The Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai Read Free Page B

brothers’. Would I ever see my father and brothers again? Others were coarse, chapped like Mother’s and my sisters’. I would probably never see my family again. These feet – huge, small, or gnarled. One pair even turned inwards. Each person wore shoes of heavy cloth, not like my straw ones.
    My toes already poked through my sandals, and my face grew warm trying to hide them. Father would not make me a new pair until the straw came in. No, he would not. He was not here.
    I wanted to cry. My tears would not fall. I had eaten a little barley before dawn, nothing since. My throat and belly clawed at me. Night was approaching and darkness was breaking over me.
    Yet on this day I had discovered that not only was I worth the price of land, I was handsome and beautiful.

BOOK 2

I. A Rival
    A girl scuttled up and stood next to me, taller than I, perhaps one or two years older. A pale blue kimono encased her. With long fingers she grasped my arm above the elbow. Thick lashes made her black eyes large in her round face. She chewed her bottom lip. She bowed to Proprietor Chiba and murmured to me, ‘Tashiko.’
    ‘Tashiko will attend to Kozaishō,’ Proprietor Chiba ordered to the people. ‘If any observe Kozaishō in need, assist her. Do not speak to either girl directly, unless you have my consent.’
    Tashiko pushed on my shoulder to guide me. Her sweet smell reminded me of bush clover and pinewood, not at all like the spicy sweat of my sisters.
    When we were away from the others, I bowed. ‘Permission to ask a question, Honourable Tashiko?’ She seemed only a little older. Still, I wanted to make a good first impression.
    ‘Just Tashiko. No permission needed.’
    ‘Tashiko, what is a “prescribed walk”?’
    ‘The ride Proprietor Chiba takes when he has been told to walk.’
    This made no sense to me. Therefore I asked no more questions.
    Tashiko steered me to a miniature house a short distance from the sh ō . ‘Lesser House,’ she whispered.
    We climbed what Tashiko called ‘steps’ to a roofed floor around the house, which Tashiko called the watadono . ‘For rain or shade,’ she said. Yellow cloth covered Lesser House’s window. I touched it when Tashiko’s back was turned. My fingers remembered what Mother had taught me: it was a heavy silk. This type of cloth allowed the light in and also gave privacy. Mother’s lessons. What if I failed here?
    Inside, coloured woods, pieced together, covered the ground and shone like a full moon with no clouds. Heaviness pressed on my chest from breathing in its odd odour. Such a floor would be easier to keep dirt away. What other new things waited for me?
    A thick futon lay bundled in one corner. Dolls sat on it, several dolls, all dressed in colourful fabrics, not straw. Their real eyes stared at me from smooth white faces, with real red mouths and real black hair and no expression. They were so beautiful, yet they did not seem happy.
    I looked at Tashiko and around the rest of the house. A large brazier and screen crowded along one wall for the two of us. Winter nights might be warmer here. In another corner a round object of carved wood spread its legs like upside-down flower petals, as if it were bowing. A bowl of water perched on top of it.
    ‘What is that?’ I pointed.
    ‘Table. For dishes.’
    Tashiko taught me other words for things. Some I accepted meekly, some I came to love, and some I learned to hate.
    Tashiko seized my hand and pulled me. ‘Come. I must bathe you.’
    We went beyond Lesser House and into the bathhouse, where she combed and fingered my hair. ‘Your great beauty, so thick and heavy. Does it take long to dry?’
    ‘At home . . .’ pressing my lips together so I did not to cry at this word ‘. . . it takes m-most of a w-warm day to dry it.’
    ‘Here, let me take these old things off,’ she said, and removed my smock and trousers.
    ‘They are not old! I want them! They are mine!’ I snatched them and held them to my chest. Today