Emmi Itäranta - Memory of Water

He watched me, and waited. Waited for me to understand.

‘You are a tea master,’ I said.

Taro turned his head slightly. I couldn’t read his expression.

‘I was,’ he replied. ‘Or to be more accurate, I was supposed to be. I learned from my father, who was a watcher of water, one of the last. He despised the masters of the cities, regarded them as traitors to the profession.’

The humidity rising from the cauldron floated in the air of the teahouse, concentrating on the window and my face.

‘But you’re not practising,’ I said.

Taro drained his cup, placed it down on the floor and pushed it towards me. I filled it.

‘Not after I revealed the location of my father’s spring to the military,’ he said. ‘I also let them know that I might be interested in an army career. They were very favourable towards me after that. But we are woolgathering,’ he said. ‘As I said, I can give you your life back, if you want.’ He lifted the cup to his lips, but the liquid was still too hot, and he placed it down again. ‘Maybe not exactly as it was, but a large enough part.’

I kept my hands on my knees, although I wanted to wipe the humidity from my brow, and said nothing.

‘You haven’t heard, have you? About your mother.’

I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to trading with him, but I had been staring at the blank screen of the message-pod for too many days, and my thoughts had built too many stories I did not want to follow to the end. I had no power to stop my words.

‘What do you know about my mother?’

Taro’s expression did not change.

‘There was a rebellion in Xinjing. Your mother has been missing for a month,’ he said. ‘She is believed to be dead.’

I had been fearing this knowledge, and yet now, faced with it, I felt nothing. Grief would come later, but now it simply poured off me and dissipated and left an emptiness behind.

‘It’s not in my power to bring back the dead,’ Taro said. ‘But what about those who are still alive?’

He saw me startle and I read contentment on his face.

‘Isn’t there someone else you would save if you could?’

My breathing clung to my throat and my heart beat faster.

‘Where is she?’ I asked.

Taro tilted his head and his expression steadied into contemplation.

‘She asked me to deliver a message. She asked you to accept my offer.’

I swallowed.

‘What’s the offer?’

‘You can both have your freedom back and you may continue your lives just until now, in peace, protected by the military. You could even use the spring more freely than the rest of the villagers.’

I thought of the weeks when the spring had been ours alone. The corners of Taro’s mouth twitched, and I knew he had seen the change on my face. I forced myself to look him directly in the eye.

‘On what condition?’

‘You only need to consent to the spring belonging to the military from now on, and to both of you working for me.’ He paused, letting the words sink in. ‘You made some crucial mistakes, of course, but you also showed intellect and cunning. I nearly believed for a while that there was no spring. Muromäki had to spy on you for a long time and make a lot of enquiries before he found out where the water was coming from and how it was being smuggled to the village. We could use spies with your skills.’

For the second time during our conversation images shifted in my memory and their details were laid out in a new manner. Muromäki’s tea visit on the wrong day, him stopping at the gate of Sanja’s house and his conversation with Sanja. And a memory that was almost lost, but surfaced now, clear amidst others: the blond-haired guest at my father’s funeral, the face that had seemed familiar but I had been unable to name. All this time I had not understood how the net was closing in around me.

Everything was still in the room, and I couldn’t see the path ahead of me due to the mist rising from past weeks and their incomprehensibility, the cracks of the world, a dark mirror in which I couldn’t discern my own face.

‘And Sanja asked me to accept that?’

‘She said she would, if it meant you could see each other again.’

I thought of Sanja, and I could feel myself turning towards the thought. I was weary. ‘Yes’ was an easy word in my mouth, and the image behind my eyes impossible to turn away: her hand in mine in the spring, where the restless current pressed against our outlines, our mark forever in the memory of the world and water.

I closed my eyes and drew in a breath.

‘She believed it would be worth it,’ Taro continued softly. ‘That’s why she came to us.’

I opened my eyes. Words slipped away, and images, and all that I could not make true even if I wanted to.

‘You are lying,’ I said.

Taro’s face twisted into an expression that wasn’t quite a smile, and something fell off, a mask, a carefully woven plan – I wasn’t sure which. I just saw that a crack had appeared in his solid intent, and before he had arranged his face into an unmoving blank canvas again, I knew I was right.

‘I could admit that I am,’ Taro said. ‘But you don’t know that. You only have my word, and you don’t trust me.’ He went quiet. We gazed at each other, and the only things moving in the room were our breathing and our thoughts. ‘What if I told you that Sanja didn’t come to us because of you, but because she wanted to protect her family? Would you find that easier to believe?’

Shadows wrapped Sanja and carried her further from me, until I could no longer see her. I did not raise my hand. I did not speak a word to forestall her. She walked away and did not look back.

I was alone, and I said the only thing I could.

‘Nothing will make me accept your offer.’

Taro lifted the teacup to his lips, drained it slowly, wiped his mouth and placed the cup on the floor.

‘Is that your final word?’ he asked. ‘Think carefully. There won’t be another chance.’

‘It is.’

Taro nodded. The finality of the gesture echoed in the walls of the narrow room. He got to his feet and his shadow fell over me. For a moment it merged with me as if it was my own.

I moved across the floor to the visitors’ entrance and opened it slightly for Taro. He kneeled down again and was just about to crawl out to the veranda, but stopped and turned towards me.

‘I’m curious,’ he said, and for the first time I saw something in him that resembled genuine interest. ‘Why? Do you believe that there is some reward waiting for you, in another life or afterlife, if you do what you imagine is the right thing?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I believe that we must make hard choices every day despite knowing that there is no reward.’

‘Why?’ he repeated.

‘Because if this is all there is, it’s the only way to leave a mark of your life that makes any difference.’

Taro did not nod, did not smile, did not sneer. He just looked, and turned again to go.

‘I’m curious too,’ I said, and he stopped. ‘If you don’t believe in rewards, if you know even your power will fade, why do you keep hoarding it and doing things you know to be wrong?’

Taro did not stir at my question. He was quiet. I heard his breathing in the humid air of the hut, and I imagined there was a nearly unnoticeable quiver in his expression, but I was probably wrong. He was looking away, and when he turned his face towards me again, it was only cold glass and stone I saw.

‘Because if this is all there is,’ he finally said, ‘I might as well enjoy it while it lasts.’

We sat still on our knees, turned towards each other, and nothing separated us, and nothing held us together. His choices could have been mine; all shadows share the same colour, and they all disappear in the dark.