by India Millar
He had pulled a sour face when I insisted on taking my—literally—precious print of the kabuki theater with me. He had been even angrier when I insisted on carrying it myself. What else could I do? I was sure the maid would have noticed how heavy it was. Even if she hadn’t commented on it, her face would have looked surprised when she tried to lift it. And Akira missed nothing at all.
There hadn’t even been time to make proper farewells to the geisha.
Their faces stared at me in astonishment when I poked my head around their doors one by one and explained formally that Akira-san was honoring me by taking me to his house. I couldn’t even answer the chorus of “why?” and “how long?” because I didn’t know. All of the geisha looked shocked, but I noticed that Sute was peering past me.
Akira watched me sort my belongings out. I realized he was making sure that I had no opportunity to gossip, and I answered his remarks with care, anxious to give nothing away.
“I shan’t have time to visit the Hidden House for a while,” he said casually, poking the kimono I had laid out with his foot. “Not that one. It’s too plain. Wear the kimono I gave you as a present for your mizuage.”
“Yes, Akira-san,” I said meekly, hoping a sweet response would annoy him. If it did, he gave no sign of it.
“I shall leave Bigger and Ken here to look after the geisha. Ken is a good man, but he needs more experience.” I schooled my face to show no expression at mention of Ken. “I may need Bigger elsewhere from time to time, so I’m going to leave Ito-san in charge for a while. You don’t know him.”
“No, Akira-san.” I kept my head down, fumbling with my few pieces of jewelry. Was it true, then? Had Kiku been right all along, about Akira being in trouble? I still wasn’t sure.
When we went out, Akira nodded to a tall, handsome young man standing to attention in the doorway.
“Ito-san, I am leaving Bigger and Ken with you. They will introduce you to the geisha. Ensure that my little flowers are well looked after.”
It was, of course, Ito-san who captured Sute’s butterfly attention. I wished her well. It would do her no harm to find favor with Akira’s man.
And now we swept through the streets of the Floating World in procession. Akira walked deliberately slowly. Not so I could keep up with him, but so that everybody we passed could see him. The crowd melted away before us, even the normal babble of voices pausing until we had gone by.
I had been half expecting this moment since the night Akira had handed his dagger to me. Now that it had arrived, I felt little except dull resignation. Even my curiosity about Auntie’s past died, leaving me an empty shell. It was not until we were well out of sight of the Hidden House that my spirits began to spark and I started to worry. Not about myself—what could Akira do to me that I would feel?—but for Ken.
He had told me himself that he was new to all the Floating World had to offer. He might think himself experienced these days, but I knew he was not. And he was, at heart, still lost in a mire of guilt. I would miss his presence terribly, as I hoped he would miss me. But above that, above the worry even, I was jealous.
Not jealous of the other geisha. None of them—not even scatterbrained Sute—would think about trying to tempt the man they thought was Bigger’s lover. But Bigger, the thought of him raised the small hairs on the back of my neck with fear and distaste.
Bigger had been left in the Hidden House with Ken. Oh, I knew Ken had made it clear to him that he had no interest in other men, but I doubted Bigger would take a single refusal for an answer. And Bigger could be charming when he wanted to be. And above all, would my dear Ken see the new upheaval, see my being taken away from him as yet another sign from the gods that he had not yet been punished enough? Was it possible that he might accept Bigger’s advances—and they would surely be made, probably sooner rather than later—as yet more punishment that he must accept as his due? I sighed out loud, knowing the answer in my heart.
Stupid man. Dear, dear stupid man.
Lost in my worries, I almost walked into Akira’s back as he stopped abruptly.
“We are here, Mineko-chan. Your new home.”
I glanced around. Where was I? I thought I knew every street, every alley in the Floating World, but this was unknown to me. We were at the bottom of a short, closed street, almost little more than a long yard. Our way was blocked by a high, stone wall with a single door in it. Akira rapped briskly, and the door opened so quickly I guessed the servant was standing ready. I had expected a maid but instead saw one of Akira’s men, bowing his master in.
We took our shoes off in the doorway and Akira held his arms out expansively.
“Welcome, Mineko. Welcome to my poor home. I hope you will be very happy here, just as Midori-chan was.” There was no note of irony in his voice when he spoke of Midori. “My home has been without a woman’s touch for too long. I am sure you will bring brightness to the gloom. Would you like to see your room?”
My room? I brightened fractionally at the thought that I might be going to live where Midori had spent time. I would like that. Akira saw the hope in my face and smiled benevolently.
“I have given you the room next to where dear Midori lived. I have left everything there exactly as it was when she left. I want it to be a surprise for her when she comes back. And I know she will be delighted to find you here waiting for her.”
He tilted his head, waiting for me to speak. My mouth opened and closed, but no words found their way past my lips. How long had Akira been mad, I wondered? I heard the happiness in his voice when he said Midori’s name and knew he wasn’t just trying to provoke me. He really believed she was going to come back to the Floating World. To him.
I would never have believed I could feel pity for Akira, but at that moment I did.
“Thank you, Akira-san,” I croaked.
He ushered me through the house to my room. A real bedroom. A separate room, divided off from the rest of the house by permanently fixed sliding screens. My own, private space. I blinked with shock. At the Hidden House, like most traditional houses, there was no such thing as “my” room. We all had areas that we considered our own, but in truth it was common for our screens to be pushed back to make one large space if Auntie had a vast number of patrons arriving for a party. And this bedroom even had a separate little room attached, with sliding doors to three sides. Akira pulled one screen back with a flourish and I gasped with surprise as I saw a number of beautiful kimonos hanging there.
“Everything you might need is here for you.” He stood back, smiling. As if I had asked the question, he added, “Of course, you will want to see where Midori lived. It is a beautiful room. I understand you may wish to spend time there, perhaps feel her spirit there. I have no objection to you doing that. Providing you do not disturb anything. It must all be exactly as she left it. Even the maids do not clean it.”
“For when she comes back,” I said unthinkingly.
Akira grinned and nodded. “Exactly. I will leave you now, Mineko. Please, treat my home as your own. The bathhouse and garden are at your disposal. If you want anything, ask one of the maids. I trust,” he glanced down at Kiku, “that your dog will behave herself. I would hate to have to punish anything that was dear to you.”
It was almost a relief to hear a flash of the old, terrible Akira.
14
A caged bird sings with
No joy. How can I sing when
My heart is not free?
When Midori had been taken by Akira to be his mistress, to live with him, we had all envied her. Oh, we understood that Akira had to be treated carefully. That he had not survived as the greatest yakuza in Edo by being a nice person. But he was rich, handsome, young. He was rumored to live in one of the most beautiful houses in Edo. And above all, she would only have to please him alone, not every patron who visited the Hidden House who could afford to buy her favors.
What could possibly be put in the balance that could outweigh all that?
Within d
ays, I had my answer. I realized that even unlimited luxury can soon cease to be enough.
We geisha were confined to the Hidden House, but our patrons brought all the gossip with them. And what they didn’t know, the maids did. We knew all that was going on. And we had each other to chatter to.
Now, I had nothing but solitude.
Truly, Akira’s home was beautiful. No expense had been spared anywhere in its construction. It was furnished in the traditional style, so to gaijin eyes it would have seemed bare. But each piece of furniture, each wall hanging, had been chosen with great taste and each harmonized with the other. I thought wryly that I would never have credited Akira with such exquisite taste and wondered perhaps if Midori had had a hand in the choosing.
And I soon found out what it was to be truly alone. The maids barely spoke to me, keeping their heads down and rushing to carry out my every request. Even in the bathhouse, when they were soaping and rinsing me, they barely managed a word. And luxurious as the bath was, even that held little joy. What was the point of a bath if there was nobody there to exchange gossip with? As I lay back in the steaming water, I remembered poor Carpi telling us that as a child she had been exhibited in a cage by the burakumin—the low caste tribe who had rescued her when her father disowned her at birth—to earn them some money. At the time, I had thought it must have been very terrible for her. Now, I longed to see somebody—anybody—and would even have welcomed a real cage instead of the gilded one I was living in if it meant having somebody to speak to.
Even Akira had abandoned me. Since he had left me the same day he brought me here, I had seen nothing of him.
I took Kiku and sat in the garden as often as I could. But the weather was getting colder, and even the colors of the garden began to dim as winter took hold. Driven almost to distraction, I finally dared to go into Midori’s room. I sat on her futon and delved into her closets and drawers, running my fingers gently over her clothes. I buried my face in her kimonos and found the faintest trace of her remaining in the cloth.
And I sat and cried.
She had escaped from this terrible place. But I could see no chance that I would ever be able to do the same.
As I stood to leave, I noticed I had left one of the drawers ajar and hurried to close it properly. I didn’t want to imagine Akira’s anger if he found anything disturbed. The drawer jolted as I tried to force it back. Cursing, I opened it fully again, pulling a face as I saw the contents.
“Midori hated these combs,” I told Kiku. I had started talking to my puppy frequently and had convinced myself that she understood every word I said to her. “They’re incredibly expensive, but they’re made from kingfisher beaks. She always felt that it was terrible that beautiful birds like kingfishers should be sacrificed just to take their beaks. She said Akira knew she hated them, so he always made her wear them.”
I ran my fingers gently over the combs, ensuring nothing was a fraction out of place. I started to shut the drawer again, and then paused.
Midori said she had a set of combs for each day of the week. Six for each day, to keep her long, thick curls pinned in place. Akira had given one set to Sute, though I had no idea why. In his strange mind, did he think he was punishing Midori in some way by giving her combs to fluffy little Sute? I shrugged. I would probably never know. That would have left six sets here in the drawer. I remembered that Akira had said that Midori had been wearing a set of the combs when she escaped, when she “left us,” as he put it. So, there should be five sets left. Thirty combs in total.
But there were not. There were twenty-four.
I pulled the drawer out fully, searching at the back. I looked in the drawer beneath, in case a set had somehow slipped down. But there were no more combs anywhere.
My breath caught in my throat. I could almost feel Midori at my side, smiling and nodding as she urged me on.
My fingers felt like wood as I finally persuaded the drawer shut.
Akira said nobody had been allowed in her room since Midori left. Even the maids were not even allowed in to clean her space. But even if they came into the room, they would never dare steal anything, especially not from in here. Perhaps, then, Akira had given a set of the combs to somebody else? I knew that he had not, even as I thought it.
For some reason, it had amused him to give Sute a set. Sute, who looked even more like a gaijin than Midori had. But hadn’t he told me that everything had been left exactly as it had been when Midori had fled? No, he would not have given any more of her precious combs away. They should all have been there.
And they must have gone recently. After Akira gave Sute her set. He would have noticed if any had been missing then. They had disappeared within the last couple of months then, at the very latest.
Kiku jumped out of my arms, yapping crossly. I was trembling and must have squeezed her too tightly for her liking.
This was important. There was a message here. A message for me, and for me alone. But it was a message written in a foreign language I couldn’t understand.
Suddenly, I had an idea. I shouted for the maid, who came running at my command.
“Do you clean this room?” I demanded.
The maid stared at me and blinked. I repeated the question.
“Is it you who cleans in here?”
“No, mistress. We are not allowed in here.”
“Then who has stolen some of the most valuable things?”
The maid’s mouth formed an O of horror. I watched the color drain from her face, and I hated myself for terrifying her, but I had to know!
“No, mistress. No. I would never steal anything from Akira-san. I wouldn’t dare.” I guessed from her terrified voice that she was telling the truth. And yet…Did something ring not quite true in her tone? She was hiding something. I knew she was.
“You’re lying,” I said crisply. I threw open the comb drawer with a dramatic gesture. “Six combs are missing. These are things that Akira-san values above anything else in the house. When I tell him they have gone, I don’t want to think about what he’s going to do to you.”
The maid literally crumpled. She kneeled at my feet, wailing.
“It wasn’t me, mistress. I didn’t take anything. It was those other women, not me!”
At first, I thought she was trying to blame the other servants. She was kowtowing on the tatami, and her words were muffled.
“It was the gaijin and her friend. Not me!”
I forced myself to wait until her voice had shrunk from a shriek to a moan before I answered. My heart was pounding. An uninvited gaijin, here in Akira’s house? No wonder the maid was shaking with terror. If he found out, she was a dead woman. Or worse.
“You let a gaijin into this house? Without Akira-san’s permission?”
“I couldn’t help it! She forced her way in. She just pushed past me.”
The maid’s voice was shaking with terror. I put my hand on her shoulder and made her sit up.
“Who did? Who forced her way in? The gaijin? When did this happen?”
Her face was running with tears. She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and took a huge breath before answering me.
“Please, mistress, don’t tell Akira-san. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t stop them. I didn’t know they had taken anything.”
I would have hated myself for pushing her if I hadn’t seen the sly expression lurking behind the tears. I hardened my heart and glared at her.
“Start at the beginning, girl. When did this happen?”
She wrinkled her face in thought and then nodded. “Less than two weeks ago. It was yoka.” The eighth day of the month. I counted back in my head. Since the gaijin had arrived, most Japanese had adopted their endearing habit of giving each day a name rather than just a number for the day of the month. Yoka had been Kin’yobi. It had been three days before that—Kayobi—when I thought the gaijin with the red hair had stared at me. Did any of this make sense? Not yet. But it would!
“Tell me exactly what
happened on that Kin’yobi? I assume that Akira-san wasn’t here?”
“No, mistress. He had not been here for a number of days. I was on my own in the house. One of the other maids had gone out on an errand. The other girl had gone to visit her mother, who was ill. Akira-san had taken his men with him, so we had no protection.” She paused and looked at me for encouragement. I waved my hand for her to continue. “I heard a knock on the door, and when I answered it, this woman just pushed past me into the house.”
“Was this the gaijin?”
“Oh, no.” The maid almost smiled. “This one was Japanese. She was obviously a very high ranking lady. Very richly dressed. Everything about her said she was used to being obeyed. She just pushed me to one side as soon as I opened the door.” She licked her lips and looked at the floor. Her voice was almost a whisper as she went on. “She was the biggest woman I have ever seen. She was almost as wide as she was tall.”
Kiku! I forgave the maid her unforgivable lapse of politeness immediately, but I was even more bewildered. Kiku was here? With a gaijin? Was it one of Mori-san’s customers, perhaps? One of those who was eager to find out more about how we Japanese lived? But why would Kiku risk bringing her here? None of it made any sense at all.
“And the woman who was with her? You said she was a gaijin? What did she look like?”
“She frightened me. She looked like a fox spirit,” the maid said simply.
I sucked for breath, surprise hitting me hard in the stomach. It must have been the same woman who I had seen looking at me. Surely there could not be two gaijin women in the Floating World with the white skin and vixen-red hair of a fox spirit. But what was she doing with Kiku? And what were both of them doing here, at Akira’s house? I was bewildered. The maid was babbling on now without being prompted, and all I had to do was listen.
