Crooning softly, now, Ri-ru sank to her knees, body vibrating, head flung rigidly back.
“Speak!” commanded Takezo.
“Aiiiiiiii!” cried the witch, now medium. “All is darkness!” She stood rigidly, head backflung. Her voice became a deep, hoarse groan. Uni waved the incense. “I see gleaming frost everywhere and demons of hard ice with holes for eyes! Aiii! I freeze!” She began to shake. Ventriloquism was one of her many skills and, even expecting it, the effect startled him. “This is the Hell of the Red Lotus!” the head seemed to growl, in agony.
Most of the audience was stirred. Several had pulled out prayer beads. Even the Italian man of reason seemed suddenly uneasy.
Takezo moved his blurred area of sight over the witnesses and noted Yoshi, for the first time, standing just behind Hideo. Decided he’d better watch him.
To cover his nervousness, the magistrate asked:
“Your name?”
Holding the head up high with both hands, Takezo squeezed the jaw joints to make the gaped mouth move as the flat, raw voice responded:
“I was called Kame, in life. Now I am no more, alone in the freezing darkness of hell! I who showed no compassion now am tormented by fiends made all of ice! Aiiiiii!” She flung herself back flat and flopped like a beached fish.
This produced general uneasiness; except Yoshi seemed almost amused.
“Yes, yes,” the judge hastened to say. “A dreadful fate. How pitiable. So, Kame-san, what can you add to these proceedings?”
Yoshi’s smirking, noted the detective. He’s in on secrets…
He dropped to his knees beside Ri-ru, keeping the head aimed at the judge. Tried to keep his semi-focus on Yoshi; had an idea.
He lifted the head high while he bowed his own to the, now, softly writhing medium.
“Say,” he shout-whispered, “Kame was also called Osa, a homosexual friend of Yoshi. Yoshi.”
“Osa,” she instantly roared, the hoarse, flat, violent voice seeming to come from the moving, dead jaws. “Osa the homosexual was my true name. Sweet Yoshi can tell you.”
The stocky new-made captain’s face reacted in a twitch of anger and surprise. The judge shook his metal fan.
“There is precedent for this,” he declared, touching his small chin with one small, delicate hand, “but the seeker of truth from the world of the dead must be known and vouched for. Who knows this woman?”
“I know this man!” cried Yoshi, stepping forward, still with a slight limp, Takezo noted, with pleasure. “He puts lies even in the mouths of corpses!” The scar that creased his nose was red with fury.
“Improper,” said the judge.
“Sit down!” ordered Hideo.
Reiko still just watched, sitting on one side of Issa who was smiling, slightly, fan covering one side of her face as she moved it. Gentile saw there was a lotus flower design on it in bright red.
“You’re running out of time, drunkard,” Yoshi said, sitting back down, scowling and folding his arms.
“No,” answered Takezo, “I have a keg of it at home.”
“Ay,” said Colin to him. “That face… know face… Damn my clumsy tongue,” he said in Spanish to Gentile who asked:
“What is it, sir?” in that tongue and heard back:
“I saw that man. Drank with him at the village the night Osan died.”
Gentile translated but was silenced by the magistrate.
“Speak when it is your turn. This is a place of law and these outbursts will be punished!”
“What will you do to the dead man?” Takezo wondered, standing up now (a little unsteadily) head a swollen, thick, raw ache and pushing the ruined face at the people on the platform. At which cue the bass, flat, harsh, raspy voice spoke again.
“Rrrrr!” it growled, jaw moving at which Issa covered the lower half of her face with the bright fan and the Italian was sure she was shaking, ever-so-slightly, with amusement. “I murdered women. I… I …” The medium thrashed, good eye rolled up into her head, foam at her lips; the uncanny voice still seeming to originate in Osa-Kame’s mouth. “Hideo was betrayed! The seisho, Lily, I killed her and hid away Osan. It is her body in the young beauty’s grave! Rrrrrrr… aiii …” She flung herself around, raising a cloud of fine sand that shimmered in the unrelenting impact of the near noon sun. “The torments of Hell surround me… aiiii!”
Issa wasn’t laughing, this time. The fan went away from her face. Hideo scowled. Reiko was perfectly still except one finger tap-tapped rapidly on his gold and red silk embroidered knee.
“He’s making the mouth move,” ejaculated Yoshi, “while she utters nonsense.”
“Disgraceful,” echoed Reiko. “Another stupid performance by a bad actor.”
Hideo frowned and said nothing. Issa had folded her fan and tapped one palm, gently, with it. She was looking at Reiko who wasn’t looking back.
“Who can identify this?” asked the judge, pointing to the head with his gleaming, gold-lacquered fan. Everyone looked at the lidded, shadowed eyesockets, jutting cheekbones, old scar tracing across one partly missing ear, the gaped mouth full of darkness in the pallid face.
A Hideo samurai stepped forward and knelt with a bow before the judge.
“Two years past, my lords,” he declared, “that fellow served in our ranks. He left, deserted, less than a year later. I don’t recall the name he used. He kept to himself. Some suspected he might have been a spy but nothing was proved.”
Yes, a spy, Takezo thought.
The magistrate stood up in his full, dark, shiny, peak-shouldered robes. His small hat sat like a decoration on his bald skull, the small, delicate fingers of one hand pointing at the ronin detective.
“Too much confusion,” he said. “Trial is postponed for one week. The body of the dead woman to be exhumed and examined. If you have made sport of these proceedings, your name and image will be posted with other outlaws and you will share their fate.”
“My image as I look now?” Takezo wondered and Issa smiled before her hand reached her mouth to cover.
“You will be punished.”
“The body has no head,” Reiko put in, maintaining rigid calm. “And must be decaying. What is the use? Not even her mother and father could –”
Except he was interrupted by a nervous, somewhat shrill voice from the side. Everyone turned other than the witch who still lay prostrate, writhing very slightly.
“There is a way to tell,” said Yazu, stooping in deep bows, keeping his face down so that he presented only the top of his narrow, bald head to the officials and spectators.
“Now who speaks?” said the frustrated judge, looking hard and long at the skinny commoner. “You? I think I know you. Have I not sentenced you to be beaten for false swearing and selling bad goods?”
Yazu went to his knees on the ground in a complete kow-tow.
“A deception, lord magistrate,” he insisted. “I was shown rice free from mold when I received the load! The truth was hidden from me.”
“I recall there was meat involved, as well.”
“More evil tricks, lord magistrate.”
Hideo was shaking his head.
“Where did he steal that sword?” he wanted to know.
“Well… what have you to say in this cause?” the judge pressed on.
Yazu peered up from under at the notables.
“Lord,” he said, “the whore ‘Lily’ is known to have a tattoo of that flower on her body. Near a spot I won’t mention.”
Takezo was now trying to focus on Issa’s face, whenever the fan moved aside. He found it hard to register what had happened between them in the palanquin that night. It had melted like an uneasy dream on waking. He wondered what she might really know about the death of Miou. Had a feeling she’d been left out of a great deal. And she hadn’t spoken, yet.
He now let the head dangle at his side, resting against his knee; studied Issa’s husband through the blurry shards of his sight. The man kept looking at his wife and sco
wling every time he did. Reiko held himself still while Hideo seemed ready to erupt.
Then Issa said:
“It seems we should discover if my daughter is buried there.”
Reiko still showed nothing while Hideo slit his eyes and looked hard at nothing.
“I agree,” said the judge. “Too much confusion, otherwise.”
“Confusion?” exclaimed Yoshi, sarcastically from the back row. “This business is tangled like a nest of snakes.”
“Yes snakes,” said Hideo, looking at his wife who had just stood up and leaned out over the porch edge.
“Ask it,” she said, pointing at the head, “ask it if my daughter is alive or dead? I care little who is buried there if it is not she. Where is my child?”
Takezo stood up and held this piece of the late Osa-Kame up at arm’s length towards her. A few flies now flickered around it.
Why is Hideo so angry with her? The ronin wondered. He was swaying slightly in the terrific sun. He wondered that Ri-ru hadn’t fainted in her exertions.
Reiko suddenly stood up.
“All nonsense!” he shouted. “Lies!”
As if on cue Yoshi shouldered forward beside him, snarling.
“This outcast criminal brings disorder everywhere he goes!” he exclaimed.
“Did you know this dead man?” the magistrate asked, looking closely at the outraged samurai. Takezo moved the head from facing Issa to Yoshi now.
Yoshi moved back from the bony, gaped and sooty countenance.
“No,” he said. “It’s a trick.”
Ri-ru thrashed and the head spoke, hoarse, raspy, violent:
“He lies! We plotted together with …”
But Reiko, with supple speed, drew his short sword, made an accurate slash and split the face in two leaving the ronin holding (as he stepped back) what might have been two demonic masks, one with the mouth downsagging in a halved frown; the other seeming almost to be trying a smile, exposing long, uneven teeth. The effect wasn’t good.
“Trained as a butcher?” Takezo said, insultingly, throwing both pieces point-blank into Yoshi and Reiko’s faces, unpleasant stuff from the opened cranium spattering other officials and onlookers.
Outcry, commotion as Hideo men milled forward clashing with police. Ri-ru and Uni the dwarf melted away as Yazu stood at his master’s shoulder, drawing his blade. Gentile tried to get to Colin but was blocked while Yoshi and Reiko made straight for the ronin detective with plenty of backup. Hideo just stood there, brooding, wiping some of Osa-Kame glop from one forearm.
Hand on his katana hilt, Takezo crouched and moved his head around trying to keep blurred track of events in the violent contrast of glare and shadow as the judge shouted:
“Stop at once! Disgraceful!”
Which wouldn’t have done much to discourage the infuriated clansmen already clashing with the yoriki guards had not Hideo bellowed, shaking his fist, as all his pent up rage and suspicion was relieved by the powerful thunderclap of Kiai from his mouth:
“Enough!” They stopped. He stormed over to Reiko and Yoshi. The judge knew better than to object to anything at that moment. “Dig up the grave,” he said, ferociously, face a little too close to his chamberlain’s. “Find my daughter, her body or herself. No discussion.” Glanced up at Issa who nodded, with downcast eyes – for once, Gentile noted. Then to Takezo: “I want to have a prosperous, honorable world for my family and clan. Like Lord Nobunaga, I want peace and orderly life.” He stepped closer, ignoring Takezo’s bare sword, peering from barely a nose away. To the dizzy, seared and battered detective, the coldly raging, frustrated lord, seemed to take form through undefined, bright and dark blurs, face a mask carved in steel that somehow softened and hardened at the caprice of his damaged sight. “Because of you, spy, where all seemed tragic but correct, there are shadows and doubts. My mind is poisoned with confusion. Maybe you did what you said you’d do so I cannot kill you. We will see. But I don’t thank you.”
Turned and stormed away across the sun-blasted yard, bright robes shimmering, followed by his entourage, ignoring Issa and Reiko who stood in the deep, bluish shade near Yoshi and their bodyguards.
The judge shook his fan at a ranking policeman, then pointed with it at the two halves of the head where they lay on the bright sand, turned in almost completely opposite directions with their opposite expressions, saying:
“Get a priest and bury that! We don’t need cursed spirits in the place of justice. The cursed living are enough.” To Takezo: “I thank you even less than Lord Hideo, disrupter. Now this sorry business drags on.”
Takezo gestured at Colin who was being led away, still bound, to the adjoining jail through the back wall gate. Kept his face cocked to where he could see the big-robed outline of the judge and a blurry hint of Issa and the others at the border of one of his uneven patches of vision.
“If it was not Osan then he must be freed,” he said, gently touching the swelling around his eyes. “Lord Izu should be informed.”
“Are you blind?” asked the judge.
“Not altogether,” was the reply. “But the less I see, the clearer things become.”
Two police guards in black and white with shiny lacquered helmets were depositing the divided head into a wicker basket with a lid, without much relish for the task. The judge took it in, glanced back at the group still near him in the shadow of the overhang, then said:
“If your supernatural testimony and that of this one” indicating Yazu with his fan, where he stood uneasily beside his teacher, “- proves false, you will be in trouble.”
“Me, in trouble, lord magistrate?” the ronin remarked, twisting a blot of semi-sight more towards Issa, Reiko and Yoshi. None of them were saying anything. None of them looked very comfortable. Yoshi seemed the least concerned which Takezo thought might be interesting if his skull hadn’t seemed full of hot needles that were being hammered in by the sun while his body almost shuddered with exhaustion. He didn’t want to drink or eat or think: just sleep, this time.
“And that witch, too,” the official concluded, turning away.
“A few more twists and the puzzle comes apart,” Takezo said towards the gallery. He was feeling suddenly far away, faint and maybe delusional, “There are, as they say, clever fish who eat the smaller one in front even as the biggest one swallows them whole.” A little giddy as it all caught up with him, he chuckled, dry and almost maniacally. “The dead man told me this.” Then he wrote something with his sword in the sand with a quick, casual swirl of the tip, and smiled as if he’d just expressed a great truth, then started away, sword still drawn and catching the brilliant, burning light, Yazu beside him, putting his own bamboo hat on his master’s head.
It all comes back to Osan and that stupid ring, he thought. And it was well-hidden. He’d assumed ninja experts would have searched his and Miou’s place. It made sense that she was able to kill the man that night, he suddenly realized, because he wasn’t there to hurt either of them but to look for it. Someone wanted it so quiet she wasn’t told. His mind went on despite his utter dull, exhaustion. Miou might have known the assassin. It made some sense. Not enough. The ring and the rest… I just don’t see it… why did Osan really run away… it wasn’t for love of that fire-haired barbarian who can’t speak six words of Japanese… because I never see anything. Miou is dead and so maybe I don’t deserve eyes…
“What did he write?” asked Reiko, not looking at either Yoshi or Issa.
The policeman holding the late Osa-Kame’s divided head in the basket, peered at the scrawl in the hot sand and gave a shrug of contempt.
“Looks like the character for ‘big,’” he said.
*
The previous night
Hideo came into her private bedroom where she lay naked on her embroidered covers behind the soft, subtle misting of the mosquito netting, the scene glowing in the light of an oil lamp and two soft green paper lanterns. At her a feet a small naked girl was giving her a pedicure while a seco
nd paid naked courtesan was dipping her small hand in a honey pot, then crushing berries and letting Issa suck and lick the sugariness from her delicate fingers while her other hand did sweet service between her long, beautiful legs. Issa had what was sometimes called a Northern, “Chinese” beauty.
Hideo stood near the curtain and just looked at her blurred and softened through the mesh. She smiled.
‘Will you join us, my lord?’ she wondered, not quite mocking, not quite serious.
‘I’ve had enough of such things,’ he said. ‘I have no need to exceed the pleasures of Paradise.’
‘You wish only to watch, my lord?’
‘No. I wish only to say this: do not betray me.’
‘My lord?’ She was genuinely puzzled.
‘I don’t mean with lovers,’ he said. ‘Do not betray me.’
‘You think this?’ She moved aside the sweet-stained little hand from her mouth and looked at her husband through the fine mesh where he had just turned his back so that he was a blur and a shadow to her. Her lips were blotted with the jam. The soft light gleamed on his black sword sheaths and golden robe. He was looking without focus at a dim, old scroll painting of a monkey in a tree full of blossoms throwing a fruit at a tiger crouching under a crescent moon.
‘It’s unclear,” he said. ‘There are shadows in the shadows.’
Thirty-Six
uMubaya’s interlude
The big African prince had followed Takezo’s directions and came, at length, to the seaside village of Mora. He’d left the main road and followed a horse and foot trail along the wooded hills that roughly enclosed the flatlands in a rough crescent. Through breaks in the dense, moist forest he could look out over the farms and glimpse the distant village itself in the humid haze and shimmer of the seacoast, about three miles away.
He worked his way down all afternoon, following a cool, zigzagging, rushing river, until he came to the outskirts of the farms where the water spread out into a wider, slower flow, twisting into bright branches intercut with irrigation ditches.
Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Page 25