Kyorinrin gasps and wheezes and it is pleasure and it is pain. When it is over he curls his paper over his mate and her ink seeps through to the other side of him and she weeps the strange tears of kanji, uncontrollable, indelible.
In the end there is nothing left of Akemi but ?.
WATER
“You can blow out a sparrow,” Inari says. It is not a question.
“Yes. It’s no different. What lights us, what lights wood, what lights oil.” Futsukeshibaba braids the smoke of her hair. The sun is restless, lining the bay with lavender, eager for the events of the day to begin their occurring.
“If I ask you to blow out the Admiral and his men, will you do it?”
Futsukeshibaba thinks about it. “No,” she sighs. “I could not bear to keep them all inside me.”
“I didn’t really mean it. It’s already happened and this is the fourth time we’ve watched it. I was only curious what you would say.” Inari looks up at the dimming stars, the bats flapping over the cassia trees. “The trick when writing about Westerners,” she sighs, “is to pretend they are unhuman. Like us or like the opposite of us if we have an opposite. Otherwise the tale is too sad to finish. These are good seats. I thank you for the gift.”
Behind them a cool blue light pours out like a cup of water. Futsukeshibaba smiles.
“At the end of storytelling,” she says. “That’s her time.”
Aoandon leans against the shoulder of her lover. The blue paper lantern will light the way home for the fox and the old woman and she will not say anything about how petty it is to fight about an infidelity that she will not even contemplate for another sixty years. Her carp looks at the smoke of Futsukeshibaba’s kimono and kindles gold with longing. The blue fire in Aoandon burns steady and strong. She is not intimidated by Inari. She lit the way for Ama-no-Uzume to come home from dancing the sun goddess to life again. She knows foxes can see quite well in the dark anyway.
“You know that I could end you with a snap of my jaws.” Inari says this cheerfully, and it is also not a question.
“Yes,” says Futsukeshibaba. She smiles wider.
Below them the sailors have wakened. They eat, they stretch, pop the bones of their spines, look for orders, square cargo, prepare landing parties. Jellyfish clot around the ships, their simple rings and veils staring dumbly up at the masts, the men, the cannons.
Gently, Futsukeshibaba lifts Inari’s heavy tail. It is as big around as the pillar of a temple, the color of persimmons. She does it so the blue paper lantern of her heart can see it, and she does it with her eyes locked on the eyes of the fox-god. With infinite satisfaction, Futsukeshibaba blows out the light at the end of Inari’s tail.
MILK
There is a school of bonsai-cutting that, should part of a tree die or wither, preserves the dead material and incorporates it into the life and sculpture of the bonsai. The tree itself lives, but there is a dead thing in it. It lives around its dead part. The death becomes part of the beauty of the tree until the tree could not be beautiful without it. It is difficult—there is always the danger of the death spreading and taking hold. You cannot remove the death from the tree. That would be dishonest. It would be pretending that the death had never come near. You must be vigilant, keep the dead wood clutched tight so that the slow decay fuels everything else. So that i
t communicates effectively the impermanence of all.
Akemi is pruning a tree. Her teacher is named Fusao. She has no hope that she will show any talent here. She cannot even bring herself to make the first cut. It seems too monumental a choice.
At the base of the trunk, there is already a scar. A sigil. It will grow before she notices it, spreading like frost. A death in the shape of a kanji:
?
FIFTEEN PANELS DEPICTING THE SADNESS
OF THE BAKU AND THE JOTAI
WHAT SHE WHISPERED
When you, sweet sleeper, wake in the morning, one arm thrown over your golden-sticky eyes, sheets a-mangle, your dreams still flit through you, ragged, full of holes. You can remember the man with the yellow eyes, but not why he chased you. You can remember the hawk-footed woman on your roof, but not what she whispered.
That is my fault. I could not help it. I tromped through you in the night and ate up your dreams, a moth through wool. I didn’t want them all, only the sweetest veins, like fat marbling a slab of ruby meat, the marrowy slick of what she whispered, why he ran.
I am a rowling thing—my snout raises up toward the moon to catch the scent of your sweat. I show my flat teeth to the night wind. I beg permission of your bedclothes to curl up in the curve of your stomach, to gnaw on your shoulders, your breasts, your eyelids. I must open up a hole in you, to crawl through to the red place where your dreams spool out.
You put your arm around me in the night. Do you remember? My belly was taut and black, a tapir’s belly, a tapir’s snout snuffling for your breath as a pig for truffles. You were my truffle, my thick, earthy mushroom. You were delicious, and I thank you for my supper.
A JEWEL WE MAY NOT GNAW
At dawn, blue light shines on my woolly stump-tail. I catch the tin-patched 6:17 commuter train from your house to my home, deep in the Paradise of the Pure Land. My friend Yatsuhashi lumbers on board at your aunt’s house, the one with the wide white porch. She is fat and full of your aunt’s dreams of straddling her supervisor while he recites Basho. She takes her seat in the empty car; I take mine. She sits up and her tapir body unfolds neatly along three creases to become the body of a respectable businessman in a respectable black suit. I, too, unfold and straighten my tie. The attendant brings cups of hot, sweet matcha, but we refrain, straining at the pelt with the night-feast. If you saw us, you would not think we had snorted and snuggled against you all through the dark and moony hours. You would think: There go two wealthy and reputable gentlemen, off to their decent, clean desks in the city.