“I was afraid you’d say that,” she said. She cleared her throat, assumed an elegant posture and with a dignified and resigned tone said, “Well then, I suppose I know now what must be done… It is this, isn’t it? For a very long time I could never quite grasp the concept. I found it awful, in fact. Barbaric, even. But now… now I think I understand the point. It is the only key to the cage I’m in, isn’t it?” She squeezed the mother-of-pearl grip of the kaiken until her fist shook.
I bowed my head. I bowed deeply so that my forehead touched her lap. Tears stung my eyes. It was a custom that I too had found awful. But perhaps not in the way a westerner peering into this culture might find it awful. No. What I found awful was the theatrics of it all. So-called redemption. So-called restoration of honour and dignity. So-called relinquishing of shame. It did not matter that there was no shame to relinquish. That there was nothing my perfect Evelyn needed to be ashamed of. She had done nothing wrong. Even so, I understood how she felt. I understood the weight on her chest that made it so very hard to breathe. She was more than a mere prisoner here. She was a hapless victim of a slow torture, of a slow suffocation and a slow squeezing out of her soul that was worse than death. And I also understood that as I could not give a wing-clipped bird the sky, I could not give Evelyn freedom from Lord Sasaki. But there was something I could give.
When I was done crying, I sat up and looked her in the eyes. I wrenched the kaiken from her grip. “Do not give him the satisfaction,” I said.
She shook her head, and tried to take the dagger back. “It’s not for him,” she replied, her voice quivering with despair. “Please give it back to me.”
“There is another way,” I said, dazed while saying the words, but I meant them seriously. Abruptly, I left her bedchamber. I went to my quarters and took out from the hiding spot behind a loose panel inside my futon cabinet a pouch I had kept safe there for many years. I took it to Evelyn and handed it to her.
“Powdered oleander. Flowers, leaves, and root. Mix all of it into your matcha and drink the entire cup. I cannot promise it will be a painless death. But it will be a certain one. And more importantly, one that gives him nothing.”
She stared at me. “Why do you have this?”
I looked back at her and stoutly replied, “This was my key… my means of escape. It is my gift to you.”
She nodded as she wiped tears that pooled in her eyes before they could stain her cheeks. She slid the pouch into her kimono. “Oh, Niko. My Niko. You poor thing. I didn’t know… You have been more kind to me than I deserve. Thank you.”
She kissed me quickly on the lips. Then she gave a faint smile and said, “Time for tea. Goodbye, Niko.”
“Goodbye, Evelyn.”
She stood to leave. I stood simultaneously then moved aside to make room for her to leave, but she didn’t leave immediately. She turned to face me again. She put a finger under my chin to lift my face up to hers to kiss me once more, with the feeling of finality, being the last I would ever get from her. We held our lips pressed together for a long time. We squeezed our hands together. When the kiss was over I made a feeble attempt to hold her back, but knowing that I needed to let her do what she needed to so as to not suffocate any longer or to lose any more of her soul, I reluctantly released her.
The room darkened and became more quiet. The sun set and the moon rose, and shone dully, like a tarnished silver plate. The crickets were muted, distant, as if they had gotten into some opium. My heart… it had lost all desire to continue beating. It was now no more than a dried-up knotted root ball in my chest.
In a state of near delirium I floated over to the foot of my lady’s bed and pulled her kaiken from its sheath. I touched the blade to test its edge. Blood beaded from my fingertip. I didn’t even feel the cut, it was so sharp.
For perhaps an hour, or however long it had taken for the moon to disappear behind the near forested mountains, I sat with my legs folded beneath me on the floor at the foot of her bed. The oleander powder had been my plan. Oleander would’ve made a mess of things. A great, beautiful, dramatic mess of things and that’s what I wanted. But Evelyn deserved the messy end more than I. I owed it to her, in fact, for the happiness she had given me. Besides, an end by dagger, for a handmaiden is, by any measure that matters, the same as one by a draught of death tea. I did not care what it gave them. I sat up straight. First I put the blade to my throat and let it touch my artery but then I stopped myself, not from fear of doing it, but realising that a throat cut was much too clean and quick a way to go. So, I turned the pointed end of the dagger to my belly in the manner of the samurai, to taunt them for their silly ritual. To taunt my tyrant lord with a courageous, vengeful death. I shut my eyes, squeezed the last of my tears from them, and I held my breath. Just a plunge and a swift slash and it would be done. In the morning, they’d find my spiritless, blood-drained body at the foot of my lady’s bed. Of course, they would say I did it out of a sense of loyalty to the house, but that did not matter. I would know the truth that I did this to follow Evelyn to wherever she would go, and that is what matters.
I straightened my reach, tensed up, and put all the strength that I had into my arms to make the final sharp plunge. But just as I was about to commit to it, I heard the door slide open.
I swivelled around and found her there, standing in the doorway.
“Don’t you do it,” she said, rushing towards me. I stood abruptly. She grabbed the kaiken from me and flung it aside. Then she stung my cheek with a slap. “Don’t you even dare.”
“Madame…” I started. I did not know what to say. Had she a change of heart? Could she not go through with it? Would she rather continue living this hellish life? It made no sense. But then I started to see some sense. She made me see it.
“What have I told you, Niko? Call me Evelyn,” she said. She clutched my head with both hands and brought us together and kissed me and I grew heady as if to pass through a layer of thick clouds. Then she pushed me onto her bed and climbed atop me, and continued kissing me feverishly. Not wasting a moment, as if there was not a single moment to lose, her hands went to her sash and loosened the knot. The sash fell away freely. Her kimono came loose. Her hands then went to her tightly pinned bun, and slid out the pin. Her hair cascaded to her shoulders.
“Why are you here?” I asked, breathless, my heart panging.
“Because you are here. Because you are my will to live.”
She let her kimono fall. Then she loosened her white cotton undergarments, and let those fall too. In the near complete darkness, I could only see the hint of her nakedness – the dark shades of her nipples, the lines of her hips, the soft hair between her thighs, but it was enough of a hint to light the fire of joy in my heart.