TOGETHERNESS




While Saburo-sama was Inu’s first husband, she was not his first wife. Everyone knew. Just as everyone in their neighbourhood had known Mimi, his first wife, a well-liked and friendly woman and Saburo-sama’s childhood sweetheart. Thus, everyone had also paid their respects and grieved his loss, when Mimi – along with the boy she had been carrying – died in labour. After only five years of marriage. She had been Inu’s age. Saburo-sama had been 32.

That was a decade ago. No one had truly expected, after this long, that he would marry again.

When he in his gentle, unintrusive way, had started courting Inu, her father had been so surprised, he’d refused to believe it for months on end. He’s only being polite; it’s because I always give him a discount on the lacquer we use… Inu, however, had known what Saburo-sama’s intentions were from the beginning, and she had felt the dread build and build like a gigantic wave headed towards the shore as first her father realized what was happening, then the rest of the district, soon they were the main topic of gossip in the streets and at the markets.

For a long time, much longer than what was fair, Inu had postponed her reply. Her father was a good man who loved his children, he urged her to make a decision, but at the same time to make that decision her own and there were days, during the wait which seemed to extend into infinity, when she imagined she could turn Saburo-sama down without making it too much of a scandal for her family, without disappointing them too terribly.

Then, her father’s shop burned to the ground. Vandals, competing lacquerware-makers, had set fire to the façade, Inu’s father and her mother and her two younger brothers only barely escaping alive.

They were still homeless. They were still without any source of income. Her father had bitterly mourned that he could no longer provide for his family.

Inu could tell, there was no choice left. The next time she and Natsu-chan met, in the house of a distant relative on her mother’s side, located on the outskirts of Kyoto, she had walked her through the garden and honestly pleaded with her. I cannot let my family go to ruins, you understand, don’t you? You understand, if I could choose anything else, I would, but that is simply not an option anymore. You understand that, right? Natsu-chan.

Yet, Natsu-chan hadn’t understood. She had left in anger and in tears, Inu watched her back retreat, knowing neither of them could ever return to the innocence which they had shared until this moment. Neither of them could come back from that.

Two months later, when the new roof over her family’s new house had just been raised, Inu married Saburo-sama and like carefully carved-out beams for a construction of that kind, certain things fell into place, where others still needed paving, smoothening over.

He gave her time. That was his wedding present to her, all the time she could possibly ask for. Inu watched Natsu-chan prepare for her travels and she watched her embark on them, from afar, that would be from the gates leading into Saburo-sama’s small but well-kept garden, unable to even wave goodbye. In turn, Saburo-sama watched her and something in his gaze told Inu, he understood the conflict of emotions that Natsu-chan hadn’t.

Perhaps that was why, nine months later, she had given birth to their first child, a girl, named Fude, because I would like her to be clever and artistic, when in reality, Inu had named her daughter after a writing brush, because it was the only link she could make, back to Natsu-chan or forward, to Natsu-chan. Far away or close by, but always to wherever Natsu-chan might be at any given moment.

Saburo-sama had accepted, Fude it was.

Two years later, Inu bore him another child. This time, a boy, Yoshitaro. People praised her hard work as his wife, they thought he had done well by himself to wait with marrying, until she was of a marrying age, and Inu smiled and nodded and clasped the baby to her breast, her two-year-old girl trailing after, grabbing at her kimono.

Sometimes, she forgot what kind of life she had wanted before. She all too easily forgot what had once filled the cavities in her, what it was like – to be whole. With her son and her daughter and her husband and their beautiful house and their flourishing garden, surely there should be no holes left in her.

Nevertheless, she would look out the gates at the bustling streets beyond, at the edges of the district, towards the fringes of the city, and she would know, somewhere out in the vast world, greater than any of the children inhabiting it, Natsu-chan was living another life. Alone.

Well, for all she knew.

And for all she knew, Inu felt, carrying her infant son, sleeping on her arm, and leading her toddler of a daughter, crying about one thing or another, by the hand inside, away from the congratulatory comments and observations of their visitors, leaving them to Saburo-sama to handle, he would do that for her, after all… Yes, she felt that she was actually alone, too. Now.

More alone than she had ever been before she became the life companion of a man.

In that loneliness, perhaps Natsu-chan and she weren’t terribly far from each other. All distances, the Nakasendo or the Tokaido notwithstanding.

She ought to find solace in such a thought, didn’t she?