Four
months ago I posted Chapter 11 of The Blind Geisha, the short
novel that I was serializing on this web log. The last four chapters,
the conclusion, obviously have not appeared. Conclusions are both
difficult and important. Though I had the final chapters outlined
with a few notes, I could not find the substance to add to this
framework.
So
I waited. That has always been an effective tactic for me. And, the
words, or rather the ideas, began to arrive; and I had my conclusion.
What follows is Chapter 12. The remaining three chapters will follow
in subsequent weeks.
The Blind Geisha
III - 12
Stews
"What
do you make of this?" Grace asked and pushed a thin sheaf of
papers across the slatted, weathered table top to Elizabeth. She
tapped her index finger on a poem that was rendered in both the
original Japanese and its English translation. "Is this the
archetypal Ikkyu? Was he reporting fact or spinning fantasy?"
Elizabeth
smiled. "That is the question, now isn't it." She took up
the pages, lowered her glasses from her forehead, and read.
"And
the difference between eroticism and just sex?" Grace asked.
A
shrug. "Perhaps it's simply explicitness. Pornography is
initially erotic, but wears out its welcome rather quickly."
They
had placed a small, rectangular cedar slat table in the middle of the
back yard, and sat there now with their papers stacked and weighted
with flat gray stones against a sea breeze that found the chinks in
the surrounding hedges, the shrubs, the bushes and trees. The sun,
now at summer height, flooded the backyard with warmth and light.
Elizabeth
placed a hand on the sheaf of papers and, leading with her fingers,
read slowly aloud:
Ten
days in this temple and my mind is reeling.
Between my legs the red thread stretches and stretches.
If you come some other day and ask for me,
Better look in a fish stall, a sake shop, or a brothel.
Between my legs the red thread stretches and stretches.
If you come some other day and ask for me,
Better look in a fish stall, a sake shop, or a brothel.
"Your
translation, isn't it?"
'"Yes,
but leaning heavily on the work of Sonja Arntzen."
Elizabeth
tapped her fingers on the weathered table top. "Bit bold, for an
old man. Don't you think?"
"He
wasn't shy," Grace said. "That's certain."
"He
was in his seventies when he took up with Mori. She was forty
something. Their vibrant sex life does seem a bit much."
Grace
nodded. "Was he stretching a point, taking a bit of poetic
license? Do you think?"
"Just
how big was
that fish?" Elizabeth leaned against the back of the chair,
hands flat now on the wide wooden arms. "One can't know, of
course, from this remove."
"Have
you read Maya Angelou?" Grace asked. She slipped her sunglasses
up onto her forehead. "I
Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is
what most people have read."
"Some,"
Elizabeth said. She came to the university when I was there."
Nodding,
Grace said, "A quote from her goes: 'I've
learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.'
She was talking about painful experiences, emotional trauma. But I
think it works both ways. Enjoyable emotions will be long remembered,
too."
"And
celebrated, yes? In poems. Perhaps enhanced. Is that what are friend
Ikkyu did? Is his reputation based on bits of fantasy?"
Grace
eased herself to the front of the chair, stood. "Quite
possible," she said. "Most likely."
Chipmunks
darted around the cedar tree chirping stridently. Up they went, out a
limb then both jumped nimbly to the fir tree, into the maple and away
through the laurel hedge.
Laughing,
Grace said, "Sex again."
"Mating,
those two."
"Birds
do it, bees do it ... ," and both women joined for the chorus of
'Let's Fall In Love'.
Laughing
together, they gathered up their papers.
"It
does raise a point," Grace said. "Take stews for example."
"Stews?"
"Yes
ma'am. Stews."
"Stews,"
Elizabeth said.
"Wikipedia
lists over 150 different 'stews' complete with a picture,
description, and country of origin. Everything from your common
Mulligan stew, to that delectable cowboy dish called sonofabitch
stew. Whatever was on hand was thrown into the pot and then spiced up
with bits of offal from a calf ... "
"Offal?"
"Entrails."
"Oh
my.'
"My
personal favorite, from some Chinese gourmand, is Buddha Jumps Over
The Wall."
"Nothing
from Japan?"
"There
is. Something called Nikujaga. But I don't think this is anything
Ikkyu and Mori would have eaten. Meat, potatoes, and onions in soy
sauce. A little too 20th century. Post war even."
Elizabeth
pushed herself up with a grunt. "And this somehow relates to
..."
"Sex,"
Grace said.
"Sex?"
Elizabeth said, raising eyebrows.
"Ubiquitous
and infinitely varied."
Arms
entwined, the pair laughed again together and walked slowly to the
kitchen door.
"I'll
put the kettle on," Elizabeth said. She moved to the stove,
shifted the pot to a back burner, then put a finger to her nose and
turned to Grace. "Come to think," she said, "there's
not much about food, now is there. Nothing in the poetry. Little in
her travel journal."
"Rice
and vegetables, millet maybe. Not particularly prose worthy."
Turning
on the burner, Elizabeth centered the pot. "Always wondered how
people could get pudgy being so poor."
The
three salesmen scooped handfuls of steaming rice from the pot and
wadded them into balls, juggling them from palm to palm. A flat
table-sized stone marked this stopping place along the trail through
the lowering wooded hills. Just beyond, a fork in the path took
travelers down to Kyoto, smoldering in the distant flats, or left
along the ridge crest towards the distant sea.
"Help
yourself," the chubby cheeked one said to Mori. "Dig in."
She sat off by herself mending the hem of her kimono. "You not
going with us anymore then?" The skinny fellow asked. He was
from the north, his accent clipped and coarse. "Bandits in these
hills," the third salesman said. "All those samurai out of
work with their lords and masters dead." The trio laughed and
winked at one another. "They doing terrible tricks on women, the
bandits," added chubby cheeks. And the men laughed louder and
elbowed one another. "Safer to go with us."
Mori
looked up from her work. Smiled. Needle and thread went back in her
bundle. She stood and fixed her straw hat on her head. "As the
priests say," she said, "All worldly pursuits have but one
unavoidable and inevitable end, and that is suffering. Bandits are to
be expected." She gave a nod and turned away from the men. She
would follow the narrow track through the trees, seeing the deeper
shadows to either side, the pale grays deepening to black, smelling
the sweet, flowery scent of the cryptomerias, the gentle rustle of a
breeze through the trees.
Behind
her, the silence of the men burst into laughter.
The
sun now low, just above the horizon, gulls turning, looping on the
sea breeze. Elizabeth stood in the middle of the yard listening to
the heave of swell meeting shore. She wrapped her sweater tighter
around her and folded her arms across her chest. Wood smoke, rather
... what was the word? Acerbic? A bit biting in the nostrils. What
could that fellow be burning up on his hillside? Clearing a place for
his fancy new house. A blight, no doubt. Grace was dismayed to see
all the trees cleared. She had made their rice with spicy broccoli
and a bit a red sweet pepper. Tomorrow she would be gone. Her man
was in Eureka, the worse for wear apparently, and she was going down
to lick his wounds.
Elizabeth
frowned.
"Well,
that phrase sounds wrong, now doesn't it," she said. After a
defeat, one might lick one's ... sounds a bit salacious the way I ...
Doesn't know how long she'll be gone. Not too long. "Men,"
she said. Little boys with their toys.
A
pall of smoke swirled off the hillside then eddied across the highway
caught in the southerly sea breeze.
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