Oct 23, 2008.
Sev and I discussed Heiye today.
“Heiye is growing well.”
“I agree. He seems to be prospering.”
“Well, as much as he can.”
“As much as he can, Sev? I am not so harsh as all that.”
“His life is harsh, my dear.”
“Our paths are less harsh?”
“We have our freedom.”
“How highly do you think I rate our freedom, tucked away here like a secret doll hidden behind a cupboard?”
“When did you hide your dolls behind a cupboard?”
“All the time. That isn’t the point.”
“It’s always the point. You shouldn’t take these things for granted, Suki.”
“I don’t.”
“He’s a slave. You think that that’s pleasant for him?”
“It’s not unpleasant, not with us.”
“It’s unpleasant by nature.”
“And what would you have instead?”
“Something. Anything, really.”
“I don’t want to be disagreeable, husband….”
“Oh, you do. I can see it in your eyebrows. Come, lady, disagree with me.”
“I don’t-”
“Don’t what?”
“The institutions of the world are not mine to change.”
“Then what do you think we’re doing? Why do you think we’re doing it?”
“We’re replacing one petty brat with another, and hoping his mother can shame him into good behavior.”
“Mothers are very good at that.”
“I can’t even get Pen to agree that she should care more about her hair than about the hair on her paintbrush, I hope out no hope that Minerva, who has no particular merits in the department of persuasion, may do better with her son.”
“Oh, please, do go on. I love it when you tear holes in ideas.”
“Don’t mock me, husband mine.”
He wrapped his arms around me.
“I do not mock. I quite enjoy poking holes in Dri’s plans myself, you know. It’s all I do with my time.”
“I hate arguing with you.”
“I know. It’s good for both of us?”
“You don’t need this.”
“I’ll tell you what I need, my love.”
“No, you won’t.”
He laughed.
Oct 22, 2008.
I go in circles today. I think, if someone asked me how I was and I answered that, that a conversation would then turn to commiseration and soft words. Circles do not feel wrong, but I feel as if wheels are rolling. My frantic turnings of the other day have calmed. I am left pleased that I can feel so strongly and chagrined that I let me run away with myself.
I feel I should relate the moments of the day, but they do not vary so much from the moments of any other day lately. The fog has been light and I have liked the weather, when I have looked out from Nima’s window. Pale and soft-looking, like shreds of reed puffs.
The question of rightness having occured to me, I have had no luck laying it to rest. I agree absolutely that Sev’s path has lain true and honorable before him, cut with the edges of a knife. The children follow where they are led, as honorable children must. Sev’s opinions about truth, justice, and freedom are, for once, in accord with his honor. He is in accord with his honor, something that sometimes he has seemed lost to. The weight of obligation and the weight of believing that our wars were incorrect has weighed on him. I now feel the same. My obligation remains clear, but do I believe that our war is correct? Sev has his correct war, and I wish to agree with him.
I was raised in a family of officers. We follow orders. I find it impossibly tangled to find my own feelings, in amongst those I feel I should feel and those I feel would make my loves happy. I think, of the wars, that Sev doesn’t like them. That my father likes them. That they are silly, prone to rebellions, ineffective, but do I think the empire expanding is wrong? Sev doesn’t like it. The Emperor is fickle. His methods destroy families. I do not like those who torture children.
I have achieved some measure of an opinion. Not, perhaps, a grand philosophical opinion suitable for discussion with the great, but a tidy one, that I feel I can defend to all comers. I am not settled, but I think I can sleep now.
“You don’t think you need to be here,” I said to Sev at midday today, surprise speaking for me.
He glanced up from his papers. I was standing in the kitchen, cutting up dried mushrooms that had been soaking all morning in broth. I had been watching him ever since the children ran outside to play.
“No. You seem to have things well in hand, lady wife.”
Heiye runs our errands and has Sev’s instructions on warning signs to look out for. Pen and Pang are at least nominally content to take in the lessons I assign them and play ducklings to Heiye’s mother duck when I am busy. The purse from Dri has lessened my concerns about our material needs.
“So, then, why are you home?”
“To see my wife and children.”
“Is it a pleasant sight?”
“I could not wish for any other.”
“How long before you go on your way? I will trip over your legs less often.”
“I have not decided.”
“Truly?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Not at all.” I hesitated, then, and almost spoke of worries. The oil in my pan began to smoke, and I had to add the ginger. “It is my very great pleasure, whenever I see you.”
“I told you I’d be back in a few weeks. I had to return.”
“So you did, and so I appreciate. Still, beloved, why are you here, if not for necessity? Surely this is a time of necessity.”
Sev laughed.
“It’s a time of waiting, really. My choices were to think of the larger scheme with your little friend hovering at my shoulder suspiciously or find someplace I could think in peace.”
“Here? Peace?”
The children had spent most of the morning fighting each other or with me and their father on one point or another. It was a fair question.
“Relatively, anyway. Hmm. You know, I think this is the most alone we’ve been in years? Always with servants and lackeys and lords about and around us.”
“Well, there has been my bedchamber.”
“With your maid in the next room? Come, Mizuki, you know of what I speak.”
“I’m cooking, my lord husband. It is not something that can be interrupted on your whim, though you know I live for them.”
“You always do claim that I am whimsical. I don’t see it, myself. I see… in any case, that is hardly what I meant. I meant speech.”
“Oh. My mistake.”
He laughed again.
A good deal else happened today, and I had time to think. I find myself without the energy to write everything of note, so I shall simply record that I love my husband’s laugh.
Oct 20, 2008.
In most cases, it is clear to me where the records of the day begin. Often they begin in anger, as I seek to express my frustrations with the world without speaking them aloud. Sometimes they are written by sadness, as it grips my brush and my wits in an inexorable current. It is said that a man’s worth is determined by motion, and that a woman’s world is best understood from a place of stillness. From inner tranquility comes a lady’s touch, the perfect pressure to change the world around her without trying.
It is a pleasant idea, but not one I have had much luck in achieving. My mind tends towards eddies and whirlpools, pulling me down into the depths or lifting strange things to the surface. I do not have a mirror within me with occasional ripples, but rather the lapping of the water on the sands.
Sev brought good news. He has succeeded in convincing a number of well-respected and highly placed men that it lies in their best interest to support, quietly, the Emperor’s retirement from his divine position. I do not think that the transition will be so quiet as all that. Sev does not, either, but according to my understanding of his spirit, I did not say as much to him. He needs to believe in peace. He can so seldom see it with his own two eyes.
I want to burn this page. I want to take my brush and break it and put paper and ink aside and never think again, I want to be perfect. I want to believe in everything my husband does, I want to support him in everything he wishes. A good wife – I do not know how to finish this. I do not think I have ever met a perfect wife, or a perfect husband. I want to be perfect for him, but he is not perfect for me. I don’t need him to be perfect, though I do admit it would be nice. He is not very nice. I am not very nice.
Speaking of eddies, I feel caught in one now, everything swirling. I avoid the subject that makes me wish to imitate my daughter and set fires.
I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. If we succeed, if we have a chance at success, and until today I was not sure we had even a chance of success, we will be overthrowing a divine ruler. I do not know if the gods wish this. I cannot disobey the gods, but I cannot betray my husband, but I don’t know what to do.
I suppose I could try to write in a way that does not embarrass me. That should be, I think, the following – I cannot disobey the gods, I cannot betray my husband, and thus I do not know where my path lies.
I must think on this. I have no one I can speak to about it. I think I wish Sev to read my diary and forbid thoughts on this matter, but he will not and I know he will not. He does not break my trust.
Oct 19, 2008.
Today I brushed Nima’s hair, and I took sweet nut oil and a comb and applied it gently. So treated, the color is less harsh, the grey a shade of storm clouds and not the brittle crunch of gravel. Meyni paused to look in on us, leaving apparently satisfied that her mother did not need her. Nimaseki’s lips turned pale after she left. I told Meyni this evening that her mother needs her company, not just her care, and I do not think I did much good. There is a misunderstanding of each others’ character there that I do not begin to know how to solve, though I am tempted as ever to wade into the fray.
It was after sunset when I returned to my own chambers. My eyes ached, my fingers cramping. Nima and I had sewn for most of the day, until the sun faded. We have worked out way through some of her tremendous piles and baskets of scraps and mending. She was very capable and sewed in her every free moment, before the gods stole her fingers’ flexibility and left her with knuckles swollen and red with pain.
It is so strange to write with someone else in the room. The bed moves beneath me, his breath stirs my hair, and my ink almost spills onto the bedspread. I think I miss having a desk, but there is a warmth here.
Sev was home when I returned, eating dinner with the children and being informed in bright, hurried tones of their numerous adventures.
“Did you really almost burn down the lodging house while I was away?” He asked me.
“Of course not, my lord husband. Have you enough tea?”
“Most certainly, my lady wife. Please be seated, and tell me about your latest endeavor. It seems, in truth, that I cannot keep up.”
Oct 18, 2008.
Pen stuck close to me today.
“I think you make a brilliant girl,” I told her.
She smiled at me, one of her father’s empty smiles.
“I do, Pen. Bring me the mushrooms, please.”
Into the soup they went, bubbling prettily grey and black. Dried mushrooms, not fresh, but the difference really is minimal if you’re a child and have no taste.
“I’ll also need the fish.”
“How shall I cut it, lady mother?”
“Pieces the size of your thumb. Oh, no, I’m sorry, my thumb. Little thumbs are too small.”
She threw the fish knife across the room, where it stuck point first in the wall and vibrated there.
“That is not how one cuts fish, daughter. Be a young lady and fetch it back, please.”
When her tears dried up, and the fish was safely added to the stew and I had made sure our chopping knife was undamaged, we sat down together with her in my lap. She is getting too big for this. I remember tantrums at her age, horribly shrieking things where I hid in my room and tried to pull the walls down with my bare fingers. That ended when I went to my husband’s home. I had to grow up.
“I’m not a good girl,” Pen told me. “I’m a rubbish girl. I shouldn’t even be a girl, I’m so bad at it.”
“What do you mean, love?”
“I cannot,” she said carefully, “find it in me to care for chasing boys the way Pang chases girls. Even Heiye chases girls. I don’t like-” she continued on, in high, anguished words. There are a great many things she doesn’t like, including her father being away, us hiding here, men wanting to kill us, Pang’s growing friendship with Heiye when he is her brother and Heiye is not even of our race.
I have tried to sooth her, but I have very little in the way of answers for her. I miss her father as well. We talked female secrets, a little, and I made her giggle. I promised her that her father and I would sort the world out properly and set everything up so that she could be a normal young lady and she would find that going to her husband’s home was a grand adventure.
It has certainly been an unexpected adventure for me.
Oct 17, 2008.
“I should have been the boy,” my Pen said.
I looked up from my sewing. They sat in a loose triangle on the floor, on flat square cushions. Heiye sat straight-backed against the wall, legs sprawled in front of him. Pen was watching her brother. Pang had been looking at the door, but turned to look back at her.
“You should have?” He asked.
“I’d be better at it than you.”
“That’s not possible. Anyway, I’m great at being a boy. Right, Heiye?”
“Your father has never complained,” Heiye said.
“Well, no, father complains about me all the time. He thinks I need to pay attention.”
“See?” Pen asked.
“That’s not at all the same thing.”
“Why do you want to be a boy, anyway?” Heiye asked. “You’d just have to get married and carry on the family line.”
“Yes, but I’d get to learn to fight things.”
“I can teach you, if you want.”
“No! Lady, but you are impertinent today. Do you have something against proper titles, Heiye?”
“Young lady, I humbly apologize.”
“You do not. You aren’t humble at all, Heiye.”
I turned my gaze away, for I did not want to punish any of them for this. I concentrated my hands and eyes on my sewing and my ears on my trio of socially inept miscreants.
“You think not?” Heiye asked.
“I think you’re humble,” Pang said loyally.
There was silence for a moment, and then Heiye burst out laughing. It was a rich, hearty sound, full of manhood. He is growing up, and his voice shows it. I think he shall be a tenor, which is a lovely sort of singing voice to have. A thought for later, I should have him instructed in the arts. He would make a fine entertainer.
“What’s so funny?” The twins asked in tandem.
“Let’s go out, young master, young mistress. I do not wish to disturb your lady mother.”
I hid my smile until they’d gone.
Oct 16, 2008.
I woke this morning to the smell of smoke. It was Pang’s turn to prove his culinary expertise, in an attempt to make our morning meal. I donned a robe and went into the other room, where all three children were circled around the stove. As was somewhat novel, nothing was on fire. Pang had assembled shellfish, green onions and a salty sauce in the pan, but neglected to add any oil.
I went to take control of the situation, with an exclamation of, “Move aside, please.”
Pen moved, but Heiye stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“Tell us what to do,” he said, before dropping his eyes and his hand.
I think I would have hit him. I am not sure what that says about me. I am not sure what that says about him. It troubles me.
Pang looked at me frantically, flapping his arms like an irate songbird.
“Pen, the oil I keep in the green jar. Pang, stir it.”
The excitement ended after that. Half-charred shellfish is actually surprisingly delectable, once you’ve added a cup of twig tea to go with it and with your children laughing uprourously and doing some sort of congratulatory hand slapping. They learned that on the streets, not from me.
It was impossible to teach them after that. I let them out for the morning, fed them noodles for luncheon, and taught them geography in the afternoon. It troubles me slightly, because my strongest memories of most of the provinces are the rebellions there that drew Sev’s attention. I am not thinking about my husband today.
He is an abolitionist, as was his mother. I am not sure what I think. It is so much bigger than I am, ingrained in how life works. I try to be decent, and do as the gods decree. The gods approve of it. Sev doesn’t. A wife is supposed to support her husband in his work and his beliefs. I believe that. I believe a good devotee supports the gods as the priesthood explains.
I should be able to wrap my mind around this. I like to consider myself intelligent. I should have a better answer for this than ‘I have a headache.’ What will I say to my children, if they ask about it? Pang’s closest friend is Heiye. It is not so unlikely.
Oct 15, 2008.
“It doesn’t always hurt. It certainly doesn’t have to hurt. It is not a burden you have to bear, the gods intend it as a blessing. You mustn’t – please don’t think that way, Heiye,” and as I saw him look reflexively at the floorboards, “That isn’t an order, simply an observation. Being with someone is very pleasant, whether you lead or follow.”
Of all the questions I was worried about enduring, I admit I was not anticipating that Heiye has no conception of intimacy where he would not be expected to submit.
“The young woman in all likelihood expects you to take the lead. Invite her to go dancing with you. Only dancing, mind.”
He smiled, a faint little thing that reminded me of Sev.
“Yes, lady mistress.”
And then I drank two bottles of rice wine, and now I feel much pleased with myself.
Oct 14, 2008.
I am blessed. I have finished one curtain, while Nimaseki advised me heartily in the ways – ah, I am being unfair. She is good-hearted, even if her mind is weakened with her body. Her eyes are very bright. Sometimes I cannot understand her, for her accent thickens and her speech’s speed increases. I nod, and am respectful.
Still no husband triumphantly returning. Heiye confides that Pang’s young female friend has refused his offer of a lizard, so heartbreak abounds. Heiye apparently has an affection of the heart as well.
I must make sure he understands men and women. Tomorrow – I have not the spirit for it today. Perhaps some rice wine tomorrow to strengthen my resolve. Lady, I wish Sev were here to do this.
I feel it is equitable for me to sit with Nimaseki and help with her work in the afternoons. No ill-wish intented, but it is different from other deaths I have witnessed. Sev’s mother was very tidy, very quiet, in part because her husband was a very orderly man. She was arranged with flowers and fragrant oil. My husband hates the smell of honeysuckle, even now. This is messier, somehow, more raw. Will this be the last day I see her? It lingers in my mind, though seldom at the forefront. There is always the chance that I will be the one to die in my bed, throat slashed by someone either too ignorant or too knowledgable to leave me alive. We are hidden, but I have no reason to feel safe except a lingering, perhaps deadly, complacency.
I am so very cheerful today. Sev would mock me roundly, and kiss me, as well.
