Dream of a Spring Night (Hollow Reed series)

by I. J. Parker

  The girl clutched her jacket to her body and, in her shame, would not look at him, but her halting answers explained much.

  Oba noToshiko had been taught both song and dance, those lewd gestures and alluring poses, by a trained kugutsu, one of the traveling women of pleasure who perform for men of wealth and power in hopes of seducing the master or heir into a torrid affair or one-night stand. And that woman had been Akomaro, one of the greatest artists of imayo and a famous harlot.

  He wondered at first why the young daughter of a noble house had been allowed to watch and imitate such performances but decided that it had all been part of Oba’s plot to seduce him. It was well-known that he invited talented shirabyoshi to perform for him, and so Oba had turned his daughter into one. The thought was sickening – all the more so because, the longer he listened and watched Otomae and the girl, the more convinced he became that the child had little or no idea of what her words and gestures meant.

  What had the world come to?

  He remembered that tear-stained face with its downcast eyes, those small, childish hands clutched in her lap. Was she still a virgin or had her training included instruction in sexual matters?

  What would Shinzei say now? But Shinzei did not appear. Otomae was chatting lightly about imayo songs and about the girl’s home, and the Emperor withdrew into himself. Only when the guard called out the hour of the boar, did he stir again. He dismissed the girl with a peremptory word.

  “What do you think?” he asked Otomae when the great doors had closed behind her.

  “I think she’s a rare treasure, sire,” said the nun with a smile. “She probably knows all of Akomaro’s songs.”

  He frowned. “That is not what I meant. She disturbs me.”

  “That, too. Is it such a bad thing?”

  “How can you ask? And you a nun!”

  Otomae laughed. “I was a woman once, even a very young one like your pretty little lady. She will give you pleasure, sire.”

  “What? You approve?”

  “Of course.”

  He looked at her, saw the twinkle in her eyes, and traced remembered beauty in the lines of her face. There had been a time when he was very young that Otomae had set his blood on fire. Age had nothing to do with that. She always made him feel younger than his years. His mood lifted. “Are you not jealous?” he asked with a smile. “How mortifying for me.”

  She put a hand on his. “You are the Emperor, but also my very dear friend. I take joy in your joy.”

  He snatched up her hand and held it to his cheek. “You know I have no joy except when I am with you. But you are an infrequent visitor. I have been seeking peace from the affairs of the world. Now this girl is getting in the way.”

  She touched his face with her other hand. “Oh, my dear,” she said lovingly. It took great temerity to touch a son of heaven so familiarly – and it gave him such comfort that tears rose to his eyes. “You are not old in years and body,” she told him. “And both men and women may find peace in each other’s arms. The Buddha does not forbid it.”

  “‘All attachment to another is impurity of the heart, and all our difficulties spring from it,’” he quoted back.

  She sighed. “Then I am a very sinful woman.”

  He wanted to bury his face in her shoulder and be held by her the way she had held the weeping child, but he only took her hands into both of his and said, “Oh, Otomae, she is too young for me. What does she know of the world?”

  Otomae gently freed her hands. “Then teach her, sire,” she said firmly. Rising to her feet, she bowed and walked away on silent feet.

  “When will I see you again?” he called after her.

  She did not answer. The door closed softly behind her.

  The Man of Learning

  Doctor Yamada lived in the Tokwa Quarter, not far from where the Rashomon gate had once stood and near To-ji temple. His house was the largest in a quarter where most homes were small, one-storied affairs, roofed with boards that were weighted down by stones. It had once been a cloth merchant’s house, but the man and most of his children had died in the last smallpox epidemic, and his widow had sold the property and returned to her family.

  The doctor’s garden was quite large, because he had bought an adjoining property when that neighbor’s house burned down. Here he grew his medicinal herbs around a small pavilion which served as his pharmacy. But the original garden behind his house was his special joy. He had planted a smaller version of the charming landscapes that surrounded the elegant villas and temples. Many-colored azaleas grew here, and cherry trees. Handsome pines twisted above picturesque rocks. Moss and rare ferns flourished in shady corners; colored koi swam in a small pond where lotus bloomed; and frogs had taken up residence on the pond margin. When the weather allowed it, all of his free time was spent in his gardens.

  Otherwise, his needs were simple and taken care of by three servants: an older woman, a man who was severely disfigured by burns, and an orphaned boy. The woman, Otori, had served him since childhood and ruled the small household, including its master. She cooked, washed, cleaned the house, and dealt with peddlers and patients who came to his door. The man’s name was Togoro. He did the heavy work and kept the property in good repair. The boy had no name. They called him “Boy,” or sometimes, “Demon,” or “Stupid.” Since he was a foundling, nobody knew his age, though the doctor guessed that he must be about fourteen. Boy swept, ran errands, and stole occasionally.

  For Doctor Yamada, daily life ran smoothly in Mibu street – or at least it did until his fateful meeting with Oba no Toshiko.

  This morning, he got up and stepped out into his garden. The sky was clear and the early sun flung golden patches across his shrubs and trees. On the roof, the doves murmured in the warmth, and a sparrow splashed in the shallow bowl of the stone water basin beside his veranda. Catching sight of the doctor, it shook off drops like sparkling jewels and flew away.

  A hollow bamboo pipe, balanced on a wooden contraption, carried water from a cistern above. The doctor tipped it down to refill the basin and washed his face and hands. Then he drank from a small bamboo dipper to rinse out his mouth and spat the water into the green cushion of moss below the basin.

  He cast a glance around his property, then filled a bucket from the rain barrel and started watering. A self-sufficient man, he participated in the life of his garden, happy when a plant was thriving and unhappy when it did not. The plants were in his care and, like his human patients, they suffered the vicissitudes of fate, disease, starvation, or cold and flourished in times of plenty. It was enough — or at least he had always thought so.

  Moving on to the herb garden, he harvested leaves and roots for his small pharmacy. As he hung them up to dry under the roof of the veranda, his thoughts shifted to the patient he would visit later. The Retired Emperor’s cook was a man unacquainted with the principles of moderation and therefore suffered periodically from wind and a painfully distended belly because he ate too much. This last bout was particularly severe. The doctor had administered purges, and the cook had taken to his bed with a good deal of weeping and moaning at the cramping of his insides. Today the doctor hoped to find him much improved, but he checked his supply of powdered ginger, bark of cinnamon, and fermented black beans, in case the flux had not abated and a stool-firming decoction was in order.

  Inevitably, a visit to the cloister palace turned his thoughts to Toshiko. She was too young for the life she was embarked on, too young to be so alone in the world, too young to bear the burdens of womanhood which would soon be hers.

  His studies at the university had included sexual matters and the female anatomy. Besides, he knew the facts and dangers of childbirth first-hand. He was afraid for her because he had seen too many women die during and after giving birth. Not that he was likely to assist in the delivery of an imperial concubine -- or any noblewoman, for that matter. Such births were handled by midwives, occasionally with the advice of old men. But he had helped poor women give
birth in hovels where no one cared that he was young and male, and he would never forget the bleeding that no art of his could stop. The only time he had seen more blood well forth from a human body had been on the battlefield. In either case, there had been no surviving such wounds. And that child Toshiko was much less sturdily built than those poor women had been.

  “Master?” Otori called him to his morning rice, and he walked back to the house. She always brought his bowl of hot gruel to his room there. He usually gulped it down while checking his medical texts or making notes about the treatment of his patients that day.

  Today he had no difficult cases, and his mind was on other things. Instead of eating, he sat down and looked around his room. In his modest dwelling, he was surrounded by the things that had given him pleasure and contentment for the past five years.

  His medical books and scrolls of illustrations were neatly stacked on shelves, interspersed with the tools of his profession: sets of silver needles used in acupuncture, silver spatulas in many sizes for probing the body’s orifices, an ivory doll with which he explained the seat of the disease to the patient and his family, and on which the patient could point out the location of the pain.

  But in his mind was more than medical knowledge. His studies at the university had opened a world to him unlike any the warriors in his family would ever have understood: poetry, music – he played the flute and was passably adept on the zither – painting, and the pursuit of those unseen forces of fate, the incredible intricacies of horoscopes which lead to the making and reading of calendars, the language of dreams and omens, and most of all the behavior of his fellow humans.

  To this he had since added a familiarity with plants and with the small creatures he encountered in his daily life: the cats and dogs of the neighborhood, and the birds, mice, beetles, spiders, bees, and fish of his garden.

  His solitary life had seemed full until now. He used to feel passion and joy in observation, experiment, and discovery. He had been happy and his life in harmony with the universe. Now nothing would satisfy him but the girl from the palace.

  As a physician, he recognized his symptoms as a form of disease. It was unnatural for a man in his mid-twenties with a fulfilling profession and a rich and useful life to yearn for a fourteen-year-old girl. He had never needed women before, except for the occasional visit to a courtesan when his physical well-being required it. Physical needs could be satisfied quite easily with such women, but the very thought of lying with Toshiko made him uncomfortable. It seemed as unnatural as if she were his sister or daughter. Clearly his condition was abnormal, disharmonious, even culpable.

  Otori returned for the bowl and saw that he had not touched the gruel.

  “What’s the matter?” she snapped with the easy familiarity of a family member. “You don’t like it? Or are you ailing with something?”

  “No,” he said listlessly, shoving the bowl toward her. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Not hungry!” Her sharp eyes fixed him. “It’s no life for a man,” she said, wagging her finger. “Work, work, work, and never any joy. When will you take a wife and play with your own children the way you play with the neighbor’s brats?”

  He had heard the speech before and ignored it. “I’m seeing His Majesty’s cook this morning,” he said, getting up. “If someone calls, tell them I’ll be back soon or take a message.”

  “Don’t I always?” she grumbled. “Better wear your good robe if you’re going to the palace. You never know who’ll see you. It wouldn’t hurt to get a few noble patients for a change.”

  That, too, was a familiar complaint. Since his income came from his family’s estates, he did not have to rely on his fees as a physician and, to her mind, he treated far too many poor people for free. A steady trickle of unsavory characters frequented his house, and she was convinced that this detracted from his reputation. About this, at least, she was quite right. People think that a man who works among filthy and disease-riddled beggars and prostitutes cannot be an able physician, and worse, that he is likely to bring their diseases into the houses of his paying patients.

  But one of his university professors had recommended him to someone on the retired Emperor’s staff, and here he was: physician to the Emperor’s cook.

  Obediently, he changed into a silk robe and put on his court hat. His full trousers were dark about the bottom from the dew-covered garden, but they would dry, and the old water stains were hardly noticeable among the pattern of small blossoms. Taking up his case, he left the house.

  He did not get very far. A small boy was lying in wait for him and rushed up to seize the doctor’s free hand with his small, grimy one. “Come,” he cried, pulling him toward a malodorous tenement.

  The doctor resisted. The child barely reached his waist.

  “Please, Doctor,” the boy cried, “please take a look at her. Just a little look. She’s not eating anything and she throws up all the time.”

  No use pointing out that people don’t vomit what they haven’t swallowed. Doctor Yamada held his breath as he ducked into the small, dark hole where a woman was lying on a straw pallet, covered with a ragged piece of cloth. She looked up at him from dull eyes in a worn, middle-aged face. But poverty and illness add years, and he was not surprised when she told him that she was only twenty years old. There was no one else except her son. Yamada did not ask, but the boy’s father had probably left, if he had ever shared a roof with them. Three other children had died, she said. Now there were only the two of them. She told him these things pleadingly, with a glance at her son. Yamada thought: only twenty, and four children already? The poor started young and burned out quickly. The “vomiting” was not from food. She was bringing up blood and would die soon. But he left her medicine and some money for nourishing soup and wine to give her strength. And he told the child where to find him.

  Their smiles were full of hope and relief. He bit his lip, tousled the boy’s hair, and left.

  The sunny autumn morning seemed dimmed when he emerged from the tenement. He took the bridge over the Kamo River and walked into the leafy eastern suburbs without taking the customary pleasure in the lush trees and the gilded roofs and spires of pagodas and palaces.

  The Retired Emperor’s palace was large. His cook lived in better quarters than many an impoverished nobleman who huddled with family and servants in some ruined mansion in the old part of the city. Doctor Yamada was shown to the ailing man’s room which overlooked a garden full of thriving cabbages and onions. The fat cook was sitting up in his comfortable bedding, his shaven head polished to a shine, and his huge belly decorously covered by a flowered robe. A tray with a number of empty dishes stood beside him. He was clearly feeling better and had a visitor who sat on a cushion beside him.

  Doctor Yamada glanced at the stranger, who was older than he and not particularly handsome with his square face and incipient jowls. He wore silk but no hat, which meant that he had walked here from his private quarters in the palace. No doubt he was some minor functionary in one of the Retired Emperor’s bureaus. Since the visitor regarded him with a cheerful smile, Yamada made him a small bow, then turned to his patient. “And how much food have you consumed this morning, Kosugi?” he asked, frowning at the tray. “Are you bound and determined to disobey my instructions?”

  Kosugi gulped and rubbed his shiny scalp. “I’m much better, Doctor. An empty belly undermines a man’s strength, and I must get back to work today.” He shot a glance at his visitor.

  Yamada snorted his disbelief. Kosugi, like most fat men, enjoyed his rest, and this time he had been sick enough to claim at least two more days of leisure. The doctor lifted one of the empty dishes and smelled it. “What is this? Surely not fried fish? Are you mad? What else did you devour, you great gobble-guts?”

  The visitor chuckled at this.

  The cook blushed. “Just a little rice, that’s all. And a very small egg. A few vegetables. And a pickle or two.”

  “A pickle or two? I told you to st
ay away from raw things and from salt and vinegar, and you eat pickles?” Yamada looked at him in disgust. “I trust at least you avoided mental activity and sexual intercourse.”

  Kosugi brightened. “Of course, Doctor. I was most particular about those.”

  The visitor laughed softly.

  Yamada set down his case and bent to prod Kosugi’s fat belly. “Does this hurt?” he asked when his patient grimaced.

  “No, but . . .” muttered the cook, “. . . can’t it wait till later?”

  “Why? I’m a busy man. People are dying while you waste my time.”

  Kosugi rolled his eyes toward the visitor who said, “You should have introduced us, Kosugi. Your manners are abominable.”

  Kosugi flushed. “It’s only Doctor Yamada, Sire.”