Chapter 9
The turning point
The souko had been reorganised and dinner had been eaten. Kenji had retreated back to his room, his mind on the letter he'd found in the lacquered box. He'd been quick to close the lid, keeping his discovery from Tsubame. All his secrecy had probably been superfluous as the young woman had been too smitten by the silks to pay him any attention. At this very moment, she sat in her and Yahiko's room, the steamer trunk's content scattered all around her, her mind full of potential designs and uses. Kenji pulled down the sudare then lit three candles he placed in lanterns he'd found in storage. He positioned them so most of the floor would be lit. He opened the box and stared at the letter. He wanted nothing more than to read it, but he also feared its content. He didn't know the address, only that it was in another part of town, somewhere near imperial palace. Yet his father was the addressee. The postage was definitely foreign; he'd never seen that red design with the profile of a woman. In view of his behavior the last time he'd felt such agitation, he decided to set the unopened letter aside for the moment. He took the cards from the box and placed the grabbing cards down on the mat. He picked the first reading card.
This is it! This place
we come to and we go from
Kenji searched the cards in front of him, the next three lines clear in his head. He soon found them.
in constant parting
acquaintances and strangers
at the gate of Meeting Hill
He smiled. He still got it. Satisfied, he read the next card. For the best part of an hour, he played a solitary game of Uta garuta. With each card, memories of long gone rainy afternoons came back to him. He heard Yahiko and Sanosuke argue over who had found the card first – the wrong one, most of the time. He saw Megumi and Tsubame's focused faces, scanning the cards. He smelled his mother's perfume as she leaned forward to grab a card. He felt his father's strong arm as the man held him in his lap, reaching for cards Kenji pointed at. This last memory jolted him back to reality. He looked at the tatami in front of him. Only one card left, yet he didn't have anymore reading cards. He looked at the oshi-ire. He'd tucked away his morning find in it. He stood up, retrieved the card from the pages of the Dutch bible and sat back down.
Quiet and serene
The sound of...
He picked up the card off the floor.
...a cicada
Seeps into the rock
The one incongruent haiku in a collection of tankas. He remembered now. After witnessing his father's and Sanosuke's altercation, the grabbing card had gone missing, the haiku never to be played. He'd soon tired of the game and forgotten all about it. What bothered Kenji the most, however, was this jaring recollection of his father holding him. Was there any possibility that he had remembered wrong? And if this had really happened, had it been a special occasion or a common occurrence? Regardless, the memory had come with a warm feeling of joy. In that moment, he'd been happy. Anxiety weighed down on his stomach. His eyes fell on the letter. Did he really want to add to his confusion? He reached out for the envelope, his desire to know trumping everything else.
15 September, 1890
Amsterdam
Kenshin,
Please forgive me for imposing this unrequested present on you. Ai was adamant in sharing these beautiful silks with you and your family. I hope you will not be burdened by it and that your wife will make good use of them. I thank you for your latest favor. I will reply properly very soon. In the meantime, I pray you will take good care of yourself. Do not allow the weight of the world to crush you.
Your devoted friend,
Iribe Yumiko
Kenji had never heard of such a person. Although this letter added more confusion, it also gave away a lot. This woman had known his father intimately enough not to use any suffixes after his name. She had also known about his mother. Most importantly, she was connected to that Ai of the pictures. He went to the oshi-ire and grabbed all his finds, both from his parent's room, the souko and other sources. He found Ai's picture in men's clothes and set it in front of him. Meiji year 18. Then, he took the letter and placed to the right. 1890, Meiji year 23. He moved on to the locket and paired it with the tattered picture; he set them to the left. Thus, taking one item after the other and placing it in front of him, he attempted to create a timeline of his father's life. He stood against the shoji and took it all the very left, his father's old clothes opened the tale; to the the extreme right, the letter closed it. In-between, newspaper clippings, broadsheets, the bible, a few pictures and the uta garuta haiku told disconnected parts of the story he could hardly piece together.
"Did you find all this today?"
Kenji started. He turned to see Tsubame's shadowy face through the sudare. He lifted it up, inviting her in. Pointing at the different items, he explained how and where he'd found them. The young woman sat in seiza next to Kenshin's old garments. Kenji joined her.
"I don't think I've seen Kenshin wear those. That blue scarf, I have never seen either."
Kenji's heart sank. He had hoped she would be able to explain them.
"There are weird stains on them. Like… Like blood."
She frowned and gestured towards the hakama. May I? Kenji nodded. Gingerly, she unfolded the piece of clothing and moved closer to the lantern. She meticulously inspect the fabric. She turned to Kenji.
"Definitely blood. I've cleaned enough from Yahiko's clothes. These stains are old. Your father most likely wore them during the Bakumatsu."
Kenji held his breath. Would she reveal more? She folded the hakama yet left it in her lap. She stared at it for a moment, deep in thoughts. Her face puckered as if she was trying to solve a complex conundrum. Then, quite suddenly, she snapped to attention and turned to the young man anew.
"I swore to Kenshin, to your father, that I would never reveal anything of his past to you. He made all of us swear when you were about five. You had started asking candid questions about everything. Your father's scar especially fascinated you. So I promised. We all promised."
"Except Sanosuke."
She frowned, confused.
"The Basho haiku in the uta garuta game, it made me remember something." He told her what he had seen and heard.
"I see," she said, pensive. "It explains a lot. I had always suspected something had happened. Sanosuke left for China around that time without so much as a goodbye. We didn't see him for the best part of the last ten years. He and Kenshin had always been so close… This must have rattled both of them. Regardless, if Sanosuke didn't swear at that moment, he definitely did when he rescued your father shortly before he came back to Japan. But that doesn't matter now. What I want to say is that I don't think it's right. I think you have a right to know those things."
Kenji heart rate increased so much he feared she could hear it.
"You will tell me about my father?"
She nodded with resolve.
"You have to understand that I don't know much. Yahiko, who usually tells me everything, has remained uncharacteristically silent on the topic. Probably because he knew I would eventually tell you; my disagreement with this charade was always clear between us. Anyway, so here is what I can tell you. Kenshin fought on the Ishin Shishi's side during the civil war. This is why the Meiji government kept asking him for help. He was about your age when he joined. I don't know what his exact role was, but judging by those old clothes, it is safe to assume he killed people."
I brought out the killer in him. Kenji shuddered. The policeman hadn't been lying then.
"This shouldn't surprise you, Kenji. It was war: people killed each other daily."
Kenji shook his head.
"I'm not surprised. I just never really associated my father with the brutality of that period. But how? How could he kill anyone with a sakabato?"
"From what I gathered, he got the reversed blade after the civil war was over. He wanted to atone and help people without ever killing again. So your father roamed Japan and assisted people in need. He vagabonded for ten years until he ended up in Tokyo and met your mother."
"Ten years?" asked Kenji. His father's resourcefulness suddenly made so much more sense. He couldn't help but feel admiration.
"Yes. I'm not too clear on how your parents met. Seems he helped her restore the dojo's name. Yahiko doesn't have all the details either. What is clear is that once Kaoru had her hooks in Kenshin, she made sure he wouldn't get away. Although he almost did."
She pointed at the broadsheet on Okubo's assassination and told Kenji what she knew of the Kenshin-gumi's misadventures in Kyoto, closing the story with the clipping of the fire and destruction of a temple complex outside the old capital. The young man was entranced by the story. The behaviors of his relatives and friends clashed with what he knew of them. He also had newfound respect for Yahiko.
"I don't understand why he wouldn't want me to know all this," he couldn't dissimulate the pain in his voice.
Tsubame looked down at the hakama in her lap, then turned to Kenji.
"Think about it, Kenji. Now that you know a little, what is it you want?"
He didn't need to think about it.
"I want to know more, of course."
She returned Kenshin's old garment to its protective paper.
"Exactly. Your father was a man of a few words. He only ever shared information about himself when the situation called for it. Obviously there were things he didn't want anyone to know." She looked at the foreign objects. "And judging by that letter, he even kept things from your mother."
"But why?"
She shrugged.
"Because whatever it was, it hurt too much, I suppose. Because he wanted you to have a life free of the burdens of war."
They both sat quietly for a moment, lost in thoughts. Tsubame reached across Kenji and picked up the letter. She flipped the envelope. There was a clear return address to the Netherlands.
"Now if I were you, I would write to that Iribe Yumiko. No one sends over a thousand yens' worth of silks to a complete stranger. And no one hides such riches without a good reason. This woman might have answers none of us could give you."
NOTE
The title of this chapter, The turning point, refers to the third line of a tanka, also called pivot. This line is used to join the two different parts of the story a poem tells. For example, in Kenji's game of uta garuta, the tanka reads:
This is it! This place
we come to and we go from
in constant parting
acquaintances and strangers
at the gate of Meeting Hill
Both
This is it! This place
we come to and we go from
in constant parting
and
in constant parting
acquaintances and strangers
at the gate of Meeting Hill
make sense on their own, but together they tell a bigger story. In the context of Kenji's life, Yumiko's letter is the pivot.