Summary
A lacerating study of erasure, LOCKED LIPS opens on a wind-scarred cane field where Lotus Blossom—orphaned, pedagogue, keeper of a one-room school—discovers a half-drowned stranger whose ribcage maps the Pacific. She sutures him with poi and lullabies until need masquerades as devotion, exchanging vows over a koa bowl. The instant the man regains flesh he slips the island’s skin, re-emerging as Mr. Stanwood, industrialist of convenient amnesia. Lotus, swept shoreward by a traveling nihonga painter, lands in San Francisco’s fog, only to find herself employed by the very ghost she buried. Silence becomes her kimono; incense, her would-be shroud. The would-be assassin suffocates on the perfume he brewed for her, a reversal worthy of karmic gagaku.
Synopsis
Upon returning home from school one day, Lotus Blossom, a Japanese orphan who lives on the island of Hilo in Hawaii and teaches at a native school, discovers Parker, nearly dead from hunger. Believing his story of a shipwreck, Lotus nurses him back to health and then, mistaking loneliness for love, agrees to marry her patient. Soon tiring of her, Parker deserts her and assumes a new identity. Later, Lotus falls in love with Komo, a visiting Japanese artist, and follows him to America. There she accepts a job as a companion to Mrs. Stanwood. When Mr. Stanwood returns from a business trip, Lotus is shocked to discover that he is her former husband but decides to remain silent. Stanwood, distrusting her silence, attempts to kill her by poisoning her incense. Before Lotus succumbs to the deadly fumes, Komo arrives, and in the ensuing fight, Stanwood is locked in Lotus's room and dies by the deadly smoke that he had intended for Lotus.
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