Chapter 5

Although as a maiko I received extensive training in the wearing of all sorts of kimono, I never prepared a jūnihitoe before. But likely, no one, the business partners least of all, knew the correct way it should be worn, so I did not stress too much about doing it incorrectly.

I found Evelyn awake, sitting on the chair by the window in her bed chamber. The curtains were already drawn, and the windows were open, letting in a cool breeze, her face soaking in the morning sun, her hair gleaming as if surrounded by a halo, and it might as well have – she was angelic. Her lips drew into a pleasant smile when she saw me and let out an incredulous laugh when I informed her that I would be dressing her in her jÅ«nihitoe.

“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes, fluttering her hands dismissively. “But only if I get to wear a pair of your favourite stockings… for you to take off afterward.”

I saw no harm in that, so I happily agreed, and I put on my favourite cherry white ones that would hide beneath the layers of undergarments.

I guessed at how the many layers of the ceremonial dress went and put them on one after another (there were a dozen in total), and when I was done, I took a step back to quickly analyse my handiwork. Evelyn was a forest of colours. Red and purple and green, with intricate patterns of white cranes and gold bamboo, of course, the pink oleander flower of her husband’s clan. I’ve only ever seen such a dress represented in mediaeval art. It was flamboyant. Garish, in fact. But nonetheless, beautiful on Evelyn. Anything on Evelyn was beautiful.

“Preposterous,” she finished for me.

She scoffed at me for saying it, but I meant it. She was radiant. She was a goddess. Even more so while at the breakfast table among the men in grey suits, and especially with the way the morning sun painted her with its golden colours to cause the silk fabric to glimmer opulently. As I stood quietly in the corner, I could not help but steal glances at her. I realised then that the reason for her radiance wasn’t the kimono she wore. It was the life in her face. She was happy. She was alive. And that made me happy and alive and because of that, my world was full of radiance.

After breakfast, Keinosuke gathered the household in the courtyard so that we could bid Lord Sasaki’s business partners farewell in a grand way. We stood in rows, all of us wearing the sort of uniforms English servants would wear while Lord Sasaki wore the sort of uniform an English Navy admiral might wear, complete with ribbons and medals that could not be real, because he had never set foot on a ship let alone ever sail one in a war, yet there he stood, medals and all. Standing next to him in her royal kimono, Evelyn stood out in stark contrast, not only against her husband, but as the only member of the household to wear a Japanese outfit. For a reason I could not grasp, but perhaps it was intuition, or a premonition of sorts, I felt unnerved about this awkward juxtaposition.

The clouds had drawn overhead and began to pour down rain and so we were all beneath umbrellas. I held an umbrella over Evelyn.

The business partners said their goodbyes and departed in horse drawn carriages. The rain came down harder and turned the courtyard dirt into mud and began to pool. What happened next happened in such a flurry that I was quite unsure of what exactly transpired before my eyes. It was much like watching the start of two cats fighting. As soon as the courtyard gates came shut, putting out of view the business partners, Lord Sasaki flung his umbrella aside, and charged at my lady. If I had any wits about me, I would have thrown myself between them to protect her from his sudden rage, but I didn’t. I only stood frozen with horror as I watched the lord grab the collar of her dress and yank her out from under her umbrella to fling her to the middle of the courtyard. Evelyn let out a fearful cry as she tumbled with a splash into a muddy rain pool. I dropped the umbrella and ran to her in an attempt to help her up, but before I could, Lord Sasaki kicked me aside.

“Leave her there!” he roared with fury.

The other servants stood as still as statues. Some had turned their faces down to their feet. The ones who watched, watched with mesmerised horror on their faces.

Lord Sasaki circled his wife like an enraged bull. A low thunder rumbled in the distance. I got quickly to my feet again and jumped onto my lady and shielded her with my body. I was beyond myself. I wept.

“Get off of her,” Sasaki bellowed.

I shook my head as I clutched her more tightly. He grabbed my hair knot and pulled me off of her painfully. He shoved me into the mud and kicked me for good measure, then turned his attention to his wife again. I tried to stand again to run to her, but foreseeing my brash attempt, Keinosuke grabbed me and held me in place, preventing me from moving from my spot.

Evelyn sat up. Mud streaked her face and dripped from her hair. She stared at her husband defiantly, and this angered him, so he kicked her back down into the muddy pool. Thunder rumbled again.

“Keinosuke! Fetch a leash,” he growled.

Keinosuke bowed obediently. “Yes my lord,” he shouted and hopped to his feet and ran to the dog kennel on the other side of the courtyard.

All eyes turned to watch Keinosuke run unquestionably to his task and then returned to Lord Sasaki when he spoke again. He had his face turned down to his wife, but he addressed everyone.

“The mark of a good military commander is the willingness of his samurai to die for him on the battlefield. In the same light, the mark of a good lord is the absolute and unquestioning obedience given to him by his subjects. When a lord’s dearest companion shows disobedience, what then does that make him?”

He made a noise that was like the grunting of a water buffalo and made an ugly water buffalo face as he spat.

“My dogs are more obedient than my wife as it turns out. But perhaps that is my fault. I do not train my wife on obedience as I do my dogs. How could I expect obedience from her when I do not train it into her?”

Keinosuke returned shortly with the leash.

“Tie it to her neck,” he ordered.

Keinosuke hesitated for a moment, but then did exactly as he was told. He put the leash around my lady’s neck and handed the other end to lord Sasaki. The thunder cracked now as if to split the sky. The rain whipped.

“Now let’s put some obedience into you shall we? I’ll put you with my dogs. They’ll teach it to you,” he said to his wife, pointing to the dog kennel. “Walk.”

My dear Evelyn attempted to get to her feet, but her husband pushed her back into the mud. Her once beautiful jūnihitoe of pink, white and purple was now thoroughly destroyed.

“No! Walk like the bitch you are.”

Lord Sasaki pointed to the cages at the far end of the courtyard where his foxhounds sat on their haunches, watching the scene with as much confusion as we, the servants, watched with dread.

He whipped the leash, and Evelyn began to crawl on all fours. I wept more loudly.

“There we are. So you do have it in you to obey, don’t you? All it takes is some proper training. Keinosuke, open the kennel!”

As beckoned, Keinosuke ran ahead and opened the cage door. Lord Sasaki pulled Evelyn into the kennel, then slammed the cage door shut.

“Stay there until my dogs have shown you how to obey me.”

Lord Sasaki stormed off, then Keinosuke and the rest of the house departed as quietly as if from a funeral. Only I remained behind. I ran to the kennel and collapsed before my lady and wept even harder when I saw the deathly shame that stoned her face.

“Please leave Niko, before you catch a death of cold,” she said quietly.

“Leave,” she reiterated, her words stern.

“I will not,” I refused. “How could you ever think I would abandon you?”

Lord Sasaki’s foxhounds approached her cautiously, sniffed around her, and licked her as if to sense that she was hurt and needed soothing. How adamantly pure the hearts of these dogs, to have suffered so much abuse from their master yet still feel compassion for another going through pain and to have the instinct to want to help. Evelyn petted each dog, then, finally, she broke down into tears. I reached my hand in for her to hold, and she took it. She kissed it then held my palm to her cheek. She was as cold as ice.

She squeezed my hand as if to put her life into it, though there did not seem like much life at all.

That late afternoon, after the rain had died away, Keinosuke came back. He bowed to Evelyn and said quietly, “Lord Sasaki has deemed that you have been adequately punished for your misdeeds.” His tone was respectful and calm, talking to the lady of the house as if she were not in a dog kennel. Despite his tone, I could tell he was desperately aggrieved. He could not look at her. For a moment I was angered by this, but then I remembered that he, like we all, was hopelessly subservient to a tyrant. He was a good man inside. It was only his lot that had made him terrible.

He unlocked the cage then turned to me. “Niko, bathe the lady. The lord wishes to be served tea.”

I bowed my head. “Right away.”

I helped my lady to her feet and walked her back to her bedchamber.

She remained silent as I took off her ruined jūnihitoe. She remained still as I set her bath. She stared straight ahead as I teased the caked mud from her hair. It pained me to see her like this. Soulless. Lifeless. Stupefied with a concoction of shame and fear. When I dressed her for tea, I felt as if I were dressing a doll. It wasn’t until after I had done dressing her that she finally spoke up.

“How do you suppose I could ever redeem myself?” she asked.

She looked me straight in the eyes as she asked me that question. The way she asked it pierced me through the heart. The guilt that weighed it. The utter brokenness. Tears welled up in my eyes again. “I don’t know, madame,” I croaked. “But if I may say so… you have done nothing wrong.”

She gave a weak smile, then the smile vanished, and she stood and walked over to her dresser drawer like a ghost, and from it pulled out a kaiken that had a beautiful mother of pearl handle and a blade that shimmered mercurially in the light of amber afternoon sun. She came back and knelt in a polite seiza, and placed the dagger on her lap.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” she said. She cleared her throat, assumed an elegant posture and with a dignified and resigned tone said, “Well then, I suppose I know now what must be done… It is this, isn’t it? For a very long time I could never quite grasp the concept. I found it awful, in fact. Barbaric, even. But now… now I think I understand the point. It is the only key to the cage I’m in, isn’t it?” She squeezed the mother-of-pearl grip of the kaiken until her fist shook.

I bowed my head. I bowed deeply so that my forehead touched her lap. Tears stung my eyes. It was a custom that I too had found awful. But perhaps not in the way a westerner peering into this culture might find it awful. No. What I found awful was the theatrics of it all. So-called redemption. So-called restoration of honour and dignity. So-called relinquishing of shame. It did not matter that there was no shame to relinquish. That there was nothing my perfect Evelyn needed to be ashamed of. She had done nothing wrong. Even so, I understood how she felt. I understood the weight on her chest that made it so very hard to breathe. She was more than a mere prisoner here. She was a hapless victim of a slow torture, of a slow suffocation and a slow squeezing out of her soul that was worse than death. And I also understood that as I could not give a wing-clipped bird the sky, I could not give Evelyn freedom from Lord Sasaki. But there was something I could give.

When I was done crying, I sat up and looked her in the eyes. I wrenched the kaiken from her grip. “Do not give him the satisfaction,” I said.

She shook her head, and tried to take the dagger back. “It’s not for him,” she replied, her voice quivering with despair. “Please give it back to me.”

“There is another way,” I said, dazed while saying the words, but I meant them seriously. Abruptly, I left her bedchamber. I went to my quarters and took out from the hiding spot behind a loose panel inside my futon cabinet a pouch I had kept safe there for many years. I took it to Evelyn and handed it to her.

“Powdered oleander. Flowers, leaves, and root. Mix all of it into your matcha and drink the entire cup. I cannot promise it will be a painless death. But it will be a certain one. And more importantly, one that gives him nothing.”

She stared at me. “Why do you have this?”

I looked back at her and stoutly replied, “This was my key… my means of escape. It is my gift to you.”

She nodded as she wiped tears that pooled in her eyes before they could stain her cheeks. She slid the pouch into her kimono. “Oh, Niko. My Niko. You poor thing. I didn’t know… You have been more kind to me than I deserve. Thank you.”

She kissed me quickly on the lips. Then she gave a faint smile and said, “Time for tea. Goodbye, Niko.”

She stood to leave. I stood simultaneously then moved aside to make room for her to leave, but she didn’t leave immediately. She turned to face me again. She put a finger under my chin to lift my face up to hers to kiss me once more, with the feeling of finality, being the last I would ever get from her. We held our lips pressed together for a long time. We squeezed our hands together. When the kiss was over I made a feeble attempt to hold her back, but knowing that I needed to let her do what she needed to so as to not suffocate any longer or to lose any more of her soul, I reluctantly released her.