CHAPTER FIFTEEN
井戸水
Well Water
Voices knifed through my slumber.
"Sanjō-san says… swooned over with no warning…"
"None at all? I find it hard to believe…"
"She looked tired, of course. They often do. I promise, we did nothing to…"
I opened my mouth to tell them they were being noisy, but I could not muster it. My eyelids weighed me down, the light blinding.
Slowly, I returned to my senses. I was in bed. I felt like I had gotten kicked in the ribs. I had a throbbing headache. If I wanted to, I could go back to sleep right now.
I practiced gripping and relaxing my hands, grabbing the rough linen of my dormitory bedding. Turning my head to the left, I squinted through my lashes. Nadeshiko was not in her bed. In her place was a woman in a kimono arguing with a man in a Western-style suit and thick coke-bottle glasses. He looked splendid, like a businessman from Ginza freshly out of an automobile. Standing slightly behind her was Sanjō-sensei, glasses flashing, arms crossed.
The sun was gone from the eastern window, but the sky outside was merely the soft grey of afternoon.
"She's awake," Sanjō said, eyes never missing anything.
"If it is alright with Fujisaki-san, I would like to examine her," said the man in the suit, picking up a leather bag.
I made no move to sit up as he strode towards me and pulled out his stethoscope. My favourite type of doctor was the kind that made jokes and pretended to miss my vein with the needle. If that wasn't available, I didn't mind the ones who treated me like a broken piece of machinery.
"What's your name, Miss?"
"Who is asking?" I replied, haughty.
The doctor blinked.
"Dr Ninomiya," he said. "I was called in to examine you after you fainted this morning. Do you remember?"
The last thing I remembered was Sanjō telling me to get into koto formation.
"No," I said, shakily.
"Do you know where you are?"
My hands caressed linen. "My room. School."
"Good. Your name…?"
"Mashiro."
"What is the date today?"
"The twelfth year of Shōwa," I said, sluggishly. "November… uh…"
He waited.
"How should I know?"
"We did not teach her to speak like that, Doctor," said Fujisaki-sensei, mortified. "I assure you."
"Mashiro-san," he said, "I am going to ask you to take off your shirt, if that is alright."
I struggled to sit up for what felt like an eternity. It was as though my spine refused to cooperate.
Cool, familiar hands guided me into a sitting position. I looked up. Nagihiko's mother was helping me. In the soft afternoon light, she looked nothing like the woman who had beat me until I bled.
I fumbled my arms through the sleeves, but it was my headmistress who gently pulled it over my head. I sat there in my chemise, exhausted. She gasped, pointing to my neck.
"Doctor, look at her chest!"
My head lolled forward. I saw the pink rash on my collarbone that had been there last night.
The doctor sighed, as if this was what he expected. He checked both my arms until he found my smallpox vaccine scar. He felt my forehead and the sides of my neck. He put the stethoscope to my chest and instructed me to take deep breaths while he listened to my lungs. The stethoscope went over my heart. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
"Headache?"
I nodded.
"Muscle ache?"
I nodded.
"Chills?"
I nodded.
"Exhaustion?"
I nodded.
"Sore throat?"
I shook my head.
"Appetite?"
I had to think about it.
"None," I said. My head was swimming. "I didn't have dinner."
"Diarrhoea?"
I looked disgusted, but my stomach gurgled threateningly. "No."
"Fujisaki-san," the doctor asked grimly. "Where does your water come from?"
"A well system," she responded, looking pale. "Separate from the village's. Surely you cannot be suggesting…"
"Has she prepared food, any time in the past two weeks?"
Sanjo sucked in her breath. "She was on dinner preparation last night."
Fujisaki-sensei moaned in despair. "It cannot be!"
"It may not," said Dr Ninomiya, folding his stethoscope, "Until I do a Widal test, I cannot give a definitive answer. She is certainly running a fever. I will need to take a blood sample."
He took out a wooden box from his bag. I craned my neck. Two blue glass vials, corked. A silver rack on which a series of smaller glass tubes were positioned. A syringe: the size of a chenille needle, at least. Was it just me, or was it bigger than I remembered?
"You are not putting that thing in me," I said, numbly.
"She's not in her right mind," said Fujisaki-sensei, apologetically.
"Completely delusional," Sanjō added, holding down my other arm. When Dr Ninomiya wasn't looking, she shot me a glare.
If I had more strength, I would have aimed a kick in at Sanjō. As it was, I lay there limply while the needle pricked the inside of my arm and filled with dark fluid.
Would I die in my school of all places? Would my vengeful ghost join the Fujisaki clan's ancestors, haunting the forest on the hill? Nadeshiko would probably love that.
"Oh, Rima-san," she'd say, reaching longingly for my legless see-through body or whatever. "How gaunt and beautiful you look in your burial kimono!"
I smiled and giggled. Fujisaki-sensei pressed her hands to her mouth. "She's hysterical already!"
"Leave her to rest," the doctor urged. "I do not want to distress her further."
I saw him take Fujisaki-sensei's arm and lead her away, speaking to her in a low voice. I craned my neck, but the plaster did not serve well to eavesdropping.
"Block off all... disinfectant... water will be..."
The water, I thought. What will happen to the poor well system? I leaned back against the pillows, listening to my shallow breaths.
Imagining water steadily dripping to the floor calmed me. The inside of my arm was still throbbing in tune to the rest of my body, even though it was bandaged up. I lay in bed, listening to the muffled voices of Dr Ninomiya and my teachers. If I strained my ears enough, the words only got fuzzier. It sounded like a creek splashing over rocks. Soon, it was raining outside.
Lovely, I thought. The well water was delightfully cool. I kicked my legs in it, feeling the steady drips down my shoulders. Why had I feared it so much? It was safe down here. Dark. Cold. I tread water, looking up. As it filled, I could simply float to the top. But then what? I thought. Where would I go?
The well was filling too quickly, and my mouth began to fill with water.
"Stop it," I said, as though the water would obey me, but my mouth was full. "No!"
My voice echoed back at me from the bottom of the well. No... no... no...
I was drenched. My legs were stuck to each other, and my hair glued grossly to the back of my neck. When I opened my eyes, there was blackness. It was the same whether I opened or shut them.
I let out a pitiful cry. I really was dead. Why did this happen to me? I tried to crawl out of bed and walk into the woods to start haunting my classmates, but my legs were bound in place. Was I stuck in my tomb? How could they have let this happen? The first thing I would do was find Sanjō and rip her perm out.
My arms flailed wildly, groping cool porcelain. Slowly, I felt along the smooth surface, breaths subsiding. It was a pitcher. It swam ghostly grey in front of the blackness of my vision, and I could have cried with relief. Water. The moment I saw it, I felt thirsty. My tongue was coated with something thick and viscous.
My ankles were tangled up in the covers I had unsuccessfully kicked off, but now the cold was setting in. My teeth chattered, and I unsuccessfully tried to pick up the pitcher to pour myself a drink. My arms were shaking too much. I decided to simply tilt the pitcher towards me and drink out of it. What did it matter, if I was sick? The water sloshed down my chin.
The water was surprisingly hot, but my headache subsided. I wheezed for breath and felt up and down the front of my damp nightgown. Who changed me? I wondered. It was probably Sanjō or Fujisaki-sensei.
I felt a swell of confused gratitude, followed by a deeper wave of chills. Every joint in my body was shaking. I tried to bury myself under the covers, but the cold was under the covers, too, poking at me with icy fingers. If I curled into a ball and put my head under the covers, maybe I would warm up faster.
I did not warm up faster. I remembered that Nagihiko's bed was close enough to touch. From under the covers, I stretched out a hand, feeling for it. Not enough. Half-hanging out of the bed, I grabbed a fistful of his covers and pulled. And pulled again.
After what felt like hours of tugging, I felt the whole thing come free of its mattress, slithering along the floor. Triumphant, I rolled over, cocooning myself in them.
It only occurred to me later that I might have stolen covers off a sleeping person. But this worry was for nothing. By the light of morning, I saw that Nagihiko had been moved out of my room. I was alone next to an empty bed, in sickbay quarantine.
Ironic. The room he once fought to have to himself was now mine alone.
In those coming days, the fever dreams long stopped resembling anything that made sense. I closed my eyes and saw dizzying shapes, colours, motion. I roared through wormholes at quintillion miles an hour, heard shouting in languages I couldn't understand. I rocked from side to side on bottomless ships sailing amorphous seas and fell from vast heights.
Sometimes, I woke up. It was mostly during the night-time. I would gulp down water and return to my fevered sleep. Sometimes the water was sweet. Other times it tasted nutty, as though something had been dissolved in it.
When I woke up during the day, someone would be watching me. The first time, it was Sanjō. I was hot again and kicked the multiple layers of blankets off me.
"It's been two days," Sanjō said, nodding towards a bowl on my bedside table. "There's rice porridge. If you need to go, use the chamber pot by your bed. Don't get up to use the toilet."
I nodded. I couldn't have gotten up and walked the eight steps to the bath if I tried. I stared at the rice gruel. I stared at the chamber pot.
My stomach heaved. I vomited directly into it.
Shortly after I threw up, something like my cramps began, only worse. My whole abdomen was in rebellion, whether it was from lack of food, or sheer infection.
Dr Ninomiya returned two, three, maybe four days after the vomiting. I hadn't done it again, but I could not tolerate food without gagging. As though laughing at my agony, I had a death-rattle cough on top of abdominal pain. Every time I dry-coughed, my diaphragm and entire intestine seized up in soreness.
"Give me something for the pain," I croaked in Dr Ninomiya's direction. "What are you, some kind of quack?"
"Is she always like this?" Dr Ninomiya asked Sanjō. "Or is it just when she's ill?"
"No, she's just like this," said Sanjō, sounding tired.
Dr Ninomiya paused, evaluating me.
"The first week is the hardest," he said, finally. "If she hasn't improved, I'll give her laudanum. She's by far the worst of all of them. Have you written to her mother?"
I dissolved back to the blissful darkness of troubled sleep, where I couldn't suffer. I hoped I could die quietly and not interrupt my Mother's work in the factory.
I grew sick of fever dreams, if that was possible. I grew dizzy at howling through wind tunnels, the nightmares of being drowned, of lurching on ships. Rice gruel lasted a half-hour in my body, at best, and I grew sick of that too. Rather than grow thin, my stomach distended and grew painful to even brush by accident.
"This is Hell," I uttered in a rare moment of lucidity, not caring what teacher heard me. I lacked the energy to do anything but lie immobile, staring straight ahead. I could not muster the effort to open my eyes all the way. My dry mouth formed the words, barely exuding any sound:
"I want to be well, or hurry up and die already."
Fujisaki-sensei bloomed into my line of sight, picking the dead begonia petals off the nightstand. I stared vacantly ahead through half-lidded eyes, not even caring that she was my headmistress and I ought to be more respectful.
My chest rose and fell shallowly. Below it, my heart pounded a beat later than it should have. Thump-… thump. Thump… thump.
"You will live," she said. "You are far stronger."
"Than what?" I croaked.
"Than an elderly woman," said Fujisaki-sensei, returning to Nadeshiko's lap-desk. Her face turned away from me, into shadow. "Or an infant."
She sat on her knees just like Nadeshiko did, back straight, feet tilted just so. I suddenly longed to hug my own mother.
These were the last words I spoke for the next two days. I was dimly conscious of the waking world in the half-collected way one remembers dreams. It was easier in the mornings. Like clockwork, enteric fever would rise steadily through the afternoon until my legs trembled and my temperature spiked. I disconnected from my vegetative body and lived only in the roar of colour when I closed my eyes.
The only thing that kept me tethered to this earth was pain. Sanjō was frustrated; Fujisaki-sensei haunted, but Dr Ninomiya was scientifically grim.
"39 degrees," he said, watching my pupils slow to dilate when he moved the lamp close. "It makes no difference if we move her now."
I woke up one evening to voices outside once more. I was in a perpetual state of sticky sweatiness. If I could operate a pair of scissors, I would have sawed all my hair off to stop it from smothering my neck in my sleep.
I felt immensely better— retrospectively a bad sign. I could move my arms. I rubbed my hands against the bedspread, rolling up the lint with my fingertips. It felt good.
"... currently in such condition... unreasonable..."
"Please!" a woman's voice begged. "I just want to see if she's awake!"
The door opened. My eyes swivelled in their stationary sockets.
"Mama?" I said, scarcely able to believe my eyes.
"Rima?" my mother said, voice constricted. "It's me."
I stretched out my hand, and she took it, fingers cool and dry against my damp, hot hands. She smelled wonderful, like sweetness and springtime. It almost made me forget how much I hurt.
"You shouldn't have come," I coughed, trying to sit up. She held a hand to my shoulder, firmly.
"Lie down. You need your strength."
"What about the factory, what about the overseer, you can't leave it now, but..." I thought I might be crying. "I'm happy you're here. I'm sorry I'm such an inconvenience."
I was babbling, like a madman. "You should have had a son. Then I could take care of you, and you wouldn't have to send me away, and Father wouldn't have left us, and I wouldn't get sick. I could marry a nice girl that you liked. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"Shhh," she said soothingly. There was silk blend brushing my eyes, wiping the tears away. "Rima-chan, don't say such things. You're not an inconvenience. I wouldn't ever have you any other way. Do you understand me?"
My head fell back against the pillows. Bright lights were dancing in front of my eyes, like will o'the wisps.
"Beautiful," I murmured. I reached to touch one with my free hand. "See the little lights... like fairies."
My fingers tightened on my mother's wrist. I wanted to keep her here forever, selfishly.
"Are you going to stay?" I whispered to the twinkling white lights, swirling in mesmerizing a kaleidoscope. "Please stay, just for a little while."
"Of course." Her hand was brushing my bangs off my hot forehead. Her fingers lingered, and something silky slithered across my neck. "If you want me to."
"I want you to," I squeezed her hand, and drifted back into the sea of sleep. A whirlwind of stars trailed after me.
"She thinks I'm her mother," a muffled voice called down from the surface of the well.
"Confusion and delirium," a watery response echoed down through the bricks. "It's common at this stage."
I drifted over the roaring falls of Sandankyō Gorge. My clothes and hair fanned out in my wake, waving like pennants.
The full moon hung in the sky, framing the thin, twisted young trees of the forest in silvery white light. The mulch was coated in a thin layer of frozen dew, but my feet did not feel the cold. I glided wherever I wished, through gnarled branches, over bubbling creeks. Here in the thick forest cover of Aki Province, I tumbled and freewheeled through the thick red and orange leaves. With a skip and a jump, I burst through the tree cover and into the star-spangled sky, giddy with freedom. Doll-like lanterns of village fires sprawled out below me.
Here, I wasn't sick, wasn't bed-bound. I was the winter goose overhead, free to roost anywhere I wanted. I gulped lungfuls of cold air. It coursed through my heated blood. But I couldn't waste time; I had business here. I alighted on the edge of a Chūgoku Mountain pass.
He waited for me astride a horse, in the flowing hakama and towering black hat of aristocracy. Above the rich purple sleeves, his high cheekbones carved out veins of steel, immobile in his age. He said nothing: only regarded me warily, as though he knew why I had come. So difficult to read, I thought, annoyed. As expected.
He could have shot an arrow at me and wouldn't have missed. I instinctively knew he was one of the best archers in the Imperial Guard. I bowed deeply, forehead nearly touching my knees. When I straightened, he remained unmoved.
So be it. I needed no man's permission to take what was mine. Walking on air, I came closer.
I brushed close enough to feel the silk brocade of the horseman's sleeve, the sweat and heaving of the beast's sides. But something was wrong: neither breath was making vapor, despite the cold. When I looked up at the horse's eyes, I found empty, gaping sockets.
The man opened his wasted mouth, and a thousand black spiders began crawling out. A million thousand legs were tickling every inch of my skin. They were all over my arms, pouring out of my blood-drawing wound and vaccine scar, crawling into my ears with a horrible rattle.
I looked down and realized I had no legs. I was in the white burial kimono. I was dead. They were here to eat my corpse.
I screamed at the treetops.
I woke up clawing my still-sore throat, scream still in my ears. It was night, but the room was tinged with gold from an oil lamp on the windowsill. Nadeshiko leapt to her feet, putting her book down.
"Rima!" she cried, clutching her chest. "You gave me a fright."
I drank her in like a man dying of thirst. She was dressed comfortably. A vertical-striped kimono in muted colours, a padded winter haori. Her fringe was mussed, but her face glowed in the lamplight.
"Nagihiko?" I whispered through my raw throat. "You look... good."
"Yes, it's me," Nagihiko said, sounding relieved. "Th-thank you?"
I let him turn my pillows over, staring hazily up at the familiar ceiling. Always changing colours, plaster shadows moving with the sun.
"I was a ghost," I said, faintly. "In the forest... and I saw... I saw your great-grand-uncle..."
"What?" he said, amused. I heard the clink of the pitcher. "A dream about that old story?"
I turned my head to the side. Nagihiko was turning the cup of water in his palm, tucking his hair behind his ear to expose the fine curve of his jaw. Beautiful, I thought, dimly. Too beautiful to lose. To beautiful to have.
"His horse had no eyes," I said, reliving it all behind my eyelids every time I blinked. I coughed. "Spiders..."
Nagihiko sucked in his breath.
"Really?" he said eagerly, in a go-on! sort of voice. Then he remembered that he wasn't listening to a ghost story.
"Try not to think about it," he cautioned me. "It was probably only an opium nightmare. Drink some water."
I licked my dry lips, which felt encrusted in dry sand. There was a startling moment of clarity, as though the clouds had parted over my fevered mind.
"Why are you doing this?" I whispered.
Nagihiko stopped mid-pour.
"You don't remember," he said, more to himself than to me. "You asked me to stay."
Watching Nadeshiko's domestic figure, I was grateful I had. In the soft light of evening, her lashes cast long shadows over her white cheeks, and the corners of her mouth deepened into a shy smile despite herself.
"Here," she said, holding the cup out. "Drink."
Obediently, I lowered my eyes and pursed my lips. I waited.
"Well?" I said, huffily.
A hesitant thumb and forefinger touched my face, tilting my chin up. Cold porcelain pressed against my lower lip. I opened my mouth as much as I was able, violently thirsty.
"That's enough."
The cup broke away from my mouth. I looked disappointedly up at Nagihiko, water dripping down my chin.
"Do you think I had to ask his permission?" I said suddenly, gazing at the door to the bath. If I closed my eyes, I could still see spiders. "As head of the family?"
"Rima-chan," Nagihiko said, hesitantly. "I'm not sure I understand you."
"Do you think Amu saw it, too?" I said, horrified. "Or did he let her through? Was it only me he stopped? Am I not…"
"Amu-chan came and sat with you earlier today," he said, slowly. "Don't you remember?"
I shook my head. My head lolled to follow Nagihiko's progress around my bed.
"Amu-chan…" I murmured.
Nagihiko gave his typical nervous laugh. "She has a good heart."
"We love that about her, don't we," I mused, feeling myself slip away again.
Nagihiko stopped.
"We do," he said.
"You and me," I said, eyes burning into his. "Are aloof and impossible to get close to. So we crave kindness, no matter how fickle it is. Isn't life disappointing?"
I couldn't hear footsteps, or even breathing. I felt like I was pushing on that bathroom door again. I intruded because more than anybody else on this earth, I understood. I wish I didn't.
"You should ask for more," I said, closing my eyes. I was in the well again, deep inside the earth. The rain had stopped.
"More?" came Nagihiko's voice.
"You deserve someone who will notice how much you do for others," I said softly, bells ringing in my ears. "And will love you for it. Not Amu. Amu will never notice. I know, because I also hoped for her… Once…"
I surrendered to the water with a shudder.
