"Hearn,.Lian.-.Otori.01.-.Across.The.Nightingale.Floor.txt,.v3.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hearn Lian)

I was saved by the woman coming into the room. She knelt before Lady Maruyama and said quietly, "His lordship is looking for the boy."

"Ask him to come in," the lady replied. "And, Sachie, would you kindly bring the tea utensils?"

Lord Otori stepped into the room, and he and Lady Maruyama exchanged deep bows of respect. They spoke politely to each other like strangers, and she did not use his name, yet I had the feeling they knew each other well. There was a tension between them that I would understand later, but which then only made me more ill at ease.

"The maids told me about the boy who travels with you," she said. "I wished to see him for myself."

"Yes, I am taking him to Hagi. He is the only survivor of a massacre. I did not want to leave him to Sadamu." He did not seem inclined to say anything else, but after a while he added, "I have given him the name of Takeo."

She smiled at this--a real smile. "I'm glad," she said. "He has a certain look about him."

"Do you think so? I thought it too."

Sachie came back with a tray, a teakettle, and a bowl. I could see them clearly as she placed them on the matting, at the same level as my eyes. The bowl's glaze held the green of the forest, the blue of the sky.

"One day you will come to Maruyama to my grandmother's teahouse," the lady said. "There we can do the ceremony as it should be performed. But for now we will have to make do as best we can."

She poured the hot water, and a bittersweet smell wafted up from the bowl. "Sit up, Takeo," she said.

She was whisking the tea into a green foam. She passed the bowl to Lord Otori. He took it in both hands, turned it three times, drank from it, wiped the lip with his thumb, and handed it with a bow back to her. She filled it again and passed it to me. I carefully did everything the lord had done, lifted it to my lips, and drank the frothy liquid. Its taste was bitter, but it was clearing to the head. It steadied me a little. We never had anything like this in Mino: Our tea was made from twigs and mountain herbs.

I wiped the place I had drunk from and handed the bowl back to Lady Maruyama, bowing clumsily. I was afraid Lord Otori would notice and be ashamed of me, but when I glanced at him his eyes were fixed on the lady.

She then drank herself. The three of us sat in silence. There was a feeling in the room of something sacred, as though we had just taken part in the ritual meal of the Hidden. A wave of longing swept over me for my home, my family, my old life, but although my eyes grew hot, I did not allow myself to weep. I would learn to endure.

On my palm I could still feel the trace of Lady Maruyama's fingers.

***

The inn was far larger and more luxurious than any of the other places we had stayed during our swift journey through the mountains, and the food we ate that night was unlike anything I had ever tasted. We had eel in a spicy sauce, and sweet fish from the local streams, many servings of rice, whiter than anything in Mino, where if we ate rice three times a year we were lucky. I drank rice wine for the first time. Lord Otori was in high spirits--"floating," as my mother used to say--his silence and grief dispelled, and the wine worked its cheerful magic on me too.

When we had finished eating he told me to go to bed: He was going to walk outside a while to clear his head. The maids came and prepared the room. I lay down and listened to the sounds of the night. The eel, or the wine, had made me restless and I could hear too much. Every distant noise made me start awake. I could hear the dogs of the town bark from time to time, one starting, the others joining in. After a while I felt I could recognize each one's distinctive voice. I thought about dogs, how they sleep with their ears twitching and how only some noises disturb them. I would have to learn to be like them or I would never sleep again.

When I heard the temple bells toll at midnight, I got up and went to the privy. The sound of my own piss was like a waterfall. I poured water over my hands from the cistern in the courtyard and stood for a moment, listening.

It was a still, mild night, coming up to the full moon of the eighth month. The inn was silent: Everyone was in bed and asleep. Frogs were croaking from the river and the rice fields, and once or twice I heard an owl hoot. As I stepped quietly onto the veranda I heard Lord Otori's voice. For a moment I thought he must have returned to the room and was speaking to me, but a woman's voice answered him. It was Lady Maruyama.

I knew I should not listen. It was a whispered conversation that no one could hear but me. I went into the room, slid the door shut, and lay down on the mattress, willing myself to fall asleep. But my ears had a longing for sound that I could not deny, and every word dropped clearly into them.

They spoke of their love for each other, their few meetings, their plans for the future. Much of what they said was guarded and brief, and much of it I did not understand then. I learned that Lady Maruyama was on her way to the capital to see her daughter, and that she feared Iida would again insist on marriage. His own wife was unwell and not expected to live. The only son she had borne him, also sickly, was a disappointment to him.

"You will marry no one but me," he whispered, and she replied, "It is my only desire. You know it." He then swore to her he would never take a wife, nor lie with any woman, unless it were she, and he spoke of some strategy he had, but did not spell it out. I heard my own name and conceived that it involved me in some way. I realized there was a long-existing enmity between him and Iida that went all the way back to the battle of Yaegahara.

"We will die on the same day," he said. "I cannot live in a world that does not include you."

Then the whispering turned to other sounds, those of passion between a man and a woman. I put my fingers in my ears. I knew about desire, had satisfied my own with the other boys of my village, or with girls in the brothel, but I knew nothing of love. Whatever I heard, I vowed to myself I would never speak of it. I would keep these secrets as close as the Hidden keep theirs. I was thankful I had no voice.

I did not see the lady again. We left early the next morning, an hour or so after sunrise. It was already warm; monks were sprinkling water in the temple cloisters and the air smelled of dust. The maids at the inn had brought us tea, rice, and soup before we left, one of them stifling a yawn as she set the dishes before me, and then apologizing to me and laughing. It was the girl who had patted me on the arm the day before, and when we left she came out to cry, "Good luck, little lord! Good journey! Don't forget us here!"