Lian Hearn - Heaven's Net Is Wide

He did not know then that his grave would be both public and anonymous: that hundreds would walk past it every day, that his stone would declaim the Otori challenge to those who entered their city, and that his voice would be heard forever, as he talked endlessly with the river.

AKANE WAS BARELY fifteen when she moved to the widow Haruna’s establishment and worked as a maid to the girls there. Men came to drink wine and eat Aunt Haruna’s legendary fried octopus and sea urchin. The girls sat with them, their company as highly valued as the other services they provided, and Akane learned how a quick wit was as attractive as a shapely body, long silky hair, or a flawless nape. Some of the girls sang; they danced like children and often played childhood games with an added sexual edge. Aunt Haruna’s establishment was fairly exclusive, visited by richer merchants and even the sons of the warrior class.

In an attempt to control prostitution, Lord Shigemori had decreed that all brothels should be confined to one district, in the new town across the river from the port. It was on the opposite side to the stone bridge; at the back of Haruna’s place was a natural hot spring, and behind it rose a small volcano on whose slopes grew a variety of shrubs and flowers warmed by the mountain itself: camellias, azaleas, and other more exotic plants that grew nowhere else in the Middle Country. The priest who served at the shrine of the god of the mountain loved plants more than people, it was said. He hardly spoke to pilgrims to the shrine-the mountain was supposed to protect and increase the virility of men-but spent most of his time tending and talking to his plants.

The southern slope of the volcano, then, was a fine place for a pleasure house. Haruna’s was named the House of the Camellias, and she was in her way an artist-of pleasure. Akane, who had grown up absorbing the elements of beauty and design from her father, found herself responding with her whole being to her surroundings. She was spoiled and petted by the older women and became a favorite with the men, though Haruna did not allow any of them to take her with them into the private rooms. She guarded Akane jealously, and Akane did not resist it; the rooms were called private, but with their flimsy walls and fragile screens they were hardly that. Akane grew accustomed to the sounds and smells of desire. She was interested in men’s enslavement, as it seemed to her, to the pleasures of the flesh, how desperately they sought release within the body of a woman. She found their need, their desire, both pitiable and arousing-it seemed so easy to satisfy them and so pleasurable-and so much more comprehensible than her father’s desperate obsession with the unforgiving stone.

She had a way of thinking that was all her own-the same characteristic that had made her seem bold and uncontrollable as a child. She studied the world around her with detachment, even irony. Haruna perceived this and admired it, for it drove men wild. Akane, she thought, liked men but would never fall in love with one. She would be safe from the infatuations that destroyed so many women when they fancied themselves passionately in love with her clients. The men were flattered at first but usually quickly tired of the demands and the jealousy. But women like Akane, whom they knew they could never own, drew them back, got under their skin and made them itch, made them offer any price to be allowed to be her only lover, after which they drove themselves mad with jealousy. Women like Akane were all too rare. Haruna would choose her clients herself and make sure they paid a good price for her. She had high ambitions for Akane-maybe even the highest, a plan that would ensure her influence and prosperity in her old age-but she shared these with no one.

She delayed Akane’s deflowerment until the girl was almost seventeen, not wanting to have her damaged physically or emotionally, and she chose one of her favorite clients-Hayato, younger son of a middle-rank warrior family, a good-looking man, not too old, who adored women but was not possessive and was adept in the art of love. Others had offered more money for Akane’s virginity, but Haruna disqualified them for various reasons: too old, too selfish; drank too much; could often not perform.

Akane enjoyed sex as much as she had thought she would. She had other clients besides Hayato, though he remained her favorite and she was grateful to him for all he taught her, but she regarded them all with the same amused detachment, and as Haruna predicted, it made her all the more desirable. By the time she was nineteen, her fame had spread throughout the city. People came to the house on the side of the mountain hoping for a glimpse of her. Haruna had to employ extra guards to dissuade rowdy hopefuls who turned up drunk and amorous. Akane rarely went outside, other than to walk in the shrine garden and look out over the bay with its steep-cliffed islands fringed with white in the indigo sea. From the top of the volcano, where sulfurous steam issued from the old crater, she could see the whole city: the castle rising opposite from the sheer seawall that her grandfather had built, its white walls gleaming against the dark forest behind it; the huddle of houses in the narrow streets, the roofs glistening after rain in the morning sun; the fishing boats at the port; the canals and the rivers. She could even see the stone bridge rising from between its bristles of scaffolding.

The bridge was finished in the spring, just as new green leaves were bursting from willow and alder by the river, beech and maple on the mountain, poplar and ginkgo in the temple gardens. Akane had gone with Hayato to look at the cherry blossoms around the shrine, and when they returned, Haruna drew the man aside and whispered to him.

Akane walked slowly ahead to her room and called to the maid to bring wine, feeling the anticipation of pleasure that Hayato always aroused in her. He made her laugh; his mind and tongue were as quick as hers. The air was soft and warm, full of the sounds and scents of spring. She gazed at the white arch of her foot and could already feel his tongue there. They would spend the rest of the afternoon together and then bathe in the hot spring, and she would see no one else after him but eat and sleep alone.

However, when Hayato came into the room, his face was somber and full of pity.

“What is it?” she said at once. “What’s happened?”

“Akane.” He sat down next to her. “Your father is to be sealed within the stones of his bridge. Lord Otori has ordered it.” He did not attempt to allay or soften the news but told her carefully and clearly. Yet she still did not understand.

“Sealed? His body?”

He took her hands then. “He is to be buried alive.”

Shock closed her eyes and momentarily wiped all thoughts from her mind; a bush warbler called piercingly from the mountain. In another room someone was singing of love. A fleeting regret came for the pleasures she had expected, which now had to be laid aside, which would be smothered by grief.

“When?”

“The ceremony will be held in three days’ time,” Hayato replied.

“I must go to my parents,” she said.

“Of course. Ask Haruna to order a palanquin. Let my men escort you.”

He touched her gently on the side of her face, meaning only to comfort her, but his sympathy and the feel of his hand combined to ignite her passion. She pulled at his clothes, feeling for his skin, needing his closeness. Normally their lovemaking was slow, controlled, and restrained, but the collision with grief had stripped her of everything but the blind need for him. She wanted him to cover her, to obliterate her, to reduce her to the basic drive of life in the face of brutality and death. Her urgency fueled his, and he responded with a new roughness, which was just what her body craved.