Old Master Bashō was dead, and he had left behind no leader with sufficient stature to sustain his manner. The gate to his cottage would be shut, the rain shutters attached, and haikai poets who had once sought his advice and approval would disperse like dry leaves blown in an autumn gale.

It was with this in mind that the senior Tokugawa retainer Sotobayama Ox-Blossom set off on a foot journey, intending to complete one final duty to the memory of his teacher. He did not wear robes of mourning, judging such displays presumptuous; but he did write Old Bashō’s death poem on his sedge-grass travel hat:

Ill while traveling, in my dreams still wandering over withered moors.^[1]

By late afternoon of the second day, he had reached the river-town which marked the outside boundary of the wide Musashi grasslands. The vermillion portal of the local inari shrine was guarded by a pair of stone fox statues wearing faded red votive bibs, and inside the sanctuary were scores of mated pairs of miniature terracotta foxes arrayed on shelves, with shards of broken ones littering the floor tiles. A rattle-rope hung from the peak of the eaves. Ox-Blossom gave it a perfunctory shake to acknowledge the god’s presence then returned to the shrine gardens. The stone purification trough was fed continuously by a bamboo trickle-pipe. After rinsing his face, neck and forearms, he settled on a bench and sat staring at the flat surface of water shimmering in the autumn sunlight, overflow spilling out evenly on all sides of the rectangular trough and dribbling down the mossy flanks of stone.

On the day before his departure, a generous sum of money had been packed in a box and delivered to the proprietor of an assignations teahouse in the Nightless City of Yoshiwara. The leader of the squad of Sotobayama samurai who carried out this task had also been charged with conveying in vivid detail what might happen to the assignations man should he behave in ways other than as was to be expected. The message was grasped, and ownership of her person was returned to the little peony girl who had been the Ox-blossom’s summer friend, all obligations to the assignations teahouse now voided.

The pleasure of doing for another what she could not do for herself filled Ox-Blossom with tenderness and nostalgia and regret.

The pleasure of doing for another what she could not do for herself filled Ox-Blossom with tenderness and nostalgia and regret. They had parted badly. His poor little peony girl had been left kneeling before him in the blue summer dawn, a gaudy robe draped over her naked shoulders and her eyes filling with tears as she told him she didn’t know what she had done wrong. It had pained him at the time; but he now appreciated that the poignancy of shared disappointment, the embrace of the inevitability of the sadness of love lost, love betrayed, love undone by the dust of the world, had also created in him a deeper understanding of the nature of the ways of the world.

Ox-Blossom would have preferred to excuse himself from the task of editing the haikai group’s final compendium. But others had already begun to define Old Master Bashō’s way of linking in terms they could use to promote their own affairs. They wanted secret teachings, a catalog of enigmas, a codification of arcane rules and requirements to which they could restrict access. Most would keep silent during the forty-nine days of deep mourning. But schismatics had already begun campaigning for a return to the “profound-depth” style of linked poetry in repudiation of the “lightness”^[2] of the Old Master’s late manner, and only Ox-Blossom’s prestige as a senior Tokugawa official could prevent them from taking over the valedictory publication entirely.

Once he had rested, Ox-Blossom continued out through the tenth-day market that was arranged along the banks of the river. He examined the leaf crowns of blunt red carrots limp in the dry heat, the crumbling black knots of soil gripped within the rootlets of giant white radishes, the piles of cucumbers, aubergines and runner beans, and the muddy segments of lotus root like stained bones displayed on the broad leaves they had been wrapped in. Old Master Bashō had described this market in one of his last travel journals, and Ox-Blossom wished to see it through the eyes of his teacher. Yet as he watched itinerant peddlers pick through heaps of cabbages, checking for worm damage, leaf burn, and the depredations of fungal rot — aware that their own customers would do the same — whatever lightness might be found in the scene was lost on him. No doubt an intensified understanding was required, an appreciation of nuance that he himself seemed not to possess.

At the river ferry’s quay Ox-Blossom paid his copper and joined the other passengers. A young wife with a pale complexion took the seat beside him. She was well-dressed for someone living in such a rural district; and she carried a pheasant cock in a woven bamboo basket-cage, the bird’s long tail feathers protruding through a gap in the weave. The young wife told him her husband had snared the pheasant in the moorlands that morning. She was on her way to the retirement villa of a connoisseur who would pay five silver for the opportunity to paint a true image of it.

Is that so? A true image?

He is an artist who creates the exact likeness of what he sees placed before his eyes, and who condemns as frivolous city painters in Edo or Kyoto, with their phoenixes and dragons and Chinese kirin.

A painter of integrity, said Ox-Blossom.

Stew it with ginger and onions in a sweet-wine broth, called the front oarsman from his perch at the fore transom. The young wife smiled and glanced at Ox-Blossom in a way that reminded him of how whenever his little peony girl had become amused by something, she would check surreptitiously to see if his dignity would permit him to share it.

Being in a narrow boat on a swift river made the young wife anxious; and as they caught the current, she distracted herself by describing how she was obliged to manage two small children, a flock of ducks, an aged father-in-law who wandered in the lanes and became confused, and a husband who, although enterprising, had a fondness for squandering his time and money in the wine shops and brothels of the provincial castle town. The ducks, in particular, were a burden to her. There’s no end to the ways they find to sicken and die, she said.

A difficulty indeed, said Ox-Blossom, watching the maples and liquidambars on the near shore sliding past, mostly still green but with full-autumn arriving in the orange and red of the lacquer bushes, the bright splashes of color reminding him of the gaudy robes his little peony girl had worn, her nape exposed and the hem of her scarlet underskirt showing.

They will eat moldy grain and collapse from bloating.

Is that so?

And rapeseed meal! How can they be so stupid as to eat something that poisons them?

A difficult question indeed…

His purchase of her contract meant his little peony girl could now live anywhere that would take her. He had wondered what she would do to support herself and instructed his house steward to keep track of her once she left the pleasure quarters. He did not necessarily require further access himself — the acceptance of necessity being a point of pride with him — but he was curious about her fate.

I would imagine you have heard of the tail-bobbing disease? said the young wife.

Tail-bobbing?

Wheezing is another symptom.

I see, said Ox-Blossom thoughtfully.

Maggoty vent, too, although by then it’s too late.

His little peony girl had told him once of her hope to learn to read and write, and he had spent pleasant evenings showing her how to draw simple characters, watching her clumsy attempts with good-humored tolerance. Probably the need to maintain herself would make further attempts impractical. Still, he had enjoyed the way her little pink tongue protruded between her lips as she struggled to copy his model and write out the word for “eternity.”

And castor beans! Do not say a word to me about castor beans!

No. But he had to say something. You raise them for their eggs then?

Eggs and feathers for now. Then later duck meat. Her small face shone serenely, all fear of the river current forgotten. I will get a good price in the city.

You will take them there yourself?

I will. For my husband would not make it past the first wine shop.

A difficult situation.

Difficult, yes. But she would be the one in the city visiting the new dry goods emporiums with cash to spend while her husband remained behind in the village, with one sniveling child tied on his back and the other stumbling along whining for his suck dummy. An obi in the new, extra-wide style will be my first purchase, and perhaps even a gaudy robe like the kind they wear in the pleasure quarters.

I see.

And tortoiseshell hair ornaments, mottled yellow and brown. I know exactly the ones I want.

Indeed. And he too knew them, decorations like those his little peony girl had shown him shyly; and it occurred to Ox-Blossom that this too was a kind of lightness, these simple correspondences, things as they were without embellishment.

Ox-Blossom had always assumed that he understood Old Master Bashō’s way of linking in his late manner because his descriptions of it were so simple. In fact, all he’d done was understand the words he had used.

Ox-Blossom had always assumed that he understood Old Master Bashō’s way of linking in his late manner because his descriptions of it were so simple. In fact, all he’d done was understand the words he had used. But now as he was able at last to recall with tranquility his days and nights of doubt and desire in the pleasure quarters, he detected within his reconfiguration of what had been endured an abrupt easing of the pain of it, like the moment when after a protracted struggle, the curved worm is at last extracted from the tight spiral of the winkle shell.

And clogs with scarlet toe cords! Can you imagine?

He could; and after wishing the young wife a safe journey, he set off on the road to the remote mountain villa where the final edit of the Bashō Group Compendium would be made, hiking up through the dry afternoon heat until he reached a roadside rest shelter. He drank deeply from his water gourd then held it cradled in his palms, the damp surface slick as catfish skin. The idea of the sadness of lost love was in many ways more satisfying than the peony girl herself had been. He drank again then got out his writing kit and sketched a prose heading:

The true image of things: a bird in a cage and a skiff on a river. What else is there but this? Unsure of my feelings, and unable to seek the advice of my little friend left behind in Edo, I devised this poor offering for her.

Then he dashed off a quick hokku opening-stanza, the words dropping down each out of the one before in a single, sinuous line of black ink:

Clogs with scarlet toe cords left under a lacquer tree; autumn arrives early in the barrier mountains.

The Cloud Terrace Pavilion was a medieval villa perched high on the southernmost peaks of the mountains that formed the central spine of the main island of the archipelago. It had been constructed by a family whose descendants chose the wrong side during the civil war, resulting in the slaughter of their persons and the forfeiture of their estates. In the decades that followed the establishment of the Tokugawa Great Peace, the Cloud Terrace had become a favorite venue for connoisseurs in search of the subtleties of the pleasures of the past.

The main structure was a large, open-sided pavilion with a massive roof of slate-gray tiles. An external porch thrust out over the void was supported by a trestlework of pillars, each pier of which was fashioned from a whole cedar tree. Attendant buildings and cottages were dispersed among the surrounding groves and crags. Covered walkways connected the complex together so that upright granite scarps and dramatically twisted pines formed part of the architecture.

Aesthetes were drawn to the Cloud Terrace by its simulation of a way of life that had long since ended, and the villa’s Tokugawa masters — susceptible themselves to the lure of nostalgia and the seductions of self-indulgence — ensured that no hint of modernity obtruded in any obvious way. The cushions, screen paintings, tray tables and crockery were recent masterworks modeled on cherished originals; and the robes issued to guests were self-consciously archaic although newly made from fine silks and satins, authenticity of effect being more important to the Tokugawa than actual authenticity.

Ox-Blossom was met by the assembled editors in the main assembly hall. You have been here for a few days then?

We have indeed. Some arrived yesterday, others the day before. You are our only laggard.

The pleasure providers selected for the occasion of the final edit complemented the furnishings by radiating an aura of sweet wistfulness. Their hair was styled in an antique manner and their eyebrows plucked out to create the broad smooth forehead of the classic Heian beauty. They were costumed in seven layers of silk robes, the combinations of colors where they overlapped at the sleeves and bodice openings meant to exemplify the elegance of that earlier age; and they hid themselves simpering behind robe-draped screens and veiled their faces when on outings amidst the cliffs and grottoes or even when transiting between buildings, their timidity considered charmingly erotic. This semblance of reluctance was set aside during the long and liquid banquets that filled the afternoons and evenings at the terrace, however — the managing of modesty-veils during such celebrations judged an intolerable nuisance — and abandoned wholly during night frolics in the outdoor thermal baths, when the illusion of the disinclination felt by refined ladies to exposed themselves to the gaze of the world dissolved in the rustic ambience of sulfurous fumes and hot water.

Stacked against the inside wall of the main pavilion building were panniers filled with hand scrolls, printed books, bound manuscripts, and bundle upon bundle of loose sheaves of poems tied together with silk cords. A few of the panniers had been opened already and their contents arranged in piles of association although this seemed premature since criteria of assessment had not yet been determined. Ox-Blossom was prepared to defend “lightness” as an ideal, and he knew that others would support him; but the cabal of poets who wished to return to the “profound-depth” style of linked poetry would make demands requiring compromise and the occasional capitulation.

The first day was spent sorting and categorizing. The editors spread themselves around the large pavilion, some choosing the outer edge with its views of sky and distant mountains, others preferring the inner ambience of gardens and grottoes. Senior Editor Ox-Blossom occupied the central position in front of the tokonoma alcove. A haiga painting by their teacher hung there, depicting a flock of crows in twilight swirling above the leafless branches of late-autumn trees. Before it stood an upright Korean vase containing a single white chrysanthemum with not a speck of dust to be found on its petals.^[3] The pleasure providers served charmingly as messengers, carrying scrolls and manuscripts between editors and scribes, their mounds of silk robes rustling as they moved about the large open-air pavilion, conveying questions and comments and, upon occasion, clever witticisms which they pretended not to understand and often didn’t.

In the middle of the room three piles were established: one for poems and linking stanzas that had been accepted, one for the obvious rejects, and one for those still undecided, with a rationale for each decision entered into a log which could be reviewed should disputes arise later.

By the end of the afternoon, the sorting process had been completed. The undecided pile was larger than the senior editor would have preferred, but he had won debates he’d anticipated losing and retained submissions he’d thought doomed. Disputatious camps had formed within the “return to profundity” clique; small differences had become magnified; egos had swollen; and certain attributes of the profound manner of linked poetry had so risen in importance in the minds of its defenders that the acrimony which billowed up around the appropriateness of including the image of a pine tree in a vision of autumn hills trembling with colored leaves seethed violently, grew in intensity, and almost destroyed the work that had gone before as one group of disgruntled conservatives threatened to renounce all further cooperation and return immediately to Edo. A compromise was reached finally, and an otherwise inoffensive poem about weepy lovers watching the wake of a boat disappear into spring mist was sacrificed as a gesture of amelioration.

The day’s work done, some of the poet-editors hiked up to a small viewing platform perched higher in the mountains while others strolled down to the thermal baths, where a few of the bolder pleasure providers were known to be awaiting them, naked as peeled willow wands. Only the senior editor remained on the terrace, assisted by a scribe and, at his request, the youngest and least experienced of the pleasure providers, a weedy little creature whose nose was pink with inflammation.

Ox-Blossom was near the end of his review of the submissions still in dispute when he came to a single hand scroll containing a series of his own poems composed one summer afternoon while visiting his lost peony girl. He scanned through the sequence until he found one that she herself had suggested and recited it to the girl kneeling forlornly in the corner.

She said she thought it was nice.

And this? He read another one, also by his lost friend.

It’s nice too, replied the young pleasure provider, twin pearls of mucus expanding and contracting on the bottom rims of her nostrils as she sniffled in quick little snorts.

Ox-Blossom wondered if the peony girl’s stanzas didn’t characterize his teacher’s late manner, more so even than did his own. He held the scroll for a moment longer then placed it on the alcove shelf behind him rather than consigning it to one of the piles in the middle of the room.

The evening banquet began with rare delicacies, and it rumbled forward in a spirit of fellowship. Wine flowed and agreements were reached, ruffled feathers smoothed, slights forgotten. The night wore to its conclusion with some matters left unresolved, however. Was, or was not, low diction to be condemned? All recognized the factuality of a nightingale shitting on rice cakes on a veranda,^[4] but was that in itself sufficient? The celebrants pondered the imponderable, held their wine cups up to be refilled, and eventually tottered off to the various cottages and pavilions they had been assigned, some accompanied by pleasure providers and some not.

Ox-Blossom ordered paper lanterns placed along the path leading out to one of the more secluded thermal pools. Pale wisps of steam rose from the dark surface of the sulfurous water and dissolved into the inky blackness of the night’s sky. He hung his clothing on the stubs of branches on a nearby pine which had been trimmed for that purpose then used the old-fashioned dipping gourd to rinse himself and warm his skin before settling into the murky pool, clutching himself against the heat of the water. The autumn night was cold and clear and bright with stars, and the uncertain young pleasure provider stood hovering in the glow of the nearest paper lantern. She said everybody else was tucked in their quilts. She said she didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She said she was called the Princess of the Chamber of Fragrant Lilies although that wasn’t her real name; and she struggled with the multiple layers of her unfamiliar costume and the various sashes and ties that held it all together, searching out a separate branch stub for each garment so that the edge of the thermal pool took on an exotic ambience, with the silk robes and underskirts and dangling sashes forming a polychrome backdrop to the austere simplicity of the mountain grotto.

The girl squatted at the edge of the pool. Judging it presumptive to touch a gourd dipper that had been used by the senior editor, she rinsed herself by splashing up palmfuls of water in a foolish and ineffective manner. She was a scrawny little thing, with a concave chest and nipples still those of a child, the patch of shame hair at her little jade gate hardly more than a black tuft of floss. She crept forward then sank into the hot water, emitting strangled little gasps of dismay at the shock of the heat, two lines of snot leaking suddenly from her nostrils.

Ox-Blossom returned his attention to the silver river of stars flowing above them, the milky beauty of it flooding across the autumn night’s sky.

It’s lovely up here in the mountains, he said, and the fragrant princess responded with a constricted squeak of assent.

Had she been here before?

She had not.

Probably you are unfamiliar with such gatherings.

She was unfamiliar with all things.

So a new experience for you, Ox-Blossom said in an avuncular manner; and when they retired to his personal chambers and the quilts spread there for them, he gave her instructions and gently corrected infelicities; then once one thing had led successfully to another, he asked if she couldn’t stop snuffling at least long enough for him to fall asleep.

The battles that Ox-Blossom had anticipated were joined throughout the day of the final cull; he won some, he lost some, and some were left unresolved. With the content of the compendium largely determined, they could begin arranging the poems into sequences, a task that would take several more days, with the undecided submissions used to fill any gaps.

In a moment of hubris, Ox-Blossom told the fragrant princess that when he returned to Edo, she would come with him, attached to his entourage, and a place would be found for her at the Sotobayama Family Compound, with appropriate duties and an older member of the household staff instructed to look after her.

That was it. The simple clarity of an honest emotion. And he smiled to think that if he hadn’t lost his little peony girl, then such an understanding might never have occurred to him.

The banquet on that second night was as sumptuous as had been the one the night before; and the good humor shared among the editors was sincere, for the conservatives had found in Ox-Blossom a tractable Tokugawa bureaucrat who would yield when pressed. while Ox-Blossom himself felt that he had preserved enough of the poems in their Old Master’s late manner to satisfy the requirements of his obligation. Celebratory wine cups were exchanged again and again, with the pleasures providers scrambling to fill and refill them; and there was a point late in the evening when Ox‐Blossom suddenly grasped the truth of the manner of lightness. He sent for an inkstone and brush, and he retrieved the scroll of summer poems he had made with the peony girl and added a concluding stanza at the bottom:

Autumn twilight; no one shares the sadness of what’s been lost: silk robes draped forlornly on a pine tree.

That was it. The simple clarity of an honest emotion. He smiled to think that if he hadn’t lost his little peony girl, then such an understanding might never have occurred to him.

The fragrant princess gazed at her new benefactor from her place in the corner. Her coif was enhanced with a few additional silver baubles although her runny nose seemed unimproved, and he wondered for a moment if he hadn’t been a bit precipitous in taking her into his service although of course corrections would always be an option.