by Jina Bacarr
When it was my turn, I stated I was but an insignificant mortal, but I was from good strong stock and possessed of an avid curiosity for how this tale would end and would not disappoint should I be given leave to return. Whatever I said must have caught the imagination of the Grand Being Himself, for I found myself on the back of a black stallion with Akira’s strong arms holding me, the warmth of his body allowing me to give out an exclamation of joy at being so close to him. I must admit that a distinct throbbing in my pussy disturbed me, for how could I feel these sensations when it was Shintaro I dreamed of holding me, his hot breath burning the back of my neck, his strong arms wrapping my soul in bliss?
Was I a wanton female with no morals after all?
I rejected this thinking, knowing I was hurt, tired, cold tremors making me shake, fever making me burn, lost as I was between two worlds, for the path we followed led down into the hidden valley to the fabled home of the samurai. The day was clear, bright, the lingering scent of fresh rain driving away the smell of sweaty horseflesh under me, but it was the scenery I shall never efface from my mind. An enchanted land it was, as if the seasons all blended together here in this one spot and showered the rich earth with the glory of the blessed deities.
Down the steep path we rode, shielded on either side by tall bamboo, deep-set corrugations filled with mud indicating it was well worn, my eyes straining to push through the haze of my weakened state to see between the wooded precipices to a rolling green plain made nearly invisible by deep indigo shadows made all the more forbidding by the wooded mountain range protecting them. The farther we went, the more the mud and sharp smell of pine gave way to the odiferous laughter of orange groves, their scent overwhelming me. Clusters of pink and white magnolias dotted the hills alive with juice-filled blueberries, shiny granite rocks and gnarled trees as the horse carried its riders over the hidden path, ankle-deep in bright yellow daisies. I did not see all this then, lapsing in and out of consciousness. I recall it now with the perception of one who has become part of this land, a broad-brimmed, straw-hatted woman in a kimono at work in the fields, her face and neck covered by an attached scarf.
A samurai woman.
I remember closing my eyes and resting my head against the young warrior’s shoulder as we passed under the ancient tall wooden gate marking the entrance to the village, a remnant of a long-ago settlement. I swore I heard Shintaro stop him with a command of surprise mixed with arrogance, then he spoke to him in a gentle manner without the coarse and brutish grunts I had come to expect from him. A chill riding on a gust of wind seized me, made me tremble, gripping me with an urgency to see his face, to touch him, but I couldn’t open my eyes, speak. Everything fell out of focus when a foul odor I couldn’t identify hit my nostrils, making my head spin.
Then the moment was gone, like a vague dream I couldn’t hold on to, and I swear by the blessed lives of the saints I cried when I felt Shintaro lift me into his arms and carry me. I swear. I clung to him as a fierce pain raced up my leg, as if the sharp blade of his sword slashed through my flesh.
For days I lay huddled inside a warm futon with the rushing wind outside rattling the wooden shutters, lightning ripping through a crack in the slats, followed by the rumble of distant thunder. Soft hands tended to my leg, angry and red it was, the jagged wound wrought by the dagger oozing with blood and pus. It was the rancid smell of infection that had jolted my senses when Shintaro sliced off the blood-soaked petticoat sticking to my leg wound, his deftness with a sword cutting away the material without touching my flesh. I like to believe he stroked my cheek with his hand and brushed his lips with mine, as I would teach him to do, but such was not the way of the warrior. Curt, strong, disciplined, he ordered me separated from everyone except a woman to tend to me.
Nami.
So quiet and composed, reserved yet assured. Nami wore the same beautiful kimono I had seen on other native women, whether they be geisha or courtesan, but I noticed something vastly different about her in this society where dramatic shades of femininity existed. Most notable was the way she carried herself. Head aloft, graceful yet strong body, determined. Loyal, committed to the way of the warrior, she always carried a dirk in her obi. Yet she was curious and bright-eyed, insisting I didn’t need my armor (my corset), scrubbing the straw matting clean twice a day and lingering with me over fragrant-smelling tea to discuss the succulence of summer foliage.
’Tis her smile I see before me now as I recall my first days in the village, as if she could sweeten every cup of tea with that smile. Gentle feelings wash over me, such tenderness I feel in my heart for her and still I chastise myself for altering her fate, a fate disrupted by my coming to the village.
I must continue or I shall bring a melancholy mood to these pages and Nami would not wish that, for her spirit was one of godliness, her actions those of a saint, though you would call her a sinner, for the religious altar where she prays is different than yours. I ask that you who don your bonnet and gloves and listen to sermons on Sundays accept the fact that good women exist who do not believe in the same moral code as you do. Nami is such a woman and I would come to know her strengths that made her as close to perfection as it exists.
Our extraordinary friendship strengthened during my stay in the single-story wooden structure set off by itself at the far end of the village (I noticed a guard posted outside day and night), a place where a samurai woman retired during her menses. Or the birthing of a child, Nami said, her sad face making me inquire further. Yes, she admitted, she had a child, but her baby died in its first year and the gods had deemed she could bear no more children. I told her about my emptiness and she nodded, saying we must be brave, like two red beans trying to hide in a bowl of plump white rice.
On a different note, I found this females-only place had a spiritual effect upon me, an opportunity to reconvene with my inner self and to contemplate what it meant to be a woman. A sexual creature, yes, but when Nami taught me the native art of arranging flowers, I also learned about harmony, balance, stability. My favorite arrangement was combining pine with rose, signifying eternal youth with long life. I ask you, what woman could wish for more?
Imagine such a place in busy Mayfair, dear lady reader, where you could go and not have to bind your midsection into the formidable trappings of a corset when your monthly pains came, where you could forgo the use of rice powder and allow your skin to breathe, where you could wash your hair and let it hang loosely around your shoulders, the scent of rose and jasmine filling your nostrils instead of the tar and charcoal permeating the air of the London streets. Imagine…
After Nami stanched my wound, she bound it with clean strips of heavy cotton but nothing could stop the hours, the days of suffering that followed. How can I describe it? I daresay you may be familiar with my turmoil if you have survived infection induced from childbed fever, those of you who insist on having your babies in a lying-in ward in a fancy hospital. I suffered similar agony from the dagger wound, the continual fainting sickness, burning skin, parched mouth and delirium. Fortunate you were to have a physician there to prescribe opium and calomel to soothe your pain, but I was more fortunate to have clean hands washed and scrubbed to attend me. A practice more British physicians should acquire instead of spreading the putrid residue left upon their dirty fingers from examining one pussy then another and damn their impertinence not to do so.
Forgive me for going off like a sinner begging for prayers, but I feel so strongly about the simple ways of avoiding disease I learned in the samurai village. I promise I shall restrain myself and dispense with my secular preaching and work to lighten your mood as mine was in spite of my pain. I shall instead dwell upon a less annoying ailment: fleurs-blanches, or white flowers, as the sticky-sweet liquid from your pussy is called when you’re caught reading erotic novels like mine. Don’t check your drawers now. You have but to open your legs and sniff to know if you’re afflicted. Yes, I’m laughing with a naughtiness you’ve not expected in this chapter, wri
ting with a light touch as wholly unpredictable as my Irish tongue, but the gods were with me during that time and the infection did not spread. When after several days I could sit up, move my leg, take a few steps, my words were always the same: where was Shintaro?
Nami would say nothing until this morning.
“He will not come.”
“Why? We are not strangers—” I stopped. How could I tell her we had been lovers?
“He is angry with Akira for bringing you to our village.”
“I begged the young samurai to bring me here.”
“Shintaro says Akira must take you back to Kobé…to your husband.”
“No, I can’t go…He will kill me!”
“I—I do not understand,” she said, helping me to my feet to find my footing in a drama where the power of my samurai’s personality, his unyielding will to force me to return to James, haunted me, tore at my soul.
“It was my husband who did this to me.” I pointed to my bandaged thigh, the wound healing, but not the memory of that day. “If Shintaro forces me to return, my death will be on his hands.”
Survival is instinctual, gut-clenching and problematic to the human psyche. It knows nothing else when its very existence is threatened. You lie, cheat, steal, claw at the fibers of your existence with the belief that if you hold on long enough, your defiance of the inevitable will somehow see you through. I wanted more than to survive. I wanted Shintaro.
And I would do anything to have him.
When Nami told me this morning I was well enough to move to other quarters, hope surged through me. Shintaro would never visit me here in this place of female containment, making me believe my plea to stay had moved the warrior with curiosity, disbelief or both. He intended to see me and deal with what he considered an unpleasant situation. I found it to be most pleasant since I harbored dreams of Shintaro holding me, our bodies locked together, him moving in and out of me in slow and rhythmic thrusts, then wrapping my leg around his thigh as he bent down to take my nipple between his teeth…
I felt confident for having kept to my conviction and not allowing myself to be dominated or victimized first by my husband and now the samurai leader. I wore the scar on my leg with pride, for I had survived, but that didn’t stop my heart from racing, so excited was I to see the samurai village, to see Shintaro. Nami helped me dress in an indigo cotton kimono, wide daisy-colored sash, earth-toned ankle-high stockings and wooden clogs. Pleased with her handiwork, she presented me with a hand mirror so I could see my image. There I saw the face of a young woman looking back at me, the nakedness of her desire, hunger and confidence in herself making me smile.
The mirror is a woman’s soul, Nami said, as the sword is the living soul of the samurai. I turned it over and inscribed on the back of the handle was a leaf from a sacred tree, a pledge, she said, that the owner would be faithful to the man in her thoughts when she looked into the mirror. I didn’t have to tell her that man was Shintaro. She knew.
I sensed a bonding with her, dear lady reader, though I would not know why until later. I must remind you, what happened in these pages was spoken in the native language, not fluent on my part, and I remain certain I have missed innuendos, so I have filled in the speeches to make them more complete for you. I have also eliminated the honorifics such as -san to allow you to integrate into these pages, not as an observer who finds these mannerisms strange, but as one who is part of the samurai life.
Come with me as I walk through the village, the children sailing paper boats in rain puddles, the women in their wide, straw hats washing their rice pots in the streams and pretending not to stare, the samurai practicing battle moves with swords and spears.
But on that morning, it was my encounter with Akira that remains the most vivid in my mind.
“You are well, Lady Carlton,” I heard a voice say, then I turned to see Akira coming out of the shadows as if he waited there for me to pass. Word of my identity had spread.
“Yes. I don’t know how to thank you for saving my life.” I bowed, but not before I saw him grab the bulge in his divided trousers. I gasped, felt my blood heat with an uncomfortable urge. I couldn’t help myself, but I imagined him naked and aroused, his warrior body smooth and muscular. My pubic muscles tightened and I lowered my eyes, but not before I saw Nami hide her mouth, giggling. I dared not let her see my reaction. I could hide nothing from her. I would soon learn the way of the warrior exceeded my expectations in many ways.
“I am duty bound to guard you, my lady, and shall do so with my life.” He bowed, his strength and discipline intriguing me as much as the way his body moved with the litheness of a mythical warrior, all his instincts tuned in to hunting his prey.
Me.
“I would never ask that of any man,” I said honestly.
“I am prepared to give…whatever you ask of me,” Akira said.
With another bow, he was gone, his physical presence as disturbing to my senses as a rare essence from an exotic blossom. But the lingering thought in my mind disturbed me more. This young man, as handsome as a royal prince, wanted me, and God help me, I couldn’t stop the stirring in my pussy.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…
I became settled in my new quarters, a ten-mat room in a big house with a main pillar so big in girth I couldn’t get my arms around it. My room included a small attendant’s area and was located not far from an earth-floored kitchen, along with a necessary place in the corner of the veranda with a big pot underneath so I could attend to my ablutions inside without having to go out in the rain. Or face the guard stationed outside.
On this day, Nami fidgeted with making everything clean and orderly, insisting on preparing ginger tea then washing me with the careful touch only another woman understands. Her fingers long and slender, nails translucent, she splashed soapy water over my breasts, stroked my hips, embraced my buttocks and washed the area between my thighs, her silence at seeing my blondish pubic hairs saying more to me than words, then bade me soak up to my chin in a rice-wine bath to smooth and soften my skin. Afterward she applied sesame oil to my hair to make it shine, then dressed me in a vibrant blue silk kimono and deep pink obi, pulling the sash around my waist tighter than my corset, and white ankle-length stockings upon my feet since I was to have a visitor.
Shintaro.
Shintaro in his world was another man. A ruler, all powerful, dominating. And a poet. His first words to me were not of rebuke, curiosity or desire, but poetry. The purity of the first snow, summer’s calm slumber, battles with demons of the night and she-foxes, moors and mountains ever green. We sat upon square silk cushions in the main room, drinking foaming green tea and eating the sweetened red beans Nami had prepared. I have never forgotten his poems and though they may seem elusive, the more you study them the more you will comprehend what hides behind the words, as I came to understand the man behind the samurai. I have recorded my favorite poem here for you, the story of a girl who loses her samurai love:
A maiden’s tear is like
a raindrop splattering
into a creek
rather should it be a drop of dew
upon a flower
yet to blossom.
The beauty of his poems still makes me wistful, longing as I do for him, but I was not prepared for his next words when Shintaro stood and turned his back to me, thinking before he spoke, then—
“Why have you disturbed the peace of our village, Lady Carlton?” he asked me in the native tongue, his tone direct, surprising me.
“I came to warn you, Shintaro, that your enemies have openly proclaimed you a rebel against His Majesty.” I explained to him that if samurai did not follow the conscription law and accept the cut in their yearly stipends and other privileges, the government would move against them with muskets and rifles, leaving them with nothing but a name.
“Is that the only reason?” he insisted, turning around to face me.
“No,” I said without embarrassment. “After what
happened between us in Yoshiwara—”
“I regret I acted as men do in the pleasure quarters, my lady, and brought disgrace upon you.”
“I am not ashamed of what I did.”
Ignoring me, he said, “You must go back to your husband.”
“I can’t. He will kill me.”
“He knows…about us?”
“No—”
“Then why do you not obey me?” he said to me in English, startling me. “Are my words not clear?”
“Yes, but—” I stopped, shocked. I daresay I was as surprised as you are, dear lady reader, to learn my samurai was a man of linguistic talent. But as is peculiar to those of his warrior status, he revealed such talents only when the battle tide turned against him. He wished to be rid of me and no one was to question his decision. Including me.
“You must return to your husband,” he repeated.
“Why didn’t you tell me you speak English?” I was angry with him, for how dare he play me for the fool, speaking English only when it pleased him.
“There are many things you do not know.” His look was amused, though I did not find it so.
“How did you learn to speak my language?” I asked.
“I wish to know my enemy,” he said, walking around me, studying me as if I were an imitation of a man with breasts and a pussy, deciding if I was significant enough to be worthy of an answer. I sensed here was a man capable of cold fury when crossed in battle.
“You mean certain members in the British Legation working with the council,” I said simply.
