Heaven's Net Is Wide

34

For the next few days, Shigeru was fully occupied with the details of the surrender agreement, the exact placement of the boundaries, a revised system through which tax would be directed to the new rulers. Most of the time he found it easy to act calmly, as if it were all a dream from which he would sooner or later awake, and everything would be as it used to be. He moved with indifference through the unreality, doing what had to be done, meticulously and with as much justice as possible. He met endless groups of people-warriors, merchants, village headmen-explained the surrender terms as best he could to them, remaining as unmoved by their anger and lack of comprehension as by their frequent tears.

Gradually his seeming imperturbability had an effect on the frantic behavior in the town. The dancing crowds dispersed, and people began wearing their ordinary clothes again as life returned to normal. He would not allow them to descend into self-pity and victimhood. That led only to impotence and a festering resentment, which would do the Tohan’s work for them and destroy the clan from within.

But from time to time Shigeru would find himself in the grip of uncontrollable rage. It came from nowhere, as if it were some demon assailing him. He usually rushed from whatever room he was in, for he feared above all killing someone without intending to; his right hand was often bruised from punching it against a wooden pillar or a stone wall once he was alone. Sometimes he slapped his own face, thinking he was surely going mad; then he would suddenly become conscious of the world around him again-a bush warbler calling from the garden, the scent of irises, the soft pattern of rainfall-and the rage abated.

Occasionally, when alone, he was visited in a similar way by demons of overwhelming grief, for all the dead and for Akane, whom he missed with physical pain. The place of her death, the volcano’s crater, had become a center of worship for the women from the pleasure houses and for young girls in love. Shigeru occasionally visited it himself, and he often went to her father’s grave on the stone bridge, made offerings, and read the inscription he had had engraved there:

Let the unjust and disloyal beware.

Rage and grief were equally unbearable, and he struggled to keep them both at bay, but painful as they were, they made him feel real. Yet he could not allow himself to succumb to either.

Chiyo had told him what she had gleaned of the circumstances of Akane’s death. He suspected his uncle Masahiro of more than lechery-the man had been actively conspiring against him. But Akane herself had been indiscreet, had not been completely faithful to him, had been swayed by Hayato’s plight. Thoughts of revenge often came to him, but revenge would keep. He would be patient, like the heron that came every evening to fish in the streams and pools of the garden of the house by the river.

Chiyo, with her practical attitude toward matters of the body, recommended that he console himself with other girls, but he declined her offers, obscurely resenting all women for their attractiveness, their duplicity, and not wanting to become involved with anyone.

He took up residence in the house with his mother and his wife. Ichiro was delighted with the arrangement, assuring Shigeru that the life of a man retired from the world had many delights: the study of literature, religion, and philosophy; the practice of aesthetic pleasures; and, naturally, the enjoyment of culinary ones.

Lady Otori and Lady Moe were less content. Both of them felt, at some level, that it would have been more honorable for Shigeru to take his own life. They would of course have joined him in this act, but while he insisted on living, they also were obliged to.

The house, while beautiful and comfortable, was not large, and Shigeru found a certain pleasure in a simple and frugal way of life. Moe missed the luxury and splendor of the castle; while she thought she had not liked the intrigue of the deep interior, now she found she missed that too. She was not fond of her mother-in-law; Chiyo’s presence made her uneasy, arousing unpleasant memories; most of the time she had too little to occupy herself with, and she was bored. She was a wife yet not a wife; she had no children; her family were dead, her house wiped out due to the rashness of her own husband. It was an insult to them that he still lived, and she reminded him of this daily with barbed comments in company and accusations when they were alone together.

With little to do herself, Lady Otori bullied Moe more than ever, often ordering her daughter-in-law to carry out tasks that the maids should do, and usually for no reason other than spitefulness. One evening, a few weeks after the battle, before the end of the rainy season, she told Moe, who was preparing for bed, to fetch her some tea from the kitchen.

It was raining heavily, and the house was dim. Moe filled the teapot from the iron kettle that hung over the embers of the fire and took a cup to her mother-in-law.

“The water was too hot,” Lady Otori complained. “You should remove it from the flame and let it cool a little before you make tea.”

“Why don’t you ask Chiyo to make it?” Moe retorted.

“Go and make a fresh brew,” Lady Otori ordered. “Take some to your husband too. He is with Ichiro, looking at some records. See if you can’t behave like a wife to him for once.”

Moe did as she was told and, full of resentment, carried a tray with the cups of tea on it to the room that was Ichiro’s favorite.

Shigeru was there alone, reading a scroll. Several paulownia-wood boxes stood around him, and the room smelled of old paper and rue. He was immersed in study and did not look up when she came in. She knelt and placed the tray on the floor. She was seized by the urge to attack him, wound him, make him suffer as she suffered.

“You sit there like some merchant,” she said. “Why do you spend so much time in here? You are no longer a warrior at all.”

“Would you be happier if we lived apart?” he replied after a moment. “I am sure some other arrangements can be made. We have both suffered. There is no point in us hating each other.”

His calm reasonableness infuriated her even more. “Where would I go? I have nothing and no one left to me! The best way to separate would be through death. Yours first and mine afterward.”

He still would not look at her but said quietly, “I have already decided I am not going to kill myself. My father commanded me to live.” His eyes ran down and up the columns of writing on the scroll. He unrolled a little more.

“You are afraid,” she said scornfully. “You are a coward. This is what the great Lord Otori Shigeru is reduced to-a coward, reading about rice and soybeans like a merchant, while your wife brings you tea.”

The day’s incessant rain, the smell of damp and mold had already plunged him into depression, and he had been fighting rage and despair all day.

“Leave me alone,” he said, the anger erupting in his voice. “Go away.”

“Why? Am I reminding you of what you would rather forget? The deaths of thousands on your account? The loss of two-thirds of the Middle Country, the destruction of my family, your own complete humiliation?”

The rage came swooping down on him. He was on his feet, prepared to rush out into the rain. She stood between him and the door. His hands came out to push her away, but she fell against him and he caught her smell, fresh from the bath, her hair fragrant and silky. He both hated her and wanted her. She was his wife: She was supposed to satisfy him and supposed to give him children. He recalled in a flash their wedding night, with its anticipation and disappointment. He was gripping her by the arm, his other hand against her neck, feeling the vulnerable bones at the top of the spine. He was aware of how fragile she was, and of his own power and strength, and was overwhelmed by desire for her.

He thrust her down onto the matting, feeling for her sash, pulling up her robe, loosening his own, wanting to hurt her, obscurely wanting to punish her. She made a small sound of fear. As abruptly as it had descended, the rage vanished. He remembered her fear and frigidity.

I was about to force her, he thought with revulsion.

“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, moving away from her, letting her go.

She made no effort to get up or to cover herself but gazed at him with an extraordinary look that he had never seen before. She said, “I am your wife. This is the one thing you don’t have to apologize for. If you are still capable, that is.”

The finest line separated the intensity of hatred from the intensity of love. Moe was more aroused by his rage than by his tenderness. She wanted his anger, when she had despised his gentleness. The act between them was as much one of violence as one of love. Yet at the moment of his surrender, he felt a rush of tenderness for her, a desire to own and protect her.

Their married life assumed its own distorted pattern, woven from the fractured and twisted threads of their lives. Throughout the day Moe acted like an exemplary wife, quiet, deferential to her mother-in-law, hardworking. But when she and Shigeru were alone, she sought to incite his rage and then submit to it. She drew the anger to her as a tall pine draws lightning and was herself both ignited and damaged by his response. He still moved and lived in a state of unreality, keeping himself busy during the day, studying, often with Ichiro, at night; the steady beat of the rainfall, the damp moist air, the smell of mold all came between him and the real world. Sometimes he thought he had become a living ghost and would drift away into the mist. The rage that Moe aroused in him, coupled with desire and its release, served a strange purpose in anchoring him to reality. He was grateful to her for it, but any expression of tenderness invoked scorn in her, so he never spoke of it.

By the time the plum rains ended, she had conceived a child. Shigeru was torn between delight and foreboding. When he saw himself, as he was occasionally able to, as a simple warrior-farmer, he imagined the joy children would bring into his life; when he considered his role as the dispossessed heir to the clan, he knew that a child, especially a son, could only add to the danger of his position. How long would he be allowed to live? If his uncles’ rule was just, soon the Otori clan would forget him; they would settle down peacefully under his uncles’ rule. His life would be irrelevant to them; his death would go unmourned. If, as he feared, Shoichi and Masahiro continued to exploit the resources of the clan for their own benefit and unrest increased, his survival would be even more precarious. He would become a focus for the hopes for the renewal of the world and the return to just government that turned into sparks and ignited revolts among peasants and farmers. His uncles would see him as a constant incitement to rebellion. If he was to live long enough to achieve revenge, he needed to walk a careful path between being too visible and being forgotten altogether. He feared a son would present too great a challenge to his uncles to ignore, yet he longed for a child: the heir to his father’s blood, the true heir to the clan.

He feared also for Moe’s health. The pregnancy was difficult: she could hardly eat and vomited often. From time to time the thought crossed his mind that their brutal coupling could only result in a monstrous child.

Moe no longer came to him at night; in fact, they hardly spoke anymore. She retreated into the women’s part of the house, where Chiyo looked after her, persuading her to eat, massaging her legs and back, brewing soporific teas to allay the sickness.