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Dragonfly Wings

By Elizabeth Ann Boyles

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Chapter One

July 1859 (Year of the Sheep), Nagasaki, Japan

Taguchi Sumi took a closer look at the charcoal bucket for the brazier in her home’s main room. A wadded paper lay half buried as though intentionally concealed. She plucked it out and uncurled the tight ball, careful to keep the black dust from dirtying the tatami floor’s spotless straw mats.
Her breath caught. Words written in the squiggly English alphabet as well as in Japanese met her eyes. Tingling with excitement, she tore through the Japanese translation.
English lessons. Taught by Americans. One class for young men. Another for young ladies. Unbelievable! Nothing on earth could be more wonderful. Nothing.
Two afternoons each week. Even once a week would have thrilled her.
Third house from the Oura River Bridge in the new international sector. She could walk there in an hour.
Three weeks had passed since the Westerners’ arrival, cracking open her country’s two-hundred-fifty years of isolation, and she hadn’t glimpsed a single one of them after that first day. But with these classes, she would meet Americans twice a week, maybe even the amazing United States consul himself. She had to comport herself with the dignity required for a samurai’s daughter. But inside her, fireworks exploded.
“That paper does not concern you.”
She started and then bowed. “Ah, good morning, Grandfather. The strange paper attracted my curiosity.” She crumpled the precious notice, fitting it within her fist, bracing for his next words.
“It announces barbarian trickery. Throw it into the fire.”
Her hands obeyed, but her heart didn’t let go. The paper disappeared in a fiery puff.
She sighed and darted a look at her grandfather. Despite the thinning white hair, his firm jaw hadn’t softened a bit. His dark eyes glittered with determination. She’d occasionally wheedled a concession from him in her childhood, but not recently.
“What now?” He picked up a metal stick and poked the brazier’s charcoal chunks.
Her chest tightened. “I regret the trouble I’ve caused the family.”
“Trouble especially for me, in arranging your marriage.” He gave the coals a final hard poke.
“I will strive to improve. Instead of being a burden, I wish to contribute to our family, if possible.”
“And how is that?” He motioned to the teapot, then lowered himself onto a cushion with a groan.
“Might not Father find translation work day after day . . . tedious? Perhaps I could aid him if I spent only a little time studying languages.”
She glanced at the Eldest again, knowing he saw through her pretense. She could never truly consider her father’s work tedious. As Dutch Scholar of the Second Rank, he had access to the writings of the world, like having a banquet at one’s fingertips. And her father didn’t just read about the Westerners. While interpreting for the American consul, he met them every day.
Her grandfather grunted and pointed to the cushion across from him.
She set his chawan bowl of golden tea on his nearby stand and took her place, kneeling back on her heels and smoothing her kimono. At his stern look, she straightened her spine.
He slurped the steaming tea, then dabbed the moisture from his cheeks. “The barbarians are perilous in ways you refuse to acknowledge. Their ideas can destroy the naïve. Moreover, Kato-dono will continue as matchmaker and search out another worthy family who upholds our country’s traditions. Such a family would never approve of your studying barbarians’ languages, no matter the reason.”
Sumi forced down the acid that rushed into her throat.
“When Kato-dono hesitated because of the botched negotiations with Kurohashi Keiji-san, I convinced him that your odd interest in the foreigners had been an ignorant phase. You should thank the gods he is still willing to represent us, especially since the age of eighteen far exceeds the time for betrothals.”
She bowed, afraid to speak. The matchmaker would no doubt seek another man as repugnant as Keiji-sama, who had belittled her, ranted against foreigners, and worst of all, applauded—actually relished—the banishment of a pitiable man to the coal mines for cherishing one ancient Christian charm. She shivered at how close she had come to a lifetime with the closed-minded traditionalist.
“Do you remember the old tale of Urashima Tarō?” Her grandfather’s voice sounded less gruff.
“Yes.” She kept her eyes lowered and tried to speak normally. “It appealed to me as a child.”
“When the young Tarō left the sea princess’s palace, a calamity lay in store. Describe it.”
“Returning home after his adventure in the underwater palace, Tarō found years had passed and his family had died. Yet—”
“Dallying in an alien place destroyed the boy’s natural life.” He leaned forward. “In addition, the ocean covering the palace enabled sharks to prowl. Invisible. Dangerous. Waiting for people foolish or stupid enough to go where they did not belong.”
Sumi blinked. Sharks weren’t in any version she’d heard. But since he freely manipulated the tale, maybe she dared use the tale too.
“May I ask if the story might be looked at in an additional way?”
“Eh? What way?” He squinted at her as she looked up.
“Since Tarō deserved the extraordinary reward for having treated the turtle kindly, it seems he could have chosen to stay at the enchanting palace.”
“Stay?” he spluttered.
She plunged ahead. “But since Taro chose to leave, he should have followed the princess’ instructions not to open the mysterious box. If he had been wise, he could have avoided the box’s curse and faced a better future.” She held her breath.
“The true tragedy was not the curse of aging. It was the boy’s neglect of service to his family.” Her grandfather plunked down his tea bowl. “Without loyalty you are nothing!” He rose and pointed his finger at her. “No matter how you construe the story, I forbid you to attend that class.” He headed for the door.
Sumi stood and bowed, then stared at the paper’s ashes. Loyal? She was loyal to her family. Couldn’t she be loyal yet explore a little? Dip her toe into new waters without being swept away? Or attacked by sharks? Her grandfather had toured the largest domains, climbed Fuji-san, visited the Shōgun’s magnificent Edo castle. He hadn’t been in a magical palace, of course, but close to it.
Glancing toward the doorway, she caught her grandfather looking back. Likely as not, he had no idea how much pain he had just inflicted. And he couldn’t know how much she yearned to please him, yet how impossible she found it.
He continued toward his room, and she turned in the opposite direction, holding back a forbidden tear.
At their home’s entrance, the summer heat already seeped through the paper panels. She slid back the shōji, seeking a breeze, but found none. Pulling out her fan, she sat on the veranda’s step, imagining years of empty days ahead.
A dragonfly flew past, its wings a flash of silver.
She straightened and watched it dart from one bush to another, heading toward the front gate. Was it a sign? A reminder to persist in her dream? Samurai admired the courageous insect, which always flew forward, never backward, and overcame lesser insects. Bashō, revising another poet’s haiku, had written:
Simple pepper pods
Add gossamer wings to them
Behold: Dragonflies
Pepper pods and dragonflies. One essence to the poem’s authors, but not to her. A pepper pod drooped in a garden until picked. However, the dragonfly could visit new, distant places on a whim and then return unscathed. She couldn’t endure remaining like a pepper pod. There had to be more to living than flower arrangement, tea ceremony, embroidery, and plucking the koto’s strings, each lesson progressing as slowly as the poet Issa’s snail crawling up Fuji-san, stone by stone by stone.
Oceans no longer separated her from the foreigners. They were here, in her city. She closed her eyes, picturing the tall, confident consul during the welcoming procession. He couldn’t be an uncivilized barbarian. Her father wouldn’t have said he had a calm, thoughtful disposition if he were. She’d sensed his fine life’s energy, his ki, herself.
Regardless of danger, whether real or make-believe, she had to find an opening into the world beyond, into the world the consul inhabited.
 
Chapter Two

The following morning, cooler air blew in from the ocean, inviting an outing. Seeing her father gazing at the book shelf over his low desk, Sumi bowed. “Father, please excuse my interruption.” She drew in a shaky breath. Had her grandfather foreseen her request and already blocked it?
He turned toward her. “Yes? What is it?”
“Might I accompany you on one of your visits to the international sector? I would like to observe a few of the strange sites you mentioned.” She drew out her fan and tried to maintain an unruffled countenance while slowly fanning her face.
“I suppose you’ll need to see the area sooner or later.” A smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. “If you have no lesson today, you may come with me. Perhaps we can satisfy a little of that boundless curiosity of yours.”
Her spirits rose as she bowed her thanks. Somehow, against all odds, he had gained her grandfather’s permission to become a Dutch Scholar and linguist. Of course, that was before anyone knew the Shōgun would open the country to the Americans, and then to other countries as well. But her father’s victory showed the impossible could become possible.
An hour later, she wiped damp palms on her cherry-colored kimono and nearly tiptoed out the house. She needn’t have worried, however. Her grandfather was in the back garden, where he didn’t like to be disturbed.
They each rode in a kago, the hammocks swaying from the broad poles carried by jogging, bare-legged porters. At the Oura River Bridge, they left the kago.
Her father waved her forward. “Walk next to me. Foreigners, both men and women, walk side by side. In fact, when entering buildings, the men insist that the women enter first.”
Sumi immediately complied despite unease at not following three steps behind. Did foreign women get used to such regal treatment?
After they passed through the guard gate, the road filled with swaggering sailors, workmen, horseback riders, men and women in bizarre outfits, and aggressive peddlers hawking fans, umbrellas, ink stones, and other paraphernalia. Two seagulls swooped overhead, their squawks mixing with the caterwauling of fishmongers selling eels and squid. The strong smell of seawater announced the bay’s proximity.
Sumi drank in as many sights as she could, her body tingling with excitement. Her country’s door had opened wide, and hers had creaked open a tiny bit in spite of her grandfather.
The dark river next to her teemed with sampans and large barges. Six men unloading barrels of whale oil shouted to each other in a language she’d never heard her father practice—not sounds of English or Dutch. She turned toward him.
“Russians,” he said, anticipating her question. He pointed to several Chinese with long pigtails earnestly bartering for daikon, foot-long white radishes, from a green grocer. “Foreigners’ cooks. The world has come to us. To our own city.”
They walked by the third house from the bridge. Its occupants had turned the Japanese house into a semi-foreign one. White wooden planks and glass windows took the place of the original sliding panels. Sumi forced her eyes away from the building. Behind its strange exterior lay the English treasure trove. She sealed her mouth against the pleadings longing to burst forth. Forbidden!
Up ahead, a group of foreigners chatted, two men and two women. The ladies wore the amazing mushroom-style skirts that nearly swept the ground. A hat covered with feathers perched on one lady’s head. The other lady wore a smaller, less startling hat with one feather poking up. The foreigners talked and laughed in a familiar fashion. Then the lady with multiple feathers signaled to another couple across the road and marched over to them. The foreign women enjoyed astonishing freedom, the extent almost dizzying.
As they drew closer, she noticed a cane poking out from under the elderly man’s arm. The cane’s top curved into the shape of a . . . a parrot’s head. Could that possibly be his clan’s insignia? The characteristics of such a bird would hardly make an enemy tremble. She snickered at the thought of a parrot swooping down on a helmeted warrior.
The man gave the lady’s words his full attention. Gray streaked his once dark hair and beard. Why foreign men wanted hairy faces was beyond her.
At that moment, the man recognized her father. He held out his hand—the handshake she’d heard about. The white-haired lady turned toward them and smiled. Then the second man, whose back had been toward Sumi, turned around.
She took a step backwards before she stopped herself. The tall American consul faced her. Only thirty years old, according to the documents her father had seen, yet he was a powerful country’s envoy. Although he didn’t shave his pate or wear his hair in a topknot, he had to be an extraordinary samurai.
The consul and her father shook hands too. No one bowed. When the elderly lady spoke, white teeth showed. They weren’t coated with black enamel. Wasn’t she married at such an advanced age? Didn’t all married women dye their teeth and pluck their eyebrows?
English words swirled all around.
Her father said something that caused the three foreigners to look at her. She raised her fan, but dared a peek at the consul’s face. He didn’t at all have the sinister look attributed to barbarians by so many of her countrymen. His gray eyes appeared just as kind as when she’d seen him on the day he’d landed. In spite of his brown beard and the swath of hair over his lips, his jaw exuded strength, as expected of a samurai. She’d heard rumors he was a good swimmer, accounting for his muscular, lean look.
She fanned her warm face. She would give everything she owned to be able to understand the conversation.

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