Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [129]
“What does it matter? You bask in Lord Toranaga’s favor, neh? So you’re fulfilled. You’re wise and warm and whole-and happy in yourself.”
“I’d rather be thin and still able to eat and be in favor,” Kiri said. “But you? You’re not happy in yourself?”
“I’m only an instrument for my Lord Buntaro to play upon. If the Lord, my husband, is happy, then of course I’m happy. His pleasure’s my pleasure. It’s the same with you,” Mariko said.
“Yes. But not the same.” Kiri moved her fan, the golden silk catching the afternoon sun. I’m so glad I’m not you, Mariko, with all your beauty and brilliance and courage and learning. No! I couldn’t bear being married to that hateful, ugly, arrogant, violent man for a day, let alone seventeen years. He’s so opposite to his father, Lord Hiro-matsu. Now, there’s a wonderful man. But Buntaro? How do fathers have such terrible sons? I wish I had a son, oh, how I wish! But you, Mariko how have you borne such ill treatment all these years? How have you endured your tragedies? It seems impossible that there’s no shadow of them on your face or in your soul. “You’re an amazing woman, Toda Buntaro Mariko-san.”
“Thank you, Kiritsubo Toshiko-san. Oh Kiri-san, it’s so good to see you.”
“And you. How is your son?”
“Beautiful—beautiful—beautiful. Saruji’s fifteen now, can you imagine it? Tall and strong and just like his father, and Lord Hiro-matsu has given Saruji his own fief and he’s—did you know that he’s going to be married?”
“No, to whom?”
“She’s a granddaughter of Lord Kiyama’s. Lord Toranaga’s arranged it so well. A very fine match for our family. I only wish the girl herself was—was more attentive to my son, more worthy. Do you know she …” Mariko laughed, a little shyly. “There, I sound like every mother-in-law that’s ever been. But I think you’d agree, she isn’t really trained yet.”
“You’ll have time to do that.”
“Oh, I hope so. Yes. I’m lucky I don’t have a mother-in-law. I don’t know what I’d do.”
“You’d enchant her and train her as you train all your household, neh?”
“Eeeee, I wish that was also true.” Mariko’s hands were motionless in her lap. She watched a dragonfly settle, then dart away. “My husband ordered me here. Lord Toranaga wishes to see me?”
“Yes. He wants you to interpret for him.”
Mariko was startled. “With whom?”
“The new barbarian.”
“Oh! But what about Father Tsukku-san? Is he sick?”
“No.” Kiri played with her fan. “I suppose it’s left to us to wonder why Lord Toranaga wants you here and not the priest, as in the first interview. Why is it, Mariko-san, that we have to guard all the monies, pay all the bills, train all the servants, buy all the food and household goods—even most times the clothes of our Lords—but they don’t really tell us anything, do they?”
“Perhaps that’s what our intuition’s for.”
“Probably.” Kiri’s gaze was level and friendly. “But I’d imagine that this would all be a very private matter. So you would swear by your Christian God not to divulge anything about this meeting. To anyone.”
The day seemed to lose its warmth.
“Of course,” Mariko said uneasily. She understood very clearly that Kiri meant she was to say nothing to her husband or to his father or to her confessor. As her husband had ordered her here, obviously at Lord Toranaga’s request, her duty to her liege Lord Toranaga overcame her duty to her husband, so she could withhold information freely from him. But to her confessor? Could she say nothing to him? And why was she the interpreter and not Father Tsukku-san? She knew that once more, against her will, she was involved in the kind of political intrigue that had bedeviled her life, and wished again that her family was not ancient and Fujimoto, that she had never been born with the gift of tongues that had allowed her to learn the almost incomprehensible Portuguese and Latin languages, and that she had never been born at all.