Chapter

           Eleven

Swarming butterflies

Disturb the calm of the pond;

The catfish awakes

The seventh month began hot and humid, the air clinging to our skin, dampening our clothes and hair. We spent a lot of time in the garden, but on those days when the heat made us languid or the mosquitoes were swarming we stayed indoors, calling to Ishi for amazake and fanning ourselves. We’d grown addicted to kaiawase since we’d first played, and often had clam shells spread across the floor of the reception room.

‘I’ve found a match,’ I called one afternoon, reaching for a shell, then yelped in surprise as I saw a foot hovering playfully above my hand. It was Isamu.

‘I was just on my way back to Daimyo Alley and thought I’d call in. Do you have a cold drink for a thirsty guest?’

‘Of course. I’ll tell Ishi you’re here.’ I started to get up but Misaki said, ‘I’ll go, Kasumi. You tidy up our game.’

Still kneeling, I began to gather the shells, sorting them into the octagonal box. ‘Where have you been today?’ I asked.

‘I was at a temple in Ryōgoku, not far from where we saw the fireworks. Look.’

He unrolled a scroll of paper he was holding. I had grown accustomed to the muted delicacy of ink paintings, but now I saw the vivid colours of an ukiyo-e, a woodblock print.

‘Can I have a look?’ I had never had the chance to examine one up close.

He held it out and I took it, studying the composition. In the foreground was a tall bamboo tower, in the background a sunrise, a river with boats. Mount Fuji was visible in the distance.

‘That doesn’t look like a temple,’ I observed.

‘Ekōin temple is where the sumo tournaments are held. That’s a drum tower; someone beats the drum to let everyone know a match is about to start.’

I pointed to the words written on the page. ‘What does this say?’

‘“Ekōin Temple in Ryōgoku and Moto-Yanagi Bridge”. It’s from a series called One Hundred Views of Edo by the artist Hiroshige.’

‘So there are a hundred pictures like this?’

‘Not yet, but eventually. Many of the great ukiyo-e artists have painted series like this of places in the city or famous beauty spots; there have been series about the highways too — even the Nakasendo.’

‘You know a lot about ukiyo-e.’

‘I’ve been collecting prints like a tourist. They were invented here in Edo, you know. My uncle doesn’t approve of ukiyo-e at all; he considers them common, a low form of art. But they’re really very striking, aren’t they? The subject matter is quite different from traditional art, but I like the way these pictures capture life right now, the busyness, the movement and the colour. That can also be beautiful.’

‘I think so too,’ I said. I remembered the euphoria I’d felt walking to the fireworks-viewing party. I had been distracted by the activities we did at home, painting and ikebana, shell-matching and strolling in the garden, but recalling that night made me want to be out in the life, the colour, of the bustling city. Other than the fireworks festival we had been nowhere.

As I handed the print back to Isamu, I realised there was a second page beneath the first. ‘What’s this other one?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ he said, his hand closing on the picture.

But I had already grasped the second page by the corner and tugged it free.

I was expecting another city scene, but instead it was a portrait of a beautiful woman. It was night-time, and she was alone in a room lit by a lantern in the corner. She was half turned to look out the window at the dark night, and one had a glimpse of bare skin at the nape of her neck.

The words stuck in my throat as I felt an unexpected surge of jealousy.

‘Beauty prints are very popular,’ Isamu said. A flush was rising up his throat to colour his cheeks. ‘They’re almost as popular as kabuki actor prints.’

I kept my eyes fixed on the picture, hoping it looked as if I were studying the technique, that my feelings weren’t written on my face.

‘As an artist, I’m interested in the composition,’ he explained, when I still said nothing. ‘I’m not collecting them or anything.’ His brow was furrowed slightly as he took the beauty print back and concealed it again beneath the temple picture.

‘Thank you for showing me the temple print,’ I said. ‘Do you have any more? Pictures of the city, I mean.’

‘Actually I do have some that might interest you: I’ve bought a couple of fireworks prints.’

‘Oh, I’d love to see those. Are they of the festival we went to? Do they show the same fireworks we saw?’

Isamu laughed. ‘I find it hard to distinguish between fireworks, but maybe you can; I’m told you have a good eye.’ Told by whom? I felt a rush of pride, followed almost immediately by a sudden rush of embarrassment at the memory of the day I had met Lord Shimizu. What had my father said? She has very clever eyes . . . It is a pity that in all other ways she is stupid. The stake that sticks out gets hammered down, I reminded myself. My pride was misplaced.

But there was no hint of insult in Isamu’s manner as he said, ‘Perhaps you’ll be able to recognise the fireworks we saw. I’ll bring the prints the next time I come.’ The awkwardness of the beauty print was passed over as if it had never happened.

Misaki returned with more amazake and, seeing that most of the shells were still spread across the floor, said, ‘Let’s take our drinks outside.’

When we were sitting under a camphor laurel tree, Misaki poured, handed Isamu a cup and asked if he had any news of her husband; Shimizu had returned from a fortnight away only to leave again within a few days. It had been four days since we’d seen him.

‘One of Shunsho-san’s men saw him in Shimoda the day before yesterday and all was well.’

After he’d finished his tea, Isamu stood to leave.

‘I’ll see you to the door,’ Misaki said. ‘Will you finish putting the shells away in the reception room, Kasumi?’

I carefully gathered the valuable shells, putting them into the top compartment of the lacquered box. As I was putting the box away in the cupboard, it was obstructed by a sheaf of papers. It was an odd place for them, I thought, as Lord Shimizu stored all his documents in the other part of the house; perhaps he had misplaced them. I pulled them out, thinking that they might be needed, and saw that they were in fact pictures: woodblock prints. Hadn’t Isamu said that his uncle didn’t approve? Even more odd, when I leafed through them, I discovered they were all variations on the same theme: namazu, the giant catfish. I knew what the catfish meant: he was the one who caused earthquakes. In the first picture the kami Kashima, who was responsible for keeping the namazu contained, had fallen asleep on the job. In another, the namazu was grinning as the city burned. Why would Shimizu have a collection like this?

I walked through the dining room towards the entryway, still studying a picture of Kashima threatening an evil-looking catfish with a sword, thinking to show them to Isamu, but as I reached the doorway I heard Misaki murmur, ‘Will you take this?’

Something in the tone of her voice made me look up. She was holding out a letter. I stepped back so that they couldn’t see me and peered around the corner.

‘With pleasure,’ Isamu said, his voice equally low.

‘You won’t — you won’t tell anyone, will you?’ Misaki asked.

‘No! Misaki-san, I would never tell,’ he said urgently. Then, more softly, he added, ‘I would never put you in danger.’ He unrolled the woodblock prints he was holding and slipped the letter between.

Misaki gazed at the prints, her brow furrowed. ‘Is that . . .?’

‘It’s just a print I bought today. I shouldn’t have brought them. I hadn’t intended to drop in. I just happened to be passing and . . .’ He shrugged.

‘My husband wouldn’t be pleased,’ Misaki said, her eyes still fixed on the prints. Or was she thinking of the letter rolled up inside?

‘I know. I shouldn’t have come. I just wanted . . .’ Again, he left the sentence hanging.

He had wanted to see Misaki, I realised. I thought of the beauty in the print he had tried to conceal; she was alluring, but not half as breathtaking as my mistress. Of course Isamu, with his artist’s eye, couldn’t help but be moved by such loveliness. And hadn’t I suspected before that he had feelings for her, when he’d defended her so vehemently against the slurs of the women from his domain?

I hurried back to the reception room, unwilling to hear more.

Behind me, I heard Misaki say, ‘Thank you for coming to see us, Isamu. I hope we’ll see you again soon.’ Her tone was artificially bright, and I suspected her words were meant to carry to me, to Ishi in the kitchen and anyone else in earshot.

‘I’ll call by again in a couple of days,’ said Isamu, his voice, too, unnaturally loud.

In the reception room I shoved the prints back into the cupboard and the shell box after them, just as Misaki entered.

She said nothing of the exchange, merely observing, ‘It’s hopeless playing shells with you; you always find the match so much quicker than me.’

‘I’m sorry.’ But my mind wasn’t on the shells any more than hers was. What was in the letter she had handed Isamu? It was obvious now that she had deliberately sent me to the reception room so I wouldn’t witness it. Yet I couldn’t believe that Misaki would betray her husband. I had seen the way she looked at him, heard how her voice changed when she spoke to him; there was no question that he was the only man in her heart. She was clearly fond of Isamu, and enjoyed teasing him, but she wasn’t in love with him.

And Isamu: surely he wouldn’t betray his uncle? But love could make people do crazy things, I thought dully. If you believed the old stories, it could even make a samurai marry a servant. Perhaps he had given Misaki a letter to confess his feelings and she had replied explaining that she couldn’t return them.

I thought that Isamu would stop visiting once he’d read Misaki’s letter, and was sure he’d forget our conversation about the fireworks print — indeed, I was almost hoping he would, given the embarrassing moment over the beauty print — but the following week he called by again, holding a sheaf of papers.

‘Misaki is outside with the gardener,’ I told him.

‘I know. I saw her on the way in. She’ll join us soon and said you would offer me some cold tea. Anyway, it’s you I was looking for.’

‘Me?’ I felt a quick surge of pleasure.

‘I’ve brought the prints I was telling you about.’ He held up the sheaf of papers.

‘I didn’t think you’d remember.’

‘I’d never forget a promise to you,’ he said, looking me straight in the eye. For a moment it seemed that he might be serious, that it might mean something, and my heart began to beat a little quicker. Then he grinned and the moment was broken. ‘But like I told you, my uncle doesn’t approve of ukiyo-e, so don’t talk about them to him, okay?’

‘Of course not.’ I liked the idea that he was trusting me with a secret.

He handed me the sheets and I began to flip through them. One showed a view from above of a single firework over Ryōgoku bridge, as if seen through the eye of a bird. Another was from the point of view of a boat on the river. The bridge took up most of the picture, with a web of coloured lights just visible in the top of the frame. The third print made me gasp. I had thought the fireworks I’d witnessed resembled flowers and I could see I wasn’t the only one. One of the fireworks in this picture had bloomed in the shape of a chrysanthemum; another blazed like the sun. They were seen through a window; the setting looked like a teahouse.

‘So, can you recognise our fireworks?’ Isamu asked.

‘No,’ I confessed. ‘But I like this one of the flowers in the sky: it’s just what I thought of when I saw them. What do the words say?’

He pointed to the top line: ‘“Fireworks Festival at Ryōgoku”. It’s from a series called Festivals of Edo.’ He pointed to two red squares. ‘This is the name of the artist and this is the censor’s seal. All prints have to be passed by the censor before they are published so that they can’t be used to criticise the Shogun.’

‘Do you have any more by this artist?’

He hesitated, then took the pile of prints from me and flicked through it. ‘There’s this one.’

I took the sheet he offered. It showed the sun going down over a cluster of rooftops, and above them a series of bamboo poles, their leaves still on. The poles were strung with coloured streamers, which I recognised at once as strips of coloured paper with poems written on them.

‘It’s a picture of Tanabata, isn’t it?’ The festival of the Weaver-maiden and the Cowherd would be celebrated in a few days’ time, just before Obon, the festival of the dead.

‘Your collection must be enormous,’ I said. ‘What would your uncle say?’

‘He —’ Isamu broke off, looking troubled.

‘Actually I don’t think he’d mind,’ I said, suddenly recalling the catfish prints. ‘Look what I found.’ Kneeling to open the door of the cabinet, I reached behind the shell-matching box for the prints. ‘You see?’ I handed them to Isamu. ‘You don’t need to worry about your uncle; he’s a secret collector as well.’

‘Oh . . .’ As he looked through them, his expression was sombre. ‘I wouldn’t show these to anyone else, Kasumi, or mention them to my uncle. This collection — it’s personal.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You recognise the catfish, I presume.’

‘Of course. It’s namazu, who causes the earthquakes.’

He tapped some writing. ‘These pictures are from Ansei 2.’

‘Ansei 2? So they have something to do with the Edo earthquake,’ I realised.

‘My uncle lost his wife and daughter in one of the fires that started after the earthquake. Lady Aimi was the youngest daughter of the daimyo. She and Aya were staying in the domain mansion while my uncle was travelling on business for the daimyo.’

‘I didn’t know.’ So that was what had happened to Lord Shimizu’s previous family. I remembered him telling my father he hadn’t been blessed with children. It turned out he had, but his child had been cruelly taken from him — so cruelly he couldn’t bear to talk about it.

‘My uncle must have kept these as a reminder of that terrible time.’ Isamu gazed at them for a moment longer before handing them back to me.

I put them back where I found them, my heart full of sorrow for what Lord Shimizu had suffered and the pain he bore in secret. No wonder he was so protective of Misaki. And no wonder Isamu had been gladdened by his uncle’s remarriage. Then I remembered the letter. I only hoped that neither Misaki nor Isamu would do anything to cause Shimizu more pain.