The Samurai's Daughter Read online

  “What manner of sword are those your father carries?” Francisco asked.

  “Samurai swords,” I replied.

  “And what, pray, are samurai?” he asked, adjusting his frilly cuffs in a manner that looked like a gesture he had learned to imitate.

  “Samurai are Japanese nobles and warriors,” I said. “And two of those swords are mine.”

  He seemed both shocked and intimidated, which pleased me. Then Father appeared and asked me to come with him back into the drawing room.

  Rosario was sitting at the end of a large settee covered in thick burgundy velvet. She held a lace handkerchief, damp from tears, with both hands. Her beautiful dark eyes were still tinged with red. Otherwise, she seemed composed and appeared to be relieved, and she evinced an expression of hope and curiosity. The head of a bull, and two sets of antlers that had belonged to some species of mountain goat, hung on the wall behind her. A Persian carpet was on the floor in front of her, separating the settee from the two plush armchairs Father and I sat in. I remembered learning how the weavers of those carpets, so rich and complex in their design, always left a thread loose somewhere, so as not to commit a sin of pride, negating perfection, a state only permitted to Allah. I thought it was really a superstition that attempted to keep misfortune at bay.

  “Rosario has told me many things,” Father said, “some of them sad, some of them wondrous. But there is one thing that requires our setting out for Sevilla immediately.”

  “Surely you can spend the night,” Rosario said. “Both of you must be exhausted. We might all of us leave at first light in our carriage.”

  Father considered it for a moment and then consented. “All right,” he said. “That would be most kind.”

  Then he looked at me and continued. “Your Spanish grandfather, Don Rodrigo, and your half-brother died some years ago.”

  I looked at him, over to her, and then back at him again. In truth the news had little effect on me.

  “Caitríona is alive and living in Sevilla,” he said. “She gave birth to a son named Patrick, and then went on to marry your mother’s brother Carlos, and has had a daughter with him.”

  “So I have a half-brother who is alive,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you have a son.”

  “Yes,” he replied, “a boy just four years younger than you.”

  I was not sure, in that moment, how I felt about this revelation. I suppose I feared the intrusion of a rival for the affection I had always taken for granted, and received exclusively, a rival in the form of a half-brother, the half-brother’s mother, and then the woman sitting across from us.

  “I thought my mother’s brother was a priest,” I said, in an attempt to ignore all of this news.

  “He was,” Rosario said, “or almost. But then he changed his mind.”

  I looked at her and did my best to smile. “Is there more?” I asked, assuming this to be the reason that, for some reason, necessitated the hurried journey to Sevilla.

  “Yes,” Father said.

  I looked at him and prepared myself.

  “Your Spanish grandmother, Inmaculada, is still alive and well, and so, it seems, is Doña Soledad Medina, your great-aunt.”

  I felt a little faint, without knowing why. I felt like crying, without knowing why.

  “She is very old,” Rosario said, speaking to me gently, “and bedridden, and she has not spoken to anyone for over two years.”

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Close to ninety,” she replied.

  I looked down at the carpet, searching for the loose thread.

  “She is still waiting for us,” I said.

  – XXX –

  My first trip to Sevilla, in Rosario’s elegant but termite ravaged carriage. The heat. Hills the color of lions. Stubborn, dark cork trees. Narrow streams. Pink and white oleanders lining the riverbeds. Francisco’s furtive stares. The evening arrival at the city gates. The swallows racing through the sky as we crossed the Guadalquivir River—the river my mother and I had been baptized in.

  We went straight to the Casa de Pilatos, and there I met my grandmother, Inmaculada, my other Mizuki, so different and yet similar in bearing. I saw parts of myself in her as we looked at each other, before she grasped me and cried. She embraced Father for the first time in her life. I met Caitríona again, who fainted immediately upon seeing us, and who might well have cracked her skull on the marble tiles had Father not rushed to catch her. She, too, was beautiful, with freckles and strong auburn hair. The emotions were intense. They ricocheted off the walls and the statues. It was almost too much for everyone.

  When Caitríona revived and recovered, even as she was unable to take her eyes off Father and me, there was much discussion among the women as to how to prepare Doña Soledad for our appearance. My grandmother Inmaculada feared the shock might kill her. Caitríona worried she might not recognize us at all, being too far gone from the world, for too long a time. Father cut through the knot of feminine doubt, taking me by the wrist, and leading me directly up a grand flight of stairs, the adjacent walls covered with paintings. He brought me into the master bedroom suite.

  A maid sat in an anteroom doing needlepoint. She was surprised and embarrassed by our sudden appearance, apologizing and clumsily trying to hide her needles and threads. Father ignored her as I smiled at her. He almost dragged me into Doña Soledad’s boudoir.

  And there she was, illuminated by thick candles, propped up on wide pillows in a nightgown. Her hands, almost translucent, rested atop a crisp coverlet. She might have been dead. She resembled the cadaver of an old woman I once saw in Sendai. But then she blinked, and though it was labored and sometimes noisy, she breathed. Father, wisely and to my surprise, said nothing to her. He sat on the edge of the bed, up close to her and, reaching over her, patted a space on the other side of her, indicating where I should sit.

  At first her gaze did not alter, for her watery eyes were open, directed at the ceiling. I looked up and saw a series of dark beams inlaid with bits of ivory that formed an intricate design, an Islamic text of some sort. We sat there for a minute or two, while my grandmother Inmaculada and Caitríona and Rosario entered the room, hovering back by the doorway. Father was patient. It was as if he knew what would happen, while the rest of us, including the maid who crept up behind the other ladies, waited in dubious anticipation.

  And then, all of a sudden, her eyes went from staring at the ceiling to staring at Father’s face. I could see she was examining him. Then she took his hand, and in a very small voice, she asked him, “Am I dreaming?”

  I could feel the astonishment and the emotions of the women in the doorway at hearing her speak, and it flowed into me as well.

  “No, Señora,” father said. “We are here, with you.”

  Then she looked at me and gasped, a gasp that stirred her entire fragile being, and she began to cry. She tried to lean forward. She released Father’s hand and grabbed both of mine in both of hers. Her grip was strong.

  “Is it you, dear?” she asked. “Solete?”

  “Yes, Aunt,” I replied, crying now myself. “It is I.”

  Father helped her to lean forward. She was light, like a bird. She could not take her eyes from me, nor was I able to avert my gaze from her. Letting go of one of my hands, she felt my hair that barely reached my shoulders. She felt my forehead, my cheeks and neck. She felt my breasts. Father moved her toward me, and I took hold of her, almost as if she were a child. She was sobbing, and so were the others. I held her and rocked her the smallest amount, terrified I might break a fragile bone.

  “You’re alive,” she said through her tears. “You’ve come home.”

  Father retreated, and the women of the house gathered round the bed and joined in the conversation, demonstrating a solidarity that, with the exception of some tensions here and there over the following months, managed to endure. The maid brought everyone bowls of a clear, hot soup, and we stayed with my great-aunt until s
he fell asleep. The other women encouraged me to lay my head next to hers for the night, and they brought in my nightgown and another coverlet. I blew out all of the candles save for one and lay there in the darkness, listening to this woman who was so close to me and yet such a stranger. Eventually I too succumbed to slumber.

  I woke in the middle of the night and realized again how selfish I had been. Father knew this woman well, had lived with her and my mother during some of the happiest months of his life. It had cost him a great deal to leave her and then cost him more—much more than I have attempted to describe—to return. She, like I—more than I in a way—was living proof of a past that was important to him. Nevertheless, he had devoted all his charm and energy that evening toward handing me back to her. I had not thought about, or asked, how he might be feeling. And he had still to meet his son.

  As these thoughts wound their way through me, my aunt turned and found me there. She looked better in the dim light.

  “How good of you to have stayed here with me,” she said in a stronger version of the Sevillano accent I had learned.

  “Father didn’t want you to wake and worry that perhaps you had made it all up.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m fine. It’s lovely here.”

  “When last we saw each other, you were barely two. You could barely talk. Now you’re a beautiful young woman. I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “Many things got in the way.”

  “But you are all right.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And you are Japanese now.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you smell like your mother.”

  “I do? Is it a good smell?”

  “My dear, it is the best scent in this world.”

  “What is it like?” I asked, rolling over onto my stomach to get a better look at her. I felt like a child again.

  “It is a mixture of things,” she said, thinking about it. “Orange blossom. Boxwood. A touch of grapefruit rind. Wet dogs.”

  “Wet dogs?”

  “Few things smell better than a dog come in from the rain, after it shakes itself.”

  I giggled when she said this, and the noise of my giggle pleased her.

  “You were there when I was born, no, Aunt? When Mother died.”

  “It was the saddest day of my life,” she said, “and one of the reasons I love you so.”

  Carefully, I squeezed her hand.

  “How can you love me,” I said, “if you do not know me?”

  “Are you a wicked girl?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you love your father?”

  “Very much.”

  “Then that, and who your mother was, is all I need to know. Will you let me take care of you, for the little time I have left?”

  “You mustn’t leave me now,” I said. “Now that I’ve finally arrived.”

  “I shall do my best.”

  Her room was so big, the house was so big, and the enclosed garden below so vast, it was hard to believe we were surrounded by a city.

  “Tell me,” she said, “what did they call you in Japan?”

  “Masako.”

  “Masako,” she said, repeating it just as I had pronounced it. “Does it mean anything?”

  “It means something like … a proper child.”

  “There. You see? You cannot be wicked with a name like that. Is that what I should call you?”

  “My first name was Soledad María. Father always said I was named after you.”

  “That you were. Do you know what it means, Soledad?”

  “Lonely, or loneliness.”

  “Sí. Perhaps it’s too sad a name for you.”

  “I’ve been Masako for as long as I can remember.”

  “So that is what we shall call you.”

  I thought about it. I thought about what all of this might mean to her.

  “You can call me however you wish,” I said.

  “Then I shall call you Solete,” she said. “Which could also mean something like a small sun, a little star in the heavens.”

  – XXXI –

  Members of the Fugger family—my great-aunt’s German bankers—and a notary were summoned the following morning. They were shown directly to her bedroom. I could see by their body language, nervous tics, coat and belt adjustments, beard preening and such, that they were both pleased and intimidated to be there. What probably began as an ordinary, sedentary day for them had been transformed into an event they would impress colleagues with for a long time afterward.

  Documents relating to my inheritance were retrieved, presented, reviewed, and re-ratified in the presence of witnesses who read and signed them. My grandmother Inmaculada and Rosario hovered about like guardian angels. The ceremony made me uncomfortable, but my aunt told me, as we were waiting for the three rotund men, that she wished for people to see her in her right mind certifying what she had put into writing when I was two. “The only sin in Sevilla more prevalent than envy is avarice,” she said. “Once I am gone, I will not be able to protect you, so I wish to make my intentions clear to everyone yet again.”

  Seeing as how I had reached the age of adulthood, Father was no longer included as a beneficiary. But I left everything in his hands. He was the only person in the world I trusted. He was not present that morning. He had more urgent business, meeting his son for the first time—my half-brother Patrick. Uncle Carlos was away in Granada, as he often was back then, hunting and spending time with his comrade Hermenegildo, and Hermenegildo’s strident wife, Ana María Angustias.

  Caitríona and my brother later told me how the meeting went. Patrick was fifteen years old then, handsome but timid, and he spent most of that first encounter staring at the floor. His eyes were Asian like mine, and there was a slight ochre tone to his smooth skin. Like his mother, he had freckles on his nose and cheeks. He was strong and tall. Reared as a Spanish gentleman, he was understandably confused by Father’s presence. All during his childhood Caitríona had told her son many things about Father’s exploits, the men he had killed, the friends he had made in high places—kings and dukes, the shogun and the pope—and she had emphasized how much of the Earth he had seen on his travels.

  My Uncle Carlos had done all he could to make his stepson embarrassed about his Asian heritage, to consider it a blemish he should endeavor to hide. His Spanish cousins and schoolmates made fun of him, and many elders spoke to him derisively. But there, all of a sudden on that morning, was the man he had always assumed to be dead, the samurai warrior wearing strange clothes and swords, with jet-black hair pulled back into a tight tail that curved upward. His father was a foreigner like no other, and un-Christian, the bastard who had made him a bastard as well.

  “I am so pleased to meet you,” Father said, rather stiffly, with a curt bow, very like him, though his eyes were moist with emotion.

  “And I you, sir,” my brother replied.

  “You’ve grown into an impressive young man,” Father said, patting my brother three times on the shoulder. The gesture made Patrick even more uncomfortable, and Father saw it, and retreated back into his shell. An awkward silence ensued. Father and son looked to Caitríona for assistance.

  “It will take time,” she said to them, “for you to come to know each other.”

  Father made a brief noise of assent the way Japanese men do.

  “He has grown up here in Sevilla,” Caitríona continued. “He has grown up believing, like me, that you were no longer in this world.”

  “I am not so easy to kill,” Father said.

  Part of that was bragging, part of it a simple fact. Caitríona blushed and looked away.

  “And I am a Christian, sir,” my brother then said.

  Father looked back at him.

  “Are you now?” he said. “That is logical. Living here among them, that is sensible. But now that I am back, I will teach you how to speak Japanese, and educate you about the other side of your soul.”

 
“I do not think I will be allowed to do that,” my brother said.

  “Who,” Father asked, “would prevent you from learning something so interesting?”

  “My father,” Patrick said. It just slipped out. Immediately, he realized how strange a thing it was to have uttered.

  “I am your father,” Father said.

  “Yes,” my brother replied. “I know. I am sorry. I meant Don Carlos.”

  “Don Carlos and I shall speak about this.”

  Once again, they both looked to Caitríona. But this time, mesmerized from watching the two of them together, face to face, she was the one at a loss for words.

  “Where was he born?” Father asked her gently.

  “In Sicily,” Caitríona replied.

  Then Father turned to my brother.

  “Your mother and I have much to talk about,” he said, bowing again.

  My brother did not bow back. He did not know what to do. He was eager to end the conversation. But then he thought of something.

  “Is it true,” he asked, “that you have slain many men with your sword?”

  Father looked at him for a few seconds before responding. Father later said it was then that he saw in the boy his own flesh and blood, and it overwhelmed him.

  “I have done what I had to,” Father replied. “Would you like to learn how to use this sword? I have already taught your sister.”

  Father drew his katana and showed it to the boy. Then he took a handkerchief from his kimono and tossed it up in the air. He used the sword to cut it into three pieces. My brother caught one of the strips as it floated to the ground.

  Caitríona and Father’s attentions were focused on their son that day. Some time would pass before I was able to ask her how it felt to be standing next to him again. Did they recall, during any of the moments they stood there with the bashful adolescent dressed like a Sevillano dandy, when and where they had made him? Father later told me how beautiful he found her, that she was even more beautiful than he remembered, that the intervening years had transformed her girlish air and granted her an even more compelling allure.