24.

Feudal Japan

MARCH, 1704

Shigaraki

At the fork where the path to Yakibō’s farmhouse meets the road, Saburo turns to bow his farewells, one last time. Goatee freshly trimmed and topknot fashionably oiled for the first time in months, he puts a cheerful face on his departure, but his smile fades as he strides away, knowing he’s about to betray the man who just sent him off with a full stomach and his blessing.

He rounds the bend, and the trees finally hide Yakibō and Hattsan from view. From the bridge ahead, he’ll double back through the forest, following the stream to the hut. By the time he gets there, Hattsan should be on the other side of the hill, chopping the wood they gathered yesterday, and Yakibō will be puttering around inside his kiln, arranging his latest batch of pottery for the spring firing.

The stream roars with snowmelt as the poet approaches the battered wooden bridge. He glances around to make sure he’s alone, then cuts into the forest, slipping and sliding up the hill, scrambling through the knee-high bamboo that carpets the ground. When the trees are thick enough to hide him from the road, he stops to catch his breath and adjust his sandal, then pushes on, keeping the torrent on his left. He’s just beginning to think he missed the hut when he spies its mossy roof through the trees ahead. He stops, listening for the sound of Hattsan’s axe in the distance. There it is. Thwock, thwock.

Melting icicles over the crooked door drip dark lines onto his back as he ducks inside. He stops to let his eyes adjust, and the six tea bowl boxes lined up on the shelf emerge from the darkness. Crossing, he snatches up the one labeled Ude-jiman, hoping he was wrong about its being empty. But Yakibō has already broken his attachment to Pride—it’s too light to have anything inside. His disappointment increases as he lifts Mikudasu, Kanzen-shugi, and Ganko. All empty.

The old fanatic must be getting pretty close to enlightenment, he thinks sourly, since he’s already managed to rid himself of Pride, Arrogance, Perfectionism, and Rigid Thinking, as well as First Love.

Yabō is the only one left. He unties his bundle, setting the box atop his belongings. But when he stretches his carrying cloth up around the addition, the corners don’t quite meet.

He groans. When he landed on Yakibō’s doorstep, his traveling cloth had held only a change of clothes, his writing supplies, and a magnificent lacquer box filled with strips of fine paper for jotting haiku as poetic inspiration arose. But during his time in Shigaraki, belongings that might actually keep him alive on his journey had joined them, and his clothes had multiplied. The kimono he’d arrived in (chosen because it fit his romantic image of an itinerant poet, even though it was made of laughably impractical silk) had been traded for thick, homespun leggings, hemp robes, a warmer cloak, and a shaggy waterproof cape. He’s wearing the wide conical hat that will shield him from rain and sun, but two pairs of straw sandals (for when his current ones wear out), plus a set of wooden geta clogs to keep his feet out of the mud, have to be carried too. He hadn’t realized how bulky everything would be, and last night he’d been too drunk on sake and a sense of his own destiny to realize that adding the tea bowl to his already strained carrying cloth would be a problem.

But it is. If he wants to take Yabō, he’ll have to leave something behind. He considers the options. Not the footwear. It’s miserable to limp along in worn-out shoes. And not the flint, knife, or pot, because he’d learned the hard way how unpleasant it is to spend a cold, hungry night far from an inn. That left things that weren’t lifesaving necessities. He’ll need the brushes, ink sticks, and inkstone for writing poetry, but what about the writing box that holds his strips of blank paper? He gazes at its glossy golden lid, lavishly patterned with a design of clouds and dragons. His father had commissioned it from the finest lacquer artist in Kyoto as a going-away present, but it’s bulky. If he takes it out, the tea bowl will fit.

But he can’t leave it behind. It’s too valuable. Saburo shudders, remembering how unpleasant it is to be the target of his father’s ire. He can’t return without the writing box. But he could come back later for it, couldn’t he? He could sneak back along the stream, the way he came today, after he has a stack of fine poems to put inside it. Yes, that’s what he’ll do. He’ll hide the writing box now, and come back for it on his way home.

A nightingale trills outside the hut, and in the silence that follows, he becomes aware that the regular chopping sound of Hattsan’s axe had stopped some time ago. If Hattsan has already finished splitting the pile of wood they’d collected yesterday, he’ll soon be hauling it in to dry. Hauling it to this hut.

Stuffing the slips of blank poetry paper between his folded clothes, he casts about, looking for somewhere to hide the lacquer box. Dig a hole in the earthen floor? No time. Stash it outside? It’ll be damaged by weather. The best he can do is wrap it in his hand towel and thrust it behind the stacked logs, poking it down as far as he can with a stick of kindling. Unless Yakibō and Hattsan burn through the woodpile faster than usual, it ought to stay hidden until he sneaks back in a few months to retrieve it.

He hastily knots his traveling cloth with the tea bowl inside, slings it over his shoulder, and hurries back to the road the way he came.