Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [1]
In a niche on the wall she had placed a scroll, the bold brushwork of the calligraphy glowing in the dimness of the alcove. Beneath it lay a neatly folded length of dark silk, long and narrow, enveloping her father’s ceremonial sword. In her head, her father’s voice: Bushido, the code of the samurai: to fight with honour. To die with honour when one can no longer live with honour.
Honour was on her side today, she knew that. And she intended to fight. She touched the dark cloth, felt the steel within the silk; she must be like steel within her weak body. Her hands shook and she bent to stroke the child’s head, as though touching a talisman.
Approaching the house, Pinkerton looked up as the door slid open. He heard Nancy give a small gasp of surprise.
Cho-Cho wore a gleaming white kimono swirling out at the hem, her hair intricately dressed, smooth ebony interwoven with pearls. Her face was whitened with make-up, her lips scarlet. The rims of her eyes were red, not from weeping, but outlined, according to tradition, with crimson. Framed by the doorway she glowed, as though lit from within. Next to him, Nancy, in her undersized frock and little hat seemed awkward, ungainly. He cut off the thought, guilty to be making such a comparison. Nancy was his fiancée; Cho-Cho a leftover from a regretted past.
Nancy sensed the tension in his body; she glanced up at him, and back at Cho-Cho. She dwelt on this vision, the woman in white, gleaming like a marble statue, her neck frail as a flower stem. Oh, she’s a clever one, she acknowledged with reluctant admiration. She tugged instinctively at her skimpy skirt, straightened her spine: back home she was considered the pretty one of the family.
When they reached the door, Cho-Cho bowed silently, motioned them inside.
‘We should take off our shoes,’ Pinkerton muttered.
Nancy silently kicked off her high sandals, her expression darkening. The instruction had the effect of linking him to the woman and the place, with Nancy a mere visitor ignorant of local custom.
The boy held out the wooden top to his father: ‘Komo!’
Pinkerton’s stiff features creased into an uneasy grin. He took the top. ‘Komo?’ he repeated, ‘Right.’
As the two women watched, he squatted next to the lacquered table.
‘Okay Joey, here we go!’ He set the top spinning. The child clapped his hands, laughing, demanding more: ‘Motto!’
Only the clatter of wood on table surface broke the silence while Pinkerton repeatedly spun the top for his son. Mirrored in the lacquer, the sphere appeared to be balanced on its own tip as it twirled.
Nancy studied the child: the stiff band tied round his brow partly concealed the blond curls. In the richly patterned kimono he seemed very Japanese.
She said, formally, ‘What a beautiful . . . outfit that is.’ Adding, to fill the continuing silence, ‘So colourful.’
Cho-Cho said, ‘In a family, such a robe is passed from father to son.’ She spoke slowly, spacing the syllables with care, aware of the pitfalls of this alien tongue, where consonants jostled each other disconcertingly, giving her words an odd inflection. ‘It is called takarabune, treasure ship design. On the ship, if you look, there are ten precious ob-u-jects connected with happy marriage.’
Once again Nancy felt upstaged. Was this woman trying to make out that she had enjoyed a happy marriage with Ben? She felt anger building within her but her features remained as expressionless as Cho-Cho’s mask-like face.
She touched Pinkerton’s shoulder. ‘Ben, will you leave us for a little. I want to speak to – the lady, in private.’
Pinkerton hesitated, but Cho-Cho decided the matter. She gave the tiniest of movements, a