Haruko shivered. In her discomfort she could not appreciate the beauty of the season's first snowfall. That failure of character stung; she strove for sensitivity and refinement. Numbness in her toes should not blind her to the beauties of the natural world. There were poems to be written about the snowfall.
Trapped in her twin miseries, Haruko did not see the woman in white until she was almost upon her. The woman in white was also apparently lost in thought, and Haruko stepped quickly aside to avoid a collision. She lost her footing on the slick ground and fell, her purchases scattering across the dirt.
"Forgive me." The woman in white knelt and helped Haruko retrieve her packages.
"The fault is mine." Haruko's kimono needed washing, and for a moment she resented the other woman's white, unstained garment. But it was a thing of beauty, like something out of a romance or a ghost story, and Haruko could not begrudge the continuation of beauty.
"My name is Yukiko."
"Haruko."
"Might I be of assistance?"
Haruko had lingered too long shopping. Tardiness or mudsplatters alone were enough to earn her husband's rebuke. The situation could not be improved by the presence of a stranger. "Thank you, but no. My home is not far."
"Perhaps we will meet again."
"Perhaps."
"I shall endeavor to pay more attention to my surroundings."
Haruko returned the other woman's smile. For the remainder of her trip, she did not worry about her muddied kimono or her husband's anger. She marveled at Yukiko's kimono, fine white stitching on white silk, covered with melting snowflakes.
There were poems to be written about such a garment, Haruko decided, but a merchant's wife had little time for poetry.
Haruko had always considered herself a dutiful daughter, and her father never indicated disappointment in her behavior. She could read and write and do figures, so that she might assist with her husband's business endeavors. But she was of course frivolous in her hobbies. She read romances, sensational tales of lovers and adventure and fantastic creatures. Sometimes at night she imagined herself living in the isolation of Uji, surrounded by faded worldly glories, refined and beautiful. And she imagined a gentleman on horseback, falling in love with her music, her voice, her very soul--all before he ever saw her face.
Edo was a far cry from Uji, and her father, though a refined and successful man, was not a prince. Still, Haruko allowed herself to imagine admirers sending her poetry, elegantly written on fine paper.
After four years of marriage, Haruko still imagined receiving a letter from a man. But she no longer desired delicate perfumes or fine calligraphy. She wanted only the three and a half simple lines of the mikudari-han:
To my wife. It is my pleasure to divorce you. There is no objection to your marrying anyone whomsoever. Witness my hand, Saburo.
Leaving home, Haruko met Yukiko again by the roadside. This time, they saw one another from a distance and smiled.
"I see that you have also learned to look up," Yukiko said.
"Indeed."
"Might I accompany you?"
"Certainly. I have errands before dinner."
Yukiko fell into step beside her, perhaps free of responsibilities. Haruko envied that freedom for a moment, no less than the white kimono Yukiko wore once again. But then she reconsidered. If she herself had time to spare from her duties to her husband, she would not loiter on the roadside, waiting to speak to almost-strangers. She would read, or write poetry, or visit a friend...not that Haruko had many friends, but with more free time she might.... "Are you recently come to Edo?"
"Somewhat," Yukiko replied.
"I have lived here my entire life; so has my husband. What of your family?"
"I am married. My father and mother are dead."
"I am sorry," Haruko said automatically. Her own parents were dead as well. She did not linger on such thoughts.
"My father's greatest desire was to find an honorable husband for me," Yukiko said. "Someone who would care for me and our children."
"You have children?" Haruko strove to keep the longing from her voice.
"No," Yukiko said simply. Haruko questioned her no farther, cautious of uncovering a private pain akin to her own. They continued in companionable silence. "I must go," Yukiko said. "Perhaps we will speak again."
"I would like that," Haruko said.
Yukiko became part of Haruko's life. Their meetings were never arranged in advance. On some days Yukiko simply happened to be in Haruko's path. As far as Haruko could tell the other woman never conducted business of her own; Yukiko was never en route to an appointment or busy with an errand, and always had as much time as Haruko could spare. Haruko sometimes thought this should have seemed odd. Women of their class had responsibilities, and if Yukiko could afford to be idle it was not seemly to wander through Edo. But when she saw Yukiko, that detail always seemed unimportant, as did the name of Yukiko's husband, his business, and the location of their home.
Yukiko never asked personal questions. Haruko was grateful, and sometimes imagined that Yukiko's restraint was not merely politeness. She was a sensitive person and perhaps perceived Haruko's unhappiness in her marriage. But it was a relief to speak with someone who knew her only as Haruko, not Saburo's wife. For the length of their talks, she could almost imagine that her husband did not exist, or that he had given her the freedom of divorce. For that reason, as much as Yukiko's company, Haruko cherished their time together.
Haruko followed the sound of sobs. A mound of white beneath the cherry tree, nearly indistinguishable from the snow, moved. Haruko recognized Yukiko, though the woman in white attempted to cover her face with a sleeve.
"My apologies," Yukiko said, hesitating to approach more closely. "I am deeply moved by the falling snow. Surely it is the last of the season."
"You are a sensitive soul." Strangely emboldened, Haruko reached out and touched Yukiko's arm. Gently, she drew it earthward to reveal Yukiko's bruised face.
"I have lingered too long," Yukiko whispered. "I must go."
"I know something of this."
"Please. I must go."
"Why?" The word slipped out of its own volition. Powerless to recall it, Haruko considered what she had said. More words spilled out. "Why does he keep you, if you displease him so? Why does he not send the mikudari-han? Does he not suffer as well?"
"Who can say?" Yukiko's eyes met Haruko's, her face close enough that Haruko could feel her breath. But she did not draw away. "Perhaps his family would not approve. Perhaps he does not wish to see me married to another. His thoughts are beyond my understanding. Is that not the lot of a wife?"
"That may be so." A thought formed, and Haruko gave it voice. "Kamakura is not so distant."
"Kamakura?"
"Go to Tokeiji," Haruko urged her. "Take sanctuary in the temple."
"He may still refuse to divorce me."
"Then wait three years! After that he will have no claim upon you."
"Three years...." Yukiko said softly. "It is a long time."
"Shorter than the years I have wasted with Saburo," Haruko said with sudden bitterness.
Snowflakes fell upon Yukiko's kimono, white on white, melted and were absorbed by the fabric. "To leave the city alone...is not merely to defy my husband. This is the marriage my father made for me."
"Your father was only a man, imperfect as the rest of us," Haruko said carefully. "You said he wanted to find you an honorable husband, a man who would provide for your future and your children's." She reached out and touched Yukiko's face. "The man who struck you is not such a man."
Yukiko trembled but did not withdraw.
"He betrayed your father's trust," Haruko continued. "If he still lived, your father would surely insist upon a divorce. Go to the temple!"
"It seems so far away...."
"I have been to Kamakura," Haruko said, "and it is not so far away."
"Alone, I cannot--" Tears filled Yukiko's eyes, and they were not the romantic tears shed by the melancholy princesses in stories. They were hopeless and frightened and ugly.
"I will go with you," Haruko heard herself say.
Their flight from Edo was something out of a dream. They left immediately, without returning to their homes to gather provisions, heavier clothing or valuables. It somehow seemed a natural decision, the only possible way to proceed. Haruko suspected that if she stopped to consider her actions, she would never have the courage to continue.
She had never considered fleeing to Tokeiji herself. Despite unhappiness, and Saburo's occasional violent outbursts, she had never considered her own life so intolerable. But poor Yukiko, who seemed but a shadow in this world...for Yukiko, she would be strong.
Yukiko smiled and without close examination her face looked unmarred, ethereal and beautiful in freedom. Haruko's own body ached. In the chill of the season's last snowfall, the miles to Kamakura came to seem long indeed.
"Are we lost?" Yukiko asked.
"I remember the way," she said, which was half a lie, but she allowed no uncertainties in her tone. As a girl she had come this way, and she remembered bits of the trip, though she could not precisely recall all the landmarks: some seemed familiar only after Haruko saw them again, and she misremembered the order of others. But this was the road to Kamakura; surely the temple would not be difficult to find.
Yukiko laced her fingers between Haruko's. Her skin was cool and smooth, and somehow did not feel the way skin should. "I am happy you have come with me. Three years will not be such a long time."
Haruko began to protest: she was not the one leaving her husband. But then she realized the folly of such sentiments. She had abandoned her home, left the city unchaperoned. Saburo would be furious, and rightly so. Such a display might move him to divorce her...or perhaps he would merely beat her and become more watchful.
No, it was too late to turn back. Haruko's throat tightened. It hardly seemed fair, to have made such a monumental decision by accident.
But in four years, she had not made the decision on purpose. Perhaps leaving one's husband must always be the result of thoughtlessness.
"Perhaps I should have written three and a half lines to him," she murmured. "A poem on fine paper."
"Do you think he would have understood?"
Haruko sighed. "No. But there would have been symmetry of a sort. It would have pleased me, I think."
"When we are in the temple, you can send a poem to him," Yukiko said. "After all, that is how it happens in the stories. Messengers always deliver the poems and keepsakes. They are never simply left lying about, waiting to be found."
Haruko smiled. It seemed that Yukiko also read fiction, and possessed a romantic and frivolous soul to match Haruko's own. She amused herself by thinking about the poem she would send. She wondered if she could find delicate paper, and perhaps suitable perfume, in Tokeiji. Or perhaps she would break a twig from a tree on the temple grounds. That would be quite sophisticated, provided she chose the twig carefully, with an eye to the aesthetics of the situation. She could wrap her poem around it like a leaf. Her calligraphy, unfortunately, would not rival that of the legends of the Heian court. If she could not perfect the appearance of the words, she could at least choose them carefully.
"What if he has followed me?" Yukiko fretted. "Or your husband? They are surely faster than we."
"They did not see us leave," Haruko assured her. Once planted in her mind she found the nightmare of pursuit difficult to dismiss. But for Yukiko, she would be brave. "It will be some time before we are missed, and even then they will search close to home. For are we not meek and dutiful wives?"
Yukiko relaxed for a time, eyes downcast. Haruko kept her own eyes fixed straight ahead; she found that if she looked at the snow her feet disturbed, her toes seemed colder and she worried even more about their tracks. Even Saburo, raised in Edo and not given to hunting and other wilderness pursuits, would have no difficulty following....
They continued past nightfall, the full moon lighting their path. One foot, then the other. The dream of flight had become a nightmare, but to stop would be no more comfortable than to continue.
"In spring, there will be yulan and irises." Haruko forced the words past her dry throat. "Hydrangea in summer and spider lily in autumn."
Yukiko knelt and gathered a handful of snow. "And now?" She placed the snow in her mouth and smiled.
"We will see narcissus and winter sweet." Haruko pressed snow to her lips, cracked from cold and lack of water. If they were numb, at least they no longer hurt. "I have only seen the temple in spring, and it was beautiful then."
"Perhaps it will not be such a bad place to spend three years," Yukiko said. "Perhaps we will never leave."
"Perhaps." Haruko did not know that she wanted to withdraw from the world. An interlude was a welcome prospect, and separation from Saburo was certainly seductive, but she was not certain she was suited to life as a nun. She could scarcely imagine any life after Saburo. "We will have three years to consider what to do."
Eventually Yukiko insisted that they stop for rest. Haruko worried that they might freeze or be discovered--she could not decide which would be worse, but was too exhausted to care very much. Her muscles, so displeased by walking, now protested as she sank to the ground. She was not certain she would ever rise again.
They huddled together for warmth. Yukiko's arms enveloped Haruko, the white kimono a barrier against the white snow which began to slowly fall once more. Perhaps it was her imagination, or the effects of the cold, but Yukiko's kimono seemed to provide more warmth than was possible. Haruko was grateful, not curious, and slipped into a sleep untroubled by dreams.
"Haruko, the sun has risen."
Haruko opened her eyes, dislodging snowflakes trapped between her eyelashes. When she moved, pain lanced through her body, and for a horrible moment she could not remember where she had fallen asleep.
When she did remember, she realized she should be distraught and fearful for her very life, but instead she felt calm. Saburo was miles away.
Yukiko brushed a layer of snow from her own hair and Haruko's. She was beautiful, something out of a story. Haruko doubted her own looks had fared so well: skin ruddy and damaged, hair in disarray, movements stiff and painful. She was no refined princess, just a merchant's wife seeking divorce.
Haruko swallowed snow and rose. She wanted nothing more than to huddle on the ground and wait for the cold to claim her. But she had encouraged Yukiko along this path. She could not abandon her friend now. "Come. Today they will welcome us at the temple."
"They will give us rice and tea and sake," Yukiko said. "There will be a fire."
Food and shelter. Haruko willed her body to move.
"Winter sweet, you said." Yukiko took hold of her hand. "Are there plums as well?"
"Yes," Haruko said. "There will be plums."
"And perhaps there will be other women like us. We can gossip about the husbands we left behind," Yukiko said eagerly. Too eagerly, in Haruko's unhappy opinion, for a woman just woken from sleep out of doors. "It will be like the women's quarters in the stories. Perhaps we will all keep pillow books."
"Yes, certainly," Haruko said weakly.
"And poetry. We will have contests," Yukiko said. "And calligraphy lessons, and moon viewing parties."
"Yes."
The ghost of a frown crossed Yukiko's face as she turned toward Haruko. She raised her hands to Haruko's face, warmth against cold flesh, and leaned forward. Their foreheads touched, and Haruko inhaled her breath. "We will read the classics." Her mouth twisted upward. Never before had Yukiko smirked, but at the moment it seemed the most natural expression in the world. "And perhaps we will read pornography, with fine illustrations. The woodcutters are all men, so the illustrations will not be true to life--but fiction can be so much more satisfying than reality, do you not agree?"
Haruko could think of no reply.
"Come," Yukiko urged. "Rice and sake and fire and fiction."
They continued. Haruko was barely conscious of her surroundings; everything save Yukiko seemed out of focus. It was the cold, perhaps, or exhaustion. She stumbled, fell to her knees. Her kimono was a mess, and she fought the urge to cry. Yukiko dragged her to her feet. She did not care much for her life, but it seemed that Yukiko would not leave her in peace.
"Tell me about winter sweet," Yukiko prompted. Haruko obeyed, thinking of a neighbor's garden in Edo which the winter months showed to particular advantage.
"And narcissus," Yukiko insisted. "And plum."
Haruko's throat hurt, but she kept speaking. Her body hurt, but she kept walking.
"Did you hear that?" Yukiko asked, expression terrified. "Something behind us."
Haruko turned her head. Men or wolves or demons, she hardly cared at this point. The world was a blur of white and shadow, as though someone had drawn the landscape and carelessly smeared the ink. "I see nothing."
"Our husbands have come for us!" Yukiko cried and stumbled. She knelt in the snow, keening in despair. "We are lost!"
Haruko grasped her hand. "We are not lost!" Their desperate situation was Haruko's responsibility. If not for her rash suggestion, Yukiko would still be in Edo, perhaps unhappy but comparatively safe. "Tokeiji cannot be far." Finding a reserve of untapped strength, Haruko pulled her friend upright. "We must go on. We have come too far to give up now."
One foot, then the next. Yukiko now struggled to keep pace. Haruko was determined to be strong enough for them both. "Winter sweet and narcissus and plum," she said. "Yulan and irises in spring. Food and fire and fiction."
"Look!" Yukiko pointed. Some of the blurred landscape resolved itself into a man-made shape. Haruko recognized the curving rooftops. Covered in snow, the building seemed more insubstantial now than the last time she had seen it.
"That is Tokeiji," Haruko gasped. "We are nearly there."
"They are coming for us!" Yukiko cried. "We must run!"
Haruko obeyed, an animal instinct, and did not look over her shoulder. She half expected Saburo to seize her. But she stumbled through the temple gate unmolested, and fell into the arms of a waiting nun.
"Yukiko!" she called, but her friend did not appear. She disentangled herself from the nun's grip and turned about.
There was no sign of Yukiko, nor of their pursuers.
"Where is she?" Haruko demanded of the nun. "Where is Yukiko?"
"Calm yourself," the nun said. "You are safe now."
"No. I can't leave her...." Haruko stumbled and fell to her knees.
"There is no one else. I watched you approach."
"She was there...." Haruko said weakly. "We came from Edo...."
"It is a miracle you survived. Last night's snowfall--"
"She was there. You can see her tracks. We must find her," Haruko insisted. But when she herself focused on the snow, she could see only one set of human footprints. Aside from herself, only the passing of animals marred the pristine field of snow.
"Poor creature!" The nun laid a comforting hand upon Haruko's arm. "What suffering you must have known. But it is over now. You may claim sanctuary here: whatever you need, for however long is required."
For an instant, Haruko caught a glimpse of a snow white fox. It looked over its shoulder at her, a very human-seeming movement, and then bounded away into the trees.
"I would like to see the winter sweet," Haruko rasped. "And the narcissus and the plum. And then I would like food and fire and fiction."
Washed, rested, and sated, Haruko sat with a pen in hand, staring at blank paper. After a time, she shifted her gaze to her hand. Her skin was dry and cracked from the cold, but she would heal. By rights she should have lost fingertips and toes. By rights she should be dead. She understood that much from the nuns' whispers. When they spoke of the miracle of her survival, it did not strike her as hyperbole.
Haruko longed to write a poem. She had the time, and today the world overflowed with beauty. But she could not take it all in. Her clean, simple kimono, the writing materials before her, the food she had enjoyed, the icicles hanging from the roof, all conspired to overwhelm her.
She had not spoken of Yukiko since those first confused moments by the temple gate. The nuns seemed to dismiss her behavior as the result of fear and exhaustion, though they might as easily count her mad or possessed. Further references to Yukiko could only encourage the latter interpretations, so Haruko did not mention her friend.
And friend she had been, whatever her true nature. Bored with her hand, Haruko looked outside, admiring the winter sweet. It was a pity Yukiko could not see the garden, but Haruko suspected that temples were not to her liking. She hoped to see Yukiko again one day, though such a hope would seem madness to some, folk who would consider her lucky to have survived an encounter with a creature like Yukiko. Those people read too many romances and ghost stories, and forgot the realities of the world.
Haruko set brush to paper, hesitantly at first. She grew more confident as she wrote.
To my husband. It is my pleasure to be divorced from you, whether by your hand or the shogunate official's. There is no objection to your marrying anyone whomsoever. Witness my hand, Haruko.
It was not a poem. The calligraphy left something to be desired; she had to squeeze the characters together to make it fit into three and a half lines. A Heian princess would be shocked by the presentation and the content. But Haruko smiled.
For today, it was enough. Perhaps tomorrow she would write a poem.
© 2006 Megan Powell.
Some rights
reserved.
Original photograph © Tim Nation. Image from BigStock