The Song of the Wild Geese

by India Millar

  I felt my fires building almost at once.

  There had been little delight between us in Washington. At first, we had both been so drained from the terrible journey from Yerba Beuna that we fell into bed at night and slept the sleep of the dead. The only time I awoke before morning was when I dreamed of Kazhua, and even in the deepest sleep, I knew my dreams were illusions. Later, Simon had been taken from me day after day by the officials who had summoned him back, and when he returned he was so on edge that our love-making had been both quick and—for me at least—unsatisfying. Here it seemed that the joy we had had between us in Edo had returned, and I moaned out loud with pleasure and relief as his hands found my breasts.

  I wasted no more time and simply slid myself across his waist, lowering my body on to his tree. I sensed him hesitate for a moment, and then it was too late for both of us. His rhythm increased at once, and I encouraged him with cries that were too urgent to form words.

  My yonaki was upon me even more quickly than I had expected. I cried out loud with pleasure and was delighted when I realized that Simon was following close behind me. I felt his heat explode inside me and gripped him tightly until he was completely still. Only then did I slide off to lie contentedly at his side.

  I was almost asleep when Simon spoke.

  “Terue, you can’t stay here. You must go back to your own room. But put your robe on first.”

  “Simon?” If it hadn’t been for the sternness in his voice I would have thought he was joking. “Why? Why can’t I stay here? With you, where I should be?”

  “No. You can’t.” He sat up abruptly, as far away from me as he could manage in that horrible, soft mattress. “You can’t stay here. It’s not proper. You shouldn’t have come to me at all. It’s not right, with Papa barely cold in his grave. Anybody would think you were some sort of negro slave, rutting in lust.”

  My hand was about to run down his chest, but I stopped, frozen in mid-air as I heard and understood what he was saying.

  “I had thought I was no longer a slave, Simon,” I said stiffly. “I thought I had left that behind me in Japan. But it appears that I was wrong. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. I will go now.”

  I made to swing my legs out of the bed, but Simon grabbed my wrist and pulled me back.

  “Terue, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, not at all. You don’t understand.”

  I lay beside him rigidly, his fierce grip holding me in place as my new world shattered into a thousand pieces around me.

  “I was a slave in the Floating World. I understand that to you I am still a slave.”

  “No!” His voice was tormented. “You are not a slave here. You will never be a slave again. But you are my betrothed wife, and as such we must…we must behave ourselves. It’s different here from how it was in Edo,” he added lamely.

  “Why?” I asked. “If I’m betrothed to you, why can’t we lie together? And what does it matter if I’m a slave or not? I was a slave when I was a geisha. Auntie owned me. I could never pay her back for what she had spent on me and she would never have let me go to lead my own life. Lord Dai paid a fortune to deflower me. If I’d married him, I would have been his slave in turn.”

  I felt Simon shudder at my words. “You are not a slave here,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word. “That is all in the past for you. This is your new life, and it’s very important that you never tell anybody that you were treated as a slave in Edo. And especially you must never speak about being sold for your mizuage to Lord Dai.”

  “Why?” I was bewildered. None of that had mattered to us in Edo. What had changed?

  “You remember the black-skinned man you saw in Washington? And you saw William and Suzanna here?” I nodded, lost. “They are all slaves. But not like you were in Edo, dear one. Most black people in America—certainly here in Virginia—are truly slaves. They are owned by whoever buys them. They can be sold again at the whim of their master. They must do as their master tells them or they will be punished. They cannot leave their home without getting a pass from their master. If they try to run away, they will be found and punished severely. If the master takes a fancy to a black woman, then she must go to him, no matter if she already has a husband. If the slaves have children, then they are also owned by their master. They have no hope of being free, ever. We have well over a hundred slaves here on the plantation. They’re a measure of wealth. The more slaves a man owns, the more he can cultivate his crops and the richer he is. That’s just the way it is here. But you are going to be my wife, not a slave. Do you understand?”

  I thought about it. I remembered poor Aki, sold to a brothel for daring to run away to her boy. I thought about my dear friends in the Hidden House, expected to give their bodies to any man who had enough money to buy them. I thought about Auntie keeping me a prisoner to force me to agree to marry Lord Dai. I thought about Simon telling me I was no longer a slave and wondered.

  “Yes,” I said finally. “I understand.”

  If Simon heard the doubt in my voice, he gave no sign of it. “Good.” I felt him relax. “Dear Terue, you are free now and forever, and you are going to be my wife. That is all anybody here needs to know about you.”

  I closed my eyes tightly and took a deep breath before I asked the question that was uppermost in my mind.

  “Then why I can’t be with you?” I asked. “Must I wait until we are married to really be your wife? Why has that changed?”

  “I told you.” Simon sounded annoyed, but I had no idea why. “It’s partly because I’m in mourning for Papa’s death, but it’s mainly because we’re betrothed. In this country, a man does not lie with his fiancée—his betrothed—before they are married. It’s unheard of. Except amongst the slaves, and nobody cares what they get up to,” he added with unconscious cruelty.

  I didn’t want to look at his face. Instead, I stared at my hands. The hands that had caressed him to joy so many times. I heard his words, but I understood only one thing.

  No matter how often he told me it wasn’t so, here in his own world, Simon was ashamed that I had once been a slave.

  Twenty-Five

  When you speak cruelly

  To me your words fall like cold

  Snowflakes on my face.

  I sat uncomfortably at the table, concentrating on keeping my breakfast eggs on my fork long enough to get the food into my mouth. I was glad to have something to distract me.

  Simon’s words from the night before seemed a little less harsh in the morning light. Had I really expected this gaijin world to be like Edo? This was his home, not mine. It was natural that I should be the one who bent to his customs. Yet still, one thing astonished me.

  Simon’s mother appeared to have no recollection of her outburst at all. She smiled at Simon constantly. Told him how glad she was to have him home. Even said how proud his father had been of his adventures for the government. How he had known his heart condition was getting worse, but had tried desperately to hang onto life until Simon came back.

  “I daresay she’ll take a while to settle here.” She nodded at me, showing a great many rather large teeth. I smiled back sweetly. “She needs to learn English, of course, to begin with. And no doubt everything will be very strange to her.”

  I stared at my cup silently, wondering how much of the vile liquid William had called “tea” courtesy compelled me to drink. It was horrible, and I knew I would never get used to it. I suppose I should have spoken then, told my new “Mama” that my English was quite good—not as good as Simon’s Japanese, of course, but enough to get by—but I did not. I doubted she would speak directly to me even if she knew I understood her. It seemed to me that it would make her discourteous manner even worse if she continued to ignore me when she knew I understood her. One of us, at least, would be polite!

  Simon turned to me, speaking in Japanese as he told me what his mother had said. I noticed that the words that had passed between them somehow seemed to have lost something in the translati
on. According to Simon, his mother had said that I would soon settle here and that she was delighted that he had brought me home as his bride.

  Simon assured me that we would have time to ourselves that first day, and I had been anticipating it very much. But he was wrong.

  We were barely out of the front door—his Mama had insisted I take a parasol as the sun was so hot. I thought she had seemed almost angry that I didn’t find the weather at all oppressive—when a carriage came to a halt at the front door, dust billowing around its wheels.

  “Damn it. The drums have sounded quickly.” In spite of his angry words, Simon was smiling widely. He switched abruptly to Japanese. “Terue-chan, some of our neighbors have come to visit us already. I’m afraid our trip around the plantation must wait a little. No! Don’t kowtow to them. Don’t even bow. Just smile and lower your head a little.”

  I stiffened awkwardly, caught off balance. These appeared to be important people. I had automatically begun to lower myself to my knees to greet them with appropriate humbleness. But it seemed that was the wrong thing to do. And Simon was angry with me again, but I had no idea why.

  I smiled at them as I had been told, hiding my hurt behind my smile.

  “Mr. Sydney! Dear Mrs. Sydney! Johanna. How lovely to see you all again!”

  “Simon!” A young girl sprang from behind the wide skirts of the woman Simon had called Mrs. Sydney. I thought she was perhaps twelve or thirteen. Almost a young woman in Japan, but here, still a child, something that was obvious from her behavior. I was thrust aside as she threw herself at Simon, wrapping her arms around his neck and squealing loudly with pleasure. “You’ve been gone forever! You look just the same, though. God, I expected to find you wearing a hat with a tassel on it and skirts instead of trousers, you’ve been amongst the celestials for so long!”

  She smelled as if she had bathed in perfume. The scent was so strong I sneezed loudly and colored at my rudeness. I had noticed before that even the gaijin men seemed fond of wearing scent to mask the stink of the flesh they consumed and the fact that they had no idea how to wash properly. It was still strange to me. In Edo, even a crowd of Japanese would smell only of clean skin. Or at most of jako, the flower seeds that were folded into clothes in storage. Jako seeds smelled a little like musk geranium, and in such discreet amounts were very pleasant.

  Simon was holding the girl at arms’ length, but I could see he was pleased at her welcome. I tilted my parasol a fraction, and the movement caught his eye.

  “Johanna, a very good day to you. May I present my fiancée, the lady Terue? And I was in Japan, not China.”

  I heard her parents gasp. Johanna glanced at them both and then burst out in hearty laughter.

  “Oh, honestly, Simon! You are so naughty, teasing Mama and Papa like that. Why, she’s just a high yellow negress! Pretty enough, but we got slave octoroons at home got as light skin as she has.”

  The silence fell around us like snow.

  “Simon, take no notice of Johanna. Her mouth always did run away with her, and nothing’s changed there.” Mr. Sydney’s booming voice broke the quiet abruptly. “Glad to have you back, that’s for sure. And this lovely lady is your fiancée, you say? If all the Japanese gals are as beautiful as she is, I’m not at all surprised it’s taken you so long to come back home.”

  I held my hand out to him and was confounded. He did not shake it, but instead raised it to his lips and gave the back a smacking kiss. Truly, Simon’s mama had been right when she said I had much to learn.

  Simon ushered us all back inside. I watched our visitors curiously. The man took out a large handkerchief and wiped his face and neck thoroughly. His wife immediately took out a pretty fan and wafted it in front of her face vigorously. Johanna was obviously deeply perplexed. She stared from Simon to me with the frank curiosity of innocence. Simon’s mama came back in at the sound of their voices and greeted them with cries of delight before she, too, took out her fan and plied it briskly.

  “Ain’t it just too hot?” she demanded of nobody in particular. I almost broke my silence to say this was nothing compared to Edo in the height of summer, but Mr. Sydney spoke first.

  “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humidity that’s the killer,” he said firmly. “But look at this little lady here. Cool as a cucumber, even in that tight robe. Ain’t she just something?”

  His wife shot him an exasperated glance, but it was Johanna who spoke.

  “Where did you find her, Simon? I never even seen a Japanese woman before. She ain’t really a negro, then?”

  Simon frowned and then shrugged resignedly. It was easy to see that Johanna was a favorite in this house, no matter how atrocious her manners. I simmered silently, waiting for his reply.

  “Johanna, Terue is a Japanese lady of very high birth. She is as pure blooded as you or me, I can assure you. In fact, in Japan she was about to be forced into an arranged marriage with one of the highest nobles in the place until I rescued her and snatched her away from him.”

  “No!” Johanna’s eyes were like saucers. She glanced at me and then rose, curtseying very prettily before she came across and stood in front of me.

  “I sure am sorry,” she apologized. “But I wasn’t to know!”

  Everybody laughed loudly at her contrite face, and I smiled myself.

  “Well, ain’t that really romantic!” Mrs. Sydney said. Even Simon’s mama managed to look pleased. “I guess it will be a while before you can tie the knot, Simon? I mean, she’s going to have to learn to speak English to start with. And of course, with your dear papa just passing away, it’s not possible for you to even think about making arrangements until after the mourning period. I guess it’ll be a year, at least, for you, Simone?”

  For a moment, I thought she had spoken to Simon and glanced at him for his reaction. But it was his mama who spoke, and I was thoroughly confused. Simon had the same name as his mother?

  “A year, at the very least,” Mama Simone spoke firmly. “I think myself it will be a good deal longer. Of course, I shall never lose him in my heart.” Mrs. Sydney nodded understandingly. “Of course, if Simon wishes it, he need only be in full mourning for the first year. But I’m sure he’ll appreciate how much his mama feels her loss and he’ll be happy to wait until I’m ready.”

  Simon murmured something I didn’t catch and after a moment’s respectful pause the chatter resumed. It seemed to me that the longer they talked the less I understood of the conversation. They all spoke so very quickly, and the words began to sound less and less like the language Simon had unwittingly taught me. And different still to how the Washington gaijin had spoken.

  I was very pleased when they finally left. And horrified when Simon told me that they would be the first of many.

  “Now the word is out that we’re back, we can expect visitors every day.” He shrugged. He saw my expression and spoke quickly. “Don’t worry, you did well. Nobody expects you to be able to speak English, so it doesn’t matter. Just look pleasant and you’ll do fine. As we’re in deep mourning, we won’t be expected to return calls, and there’s no question of us attending any parties or anything, so you’ll have time to settle.”

  I was deeply curious about my new world, but Simon seemed to think I would be pleased to have some time to myself.

  I supposed he was right.

  Twenty-Six

  My thoughts are as foam

  On the sea. I try to grasp

  Them and they are gone

  “What is it, Terue?” Simon asked quietly. “You look unhappy.”

  I jumped guiltily, wondering if he had read my thoughts.

  “Of course I’m not unhappy. As long as I am with you, I am content wherever I am. But I cannot stop my thoughts straying to our daughter. If she were here, then my happiness would be complete,” I said honestly.

  “I understand,” Simon said quietly. “If only Kazhua were with us, our world would be perfect.”

  “Do you think she is well? That she is being ca
red for?” I spoke of my daughter longingly, immediately feeling the familiar, hellish ache in my body at the mention of her name.

  “I think she must be well, and cared for,” Simon said quietly. “If it was otherwise, I’m sure that both of us would feel it in our hearts.”

  He put his arms around me and held me tightly, and I was very glad. I had longed for Simon’s embrace when I awoke early that bright morning and had slid quietly into his bedroom before anybody except the house slaves was stirring.

  “You still haven’t made that clock show the right time,” I said absently.

  “It was stopped the moment Papa died, and it’s not going to be set right until Mama comes out of mourning for him.” He stroked my hair gently. “She takes these things very seriously.”

  I wondered how long she would mourn. As far as I was concerned, the sooner she put aside her black clothes and set the clocks right the better. The whole house seemed to sympathize with her loss.

  “Will you be all right?” He grasped my hand and looked at me anxiously. “Mama insists I have to go with her into town, to see my godmother. Mama says she’s been ill and has been asking for me. I think we’ll be gone until this evening.”

  I would have laughed if he hadn’t looked so worried. I had crossed an ocean without taking harm and he thought I might be in danger here, in his own home?

  “Go,” I said firmly. “I shall put on an old kimono and be comfortable and enjoy myself wandering about the house in peace.”

  “If you’re sure?”

  “Go!” I smiled at him. “Go visit your godmother, and don’t worry about me.”

  I waited until the sound of the carriage wheels had died away before I slipped outside, delighting in the sunshine that caressed my face. The peaches on the lovely trees that arched the length of the drive outside the great house were beginning to ripen. I fingered those I could reach until I found one that gave beneath my touch and I plucked it and ate it greedily as I wandered through the garden. Slaves were working there, pulling up any weed that dared to show and clipping the bushes into shape. As I passed, they bowed their heads and shuffled their shoulders around their ears. I would have liked to have spoken to them, to ask them about their families, their lives, but none of them would meet my gaze, so I assumed it would not be courteous to question them and just smiled politely at them instead.