36.
Incense or Prosthetics

AT HIS WORKSHOP, which was housed in an old incense factory at the edge of another of the Izu Peninsula’s ubiquitous streams, Denzaimon the prosthetics artisan had been showing examples of his work to Lord Okubo’s assembled entourage. He talked for a while about its intricacies and then opened dozens of boxes and drawers, exposing a series of prototypes. In one there were ears, larger than life but so perfectly rendered that light showed through their delicate membranes, and in another there were feet, this time done in miniature, as if for Chinese women or children. He opened a third box to show them hands, with various lengths of blanched-wood forearms, and in others they saw teeth and eyes, fingers and toes. He found examples from everywhere and put them on the table, as if laying out an abstract human form. But there were no noses. He had carved only two in his life and they were sniffing out the world—who knew where?—on living human faces.

Outside the workshop, when they finally left poor Ned alone with Denzaimon, Lord Okubo walked away from the group, in order to relieve himself in the stream at the back of the building. He stood at its edge, and when he undid his clothing he could not help noticing that his own slight wounds, those minor cuts and scratches he had recently made in his abdomen, were already healing well. That was the nature of things, he supposed, they would often get better if you left them alone. And though he didn’t believe that Ned would grow another nose, he wished now that they’d been satisfied with the precautions they had taken in the stables, with guarding against infection and clearing those two incredible blow holes. As he tied up his pants again, he even had the thought that incense, after all, probably provided a greater overall social good than prosthetics. If one had to make such a choice.

In front of the workshop Tsune and Manjiro were standing together with their fingers touching while Keiko and Ichiro strolled and chatted timidly nearby, when Fumiko’s exhausted runner arrived in the village. He called out Lord Okubo’s name first, and then Manjiro’s. Lord Okubo had just come to join the others, so it was Manjiro who took the message and opened it, somehow thinking it would be further evidence of a mending, perhaps a word of kindness from Einosuke.

The note was on a single sheet of paper and crumpled in a way that reminded both Manjiro and Tsune, who continued to touch his arm as he read it, of that other sheet of paper, the one with Lord Abe’s offending paragraphs on it. Fumiko’s hand wasn’t elegant like Lord Abe’s, her characters, in fact, had so much shock in them that they shook and wandered down the page, but their message was more powerful than anyone’s philosophy.

“Einosuke monstrously killed. Come back to the castle with your swords out!”

Manjiro moaned and his knees weakened, and Tsune saw her sister’s face quite clearly, her calligraphy brush held out in front of her like a dagger. She grasped Manjiro’s arm, to keep them both from falling, but when a curious Keiko came over to read what had arrived Tsune regained herself enough to push her roughly back again, surprising her niece.

“Auntie, my goodness,” said Keiko, embarrassed and glancing at Ichiro. She considered herself an adult now, and would not be treated like Masako.

It was only when Tsune cried out, “Oh evil world, leave this child alone!” that Kyuzo, who had been standing a few yards off watching both the young couples, came forward and took the paper from Manjiro and read its message aloud. “Einosuke monstrously murdered. Come back to the castle with your swords out.”

He read so quietly that it took a second for Keiko’s irritation to freeze on her face, and shatter and fall.

Lord Okubo took the note from Kyuzo and folded it and slipped it into his kimono until its sharp corners poked against his healing abdomen.

“Prepare our horses,” he told Kyuzo. “We will go back to the castle, but will keep our swords sheathed for a while.”

Kyuzo bowed and when he moved to follow the old lord’s order he pulled Ichiro with him, not because he needed help, but lest the younger man make the mistake of trying to approach Keiko.

Lord Okubo himself was chilled by the news of Einosuke’s death, but otherwise oddly distant from it, though at the same time he knew that when the pain finally did arrive it would be his constant companion for the rest of his life. He began doing calculations, trying to remember how long it had been since he’d raised a sword in anger, while Manjiro knelt in front of him, piteously crying, blaming himself. When Lord Okubo put a hand on his head, however, it was not so much to console Manjiro as to steady himself, to keep from joining his sole remaining son on the ground.

“Not yet, not yet,” said a voice within him. “Now is the time to act.”

“Come,” he told the others. “We mustn’t leave Fumiko alone.”

When the horses were assembled the men left quickly, and when the workshop doors opened a short time later, and Denzaimon and Ned came out, they were greeted only by a cloud of dust and a grieving aunt standing beside a grieving daughter, and a bunch of bearers, ready to take them off again in the waiting palanquins and sedan chairs.

THE NOSE DENZAIMON had made for Ned came more from the carver’s imagination than from any of the measurements he had taken. Still, it was a fine nose, the length of it derived from his sense of Americans, its shape from one of the most beloved Kabuki characters of the era. He would continue his work on a more precise product; he saw no reason, in fact, why Ned shouldn’t have several more noses at his disposal, for use on various occasions. But for now there had only been time to make this one, from selected scraps of quality Japanese cypress, and glue it to the end of a long stick.

The nose was not designed to touch Ned’s face. He was to peer from behind it delicately, which he did now for those who awaited him, like a court lady might from behind a fan.