by Ben Stevens
‘First the two eldest brothers had all the hair on their body burnt off, and their finger- and toenails pulled out. Then the tendons controlling their feet were cut with daggers, and holes drilled into various parts of their bodies. By now, the crowd had started to thin. Some of those who’d previously demanded that the robbers face the sternest punishment, now protested that this was still too much. It is said that the brothers’ screams carried for miles…
‘And still the worst was to come. For the backs of the brothers were broken, before they were deposited into a large metal cauldron and boiled while still alive in soy sauce. Finally, mercifully, they expired.
‘Matsuyama did not witness any of this. He had already decided that it would be best to take his leave from the territory of the damiyo. He had amassed a great deal of money – including his reward for the ‘capture’ of the three brothers; and taking what he could, he quietly left. If the daimyo refused to believe that his senior tax official had been involved in the robberies, many others were not so easily fooled. And sickened by the barbarous punishment meted out to the two brothers – a simple execution would have sufficed – they might well choose to visit a little justice on Matsuyama themselves…
‘So the fat little man departed, entering sometime later into the town in which we, Kukai, are staying in now. It seemed quiet, prosperous – and safely anonymous.
‘We – you and I, that is – may wander from place to place; and yet most people in Japan never even leave their village or town. Matsuyama was safe here; safer now with the new name he gave himself – Utagawa – and profession as moneylender.
‘In time he purchased a house on the edge of town, thus removing himself almost entirely from any possible gossip or scrutiny, and somehow met the man, Yosa, who recently passed himself off as being Utagawa’s servant.
‘Utagawa had only one thing to fear: the release of the youngest brother named Takeda, who had sworn to destroy the treacherous Utagawa – or Matsuyama – if it was the last thing he ever did.
‘But Takeda was serving a ten-year sentence in a squalid castle dungeon, fed mainly on moldering rice and kept chained in continual near-darkness. Cockroaches and rats crawled across his emaciated body as he slept. Many men failed to survive even two years of such ill-treatment – never mind a decade…
‘Utagawa – we will use this name from now on – consoled himself with this thought. Takeda would die before he ever again saw the sky or felt the wind on his face.
‘And yet Takeda was young and tough; determined to survive if only – one glorious day – to take his revenge on the treacherous man who had betrayed his brothers.
‘Finally, after eight years as a prisoner, Takeda was given the news he’d so often dreamt of hearing –
The daimyo has just turned fifty years of age. As part of his birthday celebrations, he has announced an amnesty for all criminals who have served over five years’ imprisonment in this dungeon and several other places of confinement. So, you are a free man as from now…
9
…My master paused in his narrative, wetting his lips with some sake. I nodded.
‘The moneylender had a strange accent, master,’ I said. ‘I presume from this you were able to tell that he came from this region some six or seven hours’ away by horseback – and so went there to learn this story for yourself?’
My master gave an approving nod.
‘Excellent, Kukai! You are learning my methods well. That is it, exactly. I am able to recognize the various accents of almost all the regions in Japan. Once I was able to solve a case – concerning a missing pig-farmer – within the space of a minute, purely on the strength of this ability.’
I wanted now to say how I’d also suspected that Utagawa was scared of a ninja-like assassin. But I feared this would sound merely like boasting.
Instead, I said, ‘But why did Utagawa not just tell you this story himself, master? Why the charade?’
This was one of many questions which were suddenly flooding into my mind. But it would do to start with.
‘Firstly,’ replied my master, ‘I believe that the man who claimed to be Utagawa’s servant, Yosa, was the one who persuaded Utagawa (not his real name, as we now know, but we may as well continue to use it) to have me, and thus also you, fetched from the inn and taken to his home.
‘Utagawa was reluctant for this to happen, I believe. But Yosa – who was almost as ignorant about past events as you and I were – was stricken with worry concerning the strange behavior of the moneylender, who’d employed ronin as guards, received a mysterious note, had his windows shuttered at night and refused even to go outside. And who, of course, went into a state verging on extreme terror every time there was a storm.’
My master coughed, clearing his throat, and continued –
‘Even when I came, Utagawa was suspicious of me, and reluctant to tell me anything. If I had this supposed ‘reputation’ as someone who could solve strange and baffling cases, he thought, then I could discover for myself exactly why he’d become basically a prisoner in his own home.
‘And if I couldn’t… Why, then my ‘abilities’, for want of a better word, had clearly been exaggerated, and so he certainly wouldn’t be paying me any money (the thing most important to him in the world) by way of a fee for investigating his case.
‘So it began with that charade of the note, torn in half before I arrived. I perceived at once what was happening, and departed in apparent disgust at the way I was being treated. And then Yosa fetched us back, and I was allowed to see the second half of that note. This basically confirmed what Yosa had already said, here in confidence at the inn.
‘Utagawa then hinted at some ‘occurrences’ taking place in his past, at the same time as he gave me a rather curious grin. Even in the midst of his terror, he still took a certain delight in issuing me with a challenge. It was down to me to discover just what a certain one of these ‘occurrences’ had been, and furthermore where it had taken place.’
‘But you could have just walked away, master,’ I queried. ‘Really, the man seemed determined to cut off his nose to spite his face.’
‘Yes,’ nodded my master thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I could have just refused to accept his case. I would certainly have saved myself many hours of hard riding, anyway (I hired a fine horse from this very inn, incidentally), in the process becoming rather mud-stained and disheveled.
‘But this in fact served perfectly for my disguise when I reached the region I wanted, entering into an inn and appearing rather like one of those strange, wandering men one sometimes encounters. Not the sort of person of whom it is best to ask many questions, at any rate.
‘I thought it would be much harder than it was, to actually learn all I wanted to know. I was prepared almost to set a net, as it were, laying vague questions here and there, never appearing even remotely keen to actually obtain an answer – for nothing causes people at an inn to clam up quicker than an obvious line of questioning coming from a stranger.
‘But what had happened concerning the three brothers was still the talk of the several towns in this coastal region. It was the most ‘exciting’ – for want of a better word – thing to have happened here for years…
‘So in very little time I’d heard the entire story, from a number of different mouths; and also, fortunately, that little – but oh-so-important – snippet of information, concerning the youngest brother’s ability at archery. As soon as I heard this, along with the fact that he’d left this town (no one knew where he’d gone) with an advanced case of consumption, painfully thin and already clearly dying although he was not yet even thirty, I knew that I had to return right away…
‘I stopped on the ride back only to order the dummy that was later delivered to the moneylender’s house. I paid an extra amount for it to be constructed so quickly (I provided a basic description of Utagawa’s build, height and so on) and then transported no short distance from the craftsman’s shop; for he and his apprentice specialize
in designs for kabuki, theatre and such.
‘I returned the horse to the inn – and the owner was less than pleased at the animal’s foam-covered state of exhaustion – and then cautiously set out for the mountainside behind Utagawa’s house. I approached from the side, keeping low, my eyes everywhere. If I was seen, I would spoil the whole case, and all the work and preparation I’d done so far...
‘There! I spied a tiny entrance into the mountainside; a small cave. I crept up… Sleeping just inside of it, I saw, his bow held tightly to him, was the youngest brother Takeda. He looked so filthy and starved that I wondered if he’d have even the strength to wake up. The cave was virtually concealed by the bushes and such outside. I’d only noticed it because I’d been looking for it so carefully.
‘Here, I guessed, was where Takeda had been waiting these past days and weeks, vainly hoping that Utagawa would show himself outside. But he was growing ever sicker, racked by bloody coughing fits he was forced to try and suppress, for fear that the sound of them would give his position away…
‘It was then, of course, that I returned to the house, knocking on the shutters at the rear while Takeda was still asleep. Oh – actually I paused long enough to pay off the two patrolling ronin, who were more than happy to leave their former employer to whatever fate was coming, after I pushed a large bag of coins into each of their hands. I’d already paid off the two other ronin who were staying at another, somewhat less salubrious inn than our own, upon my return to this town a short while earlier.
‘But that note, master – why?’ I couldn’t help asking. ‘For what purpose was it even written, and delivered to the moneylender?’
‘The moneylender had already learnt that Takeda had been freed – and furthermore that he’d left the region,’ returned my master. ‘Doubtless, Utagawa still had one or two shadowy contacts back where he’d once been the daimyo’s senior tax official.
‘Immediately, Utagawa was on the alert. He knew that Takeda had vowed to kill him. He’d no doubt also that the young man would succeed in tracking him down… And then he received that blood-stained note; about which, I will tell you more about in a moment – for remember I spoke with Takeda directly.
‘Upon receiving this note, of course, Utagawa refused even to leave the house. It was left to Yosa to puzzle exactly why the man with whom he lived (the apparent role of master-servant, portrayed to outsiders, disguised the real, homosexual relationship between them, of that I’m certain) was so scared.
‘Upon my return to the moneylender’s house, Utagawa asked me ‘…whose story do you believe?’ Well – certainly not his, which I didn’t even bother to hear, but which I suspect would have said that he had nothing to do with the robberies; that the brothers falsely attempted to implicate him only after they’d tried to steal from him, but had merely succeeded in getting trapped inside his home.
‘This was also the reason why he was so reluctant to tell me – and even Yosa – exactly what had happened right at the start. For fear that he would expose himself directly as being nothing other than a cowardly, lying snake…’
‘Master,’ I said. ‘Just before you returned to the house – I mean when you knocked on the shutters – Utagawa was overcome with terror. He said something like ‘…what else could I have done?’ It seems to me obvious now that he had some regret about his actions towards the three brothers.’
‘No doubt,’ nodded my master, ‘but the only regret he had was for himself – for the situation he now found himself in, because of what had happened in the past. A man like that will allow a thousand, ten thousand other men to be tortured, broken and boiled alive, in order to safeguard their own, pathetic existence...’
My master breathed a little deeply now, and his eyes blazed with real feeling. He paused, before continuing more calmly –
‘In any case, after I showed you to your own hiding place on the mountainside, I went back to the moneylender’s house, and explained what he had to do.
‘As soon as it became dark, he would open the shutters of the room right at the back of the house, light several oil lamps within, and then walk around as though deep in thought. At some stage soon after that, he would hear a loud and eerie noise coming from the mountainside. As soon as he heard this – I impressed that the speed at which he and Yosa moved was absolutely essential – they would place the dummy which had already been delivered (and then clad in one of Utagawa’s fine kimono) in a kneeling position, with its back to the wood and paper sliding doors.
‘With any luck, an arrow would shortly come flying through one of the door’s paper panels, and imbed itself in the back of the dummy. The force of the arrow would undoubtedly cause the dummy to fall to one side, just as a slain human would. Utagawa and Yosa had already left the room, immediately after setting up the dummy. In fact they’d left the house itself, a palanquin having been waiting for them since dusk.
‘They’d got what money they could together before then – and that was a considerable amount – and, in future, they will doubtless be able to quietly sell the house, through some associate. I will go later, to shutter it up. Anyone who passes, and who knows the two men – and such people are few, and not one of them a close acquaintance – will simply assume they have gone away on another business trip.’
‘So,’ I mused, ‘the brother Takeda thinks he has obtained his revenge, and the moneylender named Utagawa – or whatever he chooses to call himself – has escaped with his life.’
‘That is so,’ returned my master simply.
‘But that sound, master, there on the mountainside – what was it? I have never heard anything like it.’
‘I made it,’ said my master. ‘I based it on a monkey cry I once heard in India; a strange and plaintive sound. I have had considerable practice in imitating animal noises (I once drove a would-be robber half-insane by continually imitating the hoot of an owl) but on this occasion, I needed to emit something rather more striking.’
‘It was certainly that, master,’ I said with feeling. ‘It was also hard to know where the noise was coming from, exactly.’
‘I have also some small ability at ‘throwing’ my voice,’ declared my master, as he replenished our cups with the last of the sake. ‘That is, at making the sound seem as though it is coming from some other place than the one where I actually am.
‘That was essential on this occasion,’ continued my master, ‘as there was no moonlight because of the clouds, and so I had to remain uncomfortably close to Takeda’s hideout so to be able to see when he actually emerged – and to make that cry the moment he’d slotted an arrow (scarcely believing that here, finally, was his chance to slay the moneylender) and drawn back the bowstring…
‘Of course, when I made that cry, he was as distracted as you, and looked almost frantically behind him for its source. And in those moments while he was looking elsewhere, down below, Utagawa and Yosa set up the dummy in a kneeling position, and hurriedly left the room, and the house, for the palanquin waiting outside the front entrance.’
‘You said you talked to him… afterwards, master?’
My master nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘After he’d fired the supposedly fatal arrow, and hurriedly gathered up his few, meager possessions, I approached him.
‘At first he tried to fight me; but I gently overpowered him, and then spent some minutes assuring him that I was a ‘friend’, so to speak. That is, that I wished him no harm.
‘Do not misunderstand me. The eldest brother should certainly have been put to death for killing that pregnant servant girl almost ten years before – just not, I think, in such a barbaric fashion. But the middle brother, and the one with whom I talked now – who’d robbed those houses, certainly, but who’d also shown such obvious revulsion for the murder committed by their oldest brother? In their case a period of imprisonment, followed by banishment from that region, would have sufficed, I think.
‘I explained to Takeda what I had learned concerning hi
m, and he confirmed this. He refused to say how, exactly, he’d tracked down Utagawa’s whereabouts, and I did not press him. Personally, I believe that some confidant of that moneylender’s was so sickened by what he had done, that he in fact gave the essential information to Takeda in secret.
‘Takeda made his way here, supported by some money he had hidden away before he’d been imprisoned. He wrote the note Utagawa showed us – and then coughed, spraying blood upon it. He was about to throw it away when he realized that it would perhaps be more chilling to the moneylender, if he were to receive such a bloodstained note. So he then paid some poverty-stricken man from out of town to deliver it, to one of the guards patrolling outside Utagawa’s home.
‘But Takeda soon realized that, in giving Utagawa such an obvious warning, he had rather overplayed his hand. His health failing, he was forced to keep watch in secret from the mountainside, hoping that Utagawa might step out into the garden one day. But there were only those patrolling guards, and on occasion Yosa.’
‘He could have killed the guards, master,’ I queried. ‘With his bow, I mean. That would have left the house far more open to attack.’
‘Yes,’ nodded my master. ‘I said that to him. To which he replied that he had no quarrel with the ronin – they might be men with children to feed – and anyway… They did not patrol together, so that even if he did shoot an arrow, he would only be able to kill the one man – and would, in doing so, alert the other. Which would, of course, mean he would give away his position.’
‘But now he believes he has had his revenge, and…?’ I prompted.
‘Did I behave correctly, Kukai? I don’t know,’ sighed my master. ‘I don’t know what else I could have done. I have effectively lied to a very brave young man; led him to believe he has had his revenge when in fact he has not. But still, I could hardly countenance a murder taking place – not even the murder of that vile moneylender…