The Courtesan and the Samurai

by Lesley Downer

  She had never known such tenderness. His touch, so gentle yet so arousing, filled her with pleasure more intense than she had ever known. She heard herself moan as he ran his hands and lips across and between her breasts to the tender skin of her stomach, until every pore was tingling. Stroking her thighs, he licked lower and lower until his tongue found the neatly trimmed triangle of hair and he buried his nose in it, nuzzling like a cat, then licked lower still, lapping up the juices which welled there. Helpless under his touch, she groaned as a long aching spasm swept over her, throbbing in her belly and running like a flame to her throat.

  Then he was beside her. Hungrily she ran her hands across his chest and muscular back, burying her face in his smooth skin, inhaling the scent of his hair. She pulled him on top of her, felt the touch of stubble as his face brushed hers, the hardness of his body, the pounding of his heart.

  ‘You,’ he whispered as they moved together, faster and faster. And then she was floating, drowning in sensation as a sweet numbness overtook her, filling her belly, creeping up her spine, surging to her fingertips and the root of her tongue. She heard him groan and felt him heavy on top of her.

  They lay for a long time in each other’s arms, then looked at each other in wonder. This was not the only night they would have, there would be many more. It was the beginning of a new life.

  39

  In the morning the young widow brought breakfast. She pushed back the screens and Hana and Yozo ate in silence, gazing out at the tiny garden – a couple of rocks and a knotted pine tree, bathed in autumn sunshine. Hana had put on the cotton kimono she had brought with her from the Corner Tamaya and tied her hair back in a simple knot.

  It was her first morning of freedom. The great city was at her feet, she could go anywhere and do anything she wanted. She was far enough from the Yoshiwara that Father would never find her now. No one even knew who she was. Wrapped in her winter clothes she would be entirely invisible.

  She’d already decided where she wanted to go. She’d always known. She’d thought about it so often – the big house, with its garden of bamboos and pines, its stone lantern, moss-covered rocks and small pond. The maples would be in full blaze by now and Gensuké would be wrapping the shrubs in straw for the winter. She would take Yozo with her. She smiled, imagining his excitement as he saw the house for the first time.

  She turned to look at him and saw he was staring abstractedly at the garden. She’d been so thrilled, planning everything she’d do with her new freedom, that she’d forgotten the city was not safe for him. In the Yoshiwara he had been hidden from their southern overlords but now he would have to be cautious. He met her eyes and looked at her questioningly, drumming his fingers on the worn tatami. He was frowning and she wondered what was on his mind.

  ‘I’m afraid I have to leave for a while,’ he said. ‘I have business to take care of.’

  Hana started, shocked. It was the last thing she had expected to hear.

  ‘I told you about my friends, Enomoto and Otori. Today’s the day they’re being transported to Kodenmacho Prison. It’s our only chance to rescue them.’ He took her hand in both of his and held it. ‘I know you understand. It’s a matter of life or death.’

  Hana blinked hard. She hadn’t expected their farewell to be so sudden or so soon. Yozo put his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forehead.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ she whispered.

  ‘I didn’t want to spoil our night together. Anyway, there’s no need to worry. We’ve thought our plan through carefully, in detail. I’ll be back by evening and I’ll have Enomoto and Otori with me.’

  For all his words, Hana knew that he was taking a huge risk and might well end up in prison himself, or even at the execution ground. But she was a samurai’s daughter and a samurai’s widow and she couldn’t stand in his way. She could feel his excitement and realized he wasn’t doing this just for Enomoto and Otori. He’d been cooped up in the Yoshiwara so long, playing the servant, being polite and deferential; now he was outside he was longing to be back in the thick of things.

  A tear trickled down her cheek. He brushed it away, then smoothed a long strand of hair that had fallen across her face and tucked it behind her ear. She closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of his fingers on her skin.

  ‘Wait for me here,’ he said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to go home for so long. I’ll wait there.’

  ‘To your house?’ Yozo’s face darkened. ‘But … it belonged to your husband.’

  ‘He was never there,’ she said. ‘Most of the time I was on my own, just me and the servants. It was my home, not his, and it’s your home too now. It’s in Yushima, not far from the river, near Korinji temple.’ She pictured the street, the river, the temple, and the great house with smoke hovering around the eaves. Just saying the names gave her a warm feeling.

  ‘There’s something else.’ He was staring at the garden and she realized he hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I have to tell you about your husband – about how he died.’ There was a look on his face that frightened her.

  She leaned forward and put her hand on his thigh. ‘I don’t need to know,’ she said firmly. ‘I only need you to come back safely.’

  Outside, a cicada shrilled, breaking the silence. He shook his head and drummed his fingers on the tatami again.

  ‘I told you that I saw your husband fall, but I didn’t tell you why.’ He took a deep breath. He was avoiding her eyes. ‘I … killed him.’

  Hana drew back. ‘You? Not an enemy?’ she gasped.

  The room had become very quiet. The widow came in to take away the breakfast trays and they sat in silence till she had gone. Yozo was looking fixedly at the garden still, his shoulders slumped. Hana wanted to tell him that she didn’t need to hear any more but he held up his hand, frowning.

  ‘He had my friend Kitaro killed.’ His voice was so quiet she could hardly hear it. ‘I vowed to avenge him but I had to wait until the war was over – and I knew it was a crime to kill one of our own commanding officers. But in the end, when I saw my chance, I didn’t even stop to think about it. It was in the last battle and we all knew we were going to die anyway. I came face to face with him on a deserted street in Hakodate and he taunted me again and I shot him.’ He had a strange light in his eyes as if he were back in that distant wild place, seeing it happening all over again. ‘I have nightmares about it still. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you until now, I was sure you’d hate me for it. After all, Commander Yamaguchi was your husband, no matter what you felt about him.’

  Hana stared at him, wide-eyed. She knew that it was not a crime but a sacred duty to avenge the death of a comrade and that men often killed other men. Her husband had boasted about how many men he’d killed, including his own soldiers; and if he’d come back he would have killed her too, so in a way Yozo had saved her.

  ‘I just couldn’t keep it hidden any longer,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want there to be any secrets between us.’

  She took his hand and held it in both of hers. ‘It doesn’t change anything for me – for us,’ she whispered. For some reason his confession made him even dearer to her.

  ‘Can you forgive me?’ he asked, turning to look at her.

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive. The only thing I need is for you to come back safely.’

  He pulled her to him and held her close, then drew back, gazing at her as if he never wanted to take his eyes off her again, and slowly straightened his shoulders. ‘Your house is where the militia barracks used to be. Ichimura stays near there, and that’s where Heizo and Hiko and I are meeting him. I’ll go with you and make sure you get there safely.’

  She rested her cheek on his shoulder and kissed his neck, then ran her hand across his face, tracing his cheek, his nose and chin, the laughter lines at the sides of his mouth, his smooth thick hair. She wanted to tell him that she would p
ray that nothing terrible would happen, but she couldn’t form the words. She realized now that he wasn’t expecting to come back.

  ‘You said you’d protect me,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t forget that.’

  ‘You have my word,’ he said, bowing solemnly.

  They hurried through the city, Hana keeping a few steps behind. As they crossed the square in front of Sujikai Gate, Hana remembered the women she had seen there, painted and powdered, ready to sell themselves to any man for a rice ball. Smells of waste and rotting food hovered above the Kanda river as they found a boatman to pole them back to the jetty near her home.

  All too soon they came to the wasteland she had run across when she was fleeing the soldiers. There were mulberry bushes planted there now, a few bright yellow leaves still clinging to the branches. She knew the moment when they would have to part was very close but despite her sadness and her fears for Yozo, to see this place she knew so well was comforting. She was going home at last.

  Tears sprang to her eyes when she saw the familiar wall with its tiled top and moss sprouting between the stones. Yozo stopped at the gate and stared at the name plate, frowning.

  ‘Seizo Yamaguchi,’ he read.

  Hana wanted to hug him then and tell him that she loved him, that it made no difference to her what he had done, that it only made her feelings stronger. She wanted to beg him not to leave on this perilous mission – but instead she steeled her heart and reminded herself that she was a samurai, smiled and blinked away her tears and wished him luck as demurely as any wife.

  Yozo took her hand and pressed it to his lips one last time, then turned back towards the river. She kept her eyes on him, his broad shoulders, his two swords at his side. He looked back once and smiled, then disappeared from view.

  She pushed open the gate, barely aware of where her feet were taking her, still dazed by everything he had told her. But she knew it didn’t change anything for her. Those grim days when she had been Commander Yamaguchi’s wife were over long ago and her heart belonged to Yozo now. Fervently she prayed that he would come back unharmed.

  Then she looked around, suddenly seeing where she was. She had been away nearly a year now. There was moss between the paving stones and drifts of fallen leaves heaped against the walls. The garden was rank with weeds and the great cherry tree had grown even bigger. The house was sadly dilapidated, with moss sprouting on the roof and tiles missing here and there, more like the haunt of foxes and badgers than a place where people lived. But it was still the same house and the same grounds. She saw smoke seeping from the eaves and walked faster, thinking how happy Oharu and Gensuké would be to see her, and how surprised.

  The great door at the front was closed and bolted. She pushed at it but it wouldn’t budge. There were swathes of cobwebs hanging from the lintels and under the eaves and piles of mouldering leaves in the corners. She went round to the family door at the side of the house and wiggled it open and stepped over the threshold, blinking, her eyes stinging from the smoke that swirled around in the darkness inside.

  In the threads of light that pierced the slits between the closed rain doors, she could see the cavernous interior, the massive smoke-blackened rafters and the tatami-matted rooms disappearing into the shadows. She smelt charcoal smoke and food cooking and thought with a surge of anticipation that Oharu must be in the kitchen, preparing lunch.

  Then she saw a movement in the gloom. There was a figure sitting cross-legged at the hearth, holding a pipe.

  There was a thump as her bundle fell to the ground and her hands flew to her mouth to choke back her cry of shock.

  For a moment she thought she must be seeing a ghost but the man was too solid – the broad shoulders, the arrogant thrust of the chin, the oiled hair hanging loose and thick and glossy.

  Her knees buckled and she gasped as if she were drowning. She wanted to turn and run but her legs wouldn’t carry her. She had to hold on to her senses, she told herself, keep her wits about her. How could Yozo have been so dreadfully wrong?

  For there could be no doubt about it, no doubt at all. It was her husband.

  40

  Commander Yamaguchi looked older and thinner. His face was gaunt and his skin, which had been exquisitely pale, had become leathery. His hair too, which had once been as shiny as black lacquer, was streaked with grey. He had dark shadows around his eyes and the crease between his eyebrows had deepened into a scowl. He looked at Hana in silence, then ran his eyes slowly over her from her feet to her face.

  Her legs seemed to bend of their own accord and she fell to her knees with her palms on the floor of the entranceway and pressed her face to her hands.

  ‘So it’s you,’ he said, and she recognized his softly menacing tones and brusque peasant dialect. ‘You’ve been travelling. And now you turn up in this unseemly kimono with your bundle, like some vulgar street person. It wasn’t much of a homecoming for me, with no wife to greet me and take care of me.’

  She trembled, speechless, and huddled up as small as possible on the cold earthen floor.

  ‘Have you lost your voice? Aren’t you going to say you’re pleased to see me?’

  ‘I thought … I thought …’

  ‘You were supposed to take care of the house. Why weren’t you here?’

  She took a breath. ‘S-soldiers …’ She could barely form the words. ‘Soldiers came to the house … To kill me – because I’m your wife. I … I had to flee.’

  ‘You’re a samurai and you’re afraid of death? Your duty was to defend this house.’

  Hana’s guilt hung over her like a miasma and her breath came quick and shallow. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her bundle on the floor, where she had dropped it, and remembered the box, her husband’s box. Perhaps if he saw it, it might soften his heart. Perhaps he would understand why she had done what she had done.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ she breathed.

  She groped for the bundle and put it on the tatami in front of him and fumbled with the knots, her hands shaking as she opened the carrying cloth. There was the plain metal soldier’s box and the wooden scroll box next to it. She remembered opening them in her rooms at the Corner Tamaya, reading the letter and the poem again and again, then putting the boxes and the photograph on the altar there. She’d wept for him, forgotten the harshness and the beatings, remembered only that he had been her husband.

  He started back as if he in his turn had seen a ghost and stretched out a trembling hand. His hand was thinner, bony, the knuckles larger.

  ‘Ichimura brought them,’ she whispered, looking up at him pleadingly. She remembered the effect it had always had when she’d looked at men in that way, through her lashes. ‘I read your letter. I mourned you. I was going to take them to Kano and bury them, as you wanted.’

  He prised the lid off the metal box and stared inside. She was startled to see that his eyes were swimming with tears.

  ‘My whole life,’ he muttered. ‘And it amounts to this, just this. The war lost, the cause defeated, everything I believed in – gone, all gone.’ He sat back on his heels and gave a long shuddering sigh. ‘I should have died with the others. What kind of world is this to be alive in?’

  He groped for his pipe and tapped it slowly on the edge of the tobacco box. The sound echoed in the silence. She held her breath, watching, waiting. Then he narrowed his eyes and looked at her.

  ‘You’re different,’ he said. ‘Come here.’

  Her heart pounding, she knelt opposite him and he gripped her chin with his finger and thumb, pinching it so hard it hurt, and stared at her face, twisting her head this way and that. His eyes seemed to peel away every layer, as if he could read her whole story, everything she had done, everywhere she had been, every man she had ever slept with; as if everything – the night she had spent with Yozo, everything – was blazoned on her skin like a tattoo. She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering Father holding her face in just that way. Then he thrust her away so hard that she fell backwards on the tata
mi.

  ‘Something’s changed,’ he said, with a scowl of disgust. ‘You even smell different. You used to be a foolish little creature, but you’re not now. You’ve learned disobedience. It’s written all over you.’

  He paused, then looked hard at her again.

  ‘You’ve learned how to think. You argue, you tilt your head, you look at me through your lashes. You’ve learned how to play games, how to make men like you. You’re not my modest wife any more, are you?’

  Hana knew what was coming and there was nothing she could do or say to stop it. Her husband gave a snarl of revulsion. ‘You’ve been in the Yoshiwara. Isn’t that it? You’ve become a prostitute. How many southerners have had use of that body? You belong to me and you gave yourself to our enemies! You’ve shamed me, you’ve shamed this house.’ He had turned dark red with rage.

  As he said the word ‘Yoshiwara’, Hana knew she was doomed. He would kill her. He had to, it was the law.

  She squeezed her hands together, feeling her heart pounding and the blood rising in her head. If only Yozo would come. If anyone could save her, he could. But he wouldn’t know what had happened until it was too late.

  ‘Don’t try and deny it,’ the Commander bellowed, his face black. ‘A woman called Fuyu came. She told me everything.’

  Fuyu. The name was like a slap in the face. Hana jerked upright, shocked out of her stupor, suddenly furious. She was not going to kneel in silence any longer. In the past she’d accepted that this man was her lord and master and had obeyed his orders and taken his beatings without complaint. But he was right. She had changed. He no longer had dominion over her spirit. Let him kill her. She would have her say first.