The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (39 page)

Now Kenji smiled at the vision of a face slowly emerging from this cypress—brow, eyes, nose, cheeks—all shaped and defined by his own hands. The face looked like Mika Abe, the girl from his drawing class, a face he longed to touch, to hold, to—

The clerk returned with a wrapped bundle. “Shall I add that to your order?”

Kenji shook his head, replaced the block of cypress on the counter, and felt the dream of the night before descend on him again. Its weight made his shoulders slump. Like the Noh masks he could never quite touch, Mika Abe was beyond his reach. Yoshiwara-sensei had vanished. The war was lost. Four years wasted. And next year Kenji would graduate from Tokyo University with a degree in architecture. So what use was a block of cypress?

His throat ached as he signed for the balsa.

Aki was bored. Rain had fallen for three continuous days before turning into a thick mist of summer fog. As if trapped in a dense cloud, she spent the afternoons inside doing her chores, but, at twelve, her housekeeping skills hadn’t improved. She halfheartedly swept the floors and dusted the tables before going to look for Haru, who always seemed busy with the household accounts, or helping her father
with the stable, or reading book after book, even during these precious summer weeks when they were out of school.

This afternoon, Haru was in the dining room, the account books spread on the glossy black lacquer table. Aki stopped at the open door, but didn’t speak. Why interrupt her sister’s concentration? Haru would barely glance up, absorbed as usual by columns of black numbers, to say in her distracted voice that she would be just a little longer before finding something for them to do. But hadn’t she been promising Aki the same thing since she was a little girl?

Across the courtyard, her father was in an entirely different world, preparing his wrestlers for the next tournament in September. When Aki was little, she liked to watch the big boys practice. Even during the war, she followed her father into the vacant practice room and watched him stare at the empty ring. When she surprised him by inching up behind him and clapping her hands, he always smiled and picked her up. That precious closeness seemed a long time ago. Nowadays, she didn’t see her father until dinner. Afterward, he went to visit friends at a teahouse, or crossed the courtyard to the stable, where the light glowed in his small upstairs office until late at night. Aki no longer followed him.

Instead, she turned back to her room and glimpsed the storage closet at the end of the hallway. Aki hadn’t looked in it for years and wondered if she might find something interesting there. She felt the hairs prickling on the back of her neck as she slid the door open. On the two top shelves were remnants of their childhood, games and toys, and old clothes. Below the shelves, an extra futon sat on top of a red lacquered trunk. What was in there? She pulled the futon off and the silver and gold mosaic inlay of a phoenix immediately caught her eye and made her heart jump. It looked strangely familiar. She remembered seeing the same trunk years ago when her mother was alive. Aki was four or five and had found her mother looking through it, lovingly touching the things inside.

“What’s in there?” Aki had asked.

“Memories,” her mother had said, smiling at her.

“Can I see?”

Her mother closed the lid slowly. “When you’re a little older, I’ll show you and Haru-chan everything.”

Aki knelt, running her fingers over the uneven surface of the mosaic tiles, imagining her mother doing the same. She tried to lift the cover, but it was locked and her anticipation turned to frustration. As she stole into her father’s room to look for the key, a twinge of sadness filled the hollow of her stomach. She hadn’t been here since her mother’s death almost five years ago, but nothing had changed. Her eyes searched the room quickly until she saw a clay bowl on the second shelf of the
tokonoma
. Two keys lay inside. She grabbed them both and hurried back to the trunk.

It was the second key that turned the lock. Aki raised the cover. Under layers of milky rice paper lay the most beautiful kimono she’d ever seen. She lifted it out of the trunk to see white peonies soaring upward from the hem, their pale petals a stark contrast to the vibrant red and gold of the silk material. She felt its softness and tried to imagine her mother wearing it as a young apprentice geisha. Underneath more paper, she found the wide black obi. Beautifully embroidered with gold thread, it felt heavy in her hands. Beneath that were two more kimonos, green and blue, but neither as opulent as the red one, and a pair of tall wooden sandals. Aki reached for the sandals and stepped up into them, wavering unsteadily. She laughed and caught herself as she almost stumbled taking a step. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could walk in them. In a separate wooden box were her mother’s hair decorations, silver combs, and makeup. And, at the bottom of the trunk was a framed black-and-white photo of her mother as a beautiful young
maiko
wearing the very same silk kimono with peonies.

When Hiroshi stepped onto the
dohyo
during the last match of the January
honbasho
, he knew that winning the tournament would put him within reach of the Juryo Division and becoming a professional
sekitori
wrestler. The difference between upper and lower ranks was said to be day and night, heaven and hell. After the match, he remembered the smooth coolness of the clay beneath his feet just before he charged his opponent and shifted his body to the right at the last moment, hitting the wrestler hard on his left side to throw him off balance. Hiroshi quickly took advantage by charging again and knocking the wrestler out of the ring before he had time to right himself. Within seconds, he was assured the tournament win.

Two weeks before the Haru Basho, the spring tournament in March, Tanaka-oyakata called Hiroshi into his office. Piled on his desk and the floor of the small room were the bundled stacks of tournament ranking sheets called
banzuke
.

“Ah, Hiroshi,” Tanaka-sama said, looking up from the papers on his desk. “Here’s something I’d like you to look at.” He turned the ranking sheet around for Hiroshi and pointed down the side of one crowded column.

Hiroshi bowed. His heart raced as he leaned closer to the desk. His name, Takanoyama, written in small, perfect characters, was circled on the right side of the sheet, below the top level of wrestlers. Underneath were his hometown, Yanaka, Tokyo, and his rank in the Juryo Division. He had been promoted to a
sekitori
wrestler.

“Did you know?” Hiroshi asked. His gaze lingered on the ranking sheet in happiness.

“I thought the Sumo Association might promote you after your wins at the Hatsu Basho in January. But nothing is ever certain.”

Hiroshi took a step back and steadied himself. At twenty-four, he had reached a rank many other
sumotori
only dreamed of. It left a sweet taste on his tongue.

Tanaka smiled, ran his hand across the top of his shiny head, and said nothing.

Hiroshi bowed. “I’m honored.”

“You’ve earned it.”

Hiroshi bowed to his
oyakata
again.
“Arigato gozaimashita
. If it weren’t for your training—,” he began.

Tanaka-oyakata cut him off. “My training wouldn’t mean a thing without your skill and diligence. Remember, Hiroshi-san, success is not handed to you. You must work hard for it and you must never dishonor what you’ve achieved.”

“Hai
, Oyakata-sama.” He bowed, remembering his less than honorable behavior with Daishima.

The benefits of his new rank included wearing a white
mawashi
belt during practice and a silk one during tournaments, and making
tegata
, the autographed handprints for his fans. As a Juryo-ranked wrestler, he would now fight fifteen tournament matches instead of seven. He could hardly wait to tell his grandparents that his
sekitori
salary came with bonuses that would also allow him to provide for them financially.

“And Hiroshi,” Tanaka-oyakata added, “your apprentice will be the new boy, Sadao.”

Hiroshi celebrated his promotion at the Sakura teahouse, hosted by Tanaka-oyakata. It was the first time he’d been in a geisha teahouse, and everything about it fascinated him, from the large
sakura
tree in the small courtyard to the front door and entrance hall, where a large brush painting hung. A maid led them past several immaculate tatami rooms of differing sizes to a larger back room with a long table surrounded by cushions. The shoji panels were hand painted with scenes of Mount Fuji, and slid open to a quiet garden. Three other
sekitori
wrestlers joined them, but Daishima remained conspicuously absent. The door to the room slid open and two geishas, who had been kneeling just outside, entered, and bowed to them. Hiroshi had never seen a geisha up close before. He watched, fascinated, as they moved in small, graceful steps, carrying plates of yakitori, pickled cabbage, grilled fish, sake, and beer. They filled the room with their sweet perfumes and light chatter. A geisha named Momiko danced for them, telling a story with each movement she made. Afterward, when she leaned close to Hiroshi and poured him more sake, the sleeve of her purple and white kimono brushed against his arm and he blushed at her touch. The other
sekitori
watched and teased him. “It looks as if Sekitori Takanoyama has found himself a new admirer.” Momiko glanced up at him and looked away. He gazed at her pale, white skin, her long, thin neck, and wasn’t quite sure who admired whom.

While Nazo dozed, sprawled out on the table beside him in the drafty barn, Akira finished the
Okina
mask with paints Tomita-san had brought back for him from Oyama. He’d meant to finish it before the accident, and was now more determined than ever to resume his life as a mask maker. The quality of the paints was poor but would have to do. Working one-handed made everything take longer, from mixing pigments to painting the exact curve of an eyebrow, but nothing could exceed the joy he felt painting a mask again, the gratification
of completing it. Akira was so involved that he didn’t hear the knocking on the barn door until it grew louder and more persistent, and he finally called out,
“Hairu,”
come in. As the door creaked open, he expected Kiyo returning from school.

At fourteen, Kiyo was growing up, spending more time with her friends down in the village. Still, there were afternoons when she came home early and walked with Akira high into the mountains, where the cool March air felt like breathing ice. They avoided the path that led to the rocks where Akira had had his accident. He would never be able to convince her it wasn’t her fault. For months afterward, she had watched his recuperation from a distance. Even now, her eyes brimmed with tears when she looked at his arm and she grew quiet, while he spoke, filling the air with more words than he’d ever uttered in all his years in Tokyo.

Akira tried to imagine what his life might be like in Tokyo, occupied for the past five years by American forces. He heard some scant news on the radio when he went down to the village, and now and then he read a newspaper brought back by Tomita-san, who made trips down to Oyama for supplies. Tokyo seemed a world away.