The Scent of Sake (4 page)

mumbled.

“Don’t worry, dear, you need only walk slowly, with very small steps. Remember to keep your knees together and bent and your toes pointed inward, won’t you?” Her mother smiled and appraised Rie from every angle. “Very fine,” she pronounced.

“You look beautiful,” O-Natsu breathed.

The brief ceremony was presided over by a white-robed priest at the city’s principal Shinto shrine. At the entrance of the shrine the bride and groom and family guests each took a sip of purify—

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ing water with a bamboo dipper from a tank engraved with the characters “cleanse the spirit.” The ceremonial room was spare, the floorboards polished to a gleaming gloss, the only furnishing being the zabuton on which guests sat facing the priest and the bridal couple, whose parents sat closest to the bride and groom. The priest waved his paper wand over the bride and groom to invoke the blessing of the gods. Rie and Jihei exchanged the traditional three sips of sake from a black lacquer cup. Her head modestly bowed, Rie was nevertheless able to steal a nervous glance at Jihei. He was standing stiffly in his black wedding kimono, looking straight ahead. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he pleased with his bride? Or did he feel as she did? Rie had no clue to Jihei’s feelings, other than his stiff, formal bearing, which was really fitting for the occasion. She would have to wait, she knew, for what lay ahead at night. She wanted to glance at his face, but forced herself to keep looking demurely down, as her mother had instructed.

The teahouse with the largest garden in the city was reserved for the reception. All the city’s luminaries were present: shogunal commissioners, town officials, and representatives of each of the major brewing houses with their wives. Women paraded in their elegant kimonos and admired the azaleas while husbands gathered in clusters and discussed the significance of the adoption of the Okamoto second son as successor to the House of Omura. The bride and groom were toasted in the top grade of White Tiger and their virtues extolled by Mr. Nakano and the head of the Kobe Sake Brewers Association.

And so she was married. Jihei, this stranger, was her
husband.
Standing in the reception line Rie caught her breath when she happened to glance up just as Saburo, the Kato third son, was passing. She looked directly into his arresting eyes, and smiled slightly before looking down. She thought she caught an answering smile as she murmured a greeting and bowed. He was so

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handsome! And she felt drawn to him, there was no question. Her emotions were in turmoil as she recalled his sympathetic reassurance at little Toichi’s funeral, the way he had caught her elbow when she felt faint. The strength he’d somehow trans-ferred to her in that small gesture. She would never forget it, or him. She wondered if negotiations were under way for the marriage of this man she found so appealing. Her shoulders tensed and she pressed her hands more tightly together. Her thoughts lingered on Saburo Kato during the rest of the reception as she stood beside her new husband.

Rie tensed as Kinzaemon turned to look at her. She made sure her head was modestly bowed, her hands folded in front of her as guests congratulated Jihei at her side. Rie knew that for Kinzaemon the marriage was the culmination of a successful negotiation to ensure the future of the house. But for Rie it felt like a death sentence.

When they returned to the Omura House following the reception it was late evening. Rie’s mother helped her out of her obi. “O-Natsu will help you with your kimono, Rie.”

Rie’s parents vacated the second floor room for the newlyweds and moved downstairs to Rie’s former room. Hana said, “The stairs are becoming too much for us, dear. We’d rather you had the room.”

“Only if it’s really difficult for you, Mother,” Rie had de-murred.

Rie put on the kimono especially selected for the wedding night, trembling as she did, beads of sweat forming on her brow. Jihei had already been shown to their quarters, but had drunk so much that he stumbled on the stairs. Rie heard him grumbling, his speech slurred, as he staggered around the room bumping into the
shoji. Please be so drunk that you fall asleep the moment you lie down
, she prayed.

As Rie walked up the stairs, she hesitated. The stairway and her

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mother’s room above were so familiar, but tonight they seemed strange, almost forbidding. She put her hands on the yellow plaster walls on either side of the stairway for reassurance, for support on this portentous night.

When she entered the anteroom she saw that Jihei was already recumbent on the futon, eyes closed, his breath smelling of sake even from where she stood. Had her prayers been answered? She entered the room slowly, sat at the dressing table and took down her hair, glancing at Jihei’s reflection in the mirror as she combed the glossy locks. When she could delay no longer she went to the futon that had been laid out beside Jihei’s and quietly slipped under the covers. She breathed as lightly as possible, hoping that Jihei was already asleep. It seemed an eternity that she lay there wakeful, apprehensive. This man beside her on the futon was a complete stranger.

Some time during the night, she could not say just when, Jihei came to her abruptly, grunting and sweating, without saying anything, without a word that might have shown consideration for her. The shock of his sharp, piercing thrusts caused her to gasp and struggle to stifle a cry of pain. When he stopped, she tried to move but was pinned by Jihei’s moist, slack body.
Disgusting!
She lay wakeful, barely able to breathe, the pain between her thighs acute as she listened to Jihei’s heavy breathing. A single tear fell. Was this what their life together would be like? If she’d had a dagger, she would have cut her throat now rather than face this nightly humiliation. She thought of Kato, of the tenderness he’d shown her at her brother’s funeral. Now she would forever be locked away with a man who would control her destiny. No, she could not think about it. Her mother was right. To survive, one must kill the self.

She closed her eyes, then opened them, determined to get as far away from this man as possible. Finally she was able to edge out from under him. Despite the ache in her heart and the sense

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of violation, she knew she would have to be with her husband in this way to bear an heir for the house. She bit her lip and tried to sleep, but the pain and sense of outrage made it impossible.

She rolled gingerly out of the futon, drew her kimono around her, and, picking up her padded wrapper, glanced at her still-sleeping husband. She slid open the shoji, then crept quietly down the stairs and along the drafty dark corridor past the kitchen to the bathroom. As she dropped her kimono into the wicker basket in the dressing room, she wrinkled her nose in distaste when she noticed bloodstains. Shivering, she entered the room where the wooden tub stood. Scooping up the tepid water still standing from the evening’s baths, she sloshed bucket after bucket over her body until every trace of blood, dried perspiration, and sticky fluids was washed away. Then she wrapped both kimonos around herself and walked softly toward the inner office. She entered and sat in the silent darkness at the main working table. She breathed in slowly. The comforting aroma of musty ledgers mingled with the hint of yeast that never left the house. For the next several minutes, the tears fell in earnest. She listened to her muffled sobs, saw her breath in the dim, wintry light.

As she was busy feeling sorry for herself, a barrel on the floor bearing the White Tiger logo caught her eye, the brand name under which the Omura sake had been sold for nine generations. She gazed at the leaping white beast, talisman of all those ancestors before her father. Of Toichi, had he lived. Something swept over her, stronger than feeling.

Whatever was necessary to ensure the birth of an heir she would do,
must
do, for the house. That was not only her obligation, but her atonement for the lapse that had ended her brother’s life. Yes, she would fulfill her obligation, but the inner office here, the core of the brewery, this she would make her own sphere, a place to forget that other life with Jihei. Here she would work for the house, do her best for White Tiger and for her father. Just

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how she would accomplish this she was not sure. But she would do it. She would work to redeem herself to her father and position herself to defeat the braggart Yamaguchi, the White Tiger enemy. Kinzaemon would come to know that she was indispensable to the business, far more than “a girl in a box.” She would find a way into the business, maybe through Kin, the chief clerk. She knew he was fond of her and had been since she was a small child. He had given her clues about the business from time to time. Sniffling, she rested her arms on the table, then glanced at the White Tiger logo again.

“I will do this, and Father will know,” she murmured.

As soon as her eyes opened, Rie extricated herself from her futon, rose, and folded it away in the wall cupboard. She turned to glance at her husband. He showed no sign of waking. Relieved, Rie opened the shoji and quickly changed in the dressing room. She knew her mother would be expecting her to prepare her husband’s first breakfast in his new home, and she padded rapidly down the slippery stairway.

Jihei appeared in the breakfast room several minutes later, and as soon as he had eaten the rice, miso soup, and pickles Rie placed before him, he rose abruptly and followed Kinzaemon into the office. Wasn’t he able to speak, to acknowledge her at all?

Rie wanted to erase her memories of the night before, of Jihei’s body on hers, his breath smelling of sake. She shuddered at the memory, and forced her attention to brewery concerns. Even as a child she had taken an interest in her father’s business, and now she felt a greater urgency. He would be retiring soon, and with him Kin. They had been looking for a successor. But before a decision

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was made about who would succeed Kin, she needed to find out what they were planning, especially in regard to Jihei. Curious to see Kin’s reaction to Jihei, but also mindful of Yamaguchi’s evalua-tion of her new husband, she slid quietly along the corridor toward the inner office and peered cautiously around the shoji that stood open. Her father’s back was to her, she was relieved to see.

Kinzaemon had taken Jihei into the office to introduce him to Kin, chief clerk and manager of the entire White Tiger operation. A spare spidery figure of a man, prominent front teeth barely covered by his lips, Kin had been with the family business almost as long as Kinzaemon. He was consulted in any major decision. Close in age to Kinzaemon and equally dedicated to family traditions, Kin nevertheless also had more of an eye to the future. Each autumn he insisted on projecting White Tiger’s markets three years in advance.

Rie had been watching her father and had noticed how tired he seemed lately, how depressed he’d become as he neared retirement. Always he’d dreamed of a son to carry on the family business, to help him create the dynasty that he’d envisioned long ago. Her shoulders slumped as a familiar weight rested on them. She was more determined than ever to make her father’s dream a reality.