Spinning Silk Page 2

  Madame’s gardener died some few years after my arrival. She declined to replace him. I didn’t mind it, but this really meant the trees’ maintenance fell mostly to me. And if I deviated in the slightest from the traditional garden of combed gravel walks and classically sculpted junipers and cypress trees, Madame found reason to punish me.

  Punishment notwithstanding, I wouldn’t lift a finger to destroy the mosaic around the mineral pool. Beatings were inevitable. I was born to create. It was the only pleasure I knew, and it was enough. I was willing to suffer for it.

  Even while I held this truth sacred and absolute, I couldn’t have predicted what a slave I would be to creation. I couldn’t have guessed what a price I would ultimately pay… nor how much more dearly a then stranger would pay.

  I called myself the lowest ranking in Madame Ozawa’s servants, but there came a time when that wasn’t quite true. One might have been lower, and even more threatening to Madame Ozawa. He came and went like the moon, exerting tremendous pull upon me, leading me far from my intended course.

  He awaited admittance on the southern veranda in full view of the household servants through the south facing doors, and set the house buzzing. None of us had ever seen anyone like him. Bronze as typical of a peasant laborer, he stood a full head taller, and much broader than a peasant diet could reasonably support. The only thing to explain it was a secret source of nourishment. So we set him down as a thief as well.

  Worse still, he couldn’t have been of pure Otoppon ethnicity. His eyes were set wider on his face and curved, almost like a foreigner’s, and their frank stare at me would have affronted anyone higher ranking.

  I averted my eyes and ducked past him, withdrawing to an inner room to take up some unfinished embroidery work. The servants and weavers whispered about him as they worked, calling him the bastard child of an Otopponese whore and a Vineland trading merchant. They weighed him, measured him, and declared him ugly, examining him by the rule of cohesion and regularity. I thought him a very worthy subject to copy, examining him by the rule of symmetry.

  Madame’s was a sturdy house, with a clay-tiled roof, a broad surrounding veranda overhung by deep, heavy beamed cedar eaves, but few secrets could be kept between its retracting shoji walls. Some of this stranger’s were soon disclosed by Madame’s grainy voice, elevated with contempt. “You cannot satisfy Yamada’s debt to me. Go back and tell him no. I have only a small farm for personal use. I’ve no use for someone of your sort.”

  There was a pause, as she read the letter over, and explained to him, with slightly more patience, her reasons for not needing him.

  “I do not need much,” he said, almost in a whisper.

  “I cannot board you under a proper roof.”

  “I would be satisfied in the gardener’s shed.”

  “The roof leaks, irreparably.”

  “It will be fine, and you will find at harvest season, your increased yield far outweighs the balance of my daily bowl of porridge.”

  I was sure Madame wouldn’t take in such an irregular person, and probable thief, but how wrong I was. I didn’t know how exactly he managed to persuade her, but I suspected it was similar to my own case. Madame always had a sharp eye for a fine beast of burden.

  His name was Shin—only Shin, without family name. And beautiful or no, I hated him.

  The garden had been my sanctuary—where I could work all day mostly undisturbed by Madame Ozawa and her daughter Satomi’s sadistic rampages against the household servants. My weaving I worked by moonlight. (I required few hours of sleep.) Madame was strict about creative liberties and punished me whenever I followed designs of my own imagining. Weaving by night allowed me the occasional sacred pleasure of doing my own work, and the secrecy to hide my creation by morning. With Shin in the garden, I would be confined to the mill by day, weaving tedious patterns under Madame’s constant observation and vulnerable to Satomi’s unchecked fits of temper.

  All this was reason enough to dislike, even despise his coming, but I reserved a better justification for my contempt. As the lowest of Madame’s small number of servants, I was often shamed and victimized, but Madame was fond of reminding me that I had not suffered every humiliation common to female servitude in her house. I was lucky, for she had only elderly Tatsuo and no living male family members. And while I was routinely beaten, I was never violated. I had this single thread of dignity. A younger, and less than scrupulous servant as Shin appeared to be could be expected to take liberties with a low ranking female servant. I disliked thinking of it, but I did, and resolved to avoid him.

  Cook and Madame’s maid Kame gossiped about Shin for days. They bent their heads close and whispered about what they had heard of him. The words curse and bad luck reached my hearing repeatedly

  “You should tell the mistress,” Kame said, dragging her thin futon from the closet.

  “Madame does not consult me about these things. She does not care for traditions. Think of it, she does not even keep her father’s shrine,” Cook said, reaching into the chest to tuck safely away the small Buddhist charm she wore daily. Then she screamed. “Ah! Get out! You nasty spider! Quick! Give me something to smash it with!”

  “Don’t kill it,” I said, swooping in with a handkerchief. “Spiders are good for the garden.” I scooped up the spider in a small square of fabric and released it gently outside on the veranda.

  “Then he should stay in the garden, and out of my chest,” Cook muttered.

  I knelt down low on the veranda to observe the creature. “You’re a splendid fellow, aren’t you?” I whispered, watching him creep across the path.

  “Only you would touch such a frightful little beast as that,” Kame said on my return.

  “We would all be dead by pestilence, but for the assistance of frightful little beasts like him,” I said, unfolding my futon and small blanket.

  Cook muttered and turned on her futon to the wall.“ They’re hideous creatures that eat their own young. I shouldn’t be shocked at your preference for them.”

  “They don’t eat their young.” I said in a low voice, and mostly to myself.

  “But they eat their mates,” Cook said. “You will make me believe you a jorogumo.”

  “Eating their mates is necessary to regulate the population—the females die after laying their eggs. If she didn’t check the males, there would be no male and female balance. It is the way spiders survive,” I said, then added as an afterthought, “And if I were a jorogumo, I would have to be the most passive spider demon there ever was. You have lived with me unmolested seven years.”

  Neither Cook nor Kame had more to say to me. We were, after all, on only slightly more cordial terms than Madame and myself. We had shared close quarters most of seven years, and we might have shared as much sympathy in our mutual humility, but Cook preferred to cling to her tiny step of superiority, and lorded over me and Kame both. But Kame flattered Cook for better treatment, and while they liked each other very little, they hated me, and often aligned against me.

  Was it any wonder I protected my fellow weavers of fibers? I could admire them for their industry and the beauty of their webs. And I felt an odd companionability with them. All human creatures hated me, too. And I would take care and shelter my creeping friends.

  4

  The door scraped across its track, and I stepped lamp-less, off of the veranda and toward the winter thinned plum trees. The sky loomed close, like a cluster of black, shining eyes following my every footfall inside the garden’s naked recesses. I heaved the compost bucket to the far edge of the garden and threw its contents into a cold barrel, then hurried away, empty bucket banging my thigh as I went. But the warm pressure of a large hand on my shoulder halted me. I didn’t wonder whose hand. I knew and braced myself.

  A voice at my ear spoke, “Shh. Don’t be afraid.”

  I spun around, thrusting Shin back with the momentum of my turn. “If you don’t want to frighten me, then don’t sneak up on me alone in the dark.
”

  He retreated a step. “I should have called you by your name, but I did not know it.”

  I averted my gaze. “You had better not call me anything. The house is full of gossips, and I’ve no open handed business with the new gardener.”

  His hand reached again for my shoulder as I turned to leave. “Your name? Please?” His language was unusually courteous, for male speech, but that might have been customary under such circumstances. I didn’t know.

  I had no intention of answering, and yet my tongue betrayed me. “Furi—”

  “Furi.” He repeated my name with a whisper, but his next words were bold enough. “Stay a minute, and let me treat you.” His right hand held a bright red apple. His left, a blade. With a flick of the wrist, he divided it. I had no idea from where he had taken the apple. Madame had no tree and its season was behind us.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I worked at an orchard before this.”

  “You mean you stole it from a merchant in the village.” I swallowed back the fluid the apple had called into my mouth. “I’m not hungry.”

  He bit loudly into the crisp skin—a kind of taunt, I thought, as I dashed up the stairs and into the house.

  * * *

  I discovered the lump later that evening as I undressed for bed. Reaching inside my apron, I withdrew the second half of Shin’s apple. He had managed to slip it into my apron pocket.

  I passed the fruit under my nose and inhaled its gentle fragrance, wondering. Was he playing some kind of a game? I frowned at the apple, even while my mouth watered. I was hungry and wanted to eat it, but it felt heavy with obligation.

  What would Shin expect in exchange for it? I didn’t like to eat stolen goods. And yet, returning the apple was a risk as well. I would have to go back to the garden in secret and meet him again. This must be what he had wanted. Perhaps it would be best to eat it and destroy the evidence at once.

  * * *

  I bit deeply into it while reclining under the eaves of Madame’s veranda and winced. It may have been the most bitter apple skin ever eaten. And yet, the flesh beneath that bitter surface was sweeter than any fruit I had ever tasted, even to this day. Its complicated flavors stained my throat all the way to my belly.

  I didn’t know it then, but I know now. Shin had handed me one half of an edible oracle. In time, both our lives would realize all of the apple’s sweetness, and every forced swallow of its bitterness.

  5

  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. Once she broke my fingers.

  Yes, I was guilty of this little deception, because sometimes, Satomi forgot to accuse me of having committed it.

  But not every 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 it was you who hid it there last time it was lost.”

  “I’ll go search for it at once.”

  “Yes. 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 a priority. 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. But they always did. They watched me bare my ruined neck and back with the keenest 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.

  Shin 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.

  Shin 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,” Shin 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 Shin. 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 Shin’s rib cage. The notion of Madame disciplining Shin 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 Shin.

  All in company stared stunned as Shin untied his robe and let it fall to his feet. All breathed a collective gasp as he bared his unaccountably pristine flesh, stretching taut over his sculpted frame.

  No servant of his rank—no matter who 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 Shin’s self-confession. Apparently he had taken the cane. He held it in his own hands! And a defense from me would be more harm than good. If Madame suspected an alliance between Shin and myself it would not go well for either one of us.

  Confused and angry, I watched paralyzed as the short whip stung and tore Shin’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 for taking punishment on her behalf.” Then: “Anything Furi has to offer could never be enough.”

  I shuddered at what the weavers implied, but rejected it. Surely Shin 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; I thought so little of myself. And since I could make no sense of Shin’s actions, I decided he was touched in the head. But 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 ang
er, 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 left my soup bowl to pace the floor. 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 Shin, as well.

  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 live people to be cautious of already. 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 Shin was my spiritual protector? I couldn’t help smiling at the idea. But I shook my head and sighed. It was only a pity Madame wouldn’t accept that. Oh, the distance I could get with that little myth! But neither Madame nor Satomi would ever accept an idea as offensive as my immortality.

  As if to prove it, over the following days, Madame and Satomi both lit into me with fury. My hands suffered from Satomi’s abuse, but the sting was fleeting. Satomi had little leverage against me. Madame was different.

  * * *

  For me, most mornings began at roughly two a.m. 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 until seven a.m.—seven in Madame’s case. Satomi awakened even later.