by John Healey
They occupied suites at extreme ends of the finca, and as the estate was equidistant from the two provincial capitals, Doña Soledad, when retiring to her rooms in the evening, would say, ‘I’m off to Sevilla,’ and Guada would reply, ‘Vaya Usted con Dios. We shall be on our way to Córdoba soon.’ They never left the grounds or felt a need to. When the priest came on Sundays from the Real Monasterio de San Francisco in Palma del Río, Doña Soledad would attend mass in La Moratalla’s chapel accompanied by her chambermaid. Guada attended, as well, hidden by a celosia on the balcony built for a choir.
There was a Roman ruin on the property, two stone columns in the woods where they sometimes took picnics. During the oppressive summer months, they would go down by the Guadalquivir, which flowed along the estate’s southern perimeter. The river was narrow there, but clear and deep, and Shiro would swim, carrying the little boy with him as the women watched and called out their worries from the shade.
Autumn arrived, cooling the evenings and cleansing the air. The days grew tender. The only other place Shiro had felt so at home was in Sendai, a place he tried to keep present in his thoughts even though, with each passing day, he felt more connected to the Andalusian arcadia surrounding him.
One night in late September toward the end of her eighth month, they lay awake in bed. Two candles flickered. They listened to owls and the fountains.
‘Do you know what my aunt fears most?’ she asked. ‘That you will take me away from her before she dies. Far away to Japan.’
It was an eventuality Shiro thought about often. He wished to see his mother and to show his face once again to Date Masamune so that the Lord would continue to approve of him. He was still a Samurai, not a renegade Ronin.
‘I must return at some point,’ he said. ‘But the journey is inhospitable and dangerous. It is not for a woman like you or for small children. I suffer about this whenever I think about it.’
It was the kind of conversation she had always hoped to have as a married woman, but it had never happened when she had been with Julian. She wished it would always be like this.
‘I would like to know the land you come from,’ she said. ‘I would like to meet your mother and for our child to know where its father was born. Women ‘like me’ have sailed many times to the New World.’
‘We can wait,’ he said. ‘I’ve no desire to sadden your aunt.’
‘It may be for some time,’ she said. ‘She is still a vigorous woman.’
‘That she is,’ he said, laughing in the dark.
He kissed her shoulder.
Two weeks later she went into labor. The comadrona was awakened in the middle of the night and brought to their room by Doña Soledad’s chambermaid. With difficulty, a baby girl was delivered just before dawn. Guada was badly torn and bled profusely. Shiro held her hand and stood by in silence as the color drained from her face. Doña Soledad sank to her knees and prayed.
– XLVIII –
In which Shiro makes a promise
Soledad Medina watched as he bathed her niece, kissed her goodbye, tied the shroud about her. They buried her next to the Roman ruin in the woods near a bluff overlooking the river where the baby was baptized a week later. Following Guada’s wishes, the child was christened Soledad María.
Before returning to Sevilla, Shiro visited the gravesite to plant what was left of the Biwa seeds. In Japanese, he copied the poem his mother had left upon her first husband’s grave, one he had memorized from his youth. He wrote it on a plain piece of paper and weighed it down upon the grass with a stone.
When snow falls my eyes sting
In winter I saw you
When the hashidoi blooms my breast rises
In spring I embraced you
When cicadas sing my limbs grow heavy
In summer I loved you
When leaves die my breath deserts me
In autumn you left me
Upon learning how his daughter had succumbed to a Florentine fever, Don Rodrigo began to weep. Doña Inmaculada fainted. The little boy was given to them. Doña Soledad decided to remain silent for a time about the little girl.
Shiro gathered his belongings and moved into the palacete with his baby daughter. A wet nurse came to the mansion and lived there for four months. Shiro encouraged the six Samurai who had stayed behind to settle in Coria del Río, where he had been so well attended. He gave them names and a letter of introduction and told them there was a good living to be had harvesting caviar from the sturgeon in the river there so close to the sea. Though he never went back to the village, the other Samurai prospered there and in time took Spanish wives.
After a year had passed, Doña Soledad sensed what was coming and unable to bear the silence any further called Shiro to her sitting room one morning after breakfast. Both of them still wore black.
‘I wish to reiterate how welcome you are to live here until your dying day,’ she said. ‘You are young and may at some point wish to remarry, and were that to happen, I would still embrace your company.’
He bowed to her.
‘I am leaving all of my possessions to the little one,’ she said, ‘all of my estates and income and savings. It will be for you to share in and to administer until she is grown into a young woman, something I doubt I shall live long enough to see.’
They both knew what she was doing, trying whatever she could to get him to stay.
‘I must return to my country,’ he said. ‘And I must take my daughter with me. I cannot be sure how people here will react as she grows older. I hope you can forgive me.’
‘Your daughter will one day be the envy of Sevilla,’ she said, not giving in. ‘She will be exquisitely beautiful and belong to its finest family. And if you will excuse the vulgarity, she will be extremely rich, as you too shall be. I know you have come to feel affection for this country, and you have powerful friends here. I beg of you to stay, or to leave her with me.’
He rose and walked to a window, looking down at the garden where a path lined with boxwood ended at a stone bench flanked by two palm trees. Birds were flittering about. He tried to imagine this woman when she was young and in love with the Duke, and the image softened him. He closed his eyes, then opened them and turned to her.
‘We shall have to go,’ he said. ‘I have a solemn promise to keep. My honor demands it. But we could return afterwards.’
This was something, she thought. It was not a lot. And only God knew what might befall them on such an infernal journey, or how the young man might feel when reacquainted with his own. Life, she knew, had a way of branching forward. It rarely doubled back.
‘Then perhaps you might make a solemn promise to me,’ she said. ‘Promise you will return her to me, so that she can see what she has here, what will be waiting for her, for as long as necessary. Promise me you will give her the chance to choose for herself.’
He saw no way out of it. Not only that, but his broken heart filled with gratitude. He came up to her, bowed, and then knelt before her to kiss her fragile hand. ‘I promise I shall bring her back to you,’ he said.
‘Then do not tarry, Shiro-San,’ she said through her tears, ‘for I shall not live forever, and if I die before seeing her again, mine will be the cruelest death ever recorded.’
‘We shall return in four years’ time,’ he said, ‘and remain long enough for her to reach an age of reason.’ And he meant it, even though he had little idea how he might make it so.
‘Take good care of her,’ she said, grabbing on to him.
‘I shall protect her with my life,’ he said.
The ship sailed from Sanlúcar three months later, bound for Santa Cruz de Tenerife and La Habana. The Samurai stood on the forecastle holding little Soledad María in his arms. She was wrapped in a shawl that had been Guada’s. Father and daughter looked back at the receding coast of Spain. Shiro recalled the first time he had seen it from the deck of the San José, unaware of what awaited him and how he had remained on board an extra night before setting
foot on Spanish soil.
Despite the pain and misfortune that beset him there, it had entered his heart and changed him. When he arrived he was a callow lad still pretending to be a warrior. He was leaving it a man, a Samurai of his own making. Would they reach Japan safely? Would his Lord be cross with him? Would Sendai still feel like home? Would his mother still be alive? He remembered the last thing she said to him, ‘Love your loneliness. Do not let it go. Treasure it with all your heart.’ The word for lonliness in Spanish was soledad. With Guada gone, this was now his task.
The ship moved upon the sea. His little girl breathed easily. It was good to be alive.
