Dream of a Spring Night (Hollow Reed series)

by I. J. Parker

  Ah, spring! And, “Oh, to lose my way among the falling cherry blossoms!”

  The Waning of the Moon

  The Emperor was convinced that his sexual prowess, albeit aided by Doctor Yamada’s wonderful pills, was proof of his continued youth and good health. In fact, he reassured himself repeatedly that first night — until he detected a certain listlessness in his partner and let her go.

  The experience suggested also that a man may indeed draw new life force from the body of a virgin. Yet in the midst of his sense of well-being, he felt a twinge of guilt for having so ruthlessly imbibed at this fountain of youth, and he sent her several expensive silk gowns and the illustrated book of the Bamboo Cutter. The more personal next-morning letter he dispensed with in view of the women’s gossip and his consort’s presence in the palace.

  When he analyzed the night’s events over his morning rice gruel, he decided that the girl was hardly a Moon Princess after all. In fact, she had been in no way different as a bed partner from other virgins he had bedded. Her eagerness to come to him had momentarily touched his heart, but subsequent developments proved her to be as passive as the rest. Shigeko was a far more responsive partner than this girl. He decided to visit his consort that very night to prove the matter to himself.

  Since a small fear yet lingered that his weakness might return when he was with the consort, he took a double dose of the doctor’s pills and went to his wife’s quarters flushed with desire.

  Shigeko had heard the gossip and welcomed him coldly. “People are talking,” she said.

  Impatient to bed her, he would have none of it. “Come, my dear,” he said firmly, “you know quite well that there is a great difference between you and a young serving-woman from the provinces. Never doubt that I treat you very differently.”

  She turned her face away. “You acted as if you did not like me the last time,” she accused him. “And when you then sent for the girl the very next night and kept her with you until dawn, I felt abandoned ‘like the reeds on the lonely shore when the crane flies to the southern sea.’”

  Her poetic image was unwelcome because it reminded him of Toshiko racing the wild geese along the river reeds. He felt a pang of remorse about both women, but this was his official consort and the mother of the next emperor, and the situation was a first for both of them. He had never had the rudeness to bed another female practically under her nose. So he took her hand and leaned closer. “Remember,” he murmured in her ear, “that a crane always returns to his mate. He is a faithful bird.”

  “Pah!” She lifted a shoulder and gave him a scornful look. “Faithful? When he keeps company with any low marsh bird?”

  He sighed. “Truly, my dear, you need not be concerned.” He took a resolute breath and added, “There was a reason. You see, not wishing to disappoint you again, I consulted my physician.”

  She frowned. “I do not understand.”

  A little embarrassed, he muttered, “We discussed, er, virgins.” She still did not grasp his meaning, and he plunged into his excuse. “Purely as a cure. It is said to help the performance.”

  Her eyes widened with interest. “Oh. I see. And the doctor recommended it? Was he right?”

  “Yes.” Suddenly triumphant and, thanks to the medicine, entirely sure of himself, he reached for her sash. “That is why I came. Let us find out together.”

  The experiment proved a complete success. He made love to her more passionately than he had in years. She, for her part, was convinced of his love and flattered by his devotion. Disappointed by Toshiko’s lack of ardor, he appreciated the warm response.

  *

  Subsequent relations between the imperial couple improved to an amazing degree. The very next day, the emperor sent a gold bar to the doctor’s house. He also sent Shigeko a charming “next-morning” poem. For the duration of her visit, he remained faithful to her, visiting her rooms frequently and spending time with her during the day. In fact, he was mildly smitten with his spouse again, and even after the installation of the new crown prince took Shigeko away to the Sanjo Palace, he abstained from Toshiko.

  But then a disastrous fire destroyed the Sanjo Palace for the second time in his memory. The flames lit up the night sky as if the entire capital had turned into a landscape of hell. The consort and the crown prince escaped to safety. The emperor expected Shigeko to return to him, but she ignored his invitation and moved to other quarters in the capital.

  And so he was alone again and bitterly disappointed. After a few days of building up his resentment toward Shigeko, he sent for Toshiko.

  Though she arrived promptly and looked charming in one of her new gowns, their night together did nothing for his wounded pride. When he took the time to observe her, he was filled with new doubts. She obeyed, she smiled, she responded pleasantly to his attempts at flirtation, but he felt a new distance between them. More importantly, he noted again the lack of passion in her love-making.

  Where there is no love, it is impossible to pretend it for long, and the emperor had been disappointed too often to be duped in this case. Not only did this girl not love him, she did not even feign desire and submitted to his embraces unwillingly. This sort of thing made a man feel worthless and brutish.

  The emperor never sank to brutality, but his silent anger affected his treatment of Toshiko in many subtle ways, some of them physical, others mental. To his irritation, she did not complain but only seemed to withdraw further into herself.

  Togoro

  A strange period of peace and contentment descended on the Yamada household during the New Year’s holidays. Otori cooked for weeks, and the kitchen was filled with good smells and endless supplies of delicacies. Every meal consisted of a staggering number of courses.

  The doctor’s sons wore their new finery after having thrown themselves with great zeal into decking the house with branches, sacred ropes, and all sorts of decorations of their own design.

  Yamada himself felt generous. The emperor’s lavish gift of gold had filled him with uneasiness, and since he was not sure he deserved it, he spent his riches freely. Everyone received gifts. The holiday came only once a year, he reasoned, and they had all added another year to their lives, cause enough to celebrate. Hachiro was sixteen now at least that was the age he had chosen), and Sadamu six. Yamada himself was twenty-six and the head of his own small family. Otori refused to reveal her age, and Togoro – Togoro remained absent, the only nagging worry in his contentment.

  This was not the first time Togoro had left suddenly. It had happened first shortly after his arrival at the doctor’s house. The doctor had gone to look for him and found him at prayer in a nearby temple. Togoro had been apologetic, but had not explained. Yamada gathered that sometimes his life got too much for him and he found relief in religious meditation. It had happened a few more times, and Togoro had always returned after these absences. But this time, he had been gone longer than usual. The doctor checked the local temples. Finding no trace of him, he asked one of the priests. The priest remembered the scarred man and thought that Togoro might have gone on a pilgrimage up to the mountains because he had asked about the holy places on Mount Hiei.

  The doctor wondered sometimes when Togoro would come back, but he was too preoccupied with work and the New Year and his private thoughts to worry unduly. When Otori grumbled about the extra work, he told the boys to help her or lent a hand himself. Over the New Year, he spent more time with his sons.

  Hachiro, who was enrolled in the temple school a few blocks away, had a holiday from his studies. Doctor Yamada had bought him a place in the school with a generous donation to the temple fund, and the boy seemed to be applying himself well. He still spent time away every day, but he was making an effort to behave well at home. Yamada was pleased but uncomfortably aware of Hachiro seemed to be withdrawn and living in a world of his own.

  Sadamu was a pure joy. He had been teaching the boy himself. Their studies were somewhat unorthodox in that much of them consisted of Yamad
a showing the child the wonders of the world around them. But there were also writing lessons. Sadamu was bright and eager for praise so he worked very hard to please his father. Already there was a closeness between them that was lacking with Hachiro, a fact Yamada ascribed to Hachiro’s being older and out of the house most of the day. He welcomed having Sadamu to himself, for in his more truthful moments he knew that he could not like Hachiro the way he should. His dislike for the boy caused him guilt, and so he was more lenient and generous with Hachiro than with Sadamu. Sadamu never complained, and Hachiro seemed to accept this special treatment as his due as the oldest son.

  And so the days passed quietly, and the holidays with good cheer, and gradually they settled down again to their routines.

  This peace was broken abruptly the day one of the doctor’s poor patients asked, “Say, Doctor, didn’t you have a servant who was burned all over and ugly as a demon?”

  “Yes. Togoro.” The doctor paused in his work. “He left before the New Year. I’ve been wondering why he hasn’t come back yet. Have you seen him?”

  His patient was having an open sore on his knee treated. He said, “Haven’t seen him myself, but I hear he got thrown in jail.”

  Yamada straightened in surprise. “In jail? Are you sure?” His conscience stirred. He should have looked harder for Togoro.

  “He got drunk and raped a girl. She must’ve had a rare fright. Her father caught them together. Sorry, Doctor. I figured you knew.”

  Yamada gaped at the man. “No. Nobody told me. Rape? How long ago was that? Where did it happen?”

  The man scratched his chin. “It was before the New Year. And before the fire at the Sanjo Palace, I think. Honest, Doctor, that’s all I know.”

  The news was disturbing. Apparently Togoro’s trouble had befallen him very shortly after he left. But why had he not sent a message? He must have known that the doctor would come. It was a puzzle.

  Yamada finished with the man’s leg and then went straight to his warden’s office to ask for information about the rape case. But they knew nothing there, and that meant the incident happened elsewhere in the city. He next went to the city jails. In the Left City Jail, he finally got news. It filled him with horror.

  Togoro had indeed been charged, tried, convicted, and had died soon after. He had died before the New Year.

  As he stood in the prison office and heard the matter-of-fact announcement, the doctor grasped a column for support. The guard said, “He was an ugly bastard. We figured nobody wanted the body.”

  I wanted him, Yamada thought. Pity and guilt wracked him so sharply that tears rose to his eyes. The guard stared at him. “Surely not a relative of yours, sir?” he asked with a glance at the doctor’s good silk robe.

  “My servant. He was a good man. I still can’t believe . . . tell me about the charge.”

  “Rape. I expect it nearly drove the girl mad -- seeing that on top of her.”

  Yamada felt a surge of impotent anger and asked to see the documents in the case.

  He was referred to the judge, who appeared to take his questions as an accusation of legal incompetence. It was only with great difficulty that Yamada got the name of the young woman who had brought the charge. Togoro had denied the crime but had been convicted on her word and that of her father who had come upon the two of them just as Togoro got off the daughter and ran away. He had been all too easily identified and was caught within the hour. Both the girl and her father testified at his trial. Togoro had said nothing.

  The doctor did not know what to believe. The story seemed very strange and not like the Togoro he knew. But what did he know of men’s urges? No young woman would willingly give herself to a man so horribly disfigured. And the young can be very cruel. Perhaps this girl had mocked him and he had finally broken under his burden.

  Only why, after he had been arrested and sent to be trial, had Togoro not given them Yamada’s name? There could be only one explanation: Togoro had been guilty and too ashamed to have Yamada know what he had done.

  And so the doctor walked to one of the temples where Togoro had prayed, and there he bought incense and burned it before the golden Buddha statue. He stayed for a long time, praying that Togoro’s suffering in this life had earned him a better one hereafter.

  It was not until later that Yamada realized that Togoro had probably died from the brutal beatings because he would not confess. It had happened in the last weeks of the year when he had been preoccupied with his own affairs. The thought of Togoro’s helplessness in his final desperate days shocked and grieved him immeasurably. Such a fate seemed grossly at odds with what life had owed the poor and gentle man. Yamada wept again – for Togoro, for himself, and for all the pain in this life.

  *

  Togoro had come to him when Yamada had just begun his practice of medicine. After waiting in vain for paying customers, he had turned his hand to seeking out the non-paying kind, those who lived on handouts from the wealthy in the shadows of the large mansions and those who hung about in the dirty alleys of the business quarter, scrounging for food in garbage. Among them, there was no scarcity of disease, and there he absorbed practical medical knowledge far more rapidly than ever at the university.

  He had found Togoro lying among the garbage beside a poor eatery. If it had been a better place, the constables would have been called to remove him, but in this case the owner of the eatery took matters into his own hands and laid into the sick man with a broom handle while a small crowd of ragged onlookers shouted encouragement.

  Togoro had not made a sound.

  When the doctor saw what was going on, he was disgusted. “Stop it this instant,” he shouted at the man with the broom. “I’m a doctor.”

  The man glowered but obeyed, and the others made room for him. The shivering creature on the ground looked barely human; it had human legs and human arms and wore the rags of a man. The head was another matter. It was a mass of suppurating flesh covered with flies. The man’s features were so distorted by blackened skin, oozing wounds, and swelling that it was difficult to find a mouth and a nose. The eyes were mere slits in livid flesh. When the doctor overcame his revulsion and knelt to take a closer look at the injuries, he saw that the deformed man wept. He wept silently. Having made no effort to protect himself against the blows, he simply seemed to wait for the final, fatal one that would end his suffering.

  Yamada looked up at the people around him. “Are you monsters to mock and beat a helpless suffering creature, a human being like yourselves?” he demanded angrily.

  “He’s the monster,” the man with the broom said, pointing an accusing finger. “Look at him. He makes my stomach turn. And he’s been there for days, driving my customers away. Who wants to eat after seeing that? I told him to leave. Many times I told him. I offered him money to go. He won’t. He’s cursing my business and my family by lying there.”

  “Nonsense,” snapped Yamada, who was examining the wounded man by then. He had been in a fire. His hair and eyebrows had been burned off and the fire had caused the horrible disfigurement of his face. His hands were also covered with blackened oozing sores, and when Yamada lifted the rags he wore around his feet, he saw that the soles of his feet were raw flesh.

  He looked at the owner of the eatery again. “This man has been burned severely. He cannot walk and he cannot help the wounds on his face. You should have helped him instead of beating him and calling him names. A stray dog would have been kinder.”

  The onlookers, deprived of their entertainment, muttered and drifted away. When the owner of the business also turned to go, Yamada rose angrily. “Not so fast, you!” he said. “I know you and I promise I shall lay charges against you if you don’t this instant get the constables so that this man can be helped.” The man nodded and slunk off.

  Left alone with his shivering patient, Yamada crouched beside him and touched the man’s shoulder. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I’m a doctor. We’ll take you to my house where I can treat your wo
unds. What is your name?”

  What was once a mouth moved a little, and a sound came like a breath. Yamada could not be certain. “Goro?” he asked.

  No, it seemed to be Togoro. The burned man tried to say more but was hindered by his shaking and the fact that he was weeping again, more copiously than before. Yamada’s heart contracted with pity, seeing those tears well from swollen, crusted eyelids and course down the raw flesh. The salty liquid must burn as much as the fire had. He said no more, hoping that help would come soon and that in the silence the man would stop crying.