Nori sits, holding the tea bowl on her lap, composing herself. Deciding how much to tell. Now that she’s away from that dingy back office, all the clever and cutting words she should have said to the pawnbroker—words that would have told him exactly where to stick his fifty percent commission—crowd in to taunt her.
She’s beginning to regret fleeing so spinelessly. She should have pushed back. If she doesn’t tell this story right, ’Baa-chan will think she’s as unfit as her father.
She gazes at the serene face, takes a deep breath. Begins with how she’d used her grandmother’s organizing system to figure out where the tea bowl was hidden, then took the real Hikitoru to Miura.
“Everything was going fine,” she says, “until he had the nerve to ask for fifty percent commission.” Her sense of injury comes roaring back. “Can you believe that? Fifty, not fifteen! He said there were ‘special circumstances.’ What kind of a fool does he think I am? Did he think you haven’t taught me anything?” She scoffs. “Why should he get five million yen, just for selling a lousy tea bowl?” Then she remembers her grandmother doesn’t know about Snow Bride being worth ten million yen. She calls up the photo on Fujimori Fine Art’s website.
“See this?” she says, holding the phone screen before her grandmother’s closed eyelids. “This tea bowl was made by the same artist who made Hikitoru, and a company called Fujimori Fine Art sold it four years ago.” She scrolls down. “See this number? Ten million yen. And that’s just the lowest price they were willing to accept, so it probably went for a lot more. Maybe I should take Hikitoru to them.” Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? “Yes, that’s what I’ll do. First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll knock on their door and—”
Her grandmother’s face pinches.
Startled, Nori cries, “’Baa-chan?”
The corners ofher grandmother’s mouth turn down, a line deepens between her brows.
She’s waking up! Nori leaps to her feet and dashes out of the room to call the nurse. She’s only gone a few moments, but when she returns with the nurse in tow, ’Baa-chan’s face is as expressionless as before.
“She frowned,” Nori insists. “I was telling her about some things that happened today and suddenly she looked like herself again. You have to believe me.”
The nurse doesn’t reply, busy checking the monitor, noting numbers on her clipboard. Then she stands for a long moment, regarding the still figure in the bed.
“I’ll call the doctor on duty,” she finally says, disappearing out the door.
Nori turns to the still figure, overjoyed. ’Baa-chan is finally on the mend. The doctor will confirm it. Everything will be all right now. She hovers, searching her grandmother’s face for further signs of consciousness, hardly daring to blink, in case she misses something.
The nurse returns with a doctor whose nametag identifies him as one ofthe hospital’s senior partners. She whirrs the blue privacy curtain around the bed, introducing Nori as the patient’s granddaughter.
The doctor listens and nods as Nori recounts what happened. Then he bends to perform his own examination, pressing his stethoscope against her grandmother’s thin hospital gown. Lifts one eyelid, and then the other, shines a light into her eyes. Moves on to test this and that, noting his observations. Nori hovers anxiously, awaiting his verdict. As he reads the monitor’s data, the corners of his mouth turn down. He scribbles some notes on her grandmother’s chart.
He turns to Nori, and her hopes dim. He’s wearing The Look.
“I know how much you’re hoping for your grandmother to wake up, Okuda-san, but I’m afraid that the ‘response’ you saw was most likely the kind of involuntary movement that afflicts the unconscious. However,” he adds, “there was a spike in her vitals around the time you witnessed the change in expression—elevated cardiac rate, disturbed respiration—which might indicate a degree of returning consciousness. I’ll ask the nurses to monitor her more closely and watch for a recurrence.
“But,” he warns, “if it does—and even if it’s a sign she’s waking up—I want you to be prepared for what that means. On TV, patients open their eyes and take up their lives where they left off, but in real life, stroke victims have to work hard to regain function. And some never do. When she wakes up, your grandmother may face a long road to recovery. We just have to wait and see.”
19.
Feudal Japan
NEW YEAR’S EVE, 1703
Shigaraki
“And that’s the last of it,” Saburo tells himself, indulging in a pang of premature nostalgia. All afternoon he’s been shuttling fired water pots from the kiln to the shed, where they joined the miso jars and grinding bowls that Yakibō and Hattsan will sell at the temple’s annual spring festival.
But he’ll never lug another piece of pottery through this door again. He hasn’t told Yakibō yet, but by the time there are enough pieces for the next firing, he’ll be gone. It takes the potter almost two months to fill the kiln, and by then, the road will be free of snow, new shoots will be poking through last year’s dead bamboo, and it’ll be time for him to resume his poetic pilgrimage.
He marks the moment by swiping his brow with his sleeve, stopping (as is his custom now) to consider whether there’s deeper meaning to be mined from the experience of sweating from hard work in deep winter, at the end of the old year. Could be, could be. He allows himself a small smile. He often catches himself thinking like a real poet these days. Once he’s on the road again, he’ll take out the observations he’s squirreled away like ripe chestnuts, hoping that a few will grow into poems as good as the one he’d written on the day he’d helped name Yabō.
The potter and his friends had been several flasks of sake into one of their drinking nights when they’d prodded him into reading that one aloud. It was the big priest from Heizan-ji who had pointed out the poem’s hidden layers of meaning, the insights that, to be honest, Saburo hadn’t intentionally put there. Fortunately, he’d recalled something Yakibō had told him—that if poetry had to be explained, it wasn’t any good—so he’d kept his mouth shut, letting them give him more credit than was due. Once the priest had pointed out the hidden meaning, of course, he saw it too. The poem is brilliant. He’s astounded, actually, that he wrote it. He must be a better poet than he thought if he can convey sentiments that deep without even realizing it.
Saburo shoulders the shed door closed, then sets off down the well-worn track to the farmhouse. Tonight, they’ll celebrate the end of the old year, the birth of the new. Unless the expected storm breaks early, they’ll walk into town and take their turns ringing the great bronze bell at the Buddhist temple for the sake of their immortal souls. Then they’ll stop by the Shinto shrine on their way home, to curry favor with the gods who grant more earthly desires.
The evening air has that crisp, clean, snow-is-coming smell—he’s learned to predict it from Yakibō, who’s uncannily accurate about such things—and, as if on cue, the clouds close over the full moon like curtains drawing across a stage. Saburo picks up his pace. As he brushes past snow-laden pine branches, he spooks a rabbit that bounds ahead of him down the path. A haunting call comes from the direction of the bridge, and he stops to peer through the trees in search of a shape coasting on silent wings. He now knows it’s an owl, just by the sound of it.
The first flakes begin to drift down, gathering into clumps that soon plummet thick and fast around him. He snaps open the oiled paper parasol kept in the shed for when weather catches them out at the kiln. Climbing the last little rise before the farmhouse, he congratulates himself that he no longer has to rest halfway up.
Not only is he stronger, the past few months have changed him in other ways too. He and Yakibō have shared more than one bottle of sake while the potter expounds on the meaning of life, the mysteries of fate, the dangers of attachment. Saburo has learned to listen tolerantly to the religious blather—even the big priest secretly agrees the old zealot is more than a little unorthodox when it comes to the Four Nob
le Truths—but all that drunken philosophizing has made him aware that even the most ordinary moments can deliver revelation. And revelations are what poems are made of. The few he’d jotted between fetching and carrying and stoking and stacking are far better than anything he wrote when he spent his days cowering at the feet of his master.
Clearing the last cedar trees, he’s cheered to see tendrils of smoke rising through the opening in the farmhouse’s tiled roof. Slivers of light outline the shutters, and it occurs to him that Yakibō has changed too. The potter is frugal with everything that has to be bought in town, and lamp oil is an unnecessary expense for a blind man. He never used to remember to light the lantern at dusk, but tonight he has remembered his “handicapped” apprentice, who will enjoy his dinner more if he can see it.
Now that he’s closer, Saburo detects the aroma of something grilling, and breaks into a trot. In the past few months, he’s also learned how much better food tastes after a day of hard labor. Stamping his feet outside the farmhouse, he shakes the snow from the parasol and snaps it shut, then pushes the door open.
“Poet, is that you?” Yakibō calls from his seat by the hearth. Two skewered sweetfish are angled over the flames, fat sizzling, skins crisping.
“O-tsukare-sama,” he adds, thanking Saburo for his day’s work. “Thank you for your hard work, too,” replies the poet, returning the customary end-of-day greeting.
He props the parasol in a corner of the entry and looks around.
“Where’s Hattsan?”
“I sent him home.” Yakibō gives the skewers a quarter-turn. “The storm is coming in fast, and it feels like a big one. I didn’t want him to get stuck out here. He should be home to ring in the new year with his parents, and help them through the snow to their first shrine visit tomorrow.” He hands a large bottle of sake to Saburo. “Which means it’s just you and me bidding farewell to the old year with this. Fetch the cups?”
When Saburo returns, he opens the bottle and fills the serving flask, then hands a cup to Yakibō before pouring for himself.
“Kanpai. Happy new year,” he toasts.
“To the end of attachment,” adds the potter.
Typical, the poet thinks, with an indulgent grimace. Fortunately, Yakibō can’t see his face and suspect that giving up everything that makes life worth living isn’t a goal he shares. On the contrary, he’s looking forward to his fair share of fame, fortune, and first love. But brimming with sake and destiny, he’s more patient than usual as the tide in the bottle recedes, and Yakibō’s enthusiasm for his favorite subject increases. By the time distant temple bells begin tolling the hundred and eight Buddhist sins in their countdown to midnight, he feels that the world is wide, the future bright, and fame awaits him just around the corner.
He divides the last of the sake between their cups and they finish it together, toasting the new year as it replaces the old.
But instead of calling it a night and rolling into his futon, Yakibō stands and feels his way to the clothing chest. Considering how much sake he’s drunk, the blind man is surprisingly steady as he bends over to root around, then tucks a folded carrying cloth into the pocket of his kimono sleeve.
“Where are you going?” Saburo asks, as Yakibō wraps himself in his reed cloak and makes for the door. He doesn’t reply, just disappears out into the darkness.
What the hell? It’s below freezing outside. Call of nature? The poet feels a slight prickling urge himself, but decides he can wait until morning. Warmed by the fire and the sake, he’d much rather curl up and go to sleep. He unfolds his quilt and lies down by the still-glowing coals. Closes his eyes. But the minutes tick by and Yakibō doesn’t return. The unpleasant possibility of finding the old man face down in the snow and frozen stiff in the morning pokes at him until he casts offhis blanket with an irritated grunt. Grabbing his cloak, he slides his feet into his still-damp wooden clogs.
The night air hits him like a slap in the face, but at least the fresh layer of snow makes it easy to see where the potter went. Rounding the corner of the farmhouse, he sees Yakibō’s footsteps plowing off into the woods, in the opposite direction from the latrine. Good thing he followed, Saburo thinks. The potter must be drunker than he looked.
He has the benefit of being able to see where he’s going, but Yakibō has a head start, so the poet doesn’t catch sight of him until he’s tugging at the brushy shack’s door. It creaks in protest as he yanks it open, sweeping aside the snow drifted against it, then disappears inside. The old badger isn’t going to pee on their firewood, is he?
No, Yakibō would never mistake the hut for the latrine. If there’s one thing the blind man does better than anyone, it’s smell. So . . . what’s he doing? Fetching firewood to see them through the long night? Saburo hugs himself against the cold, breath pluming in the night air. A minute ticks by. Two. It’s taking the old geezer an awfully long time to pick out a couple of logs. Maybe he’s not fetching firewood after all. It would be typical of the Pottery Priest to have some weird ritual of making a First Visit to the Firewood Hut in the early hours of New Year’s morning, instead of the customary rising before dawn to watch the First Sunrise.
The potter emerges with the carrying cloth looped over his wrist, knotted around one of the tea bowl boxes. What does he need that for, in the middle of the night? Saburo holds his breath, and steps off the path, hoping the blind man will pass without guessing he’s there. He hasn’t been invited to Yakibō’s midnight tea ceremony, but now he’s curious, and doesn’t want to be sent back before he sees what the crazy old codger is up to.
He follows at a distance as the blind man hikes uphill into the woods. He stops only once, encountering the trunk of an ancient gingko. A mere shell of pale gray bark, it’s hollow all the way to the sky, ringed with a braided straw rope that marks it as sacred to the Shinto gods.
Yakibō stoops to place a small coin between the roots, bows and claps twice, then folds his hands in a moment of reverence before moving on. Saburo feels a twinge of discomfort that nobody has told the blind man that the tree is dead, its gods departed, but now isn’t the best time to break that news.
The poet stuffs his hands into his armpits and rocks back and forth to keep from freezing, watching the potter resume his wade through the snow. Yakibō stops on the bank of a narrow stream cutting deep through the blanket of white, still racing along, despite the freezing cold. The blind man braces one foot on a pointy rock as if he’d done it many times before, then pulls back his sleeve and plunges his hand into the icy water. Saburo’s fingers ache in sympathy as he scrabbles around, his hand finally emerging with . . . another tea bowl? What’s a tea bowl doing up here, at the bottom of the stream?
The potter empties it of mud and stones, rinses it, then dips it again, filling it to the brim with water. Then he puts the sound of the stream to his back, and paces deliberately across the clearing beyond, coming to a halt just short of a large, flat boulder the size and shape of the low, lacquered table on which Saburo had done his lessons as a boy. The potter raises the dipping bowl high above the rock, moving slowly back and forth as he empties it, dissolving the fresh pillow of snow on top.
Then he slides the carrying cloth from his wrist, placing it front and center on the glistening granite. Snowflakes sift down through the trees and dot the back of his cloak as he bends to work at the knot.
How can he have any feeling left in his hands? Saburo flexes his own fingers, which are painfully stiff, the tips numb. He hopes the old man won’t fumble the tea bowl as he takes it from its box.
The wrapping falls unnoticed to the snow as Yakibō lifts the bowl in both hands like a chalice, its pale glaze shining in the moonlight. Saburo recognizes it. Hatsu-koi. He’d asked Hattsan what the potter meant when he said he’d been “working on” it for twenty years, and the apprentice had rolled his eyes before telling him that his master had made nearly fifty others before he chose that one to represent First Love.
The potter begins to chant,
his long-ago priestly training welling up from deep within. The cadences of the True Faith Sutra rise and fall, gaining in strength as the powerful words expand into the darkness. The final line booms from his lips.
Then, silence. A reverent silence. A profound silence. A silence that even Saburo is finding somewhat moving. Eyes closed, he casts about for the right words to commemorate the moment in a poem. But when he opens them just a slit, to check whether the snow is “floating” or “falling,” the potter’s arms are swinging down in a powerful arc.
The tea bowl flies from his hands, exploding against the rock in a shower of glittering clay.
Saburo cries out.
The potter turns toward the sound, startled.
“Poet?”
“What are you doing? You drunken fool!”
“Is that you, poet?” The potter takes a step closer. “Why are you here?”
“Why did you break it?”
Yakibō stands there, puzzled. Then he says, “First Love has been my most stubborn attachment for over twenty years. And attachments are meant to be broken.”
20.
Present-Day Japan
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2
Tokyo
Nori stands before the security guard’s desk in the swanky lobby of the building housing the Fujimori Fine Art auction house. Everything about it is designed to repel uninvited visitors—the vast granite floor, the imposing arrangement of cherry blossoms on the reception desk, even the desk itself, fashioned from curved slabs of some dark, polished wood.
The blue-uniformed guard looks down at her, unsmiling.
“I’m here to see Eriko Hashimoto at Fujimori Fine Art,” Nori says, trying to stand tall and muster some of ’Baa-chan’s confidence.
The company website had provided the name ofthe auction house’s Japanese ceramics expert, whose personal specialty is eighteenth-century blue and white porcelain—specifically, the kind manufactured for trade with Europe. But Hashimoto-san is clearly qualified to pass judgment on other types too, because she’s listed as the expert on the Snow Bride sale.
The Last Tea Bowl Thief Page 11
