“Good morning,” Midori said, bowing. “I’ve come to join the nunnery.”
Since yesterday she’d struggled with her conscience and decided she must break her promise to Reiko. Although her friend had lectured her on why she shouldn’t go to the temple, Midori had discerned how much Reiko wished to have a spy in the sect, and she’d thought of the best way to observe without arousing suspicion. She would show Hirata and Reiko what she could do!
The nuns bowed; one of them said, “You must first be examined by our leaders. Please come with us.”
Midori felt a flicker of trepidation as she followed the nuns to the back of the main hall. She had no idea how temples decided whether to admit a prospective nun.
The nuns opened a door in a wing attached to the hall. “Please wait in there,” the older nun said.
Midori slipped off her shoes and entered. The door closed. She found herself in a room furnished with a wall niche containing a butsudan-a wooden cabinet that held a written passage of Buddhist scripture-before which knelt a plain young woman, chanting prayers in a rapid monotone. She ignored Midori. By the window stood another woman. A few years older than Midori, she was pretty in a coarse way, with pert features, tanned skin, and a watchful expression.
“She wants to show how pious she is,” she said, pointing at the praying woman. “Too bad there’s no one to see but us.”
Midori smiled timidly.
“I’m Toshiko,” the other woman said, crossing the room to stand near Midori. "What’s your name?”
Midori had thought up an alias: “Umeko.”
“So you’re joining the nunnery too?” Toshiko’s informal manner and cheap indigo robe marked her as a peasant.
“If they’ll have me,” Midori said.
Toshiko looked her over, curious. “Why do you want to be a nun?”
The bold queries unsettled Midori, but she was accustomed to speak when spoken to, so she gave the story she’d prepared: “My family wanted me to marry a man I don’t like, so I ran away.”
“Oh.” This common scenario seemed to satisfy Toshiko. “Well, I’m here because my father is poor and I’m the youngest of five daughters. No one will marry me because I have no dowry. It was either this or be a prostitute.”
“I’m sorry,” Midori said, truly moved by the woman’s plight and admiring her matter-of-fact acceptance of it.
The door opened, and a nun entered. She beckoned to the praying woman, who silently rose. They left the room together.
“Think you’ll be happy here?” Toshiko said.,
“I hope so.”
“I hear they’re very strict,” Toshiko said.
Midori recalled the rumors of starvation, torture, and murder that Reiko had mentioned last night. Earlier, they’d only added thrills to her adventure, but she felt the first stirrings of terror.
As a precaution she’d written a note to Reiko, explaining her plan to join the sect, and left it on Reiko’s desk. But what if Reiko didn’t find the note? No one would know where Midori was; there would be no one to rescue her if she got in trouble.
“Don’t look so scared.” Laughing, Toshiko linked arms with Midori. “Stick with me. I’ll see you through.”
Her friendliness comforted Midori, but soon the nun came for Toshiko, and Midori sat alone, waiting. The fear grew until she felt cold and shaky. She clutched her parcel, glad of something to hold. Wondering what comprised the official examination, she battled the impulse to flee. She thought of how upset Reiko would be if she knew Midori was here. Midori then thought of Hirata.
She stayed.
After what seemed ages, the nun took Midori to a building near the back of the precinct. This was a low wooden structure nearly hidden by trees, with shutters closed over the windows. Alone, Midori entered a long room where a huge round ceiling lantern burned overhead. Five priests and five nuns were kneeling along opposite walls, and three figures sat upon a dais across the end of the room.
“Kneel beneath the lantern,” ordered the big man at the dais’s center.
Fluttery with nervousness, Midori obeyed, holding the parcel tight in her lap. She hadn’t expected so many people. Although the light focused upon her obscured her vision, she saw that the speaker was a priest with cruel features and a scar above his ear. Reiko had described the sect officials to Midori, and she recognized him as the priest Kumashiro. The ugly man at his right must be Dr. Miwa, and the nun at his left, Abbess Junketsu-in. They looked more frightening than they’d sounded in the safety of Reiko’s parlor. The other priests and nuns were nondescript strangers. Stern and foreboding, they all regarded Midori. From elsewhere in the building came the sound of muffled chanting.
“Tell us your name and why you wish to join us,” Kumashiro said.
In a thin, quavery voice, Midori related her false story, adding, “I want to devote my life to religion.”
“What’s that you’ve brought?” Junketsu-in said. With her elegant robe and head drape and her classic features, she was pretty but somehow sinister.
“It’s a kimono.” Midori faltered. “A gift for the temple, to pay for my keep.”
A nun conveyed the parcel to the dais. Junketsu-in unwrapped the pale green silk garment printed with gleaming bronze phoenixes. “Very nice,” she said, laying it by her side.
Midori regretted the sacrifice of her favorite, most expensive kimono for a good cause.
“Serve us tea,” Kumashiro said.
A teapot and cups sat on a tray near the dais. Midori resented these commoners for treating the daughter of a daimyo like a servant, but years as a lady-in-waiting had taught her to obey orders. She poured the tea with unsteady hands. When she presented a cup to Priest Kumashiro, the liquid sloshed on his robe.
“Stupid, clumsy girl!” he shouted.
“I’m sorry!” Terrified, Midori fell to her knees and scooted backward. “Please forgive me!”
Embarrassing herself in front of so many people mortified her. Surely they would throw her out.
“Never mind. Go back to your place,” Kumashiro said. “We’ll ask you questions, and you must answer honestly.”
More nervous than ever, Midori knelt under the lantern. During childhood lessons, she’d never been much good at recitation. What if she didn’t know the right answers?
“Suppose you were walking alone in Edo and you lost your way,” Kumashiro said. “What would you do?”
Such a situation was unfamiliar to Midori, who never walked alone in the city because that was not done by young women of her class. She had never gotten lost or bothered to think what she should do if that calamity befell her. Panic gripped Midori. Quick, quick, what to say?
“I-I guess I would ask someone to help me,” she ventured.
As soon as she spoke, it occurred to her that she should have said she would retrace her steps or use landmarks to help her find her way. Inwardly, Midori cursed her stupidity. The watching faces showed no reaction to her answer, but surely they thought she lacked common sense and depended on others to think for her. She clenched her fists, praying to do better on the next question.
“How would you divide three gold coins between yourself and another person?” Kumashiro said.
A resurgence of panic rattled Midori’s wits, but she knew she couldn’t divide three items evenly between two people. She also knew that courtesy required self-sacrifice.
“I would give two coins to the other person and keep one for myself,” she said.
Then she realized that she could exchange the gold coins for coppers and divide those. She would never get into the nunnery this way!
“If a person who was older, wiser, and stronger than you and superior to you in rank gave you an order, what would you do?” Kumashiro asked.