Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [60]
Cho-Cho’s relationship with a lost boy, regained, at one remove, on paper.
Mary and Louis discussed the change in Henry, and agreed that it was probably due to his status as an ageing bachelor far from home and family. His sister softened: poor Henry, of course he missed them. In her next letter she told him she prayed to God to bring him some measure of joy in that strange, unchristian land where he must be lonely.
So when Henry asked Suzuki to be his wife and she agreed, he made no mention of the fact in letters home.
27
Suzuki was hesitant about accepting Henry’s proposal. She had adored him for years, in the way she would revere a distant god. For a servant girl to be noticed at all by such a figure seemed beyond expectation. But from the beginning Henry had talked to her as an equal; they understood one another. He had known Cho-Cho’s father and he had feared for the future of the orphaned girl. He told Suzuki once that if he could have adopted Cho-Cho when her father died, he would have been a second father to her. With time, Suzuki saw, his feelings had changed. Perhaps before he knew it himself she was aware that Henry was besotted with her mistress.
From the day when he arrived with Pinkerton at the little house overlooking the harbour, through the years that followed, Suzuki watched that devotion grow. But Cho-Cho was always tantalisingly beyond Henry’s reach, and Suzuki saw the three of them moving in a sad, circular dance like figures on an Imari vase, linked but held apart: Suzuki loved Henry, who loved Cho-Cho, who loved Pinkerton, and so it would continue.
Suzuki accepted him because she was Japanese and, like Henry himself, a realist: she accepted the possible. And she felt guilt because incomplete though it was, her life would be richer by far than Cho-Cho’s.
Suzuki’s family, at first mistrustful, met the consul and discovered that he spoke their language fluently, that he was at ease with their culture and – for a foreigner – had a reasonably pleasing appearance: small, pale, black-haired, with sharp cheekbones and narrow eyes. He was considerably older than Suzuki, therefore experienced in the ways of the world; a good thing. He was also, being American, wealthy, while their own poverty was showing ever-sharper teeth. He was made welcome.
‘Your daughter will have a traditional wedding,’ Cho-Cho reassured Suzuki’s parents. ‘Sharpless-san would want that.’ Faced with this unexpectedly forceful young woman, the parents, to their own surprise, allowed her to take charge of arrangements.
Cho-Cho ticked off items on her list: comb, sandals, sash . . . she recalled that once before, long ago, she had rehearsed these details, but this time the paraphernalia would be real, not the furnishings of a hopeless dream. The bridegroom would provide.
She concentrated on each item: Suzuki’s wedding kimono would be of heavy silk, shiromuku, the whiteness denoting purity. The white headdress would be placed over a gleaming ceremonial wig. She assembled the little purse, the mirror, the fan and the kaiken – there was a momentary faltering when she came to the traditional bridal knife in its silken sheath. She touched her throat, paused. She sensed Suzuki watching her with an anguish that was not wholly concealed.
She wanted to reassure her old servant and friend but troublesome emotions were better left unexpressed. And besides – a fingertip to her throat – she suspected she would be unable to speak the words.
The Shinto ceremony moved at the traditional, stately pace with an exchange of rings and nuptial cups. The priest led the service, the bridal couple recited oaths of obedience and faith and at the sanctuary they offered twigs of the sacred Sakaki tree. Henry wore the appropriate kimono, the haori-hakama and – unusually for him – looked cheerful.