by India Millar
Big sighed and then nodded reluctantly. “If that’s the only way I can make sure Terue is safe, I will do it. I will not let Auntie hurt her baby.”
I stared at them and saw the pain in both their faces. Seemon held his arms out to me, and I understood finally that I had no choice. I handed him my precious baby and at once my breasts ached for loss of her.
“If Big will promise to care for her, then I suppose we must leave her.” The words choked in my throat. “If it’s the only way we have any chance of finding her again, at least in this world, I suppose we must do it. Wait, I must write to her. Explain to her that we had no choice.”
There was a pile of paper, brushes, and ink on a table. I picked up the brush and began to write. I was not practiced in the art of calligraphy, and I was angry with myself that I found it so difficult. Finally, I folded the sheets and handed them to Big.
“You will give her that, Big?” I stared at him, desperate to make him understand. “If we cannot come back for her before then, give it to her when she is old enough to understand. But above all, you must tell her, time and time again, that we both love her. That we had no choice at all. Tell her that we will see her again, just as soon as we can. And remember her name is to be Kazhua. Green Leaf. For her beautiful eyes.”
“I will tell her all she should know,” he said woodenly.
“We must go,” Seemon urged. I walked before him unsteadily, lost in the pain in my body and the pain in my heart. Seemon paused in the doorway and handed Big a small casket.
“There is thirty gold koban in there. Please, use it as you see fit to look after our daughter. If there is anything left, give it to her when she is old enough to make good use of it.”
Seemon turned me away and pushed me gently toward the hidden door in the Hidden House before I could change my mind and rush back to my Kazhua.
“She will be all right, won’t she?” I whispered. I felt Seemon sigh. “We will come back for her, promise me.”
“We will see her again, dear one. I know it.”
I was sure I heard Kazhua cry and I turned back, but Seemon closed the door firmly and the sound was cut off.
I wept with her.
Twenty-Two
How can I describe
Colors to you when you are
Blind to all my words?
The only memory I still have of the first weeks of our journey is the sound of wild geese.
Every waking moment, I heard them. I was very ill and I thought they were flying alongside us to wish me well. Seemon told me later that they were not geese at all, but seagulls. I had never seen or heard a seagull, but I knew perfectly well what a wild goose sounded like, so I knew he was wrong.
I didn’t bother to argue with him. What was the point? What did the song of a bird—no matter which bird—matter compared to the loss of my daughter? I sobbed so long and so much I began to wonder how it was possible for my head to contain so many tears.
Seemon cried with me, holding me in his arms and telling me over and over again that we had no choice. That we had to leave our daughter or we would all have died. And—after a while—that there would be other children born to us.
I hated him for that. How could I love children as yet unborn when my own dear Kazhua was left far behind me? I pushed him away and for a long time refused the comfort of his arms. I had to give in when the ache in my breasts became too much for me to bear. Seemon held me tenderly and I offered him my nipple silently. I almost cried with relief as my milk was drawn out of me by his lips, and then I did cry, silently so he would not notice, as I thought that it should have been my baby, not my husband, who suckled there.
I began to think the gods were intent on tormenting me. As if the loss of my child wasn’t terrible enough, as the days went by I began to dwell more and more on Auntie. Images of her lying in my lover’s arms rose unbidden to my thoughts. Had she also gone to his house? Laid with him in his strange bed. Laughed—as I had laughed—when the feather softness of his mattress had closed around me? Had he taken her in the tea house when I was there and might have heard them?
Bitterness consumed me and I turned my face from Seemon.
“Terue, what is it? Is it Kazhua? I promise you, I miss her just as much as you do.”
No, you don’t, I thought silently. You can’t. You made her with me, but you didn’t give birth to her. Never had her suckle at your breast. You are not her mother. I glanced at him and saw the pain in his face and thought he had no right to be hurt and suddenly I was angry.
“I wasn’t thinking about Kazhua,” I lied. I thought about her almost every waking moment. At night I dreamed of her. “Why didn’t you tell me that Auntie was your lover?”
He stared at me as if my words had been spoken in a language he didn’t understand. For a heartbeat, I wondered if Big had lied to me. Then he closed his eyes and his face lowered and I knew Big had not lied.
“How long have you known?”
“Big told me. While I was locked in my room, waiting for you to return,” I said bitterly. “I didn’t want to believe him, but it’s true, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Yes, it is true.”
“Why? Why her?”
Ah, but that was the very heart of the thing! Why Auntie? Had it been a geisha from the Floating World, even a courtesan, my hurt would have been so much less. But Auntie!
“I couldn’t help it,” he said defensively, and I almost laughed. The age-old excuse of any man found out in wrong-doing. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help it! I waited in silence. I would not help him. “I was introduced to Hana almost as soon as I came into Edo. She was very kind to me at first. Don’t forget, I was in Japan to make the acquaintance of the greatest men. And she knew everybody. She introduced me to them all and eased my path because they trusted her. More than that, she corrected my language and manners in such an elegant way I hardly knew she was instructing me. She made me feel Japanese. I was very grateful to her.”
“So grateful that you took her as your lover. How could you!”
Seemon rubbed his hands over his face. “Terue, if I had seen you first, there would have been nobody else for me. But I didn’t know you even existed then. And Hana is a very attractive woman.” I shook my head and he smiled ruefully. “She is. You only see her as your Auntie, not as a man would see her. She is a pretty woman, and very amusing company. I promise you, those of my new acquaintances who suspected about it envied me greatly.”
My world turned around me. Auntie, attractive and sought after? The terrible woman who had beaten us all into submission with her cane and even more with her acid words? The woman who could terrify each of us geisha into obedience with no more than a single look? Then I remembered the geisha in the tea house gossiping about Auntie. Saying that in her younger days she had had the greatest yakuza on Edo at her feet. So much so that he had bought the tea house and the Hidden House for her so she would never want for money. What utter fools all these men were!
“Did she come to you in your house?” I had to know. “Did you make love to her in your bed?”
“No.” He sounded so surprised by the question, I believed him. “Never. She always insisted that we go to the Hidden House. And even there, never to her apartment. Always to the secret room. I asked her once if she was ashamed of me, and she said not at all, but it was because she delighted in me being her secret joy. That she wanted to keep me to herself and that nobody in the whole of the world was to know about us.”
I knew instinctively that Auntie had been deluding herself. The geisha in the Hidden House had known, but in their love of me had not told me. Did I wish they had? I supposed not. Then I remembered how we had first made love in the secret room and I was angry again.
“Why did you take me there? How could you make love to me in the same place that you had her?”
His jaw dropped in surprise. “I wanted you,” he said simply. “I was so frantic, it was the first place I thought about. I k
new we would be safe there, and once I got you alone, we would be able to make plans to meet again somewhere else. It never occurred to me that it mattered.”
Tamayu had often sneered at her patrons. And her lovers, as well.
“Men are all the same,” she insisted. “They just don’t think like we do. In fact, when they’re in lust, they don’t think at all.”
I had thought her harsh at the time, but now I understood that she was right. Seemon had not been thoughtless. Rather, he had simply not thought at all. I had thought him different. I was wrong.
“Forgive me, please?” He kneeled on the floor at the side of our berth. “I can’t undo the past. But I promise you, as soon as I found you, I had no interest at all in Hana.”
“But you kept on seeing her,” I said coldly. I needed to know the whole of the truth before I could begin to forgive.
“Yes. I felt I had to. She had been very kind to me and I knew that she was at least a little in love with me. How could I just tell her that it was over, that I had found somebody else and wasn’t interested in her anymore?”
I stared at him incredulously. That was exactly what a Japanese man would have done. It was only what Auntie—Hana—would have expected. And how was keeping her hanging on, wondering what she had done wrong, any better than telling her the truth straight away? Seemon was staring at me imploringly and I shook my head.
“Seemon,” I said wearily. “If the day ever comes when you tire of me, please tell me at once. Don’t make excuses. Just tell me.”
“That day will never come.”
He raised himself on his elbows and lay beside me. He meant it, I knew.
My anger spent itself and drained away. He was right. The past was over and done with. Nothing either of us could say had the power to change a single moment of it. He fell asleep in my arms and I lay beside him, wishing it was Kazhua who was snuggled up to me.
He was asleep almost immediately. I was exhausted from our confrontation, but sleep would not come to me and I lay awake for a long time, my thoughts whirling aimlessly.
As I finally dropped into sleep, I realized that for the first time I could no longer hear the song of the wild geese.
Twenty-Three
It is only when
The past is put in its place
One can move forward
I hung onto Seemon’s arm for balance, bewildered as it seemed that the solid earth was still rocking beneath my feet. He held me tightly and spoke reassuringly.
“Don’t worry. The motion of the sea has gotten into your legs. In an hour or two, you’ll be fine.”
We walked along the dock as unsteadily as a man who had drunk far too much sake. And Seemon was wrong. I was not fine. My legs, indeed, did recover their balance. But my head did not.
In spite of the fact that he told me again and again that he was just as much a stranger here as I was, I could not believe him. If that was true, why then did everybody in this small settlement on the American coast seem to find their way to our lodgings? Invitations were pressed on us. We were invited to parties, to dine, to go for meals in the countryside. Seemon said these were called “picnics” and assured me I would love them. He was right to a certain extent. At least they meant I could sit comfortably on my heels for a while.
I was bewildered and asked why these strangers were so interested in us? Had we been back in the Floating World—and how I longed for that to be so!—the best we could have hoped for would have been to be ignored. In the flower and willow world, gaijin were sneered at. People drew their robes back when a Dutch trader passed, concerned that they would be contaminated in some way by their touch. Out of all the gaijin in Edo, only Seemon, with his grasp of Japanese and his willingness to learn our way of life, had been accepted. I had fully expected to be treated as a foreign barbarian here in my new world. After all, wasn’t that exactly what I was?
“They find you fascinating.” Seemon smiled at my confusion. “The women look at you in envy, and the men envy me for having you with me. You are truly beautiful, Terue. No matter where you are.”
I managed a smile at his words, but even Seemon confused me. I thought that he was a different man here in his own world. He seemed more comfortable than he had been in the Floating World. More relaxed. And above all, at home. Whereas I was now the stranger. Sometimes, he forgot I spoke hardly any English and began a sentence in Japanese only to change to English halfway through. At first, this angered me greatly and I snapped at him. He always apologized, but still constantly forgot. After a while, I stopped asking him to speak to me only in Japanese and instead listened carefully to his words. It made little sense to begin with, but gradually, I pieced together full sentences, and before we left the settlement of Yerba Buena, I could understand what the rest of the gaijin were saying if they spoke slowly and I concentrated very hard. I did not want to appear foolish by trying to speak English badly, so I simply pretended I didn’t understand them. Besides, I soon found that if the gaijin thought I couldn’t understand what they were saying, they spoke freely in front of me.
“She’s supposed to be one of those exotic Japanese dancing girls. What do you call them? Geisha, isn’t it?”
The older woman smiled at me and offered me food, a strange sort of cake that was far too sweet for my taste. Still, politeness insisted I take it and pretend to enjoy it as well. I nodded and smiled and swallowed the insult along with the food.
“I suppose she’s quite pretty if you like really tiny women.” Her companion shrugged. “My Sam thinks she’s divine. Typical man. Just because she’s so small and looks as if she’s made from porcelain, he thinks she needs looking after.”
“They’re supposed to be married, aren’t they? But I notice she doesn’t wear a wedding band. Do you think maybe they went through some heathenish sort of wedding ceremony in Japan?”
“Maybe. Still, even if they did, it’s not going to mean a thing here, is it?”
Both women laughed. I hid my face behind my fan and watched them watching me. I was very glad when Seemon asked me if I thought I was well enough to travel again.
“How do you feel about setting off soon? If you still feel unwell, we can stay here for as long as you feel you need to.”
I still ached, although I knew that the feeling was more for the loss of Kazhua than anything physically wrong. And I wanted, more than anything, to get to Seemon’s home. To begin my new life as his wife. Perhaps even, and I astonished myself with the thought, to make another baby. Not to take my darling Kazhua’s place, never that. But my arms ached to cradle a child, and the love I had never been able to offer my lost child overflowed my senses.
“I’m ready to go,” I said promptly. I was puzzled to find Seemon appeared less than eager.
“You’re sure? It’s a very long journey, and it’s not going to be pleasant. And we’re not going straight to my home.” My spirits sank. Where else was there for us to go? Seemon saw my disappointment and put his arms around me tenderly. “I must go to Washington first. Report back to my taskmasters. Hand over my diary and answer their questions. As soon as I’m done there, we can go home.”
“I suppose I must be grateful to them.” I managed a smile. “After all, if they hadn’t sent you to Japan, we would never have known the other existed. Tell me about your home. Will I like it there?”
I felt him tense and immediately I was worried.
“You’re going to find things are very different in Virginia to what they are here.” He hesitated and added quickly, “But I’m sure you’ll be happy there.”
He spoke in Japanese and I understood instinctively that he wanted to impress on me the importance of his words. The journey didn’t worry me greatly. After all, I had already traveled halfway around the world and survived. And how could Virginia be so different to Yerba Buena? It was still in America, wasn’t it?
“I want to go, of course. What’s different about it?”
“Yerba Buena is a very small place. Oh, I know the
people here are all very proud of their settlement, and they insist in a few years it will be a big town, but at the moment it’s nothing more than an outpost. Virginia is a very old place. People have lived there for centuries.” He paused for thought and I stared at him, silently urging him to go on. “I was born and brought up there. My family have been there for generations. Before I went to Washington with my uncle, I thought my hometown must be the grandest place in the whole of America. I soon found that it was actually only a small place, compared to Washington. But the people who live there are very proud of Virginia, and of their heritage. They are perhaps a little set in their ways and don’t take kindly to anything new.”
“Just like Edo,” I said drily.
“No, not at all like Edo, dearest. I wish it were. But no matter. I know they’ll love you, Terue-chan. Just as much as I do.”
I shrugged off his words and waited impatiently while a strange man fiddled with an odd-looking machine that Seemon said was going to “take our photograph.” A few days later, I stared in awe at a perfect picture of the two of us standing side by side. How tall and handsome Seemon was! I told him so and he laughed at me. It was strange. This photograph seemed to reflect me far more clearly than any mirror ever had. I stared at the photograph for a long time. This was what other people saw, then. My breath caught in my throat as I wished beyond anything that I could get a copy of it to my dear Kazhua, that she might know her mother next time I saw her.
We set off the next day. All our new friends in Yerba Buena came to wave us off and I was touched. I had been wrong about the women not liking me, I decided. After all, their words had been far kinder than anything the people of Edo had ever said about the gaijin! I rather thought I would like to come back here one day. But in a future that was far distant. First, I was going to Seemon’s home. To meet his family.
The thought worried me. I was torn. Much as I wanted to go to his home, to the place that was to become my home, I was deeply afraid his family may not be happy with his choice of wife. And if they hated me, what then? I would have liked to have shared my worries with Seemon, but I did not. It would have been too much like insulting the family I had not yet met. Finally, I admitted to myself that I was pleased we were going to Washington first, to postpone the inevitable for a while longer.
