CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

A FAST BUSY SPIRIT

Okitsu’s Pine Beach was as lovely as the guidebook claimed. Cat and Kasane waited in the sand among the children who had gathered to watch the ceremony to appease the restless spirit of the homeless ghost. The old priest stood at the water’s edge. He gazed past Suruga Bay and its jagged, dark green rim, the forested mountains of the Izu peninsula to the southwest.

The calm waters of the bay had been burnished by the rays of the setting sun. The late-afternoon light gilded the fishermen’s sails as the last of them dipped and bowed in the wind. Behind him, Mount Fuji’s slopes glowed copper.

The priest was chanting softly to himself. When he finished, Cat waded out into the icy surf. She carried the small boat Kasane had made of straw and loaded with a paper flower, a bundle of burning incense, and a lighted candle. She waited until a wave was retreating, then set the boat afloat and gave it a careful push. The priest intoned scriptures and tapped on his bowl-shaped bell while the small craft bobbed on the low swells.

When a wave finally swamped the boat, the priest bowed, turned, and headed up the beach, still chanting. His feet sank into the soft sand, which flowed into his straw sandals, slowing his progress almost as much as the children who swarmed around him. The children gave Cat an idea.

She walked alongside the priest. “Thank you, holy one.” She unobtrusively placed a packet of coins into his begging bowl.

“If life come, this is life. If death comes, this is death.” It wasn’t the response Cat expected, but in the short time since Kasane had hobbled up with this priest in tow, Cat had come to realize he never said the expected.

“Holy one, I want to buy your talismans.”

The old man opened the drawstring of the pouch around his neck and with the long, tapering nails of his first and second fingers extracted a folded slip of paper. “When one passes through the gateless gate …” He handed it to her gravely. “One walks freely between heaven and earth.”

“Excuse my rudeness, holy one, but I need all your talismans.”

He took the pouch from around his neck, but he paused before he gave it to her. His eyes were as remote as a corpse’s, and yet Cat felt as though he were speaking directly to her inner thoughts. “If someone hesitates,” he said, “he is like a person watching from a window. Life will pass by the window and be gone, and he will not see it.”

The priest bowed and with both hands held out the bag. “That which is form is emptiness … .” He began chanting again, turning away from Cat as though she had ceased to exist. “That which is emptiness is form.”

Cat fingered the soft, much-worn cloth of the sack as she watched his progress through the wind-gnarled pines that grew almost to the water’s edge. The trees rose from a haze of smoke from the piles of seaweed that were being burned for salt. Clusters of drying octopi dangled from long poles stuck in the sand. Brown swags of nets hung from tall bamboo racks.

The children returned to their play and to their chores, separating the day’s catch from the nets or bailing out the boats. Fathers sat under the pines and dandled their little ones, as they did every evening.

A line of women balanced shallow wooden tubs on their heads as they walked along the shoreline. They wore their sashes brashly tied in front. The well-side gossip was that men who bought their flatfish, mollusks, and seaweed could also rent their clams.

It was a lovely scene, but Cat wasn’t in a mood to appreciate it. She had money now, but it wouldn’t buy her peace of mind in a public accommodation. Kira’s men were probably checking them all.

“We can’t stay at an inn, elder sister,” Cat said. “Enemies are still searching for me.”

“Then we can sleep on the beach like a pair of gulls.” Kasane smiled happily at her.

“Where?” The blind fear no snakes, Cat thought again.

“About sea matters, ask a fisherman.” Kasane was almost elated at being able to provide shelter for her mistress and protector.

Cat had purchased a crude crutch in Yui. Kasane used it as she led the way past the fishermen’s tiny reed shacks and open-air tea shops to a deserted, marshy part of the beach where the river emptied into the bay. With Cat’s help she cut a few saplings and propped them against two pines to make the sloping roof of a lean-to. She used the tough river reeds to lash fallen branches across them as a framework.

With her crutch under one arm, she waded into the marsh at the river’s mouth and began cutting the long reeds that grew there. She showed Cat how to use single stems to tie them into bundles, then split the bundles and slide them over the poles, forming a simple thatch.

Cat had always assumed that it was the nature of peasants to be clever with their hands. However, she was beginning to think that Kasane, if given time, could fabricate from bamboo and straw and river grass anything they might need.

While Cat walked down the darkling beach to buy bream from the day’s catch, Kasane laid out the sleeping mats, cut grass for pillows, and started a fire of pine needles. As they ate Okitsu’s famous bean flower dumplings and the bream, broiled on a driftwood plank, Cat watched the lights across the curve of the bay. They were from the fishing village of Ejiri, nestled among the dark folds of the foothills.

Ejiri was only a ri away. Even after buying secondhand clothes and mats and other necessities in Okitsu, they could have rented a horse and traveled at least that far tonight. But for the first time Kasane had balked, and not because of her injured ankle.

“It will be dark before the ceremony for the restless spirit can be completed, mistress,” she had said.

“It can be done in the dark.”

“Please, couldn’t it be done here? Now?”

There had been a tremor in Kasane’s voice. She feared that the homeless soul of the dead man might have fixed on her and Cat. She was terrified that the ghost would catch them in the dark before it had been appeased. Cat had agreed to stay.

Now Cat concentrated on mending the drawstring on her bag of patience, as the old saying went. So far today her heedlessness had not only slowed her down, it had injured Kasane. Musashi said that speed was not part of the Way and that the truly skilled never appeared busy. Musashi said that a fast, busy spirit was undesirable.

“The bream is delicious,” Cat said.

Kasane ducked her head shyly. “It seems too dry. I must have foolishly overcooked it.”

“It’s perfect.” With her chopsticks Cat picked up the last crisp curl of skin and savored it. “And it certainly doesn’t lack seasoning.” She grinned at Kasane over her hand as she put her tongue to it to taste the salt left by the seawater. Then she cleansed her mouth with pale tea.

The lopsided moon wouldn’t rise for hours yet, but stars spangled the night robe of heaven. Their light outlined the wind-sculpted forms of the pines and twinkled like fireflies among the needles. Cat closed her eyes and inhaled the fragrance of pine resin.

“Your pipe, mistress.”

Cat bowed in thanks. “Hold out your leg, elder sister,” she said.

“It’s better now.” Kasane was disconcerted by the attention, but she put her foot near the fire so Cat could see the bruised, distended ankle. She winced when Cat probed it with her fingers. “Surely it will be much better tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow blows tomorrow’s wind.” Cat opened the prettily packaged clamshell that held the medicine. “Let’s see if the Maru-ichi shop’s Salve-Conveyed-in-a-Dream is worthy of its repute.”

She put a dab of the thick black paste onto one of her paper handkerchiefs laid out on a flat rock. She took a glowing pair of brass chopsticks from the fire and smeared it around. The heat released an odor so pungent, Cat’s nose wrinkled as though in retreat from it, but she gently placed the medicated paper onto the ankle. Cat felt as responsible for the sprain as if she herself had taken Kasane’s foot in her hands and twisted it.

“The young women who sold the salve were very beautiful.” Kasane leaned forward to watch Cat wrap her towel tightly around the ankle and the paper.

“Dear Kasane, you’re as ignorant of the world as a frog in a swell.” Cat laughed. “They aren’t women.”

“They aren’t?”

“Of course not. They’re boys.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.” Cat tucked in the end of the bandage and eased Kasane’s foot down in the cushioning sand.

Then she lit the pinch of Okitsu’s famous Dragon King tobacco and looked out at the starlight on the bay while she smoked it. Kasane used a twig to write in the sand by the light of their small fire. “A very foolish person tried to compose a poem,” she said.

“Please recite it.”

“It’s unfinished.” Kasane deeply regretted mentioning it. “It’s clumsy and vulgar.”

Cat leaned forward to read what Kasane had written. “‘Your look, a silk robe …’”

Kasane turned bright pink and hastily smoothed the sand, erasing her words.

“It’s a good start,” Cat said. “When you think of an ending line, you can write to your pilgrim yourself.”

“Excuse my rudeness, mistress, but he already knows your hand. He’ll be looking for it.”

“That’s true.” Cat remembered that the last letter from Kasane’s pilgrim had said he would check the notice board of each temple for word from her. “We’ll think of a finish to your poem, and I’ll write it for you.”

“He must be very handsome,” Kasane murmured.

“Who?” Then Cat realized that Kasane was referring to the fictional lover waiting on the southern island. “Some people say he’s fair of face,” she admitted.

A long silence followed, and Cat knew Kasane longed for details of Cat’s affair but was far too shy and polite to ask.

“We met in the springtime while my maids and I were on an outing to the countryside to hear the first song of the cuckoo.” Cat remembered an incident from Lady Shonagon’s Pillow Book and revised it to suit her purposes. “We picked branches of saxifrage, all covered with white flowers. We wove them into the wickerwork of our palanquins until they looked as though white quilts had been thrown over them. We were so pleased with the effect, we ordered the bearers to take us to the country house of my mother’s first cousin.

“We arrived at his gate, all of us laughing and shouting for him to come see. My beloved happened to be visiting. When I saw him I knew I would never be happy with anyone else.”

“How wonderful.” Kasane sighed at the prospect of actually loving the man with whom she shared her life. “My husband-to-be was born in the year of the Rat.”

“That’s good,” Cat said. “That means he’s thrifty and will prosper.”

“But I don’t know which year of the Rat.”

“Ah.” Cat sighed in sympathy. Kasane’s groom could be twenty or thirty-two or forty-four or sixty-six. She and Kasane were silent for a long time, each with her own bitter thoughts.

Kasane remembered sitting, head bowed, while her parents and the go-between haggled over her and the gifts to be given the groom’s family. Kasane knew that even if she could return home, even if the groom’s family accepted her, she would only have to leave again. She would become the servant of her mother-in-law. She would live out her days among strangers.

Cat remembered the first man she had known. There had been nothing romantic about it. He had paid Old Jug Face a great deal for the privilege of being the first. As she sat waiting for him Cat had almost regretted her decision to enter the Yoshiwara. But she had reminded herself that she would have had to pillow with a stranger in any case, even if she had married.

The night wind carried the sound of a drum and samisen and voices singing in one of Okitsu’s many inns. Okitsu was a popular resort. The partying would go on most of the night.

Cat recognized the song. It was from a play about this beach.

“At a time now past,” Cat said, “a fisherman found a robe of feathers hanging in one of these pine trees.”

“Who did the robe belong to?”

“A beautiful princess. She appeared to the fisherman and pleaded with him to give it back to her. Without it she couldn’t fly to the moon where her home was.” Cat put down her pipe, draped her new travel cloak over her shoulders, and moved out onto the beach.

“She promised the fisherman that she would perform for him a dance known only to the immortals.”

With the bay and its reflected glitter of stars behind her, Cat danced in time to the distant music. As she bent and swayed she wove an intricate pattern in the air with a pair of folding fans.

“She danced under the pines to a heavenly music until the wind caught her robe and lifted her. She flew past Mount Ashitaka. Past Mount Fuji. She was never seen again.” Cat ended her performance by kneeling. She extended her arms behind her and fluttered the fans as she bowed until her forehead almost touched the sand.

Kasane clapped her hands. “You dance like a princess, mistress.”

Cat returned to her seat by the fire. She pulled the cloak close around her. They were almost into the twelfth month, and the wind was cold.

As the wind shifted, the music and laughter from Okitsu faded. They were replaced by the steady murmur of the surf and the low rustling of the pine boughs overhead. Tomorrow, Cat vowed, tomorrow they would be on the road before dawn.

She had already set her plan in motion by dropping some of the priest’s paper talismans on the beach where the children would find them. The charms were of the simplest sort, slips of paper inscribed with an invocation to the Fox god. The poor folk pasted them above their doorways as protection against robbers.

While Kasane cooked supper, Cat had cut her paper handkerchiefs into strips and written out fifty or sixty more of them. She hoped the Lord Buddha would understand her desperation and forgive the sacrilege.

Tomorrow she would leave the papers along the road. She would surreptitiously tuck them into the loads of passing pack horses. She would plant a rumor to go with them. The chances of the ruse working were slim; but if she couldn’t lose the rnin from Tosa, at least she could try to make his job more difficult.

Hanshiro was proving difficult to lose, and not just because he was as persistent as boiled rice on the sole of her foot. His face and his presence were beginning to haunt Cat. Someone, somewhere, was playing a bamboo flute. Perhaps it had summoned the memory of him.

As Cat lay on her narrow mat with her head cradled on her arm and listened to the melancholy song and to the constant rush and murmur of the waves, Hanshiro returned. His dark face, shaded with the stubble of his beard, was almost gaunt.

Tosa dog! Cat thought.

She remembered him as he had looked in the lantern light of the abbot’s poetry gathering. Shadows lay under the arches of his prominent cheekbones and in the deep hollows around eyes that glittered like ice on obsidian. His face was rugged, cold, ruthless as the mountains. And like the mountains he was remote, mysterious, and beautiful.