Chapter 2

Wrought with so much disgust at myself, I was tempted to spring from my bed to take her stockings deep into the woods at this very late hour and fling them into the creek. But I didn’t do that. I couldn’t bring myself to. Instead, I kept my lady’s soiled stockings pressed against my cheeks and I wallowed myself to sleep, my heart aching with the knowledge that tomorrow I would have to face her having committed my transgression.

There is never a moment of tranquillity. In the heart that loves the blossoms, the wind is already blowing – Izumi Shikibu

Lady Evelyn was a terrible woman. I was sure of it. It was not that she acted out in terrible ways, nor was it necessarily in the way she treated the servants. It was more that her husband, Lord Sasaki, was a terrible man who did cruel things to his servants and it was her indifference to his display of cruelty – her complicity – that convinced me that she was terrible. Once, Lord Sasaki forced poor Takumi, our head gardener, to strangle a stray kitten that Takumi’s son, Hiroto, had taken in as a secret pet. He forced Hiroto to watch, as well as the rest of the household. I will never forget the unsympathetic face Lady Evelyn made as she watched Takumi strangle the kitten in the courtyard that day. No emotion came to her save for a languid boredom as if to watch a maple tree shed its leaves. Yes, she was surely terrible. But she was also beautiful. Her long golden hair shimmered like a halo whenever the sun touched it. When she walked, she walked with a floating grace, like a swan carried by a calm river, and of course her feet, oh her lovely feet, that could have been shaped by the most talented porcelain artisan, were the most beautiful I have ever seen. How strange for God to meld such beauty with terribleness. But perhaps not so strange… Consider the oleander blossom, its delicate beauty, its heavenly fragrance, and its lethality as a poison.

The morning that followed my shameful tryst with her stockings, to my great relief, when I had woken her for her breakfast and dressed her, she said nothing to me. And of course I said nothing to her.

She was not so magnanimous with silence later that morning, when I found myself alone with her in a private part of her garden.

I had been given the task of sweeping the flat stones that made the walking path to the koi pond. She strolled the path. I moved aside and bowed and said, “good morning, madame,” to which she responded by returning a small bow. I, feigning not being affected by her presence, continued sweeping the wet leaves on the stepping stones as she went to sit at the bench beside the pond. Sunbeams that broke through the leaves of the gingko and sakura, softened by the morning mist, bounced off the pond to paint her with playful dancing light. She wore a lovely sky-blue dress, the latest in fashion from Paris according to Fumiko, madame’s personal couturière, the hem of which came up enough to reveal her feet nestled in French slippers. I did my very best to keep my eyes averted, or if I did look, only to keep my glances quick.

“Niko, can’t you see that I’m trying to enjoy a peaceful morning? Stop that horrid scraping,” she said.

I stopped abruptly, bowed apologetically, then turned to leave the garden as quickly as I could.

“I did not say leave,” she said, and so I stopped, and I turned to her and said, “I’m sorry madame,” then, awkwardly, found a corner of the garden to stand in where I could be the least disturbing.

She watched my awkwardness with amusement, then laughed when I finally found my spot to stand. Flustered that I did not know the right way to act, and fearful that she might lose her patience with me and thus let her husband loose on me, my face grew hot, my cheeks surely blushing as bright as the mottles on a kohaku koi.

“Niko, you do well as a garden ornament, but you are my handmaiden. Come here and give me company.”

Disoriented, I hesitated, but she extended her hand implying me to take it, so I went to her and took it, then she stood, and weaved her arm with mine.

“Let’s stroll,” she said, and she took me along for a stroll.

The estate of Lord Sasaki, said to have once belonged to the feudal lord Date Matsamune, is situated on a high plateau by the sea. Much of the original castle is still there, appearing like a snowcap on a hill from a distance. On its seaward side, emerging from the ruins of centuries of earthquakes, were scattered a few stone grey cottages constructed in the style of a small English village of the region from where Lady Evelyn hailed. The cottage village was a wedding gift to her by Lord Sasaki. There were as many cottages as in a real village, but all were empty, their windows black like sunken eyes. I could not see how they could possibly make Evelyn happy. Their emptiness could only punctuate the loneliness here. A village, even an English one, I’m sure, should be filled with the laughter of children, the clucking of chickens, the sound of grinding mills, and of village gossip. The only sounds here were the cold winds that came from the sea, which howled as they carved a path through the grey, lifeless stone.

We strolled quickly through the ghost village and took a path flanked by English flowers to the sea cliff, then off the path to stroll along the cliff through the tall grass that waved in long sweeps of breeze that persistently came in from the sea and where when there was no wind in the summer evenings, provided a playground for the fireflies to dance in. She kept me close, clinging to my arm, swaying as she strolled, while I stayed as stiff as a reed.

We arrived at the tip of a bluff and peered over the edge together to watch the sea churn and boil there, and above the boil, the seagulls floating like a dozen kites, some catching an updraft to dart up high into the sky. Then we sat in the tall grass and Lady Evelyn spotted a cloud of faint black smoke that billowed from an unseen ship.

“That ship must be from San Francisco,” she said as she stared, cupping her hand to shield her eyes from the rising morning sun. “How long do you suppose it took to get here?”

“I’m not sure, madame,” I replied.

“Mmm, I see,” she replied in a tone to suggest she was not surprised by my ignorance.

“What is your guess, madame?” I asked timidly, asking not because I cared, but because I would rather speak on this matter than allow conversation to drift into more perilous waters.

“Two weeks perhaps,” she said.

“And why do you suppose they come?”

“That is a good question,” she said and pondered it for a moment before answering, “To bring a naive young girl to Japan perhaps.”

“I do hope she likes it here,” I answered, careful to keep my answer light, but nonetheless somewhat surprised by the unexpected bitterness in her tone. I was surprised not by the bitterness, but that she would convey it to me, even so subtly.

“I hope she does too,” she replied. Her voice was listless and barely audible beneath the sound of the whispering grass as if she were speaking in a dream. There wasn’t despair in the voice, but it was something similar. A sombre anger. Anger with herself perhaps. Again, I was careful to not touch a nerve, saying nothing in response, but seeing my discomfort she smiled at me. She folded her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees. “So tell me something about yourself, Niko. How did you come to be here? How were you so fortunate?”

“To be in Japan? I was born here.”

“Don’t be difficult. I meant to be in my husband’s service.”

I could answer her with the same despair, but, motivated not to, I replied, “There’s not much to say. I had not travelled so far as you or that girl on the ship from San Francisco. I’m from a small village in the south only a few hours away by train. I went to Kyoto to enter training as a maiko. I had the naive dream of becoming a geiko of renown, and, well of course that did not work out as I had hoped, so I ended up here. The man that had convinced me to leave my family for fame and fortune really glossed over the finer points of becoming a geiko, like how preposterous a prospect it is, especially for a girl like me.”

My lady cocked her head. “A girl like you? You’re very beautiful, Niko. You would’ve made a fine geiko, I’m sure.”

“Thank you, madame, but beauty is not the only aspect of being a geiko. Nor is it the most important. More important to being a geiko is the ability to charm men, which did not come to me naturally.”

She snickered. “Because they were men.”

I blushed and turned my face to the sea. We strayed dangerously close to a topic I would rather not discuss.

“Have you ever made love to a woman, Niko?”

The question came suddenly, but in a manner to suggest it had been biding its time. It was nonetheless jarring to hear it. I would have never considered Lady Evelyn to be the sort that would ever wonder about the carnal interests of her servants. Then again, before last night, I would have never considered her to be the sort to gift her servants her soiled stockings.

“I have not, madame,” I said. My voice rasped.

“That’s a lie,” she replied immediately.

I looked at her incredulously, not for her brashness, but because she was right. Once again, she had seen right through me. I could not hide anything.

“Tell me about your first time,” she said.

I made a flustered noise as my admission that she was right to accuse me so. The excitement of the prospect of confessing a secret began to wring me. I knew that it wasn’t wise to entertain my lady’s interrogation, but I also knew that I wanted to. So I did. “I may have once developed feelings for… for my geiko…”

The admission burned my chest, and made me short of breath. I had told no one before. It was a secret I had never dared to share with anyone.

“Oh? How delightfully naughty…” she answered, her face lightening in a way that was exhilarating to witness.

“…Perhaps it is the reason I was expelled from the teahouse.”

“Indeed, ” she answered with a chuckle. She held her legs more tightly together and dug her chin into the divot between her brought-together knees.

“So it isn’t just my imagination playing tricks on me,” she said.

I swallowed. Nodded. My heart was ready to burst in my chest with fear and yet I was spellbound, helpless, to do nothing else but to spill all my life’s secrets to her. How it had come to be this way, I hadn’t a clue. But my prattling heart at least pumped me full of vigour that was wonderful to feel. I had more to spill, and I wanted to spill it.

“How did it come about?” She asked.

Another question that caught me by surprise. Another question I would never have thought she would have the interest to ask, yet now that she had asked it, I was all too eager to answer. I could not help but smile to see the excitement on my lady’s face. She was hungry for my secrets. Truly hungry. I had never seen such a look of hunger on her face before. And that had the effect of giving me reckless confidence.

“Well…,” I leaned in closer to her so as to be heard above the sea wind whistling through the grass. “Over time we formed a bond, as is usual for a maiko and her geiko. A sisterly bond, as is proper. But I knew from the beginning that I would always think of her in ways beyond sisterly. I was infatuated with her from the moment I first laid eyes on her, but of course I never dared to act upon that desire, because I never believed she could possibly have anything more than a sisterly affection for me. That began to change one night when she complained about soreness in her muscles after a show. I took to massaging her legs and feet, and that was when I suppose I realised there was a chance for something more. At first I was modest. I risked nothing. But I could see the clear satisfaction on her face from my touching her. I could see the yearning. Perhaps I was seeing things that were not so, but all the same, little by little, I became more daring in my touches. More sensual. Until one night, I could not help myself. We had both received a bit too much sake from our clients and that did me in. I began massaging her just like any other night, but that night, I had the idea of… licking her foot. It was meant to be a playful tease, of course. But she did not react to it as if it were so. She asked for more. So I gave her more. And, well…”

I felt myself becoming tight with arousal as I recalled those wonderful nights all those years ago. The most heavenly nights of my life.

My lady was holding her breath now, and barely holding onto her composure. She wanted to hear more, but I had not much more to say without reliving heartbreak and betrayal, so I ended the story, saying, “that was how we first came to make love.

She breathed out slowly, and laughed bashfully and her chest heaved as she said, “my, how utterly sinful… how wonderfully exhilarating. I’ve always wondered what it must be like to lie with a woman.”

She spoke aloud, but she did not speak to me. She spoke her thoughts to herself and her eyes were fixed on the black plume that came from the ship beyond the horizon, wistful, thirsting. And I waited with tremendous anticipation for what she might then say or do, feeling very much like one of the seagulls that rode the updrafts along the bluff.

Suddenly, she turned her eyes back to me. I came back into focus. Her eyes were sharp, and so were her lips. Her expression had suddenly transformed from being amused, to something else entirely. Devious. Demonic even. “You’ve laid bare all your dirty sins, Niko. So lay bare another: what did you do with my stockings last night? You took them with you to bed, haven’t you, naughty girl?”