Black Lotus

22

A brilliant, clear autumn sky arched over the Zōjō district. The morning sun gilded leaves turning yellow and red in the treetops. The warm weather had brought droves of pilgrims who mingled with nuns and priests in the marketplace. At the gate of the Black Lotus Temple, Midori climbed out of the palanquin that had carried her from Edo Castle. Nervous but excited, she hurried into the precinct, clutching the bulky parcel she’d brought. She paused, beholding the sights.

There were certainly more trees and plants than in other temples, but the nuns, priests, and pilgrims strolling the grounds looked normal to Midori, as did the buildings. Children’s laughter enlivened the quiet. Probably Reiko had exaggerated the danger to frighten her away from the temple, Midori thought. She felt a pang of disappointment because she’d hoped for a little adventure, and a resurgence of the pain caused her by Hirata and Reiko last night. To them she would always be a handy friend but never worthy of Hirata’s love or Reiko’s respect… unless something changed. And Midori intended that it would. She was going to spy on the Black Lotus whether Hirata and Reiko approved or not. Now she marched over to a pair of nuns who stood outside the main hall.

“Good morning,” Midori said, bowing. “I’ve come to join the nunnery.”

Since yesterday she’d struggled with her conscience and decided she must break her promise to Reiko. Although her friend had lectured her on why she shouldn’t go to the temple, Midori had discerned how much Reiko wished to have a spy in the sect, and she’d thought of the best way to observe without arousing suspicion. She would show Hirata and Reiko what she could do!

The nuns bowed; one of them said, “You must first be examined by our leaders. Please come with us.”

Midori felt a flicker of trepidation as she followed the nuns to the back of the main hall. She had no idea how temples decided whether to admit a prospective nun.

The nuns opened a door in a wing attached to the hall. “Please wait in there,” the older nun said.

Midori slipped off her shoes and entered. The door closed. She found herself in a room furnished with a wall niche containing a butsudan-a wooden cabinet that held a written passage of Buddhist scripture-before which knelt a plain young woman, chanting prayers in a rapid monotone. She ignored Midori. By the window stood another woman. A few years older than Midori, she was pretty in a coarse way, with pert features, tanned skin, and a watchful expression.

“She wants to show how pious she is,” she said, pointing at the praying woman. “Too bad there’s no one to see but us.”

Midori smiled timidly.

“I’m Toshiko,” the other woman said, crossing the room to stand near Midori. "What’s your name?”

Midori had thought up an alias: “Umeko.”

“So you’re joining the nunnery too?” Toshiko’s informal manner and cheap indigo robe marked her as a peasant.

“If they’ll have me,” Midori said.

Toshiko looked her over, curious. “Why do you want to be a nun?”

The bold queries unsettled Midori, but she was accustomed to speak when spoken to, so she gave the story she’d prepared: “My family wanted me to marry a man I don’t like, so I ran away.”

“Oh.” This common scenario seemed to satisfy Toshiko. “Well, I’m here because my father is poor and I’m the youngest of five daughters. No one will marry me because I have no dowry. It was either this or be a prostitute.”

“I’m sorry,” Midori said, truly moved by the woman’s plight and admiring her matter-of-fact acceptance of it.

The door opened, and a nun entered. She beckoned to the praying woman, who silently rose. They left the room together.

“Think you’ll be happy here?” Toshiko said.,

“I hope so.”

“I hear they’re very strict,” Toshiko said.

Midori recalled the rumors of starvation, torture, and murder that Reiko had mentioned last night. Earlier, they’d only added thrills to her adventure, but she felt the first stirrings of terror.

As a precaution she’d written a note to Reiko, explaining her plan to join the sect, and left it on Reiko’s desk. But what if Reiko didn’t find the note? No one would know where Midori was; there would be no one to rescue her if she got in trouble.

“Don’t look so scared.” Laughing, Toshiko linked arms with Midori. “Stick with me. I’ll see you through.”

Her friendliness comforted Midori, but soon the nun came for Toshiko, and Midori sat alone, waiting. The fear grew until she felt cold and shaky. She clutched her parcel, glad of something to hold. Wondering what comprised the official examination, she battled the impulse to flee. She thought of how upset Reiko would be if she knew Midori was here. Midori then thought of Hirata.

She stayed.

After what seemed ages, the nun took Midori to a building near the back of the precinct. This was a low wooden structure nearly hidden by trees, with shutters closed over the windows. Alone, Midori entered a long room where a huge round ceiling lantern burned overhead. Five priests and five nuns were kneeling along opposite walls, and three figures sat upon a dais across the end of the room.

“Kneel beneath the lantern,” ordered the big man at the dais’s center.

Fluttery with nervousness, Midori obeyed, holding the parcel tight in her lap. She hadn’t expected so many people. Although the light focused upon her obscured her vision, she saw that the speaker was a priest with cruel features and a scar above his ear. Reiko had described the sect officials to Midori, and she recognized him as the priest Kumashiro. The ugly man at his right must be Dr. Miwa, and the nun at his left, Abbess Junketsu-in. They looked more frightening than they’d sounded in the safety of Reiko’s parlor. The other priests and nuns were nondescript strangers. Stern and foreboding, they all regarded Midori. From elsewhere in the building came the sound of muffled chanting.

“Tell us your name and why you wish to join us,” Kumashiro said.

In a thin, quavery voice, Midori related her false story, adding, “I want to devote my life to religion.”

“What’s that you’ve brought?” Junketsu-in said. With her elegant robe and head drape and her classic features, she was pretty but somehow sinister.

“It’s a kimono.” Midori faltered. “A gift for the temple, to pay for my keep.”

A nun conveyed the parcel to the dais. Junketsu-in unwrapped the pale green silk garment printed with gleaming bronze phoenixes. “Very nice,” she said, laying it by her side.

Midori regretted the sacrifice of her favorite, most expensive kimono for a good cause.

“Serve us tea,” Kumashiro said.

A teapot and cups sat on a tray near the dais. Midori resented these commoners for treating the daughter of a daimyo like a servant, but years as a lady-in-waiting had taught her to obey orders. She poured the tea with unsteady hands. When she presented a cup to Priest Kumashiro, the liquid sloshed on his robe.

“Stupid, clumsy girl!” he shouted.

“I’m sorry!” Terrified, Midori fell to her knees and scooted backward. “Please forgive me!”

Embarrassing herself in front of so many people mortified her. Surely they would throw her out.

“Never mind. Go back to your place,” Kumashiro said. “We’ll ask you questions, and you must answer honestly.”

More nervous than ever, Midori knelt under the lantern. During childhood lessons, she’d never been much good at recitation. What if she didn’t know the right answers?

“Suppose you were walking alone in Edo and you lost your way,” Kumashiro said. “What would you do?”

Such a situation was unfamiliar to Midori, who never walked alone in the city because that was not done by young women of her class. She had never gotten lost or bothered to think what she should do if that calamity befell her. Panic gripped Midori. Quick, quick, what to say?

“I-I guess I would ask someone to help me,” she ventured.

As soon as she spoke, it occurred to her that she should have said she would retrace her steps or use landmarks to help her find her way. Inwardly, Midori cursed her stupidity. The watching faces showed no reaction to her answer, but surely they thought she lacked common sense and depended on others to think for her. She clenched her fists, praying to do better on the next question.

“How would you divide three gold coins between yourself and another person?” Kumashiro said.

A resurgence of panic rattled Midori’s wits, but she knew she couldn’t divide three items evenly between two people. She also knew that courtesy required self-sacrifice.

“I would give two coins to the other person and keep one for myself,” she said.

Then she realized that she could exchange the gold coins for coppers and divide those. She would never get into the nunnery this way!

“If a person who was older, wiser, and stronger than you and superior to you in rank gave you an order, what would you do?” Kumashiro asked.

Relief flooded Midori. This was an easy question for a girl conditioned to respect authority. “I would obey.”

“What if you were ordered to do something you didn’t want to do?”

“It would be my duty to obey anyway,” Midori replied promptly.

“What if it meant doing something you thought was wrong?”

Frowning, Midori hesitated while she tried to figure out what answer he wanted. Anxiety knotted her stomach. “I’d obey because I would think that my superior knew what was right or wrong better than I.”

“Even if what you were ordered to do was against the law?”

Midori was perspiring, although her hands and feet felt like lumps of ice. She didn’t think she should say she would break the law; nor did she want the sect to believe she would rebel against authority.

“Answer,” commanded Abbess Junketsu-in.

“I would obey,” Midori said, hoping she’d chosen the lesser of two evils.

“Would you obey even if it meant hurting someone?” Kumashiro said.

Hurting them how? Midori wondered in frantic confusion, but she was afraid to ask. Maybe saying no now would make her earlier replies seem untruthful. “Yes,” she said uncertainly.

She longed for some indication of how well she’d done so far, but none came. Junketsu-in took up the questioning. “Are you close to your parents?”

Filial piety required that Midori profess loving devotion to the parents she’d supposedly left, and regret for refusing to marry the man they’d chosen for her. She thought that was the correct response. But her real mother had died long ago; her father, Lord Niu, spent most of his time on his provincial estate, and Midori rarely saw him. If she lied, her interrogators might guess.

“No,” she said, reluctantly opting for the truth.

The expressions of the assembly remained neutral. “If your parents should need your assistance, would you feel obliged to return home?” Abbess Junketsu-in said.

Lord Niu suffered from madness, and Midori couldn’t imagine anything she could do for him. She said,”No,” ashamed to appear such an undutiful daughter.

“Have you any brothers or sisters you would miss if you entered the nunnery?” Junketsu-in said.

Midori thought sadly of the older sister murdered, the brother slain after committing treason, and other sisters married and living far away. She couldn’t miss them any more than she already did. “No,” she said.

“What about friends?”

“No,” Midori said. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be away from Hirata and Reiko long enough to miss them.

“Suppose that you were all alone, with no place to live and no way to earn your rice,” Junketsu-in said. “Then suppose that someone rescued you, sheltered and fed you. How would you feel toward them?”

“I would feel most grateful,” Midori said honestly. When her stepmother had banished her from Edo, other members of the family had lacked the power or inclination to help Midori, but Sōsakan Sano had brought her back and gotten her a position in Lady Keisho-in’s retinue. She would be forever thankful to him, and to Reiko for befriending her.

“How would you repay the favor?”

“I would do whatever I could for them when they needed me.” After all, helping Reiko was one reason Midori had come here.

“Would you love them?” Junketsu-in said.

“Yes,” Midori said. Sano and Reiko were like family, and she did love them.

“If you’d come to love someone, would you give your life for them?”

“Yes,” Midori said with conviction. Honor required such loyal self-sacrifice. And Midori had often dreamed of dying heroically for Hirata.

The impassive façades of the people around her didn’t alter, but she sensed moods shifting and the faint draft of breaths simultaneously expelled, as if they’d reached some decision. Hope and dread leapt in Midori. Had she passed or failed the test?

Oh, she knew she’d failed! They were going to say they didn’t want her. Now she couldn’t even hang around the temple and watch what happened, because the Black Lotus would wonder why she’d stayed. Midori was dying to go home, but she couldn’t bear to have Reiko learn that she’d broken a promise and hadn’t even learned anything about the sect. She couldn’t face Hirata without hope of winning his heart.

“Come with me,” said Abbess Junketsu-in. “You shall begin training as a novice in the convent immediately.”

Midori gaped in stunned delight. She was in! She bowed to Kumashiro, Junketsu-in, and Dr. Miwa, exclaiming, “Thank you, thank you!”

As Junketsu-in led her away, Midori eagerly anticipated spying on the sect and impressing Reiko and Hirata. She hoped her new friend Toshiko had also been accepted as a novice.