by Ben Stevens
‘Don’t touch it! It is poisoned… It’s just fortunate that neither one of you were stood in its path…!’
My master took a deep breath, and in a calmer voice continued –
‘And there is Yamaguchi’s masterstroke… Designed so that anyone who realized the intricate, heat-activated mechanism inside this doll – this innocent-looking object of death – might meet with the same fate as Kotaki…
‘That was why Yamaguchi took so long to avenge the loss of his business, for which he blamed Kotaki. Because all those years were spent doggedly designing, and then constructing, this remarkable, if deadly doll, which was then delivered to Kotaki’s shop with the request for a repair to be made...’
There again came that ‘clicking’ sound, as the doll’s mouth began slowly to close… Quickly my master grabbed at a small piece of wood lying on the desk, using this to jam the mouth open. The clicking sound continued for a few more moments; and then there was a grinding noise, like small metal parts shearing together and then snapping, breaking…
The magistrate breathed slowly out, attempting to keep his composure in the face of everything he’d just seen and heard.
‘Incredible… So evidently Kotaki staggered to his feet, then fell over his stool and collapsed upon the floor, the poison acting quickly…’
‘That is so,’ confirmed my master. ‘The position of his body thus indicated that his attacker had disturbed him while he’d been working, first entering into this room through the open door…’
‘But, Ennin-sensei, while I’m certain that everything you say is the truth, exactly what evidence links this… this doll to Yamaguchi?’
My master gave a cold smile.
‘No craftsman can resist putting their mark, their signature, upon their work. Especially when this piece of work is something truly remarkable… But where, exactly, would this mark be made?
‘I think I have an idea…
My master took hold of the lower part of the doll’s mouth (still jammed open with the small piece of wood) with his finger and thumb, and with some effort succeeded in snapping it off.
He examined the back of it, and still wearing that slight smile then presented this part to us. And there, scratched almost minutely into the wood, were the two Chinese characters –
山口
Yamaguchi.
Yamaguchi confessed to his crime, shortly before his execution. Although, had it not been for that vainglorious act of ‘signing’ his extraordinary instrument of death, he might never have been connected with the killing of the toymaker Kotaki at all…
The Poet
1
Ennin was sat alone in the tatami room he’d taken at a salubrious inn, well-known for the quality of its cuisine. His servant, Kukai, was out on an errand, and would not be returning before nightfall.
There came a gentle knock upon the closed sliding door. Ennin’s eyebrows rose in mild surprise, and in a low voice he said –
‘Come.’
The door slid open; and a thin man, dressed in a blue-and-white striped kimono, made his hesitant entry. At the sight of him, Ennin’s eyebrows raised a second time.
‘You honor me, with this visit,’ he declared.
The thin man rapidly shook his head, and in a reedy, almost trembling voice declared –
‘No, no, Ennin-sensei. The honor is all mine, believe me. When I discovered that you were also staying here, at the same inn as me, I had to… had to…’
The poet gulped several times, apparently unable to finish. Ennin had heard what a torture it was for this famous poet to converse with other people, so painfully shy was he.
‘…visit?’ suggested Ennin smoothly.
‘Yes! Yes – visit you.’
‘Please – I have only just begun lunch. There is food here, sake…’
‘I… I fear I am imposing,’ rasped the poet, his eyes practically rolling in their sockets.
‘Actually,’ returned Ennin, ‘I have read a number of pieces of your work, and found them to be excellent. And your name is so well-known, across the whole of Japan… So I would certainly desire to take lunch with you, if that is agreeable…’
With a scuttling, almost crablike movement, the poet moved over and seated himself beside Ennin. He took a pair of chopsticks, and then placing his hands together briefly uttered a word of thanks before commencing his meal.
Ennin gave the slightest of smiles, as he filled the poet’s cup with sake. (Two cups had been brought to this room, together with a sufficient quantity of food, given that Ennin had consumed every other meal at this inn together with his servant.)
Evidently (thought Ennin) this man has retained traces of all those years when he was poor and wretched, ceaselessly roaming the woods and mountains of this country as he composed many of his works, and taking such sustenance as and where he could find it. Offer such a man a free meal – even after he has become wealthy and famous – and he will instantly commence eating, so scared is he still that his bowl will be quickly snatched from his hands…
After a few moments had passed, the poet seemed to become suddenly aware of his partial rudeness. He glanced at Ennin, colored slightly, and placed his bowl and chopsticks back upon the table.
‘Forgive me, Ennin-sensei… So used am I to eating alone, that I – ’
‘Please, please – I noticed nothing,’ said Ennin quickly. ‘I, too, care little for formalities…’
At this, the poet giggled. It was a slightly shrill sound, indicative of a strained nervous system.
‘I have heard your… stories, Ennin-sensei,’ he declared, pausing to clink his cup against Ennin’s, and then take a long sip of sake.
‘You are a… marvel. I – admire you greatly, like so many in Japan.’
‘You flatter me,’ said Ennin, his voice at once sounding slightly offhand.
The poet giggled again.
‘Forgive me, Ennin-sensei; you must despise such prattle… But although I usually go out of my way to avoid all forms of company, and certainly conversation, save for that which is absolutely necessary, still I had to talk to you.
‘So please just tolerate me, as I stumble over choosing what exactly is best to say…’
Ennin nodded, and again filled both their cups. It was a bright, warm day, a gentle breeze blowing through the opened windows of wood and paper. Ennin took a piece of sashimi off the black wooden tray with his chopsticks, and putting this tidbit upon an exquisite little china plate then poured a small quantity of soy sauce upon it.
‘Yes…’ he said slowly, as though continuing a line of conversation rather than restarting one. ‘I have read… I don’t know how many pieces of your work. I have no desire to ‘prattle’ myself, yet I must say that you –’
‘I am a fraud, Ennin-sensei,’ hissed the poet almost malevolently, his eyes appearing curiously like a snake’s as they at once swiveled in Ennin’s direction. ‘I have… deceived… people, by writing so… And yet the more convoluted my work, the more pretentious and… and banal, the more they praise me. Into Chinese and Korean, would you believe, my work has been translated! But this, this…’
‘It brings you no pleasure,’ said Ennin quietly.
‘Yes! Exactly that! The artistry in what I do is lacking – lacking entirely! I have lost all connection with my subject matter, the months and the years I spent traipsing across mountains and through forests, across distant rivers and streams and… and…’
The bowl and chopsticks almost fell from the poet’s hands onto the long and low table, and he began quietly to weep. Ennin did not even look at him, his gaze instead fixed upon some spot on the far wall, close by the sliding doors.
‘You feel it has all passed you by, yes?’ said Ennin quietly, yet still somehow firmly. His voice seemed to rise from some strange place deep within him. ‘The wonder of all that you once saw, smelt and felt – felt with your very soul. Then you could tell men – women – things they knew already, yet in a way that was somehow fresh. The
mark of every great artist…’
The poet wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands.
‘Yes… Yes, it is as you say. Then I could be happy; I was capable of–’
‘Happiness is nonsense,’ declared Ennin brusquely. ‘There is no such state. The best emotional state which we can – should – aspire to is perhaps one of what might be termed ‘mild contentment’. That, I believe, must be sufficient.’
‘There I must disagree with you,’ returned the poet, his composure recovered. His eyes bored into Ennin’s, compelling Ennin to turn his face and meet the poet’s gaze.
‘Forgive me, but it is well known how you view the world – your cases – with this cold logic of yours… How else could you possibly have survived against such an adversary as Sesshu…? One of those accounts written by your servant, your scribe, The Black Death, is still one of the most chilling things I have ever heard…
‘But in your mind now the irritation is quickly beginning to grow, and you are thinking – What is it, exactly, that you wish to say?
‘Well, this is it – that upon finishing one of my poems, once upon a time, I was able to reach one of the most fantastic states of contentment known to man. I would go so far as to call this happiness. Indeed it was more than this – it was euphoria… While it raged my appetites were vast and unquenchable – alcohol, food, women…’
‘And together with such a feeling – finally – came the money, the fame, the recognition so long denied to you,’ broke in Ennin, again transferring his eyes to that point upon the far wall. ‘But when this feeling had passed – when the cold light of dawn showed itself outside the geisha house, and all those hangers-on who’d attached themselves to you like leeches used your money to pay for their pleasure, then that sense that you were merely cheating – that somehow you’d succeeded in fooling everyone with only the tiniest grain of real talent – grew in you like a cancer once again.’
The poet breathed deeply, and nodded. This time, it was he who replenished both cups.
‘You know all this of course, Ennin-sensei. Just as you know everything, unless…’
‘Unless…?’ murmured Ennin, not blinking as he continued to stare at the wall.
The poet moved fractionally closer towards him.
‘You are yourself familiar with such a state of mind… Both the upside… and the down… This sense of euphoria… and then what must surely mirror it… Afterwards…’ the poet almost whispered.
‘No,’ said Ennin firmly. ‘I am not. I have long since trained myself to keep a more balanced state of mind; although, I confess, I am not in the least artistically-minded. For my line of work, I have only to deal in facts – often relatively trivial ones, and yet facts ignored or otherwise disregarded by those who see them.
‘And from this, the inference… and the solving. That is all.’
‘So there is nothing troubling you, then,’ declared the artist, almost with mild petulance. ‘The great Ennin-sensei – more machine than man…’
At this, Ennin gave a cold smile, his eyes remaining fixed upon the same spot. He thought of how his body ached, sometimes, when he awoke. Too many years spent sleeping out in the open, in the wind and the rain… Too long spent walking, even climbing sometimes, going from village to village, town to town – city to city…
And always the requirement to try to see ahead – to anticipate. This was essential; for as greatly as he was revered, and for all he’d achieved, his enemies were still many and widespread, and so he was simultaneously still hated and feared the length and breadth of Japan. Any time, an assassination attempt could be made; and not every assassin was as clumsy as the one his servant, Kukai, had described in that case entitled The Forty-eighth Ronin…
Ennin immediately forced himself to stop such brooding, and again glanced at the poet.
‘So you have writer’s block,’ he said.
‘I am finished, Ennin – as a writer, poet, or whatever is they believe me to be,’ came the reply, another cup of sake quickly being consumed. ‘I have lost that essential simplicity of style – my writings have become unbearably lengthy and convoluted; always a thousand thoughts crowd into my mind as I try to write, distracting me hopelessly away from the true style; leading me down blind paths and alleys and making the… the real message of my work impossible to fathom.’
‘And the praise you get for these so-called ‘blind paths and alleys’ of yours – that you have created nothing so much as a new form of language, a new structure, that many others now try to emulate… That the Empress, there in the Imperial City, has your ‘unbearably lengthy and convoluted’ poetry read to her in the evenings, and that – you may take my word for this – she is enthralled by the beauty of it all…
‘This means nothing to you?’
‘Nothing,’ sighed the poet, setting his cup down a little too hard upon the table. ‘If my work pleased me – if it gave my soul that essential nourishment – I would require no one else, even, to read it. I could build a small hut in the mountains and there live out the rest of my days in solitude, composing such… such simple…’
The poet’s reedy voice faltered as he again wiped his eyes.
‘Come,’ said Ennin. ‘Let us leave this room, and take a walk around this town. The temple near here is meant to be quite beautiful, and I think we would feel better for stretching our legs.’
With a miserable nod of his head, the poet rose to his feet.
2
A long river wound its way through this town, the banks steep and made of many large stones all jumbled one on top of the other, as a safeguard against flooding which might occur during the rainy season. Weeping willows grew at regular intervals; geiko – young, apprentice geisha – passed beneath them, carrying parasols to protect their delicate, whitened features.
The appetizing smell of grilled birdflesh and eels came from several nearby stalls, so that although Ennin and the poet had only just eaten, they immediately felt hungry again.
The pair crossed a curved bridge with two arches, so that its reflection in the surface of the water resembled a pair of spectacles, and then proceeded along a narrow street into the temple-area of the town. By the open front gate of the temple Ennin wished to visit was a large statue of the founding priest, some juzu – prayer beads – draped over his stone hands, which were placed together in prayer.
Ennin and the poet entered in through the gate, leaving the relative hustle and bustle of the town behind them. A few wispy white clouds blew tentatively across an otherwise perfectly blue sky. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so. There was none of that frantic, single-minded pursuit of shade which occurs during Japan’s hottest months.
Several gardeners were tending the trees and bushes growing all around the temple. Ennin and the poet took a path, covered in tiny stones, which led along one side of the temple hall and into a quiet, shady area, where there was a pond. Two bamboo pipes, emerging from the surrounding vegetation, supplied the water, while carp flashed their exotic colors, there in the pond’s cool darkness.
There was a bench, only wide enough for two people, upon which Ennin and the poet seated themselves. The afternoon now seemed strangely expectant, as though holding its breath for what would happen next…
‘You have told no one else, what you have just said to me?’ questioned Ennin.
The poet gave an emphatic shake of his head.
‘Absolutely no one,’ he confirmed. ‘Only you… For you are surely one of the… greatest… of all artists, even if you do not detect this artistry in your work…’
‘I am tired, sometimes,’ admitted Ennin suddenly – only now to someone else, not just himself. ‘I, too, would love to obtain… simplicity. I would practice Zen meditation, perhaps – but, you see, I can never afford to drop my guard.’
‘A man such as yourself must have many enemies,’ noted the poet. ‘I have heard you were friendly with the great swordsman, Oyama, and eventually discovered just how he’d been ‘lulled’ into
dropping his guard, and thus killed… Another story of yours written by your servant – The Rain-Player, is I believe its title.’
Ennin gave the poet a curious glance.
‘You seem to have followed my work quite closely.’
The poet shrugged.
‘There is no other man, living or dead, I admire more.’
The still afternoon – for the cooling breeze had ceased – continued to hold its breath.
‘I wish I could help you,’ said Ennin. ‘To find this peace of mind you so clearly desire; this consuming goal of simplicity in your work that always lies frustratingly just out of reach…’
At once, close by the bamboo pipes, there appeared a frog. It paused for a moment by the edge of the water, so still that it could have been mistaken for an ornament…
‘An old pond…’ murmured the poet.
Suddenly the frog leapt –
‘A frog jumps in,’ rejoined Ennin.
Choro-choro, gurgled the water issuing from the two bamboo pipes.
‘The sound of water…’ finished the poet, who then gave Ennin a look of stunned amazement, as the afternoon at last exhaled its held breath…
‘There,’ said Ennin softly. ‘There…’
It was several months later that the pair met again, quite by chance. Ennin had lately succeeded in solving the remarkable case of the assassin who was able to disguise herself as a chair, while the poet now had several apprentices at the hut he’d constructed in the middle of a bamboo forest, who all led lives of dogged simplicity and austerity as they focused themselves solely upon composing these remarkable, three-line poems.
…Again, the pair walked together, no one else in attendance. It was nearing winter now, and chilly. Lanterns hanging on the street-stalls glowed red and orange in the gathering gloom.
‘I know it means nothing to you – but you have achieved even greater acclaim for this new form of poetry of yours,’ declared Ennin quietly.
‘Such ‘acclaim’, yes, is meaningless; but the work itself – and the lifestyle which it requires – is satisfying to me. That is all; and it is everything,’ returned the poet.