That gives her pause. Has she underestimated him? Because that’s what she would have said, if she were in his place. Information is power, and as long as he’s the only one who can tell her if it’s the real thing or not, she can’t sell it to anyone else. She’ll have to let him see it.
“All right.” If she stages it right, maybe he won’t guess she’s taking a shot in the dark. “You have the address I gave your mother? Message me when you get here and I’ll let you in.”
She ends the call and considers the two tea bowls. Decides to bet on the pale one that’s the wrong shape, because it looks more like the picture of Snow Bride that Daiki found. Rewrapping it, she sets it aside. Then she packs up the others and puts them back on the shelf. If the white tea bowl proves a bust, they can always “discover” the dark red one in the lean-to.
Her phone chimes. That was fast. The kid must have run all the way from the station. I’ll be right out, she types. Leaving the stepladder where it is, she whips off her kerchief and hangs up her work apron before hustling to the front of the shop to let him in.
The shutter rolls up, revealing scuffed black running shoes rocking back and forth, two hands shoved into the pockets of black uniform trousers, and a pair of narrow shoulders oppressed by a heavy backpack. Waving him under the half-open door, she rolls it back down behind him. He stands there surveying the shop through his black-rimmed glasses, blinking like a myopic turtle with a ridiculously weighty shell.
“Come on back,” she says.
At the open door to the office, he slips off his shoes without untying them, then lopes to the table.
“Is this it?” he asks, staring down at the box.
“Yes,” she says. “Tea?”
“Yes.” Then he remembers his manners and adds, “Please.”
She busies herself at the hot water pot, then looks up. He’s still standing.
“Sit,” she says, waving at the table.
He shrugs out of his backpack and lets it thud to the floor, then drops onto the thin cushion reserved for guests. He peers at the upside-down writing on the box in the middle of the table, while Nori arranges the teapot and two cups on a battered lacquer tray. She kneels across from him.
“That isn’t going to tell you anything,” she reminds him, pouring out the tea and handing one cup across the table. “Hikitoru’s real box is upstairs, with the wrong tea bowl inside.”
She unboxes the white bowl with straight sides and sets it between them.
“That’s not it,” he says.
That was fast. Too fast.
“How do you know? You haven’t even really looked at it.”
Unzipping his backpack, he tugs out a blue plastic sleeve and unclips the papers inside.
“You’ve seen these, right?” He hands her printouts of Waterlily and Snow Bride from the internet.
“Yes,” she says, placing them on the table.
“What about this?” He offers a copy of Yoshi Takamatsu’s unsatisfying biography.
“I saw that too.”
“I bet you haven’t seen these, though.”
He hands her two black and white photocopies from a book that’s so old, the yellowing around the edge of the pages shows up as gray shadows. The captions identify the tea bowls in the photos as Snow Bride and Waterlily, but they’re shot from the top, not the side. Seen from above, both have a distinctive oval shape.
“Oh.” Now she understands. “That’s how your grandfather knew, isn’t it? Before he even unwrapped the bowl I brought, he could tell it was the wrong shape.”
“Yes.”
“But that doesn’t mean all of Yoshi Takamatsu’s tea bowls are this shape,” she objects.
“It doesn’t,” Daiki agrees, handing her the last sheet of paper. “But they are.”
This photo shows another tea bowl—named Unmei, according to the caption—and it’s oval too. But it isn’t drippy or white. It isn’t even Tamba-ware. The rough clay is studded with tiny chips of white and brushed with a bubbling glaze that leaves swaths of the bare surface showing through. It looks like Shigaraki-ware. If the Xerox had been in color, the clay would have been ochre, shading to deep red, and the glaze a grayish green. Her father had invested in enough Shigaraki-ware to outfit multiple restaurants, and it’s all still gathering dust in the back room. It’s beautiful, but sauces are hard to scrub from the nooks and crannies of the rustic surface, and not a single restaurant owner had been interested.
“Impossible,” she says. “It’s the right shape, but it’s not Tamba-ware.”
“I know. But according to this old book of my grandfather’s, Yoshi Takamatsu moved to Shiga province and started his own kiln, where he became known by the nickname Yakibo. He was working in a new region, with different clay and different glazes, but look at the shape. And the rim.”
She sets the photo of Unmei beside the others, and once she looks past the rough surface, she sees it. It’s the same shape as Waterlily and Snow Bride. And all three have delicate rims, far thinner than typical Tamba-ware or Shigaraki-ware.
She’s still not convinced.
“Why don’t any of the websites say he worked under two different names?”
The boy rolls his eyes.
“Because the kind of people who know the nicknames of Edo Period potters with hardly any surviving work write books, not articles for the internet. You may have noticed that my grandfather isn’t a big fan. After you left, he showed me this book to prove his point. There’s no picture of Hikitoru in it, but my grandfather says your missing tea bowl will be Shigaraki-ware, not Tamba.”
“Why?”
“Look at the names. The Tamba-ware ones have pretty names. Snow Bride. Waterlily. But, Fate? And, Taking Back?”
He’s got a point.
“Now that we know what we’re looking for . . .” he bounces to his feet, “. . . where do we start?”
We. Nori regards him thoughtfully. Well, it wouldn’t hurt for the kid to feel they’re partners, at least until she knows more than he does. Which she might, as soon as she can get rid of him. ’Baa-chan has her own peculiar way of doing things, including how the dishes in the shop are arranged. The moment Daiki told her the potter’s nickname, she knew exactly where to look for that tea bowl.
14.
Feudal Japan
SEPTEMBER, 1703
Shigaraki
Yoshi sits up, instantly awake. This must be the biggest typhoon to hit Shiga province in all the twenty-two years he’s lived here.
Plink-plink-plink-plink-plink-plink-plink-plink—
Water is coming through the leak in the roof much faster now. By the sound of it, the pot he’d pressed into service at midnight is nearly full. Which doesn’t surprise him, because the roaring gusts of wind that jolted him from sleep are now driving torrents of rain against the side of Takanori’s old farmhouse. If the master had still been alive, he wouldn’t have had to exaggerate this storm’s ferocity to impress his drinking cronies.
The shutters rattle, buffeted by the wind. Is it still nighttime? Or morning?
“Hattsan?” he ventures. If his apprentice is still asleep, he’s not snoring anymore. “HATTSAN?”
No reply. It must be morning. His anxious assistant has probably gone out to check the kiln, to make sure that the fixes they’d put in place last night are holding. They’d been up past midnight, covering the chimney and shuttering the stoking windows to keep the pots inside dry until firing, but no matter how short the night, Hattsan never sleeps past first light.
Plinkplinkplinkplinkplinkplinkplink. If that pot’s not emptied soon, it’s going to overflow. Yoshi stands, wincing a little at the stiffness in his joints. He’d been feeling it ever since Takanori passed away, as if he’d inherited the master potter’s aches and pains along with his kiln. Six years now, nearly seven. After New Year’s, he’ll stop by the temple and talk to Uchida-bōsan about scheduling a service for the potter’s death anniversary.
Yoshi rolls up his quilt, then mea
sures four strides from the hearth to the corner of the room where he always stows it, so he won’t trip over it during the day. Making his way toward the leak, he brushes a hand along the rough plaster wall until his foot encounters the clothing chest, then pivots to shuffle cautiously toward the bare patch where he’d pulled up the wet straw mat last night and set the pot in place to catch the leaks. With a grunt, Yoshi lifts the sloshing vessel and backs up to the wall, sliding along it until he reaches the stone-paved entry. Aiming his feet into his wooden geta clogs waiting in their customary spot at the edge of the mats, he shoulders the door open against the wind. The storm throws a fistful of rain in his face as he staggers outside to dump the water. He quickly ducks back in to replace the pot and wipe the floorboards.
His empty stomach reminds him that Hattsan would have been too polite to help himself to anything in the kitchen before heading out to his morning duties, and he’ll be as hungry as a school of carp by now. Yoshi feels his way to the kitchen to scoop up handfuls of last night’s cold rice and wrap them around salty-sour umeboshi plums and slices of pickled daikon radish. He eats two rice balls, listening to the pounding rain overhead and wondering how soon it will let up, then tucks the rest into a dish and ties a carrying cloth around it to protect it from the elements. Plucking his wide conical hat from its peg by the door, he knots the strings under his chin and shrugs into the new rain cape hanging beneath it. The shaggy reeds are still pungently damp on the outside, but he’s pleased to find the inside warm and dry.
The wind is far too strong for the oiled paper umbrella he keeps propped next to the door, so Yoshi tucks his chin down against the slanting rain as he makes his way toward the kiln, trailing a hand along the blackened cedar siding of the farmhouse, then using the brushy bamboo lining the narrow path to guide his steps toward the outbuildings.
Hattsan isn’t hard to find. Even the storm can’t drown out the slightly bawdy song being sung with the gusto of someone who believes himself entirely alone in the clay treading shed. Despite the miserable conditions, Yoshi grins at a verse he hadn’t heard before, then his foot catches on something lying across the path and he pitches forward so violently that the dish of rice balls flies from his hands. He lands, knees-first, in the mud. Palms stinging, kneecaps bruised, he rises, irate.
“Hattsan!” he bellows.
The song abruptly cuts off and the door bangs open.
“Yakibo!” cries the apprentice, so distressed at seeing his disheveled master that he accidentally calls him by the nickname people use for him in the village. “Are you all right? I’m sorry! Really sorry. I used that broom this morning to clear the path, but it was raining so hard, I thought I might need it again, so I leaned it up outside the door, and the wind must have . . .”
“How many times do I have to tell you—” Yoshi grumbles, stomping into the shed.
“I know, I know,” Hattsan is scurrying to hang the errant tool on the wall where it belongs. “Always put everything back in its place. Here, let me—”
He kneels to swipe at the worst of the mud on the front of Yoshi’s leggings with a rag, but Yoshi stops him and takes the cloth to clean his hands first.
The contrite apprentice says, “Sorry, I won’t do it again.”
Yes he will. Hattsan is a good boy, but not a fast learner. Yoshi carefully sets aside his irritation, however, lest it turn into another attachment binding him to the Wheel of Rebirth.
Instead, he says, “I brought you some rice balls, but they might not have survived the broom handle.”
Hattsan thanks him and escapes to search the bushes.
When he returns, Yoshi asks, “Why are you out here preparing clay in the middle of a typhoon, anyway?”
“I thought we might need some new roof tiles,” his apprentice explains. “That leak we discovered last night means at least one is missing or broken, and we may lose more if this wind keeps up. Since we’re doing a firing anyway . . .”
“You’re right. Good thinking.” Gratitude chases away the last of Yoshi’s irritation. Hattsan might not be the sharpest stick in the woodpile, but the son of a builder is way ahead of the son of an artisan when it comes to fixing anything that’s not a pottery tool. Yoshi stoops to take a pinch of the clay his apprentice has been treading, rubs it between his fingers.
“Too wet,” he says. “If you don’t add more earth to make it stiffer, the tiles will be brittle after they’re fired.”
“They will?” Hattsan can’t hide his dismay. “The ones I already turned out of the mold looked fine to me.”
“Don’t look,” Yoshi says. “Feel. Close your eyes, if you have to. If you don’t put those back into the treading pile and work in some more clay, we’ll be replacing them again, come the next storm.”
“I understand.” He sighs. “I’ll do it right away.”
Satisfied that no more supervision is likely to be required for a few hours, Yoshi heads to the kiln. He has a long day ahead, arranging the pieces they’d hastily loaded in yesterday before the storm broke. Fortunately, the rain has diminished from gusting fury to a steady downpour, so he’s able to pay his respects at the small shrine next to the kiln’s entrance without getting much wetter. Like Takanori before him, he relies on the resident gods to bless each piece so it not only emerges whole and unbroken, but appealing to the eyes of his customers.
He crawls through the low entrance, reminding himself to give Hattsan some coins to buy a good bottle of sake the next time he’s in town, for the more elaborate offering they’ll make before kindling the fire. He needs to stop by the temple to pick up more incense for honoring Takanori’s death tablet on the home altar too. The kiln gods can make or break each batch of pottery, but it’s Takanori’s spirit to whom Yoshi owes daily thanks for teaching him everything he knows.
Work on mastering only one thing at a time, no matter how long it takes.
Practice makes perfect.
Listen to what the gods are telling you, so they don’t have to hit you over the head with it.
The master’s wisdom still informs Yoshi daily—not just for making pottery, but for the all-important work of shedding his attachments. When he’d first arrived, the rōshi s old friend had initiated him into the secrets of fashioning Shigaraki-ware, but over time, he also taught him how the repetitive throwing of everyday storage pots and grinding bowls could be a form of meditation. How turning out one nearly identical piece after another invited the gods to work through his hands, raising ordinary pots from the mundane to the divine.
That’s how he got the idea to use his potter’s wheel to master the attachment to Kiri he’d been sent there to renounce. He begged the gods to work through him, to elevate his sorrow to something pure and spiritual that would help him escape the Wheel of Rebirth instead of tying him to it. He’d made forty-three tea bowls representing “first love” by the time Takanori followed him to the firewood shed where he’d been stashing them. His master had stood for a long moment, contemplating the bowls stacked everywhere, then gently suggested that instead of making more, he ought to start throwing them away. That it would be better to choose one to pour his longing into, and discard the rest.
So Yoshi did, though he found it nearly impossible to decide which one perfectly captured the essence of “first love.” He wavered back and forth, running to the trash heap to exchange the one he’d picked for one he’d just thrown away.
Takanori then pointed out he had merely traded one obsession for another. Until he smashed the alternates, he’d never be able to focus on giving up the one he’d chosen.
And that worked, for the most part. As the years went by, Yoshi discovered a number of other attachments and freed himself from them. Only First Love still mocks him from the shelf in the woodshed.
But that might be about to change. For the first time in twenty-two years, he’s optimistic about getting rid of it. He’d experienced a flash of enlightenment yesterday while consoling the noodle maker on the loss of his wife, and when today�
��s work is done, he’ll put his newfound perspective to the test.
Turning his attention to arranging six new tea bowls around the mouth of the firebox, he holds each between his palms, feeling the slight variations in shape and glaze that differentiate the candidates representing Ambition, the lesser attachment he plans to deal with after ridding himself of First Love.
Working his way back through the kiln, he’s oblivious to the storm drumming on the roof as he arranges the shelves of storage pots, water jars, and grinding bowls so that each will be blessed by the searing caress of the gods. Hours later, when he pokes his head outside again, he’s surprised to hear the quiet plip-plop of water dripping from tree branches, instead of roaring from the heavens. Cautiously, he crawls out through the low opening, grimacing as he unbends his stiff body. He sniffs the air. It doesn’t feel like the storm is over yet, but he ought to take advantage of this lull to test his new insight about First Love and restock the farmhouse’s firewood before it starts up again.
Aiming for the sound of the swollen stream, he uses the half-buried rocks Takanori lined the path with to guide his feet, until he’s pushing past shoulder-high azaleas outside the firewood shack. As the wind picks up, it stirs the dry leaves still hanging from the brushwood used to construct the small outbuilding. He yanks open the crooked door and steps inside. As always, it smells pleasantly of the pine stacked waist-high along the wall.
Before stooping to his chore, he reaches toward the shelf above the logs and runs his hands along the five tea bowl boxes atop it. He’s managed to rid himself of Ude-jiman (misplaced “pride” in his own skills), Mikudasu (the “arrogance” which had prevented him from properly honoring Takanori’s teaching when he first arrived), Kanzen-shugi (the “perfectionism” which stood in the way of trusting the kiln gods to help him turn out truly divine Shigaraki-ware), and Ganko (the “rigid thinking” that blocked him from accepting there could be more than one right way to do things).
But today he’s here to consider Hatsu-koi. As the bowl representing First Love settles between his palms, he lets the silence surround him. Then he thinks of Kiri.
The Last Tea Bowl Thief Page 8
