Deep Purple (28 page)

“You are ready to eat something today?” the voice asked.

Reluctantly Jessie forced her eyes open to the clean, sunlit room and to the man who stood over her, seeming taller than ever. Slowly she nodded, for indeed the flavor that wafted by her nostrils was tempting.

“Good,” Taro replied. He set the tray he carried on a low table that he moved between Jessie and himself.

She looked at the fluffy brown food in the bowl. “
What is it?” she suspiciously asked.

"
Ochazuke
. Rice with tea poured over mushrooms. And these,” he said, passing her two wooden sticks with blunt tips, “are
hashi
.”

She watched, fascinated as the man began to eat, deftly moving the two sticks with the fingers of one hand. Then she tried, but the rice kept sifting through the awkwardly held utensils. After a few moments, Taro said, “
You will have to use your fingers until you master the
hashi
.”

“
Oh, but I won’t be here that long,” she protested.

He said nothing but continued to eat, and she asked, fear rasping her voice to a whisper, “
You will let me go, won't you?”

He set down the bowl of half-eaten
rice. “You are free to go at any time, Lotus Woman. But wherever your footsteps may take you, your soul belongs to me, now . . . and always.”

A rose-scented candle burned low, casting dancing shadows. In the hush that fell she could see only his face, the
jet eyes that held her as truly as chains.

Another hour. Another day. She could only measure the passing of the time by the slow inching of the sun’s slanted rays across the plank floor, by the curious but tasty meals that Taro prepared for her, and finally by his comings and goings. The intervals he was away became longer as she grew stronger – strong enough to stand, though she was still unsteady on her feet.

He was unfailingly kind, unfailingly polite in her presence. Still, she blushed eac
h time he entered the cabin, his tall, slender frame dominating the small room. She recalled the intimate tasks he had performed for her—changing the straw mats, leaving them outside to air, when, in the deeper throes of withdrawal, she had been unable to control her bodily functions; then later he had seemed to know and unobtrusively provided a porcelain chamber pot.

With him gone from the cabin her thoughts seemed to linger on him more than when he was present, and she decided that there could be nothing
more unromantic than what passed between the two of them; yet each time he entered the room she instantly knew it, though she might be asleep, by the way the air seemed to crackle—as if charged, like the electrical storms that lashed the deserts and canyons, sending the wind howling up through the mountains’ saddlebacks and fissures.

She was coming to know the cabin as thoroughly as a prisoner his cell. It was a spare, austere, but immensely peaceful room. There were the immediate things
—the rough-textured mat beneath her. the porcelain jar of Indian paintbrush that wafted of spring sitting on the low black lacquered table nearby.

Farther away stood the ornately carved chest with gold handles. In it she had glimpsed exquisite ivory carvings, golden bowls, an
d jade vases. In a corner on a raised platform stood a large cypress tub. A bamboo bird feeder hung in the open window, rendering the occasional sight of a hummingbird or a fragmentary song from the mockingbird.

That afternoon, when Taro at last returned,
his arms burdened with chopped wood, she felt for the first time really alive. Isolated as she had been, her senses picked up things that went unnoticed before—from the sighing of the breeze outside as it winged its way down through the interlocking gulches to the pungent taste of the green tea she drank.

“
So that’s where you go every day,” she murmured.

He began stacking some of the logs in the fireplace. “
Not always, Lotus Woman," he said as he added small chips of kindling. “There are other things which need my care besides you.”

She tilted her head to better study the man whose profile was to her. He held a bamboo match to the chips, and the wood caught fire. He looked directly at her then, and she caught the slightest curve in the carved lips before he
turned back. “There are the burros to be fed, the garden to be tended to, the mine to be worked.”

“
I’m a lot of trouble to you, aren’t I, Taro?” she asked in a teasing voice.

He stood and crossed to her, looking down at her recumbent figure. “
Your presence gives me great pleasure. My house will be empty when you leave.”

Before she could consider some sort of reply to his solemn words, he left her to bring in two large buckets of water, which he poured into a great caldron suspended from the spit in the fire
place. “It is time for a complete bath for you,” he explained when he saw her quizzical look.

Once a week she had used the boardinghouse
’s public tub located in a room back of the kitchen. It had been a hurried necessity that accomplished little more than the surface cleaning of the dust from the skin and hair, a routine that she often thought more trouble than it was worth, especially struggling to rinse the soap's film from her tangled mass of hair. Her daily ablutions had consisted of a quick sponging from the basin of tepid water in her room.

But watching Taro as he moved about the room preparing for her bath, she began to realize his motions took on the aspects of a ritua
l. On a short wooden stool he placed a dried gourd, a small lava rock, a wooden bowl of what she learned was wet rice bran, and a large porous washcloth.

After emptying the hot water into the tub and replenishing the caldron over the fire, he came to kneel
at her side, hands flat on his thighs. “I am ready to bathe you.”

She clutched at the neckline of her robe. “
Well, I’m not,” she said fiercely.

“
Do you think I will see anything I have not already seen?” he asked patiently.

Her lower lip thrust out petula
ntly. “It’s not that.”

“
Then do you think what I shall see will stir in me desires this time that I did not feel the first?” Without giving her an opportunity to consider, he continued. “A person who cannot control his mind as well as his body is weak. What I do for you is an impersonal service. Please think of it as no more.”

When she made no reply, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her across to the tub, sitting her on the stool, which had been cleared of its bath utensils. He began to talk to her
, explaining what he did, as if he sought to ease the tension between them. “The geishas are women in Japan who are hostesses— entertainers—and they devote much time to daily bathing.”

“
Daily?” she asked, so incredulous that she was not really aware that he lowered the neck of the embroidered robe to bare her shoulders.

“
Yes, daily.” He smiled at her naiveté. “And it is the women in my land who perform the task of bathing the men, not as I am doing for you. The same holds true of eating. It is the women who eat last and wait on the men and walk behind them.”

“
I don’t think I would like your country,” she snapped.

“
But you like what I am doing, don’t you?” he asked as he moved the wet, warm cloth across her shoulders, lifting the mass of her heavy, snarled hair to scrub the long column of her neck.

“
Yes,” she admitted in a whisper, wishing that she could divorce herself from the task he performed as easily as he seemed to do, for she was all too conscious of his nearness and her own near nudity.

Taro moved aro
und in front of her, hunching on his heels, so that his face was even with hers. She was struck by the sheer masculinity of his features—the harsh planes and angles, the narrow-lidded eyes that seemed to smolder with black smoke.

His hands parted the robe,
and, rewetting the cloth in the warm water once more, he began to run the cloth over her throat and shoulder bones. “You are as delicate as a hummingbird, Lotus Woman,” he said in what anyone else would have termed an impersonal observation. But having been in close contact with him over the many days and nights, she would have sworn that a deeper, richer substance imbued his low-pitched voice.

The cloth slid down the valley between her rose-tipped breasts, around her ribcage, and up under her arms before
moving lower to bathe her stomach. She began to tremble inside, like the slightest tremors of the earth that go unnoticed before a quake. What this man did to her was a hundredfold more arousing than all the nude paintings . . . even than Brig's exploratory kisses. She could not take her gaze from Taro's face, yet his countenance remained impassive as he went about his task.

His hand lowered to her thighs now and gently slipped inside before sliding down to cup her calves and ankles. For a moment her lids s
napped closed in a reaction of sheer shock, then remained that way as she savored the pleasant sensation that followed Even the soles of her feet, small and narrow, did not go unwashed.

“
Why must you wash me before I take a bath?” she asked tremulously. "It makes no sense"

He rose now. "You would not wish to bathe your body in dirty water, would you?”

"But you just bathed me."

"No. You Westerners do not know what real cleanliness is.”
Then, "Forgive me if I have offended you. I'm afraid I make a very poor host.”

"No . . . no, I . . . like what you are doing,”
she unwillingly admitted. “It's just that . . ." Her gaze lowered.

His eyes searched her face. “
I know this must be very difficult for a Western woman such as yourself,” he said slowly. “But you must understand by now that I would not bring harm or discomfort to you.”

She could only nod her head.

He smiled. "Good. Now we will complete your bath. Then, after you have rested—for your body still needs much rest—we shall eat.”

What followed was actually very
enjoyable, once she closed the door on her thoughts and let herself relax and only feel. First he added the last of the boiling water to the half-filled tub of tepid water; then, to her amazement, he dropped orange slices in the tub—to scent it, he explained. And she could indeed smell the citrusy-fresh scent of the fruit rising with the steam. Lastly, he stood her on her feet, supporting her with one hand about her waist, and with her faced away from him, he removed her robe.

When he scooped her up, she w
rapped her arms around his neck. She could smell his own clean scent. With her head tipped back against his forearm, she looked up into the inscrutable face. He seemed totally unaware of her naked body held against him.

He lowered her into the deliciously
hot water, and it surged about her breasts, distorting everything below. While she lolled in the tub, soaking, he went to the fireplace to return with two more pails of hot water, which he emptied into the tub. “Give me your foot,” he instructed.

Languoro
usly she offered up her right foot, and he began to rub its heel and sole with the lava rock. She closed her eyes and sank farther into the tub, letting her arms float to the surface in dreamy abandon.

He repeated his actions with the other foot, then took
the dried gourd and scrubbed each leg, from ankle to calf. She did not find it particularly enjoyable, but he explained it removed the superfluous hair and dead skin. He began to apply the wet rice bran. "This is like a facial,” he explained. "In my land the geishas use nightingale droppings.”

She laughed, realizing both that it was the first time she could remember laughing in a long time and that Taro was attempting to make the bath easier for her by making her relax, by occasionally talking to divert he
r. At her laughter, his glance flickered to her face, then dropped as he resumed his task.

At last, to her disappointment, he leaned over her with a large soft towel and lifted her easily from the tub. Beneath her hands that she put around his shoulders, s
he could feel the ripple of the muscles. His face was just above hers, and she contentedly nuzzled her head in the hollow of his neck, dreamily wishing she could stay in that secure, fetal position forever. But too soon he laid her on the mat and released her.

As he knelt over her, roughly toweling her proffered body, her gaze clung to his face. She perversely wished that there was some way she could break through his self-containment. She sighed, somehow knowing that no one would unless he permitted it.

His dark gaze fell on her. “You enjoyed the bath after all?”

“
Very much. Can we . . . you will bathe me again?”

A mask slid over the eyes. “
Whenever you wish, Lotus Woman.”

CHAPTER 38

D
aily Jessie's strength returned. The color returned to her skin and the shining life to her butter-yellow curls. She knew soon she would be strong enough to leave the cabin. But her soul was not yet ready to return to the dichotomy of her former life. And so she luxuriated in those lazily passing days of spring.

Taking up her perch on the narrow wooden arched footbridge that Taro had constructed over a nearby rivulet, she watched as the scrub oaks and piñ
on and occasional willow changed into their emerald garb. She learned to sit patiently, knees drawn up beneath her chin, while the shy mule deer or pronghorn antelope made its way down to the thin but deep ribbon of water. It was the mating season; even a flock of cinnamon teal proclaimed it from the cerulean sky with their gargled calls. A desert bald eagle swooped down into its mountain cranny where its mate waited, and the smaller birds trilled their love calls.

And Jessie waited, for what she was not certain.

Her life there in the mountains took on a comfortable routine, beginning with dawn when Taro woke and stirred the banked embers into life against the early-morning chill, for the altitude was nearly five thousand feet above sea level. After breakfast, usually rice and bean curd, which she was learning to prepare, he would leave for the mine, equipped with three candles, for his ten-hour day beneath the ground.

After his departure she would clean the dishes and then read some of the out-of-date newspapers he furnished her. Later she went to sit on the footbridge, enjoying the sun
’s life-giving rays as she had never thought she would. At noon she walked down to the mine entrance that was half-pit, half-cave and shared a picnic lunch with the man who had come to own a part of her, as he put it.

It was easy to talk with him, for he seemed interested in what she ha
d to say, especially her earlier life and her education— something that the Japanese female did not receive. However, Taro surprised her when she learned that he had more education than she, for he told her the Japanese male usually had a full eight years of education unless he was of the
eta
—or the untouchable—class.

“
There is a class system ruled over by the nobility,” he clarified. “Below that is the warrior, or samurai, class; the agriculture class, from which I come; the mechanics and artists; and lastly, the merchants. Then there are the untouchables, which are not dignified with a class.”

She admitted that there was a class system in the United States despite its egalitarian claim to democracy, the class being ruled by the Anglo. “
Below that are the races of color. That I am partly one of color—-Spanish—was one of the reasons I was considered unsuitable to marry Brig Godwin.”

“
The heir to Cristo Rey?” Taro asked carefully.

She nodded, and he said, “
It is this then that drove you to the House of the Golden Dreams?”

She looked away from his probing gaze. “
Yes, but what I feel for him no longer exists. I have come to see that he was not the man I thought he was. He was a weakling. A puppet!”

“
And yet your soul is still not healed, is it?”

“
Maybe one day,” she replied evasively.
If you allow me to stay here long enough
.

Would he? Or would he make a bridal contract for some young woman he had never seen, as he had told her many of his countrymen had done?

The thought stung—not the thought of Taro’s marrying someone else, but the thought of what would take place between him and his bride, something that she would never experience. Why, she was jealous!

And what would Taro think of her outlandish thoughts, coming as he did from a society where a woman supposedl
y had no thoughts? Yet he had been in the United States for four years, since he was only seventeen. In some ways he did seem to think as a progressive American would.

But what American male, she asked herself, would have done for her, or any woman, what h
e had?

Embarrassed as always by the direction her thoughts seemed to run, she would change the subject, asking Taro to tell her more of his strange homeland, so that daily she was becoming more familiar with the unusual man and his customs.

She learned to remove the funny shoes, the
zori
slippers, he had provided, really not so different from her huaraches of childhood, before she entered his house in the
tabi
stocks. And she always made certain the
zori
toes pointed away from the door. She acquired the taste for the furry green tea and learned the polite ritual of taking the thumb and forefinger to wipe the lip of the teacup when one is finished.

Such a simple custom, yet as she watched Taro perform the rite on her own cup, it seemed a terribly intimate ges
ture.

Sitting on the wooden slats that bridged the stream, she pondered the irony of the situation. At the Crystal Palace she had watched men nonchalantly slip their hairy paws down the low-cut fronts of the dance-hall girls
’ dresses and had felt only repugnance for what she saw. Yet there in the clean simplicity of Taro’s home, she had only to watch the smooth slender fingers trace the rim of a cup and her stomach fluttered with the beating wings of a hundred Japanese nightingales!

Even now her breath seem
ed trapped in her lungs as her gaze fell on Taro moving up the boulder-cropped path toward her. Behind him plodded the burro that had brought her to the mountain refuge. She rose and went to meet Taro, feeling shy before the man with the memory of her thoughts about him still fresh on her mind.

What would it be like for his hands to touch her in a way that was not impersonal?

She patted the rough, furry hide between the burro's droopy ears. “How was your day?” she asked Taro, noting that the rawhide chests on either side of the burro were full.

“
The silver is wearing thin, but I may have found a streak of copper.”

She fell into step beside him as they moved toward the cabin. “
Copper? Is it valuable? The men at the Crystal Palace talked of nothing but gold and silver lodes.”

“
It will be,” he prophesied. “But maybe not soon enough.”

They removed their shoes and went inside the cabin. Jessie crossed to the wall of staggered shelves to find the tea canister and prepare Taro a cup while he changed into a robe. Sh
e had been careful over the weeks to keep her head averted, her hands busy preparing the tea, but sometimes her eyes glimpsed a forbidden flash of gold-sheened, muscled flanks, and her stomach would lurch, as if she were falling.

The late afternoon was her
favorite time of day. After the tea, she and Taro would bathe, first him, then herself. Though he no longer performed the intimate task of bathing her, since she was strong enough to do this herself, she still found the bathing a sensual rite.

Afterward t
hey would eat and spend the hours of the evening talking—he perfecting his English, which she thought was as good as or better than hers, and she learning smidgens of Japanese. Sometimes she would help him pack the dynamite blasting caps with black powder. At other times she would simply sit and watch, entranced by his liquid movements, as he sharpened his pick or worked on his hand drill. Occasionally she sewed, one of her first projects his robe that swallowed her despite her tall frame, while he read Cooper’s
The Spy
or Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter
—to learn more of his new country, he explained to her.

Taro seated himself now before the
kotaku
, and she noted how the ebony of his robe enhanced the deep, utter black of his eyes. She set two cups on the table and took her place across from him. From experience she learned that the first few minutes of drinking the tea were reserved for savoring its taste.

After a few moments, Taro spoke to her, his jet gaze without expression. “
Your afternoons in the sun have replaced the color in your skin. Now it has the color of a summer peach—the shade it had when first my eyes saw you.”

Her gaze dropped before the intensity of his. “
Why did you come each night to my table?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

H
e put the cup to his mouth, letting the hot liquid flow over the beautifully delineated lips, and she watched, fascinated— fascinated by everything about the man. “You were like a burning bush,” he said finally. “You were alive with color, except for your eyes. But the color inside you radiated, like an aura. Your body spoke to mine, Lotus Woman. And my body grieved when it noted your color was slowly fading, that your body was dying.”

“
I have never thanked you for what you did—taking me from that horrible place and . . . making me well.”

“
The light and color you bring to my house are enough.”

He rose in a fluid motion and, taking the wild strawberries she had gathered earlier, crossed to the open window where hung the bird feeder. He began to talk as he mas
hed the berries’ pulp into the feeder. “Within the week I need to return to Tombstone to renew my supplies—and, of course, have the assayer test my ore. Perhaps you would like to go with me?”

Her heart missed a beat, then double-timed to catch up. His back
was to her. She could not bring herself to ask the gentle man the one question she wanted to ask. “If you wish me to.”

He turned toward her. His back was to the sun, and she could not see that inscrutable face. “
I wish to give you your freedom, Lotus Woman. There are no birdcages in my house, for the bird would never be mine if it were caged.”

And am I yours
? Was she reading too much into what he said? Would he think her too forward were she to reveal she dreamed erotic fantasies about him now? “Shall I prepare the bathwater?” she asked instead.

He nodded, and she took the kettle of boiling water that was kept continuously hot from the bed of coals and poured the water into the large tub while Taro brought in more water. This time, however, when t
he bath was ready, instead of retreating to another part of the room to occupy herself, she said, “You once told me that it was the woman who bathed the man in your country, yet you have not asked this of me. Will you not let me bathe you this time, Taro?”

Silently he studied her. “
It has been a long time since a woman performed such a task for me. I would greatly appreciate it.”

She retrieved another kettle of water while he shed the robe and seated himself on the stool. Carefully she poured the steaming w
ater in the tub, then collected the cloth and dampened it. Remembering how he had gone about bathing her, she first washed the broad shoulders, noting the ridges of muscles that were crisscrossed by welts. “The scars—how did you get them?”

“
The railroad supervisor was not pleased because I did not bow before him as did the Chinese coolies. Not too long afterward I left the railroad—the Chinese call it the Smoke Dragon,” he added, smiling. “Then I began to work in the mines.”

Her fingernail traced the cordur
oy line of scars, and she had the satisfaction of feeling his muscles flex beneath her fingertip. She left his back to wash his body precisely as he had washed hers. There was something tantalizing about the clean, smooth skin that covered the rock-hard muscles, the well-formed calves, and the strong line of the feet.

She thought about how reversed was the situation compared to that of the Anglo society. Here she performed the most personal of tasks for a man, and yet a sexual act was never culminated; but
from what she had learned in the Crystal Palace, couples engaged in the sexual act and yet never once experienced true intimacy, she was certain.

She began to wash the arms now, not bunched with muscles but ridged in long, sinewy strength. Taro
’s lids were closed, and she enjoyed the chance to look upon the purely masculine face of tawny marble, wondering if she would ever have the chance to know the man, his thoughts. His eyes opened to meet hers. He said nothing, and she knew then he did know her thoughts.

Her throat worked, wanting to break the overpowering silence with words. Taro
’s fingers came up to rest on her lips. He moved his head in an almost imperceptible negative gesture, and she sensed he was telling her that it was no time for words. Puppet-like, her hands resumed the task of bathing the man. Carefully she kept her gaze averted from his genitals.

With his bath finished, she retired to a corner to discard her blouse and skirt while he donned his robe and prepared her bath. Sitting on the stool w
ith only the robe thrown discreetly about her shoulders, she cleansed away the day’s accumulation of dust and dirt before stepping into the tub to soak, her head resting against the cypress’s edge. Taro did not watch her. Instead he worked on the primers and drillers that he would use in the mine blasting, but she knew that he was as aware of her as she was of him.

Later, they stretched out on their respective mats, his across the room from hers now that she was well. The candle was extinguished, and only t
he banked embers cast a faint golden glow over the room.