“I will not object to that.”
“Good. Then let’s keep each other warm.”
We kissed on the lips and we kissed with our tongues. I felt happiness on her tongue. I felt hers and I felt mine. I do not remember being happier in my life.
The moon lingered long enough to be the light for our happiness. When it finally descended behind the hazy mountains, we drifted into sleep.
***As for the heart that finds joy in fields of wild autumn flowers: Is it content to stay? Or does it yearn to leave? – Akazome EmonIt should not have come to me as a surprise that happiness miraculously afforded, was always fleeting. Once again, I watched my happiness melt away in a single morning like a snowfall too early in the season.
I awoke in the arms of Lady Evelyn in the morning and was so overjoyed, so overwhelmed with a giddy glee, I nearly burst out with laughter. But I held in the laughter so as to not wake her. I wanted to watch her breathe through her smiling lips, and I wanted to feel her gentle heart beat on my breasts for as long as I possibly could, which meant until the sun began to grey the sky dawn.
When the sky did finally grey to dawn, I stirred her awake by nudging her and whispering in her ear,
“Madame, you must wake up and return to your room. I will come to fetch you for breakfast in an hour.”
She sighed deeply then nuzzled me in a cat-like way. “I’m not hungry. Please let me stay here.”
As much as I wanted to, I could not accept that answer. “Please, madame, your husband expects you to have breakfast with his guests.”
She pouted at me while I put on my kimono, but despite the face full of protest, allowed me to drag her out of my bed and wrap her in her kimono. After seeing that the corridor was clear I nudged her out of my quarters forcibly. She turned back to me and pulled me into her arms and kissed me right in the middle of the corridor.
I squirmed to indicate my disapproval of her brash behaviour — if anyone had been in the corridor to see that, then my days would’ve been numbered, and, in all likelihood, her days as well. Recklessly, she laughed through the kiss, then sighed, then kissed me once more on the cheek before I was able to pry her off of me.
“Madame, please!”
“Call me Evelyn.”
I glanced up and down the corridor to make sure it was still empty before leaning in and whispering to reiterate my protest in the manner she insisted, “Evelyn… please…”
“I don’t care if anyone knows,” she replied.
“Yes you would,” I warned. “Now please, you must return to your bed. I will come fetch you in an hour.”
After I was sure she had returned to her room, I quickly dressed in my outfit for the day, a traditional English servant’s dress to impress the lord’s Dutch guests, then hurried to the kitchen to make Evelyn’s meal.
“Tamagoyaki, aged-miso soup, and natto,” Kimiko instructed. “The lady of the house will have a Japanese breakfast today.”
It was a strange order as the rest were being prepared an English breakfast, but I did not question the order. That is what I made.
The lord’s chamberlain, Keinosuke, caught me in the courtyard rushing back to wake Evelyn to give me more instruction. “Lord Sasaki demands that his wife wear her jūnihitoe at breakfast.”
The order was so absurd that I let out a noise of confusion and protested. “Apologies, sir… if I am not mistaken, I believe you said to dress her in her jūnihitoe?”
“That’s right. Now hurry so that she is not late.”
He left before I could ask for any further clarification, but I suppose I understood the intent. It was to make an impression on the guests. A jūnihitoe is no simple kimono as it were. It is an outfit reserved for high nobility, and, usually, highly formal affairs such as a royal ceremony. Evelyn had never worn her jūnihitoe, nor did I believe she ever intended to. It was a wedding gift from her parents, a token of their respect for Japanese society and Lord Sasaki’s high status in it. But he had always shown resentment towards it. He, as many of the upper echelons of modern Japan, asserted that such a relic was nothing more than a shameful reminder of Japan’s past corrupt feudal system, or so I was told. The dress had therefore always remained hidden from view. I wonder what has changed? Or perhaps nothing had, and all the resentment for the past was simply theatrics. I suspected that many of the lords, many who have come from samurai families, secretly yearned for the old samurai ways.
Although as a maiko I received extensive training in the wearing of all sorts of kimono, I never prepared a jūnihitoe before. But likely, no one, the business partners least of all, knew the correct way it should be worn, so I did not stress too much about doing it incorrectly.
I found Evelyn awake, sitting on the chair by the window in her bed chamber. The curtains were already drawn, and the windows were open, letting in a cool breeze, her face soaking in the morning sun, her hair gleaming as if surrounded by a halo, and it might as well have – she was angelic. Her lips drew into a pleasant smile when she saw me and let out an incredulous laugh when I informed her that I would be dressing her in her jūnihitoe.
“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes, fluttering her hands dismissively. “But only if I get to wear a pair of your favourite stockings… for you to take off afterward.”
I saw no harm in that, so I happily agreed, and I put on my favourite cherry white ones that would hide beneath the layers of undergarments.
I guessed at how the many layers of the ceremonial dress went and put them on one after another (there were a dozen in total), and when I was done, I took a step back to quickly analyse my handiwork. Evelyn was a forest of colours. Red and purple and green, with intricate patterns of white cranes and gold bamboo, of course, the pink oleander flower of her husband’s clan. I’ve only ever seen such a dress represented in mediaeval art. It was flamboyant. Garish, in fact. But nonetheless, beautiful on Evelyn. Anything on Evelyn was beautiful.
“You look…”
“Preposterous,” she finished for me.
“Royal.”
“Indeed.”
“…and radiant.”
She scoffed at me for saying it, but I meant it. She was radiant. She was a goddess. Even more so while at the breakfast table among the men in grey suits, and especially with the way the morning sun painted her with its golden colours to cause the silk fabric to glimmer opulently. As I stood quietly in the corner, I could not help but steal glances at her. I realised then that the reason for her radiance wasn’t the kimono she wore. It was the life in her face. She was happy. She was alive. And that made me happy and alive and because of that, my world was full of radiance.
After breakfast, Keinosuke gathered the household in the courtyard so that we could bid Lord Sasaki’s business partners farewell in a grand way. We stood in rows, all of us wearing the sort of uniforms English servants would wear while Lord Sasaki wore the sort of uniform an English Navy admiral might wear, complete with ribbons and medals that could not be real, because he had never set foot on a ship let alone ever sail one in a war, yet there he stood, medals and all. Standing next to him in her royal kimono, Evelyn stood out in stark contrast, not only against her husband, but as the only member of the household to wear a Japanese outfit. For a reason I could not grasp, but perhaps it was intuition, or a premonition of sorts, I felt unnerved about this awkward juxtaposition.