“Well, how do you tell the difference between I go,
“By inflection, Anjin-san, and tone. Listen:
“But these both sounded exactly the same.”
“Ah, Anjin-san, that’s because you’re thinking in your own language. To understand Japanese you have to think Japanese. Don’t forget our language is the language of the infinite. It’s all so simple, Anjin-san. Just change your concept of the world. Japanese is just learning a new art, detached from the world. . . . It’s all so simple.”
“It’s all shit,” he had muttered in English, and felt better.
“What? What did you say?”
“Nothing. But what you say doesn’t make sense.”
“Learn the written characters,” Mariko had said.
“I can’t. It’ll take too long. They’re meaningless.”
“Look, they’re really simple pictures, Anjin-san. The Chinese are very clever. We borrowed their writing a thousand years ago. Look, take this character, or symbol, for a pig.”
“It doesn’t look like a pig.”
“Once it did, Anjin-san. Let me show you. Here. Add a ‘roof’ symbol over a ‘pig’ symbol and what do you have?”
“A pig and a roof.”
“But what does that mean? The new character?”
“I don’t know.”
“ ‘Home.’ In the olden days the Chinese thought a pig under a roof was home. They’re not Buddhists, they’re meat eaters, so a pig to them, to peasants, represented wealth, hence a good home. Hence the character.”
“But how do you say it?”
“That depends if you’re Chinese or Japanese.”
“
“
“Absolutely!”
“Of course, the Chinese are very stupid in many things and their women are not trained as women are here. There’s no discord in your home, is there?”
Blackthorne thought about that now, on the twelfth day of his rebirth. No. There was no discord. But neither was it a home. Fujiko was only like a trustworthy housekeeper and tonight when he went to his bed to sleep, the futons would be turned back and she would be kneeling beside them patiently, expressionlessly. She would be dressed in her sleeping kimono, which was similar to a day kimono but softer and with only a loose sash instead of a stiff obi at the waist.
“Thank you, Lady,” he would say. “Good night.”
She would bow and go silently to the room across the corridor, next to the one Mariko slept in. Then he would get under the fine silk mosquito net. He had never known such nets before. Then he would lie back happily, and in the night, hearing the few insects buzzing outside, he would dwell on the Black Ship, how important the Black Ship was to Japan.
Without the Portuguese, no trade with China. And no silks for clothes or for nets. Even now, with the humidity only just beginning, he knew their value.
If he stirred in the night a maid would open the door almost instantly to ask if there was anything he wanted. Once he had not understood. He motioned the maid away and went to the garden and sat on the steps, looking at the moon. Within a few minutes Fujiko, tousled and bleary, came and sat silently behind him.
“Can I get you anything, Lord?”
“No, thank you. Please go to bed.”
She had said something he did not understand. Again he had motioned her away so she spoke sharply to the maid, who attended her like a shadow. Soon Mariko came.
“Are you all right, Anjin-san?”
“Yes. I don’t know why you were disturbed. Christ Jesus—I’m just looking at the moon. I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted some air.”
Fujiko spoke to her haltingly, ill at ease, hurt by the irritation in his voice. “She says you told her to go back to sleep. She just wanted you to know that it’s not our custom for a wife or consort to sleep while her master’s awake, that’s all, Anjin-san.”
“Then she’ll have to change her custom. I’m often up at night. By myself. It’s a habit from being at sea—I sleep very lightly ashore.”
“Yes, Anjin-san.”
Mariko had explained and the two women had gone away. But Blackthorne knew that Fujiko had not gone back to sleep and would not, until he slept. She was always up and waiting whatever time he came back to the house. Some nights he walked the shore alone. Even though he insisted on being alone, he knew that he was followed and watched. Not because they were afraid he was trying to escape. Only because it was their custom for important people always to be attended. In Anjiro he was important.
In time he accepted her presence. It was as Mariko had first said, ‘Think of her as a rock or a shoji or a wall. It is her duty to serve you.’
It was different with Mariko.
He was glad that she had stayed. Without her presence he could never have begun the training, let alone explained the intricacies of strategy. He blessed her and Father Domingo and Alban Caradoc and his other teachers.
