Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  So there were men who claimed to love her, and as her Elder Sisters aged and died, other geishas learned to dance at her side, and new young men grew up to admire her. She had scarcely known anyone else. Her parents, who had sold her to the teahouse on her third birthday, were since ascended in cremation-smoke; likewise her brother, who had never visited her; now her brother’s children followed the same road; so that her antecedents might as well have been the faded square vermilion seal of Hojo Ujiyasu, whose lines resemble a labyrinth. Perhaps Kannon weighed this when she considered Yukiko’s prayer. What had the girl ever received but loneliness, humiliation, merciless practice and principled punishment, all of which produced in her the determined longing to embody grace? Had she changed her collar and grown old with the rest of them, she might have won allies, dependents, starstruck clients and perhaps even friends of a sort, although the sorrow which I have sometimes seen in the eyes of older women in that world makes me suspect that a strictly governed childhood can never be remedied. So Yukiko had abandoned nobody! None knew who she was, for she was a tree on the other side of Jade River, on a hill nearly as far away as Rainy Mountain; there she stood dreaming while the earth froze around her skirts, and her arms were as wrinkled and withered as her unremembered grandmother’s.

  When whitish-pink cherry blossoms began to swell in the whitish-grey sky, then Yukiko remembered who she was, and drew in her arms. Next, her mind itself burst into flower. Finding herself once more in the back room of the teahouse, with the round mirror before her and her wig on its stand, she brushed the white shironuri on her face. They learned to set that room aside for her on the night after the first cherry flower fell at Kiyomizu Temple.

  What she was sufficed her at first—all the more as others died. (This speaks more poorly of them than of her.) How many women would decline to be beautiful forever, or even nearly forever? Although they came precisely to forget the iron-and-autumn world, after too much sake her clients might mention famines, rebellions and executions, and she gave thanks to Kannon that such matters could no longer touch her. Rice was cheaper or dearer, maikos’ costumes unfailingly splendid; that was all. The geishas called her Eldest Sister. Her wrists bloomed slowly up, and she crossed her brilliant sleeves, singing “Black Hair.” She seemed beyond change. But she had been given only until the blossoms fell, so that still her hours resembled those swirls of silver thread advancing around her neck, soon to meet beneath her shoulders and drown the scarlet forever. Thus each spring she changed her collar, becoming again a cherry tree in the lonely hills.

  3

  Presently she commenced to wonder whether she had been created merely to make others happy, not to be complete in and of herself. She danced just as her bygone Elder Sisters had taught her, not altering a single motion, and the quietly carousing old Noh actors who came here each spring compared her to sunshine at midnight, to a bare peak looming high over a snowy range, to snow in a silver bowl. Sometimes she called for a closed palanquin, and was carried to Yasaka Shrine to pray alone. The house paid for this; that was all she cost; her younger sisters shared her fees among them, saving for old age. Where she hid herself from spring to spring she never said; and if, as some people believe, secrecy in and of itself becomes truth, then her vanishings were preciously inexplicable lessons. By now the Noh actors were certain of her ghosthood. A goddess appeared singularly, whereas these regular apparitions of hers implied some form of unfreedom. So they called her to dance for them in that upstairs room, behind closed shutters, while an old woman sang and plucked the shamisen, and sometimes a young maiko beat the drum. Drinking in sad joy, the actors admired and pitied her.

  The Inoue School expresses nothing in the face, everything in the movement. This too is a Noh actor’s way. Mr. Kanze and Mr. Umewaka, present incarnations of those two great acting families, discussed with nearly unheard of approval her fixed gaze’s projection of thoughtful sadness, her slow turnings and the way her wide sleeves hung down like wings. She filled their sake cups, and they smiled—for they could be cheerful enough when their masks came off. Another incense stick burned to nothing. On the following night Mr. Kanze was performing “Yuya,” incarnating the sweetly dancing young girl, and he raised his wrinkled hand in front of his masked face, then turned, the lovely mask smiling and smiling; he seemed to move faster than Yukiko, and presently his head tilted down lower and lower, so that Yuya’s mouth smiled upward in increasing sadness; and her wig of horsehair glistened. The cherry blossoms had already fallen—a matter of greater interest than the recent hunger-riots. After he had withdrawn behind the rainbow curtain and the apprentices carried away his mask and costume, he went out to an eel restaurant with Mr. Umewaka; where, having discussed the carelessness of choruses, the ignorance of certain members of the public and other such eternal matters, they drank sake, then more sake, upon which Mr. Kanze said: Our Cherry Ghost nears the end of her spring at last.

  Oh, do you think so?

  Did your father ever speak about her?

  Not in my hearing, unfortunately. He preferred me not to be instructed by any geisha, however talented.

  Of course, of course. When she danced the Yuya Dance for us the other night, it struck me as less fresh than ten years ago. And once my father told me that while her motions were nearly perfect, she had not yet mastered it. You know the second lowering of the fan—

  Yes. She has certainly mastered that. In fact, I saw no error in her dancing at all, and as you know, dear friend, I’m very critical.

  As I know too well, dear friend! Well, next spring let’s bring our sons, so that when they’re old they may begin to notice something.

  My son’s unready, unfortunately. He’s ungifted, quite a shame to me—

  Not at all! I’ll never forget the way he performed “Yokihi.” He truly brought her alive, and that daring choice of mask—

  He insisted. Perhaps I shouldn’t have indulged him.

  So they praised one another, and eventually agreed to bring their sons to see the Cherry Ghost. And when the blossoms came, and they withdrew into that upstairs room where she poured out sake for them and their sons, who were beginners, men in their thirties, still encumbered in their acting by remnants of the deceitful “first flower” which pertains to a young body, Mr. Umewaka requested the Yuya Dance.

  The Cherry Ghost demurred, saying: But since I performed it just last year . . .

  Exactly. You possess such grace . . .

  Please excuse my extremely clumsy movements. I feel ashamed to dance before you. But since you insist, sensei, I’ll try my best.

  The shamisen player was already kneeling in the corner. The Cherry Ghost began to dance.

  That night Mr. Kanze said to his son: Watch her again in thirty years. She too is losing her “first flower,” but I’m sure she’s unaware of it.

  4

  In her old teahouse they learned to expect her on that instant when clouds of cherry blossoms filled the sky in Kyoto. Men waited to give her gold hair ornaments, which she passed on to her Younger Sisters. When the last proprietress died, her sisters retired, and rain leached through the rotten roof, she removed to a quiet house employing only three geishas, whose owner was old and expected nothing; she made them all rich. She had heard that Yoshitomo was dead, and the Imagawas nearly exterminated; but when she inquired after these matters, in order to overcome the shyness of a certain drunken samurai, he laughed at her and said: That was long ago!— Perhaps she had already known that; she might have learned it in a song. She danced “Black Hair,” and a tear traveled slowly down the man’s face. His uncouthness annoyed her. But isn’t the lot of the perfect to be surrounded by the imperfect?— When that house likewise went out of business, she gave herself to one in the Pontocho district, thereby freeing it from a parasitic loan; thus she did Kannon’s will. After praying at Yasaka Shrine, she recommenced to dance in Gion, saving the establishment of a retired geisha who had slanderously
been called unlucky. By now people interpreted her apparition as a sign of great fortune, saying: The Cherry Tree Lady has come to us! She never ate or drank, but took in the fragrance from incense sticks. Most people still said her face expressed spring.

  She carries her ageing beautifully, the current Mr. Kanze instructed his son. You should remember her next time you perform “Kinuta.”

  Thank you, father. Is she truly a ghost?

  Of course. So never fail to show her respect and pity.

  If I were performing her, I’d need our youngest mask—

  Don’t go falling in love with her. You know where the prostitutes are.

  5

  In Kamakura stands a shrine to Eleven-Headed Kannon wherein the goddess is all hues of gold, crowned with heads; she is vermilion-lipped, yes, very wide-lipped, and guarded behind by a cloud-shroud of swirling gilded metal. Some people say that prayers at this spot find special favor. And that spring when Yukiko flowered back into herself, there on her hill which lay so nearly in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, she wept snowy tears, and longed to go to Kamakura, to pray that this strange weight be lifted from her. But she was bound to appear in Kyoto, in another teahouse in Gion, and from there she could by no means reach Kamakura before the blossoms fell. For that moment she would have liked to keep her budding blooms in her sleeves; but out they came; and thus, freed from her prison of wooden bones, she became a lovely maiko once again.

  Then that spring fled, as did the next, and the young Mr. Kanze began to grow old. When he visited her she danced, singing for him the old tanka: Even the dream-road is now erased.

  6

  Up on her hill, not quite in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, she gazed across the forests and plains, and the jade-grey river made broad white waves across the rocks. Her flowers had gone; soon she must lose her leaves within the pearlescent colorlessness of the autumn sky.

  To be beautiful without loving anyone is as sad as to be unbeautiful and remain unloved. How could Kannon’s warning have been false? Disregarding Keisei’s Companion in Solitude, which warns that a lover’s longings, or even the wish of a faithful old couple to be buried in the same grave, are crimes, she reached for love as a reprieve from her sadness.

  In the following spring, there came into that ancient teahouse a hardworking sake merchant’s spendthrift son. His father had engaged him to a gentle girl who was adept at spinning hemp cloth. One night during the Chrysanthemum Festival a little streetwalker in a striped cotton shift led him past chanting and torchlights, around three shrines, and thus to her pillow-room behind the reed fence, where they spent a fine half-hour, after which, happily kissing her hand, he departed, and then, perceiving that only a few copper coins remained to him, he turned around and gave them to the prostitute, who stopped washing herself just long enough to take them, giggled at his silliness, then showed him out again. Not daring to face his father, who would likely beat him, this improvident fellow, whose name was Shozo, began searching for a place to sleep; and wandering past those same crackling torches, which cast ashes into his hair, he spied the youngish Mr. Kanze in a carplike costume—scaly flames and white shell-scales below his waist, white openwork lace above—gliding forward as if the stage were moving beneath him; I swear he was three-dimensional against the suddenly two-dimensional trees; and sparks rushed up into the summer darkness behind him, while the flame-light colored his white mask to ivory and yellow and back again. The windblown pinetops resembled the swaying and pulsing of Kannon’s spider-arms. And when that ivory mask appeared to change expression, what could it mean? Shozo had never wondered this before.

  The next time that he could steal money from his father, he attended “Yuya,” which Mr. Umewaka the elder happened to be performing. So it was that Shozo presently won a side view of a lovely female Noh mask in play, so that he could swim into the black gash between its beauty and the flabby bulge of an old man’s throat; and because Kannon had led him here, to him above other men was it now given to achieve true love of woman, which is to say that his heart’s flower would never wither on mere account of a woman’s ageing.

  His weary father dispatched him with a fine two-handled keg of sake in order to seal a certain betrothal. Shozo misdirected the porter and sold the keg. With these proceeds he attended Kabuki plays all afternoon, then found one of those high-ranking courtesans for whom the weightiest silver coin is not enough.

  The next time his father threw him out of the house, he departed well provided with coin, which he purposed to squander in a geisha house. Kannon appeared to him in the guise of an old friend who often borrowed from him and never repaid. Among Shozo’s virtues was generosity, or at least a sort of consistency: Just as he expected forgiveness from his father no matter what he had done (an expectation ever more often disappointed), so he helped anyone unconditionally. When his friend now approached him, Shozo thought, without resentment or even regret: I won’t be hiring a geisha after all.— And he smilingly greeted the man.

  Shozo, said Kannon, I’ve come into some money, so I can finally pay back every sen I owe you. Here it is, with thanks.

  And the astonished young man received a heavy purse. Being an experienced traveller in our floating world, he quickly recovered himself, laughed and said: Come help me spend it.

  No, I don’t deserve that. If I were you, I’d go to that teahouse in Gion where the Cherry Tree Ghost appears. The blossoms will soon be falling, you know! I’m off to pick one for myself, if you know what I mean.

  And his friend hastened away.

  So that is what Shozo did, and that is how he met the Cherry Tree Ghost. It was the first of her seven days. People were already streaming to the Eastern Hills to view the flowers.

  When from the side he saw her snow-white cheek through the curtain of cherry-blossom strings which issued from her hairpin, he remembered Mr. Kanze’s Noh mask, and loved her because she was more than he could understand. Or perhaps he loved her only for her willow eyebrows. In any event, he longed to disorder her hair on a pillow. How should he proceed? He could hardly hope to persuade her with the maxim that life is brief.

  The Cherry Tree Ghost rotated slowly toward him, smiling. Never suspecting that each perfect movement now came as wearisomely to her as do all their drudgeries to those poor girls who burn seaweed for salt, he began to learn the way that the little downward point of hair at the forehead rendered her face heartshaped.

  That year the cherry blossoms at Kiyomizu Temple were especially fine. But he did not go there. The Cherry Tree Ghost danced for two nights—and then Shozo’s money was finished . . . and after the fifth night an early rainy wind came down from the mountains, so that the blossoms began to fall. Shozo’s desire followed her, leaving him alone.

  As for her, she scarcely thought to see him again. But as soon as April’s cherry trees flowered in Kyoto, he was waiting for her at the teahouse, this time with money earned honestly. He had even begun to please his father. But his filial piety was not excessive. Longing to see that supermortal geisha’s black hair spread out on his hemp pillow, he had broken off his engagement; to him the admonitions of his parents were as tree-cricket songs. He craved to marry the Cherry Tree Ghost. As soon as she read his face, she commenced to suffer.

  Old Mr. Kanze had lately died. When she danced, his son watched knowingly. The house was satisfied; money came in, and all the geishas bowed one by one to their Eldest Sister. Meanwhile Kannon guaranteed that Shozo’s purse was full. And so seven nights spent themselves. In the floating world one rarely gets a keepsake, a bone-hard residuum. Flowers fall. Desperate to comprehend what captivated him, the young man stared owl-eyed, dreading to cheat himself with a single blink.— A maiko explained: The first thing we learn is manners: how to enter a room, how to smile, how to talk.— Then Shozo understood that the Cherry Tree Ghost’s perfection came from experience.— Having lately studied The Tale of the Heike and the Threefold Lotus Sutra, he now kne
w many allusions, and even the Noh actors who patronized Yukiko’s teahouse had begun to find him less impossible. On the fourth night he had a maiko convey to her a poem he had calligraphed on blue paper, with a willow twig attached:

  What will become of me?

  Flitting dream who ever returns

  to this fading world of ours,

  when will you perfume my sleep?

  The Cherry Tree Ghost smiled as if she were proud of him, although her smile might also have been sad or mocking. While the maiko knelt waiting, she painted this reply:

  Where you will be

  and what you might dream

  when next the cherry flowers

  the cherry does not know.

  The maiko glided back to Shozo, bearing this verse on a tray. Shozo’s eyes would not leave the Cherry Tree Ghost, who, well knowing that certain matters must not be discussed, and that in life as in breath the pause is important, vanished easily away in a shower of fragrant white tears, her tiny dark mouth verging on a smile, in order to go happily; before another incense stick could be lit she had become leaves, roots and wood again, on that high hill overlooking Jade River and the meadows.

  That year flowered, then fluttered forever off the tree. Because Shozo rarely made mistakes in business, he made profit with small effort. He attended performances of the Kanze School, and when the actors glided before him upon the Noh stage, he seemed to be viewing summer from the edge of Kiyomizu Temple, gazing down into the green and yellow-green treetops, the emerald-lobed clouds of trees swimming above the curvily tapered gable roofs; within that darkness lived a treasury of ghosts, beauties and golden secrets. What world was this, and how could he increase his understanding? Slowly Mr. Kanze (who was already near as old as his father had been) turned back onto the rainbow bridge, gazed down, staggered, froze, then raised his staff. What did it mean? Shozo imagined that every motion of his Cherry Tree Ghost must hide a meaning. How could he approach her until he learned it? With all his heart he prayed in the wooden darknesses of shrines.