They say that women
Are the weaker sex. How comes
It that we give birth?
“Your house is truly beautiful, Akira-san.” I had no need to try and inject wonder into my voice. I spoke the simple truth. Even the hall was an example of good, and very expensive, taste. The woodwork had obviously been taken from a far older building. It gleamed with the gentle sheen that only very old wood gains. There was no tatami matting, just wood-block flooring so finely wrought that not even a sheet of rice paper could have been inserted into the grooves.
“I am delighted that it is to your taste. Please, come in.”
Akira’s words recalled Libby Kelso calling out to me—a world and years ago—“Come ben!” when she welcomed me to her simple Highland croft. Yet how different was this sumptuous place! Akira sounded genuinely pleased that I was admiring his home, so I raised my eyes and looked around boldly.
After a second, I became puzzled. My gaze flitted over exquisite scrolls. A single pillar bearing a vase, unadorned by flowers. Screens that were glazed with the finest silk rather than paper. Surely, none of this was new to me! Hope rose in a tide of joy. Was I seeing all this through Kazhua’s eyes? Was her spirit still here, whispering to me? I almost laughed out loud at my own incredulity. Of course, I had seen this before. Or something very like it. Akira had re-decorated Auntie’s Green Tea House to reflect his own taste. That was why it looked so very familiar.
Akira slid open a door at the end of the corridor and I stepped through. The whole house was percolated with a strange scent. Not flowers, although there were flowers in this room. Nor incense. This perfume was headier than either. I breathed deeply and the aroma seemed to linger on my tongue. I tasted it and found it exotic. Did I like it? I wasn’t entirely sure.
“You will take tea.” Akira clapped his hands without waiting for me to answer. A maid came in at once. “Are you hungry? Would you like some daifuku cakes? Or perhaps some bean curd jam?”
We had eaten dinner very early yesterday, and I had had no appetite for breakfast this morning. My hunger awoke at his words.
“Yes, please,” I said simply.
Akira nodded at the maid. It seemed to me that she was gone barely a second before she was back with a tray containing plates of food and a steaming kettle along with all the paraphernalia needed to make tea.
“Thank you,” I said politely. “Please leave the tray next to me. I will prepare the tea.”
She glanced at Akira. He must have nodded as she put the tray down and left silently. I took the steaming kettle and poured water on the green tea powder, whisking it carefully before I handed the brimming cup to Akira with a bow. I sat back on my heels and waited for him to taste it before I made myself a cup. It had been a very long time since I had performed the tea ceremony. I examined my performance critically. Had I done everything right? I thought so. My own tea was delicious.
The steam from my cup mingled with the teasing aroma. I inhaled both and felt myself very content. Akira smiled at me. I returned his smile and allowed myself to stare around the room.
Kazhua had been here. She had walked these same floorboards. No doubt admired the tokonoma, backed by a scroll and a vase of flowers with a sparsely beautiful ikebana flower arrangement. Perhaps she had arranged the flowers herself at one time; Auntie would surely have instructed her in the art. I put my head on one side, trying to feel her presence. Had she been happy here? Had she stayed because she wanted to, or had Akira made her his prisoner? Alas, the empty air divulged no whisper. I saw that Akira was watching me and I returned his glance firmly. I decided that surely Kazhua must have enjoyed living in this lovely house. And Akira was, undoubtedly, an attractive man. It must have been pleasant for her, I thought, having such a rich, powerful man dangling on her every whim.
I smiled at the thought, and Akira smiled with me.
“You perform the tea ceremony with great grace and skill.” I inclined my head in acknowledgment. “I doubt if any geisha in Edo could do it better. In fact, if I didn’t know that you came from Kagoshima, I would have taken you for a native of the Floating World. Your accent is not at all provincial.”
“You are most kind, Akira-san,” I murmured.
I tried to gather my scattered wits. What was the matter with me? I was here to find out about Kazhua, not to eat and drink and be flattered by Akira. But it was all far too much trouble. I sipped my tea and simply waited for him to speak again. Instead, he threw his head back and laughed with what appeared to be very real amusement. A thread of silvery saliva ran from one of those sharp incisors to his bottom tooth. For a moment, I fancied myself a morsel of food, caught between his strong, white teeth and I shuddered.
“Tara-chan, you are truly beautiful. And very mysterious. I can’t make you out at all. I wonder, would it amuse me to try and steal you from your gaijin?”
“I don’t know. Would it? I had heard rumors that your heart had already been stolen, never to be returned.” I put my head to one side and stared at Akira quite rudely. His pupils were so huge that they dominated his eyes, almost drowning out the glittering grey that surrounded him. His face was very calm, neither amused nor angry.
“Is that so? And do you really believe that I would allow my most intimate business to be known by the whole of the Floating World, Tara-chan?”
I thought about that for a moment. The way Akira put it, it did seem like nonsense. Did that mean that the search for Kazhua that had led me here was no more sensible than chasing leaves in the wind? I frowned. I was angry with Akira for giving me hope and then snatching it away.
“I suppose not,” I said sulkily.
“And if I told you that it was true?”
He was mocking me. I glared at him, and it seemed to me that the glitter in those grey eyes intensified.
“Have you been smoking opium?” I demanded abruptly. My terrible manners seemed to amuse him still further.
“I have. Would you like some? My enemies, of which I have many, would tell you that the opium I keep for myself is made only from white poppies, grown at very high altitudes. They say it is grown in fields kept especially for me, and that it casts a spell that cannot be compared to any opium available elsewhere. That is all nonsense, of course. But it is the very best opium. I reserve the last of the seed-head crop for myself. That way, the residue is very strong and very fragrant.”
So that was the fragrance I had been enjoying. Truly, it did not smell like any opium I had ever encountered before. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, I thought for a mere second or two, but I must have been wrong. When I opened them again, Akira had a little tray in front of him. It contained a burner with an open flame and a bone pipe with a long, slender silver stem. He was holding a knob of deep, black opium over the flame. Already, it was beginning to look sticky and to smolder. He smiled at me and pushed the opium firmly into the pipe, holding the bowl back over the flame until it was to his satisfaction.
“Would you like to try it?” Akira held the glowing pipe out to me.
I shook my head firmly. “I took opium once. I did not enjoy it.”
“Ah, but I have told you. This is different. Come, Tara-chan. If we are to be friends, surely you will do me the honor of sharing a single pipe with me?”
He was at my side. How that happened, I had no idea. I had not seen him move. His hand moved very slowly as he pushed the pipe between my parted lips.
“Just breathe the smoke in.” I took a cautious breath. The smoke was very hot and very intense. It caught in my throat and I coughed. Akira patted my back very gently, and for some reason, I found that funny. I laughed, and he promptly put the stem of the pipe back between my lips. I had to breathe. I had no choice but to inhale.
In the days when I had been a geisha, I had prepared opium pipes many times for my patrons. They had always tried to entice me to take some of the drug. Their descriptions of the effect it had on them differed widely. Some said I would find it very relaxing. Others went further, and promised it would give me dreams more beautiful than any I could ever find in sleep. Some, probably more truthful, said simply that they could not describe the sensations it induced. I had never been tempted. I had taken opium only once, and very briefly. But I had not liked the sensation it had given me at all. I had felt deprived of my own will, uncaring what I did or what was done to me. I had never been tempted to try the drug again.
This was nothing at all like the opium I had taken. Akira had spoken honestly when he said his opium was very special. I stared around me in fascination. All the beautiful objects that filled his home glowed. I was sure that an unfelt breeze swayed the ikebana display. Its perfume seemed to steal across the room to me, winding itself in my senses. I could hear colors and see sounds that could not have been in that room. Sighs—of pleasure or pain? I had no idea which. The sea, sliding across a beach far, far away.
“So beautiful!” I whispered.
Akira took a deep pull on the pipe. And then another. “Do I really know you, Tara-chan?” he asked softly. “I know the Tara-chan who is kept by the tall, clumsy gaijin. I know you enough to be intrigued. But apart from that, why do I feel that I have known you for a long time? That the little I know of you hides many things that you will not let me see? It’s very odd, but although you come from the back of beyond, far away from the Floating World, your accent is pure Edo.”
I shrugged. “I have the unfortunate habit of speaking like the people around me, Akira-san,” I said innocently. “The girl I shared a room with in Kagoshima came from Kyoto, and everybody told me I sounded just like her.”
“Really? That explains it then.” Akira arched his brows. Did he believe me? I had no idea. “In any event, listen to me now, Tara-chan. Nobody defies me. Ever. They are all far too afraid of me to dare. Are you afraid of me, little one? I suggest that you think carefully before you answer and tell me the truth.”
I barely gave it a second’s thought. “No,” I said simply.
He stood, towering over me and almost blocking out the light. “In the whole of my life, only one ever dared to flout me. And that was a woman. The only one who has ever dared to disobey my wishes. There were those who said she was not a woman at all, but a fox spirit. Were they right, I wonder? For sure, she had green eyes and hair almost as red as a vixen’s coat. Are you her, come back to torment me in a different body? Has my fox spirit possessed you, just as she possessed my Kazhua? If you are inhabited by Kazhua’s fox spirit, then jealousy must have drawn you back to me. Ah, but that pleases me greatly.”
He was talking about my daughter. There could not be two geisha in the Floating World with red hair and green eyes. Surely, the coincidence that Akira had chosen to call her by the name I had given to her was the final proof. Even in my befuddled state, I felt a deep well of pure happiness.
I had found her at last!
“What happened to her? To your fox spirit?” My voice was slurred. I focused desperately on the ivory netsuke that hung from Akira’s obi. It had been styled into the shape of a fox’s head—of course!—and as I stared at it I was sure it winked at me in return. I couldn’t help it, I threw my head back and laughed out loud.
“She laughed at me as well,” Akira whispered. “No matter what I did to her, she still laughed. She would not break, would not bend to my wishes. To my needs. I would have given my life for her, but she didn’t want it. She didn’t want me at all. If I hadn’t loved her so much, I would have killed her. There still are days when I wish I had.”
I stared at him. The opium was still fast hold of all my senses, but I had heard one thing very clearly. No matter what I did to her. How dare Akira say he loved my daughter in the same breath as he uttered those terrible words?
“If she really was a fox spirit, surely it was foolish to try and hurt her?” I forced my thick tongue to speak carefully. “She could have taken the most terrible revenge on you.”
“She did. She left me for a riverbed beggar of an actor. Perhaps he was protected by her spell as well. I tried to kill him, but he wouldn’t die. Get to your feet.” Akira’s tone was suddenly harsh. I scrambled to my feet and swayed. His hand grabbed my arm and he tugged me after him.
“Where are we going?” I asked helplessly. His grip was so tight, my arm felt as if it was bound with iron.
“I don’t know what to make of you, Tara-chan. You worry me. Did we meet in a past life? Is that it? Or are you really my lovely Kazhua come back to me?”
My lips were too dry to form words. Instead of trying to speak, I turned my head and bit his wrist as hard as I could. I tasted blood, but it worried Akira not at all. He threw his head back and laughed.
“Here.” A screen door slid open at his touch and he tugged me into a large, airy room. The scent of jako seeds was gentle on the air. “Is any of this familiar to you? Do you know where you are? Tell me now.”
I stared around. My head was spinning to the extent that I was not sure if it was me who was whirling or if it was the room that was whirling around me. I took a deep breath and then another. I closed my eyes and wished immediately I had not as the dizziness threatened to knock me off my feet. Still, when I opened my eyes again I found it had helped a little. At least I could focus.
“What do you see?” Akira’s mouth was very close to my ear. I could smell his breath, heavy with the scent of opium poppies.
“It is very beautiful,” I said seriously.
Akira moved away from me and I swayed, grabbing the wall for support.
“What is in these drawers?” He had moved across the room and placed his hand on a Western-style chest of drawers made of some very fine, almost white, wood. “Do you know?”
I put my head on one side, considering. “Underclothes?” I guessed. “Perhaps an obi or two?”
He was staring at me, as if he was trying to read my face. “Is that what you think? Or are you lying? She lied to me constantly. She told me that she didn’t love me. That she would never love me. She was lying, wasn’t she?” His voice was suddenly deeply pitiful. My befuddled mind balanced the thoughts that this wicked man had hurt my child with the sudden shocking knowledge that in her own way she had hurt him equally as much.
“I don’t know,” I said simply. “I don’t know what happened here. What passed between you.”
Akira’s arms hung limply by his side. He fingered the drawer behind him and pulled it out with his fingertips. I watched his face and saw a sudden look of cunning there.
“Look!” He held up his hands, palm upward. They were full of delicate combs, the bands glittering with gold and the prongs bright red. Lord Dai had bought me a set of combs similar to these. They were fabulously expensive and I had taken them from him with many expressions of gratitude. But I had never worn them. Each prong was a kingfisher’s beak, and I couldn’t bear the thought that a once-living part of such a beautiful bird would touch my scalp. “Do you like them? I gave Kazhua a set of combs for each day of the week. She loved them and wore them always.”
He was lying. If I hadn’t been able to see it in his face, I knew my daughter would never have been happy to think so many kingfishers had been slaughtered for nothing more than an expensive trinket. I kept a stone face.
“They are very beautiful,” I said neutrally. “I have never seen such fine examples before. I’m surprised she didn’t take them with her, if she liked them so much.”
The combs trickled through his fingers and fell back into the drawer like so many blossoms of blood.
“She took nothing I gave her. Nothing but the clothes she stood up in.”
I shared his pain. Suddenly, I understood that this man who appeared to have the entire Floating World at his command had lost the one thing that had meant everything to him. Just as I had.
“I’m sorry, Akira-san. I do not know your Kazhua.” And that was true enough. The Kazhua I knew and loved was not his Kazhua. “Perhaps you will be happier when you take another woman into your life.”
I spoke quickly, knowing that if I paused, my words would become jumbled. The opium fumes in my brain were clearing a little, but I was still floating on a cloud of euphoria that made everything seem unreal.
“Perhaps I will.” Akira was staring at me. I felt his gaze pin me with as much mercy as a moth plucked by a bat. “I sense my pretty combs did not appeal to you, Tara-san. Perhaps I have something else hidden away that you might like?”
The air was thick with anticipation and I was suddenly sure that he was talking about his tree of flesh. The conceit of the man, to think that all he had to do was wave it at me to make me happy. In her better moods, Auntie had been fond of warning us geisha to beware of the patrons, no matter how sweet they were to our faces. Trust none of them, she instructed. They will all lie to you. Believe those lies, and you are as foolish as they are. Lie with them for the lie, and we had no place in her house. We had laughed behind her back at her old woman’s wisdom. Little did I know at the time that Simon, my husband, had been her lover before he met me. And that it was Auntie who had taught him the tricks of pleasing a woman.
“I thank you for your hospitality, Akira-san.” My voice trembled. I knew it was with anger, but I hoped he thought it was the opium. “But I think it is time I left now. Callum-san will probably have returned, and will be worried if I am not there to meet him.”
“Callum-san does not worry me in the least.” Akira fingered the neck of his robe. “When you get back, you may tell him where you have been or not, whatever pleases you. He’s not going to understand a word you say, but I daresay it may salve your conscience to tell him anyway. It doesn’t matter. Only one other woman has ever seen what I am about to show to you. I assure you, you will find it worth keeping Callum-san waiting.”
I was about to snap at him, to tell him what I thought of his smug arrogance, when I suddenly realized he could not be talking about his tree. Surely, many women would have given pleasure to the great yakuza. Many women must have seen his tree and enjoyed it. I remembered the samurai who looked at him in admiration and thought that perhaps many men, also, had seen his hidden jewel. It was something else then. I was intrigued despite myself and I watched him silently as he tugged at the elaborate knot in his obi. It defied him and he cursed, tearing at the expensive silk with his fingernails. I leaned forward, almost ready to help, but changed my mind and stayed still. Whatever Akira had in mind, I would not give him the satisfaction of showing I was in the least interested in what he had to offer me.
He gave a grunt of satisfaction as the obi finally parted and his robe fell open. As he shrugged it from his body, the netsuke that hung from his obi made a noise almost like the chiming of a tiny bell as it hit the floor. I barely registered the noise, my whole senses were reeling as I looked at Akira’s naked body.
He stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, then turned slowly until he was once again facing me.
“Well?” he demanded. My mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Without any instruction from my brain, my body jerked upright and I walked across and ran my hand across his chest and down his stomach. I felt the skin beneath my palm glowing red hot, like a fine piece of silk that had just been ironed. I walked around Akira, studying him from every angle in mingled amazement and admiration.
His whole body was a superb work of art. I knew, of course, of the yakuza tradition of tattooing much of the body. In Japan, it would be unheard of for any man who was not allied to a yakuza organization to have any sort of tattoo. But this! Every fragment of Akira’s body shimmered with color. Only his head and neck and hands, from the wrists down, were unadorned. And in contrast to the rioting, writhing tattoos everywhere else, the naked skin looked as dull as a dead fish’s belly.
The tattoos had been inflicted by the hand of a master. What fancy had possessed Akira, I wondered, to make such choices to decorate his body? Flowers opened their blossoms beneath my touch. I leaned forward, sniffing his skin, certain that I could smell their fragrance. A crested crane cradled his chest muscles. Beneath it, a tiger raised its massive paw casually, as if to swipe. So real were the images that I found myself hoping the great cat would miss its target. On his back, I saw a fox, its teeth bared in defiance to the world, its tail dangling artfully so that it disappeared into the cleft of his buttocks. In my heightened state of awareness, I thought the fox tattoo might be newer than the rest. It seemed to me that the colors were just a little brighter, and that possibly it had been executed by a different hand than the rest of the tattoos. A tribute to Kazhua, the fox spirit? Everywhere I looked was color. Birds and flowers and vines and snakes, all seemed to writhe before my astonished gaze until I thought I was truly looking at a jungle filled with creatures that had never seen the soil of Japan.
And as I looked, eyes looked back at me. Inserted cunningly amongst the other artwork, a half-closed eye peered around the tiger’s belly. Another rested against a rioting flowering vine. A pair stared insolently from each side of Akira’s belly button. The more I looked, the more eyes I saw. I put my finger out and poked one deliberately, hoping that they would close beneath my probing. They did not, but Akira laughed.
“You understand? Even when I sleep, my body does not. People say that I see into their very hearts. And they are correct. My body sees what my true eyes do not. Nothing can be kept from me.”
I nodded, but it was more to keep him quiet than in agreement. I licked my lips as I saw that even his tree of flesh was decorated. It was covered in vines, decorated with shy, just opening white flowers. White. In Japan, the color of mourning. Akira’s idea of a joke perhaps? Or was it a warning? I trailed my finger down the length of his tree and felt the way that the path of the vines followed his veins. I winced, feeling the pain the tattoos must have caused in my own flesh. Was it the tattoos that made his tree seem to stand so tall and proud, or was Akira really so well favored by nature? I giggled at the thought, and his hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.
“You have seen the pain I have endured, and yet you dare still laugh at me?” he snarled.
I stared at him and the giggle turned to a full-throated laugh. Akira might be feared by everybody in Edo, and I had no doubt with very good cause, but his words had sounded exactly like the dialogue a villain in a kabuki play would utter just before the hero charged on stage and rescued the maiden-in-distress.
His eyes bulged with anger and I saw the pulse in his neck beat fiercely. It was all so shockingly over-done that I laughed until tears ran down my face. When I wiped my streaming eyes with my hands, I saw his rearing tree had wilted. I rather thought that even the colors of his tattoos were diminished.
“I must apologize, Akira-san.” I found my manners and my sense at the same moment. I even managed a reasonably servile cringe, staring at the floor with lowered eyes. “I think it must have been the opium. Please forgive me.”
He stooped and picked up his robe, flinging it over his body. He grimaced as he glanced at the obi, forever ruined by his own scrabbling nails. Still, he pulled it tight around his waist. He was massaging his wrists in an odd gesture, as though he felt pain there.
“I do not frighten you.” It was a statement, not a question, and I did not reply. He reached out and pushed my chin up so that it was fully in the light. He watched my face curiously. “You have heard my reputation, Tara-chan?” I nodded. “Perhaps people have told you how many of my enemies have disappeared without any trace of their passing. Or have you heard of bodies found in public places, impaled on bamboo stakes or lacking limbs?”
I shuddered. I had heard of this, and at the time thought it nothing but tales to enhance Akira’s reputation.
“I have heard such rumors, Akira-san,” I said.
“And you have seen the glory of my body, so you know that I do not fear pain myself. And you still laugh at me.”
The last of the opium fumes left my head. I felt my mind clear and knew suddenly exactly what danger I had put myself in. I took a deep breath and inhaled the pleasant scent of jako seeds. My eyes flew open and I met Akira’s gaze calmly. He had not broken my daughter. He would not break me.
“You will not hurt me.” I spoke clearly and firmly. He blinked in surprise. For a long moment, we stared at each other. I knew I was safe when Akira shook his head.
“I will not hurt you.” He echoed my words. I waited, certain he was going to say something else, but he did not. Instead, he gripped my chin in his fingers, quite gently, and turned my head from side to side, staring at me all the time. My voice was muffled by the effort to move my lips.
“I think I should go now, Akira-san.”
He nodded slightly. “Yes. Go back to your gaijin. Tell him what happened to you today after all. He will not understand you, of course. But I think it is only fair that he should know. Mata mite ne, Tara-chan.” Until we meet again.
I arched my lips in a small smile. “Sayounara, Akira-san,” I said with rigorous politeness.
I felt eyes on my back as I walked out, but whether they were Akira’s eyes or the tattooed eyes on his body, I had no idea.