the well うまい水

Well, the walks with Reiko never took off. I must’ve caught something that night and on the next day it was my turn to be confined in my apartment. I had the most dreadful headache I could hardly open my eyes.

This morning Oka-san invited a priest in to cleanse the living quarters. His chanting didn’t really help my headache much. But I do hope wherever the evil spirits were they are now out of the tea house. And they may very well be. I actually felt much better this afternoon. My appetite was back so I asked for some congee made with water from the well in our old tea house.

For some reason, only congee made with water from that well has a subtle fragrance that I singularly love. Part of it I’m sure has to do with my associating it with childhood. But the fragrance is so unique I have never forgotten it; nor have I ever tasted it in anything else. The congee also possesses a tinge of green that could almost be absent if it wasn’t for the fact that the green only becomes opaque enough to render it a certainty at the rim of a bowl. Ever since we moved out of the old tea house the opportunity to taste congee made with water from that well is scarce, but I can always see that tinge of green when I close my eyes. It makes me all warm inside.

So when I got my rare treat today, I just held my bowl and inhaled. Then an idea came to me. I nearly jumped up from my futon with all the excitement of making a prodigious discovery. But I checked myself and decided to enjoy my divine congee and my last day of God-given respite before the new year in peace. I will talk to Reiko tomorrow.

high expectations 心待ち

Reiko has not stepped out of her room in the last three days. No one has seen or spoken to her except Oka-san, who, three nights ago when Reiko’s retreat first took place, went into her room with a very annoyed and superior air and came out of it sighing with her back slightly hunched. Everyone is surprised that Oka-san has left Reiko completely to herself so we have all done the same.

It then seemed to me nothing short of extraordinary that, before supper, Oka-san called for me and bade me to take Reiko out for a walk today.

“If it seems agreeable to her, you can take her to the walk every night.” She added.

I obeyed of course, I would even go to Kabuki again with Reiko’s friends just for the change of scene. But the way Oka-san has handled the whole affair is astonishingly incongruous with the regimented way in which she runs the tea house. Tempers are unknown to her geishas because she is perfectly indifferent to tears and appeals to feelings. She is generous but does not tolerate anything that comes in between her and clients’ fees, preferably paid in gold or silver.

Reiko’s room was not lit. It had that unpleasant odour of an occupied and unaired cell, mixed with the fragrance of one of her perfume bags that she picked out. She was pursing her lips on a piece of red powder paper. Her hair and kimono shone with a peachy tinge under the sunset that came through her shut windows. She must’ve known our plans before I came from Oka-san.

It was slightly awkward after not seeing each other for three days, but as soon as we stepped out into the young night air the cloud that was wrapping around my heart cleared. I started to talk about the clients we’d had in the last few days, what so and so did, and how this and that happened.

While Reiko acknowledged me with the odd nod here and there, we arrived and stopped at the little bridge over Takasei creek. The trees along the banks were bare; she sighed.

“My Danna-sama has not been with me for 7 days.” She said while fighting back some tears.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Really! At this time of the year, I wouldn’t expect to see any of these men until next month. If you’ve just been upset over this!” I suddenly discovered that I wasn’t as sympathetic as I thought I was. I was even harsh, eager to accept her ‘ridiculous’ reason so her grief became less formidable.

She looked at me for a minute then looked away and continued, “perhaps I expected too much. When one has opened the doors to her heart with the help of another pair of hands, one cannot lock it again. Is not that a kind of supreme sacrifice? Is not one entitled to expect?”

“Yes, but, Reiko, the reality is that we’re mere diversions for these men. They come to us precisely because we’re nothing like their wives and concubines. So we can’t expect them to come to us every evening or us to go to them every morning to pay our respects.”

“No. ” She smiled, ” But I also do not expect him to return again. Ever.”

I suddenly thought of Ming Kwok. I didn’t speak.

“He has been writing to me everyday. But words pale against broken promises, even though it is hypocritical of me to exact these promises in the first place. I think what I sought was an idea, a mode of life that could be fulfilled by him, or someone like him. He broke explicit promises while I broke implicit ones.”

“You make it sound like there are laws to love. And you’ve broken the Love Laws.”

She smiled.

But I was not satisfied with her eloquence and air of melancholy experience. “Is there no way out? Must we love, within or without the Love Laws, to be happy?”

“Happiness is but a state. And like all states, it is transient and relative. Which happiness are you talking about?”

It was my turn to smile, “this is not fair. I haven’t had three days to think about these things.”

I turned away from the railings of the bridge and signalled it was time to return to the tea house. Reiko nodded and started walking slightly ahead of me. I was eager to return to my room for all I could think of now was Ming Kwok.

Ming Kwok 明国

I’m rather disappointed with Ming Kwok’s letter. It almost seemed to have come from someone else’s pen.

It was five years ago when I last saw him, as his boat was rowed away from shore. He was returning to Kanyo (漢陽) in China with his father, who was a powerful merchant and extremely popular at the court.

He was a typical merchant’s son and had no interest in commerce. In other things he simply excelled. On the first night, when I had much apprehension of receiving a guest from a foreign land, I listened in awe as he talked of The Chronicle in perfect Japanese. The next night he brought his koto and played so well that in the morning Oka-san commented on it and expressed much surprise at my hiding the “talent” all these years. I did not want to be scolded so I didn’t tell her the truth. Then he started coming to the tea house everyday and gave me lessons on Chinese painting. It was highly unconventional but Oka-san tolerated it because he was a generous client.

He was in Heian for two hundred days. On most of those nights we talked until the roosters crowed. My initial apprehensions never resurfaced, his etiquette was faultless but with such a natural grace that I was drawn to him in all my attention when we were together and my thought when we were apart.

On the last night, we rode on his horse to Nanzenji. The moon was brilliant and the air delicious. We were rocked like infants in a mother’s embrace on the horse’s gentle trot. A little breeze and our comfortable silence enveloped us; I was quietly delirious in something undefined and otherworldly.

“I wanted to show you the Heian before the monks and their brooms get up.” He whispered into my ears as I alighted from the horseback into his arms.

Then I saw it. Where the grounds of Nanzenji were was now a crimson sea of maple tree leaves. Waves of the same hue layered upon each other, now stubborn, now flapping. On top of them I at first didn’t know how to walk. The crackling my steps kindled alarmed me. But that didn’t last long, the fire of freedom was too tempting. With Ming Kwok leading, I lifted my kimono up slightly and immersed into this sea of fire until we were submerged.

Ming Kwok’s letter 明国の手紙

Momojiri-sama,

It has been a very long while since the last time I beheld you. I hope you are well.

I promised to write during my journey, yet I knew not what to put down. But now I am home and, even though I hesitate to tell you, a marriage has been arranged whilst I was in your country. The wedding will be 3 months from now. I am yet to meet my bride.

I lost my koto in the sea on my journey. Perhaps it was a sign? I wish I could ask these questions to you in person.

Please accept the brushes and calligraphy books that accompany this letter.

Yours

Ming Kwok

haunt me, haunt me not 物覚え

1. On the way to meeting clients in Edo. The carriage was big, so we lay next to each other with two bowls’ distance between us. You never lifted the blinds because you’re prudent but your eyes were fixed on the passing sceneries through the silk gauze. After such a period of reverie, of which there were many, you would say something profound and refreshing about what you see. Thus we passed our time until the last morning when we arrived. You hair was unmade and you were hungry. So I gave you my apple. Without cutting it into pieces, you worked around it while holding it. The orb was soon reduced to a closed fan. You looked at me, meaningfully I now imagine, and extended your arm so you could place the apple in my mouth. Enchanted, I too bit into the apple, though we never even shared a cup of tea before that moment.
2. We were supposed to meet at her tea house to go see the weeping willow cherry blossoms together. I was a little early and she was out doing errands. So I stood on the other side of the street to wait for her, facing a laneway where she’d probably be coming from. The sun shone so brightly, the entire laneway was covered in a snow of light reflected from the white walls of the tea houses. And vague patches of blue and yellow appeared from the end of the laneway. It was an exceptionally beautiful sight, as the light played with her kimono, hair and eyes; and the beauty only increased when she came closer. Under a tree branch that jutted out above the wall of her own tea house, she stopped and effortlessly snapped off an offshoot of cherry buds, without ever taking her eyes off mine. Then she was next to me on this side of the street. We bowed and she gave the flowers into my hands. The light shone brighter.