"Eeeee, very good," he said, pleased for her. "Show, eh?"
She got up carefully and lifted the hem of her skirts and allowed him to look at the backs of her legs. The scar tissue had not split and there were no suppurations. "Very good," he said. "Yes, soon like baby skin, neh?"
"Thank you, yes. Soft. Thank you, Anjin-san."
He noticed the slight change in her voice but did not comment. That night he did not dismiss her.
The pillowing was satisfactory. No more. For him there was no afterglow, no joyous lassitude. It was just a mating. So wrong, he thought, yet not wrong, neh?
Before she left him she knelt and bowed again to him and put her hands on his forehead. "I thank you with all my heart. Please sleep now, Anjin-san."
"Thank you, Fujiko-san. I sleep later."
"Please sleep now. It is my duty and would give me great pleasure." The touch of her hand was warm and dry and not pleasing. Nonetheless he pretended to sleep. She caressed him ineptly though with great patience. Then, quietly, she went back to her own room. Now alone again, glad to be alone, Blackthorne propped his head on his arms and looked up into the darkness.
He had decided about Fujiko during the journey from Yokose to Yedo. "It is your duty," Mariko had told him, lying in his arms.
"I think that'd be a mistake, neh? If she gets with child, well, it'll take me four years to sail home and come back again and, in that time, God knows what could happen." He remembered how Mariko had trembled then.
"Oh, Anjin-san, that is very much time."
"Three then. But you'll be aboard with me. I'll take you back with-"
"Thy promise, my darling! Nothing that is, neh?"
"Thou art right. Yes. But with Fujiko, so many bad things could happen. I don't think she would want my child."
"You do not know that. I do not understand you, Anjin-san. It is your duty. She could always prevent a child, neh? Don't forget, she is your consort. In truth, you take away her face if you don't invite her to the pillow. After all, Toranaga himself ordered her into your house."
"Why did he do that?"
"I don't know. It doesn't matter. He ordered it, therefore it is the best for you and best for her. It has been good, neh? She's done her duty as best she can, neh? Please excuse me, but don't you think you should do yours?"
"Enough of your lectures! Love me and do not talk anymore."
"How should I love thee? Ah, like Kiku-san told me today?"
"How is that?"
"Like this."
"That is very good - so very good."
"Oh, I forgot, please light the lamp, Anjin-san. I have something to show thee."
"Later, now I-"
"Oh, please excuse me, it should be now. I bought it for you. It's a pillow book. The pictures are very funny."
"I don't want to look at a pillow book now."
"But, so sorry, Anjin-san, perhaps one of the pictures would excite you. How can you learn about pillowing without a pillow book?"
"I'm excited already."
"But Kiku-san said it's a very first best way of choosing positions. There are forty-seven. Some of them look astonishing and very difficult, but she said it was important to try all . . . . Why do you laugh?"
"You're laughing - why shouldn't I laugh too?"
"But I was laughing because you were chuckling and I felt your stomach shaking and you won't let me up. Please let me up. Anjin-san!"
"Ah, but you can't be cross, Mariko my darling. There's no woman in the world who can be really even a little cross like this . . . ."
"But Anjin-san, please, you must let me up. I want to show you."
"All right. If that-"
"Oh, no, Anjin-san, I didn't want - you mustn't - can't you just reach out - please not yet - oh, please don't leave me - oh, how I love thee like this . . . ."
Blackthorne remembered that loving. Mariko excited him more than Kiku had, and Fujiko was nothing compared to either. And Felicity?
Ah, Felicity, he thought, focusing on his great problem. I must be mad to love Mariko, and Kiku. And yet . . . the truth about Felicity is that now she can't compare even with Fujiko. Fujiko was clean. Poor Felicity. I'll never be able to tell her, but the memory of her and me rutting like a pair of stoats in the hay or under rancid covers makes my skin crawl now. Now I know better. Now I could teach her but would she wish to learn? And how could we ever get clean and stay clean and live clean?
Home is filth piled on filth, but that's where my wife is and where my children are and where I belong.
"Don't think about that home, Anjin-san," Mariko had once said when the dark mists were on him. "Real home is here - the other's ten million times ten million sticks away. Here is reality. You'll send yourself mad if you try to get wa out of such impossibilities. Listen, if you want peace you must learn to drink cha from an empty cup."
She had shown him how. "You think reality into the cup, you think the cha there - the warm, pale-green drink of the gods. If you concentrate hard . . . . Oh, a Zen teacher could show you, Anjin-san. It is most difficult but so easy. How I wish I was clever enough to show it to you, for then all things in the world can be yours for the asking . . . even the most unobtainable gift - perfect tranquillity."
He had tried many times, but he could never sip the drink when it wasn't there.
"Never mind, Anjin-san. It takes such a long time to learn but you will, sometime."
"Can you?"
"Rarely. Only in moments of great sadness or loneliness. But the taste of the unreal cha seems to give a meaning to life. It is hard to explain. I've done it once or twice. Sometimes you gain wa just by trying."
Now, lying in the dark of the castle, sleep so far away, he lit the candle with the flint and concentrated on the little porcelain cup that Mariko had given him which now he always kept beside his bed. For an hour he tried. But he could not purify his mind. Inevitably the same thoughts kept chasing each other: I want to leave, I want to stay. I'm afraid of going back, I'm afraid to remain. I hate both and want both. And then there are the "eters."
If it was up to me alone I wouldn't leave, not yet. But others are involved and they're not eters and I signed on as Pilot: 'By the Lord God I promise to take the fleet out and through the Grace of God bring her home again.' I want Mariko. I want to see the land Toranaga's given me and I need to stay here, to enjoy the fruit of my great luck for just a little longer. Yes. But also duty's involved and that transcends everything, neh?
With the dawn Blackthorne knew that though he pretended he had put off the decision again, in reality, he had decided. Irrevocably.
God help me, first and last I'm Pilot.
Toranaga uncurled the tiny slip of paper that arrived two hours after dawn. The message from his mother said simply: "Your brother agrees, my son. His letter of confirmation will leave today by hand. The state visit of Lord Sudara and his family must begin within ten days."