Hashi

  HASHI

  It is early in the morning. Sunlight has not yet entered the palace gardens. Dew hangs from blades of grass; mist weaves through cherry trees.

  Maruki walks between the trunks, bare feet over the cold ground. The air is still, the whispers of her kimono the only sound. The opulent silk contradicts the sober cut; the turquoise, indigo and azure colors show that she is of lowborn blood.

  Her path weaves through rough garden stones. Two palace guards follow thirty paces behind, eyes alert and relaxed hands on the scabbards of their tachi. Armors creak with each step, bamboo scraping against leather.

  The path leads to a small pond, its surface smooth as a mirror. Maruki bows slightly by the edge and leans over the water.

  A marble-white face stares back, with eyes and lips painted black. From her ears hang rings of lapis lazuli: a reward from a pleased warlord, or maybe a gift from the Daimyo himself. Her raven-dark hairdo is arranged in a lush ziggurat of ringlets and waves.

  “A waterfall,” mutters the older guard, recalling a glimpse through a window of Maruki grooming her hair. “A waterfall of black silk.”

  Her dark ripples and waves are held in place by three ivory hashi, carved from the fangs of who knows what beast from foreign lands. Peering into the water she lifts a hand to the crown of her head and adjusts one of them slightly.

  A gust of autumn wind wrinkles the pond. The tang of cherry and the salty scent from the sea mingle with the reek of manure and sweat.

  Maruki straightens up. A nearby bush shivers.

  The younger guard frees his tachi’s tsuba with his thumb. The other stops him with a shake of the head.

  “Her husband,” says the older guard, sniffing. “The swineherd.”

  The young guard hesitates, then loosens the grip on his hilt.

  The swineherd leaves his hideout in the foliage. Hunched, hobbling over crooked legs he gets close to Maruki; she waits for him by the shore, straight and still as a bamboo stem.

  If he could stand erect, the swineherd would be taller than the guards; with his bent back and misshapen legs he barely reaches Maruki’s chest. He approaches until he is two steps away. He looks up. He smiles through sunken teeth and sputters a bunch of muddled syllables.

  She recalls...

  ... recalls the warm summer evenings, long ago, spent brushing her unendingly long hair, bright dark velvet under the silver moonlight, and the longing glances the guards on the wall would steal at her when they thought she would not notice...

  ... recalls the praise and failed cajolery from warlords and their retinue when, visiting the Daimyo’s court, they discovered that poems and tales of her beauty paled in her presence...

  ... remembers her pride the night when Lady Jin, the Daimyo’s wife, invited her to the inner sanctum where all the women save Maruki were of highborn blood. The noble ladies commended the plush darkness of her long hair and with knowing smiles admired the beguiling simplicity of her hairdo. Maruki remembers thinking that praises and promises are sweet empty words, but jealousy is often sincere.

  That night Lady Jin offered her a pipe of green jade, smoldering with herbs from faraway Xinjie across the long sea. Maruki inhaled once and felt light-headed and carefree; she inhaled twice and felt cozy and giddy and everything was worthy of a good laugh. The more she laughed the more Lady laughed and all ladies laughed and the more they kept stocking her green pipe.

  One of the ladies brought a kimono of the finest silk, crimson and bright cherry and imperial red, tied with an obi that would befit a royal bride. Maruki giggled and clutched the pipe while the ladies groomed her; then swathed in scarlet and clouded in fumes they flocked behind Lady Jin along the garden path and through the palace gates.

  Across the walls, the servants’ huts cowered against a muddy plaza. The place was lit with scores of bright firefly lamps, in red and blue and yellow as if it was the Daimyo’s birthday. The servants themselves stood around the square, heads bowed low, along some of the guards with ready spears. And in the center of the circle awaited the swineherd, addled and reeking of pig, and the sour abbot from the nearby temple.

  The ladies waved their fans to cover their noses and hide their laughter while two guards led Maruki and her jade pipe to the middle of the square, where the abbot was to marry her to the swineherd. Her heart pounded in her throat struggling to scream no, no, she did not and would not, while the fumes in her head doused her will; as if she was a puppet and the ladies’ laughter her strings, Maruki herself laughed and smoked and laughed and to all that the sour abbot was saying she answered yes.

  Her memories from then onwards whirl into a blurry mist of yellow and greenish shadows. Two days and three nights of ravings and fevers in the swineherd’s hut: the cold; the hellish heat; the stench; the immaculate cleanliness of the humble home despite the reek. The swineherd, who did not touch her.

  With two long saibashi he placed cold compresses over her forehead during the torrid noon, and at dusk with the long saibashi he covered her feverish body with blankets so she would be warm. With a wooden spoon he poured fresh water in her parched lips, and mounted guard with a fan so flies would not defile the black tide of hair flowing like an ebony stream over a mountain of pillows.

  The third morning her body could stand up and her mind could think straight.

  She remembers the swineherd’s sadness when she abandoned his shed and went back to the palace; the gibes from the guards as she set foot through the gates; ladies flickering their fans in mock concealment of snickers and scorn; the long cleansing and purifying rites she had to endure until she was tolerated back in court.

  The heavy wig she had to wear for a long, long time, for she had to shave her head during the purifying rituals.

  Now Maruki has dew in her eyes, her face a mask of cold porcelain. She stares at the swineherd by the pond, who grins in silence through crooked teeth.

  “Leave,” she whispers. “The unclean are not allowed in here. The water will be tainted if you touch it. Leave.”

  He nods and beams his rotten grin.

  “Leave!” she says. “Go back to your mud and your pigs. I must return to court; the Lady awaits. Go away!”

  A sad shadow veils his smile. He stretches a stout arm and brings his coarse hand to her pale cheek.

  The guards cannot help recoil their heads as they wince. Maruki is an ivory statue draped in azure silks.

  The swineherd halts his fingers before they graze her skin. He points to the waves of curls and ringlets crowning her forehead and laboriously mutters: “Wah... teh... fah...” Then his hands retreat and hide his own face. He sobs.

  Maruki turns around and walks away towards the guards.

  One... two... three steps, cold blades of grass under her bare feet.

  She stops.

  Raises her hands to the crown of her head.

  With a soft pull she doffs the three hashi that hold her hairdo.

  A dam bursts; a flood, an avalanche: a torrent made of moonless midnight flows around her shoulders, her hips, her thighs, and spills over the ground. Marble-faced, not looking back, Maruki extends her right arm towards the swineherd. Between the fingers of her balled fist, the three hashi jut out like silver claws.

  Nothing moves. The wind dares not breathe, and later tonight the two guards will, half-drunk, swear to their comrades that had Hell unleashed its legions upon the garden that instant, even Humaru the Demon Lord would have lacked the courage to confront the barefoot woman among the garden stones.

  Maruki awaits.

  The swineherd, between befuddled and afraid, limps closer with cautious steps. His rough hand, jittery as a monstrous butterfly, flutters as it inches towards the hashi. He takes them; he clasp them tight and cradles them against his chest.

  Maruki
wafts away from the pond. As she walks past the guards her midnight waterfall caresses the grass the young guard stumbles forward, trying to prevent it from brushing the dry leaves and the dirt; a glance from the marble mask freezes him where he stands.

  Maruki glides towards the palace through the cherry trees, shrouded in murmurs of blue silk.

  Thirty paces behind the guards follow, with their bamboo and leather creaks.

  A golden spear of morning sunlight pierces the garden. By the shore of the pond the swineherd struggles to straighten up, to stretch and stand tall. His eyes follow the raven-dark cascade as it flows away among the stones, as it vanishes between the trees and the foliage and he can see it no more.

  ###

 

 

  Herko Kerghans, Hashi

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