Mistress Oriku. Matsutaro KawaguchiЧитать онлайн книгу.
My teacher, Enshō, was very good at it, too, and he kindly made me rehearse it intensively. However, he warned me not to try performing a sentimental drama of this kind while I was still young. ‘You will not have the power really to touch people’s hearts until you are past forty,’ he said. ‘I will teach it to you, but I will not have you mount the dais and perform it.’ And that is why, until today, I have never done so. If my performance conveys anything of the great Enchō’s and of my teacher Enshō’s skill, I hope you will be able to forgive my forwardness in attempting it.”
Far from being a perfunctory little speech for the occasion, Shinkyō’s words sounded utterly genuine. Oriku was all ears. She wondered what that “particular reason” could possibly be, and his talk of having learned the piece from Enchō and Enshō filled her with nostalgia for days gone by. Shinkyō never once looked at her, but she nonetheless sensed he was aware of her. She also suspected he had suddenly changed his plan when he learned she was there. His voice was firm and settled; unlike those of so many young performers, there was nothing unstable about it. His delivery was warm, too, and brimming with feeling. Oriku could still hear Enchō’s voice in that same great scene, the one in which Tasuke, under threat from his entire family, bids farewell to his beloved horse, Ao, before leaving home forever. She knew the story intimately, having heard it twice—once at her old home in the Yoshiwara and once at the Hakubai Theater in Kanda—and those experiences were not ones she would ever forget. Shinkyō’s Shiobara, today, certainly offered a good deal to remind her of the master. At first she listened somewhat distractedly, but his polished excellence gradually drew her in until, sure enough, when the farewell came, she wept.
“Be brave, oh, be brave, Ao! Let my sleeve go! I must leave!”
His sobbing voice sounded very like Enchō’s. Oriku was deeply impressed. Enchō had said when he performed Shiobara at the Hakubai that it was for the last time, and indeed it had been. He had never recovered the strength to do it again. Shinkyō’s Shiobara today brought back Enchō in person, displaying a precocious grasp of the sentimental repertoire’s subtle appeal. Not that he did not have some way to go yet—he had mastered the piece, yes, but it was not yet entirely his own. Still, he had brought tears to every eye, and the audience was very pleased.
“After bidding farewell to Ao and putting his home behind him,” Shinkyō explained at the end, “Tasuke goes into service in Edo with a firewood and charcoal wholesaler, and little by little he makes a success of himself. That will have to wait for another time, though. The farewell to Ao is as far as I can go today.”
The rather small Namiki Theater shook with thunderous applause, which went on and on while Shinkyō continued to bow in acknowledgment. Oriku applauded too.
“You’ll be as good as the best!” an old man cried from just below the dais. “Keep at it!” The audience burst into renewed applause.
On her way out, Oriku found her footwear ready for her at the exit. The theater owner appeared, to thank her.
“I’d never heard Shinkyō before,” she said, “but he’s good, isn’t he?” She gave him the bag containing a gift she had brought, with the request that he pass it on to Shinkyō. The wind along the river felt good in the rickshaw on the journey home. Brimming with the satisfaction she always felt after a fine performance, she had a good mind to become one of the young man’s regular patrons. When she got back, she was informed that Mr. Tamura, from the Ichimura Theater, was there with a whole crowd of actors. The staff was frantic. Oriku slipped off her haori jacket and rushed to the main room, to find Tamura Nariyoshi, a giant of the theater world, there together with his son Hisajirō and over a dozen young actors like Kichiemon, Mitsugorō, and Yonekichi.
“Where were you?” Tamura teasingly demanded to know. “You said we could come anytime, you’d always be here! You must be taking it easy lately!”
“By no means! I certainly am not! The young storyteller San’yūtei Shinkyō had a special performance today, to celebrate his promotion to principal artist, and I felt it was my duty to go. If I had known you were coming, you would have had no occasion to reprove me. I may go to the theater during the day, but I am always back in the evening.”
“I see, I see. Well, if it’s duty to an artist, go right ahead. You’re forgiven.”
Great man that he was, he smiled at the mention of “duty.”
“Shinkyō is pretty good for his age, isn’t he?” Hisajirō remarked. He seemed to have heard him before.
“I was extremely impressed,” Oriku replied. “He seems very solid.”
“What did he do today?”
“‘Farewell to Ao,’ from Shiobara Tasuke.”
“He did? He really had the nerve to perform that?”
“I know what you mean, but I heard Enchō’s Shiobara, and Shinkyō certainly learned his lesson well. He got plenty of tears out of me, I can tell you that.”
“Really? I’d like to hear him do it myself.”
Hisajirō seemed to be quite a fan. Oriku gathered that next month they would all be performing a new set of plays at Mukōjima, so they had come to see what the place was like and, incidentally, to try some of that chazuke. The saké had been served, each actor had his sure-to-satisfy dinner of river fish before him, and all were chattering merrily. Kichiemon sat quietly in morose silence, but Mitsugorō was engaged in lively conversation with the others about all the trouble they had had with the new play.
“Oriku,” the great Tamura asked, “do you think Shiobara Tasuke would work as a stage play?” Kichiemon gave Oriku a thoroughly actorlike glance.
“Hmm, I wonder.” Oriku paused to think. “The late proprietor of the Silver Flower had heard Enchō do it, and he also saw the kabuki version by Kikugorō V. He used to say that Enchō, just with his fan, got closer to the heart of the matter than Kikugorō ever did, with all his props. That’s my feeling, too.” She said exactly what she thought.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Kichiemon nodded. “I never heard Enchō’s Shiobara, but I thought the same thing when I heard Enshō’s. Even ‘Farewell to Ao’ has greater truth to it when heard from the storyteller’s dais. The sorrow of a stage-prop horse just doesn’t quite do it, somehow.” He watched the expression on Tamura’s face.
“Could be, could be. If the horse should fall over, there goes the play.” Tamura nodded in turn. Having just come from hearing the scene, though, Oriku could not help being impressed by all this earnest interest in whether or not it would work on stage.
At last the chazuke had been served and eaten, and the actors had departed in a procession of rickshaws. Oriku thought it was still early, but actually it was past ten o’clock. Time had flown in such pleasant company.
“Mistress Oriku, you have a visitor waiting for you!” Ofune, the head maid, brought her the news. “I didn’t tell you because Mr. Tamura was here, but he’s been waiting for nearly an hour.”
“Who is it? Do I know him?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s San’yūtei Shinkyō, the storyteller.”
“Really? Shinkyō? Is he here alone?”
“Yes. He says he wants to thank you.”
“That’s a bit much in the way of manners. He has quite a job ahead of him if he’s going to thank every member of his audience in person!”
“I don’t know what it’s about, but anyway, I took him to the Camellia annex. It was the only one available.”
“Well, business is certainly good when I’m not around!” Smiling, Oriku set off for the Camellia. Each annex was named after the characteristic flower in its garden. The Camellia featured big, red and white variegated camellias that bloomed there magnificently, to the right of the path, from mid-February through March. The annexes themselves were modest in size, but each had its own spacious garden. In the Camellia, Shinkyō