The Song of the Wild Geese Read online

  “Don’t you know what this place is?”

  “It’s a tea house.”

  “No, it’s not.” Aki again, glaring at Ren to be quiet. “Well, it is. But tea houses are on every corner here in the Floating World. This isn’t just any old tea house, it’s the Green Tea House. It’s famous throughout Edo. In fact, it’s famous throughout Japan. Men travel for many days just to come here.”

  I stared at each of them in turn, totally bewildered. Edo I had heard of. It was the capital of Japan, the most important city in the whole of the country, which meant it was the most important city in the whole world. But if I was in Edo, how could I be somewhere called the “Floating World” at the same time? And why should anybody go out of their way just to get tea? My mother made excellent tea—when she could afford to buy it—but nobody came to take tea with us.

  My expression set Aki and Ren off again. I watched both girls shake with laughter, clinging to each other for support. I had had enough. I stood and was ready to leave the room, in spite of the fact that I had no idea where I was going to go.

  “Oh, let flow the water.” Aki was smiling broadly. I was still suspicious, but these two girls—apart from Auntie—were the only people I knew in my new world, so I sat down again and spoke humbly.

  “Please, Aki. I am only a simple village girl. Until Auntie brought me here, I had never been farther than the fields around my own village. If you would be so kind, please explain to me about the Floating World. And this place. And why I am here.”

  Aki preened at my words. “You are in the Floating World.” I frowned, wanting to protest again that she had said I was in Edo, but she raised her finger and I was silent. “The Floating World is part of Edo. It is very famous. It is the place where men come to be entertained, to enjoy themselves.” I nodded, although I still had no idea what she was talking about. “You are in the most exclusive tea house in the whole of Edo, which really means in the whole of Japan. Auntie allows only the richest and most powerful men to enter our doors, which is why we all have to be so talented. See?”

  “No,” I said simply. “If I’m going to be a maid, why do I have to be able to sing and dance, like you said?”

  Aki closed her eyes and shook her head wearily. “I told you. You’re not really going to be a maid at all. You’re a maiko, like we are. When you’ve learned everything you need to know, you’ll have your mizuage ceremony and then you’ll be a geisha. If you’re good enough. Are you with me now?”

  Maiko? Geisha? Mizuage? The words chased around my brain. I knew of geisha. Everybody did. They were beautiful, talented women who used their many skills to entertain rich men. But I had never actually seen one. In fact, to me they were as far away from my life as the spirits that inhabited the unseen world all around us. And I had heard the word maiko. It had enchanted me, as it literally meant “dancing child.” And now Aki was telling me that I was a maiko? But mizuage. Now that was a complete unknown.

  I was so puzzled and surprised that I blurted the first words that came into my head. “What’s a mizuage?”

  I had expected more laughter, but instead, Aki and Ren turned their heads to stare at each other in an elaborate mime of amazement.

  “You have to have your mizuage before you can be a geisha,” Aki said slowly. “Have you never heard of it?”

  “No. Is it some special kind of ceremony?”

  Aki licked her lips. “Sort of.” Ren giggled again, and Aki dug her in the ribs with her elbow. “The easiest thing will be to show you. Come on.”

  I followed both girls obediently and waited when Aki paused outside a screen door much like the one that led into our room.

  “Tamayu-san.” I glanced at Aki in surprise. The strident voice she used in front of me was suddenly soft and very humble. She waited a beat and then repeated the words again. When she was met by silence, she turned to us.

  “She’s not here. I thought I heard her go out earlier. Come on, we can slip in and she’ll never know we’ve been here.” In spite of her words, Aki slid the screen door open very slowly and carefully. “Nice, isn’t it?”

  The room was as large as the one we shared, but had more furniture and the screen walls were bright with prints. One in particular enchanted me at first glance. It showed a towering wave about to break over the top of a boat. I had never seen the sea, and I wondered if it was really as beautiful and fierce as this picture.

  “Stop gawking and come over here,” Aki called over her shoulder. She was on her knees in front of a large trunk and was sliding her hands through the contents. “Got it!”

  I kneeled at her side, watching as she pulled out a fat book, beautifully bound in bright red leather. The characters on the front cover were embossed in gold.

  “I can’t read,” I said reluctantly, even as my fingers itched to feel the leather and trace the gold characters.

  “Doesn’t matter.” I was leaning against Aki, and I could feel her vibrating with excitement. “This is for looking at, not reading. It’s Tamayu’s pillow book. One of her lovers bought it for her. Must have cost him a fortune, and I don’t know why he bothered. I bet there’s nothing in here that she hasn’t tried already.”

  She opened the front cover and held the book out to me on her splayed palms.

  I stared at the full page illustration curiously. My first thought was that the drawing was quite beautiful. It showed a young couple—the man handsome, the woman beautiful, and their expressions rather serious—both very richly dressed. My eyes wandered down the page, and I gasped, feeling the blood tingle in my cheeks.

  “No!”

  Aki nodded seriously. “Oh, yes. That’s what men and women do. Didn’t you know?”

  “Of course I do. I have five brothers. I’ve seen their trees of flesh often. But they didn’t look like that! And they’d never dream of putting them there, I’m sure!” I finished lamely.

  I expected Aki to laugh at me again, but instead she was serious. “Well, I expect where you come from they wouldn’t even imagine doing things like this. But you’re in the Floating World now and it’s different here. Look.”

  She turned the page carefully, jabbing her finger at the new illustration without quite touching the paper.

  “Look.” Ren was so close to me that I could feel her breath on my cheek and in spite of my intense reluctance, I knew she would know at once if I tried to turn my head away, so I looked.

  The illustration spanned both pages. The woman was on the right-hand side, the man on the left. But there were few clothes. The man’s robe was flung back and beneath it, he was clad in a simple loincloth, folded in much the way sumo wrestlers wore their far bulkier versions. The woman had a kimono draped loosely around her, but it was pushed well away from her body. So life-like was the drawing that I could imagine her clawing at the cloth, frantic to push it away from her skin as it got in her way. I tried to focus on the kimono, but it was no good. My eyes were drawn to the middle of the two pages, where—just as the fine parchment met—both of the figures also joined.

  I guessed that Ren was excited by the book. Her breath was hot where it brushed my skin, and I was sure she was leaning more fiercely against me. I was deeply embarrassed. I would have given anything to be allowed to close the book, put it back in the chest, and try and forget I had ever seen it. And yet, at the same time, it held a dreadful fascination. I could not take my eyes off the couple, caught in their most intimate of moments.

  The woman was lying on her back, with her widely splayed legs inviting the man, who was leaning toward her. My gaze was drawn to her black moss, and I was immediately terrified. My own private parts had a fluff of down, as misty as a dandelion head in seed. This woman’s black moss unfurled like a chrysanthemum in full bloom, rioting on the page in its glory. My black moss would never look this! Was I doomed to failure right from the start?

  Ren nudged me slyly. “See what he’s doing?”

  I glanced at the man. For a moment, I was confused. He was about to lea
n against the woman, I thought. Then I looked again and my eyes widened in disbelief. He had his tree of flesh in his hand, but it was like no tree I had ever seen on my brothers or even on my father. It reared from his body, stiff and straight. My eyes widened as I saw that the tip of his tree was already nuzzling between the woman’s legs, aiming straight and true into her black moss.

  I shook my head, lost for words.

  Ren and Aki nudged each other and giggled. Ren pushed her face into mine, rubbing against me like a friendly cat. Her cheek was wet with sweat and the touch was unpleasant.

  “Ever seen anything like that, have you?”

  I shook my head. And yet at the same moment, I knew I was lying.

  Long before—at least a year before Auntie had come to our village and claimed me—I had been driving our ducks to a new pond. It had been a dry summer, and the pond in our own field was nothing but a nasty sheen of green slime.

  “Take them down along the riverbed,” Mother instructed. “Follow the track of the river down past the willow stand and you will come to a pond that should still have some water. Go later today, after the evening meal. And try and make sure nobody sees you. If there is water still there, it is better that nobody knows about it except you and our ducks.”

  She laughed, and I joined in dutifully, even though it seemed to me to be wrong that our ducks could drink and other ducks in the village had to go thirsty. I would do as she asked. Apart from anything else, if the ducks went thirsty for long, they would start to get thin, and that meant they would be killed and eaten. Not by us, of course. We had the occasional duck egg on special occasions, but that was all. The poor things would be sold to those who had money and inclination enough to eat flesh. Mother wrung their necks, but I was expected to pluck the sad little corpses, and I hated it. So, mindful of her words, I waited until dusk and then led our small flock alongside the river, hissing at them to be quiet whenever I was near a house.

  Mother was right. I had to walk quite a long way along the riverbed, but eventually I came to a dip in the dry course and there was water. Not a great deal, to be sure, but the ducks piled in happily, drinking and throwing the water over their feathers in fine style. I watched them for a while, but the evening was hot and humid and eventually I took myself into the deep shade of a stand of camphor trees. The leaves smelled bitter, like medicine, but I was so grateful for the shade I barely noticed. My walk with the ducks had been long, and I was hot and tired. I knew I was falling asleep, but the ducks would not leave the water and I thought they would be safe.

  A strange noise woke me up. I jerked upright, terrified that a fox had got amongst my flock. What Mother would say if I had to admit that I had allowed some of our precious ducks to be taken by a fox did not bear thinking about. I scrambled to my feet, staring around wildly. The ducks quacked softly and—I thought—looked at me curiously.

  I was so relieved my flock was safe that it took me a while to realize the sound that had woken me was not coming from them at all. Intrigued, I walked to the end of the camphor trees and parted the low shrubs that grew in front of them carefully. I had no fear of real foxes, but full darkness had almost fallen and it was the time of day when fox spirits might be about. I was very careful to make no noise. I peered through the hole I had made with my hands and my mouth gaped in astonishment.

  There were two bodies lying on the beaten earth of the clearing behind the shrubs. Two bodies that were so entangled that it took me seconds to work out that they were a man and woman. Or at least, a man and a girl. I thought the man must be hurting the girl. He was hitting her with his whole body, and she was uttering small, piercing cries. I almost ran forward, feeling I had to do something to stop this big, powerful man from hurting the far smaller, obviously helpless woman. But I did not. I knew who she was. And I knew the man, also.

  The girl was called Chieko. It wasn’t her real name, but was the name everybody in the village called her. It was what passed for wit in a village as small as ours. Chieko means “Wise Child,” and poor Chieko was far from wise. She was actually simple. I had never even heard her speak. In fact, this was the most noise I had ever heard her make. She was the despair of her mother, a nice woman whose husband had left her when it became obvious that Chieko was never going to be of any use and his wife hadn’t gone on to produce any male children.

  “I don’t know why I don’t sell her for a slave,” she told my mother. “Well, I do. I can’t think of anybody who would even take her for free.”

  My mother nodded sympathetically, although I could tell she was thinking proudly of her own fine male children.

  But it appeared that her mother was wrong. Chieko did have a use after all.

  The man who was enjoying her body was our neighbor, but much higher caste than we were. He owned much of the village next to us, and many of the fields surrounding our own village. Mother had always instructed us to look down modestly whenever he passed, but for some reason, I caught his eye once, and he paused and lifted my face with his finger under my chin.

  “Well now.” He hunkered down, but his face was still looking down at me. I was so terrified I could not even blink. “Surely, this is a pretty flower to be growing wild in the field.” Mother shuffled up to us quickly, bobbing and bowing to him manically. “Your child?”

  “Indeed, lord. Indeed, she is. A poor girl child, nothing more. Yet if she pleases you, lord, then I am truly blessed.”

  He pinched my chin, hard enough to hurt. I wanted to bite him, but I could feel the anxiety flowing from Mother, so I stayed still.

  “What’s your name, child?”

  “Junko.”

  I heard Mother moan, and I wondered what I had done. The man had asked my name and I had told him. What was wrong with that?

  “Pure child, eh? And does the name suit you, little one?”

  I nodded. He laughed. His breath stunk of sake and garlic, and it took all my willpower not to turn my head away.

  “Well then, Mother, I suggest you keep this one as pure as her name. I may come back for her one day.”

  He released my chin and slid a small coin into my hand, curling my fingers around it. He walked off whistling and I watched him go until Mother clouted me around the head and took the coin away from me.

  Now, I watched as he reared away from Chieko. No matter how far he leaned back, it seemed to me that he was joined to her by his tree of flesh. Had he somehow hooked it into her so he could not let go? Was that why she was making such distressed noises? Fascinated, my gaze wandered up to Chieko’s face. As I watched, her eyes flew open and her eyeballs bulged so hard I thought they were going to fly out. At the same time, her legs arched wide apart in a bow, and her toes curled so far under her feet that they disappeared. She cried out loud and the man lying between her legs laughed.

  He fell toward her, his entire tree of flesh disappearing into her black moss. Black moss that was every bit as thick and lush as that in the pillow book. For a moment, I could not see Chieko at all. Then he rolled off her and lay on the hard ground, panting. I could see his chest heaving. Chieko was still. Then a curious thing happened.

  Chieko’s partner hooked together his robe with both hands, sitting up to fasten the sash. He rose to his feet and shuffled into his sandals. Threw a handful of coins on Chieko’s body and walked away as if he could no longer even see her. I was about to dart forward, to ask if she was all right, but there was no need. She stood and stretched, tugging her own kimono tight and stooping to pick up the coins with greedy fingers. She walked away as if nothing had happened, just as the man had.

  I herded my ducks together and walked home. I would have liked to have asked my mother about what I had seen, but caution laid a finger on my lips. I remembered how mother had seemed very pleased when Chieko’s friend had paid attention to me. The coin he had given to me vanished into her obi instantly and we ate fish that night, and for many nights afterward. The fear that it could have been me, instead of Chieko, lying beneath him tr
embled in my thoughts. I mentioned casually to my older brother that I had seen Chieko with the man and he laughed out loud, then looked at me suspiciously.

  “And what were they doing, little sister?” he asked.

  I shrugged innocently. “Nothing. Just walking along the riverbank together.”

  “Aye? Well, you just keep away from that Chieko. She’s…” He paused for thought and then shrugged. “She’s not right in the head. I don’t want you catching her silliness.”

  Why in that case did I see, with the good sight of my own two eyes, my brother and Chieko walking out of the village together not a week later after the evening meal?

  Aki’s elbow nudged me out of my reverie.

  “See? That’s what men and women do together. That’s what’s going to happen to you at your mizuage ceremony. A very rich man will pay Auntie a fortune for the privilege of taking your maidenhood. After that, you will become a geisha. Understand now?”

  “I can’t do things like that. My black moss isn’t a bit like theirs,” I said helplessly.

  Both girls looked at me in astonishment and then howled with laughter. Aki leaned on Ren for support, and I saw that tears of amusement were pouring down her cheeks. Ren started to say something, but laughter swallowed the words and she could do nothing but gasp for breath.

  “And what is causing you so much amusement, my dear children?”

  The man’s voice was as smooth as fine silk, but it stopped Ren and Aki’s laughter dead. Aki snapped the pillow book shut and slid it to the tatami matting, elbowing the folds of her kimono over it. Both girls were instantly quiet, their gaze fixed on the floor, their heads bowed courteously.

  “Nothing, Big. Nothing at all.” Aki’s voice was as high and breathless as it had been when she had first tapped at the screen door. “This is the new girl. She knows nothing at all, so we thought we would show her how beautiful the Green Tea House is.”

  “Did you now?” The man’s voice was cynical. I stared at him with frank interest. He was tall and slim with smooth skin the color of a tea rose in full bloom. His beautifully arched eyebrows were raised in an expression of disbelief, his rather full mouth pursed. He did not look like my brothers at all. Perhaps it was his expression that reminded me of them. Whatever it was, I decided instantly that I liked him.