Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show

by Richard Wiley

  “What will you do with all the shit you’ve collected?” the younger samurai asked him. “Sell it to a farmer, or spread it on a field of your own?”

  It was an ignorant question—what honey-bucket man had a field of his own?—but the father only said, “We sell it to a merchant who sells it again to farmers, passing it on.”

  He emptied the buckets into his wagon, careful to ensure that no bits of waste splashed the horrid samurai’s already wasted clothes. Then he bowed as low as he could, peeking to assure himself that Momo’s head was also down.

  “Merchants again!” croaked the younger man. “Isn’t that always the problem? Usurping merchants everywhere, even in the shit business! We ought to kill every one of them!”

  He raised his voice for a second but then stepped closer to the father, becoming conspiratorial. “You men provide a service and so does the farmer who buys this crap, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “But tell me old man, what does the merchant do save build obstacles between the two of you, and while he’s at it build himself a fine new house?”

  As he spoke the older samurai, though he’d finally let Manzo spread fresh pine boughs across the backs of both horses, was having no luck at all getting the flies to leave their pickle jar alone. The boughs, of course, were meant for after cleaning, as a kind of garnish, not for when shit caked everything in sight like hard tofu. That was what Momo had been trying to tell him.

  Momo expected the younger samurai to go on about the evils of the merchant class a while longer, but instead he returned to the horses to swat at the flies again and otherwise rummage around. In the window above them the geisha was now singing the refrain of a popular love song—“I waited for him till my well ran dry, until the nearby fields grew fallow”—while across the street someone else splashed water from a bucket and mopped another bar’s floor. Momo, of course, was convinced that the geisha was singing for him alone. He loved this street with all his heart and, though he would never have admitted it to anyone, had formed the habit of reciting the names of its bars: “Bizen-ya, Kado, Yamago-ya, Kanzan, Jittoku, Miki, Edo-ya, “as he scooped the shit from their outhouses.

  He recited them now, inside his head, to the rhythm of the song of the geisha, until the younger samurai came back with a fist full of coins.

  “We want to buy all this shit,” he said. “We’ll take it off your hands right now.”

  “What?” said the older samurai, but the younger one turned on him, in a hissing rejoinder that soon turned into a shout. “You’ve seen for yourself that nothing else will cover the smell! What rots, rots! That is why we have flies and worms!”

  He glanced back at Momo’s father and said in a quieter voice, “We’ll need the loan of your wagon, also.”

  The father knew by their weight that the coins he’d been given were sufficient, so he told Momo to go with the men, and bring the wagon back when they’d found their field and the fertilizing was done. Manzo was disappointed that he had not been chosen to go, since everyone knew he was the more responsible son, but he hid it by saying, “That’s good shit you’re buying, sirs. Everyone loves the shit from a geisha house.”

  It wasn’t only Momo who could say something clever. He could, too!

  Despite its awkward look and sloppy, heavy contents, the wagon could be pulled by one man if he were skilled. Manzo was the best puller in the family, followed closely by their father, while Momo was one of the worst pullers in all of Shimoda. So when Momo stepped into the wagon’s thick hemp halter, Manzo forgot his jealousy, stopped trying to think of clever things to say, and helped his brother center himself. It wouldn’t do for Momo to bring embarrassment to the family, no matter how decrepit the men who had purchased the load.

  When Momo was ready Manzo and his father pushed from the sides until the wagon gave a beginning lurch, while Momo remembered to keep his head bent, watching his feet to make sure they were set wide apart. Up the road he went, away from his father and brother and out of the sight of the geisha, who, in any case, had stopped singing and closed her window again some moments earlier.

  Momo could hear the samurai behind him, the younger one walking, the older one tense on his horse, when it quite suddenly came to him, as if in a final lyric from that geisha, that there was more to be careful of here than just spilling shit or the pace and gait he chose. His father had told him to come back as soon as the fertilizing of their field was done, but these men were no more likely to have a field that needed fertilizing than he was! No sir, they were outlaws of some kind, that’s what they were, and their contraband was hidden inside that pickle jar! And if that were true then this, at long last, was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, the chance to break loose from the pitiful peasant shackles that were ruining his days and enslaving his entire life. He had to be brave, that was all there was to it. He couldn’t piss his pants again. He had to find the courage he was always bragging about right now.

  Momo headed out the way they always did, not stopping until he reached a spot at the edge of town where some two dozen other honey-bucket wagons waited, full and unattended, for the merchant who would later pick them up. “Kambei, the catcher of criminals!” he thought, and imagined himself depicted on a poster.

  To cover his growing nervousness Momo sang the second line of the geisha’s song, in a loud and quivering voice: “Until the petals fell from all my pretty flowers and the freezing mountain streams grew murky…”

  “Shhh,” said the younger samurai, bringing the pickle jar forward. “Be quiet! Stop that horrible noise and take this from me now, my strong young lad. Submerge it in your wagon. I don’t want to dirty my clothes.”

  Momo had slipped out of his halter and turned to face the man, flexing his jaw and trying as hard as he could to cast his fear aside. The pickle jar was heavier than he thought it would be but he pulled it against his chest and smiled, allowing the flies to track their dirty feet across his lips and nose.

  The older samurai was slow at getting off his horse and took a piece of material from his pack to cover his mouth before coming forward. He also carried one of Manzo’s newly woven pine boughs, and waved it in the air. This told Momo as plainly as words ever could that the smell he’d lived with all his life had become his best advantage. So he stuck his tongue out for extra effect, allowing a couple of flies to land upon it, dancing in the wetness that they found.

  The older man coughed and gagged a little bit, but the younger one confided in Momo. “It’s only a trick we are playing on a friend. Just lower the jar down into the shit now, that’s a good boy, hide it well until we’re ready for it.”

  “There are a lot of wagons here,” the older man told him. “If we’re ever to find it again we’ll have to leave a mark.”

  Though it was an easy order to carry out, Momo bought himself time by pretending that it wasn’t. He strained under the weight of the jar and bumped the wagon, staining his forearms with the little waves of waste that came lapping over its side.

  “Just place it in the wagon,” said the older man. “Slip it under the surface till we don’t see it anymore.”

  Momo grinned, then lifted the jar up much higher than was necessary and fairly threw it into the center of the wagon, as if it were a heavy stone. Shit splashed everywhere, over the ground around them and onto the heads and shoulders of all three men. Strains of it flew even into the mouths of both the samurai, and while they were spitting and wiping themselves and shouting, leaning over and vomiting onto the ground, Momo stood up straight and ran, not singing this time, but chanting his memorized litany of bar names: “Bizen-ya, Kado, Yamagoya, Kanzan, Jittoku, Miki, Edo-ya…” until he heard them pull their swords from the scabbards, remount their horses and give chase.

  Who knew what he thought he might achieve by such a tactic when, not ten seconds earlier, running seemed to be the thing he most wanted to avoid?

  WITHOUT THEIR WAGON and with time to spare before they were due at home, Manzo and his father had walked toward the por
t to take a look at the American ships while it was still early enough for their presence not to bother anyone. It had been Manzo’s idea to do such a thing, convincing his reluctant father, because he wanted to have a story of his own to tell when Momo got back and they all sat down to breakfast later on. They had had to slip past that sleeping contingent of Ueno’s drunk soldiers to stand at the town’s bulkhead, and were now looking out at the ships and the swelling high tide. The weather had held but the offshore clouds were worrisome, frowning at them in a good imitation of Manzo’s father.

  “Don’t fret so much, Papa,” Manzo said, but he couldn’t help adding, “You know if me and Momo could gather the shit from those ships we could go into business for ourselves and you could retire.”

  He counted eight ships and had heard that within them were more than a thousand men, filling their bellies daily, and flushing all that potential profit into the bay. No ambition? Who did Momo think he was?

  His father nodded, but was so accustomed to Manzo’s ramblings that he hadn’t really listened very well. Rather, he had been musing on what had happened earlier and said, “You know, the more I think about it the more I worry that I should not have let your brother go with those men. We all knew perfectly well they were masterless, I must be getting old.”

  He spoke softly, and glanced at the closer, sleeping samurai, to make sure he hadn’t awakened them. He looked out at the ships again, touching Manzo’s shoulder.

  “So much change is taxing,” he said. “Our way of life will be over before we know it.”

  But though soldiers might sleep through such nearby peasant chatter, even drunks like the ones Ueno had hired woke quickly to the sounds of horses’ hooves, and the slap-slap-slap of a barefooted runner. Manzo and his father heard it too, but didn’t look to see what was making the clatter until half of Ueno’s soldiers were standing, belching and sheltering their eyes. It was Momo, of course, the furious and filthy riders almost upon him.

  “Damn you, peasant scum,” one of them yelled, but by then Ueno’s men had recognized their prey.

  “Well, well,” said their leader, “what do you know?” and as Manzo stood out in the road, ready to roll under the hooves of horses if he had to, to save his brother, the soldiers pulled their swords and spread themselves out, like the floats on a net.

  “Hurry up Momo!” screamed the father, and he grabbed Manzo’s sleeve saying, “Let’s go this way!”

  The beach bulkhead was high, but the father jumped upon it with ease, pulling Manzo up beside him as if he were a child. “Now let him see us,” he ordered. “Wave your hands, Manzo! The tide is in, so let’s get ready to dive.”

  “Over here Momo!” bellowed Manzo.

  His voice rose above those of the others like rolls of rumbling thunder, but twice more it seemed the riders would catch Momo, killing him with easy swings of their swords.

  “Momo! Momo!” their father yelled.

  It was difficult to tell whether the riders saw Ueno’s men or not, so intent were they on running Momo down, but Momo saw them, and darted past their waiting swords like a bait fish, to leap over the bulkhead and into the frothing sea, in the arms of his brother and father.

  “Swim for your lives!” screamed Manzo, but in a moment they were wading away, in only about three feet of water, while behind them they could hear shouts of joy.

  “Tie their hands, men! That’s right, bind them up! What do you know? We’ve actually caught them, just as the master ordered! What in the world do you know?”

  The leader had placards, which, through all these recent days of searching, he had somehow remembered to keep on his horse, and when the captives were sufficiently bound he placed one on each of them.

  “75” and “111,” the placards said.

  As they moved out of town toward the inn where Ueno stayed, it didn’t seem to matter to anyone that the placards were reversed, each on the wrong man’s neck.

  42.

  The Omen of the Crows

  FOR LORD OKUBO’S ENTOURAGE—with the notable exception of Ned and O-bata—things were getting worse, not better, by the time they arrived in Shimoda later that same morning. During the eight days since Einosuke’s death they had found that they were unable to easily speak to each other or eat together, unable to do anything save follow the Buddhist prescripts concerning Einosuke’s burial, fall into the bottomless pits of their broken hearts, and prepare their swords for battle. From the moment after Lord Okubo put his seal on his note to Ueno, in fact, he and Manjiro had found it difficult even to bear the sight of each other’s faces. Manjiro continued to blame himself, in long and crazy prayers to his ancestors, and Lord Okubo, in order to avoid another trip to his secret room until revenge was done, blamed Manjiro, also, and took to having rambling conversations with his two already dead sons, Toshiro and Einosuke, alone at the beach where Einosuke had lost his head.

  Generally speaking the women fared better, for they could deal with the men, if not very well with each other. Fumiko, for example, would allow herself to be summoned by her father-in-law, but she would broach no contact with Tsune, except through the door of the room that she shared with Masako and Junichiro. All she could manage was to care for her infant son, placing him before her on the tatami and trying to teach him to speak by repeating the word she most wanted him to utter first, and to remember forever: “Tochan, tochan, tochan. Daddy, daddy, daddy. Father, father, father.”

  “Say it!” she commanded, and when he wouldn’t do it she said it herself, trading two syllables for four, and crying them out the window into the rain: “Einosuke! Einosuke! Einosuke!” Oh, how could she have been such a despicable wife?

  As for Keiko, she stayed outside from dawn until the guards called midnight each day, pacing the perimeter of her father’s half-formed garden in her mourning clothes. She liked the feeling of the fabric against her skin and soon began dancing to the song in her head, “Three tulips grow down by the river, red, yellow, and white… Three tulips grew in a bed of a thousand, then one day a boat came by…” Oh sadness! Oh sorrow!

  Though they had drifted back a little toward civility by the time they arrived at the Kanaya Inn, up the Inozawa River from Shimoda, they were each still clinging to the ruin of their lives by the fringes of an unraveling madness, with revenge the medicine that kept them each alive.

  WHAT HIS HOW THINGS stood when Keiki, Kyuzo, and Ichiro, burdened by three horrid hangovers, but enlivened with the news of Einosuke’s murderers’ capture, which was all over town, came upon Lord Okubo in the inn’s side garden late on the afternoon of the family’s arrival.

  “Where is Manjiro?” asked Keiki. “Where is young Kambei of the posters?”

  Keiki held the misplaced belief that news of the capture, combined with his father’s betrothal note, would mend just about everything, while Kyuzo, who had been given the note when he and Ichiro awakened Keiki a few hours earlier, wanted to put it on hold for a while and immediately discuss a battle strategy with Lord Okubo.

  The old lord, however, was not alone in the garden. Keiko and Masako were with him, their stricken faces cast toward the ground. So the men had to pause, adjusting their ill-timed sense that things would now go well. No one, in fact, even bothered to answer Keiki’s question, save Junichiro, who wobbled out from between his sisters, peered up into Keiki’s face, then turned and laughed and ran back toward Masako.

  “He gets tired so easily,” she said. “Once I wouldn’t let him stop walking for an hour and a half.”

  She said it as if it were a confession. She seemed to have no idea to whom she was addressing her comments, and Lord Okubo, too, disheveled and unbathed, only turned toward Kyuzo and croaked, “They wouldn’t stay in Odawara when I asked them to. All of our women insisted on coming here, even Fumiko. And these two won’t stay away from me now.”

  He had a teacup in his hands and when he gestured toward his granddaughters tea spilled out of it. A litter of skinny white kittens had just come from beneath a ne
arby shrub, but they ran back under it when the tea landed on the path.

  “Show everyone back to their rooms,” Lord Okubo told Keiki, whom he had mistaken for the innkeeper. “And you, Kyuzo, tell me what you’ve discovered of our enemy.”

  He tried to stop squinting but his head shook on his neck. He put one hand upon his forehead, the other one up to tell Kyuzo to wait until Keiki and his grandchildren, and Ichiro too, had gone inside. For his part, though, Keiki was disappointed at his reception; his father’s representative was usually treated more civilly, but he wanted to find Tsune anyway, so he could get some medicine for his headache, and begin to feel at home.

  “Ueno is settled at a nearby inn,” Kyuzo said when they were alone. “We heard that he caught the renegades this morning.”

  “We heard it, too,” said Lord Okubo. “A runner has come to say he will bring them here tonight. Do I look unready for battle? I think I look unready. Maybe I should rest again and bathe.”

  At the nearest end of the garden there was a bench under a trellis, where Kyuzo led Lord Okubo so they could both sit down. Lord Okubo put his teacup in the dirt between his feet and bent forward to peer into the small amount of tea that remained. Kyuzo thought they would sit there like that for a good long moment, that like himself, Lord Okubo believed in the silent communion of men before discussing the details of a battle, so he was a little bit startled when Lord Okubo spoke.

  “You are strong, Kyuzo, a famous warrior, but do you think you could go on living after the death of a son? Tell me honestly, I don’t want platitudes. Do you have that kind of strength? Most men do not.”

  He didn’t look at Kyuzo but kept trying to find his reflection in his cup.

  Kyuzo sat forward, too, in order to gaze at his still-painful toe, its foreign-made wrapping still somehow clinging to it.