As promised, you have lots of choices if you don't want to give money to Amazon. Purchase the ebook or paperback from:
Bookshop.org is now also offering ebooks, not just paperbacks. It's a great way to support local bookstores.
Or bypass all these corporations and order a paperback directly from me HERE, for a $3 discount.
If you don't want to buy a copy, you can request your local library to order a paperback or ebook. Or if you have a Librarything or Netgalley account, you can request a review copy, but only until the end of this month.
No matter where you read, please leave a review, especially on Goodreads. It helps a lot! Thanks so much for your support. I really appreciate it!
And now a preview for your enjoyment...
This is a photo of Eroshenko performing in a concert with other students from the Tokyo School for the Blind, probably in 1915.
Click through to read Chapter One
Eroshenko
by Lucy May Lennox
Chapter 1
January, 1915
At the far west edge of Tokyo, where the sun’s last rays cast elongated shadows upon the dusty unpaved roads and rice fields by Shinjuku station, a sprawling two-story building loomed conspicuously in the tranquil surroundings. The Nakamuraya, with its stylishly rustic signage, proudly announced itself as one of Tokyo’s pioneering bakeries specializing in Western-style pastries and bread. Upstairs, above the bustling shop, dissidents and artists found solace in a private salon, where amidst the scent of sweet cream buns and the buzz of impassioned conversations, the rebellious souls of Tokyo congregated away from the prying eyes of the world below, to find acceptance and understanding in the company of like-minded spirits. The Nakamuraya bakery was not merely a purveyor of foreign delicacies but a refuge for those who dared to defy the suffocating constraints of societal expectations.
Kamichika Ichiko ascended the steep, narrow stairs to the salon above the bakery. She was unusually tall for a woman and held herself very straight, although her clothes were unassuming—a plain indigo striped cotton kimono. Her hair was parted severely in the middle, tied in a simple bun. Her sharply arching eyebrows framed quick, intelligent eyes.
Although it was late in the evening and the bakery was long closed, the exotic, sweet smell of cream buns lingered in the air: vanilla, yeast, baking bread, burnt sugar. She slowly put one stocking foot in front of the other as she mounted the creaking staircase, feeling as if she were intruding in the family’s private residence.
The salon above the Nakamuraya, run by the proprietor Sōma Kokkō, assisted by her husband Aizō, was famous in certain bohemian circles for nurturing artistic talent, and, it was whispered, for sheltering radicals. But to Ichiko it looked like no more than a shabby family living room above an ordinary shophouse: a cramped eight-mat room with a small low table haphazardly stacked with tea cups and snacks. Hand-sewn curtains covered the windows. An eclectic collection of domestic and foreign bric-a-brac lined a desk shoved in one corner.
The tiny room was crowded with people sitting on the floor, most of whom Ichiko recognized as activists, artists, writers, or perhaps more accurately, aspiring artists and writers, also-rans and fellow-travelers. Leftist intellectuals had been wintering since the failed attempt to assassinate the Meiji Emperor five years previous. The police crackdowns were brutal and unsparing. In the wake of mass arrests and public executions, few now dared to speak out. But not all had relinquished their anarchist ambitions, and now some sat in this very room, seeking ways to spread their message of freedom.
Among the salon members, one stood out, and not only because even sitting on his knees, he towered over the rest. He was startlingly pale, his cheeks flushed in the close air of the crowded room, his long blond curly locks hung round his head like a halo. He looked very young, with round smooth cheeks and full, curving red lips.
Having grown up in Nagasaki, Ichiko was accustomed to seeing foreigners. As a student at Tsuda Academy, she had been educated by foreign women, and even now she sought out British and American women residing in Tokyo, to improve her English. Although she liked to think of herself as cosmopolitan, she had never been so close to a foreign man before.
Yet it was not merely the man’s foreignness that was so striking. He was obviously blind. Beneath heavy blond brows, his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but not the manner of a sleeper, with the top lids extended down. Rather, the lower lids were drawn upwards, his eyes no more than slits cast heavenward. He sat stiffly in the Japanese style, on his knees. He was deep in conversation in Russian with Kokkō, a diminutive, fortyish woman with a round, motherly face. As they talked, he held one of her hands in his.
All this Ichiko took in as she crested the top of the staircase, feeling as if her feet were sliding out beneath her, as if the uneven floor were about to give way. She staggered slightly as she entered.
Ichiko cast her gaze about the room. No one greeted her. There in a corner, she recognized Ōsugi Sakae. What was he doing here? She turned away, hoping he would not notice her. He was wearing a Western-style white suit with a bow tie, and a small bushy moustache that she found quite ridiculous. She had once thought him handsome, but now she felt there was something too smooth, too polished about him, with his brushed-back hair and bulging round eyes. She hated the officious way he carried on, as if he were the host of the salon.
Kokkō, the true holder of that title, at last took notice of her, sliding over on her knees and gesturing for Ichiko to sit.
“Welcome, welcome,” Kokkō said, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she smiled. Her wide-set eyebrows sloped downward at the edges, giving her a sympathetic cast. She took a maternal tone with all the guests at the salon, perhaps because she herself was mother to ten children. “We’re always glad to have new members to our little gathering. You’re the lady reporter, correct? The one Hiratsuka-san invited?”
Ichiko bowed and introduced herself, but she could not take her eyes off the tall foreigner sitting ramrod straight beside Kokkō, seemingly listening to their conversation.
Kokkō took the hint immediately. “Have you met Ero-san?” she asked. Ichiko shook her head. Kokkō placed a hand on the man’s knee. “This young lady sitting to your left is Kamichika-san, a lady reporter with the Tokyo Daily News.”
The foreigner placed his hands on his knees and executed a formal bow. “A pleasure to meet you, Kamichika-san. I am Vasily Eroshenko,” he said in perfect, if heavily accented Japanese. He pronounced his given name in the Japanese manner, Washirii. “But everyone calls me Ero for short.”
Ichiko gaped at him in surprise. “A-a pleasure to meet you.”
He gave a dazzling smile, all white teeth and red lips. His upturned eyelids were slightly asymmetrical, the right closed but the left slightly open, revealing a silvery white eye. Occasionally they opened partway reflexively, only to shut tightly a moment later. Rather than facing her directly, he tilted his head slightly to the right. Ichiko could not help staring at his singular countenance.
“You are surprised that I can speak Japanese, no?” His voice was deep, with a musical lilt in his exotic accent.
Ichiko blushed at the transparency of her response. Kokkō merely grinned merrily. She had clearly heard similar exchanges before.
“I was rude. I apologize,” Ichiko said. “But I’ve never spoken to a foreigner who knows Japanese. Even my teachers at Tsuda Academy only spoke English.”
“Shame on them for not learning,” Eroshenko said, still smiling. “I have been a student at the Tokyo School for the Blind for over a year. That has been more than enough time to learn.”
Ichiko thought again of the two American lady teachers at Tsuda Academy, who had lived in Japan for over twenty years but not learned even one word of the language.
“Your Japanese is very good.” Ichiko did not know what else to say. And it was not just his facility with the language. The way he sat on the floor, the way he bowed, indicated that he was accustomed to Japanese manners. So unlike the foreign women she had known, who knocked things over with their trailing skirts, refused to remove their laced-up boots, and became indignant at the gentlest correction.
“Thank you,” he replied seriously. “It is an interesting language. But my true love is Esperanto.”
Ah, it all made sense now. Ōsugi Sakae had been running an Esperanto school in Tokyo for nearly a decade, and Ichiko guessed that everyone attending the salon had been a student there at some point, including herself.
“Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?” Eroshenko asked, his features lifted in hopeful anticipation.
“Jes, iomete,” she replied, but even those few words strained her memory. It had been some time since she had attended classes.
“Tre bona!”
“Are you Russian?” Ichiko asked, reverting to Japanese. It was an informed guess. Russian literature was in vogue, and she herself had become a passionate reader as a student, although in English translation. His name and the loose peasant blouse he wore reminded her of characters in novels by Turgenev and Tolstoy.
Eroshenko frowned slightly. “I am Ukrainian.”
“What?”
He sighed. “My father is Ukrainian, and my mother is Russian. According to my passport, I am a subject of the Russian Empire. But in my heart, I consider myself a citizen of the world.”
Before Ichiko could think of a response, their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of two more guests to the salon, Hiratsuka Raichō, the editor of Bluestocking magazine, followed by her particular friend, Otake Kōkichi.
“O-Ichi-san! My darling! How lovely to see you again!” Raichō settled herself beside Ichiko with languid grace. Meanwhile, a university student hovering nearby seized the opportunity to practice Esperanto, pulling Eroshenko away to a secluded corner.
“We’re so lucky to have you back in Tokyo,” Raichō continued, casually draping an arm around the shoulders of Kōkichi, seated on her opposite side. “Those bumpkins in Aomori don’t deserve you.”
Ichiko smiled politely. She held Raichō in high regard and did not want to bring up the fact that it was Raichō’s carelessness that led to her dismissal from the school in Aomori.
“Hey, good ta see ya again.” Kōkichi squirmed out from under Raichō’s arm and reached across the table to shake Ichiko’s hand like a man. “How’s the Daily News?”
“Good, thanks to you.” Ichiko always felt at ease with Kōkichi, with her mannish clothes and demeanor, her frizzy hair and quick, impudent smile. It was Kōkichi who had informed her about the job opening at the newspaper.
“I know it ain’t as radical as writing for Bluestocking, but you’re our undercover operative in the mainstream press,” Kōkichi said with a mischievous grin. “They wanted to hire their first lady reporter and they got a Bluestocking, haha!”
“They’re not making you serve them tea, are they?” Raichō asked.
“No, it’s been going well so far,” Ichiko said truthfully, hoping to impress Raichō. “With any luck I’ll get to interview a politician soon, rather than just covering events for the society pages.”
“You need to write an article about what happened with the prince of Siam,” Raichō said in her most dictatorial voice.
“What happened?” Ichiko tasted a cream bun, then instantly regretted it. The heavy sweetness was overpowering, not what she was used to.
“An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took him to the Yoshiwara to drink and cavort with the oiran. Can you imagine?”
Ichiko laid the half-eaten bun discreetly aside and glanced at Kōkichi, keeping her expression carefully neutral. Kōkichi and Raichō had themselves caused a scandal a few years previous by visiting Yoshiwara and talking to the oiran, then writing about the issue of prostitution in Bluestocking. The most outraged editorials had been penned by Ono Bushi, who was now Ichiko’s boss. But she had not discussed her connection to Bluestocking with him, and he proved to be more accommodating than she expected, at least in giving her reporting assignments.
“It’s shameful!” Raichō’s aristocratic features distorted as she worked herself up in anger. “Just think, if a member of our imperial family visited London or Paris, would the local officials take him on a tour of the whorehouses then claim that was their exalted, ancient tradition? People would be protesting in the streets! There’s no other country in the world where sex work is passed off as a national treasure.”
“I agree, but the incident was some weeks ago,” Ichiko said. “How can I write a newspaper article about something that’s not news?”
Kōkichi struck her palm on the table. “Interview the head of the Women’s League. She’s been trying to organize a protest. I can give you her address.”
Ichiko smiled at her gratefully. Kōkichi had the best connections.
Raichō again placed a possessive arm over Kōkichi’s shoulders, giving Ichiko a twinge of jealousy. She wished she were Kōkichi’s “sister” but Raichō had met her first.
Both Raichō and Ichiko were nearly thirty, far past the age they should have been married. Ichiko thought briefly of the girls from her hometown in Nagasaki—married all, with many, many children. Even among her former classmates at Tsuda Academy, the most outspoken girls were quickest to acquiesce when a go-between showed photographs of eligible grooms, or worse, to run off with the first man who smiled at them. She was the only graduate from her year still unmarried.
On the other hand, here was Raichō, not only unmarried but openly cavorting with nineteen-year-old Kōkichi, both of them wearing men’s hakama. How much longer would Raichō’s parents countenance this? But then, she had always been extraordinarily strong-willed.
“And how is Bluestocking?” Ichiko asked, intentionally shifting the subject away from herself.
“Haven’t you heard? I’m turning the whole thing over to Itō-san,” Raichō said airily.
“You must be joking!” Ichiko revered Bluestocking. Reading its fiction and essays, meeting the women who wrote them, had changed her life, set her on the path to becoming the first and only lady reporter at the Tokyo Daily News. But there was no denying that openly advocating for the rights of women had proved controversial. Not least, Ichiko’s firing from the school in Aomori. Raichō herself faced an endless stream of vile, threatening letters and ridicule in the press. She had been stripped of her academic degree and even had stones thrown at her parents’ house. She was wealthy enough to shrug all this off.
But as much as Raichō relied on her family’s indulgence, she took pride in the magazine she had founded only four years prior. Ichiko could hardly believe she would just give it up. And yet she was, smiling as if it were nothing.
“Turning it over to who?” Ichiko asked.
“Itō Noe. She’s only nineteen, but I’m sure she can do it. Haven’t you seen her writing? We published some of her short stories. Such passion!”
Ichiko couldn’t recall. The name was so ordinary, not a flowery penname like Raichō or Kokkō.
She poured herself a cup of lukewarm tea, as Sōma Kokkō did not stand on ceremony but left the salon members to their own devices. Kōkichi lit a cigarette, then used it to light one for Raichō, a gesture Ichiko found both masculine and intimate.
“Otake-san, you know we don’t smoke here.” Sōma Kokkō’s words were polite, but her tone allowed no argument. Kōkichi stared at her in indignation, then flounced downstairs, followed closely by Raichō, the two of them trailing a stream of smoke. The aroma of tobacco made Ichiko long for a cigarette herself.
“Why don’t we have some music?” Kokkō suggested. The other guests looked up expectantly, and Eroshenko rose to his feet. She reached for an instrument leaning on the wall behind her and placed it in Eroshenko’s waiting hands. It had a long neck like a guitar or shamisen, but the sound box was triangular.
He strummed the strings several times, adjusting the tuning. Ichiko found herself holding her breath in anticipation. The melody started slowly at first, each note repeated, drawn out in tremolo, creating a sensation of tense expectancy. First came a fall of individual notes, then chords that went faster and faster, his fingers flying confidently over the frets. Ichiko closed her eyes, imagining the winds blowing over the Russian plains, golden heads of wheat bowing and dancing, men in loose tunics and laborer’s caps kicking up their heels to impress blue-eyed girls with blonde braids. The pace slowed to sedate repeated chords, then sped up again, even faster than before. The tune, at once joyful and melancholic, transported her to a wild, exotic land she had never known outside of books, yet she felt as if she were seeing it herself.
No comments:
Post a Comment