Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show

by Richard Wiley

  But Einosuke, his mood somewhat better but still not entirely assuaged by what Manjiro had said, told Fumiko that he didn’t want her working with him, that they couldn’t act so expansively in Odawara, and that she should return to the castle where she belonged. At first she was hurt and intended to go to her room to sulk—how dare he continue to pout so obstinately when the need for it was gone?—but soon she realized that it was that kind of reaction that exhausted her more than anything else. So she decided that she would forget her selfish husband and called out for O-bata instead. And by noon the entire castle staff was flinging wide the doors to unused rooms, cleaning everywhere, futon sticking out of the windows like dozens of severed tongues. It was good to be busy, to hear the slap of sticks against those futon, and to see dust rising in the rainy morning like the sighs of relief they had all, save Einosuke, expelled the night before. The guards at the gate felt it, and so did Masako, whom her father had finally chased away, too, and so did Ace Bledsoe, who was wandering the castle’s lower floor and grounds, wondering what the day might bring him, and longing for someone to talk to.

  As the hours passed Einosuke sped up his work to conform to the sounds of the work from the castle, and made such good progress with his final raking that he decided to place just one large boulder in the garden, as his own symbol of better times to come. The one he chose wasn’t nearly the largest boulder, but was important to the garden’s strict asymmetry, and he wanted to be able to see it there, providing stability, when he brought Fumiko out that evening to show her.

  When he called the workers and went to retrieve the boulder from its place at the forest’s edge, however, he was surprised to find that a fissure had appeared, thick as the line of a closed eye, over most of its near side. At the beach there were more like this one, others that conformed to the necessary look and size, but he had been sure of his decision and had brought home only one. Now what would he do? He couldn’t have a broken boulder outside the castle of a slowly repairing family, so he called his workers, deciding to go to the beach for a replacement while there was still sufficient light. If he didn’t go now he would have to go in the morning, when everyone was back from the prosthetist’s village.

  “Quickly then,” he told the workers. “If we hurry we can be back in an hour.”

  While the workers, trying not to grumble, moved off to get their nets and poles, Einosuke went to the castle’s side door and called for Fumiko. He didn’t want to enter the castle because of his filthy clothes, but though he called repeatedly, his wife didn’t answer. As he turned to look elsewhere for her, however, he found both Fumiko and Masako standing nearby and broadly smiling, Junichiro between them, his stubby legs firmly planted on the ground. And a few feet beyond them stood the remaining American, unseen by the women and shyly watching.

  When the baby saw his father he pulled his arms from the grasps of both his sister and mother, staggered forward, then turned and staggered back. He took a step in one direction, a step in another, stopped to gain his balance, then took two more. There had been evidence that he might soon stand by himself when Einosuke and Fumiko played with him at night, but little hint of early walking, and Einosuke knelt, delighted when his son plunged into his open arms.

  “What’s this?” he laughed, his heart finally freed from the last of the recent trouble. “What power are we unleashing on this poor country of ours?”

  “He did it inside, too,” Masako cried, “but not nearly so well.”

  In truth she had been irritated earlier, at not having been allowed to go with Keiko to get the foreigner’s new nose, but oh how happy she was now. Think what she would have to goad Keiko with when the party returned that night. Junichiro walking! What better sign could there be that they were about to reenter normal life?

  “He really is precocious,” Fumiko said. “We’re going to ask his grandpa if he took his first steps earlier than his rather or his Uncle Manjiro.”

  When she turned to point at the gate through which that grandpa had gone, she saw Ace Bledsoe standing there, smiling at the universal treat of having been allowed to see a baby’s first walking. Masako bowed to him, and Einosuke did, too, then pulled Junichiro up against his dirty chest.

  “He’s an earlier walker than his uncle,” he told his wife. “I can tell you that right now. I remember Manjiro’s first steps better than Father, for he, too, walked into my arms.”

  It was as precious a memory to him as watching his son’s steps just now, and a few wayward tears washed the dirt from his eyes. Fumiko, however, stood looking at the American. He was not fearsome as he’d been at the treaty-signing ceremony, nor was he particularly handsome, if you stayed away from his eyes. He was just a man, younger than she was, probably, who might very well have a wife and children of his own waiting for him. Oh, she had been so foolish! Of course the way to disarm this anxiety—no, she must not be coy—the way to disarm this attraction was to face the man squarely, talk to him in some personal way, and by so doing take away his strangeness, take away his draw. And that, she decided, was what she would do, as soon as the chance presented itself.

  Einosuke let the squirming Junichiro fall back into the waiting arms of Masako. He smiled at his wife and said that though he was going to the beach for another boulder, he would be quick about it, and when he returned they would spend the evening together, just the four of them, eating and talking and finally celebrating the fact that, though it had seemed impossible only a day ago, things would now be fine. He thought that perhaps they might even include the American, though he kept that part to himself. Until he got back, until he decided if he was capable of such a thing.

  The laborers had assembled at the gate but Einosuke decided that instead of walking with them he would take a horse to the beach. That way he could choose his boulder and be ready when they arrived, and return to those he loved. Lord Okubo’s fiefdom was cash poor but rich in horses, so though many of them had been taken that morning, Einosuke was still able to select a good one. He had often argued with his father in favor of selling most of the horses, in order to pay their bills, but as he rode under the castle gate now he was glad he had lost the argument. To be poor in Edo and rich in Odawara, it seemed, would continue to be the state of things for a while.

  By this late hour most of the vendors who set up shop in front of the castle each morning were gone. But as always there were ronin standing idly by, talking and getting ready for another cold night. As Einosuke passed them he made the horse go faster, until he had passed his laborers, too—men who did not look forward to the work that was in store for them, and seemed to be trudging along.

  32.

  Extra Circumspect, From Now On

  STRANGE FORCES were at work in Fumiko, but she remembered her decision, and though she had not expected to fulfill it this quickly, considered it a solemn promise to herself. So once Masako and Junichiro were safely inside the castle she summoned her courage and sought out Ace Bledsoe, who was easy enough to find. He had gone around to the sunny side of the castle and was sitting on a stool with a book in his hands, reading aloud in the spidery tongue.

  Ace noticed her mid-sentence and stood up. He was holding a book of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, given to him by Colonel Morgan when he’d first joined the Mighty Abolitionists. At first he hadn’t understood the essays, but recendy, especially during the sea voyage, he had committed parts of one of them to memory. He had not, in fact, been reading, but reciting it when Fumiko came upon him. “To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense, for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—and our first thought it rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.”

  He thought it was both beautiful and true, and was trying to make it his code, the way he intended to live his life from then on. He had the feeling that if he could speak his “latent conviction” to the woman who appro
ached him now, she would speak her own back to him.

  “I appreciate what you all did for Ned the other night,” he said. “Not everyone would take in a wounded stranger.”

  “Shall we walk together a minute?” Fumiko asked him. “Shall we remove ourselves to the forest, so I can speak to you honestly, without a visitation from Masako? She’s inquisitive and if she sees us she will defeat my purpose before I even start.”

  She gave him a demure smile and gestured toward the path that led to Masako’s marsh. She had watched only his mouth as she spoke to him, and was satisfied to find that her heart did not flip over in her chest. Yes, she’d been right, he was a normal man, fervent, perhaps, and kind, but as men often were at moments like this, utterly unaware of what she’d been feeling, of how he had ruined her peace of mind. She smiled again, surer now that she would free herself, once their little walk was done.

  Ace moved along behind her, pleased with the effort she was making. It was the first time anyone other than Manjiro, and Kyuzo a little bit, had tried to talk to him since Ned’s injury. It hadn’t been bad, though, being left alone. Today, especially, he was glad to have some time away from Ned, whose constant harping on the fact that he wasn’t feeling any pain had been driving Ace to distraction.

  He thought he’d better try to hold up his end of the conversation.

  “I always thought Ned talked too much,” he said. “I’ll bet he’s doing it again with your menfolk or with the carpenter they took him to visit. I’ll bet he’s telling them how he wished he had a nicer partner than me, or someone a little less serious, at least. He says I spend too much time worrying about my life, and in actual fact I’m not easy to get along with. I’d like to remedy that.”

  That was not what he’d meant to say and he was surprised. How could he remedy such a thing?

  “There was a wonderful old teahouse down this way once,” Fumiko told him. “When I first married Einosuke we used to come here and sit, to try to get to know each other. I hardly remember it now, but at the time I was deeply disappointed, really in pain, for though he seemed a decent enough man I didn’t want to be married to him. I was such a sentimental girl. I cried myself to sleep almost every night, once I heard him snoring. I just did not feel he was a jibun no ki no atta hito, a kindred spirit with myself. Does that sound selfish to you? Did you know your wife before you married her? Are marriages arranged in America as they are here in Japan?”

  It took her breath away to say such things, to tell this unvarnished truth and ask such pointed questions. She had never done it before out loud, not even with Tsune. She had spoken slowly, though of course she knew he wouldn’t understand, and she had watched him as she spoke, determined to get everything finished, even at the expense of looking into his eyes. Her own eyes were moist and her lips were dry.

  Ace nodded when he was sure she was finished. He had recognized it as something deeply felt and said, “I’ve a little confession to make about Ned. I used to like to go fishing when we were both holed up on Colonel Morgan’s farm, practicing for some new show. There was this nice little stream running through his place, but I really only went there for self-communion, you know, to get away from everyone and think about how my life was going and such. I even talked aloud to myself so taking Ned with me was out of the question.”

  He smiled and Fumiko thought, “Can sounds such as those truly make up a language?”

  What she said, however, was, “I suppose it is really too much to ask, even in America, that a man recognize the woman he marries for herself, for what she is and what she feels, and not merely as an extension of himself. I suppose it is too much to ask that he see her.” She paused, embarrassed. “I hope you won’t think it horrible of me to talk this way. I hope you will understand that Einosuke is really a most wonderful husband in every other way. It’s just that he rarely penetrates my heart.”

  The heart he rarely penetrated was in her throat.

  “So I used to try to trick him,” said Ace, laughing a little and raising his eyebrows. “Sometimes I’d say I was going off to write a song, and other times I’d lie down in Colonel Morgan’s barn and pretend to be napping, all in search of solitude, you know, all in search of time alone. Ned was suspicious, I think, but sooner or later he’d get interested in something else and I could sneak off. Hell, there was only the one stream, so nothing would have been easier than finding me. I used to think he was stupid, but of course that wasn’t the case. Ned had his own kind of dignity. I guess that’s why I’m saying all this now.”

  Fumiko looked at him. She had stopped thinking about Einosuke. What she wanted to do was touch this man, to break the spell her dream still held over her by putting her hand on his face. And so she did it, even before he stopped talking. She reached up and touched his cheek with the middle three fingers of her right hand, letting them slide from his eye socket to the corner of his now unmoving mouth. It was at once the bravest and the most provocative thing she had ever done.

  She kept her fingers there for the merest seconds, though it seemed far longer. And when she finally released him Ace nearly fell. He bent toward the ground, steadied himself, then picked up a twig and pretended that that had been his intention all along. He stood again and passed the twig between his fingers like a coin. It was a trick his father had taught him, that he hadn’t tried to do in years. She watched as it wove itself around his knuckles, then took it from him and placed it out of sight, inside her kimono.

  “I will go back before you,” she said. “We must, of course, be extra circumspect from now on.”

  She put her hand on his, kept it there until she’d moved a half a step toward the castle, then let it go and held her palm out, so he might know what she meant.

  Ace watched her walking back over an entire bed of twigs, the brothers and sisters of the one she had taken from him.

  Little bits of nature, one indistinguishable from another, all of them spread about.

  33.

  Behold, Your Defeated Lord

  HORSES MIGHT HAVE BEEN plentiful in Lord Okubo’s stables, but they were rare among masterless samurai, for if a man had a horse but no employment, it wouldn’t be long before he would either have to sell his horse to provide for his sustenance, or risk having it stolen. Unlike acreage or outbuildings a horse was a moveable commodity.

  Among the ronin Ueno had hired, however, there were two with horses, given them as a reward for cutting off Ned Clark’s nose, and they, plus the very man who had hired them, sat atop those horses watching Einosuke leave the castle. Number 75, the older of the two ronin, had been masterless for twenty years and, when not drunk on cheap liquor, was adjusted to his status. The younger man, however, Number III, had been out of work for less than a year, and had not in the least come to terms with the fact that he did not wear the crest of a clan anymore.

  The beach that ran along the coast was not too distant from Odawara Castle, but neither was it easily approachable. Only a few paths wide enough for horses led to it, and these necessitated riding either north or south, then doubling back through underbrush. For this reason Einosuke’s laborers, who were able to walk more directly, arrived at the site only a few minutes after him. It was raining again but the boulders were always wet anyway, pounded twice a day by the sea.

  As a child, in that distant time before Manjiro was born, Einosuke had had another brother, only a few years older than himself. This brother’s name had been Toshiro, and he had seemed to Einosuke to be a young god, able to run like the wind and strong enough to move these boulders around like they were made of papier-mâché. Had he lived Toshiro would have been the next Lord Okubo, and though when the torch of ascension fell to him Einosuke had not shrunk from its flame, he had always known in his heart that it was Toshiro, not he, who could have lifted the clan into national prominence. In Einosuke’s memory Toshiro had everything; both Manjiro’s curiosity and spirit and his own good discipline, his everyday seriousness of mind. Just as Masako liked to play at the cast
le’s marsh now, it had been Toshiro’s greatest joy to play among these boulders, and every time Einosuke returned to the place he felt his elder brother’s presence.

  Einosuke had dismounted and looked at the head laborer, now, who walked behind him waiting to hear which boulder they would have to dig out. He remembered that when his father came to him one night to tell him Toshiro had died, of something so simple as a fever, he did not believe his father, and there were ways in which he did not believe him still. When their mother died a few years later, giving birth to Manjiro, he had had no trouble knowing that was true, but his mother had been weak like himself while Toshiro had been invincible, like no one else he had ever known.

  Einosuke found the boulder he wanted and peered at it, looking for fissures and unseemly angles. He stood on it and jumped and felt the boulder take his weight, just as an ambushed Toshiro used to do when Einosuke jumped upon his shoulders.

  “This one,” he told the head laborer. “Unless we find that its buried part is ugly, we’ll take it home.”

  A voice behind him said, “Yes, it is the buried part we must always watch out for.”

  Einosuke turned around to stare at Ueno. He recognized him immediately but asked, “Who travels on this rocky piece of our shoreline?”

  “I’m not traveling but have come to seek you out,” said Ueno. “We followed you down here from the castle. We haven’t been very quiet, you should have heard us coming before now.”

  The waves were crashing about him and Einosuke had been awash in thought, but he decided not to say so. His laborers were standing close together by then, Numbers 75 and III herding them like dogs. He decided to be magnanimous, not to taunt Ueno with the still surprising fact that Lord Abe had been deposed and that he and his ridiculous private army were of no use to anyone anymore. But the words that came out of his mouth were taunting anyway.