Hello, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard here,
I'm starting a LOVE STORIES SERIES in this blog, showcasing fine short stories by Filipino writers.
The theme is LOVE, and by this I refer to love in all its guises, not just love between man and woman, but same-sex love, love for pets, love for family, love for country, love for God, love for nature … all the facets of this emotion called LOVE.
To start us off, here is a story by Nikki Alfar, who transports us to 1863 during the time of Shoguns. "The Mechanism of Moving Forward" is reprinted with her permission.
***
NIKKI ALFAR is a wife, mother, fictionist, dancer, arnis student,
knitter, and origami folder. While she has yet to receive acclaim for folding,
knitting, fighting, dancing, mothering, or wifing - go figure - she has managed
to cadge repeated recognition out of the Palanca, Nick Joaquin, and global
Mariner literary authorities, along with back-to-back National Book Awards for
her story collections WonderLust (Anvil Publishing) and Now,
Then, and Elsewhen (UST Press).
She’s edited more speculative fiction
anthologies than she can count – there’ve been many, and her math is egregious
– including the acclaimed, annual Philippine Speculative Fiction,
which is now relaunched as New Philippine Speculative Fiction. By
trade, she’s a marketing and corporate copywriter, so she writes fiction alllll
the time.
Nikki smokes like a chimney, and has
one two children with writer Dean Francis Alfar - Ryo, 23, is also a published
writer, and Asriel, 16, is an online novelist.
***
THE MECHANISM OF MOVING FORWARD
Copyright by Nikki Alfar, all rights reserved
by Nikki Alfar
the mechanism of beginning
What
enables the karakuri ningyo to commence operation is the auto-adjustment pin, which – as with all
parts, save the mainspring – must be crafted of nothing but the most appropriate
wood, harvested and fashioned at the proper time of year, to avoid air
temperature and humidity taking their toll, before the structure has yet been
assembled. This pin functions as a stopper for the cogwheel.
UPON ENTERING HIS workroom,
on the nineteenth day of the twelfth month of the Nederlander year 1863, Tanaka Hisashige promptly lost hold of the
lacquered tray he had been carrying, such that the tea implements he had so
meticulously prepared, moments prior, fell clattering to the polished wooden
floor.
“Such
a clamor,” murmured Sakuma Kei, evincing no further reaction than the barest,
most blamelessly demure of smiles. “One would almost think Tanaka-san had never seen a naked woman
before.”
“In
– in – in – the baths, certainly,” was the only response that politeness and
his stunned state of mind enabled him to muster, gazing – while at the same
time desperately endeavoring not to gaze – at the splendidly-unclad form of his
revered teacher’s daughter.
“You
did mention, in our correspondence, that you wished you might more closely
study human anatomy, as the Redheads do,” she explained, with innocuous aplomb.
“Therefore it seemed to me that I could offer you no greater o miage, upon my return from the
capital, than the gift of myself.”
“The
tea!” Hisashige exclaimed, dropping to his knees with unseemly haste. “The floor!”
Tending to the fallen crockery would afford him a moment to clear his mind – not
to mention, thankfully, avert his eyes – although of course she would see
through the pretense immediately; it was only an ordinary tea set, after all,
meant for everyday sencha. He had
considered presenting something more refined, in celebration of her homecoming,
but had reflected that it might seem overly presumptuous, or overly eager, for
which diffidence he was now profoundly grateful, and not merely because his
better porcelain had consequently escaped destruction.
“To
think that the renowned inventor of the Ten-Thousand-Year Self-Ringing Bell
Clock,” Kei was musing aloud, “at only twenty already a karakuri master famed throughout the land, should be so discomfited
by a mere slip of a maiden, yet again deemed by our great thirteenth leader to
be lamentably unimpressive, unworthy, and altogether unmarriageable.”
He
very nearly fell into her trap, only at the last moment managing to refrain
from looking back up at her. “He said no?”
“He
said a great deal, including expressing his conviction that our Dejima, being
an artificial island, must be composed of gears and pulleys – like one of your
automata – or, more fitting to his mind, water and clockwork, like a mizudokei. I do not think he believed my
explanation that it is merely earth, reclaimed for the purpose of maintaining
the ludicrous fiction that the Nederlanders
are not quite on our soil, thereby upholding, while at the same time
unmistakably subverting the ridiculous sakoku
ban.”
He
did look up then, too alarmed to be constrained by propriety.
Her
smile had become far less demure, her charcoal-dark eyes dancing with triumphant
mischief. “I did not say it in quite those words, naturally.”
In
his relief, he ceased resistance, resigning himself to merely confining his
gaze above her chin. “You are presented to the shogun, and you spend the opportunity speaking to him of dirt?”
“I
am fortunate he chose to address me at all.” Kei shrugged – firm in his
resolution, Hisashige simply inferred the gesture from the tilt of her head.
“The other maidens were not so favored. However many unwed women the bakufu persist in throwing at him, I do
not think our Lord Iesada is at all interested in marriage; he spent no more
than ten minutes on the lot of us.” She tilted her head the other way, raising
an eyebrow. “Do you think it would have helped, had I been naked?”
He
refused to be baited again, having at last regained some measure of
equilibrium. “I believe I should go and fetch some more tea, as well as a
servant to tidy the disarray.”
“Do,
please.” She remained serenely unmoving, evidently not in the least troubled by
his implied threat of exposure. “It is winter, after all, and somewhat chilly;
tea would be most welcome.”
“I
have heard that there is a most ingenious invention designed to aid with that
condition,” he noted, accepting defeat and thus crossing the room toward the
disheveled heap of gorgeously-colored silk and wool, lying blithely discarded
on the floor. “It is called ‘clothing’.”
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