Lest Our Passage Be Forgotten & Other Stories Page 6

  “Like what?”

  “Did you experience Shikujo’s funeral the other day?”

  Fuyoko nodded.

  “He had many good memories, but he was so filled with hate for his brother that it was hard to find them at first.”

  “His brother the banker?”

  “Yes. He’d asked for a small loan for his farm five years earlier, and Iniki hadn’t granted it to him. He built up so much anger that he was ready to die without speaking another word to him. I asked him if he’d like to relive the memory, to be sure it was as he remembered it. He eventually said yes, and he realized how difficult it had been for Iniki to say no. With the drought the previous two seasons, he’d had little enough money to go around.”

  “And that’s wondrous?”

  “On the surface, no. But to me it was a wonder what Shikujo had done to himself; his mind put himself so high up on his mountain of pride that he could no longer find his way down. It’s a wonder that I could help him, a wonder that they reconciled before he died. Such things don’t happen often, but when they do I’m reminded of why I chose the profession I did.”

  “Does it outweigh the rest?”

  Yasuo blinked. “What do you mean?”

  Fuyoko laughed; it was a sharp and biting thing. “Does it outweigh living on the island, alone? Does it outweigh being called only when someone is dying? Does it outweigh being ostracized by a village that would rather you didn’t exist until necessity demands it?”

  Yasuo fixed his stare on the largest island in the lake, where two small boys were chasing one another around the trunk of a cherry tree. “I like my island,” he said after a time.

  “You mean you tolerate it. There’s a difference.”

  “No, I like it. Not everyone is a social creature, O-dono. I may not be invited to birthdays and New Year feasts, but what I do is necessary. It is important that what I do is done well. I am needed, and that is enough.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself when Harune comes to drop off her Rika?”

  Yasuo felt his face flush. “Fujumoto-san is a client.”

  Fuyoko emitted a deep, rumbling chuckle. “So you’ve said, but the blood in your face says otherwise.”

  Fuyoko’s eyes twinkled as she watched Yasuo squirm, and he hated her for it, but he had dealt with worse, and he would find a way to deal with her.

  He motioned to the waiting room behind them. “We do have work to do, O-dono.”

  “Ah, yes. That.” She stood up taller, still only coming to his breastbone, and put on a face of mock-seriousness. “I’ll make you a bargain, smokeman. My son wants my memories, Asuhiko wants my memories, you want my memories, so I’ll give them to you, but on one condition.”

  “And that would be?”

  “For each memory I give, you have to answer one question, and you have to answer it to my satisfaction.”

  Yasuo didn’t like the satisfied smile on Fuyoko’s face, and his stomach was already churning at the questions she might ask, but he knew he had no real choice.

  On the island below, one of the boys caught up to the other, at which point, the chase reversed. Even from his vantage Yasuo could hear their faint giggles.

  “I’ll agree,” Yasuo said, “but only for memories that aren’t hurtful.”

  “That seems fair.”

  “Then consider the bargain struck.”

  She slapped his back. Hard. “Well then, I suppose we’d better get to it.”

  “Yes,” Yasuo said, trying to recover his composure, “then perhaps we could start where we ended last time. Why do you wish to tarnish your husband’s legacy?”

  She made a hmmph sound. “His legacy... You might have chosen a different word had you waited until the end of the memory to storm off.”

  “And what would I have seen?”

  “My husband beating me in front of the entire court, my being dragged away to his room. And it only grew worse when he retired that evening.”

  Yasuo paused before speaking again. This was dangerous ground he was treading. If the Daimyo ever found out he knew such secrets, even the normally high protections of the smokemen would do little to save him.

  “Revealing anything about your husband will do little good when you pass over,” Yasuo said.

  “Don’t you think we should be truthful?” she asked.

  “There are truths and there are truths. We want to uncover your nature, your true self, so that it is plain to see.”

  “That was my truth—for many years—until I produced him two sons and he finally lost interest in me.”

  “But that was not you, was it? Did your husband’s behavior define you? Does it still?”

  “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “It is natural to be confused at a time like this. The important thing to remember is your life beyond, the one that cradles you until your next life begins.”

  “I care little for the next life, and even less for the one beyond that.”

  Yasuo couched his next words in the softest voice he could manage. “Then do it for your son if you love him.”

  Fuyoko was silent for a time. The boys dashed across the bridge and were lost among the pine.

  “I loved him once. But he has become so much like his father.”

  “Perhaps you don’t relate to him like you once did, but was his birth not joyous?”

  Fuyoko stood and looked upon Yasuo with a clarity he hadn’t seen before. She nodded once. “Yes, we can begin with that.”

  Yasuo took her through the ritual again, massaging her back, getting her body to the right point of relaxation. He used the incense and the cups and placed them along her back.

  As the smoke was collecting, Yasuo read another of the poems on the wall.

  Angry clouds

  Flying ever east

  Their bellies pregnant with rain

  They would storm upon us if they knew.

  When the right time had passed, Yasuo tested the memory. Fuyoko had focused well upon the memory of her son’s birth. She seemed truly happy, but when her husband came to view his son for the first time, she grew stiff and defensive, even fearful. It was, in terms of her memories, useless; there was no way he could show such a thing to the public, much less the Daimyo himself. But in terms of Fuyoko’s attitude, this was a step forward. He could only hope that the coming days would provide more luscious fruit from which to choose.

  Yasuo left the castle shortly after. As he was crossing the stone bridge leading from the castle to the village proper, he noticed Harune standing on the far side just next to her cart. He grew worried the closer he came, for her face was set grimly.

  “Fujumoto-san, how may I serve?”

  She held her hand out, palm up, revealing the coins he had given to Rika. She glanced up at the castle and said, “Do my daughter’s memories mean so little?”

  “Harune, I—”

  “You said the oils were very expensive, and the sage.”

  “I thought she could come back another—”

  “I told you I would pay like any other when you came for Rika’s memories.” She glanced up at the castle again. “We’re not as rich as some, but the Fujumoto aren’t beggars.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead she threw the coins at Yasuo’s feet, climbed up to the driver’s seat of her cart, and whipped the ox into motion.

  Yasuo stood there, hurt and confused. He hadn’t meant any offense. Truth be told, he’d hoped to simply see her again when she came to drop Rika off. Otherwise months would have passed before he would see her again.

  Harune’s cart was soon onto market street and then lost as it turned right toward her home. Only then did Yasuo pick up the coins and return to his boat. As he rowed home, he refused to look up to see if Fuyoko was watching from her balcony.

  Yasuo returned to the castle the next morning, which was a chilly and windy affair. Part of him said he should walk to the Fujumoto farm and explain to Harune, but another part said she needed time alone, tim
e to digest what she’d done. After she was calm, then he could talk to her and she would be able to understand.

  “You owe me a question, smokeman,” Fuyoko said after he’d entered the room.

  Yasuo took off his wool coat and bowler and handed them to the handmaid to hang. “Good day to you as well.”

  Fuyoko waved his hello away with a flick of her hand. “No stalling. I want to know what memories you will choose.”

  “What?”

  “When you die, which memories will you choose?”

  “I... You want to waste a question on that?”

  “I’ll waste my questions if I want. Now answer.”

  Yasuo hadn’t ignored his own death—he, of anyone, knew the preparations that one must take—but he had always been a private man, and he didn’t feel like sharing them. Still, he had agreed to Fuyoko’s strange bargain.

  “The one that strikes me as most important is my wife’s death.”

  Fuyoko’s eyebrows rose. “She died in childbirth, didn’t she?”

  It again struck him how in tune Fuyoko was with his personal life. It still felt uncomfortable. “Yes.”

  “But why? Why that memory?”

  “Because it shows how much I respected her.”

  “Respected?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Not loved?”

  Yasuo felt his face flush. “I loved her in my own way, but love can be overvalued. She was a good wife to me, and I was a good husband. It was a better marriage than most.”

  “Is that why you don’t visit Harune more often? Out of respect?”

  “That,” Yasuo said as he turned toward his bag to hide his shame, “is another question.”

  Days passed, one running into the next, broken up only by the occasional practical joke from Fuyoko. One day she put jade marbles just inside her door, causing Yasuo to fall painfully on his backside and break three of the glass jars he used to extract memories. When he returned from a trip to his home to pick up more jars, she seemed cowed, but only until the end of the session, when she farted so loudly it scared her handmaid into a small yelp. All three of them remained silent for unbearable seconds as the handmaid stared at Yasuo and Fuyoko with a perfectly embarrassed look on her face. Then, like bursting rain clouds, all three of them devolved into uncontrollable laughing fits.

  It occurred to Yasuo that humor might be the key to finding decent memories for Fuyoko, but the straight-backed nature of the Daimyo and the lords of Kaidon wouldn’t allow them to accept such a display. They would consider it an embarrassment, no matter how true to Fuyoko’s nature it might be. No, he had to go another direction. He managed to elicit positive memories from Fuyoko, but in actuality they were either soured by her interactions with her husband or were so bland as to say nothing useful about her life.

  Fuyoko hadn’t asked another question since the first, and he wondered if she’d given up on the notion. But the day Asuhiko was to return, she said, “It seems to me you owe me quite a few questions, smokeman.”

  Yasuo forced a smile while his gut tightened. “Is my life really so important to you?”

  Fuyoko’s face had been bright and mischievous, but it relaxed then. “I am only curious about you, Osokura-san. Is that so foreign?”

  She seemed so genuine about it that Yasuo smiled. “Go on, then.”

  “Why does Harune bring her daughter to you?”

  “To prepare memories.”

  “Doesn’t she have enough?”

  “She is not rich. She can only afford a memory or two per season.”

  “They say she still grieves over her husband.”

  Yasuo shrugged. “It seems to be so. She always chooses the memories for Rika, memories that pay homage to him as much or more than her daughter.”

  “Why do you think she does so?”

  “To show those in Shiri-kin what sort of a man he was. To give him his due even though he had no proclamation on his day of passing.”

  Fuyoko paused for a while, perhaps soaking in what Yasuo had said. “Why don’t you call upon her?”

  Yasuo’s gut felt like a twisted New Year cookie. “I don’t... Harune is a widow.”

  “We’ve determined that.”

  “She doesn’t... My feelings for Fujumoto-san have no bearing.”

  “You don’t think she would love you?”

  “I told you, my wife—”

  “Is dead, yes. But you’re not.”

  “Harune,” Yasuo began, not sure he was willing to voice the thought, “is as much a part of this village as everyone else.”

  “Meaning what? That she would spurn your affection?”

  “Yes!”

  “How will you know until you try? I wonder when you, a man who deals with death every day of his life—isn’t that what you told me the first day we met?—isn’t willing to embrace what he has left of it. I would if I were you.”

  All the humiliation he’d felt over Fuyoko’s unwelcome probing came bubbling to the surface, and before he could prevent it, a laugh burst from Yasuo like a bark. “If you were me...”

  “Yes.”

  “You would do something you’ve avoided your whole life...”

  Fuyoko straightened her back. “I’ve been a prisoner—”

  “Yes, I know. Your horrible husband ruined your life. But you were the Daimyo’s wife. Outside of your marriage, you could have had anything you chose. You haven’t wanted for anything your whole life. You want to know why there aren’t any pure memories? It’s simple. It’s because you’ve swallowed your own vile tonic for so long you’ve convinced yourself none of it was worthwhile. None of it! But the truth is there’s plenty of joy and love and respect in your life. Your first day as a woman, the day you left your prefecture for Kaidon, your first trip to Ushito, your first kiss. Everything can be tainted if you look back upon it with a sour mindset. It’s up to you to find the memories and to let them shine, as they truly happened, exactly as you felt them then.”

  Fuyoko was silent for a long time. She looked at him with steely eyes, but then they softened and turned thoughtful. She stared up at the poems adorning the well. She kept her eyes on one of them for so long that Yasuo turned to regard it.

  A spring day

  Breaks with golden light

  It warms my heart and yours

  As its arms reach outward to embrace.

  “You’re right, smokeman,” Fuyoko finally said. “There are memories that are pure.” She turned her gaze back upon him, her eyes glistening. She nodded once, disrobed, and then lay down. “Begin, and you will see what I wish to say.”

  He was confused at first, but this was an opportunity he had to grasp. The summoning of her memory went so smoothly and worked so well that when he touched the jars on her back and opened his mind he was drawn into her past immediately.

  He saw the beautiful clouds described by the first poem, felt a warm breeze, heard crickets.

  It was a complete surprise. Yasuo had assumed someone had created the poems as a gift for her. He had no idea that she’d actually experienced the poems. Fuyoko was not the one creating the poem, so perhaps she had made them at another time, attempting to capture the memory in prose. But wait. No. If Yasuo concentrated, he could sense the sooty smell of ink on the air. Fuyoko was not the one creating the poem after all. But if not her, then who?

  “Continue,” Fuyoko said after he’d collected the memory away in its jar.

  He complied, quickly and efficiently collecting the oil and preparing the jars once more. When he set the last jar, he whispered a small prayer that she would progress into more personal memories.

  The second was as strong as the first. The storm clouds infused Yasuo. He could feel the lightning tickle the nape of his neck and the wind tug at his hair. The wind was too strong to smell ink, but Yasuo heard a faint clinking sound, as of a brush against an ink bottle.

  “Again,” she said.

  The third showed the river bank, that the final poem described, and it
was as immersive a memory as Yasuo had ever experienced. He truly felt like he was a part of it, like he could reach out and brush the tips of his fingers over the cattails, like he could hear every leaf on the willow as it rustled in the wind. It was with great regret that he pulled back from the memory and began collecting the oil.

  Yet once he was free of the pull of the memories, Yasuo began to worry. There was no doubt that they were strong and beautiful, but a funeral was not about isolated beauty. It was about speaking to one’s spirit, to one’s life, and Yasuo didn’t really have anything that would speak confidently to Fuyoko’s.

  Yasuo was so lost in his musings that it was only when he had finished bottling the essence away that he realized Fuyoko’s aged form was wracking with silent sobs on the couch.

  “O-dono, please, what is the matter?”

  “Go,” she replied through open sobs. “Just go.”

  He bowed though she could not see him and put his instruments away. “I am most sorry if I—”

  “I said go!”

  He bowed once more and opened the door. He closed it and started when he realized someone was just behind him.

  “Asuhiko-sama. I didn’t realize you were there.”

  Asuhiko smiled—forced, it seemed to Yasuo—and nodded toward the door. Fuyoko’s sobs could be heard easily. “I hope there is some good news.”

  Yasuo stepped away from the door. “Please. She has only now become upset. We created three—two, rather—strong memories. I think I can use them somewhere within her ceremony.”

  “The poems?” Asuhiko said.

  Yasuo stood dumbstruck for a moment. “How did you know?”

  Asuhiko smiled. “One need know Yoshida-dono for a small amount of time to know those poems are precious to her.” Then Asuhiko’s expression grew stern, and he raised himself up taller. “You truly think they would prove useful in her proclamation?”

  Yasuo paused, for Asuhiko clearly thought they would not prove useful. Yasuo would even go so far as to say Asuhiko was requesting they not make an appearance on her night of passing.

  “It is true they say little, O-sama. If the truth be told, I would rather find more insightful memories for her.”