Читать книгу Mistress Oriku - Matsutaro Kawaguchi - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

Life on the Sumida River

“Tokyo was so nice in those days!” Oriku narrowed her eyes as she spoke. It was early Showa, the late 1920s. She was in her early sixties, Shinkichi in his late twenties. She was talking about the city as it had been back in the Meiji period, some forty years earlier.

“You know, you could drop a line in the river from the garden of my place and catch a sea bass. The tide brought them all the way up here. In summer you could jump in from the jetty—people didn’t swim so much as just cool off in it. That shows you how clean the Sumida River was back then.”

She heaved a sigh and lamented the ever-grubbier landscape of Tokyo. Shinkichi, too, was born in Asakusa, and he knew how pretty the Sumida River had been in Meiji. When summer came, water sports took over the whole river, from the Ushijima Shrine to Kototoi, and there were children everywhere, learning to swim.

“When I think of Tokyo in those days, what makes me saddest of all is seeing the river so dirty now. I don’t care how much the world has changed, or civilization has progressed—couldn’t they at least do something about the river? If it has to be like this, they might as well just fill it in and turn it into a park.” Flushed with indignation, she really thought they could do it.

“And then, at night the tanuki badgers would come out, and they would give the old caretaker such a fright that young girls wouldn’t work here. There were no modern conveniences in those days—no automobiles or the like—and when you went out at night, you’d go four or five together, hand in hand, swinging lanterns, along the bank. It was quite something! Rickshaws wouldn’t come late at night, and after nine o’clock there wouldn’t be a soul along the Mukōjima embankment.”

Oriku’s Shigure Teahouse stood beside the river, among the reeds, on land within the Terajima village boundary. The Mukōjima embankment followed the river straight from Makurabashi to Kototoi, but at the Kototoi dango shop it turned right, then left at the Chōmeiji Temple corner and continued on between peaceful rice fields on the right and, on the left, a marshy expanse of reeds. In those days the embankment was made of high-mounded earth, with a row of sturdy cherry trees on either side. These were of course beautiful in blossom time, but they were lovely, too, when covered with leaves. In fact they had a special charm in every season. When the blossoms were at their height, people came in animated droves to see them, and on one side of the embankment teashops with reed blinds sprang up all along the river, from Makura Bridge to Kototoi. Over the entrance to each shop hung a festive curtain that fluttered in the breeze to invite customers in.

These were no simple wayside teashops, either, but the outposts of famous Tokyo restaurants, serving sushi, light dishes to go with saké, or hearty soups for teetotalers. Inside, drunken revelers would be singing and dancing, or having the geisha with them sing songs amid bursts of happy laughter. It was all a colorful flower-viewing paradise.

However, this noise and bustle went no farther than Kototoi. The teashops disappeared once the embankment split off from the river and turned away from the Chōmeiji Temple corner toward Shirahige Shrine. There the visitors were people of taste, come to enjoy the blossoms in peace. With paddies on the right, and on the left that long, marshy stretch of reeds, the gay flower-viewing pandemonium faded away.

The Shigure Teahouse, an elegant inn and restaurant, had been built there among the reeds. The inn-restaurant combination was still unfamiliar in those days, although no one was likely to complain if a restaurant guest somewhere spent the night. A sign to the left of the embankment announced, “This way to Shigure Teahouse.” If you went down there, you came to a tasteful, wattled gate with the name “Shigure Teahouse” written in white letters on natural wood, hanging above it in a formal frame. From there a winding path cut through the reeds led you to the teahouse itself, with its thick, thatched roof.

From the outside the place looked like a farmhouse, but the inside was done in a luxurious sukiya style of restrained elegance. There were eight tatami-floored rooms, large and small. Behind the main building stood four smart annexes. No meat figured on the menu, nor sea fish; only loach, carp, whitebait, and other small fish caught in the Sumida River itself. The closing dish to every meal was chazuke, green tea over rice, served here with clams brought in from Kuwana on the Ise coast, and prepared in the shigure style, boiled down in tamari soy sauce and flavored with ginger and pepper. Those clams were Oriku’s pride. She had them sent once a month from Kuwana, and she made sure they were of a quality unavailable anywhere else in Tokyo.

Shinkichi had tasted them, too. The shigure clams, as big as your thumb, were served on freshly cooked rice, sprinkled with flaked nori seaweed. You could eat them just like that, or you could pour tea over them and turn the dish into a rich, clean-tasting chazuke.

Shinsuke had eaten that sort of chazuke at Kuwana as well, but the clams there kept getting smaller with the years, until overharvesting made them harder and harder to find. The clams at Oriku’s Shigure Teahouse, however, were famous among all those who came from afar to enjoy the pleasures of Mukōjima, and her extraordinary success in so isolated a spot shows just how delicious they were.

“People nowadays don’t even know what good food is anymore. They have saké with some tuna sashimi, then some shrimp tempura with their rice, and they think they’ve eaten well. I don’t care how good all that may be, you can’t eat sashimi and tempura three days in a row. At my place, though,” she declared proudly, “you can eat clam chazuke three hundred and sixty-six days of the year and never get tired of it.” It was just like the irrepressible Oriku to add an extra day to the year’s regular three hundred and sixty-five.

“And that,” she went on, “is why people come from everywhere to enjoy it. Statesmen, industrialists, kabuki actors, samisen masters—they all used to come. Everyone who’d had their fill of fancy cuisine.”

Her pride swelled visibly as she spoke. The wealthy, the powerful, the idly elegant: her Shigure Teahouse attracted the cream of them all. When you poured hot tea over those big, beautiful clams—still sizeable despite the boiling-down process they had been through—resting on their bed of warm, cooked rice, they would plump up again, delicate, succulent, bursting with flavor, color, and fragrance.

“Eating shigure clams at Kuwana is what got me into this business. I was amazed. I could never have started up this restaurant if I hadn’t known that taste. There are more than enough restaurants in this world already, and you get nowhere if you don’t try something different. At the time I’d decided not to make my move until I’d found a signature dish, something people would talk about. So those clams that time in Kuwana were, as they say, like the Buddha turning up in hell—they were a friend in need.” She was extremely grateful to those clams.

Until Oriku set up her restaurant she had run a Yoshiwara establishment named the Silver Flower. In short, she had been a brothel madam. This is what she had to say about that.

“I was on my way to becoming a courtesan, you know. I was born a long way from here. I may look like a native of Edo, but actually I’m from the country, from Kōzuke Province. I was sold to the Silver Flower when I was eighteen. I’m an old woman now, as you see, but in those days I was just too pretty to be a farmer’s daughter. Don’t laugh! It’s true, it’s true!”

“You still are, you know.”

“Oh no, I’m not! People can flatter me all they like, but when I sit in front of the mirror, the truth is there to see. That’s all there is to it. In my late teens, though, I had a small, neat figure, with bright eyes and a cute nose. My family was so poor they sold me off to the Yoshiwara, and when I got there I was as naive as you can imagine. They couldn’t just set me on my own, entertaining customers, so the owner and his wife had me stay in their own room at first and do the chores, to learn a bit of the business.”

Soon enough the owner took a liking to Oriku and more or less raped her; and since the rules strictly forbade a brothel owner to carry on with one of the women of the house, she never became a prostitute at all. Instead she ended up as the owner’s mistress.

“His wife was jealous, you know. I myself had no idea what to do, but he was slick, and he managed to talk her around. ‘At my age I can’t really see anything wrong with a man keeping one mistress, anyway. This place takes up your time,’ he’d tell her without a qualm, ‘and I don’t see why you should complain if I amuse myself a little elsewhere. Oriku is just a girl, as innocent as she could possibly be—surely that’s a lot better than some woman or other from who knows where!’ And he just set me up as his mistress in a house at Hashiba. He was over fifty, and his wife was about the same age, so four or five years after I arrived she died, and he moved me straight from Hashiba to the Silver Flower. That’s how I came to help run a brothel. Not long after that he died, too, and I became the proprietor. They had no children of their own, and their adopted daughter, Oito, became quite attached to me.”

That was how she spent the next fifteen years. Then, when she turned forty, she found Oito a husband, let the couple have the business, and started the Shigure Teahouse on her own, right here at Mukōjima.

“The land was practically free, but the area was more or less a marsh, and whenever it rained for a while, water seeped up from everywhere. What a mess! I had to have earth brought in and the whole property built up higher, and that did cost a bit! It might look a little lower when you come down to it from the embankment, but actually it’s at nearly the same height. If it wasn’t, it would be waterlogged all year round.” There was pride in her voice, too, when she described all the trouble she’d had when she built the place.

“Oito was dead set against it, you know, and she tried to talk me out of it. ‘What’s the point of setting up a restaurant in a solitary spot like that?’ she’d say. ‘You’ll never get anyone to come! Stay with us here, instead, please!’ She’d be almost in tears. But at the time I was fed up with the world. I’d been a man’s mistress at eighteen, I’d worked like mad as a madam till I was forty, and the thought of doing that for the rest of my life made everything seem completely pointless. All I wanted was a quiet life, you see, somewhere away from people. I couldn’t afford just to amuse myself as I pleased, though. So I set up this place. In the beginning, no one thought it would last. The times weren’t what they are now. I knew nothing about publicity, I just went around to everyone I knew, giving away hand towels printed with the name and location, and asking them to give the place a try. I knew a lot of people, thanks to my job all those years, and other tea-house owners—the ones who’d send clients on to the Silver Flower—might bring their customers out, but the place was just too isolated, and they felt as if they’d come to some distant province. There wasn’t much transportation in those days, and once you crossed the river you felt that you’d arrived at the back of beyond. That sounds crazy now, doesn’t it, when it takes less than ten minutes by car!”

She laughed a man’s full-throated laugh. The world was so different now from what it had been back then, she could hardly believe it.

“I’d had to ignore everyone’s opinion to go ahead, and I was really worried about whether there would be any customers. The place started out less than half the size it is now. I’d managed somehow to get it going, but I was afraid no one would actually come all the way out there. The first one who did was actually the kabuki actor Danshirō, of the Omodaka House. The Omodaka House was another Yoshiwara brothel, practically next door to the Silver Flower. I’d known him for a long time. When he heard I’d opened my restaurant he became my very first customer. I can’t tell you how happy I was. And he didn’t come alone, you know. He brought his friend Yaozō with him, as well as five well-known kabuki actors. Nearly ten of them came crowding in, and threw us into a panic!”

The memory of how the minute her place opened she had had to look after almost ten customers, meanwhile scolding her inexperienced waitresses, had become her very favorite story, one that she proudly repeated to Shinkichi whenever she saw him. The shigure clam chazuke she had been so nervous about was a surprise hit. She felt big tears running down her cheeks, she said, when they told her they’d never eaten anything so delicious.

That was when it all began. Kind Danshirō spread the word to everyone at the Kabuki-za, and a procession of the greatest stars—Utaemon, Uzaemon, Ichizō, the real pillars of the stage at the time—turned up there. They in turn told others, until the fame of the Shigure Teahouse spread far and wide.

“They say actors are coldhearted, but it’s not true. If Danshirō hadn’t come then, the place wouldn’t have become famous anything like that quickly. ‘If you’re tired of fancy dishes, try the Shigure Teahouse at Mukōjima,’ he’d tell everyone, so the name of my place really got around. That makes him the Shigure Teahouse’s great benefactor. That’s why I still take special care of guests from the entertainment world.”

“Doesn’t taking care of them too well sometimes get you into trouble, though?”

“Why no, not at all. Why should it? I’m too old by now to lose my head over a man, but on the other hand, I’d hate just to dry up and wither away, and besides, I denied myself so much, for so long, while I was running that brothel, I won’t have anyone criticize me for indulging myself a little.”

“No one’s particularly criticizing you, but I was just wondering whether you don’t carry it a bit far.”

“Nonsense! There’s no such thing as going too far in playing around with men. Isn’t keeping each fling to one night, then moving on to the next, a lot safer than losing your head over one man? What’s dangerous is going on and on with the same one. You get stuck on him, you drag him home, you sit him down across the brazier from you—why, by that time, even you would never come back!”

In short, Oriku kept her little affairs tidy and clean. She had felt until she turned forty as though life was over for her. Then unlooked for success had found her. She had enjoyed her flings, and she had been fond of younger men, but she had never gotten in too deep. In principle, each man had one night only, but she never left unpleasant feelings between herself and any man she had spent even a day with. Instead, she remained his friend and did all she could for him.

An actor by the name of Ichikawa Monnosuke was the one who started her off on this second life. Monnosuke, an onnagata, played the role of the wife for great actors like Danjūrō or Kikugorō. He lacked any particular looks, but he had a clear voice and a well-modulated delivery, and his acting, while not showy, conveyed great skill.

He would play the wife to Danjūrō’s Chōbei in the great Bathhouse Scene; if the play was Ōmori Hikoshichi, he would do Lady Chihaya; and Osono in the Saké Shop Scene was his greatest success of all. As much at home in historical as in domestic dramas, and a special stand-out in plays adapted from the puppet theater, he really was extremely good. He never won any great popularity because his performances, however expert, offered little beauty, but Oriku liked him very much.

“Did you make love with every man who appealed to you, no matter who?”

“What a dumb question! If you made love with every man you liked, you would wear yourself out and head straight for an early grave. Connecting like that is a matter of rhythm and timing—it just happens. That’s how it was with even Monnosuke. He came to the tea-house by himself two or three times. Coming out all this way alone suggests a certain naïveté, but at the time I myself had no experience of this sort of thing, so Monnosuke became my first man.”

“You mean you were a virgin?”

“You do say awful things, don’t you! No, of course I wasn’t.”

“Well, but I suppose you’d been alone those ten years since the man who’d brought you to the Silver Flower died.”

“Right, I was the madam, so I sat in the back room all day long and couldn’t take my eye off the business for a moment. The last thing I could do was to get involved in some fuss with a man!”

“Since you thought life was over for you, Monnosuke must have been a second youth, so to speak.”

“Yes, I suppose you could put it that way. I might not have had any affairs at all if I hadn’t had that one with him, so I wouldn’t have known anything about love—what I did with the proprietor of the Silver Flower was just duty, after all. My heart would never have known those moments of anguish. Monnosuke was a seasoned warrior who’d already been through a hundred such wars, and he had me, at forty, in the palm of his hand.”

“I see. So your first real experience of a man came after you turned forty.”

“Come to think of it, they say the pleasures you taste first in middle age are like rain that starts late in the day—they just go on and on; and it’s true, for a while I was really swept away. Basically, though, I’m no fool, and I knew that if the rumor of what was going on ever got about, it would do the business I’d worked so hard to set up no good at all. That thought really shook me awake. So I backed away from him and put out the fire before it got out of control.”

“I have to hand it to you there.”

“Well, you know, it’s the business that was at stake.”

She lost her head over Monnosuke, yes, but that was the last time. Never again did she so forget herself. If a man showed signs of becoming overattentive, she would withdraw from him, put on a show of being terribly busy, and wait till he came to his senses. However, she never failed to do the right thing over the years by every man she had had that sort of bond with, be he an actor or some other kind of entertainer.

“Monnosuke is the only one I fell in love with. When we split up, I heard he was complaining that Oriku had abandoned him, but really, he was too old for that.”

“But didn’t Monnosuke keep coming to the restaurant, even afterwards?”

“Yes, he kept coming till he died. He was two or three years older than me, but in personal matters he treated me as a sort of elder sister and would always come to talk them over with me. I made him a lot of fans, too; and two years after we parted he turned up with a very unusual problem.”

Oriku was in her fifth year of business, the economy was prospering, and the Shigure Teahouse was doing very well. Every day was a whirl of activity. She left the cooking to the chef, but she looked after the chazuke herself, kept a sharp eye on the size and quality of the clams, and personally made sure the tea was exactly as it should be. As she worked she was dripping with perspiration, the trailing length of her kimono sleeves tied up out of the way so she could get on with the job. Then, one day, in came Monnosuke, looking glum. Normally, whenever he turned up he was taken straight to the Paulownia annex.

“I wish you hadn’t come just now,” she told him, without even untying her sleeves. “I’m too busy. I have no time to talk to you.”

“I’m glad you’re busy, but surely you needn’t be so greedy as to take it this far. You’re making yourself a nice enough living already.”

“What are you talking about? If the restaurant didn’t do well I wouldn’t make a living at all!”

“Now, don’t talk nonsense. You have the Yoshiwara behind you. They wouldn’t want you to suffer.” He spoke with the gentleness of an onnagata.

Monnosuke, like everyone else, assumed that even after signing over the Silver Flower to the former owner’s daughter and her husband, Oriku still received support from them, so that the Shigure Teahouse was just an amusement for her, and whether or not it did well was beside the point. Such talk enraged Oriku.

“That’s enough of your wild guesses! You’ve no idea what you’re talking about! Once I left I was just like anyone else to them—I would never look to them for any help! No, if this place lost its popularity, there’d be nothing for me to do but hang myself.” As so often with him, she flared up and gave him a good piece of her mind.

“I see. So you get no support from the Silver Flower?”

“Of course not! I wouldn’t take it even if it were offered. Instead the Silver Flower built me this place. I worked fifteen years there, after all. That was fair enough.”

“Well, I don’t see why you have to get so angry about it.”

“Angry? Of course I’m angry! Here I am, working my head off, and people imagine the Yoshiwara is supporting me! I can’t stand it!”

“Sorry. I should watch my tongue.”

“Well, look out—you might do it again.”

Between the two of them, it was impossible to tell just from their manner which was the woman and which the man. In fact, it was always like that. That’s how it was with the gentle, feminine Monnosuke and the quick-tempered Oriku, every time they were together.

“I came today, you see,” Monnosuke said timidly, “because there’s something I simply have to ask you.”

“Something outlandish, I’m sure. Well, I still have two parties of guests to look after. You can wait till I’m done with them.”

Back she went to the kitchen, and untied her sleeves only after the two parties were properly taken care of. The kitchen was of a generous size, since the building was a remodeled farmhouse, and its polished wood floor shone. The hearth was set into the floor at the base of the main pillar. Oriku sat and gave directions from there, and also personally made the tea.

Once the last two parties were gone and her sleeves were untied, Oriku washed her face and returned to the Paulownia. Monnosuke was drinking gloomily by himself.

“You look terribly depressed. Has something happened?” She sat down. Their affair might be over, but they understood each other and could talk about anything.

“I just don’t know what to do. I can’t tell anyone else, so I thought I might at least get you to listen to the story.” He had none of his usual cheerfulness.

“If it’s that bad, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“You’re right, I’d much prefer not to trouble you with it, but you see, it concerns Mr. Matsushima of Kayabachō.”

“Mr. Matsushima? He’s your benefactor, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he’s been my benefactor for ages. When I took my present name, he’s the one who provided the curtain for the event. I can’t tell you how much he’s done for me. When he wants something of me, I simply can’t refuse.”

“What does he want of you, then? Surely a man like that wouldn’t be unreasonable.”

“I’m afraid he’s asking a lot, though. You see, he has this maid named Ohisa. You probably don’t know her—she hasn’t been with him that long.”

“No, I don’t know him well enough to know his maids. Are you saying you’ve gotten this Ohisa pregnant, or something?”

“Goodness no! And if I had, do you really think I’d come to you about it? No, the one who’s gotten her pregnant is Mr. Matsushima himself.”

“Oh dear, that’s poor, knocking up one of his own maids. It isn’t like him.”

“It certainly isn’t. It seems his wife gets after him about everything. She doesn’t know yet, so apparently so far, so good; but he’ll really be in for it if she ever finds out. On top of all that, Ohisa is getting big, and she’s left the shop to go back to her parents.”

“Why are you carrying on to me this way about somebody else’s love troubles? I’m busy, and you could spare me this nonsense.”

“No, no, I haven’t even gotten to the real problem yet.”

“What? You’re impossible! For pity’s sake, then, just get on with it! What is this all about?”

“Mr. Matsushima wants me to marry Ohisa.”

“He what? Just like that? Big belly and all?”

“Yes. He wants me to marry her and treat the child as mine.”

“Well, that’s a good one.”

“I think so too.”

“That’s what you get for messing about so long as a bachelor.”

“Yes, and that’s exactly why I asked you to marry me. But you wouldn’t, would you!”

“Of course I wouldn’t. Me, at my age, an actor’s wife! The idea!”

“Yes, that’s why you said you didn’t want me. So it’s your fault, too.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want you. It’s just that, to me, the business comes first.”

“Right, so I’ve given up. In exchange, you might at least help me out. What in the world should I do?”

“That’s entirely up to you. I can see you taking a wife, after tasting the pleasures of life as you’ve already done, but not then having your own child. You might as well just go ahead and say yes. People will accept it readily enough, if you let it be known there was something between the two of you from before. Mr. Matsushima’s a very presentable man, and the child’s bound to have looks. You don’t, and that does you no good despite your skill. Mr. Matushima’s son would make you a good successor. Marry Ohisa, and everyone will be happy. Don’t you agree?”

Eager as Oriku always was to be helpful, these words slipped out of her mouth before she even knew what she was saying. Monnosuke seemed to have been expecting just that tone of voice.

“Then I’ll do as you suggest. I hope I may avail myself of your good offices.”

“Good offices?What do you mean?This has nothing to do with me.”

“But this isn’t the sort of thing a man can look after all by himself. Won’t you please talk to Mr. Matsushima for me?”

“Why in the world should I have to do that?”

“There isn’t anyone else I can ask, and it isn’t as though I was just adopting a kitten or something, you know. This woman is going to be my wife. There’s my teacher to think about, and I’ll have to introduce her to my other benefactors, too.”

“Mr. Matsushima will take care of all that for you. You won’t have to say a word.”

“But I’m sure everything will go much better—much more smoothly, you know—if you step in as go-between. Nothing you’d say would ever strike a false note.”

This was just what Monnosuke had had in mind. If he was going to marry someone’s pregnant maid, he wanted everything done properly, or as much as possible under the circumstances, but he could not very well say so himself, so he had been planning to use Oriku all along.

“All right, I’ll talk to Mr. Matsushima.”

“I’ll be very grateful.”

“I’ve never known a man to go on and on making such a nuisance of himself as you do!” She looked angry, but she was not displeased. It was her way always to do anything she possibly could for someone she had had that sort of connection with, even once.

“Matsushima” was a well-established restaurant at the Yakushi corner of Kayabachō. Oriku had known the owner ever since her Silver Flower days. In his mid-fifties, with a pale, slender face, he looked good in his kimono of lustrous, striped cotton, and you could see at a glance that women would find him attractive.

Oriku put in a phone call to Matsushima’s place and got him on the line. He willingly came out to Mukōjima. The streetcar ran as far as the Kaminari Gate, and from Azuma Bridge a penny steamer would then bring you to Kototoi. After that, it was just a matter of strolling along the embankment. That was the way most people came if they were in no hurry, but Matsushima was impatient, and at Azuma Bridge he hired a rickshaw.

It was late autumn. The cherry leaves were yellowing, and there were few people about. Still, the Asakusa Kannon main hall and pagoda, the Shōden temple grove, and so on, seen from the embankment, looked the part of famous sights of Edo. In fact, the whole view could have been a Hiroshige print.

“It’s always so beautiful out here!” Matsushima did not go straight in, but instead stood a while in the entrance and gazed around him. When he came down from the embankment, the reeds were so thick that he felt as if he were dropping down into a marsh. The gate was almost hidden by the reeds. Once he actually reached it, though, they turned out not really to be that tall. The winding little path quickly rose until suddenly the full, tranquil sweep of the Sumida River opened out before him, from Hashiba on the far bank to the torii of Masaki Shrine. To someone from Kayabachō the place seemed like a country villa. Out on the river the red-footed gulls were gathering in flocks, and sailboats were drifting lazily by. The autumn stream was especially clear.

“You could live forever in a place like this.”

“Not me, I’m afraid. I can’t just take it easy, the way you do.”

“The way I do? What gave you that idea? It’s not like the old days anymore. There’s a lot of competition. I’m off to the market at three every morning. It gets hard, when you’re as old as I am.”

“You’re still doing that?” “Still? How do you think my place would keep going if I didn’t? For Japanese food, everything depends on the raw materials. I can’t serve my customers anything I haven’t inspected myself.”

“I’m impressed. That’s what makes your restaurant the place it is.”

“And you—they say you go in person twice a year to Kuwana, which is why your clam chazuke is always so good. The quality goes down right away when you leave the marketing to other people.”

They headed for the annexes, chatting about cooking. She took him to the Paulownia, where she and Monnosuke had talked. An original Hokusai painting hung in the tokonoma.

“All right, auntie, what was it you wanted to discuss?” Matsushima had hardly sat down before he got right to business.

“What do you mean, ‘auntie’? You’re being rude!” “When a woman’s over fifty, you know, auntie’s what she’s called.”

“Well, not me. I’m only forty-five. If I’m ‘auntie,’ you’re ‘unk.’”

“Ha, ha, ha! Wicked repartee, as ever!”

He slipped out his tobacco pouch, while a maid brought in a tray of saké and two small dishes of wild greens. Matsushima was sufficiently fond of saké that it sometimes caused him problems. Apparently one of these problems was the maid Ohisa.

“What I wanted to talk to you about, you see. . .” said Oriku, pouring for him, “is this business of Ohisa.”

Dead silence. Matsushima put down his cup.

“Monnosuke told me the whole story. It was a sudden shock for him, and he needed someone to talk it over with, so for one reason or another he came straight to me.”

“He’s completely lost his mind!”

“I don’t see the problem. You needn’t worry that I’ll let this go any further, but it certainly might have if he’d told someone less reliable.”

“Well, I suppose you’re right, but I don’t see why he had to tell you.”

“I didn’t want to hear about it, either, but now that I have, I’m concerned. You’re not just anybody to me, and Monnosuke knows that. That’s why he came to me.”

“Does he know about you and me?”

“He wouldn’t have come to me if he didn’t. He came because he knew that here he could safely wash your dirty linen in private.”

“So he knows, does he, about you and me.”

He gave the cup back to Ohisa. “I’m a sloppy drunk, you know. Even with Ohisa, it isn’t as if I had planned to get involved with her that way. Oh, I had my eye on her, it’s true, but she’s a good worker, and all I actually meant to do was be nice to her. It’s drink that got me into this mess.”

“You’re always getting into trouble that way, aren’t you. I suppose I’m one of your little lapses, too.”

“That was a long time ago. I’ve forgotten all about it.”

“Not that long—it was just three years ago, you know, and now you’re asking me to dispose of a pregnant girl. Men are awful, they really are.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

He slipped off his cushion, put both hands to the floor, and bowed his balding his head low before her. “Please,” he said, “I will be grateful for anything you can do to help.”

For Oriku, Monnosuke and Matsushima were both partners in pleasure, and she had a bond with both. She could not very well abandon either.

“Get Monnosuke and Ohisa together before anyone finds out about the baby, give them just enough of a wedding reception to keep up appearances, and buy them a little house—anything will do. Then, in exchange for Monnosuke’s taking on your child, look after him for the rest of his life.” Oriku laid down the conditions she had worked out beforehand.

Matsushima accepted them as a matter of course. “I understand all that without your telling me. Obviously I’ll look after him, considering the burden involved. He’ll have a monthly allowance, too. You needn’t worry about that.”

“Forgive me. I was sure you’d say that, knowing you as well as I do. Obviously, an actor works only half the year. His wallet’s thin, however brilliant a show he may make. To him, marriage means debt.”

“I know, I know. Stop harping on it.”

“Fine, I will. I gather Monnosuke would be glad to have the child, since it’s yours, even if he had to ask for it himself.”

“Anyway, I’ll appreciate whatever you can do. It will be a relief to have you step in. I feel as though a great weight is off my shoulders.”

“A woman from your past comes in handy at a time like this, doesn’t she. This isn’t the sort of thing you can discuss with family.”

“You’re absolutely right about that.”

“This is why it’s important to stay friends, so you can talk things over calmly, even after you split up. It’s no good for either the man or the woman to end up glaring at each other in silence. I’m the living proof of that. I’m sure it’s only because we were together once that we can talk this way.”

She was repeating herself, but on this subject that was her way. She was always telling young people, too, how essential it was that if they had to part, they do so on friendly terms.

For a man and a woman to cross the last barrier and sleep together, their bodies merged, creates a bond beyond the reach of any calculation, a bond achieved under the guidance of natural affection. Once that depth of relationship is reached, honor it forever! Such was the philosophy of love that Oriku had defined and upheld ever since the days when she managed the Silver Flower.

Matsushima laughed. “All this heartwarming talk of yours just makes me want to get in bed with you again!”

“You must be joking! There’s nothing more pathetic than relighting an old flame.”

“As things are now, though, I’ll never be able to look you in the eye for the rest of my life. I just won’t feel right until I’ve gotten you where I want you again, in bed.”

“And you think I’ll go along with that, to make you feel better?” Matsushima roared with laughter.

So their talk ended in merriment on both sides, and it got things moving in the right direction. Ohisa became Monnosuke’s bride, and no one was the wiser. The reception was a small, private affair, and in due course she had a son. Monnosuke was overjoyed.

When an actor had a son the event was celebrated with red rice, but there was no joy for a daughter, since she could not become his heir. In other lines of business, the young man who joined the family by marrying a daughter could be officially as a son, to assure succession, but in the world of kabuki this was not possible. Sometimes an actor could perpetuate his name by adopting a fellow actor’s son, and this worked well enough if he actually knew a suitable boy; but if he did not, that was that. Monnosuke and Ohisa had both been praying that it would be a boy, so they were very happy indeed. As for Mr. Matsushima, he gave them a formally wrapped present of a hundred yen—the equivalent of a million yen these days. For an actor’s family a son was a golden egg, while a daughter made just another mouth to feed and was treated as a nuisance.

So Monnosuke was delighted, and when the boy was a month old Monnosuke brought him in his arms to Mukōjima, to show Oriku. He was a pretty, pale-skinned baby, with a distinct resemblance to Matsushima.

“You’ll have to take proper care of your wife, now that she’s laid you a golden egg,” Oriku reminded him. That had been her greatest concern. Ohisa had already been pregnant with Matsushima’s child when Monnosuke married her, and Monnosuke might sometimes say cruel things to her. The thought made Oriku feel sorry for Ohisa.

“Oh no,” Monnosuke assured her, “I’m very happy, really. She looks after everything so beautifully I feel like telling her she should be a restaurant maid, and she’s a marvelous cook too. That’s not surprising, I suppose, since she spent all that time in a restaurant, but even so, she misses nothing, and on top of that she’s brought me this lovely little boy! I can only thank both you and Mr. Matsushima.” His joy was unrestrained.

“Mr. Matsushima will be so relieved to hear you say all this! Ohisa will be wanting to do her very best for you, considering the condition she was in when you accepted her, so make sure you’re always good to her, since you are so pleased with her.”

In short, it was a fine case of “all’s well that ends well.” Still, the whole thing made Oriku want to laugh. Monnosuke and Matsushima, both men with whom she had no trivial bond, had apparently been destined to become entangled with each other in this way.

“It couldn’t have worked out better, and let’s hope that it keeps going well from here,” she would say to herself with a wry smile. “My little flings turned out to mean something after all!”

Thereafter, Matsushima and Monnosuke continued their visits to Mukōjima, making the long trip out there whenever they tired of fancy food and felt like some clam chazuke instead. From spring through autumn the place was full, but the stream of customers dried up when the cold set in. The menu on offer was hardly dazzling enough to bring people all the way from Azuma Bridge through the freezing river wind, and the sleepy faces of patrons crossing on the Hashiba ferry, homeward-bound from the Yoshiwara, disappeared when winter came. Silence settled over the place during the winter months. Nonetheless, mornings when it snowed were special. Quite a few fanciers of fine scenery would come out to view the snow at Mukōjima.

Oriku had this to say on the subject. “Nowadays the snow doesn’t stay even when it falls, so there’s nothing to talk about. The cars keep driving by and messing it up, so there’s no time for it to accumulate. You can’t enjoy a snowy scene if the road isn’t thickly covered with snow. Maybe there are just too many people now, or the sun’s hotter, or something, but anyway, what snow does fall melts right away, and it just doesn’t feel like the old days. And it isn’t just snow either. The way the view changes with the seasons is losing its charm too. Speaking of how pretty the snow was—people would come from far and wide to enjoy it, and of course, there’s still that haiku of Bashō’s, engraved on a standing stone at Chōmeiji Temple:

Come on, everyone,

snow-viewing, slip and slide,

till we all fall down!

That just shows how beautiful the snow at Mukōjima used to be. I admit, though, it was quite a job, keeping the path that led down from the embankment clear. Snow would cover the whole expanse of dead reeds, till from the veranda it looked as though the houses on the other side would soon be buried. Not a single ferry crossed the river, and everything was so quiet that you felt you had been washed clean through and through. It was pretty lonely by yourself, so you’d invite someone to join you, and you’d have a drink together. Young people these days have no idea how delicious saké can be, when you drink it like that with a friend, gazing out at the snow. You’d make it good and hot, and with it of course you’d have a hot stew. Monkfish is especially good when it’s snowing. Saké drunk like that with a man you like, over monkfish stew—why, it used to be heaven on earth! People in the old days enjoyed good food even more when the setting was a pleasure too. ‘Food just tastes better there, the rooms are so pretty,’ people used to say, but no one talks like that anymore. Everything’s crude and obvious now. The tonkatsu breaded pork is thick, tender, and cheap everywhere, and everyone’s happy with deep-fried pork, so it’s no wonder they don’t really understand food at all. Obviously, I have nothing against tonkatsu itself. Young working people are welcome to eat it instead of a bentō box lunch, but I wish they’d make some distinction between bentō meals and real food. The kind of bars where you just sit down and grab a bite are fine if you live in town, but don’t people ever feel like drinking somewhere with a really nice garden? Even at my place—I built it in the Meiji period, after all, so there’s plenty of land around it—you can enjoy clam chazuke in a handsome, elegant room. These days you could never make a profit from setting up a place like this, and once I’m gone, there’ll be no one to carry it on. The days of pleasure in saké and snow will never come again.”

Whenever she got talking like this, Oriku would lose herself in memories of how beautiful Mukōjima had been back in earlier years, and how many fine sights it had offered. And as she talked, she would become intoxicated with the sound of her own voice, until she no longer even saw the person with her and would begin to resemble some mad old woman chasing ghosts from the past. Like the mother of Umewakamaru, who wandered the banks of the Sumida River in search of her son, Oriku would talk on and on as she called to mind visions of the good old days.

She talked well too, and she had a fine voice. Back when she was a kept woman, living at Hashiba, she had worked hard to learn itchūbushi samisen and voice under Miyako Itchū himself; so that her voice still swept her listener along with her, when she got going on old times. From age nineteen to twenty-five she had been someone’s mistress, then till forty a brothel madam. Thereafter, for all her hard work, she had had not a care in the world, and it showed: despite her years she had nothing about her of the old woman. She had just turned sixty when Shinkichi first met her, but her face was as fresh as ever, her back was unbent, and although she never used makeup, she cut a very presentable figure.

Monnosuke’s son grew up strong and healthy. He first appeared onstage at age six, and at sixteen he took the name Monjirō. His real father, Matsushima, soon passed away, and another of his sons—Monjirō’s half-brother—took over the business. The restaurant continued to do well, and Monjirō, as much in favor with the son as he had been with the father, went there often.

There had been no talk when Ohisa became Monnosuke’s wife, but word that Matsushima was Monjirō’s real father got out in the end and became something of an open secret.

Whenever the offering changed at the theater, Monjirō brought the new program out to Mukōjima and spent a leisurely day there. An actor’s son matures fast, drinks, and amuses himself with women; his is not the strict upbringing imposed on the son of a townsman. Still, Monjirō was relatively sober in his behavior. Even at the Shigure Teahouse he drank no more than a glass of beer, and he always addressed Oriku with boyish affection as “auntie.” This naturally endeared him to her. She would take him to her own room, where they would eat their chazuke together. Then they might go out and fish from the dock, stroll off to Chōmeiji Temple for some delicately flavored sweets, and wander on to Hagi no Sono, the Bush Clover Garden, or Hyakkaen, the Garden of a Hundred Flowers. For Oriku, Monjirō was a handy amusement, and when he got back she would give him a bit of pocket money. The more she did for him, the more he played up to her, and he would keep her engaged in conversation until late in the evening. Sometimes he would even spend the night.

Since there was a lot of traffic in the main building, and people started clattering around there early in the morning, Oriku had taken over the Paulownia annex for herself. Even if the others were occupied, the Paulownia was hers. When Monjirō stayed over, he and Oriku would sleep side by side in the annex’s main room, on separate futon, but in summer the mosquitoes were so bad that they slept within the same mosquito net. He even turned up suddenly late at night, drunk. He had taken a rickshaw from Azuma Bridge, and he plopped himself down on the kitchen floor, mumbling, “Please pay the rickshaw man.” This was not the first time this kind of thing had happened. By no means a sturdy drinker, he suffered for it if he was made to drink too much.

“There’s nothing worse for you than drinking more than you can take!” Oriku scolded him.

“I’m angry tonight, so please don’t you be angry with me!” he said. Nice young man that he was, he made up to her just as though she had been his real mother. She had the rickshaw man paid and half-carried him to her private room in the Paulownia. It was early August. She put him to bed in the mosquito net, since the houses along the river were buzzing with mosquitoes, and being so drunk he immediately began snoring loudly. Ten o’clock had come and gone, the other guests spending the night were quiet, and the even the kitchen fire had sunk low. Oriku had changed into her nightclothes and was just about to have a nightcap.

“Give me some, too!” Still sleepy-eyed, he began to get up and move toward her.

“I will not! Basically, drinking isn’t a good idea anyway, and I’m certainly not going to let you drink more than you already have. Just be a good boy and go to sleep.”

“But I can’t sleep when I’m angry! Tonight my friends made a fool of me.”

“In what way?”

Oriku sat there in her nightclothes. It was chilly near the river, toward dawn, and she was wearing a thin silk slip with a pink sash. She may have been in her mid-fifties, but she still had considerable allure.

“A lot of us got together tonight in a bar behind the Kabuki-za, to brag about our conquests.” He still looked sleepy.

“Young men do that, you know. You should have done your bit of bragging too.”

“But I have no conquests to brag about! So they all made fun of me. ‘That moron hasn’t had a woman yet!’ they kept saying. They treated me like an idiot. It made me so angry, I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Well, you weren’t very smart. Why get angry over something like that? All you had to do was pretend!”

“But I’d told them I haven’t!”

“Talk about being naive! What a baby!”

“Yes, I’m a baby, I know. Even if I’d faked it, though, it’s still true, I’ve never experienced a woman. I’ve fallen for women, women have fallen for me, but it’s just that I’ve never gone all the way, and it’s driving me crazy! If I could just once experience the real thing, after that I could tell whatever lies I need.”

He was hanging his head, looking sweet, comical, and pathetic all at once. She readily believed it was driving him crazy.

“You’ve never been to the Yoshiwara?”

“No. The women in places like that turn me off.”

“Don’t be cheeky. You’ll find the most popular of them is just like any other girl. Well, tomorrow, go to the Silver Flower. Everyone there knows you, and you can have as good a time as you like. That should do, shouldn’t it?”

“I don’t want to. It’s not that buying a girl worries me. I just don’t like the idea. If a woman can feel strongly about being a virgin, then a man can, too. I want my first woman to be someone I can remember forever after. I’m damned if she’s going to be some tart!”

His face was bright red. Come to think of it, there was something to what he was saying. There could be nothing wrong with a man cherishing his first time, just the way a girl is likely to do. Oriku had had her first experience with the owner of the Silver Flower, and even now the memory of that first night was clear in her mind. She understood how he felt. Still—

“If that’s what you really insist on, you’ll never find anyone. If you won’t have a woman who’s for sale, you’ll just have to keep waiting for the right chance.”

“Your talking that way just convinces me I’ll end up with some woman who means nothing to me after all, and it makes me afraid.”

“Well then, I see no way out. You’re a man, not a woman. Why not just let things take their course?”

“Dammit, no! I won’t have it!”

Red-faced, he glared at Oriku.

“Auntie, won’t you show me?”

“What? Me?”

“Yes, you. You’re always so sweet to me, and I really love you too. It’d be a memory I’d always cherish. Besides, in time I’m bound to be appointed principal actor.”

“Wait a minute! I can’t do that!”

Oriku straightened up. This was just too unexpected. Flustered, she was also overcome with confusion that the sixteen-year-old Monjirō should feel that way about her. Naturally, she had not yet given up her taste for men, and she fully intended to have a good time with the right partner, if she found one. Anyone other than Monnosuke’s son might well have put the age difference out of her mind. Kabuki people customarily subjected a colleague’s first sexual partner to minute scrutiny. They called the experience “fude oroshi,” or “testing the brush.” Oriku herself had been through it before. So far she had pampered him like a child, and she had no particular reason to say no, but the thought of Monnosuke’s past with her convinced her it was out of the question.

“I won’t have you talking like that. Please. I just can’t.”

She meant this to be her final word, but she simply could not mention Monnosuke. Needless to say, Monjirō fought back.

“I can’t accept that. I’ve had the courage to be frank with you, haven’t I? I’m asking you straight out: please, show me what it’s like. I’m sure you’ve done this ‘testing the brush’ before. Everyone at the theater says you have. Please, Auntie, please.”

As he spoke, he threw himself tight against her. The full impact of his strong young body toppled her over, and he clung to her leechlike, with all his strength. Struggling to push him away got her nowhere, and every word she tried to say came out too loud. The Paulownia was a separate building, it is true, but it was high summer, and every room, everywhere, was wide open. Any cry from her would be heard. For a while she resisted, but in the end she gave up and let Monjirō do as he pleased.

As soon as she woke up the next morning, she went straight to the bathhouse. It was behind the main building, and when there were overnight guests the water was heated early. Despite luxurious soaking, she felt as though the events of the night had soiled her in some way. She thought of the Monnosuke of old. Yes, now she had that bond with the son too, as well as with the father. An indescribable sort of shame seemed to flow through her, like black blood. She scrubbed her arms and legs, and dashed water over herself to wash away any reminder of what had happened.

She did not return to the Paulownia after her bath. Instead she went to a room facing the river and had a cold beer.

Monjirō got up and came to join her. His expression was happy and peaceful. At first he betrayed a touch of embarrassment, but he looked full of life. He was completely different from the night before.

“I’m sorry,” he softly, his own beer glass in hand. “I’m confident now. I could have made up stories, but I’d never have felt confident until I’d known the real thing. I apologize.”

For all his expressions of contrition, he looked distinctly happy.

“It’s going to feel wonderful, later on, knowing you were my first. I’m just so happy, when I think I could fall in love with a woman even better than you.” His words conveyed real joy.

“You’re not to tell anyone, you know.”

“No, I won’t. But when anyone asks me who I ‘tested the brush’ with, I’ll be proud that it was with the mistress of the Shigure Tea-house!”

And off he went to the Kabuki-za, still looking light and cheerful. Oriku’s early feelings of revulsion largely melted away at the sight of his joy. Better me, she told herself, than just any woman. By evening she had forgotten all about it.

It was not Oriku’s way to dwell on what was over and done with, and if anything somewhat unpleasant happened, she would usually have forgotten it in a few days. By the next day that business with Monjirō had healed over like a scratch, and she no longer gave it a thought.

Two years later, Monjirō was promoted and took a new name. Monnosuke, his father, succeeded to his own teacher’s name and became Ichikawa Mon’emon, while Monjirō assumed his father’s and became the third Monnosuke. Mon’emon then paid another visit to Mukōjima.

“I would very much appreciate your backing on this occasion,” he said politely. “I will not ask for it again.”

Oriku was of course resolved to do whatever she could, and she gladly agreed. Mon’emon never normally brought her theater tickets unless she particularly requested them. He faithfully sent her a summer yukata every year during the gift-giving season, but that was all. He never displayed the slightest trace of cupidity. Knowing his character as she did, she replied, “I was thinking about this, too. Knowing as I do what sort of man you are, I’ll approach the Silver Flower about it too.”

She went on, “Your acting success can rise no higher, now that you’re Ichikawa Mon’emon. Let’s drink to that before you go.” She ordered a festive meal and served the saké in the great room of the main building.

“No congratulations could give me greater pleasure than yours,” said Mon’emon, for all his years ever the gentle onnagata. Then, later, when a few drinks had given him the courage:

“I understand Monjirō made himself a bit of a nuisance to you.”

“Yes, when he was drunk he’d come bursting in and say whatever he felt like.”

“He did?” He stopped himself. “I gather you taught him how to make love,” he said with perfect equanimity, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “You shouldn’t have gone to such trouble.”

Oriku felt herself blush.

“He was so happy to have been initiated by the right person. I’m very grateful.” He expressed his thanks without a trace of irony or innuendo.

“Initiated”—he had stressed that wordwith particular appreciation.

Ah, yes, teaching and learning . . . For Monjirō it had been an education. There had been nothing shameful, nothing uncomfortable about it. She had simply acted as his teacher. For Mon’emon’s lover of all those years ago to spend the night with his son had simply been a matter of education, an experience a man needed. Mon’emon’s gratitude came from the bottom of his heart. Some people might leer and snigger, but no, to him it was just education. Oriku was impressed.

Any lingering aftertaste was gone now. Oriku could experience the satisfaction of knowing she had done a good deed.

“For the ceremony, let’s give you a proper stage curtain with both your names on it: Mon’emon and Monnosuke. ‘From the Shigure Teahouse,’ it’ll say.”

“Goodness! Thank you! I hadn’t dared hope for so much.”

Mon’emon bowed happily to her and left in an elated mood.

“That’s what makes a man a man,” Oriku reflected. Of her regrets at having been susceptible enough to let young Monjirō to get the better of her, she could only think, “I wasn’t yet a true child of Edo.”

That autumn at the Kabuki-za the promised stage curtain, bearing the names Mon’emon and Monnosuke, and inscribed “From the Shigure Teahouse,” brilliantly captured the audience’s attention. Oriku was there too. She looked radiant.