CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

二重織り

Nijūori

The sun rose regardless. I woke to cramped, sweaty darkness. A human hand was in mine.

Nagihiko.

He fell asleep in the hour before dawn. The pillow went under his shoulders to support his back, chin up. His closed eyelids lay smooth as fallen snow. It was too easy to relax into his side and pretend to sleep. Easier still to listen to the sound of his breathing. He inhaled through his nose, exhaled through pursed lips like a sigh.

I never shared a bed with another person like this. I was smothered. There was no space to stretch my legs. The mingled warmth of our bodies was sweltering. My clammy palm found his again. Squeezed.

He sighed in his sleep, head tossing. He was a picture washed in India ink on tissue paper. He still slept with his mouth open. He was so beautifully, blissfully alive.

And I was alive with him. I did not take easily to sentiment, but in those early hours before dawn, I let myself go soft. I studied the silvery-white outline of his nose. I thought about the meaningless cosmic joke that birthed us within two years of each other. How we lived in the same time. In the same place. If I hadn't, we wouldn't have met. How strange. How cruel.

All the while, Amaterasu's face threatened me. When the icicles on the veranda began to glitter, I unstuck myself from his legs. I crawled out of bed, taking care to tuck the blankets in around him.

A strip of white eyeball showed through the eyelashes. Maybe not as asleep as I thought.

I stole from the young master's room like a thief.

Frost crept over the veranda where we forgot to close the storm-shutter the previous night. I hastily closed it.

True to Nagihiko's prediction, Amu was out cold. The morning chill clung to me as I got into the futon. She grunted and rolled over, taking the comforter with her. Shivering, I reflected that true luxury was waking up on one's own schedule.

Outside my screen, the scratch-and-sizzle of the hallway lantern being lit. The maids were waking. I had cut it close.

Surely Nagihiko did not mean to make me his wife. I grinned at the wall. My thoughts run away with me. If we had maids, maybe he wouldn't mind that I couldn't de-scale a fish. Suppose I could take Emi with me, as though Mother would ever surrender her (or say yes to the union).

My grin languished. Or we could elope. Osaka would be intolerable. Hokkaido wasn't far enough. Maybe Manchuria, like Utau. But what would come after?

I didn't know what marriage looked like. As a girl, I imagined two copies of Mother running around in a frenzy. As a woman, two unpleasant strangers cohabiting. Maybe it was like the tragic couple of the moving picture: a long-suffering loyal wife who works as her husband wines and dines his mistresses.

What of Nagihiko's parents? The Fujisaki marriage was too odd to consider.

One thing I knew for certain: abandoning the silk mill to become a dancer's wife would be nothing short of selfishness. It was selfishness, too, to ask Nagihiko to give up what he was born for in favour of silk-spinning. I was not yet foolhardy enough to elope to a warzone at eighteen.

I couldn't wed Nadeshiko. More importantly, I didn't want to. I ran my finger down the line of my navel, where something dried remained stuck to my skin. Nagihiko would never ask me for sons if I did not want them. I loved that about him. He might not even care about marrying me, only about taking responsibility. And I loved him for that, too.

It was impossible. The two of us were always destined for an expiry date. I was suddenly frustrated with the circumstances of it all. I wanted to stand up and rage against the sun, against my mother, against everything holding us apart.

The panes of sun almost reached the door. A maid rooted to the spot outside the screen. She cocked her ear. The second time, I heard it. A rapping on the door, a voice from the other end of the house.

"So early on the first day of the year!" the maid whispered. "Who could possibly..."

Every event in a stranger's home is alien. It must be an overzealous friend making a New Years' call. She called for the housekeeper. I almost drifted back to sleep when I heard more footfalls, more whispers.

"The Master..."

"Then wake him!"

A brief conference was held. They scattered.

After that, Fujisaki Aoi must have gone to the door. There was no reason for him not to. Now unable to go back to sleep, I sat up. I wet my fingers and managed to flatten my hair down from its fevered frizz. I rested my hand-mirror gently against my crossed thigh and inspected the damage.

Bright red spots dotted my neck. It couldn't be typhoid. I had the vaccine, same as everyone else. I didn't feel feverish – save the hammering of a headache –

The ghost of Nadeshiko trailed her lips up my neck, kissing harder than I thought she could. Stop me. Teeth on my arteries, full of feeling. Say no.

I put the mirror down and looked for a polo-neck jumper.

If I had been at home, Emi would have ribbed me for it when I came out for breakfast: You're cold, Little Miss? Heh heh!

But O-Mari barely noticed I was there. She poured me tea and set out a bowl of dried plums for the hangover. Her lip had a quiver. She kept looking over her shoulder.

Had Tsubaki said something? Surely someone not above beating their students was not above beating her maids. The house was still asleep, save for the two of us and Mr Fujisaki.

"Are you quite alright?" I said, surprising myself. O-Mari jumped, and tea sloshed everywhere.

"Oh," she gulped, mopping the table with the edge of her yukata sleeve. "Oh, forgive me, it's nothing."

My stomach was in too many nauseous knots to eat. I opened a book on the kotatsu.

Even for New Years' Day, the atmosphere was out of place. I could not envision the Dragon having a lie-in. Nagihiko rose early. Didn't they want to visit some miserable shrine?

I felt O-Mari's eyes on the cover. She likely couldn't read, never mind read the brick-like English alphabet. She chewed her lip.

"Miss, why don't you read something from our collection instead?"

I would have sooner disembowelled myself. But it was my last day in the house, and it was too awkward.

"Erm," I said, thinking this would stop her pussyfooting. "Alright."

"I will put that one back with your things," O-Mari said, holding the book out like a live grenade.

Amu dragged herself into the room a time later, face grey, shadows garish. She looked like the ghosts she was so afraid of. She was too hungover to gawk at the sight of me reading an Imperial Court poetry anthology. I flipped the page.

Limitless,
The far side of the clouds
May part us, yet
Within my heart,
Shall I carry you?

"How's your head?" I said, not unkindly.

"Horrible," she picked up a plum. "I hgg. Hagablahblah."

"Quite," I said. "Where's Nadeshiko?"

Amu didn't know. The morning never really began. Without Aoi there, the day felt like a disjointed extension of night. When the sun was well and firmly up, Fujisaki-sensei opened the screen.

"Excuse the intrusion," she apologised in her own house. "Did you sleep well?"

We made noises of assent. A stray stinkbug crawled across the tatami. Were my dark circles obvious? My skin crawled. Could she smell the teahouse smoke and see the love-bites through my jumper?

My nerves were further shot by Nadeshiko behind her. I failed to catch her eye. Had her mother been questioning her? Is that why they took so long? I should have never let him light that fire!

Her eyes were glassy, smile hung straight. Was I staring at the same person who had unravelled on top of me? I pressed my thumb over the kanji for heart.

The train left that morning. I barely took in what the housekeeper was saying. Our things were packed. The weather was clear but cold, from last night. Nadeshiko was nodding and would not look at me.

"I should go move everything to the porch," Nadeshiko got to her feet.

"You won't do it right," I said very fast, following suit. "I'll move my own things."

I caught her eye. The plan took shape, wild and half-baked. I corner him on the porch, ask him what's wrong? Feel his hands on mine, say goodbye —

"The housekeeper can take care for that!" Fujisaki-sensei exclaimed. "Both of you, sit down."

I sunk back to my knees. I wondered if Nagihiko was looking at me, but thought better than to check.

That morning was spent in proximity and out of reach. I picked holes in my stockings the whole trolley ride to Hiroshima Station. Across from me, Nadeshiko's legs had gotten so long that her knees occasionally bumped against mine. Her bone-white knuckles rested on her lap. Amu spoke, but mostly it was the Dragon: about this and that, the snowfall and the night before, good wishes for our families. I could have throttled her. It was too oblivious to be intentional sabotage.

"We leave you here," she said finally, relinquishing us from our prison. Mother and daughter stood together, posed stiffly like expensive dolls. "It was a pleasure to-"

"Thank you so much!" Amu burst out, throwing her arms around Nadeshiko. I wanted nothing more than to snatch her away and do that myself. I wanted to feel her fragile limbs buckle against me and her arms tighten across my back again. Hot-white jealousy burned through my nerve endings.

"For everything, I can't believe- y-you have to let us repay you! Stay over with us whenever you're in Tokyo, there's not much room, but-"

"Don't thank me, please," Nadeshiko squeezed Amu tightly. Her eyes met mine. "It was all my pleasure."

This was it. I would not have a chance to be alone with him until school reconvened. There was no way to say goodbye in front of Amu and his mother. I picked at a cuticle. Then bowed.

"Until we see you at school."

She looked like she dreaded it.

Clink, clink, clink.

My spoon against the cup. My mother slid an abacus bead to the left. Her only daughter was stranded by an earthquake, days into the New Year, and still, my mother counted and tallied.

My mother was too logical to rage. But her face was pinched white from the inconvenience.

"You ought to have wired me," she said. A bead slid over.

The marks on my neck burned under a silk scarf.

"Could have been dead under the rubble, for all I knew. Recount the remittance column. The figures are off."

This last part was at the accountant. He stood next to her, looking as though he would like to be excused.

"You had an appointment with Dr Inoue for the day you got back before dinner with a client. I was unable to produce you. You were unaccounted for. Wasting time with school-friends in, where, Hiroshima?"

The tea was tasteless. My heart beat faster, thinking of how precious few minutes I had to waste.

My mother said, "So soon after your illness. I had no way of seeing you."

She looked tired. Her fingers did not waver on the abacus. I felt ashamed upon realising that my mother had nearly lost her only daughter twice.

"Mama…"

"You're thinner. Suppose the weakness is permanent? This would complicate negotiations. This is why I wanted Dr Inoue to verify your good standing."

It wasn't that Mother didn't love me. This was how she talked, in business and numbers. A sickly mare did not demand its price.

"No matter," she said and moved on before I could take it in. "We proceed without an examination and promise one at a later instance, if all goes well."

"Whatever do you mean?" I said. "For what purpose?"

My mother picked up her bell and rang.

"Kusukusu," she said, "See if something can't be done about that hair."

Emi could barely contain her laughter. She bubbled over with information like an unattended pot as she raked oil-soaked hands through my curls.

"The suitor's your age. Kukuku. Of course, the Misses were careful not to say his name in front of me. The go-between is the hairdresser down the street, who knows his elder sister's husband. Their family farms rice and potatoes."

"Tenant farmers?!"

"Respectable ones." Emi yanked my hair to the side a little too hard. "The boy's gotta big brother, so he's itching for a family to take him in. Your mama thinks he's too broad, but your grandmama insisted we meet him as a formality. She says nobody knows the permanent effects of your illness, so we must hurry to marry you off."

Permanent effects meant madness. I heard whispers of it here and there. Some women were never quite the same after enteric fever. Childbirth could make it worse, prone to fits of hysteria and withdrawing from society. In wealthy families, private investigators were hired to ensure no such risk. I heard once of a man disqualified from consideration due to a distant great-aunt with dementia.

It reminded me of Nagihiko's strangely acute knowledge of my grandfather and the innocent flattery towards my mother last summer. I wanted to laugh, giddy. He had been inquiring into my family so he could marry me. What a fool I had been!

I knew my own mind. I was not mad. Yet I was mad. I was crazy, demented, off my head. I yearned for fruit out of my reach, knocked it down, bit into its sweet flesh. I was now expected to cast it away or make off with it like a thief. The circumstances were absurd.

I was mad. I stared back into the mirror. I looked hardened and mutinous.

"Would any man do?"

"Hm?" Emi said through pins in her mouth.

"Would any man do?" I repeated. "I am taking a husband into my house, am I not? So surely his standing does not matter. Surely any man will do."

Emi hooted, turning me away from the mirror. "Oh, don't let your mama hear you say that!"

Despair. One meeting, I chanted. I could bow out politely and overpower my mother if need be. She was a mere woman, after all, nowhere near the authority of a father or a brother. Divorce was acceptable, where I was from. If you disliked the man so much, and you had been forced into a marriage out of obligation, you could always return home if need be. Most didn't. But I could.

I wondered what Nagihiko would say if he knew where I was. I recalled his would-be suitor that hot summer day in Ginza, who wept inconsolably at her marriage-meeting with Nagihiko. I scorned her for dragging her heels. I said it was futile to fight the inevitable. Now, I prayed a silent apology to her.

My jaw hardened. I was cocooned in a kimono, then a silk overcoat. A quince flower was tucked in my hair. I was guided out the door, into a cab, down the street, like a dream. Something was resolving in me, like a stone polished over and over by the battering of the waves.

I would not forsake Nagihiko. My heart had a capacity of one. I could no more change my tastes than force the sun to rise slower. I understood what Utau meant now, back at the ball: I thought I could find a powerful husband. Even the military is too cowardly to go up against him.

Maybe it wasn't enough for Utau. An idea was formulating. It might be enough for me. I would not forsake Nagihiko. But a military man – one with a father who outranked General Yamabuki – would be enough to protect the ones I loved. If my husband could save the Fujisakis and go to war in China, I would be a future widow alone in an empty house. I would be free to take Nagihiko back into my arms.

Would Nagihiko would still have me?

I thought of the male cuttlefish, which was an odd thing to think about in the moment. In their pursuit of a mate, a weaker cuttlefish standing no chance against his opponent will camouflage himself as a female.

We wouldn't have to wait until he died. Nadeshiko would call on me without impunity, slip past the front door of my husband and into my arms. If she was careful, she could do more than that. I fought a shudder, and my knee jogged impatiently under my kimono. I had opened my robe, let her in. I would let her in again.

I stepped out of the cab. Two men and a woman were waiting for us. One man was young. One man was older. It was the younger, then.

I re-adjusted my muff and met the younger boy's eyes.

"Kirishima-kun," I said, amazed the name came so easily to my lips. "It's been a while."

"Oh!" said his brother. "You two have met before? What luck! I suppose you both attend school in Kobe."

Kirishima looked just as he had when I had seen him at the ball. Unruly hair, serious eyebrows.

"Let's go in and get our table," my mother hurried before I could say any more. My mother had made an odd choice. The dining establishment was underground down a series of steps, and the entrance was shaped like a barrel. I knew it was my mother's choice, because a farmer would never choose to eat a non-rice product.

Barmaids scurried about the floor. The smell of roast beef lingered. Foreigners tended to look all the same, yet the couple in the corner nagged me. Both blonde, I was certain I had seen them before. Amongst the foreigners, one or two Japanese servicemen evidently had a penchant for German cooking. A gramophone warbled out a song in a language I didn't know. On the piano, somebody had draped a bloodred flag emblazoned with a Buddhist manji.

I was no better at the countries of the world than I was at anything else. My mother gave me no time to contemplate it; she hurried me up the stairs to the formal dining of the second floor.

"A bierkeller?" the older man said in response to something I hadn't been listening to, tripping over the German in his broad accent. He must be Kirishima's brother. That explained his cheerfulness: he would be inheriting everything. That they were farming stock explained their waistlines. My prejudices blinded me to appreciating this quality in a husband-to-be, but Mother was cleverer than that. In time I wish I had been less picky.

Mother was the worst company one could have at a banquet. Thankfully, the hairdresser who introduced us knew her role in the game. Perhaps even enjoyed it. She kept me entertained with her gawking at the foreign food.

I learnt that Miss Kinuko Mashiro had always loved Western food, dined here once or twice, and had herself a penchant for beef. Everything on the menu baffled the hairdresser, from hamburger steak to Berlin pancakes, but everyone was excited to receive a round of beer.

The hairdresser harangued Kirishima with questions, saving me the trouble of speaking. Did he eat a lot of foreign food? Had Kouen not used the German model on its students? But potatoes, surely, were German? And how was the harvest that previous year?

A girl is a thread in a tapestry pulled by warp and weft, duty and face. She forges alliances, bears children, brings bride-price, serves in-laws. The longer the housekeeper talked and the longer my mother and Kirishima's brother knowingly nodded at each other, the tighter and tighter I stretched.

"Why, Mashiro-san!" the housekeeper exclaimed. "How quiet you've been!"

The enemy of the shy woman is the busybody who draws attention to how quiet she is being. The thread was stiff as iron. I don't participate in fishwives' babble danced on the tip of my tongue.

"I'm afraid she's inherited my serious nature," my mother said gravely.

I picked up my spoon and grimaced like a Kabuki actor into it. Kirishima choked on his beer.

"From a young age, she was soft-spoken and contemplative."

I composed myself. Kirishima's dimples vanished, but his eyes lingered. I was a fool for acting like myself.

"How lucky that is," Kirishima's brother said. "Fuyuki was an over-serious child as well. He took his responsibilities so seriously; I couldn't believe I had the bad luck to be born first."

I was a shifty child in subtle ways: making faces, rearranging my dinner into offensive pictures, reading magazines within books, letting Emi talk me into schemes. I wondered if my mother remembered this, or if she was recalling a child she invented.

I stole another glance at Kirishima, quailing under my mother's evaluation. He was but a boy, the same age as me. He caught my eye, and smiled.

Kirishima would not turn me down. My hopes rested on his family finding something about me they did not like. Infertility wouldn't dissuade them: I owned a silk-mill and could always adopt an heir.

I could always be ugly. I put my napkin to my lips and wiped the rouge off.

"Rima," my mother said, watching me like a hawk. "What are you doing. Are you quite alright?"

"Queasy," I said.

I was plied with ginger. A delicate countenance would make me look frail and likely to die, especially after the bout with fever. I needed a way to lose my mother's watchful eye to destroy my prospects.

I realized that I was plotting again. I blinked.

"German food is so heavy," I said, trying to look ill.

"A true Japanese beauty," the hairdresser tutted. The Japanese beauty was worlds away in Hiroshima, unaware that I was thinking of her. "Japanese food is always simplest and best."

"Might I take some air?" I used my best Nadeshiko impersonation. "I have forgotten which way we came in…"

To my displeasure, Fuyuki Kirishima jumped up to my aid.

"No," I said.

The table was silent.

"I mean," I amended, "Don't trouble yourself on my account."

"I assure you," he said, "I've seen a lady vomit before."

My eyes popped. If I wasn't trying to make him hate me, I would have liked him.

My mother said, "Go."

I went. Kirishima hover-handed my elbow and walked me down the stairs. Passed the flag and the piano. Out, onto the street.

I blinked in the weak winter sunlight. A family walked towards the park. Two school-girls passed us. For the first time in years, I was away from a teacher and away from my mother. I was unsupervised. I inhaled.

"If you're going to be sick," said Kirishima, "I would do it behind the Wako Tower."

"Why?" I said.

"That's where the drunks go."

Oh, how I liked him. I wish I didn't. I would not make a cuckold of him.

"I regret to disappoint," I lied. "It's been like this since the typhoid."

He walked me towards the clock tower. I did my best to make my legs shake. Fragility came easy to me. Under the watchful eyes of the pillars, I doubled over. Arms crossed, he politely blocked the sun with his body. I reflected on the absurdity of the image: me, done up in a kimono with flowers in my hair, pretending to retch. I was blessed instead with the hiccups.

I continued to hiccup at the watch display. To my amazement, Kirishima spoke.

"To tell you the truth," he said, "I'm glad you're ill. I hoped to talk to you alone."

As was my habit, I shrunk in response. The invisible fortress I built between us raised its gate.

"I don't know, well… just, maybe… the whole thing is set up a little strangely, so I find it difficult to speak freely in a meeting like that. I was nervous, but when I found out it was you, I felt better."

I blinked. He must have seen my surprised look, for he kept rambling.

"You're surprisingly easy to talk to, you know."

"I am glad I have a single accomplishment," I said. Perhaps a bit of lingering bitterness from the ball. "Your classmates thought I had none."

"My education was common, so I don't notice things like that." Kirishima seemed to be having an internal struggle over how honest he could be. "I think they were all only trying to get Fujisaki-san's attention, because she's so refined."

So unprepared was I to hear Nadeshiko's name that my stomach flipped over.

"Seems refined?" I looked up, flushed.

"I thought she was the delicate flower type, and so did everyone else. But she earned my respect at the ball."

"How?"

Kirishima seemed to realize he had said too much, but it was too late. His eyes darted around.

"I'm sure she wouldn't want me to tell you. It wasn't for your benefit. She was only doing what was right in the situation. You mustn't ask me anymore."

"It's too late," I said, quivering. "You've said too much. What happened?"

"She gave Shouta terrific what-for, when they were all saying that stuff about accomplishments. I don't know how girls manage to sound so elegant when they scold someone."

My heart beat a million miles a minute. "Tell me what she said."

Kirishima hesitated. "Ah…"

"Whatever you can remember."

"She said that –" Kirishima licked his lips and walked away from me.

"That it was any wonder Mashiro-san was so stiff. That Mashiro-san is shy, but people mistake it for coldness." He spoke faster. "That above all else, Mashiro-san values sincere people unafraid to make a fool of themselves. That you were conserving effort for a dance partner who would enjoy himself, instead of gawking at her beauty."

Nadeshiko, who held her tongue, had relinquished it. For me.

"It sounded better when she said it," He looked back at me over his shoulder. "But I saw for myself that it was all true."

As he spoke, I remembered he existed.

Kirishima smiled weakly at me, framed between two columns like a Greek statue. "I like you. Since that night in the rain, I've liked you. You're honest. You would tell me if I had no reason to hope."

I opened my mouth. I wish he had said anything else.

"I can't."

"I know," he said quickly. "I know you're young. I know your family wouldn't…"

"I can't, Kirishima-san. Not four years from now. Not ever."

He avoided my eyes, mussing up his hair. He lacked the pride to look dejected. Only resigned.

Kirishima might have made me a good husband, had not been drugged by passion. He was loyal and honest. He reminded me of Amu. Even then, I liked him. I think I wanted to be his friend.

It was a world away from the aching urge to take Nagihiko in my arms and save him, redeem him, leave him better than I found him. To watch him. To hear him speak until the sun came up. A feeling like that doesn't need marriage to validate it: it stands on its own, still and shining.

I could have married Kirishima if I wanted to. A wedding is a piece of paper. It was not out of nobility or adultery that I declined his offer. It was because I liked Kirishima. Curse him for his sincerity. I knew too well the feeling of watching your chosen person love another.

"I like you." Even to me, it was weak. By the looks of it, Kirishima found it weak too. "But my family, they're…"

In debt, I was going to say, an excuse suddenly coming to my attention. My house has no fortune, only thousands of yen in debt. Do not saddle yourself with me-!

"They're in debt." My voice was drowned out by the blare of a car, and the call of my mother's voice.

"There you are!" my mother cried from down Chuo Road.

I was torn from Kirishima, back into the arms of my mother. I looked back at him as I was put into a cab, eyes wild. I was not the blushing bride my mother was selling. I was a cutthroat securing her survival at her expense.