The Masuda Affair sa-7

by I. J. Parker

  Mimura caught their mood and put on an ingratiating smile. ‘The kid’s crying his eyes out ‘cause his treat’s over,’ he explained. ‘The rich gentleman has bought him pretty clothes and presents. And sweets, too, I suppose. I’m sure he likes it much better here than at home.’ His voice took on a whining quality. ‘We’re just poor people, sir. Desperately poor. The child’s gone hungry along with his parents. Why, I wager he thought he’d found paradise with you, sir. But he belongs to us. I lost a day’s work, looking for him. I don’t know how we’re going to manage.’

  Akitada looked at the constables and snapped, ‘Before I turn this child over to these people, I should like to see some proof that they are indeed his parents.’ But he had little hope of disproving their claim. The boy had recognized them. And the fact that he had picked up the child in the forest near their home had already convinced the constables.

  Since he was clearly a gentleman and the claimants were a ragged fisherman and his wife, the two constables decided to turn the matter over to the local warden. They all walked to the warden’s office, Akitada still carrying the child.

  The warden was a middle-aged man with an enormous mustache which he kept stroking as he listened to the constable’s report. He looked them over, then took down everyone’s name and dwelling place. When informed that Akitada was a senior secretary in the Ministry of Justice, he bowed respectfully.

  The fisherman, Mimura, whispered to his wife. They looked like people whose fortune was about to be made, if only they played their game carefully.

  When the warden had written down his last note with painstaking brush strokes, he turned to the child in Akitada’s arms. ‘Boy,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘Are these your parents?’

  Mimura’s wife cried, ‘No point asking him. He’s an idiot. Deaf and dumb as a stone. He’s ours all right. Who else would want him?’

  ‘He is not an idiot,’ snapped Akitada. ‘And if you were his mother, you wouldn’t call him that.’

  The man came to his wife’s aid. ‘It’s true, begging your pardon, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s been a great burden to us, poor little cripple. But he’s ours, and we take care of him as best we can.’

  The warden sighed. ‘Do you have any proof that he’s yours?’ he asked the Mimuras.

  They looked at each other. The man said, ‘We didn’t know we’d need his papers. We just went searching for our lost boy. It’s a fine thing when a father can’t have his own child without carrying papers around with him.’

  The warden sighed again. He turned to Akitada. ‘You won’t deny that you found the boy near the Mimuras’ home, will you, sir?’

  ‘No. But what parent would leave a child out in such weather in nothing but a thin ragged shirt? No real parent would treat a child in that fashion. And he’s been beaten and starved.’

  The warden heaved a third sigh. His expression spoke volumes about the naivete of the wealthy when it came to how the poor lived their ramshackle lives. ‘Can you find someone to testify that the boy is yours?’ he asked the fisherman.

  Mimura blustered, ‘What? Now? This time of night? On a holiday? You don’t mean I should go all the way home and walk back here with one of my neighbors, do you?’

  But his wife was pulling his sleeve and pointing to the street outside. ‘There’s that monk again,’ she said. ‘He saw the boy at our place.’

  The warden sent for the mendicant monk, perhaps the same one Akitada had seen earlier. He was still wearing his basket hat. The warden explained the situation and the monk turned to peer through a slit in the basket at the Mimuras and the boy in Akitada’s arms. He spread his hands. ‘I don’t recognize the child, though I remember the woman very well.’ He had a fine, deep voice and spoke like an educated man. His tone implied that their meeting had not been a pleasant one.

  The woman bit her lip. ‘Jiro’s wearing new clothes and is clean. You’ve got to remember him. I was telling you what a terrible thing it is to raise a child that’s not right. Can’t say a word, can’t hear, and isn’t right in the head, I said. We work and work to feed him, and there’s never any money in the house.’

  The monk inclined his head. ‘I recall that conversation, and it is true there was a child there. It may be the same boy.’

  It was good enough for the warden. Since Akitada made no move to turn over the child, one of the constables took him from his arms and handed him to the woman. The warden pronounced a warning to the Mimuras to keep a better eye on him in the future, the monk departed, and that was that.

  But Mimura was not quite done. He now bobbed Akitada a bow. ‘We’re much obliged, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s been treated like a prince. Just look at him weeping his eyes out, sir. He knows he’s going home to a cold house and an empty bowl.’ He paused expectantly.

  Akitada looked at Mimura in disgust, but he reached into his sash and gave the man most of the silver he carried. It was enough to feed a large family for a month. The boy looked at Akitada despairingly.

  ‘Be a good boy,’ Akitada told him, tousling his hair. ‘I shall come to visit you and make sure all is well.’ He gave the Mimuras a sharp look and then turned away, unable to meet the child’s eyes.

  The woman snorted. ‘He can’t hear a word. No need to bother yourself.’ The Mimuras left.

  Akitada followed them out, then stopped to watch them walk away. When they had gone a little way, the woman put the child down roughly. The father’s broad back blocked Akitada’s view, but he heard the boy cry out in pain and he clenched his fists. Both parents took the child’s hands and disappeared into the crowd.

  It had been foolish to give his affection so quickly and deeply to a strange child. Akitada’s heart ached to see him dragged away, whimpering. The brutes had abused him and would do so again, but he had no right to interfere between parent and child. He hated this helplessness. He hated seeing the boy’s hope crushed so suddenly and completely. And he ached because he had failed the child just as he had failed his own son.

  For the next hour, he wandered despairingly about town, trying to think of a way to rescue the boy, knowing he should return to the inn, saddle his horse, and go home to be with his wife.

  And then he saw the cat again.

  TWO

  The Courtesan’s House

  He recognized it immediately: the brown and white fur arranged in irregular patches; the scarred face with one eye half closed so that it seemed to be winking; the tear in the right ear. It sat on an upturned basket behind a vegetable stall, looking at him and twitching its tail.

  Perhaps it was the festival’s peculiar atmosphere, or his own confused emotions, but Akitada was suddenly convinced that the cat was his link to the boy. This time he knew better than to rush the animal. He approached slowly, making soft clicking noises with his tongue as he had heard his sisters do when they called their kitten. The cat winked, slipped down from the basket in one fluid motion, and strolled away.

  Akitada followed, keeping his distance, waiting as the animal stopped to examine garbage in gutters and alleyways for bits of food. He had no idea what he would do if he caught the cat, and he did not worry about the peculiar figure he made, following a mangy cat up and down dark alleys in his heavy silk hunting robe and stiff hat. At one point the cat paused to consume a large fish head someone had tossed out of a restaurant. Akitada hurriedly purchased a lantern from the shopkeeper next door, overpaying the man in his haste not to lose the cat. Eventually, the animal stopped scavenging and moved on more purposefully.

  They left the business district behind. The streets grew darker, there were fewer people about, and the sounds of the market receded until they were alone on a residential street, the cat a pale shadow in the distance. A pearly moon cast its uncertain light as remnants of clouds moved slowly across it. Akitada picked up his pace. Occasionally, the light of lanterns or torches inside a walled compound threw weird shadows through the intervening trees. Puddles still glinted here and there in the potholes and cart tracks of the road,
and Akitada hoped it would not start to rain again. He had the strangest sense that he and the cat moved towards some unearthly place, that the cat was leading him among the ghosts. He was being foolish, but in his misery, he relinquished his common sense willingly. It was a faculty that had never been particularly useful when it came to human emotions.

  The cat appeared to have a definite destination. It kept up a steady and direct route towards the lake. The streets became darker, the lights from dwellings fewer. When they reached the road along the lake, Akitada saw that the wealthy people of Otsu and summer visitors from the capital had built their villas here to catch the cool breezes and have a view of the distant mountains. Their gardens were large, and the walls and gates in good repair. The sweet scent of flowers came over the walls, made sweeter by the moisture which still lingered from the rain. Somewhere a reed warbler called and was answered. Charming rustic roofs peeked from the trees, or elegantly tiled ones, and occasionally, where a wall was low and the trees not dense, he caught a gleam of the moon-silvered lake.

  Imperceptibly he relaxed and smiled to find himself on this adventure with a cat. Then, abruptly, the moon disappeared behind clouds, the street was plunged into sudden darkness, and he could no longer see the cat. When the moon came out again, he strained his eyes and started to run. The street lay before him, long, straight, and empty. The cat was gone. With a ghostlike suddenness it had disappeared into the darkness as if it had never been.

  Akitada stopped and looked everywhere. Nothing. Panic rose for a moment, then abated into defeat. In the distance sounded a temple bell. He turned to go back to the inn.

  When the ringing of the bell stopped, he heard the slow clacking of wooden sandals. An old man approached, paused, and produced a pair of wooden clappers which he beat together vigorously, calling out in a reedy voice, ‘The Rat… The hour of the rat… The Rat.’

  A night watchman. And it was the middle of the night already. Most decent people were in their beds.

  Akitada called out, ‘Do you happen to know who owns a brown-and-white cat hereabout?’

  The watchman raised his lantern to look at him. ‘You mean Patch, sir? Nobody owns him. He lives in the dead courtesan’s house.’ The watchman pointed to the gate of one of the lakeside villas. ‘A visitor in town, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, a visitor.’ Akitada looked at the wall and gate and saw that it did not match the neat appearance of the rest of the street. Plaster had fallen, exposing the wood and mud construction, and in one place a large section had collapsed, mocking the heavily barred wooden gate by allowing easy access to cats and humans alike.

  Patch? The cat was spotted. Surely, the boy had recognized the cat and tried to call its name. ‘The dead courtesan’s house?’ he asked the watchman, who seemed amused by the odd encounter on the moonlit street.

  ‘Nobody lives there anymore,’ the watchman said. ‘It’s a sad ruin. The cat belonged to her.’

  ‘Really? Who owns the property? I might want to buy it.’

  ‘Ah.’ The watchman’s curiosity was satisfied. The rich, not having regular work, kept peculiar hours, but that was not his concern. He shook his head. ‘Dear me, not that place, sir. She killed herself because her lover left her to starve. They say her angry ghost roams the garden to catch unwary men to have her revenge on. I never go near it myself’ He produced a wheezing laugh. ‘Not that she’ll have much use for an old stick like me, but you’d better keep your distance, sir.’

  Akitada looked at the watchman. It was the middle of the O-bon festival, and the old man was clearly superstitious, but somehow the tale of a haunted house fitted his own mood. ‘How did she die?’

  ‘Drowned herself in the lake. Pity. They say she was a rare beauty.’

  ‘Were there any children?’

  ‘If so, they’re long gone. The house belongs to the Masudas now.’

  Akitada thanked him, and the man resumed his rounds, making a wide detour around the broken wall and barred gate.

  Akitada walked to the collapsed wall and peered into the overgrown garden. Trees and shrubs hid all but the corner of an elegantly curved roof. Up ahead the night watchman looked back and shook his head at such foolhardiness. Akitada waved and waited for him to disappear before scrambling over the rubble into the garden. He was trespassing and felt foolish, but was more determined to find the cat than ever.

  A humid, stagnant atmosphere received him. Dripping vines, brambles, and creepers covered shrubs and trees. His feeble lantern gilded wet leaves and picked out a stone Buddha, half-hidden beneath a blanket of ivy. Strange rustlings, squeaks, and creaks sounded everywhere, and clouds of small gnats hovered in the beam of his light. The air was oppressive and vaguely threatening. The cat’s coming and going had left a narrow track which soon disappeared under dense vegetation. Akitada followed it, but had to take detours and lost the way. His progress was noisy with snapping twigs, and he wondered vaguely about the neighbors. Surely no one else was out at this time. When he felt a tug at his sleeve, he swung around, his heart beating, but he had only brushed the branch of a gaunt cedar.

  He would have turned back, if he had not heard the sound of a door or shutter slamming. Perhaps it had been the cat, or some beggar finding refuge in the deserted house, or even the wind from the lake beyond, but it was enough to make Akitada press on.

  When he reached the house, he was covered with scratches, itching from insect bites, and his topknot was askew. But there, on the veranda, sat the cat, waiting.

  The villa looked small, dark, and empty, its shutters broken, the paper covering its windows hanging in shreds, and many of its roof tiles had shattered on the ground. The balustrade of the veranda leaned at a crazy angle, and where there had been doors, black cavernous spaces gaped in the walls. It must have been charming once, poised just above the lake in its lush gardens, a nobleman’s retreat from official affairs in the capital, or – as the watchman had implied – his secret love nest.

  The lake stretched, dull silver, towards a distant shore that wore a necklace of tiny lights. People were still welcoming the return of their dead. Here, in this dark and deserted villa, no one had lit candles or set up an altar to welcome the spirit of the unhappy woman who used to live in it. Only the water lapped gently among the reeds along the bank, but Akitada suddenly felt a ghostlike presence and shivered. He looked about, then walked up to the ruined house. The cat watched him with unblinking eyes, motionless until he was close enough to touch it. But when he stretched out a tentative hand, it slipped away and disappeared inside. He called its name softly, but the animal did not reappear.

  The veranda steps were missing, as was most of the floor. The house, which had been vandalized for useful building materials, had become inaccessible to all but cats. He was turning away, when he heard an eerie sound from inside, a soft wail definitely not made by a cat. He swung around and caught a movement inside.

  He thought a tall pale shape – a woman trailing some diaphanous garment? – had moved past the opening to one of the corner rooms. Akitada felt the hair bristle on his neck and called out, ‘Who’s there?’ He got no answer.

  Walking quickly around the corner of the house, he climbed one of the supports of the veranda and held up his lantern. He directed its beam into the room where he had seen the woman. It was empty. Dead leaves lay in the corners, and rainwater had gathered in puddles on the remaining floor. In spite of the warm and humid night, Akitada felt a sudden chill.

  When he jumped down from his perch, his foot landed on something that broke with a sharp crack. The lantern revealed a shimmer of black lacquer and mother-of-pearl: a wooden toy sword, proof that a small boy had once lived here. He picked up the hilt and choked with pain; the sword was identical to the one he had bought Yori during the last winter of his life. A costly toy, it had been lacquered and ornamented to resemble the weapon of an adult. Yori’s delight in it, and the times they had spent practicing swordplay in the courtyard at home, had been more than worth the expen
se. When the memory faded into the familiar bitterness, an irrational fear gripped Akitada. He stumbled away from the haunted villa, plunging back into the wilderness. He scrambled through as fast as he could, and when he reached the broken wall again, his heart was pounding and he was out of breath.

  The street lay empty, the watchman long gone. Dejected, Akitada returned to the inn. He was no closer to helping the boy or making sense of what was troubling him. A courtesan’s ghost, a feral cat, and an expensive toy? What did they mean? He was too weary to think.

  In spite of his exhaustion, he slept poorly. The encounter with the child had brought back all the old grief and added new fears. He lay awake for a long time, thinking that he had abandoned the boy to his fate without lifting a finger to help him and remembering the guilt of having neglected his own son during the time of the pestilence. When he finally fell asleep, his dreams were filled with snarling cats and hungry ghosts. The ghosts had the face of the boy and followed him about, their thin arms stretched out in entreaty.

  Towards dawn he woke, drenched in sweat, certain that he had heard Yori cry out for him from the next room. For a single moment of joy he thought his son’s death part of the dream, but then he felt the tears on his face and knew he was gone. The dark and lonely room of the inn closed in around him, and he plunged back into despair.

  Waking was always the hardest.

  The final day of the O-Bon festival dawned clear and dry. If the weather held, Akitada could reach the capital in a few hours’ ride, but he decided to chance it and spend the morning trying to find out more about the boy, the cat, and the dead courtesan. He thought, half guiltily and half resentfully, of his waiting wife, but women seemed to draw on inner strengths when it came to losing a child. In the months since Yori’s death, Tamako had quietly resumed her daily routines, while he had sunk into despair.