Fifty Words for Rain(73)
I do wonder what he is like. I’ve never met him. But then I’ll find out soon enough.
We’re getting married tomorrow.
There was a wedding dress already laid out on my bed the day I arrived home.
I have no choice. As it turns out, I never had a choice at all.
* * *
February 12th, 1935
My husband has just left my room. I can still smell his sweat on me.
He is mercifully quick about it. There’s that, at least. It took him a full week after the wedding to manage the deed. He hates me, I think, though he is too proper to say so to my face.
I have all the time in the world to write, he gives me nothing to do. I am not allowed to have friends over. If I had any friends in Tokyo, I imagine this would distress me. There are barely any books and I have no allowance yet, so I cannot buy more.
There is not even a piano here. I have asked for a music room.
He says he will consider it if I give him a son.
I doubt he will get any living sons from me. My grandmother could not manage it. My mother could not manage it. And they were penitent, desperately penitent to a foreign God. They did everything in their power to lift the curse on our boys.
I have lived all my life as a sinner.
I will probably give him a three-headed girl. And then I won’t get my music room.
* * *
March 28th, 1935
I have missed my course.
I pray for a dead child.
It would be a mercy. Poor girl. Poor, damned girl.
* * *
September 8th, 1935
It’s been a long time since I have had the strength to write.
The baby will come in December or January. They say I am past my dangerous months and that a healthy child is sure to be born. I feel so tired all the time that I would lay no bets on it.
Mama has sent me an endless amount of teas and tonics to drink. She says she has had a priest and a shrine maiden bless them, that they will give me a healthy son.
One of them smelled like blood. I wonder how many peasants she had sacrificed to make it.
Luckily, my husband thinks she is mad and forbids her from sending me anything else. His mood has improved considerably and I am allowed a small allowance now. He is having a library put in for me.
He doesn’t read. All he does is smoke and play chess by himself.
The doctor says from the way I am carrying that it’s a boy. I am sure my mother threatened to have his family skinned alive if he said otherwise, though, so I do not allow myself to be hopeful.
I will never allow myself to be hopeful again.
“Little madam!”
Nori jumped and almost slipped from her perch. She dug her heels in and stuck her head out from between the leaves. Ayame was looking up at her.
“I’ve been calling you, my lady.”
Unseen, Nori slipped the diary down the front of her blouse.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear.”
Ayame frowned. “You’re up too high. Your brother would not like it.”
Nori swung down, expertly navigating the grooves in the wood where she could fit her feet. She spent half her life in this tree; she trusted it more than anything. Except Akira.
Once her feet hit the ground, she gave Ayame her best smile.
“But we won’t tell him, will we?”
Ayame sighed. “My lady . . . I wish you would not take such risks.”
When did you grow to care for me so much?
“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “What did you need, Ayame-san?”
The servant shuffled her feet. “Obocchama has asked to see you.”
Nori blinked. “What? Why?”
“He didn’t say. He won’t say.”
She sighed. Akira never sent for her; he simply showed up. For him to send Ayame did not bode well. “Why do you look so terrified?”
Ayame’s face was pale. “He’s in a mood, I’m afraid.”
She felt her stomach turn over. Akira had said three words to her all month. He hadn’t even bothered to take her to the festival for her sixteenth birthday; she’d gone alone.
Something was clearly bothering him, but Nori had been too afraid to ask what. Apparently she was about to find out.
“Where is he?”
“He’s in the study, my lady.”
Nori handed Ayame the diary and headed off without another word. There was no point delaying a storm. If she had to face one, she would face it head-on.
She took off her shoes and took the shortcut through the now unused room that had once been used to house the family shrine.
Even now, she could see the spot where she’d nearly died. The servants had replaced the mats, but beneath that, the floorboards were discolored. The bleach had removed the stain from her blood, but it had left its mark. If she really tried, she could smell the sharp scent of her fear. She could still feel that raw desperation buried somewhere just beneath the surface.
It seemed like so long ago now that she’d had no one.
But it wasn’t. She would never forget any of it; every person she’d ever met was seared into her skin like a brand.
Sometimes she looked in the mirror and thought it was nothing short of a miracle that she still drew breath.
She tapped lightly on the door to the study and heard the sound of the violin break off. She recognized the song. It was Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” one of the first things he’d ever played for her. He’d often told her he didn’t favor it.