The Teahouse Fire

by Ellis Avery

  “It was in the fall,” Miki said, pulling a small box wrapped in paper out of her mother’s comb chest. “So this is her new family’s New Year’s gift, flower-petal mochi.”

  My heart sank. It was an absolutely standard New Year’s confection, an absolutely standard gift for a confectioner’s family to send all its acquaintances and business associates, like a print shop sending out calendars. The Shins did the same thing, sending out folded pads of tea-paper each year. Being remembered like a cordial stranger was worse than not being remembered at all. “The outside’s probably too tough to eat anymore,” Miki said, “but my cousin said they were so soft when they were fresh.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled, my breath shallow and tight. “And please thank your cousin for her kindness.”

  AFTER MIKI and her mother left, while Yukako and the babies slept, I numbly unwrapped Inko’s third gift to me, the box under its layers of paper and blue cloth. It was a toughened circle of rice dough enfolding a stem of candied burdock and a wad of miso-flavored pink bean paste. I gnawed at it morosely as I balled up the wrappings and the box, then realized what Inko had sent: the blue cloth wrapper smelled of neriko incense. It was a piece of fabric from the robe she’d worn our night together. I gasped. She was so clever, sending a gift only I would recognize. Since she would have needed help writing a letter, and I would have needed help reading it, she would no doubt have felt obliged to send New Year’s greetings as bland as I’d feared her gift might be.

  I was so lucky, I thought. And quickly, before Miki’s cousin could go back to Tokyo empty-handed, I resolved to reply in kind. I found an unsent packet of New Year’s tea-papers and dug through Chio’s mending box for the brightest thread she had.

  THOUGH MIKI’S COUSIN was to marry and leave Tokyo before I could learn if my gift had been received, for years I would take comfort in the fact that she had promised to give it to Inko as soon as she arrived. In a place you could spot only if you unwrapped the tea papers yourself, I embroidered Inko’s namesake onto the fragrant strip of indigo cloth she’d sent: a noisy bird, unfurled and cawing, the color of new grass.

  I WATCHED OVER Yukako as I sewed and brought food when she woke. “I’m always sleepy,” she laughed at herself. “You’ve been so good to me, Miss Ura.” She bowed wearily as I helped her gather up both babies to nurse.

  “Of course you’re tired,” I said.

  She exhaled deeply. “I didn’t expect to get pregnant again so soon.” She gave a sound that was half-sigh, half-laugh. “But I wouldn’t wait around for Baby Three. Young Master didn’t expect to have a barbarian wife,” she said, pointing at her teeth and brows. She pressed her face to their fuzzy heads each in turn. She glanced around as if someone might hear her, and then whispered, “You are both so beautiful. More beautiful than peaches. More beautiful than sakura. More beautiful than either of your parents.” was in love with them too. Kenji suckled all the harder when I grasped his little foot, and Tai gurgled at me. I never heard Yukako praise her children to their faces once they were old enough to understand, but her eyes never lost that drunk look for them, either.

  Those were the years I would have married, when the boys were tiny. I turned sixteen the year Tai was born, and by the time Kenji had outgrown the need for a nursery maid, I was twenty-two: by then, every girl at the bathhouse my age was married with children of her own. Like most Japanese girls, I did not relish the thought of leaving home and family to work for strangers and die in childbirth, but unlike most I had no parents who needed to dispose of me, no would-be parents-in-law eager for grandchildren with my features. If I had reminded Chio regularly, she might have said something charitable about me to the most desperate mothers of unmarried sons in the neighborhood, but I did not. I made sure to scowl at such women. I was not unfeeling: at night sometimes I would long so much for someone to touch me that I’d bite the heel of my hand. But I wanted no one to take me from my bed beside Yukako, no one to give me children in place of those who were already dear to me. My dream, with Inko lost to me, was to care for those boys and their mother until I was so old they took care of me.

  “Two Shin boys is plenty,” Yukako said proudly, that day that should have been New Year’s Eve. And then, because she had lost so many, she closed her eyes in prayer. “Now grow,” she whispered when she finished. “Live.”

  AT FIRST WE HAD THREE small children in the house: Tai, Kenji, and the gardener Bozu’s grandson Toru, a little older, who was sadly proving as slow-witted as I was said to be. In Meiji Nine, three years after Tai was born, we gained a fourth. That New Year’s, the note that came from Chio’s son Nao—the boy in the Perkins Studios Yokohama daguerreotype—was unlike any we had ever received.

  I hope someone will read this to you, Mother, read Yukako in the sewing room while Kenji napped on my back and I kept Tai quiet with a game of cat’s cradle. In a painstakingly clear hand, Nao wrote—or someone wrote for him—I am working on the Asaka Canal, north of Tokyo. It will take years. In places we can use explosives to tunnel through the mountains; in others the danger is too great. I lost a friend in a blast; he was like a brother. My sensei says I have learned enough to be put to more precise and demanding use. It is an honor, but I regret that I will risk less for Japan than my brother did.

  Yukako puffed out all her breath at once and bit her lip, the way she did when she thought about her own brother. But none of this is your concern, she continued. Due to a misunderstanding, I was recently hurried into a marriage I did not want. At this, Kuga and Chio exchanged a startled glance. If you encounter a woman who claims to be pregnant with my child, please feel obliged neither to harbor nor reject her.

  “Ehhhh!” the three women each exclaimed in turn.

  “Well, well, well,” tutted Yukako. She opened her mouth to speak and closed it. “And he sends you best wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year.”

  SO WE WERE NOT entirely unwarned that June night—soon after the rainy season ended and the little Migawa and the Canal Street canal were at their whooshing highest—when the little girl appeared. That day Yukako had received a letter from her cousin Sumie, which she had saved for the cool of the evening to read in her upstairs room. As she sat with the letter, she quietly pushed a fingertip into the ridge of her teacup until the nail went white: I had not seen her so upset in years.

  “How is Sumie?” I asked.

  Yukako did not answer me directly. “You know how some samurai are wearing Satsuma cloth these days?”

  “Yes?” She was referring to a particular pattern of servants’ cotton cloth, indigo sprigged with white. I had seen a number of well-to-do men in Satsuma cloth: their kimono differed from their porters’ robes only in that the indigo, not yet washed out with years of use, looked as if it could come off on your hand.

  “Do you know why it’s so popular these days?”

  I didn’t.

  “Do you know who Saigo Takamori is?”

  “I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know.”

  “He was a Satsuma samurai who fought on the Emperor’s side against the Shogun. But he doesn’t like the way the new high-collar government’s been all sticky with the foreigners,” she said, using a word that actually meant sesame grinding as she ground sticky imaginary seeds in her palm. “So he’s gone back south and started training samurai in the hills, to fight the barbarians back to their boats. They blow up government offices to impress young men into joining them. They think if they bankrupt the rest of us by invading Korea, it will scare the foreigners away.”

  “And the Satsuma cloth?”

  “A lot of people think he’s right, even if they don’t think he’s wise.”

  I nodded. I remembered the men I’d heard murmuring about unrest in Satsuma years before, at the Expo. “And your cousin?”

  Yukako paused. “Well, Akio’s gone to Satsuma.”

  “I don’t understand. To put down Saigo’s rebellion?”

  “No. To join it.”

  “Ara!”
>
  “His father’s still in Tokyo, begging for permission for them all to stay in Hikone. Sumie’s up there alone with four children and her mother-in-law; who knows what they’re living on? And now he’s gone. How could you leave your parents like that?”

  “But wait. Didn’t his brother die fighting the Satsuma rebels?”

  “He died as a samurai. And I suppose Akio wants to die that way too.” It was hard to read Yukako’s voice. “He left a letter for his father that if he had to choose between Satsuma and Meiji—‘the upstart merchants, the hayseed conscript army, the forced move to Tokyo, the crippling taxes raised to pay indemnities to foreigners—’” she said, reading Sumie’s letter aloud, “he’d choose his fellow samurai in Satsuma.”

  “He just rode off one morning and left a note?”

  “In the letter, he said he was fighting to get the family rice stipend back. And maybe he thinks that, but the truth is, he ran away. And he was always such a good son too,” said Yukako bitterly.

  True: he’d married as his father wished without a murmur of protest. “Will you start wearing Satsuma cloth too?” I asked, wary.

  Yukako rolled her eyes. “Those samurai can cut off all the high-collar heads in Japan and they’ll still have to fight the barbarians and their guns. And if they invade Korea, why, then the foreigners won’t have to do it themselves.” She crossed her arms, scoffing. “All those men on Saigo’s side, can he give them rice?”

  She looked away then, fingering one of her combs. “I don’t think they’ve sold off their place in Kyoto yet. Akio could have stopped here on the way south if he’d wanted to.”

  “He didn’t want to,” I said.

  BEFORE SHE COULD RESPOND, Tai rushed in, calling, “Mother! Mother! The stream’s on fire!” We dashed outside to see the Roman candles whistling into the air, one, two, three. Set on a flat dry stone in the stream where they’d be least likely to cause any harm, the fire-flowers leapt and sparkled all on their own, glittering into the water like sequins. While the boys stared, rapt, we looked around to see who’d set them, and found no one.

  “I only know one person who knows how to make hanabi,” ukako murmured to Chio. I knew Akio was still on her mind, and seeing the fireworks must have taken her back to that summer, that summer, when Nao and Akio were at the Shins’ and her brother was still alive.

  “Look!” cried Kenji, pointing to the tiny bundle of blue cotton by the thatched gate. As we all gathered toward the baby, I looked back at the stream, where a puff of leftover smoke rose and spread into a lamplit haze. The stark, dirty face of a girl, suspended as if among the trees, looked back at me once and disappeared.

  “Let’s call her Maki,” said Tai. She did look like a little maki, a sushi roll bundled tightly under the gate.

  “Perdita,” I said, under my breath.

  “She looks just like my Nao-bo,” Chio breathed, taking the baby in her arms. I tried to see the daguerreotype boy in the tiny face: maybe a little around the cheeks.

  Kuga watched her mother holding the girl. I remembered how severe Chio had been when her daughter brought home little Zoji, under circumstances far less unorthodox than these. “Let’s call her Naoko,” she said, her voice flat.

  Everyone looked to Yukako. As Okusama, the lady of the house, it was hers to say if the baby could stay. She took the bundle from Chio, and a bubble of spit formed between the girl’s tiny lips, glistened in the dark, and popped. “We’ll call her Aki,” ukako said.

  The baby arrived with no written information and only a servant’s shabby blue-and-white robe for a blanket. We all heard at the bathhouse about the woman’s body found that week, not far from us, in the rain-swollen Kamo River. At the bathhouse, bratty Miss Hazu, now grown up and stylish, whispered about it with her friends behind her paper fan. I shuddered at the news. I’d looked back a last time when we brought the baby in: I thought I saw a glassy flicker by the stream, like light on a pair of eyes.

  18

  1876

  LONG AFTER BOTH BOYS were able to eat grown-up food and patter down to the privy on their own, Yukako cuddled and suckled them in bed at night, and so I was surprised by the firmness with which, when Tai was four—but five by Japanese reckoning—she exiled him from the upstairs room to sleep with his grandfather.

  On the fifteenth day of the Eleventh Month in Meiji Nine, the same year Aki came to us, all the girls who had turned three and seven that year by Japanese reckoning, and all the boys, like our Tai, who had turned five, were dressed up in their best kimono and brought to the neighborhood shrine for blessing. Poor Kenji, suddenly condemned to babyhood: tied to my back, he struck his head gloomily against my shoulder as Yukako dressed Tai in a smart new robe, again as she and Jiro stood with Tai before the shrine priest with all the other parents and little boys, and yet again as the Mountain filled Tai’s sleeves with lucky red-and-white candy. He cried when Yukako brought Tai down to take the first bath with his father and grandfather, instead of the second with his mother and brother. Tai had seemed perfectly happy to lord his luck over Kenji all day, but that night I came home from my own bath to the sound of his sobbing; when I came in through the kitchen, I found Yukako walking him down the stairs. “It’s Seven-Five-Three day,” she repeated, just as she had that morning. “None of the other little boys you saw at the temple are suckling like babies tonight.” Tai gulped his tears and swallowed. “You’re not going to cry in front of Grandfather, right? If you cry, you can’t learn temae.”

  Tai wiped his face with his sleeves.

  “What did you have for dinner tonight?”

  “Rice. And mackerel,” the boy sniffled.

  “Who bought the rice?”

  “Mother.”

  “And who earned the money to buy the rice?”

  “Father.”

  “No, Grandfather earned it. People give him money so they can learn temae, and he gives us money so we can have rice. This is what grown men do,” she said. Her voice was tender and hypnotic.

  Tai gave his mother a tentative look. “Me too?”

  “You too,” she crooned. “Once you learn from Grandfather, people will come from far and wide to learn temae from you. And they will give you money, and I will find the best price for mackerel so you can have it every night, and o-Chio will make rice balls just the way you like them. But first you have to spend as much time as you can with Grandfather,” she said.

  “Hai,” Tai whispered.

  Her voice was firm and clear when they talked, but after leaving him, Yukako sat down on the stairs for a moment and gave me a sad smile. Pressing the corners of her eyes, she permitted herself a quick wet sigh before going back up to Kenji.

  UNTIL THAT NIGHT, whenever Yukako walked into a room, the two boys held up their arms for her to carry them. The next morning, with Kenji strapped to me as I helped Yukako bring in breakfast, I saw Tai sitting between the Mountain and the Young Master, the way his face lit up when he saw his mother, the way he leaned forward to go to her, then looked back and forth from his grandfather to his father and stayed in place. “Thank you, Mother,” he said when she knelt before him with his tray.

  “You’re a man,” said the Mountain. “You don’t have to say that.”

  “Just bow,” said Jiro. “No, not so deep.”

  “Starting today, you’ll take classes with the other students,” said the Mountain. Tai nodded, his eyes enormous, as Kenji twisted in his sling to get a better look. “And tomorrow you’ll go with all of us to the Raku kiln.”

  It seemed that Young Master had failed to make plans to be away this time. Jiro’s face tightened before Tai could even pipe up, with a child’s unerring instinct for the uncomfortable question, “Papa too?”

  Yukako broke the balky silence. “I know you’ve been sick this week. Would you like me to go in your stead?” She gave a brief, pointed glance at Tai. Even a careful small child—even one being treated, suddenly, like a grown man—might need looking after in a room full of breakable treasures.


  “Please,” said Jiro, his nodded bow a hair deeper than he’d instructed his son.

  “We’ll go tomorrow afternoon, then. In the morning you’ll have a new student,” the Mountain told Yukako.

  “I will?” she asked, surprised. She had not been asked to teach any students since Okura Chugo’s mother, who had studied for just a year: plenty of time, the big merchant felt, to learn to keep his collection of tea things in order.

  “You’ll teach Advisor Kato’s wife,” said the Mountain. “He just married the daughter of the man who bought land for the Anglican church.” That explained it. While most men went out at night, Christians stayed home and relied on their wives and children for entertainment, a practice of which, given my experience, I did not approve.

  I WAS NOT REQUIRED for Yukako’s first lesson with Lady Kato, so I served green tea to the elderly Pipe Lady when she visited her son that morning. She asked about his autumn trip to Tokyo and the Mountain told her of the Emperor’s Sword Decree: given the threat of Saigo Takamori’s rebels in the south, the wearing of swords, beginning in the tenth year of Meiji, would be forbidden throughout Japan. The Pipe Lady was outraged. By law, only samurai had the right to wear swords, so this came as yet another blow to her family. “They will not rest until they have stripped us of everything,” I heard her say, her voice like sand and splinters.

  I kept her pipe and teacup filled, and humored Kenji as he fretted in Yukako’s absence. Suddenly deprived of his brother, he’d begun pointing more and talking less, nursing for comfort, even rummaging hopefully in my kimono for milk. And so, in a morning spent ferrying teacups to the garden room, making twists of sucking cotton soaked in sweet soy milk, and distracting Kenji before he could take every pot, jar, and ladle off its shelf, I saw Lady Kato for only a moment, when she said farewell to Yukako. She was a pudgy child bride, younger than myself, with sweet bubble cheeks and a rosebud mouth. Her hair had not been oiled by a hairdresser, but instead stood piled up on her head in a swirling, pouffy bun, like a mountain of extruded chestnut paste. Just as strange, I’d never seen anyone wearing a kimono and a necklace before, and it had been years since I’d seen a little gold cross worn at the throat. I touched my neck reflexively, feeling for the thousandth time the absence of my Saint Claire medal. “I’d like to practice before next week,” the girl said timidly.