by India Millar
Ken swallowed, as if his throat was dry, and stopped talking. I rested my forehead on his shoulder, guessing he did not want me to look at his face. When he spoke again, his voice rasped.
“I didn’t want to hurt him, Mineko. But he kept on. He even had enough breath to rant at me, calling me a coward, saying I was not his son and he might have well trained one of his daughters to fight. I don’t have a temper, perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I disappointed him. I always fought—still do—with my brain, not my heart. Even in those days, if I could overcome an opponent without hurting him, then I would do it. But my father kept on and on and on. And I knew he was toying with me, that he could stab or slash me any time he wanted. He was an amazing swordsman, in spite of his age. And gradually, even I became angry. I wanted to show him that he was wrong. That I could fight. That I was better than he was even. And I got my chance. Just for a moment, my father let his guard down, and I darted in with my sword. I never meant to hurt him. Not in spite of everything. He was my father! But instead of just giving him a scratch, as I intended, my sword carved a great cut, almost like seppuku as it slashed across his ribs and down his stomach, the wound was so terrible. He literally dropped where he stood, his sword still in his hand.”
I thought, serves the old bastard right! But I could not say it out loud, as I knew I would have hurt Ken badly. Perhaps he sensed my thoughts. He shook his head, his eyes staring at me but seeing the past.
“I kneeled down beside him. I couldn’t believe I had hurt him that badly. I tried to staunch the blood with my hands. When that didn’t work, I grabbed handfuls of his robe and pressed on the wound with it. But still he bled. If he hadn’t been bleeding, I would have thought he was already dead. He was an old man. How could he take such a wound and still live! I screamed for the servants, and when they arrived, I shouted at them to get a doctor. I knew it was no good, but I had to do something. Father was barely breathing by the time the doctor arrived. He kneeled on the floor by father’s side, and I didn’t need him to tell me it was too late, had been too late as soon as my sword hit him. We were both shocked when Father opened his eyes. He looked at me, and I swear there was pleasure in his face.
“‘My son,’ he said. And somehow, his voice was still strong. ‘My son. You see? I always said you would be better than me one day. An accident, doctor. Just an accident.’
“And he smiled. He smiled Mineko. Smiled as he died.
“I thought about committing seppuku myself, my guilt was so great. How could I live with myself when I had killed my own father?”
“It was an accident,” I protested. “He said so himself.”
Ken grunted. “Was it? I told myself it was at the time. But the more I came to think about it, the more I knew I was lying to myself. I wanted him to die. Wanted to kill him with my own hands. I hated him. Hated my own father. I felt guilty about it, but at the same time, I was secretly happy. He was gone, at last. The monster who had made my life a misery. Dead, and I had killed him.”
“Served him right.” I could have snatched the words back as soon as I said them. Ken looked at me with shock, and I wished I had never spoken. What kind of woman would he think me now? I spoke quickly, instinctively, without trying to arrange my thoughts. “If you hadn’t killed him, he would have killed you. He didn’t love you. Why should you have loved him?”
“Ah. But love isn’t conditional, is it? I loved you the moment I saw you, but you didn’t even know I existed did you?” He was smiling, but oh! So sadly. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that I had been in lust, at least, with him from the second Akira had presented me to him, but I did not. After all, lust was hardly love, was it?
“What happened?” I asked instead.
“I told our fellow samurai what had happened. Explained how it had all been a terrible accident. The doctor supported my story, of course. And they believed me. Why shouldn’t they? I had always been the most devoted of sons. And they told me something that astounded me.
“‘Your father was always very proud of you. He said that you were already far better than him with the staff and your hands and feet, and that it would be no time before you surpassed him with the sword.’
“They didn’t say it in so many words, but I knew each of them was thinking the same thing. My father was getting old. If he had to die, he would have been pleased to die in competition with me. Why didn’t he ever tell me he was proud of me, Mineko? All I ever heard from him was abuse. That I wasn’t good enough. Never would be.”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. I knew I hated Ken’s father with a passion, and equally that I was not prepared to make any excuse for him. “And you’ll never know. But what happened after he died? How did you come to be here in Edo?”
“My father’s friends were very kind to me. They offered to help with the estate until I found my feet. Even suggested that I needed a bride. They were right about that, of course.”
I frowned, trying to absorb all this news. I had sensed that there was far more to Ken than just a hired thug, but this? How was it possible that a high-caste samurai had ended up as Akira’s man? I was bewildered. Then another thought—far more interesting at that moment—pushed the lesser question aside. Why didn’t Ken have a wife? He must be in his early twenties, I judged. By his age, a man of good birth, presumably with a reasonable fortune behind him, should have a wife. Probably several concubines as well.
“Why weren’t you betrothed to a suitable woman when you were young?” I demanded. That was the way it was with the nobility, with anybody of reasonable status. Marriages were arranged. A man might learn to be happy with his wife, but it certainly wasn’t necessary. Good birth and the right amount of money accounted for everything. Even a peasant would wed a one-eyed hunchback if she bought more to the union than he had.
Ken shrugged. As if the question wasn’t important. “Father had never bothered. Learn to be a warrior first, and a lover later, he always said. There would be plenty of choice, when the time came. He himself had married late and never regretted it. Even if many of the girls who were suitable for me had been promised already, Oita was full of well-off young widows of good birth. A lot of them already had children, which was in their favor, of course. It proved they weren’t barren.” He stopped speaking. I glanced at this face and saw he was grimacing.
“Go on,” I said gently.
“My father’s friends found an endless parade of girls and young women for my approval. I spent endless days drinking tea and smiling and trying to make conversation. At least I had no need to explain my situation to their anxious fathers; our family and my story were well known in the area. They were all only to keen to secure me for their daughters. But after the first couple of times, I found I couldn’t remember any of them. It was if the same girl was produced each time. They were all reasonably pretty, I suppose. All well dressed and well mannered. But none of them had a spark of joy or intelligence in them.”
“That’s not usually asked for in a wife,” I said drily. “In fact, most men would prefer their wives to be pretty enough so they can stand to look at her, but biddable. All they really want a wife for is to bear them sons and ensure the house is clean and comfortable when they decide they want to come home.”
“Then I must be strange.” Ken smiled and kissed my forehead. “I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life with any of them. I know…” He held his hand up as he guessed what I was going to say. “I could have taken a mistress for enjoyment. But I wasn’t comfortable with the notion. It didn’t seem right to me, to be looking for a wife and at the same moment thinking about taking a concubine.”
“You are not Japanese.” I meant it jokingly, but I sounded rude. Ken stared at me in surprise, and I braced myself for a slap that never came. Stranger and stranger! “No Japanese man in the whole of history would think like that.”
“Perhaps not. But I did.” He managed a smile. “Anyway, I woke up one morning and realized I was deeply miserable. And th
e more I tried to tell myself that I had everything in the world to live for, the more depressed I became. Since father’s death I had neglected to practice my martial arts. I just couldn’t do it. I was beginning to run to fat. My joints ached when it rained. I was bored. And I didn’t care. And then one evening, one of my newly acquired friends came to visit. I was turning into a priest, he said. And he was going to show me that life had more to offer than solitude. Politeness made me go with him, but by the gods, Mineko, I soon found he was right.”
“Cured your depression, did he?” I guessed what was coming and I was, quite unreasonably, jealous.
“That he did. That first evening, he took me to a local geisha house. A very expensive one. The girls were beautiful. But not only that, they sparkled. Oh, all my prospective brides could sing and dance and play the samisen. Of course they could. But these girls were witty as well. They made me laugh for the first time in months. I drank far too much sake and woke up next morning with a terrible headache. But I felt it had been well worth it to live again.”
He looked at my glowering face and laughed. “They were geisha, Mineko. One could look, but not touch.”
I shrugged but thought bitterly, I’m a geisha, Ken. I can also play and sing and dance. But this geisha can be touched. And used. And abused. But for once, Ken did not see my distress. His thoughts were a long way away. I pushed my sadness away and listened. After all, he was here, wasn’t he? With me, not them.
“After that first evening, I started to go out into the world again. At first always in company, and only later on my own. I drank far too much. Began to move on from the respectable geisha houses to the courtesans. Learned that there was much in my life that I had never known about. I even started to practice my martial arts again, but never with the sword. That would have been too much. I expected my father’s friends to be angry with me, to think I should be in deep mourning. But the strange thing was, they weren’t angry at all. It seemed to me that in the strangest way they were pleased with the changes in me. It was as if I had been admitted to some sort of exclusive society that was delighted to have me as a member. Does that make sense to you?”
“Of course it does. They no doubt considered that they had saved you from yourself. That they had made a man of you.”
Ken blinked, turning my words over in his mind. I smiled, enchanted by his innocence.
“But apart from that, what happened to you? None of that explains what brought you here, to Edo. To Akira.”
“Ah. I’m nearly there, I promise you. I got wilder and wilder after those first few weeks. I rarely spent a night in my own bed, always woke up with a pain in my head. But I was young, and now that I was exercising every day again, I was fit. And the main thing was, while ever I was drunk, while ever I was recovering from being drunk, I could forget that I had killed my father. It was only when I was sober that I hated myself, so I made sure I was sober as little as possible. I might have gone on like that for a long time. I suppose I would finally have married, had a family. Either gone on visiting courtesans or taken a mistress or two. But then I woke up. I mean, literally woke up.”
He hesitated, and I snuggled against his chest. I made sure I wasn’t looking at his face as I sensed he was getting to the nub of things. Things that he was deeply ashamed of. I began to be worried. What could Ken have done that could possibly shock me? Expose his bastards? Sleep with his mother? Discover an unconquerable desire to have sex with dogs or perhaps sheep? I had heard our patrons brag about all of that and far more. I doubted there was anything that a man could do to either cover up his sins or find pleasure for himself that would ever surprise me. And if such a thing did exist, then it must be terrible indeed. I didn’t want to hear any more, but Ken was talking again and I forced myself to listen. If I didn’t, then I would spend the rest of my years wondering.
“I had had a particularly lively evening. Drank a lot of sake. Gambled heavily and won. I remember that, but—and for this I am eternally grateful—I remember nothing after about midnight, when I left the gambling house. I woke up next morning on a strange futon. Nothing unusual about that, but the room was particularly squalid. I could see at a glance that it was dirty, and it smelled bad enough to make me curl my lip in disgust. And then I looked at the woman next to me. The woman I had, presumably, chosen. And had no doubt spent the night making love to.”
I felt him shudder at the memory.
“She was fast asleep. Lying on her back and snoring with her mouth wide open. She was old enough to be my grandmother, Mineko. She still had her full makeup in place, but it was badly smeared and I could see the wrinkles beneath it. And she had no teeth! Not a single one in her head!”
Ken gasped the last words, and I was deeply relieved I had kept my head on his chest. I closed my eyes tightly and tried not to laugh out loud. I hesitated to tell him, but I doubted that there was a single man in the whole of the Floating World who hadn’t had a similar experience. Or two. Or three. And as for the courtesan having no teeth, that was hardly unusual. If her teeth had been bad anyway, she had probably had them all removed so she could give greater pleasure to her patrons. Indeed, many men went out of their way to ensure that their courtesan of choice was toothless for just that reason. Was that it, the big secret? Surely not. Not even Ken, innocent as he had been then, could have been so worried.
“Oh dear,” I murmured. “What did you do?”
“I dressed as quickly as I could, left her some money on the futon, and hired a palanquin to take me home. It was a long walk, and I barely trusted my legs to keep me up. I was terrified she might have given me the pox and I barely went out of the house for weeks afterward. When my new friends asked why, I gave them the honest answer, and I was deeply relieved when they understood perfectly. A couple even offered to introduce me to a doctor who specialized in such matters, but I preferred to follow the advice of the man who had first introduced me to the pleasures of women.
“‘Wait and see,’ he advised. ‘If anything strange appears on your tree, or you have pain when you pass water, then we will take you to a doctor. If nothing happens, you will be fine.’
“And I was deeply relieved to find that I was, indeed, well. But the incident shook me to the core, Mineko. In the weeks I spent in my own company, I began to feel guilty all over again. Was this really any way to atone for my father’s death? Would he be proud of the way I was carrying on? I knew the answer was no to each. For a while, I seriously considered settling down properly. Marrying one of those boring women and having a son who I would name for my father. I went so far as to pay visits to a couple of the prettiest girls, but it was no good. I felt in my bones that this wasn’t right. In fact, when I was alone in my bed at night, waiting for sleep to come, I began to be sure that I could hear my father’s voice, nagging at me. Telling me that yes, of course I should do this. That it was right that I should take a wife. Have children. Continue the family line. Die in my bed like a good family man, or even better, in a fight as he had. And all the time, I felt he was snickering at me. That he had reached out from whatever hell I had sent him to in order to get his revenge on me.”
“Was it his ghost, do you think? Or perhaps a restless spirit, impersonating him?”
Ken chuckled. I felt the sound deep in his chest. “More likely my own guilty conscience! For a while, I bowed to his memory. It was right I should do this, I thought. Take the same path as every other respectable gentleman. But the more I decided I should do it, the less I wanted to. I dithered for a long time and finally took the middle path. I decided to wait. Not at home. I couldn’t do that. But I would travel, I decided. Get away. Give myself time to think. But I couldn’t do it without purpose, and I finally found an idea that would give me the escape I longed for, and at the same time ease my stinging conscience.”
“You came to Edo? To work for Akira?”
I was astonished, and couldn’t hide it. Ken shook his head.
“Wait. Let me finish.” He was teasing me. I
poked my finger in his ribs, urging him on.
“I decided I would go on a pilgrimage. Visit as many monasteries where the martial arts were taught as I could find. Martial arts schools as well. At each one, I would humble myself before the master and beg to be instructed. I turned the plan over in my mind, and found it good. I would not only give myself time to think, but surely, if anything could, this would show due reverence to my father. It was the thought of my father that was uppermost. No matter how drunk I was, I only ever forgot I had killed him for more than a couple of hours. As soon as I sobered up, my conscience made me gloomy. I could never undo what I had done, but perhaps in this way I could atone for it. I thought there must be many, many masters in Japan whose skills were far better than mine. They would hurt me, I didn’t doubt. Just as my father had hurt me virtually every day of my life. And I looked forward to that, Mineko. As if the pain inflicted on me could somehow lessen the crime I had committed. Does that make any sort of sense to you?”
“Yes,” I said simply. Folk tales were full of men and women who had tried to rid themselves of their guilt by accepting punishment. I had never seen it amongst our patrons, but I understood perfectly what Ken was saying. It might not even be something that you had done in this life that you felt guilty about. I had a clear memory of poor Carpi insisting that Kiku was so grossly fat because of some sin of over indulgence she had committed in a former life.
Whichever way I looked at it, I didn’t think for a second that my poor Ken could ever have rid himself of his burden of guilt, no matter what he tried to do. That was the way of it—if you felt guilty, then you had a good conscience. Because of that, you would never rid yourself of your guilt. Ah! But life could be unfair.
Yet, still I asked. “Did it work?”
To my surprise, Ken laughed, although the sound was without humor.
“It went wrong from the start. I thought my new friends would try and dissuade me, but they made things worse. They nodded seriously, and told me what a good son I was, how my father would be proud of me. When I finally left, I burned with the shame of my deceit. And it got worse, Mineko. I was accepted by the good monks at the first monastery I came to and invited into the dojo to practice with their master. I can’t tell you how I longed for the moment! But it was hopeless. Even out of training as I still was, he was unable to lay a finger on me. I moved on to the next monastery, and the next. It got a little harder, but of course I was now back into training. My body was hard and fit again. And my mind, too, began to awake from its long sleep. I began to enjoy the combat. I had almost forgotten my intention to be hurt. And then I arrived at the first martial arts school, rather than monastery. And things were different there.”
