Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (16 page)

There were more questions that might have been asked but everyone remained quiet, waiting for Lord Tokugawa, whose own deep silence these last few minutes had given him the floor. “Help me stand,” he told Keiki. “As I get older I find it difficult to remain sitting for so long. In that, I guess, I am like the American Commodore.”

Keiki went around behind his father, but before he got there, Lord Tokugawa had stood alone. He was facing Lord Abe, his complexion as ashen as Manjiro's. “For years I have advocated a buildup of our defenses,” he said, “When I was military advisor to the government I always argued for it. Because of the weakness of the Shogunate, I have even gone along with our stupid policy of trying to put the Americans off with schemes and excuses, of trying to buy more time with the ridiculous concept of ‘perpetual negotiations.' But, my dear Lord Abe, as far as schemes go, does it not shame you to have dug so deeply only to come up with this one?”

Lord Abe was stung but he held his tongue, rage trapped and growing within his reddening face. Yet when Lord Tokugawa stepped toward the door and Keiki opened it for him, everyone, including Lord Abe, scrambled to follow him down to the building's first floor. There were geisha down there, waiting with food and musical instruments. They had expected that once the meeting was over the lords would join the foreigners, but Lord Tokugawa hurried past them, not speaking, not even pausing when he got to the front door.

The night was mild, the rain of the last few days gone west. But when Lord Tokugawa and Keiki got into their palanquins and departed, without so much as a farewell bow, there was so much brooding in the geisha house doorway that Lord Abe had to speak twice before Manjiro finally understood that the words were directed at him.

“Do you know the Shoguns guesthouses,” he asked, “those older ones further down the Sumida River, the ones not in use anymore?”

“Yessir,” whispered Manjiro.

“Then take these Americans there. Make them comfortable, feed them and give them saké if they want it, but otherwise say nothing.”

Manjiro could not bring himself to answer, so outraged was he by Lord Abe's plan, his behavior—by how severely his greatness was diminished. But Lord Abe was stung by far more lofty slights than Manjiro's and didn't notice. He only turned, barked a fiery order at the tight-lipped Ueno, and frightened the waiting geisha down the hall.

Thus it was that everyone involved, whether traveling across Edo or standing numbly at that open doorway, was cold-eyed or determined or lost or emphatic, burning with one kind of rage or another.

Everyone, that is, but the two American minstrels, who continued to play like bear cubs, singing and dancing in their cell.

16
.
Rumors

DURING THOSE TRYING DAYS
even ordinary rumors could spread across Edo more swiftly than fire among its wooden buildings, but the rumor of the rift between Lord Abe and Lord Tokugawa, and the subsequent disappearance of the American musicians, was a seven-headed monster with each head talking in fine full voice. On his way to the palace with his father the next morning Einosuke heard it several times. He was told that the Americans had run from a geisha house and were hiding in the entertainment district; that they were escapees from a harsh America and seeking political asylum; and that they were already dead, their heads spiked on lantern tops, planted at the front of that circular American train. Merchants all over Edo heard they were loose and killing merchants; palanquin bearers, that they were small of frame and short, dressed in women's clothing and murdering palanquin bearers; and samurai, that they were well-trained warriors.

Closer to the seat of government, inside the chambers of the Great Council, in the Edo offices of the Imperial Chamberlain, and in the living quarters of the Shogun himself, the location of the missing Americans was less on people's minds than the situation that had developed between the two great lords. In those places one story had it that Lord Tokugawa had laughed in Lord Abe's face, another that he had refused to hear Lord Abe out at all, and a third that Lord Abe's mean-spirited aide would soon fight a duel with Keiki, Lord Tokugawa's unready son and heir. Oh gossip, how it spreads across the world, irrespective of customs or cultures!

Lord Okubo and Einosuke searched for Manjiro in the hallways and antechambers of the Great Council, for they knew he had been present at the geisha house meeting everyone was talking about and would be able to tell them what had truly taken place. But though they looked everywhere for him, they could not find Manjiro. He wasn't with the Dutch-speaking interpreters in the corner, and he wasn't with those junior aides who stood outside of Lord Abe's inner chamber door. Lord Okubo thought he might find Manjiro in the commissary, though it seemed too early for lunch, and Einosuke searched the castle grounds, through its gardens and around its ponds. Both men still felt the renewed family bonding that Keiko's dance recital had brought them, and very much needed Manjiro.

It was unusual for Lord Okubo to grow anxious at rumors, but when he met Einosuke again, later, he put a hand on his eldest son's shoulder. They sat down on a couple of cushions in a side hallway, from which they could see that the door to Lord Abe's private chambers remained closed, that no one left or entered except the dislikable Ueno.

“I'm going to stop him, ask after Manjiro when next he comes out,” Einosuke announced, but when Ueno did come out again, more than half an hour later, he was moving so fast that stopping him became an impossibility. Aides and servants and even some lords had to leap out of his way. Lord Okubo urged Einosuke on, telling him to catch up in a hurry, and soon Einosuke was chasing Ueno down the hall.

For his part Lord Okubo got up and walked along the short hallway, approaching Lord Abe's door, where Lord Abe's secretary, an even older man than Lord Okubo, sat on a high dais and admitted no one, whether lord or petitioner, without an appointment. But when he saw Lord Okubo he straightened up and bowed. “A most unhappy morning, sir,” he said. “Please, go right inside.”

Lord Okubo looked around the anteroom, but there was no one present to witness the man's unusually accommodating behavior.

The first room of Lord Abe's inner chamber was small. There were two rooms past it, neither of which Lord Okubo had ever been in before, but every time he saw this first room he got the feeling that it was too plain, not befitting the leader of the Great Council. The tatami hadn't been changed since before Lord Okubo's last visit to Edo, and the
shoji
on the windows, which overlooked the castle's prettiest garden, was stained in places and had numerous holes.

Lord Abe was not present in this outer room so Lord Okubo opened the
shoji
and looked down at the garden. Now that the rain had stopped it was possible to see spring's delicate approach, if not in the buds on the cherry trees just yet, at least in the light step people used when walking, and the beginning color of the crocuses. All seemed peaceful and quiet. He could even see the orange flash of a carp's back on the surface of the nearest pond.

“I am glad you were able to come so quickly,” Lord Abe said behind him. “That, at least, is a good sign. Maybe we can stop it all right now and say that it never truly began.”

Mystified, Lord Okubo turned around. He had not been summoned, he had only stopped in on his own, but when he saw how pale the great lord was, how his hands shook and his lips trembled, he said, “Sir? Is something the matter? Is there someone I should call?”

He meant that ancient secretary, or perhaps the castle physician, but when Lord Abe heard him he let out a bitter laugh, regaining some of his control. He stepped around Lord Okubo so that he was closest to the open window. “Is that your eldest son down there with Ueno?” he asked, pointing out. “Did he come with you today? I had suspected he might not, that he might be in league with the despicable Man-jiro.”

No one had been down there a moment earlier, but indeed, Einosuke was now standing at the edge of the pond, head bowed toward Ueno, who was throwing his hands about and berating him so loudly that the two lords, though they could not deduce their meaning, could hear the sense of insult in the words.

“In league, sir?” asked Lord Okubo, “Einosuke ‘in league' with Manjiro?” He could not bring himself to believe that he had actually heard the word “despicable.”

Lord Abe turned away from the window and then back toward it and then toward Lord Okubo. He was perplexed, unsure whether to believe or disbelieve what seemed to be Lord Okubo's ignorance of what Manjiro had done, when suddenly a cloud came over Lord Okubo's face, forcing his eyes closed. It stopped him for such a long moment that when he once again opened his eyes he felt dizzy, and touched Lord Abe's arm with such clumsy disorder that it was the great lord, not Lord Okubo, who rushed to the door of his office for help.

When Lord Abe came back Lord Okubo said, “These rumors…” but he had to stop again, leaning against the windowsill. He drank some of the tea Lord Abe had brought him and put the cup down. “Where is Manjiro?” he asked. “And what do you think he has done?”

He turned to look into the garden again, but there was no longer anyone there, and the instant Lord Abe said, “Your son…” the doors flew open and in rushed Ueno and Einosuke, agitated and shouting at each other.

“In this man's family treachery runs deep,” Ueno began, but Lord Abe told him to shut up and Lord Okubo shoved Ueno aside to look at Einosuke. “We have a problem,” he said. “It seems your brother has kidnapped the American musicians in a misguided attempt to keep them from harm.”

His tone was instructive, as was his touch down low on Einosuke's hand, and when Einosuke said, “Yes Father, I know,” his voice, whatever it might have been earlier, was once again normal.

When Ueno tried to speak Lord Abe once more silenced him, and when Einosuke and his father left his chambers Lord Abe not only kept Ueno from sending for the palace soldiers, but followed them into the long outer hallway, to stand in silence, bowing and watching them go.

Later Einosuke would remember Lord Abe's bow and blame it for the sense he had during much of the rest of the day that things might not be so bad.

And he would also blame that bow for making him unready, for making it nearly impossible for him to believe it when, by late the next afternoon, his father resigned from the Great Council in shame, and decided to return to Odawara with what remained of his family.

17
.
Fine Mornin', Ain't It?

NED AWOKE FIRST
, climbed from his blankets in the Pavilion of Timelessness, and stepped out to breathe the cold crisp air. It was true he hadn't really wanted to come ashore, had done it only for Ace, to soothe his friend's desire for adventure, but now that he was there he found the bamboo grove beautiful, with its trees at uniform distances, and when he noticed the side wall of Lord Tokugawa's hunting lodge, his immediate thought was to get a closer look at it, give a warm welcome to whoever might be inside.

As he reached back through the paper doors for his shoes and seaman's jacket, Ned looked at Ace, asleep with his mouth open, next to the Japanese man who had brought them here, a guy that he'd decided to think of as “Mangy,” because it was as close to his real name as he could get. Mangy's topknot was loose and creeping down the side of his head like a slug, but both men looked peaceful in their slumber. If there was one thing Ned knew about Ace, however, it was that peace was as foreign to him as a hairdo like Mangy's, and search as he might, he wasn't going to find it by hooking up with strangers in Japan. No sir, that they should have stayed at home was as clear to Ned as the bamboo trees in front of him as he looked out the door.

Still, they were here now and he'd done enough standing still on shipboard, so he pulled on his shoes, stepped off the porch and made his way through the bamboo quickly, by gripping the tree trunks and swinging on them—
allemande left, allemande right
—as if he were at a square dance. And soon he found himself standing on a bare stretch of hard ground next to the side of the lodge. In one direction its wall jetted down to meet the forest again, but in the other it seemed to grow higher, as if yielding more standing room to a man inside. So he walked that way and when he stepped around the corner saw the mouth to a corridor that led to a sun-bright courtyard. He could hear someone caterwauling in there—singing would be a kind word for it—but he could also hear wind chimes, a high-pitched and pleasant ringing, not unlike the ship's triangle.

Ned felt his unshaven face and worked his mouth, briefly thinking that he should pass the courtyard by, just circle the building and go back to wake Ace. When the man stopped singing, however, and barked out a phlegmy cough, he stepped inside the corridor and reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve a small harmonica. And when the cough came again he blew softly, copying the cough perfectly, finding its pitch on the first try. The cougher heard it and stopped, while Ned pressed himself against the wall and grinned mischievously. A moment passed, and when another cough came, he gave it a quieter echo.

“Chikusho
,” said Keiki in the courtyard.

Ned would have left then, satisfied that he had a good story to tell, but a shadow fell across the ground before him, followed so quickly by its maker that he could only press himself closer to the wall. The man was naked except for a loincloth, and had hair flying everywhere. He was so comic-looking that Ned might have laughed, except for the fact that he was carrying a large and unsheathed sword.

The man glanced into the corridor but couldn't see Ned, and when he went some distance farther and coughed again, a random spasm this time, like five or six dog barks, Ned put the harmonica to his lips and woofed out the same sound.