The Moonflower

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “He will never go home with me,” Marcia said, and did not add that she no longer wanted him to.

  “I will tell Ichiro that I must stay here,” Chiyo said sadly. “There is no other way. Now it is time for my lesson. Would you like to come and watch?”

  There was something so gentle and apologetic in Chiyo’s tone that Marcia could not refuse. They followed the narrow alley that ran parallel with the river and was called the Pontocho section of Kyoto—one of its principle geisha quarters. Cutting into this alley was a still narrower street, hardly more than a slit of walk between the close-set little houses. Chiyo turned up this slit just as it began to rain again, and stepped into the entrance of a two-story house. From above Marcia could hear the beat and chant of the drum music.

  They left their shoes at the entrance and went up the narrow stairs. The large main room upstairs was for the teacher and her pupils, with a smaller room of mats adjoining for visitors or those who waited for their lessons.

  Chiyo went in quietly and bowed low to the woman teacher, while Marcia sat down on cushions in the visitors’ room to watch. She had the strange sensation of moving in a dream. Sooner or later appalling reality would sweep back upon her, but for the moment she welcomed distraction.

  The teacher wore a dark gray kimono and sober-hued obi. Her black hair was pulled straight back into a knot behind. She sat on her feet before a large polished block of wood and in each hand she held a stick of white leather, rounded at the handle, but flattened at one end like an elongated spatula. With these she sounded the beat, whacking the sticks vigorously against the wooden block.

  Each of the four girls held a hand drum, shaped rather like an hour glass, with a diaphragm at each end. One hand held the drum near shoulder height by its silken cords, while the other hand patted it.

  The teacher not only sounded the beat with her leather sticks, but also accompanied it with a vocal chant, and the drum players echoed the chant at certain places in the music.

  The far side of the room was completely open and overlooked a veranda of the next house, across a narrow roof. Marcia watched the rain spattering on wet tile. A pair of white tabi had been pinned to a wire over the gallery and flapped back and forth gently in the breeze as the drums began.

  The lesson was advancing serenely, when a man’s voice sounded suddenly downstairs. At once Chiyo set her drum down, murmured apologies and rose from her knees. Ichiro had come for her unexpectedly, but only the swiftness of her movement betrayed her alarm.

  Marcia went downstairs with her, to find Ichiro waiting. He bowed somewhat absently to Marcia and began to speak to Chiyo in Japanese. Earnestness and entreaty sounded in his voice and Marcia heard him repeat the word “Kobe” several times.

  Chiyo attempted to hush him until they were away from the house, but he had been drinking again and saké seemed to release his natural restraint. Not wanting to be part of this domestic crisis, Marcia tried to make an excuse and get away, but Chiyo pleaded with her to stay.

  “Please—perhaps you can make Ichiro understand that what he asks is impossible.”

  Her escape barred, Marcia found herself walking through the drizzle toward home, while Minato-san beseeched his wife.

  Once Chiyo turned to Marcia in explanation. “He finds it hard to talk to me at home because of Madame Setsu. He does not wish to hurt her feelings, but thinks his own family comes first.”

  “Perhaps he’s right,” Marcia said.

  “No, no!” Chiyo cried. “You do not understand. But one thing is clear—Ichiro must go to Kobe. This I am sure of now. He must go soon. If he stays here something terrible will happen.”

  She spoke gently to her husband in Japanese and, while his expression did not change, Marcia saw despair in the bending of his head. An increasing sympathy for Minato-san was growing in her, but no effort at persuasion seemed to have any effect on Chiyo and by the time they had walked home, Marcia was convinced that Ichiro was wasting his time in an effort to change his wife’s mind. Something held her adamant.

  When Marcia reached home, Sumie-san came to meet her.

  “Where is Laurie?” Marcia asked.

  “Have come inside,” Sumie-san said cheerfully, but it developed that she did not know where the child was at the moment.

  Laurie did not answer her mother’s call and Marcia began to look for her, suddenly uneasy. She was not in the bedroom, or drawing room, or dining room. Nor was she upstairs. There was only one place left to look.

  Marcia opened the door of Jerome’s room and saw her daughter at once. Laurie sat on the floor before the empty fireplace and for a moment Marcia did not realize what she was doing. Then she stepped closer and saw in horror that Laurie, with a concentration that shut out everything else, was systematically crushing in the head of the Japanese doll. Her weapon was a brass paper weight from her father’s desk and she raised and lowered it fiercely, smashing in the fragile plaster until her mother caught her hand and held it.

  Laurie looked up at her stonily for a moment and then burst into wild sobs. Marcia went down on her knees and held the child close, rocking her gently back and forth, whispering to her softly, trying to keep her own trembling from showing itself to her daughter.

  “We’re going home soon, darling,” Marcia crooned. “Soon we’ll be on the plane for home and then everything will be all right again. Hush, darling, hush.”

  But Laurie sobbed on in abandonment and would not be comforted.

  19.

  The episode of the doll was more frightening to Marcia than anything else that had happened. Laurie ended by being violently sick to her stomach and Marcia put her to bed, sat beside her, soothing her, reading to her when she felt a little better.

  The broken doll she hid away in a drawer, sick at the sight of the mutilated head. Yet she did not want to throw it away. Laurie had some sort of confusion about the doll and it would be necessary to get to the bottom of it. Whatever it was, she was sure the cause led back to Jerome and his sway over his daughter. Any reproach she might make to him on this score would be useless, but she wanted him to know what had happened, to see this clear evidence of his unhappy influence.

  At dinner that night, with Laurie absent from the table, Marcia told him what the child had done, and how ill she had become as a result. To her surprise Jerome did not laugh the matter off. He shoved his chair back from the table as if he did not want any more dinner.

  “Bring me the doll,” he said curtly.

  When she returned to the bedroom, Marcia found Laurie asleep. She was able to open the bureau drawer without waking her, and take out poor little Tomi, her broken head wrapped in a handkerchief. She carried the doll to Jerome at the table in the big dark dining room, and laid it before him.

  He picked it up, almost as if in dread and turned it about, examining the broken head. Laurie had not completed her destruction, for only one side was crushed in. One plump cheek remained, and part of a merry smile, while one black, slanted eye regarded them innocently.

  Jerome pushed the broken toy away from him on the table and covered his face with his hands.

  “What is it?” Marcia cried, more disturbed by his show of despair than she would have been by anger.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Don’t bother me now. But you can do something for me. I had agreed to take Cobb to see Mrs. Minato tonight and I don’t feel up to it. When he comes, tell him I can’t see him. Make any excuse you like, so long as you get me off.”

  Sumie-san tiptoed in, frightened, to clear the table, but Jerome sat on, unheeding, his face in his hands. When she began to load dishes on a tray, he rose and went past Marcia to his room, looking white and strained. Marcia returned to Laurie, hiding the doll in the drawer again. She stood beside the child’s bed for a little while, listening to her regular breathing. Then she went to the window and stood looking out into the garden.

  O Tsuki-sama ruled the world again tonight. All traces of rain had been swept away by rising wind and the moon ro
de the cloudy sky, full and clear. The small pine trees made a black pattern against the silver light, but the garden lay peaceful and still.

  Yet there was no peace in the scene for Marcia. She remembered Chiyo’s words. How fine was the boundary line between sanity and madness? At what point did one step across? And where did the area of danger begin?

  Alan was coming here tonight. That was the one consoling thought she could cling to.

  When the bell at the gate jangled, she did not wait for Sumie-san, but ran hastily to answer it. It was not Alan at the gate, however, but Chiyo, all the Japanese restraint gone from her.

  “Ichiro is in trouble!” she cried. “He went out after we came home today, and now the police have called and they are holding him at the station downtown. Oh, please, please—Talbot-san must do something.”

  Marcia led her into the hallway and rapped on Jerome’s door. He heard Chiyo’s voice and he came to see what the matter was. Marcia half expected him to shrug Ichiro’s troubles aside, but he did not. He was always kind to Chiyo.

  “I’ll go down to the station at once,” he told her.

  “I will come with you,” Chiyo said. “If he is in trouble he will need me.”

  They went out together, Chiyo bowing apologetically to Marcia. When Marcia returned to her room, Laurie had turned over on her stomach, but she still slept, exhausted from her emotional bout.

  Half an hour later Alan arrived. Jerome and Chiyo had still not returned.

  “I’m glad you’ve come,” she told him. “Jerome had to go out unexpectedly, and Chiyo went with him. Something has happened to Minato-san. He’s been drinking again and the police phoned his wife. I’m afraid he’s in trouble.”

  “I see. And what about you? There’s been trouble for you, too?”

  In the drawing room she sat in a stiff Victorian chair and told him about the doll and about Laurie’s subsequent emotional upheaval. He heard her through.

  “It’s you I’m worried about,” he said when she finished. “Laurie will grow up and for her all this will fade. But what’s happening to you, Marcia?”

  She kept her voice steady by an effort. “I got our plane tickets for home today. In a little while I can take Laurie away. If we can just get through the next three weeks.”

  “Not here,” he said. “You need to leave this house. You need to get away from Kyoto.”

  She knew this was so, but she could see no practical move that would get Laurie safely away from Jerome.

  “Nan said to be careful,” she began.

  “Listen!” Alan said and moved suddenly to a window. “There’s something going on next door.”

  Marcia went to stand beside him. She could not see into the next garden, but she heard a voice calling anxiously in Japanese, then the sound of someone running.

  Sumie-san came into the room a little out of breath. She explained in a rush that the maid from next door had just come to tell her that Haruka-san had run away and she had been unable to stop her. The fox had taken possession of her again and she might come to harm.

  Marcia didn’t hesitate. There seemed only one thing to do. “We’ll have to go after her. Sumie-san, stay with Laurie. Don’t leave her for a moment. We’ll be back soon.”

  She did not ask if Alan would go with her. He came at once. As they hurried out to the front lane she explained.

  “It’s full moon again tonight. Nan says when the moon is full Madame Setsu becomes melancholy. She has a strange idea that she belongs to the spirit world, and she goes seeking the spirits of those she loved, so she can rejoin them.”

  In the lane they saw no one and turned downhill to the first cross street. Alan held out his hand so they could run together as they caught sight of a slight figure in a white kimono disappearing around the corner at the end of the street.

  “She’s heading toward traffic!” Marcia cried. “We’ve got to stop her.”

  But Haruka Setsu, for all that she wore a costume that was scarcely made for running, glided ahead of them as smoothly and swiftly as the spirit she felt herself to be. The ends of the flowing silk scarf over her head floated behind her, shimmering in the soft moonlight.

  In view of the highway they could see her clearly, but they were not in time to stop her as she ran directly into the evening traffic. Miraculously, nothing struck her, but Alan and Marcia were held up for a moment or two before they could get across. By that time Haruka had darted into a path up the hillside.

  “That’s the way we took for the temple the other day,” Marcia said, as they ducked hand-in-hand under the nose of a bata-bata.

  “Perhaps that’s where she’s going,” Alan said.

  It was like following a will-o’-the-wisp. When clouds darkened the moon, only the luminous flicker of a white kimono guided their direction. She was far ahead now, and any turn of the crooked lane might lose her for good. But she moved always in the direction of the temple and they were in time to see her flee through the gate where Alan and Laurie and Marcia had entered the Sunday of the picnic.

  Now they lost her completely and the moon was dark, the temple grounds haunted and shadowy. There were a hundred places where she might hide in this vast place, if she suspected that anyone pursued her.

  “Wait” Alan said, and his voice was hushed as the stillness about him, hushed as the rushing whisper of water and the sighing of wind in the cryptomerias high overhead. The grove of great trees rose black and tall on their right, and the scent of cedar was all about them. Directly ahead the tremendous inner gate with its huge columns and high door-sill made a block of massive shadow. Beyond, near the temple buildings on the hillside, were a few scattered lights.

  Marcia and Alan stood close together and she felt his fingers strong about her own. They waited, breathing quickly, striving to pierce the soft darkness, to catch some gleam of white that would give them direction.

  “Perhaps if we call to her?” Marcia whispered.

  “No,” Alan said. “We might only frighten her into hiding.”

  The scene about them lightened a little, then grew increasingly bright as the great opal moon came out from behind streamers of clouds. The earth seemed awash with silver now, and Marcia could almost feel the moon intoxication touch her, as it must have touched Haruka. The gate loomed darkly sinister and black with shadows, only its tiled roofs gleaming in the moonlight. Then came the glimmer of white for which their eyes searched and Marcia’s clasp tightened on Alan’s fingers.

  Haruka Setsu was no longer fleeing. Nor, apparently, did she know she was pursued. Slowly she moved out of the deep shadow of the gateway, out from between tall columns, until she stood on the edge of the raised platform that made the floor of the gateway. The great roofs and columns dwarfed the slight figure in white, yet they made the woman a focus of all interest, as a figure spotlighted on a stage.

  She was half turned toward them now, as she faced the moon. The white scarf fell back from her head and face. She raised her arms as if in supplication to O Tsuki-sama, and the long flowing kimono sleeves hung from her arms in a line of classic beauty.

  Alan made no sound, but his hand drew Marcia with him. It was as if they sought to capture a wild heron which raised white wings for flight there in the lambent moonlight.

  Now they were close, close enough for Marcia to see the woman’s profile clearly for the first time. In the clear pure light her face was lifted in all its terrible beauty. A strange frozen beauty, like that of a young girl whom the years could not touch. As they watched, caught in a spell which held them quiet, Haruka let one arm fall to her side out of sight. The other slender hand remained outstretched, suppliant, pleading. It was as if she beseeched the moon goddess to let her follow the moon path away from earthly suffering.

  Alan stirred. This was their chance. They were so close to her now. But a loosely graveled walk circled the gateway and when Alan’s foot struck the fine pebbles they made a tiny clatter. At once the woman on the platform shrank back and flung the scarf over her he
ad to hide her strange, terrible beauty. As a spirit of the dead, she must be faceless, in true Japanese tradition.

  Alan spoke to her gently. “Madame Setsu? Don’t be afraid. We’ve come to take you home.”

  The woman moved, but this time Marcia moved more quickly. She ran up the stone steps of the gateway and approached her, speaking softly.

  “I am Chiyo’s friend. Do you understand English? We have come to take you home. Please—dozo,” and she gestured in the direction from which they had come.

  The woman turned and came to her, moving lightly on her elegant zori sandals. She seemed to peer at Marcia through the thin scarf. She murmured words in Japanese, but Marcia was helpless to understand. At least Haruka did not seem to be afraid of them. Her attitude was more one of sorrow, of hopelessness, perhaps. As though her quest for those she would rejoin had been defeated once more, and she could do nothing but give in with good grace.

  She slipped past them and went down the steps, but when they moved quickly after, one on each side of her, she did not seek to escape, but walked proudly between them in the direction of home. Marcia did not touch her, knowing that the Japanese were not given to laying hands upon the person of a stranger, but she was aware once more of the illusive perfume the woman wore. Haruka moved more moderately now, and when they reached the highway she waited between them until it was safe to cross.

  Little was said on the way home, though she seemed to understand something of their English when they addressed her. She did not come with them in the manner of a captive being retaken into custody, but as a distinguished lady who does honor to her companions by accompanying them.

  When they reached the Minato gate, she bowed very low to each of them in turn.

  “Arigato gozaimasu,” she murmured her thanks in a low sweet voice. And with the veil still hiding her young face, too youthful for her years, she went through the gate and into her own part of the house.

  They heard the maid come to greet her, and then Chiyo’s voice, raised anxiously. A moment later Chiyo came hurrying after them as they turned away from her gate.