Free The Samurai's Garden: A Novel by Gail Tsukiyama

my mother wrote. “A man can’t be so far from his family without seeking comfort elsewhere. In this I have never found fault in your father. He has always provided us with everything we needed. What he does during his life in Japan has always been his own business. But I have just learned through Mr. Chung at The Royal Hong Kong Bank that your father has been withdrawing large sums of money in the name of a woman residing in Kobe, Japan. Mr. Chung felt the need to tell me when your father asked to borrow against our Hong Kong house. It has been a great shock to me, Stephen. But my first concern must be for you children. Now that you are getting better, perhaps you should just return to Kobe early. You’re old enough to understand these things, and you’ve always been the closest to your father. Maybe you can find out what this is all about.”

    There was little more to her letter, other than small formalities. Everyone in Hong Kong was fine, and Pie would write soon.
    I sat, stunned by her words each time I read them over again. I swallowed hard and let my eyes wander away from her straight, neatly written characters. I knew my mother’s even tone masked the embarrassment she must have felt, and part of me wished I could be in Hong Kong to comfort her. I tried to imagine my mother after she first heard the news. She might have been standing on the front balcony of our house, overlooking the Hong Kong harbor, her fan moving the heavy air from side to side, her other hand raised to block out the sun’s glare. From the courtyard, the high, whiny voices of our servants could be heard, while Pie might be running in and out asking her question after question. All the while, I knew my mother could only have one thing on her mind: Who was this woman who had stolen my father’s love?
    I put the thin sheets of paper back into the blue envelope and closed my eyes. The wind had begun to blow, stirring the heavy air. I wanted to cry. My mother was wrong, I didn’t feel old enough to understand any of it. My father never told me of another woman in his life. He was simply the man who wore immaculate dark suits, worried about my health, and sat on the beach waiting for me to listen to his calm voice. I never saw him give money to other women. I only knew one thing for sure, I wasn’t ready to leave Tarumi yet.
     
     
    The wind started to blow harder by late afternoon. I sat at my grandfather’s desk trying to write a letter back to my mother when I heard the angry wind whistling through the house. It rattled the shoji walls and shook the floor beneath me. Matsu had disappeared after lunch without saying a word about where he was going. At the time I was happy to be left by myself, but as I stood up, I felt the floor vibrate and I began to worry.
    All of a sudden I heard Matsu calling from the garden. I went to the front door and saw him hurrying through the garden to the house.
    “A big storm is coming,” Matsu yelled. He came into the genken and told me to follow him.
    In a small storage space next to the kitchen, Matsu began pulling out several large wooden boards. “These slide into place in
front of the shoji panels,” he said, pushing one toward me.
    We placed the wooden panels over the front shoji windows first. It began raining and the wind had increased so we could barely walk straight. I couldn’t imagine Matsu having to do this by himself. We moved as quickly as we could around the house, until all the shoji panels were covered and the house appeared entombed. We were soaking wet, running around securing everything we thought might be washed away. When I stopped to catch my breath, I could hear the ocean rise up and crash against the road in front of the house.
    Matsu stood at the open gate, watching the waves thunder up and over the dunes onto the road. “Do you think it’ll come any closer?” I shouted.
    “It has before,” he answered.
    “What should we do?”
    “We’ll wait and see. Sometimes the storm