The Shadow and the Star (60 page)

"Ah." Mr. Dojun bowed, as if she had just provided the answer to a baffling question.

"It would be pleasant, though. That is, if he…" She leaned her cheek against the cool wooden post. "I should like him to feel happy and at home here."

"Know lady make paper crane. You buy?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I would buy some. A thousand?"

"Thousand,
hai
. All hang down, string, eh? Pretty. Turtle, few maybe. I write, say Obasan make." He pulled a notebook and pencil from some hidden pocket and made Oriental marks upon a sheet. He tore it out, folded it carefully, and handed it to her. "Good."

"Yes, and perhaps some bamboo in pots for greenery."

He bobbed in agreement. "Manalo take Mrs. Samua-san downtown, go Obasan, she read, all buy, paper crane and all that. Bamboo pot, go greenhouse."

"Thank you."

With a deft move, he tucked the notebook away and pushed the bell for Manalo. As Leda slid his note into her pocket, he said, "Say you secret, Mrs. Samua-san. I happy. You good wife him." He bowed to her. "Crane bed gift—you, he. I give."

"Oh," Leda said softly. "Thank you!" She felt shy under his exotic gaze. "I'm really trying to be a good wife. But I don't seem entirely to have the proper knack of it yet."

"Got bed. Got
tansu
. Only need
hanayome-taku. "

"What is that?"

He made a circular gesture with his hands. "Small-little table. Boy make, give mother. Samua-san been make
hanayome-taku
, oh, long time. Been boy. Give Lady AshIan'. New wife—what word you say? New wife?"

"Bride."

"Ah. Bride go mother house, take
hanayome-taku
husband house. Good marriage, after bung house."

Leda tilted her head in interest. "Mr. Samua-san made one of these—whatever?"

"
Hanayome-taku
. Bride-table. I been help make. Been make, oh, fifteen year maybe. Mrs. Samua-san go down Lady Ashlan' house, you see table." He lifted his eyebrows. "Ah! You go down, bring Samua-san bride-table here this house,
ne
? All OK then. Make good marriage. Samua-san, he come home, all right."

She smiled. "I'm sure that's a very good idea, but—"

"Good! I draw." He pulled his notebook out again and made a sketch that at first glance appeared to be a larger version of the Japanese characters that he'd written on the note he'd given her. When she looked, she could see that it must be something rather like a plant stand, with three splayed legs, a square top, and a single round shelf nearer the bottom. "You go Ashlan' house, bring table."

"I don't think I—"

"All fifteen year, Lady Ashlan' bedroom. You look lady bedroom, see
hanayome-taku
. Bring here."

"Mr. Dojun, I'm afraid I couldn't just take something out of their house."

"No, no. Belong you!" He thrust his hand out emphatically. "You Samua-san bride. No keep Lady Ashlan' this table, she know."

"Still, I—"

"Samua-san, he like see
hanayome-taku
. He see, know you honor, got respect him."

Leda bit her lip.

He bowed. "He see, he know sure. No need word."

It seemed a large accomplishment for a small-little table. But Leda looked sadly around the newly fitted room, that Samuel had not so much as expressed a desire to inspect in the few taciturn evening meals he'd taken with her, and found herself willing to give anything a try. "Perhaps you could bring it from the Ashlands'. I should feel like a housebreaker."

Mr. Dojun waved his palm in front of his face in a negative manner. "No can do. New wife, she bring. She no use own hands—got no fortune, no good marriage. Small-little furnita. No heavy, eh?"

Leda sighed. "Well, I shall consider it."

And she did consider it. That night as she lay in the new crane bed, listening to the rustle of red paper cranes that hung in long drifts from bamboo canes suspended at the ceiling, she considered. It was the first night she'd spent at Rising Sea, and she was alone.

Not alone, precisely. The several gardeners lived-in: now and then, through the open shutters, she heard them speak to one another quietly from the grounds below, and Mr. Dojun slept in the butler's room downstairs.

But Samuel wasn't there.

At the hotel, he had at least come at night, though he always sat up awake until long after she was asleep and left before she woke. Last evening, he hadn't come at all in spite of having given permission—through Manalo—for her to move into the house.

In the morning, she decided to go to the Ashlands' house and bring the bride-table, and hoped she would not be arrested for burglary. Manalo didn't seem to think she would be. He didn't seem to think much of anything when he arrived with the buggy, sunk in gloom because his wife had left him and moved in with a man from Wahiawa.

Leda tried to hide her shock at this story, which was freely admitted and meticulously detailed. She was to attend a garden breakfast at General Miller's; all the way, Manalo regaled her with the sad facts of the breach and asked mournfully for advice. In all honesty, she felt she had none to give, but what little she did suggest seemed to slide right off the Hawaiian's broad and drooping shoulders. He didn't even drive at his usual mad pace, and they arrived at the breakfast a full quarter-hour late.

When she left the gathering, Manalo had fallen from garrulity into strange and silent gloom. He wore a lei of yellow hibiscus and tiny red berries nestled among fragrant leaves. Leda herself wore a wreath of white carnations that Mrs. Miller had given her, but in spite of the flowers' scent, she noticed a peculiar, sweet odor about Manalo.

His driving regressed back to its worst in speed and recklessness. Leda several times had to hang onto the buggy and speak sharply for him to slow down, and he got lost on the way to the Ashlands' house, driving around the same block three different times. But finally he turned the horse into a shady gate, where a lovely white two-story house, surrounded by verandas like Rising Sea, stood in a fine lawn, the emerald dappled by black-green shade from huge, stooping trees and tall palms.

Orchids hung down from the trees in profusion, hothouse plants blooming wild: purple, white, pink. It seemed a magically spooky place, beautiful but utterly silent, and yet manicured as if the family might step out onto the grass at any moment. Manalo did not jump down to help her out, but sat slumped in his seat. Leda glanced at his funereal, half-masted expression, and gathered her skirts, stepping down alone.

Mr. Dojun and Manalo had both said the house would not be locked. No one locked anything here, apparently. Still, Leda would not have minded Manalo's company as she slipped inside the dim interior.

The furniture was all covered with white duck, and the floors were bare of any mats or carpet. She tiptoed through the wide hall and up the stairs, finding Lord and Lady Ashland's bedroom by the glass-fronted case that Lady Kai had given her mother and described to Leda.

Beside the bed, she carefully lifted the covering from a tall, narrow stand. The moment she saw the table beneath, she knew it was Samuel's
hanayome-taku
. The austere, outward curve of the legs was like nothing English; it was completely
shibui
, as Dojun would say, astringently elegant and Japanese in its simplicity, the wood showing an intense grain from black to golden-red, almost as if an artist had brushed arcs of colored ink across it.

A small collection of mementos lay on the polished top: a homely brown stone in a black bowl, a wooden calabash, and a sweet-smelling box that she recognized as sandal-wood. As she looked at them, she felt very certain that she should not take the table, that it was unforgivably impertinent of her.

But she set the items carefully beneath the covering on the dressing table, hoping that Mr. Dojun was quite correct, and Lady Tess would understand. She folded the muslin and laid it on the bed. The table itself was much heavier than she'd expected, and an unwieldy shape, as tall as her waist, with a tendency to tilt in an awkward manner when she picked it up.

She carried it downstairs with exquisite care. Working her way through the front door required extra effort, while Manalo just sat there, apparently half-asleep in the buggy. He didn't respond to her low calls, and she didn't care to shout and rouse the neighborhood. She bore the table painstakingly out to the carriage, but she didn't dare try to lift it inside herself, for fear of scratching it.

"Manalo!" she hissed. "Do wake up and forget your troubles for one moment!"

He turned his head and looked at her drowsily. Then he hauled himself up, looped the reins around the buggy post, although the poor horse looked in no mood to travel, and ambled around to her side.

"If you would just lift it to me, please, after I've got in—"

Before she finished her instructions, he'd hoisted the table out of her hands and stood swaying in a very odd manner. Just as it struck her that the strange, non-floral odor about him was that of strong spirits, the horse decided to take a closer look at the lawn grass. The trailing leg of the table caught on the edge of the buggy panel. Manalo stumbled forward.

Leda cried out in dismay as the table bounced off the carriage and hit the brick-paved drive with a horrible crack.

"Oh,
look
! How could you?" She pushed him away with a hand on his chest. He tripped backward, landing in the grass with a grunt, but Leda had no time to worry over his well-being—she was too busy staring in consternation at the table leg that was fractured down its length and hanging loose from the top. "Oh, no!" she whispered. "Oh, dear; oh, no!"

Gingerly, she bent and turned the table slightly. A flat metal bar with Oriental calligraphy carved into it stuck out of the end of the leg, a joint of some sort. As she tilted it farther, the whole leg came off in her hand. She gave a little moan as she held it up.

With a strange sizzling sound, the metal bar began to slide free. She sucked in her breath and tried to right the leg, but the weight of the metal was already beyond resisting. Leda jumped back, saving her feet from a yard of curved and glistening steel with a wicked point that caught the sunlight through the trees and sent a spark of multicolored light into the atmosphere as it fell.

For an instant, she thought:
What a strange fastening for a table
. But no sooner had that crossed her mind than she knew it was no fastening, nor furniture joint. It was nothing to do with furniture at all. She was gazing at a sword blade, a beautiful, viciously sharp blade, with an intricate carving of some sort of unpleasant-looking beast along the upper length.

"Oh, good God, look at this!" she exclaimed, and then clapped her hand over her mouth as she heard her own language. She glanced over her shoulder at Manalo. He was lying still in the grass. With another exclamation, she knelt next to him, but he only lifted his eyelids and closed them again, and began to snore, his breath redolent of something like cherry brandy. She dropped his limp hand on his chest. "
Pilikia
you!" she said in disgust. "What am I to do now?"

She turned back to the table, gingerly lifting the blade by the blunt, squared-off end. She attempted to slide it back into the leg, and dropped both with a gasp, clutching at her fingers to staunch the cut while tears sprang to her eyes. Laying the broken leg fiat on the ground, she nudged the sword toward it, angling the point into the raw, cracked end of the hollowed-out slot. When she finally got the blade back in place, she upended the whole table and tried to fit the leg back on, hoping against hope that it might be possible to fix.

What a sword blade was doing in Samuel's table, it seemed pointless to ponder. No doubt it had something to do with Japanese tradition. Probably all bride-tables had them, and it was the worst sort of luck for a bride to break the thing, and expose the sword—most likely it meant future disaster of unimaginable proportions.

The present disaster was awful enough. How was she going to tell Samuel? Or Mr. Dojun? Or Lady Tess?

She didn't realize she was muttering to herself, trying to fit the leg back into place, until someone answered her. Then she jumped a foot, and looked up at the toothless grin of a straw-hatted, barefoot kau-kau man who seemed to have appeared from nowhere at all, with his pole over his shoulder weighted down by two huge baskets of fruit hanging at the ends.

"Need help, missy?" he asked in a genial way. "Broke de table?"

"
He
broke it," she said crossly. "But it's my fault. I never should have touched it. Oh, what shall I
do
? I wouldn't have seen it scratched for the world, and here it is damaged beyond repair!"

"Want fix, missy? Got grandson fix. All fix, never know broke."

Leda looked up, hope flooding her, and then back down at the table. "I don't see how it could possibly be fixed."

"Fix yes! Yes, yes! My grandson, Ikeno, he best cabinet-maker in island. Dat special table, yes? Not everybody know how fix. My grandson know."

"Does he?"

"Special sword table. Japanese, ey? My grandson only one can fix. He live way out, Ewa, Aiea, closer the plantations."

"Way out?" Leda felt dubious and desperate. "How far?"

"Take buggy, maybe hour."

"Is there nothing closer? In the city? Surely the better woodworking shops would be here?"

"Huh. Too many
haole
, Chinese. Don't know nothing for Japanese sword table. My grandson come over last year Japan."

"Do you think he might be able to do it on the spot? Right away, so that I could wait and take it home with me?"

"Yes, yes! I take you, he fix. Big sign say, 'While You Wait,' yes. Fix while you wait."

Leda turned to Manalo. She bent down and shook at his shoulder. "Oh, do get up! Wake up! We must go!"

He opened his eyes and mumbled. With much coaxing, she got him to sit up. He stared blearily past her at the fruit seller.

"We must go right away, Manalo. I'm sorry that you're not feeling your best, but he's going to get the table fixed, and I want to see that it's done. Come along. Come
along!"
The last plea was made as he shook his head and pushed her away, slumping down again on the grass. A small brown flask slid from his shirt pocket. She stood up and stamped her foot, turning to the vendor in desperation. "Can you drive? Can you take me there and back? I would be glad to pay you."