Читать книгу Mistress Oriku - Matsutaro Kawaguchi - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

Tempura Soba

All the Shigure Teahouse customers, from the greatest man to the humblest, fancied Oriku. This was partly because Oriku did her best to make them want to keep coming.

“Look what a long way it is to get here! Wouldn’t it be wrong of me not to flirt with them a little?”

That was her policy, and she left no guest entirely to the care of a maid. Celebrity or nonentity, it made no difference to her. She would step forward to greet each one; when the meal was served she would fill his cup in person; and, if requested, she would bring out her samisen to sing kouta or hauta songs, or even sometimes a kiyomoto ballad.

In her Hashiba days she had worked hard and acquired the requisite skill. She played the samisen well; her voice had strength and character; and when she sang, with a tipsy flush around her eyes, “Oh, to be with you, / oh, to see you, / I could grow wings and fly to you! / Poor little caged bird, / it’s hard, too hard!” the guest would get all shaken up. “I do believe she’s in love with me!” he would think, quite pleased with himself. All this made her a hit with the customers. These alluring performances of hers were never perfunctory, but when it was time to bring on the clam chazuke she would rush back to the kitchen, sit herself down by the hearth, check the hot water, and prepare it in person.

“The Shigure Teahouse’s reputation would suffer if the clam chazuke was off,” she would explain to the maids.

“Let someone else do it, for once!” one of her regulars might say.

“Oh no, I can’t do that!” she would reply. “Why, this restaurant is my whole life!” When it came to the clam chazuke, she would allow no one else to touch it.

“If that’s how you feel, Oriku, then you’ll never be able to get away for a while. Isn’t that right?”

f

“Never mind. I don’t care to, anyway. I go to the theater or the music hall only during the day.”

“And suppose you found yourself a lover. What would you do then?”

“Thank you for your kind concern,” she would laugh, “but you needn’t worry about me!”

She had so many customers that she did sometimes come across one she liked, but she amused herself only with artists from the entertainment world. She stayed away from respectable pillars of the community.

The artists in question included not only actors, but also kiyomoto or tokiwazu samisen masters, the heads of the Fujima or Hanayanagi schools of Japanese dance—whoever it was had to be at the top of his profession, or she would have nothing to do with him.

This policy of hers began when Monnosuke told her, “Never get involved with anyone conventionally respectable. Amuse yourself only with a man who lives by his art. A respectable man is gauche and susceptible,” he went on to tell her, “and if you let him, he’ll cling to you forever, which will make things hard for you. Once you’re trapped that way you’ll neglect your business, and the reputation of this place you’re so proud of will suffer. An artist understands these things better. He knows what he’s doing, and he’ll give you no trouble, regardless of how things work out between you. An artist may very well have a romantic streak, but he doesn’t get in over his head—he’s able to keep things light and to part lightly. And another thing: always choose an artist of the first rank. A man like that values his reputation, and that makes him discreet. If he’s an actor, go for someone like me or higher. If he’s in Japanese music, he should be the head of his school. As for music-hall artists, if I may say so, you should have nothing to do with them. They can be fun, but your clientele here is first-class—you manage to attract even statesmen, people like Itō Hirobumi. The Shigure Teahouse would start to lose its luster if it got about that you were involved with some storyteller.” To a degree Monnosuke was pleading his own cause, but his advice was perfectly sound. A first-rank artist undoubtedly had a first-class grasp of these things.

Monnosuke was the second man in Oriku’s life.

Having been warned that actors were fine, but storytellers were not, Oriku stayed away from music-hall artists. However, she still enjoyed the atmosphere of music halls. The Silver Flower’s former owner had been an ardent fan of the great Enchō I, and many artists visited his place. Enchō and his students would perform short comic and sentimental pieces there when the girls took their day off.

At the time, Enchō I was already old and had lost the vocal power of his youth, but his art itself continued to gain in refinement, and his sentimental pieces had something so special about them that he never failed to move his audience to tears. Particularly in the highlight section of his own Shiobara Tasuke, he gave a quiet, convincing intensity to the long scene—almost half an hour—between Tasuke and his beloved steed. Menaced by his entire family, Tasuke is about to leave his home forever when he bids farewell to the faithful horse that has long served him so well. The horse, Ao, sadly seizes Tasuke’s sleeve in his mouth and will not let him go. Tasuke, overcome, embraces Ao’s muzzle. “You’re the only one who wants me to stay!” he cries; at which the Silver Flower girls all burst into tears, and Oriku too.

“Talk about mastery, that’s the real thing!” the Silver Flower proprietor exclaimed after the performance. “Kikugorō V was so impressed by Enchō’s Shiobara that he adapted it for the stage, but even his rendition of it didn’t come up to Enchō’s. Genuine mastery has frightening power.” He simply could not get over it.

Oriku was swept along too. “What happens to Tasuke after he says goodbye to Ao?” she asked.

“I’m not sure, but he eventually finds himself a position in Edo, serves out his apprenticeship, and becomes a successful shop owner. That’s how the piece ends, but a lot goes on in between.”

“I’d love to hear the whole thing.”

“Then you’ll have to go to the theater where Enchō performs. I’ll put in a word with him and have him do Shiobara, if you like.”

“Where is Enchō’s theater?”

“I hear next month he’ll be at the Hakubai in Kanda.”

“Oh no! It’s quite a way from here to Kanda.”

“It is not! By rickshaw you can be there in an hour, and if you go seven days in a row, you can hear the whole thing.”

“But I can’t do that, just to suit myself! I can’t be away for a whole seven days!”

“Of course you can. It’s all right. You work so well, you deserve a rest. Enchō’s sentimental stories aren’t just fun; they can teach you something, too. You’ve been with me since your teens, and there’s a lot about the world you don’t know. You’ll learn all sorts of things.”

So, at the proprietor’s insistence, Oriku traveled daily, for seven days, from the Yoshiwara to Renjakuchō in Kanda to hear Enchō do Shiobara Tasuke.

The star of the Hakubai Theater was then Enchō’s disciple, Enshō, and Enchō appeared there as a guest artist. This was about 1896. Kanda was indeed a long way from the Yoshiwara, but Oriku refused to give up. It meant something to Enchō, too, to be doing Shiobara by special request from a fan, and he put his heart into it more than ever. Each day’s performance was a masterpiece. Oriku assumed at first that three days would do her, but once she began, she could not bear to miss the rest. Enchō’s heyday was past, and physically he had visibly weakened. The beautiful voice that had once filled the hall was uncertain now, and sometimes difficult to make out. However, its defects only deepened its appeal, and it communicated poor Tasuke’s suffering directly to the heart. Evening after evening Oriku forgot herself under its spell.

When Oriku was in her late twenties, having not long before become the mistress of the Silver Flower, Renjakuchō was Kanda’s liveliest quarter and boasted no fewer than three music halls. The Tachibana Theater, near Sudachō, offered performances by such masters of the Yanagi school as Ryūshi, Kosan, Bunji, Bunraku, Tamasuke, and Shinshō; while at the rival Hakubai Theater you could hear Enchō and other San’yū-school stars like Enshō, Enkyō, Enkitsu, Enba, En’u, or Ensa. The competition was intense. However, the Yanagi artists eschewed any instrumental accompaniment, while the San’yū side offered, in addition to Enchō and his disciples, the colorful En’yū, who started the suteteko dance craze, the belly-laughing Mankitsu, Entarō with his horse cart, and other such madcap players, with the result that the Hakubai Theater was always far ahead. The ever-serious Ryūshi, who was the mainstay of the Yanagi side, clove to the straight-and-narrow in his art and accepted no one who deviated from it. The Tachibana Theater performances were as a result quite somber, and despite all this loyalty to the highest principles of the storyteller’s art they could not compare in popularity with those at the bustling Hakubai. On top of that, the fact that Enchō was appearing at the Hakubai as guest artist meant that the theater was sold out every day, with the audience overflowing into the lobby and even a row of people standing all the way at the back.

Oriku had her seat reserved, of course, complete with a cushion and an ashtray, just to the right of the storyteller’s dais. She entered through the greenroom before Enchō came on. All the San’yū artists knew who she was, and those who had warmed up the audience for the master would greet her politely. She tipped all the attendants and artists and was honored accordingly. Leaving the Yoshiwara at sunset, she reached Kanda about seven. Enchō mounted the dais only at eight, and after a bumpy hour in the rickshaw she was hungry. Except for one vegetable market, behind the Hakubai it was all restaurants: Kinsei, Miyoshi, Iroha, Hinode—one after another, offering everything from sea bream to chicken stew at Botan, or soba at Yabu. Soba being a favorite of hers, Oriku alighted daily just before the theater and went straight around the corner to the Yabu soba restaurant. She had filled out since coming to the Yoshiwara, and in her striped kimono and black haori jacket she looked older than her years. All heads turned her way when she came in alone. A flagstone path led straight in from the entrance, with a long, narrow tatami-floored space on either side for the patrons—the effect was quite elegant. Since she was by herself she sat down in a corner, and almost every day she ordered tempura soba. In flavor, the Yabu soba was a cut above that served elsewhere, and it was correspondingly expensive. Around town, plain soba generally cost two sen, but at the Yabu it cost three, and the tempura soba eight. The bowl of soba was served with a great big kuruma prawn, and the dish left a pleasant aftertaste. Once you had finished, you poured the hot liquid from the soba pot into your bowl and drank that too. Oriku was doing just that when two boys came in and sat down beside her. One was about ten, the other perhaps thirteen. They had on striped cotton with simple Kokura obi, and they had taken off their aprons, to carry them instead. With their pale, youthful faces they did not look like shop boys from some merchant establishment. Side by side they sat, right next to Oriku. Oriku still had plenty of time, so she took out her tobacco pouch and had a smoke.

“I’ll have one tempura and one plain.” The elder of the two placed his order. Oriku thought it quite extravagant, for a boy.

“Just plain for me,” the younger added in a low voice, hunching his shoulders forlornly. The two might have come in together, but they did not order in at all the same way. The bigger called for two whole servings; the smaller for just one. The bigger boy spoke confidently; the smaller boy with embarrassment.

Smiling, Oriku continued to enjoy her smoke. Her pipe was fine bamboo from Laos, with silver fittings, and her tobacco pouch was gilded Dutch leather.

The place was crowded, and the soba the boys had ordered never seemed to come. They did not talk. The small one sat there in gloomy silence, while the big one looked sharply around him. At last their orders arrived. The big one ate his tempura soba with gusto, while the small one picked forlornly at his plain soba.

Oriku began to feel quite sorry for him. Clearly, his pocket money would not cover tempura soba; plain was the best he could do. She could bear it no longer.

“Young fellow!” she abruptly addressed him. He looked at her in surprise.

“I see your friend is eating tempura soba. What’s the matter, then? Don’t you have the money for it? I’ll treat you if you don’t. You must have some, too.” She called the waitress over and ordered him tempura soba before he could regain his composure, then paid for his and hers together.

Eyes wide with astonishment at receiving so unexpected a treat from a lady he had never met, the boy placed his hands on his knees and artlessly bowed his head. “Thank you very much,” he said. “You are very kind.”

The bigger boy looked the other way and kept eating, ignoring the whole thing. The way he had ordered tempura soba just for himself, without a thought for his younger friend, despite their both coming in together, had made Oriku angry. That was why she did it.

“Who can those two be?” she wondered as she left. Respectable shop boys would not have been going out to eat soba at that time, and besides, there was something a little too casual about their dress. An odd pair! However, she soon forgot all about them. Enchō had already mounted the dais when she entered the theater, through the back. Shiobara Tasuke ended that night. The master’s daughter fell in love with Tasuke, the two were married, and the scene in which she cut off a long, trailing sleeve to demonstrate the depth of her feeling provoked merry laughter. It all ended very happily. Oriku, who had come from the Yoshiwara seven days in a row to hear the great Enchō in his declining years, felt glad and fully satisfied.

“Now I have at last reached my sixtieth milestone,” Enchō said after concluding the piece. “This is the year when I must bid farewell to the Tasuke you have loved so long. I am extremely grateful to all of you for coming to hear me, and particularly to a certain lady who has come from afar every day for seven days. To her, from the storyteller’s dais, I offer my special thanks.”

He bowed in the direction of Oriku, and the audience, who had no idea who she was, applauded. Blushing, Oriku left her seat and expressed her heartfelt thanks to Enchō. That was the last time she heard the master. He passed away two years later, in 1899. He was sixty-two.

So Enchō was gone; but Enshō, his star pupil, was very good indeed, and people said he even surpassed his teacher at The Peony Lantern, which he had inherited directly from him. Oriku’s trips to the music hall, which had begin with Shiobara Tasuke, continued. She became a fan not only of Enshō, but after him of Ensa, En’u, and Enkyō, and, on the Yanagi side, of Bunji and Tamasuke. When the Namiki Theater was built on Hirokōji, near the Kaminari Gate, she went there three days a month or so, to hear her favorite artists. Then she left the Yoshiwara and opened her Shigure Teahouse, and those same artists turned up there, one after the other. Enshō had died, but Enkyō, Enkitsu, and Ryūshi IV came; so did, more assiduously than any of the others, the young Kosanji and Bafū. They frequented the Silver Flower, and when they took the ferry across the river, on their way home in the morning, they would stop by for chazuke. Both loved their saké, and they drank plenty of it there, too.

“We’re both broke today, so we’re each going to perform for your guests instead—that’ll get us off, I hope.” The words were slurred.

“Fine, but you can’t possibly perform this drunk. So forget today. Just go home. You can do it some other time.”

“Come on, be serious. I don’t care how drunk I am, I’m sober when I perform. Get all your people together in the main room. Tell your annex guests, too, if you have any. Tell them Kosanji and Bafū are each going to do a turn—oh, some of them will come, I know they will.” The speech was still slurred.

Kosanji and Bafū were both popular young storytellers, and both were certainly good. Kosanji was fine-featured and slender, Bafū red-faced and roly-poly. The two together would make an amusing pair.

Every one of the restaurant staff gathered in the big main room, and the guests staying in the annexes gladly joined them when they heard what was going on. Among them were some handsome, elegant couples who pleased the two especially. Kosanji decided on Five in a Night, his special favorite, while Bafū chose Old Bones. Their quintessentially Edo art perfectly suited their audience. Drunk or not, when the time came, each sat up straight and sounded exactly as he did in the theater. They gave a wonderful show, and the delighted audience took up a collection for them.

“Oriku, this is all yours. Now we’re even, I trust.” They held out the bag with the money in it.

“Nonsense! A bill’s a bill; a gift’s a gift. You promised to pay your bill by performing. Whatever the audience wants to give you is something else. Take it! All right, I won’t contribute myself, but Five in a Night and Old Bones certainly cover the bill!”

“I just knew you’d say that!” said one.

“You’re a real child of Edo, you are!” said the other.

“Now, now,” said Oriku, laughing, “calm down! Have a good time, by all means, but in moderation! You’re the current Yanagi stars. The whole line depends on you. Your art’s important, but so is your health. Please don’t ruin it with drink!”

She put her opinion bluntly enough, but they were hardly the men to heed it meekly, and they kept stopping by. Kosanji seemed to have a crush on Oriku, but that was about the time when Monnosuke warned her against involvement with music-hall artists, and she had no desire to oblige Kosanji. Still, Yanagi and San’yū artists kept coming as before, crowding into the Shigure Teahouse for parties to celebrate promotion to principal artist, assumption of a new name,or succession to a great name from the past. The Namiki Theater was just on the other side of the river, across the Azuma Bridge, and that was where Oriku went whenever duty required her to attend an artist’s performance.

The performers’ names were written on lanterns hung in a row near the entrance to the narrow street, on the main avenue from the Kaminari Gate to Komagata. The ground nearby was paved with flag-stones always kept gleaming wet. “Welcome!” the attendant who took charge of the customers’ footwear would call out as you entered the door. It was a very comfortable theater.

Whatever other obligations she might have, Oriku always put her business first, and she went to hear a music-hall storyteller only during the day. The Shigure Teahouse had been going for three years when there was a special performance to celebrate the promotion of a young man named San’yūtei Shinkyō to principal artist. Oriku had never even heard of him, but he nonetheless took the trouble to come in person to Mukōjima in order to deliver the illustrated, block-printed invitation.

He left the following message: “I gather that Mistress Oriku goes to the theater only during the day. Three of us among the young principal artists have therefore organized a daytime performance at the Namiki Theater, and we would be most grateful if she were kind enough to come.”

This happened while Oriku was away at the Yoshiwara, on a visit to the Silver Flower. She supposed she might recognize Shinkyō, since the invitation identified him as a disciple of Enshō IV—after all, Enshō had visited the Silver Flower often, to perform in Enchō’s place. She felt sorry for the young man, reflecting that things could hardly have been easy for him after his teacher’s death, and she looked forward to seeing whether he had inherited Enshō’s skill, or whether anything at all of Enchō lived on in him. So, on the appointed Sunday, at one o’clock, she entered the narrow street leading to the Namiki Theater. Her face was well known, and everyone there knew how many artists frequented her place.

“Good afternoon, and welcome,” the attendant greeted her. “I’ll put your footwear in a separate place.” He did not give her the chit that others received so as to be able to reclaim their geta later on. Not to get that chit at a music hall meant that you were an honored habitué. Oriku’s generous tips had put her in good standing. She liked that. Asakusa did not generally favor daytime performances, and the theater was only about two-thirds full, many of those present being in any case invited guests. Cushions, each provided with tea and an ashtray, were placed before the pillar to the left of the dais for the three young performers: Enju, Kinraku, and Shinkyō. Not that they were really all that young, each being thirty or so and thoroughly skilled. Enju did Mind’s Eye and Flattery, and Kinraku A Tight Game and Pale Blue Cotton. They were very good. At last it was Shinkyō’s turn. The program announced Blossom-Viewing Broke. Oriku could not really place him, even after he mounted the dais. Small, round-faced, and nice-looking, he inspired little confidence, but he obviously felt at home on the dais and seemed indeed to belong there.

“I realize it was presumptuous of me to arrange this three-man performance, and that I may have earned your displeasure,” he began, “but I want you to know how grateful I am for the stature you have given me.” He spoke sincerely, without a trace of affectation.

“Blossom-Viewing Broke is of course a specialty of mine, but for a particular reason I am taking the liberty to change the program in order to do instead the “Farewell to Ao” scene from Shiobara Tasuke, which I learned from the great Enchō. My teacher, Enshō, was very good at it, too, and he kindly made me rehearse it intensively. However, he warned me not to try performing a sentimental drama of this kind while I was still young. ‘You will not have the power really to touch people’s hearts until you are past forty,’ he said. ‘I will teach it to you, but I will not have you mount the dais and perform it.’ And that is why, until today, I have never done so. If my performance conveys anything of the great Enchō’s and of my teacher Enshō’s skill, I hope you will be able to forgive my forwardness in attempting it.”

Far from being a perfunctory little speech for the occasion, Shinkyō’s words sounded utterly genuine. Oriku was all ears. She wondered what that “particular reason” could possibly be, and his talk of having learned the piece from Enchō and Enshō filled her with nostalgia for days gone by. Shinkyō never once looked at her, but she nonetheless sensed he was aware of her. She also suspected he had suddenly changed his plan when he learned she was there. His voice was firm and settled; unlike those of so many young performers, there was nothing unstable about it. His delivery was warm, too, and brimming with feeling. Oriku could still hear Enchō’s voice in that same great scene, the one in which Tasuke, under threat from his entire family, bids farewell to his beloved horse, Ao, before leaving home forever. She knew the story intimately, having heard it twice—once at her old home in the Yoshiwara and once at the Hakubai Theater in Kanda—and those experiences were not ones she would ever forget. Shinkyō’s Shiobara, today, certainly offered a good deal to remind her of the master. At first she listened somewhat distractedly, but his polished excellence gradually drew her in until, sure enough, when the farewell came, she wept.

“Be brave, oh, be brave, Ao! Let my sleeve go! I must leave!”

His sobbing voice sounded very like Enchō’s. Oriku was deeply impressed. Enchō had said when he performed Shiobara at the Hakubai that it was for the last time, and indeed it had been. He had never recovered the strength to do it again. Shinkyō’s Shiobara today brought back Enchō in person, displaying a precocious grasp of the sentimental repertoire’s subtle appeal. Not that he did not have some way to go yet—he had mastered the piece, yes, but it was not yet entirely his own. Still, he had brought tears to every eye, and the audience was very pleased.

“After bidding farewell to Ao and putting his home behind him,” Shinkyō explained at the end, “Tasuke goes into service in Edo with a firewood and charcoal wholesaler, and little by little he makes a success of himself. That will have to wait for another time, though. The farewell to Ao is as far as I can go today.”

The rather small Namiki Theater shook with thunderous applause, which went on and on while Shinkyō continued to bow in acknowledgment. Oriku applauded too.

“You’ll be as good as the best!” an old man cried from just below the dais. “Keep at it!” The audience burst into renewed applause.

On her way out, Oriku found her footwear ready for her at the exit. The theater owner appeared, to thank her.

“I’d never heard Shinkyō before,” she said, “but he’s good, isn’t he?” She gave him the bag containing a gift she had brought, with the request that he pass it on to Shinkyō. The wind along the river felt good in the rickshaw on the journey home. Brimming with the satisfaction she always felt after a fine performance, she had a good mind to become one of the young man’s regular patrons. When she got back, she was informed that Mr. Tamura, from the Ichimura Theater, was there with a whole crowd of actors. The staff was frantic. Oriku slipped off her haori jacket and rushed to the main room, to find Tamura Nariyoshi, a giant of the theater world, there together with his son Hisajirō and over a dozen young actors like Kichiemon, Mitsugorō, and Yonekichi.

“Where were you?” Tamura teasingly demanded to know. “You said we could come anytime, you’d always be here! You must be taking it easy lately!”

“By no means! I certainly am not! The young storyteller San’yūtei Shinkyō had a special performance today, to celebrate his promotion to principal artist, and I felt it was my duty to go. If I had known you were coming, you would have had no occasion to reprove me. I may go to the theater during the day, but I am always back in the evening.”

“I see, I see. Well, if it’s duty to an artist, go right ahead. You’re forgiven.”

Great man that he was, he smiled at the mention of “duty.”

“Shinkyō is pretty good for his age, isn’t he?” Hisajirō remarked. He seemed to have heard him before.

“I was extremely impressed,” Oriku replied. “He seems very solid.”

“What did he do today?”

“‘Farewell to Ao,’ from Shiobara Tasuke.”

“He did? He really had the nerve to perform that?”

“I know what you mean, but I heard Enchō’s Shiobara, and Shinkyō certainly learned his lesson well. He got plenty of tears out of me, I can tell you that.”

“Really? I’d like to hear him do it myself.”

Hisajirō seemed to be quite a fan. Oriku gathered that next month they would all be performing a new set of plays at Mukōjima, so they had come to see what the place was like and, incidentally, to try some of that chazuke. The saké had been served, each actor had his sure-to-satisfy dinner of river fish before him, and all were chattering merrily. Kichiemon sat quietly in morose silence, but Mitsugorō was engaged in lively conversation with the others about all the trouble they had had with the new play.

“Oriku,” the great Tamura asked, “do you think Shiobara Tasuke would work as a stage play?” Kichiemon gave Oriku a thoroughly actorlike glance.

“Hmm, I wonder.” Oriku paused to think. “The late proprietor of the Silver Flower had heard Enchō do it, and he also saw the kabuki version by Kikugorō V. He used to say that Enchō, just with his fan, got closer to the heart of the matter than Kikugorō ever did, with all his props. That’s my feeling, too.” She said exactly what she thought.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Kichiemon nodded. “I never heard Enchō’s Shiobara, but I thought the same thing when I heard Enshō’s. Even ‘Farewell to Ao’ has greater truth to it when heard from the storyteller’s dais. The sorrow of a stage-prop horse just doesn’t quite do it, somehow.” He watched the expression on Tamura’s face.

“Could be, could be. If the horse should fall over, there goes the play.” Tamura nodded in turn. Having just come from hearing the scene, though, Oriku could not help being impressed by all this earnest interest in whether or not it would work on stage.

At last the chazuke had been served and eaten, and the actors had departed in a procession of rickshaws. Oriku thought it was still early, but actually it was past ten o’clock. Time had flown in such pleasant company.

“Mistress Oriku, you have a visitor waiting for you!” Ofune, the head maid, brought her the news. “I didn’t tell you because Mr. Tamura was here, but he’s been waiting for nearly an hour.”

“Who is it? Do I know him?”

“No, I don’t think so. It’s San’yūtei Shinkyō, the storyteller.”

“Really? Shinkyō? Is he here alone?”

“Yes. He says he wants to thank you.”

“That’s a bit much in the way of manners. He has quite a job ahead of him if he’s going to thank every member of his audience in person!”

“I don’t know what it’s about, but anyway, I took him to the Camellia annex. It was the only one available.”

“Well, business is certainly good when I’m not around!” Smiling, Oriku set off for the Camellia. Each annex was named after the characteristic flower in its garden. The Camellia featured big, red and white variegated camellias that bloomed there magnificently, to the right of the path, from mid-February through March. The annexes themselves were modest in size, but each had its own spacious garden. In the Camellia, Shinkyō was sitting alone, a small earthenware jar of saké before him. He slipped off his cushion as soon as Oriku came in and humbly introduced himself, just as an artist does.

“I am Shinkyō. Please forgive me for imposing on your time. I am most grateful to you for receiving me. If I have presumed to trouble you this way, it is because I am so anxious to give my thanks.” He kept his head bowed low, with both hands on the tatami floor. Presumably he had changed after the performance and come straight here, dressed with severe discretion in a dark, warm-toned grey cotton haori jacket over a very quiet cotton kimono.

“Such ceremony! Goodness, please sit up! I’m no good at bowing myself, so do please straighten up! I was a guest at the theater, but now you’re my guest, and you mustn’t be formal. Now that I’m here, please allow me to pour you a cup.”

She picked up the saké jar and was about to do so when Shinkyō stopped her. “No, no,” he protested, “I did not come for that. I am here to thank you, you see.”

“There’s no need for you to thank me. It’s a storyteller’s job to earn a living from telling stories, just as it’s my job to earn a living from selling chazuke. As long as I go to hear you, and you come to eat here, we’re even, if you see what I mean. Please don’t make such a big thing of it.”

“No, no, Mistress Oriku, you do not understand. I am not here to thank you for coming today. I am here to express my thanks for sixteen years ago.”

Shinkyō’s face changed. The blood drained from it, and he suddenly turned pale.

“Sixteen years ago? What do you mean? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t? Mistress Oriku, have you forgotten? I have not, and I never will as long as I live.” He placed his hands very properly on his knees.

“Sixteen years ago, Mistress Oriku, you went every day to the Hakubai Theater in Kanda to hear the great master Enchō perform Shiobara Tasuke. You must remember that.”

“I certainly do. That was when I was still in the Yoshiwara, and Kanda was a long way off. But how do you happen to know that?”

“On the last day, you went to the Yabu soba restaurant behind the theater and had tempura soba. Do you remember?”

“Mm, perhaps I did. I always liked that soba place in Renjakuchō, and I still go there now and again. The tempura soba there is so good.”

“Yes, you had it that time too. I was sitting next to you, and I watched.”

“Why on earth do you still remember a little thing like that?”

“Well, you see, I was just eleven then, and working at the theater as an errand boy. Sometimes I’d get a tip from one of the artists, and being a boy I was always hungry, so I’d rush straight out to the Yabu. It was expensive for a child like me, but I had no time to look further. Expensive or not, in I’d go. But that day I was with Enji, a budding artist and a close disciple of Master Enkyō. He brazenly ate tempura soba, but that was beyond my means and I had to make do with plain. So there I was, just longing to grow up fast and be a success, so that I too could afford tempura soba, when the lady sitting next to me—you—apparently saw how I felt. ‘Young fellow,’ you suddenly said, ‘I’ll treat you to tempura soba.’ You called the waitress over and placed the order. I was flabbergasted and just sat there like a stump. Then you paid for yours and mine together, and left. It all happened so quickly, I completely forgot to thank you properly. Then the soba arrived, steaming hot and delicious. You know what it’s like there. They don’t deep-fry the big, juicy prawn till the dish is actually ordered, which makes the tempura soba there completely different from anywhere else. I was just a boy then, but even so, I didn’t feel like picking up my chopsticks right away. I just sat there, staring at the soba you’d bought me.”

What he remembered from sixteen years ago seemed still to be as real to him as though it had happened yesterday. And now Oriku remembered, too. The two boys had come in together, and the big one had ordered tempura soba, while the little one had sadly ordered plain.

“I see,” she said. “That boy was you.”

“Yes. It was the happiest moment of my life. At first I simply could not believe it, and even when the soba came, I was still in a daze. ‘What are you gawking at? Go ahead, eat!’ Enji said, so I finally did. ‘Do you know who that was?’ he asked. ‘That was the mistress of the Silver Flower, in the Yoshiwara. She’s been coming every evening to hear Master Enchō’s Shiobara Tasuke.’”

“My goodness, that’s amazing, the connection between you and me.”

“Yes, it’s an amazing connection. At the time I must have been looking jealously at Enji’s tempura soba. You saw all that, I’m sure. You were so wonderfully kind to a boy of whom you knew nothing, either who he was or where he was from! When I had finished, I raced back to the theater and peered through a crack at the back of the stage. I saw you sitting there, next to the dais, and I stared at you hard enough to bore a hole in the wood. Even at that age, I wanted somehow to do well enough to be worthy of thanking you. I know the whole thing sounds like one of Master Enchō’s sentimental dramas, but still, it is perfectly true. For someone like you, Mistress Oriku, it was nothing, but for me, what you did was beyond price. I have never eaten tempura since, not once. I decided it would be taboo for me until the day I was worthy to thank you. That is when I asked Master Enshō to take me on as a disciple and began to learn his art.”

Shinkyō fell silent and wiped his eyes. Childhood memories had filled them with tears.

“After my teacher had died, and I finally became a principal artist, my first thought was to pay you a visit. You knew nothing about this, Mistress Oriku, but I owe you an enormous debt of gratitude. So I planned today’s three-man performance accordingly, and when you were kind enough to come, I was so happy, I was just so happy. . .”

“But I really did nothing to make such a fuss about, you know. It was just a bowl of tempura soba. You mustn’t exaggerate.”

“No, no, you still do not see. For you it was just a bowl of tempura soba, but what I shall never forget is the warmth of your kindness. I worried about whether you would actually come and hear me perform as a principal artist, but you did, and that old memory then convinced me on the spur of the moment to do Shiobara Tasuke.”

“It’s quite embarrassing, to imagine you thinking of me that way. But you did Tasuke very well. You certainly mastered the lessons you were taught. I assume it’s true then, that, as you said before you began, you were told not to perform it until you were forty.”

“Yes, it is true. I thought it was a bit soon myself, but Master Enchō’s Shiobara returned to me when I stopped to remember that day. I did not feel that way until I actually seated myself on the dais, but as soon as I saw your face, that performance at the Hakubai Theater sixteen years ago came back to me. It was the last night, and I will never forget how Master Enchō looked. He himself said it was his very last performance of Shiobara, and he turned out to be right, so that was my final memory of him. When I saw him there at the theater today, from the dais, I felt he was telling me to go ahead, it was all right, I could do Shiobara; so then and there I made up my mind, and I did. That warning against doing it till I was forty had made me want to try it so much, I could hardly stand it—and then, there you were. I could not help myself. I know I should not have, but I was carried away.”

Perhaps his tears had dried by now; at any rate, he moved to pour himself some saké.

“Now, now, I’m a woman, this is what I’m here for.” Oriku picked up the jar. The saké was cold.

“Dear me, it’s icy!” She plunged the jar straight into the kettle on the hibachi.

“Well, I’m very pleased, I must say. To think that seeing my face made you want to do Shiobara! I really appreciate that. You are a bit young for it, and it really isn’t completely yours yet, but you gave it wonderful energy and style. The obvious pleasure it gave the audience proves that. That was truly heartfelt applause, not just some hand-clapping to be polite. They were simply delighted.”

“I hope so.”

“Of course they were. A sentimental piece has real flavor, unlike a funny one with a punch line. Anyone can just go ahead and tell what happens in the story, but to make the audience actually feel the loneliness of the great world out there, beyond the village, or Tasuke’s sorrow as he prepares to leave home—that’s really hard, I’m sure.”

“It is indeed. Today I felt like a student dragged before an examiner. At first I was shaking. Stop it, stop this right now, I kept telling myself, but it didn’t help. I clearly remembered the way the great Enchō did it, and Master Enshō, too, but I still couldn’t do it exactly like that. It’s strange. Art is really frightening. In the end it all turned out to be a remarkable, quite unexpected lesson. Even so, the tempura soba I had at that soba place. . .”

“Now, that’s enough. You’re embarrassing me.”

She lifted the jar from the kettle. “Let me pour you one.”

“But first, Mistress Oriku, won’t you let me pour for you?”

“With pleasure. It really makes me very happy when I think you never forgot a little thing like that, but took it instead as an encouragement that spurred you on.”

She lifted her cup as Shinkyō poured. When she brought it to her lips, she experienced a sort of rush of feeling. It was not desire, but Shinkyō did look very attractive.

“How old are you now?” she went on.

“Please don’t ask.”

“Well, you were eleven at the time, and it’s been sixteen years, so I suppose you must be twenty-seven.”

“That’s right, I’m a chick hardly out of the shell.”

“Young indeed—just my age when I heard Enchō.”

“In other words, you’re now the other side of forty.”

“Yes. I was just forty when I set up this place.”

“But you look so young!”

“Don’t flatter me. A woman has no age.”

“Indeed, indeed. An artist, either.”

“I’d ask you to come again, but you probably won’t have much of a chance. Still, do come by, if you think of it.”

“Thank you very much. I certainly would like to. Would it matter if it was late in the evening?”

“No, not at all. Just give me a ring, and I’ll get things ready.”

“I’ll really appreciate it. I owe you so much, I’d like to keep coming the year round.”

“On the other hand, if you’re too late there won’t be any more rickshaws, and the ferry will have stopped, too. You won’t be able to get back.”

“That will suit me perfectly, if I may be allowed to spend the night here.”

“What? This is only a chazuke restaurant, you know.”

“So they say. I hear you don’t find shigure clams like yours anywhere else in Tokyo.”

“Would you like some?”

“Yes, please.”

Oriku went back to the main house and sat down by the kitchen hearth, but the way she picked out the clams was new. Usually she went about it just as a man would, but for once she was back to being a woman. Shinkyō was far below her in age, but all the same, deep down she was excited. That a single bowl of tempura soba should have given him such pleasure, for so long, and served to spur him on toward mastering his art—there was something so sweet about that, an appeal beyond simple desire. She had them bring a tray laden with chazuke and two or three jars of saké. Midnight had come and gone already, and the whole place was quiet.

“Stay away from music-hall artists,” Monnosuke had said.

“Well,” Oriku told herself, feeling contrary, “it all depends.” Shinkyō, tonight, certainly yielded nothing to Monnosuke in the way of dedication to his art. In that sense, you felt, he really was solid gold.

Oriku, who knew everything she needed to know about amusing herself with men, never let herself just get carried away. She chose her man herself. If she did not like a fellow, she kept away from him. If she got on with someone, she did not hesitate to get close to him physically as well. Letting one thing lead to another, making mistakes, becoming involved against her better judgment—she avoided all that; but if she liked a man, she went right ahead, with no regrets.

That night, she finally lay down with the young Shinkyō in her arms. That feeling of sweetness had been desire. Shinkyō clung to her, weeping. All night long he kept his arms around her and never let her go.

He left at dawn, while everyone was still asleep. Then it was over; he never came to Mukōjima again. He had spent the night the very first time he came, and that night was to be all. He did not return. Oriku was sorry, but for Shinkyō that was that. She had been planning to feed him tempura the next time he came, but she never had a chance to do so, and she shrank from the thought of chasing after him. Meanwhile, five years went by, and she heard from afar that he had become famous.

Then, in the autumn of the fifth year, he came strolling down from the embankment with a fan of his. There was an entirely new weight-iness to his presence, now that he was a major star. He said he was the featured performer at the Hakubai Theater, which they remembered so well, and so had the honor of going on last.

“How about it, Shinkyō? Shall we go to the Yabu and have some tempura soba?” Oriku said teasingly.

Shinkyō frowned. “Mistress Oriku,” he said, “I still do not eat tempura. I mean not to eat it ever again.”

“Now, don’t be impertinent. You may not like tempura, but you seem to have quite a taste for clam.” The quip, which was just like her, contained not a trace of pique. Shinkyō remained unmoved.

“Mistress Oriku,” he declared gravely, looking her straight in the eye, “the good name of the Shigure Teahouse would have suffered if I had presumed further on your kindness.”

“That’s just an excuse. You ran away from me, didn’t you. Coward!”

“Say whatever you like. I have no intention of remaining an entertainer forever. No, I keep working for the day when I can become your lover openly. Then I will be back, I promise.”

“What a talker! You’d better hurry—I’ll be a sixty-year-old biddy pretty soon.”

“A woman has no age. Please wait for me, Mistress Oriku, until the day when I can enjoy tempura soba with you before all the world.”

Shinkyō’s eyes were clear and calm. Oriku found them overpowering. She had seen, she felt, into the heart of a single-minded man.

Not long afterwards, she heard he had opened a restaurant and inn on Uguisuzaka, at Ueno. However, no word came from him to say he felt like tempura soba. Had those clear eyes been telling the truth, or not? Even if they were not necessarily to be believed, they had seemed to say that, somewhere in his heart, he was waiting.

As an artist he had achieved early success, and he had retired early too. He was clever. That one night they had had together was over, but she felt as though the story itself was not over yet.