Butterfly's Shadow Read Free

gardens that looked no bigger than a handkerchief and Pinkerton could see tiny figures bent low over whatever modest crop they were tending. When they stood upright, with their shallow straw hats and thin bodies, the figures looked like mushrooms growing in the green patches.
    On shore Pinkerton and Eddie elbowed their way through rickshaw men calling out, plucking at the sailors’ sleeves. Offering them a ride to a good time.
    Eddie brushed them aside, as he did the pyjama-clad men smiling obsequiously and offering to escort them – ‘right here, very quick’ – to what Pinkerton guessed were whorehouses.
    ‘We don’t need them,’ Eddie said reassuringly. ‘Cat-houses are licensed by the government. Anything clean and decent will be in the centre of the city.’
    ‘Are the people okay with that?’
    ‘Sure. They’re not like us, Ben. They’re not immoral exactly, they just don’t have morals.’
    Ben and Eddie pushed their way through the crowd and into the market district, a maze of narrow streets lined with little shops. Then, as they turned the corner, the smell hit them: seafood and fish, an ammoniac tang so pungent that Pinkerton clamped his hand to his nostrils and tried to breathe through his fingers. The street smelled worse than a polecat. His stomach heaved and he thought longingly of sweet-smelling American fish: broiled red snapper, soft-shelled crabs, clam chowder . . .
    But it was not only fish that hung in the air like an evil gas. The city stank. Open sewers ran down each side of the narrow streets, emptying into larger sewers further on. The stench was overpowering. Locals, in their wooden-soled sandals, were agile, even the women carrying babies strapped to their backs, avoiding the slippery edges of the sewers, deftly sidestepping rickshaws, bullock carts, horse-drawn wagons and bicycles. The two men, immaculate in their naval uniforms, trod carefully. Pinkerton’s spirits dropped ashe looked about him: what could anyone find to enjoy in surroundings so vile?
    ‘ Eddie? ’ He sounded desperate.
    In the pandemonium he had to shout to be heard. He bawled questions into Eddie’s ear about whore houses and good-looking girls . . . But in truth the stink was blocking out all thought of pleasure as he pressed through the hubbub.
    Eddie, an old hand, laughed away his doubts when they emerged into a quieter part of town and could talk. There was plenty of time to make themselves at home while the ship was repaired; to get a house in a nice neighbourhood, and a nice girl, a nice, clean Japanese wife provided by the local marriage broker. ‘She’ll be yours for as long as you need her.’

2
    From the window of the little house on the side of the hill she could see foreign ships sitting on the water, fat and calm as swans. In the deep horseshoe of the harbour fishing boats were tied to the quay, the men working at their nets. The big ships were anchored further out, with tiny boats carrying men and supplies to and from the land. Not so long ago Cho-Cho would have walked along the sea path with her father, watching the fishermen, listening as he explained the intricacies of baiting and catching, scaling and slicing; this was his way, planting thoughts like seeds to grow inside her head, showing her things it could be useful to know. But now she waited fearfully for the unknown, and there was no father to explain anything.
    She had been given certain information, but there were blank places and she had no experience to guide her. A man would arrive; a ceremony would follow. She would become a wife. Meanwhile she prepared herself; she concentrated on the surface of things, details: cloth, comb, sandals, sash.
    A wedding kimono should be heavy silk, shiromuku , the whiteness denoting purity, woven to glow like shogetsu cherry blossom. What she wore on her body needed to be right in every respect, the ceremonial wig smooth as lacquer and over that the headdress shaped to conceal possible horns of