The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) (10 page)

Cat lay down gratefully on the raveled mat JMshk spread out under the boat. She cradled the walking staff in her arms. A tattered scrap of a quilt and a few broken utensils were wedged up into the thwarts overhead. JMshk took down the quilt and spread it over her.

A pair of wooden tablets with JMshk’s parents’ death names written on them were fastened to the ceiling formed by the boat’s broken floorboards. Stubs of incense sticks bristled from the sand. A bowl of cooked rice with chopsticks stuck into it and a thimbleful of water were mute evidence that JMshk had been faithfully providing for his parents’ well-being in the spirit world.

“Buddha of the Boundless Light will bless you, child,” Cat murmured before she fell asleep.

She slept through the hours of the Snake and Horse. She slept through the rainstorm that produced a flowering of bright, water-repellent paper umbrellas and big straw rain hats along the road and sent unprepared travelers scurrying for cover. She slept until the moist crunch of feet in the sand woke her. Without changing the rate of her breathing, she slipped her hand into her sash and found the scissors.

“Holy man.” The voice was gruff. Cat tightened her grip on the scissors. “JMshk says you’re a diviner.”

In spite of the introduction, of sorts, Cat almost stabbed the face that peered under the dripping gunwale. The man’s vein-laced nose had been broken two or three times. The bulbous tip of it slanted toward the lumpy left ear growing like a fungus on the side of his head.

He had shaved his eyebrows, exposing the thick ridge of bone over his bulging eyes. His bristle of black hair poked out from under a towel, rolled into a narrow tube, wrapped around his head, and knotted above his left ear.

At first glance Cat thought his head was being swallowed by a snake. A snake’s distended jaws had been tattooed along his own jawline. The lower and upper fangs bracketed his puffy-looking lips. A forked red tongue flicked across his nose. A pattern of blue scales covered his chin and ran down his neck.

“What do you want?” Cat asked.

“To beg a favor of you. In return, to offer you food and lodging.”

“And a bath?”

“My wretched hovel has few amenities, but certainly you can bathe there.”

Musashi wrote that to cross the expanse one must assess the perils, the directions, the obstacles. Cat realized, with a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach, that she didn’t know what the perils and obstacles of the TMkaidM were. She didn’t know whom she could trust and whom she must fear. As she crawled out from under the boat, she saw that this was certainly a man to fear. She decided to trust him.

He was squat, with long, powerful arms. The thick calluses on his shoulders marked him as a
kago
bearer. The snake tattoo that started at his face wound in thick coils down his neck, across his chest, and around his torso. The tail disappeared into the pouch of the loincloth that was his only clothing. Cat suspected that the tip of the tail ended at the tip of
ano mono.

He hissed politely as he bowed. “For reasons obvious to all but a blind man, these stewed tea loaf fools call me Mamushi no Jiro, Viper.” He gestured at the world in general. It was the sort of name a bandit or gambler would adopt, and Viper seemed pleased with it.

He motioned her toward a flimsy bamboo
kago
sitting on the sand. Another bearer squatted beside it. As Viper slogged off through the sand, he hitched up his loincloth and tightened it for the work ahead. Cat stared, fascinated, at the golden-and-black-striped tiger face covering his bare, tightly muscled buttocks.

The narrow white roll of loincloth partially obscured the pink nose at the point where his nether cleavage began. The huge eyes glowered from either side of it. The tiger’s cheeks followed the contours of the nates, and when Viper walked, his great cat seemed to be chewing thoughtfully.

Cat knew that to cross the expanse she would have to trust her own instincts. Her instincts told her Viper was offering her more than shelter. He was offering her sanctuary.

“What do you want of me?” She pulled her staff and pack from under the boat.

“To speak to the dead.”

THINGS LATELY FASHIONABLE

Hanshiro’s posture marked him as a true swordsman. And for the eye untrained in such subtleties, his two swords were usually warning enough. The hem of his baggy, thigh-length coat rode up over the scabbards. They formed the distinctive silhouette that identified him as a warrior and a man to avoid. But bearing and a pair of swords didn’t always ensure respect, certainly not here in Edo’s theater district.

Hanshiro ignored the acrobat who trotted along on his palms beside him. He had wrapped his feet around his neck and held a begging bowl in his agile toes. He jingled the few
mon
inside it beguilingly. Safe in his haven of imbecility, he tilted his head sideways to grin up at Hanshiro.

“Read your fortune, honorable sir?” asked a heap of paper rags. The diviner inside them sat on a small square mat. His divining sticks were laid out in front of him.

He was blind and couldn’t see Hanshiro’s scowl or his swords. The scowl deepened and hardened. It was a look that usually guaranteed Hanshiro wouldn’t be bothered, but in the theater district bothering people was the principal occupation.

Hanshiro joined the crowd of theatergoers and sightseers, peddlers, street entertainers, and beggars, holy and profane. The narrow roadway was lined with fifteen-foot-tall poles. The white banners that hung vertically from them were painted with the actors’ crests and bold black ideograms announcing the plays.

Shops and tea houses, built side by side, fronted directly on the street. Posters of the actors in their most famous poses covered the walls. Strings of spherical, red paper lanterns decorated the first- and second-floor eaves. From the balconies, people called down to their friends passing below. Drums sounded continually as touts tried to attract attention. The noise of people hawking everything from firewood to love amulets reverberated off the walls, making it difficult to hear anything below a shout.

Even though the opening dance had started at dawn and the actors were well into the first play, the river imps were still at work here. Like the
kappa,
their demon namesakes, they plucked at the sleeves of likely customers and tried to draw them into the theaters.

“Come to the finest show in Edo.” They bowed and wheedled and circled their victims. “Witness the tragic story of the courtesan Oshu. Your tears will saturate your sleeves.”

“Buy a program. Buy a program.” Younger boys wore foot-tall wooden pattens called
geta
and waved the booklets over their heads so they’d be seen in the press of people.

To get their money’s worth, country folk had left their homes at two in the morning, the hour of the Ox, to arrive in time for the first dance. They had long since rented small mats to sit on and had settled into their places, packed shoulder to shoulder with the Edokko on the bare earth of the pit. They had spent the morning eating cold rice from their wooden lunch boxes, smoking their tiny pipes, nursing babies, chatting to each other, and calling out criticism and encouragement to the actors. The pit was redolent with tobacco, pickles, and urine.

Those who rented the expensive box seats were more urbane. They thought it fashionable to come late. Rollicking parties of them brushed by Hanshiro. They wore
geta
to keep their travel cloaks and the hems of their bright robes out of the dust. They twirled parasols painted with flowers and poetry.

Their servants followed with rattan boxes swinging from poles over their shoulders. The boxes contained supplies for a day at the theater—makeup and changes of clothing, playing cards, books, tobacco, and pipes. And most important of all, paper, ink stones, porcelain water containers, and brushes for poetry contests and love notes. Employees from the tea houses hurried alongside, bowing and soliciting business.

The latecomers bought programs and clattered into the slate-paved entry ways of the tea houses. They would spend most of the hour of the Snake eating and drinking and discussing the plays. Before going to the theater they would change their street robes for elaborate
kimono.
It would be the first of two or three costume changes they would make before darkness ended the day’s performance.

As Hanshiro watched the bright crowds swirl past, he wondered what made people mad for the latest nuance of sash knot or sleeve length. The zeal with which people pursued such absurdities mystified him. Fashions changed, but the mania for being fashionable endured the ages. The theater district always made him think of a song written almost five hundred years earlier.

Things lately fashionable in the capital:

Painted eyebrows, hairdos, hairpieces,

Saltwater bath robes, women in men’s clothes,

And not a nun who doesn’t have her
naginata.

“Here you are, here you are!” One of the wicket
geisha
beckoned to Hanshiro. On a long bench next to the theater’s doorway he danced and shouted enticements to the crowd. “Buy a ticket and see the famous Shichisaburo perform in the tragic story of Oshu. See the spirit of the famous courtesan rise from the flames of her lover’s letter. Step inside. Step inside.”

The wicket
geisha
wore a woman’s robes and a blue towel draped over his head and tied under his chin. The towel was dyed with Shichisaburo’s crest. The
geisha
stalked the length of the bench in Shichisaburo’s soft-stuff style. He flourished his open fan over his head, cocked his other elbow, crossed his eyes, and struck a
mie,
the particular pose Shichisaburo had made famous. Then he squatted to be at eye level with Hanshiro.

“ You look like a man of fine sensibilities,
rMnin
.” He shielded his mouth with his fan, as though sharing a secret. “The new impersonator, Dragonfly, from Osaka, acts the part of the doomed courtesan. He’s very sensual. Irresistible.”

Hanshiro hardly spared him a scrap of his glower. He strode through the stacks of cake and clothing boxes and
sake
barrels, gifts from adoring patrons to their favorite actors. Many of them bore Shichisaburo’s crest.

Hanshiro turned into the alleyway, behind Shichisaburo’s theater, the Nakamura-za. Casually, as though only passing time, he used the butt of his old parasol to scatter the heap of trash there. He didn’t expect to find anything, but from what people threw away he could reconstruct entire lives.

At the bottom of the pile he found the charred remains of a blue hempen coat. The white characters for Nakagawa were still visible. With hundreds of secondhand stores and pawnshops in the city, no one threw away clothing unless they had a good reason.

Hanshiro was waiting for Shichisaburo when he made his dramatic exit. The agitated clacking of wooden blocks signaled the climax of the first act. It was accompanied by shouts of “That’s the way, Shichisaburo!” from the audience.

A pair of black-clad, masked, hooded, and stockinged assistants followed Shichisaburo. They had hovered about him on stage, adjusting his sixty pounds of layered, weighted, gold-and-silver-embroidered robes each time he moved. They continued to do it here.

Beyond the black curtain Hanshiro could hear the rustle and murmur of people stampeding for the passageways to the nearby tea houses. The tea houses had privies. The theater didn’t.

“I haven’t time to chat.” Shichisaburo was preoccupied.

His lady love had sneaked out of the
shMgun’s
palace and into the city. She was waiting for him in a back room of the tea house next door. As a pledge of her affection she had sent her fingernail clipping in a tiny jade box. Anticipation had Shichisaburo in a fevered state.

Hanshiro held out the handle of the parasol with the charred jacket dangling from the end of it. Shichisaburo blanched under his thick crust of rice powder makeup, but he put on a brave show. Earlier that morning he had convinced Kira’s retainers that he was ignorant of the young Lady Asano’s whereabouts. Shichisaburo was, after all, an actor. The simple westcountryman from AkM had fared no better with him.

“I’ve already told Lord Kira’s rabble I know nothing of the matter.” Shichisaburo looked around for help as Hanshiro, stiff-legged, silent, and somehow much larger than the physical space he occupied, crowded him toward the stairs to the dressing rooms.

The mob of Shichisaburo’s female admirers shouted their offers of love and/or marriage and/or a brief dalliance from a safe distance, a tribute to the ferocity of Hanshiro’s demeanor. Ordinarily they would have crowded close to press flowers and gifts and middling but fervent verse on their idol.

The shadowy stage assistants prudently disappeared, leaving Shichisaburo to tussle with his costume and the surly stranger. As he climbed the narrow stairs, the long train of his heavy robes tangled with his feet. The sleeves of his huge outer coat were four feet square and stiffened with bamboo splints. The bamboo caught on the door frame and bent backward. When they released and sprang back into shape, one of them bruised Shichisaburo’s hand. He was rubbing it dolefully when he reached the upstairs dressing room.

Hanshiro spread a silk cloth on the
tatami
and laid his long-sword on it. With his left hand he deftly slapped the baggy hem of each
hakama
leg
out of the way as he crossed his legs and sat down.

When he was comfortably seated he regarded the actor with a chilly smile. “Now, honorable riverbed-beggar, tell me what you know.”