LEAVING THE MOON AS A KEEPSAKE
The inn in Minakuchi was full of travelers, so Hanshiro and Cat couldn’t linger in the bath. Still, the hot water and the steam washed off the cares of the road along with the mud. The easy intimacy made them feel as though they had been lovers a long time. They crouched on the wooden grid across the floor and scrubbed each other with bags of rice bran. They laughed and splashed basins of water over each other, as carefree as children.
When they finished washing they took the wooden cover off the tall, round cedar tub and climbed in. They lowered themselves through the cloud of steam and into the scalding water. The tub was just big enough for the two of them. The water came almost to Cat’s chin.
Cat sat with her knees pulled up and her toes pressed against the far side. The sleek curve of her back and hips nestled against Hanshiro’s chest and groin. She put her arms around his muscular thighs, which were drawn up at her sides, and draped her palms over his knees. She leaned her head against his chest.
He crossed his arms over her breasts and laid his head back until his neck rested on the rim of the tub. They both sighed, then took long, slow breaths, their chests rising and falling in unison. They closed their eyes and sat motionless and absolutely, completely happy.
Finally they could no longer ignore the loud coughing of the maids outside, reminding them that others were waiting to bathe. Hanshiro helped Cat out of the tub. They wiped each other off with their small towels, then put on the blue-and-white-striped wadded cotton robes supplied by the inn.
When they returned to their room, it had been prepared for them. Coals glowed in the firewell, and a small brass brazier gave off additional
heat. A long-handled box of smoking utensils sat on the floor. A pair of pillow stands had been set side by side at the head of the pile of mattresses. The servants had put two low tables next to it. Tea and sweet bean cakes were laid out on one. Writing materials sat on the other. Words meant only for one other pair of ears were better written than spoken in a crowded inn.
“I’ll return as soon as I can.” Cat started to rise to leave, but Hanshiro held her tight against him while their hearts beat together.
“I’ll be waiting,” he whispered.
Cat pulled away reluctantly. She opened the sliding panel and stepped into the passageway. She turned and knelt facing Hanshiro, who sat in the glow from the firewell. Cat laid one hand on top of the other, palm down on the floor, and bowed, then she closed the door, stood, and walked to the room next to hers.
Inside, Kasane was sitting back on her haunches next to a low, freestanding shelf littered with cosmetics. She was naked from the waist up, and her cotton robe hung down around her sash. Her rented silk robes were draped over a rack in the corner. Cat breathed in the incense that was burning there to perfume the clothes. She had picked it out and was reassured that it was just the right combination of scents for the occasion.
Cat supervised the shampooer’s work. Because Kasane’s hair had been cut to shoulder length, the woman added switches of long black hair and rats of bear fur to fill it out. When she finished, the shampooer used a bag of rice powder to whiten Kasane’s body as far down as the nipples. For her face she rubbed on a base of sticky camellia oil. Then she moistened white powdered lead with perfumed water and brushed it into a smooth mask.
After the shampooer had put on the foundation, Cat dismissed her so she could do the rest herself. She used a thin brush dipped in black dye to emphasize Kasane’s hairline. She outlined her eyes in red, then black. As she worked she gave some final advice.
“Remember, elder sister, don’t crack your knuckles or adjust the floor lantern while you’re standing up. Above all, don’t scratch your head with the dumpling skewer.”
“I won’t.” Kasane’s whitened hands trembled so badly, she had to hide them in her sleeves. She had studied the forty-eight positions illustrated in her manual, but much as she yearned to pillow with her lover, the thought of actually doing it terrified her.
“Remember to move slowly,” Cat said. “Moving slowly lends dignity and grace and minimizes blunders.” She chose another brush from
the low shelf and dipped it into a clamshell of rouge. She frowned with concentration as she painted a tiny bow of a mouth over Kasane’s natural lip line. “Untie your sash to let him know you’re ready to accept him, but do not practice the artifice of foolish whores who pretend their sashes came undone by accident. Do remember to stick in some cries. They’ll give him confidence.” With both hands Cat extended a stiffened silk case with a packet of folded paper handkerchiefs and bowed slightly over it. “For the pledging liquid.”
Kasane knew that. Her manual emphasized that the success of a pillowing was marked by the number of paper napkins required afterward.
Still on her knees, Cat moved around Kasane, arranging the folds of the silk robes she had rented for the occasion. She tugged at the back of the collar to expose more of the seductive line of Kasane’s nape and back. She had Kasane sit at just the right angle to the door. She gently but firmly adjusted her upper body and shoulders, her neck and chin, into the most alluring curve. Then she placed the night lantern to take full advantage of the lights and shadows on Kasane’s tranquil form.
When she was satisfied that Kasane looked her best, she knelt in front of her.
“I spoke sternly to the young man.” Cat didn’t mention that Traveler had been sprawled and groaning in the dust and debris of the marketplace when she had interviewed him. Because he thought Cat was Kasane’s brother, he had been gathering the nerve to speak to her. Before he approached Hanshiro, he had intended to ask Cat’s permission to accompany them on their journey.
“I wanted to be sure he would be kind to you,” Cat said. “He answered me candidly. He began his pilgrimage with a friend, but the friend wandered into the pleasure district of the first post town they came to and refused to leave it. He seems sincere, and he has good prospects. He swears he wants to marry you.”
Kasane blushed, but she was too worried about disturbing her hair and robe to even hide her face behind her sleeve. She had to resist the urge to pull her collar forward to hide the indecent display of the nape of her neck.
“Your first joining might be awkward and even painful, but with time you’ll learn to give each other joy.” Cat reached out to smooth Kasane’s already sleek hair. Her voice was hoarse from holding back tears of joy for Kasane’s good fortune and her own. “You have been a brave and true comrade, elder sister. Now if it’s fated to be, you will have the greatest of gifts, a heart’s companion on life’s road.”
“Thank you, mistress. You have been very kind to one of small merit.”
As the white space of a painting intimated mountains and mists, oceans and infinite possibilities, so the words Kasane did not say spoke volumes. Her lips, which Cat had painted with a false line, red and round as a peony bud, trembled.
Cat turned in the doorway to look once more at her. She smiled reassurance before she knelt and slid the panel closed. She went to find a servant and slip him thanks money. She instructed him to lead Traveler discreetly in through a rear entrance after the thin, perforated wooden shades had been lowered over the night lanterns. She was sure Kasane would sit without twitching an eyelid until he arrived.
Cat returned to her room to find Hanshiro reading by the light of the night lantern. He put down the book and sat cross-legged with eyes closed as Cat knelt behind him and kneaded and rubbed his shoulders and back. She had moved down to his hands and was gently tugging his fingers, one by one, when she heard the creak of footsteps on the tatami in Kasane’s room. A man spoke, his voice too low to be distinguished.
Cat moved to the writing table and sat so that her sleeping robes fell into graceful folds around her. She took up the brush, dipped it into the well of the ink stone, and wrote, “He must have a terrible headache.” She was feeling remorse for the blow she’d given Traveler.
She passed the paper to Hanshiro, who wrote, “If you gave him a headache, you also gave him a cure.”
Hanshiro had given the lad a pinch of powdered ginseng from his stock of medicines, but he was certain Cat’s medicine would be much more effective.
Cat and Hanshiro could hear the chime of a porcelain sake jar against a cup, the rustle of clothing, and a riffle of laughter. Cat wrote, then held the paper out on her fan for Hanshiro to read.
A pair of noisy sparrows
Bamboo thicket, moon rising.
For the first time Cat saw him smile without the enigmatic sadness that had always veiled his eyes. She saw the pale flecks in them shift and brighten as yellow silk would shimmer gold in sunlight.
He linked his verse to hers in an admission of love’s effect on him.
A rising lark, lost
In the mist of winter hills,
As baffled as I.
Watching him write, Cat thought her passion too great to be contained. Surely it would burst from her heart and scatter as wantonly as silk floss on the wind.
Cat and Hanshiro dared not provoke fate by discussing the future, but hungrily they questioned each other about the past. In a few hours they tried to recover the lifetime they had spent apart. Long into the night, while the storm of passion rose and swirled in Kasane’s room, they wrote. They filled the thick, pliant sheets of lavender-tinted paper with graceful characters and with the secrets of their hearts.
“Lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch,” Hanshiro wrote. “Hair iridescent as a wet crow’s wing.”
It was a form of communication as sensual as a whisper in the ear. Cat felt as though each stroke of Hanshiro’s brush, lingering and supple on the paper, were inscribing his love on her skin. They discreetly ignored the muted laughter next door, but it added to the witchery.
“Oh, when you do that,” they heard Kasane murmur. The rhythmic whisper of bedclothes grew more urgent until finally Kasane’s impassioned cry sounded through the inn. She must have thrown a pillow because something crashed into a screen. The usual late-night music and laughter and talk ceased for several beats, then took up again.
Cat and Hanshiro knew their time of love would be brief and they must live in the moment. The future was uncertain at best, and in their case they would have to devote themselves to the vengeance to which Cat was sworn. They could have written all night, but they knew they must try to sleep. The days ahead would be arduous.
They burned their love letters one at a time in the brazier. Then they untied each other’s sashes, and as Cat’s robe fell away Hanshiro kissed each of the bruises left by the rocks of the mountain. He held Cat to him, and when he trailed his fingers down her spine he drew out any fatigue or tension that might have remained there.
They both knew that they could not enjoy the usual lovers’ courtship. They might never view the cherry blossoms at Asukayama or walk along the seaside at Shinagawa or go into the mountains to hear the first lark in the springtime.
Knowing that this might be the last time they would hold each other gave their passion a tender urgency. Silently, languorously, they traveled
the silken road. They caressed and entered into the caressing until the lantern they carried became the brilliance of the moon. Then they lay with their arms around each other and their legs entwined until the dawn bells rang.
“‘Coming to an end,’” Hanshiro whispered. “‘And leaving the moon as a keepsake.’”
“Tonight.” Cat looked up at him and smiled sadly. If fate willed it, that night they would enter the Western Capital. Perhaps then they would find Oishi Kuranosuke. They would end their quest and begin their vengeance.