The trick to hiding Satomi’s weapon of choice, an old rosewood cane once relied upon by her grandmother, was to cast it aside carelessly somewhere out of her usual way, but also somewhere she might have reasonably put it herself. This preserved deniability if an accusation came.
If I didn’t hide the cane, Satomi would almost certainly finish her embroidery in a foul mood, and bring the cane down hard on my hands as I sat weaving. Yes, I was guilty of this and other little deceptions, because sometimes, Satomi forgot to accuse me of having committed them.
But not this time.
“Mother!” Satomi’s throaty cry filled the workroom.
“I can’t find my cane and I know she’s taken it! Tell me where you’ve hidden it!” She slapped me with the broad side of her hand. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and rose to face her.
“Have you looked by your bookcase? Last time, we found it there.”
“It’s not by the bookcase, you idiot. And by the way, I know it was you who hid it there last time it was lost.”
“I’ll go search for it at once.”
“You will produce it—but you’ll get a lashing first! Mother!” Satomi screamed again.
Madame was unfortunately not engaged, so disciplining her least compliant servant was little inconvenience. She entered the room, switch in hand. Kame was present, along with five of the day weavers. It seemed I could look forward to a public flogging.
“Furi. I grow so tired of this same dispute. Why will you not keep the cane always in the case by the doorway?”
I bowed low to Madame, but said nothing.
Madame frowned in affected frustration.
“Disrobe.”
I didn’t even glance at the witnesses. They had seen me humbled this way before. I wondered they even bothered to pause in their work.
They did, however, pause. Watched me bare my ruined neck with keen interest.
I had braced myself for the sting when the shoji door slid wide with a sudden thwack. I shuddered. With the opening of the door, my shame was complete.
Ansei stood on the veranda, gripping the lost cane in his hands. How had he found it? My heart sank with the realization that he was repaying me for the previous night’s slight in the garden. I only wondered how he had found the cane. It should have been behind Satomi’s chest in her own bedroom.
Ansei stared past me unseeing, and bowed low before Madame and Satomi.
“I am very sorry for having taken the cane. I thought it would serve as a planting instrument.”
My spine went rigid. He had taken it? I had hidden it away only that morning.
“That belonged to my grandmother!” Satomi said, snatching the instrument back with a possessive huff.
“Please, forgive me.”
Madame surveyed him a moment before speaking.
“Of course you must be punished,” Madame said, regarding him doubtfully. “How could you presume to take my daughter’s possession from the house and use it thus in the garden?”
“It was stupid of me,” Ansei said, holding his bow with his eyes averted.
Madame put her weapon aside. “Kame, go get Tatsuo.”
Tatsuo was Madame’s only older male servant. He kept the accounts and liaised between the mill and customers. But sometimes Madame Ozawa called upon him to do unusual tasks. Apparently, she expected him to discipline Ansei.
I couldn’t wonder she did expect it. Madame was a small woman, though fairly strong. The top of her head barely reached the middle of Ansei’s rib cage. The notion of Madame disciplining Ansei to any effect seemed ludicrous.
It was only marginally less ludicrous for the rather bent and aged Tatsuo to perform the duty. Madame explained to him in a few words and his mouth formed a grim line across his wizened face. Then he accepted the switch from Madame’s hand.
“Disrobe,” Madame commanded Ansei.
All in company stared stunned as Ansei untied his robe and let it fall to his feet. All breathed a collective gasp as he bared his unaccountably pristine skin, stretching taut over a sculpted frame.
No servant of his rank—no matter whom he served—should be so innocent of the slightest mark, scar, or blemish. His skin gleamed, perfect as a young child’s. Was it possible he had never been beaten?
The idea that Tatsuo, holding Madame’s switch, should maim him, and for my crime, filled me with the purest shame I had ever known. Blood rushed to my face and I wanted to speak out and stop her, but what could I say?
It was insane to contradict Ansei’s self-confession. Apparently, he had taken the cane. And a defense from me would be more harm than good. If Madame suspected an alliance between Ansei and myself, it would not go well for either one of us.
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Confused and angry, I watched, paralyzed, as the short whip stung and tore Ansei’s perfect neck and back.
* * *
Later that evening, as the last of the weavers left their looms, I heard them whisper among themselves, “I wonder what he asks of her for taking punishment on her behalf.”
I shuddered at what the weavers implied, but rejected it. Surely Ansei was not as stupid as that. I had no status to offer him. And he was free enough to seek favors from the brothels not many miles away. It didn’t make sense to risk his place in the household, however low it was, for my sake. And since I could make no sense of Ansei’s actions, I decided he was touched in the head. Yet, even that seemed a poor explanation for his behavior.
I felt and heard the whole household puzzling over what had happened that afternoon. Tatsuo’s voice, elevated in anger, penetrated even to the kitchen.
“You had better send him away.”
A pause for Madame’s inaudible reply.
Tatsuo screamed back, “He’ll bring bad luck to the house! I don’t like it. Something is unnatural. Be careful, and lay off of whipping that girl! It isn’t worth it.”
“Spare me your superstitious theories,” came Madame’s dry reply. And the subject was dropped, though uneasily enough for Tatsuo.
I knew Tatsuo embraced the ancestral spiritual traditions—the world of yokai, supernatural demons, ghosts, trolls and deities. It seemed he believed something supernatural of Ansei.
My instincts tended to agree with Madame, where superstitions were concerned. I only partly accepted the very common lore of spirits and their dealings with mortals, but for practical reasons. In my position, I had no time or energy for burning incense to please the dead. I had no knowledge of my dead family members, anyway. Serving the dead was fine for Cook, but I wouldn’t buy a talisman and walk around on tiptoes to avoid offending unknown spirits. I had too many living people to be cautious of. The spirits would have to await my death before settling their grudges.
But what did Tatsuo mean by: lay off whipping that girl? It isn’t worth it?
Did he really believe Ansei was my spiritual protector? I couldn’t help smiling at the idea. But I shook my head and sighed. It was a great pity Madame wouldn’t accept Tatsuo’s theory. Oh, the distance I could get with such a myth! But Madame would never embrace such a notion.
As if to prove it, over the following days, Madame and Satomi both lit into me with fresh fury. My hands suffered from Satomi’s abuse, but the sting was fleeting. Satomi had little leverage against me. Madame was different.
* * *
Most of my mornings began early, during the third quarter of the night. These dark hours were the best of my day, when I could work while the mill was quiet. Satomi and Madame slept long, solid hours. Once asleep, they never rose again before seven. Satomi awakened even later.
If the nights were warm enough, as they had recently begun to be, I would withdraw the mill’s shoji doors. By the light of the moon, I worked my designs into silk. The night and the moon seemed to transport me to a different place and time—a place more beautiful than any I had ever seen by the harsh light of the sun.
The loom was kind. Yielding. Productive. It seemed to become part of me as I wove rhythmically, up and back, back and forth. The waking dreams I dreamt, I spun tenderly into the threads at my hands. Though the silken illusions of my imagination were, perhaps lovelier, I was pleased with their physical representation. I knew they were good and they nourished me enough to preserve me through the drudgery of daylight hours.
I was in this place of happiness when I heard the swift thwack! I knew well, but had only once before heard by night: Madame’s whip as she sent it flying against the hardwood.
“What do you think you are doing? Did anyone authorize you to spend my resources in this way?” She stood behind me now, examining the design on the half-completed piece of fabric.
I turned and bowed my head to the tatami.
“Madame! Forgive me!”
Madame was deaf to my pleas. She tore my work down from the loom. She held it by two ends and ripped it through the center with the horrible shriek of breaking silk thread. I retrieved my destroyed fabric from the floor and stared at it, bitter tears flooding my eyes.
“You will pay for every cent of the thread you have wasted on your own vain ambition. Disrobe!”
I obeyed. And I felt the sting of her switch cut clean through my skin, but my thoughts were only for the other weavings I had hidden within my chest like illicit children secreted away in the attic. If Madame went searching, she would find them. I breathed in relief when she left me and returned directly to her rooms in the house.
My gaze found the horizon, and in a blink, I saw I had little time before sunrise. Without pausing even to wash the blood from my back, I pulled on my robe, and dashed back to the house and the bed closet where Cook and Kame still slept in thick mounds upon their futon beds.
I dug deep into my chest, piling musty winter clothing and blankets up high beside it. Then, taking a breath, I gave a tug, and pulled up the false bottom. I withdrew my fabric, years of work which I kept carefully guarded in the bottom of my chest.
I took it up gently in my hands, and wrapped it in a small woolen blanket. Then I stepped out to the garden, my bare feet padding nimbly over the cold gravel walk. I reached the shed, and being as quiet as possible so as to avoid awakening Ansei, I found a small cedar barrel, placed my bundle inside, and sealed it back up with a lid. By the light of the moon, I scanned the exterior of the garden shed for a shovel. Finding one, I retreated to the outer edges of the garden. I thrust the shovel into the hard-packed earth, and found it yielded easily. For almost thirty minutes, I dug and dug, then dropped to my knees, feeling around the cold earth for signs of excess dampness.
I brushed the clay from my hands, pushed the four-tou barrel into the hole, and began puAnseig the damp earth back over the top of the barrel. I did my best to restore the patch to its original condition, but it worried me. As sun sent its first rays over the garden wall, I remained, staring at the patch of earth. Would it really go unnoticed? A sharp snap of a twig broke my fixation on the bare earth beneath me.
I lifted my head toward the sound. Ansei stood a little way off, staring down at me with suspicion-hardened eyes. Mud covered my feet up to my knees. My robe draped clumsily around my shoulders, half concealing, half exposing the bloody evidence of Madame’s midnight beating.
Standing above the disturbed ground, I looked like a murderer desperate to hide a body. And if Ansei bore any grudge against me for the beating he had borne in my behalf, he would have ample material with which to settle scores.
I pulled my robe around my knees and met his stare, daring him to speak, to raise any wicked accusation—any boundless demand. The shriek of a heron shattered the stillness, and I braced myself, knowing what would come.
In all the weakness of my orphaned youth, I had never stood so exposed as I did then to the whim of a fellow servant. To keep my secret, Ansei could have extracted any promise. I would not—could not—have withheld it from him. I was his slave. Any servant in his position would claim me his. It was his right.
Instead, he averted his eyes, bowed low and remained bowed for several seconds. Then he retreated within the garden shed where he slept. I stood dumb for several seconds before I realized he didn’t intend to speak.
I exhaled in a rush of breath.
Nothing! He’d asked for nothing! I hardly dared believe I could be so lucky, but I had much to do yet before I could let myself take any time for reflection. I hurried to the well and stopped short. A bucket of freshly drawn water stood to one side. Next to it rested a clean washing towel. My gaze shot back to the shed. Had he done this?