XXIX
THE REINCARNATION OF SHIJIRO ARISUGA
For I think that you will wish to know what Hoshiko did to appear learned in the trade of the soldier before she joined the Guards. But it is not easy. For I am very near her now. And the satin hands must be as leather; the tiny feet must often leave their prints in blood on the snow; the plump, pink cheeks must be pounded into caverns and scarred with wounds; the nails must be deliberately torn and broken from the exquisite hands; the beautiful hair must be shorn. And last and hardest to tell, in her forehead must be made a ragged scar like that Arisuga got at Pekin—the one which had brought him to her. That I shall tell first—the making of the wound.
For a long time she studied it. This all men knew and it must be perfect. Once she mistrusted her own skill and went to see a surgeon. She showed him the picture of Arisuga and asked whether he could reproduce his wound upon herself. But immediately the doctor began to be wary. For he was a doctor like all other doctors, and when confronted with a thing unusual—one which no other doctor had put into the books—he was not wise.
"Ugly women," he said, "have often asked me to make them pretty. But this is the first time, in a somewhat extended practice, that I have had a pretty one ask me to make her ugly. Tell me the reason for it, and perhaps I can convince you that such beauty as the creator graciously gives us ought to be preserved, not destroyed, for it is more rare than you think."
But while he opened his case for some instrument of exploration, Hoshiko fled—so quietly and swiftly that when he turned he wondered if she had ever been there. Yes, there was in the air the flower perfume with which she had anointed her pretty body for his offices.
Of course she could run no such risk again. She must do it herself. So for long she thought upon wounds and woundings. How they were made; how they were healed; how that one of Arisuga's had been made; how it was healed: it was a sabre, and it had cut—so. Then it had been stitched so—very carelessly she had thought every time she saw it.
She was entirely capable of striking herself with a sabre; but through long reasoning she understood that she would not be likely to reproduce the precise form of Arisuga's wound. Though this was necessary, there was only one chance in many thousands of accomplishing it.
She finally knew that she must do it carefully, slowly—very slowly. There would be none of the ecstasy of the battle. Arisuga had often told her that he had never felt the wound until it was healed. That, in fact, he would not have known that he was struck but for the blood in his eyes. But she must do it as one argues a thing. Do you understand the difference? Can you see how a wound received in hot carnage and one slowly carved in one's own flesh may differ? Be sure that Hoshiko understood all this.