SHARPEN THE TWOFOLD GAZE
The fact that the theater chief of the Nakamura-za knew Cat required her to change her plan. For an interview with Shichisaburo she would have to see him alone. To do that she would have to look more presentable. With her bamboo hat pulled low and her staff in hand, she took Kasane to the used-clothing dealer just outside the temple gate.
They took off their sandals, pushed aside the short blue curtains, and stepped up from the street onto the tatami-covered platform of the shop. The owner and clerks all shouted greetings as they sat. Cat smoked while a clerk served them tea. Another employee fanned the coals in the porcelain brazier to warm the chill in the open-fronted shop.
“I’m not worthy of such kindness, younger brother,” Kasane murmured.
“Yes, you are.” Cat waved toward the women’s robes that the shopkeeper’s wife held up for Kasane’s approval. “Pick what you like from those.”
Then Cat considered each of the men’s garments. Since everything was about the same size, fit was no problem. But the shop’s owner sent the stock boys on several trips back to the storeroom before she decided on an outfit.
Kasane wasn’t used to being waited on. Tears sparkled in her eyes as she whispered behind her sleeve to Cat. “I’ve never bought anything for myself.”
Cat could tell that. She could tell that this pathetic collection of peasant castoffs was unimagined luxury to Kasane.
Cat had thought to save money by renting clothes. She intended to return them the next morning, after her interview with Nakamura Shichisaburo and after Kasane had impressed her young man, even if only
briefly. But as she watched Kasane’s face set softly alight by the used-clothing dealer’s meager stock, she changed her mind. She instructed the shop owner’s wife to take away the rentals and bring out the better robes. They were a bit faded and worn at the collars, but they had no patches.
Dragonfly’s “little drops” bought Kasane a pair of dark indigo peasant’s trousers, gray leggings, black tabi, and a wadded robe of deep blue cotton with huge white chrysanthemums. Cat mentally computed the cost of the clothes plus the loincloth, wadded jacket, trousers, and leggings she had rented for herself. Then she added a sash of orange-and-yellow tile design to Kasane’s things.
She used the remaining coppers to buy two pair of new straw sandals and two big squares of cotton to use as furoshiki. The shop owner retired to his desk behind a low slatted partition to weigh the coins and enter the items and amount of the sale in his ledger. While he worked, Cat and Kasane changed behind the screen at the back of the shop.
Cat helped Kasane tie the sash low on her hips and tuck up the back of the hem of the jacket in boyish fashion. She redid Kasane’s hair in a tea whisk style. The effect was charming and all the rage among women of Edo. Cat was sure Kasane’s suitor would approve. And since women were forbidden in kabuki companies and in the reception rooms of the priests’ quarters, Kasane would blend in better.
They left to shouts of “Thanks for your continued favors!” from the owner, his wife, and every clerk and stock boy. When they entered the temple grounds again carrying their old clothes in the furoshiki, Kasane could hardly contain her delight. She brushed away motes of imagined lint so she could stroke the robe and sash, whose textures had been softened and their colors deepened by wear.
Cat draped the black paper cloth around her head again and replaced the mask covering her nose and mouth. The mask was hardly noticeable among the other costumed entertainers, and Cat felt safer behind it. Besides, she didn’t want Shichisaburo to recognize her right away. He might turn her away without hearing her out. He had, after all, thoroughly discharged his obligation to her.
Cat and Kasane sat with their legs dangling off the edge of the veranda of the temple’s reception rooms until the sun was setting. When the novice finally came to fetch Cat, she left Kasane sitting in the twilight and followed the boy inside.
The austere cherrywood corridors were cool and dark and serene. The distant chanting of priests seemed to cleanse the air of impure thoughts as thoroughly as the novices cleansed the corridor of dust. Each
morning a row of them, bent double at the waist, their skirts tucked up and with dampened rags pressed to the floor, ran hip to hip along the corridors’ boards, polishing them until they glowed faintly.
When Cat entered Shichisaburo’s crowded room, the actor was admiring a severed human head on a round wooden box lid. It was resting on thick paper, between the sheets of which was the usual cushion of rice bran and ashes to absorb blood. The head’s shaven scalp had been colored a livid purple by the blood that had pooled in it. The bulging eyes were fixed in a death stare.
“What do you think of it?” Shichisaburo gripped the topknot with one hand to steady the head and with the other jovially held the lid up for Cat’s inspection.
“It resembles you remarkably, Your Honor.”
“It does indeed!” Shichisaburo rotated the lid so he could study the wooden likeness from all sides.
He lifted it to look at the bottom of the neck, which had been carved and painted to simulate the sliced skin, sagging muscles, trailing ligaments, and spinal cord and windpipe. He beamed at the young man in formal black hakama and haori coat who knelt with knees slightly spread and hands on his thighs.
“Your master is a genius,” Shichisaburo said. “It’s so lifelike I hear flies buzzing around it. And he used paulownia instead of persimmon wood.”
“Only the best for the greatest, most honorable sir.” The young man bowed low. “My master sends his abject apologies for keeping you waiting. I hurried as fast as I could.”
The young man looked peaked. Riding in a jolting palanquin for two days and a night hadn’t agreed with his digestive system. Sensation was just returning to the hand that had gripped the palanquin’s looped ceiling strap.
“Your master could hardly be blamed. I left the capital precipitously. The road called.”
Actually, Shichisaburo had left Edo just ahead of serious trouble. Kira’s men had returned. They had refrained from applying painful methods of persuasion. Torturing a celebrity like Shichisaburo would have created a scandal, and scandal was what Kira was trying to avoid. But they had mentioned a certain attendant to the shogun’s wife, the woman with whom Shichisaburo was having a dalliance. Shichisaburo had confessed to discovering a missing priest’s costume but had assured them he hadn’t seen the fugitive.
The theaters usually closed down for the eleventh and twelfth months
anyway. Everyone in Edo was making preparations for the new year and had less time for frivolities. The kabuki companies used the lull to prepare plays for the next season. Shichisaburo had decided it was a good time to disappear for a while.
He handed the head to the young man, who swaddled it in a large silk cloth. He placed it reverently in the nest of silk floss in a fragrant cylindrical head box emblazoned with the wood-carver’s crest.
“The likeness arrived at a most propitious time,” Shichisaburo said. “Today we begin rehearsing The Revenge of the Soga Brothers. When this is produced in the last scene, the audience will be stunned.”
Shichisaburo lifted the lid for one last look before the young man tied the red silk cords around the box. He nodded first to the woodcarver’s employee, then to his own assistant. “This gentleman will show you to the stage manager’s room,” he said. “He’ll see that this masterpiece is properly cared for.”
When the two men had gone Shichisaburo turned his attention to Cat, who knelt facing at a respectful angle. She bowed low and placed Dragonfly’s fan and poem on the tatami in front of her. If Shichisaburo had been alone, Cat could have revealed her identity then, but of course the theater chief of the Nakamura-za wouldn’t be alone. Attendants hovered around him here just as they did on stage.
One arranged his layers of silk robes whenever he moved. One poured tea. One tended his pipe. One took dictation, and another ground ink. One sat ready to carry messages and perform any other chores Shichisaburo might need done. Others bustled in and out with letters, gifts, invitations, flowers, and miniature presentation casks of sake.
“The mysterious masked youth of Kazusa!” Shichisaburo smiled artlessly as he balanced Dragonfly’s closed fan on his own and handed it back. “Hashikawa says you have some talent.”
Cat felt a rush of affection and relief. At last she was in the presence of a friendly, familiar face.
“I’m but a stupid fisherman, Your Honor, whom fate has rowed far offshore.” Cat knew of Shichisaburo’s impartial attitude toward sex. She knew that in Edo he frequented both the women’s pleasure district and the boys’. She intended to use his impartiality to get him alone.
She had no trouble flirting from behind a mask. She even used it to advantage. A man as jaded as Shichisaburo would appreciate the dash of intrigue. She flipped open Dragonfly’s fan ingenuously, but her eyes flashed seduction above the black cloth. The fact that she sat at an angle meant she could turn her head slightly and look at him sideways. It was a thoroughly beguiling pose.
“You look familiar.” Shichisaburo knew he was being enticed, and he was enjoying it. “Where might I have met you?”
“Forgive my rudeness, Your Honor, but nowhere, I’m sure. My master”—Cat emphasized “master” just enough to hint at a connection beyond business—“was taking my sister and me to Ise. But he departed for the far shore, sent from this burning house of a world by a brain hemorrhage. It was brought on, the doctor said, by an overindulgence in wine and passion. Now we’re trying to reach the holy shrine alone.”
Cat twisted her towel sensuously around her fingers. The gesture could be either an expression of grief or a form of invitation.
“Your master left you beached and broke, did he?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“And now you want to become a star of the stage, I suppose.”
“No, Your Honor.” Cat lowered her radiant eyes, then raised them in sultry entreaty, staring out through long black lashes.
The look had always worked before, and it worked now. One of Shichisaburo’s painted eyebrows arched in admiration. When he drew in a deep breath, his plump chest expanded, as though filling to capacity with desire.
“I would never aspire to put my mud-stained feet on the boards trod by a celestial talent such as yours.” Cat bowed until her forehead, still swathed in black cloth, brushed the tatami. “I’m such a clumsy oaf, I have trouble keeping my sash tied.”
Cat could hear the attendants’ disapproval in the loud rush of air through their nostrils as they inhaled collectively; but Shichisaburo smiled at the boldness of the overture. Cat continued to stare at the floor as the scribe and the servants excused themselves. The last one to go trimmed the wick of the floor lantern and lowered the wooden openwork night hood over it.
The resulting shadows enhanced the allure of Cat’s vaguely sinister disguise. They etched planes and angles into Shichisaburo’s bloated face. They masked the effects of time and overindulgence on his features. The rustle of his silken robes was sensual. The very darkness was charged with his erotic enthusiasm.
A novice appeared with a pedestaled tray full of covered bowls and tea things. He replaced the half-empty tobacco canister with a full one and fanned the coals in the brazier.
“Shall I make up the bed?” he asked.
“If you would be so kind.” Shichisaburo lifted the lids from the bowls and inspected the contents of each. He found only vegetables and
boiled millet, the usual fare of Buddhist priests. If he was disappointed, he gave no indication.
“Shall I tell the masseur you request his services?” the novice asked.
“I’m exhausted from a long day of travel. I prefer not to be disturbed.” With his chopsticks, Shichisaburo picked up a gray, slimy lump of pickled eggplant and held it out for Cat. “Try this. It’s the specialty here.”
“Will there be anything else?” As the novice bowed, his shaven pate gleamed pale in the darkness.
Only solitude, Shichisaburo thought. That cheap commodity that can’t be bought at any price. “You’ve all been very kind,” he said. “Please express my gratitude to His Reverence.”
When the boy had knelt in the corridor and slid the door closed, Shichisaburo sat staring past Cat’s shoulder until the great bronze temple bell stopped tolling its evening song outside.
“Where have you and your sister and your late master slept at night, Hachibei?” he asked at last.
“In poor inns, Your Honor. Dirty places, most of them, and frequented by the lower orders. But I can assure you I have no fleas nor lice nor carbuncles.”
“If the meanest of beggars can scrape together the price, he can rest his head on the pillow of a roadside inn.” Shichisaburo sighed. “But I, the toast of Edo, am not good enough to sleep in public accommodations. The government fears I might contaminate the lower classes with sumptuous notions, you see.”
Shichisaburo motioned for Cat to eat, but she declined politely. She was touched that Shichisaburo would treat a peasant boy with such consideration. But she thought of Kasane, alone, cold, hungry, and beset by night with its attendant ghosts and ogres and demons bumping about in the darkness under the veranda. Best to hurry this along.
“Is that why you’re staying here, Your Honor?” Cat feigned ignorance of the laws concerning actors.
“It is.” Shichisaburo slurped fermented bean paste soup from one of the bowls. “The priests take us beggars in. And we in turn draw the faithful into their web of cant. We also donate large sums to their coffers.
“But alas, this is not one of those temples smelling of meat and fish,” he said. “The priests have not become obligingly gluttonous and carnal. One finds no compliant nuns here to relieve the tensions of a long, dusty journey.” Shichisaburo sighed wearily. “I could visit the pleasure district, of course, but it’s so inconvenient. The fans mob me and create public commotion.”
“Perhaps one of the handsome young initiates would do as well,” Cat said.
“Acolytes treat sex as if it were a religious obligation.” Shichisaburo finished off the last of the eggplant, drew a paper from the wallet at his side, and wiped his mouth daintily. He crumpled the paper into a tiny ball and slipped it into his sleeve, leaving no unseemly litter. “They become tiresome.”
“Forgive my rudeness, Your Honor. But surely they’re awed by the magnificence of your presence.”
“Do you think so?” Shichisaburo looked positively demure, but Cat knew he was excited by the prospect of groping in darkness with a young, veiled lover.
Cat could imagine his imaginings—boy’s sturdy, smooth thighs. Thin, hard buttocks that would resist the pressure of impassioned fingers. Round, pliant testicles wobbling evasively in his grasp and a slender, throbbing cock to fondle and lick. Cat was almost sorry she would have to disappoint him so completely, although she hoped he would be charmed by the danger she would offer as consolation.
When Shichisaburo helped her escape from Edo, he had settled his accounts with Cat. Now she would have to put herself in his debt. She didn’t relish it. To receive a favor was to sell one’s liberty; but she knew she had best get it over with. She had one more errand to run this night.
She rose onto her knees and moved so close to Shichisaburo that she could hear him wheezing softly with lust. She could smell the aloeswood with which he censed his sleeves. She could smell the pickled radish with which he had cleansed his palate.
When he put a heavy arm around her shoulder and reached out to tug playfully at her sash, she took off her mask. She smiled up into his face.
“Sharpen the twofold gaze of perception and sight, old friend,” she said in a low voice. “What you fish for may not be what you catch.”
It was a credit to his acting ability that Shichisaburo’s expression didn’t twitch. “Unlike the clear-eyed Musashi,” he said with amused dignity, “my business, like yours, is bewilderment.”
“I need a job, Shichi-san.” Cat teasingly tapped his chest with her fan.
“A job!” he murmured. “Don’t be absurd, my lady. Silk brocade doesn’t make a good mop.”
Rain cascaded from the edge of the bridge above, splattering loudly when it hit the shingle of the river bank. Kasane held the lantern up so Cat could see the faces of the people huddled around the blowing fires among the pilings. Cat recognized none of them.
“Have you seen the old blind man and his family?” Cat asked. “The young women and her two children?”
“They left this afternoon.” The old woman’s face was invisible in the shadow cast by the square straw hood over her head.
“Do you know where they were going?”
“No more than I know where the wind blew the dust of the road today.” The woman didn’t even look at Cat, and her tone was hostile. The comradeship born of shared adversity under this bridge was gone. Cat was now an outsider with a lantern, a waterproof umbrella, a new straw raincoat, and probably a dry bed.
Cat had convinced herself that she wouldn’t be interfering with the young woman’s fate if she gave her the food in the furoskiki and the three silver coins she carried wrapped in paper and tucked into the haramaki , the cloth wrapped around her stomach. It was part of the money Shichisaburo had given her, and it was to be a pilgrim’s gift for the young woman and her family.
Cat had always known generosity to outsiders as a form of commerce. It was the buying and selling, on credit, of obligation or future favors or divine blessing. But she was discovering that the joy of giving without expectation of being repaid was much greater than the satisfaction of receiving.
When she realized the young woman was gone, her disappointment was so bitter it almost overwhelmed her. She took deep breaths to stop the sobs rising in her chest. She hitched her straw raincoat up around her neck, pulled her hat down, opened the umbrella, and stepped out into the downpour. The cold, blown rain immediately dispelled the heat of the tears on her cheeks.