Bonchi by Toyoko Yamasaki

Author:Toyoko Yamasaki [Yamasaki, Toyoko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Hawai‘i Press
Published: 1982-04-19T17:00:00+00:00

One afternoon several months after the Lake Biwa excursion, Kikuji took O-Fuku, along with Tsuruhachi and two youthful geisha, to a performance featuring the great Narikomaya, in the most famous of the kabuki epics, The Forty-seven Ronin. Kikuji was inattentive to the stage action, in which the virtuous prostitute, O-Karu, was timidly climbing from her second-story room down to the hero, Yuranosuke, who occupied the time by looking up her skirts and making bawdy observations. Kikuji was in no mood for comedy. His eye swept over the side walls of the theater, the boxes of which were draped with the crested curtains of various teahouses. To one side of his own spacious compartment was the walkway jutting out from the stage and ending at a curtained entrance on the left. It was along this passageway that the major actors often entered, freezing now and again into dramatic and unforgettable poses. It was natural that, with this favorite play of the kabuki repertoire, performed by the greatest of living actors, the hall should be filled to capacity. Still, he could not give himself to the play. His own thoughts meandered ceaselessly through his mind. Allowing them to wander as they would, he felt that they might lead him to some insight, some meaning he would never otherwise grasp. And if they did not, he could always watch the play. These samurai! It was wonderful the way the girls always tended to lie down and die for the love of a samurai. Reflectively, he drank the saké Tsuruhachi poured for him. He reached for O-Fuku’s hand. She was deeply involved in the play and paid no attention as he entwined his fingers with hers. He gave it up in suppressed irritation, returning her hand to her lap. She threw a quick, appraising glance at him before returning to her rapt concentration on the stage.

For almost four months now, ever since the Lake Biwa picnic, he had been seeing her regularly. But it was different from his relationships with Ponta and Ikuko. With them, the sexual surrender had been complete, trusting, and undemanding. He had reciprocated it fully. But with O-Fuku, there was, he sometimes thought, submission without surrender. The path to complete and absolute trust, which he required if he were to be fully content with his mistresses, was blocked by some stubbornness, some unexplored area of her personality. It was very exasperating. He looked at her: she was sitting very straight, leaning a little forward in her anticipation and excitement as she watched the stage. The lighting in the area of his box was dim, and she had a dark shadow on her cheek. It was almost, he thought, a visible mark of the undefined difference which somehow kept her apart from him, even when they were most together. How essentially mysterious she was—and how fascinating the mystery!

Always when he called to take her out, she seemed genuinely pleased to go, and yet she always directed him to teahouses outside of Osaka.

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