In my youth, I wished for freedom so mightily I thought I would willingly scratch the flesh off of my bones to get it. I would endure any degree of temporary torture for a promise of liberty granted in the earlier half of my life. So I imagined.
My thoughts were rash. I had never even tested my upper threshold of pain tolerance. How could I know what I would endure?
But sometimes, even rash wishes, disguised as some gruesome prospect we would never consent to in our right minds, fall at our feet. These hideous prospects have enough power to, in time, deliver our heart’s wish. The difficulty is holding faithful to the wish while enduring its torturous delivery.
Illness came to our town. The mountains provided a natural barrier to the spread of disease. However, upon reaching us, disease often devastated the population, wiping out great numbers. This illness, however, was more mysterious, and more selective in its death route.
It found Madame Ozawa’s house early. One elderly weaver succumbed while threading her loom. She simply collapsed to the floor. She drew her last breath only two feverish hours after laying her upon a futon to rest. Her family carried her corpse away that evening, while all in the household busied themselves furiously with the task of cleansing.
We burned her loom, replaced the tatami, and disposed of all the dead weaver’s inventory of silk. Cook went about hunched and chanting Buddhist prayers as she rubbed her bead charm. Kame fashioned fabric masks for Madame and Satomi, herself and Cook. Ansei tended the bonfire in the garden while Tatsuo prayed over incense. Then everyone left for their homes and the private onsen baths in the mountains. Madame and Satomi stayed away for several days, leaving her household of servants behind.
Having cleaned or burned everything reasonable, the servants watched and waited for the next to succumb. With Madame gone, Tatsuo took charge of the household, but with the weavers staying away, all work ceased, except perhaps, Ansei’s laboring hands in the garden.
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I felt oddly liberated, thoroughly well, and unafraid of the illness. I wove as I pleased, and rather enjoyed the comparable solitude. Emboldened by the weavers’ absence, and with only Kame and Cook to worry about, I threw open the mill’s doors by night and burned oil in my lamp.
Ansei appeared on the veranda and silently watched me at work. I gestured for him to join me. He knelt down beside me and cast an admiring glance at the piece of embroidery I was finishing. I had woven two cranes, male and female, entwining in an embrace.
I glanced askance at Ansei.
“Well? How does it compare to my mother’s work?”
“It is beautiful, but your mother’s work was different. Yours is evocative. Deeply felt. Her work was more intricate, both structured and fragile.”
I nodded to my loom and asked, “Have you ever used one?”
“Not like this, but I have tried making fabric before.”
“Let me show you,” I said, taking his hands in mine. He yielded reluctantly as I guided him to the shuttle.
We worked together silently, hands and shoulders lightly touching, our movements, even our breath synchronizing in a wordless rhythm until the morning was upon us.
At dawn, he stood and stretched his long limbs, leapt over the veranda, and retreated to his garden until the following night.
After midnight, he appeared again on the veranda. As I worked, he whispered the poetry of his daily observations in the garden, detail by detail, from the tenderness of the mother bird with her nestlings to the reflected iridescence of the dragonflies’ wings. Beyond us, the cicadas thrummed their urgent song and my own heart raced to its rhythm in breathless synchrony.
The verbal images seemed to travel up my threads and jump lifelike into the weave of my fabric. My work had never appeared lovelier. Of all the hours of silken happiness I had known until that time, the nights with Ansei at my loom side were at once the most sublime, and least satisfying I had ever known. And when the sky began to change and Ansei stood, stretched and turned to leave, I caught his arm and held it.
He took my hands, but frowned.
“Please.” I mouthed this word only.
He squared his frame above me, expression full of warning. When he met my glance, I saw his eyes twitch in eagerness to escape. Then I gasped in pain.
A sharp sting withered my grip and at once I withdrew my fingers.
I looked up again to find a vacuum where Ansei had once stood. A thin wisp of a silken thread fell across the floor.