Read Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show for Free Online Page B

pass this rare gift along, but he should not have spoken. The gift, after all, now belonged to his sister-in-law. Lord Okubo grumbled and Manjiro stared out at the garden where his brother’s boulders were like fifteen large chocolates in a box of their own, but Tsune acted quickly, and saved Einosuke from embarrassment. She had taken a tiny knife from her obi a moment before. Her intention had been to cut one of the chocolates into wedges, so that each of them might have a taste, but she changed her intention without changing the movement of her hand.
    â€œAs usual Einosuke is right,” she said. “But before we close it let me arrange these things so that their designs all point the same way.”
    She handed the lid to Fumiko, then used the tip of her knife to turn the chocolates until the cluster of grapes on the top of one moved in congress with the filigreed pine needles on another. She made the oval acorns atop the chocolates at the corners of the box look like sentries with fat round guns.
    â€œThat’s better,” she said. “Now it is more pleasing to the eye.” She would have closed the box immediately then, but Keiko and Masako came into the room, Keiko struggling under the weight of her fat baby brother.
    â€œWhat’s better?” asked Masako. “Let’s see.”
    The side of the box’s lid with the thumbprint on it was facing Fumiko, but the thumbprint on the box’s base was not. That misalignment was the only thing that kept her from instantly slamming the lid down. Tsune might be destined to marry higher than she, but unlike the three men in the room, she would not hesitate to interfere. Just as her sister’s self-absorption had nearly let her cut one of the chocolates apart, so her second daughter’s curiosity would surely send her hand out to mess up the order of the chocolates again, maybe even spilling them onto the floor.
    â€œStay a little back, dear,” she said. “Satisfy your curiosity with your eyes this time.”
    Because it was unlike her mother to speak abruptly, Masako did as she was told, but Fumiko’s words also served to bring Keiko around.
    â€œOkay then, what is it?” she asked. “Here, Masako, take our Jun-chan.”
    A stream of liquid was drooling from the baby’s mouth, and when Masako took him from her sister’s arms a fine line of it arched out into the air, falling down across the nearest corner of the chocolate box. It settled over the guardian acorn like a thick strand of spider web.
    â€œChikusho , “said Lord Okubo. “What do we do now?”
    â€œIs it bean paste?” asked Keiko. “If it’s bean paste simply give that one to Junichiro. If it’s bean paste I don’t want any at all.”
    â€œIt is not bean paste, dear,” said Tsune. She still had her knife in her hand but she was looking directly at Manjiro. Her look seemed to say, “Don’t you agree that we have no choice now but to eat the piece that the baby has spit on?”
    Manjiro had been sitting pretty glumly all this time. He had given the chocolates to Tsune because there was something in it of the flirtation they had had in their youth, and, of course, because he wanted to show off, but the reactions of the others had brought him down. Now, however, Tsune was giving him a chance to find his previous mood and he smiled. “Let’s eat it,” he said out loud. “After that we can close the whole thing up again, pass it on.”
    Tsune laughed, and as soon as she heard the easing of tensions, Keiko laughed too, taking her aunt’s free arm. Masako, however, who had been struggling under the baby’s weight, finally sat him down. She enjoyed mischief more than anyone, but she also had her mother’s sense of protocol. “Such a plan will leave a hole in the box,” she said, “an empty space at its corner while all the other spaces are full.”
    The