Murder on the Cliff by Stefanie Matteson Page B

patron. He showered her with magnanimous gifts, as he was expected to. He set her up in her own teahouse. She in turn was supposed to reserve her sexual favors for him; or, if she did take a lover, to be discreet about it. Not only was she indiscreet, she was practically shouting about her affair from the rooftops.”
    “The press was shouting about it from the rooftops,” Charlotte corrected. She spoke as one who was sensitive to having her private affairs splashed across the front pages of the scandal sheets.
    Spalding shrugged.
    “I’ll grant you that she was indiscreet, but at least she was honest,” Charlotte continued. “Obviously she must have been conscience-stricken about continuing to accept Tanaka’s patronage in the face of her relationship with Shawn. Instead of carrying on in secret as someone else might have done, she accepted the responsibility for her actions and publicly severed her relationship with Tanaka. I think that’s commendable.”
    “She may have thought she was behaving responsibly and you may have thought she was behaving responsibly, but to most Japanese, she was being irresponsible, disloyal, and selfish. That’s why she was vilified in the press. To the Japanese, style is more important than substance: it didn’t matter that she had a relationship with Shawn as long as she kept up the appearance of loyalty to her patron.”
    “She made Tanaka lose face.”
    Spalding nodded.
    “But Spalding, he didn’t seem to me to be acting like a humiliated man. Did he to you? In fact, he struck me as a man who was handling the situation with tact and sophistication, even humor.”
    “Which is what made the burden of her obligation to him all the greater. If he’d publicly denounced her or publicly attacked Shawn, she would have lost face in return, and they would have been returned to an equal footing. But he behaved like a perfect gentleman.” Spalding harrumphed. “I wish he’d displayed the same degree of tact when he gave his talk at the opening ceremonies.”
    “His only reproach was the marionette song,” Charlotte said, remembering Tanaka’s high, clear voice singing the song about the marionette whose heart “flip-flops and changes.”
    “Exactly,” said Spalding. “Not only did he behave like a perfect gentleman, he behaved with impeccable style.”
    “Giving her no out but to take her own life, leaving his half-burned business card as the only clue to the reason why.”
    “Yes. To atone for her debt of honor. A modern young woman wouldn’t even consider atoning for her disgrace in such a situation—look at the bar hostess who was blackmailing a cabinet minister to keep their relations a secret—but geishas in general, and Okichi- mago in particular as one of Japan’s foremost geishas, are different. The world they inhabit is an anachronism; they are the guardians of traditional values.”
    “‘To die with honor, when it is impossible to live with honor,’” said Charlotte. She explained: “The words that Butterfly reads before she takes her life: the words inscribed on the blade of her knife.” Charlotte had played Butterfly in the screen version of Puccini’s opera. After Soiled Dove ’s success, she’d played Oriental women in a whole string of films. That was the Hollywood recipe for success: if it worked, repeat it ad nauseam .
    “Ah yes, another story based on the Okichi legend,” said Spalding.
    As they rode, Charlotte looked out the window. She never tired of this lovely avenue. But this afternoon she saw a sight that disturbed her. The enormous fern-leafed beeches in front of a sprawling Victorian were being cut down. Their beautiful sculptured gray trunks bore huge white scars where limbs had been amputated in preparation for felling the entire tree. They looked like mutilated bodies.
    “Spalding, why are they cutting down those trees?”
    “Sickening, isn’t it?” he said. “I can hardly bear to look at it. It’s Nadine Ogilvie’s property,