Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [11]
She broke off a morsel of meat loaf and placed it in her mouth. She did her best, nodding and smiling, but he noticed that she found it hard to swallow the small scrap.
‘Okay, try this – apple pie.’
‘Apple-u-pie,’ she echoed, nibbling.
‘Right!’
She continued to chew, cautiously.
‘Good?’
‘Good.’
No, she wanted to say, not good, horrible, but that would have been impolite. Instead she set out to win him over to real food.
He found himself watching her prepare the stuff, helped by the maid: kneeling, feet tucked beneath her, pale hands deft and swift, the blade slicing delicate fillets of fish into discs of almost transparent thinness, carving vegetables into fantastic flower shapes, moving small bowls of this and that from one low table to another. Finally she would turn her head, glance across at him with an encouraging smile.
‘Try now.’
The tuna and swordfish, the vinegar-rice, grilled eel and fiery pickle proved easier to accept than he would have believed, and he even learned to manipulate the short, polished chopsticks, appreciate a good, aged sake.
He drew the line at horse mackerel, but grudgingly admitted that even the dishes he was unable to stomach were good to look at – you could put them in a glass case in a museum. Still, every now and then his taste buds sent unambiguous messages and he would bring home a parcel from the galley storeroom:
‘Meatballs! Apple pie like Momma makes!’
*
His off-duty hours were agreeable; the girl constantly found new ways to please him and there were even times when – fleetingly – he felt a sense of uncertainty, of indecision. He floated on a sea of strangeness here; nothing in his life had prepared him for this unsettling blend of distance and closeness: she was obedient, totally subservient, yet within that servitude she found ways to make him feel like a beginner. His life had been a thing of broad brush-strokes, thoughtless pleasures; easy-come, easy-go. Here, where each action, each reaction entailed its history, he was reluctantly drawn into an acknowledgement of something more.
It was at moments like these, when Cho-Cho became aware of his blue eyes resting on her thoughtfully, that she felt most fiercely the hope of happiness. On days when he went swimming off the rocks she watched him from the shore, seeing the gleam of sunlight on his wet body as he rose from the surf like the sea god Ryjin, who controlled the tides from his coral castle beneath the waves. He waved to her, sending drops of water flying through the air, sparkling like jewels being cast back into the foam. When he came ashore he would pull her from her perch like a boy prising a mollusc from a rock, and squeeze her with wet arms, soaking her cotton kimono until she squealed in mock protest.
The ship was almost ready; before long he would be leaving. But perhaps it would not end there. She persuaded herself that like two differently coloured threads entwined, as their bodies were so often entwined, they might form a strand that was strong enough to hold them together.
On his last night Cho-Cho prepared a special supper. She dismissed the maid, Suzuki, and did the whole meal herself. One dish was served, somewhat to Pinkerton’s dismay, on an oval leaf plucked from a nearby tree. Given the choice, he preferred his food on a plate. She noted his bafflement.
‘Tradition.’
‘I should’ve guessed.’
‘This – tegashiwa leaf.’
She had prepared her words, she wanted to tell him, as her father had explained to her that in the old days when a samurai left his home to follow his lord it was customary for his wife to serve him a farewell dish on a tegashiwa leaf. Afterwards, ot-san told her, the leaf was hung above the door to bring the departed samurai home safe.
‘In old days,’ she began, but she failed to find the words she needed. She smiled and shook her head; presented him with the leaf-dish.
‘Tradition.’
When the meal was over, she washed and dried the leaf, and hung it above the door. She recalled ot-san saying that when the leaf, with its shape so like a human hand,