Sowing Ghosts 1.2

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[Continuing chapter 1]

Her name was Katsumi and she occupied — it seemed too much to think she lived in — a room at the back of a tea-shop on Nijō Avenue well south of the good neighbourhoods. Hiroki found himself amused that her neighbour was Tōjiji, one of the huge Lotus-sect temples. Equally amusing was that, while she was happy to welcome him onto her futon, she would not let down her hair for him. He had to ask her about that, when they had finished, and she gave him a small, careful smile and said, “We do not know one another well enough yet, lord.”

“Somehow, though,” he said, sitting up, “I have got the impression that it was you who approached me and not the other way — what many would call the normal way.”

She appeared to think carefully about what he had intended as a jest. “I think I could tell that you were a cultured person,” she said after a while, looking down at the floor rather than at Hiroki. “And I am most interested in cultured persons.” Now she looked up at him. “So of course I made it easy for you to come here with me.”



He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Why are you interested in cultured persons? Have I misunderstood you in some way?”

She laughed, but not in any way suggesting amusement. “I believe you understand what I am perfectly well, my lord. Perhaps, though, you do not quite understand what I wish to be.”

“I am told that we are all as Lord Buddha made us in our current incarnation and that it is pointless to wish otherwise.”

“You surely do not believe this yourself,” Katsumi said. She sat up herself now, pulling her kimono more tightly around her so that it covered her skin up to her throat. “You pretend to be unfamiliar with this city, and yet your accent betrays not only that you are of Kyoto, but that you are of a particular class of resident. Or,” and now her smile was genuine if wicked, “have I misunderstood you in some way?”

Hiroki stared at her, startled. It had been years since he had left the capital; it had not occurred to him that his aristocratic accent was still so easily identified. His companions and lord had never said anything—but they had presumably never heard a Kyoto aristocrat speak, and this prostitute clearly had. “I am not pretending to be something I am not. I most definitely am a samurai, vassal to Lord Tanuma of Kozuke province to the east.”

“I will grant you that you are this person now,” she said. “But you were not always so. I hear it in your voice, I see it in the way you move.”

“Which,” he said, becoming desperate to change the subject “brings us back to the question you did not answer. Why are you interested in cultured persons?”

“Isn’t that obvious? A cultured man is much more likely to spend his time and money on a woman who can engage his interests. I am interested in cultured persons for their own sake, but I very much like money. It makes it so much easier to be comfortable, don't you think?”

He had to smile at this. “I cannot disagree with you.” The room to which Katsumi had taken him was small and not especially clean; there were no objects in it pleasing to the eye, and now that his senses were not so focused by the attractions of Katsumi's body and face he was aware of the smells sneaking into the room from the tea-shop beyond. “And I believe I begin to understand you. In what way may this cultured person help you?”

“You can teach me about poetry.”

For a moment Hiroki could think of no response. One of his cousins was a famous court poet, but it was impossible she could know this. And even if she had known, he was not sure that her answer had made any sense. Then he made the connection. “Because if you can write and recite poetry wealthy men will be more interested in you and perhaps become your patrons. Or protectors?”

“I will be satisfied if I can recite poetry,” she said. “And I have no need — and certainly no desire — for a protector.”

“You may find yourself afflicted with one anyway, if you come to the notice of the great and cultured. Those men usually regard women as things to be possessed.” He shut his mouth, realizing that she thought him to be one of those men. Rather than wait for her to admit to this understanding of his comment, he got to his feet, bowed his head with what he hoped was a sufficient indication of regret and said, “Unfortunately my business here is unlikely to leave me much free time in which to be a teacher. I do wish you the best of fortune in your search, though.”

If Katsumi was stung by his refusal she did not show it in expression or movement. Instead she settled back onto her futon, smiling. “Until next time, then, my lord,” was all she said.

The sky had darkened while Hiroki had been taking tea, and more, with Katsumi. Unless the world had improved dramatically in the years of his absence, the streets of the capital weren't a safe place for anyone to be once night fell. If he wasn't back at the temple soon, he would still be in the rougher part of the city when the light failed completely.

I was never this nervous back home, he thought, frustrated at his being so unsettled. It was true that Lord Tanuma's castle town was much smaller than even the reduced size of the capital. But it was equally less civilized, and therefore much more dangerous a place.

Or should have been. The one big difference between Umayabashi and the capital, Hiroki reminded himself, was that Umayabashi had a lord whose control over the town was total. Nobody seemed to be responsible for the capital, however many men might claim to be.

Is that why I'm nervous? Simply because I don't know who my enemies are supposed to be? Nothing about this visit was unfolding as it ought to. I was prepared to find the emperor a mere figurehead, he told himself. I was even prepared to find the same of the shōgun. That was the state of things when I left. But there had always been a man, a single man, who protected the country and advised both shōgun and emperor. Today he had learned that no such man existed anymore.

The country was as much without a protector as Katsumi, and much more poorly situated to live without one.


Hiroki increased the pace of his walking, until his frozen breath streamed behind him like clouds in the faint night-light. His worries diminished the closer he got to the wealthier neighbourhoods near the imperial palace, and by the time he reached the Shōkoku Temple his nerves had settled. He reached the safety of the temple's compound just as the lanterns were being lit.

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