“Yeah, I saw that on your bookshelf. Pillow-something, right?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
Marianne Engel retreated to the kitchen with short, sharp steps, as she’d even gone so far as to put on geta, traditional wooden slippers. She returned with multihued trays of sushi: slices of white (and orange and silver) fish lay on beds of compressed rice; beady red fish eggs lolled on seaweed beds; and shrimps curled into each other, as if hugging tightly during their final moments on earth. There were inarizushi, cubes of rice wrapped in thin sheets of sweet golden tofu. Gyoza, dumplings made of beef or pork, bathed in zesty black sauce. Yakitori, barbecued strips of chicken and beef, on wooden skewers. There were onigiri, triangles of rice wrapped in seaweed; each, she explained, contained something different, something delicious: plums, fish eggs, chicken, tuna, or shrimp.
We cleaned our hands with
She showed me the proper way to stir my miso soup with chopsticks and demonstrated that ramen noodles must be slurped loudly, because this not only cools them but makes them taste better. While she drank sake, she insisted that I stick with oolong tea; she just wouldn’t give up that silly idea that alcohol and morphine don’t mix. Every time my cup was less than half-full, she refilled it with a slight but respectful bow. When I inserted my chopsticks into my bowl of rice so that they stood straight up like two trees growing out of a snowy hill, she immediately pulled them out. “It’s disrespectful to the dead.”
When the meal finally ended, she rubbed her hands together gleefully. “Tonight I’ll tell you a story about another woman named Sei, although this one wasn’t even born until hundreds of years after the writing of the
XVII.
Long ago in old Japan, a girl named Sei was born to a glassblower named Yakichi. At first her father was disappointed that she was not a son, but his disappointment ended the second that he held her. From that moment on he was devoted to her, and she to him.
Yakichi watched with proud eyes as Sei grew from a spirited child into an intelligent young lady. That she was beautiful was beyond question and, in her fine features, Yakichi could see his late wife’s eyelids and cheekbones. The mother died when Sei was just a child and this made the father and daughter hold each other all the tighter.
On the verge of adulthood, Sei decided to follow in her father’s footsteps. Yakichi felt great joy in her decision and his happiness was now complete: his knowledge wouldn’t die with him, after all. Sei adopted the title of Glassblower’s Apprentice and showed remarkable potential and quick progress. She had a delicate touch and, more important, she could envision the object before it was blown. Technique can always be learned, Yakichi knew, but Sei was born with the gift of vision. She could see beauty where others saw only empty air.
Sei studied well under her father’s tutelage, learning just how hot to stoke the fire and just how forcefully to blow. She learned to read the bright glow of the heated glass. She worked diligently to develop her understanding of breath; for she knew that with breath she could create a world. She imagined herself breathing life into the glass and, with every week that passed, Sei came closer to realizing the loveliness of the objects that she could picture in her imagination.
Yakichi began to bring Sei to the local weekend market, where he maintained a stand to sell their wares. Men started to come in swarms. They claimed they wanted to look at the glasswork but really, of course, they came to look at the captivating young woman. “How like glass you yourself are,” one old man couldn’t help but say, scuttling away like a crab across a beach when he realized that the words had actually slipped aloud from his claws.
Soon, their table was selling out before lunchtime. Almost all the pieces were purchased by men-even as gifts for their own wives-simply because they wanted to own a container of Sei’s breath.
Yakichi was pleased. Business was stronger than ever, finances were good, and Sei was becoming a fine glassblower. But for all their success, Yakichi wished a husband for his daughter. Though he was a protective father, he wanted her to experience all that life had to offer and, he thought, a “beneficial” marriage would better their family line.
So Yakichi took stock of the men who frequented the stand. There were artisans, landowners, fishermen and farmers, soldiers and samurai. Certainly, he mused with a smile, there would be no shortage of suitors. After all, Sei had beauty, skill, health, a pleasing personality, and loyalty. She would be a fine wife and good mother, anyone could see that, and it would be easy to arrange an advantageous marriage.
When Yakichi approached his daughter to suggest this, she was quite shocked. “I know this is the tradition,” she cried, “but I never thought that you would ask it of me. I will marry for love, and love alone.”
The force of his daughter’s conviction surprised Yakichi, for she had never before gone against his wishes. Marriage was for improving one’s family position, the old man thought; marriage was not something to be undertaken for love. And yet Sei insisted and, because Yakichi adored her, he acquiesced. Still he worried, because there was no one in his daughter’s heart.
But, as is often the case in these matters, Sei soon met a young man, and she did fall quite completely in love with him. At first, Yakichi was displeased because Sei had chosen Heisaku, a simple farm boy with neither money nor prospects. However, the boy had a pure, good heart. So, maybe…
Yakichi remembered his own departed wife. Although theirs had been an arranged marriage, they had been lucky and Sei had been conceived in love. Buoyed by the memory of his own good fortune, Yakichi decided that he could hope for nothing less for his daughter. He gave his blessings to Sei and Heisaku.
It was about this time that one of Sei’s more inspired pieces-a glass flower-was given to a daimyo, a local feudal lord, by one of his servants. This daimyo was despised and feared for his brutal temper. He had no time for glass flowers and angrily asked the meaning of the trivial thing.
The servant, always looking for special favor, said, “I thought you might like to know, my lord, that this glass flower was created by the most beautiful girl in all the land.” The daimyo’s ears pricked up and the servant quickly added, “And she is unmarried.” The servant, you see, had recently overheard the daimyo talking about his desire to start producing children, saying that only the most beautiful and skilled woman would suffice.
The daimyo quickly decided on a plan of action. He sent out a message that he had in mind a commission for a great glass statue, and that he’d heard Sei and her father were the most skilled glassblowers in all of Japan. For this reason, the message claimed, he was summoning them.
The daimyo had no more interest in commissioning a glass statue than he had in commissioning a ladder to the moon. He was interested in owning land and castles and cattle and rice fields. And a beautiful woman. Yes, that interested him very much. But Sei and Yakichi knew nothing of this, and were only excited. They imagined that this might be the first of many noble commissions-in short, the realization of their dreams. So the father and daughter loaded up their little cart and set off for the daimyo’s castle.
They were admitted into the main court, where the daimyo was waiting, and his eyebrows went up at the sight of Sei. His gaze followed her around the room; to Sei, it felt like cockroaches upon her skin. She could tell immediately that this was not a good man, as he sat there turning one of her glass flowers over and over in his grubby fingers. But this was not about her feelings, she told herself, and all she could do was give the best presentation possible.
Sei and her father showed the daimyo their finest works and described them in detail. She showed crystal
