47 Ronin Page 13

  The circling and slashing of the swordsmanship contest continued, never so strangely out of place as on the floor of a darkened theater with the partitions between the boxes serving as obstacles. Both men were apparently in poor physical condition, besides being drunk, and the townspeople found it a noisy, odious performance. Many of them began to leave the theater, in deep resentment that men of this station should come into a theater and break up the show. As busy as he was, Oishi sensed this and felt greatly embarrassed, even though his predicament was all of his own making.

  He endeavored to bring the fight to a quick close but his opponent was just as handy as he, and the silly circling and slashing went on. Never in his life had Oishi felt or looked so foolish, and he cursed himself for getting involved in such a scrape. Realizing that he could not look any worse if he tried, he deliberately tripped himself and fell flat on his face before his opponent. The big man whooped in victory and tapped him not too lightly on the head with his sheathed sword in a gesture of victory. Oishi drew himself to his knees and made a mock bow of surrender, and the big man laughed and withdrew to his own box.

  The skylights were opened by now and the performance was at an end. Some members of the audience were still in their places, hoping that the play would begin again, but most had left out of fear or disgust. The big samurai ordered his men to pick up their things and prepare to leave and Oishi was about to do the same when he happened to look around at the boxes on the side again and saw Okaru. She was sitting there talking with a little maiko, or apprentice geisha, and Oishi could not be sure whether she had seen his performance or not. He assumed she had, however, and turned away in regret and embarrassment. Shindo noticed this, as drunk as he was, and called it to Koyama’s attention. When Koyama finally understood what Shindo was trying to tell him they exchanged a knowing glance.

  Oishi abruptly left the theater, his little group following, with Shindo and Koyama bowing in recognition to Okaru who politely nodded in return. Oishi missed this interchange; he was still thinking about his own disgraceful behavior. In his mind there was only one cause for satisfaction about the whole episode; if any of Kira’s spies had been watching they had certainly received proof that the object of their surveillance was a complete fool. His sword was evidently rusty, his swordsmanship was appallingly bad, and he had no more thought for his reputation than a street beggar.

  In disgust with himself and to deliberately compound the injury to his reputation, Oishi insisted they stop at the first “teahouse” they came to, even though it was a low-class establishment that he would ordinarily have shunned. Dejectedly he slumped down just inside the door and demanded service of the watch-girl. Here he consumed more saké, which was not the best, served by “geisha” who were not the best either. These girls were straight off the farms with no training in the social graces whatsoever. Their function was to serve saké and sleep with the customers when requested; their abilities to entertain in other ways were strictly limited. Oishi listened in boredom as they chattered among themselves in their local dialects, all of which grated unpleasantly on his ear. But he was there to drink, not to talk, and he devoted himself single-mindedly to that purpose.

  Hours later Shindo and Koyama had quietly slipped away and Oishi was left lying in a stupor with his head cradled in the lap of the watch-girl, who was crooning a folk song of home in a wavering monotone. Kataoka had fallen asleep in the corner, exhausted and out of patience with his leader.

  Suddenly there was a commotion at the front door and the girl paused to look up blearily. Oishi raised himself to listen, then sank back again against her as she resumed her song. The next thing Oishi knew, the door was thrown open with a bang and Hara, his eyes blazing, stood in the doorway. Oishi tried to pull himself up but his hand slipped and he went crashing back against the girl, who was stunned into silence at the sight of the wild-eyed samurai before them.

  “Hara,” Oishi said thickly as he got to his knees. “Welcome, old friend. . . .Kataoka, looks who’s here—it’s our old friend Hara.”

  Kataoka roused himself sleepily, but when he saw who it was in the doorway he sat up with a start. He was about to say something to Hara by way of explanation but the look on the other’s face stopped him. He had never seen such an expression of fury on Hara’s face before and for once he was at a loss for words.

  “So the stories were true!” Hara hissed at them, his hands trembling at his two swords as though he would like to put them to use. “I never would have believed it of either of you so I had to come and see for myself. And you, Oishi, were so upset when I sank to becoming an archery instructor!”

  Oishi rose unsteadily to his feet. “Now just a minute, old friend. . . .”

  “I’m not your friend,” Hara interrupted him icily. “You’re a disgrace to the name of ‘samurai.’” He shook his head. “I would never have guessed that you would willingly wallow in such filth as this!”

  “Now wait a minute!” Kataoka said angrily, but Hara was not about to wait for anyone.

  “Who pays for all this whoring, Oishi-dono!” he asked with a rising note of fury in his voice. “While some of our men are starving in the streets, by what right do you spend our funds in this way?”

  “Hara, you’ve said enough!” Oishi shouted.

  “I have said enough. I’m through talking to you and I’m through listening, too. I’m going to spread the word to all our band that Oishi has become a thief and a rake and is not to be trusted. I should cut both of you down and be done with it!”

  He turned to go out the door and Kataoka flung himself desperately after him.

  “Hara, don’t you see . . .” he began, but Hara, in a supremely insulting gesture, placed his foot squarely in Kataoka’s chest and pushed him violently backward.

  “Son of a beast!” he spat through clenched teeth, and then he stepped out through the doorway.

  As he closed the door, Oishi glimpsed a young man waiting behind him but the face was not familiar and he was quickly forgotten.

  Hara was gone and Oishi and Kataoka were left sadly shaking their heads.

  After a moment the girl, still white and shaking, began to edge toward the inner entrance to the teahouse, but Oishi saw her out of the corner of his eye. He moved to block her path and forced a smile to his lips.

  “Please,” he said, “it’s nothing to be alarmed about. Our friend is very old fashioned and doesn’t understand why we like to have a good time once in a while.”

  The girl hesitated and the color gradually came back to her cheeks.

  “It’s too late for singing now but we really appreciate the fine time you showed us.” He opened his purse and took out a few coins, which he dropped from one hand into the other as he continued. “You’ll forgive us, won’t you? And not mention this episode to anyone?”

  The girl took a deep breath when she saw the money, and when he finished and handed it to her she smiled and revealed her crooked teeth.

  “Thank you, sir. Please come again.”

  Oishi and Kataoka bowed clumsily to her and left. Out in the air Kataoka moved apart by himself and for once had no lighthearted comment to make. Oishi realized how deeply his old friend had been humiliated by the afternoon’s happenings, and wondered if Hara, too, had lost all faith in his leader. Under the circumstances he could not blame either of them if they had, and when they reached Yamashina Oishi went to bed in a black and all but hopeless mood.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the middle of the night Oishi was half-­awakened by whispered voices in the corridor outside his room. He tried to make out what they were saying but the sounds blurred in his head and he rolled over to go back to sleep. Facing away from the doorway he imagined he heard someone softly open and close the shoji, but he was too miserable and drunk to care and tightly closed his eyes until he fell asleep again.

  It was some time later when he happened to turn toward the door that he sensed that someone was in the room. And not only in the room but in the
same bed with him! There was a dim form lying on the mattress next to him, and he raised up on his arm with an exclamation.

  His first thought was that it was his wife, returned from her parents’ home without permission, and he felt a simultaneous urge to embrace her and to strike her for her disobedience. Then the figure turned more directly toward him and he saw by the moonlight that filtered milky-white through the paper windows that it was Okaru. Again his impulses were contradictory. He knew instantly that her being there was the doing of Shindo and Koyama, and this made him angry and resentful. But on the other hand the whole thing was funny! It was a cruel joke to try to get him involved with a “substitute wife,” and he could not help chuckling in a kind of mirthless despair. At the sound the girl looked at him curiously. He could see now how pale her skin was and could distinguish a faint reddish glow through her dark perfumed hair. She was beautiful, he had to admit, and he moved closer as she watched him, motionless.

  He reached out to touch her to make sure she was real and felt a surge of passion as he felt the warm skin of her cheek. His hand moved to the back of her neck and he stroked it softly under her low collar. Then his hand moved to her throat and then slowly down the front of her flimsy kimono, opening it all the way.

  Abruptly he opened it wider, first one side and then the other, until she lay fully revealed in the pale light. Her skin was so smooth, so perfect, that he hesitated to touch it again. Then he placed his palm on her chest and felt her quickening heartbeat.

  After all, he thought, she did not have to be here if she did not want to be. She was of first-class rank and could refuse unwanted bed partners. And was it not truly a shame for a man not to eat a meal set before him?

  With a sigh he rolled heavily onto her, but the night was not yet through with surprises. As her yielding body received him, he felt a sensation such as he had never known before.

  Deep inside her he felt a rhythmic throbbing that caressed him unceasingly until he reached the point of ecstasy. Then it continued so that he felt exquisite pain as he was drained of every drop of passion. Was it a trick, he wondered, as he rolled off her? Was it a technique she had learned in the geisha house, or was it some rare gift she had been born with? But he lacked the courage to ask her. Leave well enough alone, he thought, and quickly fell asleep.

  In the morning when he woke and found the girl still beside him, he felt thoroughly ashamed of his behavior. He saw that she was already awake and he spoke to her in apology.

  “There should be no intimacy without politeness.”

  She smiled at him for the first time and he was again aware of her beauty. There was a perpetual melancholy expression in her eyes that gave even her simple smile a touch of mystery.

  “It is a matter of no great importance,” she said simply.

  Oishi was reassured and grateful for a moment but then his mind went back to the brawl in the theater. She had been there and surely she must have a low opinion of him for his silly antics in a theater full of people. Now another thought occurred to him. Since she had seen him and must think him a fool, why had she consented to move in with him when his well-meaning relatives had sought her out? Did she need the money they were undoubtedly paying her? Not likely, for one of her class. Could it be that she was a spy herself, cleverly gotten into his house through Shindo’s or Koyama’s gullibility?

  She must have guessed what he was thinking, but as she smiled at him again he took refuge in the banter of the teahouse.

  “A woman who has a smile for everybody is coldhearted, they say.”

  “That may be,” she agreed, still smiling. “But what makes you think I smile for everyone?”

  “It is your business to do so,” he said simply. “I don’t flatter myself that I’m any different from the rest.”

  “All men are different and yet all are the same.”

  “True,” he agreed. “But some men are to be avoided, not sought out. Troublemakers and the like can bring nothing but pain to those around them.”

  “Sleeve touches sleeve because it was predestined in the former world,” she said quietly.

  “And what is joined must separate,” he said, just as softly. Then he abruptly changed the subject, rather than risk going too far in a discussion of themselves.

  “The Kabuki was not what you said it would be,” he began, falling back on the subject they had discussed before.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it,” she answered, readily changing with him to a lighter conversational tone.

  “You said it was realistic—to me it was just the opposite. Peasants don’t behave like that—and neither do noblewomen.”

  Okaru’s eyebrows raised slightly but she remained silent.

  “No samurai’s wife would leave him for a commoner like that fellow in the play,” he went on. “It was completely unbelievable. I can see how ignorant people who don’t know any better might be taken in by it, but anyone who has been around the nobility at all would know that such things don’t happen.”

  “I’m sure you’ve known more noblewomen than I have,” she admitted. “But you didn’t see the end of the play. The young commoner turns out to be a samurai himself! And even if you didn’t guess it, most of the people in the audience knew it because they’d seen the play before.”

  Oishi was silent for a moment. “Well, that might make some difference,” he said grudgingly at last. “But that still doesn’t justify her infidelity.”

  “But what if her husband had treated her cruelly? What if he had divorced her for some trivial reason and she had no one to turn to?”

  This conversation, too, was beginning to hit uncomfortably close to home and Oishi hesitated. “Perhaps,” he said weakly. “But still no decent woman would throw herself so promiscuously at a man.”

  Now it was Okaru’s turn to feel uncomfortable but she merely nodded in agreement. “Yes,” she said. “You are probably right. I haven’t known many noblewomen—many decent women—and I’m sure you’re right about the way they behave.”

  Oishi realized too late how his remark had stung her, but he could find no words of apology that seemed adequate. In his embarrassment he fell back on his customary blunt manner.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Your relatives asked me to come,” she said simply. “They said you needed a woman in the house so that you wouldn’t chase around the pleasure quarters every night and ruin your health.”

  “They came to you? They sought you out?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course,” she said in surprise. “Did you think that I? . . .” She hesitated, then smiled. “Not that a woman doesn’t need a man as much as he needs her.”

  Oishi’s thoughts were still on Shindo and Koyama and he only dimly heard her. Was concern over his health their true motive? Or was there something else they hoped to gain by bringing the girl into the house? They certainly must have been watching him carefully to know that this girl of all the geisha in Kyoto had attracted him the most. But what would happen if he let himself become too involved with her? Was that also part of their plan? With a puzzled sigh, he turned back to the girl.

  “What about your other customers, girl? Can you afford to devote yourself to one at the expense of the others?”

  “That’s my business,” she said with a laugh.

  “But why pick a dissolute old man like me?”

  “I’ll tell you a secret, old man,” she said mysteriously. “You’re not that many years older than I am.”

  Oishi nodded. “Perhaps that’s why you’re more attractive to me than the rest—I mean . . .” He stopped, flustered, aware that he had said more than he meant to. He waited for her to laugh at his slip but she merely waited for him to finish.

  “I mean that young girls are foolish. But so are men when they reach my age.”

  “But not you.”

  “How can you say that?” he asked in astonishment. “I’m the biggest buffoon in Kyoto. You saw a sample of my behavior in the thea
ter yesterday.”

  “Just as I don’t think you are so old, I don’t think you are so silly,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What do you see in me?” he asked, raising his voice in exasperation.

  “Perhaps I see someone who has suffered from a loss of position and I sympathize with him.”

  “Sympathize or pity?” he asked cuttingly.

  “Oh, I don’t pity you. I feel that someday you will regain what is rightfully yours. As you know, a man is in a better position to do that than a woman is.”

  Oishi stared at her. She seemed to be telling him quite frankly that she knew all about him. Or was this merely the manner of the geisha, a smile and a soothing word for everyone?

  “You’re talking nonsense,” he told her. “What I’ve lost can never be regained—and all the determination in the world won’t help get it back.”

  “Whatever you say,” she smilingly agreed.

  “You saw me at the theater,” he said in a weary voice. “You still think that after that disgraceful exhibition that I am a fighter.”

  “If necessary,” she nodded, “I think you could be.”

  “And what leads you to that conclusion?”

  “Just from what I know of you, in the few times we’ve met. For example, I have an idea that things went pretty much as you wanted them to in the theater.”

  Oishi was startled. “What do you mean?”

  For an answer she got up out of the bed and moved toward the corner where he had thrown his sword the night before.

  “I’ve made a bet with myself about your sword,” she said, picking it up in its scabbard. Oishi made an involuntary move to stop her, then quietly lay back to see what she would do. “I’ve bet that it’s not as rusty as you pretend.”

  She moved back to stand over him in her flimsy nightdress, her hand on the hilt of the sword. “Am I right?”