"MEMOIRS OF AN OPIUM EATER": Twentieth Year in the Reign of Hantei XXXVIII, Sixteenth Day, Month of the Dragon
In the House of the Morning Star (L23) this evening, I saw the most pathetic and disgusting spectacle - yet also a monstrously funny one. It was Ashidaka Michitaka, the cousin of our venerable Emerald Magistrate (P25), and he was drunk as a prawn in a barrel of sake.
Michitaka has a superficial resemblance to his cousin, but only in the sense that a goblin resembles a proper man. Where Naritoki is a bit stout, Michitaka is so fat his belly makes rolls beneath his robes. It is not just his flab that makes him ridiculous, however; he dresses so garishly that he'd make a color-blind Unicorn chuckle. On top of all that, he fancies himself a man of culture and refinement, when he in fact has not the fraction of a tithe of his cousin's elegance and intelligence.
In him we have the perfect puppet of a buffoon, and tonight we saw him in a most amusing farce. Drunk, as I said, and mooning for the love of a geisha called Oko. A hinin, she still is too wise to submit to Michitaka's embraces when he's sober. Drunk, he's simply too monstrous a spectacle for any but the most debased of prostitutes.
Thus we find drunk Michitaka kneeling on the ground before her door, proclaiming his undying passion between hiccups. What he did not see was that Oko was, in fact, outside her chamber with the rest of us.
Her next action was so bold and brazen that it was all we could do to keep our laughter inside. While Michitaka moaned and slobbered before her door, she slipped out the back, and soon had returned with a young geisha simply called Syrup(Toumitsu). Now, Syrup is not skilled in the arts of conversation or music, and furthermore has a long face that would be more handsome on a mare than a woman.
Oko had changed robes with Syrup - and I must now add that Syrup was a full head taller than the other woman, so Oko's fine and colorful robe looked tiny and ridiculous on her - and Oko was begging Syrup to lie with Michitaka and pretend to be her (that is, pretend to be Oko). Syrup was not eager, and said she'd be discovered, but Oko begged, and swore Michitaka was far too drunk to know the difference. Then she pushed many coins into Syrup's hands until Syrup said she would try.
I cannot even bring myself to imagine what happened when Syrup went into Oko's room with Michitaka.
"MEMOIRS OF AN OPIUM EATER": Twentieth Year in the Reign of Hantei XXXVIII, Seventeenth Day, Month of the Dragon
Today my Dear Friend mentioned that Michitaka came to the silver smithy today and purchased an expensive comb from our finest craftsman. She said that he never stopped smirking and said that it was for a beautiful lady who had finally accepted his love for her.
Poor Syrup!
Where once there was a fat, drunken sybarite he has become a new man, almost totally unrecognizable.
When informed that Yogo Osako had been the one behind Ashidaka Naritoki's murder, he replied that she had merely delivered the final blow... it was the city that had killed him. He expressed the view that vengeance was no longer necessary. How could anyone be punished further than being left to drown in the filth that she had helped to create?