulder? All dead, he supposed, or in cages like him, heading for Edo and the execution grounds. He thought of the years he had spent in Europe working and studying, acquiring knowledge for his country – only to end up here, caged like an animal, crouched in his own dirt.

  He growled and shuffled, lashing out furiously with his foot, trying to shake the porters off balance. A spear whacked against the side of the cage and there was a barked roar and he slumped back in the dappled twilight.

  Gradually the light on the bamboo changed. Outside the opening, the tree trunks grew denser and the shadows longer. The cage began to tilt, at first a little, then more and more steeply, until Yozo was pressed up against the back wall. He could hear the porters’ groans and curses and their laboured breathing as their steps grew slower and slower. After a while they seemed to be stopping after each step to lift and heave the cage. It was strangely quiet, as if the rest of the convoy had moved on and they’d been left behind.

  There was a rustle and a faint snap, as if some creature, a deer perhaps, was moving through the woods. Something shrieked – it could have been a monkey – and the whole forest came alive. There was a great cawing and flapping of wings and branches creaked and groaned.

  Then out of nowhere came a rush, more a wind than a sound, and suddenly the cage crashed to the ground. It bounced then smashed up against something hard. Yozo had curled into a ball to protect himself and cautiously raised his head. In the silence he heard dull thuds, a strange gurgling and a soft deep snarl. Then a monstrous shadow appeared, looming above him. The creature moved closer – too large for a man but too small for a bear. Yozo stared at it in numb fascination: it seemed a cruel way to die, to be ripped apart by some wild beast.

  Then to his utter amazement he heard a voice. ‘Watch out!’

  A blade sliced through the bamboo hasp and the door of the cage lifted. A face like a mountain demon’s with a long nose and huge round eyes appeared. Yozo broke into a grin so broad it hurt his bruised face and tore his cracked lips. He knew those steely blue eyes and that pallid skin, though the square jaw was now covered in light brown stubble.