The Tokaido Road

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  One arranged his layers of silk robes whenever he moved. One poured tea. One tended his pipe. One took dictation, and another ground ink. One sat ready to carry messages and perform any other chores Shichisaburo might need done. Others bustled in and out with letters, gifts, invitations, flowers, and miniature presentation casks of sake.

  “The mysterious masked youth of Kazusa!” Shichisaburo smiled artlessly as he balanced Dragonfly’s closed fan on his own and handed it back. “Hashikawa says you have some talent.”

  Cat felt a rush of affection and relief. At last she was in the presence of a friendly, familiar face.

  “I’m but a stupid fisherman, Your Honor, whom fate has rowed far offshore.” Cat knew of Shichisaburo’s impartial attitude toward sex. She knew that in Edo he frequented both the women’s pleasure district and the boys’. She intended to use his impartiality to get him alone.

  She had no trouble flirting from behind a mask. She even used it to advantage. A man as jaded as Shichisaburo would appreciate the dash of intrigue. She flipped open Dragonfly’s fan ingenuously, but her eyes flashed seduction above the black cloth. The fact that she sat at an angle meant she could turn her head slightly and look at him sideways. It was a thoroughly beguiling pose.

  “You look familiar.” Shichisaburo knew he was being enticed, and he was enjoying it. “Where might I have met you?”

  “Forgive my rudeness, Your Honor, but nowhere, I’m sure. My master”—Cat emphasized “master” just enough to hint at a connection beyond business—”was taking my sister and me to Ise. But he departed for the far shore, sent from this burning house of a world by a brain hemorrhage. It was brought on, the doctor said, by an overindulgence in wine and passion. Now we’re trying to reach the holy shrine alone.”

  Cat twisted her towel sensuously around her fingers. The gesture could be either an expression of grief or a form of invitation.

  “Your master left you beached and broke, did he?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And now you want to become a star of the stage, I suppose.”

  “ No, Your Honor.” Cat lowered her radiant eyes, then raised them in sultry entreaty, staring out through long black lashes.

  The look had always worked before, and it worked now. One of Shichisaburo’s painted eyebrows arched in admiration. When he drew in a deep breath, his plump chest expanded, as though filling to capacity with desire.

  “I would never aspire to put my mud-stained feet on the boards trod by a celestial talent such as yours.” Cat bowed until her forehead, still swathed in black cloth, brushed the tatami. “I’m such a clumsy oaf, I have trouble keeping my sash tied.”

  Cat could hear the attendants’ disapproval in the loud rush of air through their nostrils as they inhaled collectively; but Shichisaburo smiled at the boldness of the overture. Cat continued to stare at the floor as the scribe and the servants excused themselves. The last one to go trimmed the wick of the floor lantern and lowered the wooden openwork night hood over it.

  The resulting shadows enhanced the allure of Cat’s vaguely sinister disguise. They etched planes and angles into Shichisaburo’s bloated face. They masked the effects of time and overindulgence on his features. The rustle of his silken robes was sensual. The very darkness was charged with his erotic enthusiasm.

  A novice appeared with a pedestaled tray full of covered bowls and tea things. He replaced the half-empty tobacco canister with a full one and fanned the coals in the brazier.

  “Shall I make up the bed?” he asked.

  “If you would be so kind.” Shichisaburo lifted the lids from the bowls and inspected the contents of each. He found only vegetables and boiled millet, the usual fare of Buddhist priests. If he was disappointed, he gave no indication.

  “Shall I tell the masseur you request his services?” the novice asked.

  “I’m exhausted from a long day of travel. I prefer not to be disturbed.” With his chopsticks, Shichisaburo picked up a gray, slimy lump of pickled eggplant and held it out for Cat. “Try this. It’s the specialty here.”

  “Will there be anything else?” As the novice bowed, his shaven pate gleamed pale in the darkness.

  Only solitude, Shichisaburo thought. That cheap commodity that can’t be bought at any price. “You’ve all been very kind,” he said. “Please express my gratitude to His Reverence.”

  When the boy had knelt in the corridor and slid the door closed, Shichisaburo sat staring past Cat’s shoulder until the great bronze temple bell stopped tolling its evening song outside.

  “Where have you and your sister and your late master slept at night, Hachibei?” he asked at last.

  “In poor inns, Your Honor. Dirty places, most of them, and frequented by the lower orders. But I can assure you I have no fleas nor lice nor carbuncles.”

  “If the meanest of beggars can scrape together the price, he can rest his head on the pillow of a roadside inn.” Shichisaburo sighed. “But I, the toast of Edo, am not good enough to sleep in public accommodations. The government fears I might contaminate the lower classes with sumptuous notions, you see.”

  Shichisaburo motioned for Cat to eat, but she declined politely. She was touched that Shichisaburo would treat a peasant boy with such consideration. But she thought of Kasane, alone, cold, hungry, and beset by night with its attendant ghosts and ogres and demons bumping about in the darkness under the veranda. Best to hurry this along.

  “Is that why you’re staying here, Your Honor?” Cat feigned ignorance of the laws concerning actors.

  “It is.” Shichisaburo slurped fermented bean paste soup from one of the bowls. “The priests take us beggars in. And we in turn draw the faithful into their web of cant. We also donate large sums to their coffers.

  “But alas, this is not one of those temples smelling of meat and fish,” he said. “The priests have not become obligingly gluttonous and carnal. One finds no compliant nuns here to relieve the tensions of a long, dusty journey.” Shichisaburo sighed wearily. “I could visit the pleasure district, of course, but it’s so inconvenient. The fans mob me and create public commotion.”

  “Perhaps one of the handsome young initiates would do as well,” Cat said.

  “Acolytes treat sex as if it were a religious obligation.” Shichisaburo finished off the last of the eggplant, drew a paper from the wallet at his side, and wiped his mouth daintily. He crumpled the paper into a tiny ball and slipped it into his sleeve, leaving no unseemly litter. “They become tiresome.”

  “Forgive my rudeness, Your Honor. But surely they’re awed by the magnificence of your presence.”

  “Do you think so?” Shichisaburo looked positively demure, but Cat knew he was excited by the prospect of groping in darkness with a young, veiled lover.

  Cat could imagine his imaginings—a boy’s sturdy, smooth thighs. Thin, hard buttocks that would resist the pressure of impassioned fingers. Round, pliant testicles wobbling evasively in his grasp and a slender, throbbing cock to fondle and lick. Cat was almost sorry she would have to disappoint him so completely, although she hoped he would be charmed by the danger she would offer as consolation.

  When Shichisaburo helped her escape from Edo, he had settled his accounts with Cat. Now she would have to put herself in his debt. She didn’t relish it. To receive a favor was to sell one’s liberty; but she knew she had best get it over with. She had one more errand to run this night.

  She rose onto her knees and moved so close to Shichisaburo that she could hear him wheezing softly with lust. She could smell the aloeswood with which he censed his sleeves. She could smell the pickled radish with which he had cleansed his palate.

  When he put a heavy arm around her shoulder and reached out to tug playfully at her sash, she took off her mask. She smiled up into his face.

  “Sharpen the twofold gaze of perception and sight, old friend,” she said in a low voice. “What you fish for may not be what you catch.”

  It was a credit to his acting ability that Shich
isaburo’s expression didn’t twitch. “Unlike the clear-eyed Musashi,” he said with amused dignity, “my business, like yours, is bewilderment.”

  “I need a job, Shichi-san.” Cat teasingly tapped his chest with her fan.

  “A job!” he murmured. “Don’t be absurd, my lady. Silk brocade doesn’t make a good mop.”

  Rain cascaded from the edge of the bridge above, splattering loudly when it hit the shingle of the river bank. Kasane held the lantern up so Cat could see the faces of the people huddled around the blowing fires among the pilings. Cat recognized none of them.

  “Have you seen the old blind man and his family?” Cat asked. “The young woman and her two children?”

  “They left this afternoon.” The old woman’s face was invisible in the shadow cast by the square straw hood over her head.

  “Do you know where they were going?”

  “No more than I know where the wind blew the dust of the road today.” The woman didn’t even look at Cat, and her tone was hostile. The comradeship born of shared adversity under this bridge was gone. Cat was now an outsider with a lantern, a waterproof umbrella, a new straw raincoat, and probably a dry bed.

  Cat had convinced herself that she wouldn’t be interfering with the young woman’s fate if she gave her the food in the furoshiki and the three silver coins she carried wrapped in paper and tucked into the hara-maki, the cloth wrapped around her stomach. It was part of the money Shichisaburo had given her, and it was to be a pilgrim’s gift for the young woman and her family.

  Cat had always known generosity to outsiders as a form of commerce. It was the buying and selling, on credit, of obligation or future favors or divine blessing. But she was discovering that the joy of giving without expectation of being repaid was much greater than the satisfaction of receiving.

  When she realized the young woman was gone, her disappointment was so bitter it almost overwhelmed her. She took deep breaths to stop the sobs rising in her chest. She hitched her straw raincoat up around her neck, pulled her hat down, opened the umbrella, and stepped out into the downpour. The cold, blown rain immediately dispelled the heat of the tears on her cheeks.

  CHAPTER 42

  A FLOCK OF SPARROWS

  The performance of Shichisaburo’s company at Kambara’s temple was open-air. The “theater” was defined by large straw mats hung from bamboo palings. From the wings of the temple’s outdoor stage, Shichisaburo looked out over the house, or rather the yard.

  Kabuki audiences were always boisterous, and Shichisaburo had the small bruises faded to a purplish yellow on his calves to prove it. The bruises had been inflicted by overwrought fans in the pit, the place-for-packing-them-in. They had reached up and pinched his legs when as the villainous character Lord Kudo he had strayed too near the edge of the stage.

  Even so, this audience made Shichisaburo uneasy. The people sitting on temporarily roofed platforms along the two sides were decorous enough. They were in the expensive seats, after all. But the ten-mon ticket holders, the farmers and servants and merchants’ clerks, were crowded into the three center sections— the place-for-packing-them-in, the great beyond, and at the very rear, the deaf gallery. They sat on the ground on bundles of grass or on rented thick, rigid straw cushions that looked like half a tatami. They seemed to be in even more of a ferment than usual.

  Most of the fanners had never seen a kabuki performance before. Their hamlets were too far from Edo or KyMto or Osaka for them to travel to the theaters there. In any case government decrees forbade their attendance.

  The government held that kabuki would waste the farmers’ time and fill their heads with extravagant appetites. They would start using hair oils and tying their topknots with paper cords instead of straw. They would demand umbrellas and barbers, public baths and pawnshops, all of which would surely mean the downfall of the nation. But as with most of the admonitions posted on the government’s bulletin boards, this one was being honored more and more in the breach.

  People shouted their orders to the purveyors of boxed lunches and tea and sake as they hawked their wares through the tightly packed crowd. With mouths full of vinegared rice and raw fish, the fans gossiped and discussed the performance and called out encouragement to Dragonfly on stage.

  Shichisaburo noticed that the vendors were selling a lot of sake and shochu, a potent brew of sweet potatoes. The farmers were drinking especially heavily.

  “A big crowd.” The stage manager peered around the huge, stiffened sleeves of the outer robe Shichisaburo wore for the role of Lord Kudo. “We’ll have difficulty clearing away the corpses from the last scene.”

  “How many cockroaches?” Shichisaburo asked.

  “Only twenty or so of the abbot’s relatives. Most are paying customers.” The stage manager bowed and hurried off to chastise a writer who thought his ideas should take precedence over the leading actor’s. He shook his head at the general state of moral decay that could produce such a preposterous notion.

  Shichisaburo had other worries, however.

  The Danjuros of the pit will go out on their ears today, he thought.

  When young swells of the lower classes got drunk they imitated aragoto, the “rough stuff” acting method of their idol, Ichikawa Danjuro. Brawls sometimes erupted, and the police had to drag the combatants away by their topknots.

  Because Danjuro had fallen ill ten days ago, Shichisaburo had been obliged to take over some of his roles and adopt his acting style. Shichisaburo suspected Danjuro had feigned illness long after he was better so he could stay behind in Edo and continue his clandestine affair with a young guardsman.

  Shichisaburo knew that ignorance was what made a man resent his fate, but he wasn’t happy to be playing the villain. The “soft stuff” style of the romantic heroes was more to his liking. The swooping blue-and-black-and-purple lines of the “rough stuff” makeup Shichisaburo had painted onto a white powder base were designed to throw his pug nose and well-padded cheekbones, forehead, and chin into high relief. They had transformed his pudgy face into the hideous mask of the evil Lord Kudo. Lord Kudo’s scowl mirrored Shichisaburo’s mood.

  Even with four or five men to hold up the train of his layered robes and the enormous square, shieldlike sleeves, Shichisaburo’s costume weighed him down. He gestured, and an attendant slid a tall stool under him so he could sit back on it and still appear to be standing. It was a device used often on stage to give the actors relief during long scenes.

  Normally Shichisaburo would have been napping in the small dressing room curtained off for him, but he couldn’t relax today. He had to see Lady Asano in her first appearance in this dance interlude between acts of The Revenge of the Soga Brothers.

  Even though the temperature of the air was brisk, moisture formed where the thin copper base of his huge wig and horned headdress rimmed his painted forehead. He made another subtle gesture, and a hand and towel shot forward to dab delicately at his brow.

  Shichisaburo had good reason to perspire. He was taking a tremendous risk inviting Lady Asano to stay on. At the very least he would be reprimanded for allowing a woman to work in his company. And if he were caught harboring a fugitive, his theater would be closed permanently and he himself banished to a place where his acting talents would not be appreciated.

  But Shichisaburo enjoyed the intoxication of risk. And he couldn’t just give Lady Asano the money she needed and turn her out as she had suggested. Under Shichisaburo’s fierce makeup was a bland, world-weary visage that in turn belied a tenderness of heart. He couldn’t bear to think of Cat braving the perils of the TMkaidM with only that foolish young peasant woman for whom she had developed such an irrational attachment. Besides, Shichisaburo was so short-handed that he was desperate for reliable help.

  He needn’t have feared that Cat would betray him by a misstep. Dragonfly had been right. She was a master of bewilderment and a very fast learner. She had had only a few hours’ rehearsal before this performance, but with confidence and grace she no
w made her debut by way of the musicians’ and stage hands’ small “coward’s door.”

  As a kurogo, a “black man,” she was to assist the actors and make sure props were where they should be. She was perfectly obvious to the theatergoers, of course, but she was as invisible as a shadow. She was swathed in the kurogo’s black costume from the top of her head to the toes of her tabi. Her face was covered by a black veil. Because black was the color of nonexistence, Cat didn’t exist.

  Cat’s heart was pounding as she ducked through the low door at the rear of the stage. She walked behind the three singers seated in a row and behind the flute and samisen players and the three drummers, all of whom were absorbed in their music.

  Beyond them stretched the stage. It wasn’t a large stage, but to Cat it looked vast and empty and lofty. Even though Dragonfly was dancing at the other end of it, Cat felt as if, far below, every eye in that sea of heads was watching her. With heart pounding, she crouched in her assigned place near the backdrop and waited for her cue.

  Dragonfly was acting the part of a shy waiting maid who had been ordered to rehearse the lion dance. Left alone with the lion mask on a stand, she danced hesitantly at first. As the mask began to exert its power, however, her eyes were drawn more and more often to it.

  Finally she went to the stand, knelt, and took the lion head in her hands. Tentatively she clapped the hinged jaws a few times. Then, holding it out in front of her, she began to dance with it in time to the flute and samisen and the chanting of the singers.

  Slowly the lion head took control of the young woman. Dragonfly’s tremulous movements became stronger, more powerful. He tried desperately to rid himself of the heavy mask, but he couldn’t. It began leading him around the stage.

  Just as the mask had bewitched the waiting maid, so Dragonfly bewitched Cat. She was so mesmerized by his lithe, strenuous performance, she almost missed her cue. When it came she picked up the long flexible rod from which dangled a butterfly of bright red silk stretched over a frame of bamboo slivers. Cat took a deep breath and stood up slowly. Holding the butterfly out in front of the mask, she began her own dance in simple counterpoint to Dragonfly’s elaborate one.