The Japanese Corpse ac-5

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  He grinned, for the feeling wasn't a bad feeling at all, and he wanted it to last. But then, as he began to walk away from the rock supporting the hamper, he suddenly stopped. So there was still some anxiety left in his mind. Maybe the pleasurable feeling wouldn't last. He could still suffer a little; he still had something to suffer with.

  He stumbled and hurt his shin against a piece of driftwood. He felt the reaction of his nerves, but again there was no real contact. He observed the pain, a worm crinkling through the bones of his leg, a red-hot worm, an amusing worm which he could watch, but that had nothing to do with him. Yuiko was coming toward him and together they walked on the fine glittering sand. She pointed at the Buddha statue dominating a group of rocks and shrubs at the edge of the beach. The sun and clear air and the sound of the lake's water nibbling at the island had exhilarated the girl and she was running ahead of him, but he saw her stop abruptly in front of the statue and her body crumpled. She was on her knees when he got to her and her hands were clasped over her face. The Buddha was life-size, a body sitting erect, legs folded under the stone folds of a robe, hands outstretched, the left hand supporting the right. The large slanting calm eyes rested on what was lying on the hands. A cat, lazily asleep in the ultimate quietness of death, supporting its chin with its paws, and a bird, also dead, revolving slowly, suspended from an almost invisible nylon string, showing a closed and an open eye in turns, the open eye very much enlarged. The closed eye seemed peaceful, the open eye expressed an intense surprise, a lunatic fear inspired by the situation it found itself in. Whoever had arranged the two corpses had taken his time and managed to obtain the desired effect. Death showed its true face; the bird turning against the background of light gray stone embodied the end of everything to an extreme pitch of stark reality.

  Yuiko had fallen forward, whimpering. The daimyo's effort had met with success, but he had injected fear into the wrong subject. De Gier opened his pocketknife and cut the string holding the bird. He picked up the cat and the bird and deposited them gently behind the statue, covering them up with small rocks and pebbles. He worked slowly, giving himself some time to think. So the daimyo had changed his plans. He had arranged the trip on the lake, setting up Yuiko to invite the sergeant. Maybe he had wanted to kill him after all, for Kono might be around. The daimyo had used Kono before, and the move was associated with violence, with a knife, with rough intimidation. But the staging of the dead cat and bird and the Buddha statue indicated the hand of the daimyo himself. De Gier tried to visualize the steps leading up to the confrontation he had taken part in just now. He had seen both cat and bird on his way to Lake Biwa. Now they were here. The daimyo had picked up the corpses and taken them here, so the daimyo's car had been behind his own sports car. The daimyo had been stopped by the flagmen too, had seen the corpses and had collected them. While de Gier and Yuiko lost their way to the harbor, the daimyo had gone ahead, boarded the fishing boat and sailed away. De Gier had lost more time tacking close to the shore while the fishing boat headed directly for the island. The daimyo had arranged his tableau, using the dead animals which coincidence had placed in his hands, and left again, or the boat had left, leaving the daimyo on the island because, presumably, he wanted to see how de Gier would react. But it had all been arranged on the spur of the moment, there had been no deliberate planning. So the daimyo had been in doubt, to destroy the opposition or allow it to continue in order to cooperate with it, to mutual benefit. But shake the opposition a little before proposing participation, paving the way so to speak. De Gier laughed as he pushed some sand over the pebbles. He was beginning to think like the commissaris, maybe he was finally learning.

  He walked around the statue and knelt next to Yuiko's body. She had stopped whimpering and he turned her over and picked her up, nuzzling her cheek with his lips. He carried her to a spot where they couldn't see the statue and set her down.

  "Yoroshii," he said. "It's all right. Your boss wanted to frighten me but there was nothing there but a dead cat and a dead bird. You saw the bird before, remember? the striped sparrow you told me about? Don't be upset, it had nothing to do with you. The daimyo is on your side, remember?"

  She smiled and reached out to stroke his hair.

  "I'll get the hamper," he said. "This is just the right time to eat."

  When he came back to her she had managed to calm herself although her body was still rigid and she mechanically opened the hamper and took out its small square plastic containers, flipping off the lids and dishing out cold boiled rice and bits of thinly sliced meat. She gave him his chopsticks, wrapped in a narrow paper envelope and he tore off the paper and broke the sticks free, grimacing ferociously, muttering to himself.

  "Pardon?" she asked in a flat little voice. "What did you say?"

  "Damned sticks," he muttered. "Why do they have to join them?" He picked up a spare pair and showed her. "See? They are joined at the bottom; they expect you to snap them apart. Manufacturers are getting lazier and lazier. It's like selling you a shirt with two hundred and eighty four pins in it. Before you put it on you have to sit down for ten minutes and if you forget to pull one out you scratch youself."

  She smiled tiredly. "Chopsticks always come like that, the cheap ones do. They are made in enormous machines, I saw one once, when I was still at school; we were taken to the factory. I don't mind breaking the sticks free, but I apologize if it is inconvenient for you. Perhaps they should pack them differently for foreigners."

  "Never mind," he said gruffly. "You are not responsible for the way chopsticks are packed. Maybe that dead bird did upset me after all. Maybe your daimyo is getting on my nerves finally. I am sure he is wandering about here somewhere. Maybe he's behind that rock over there, or up in that tree. Do you see a daimyo in a tree?"

  She looked at the trees obediently and shook her head. "No," she said. "I don't see a daimyo in a tree." She was crying and laughing simultaneously and he caught her in his arm as she fell over. "You are crazy," she sobbed. "I hope nothing will happen to you. They shouldn't have picked me to get you here. There are other girls in the Golden Dragon who speak English. I am too sentimental and you make me laugh sometimes. Do you see a daimyo in a tree! He is old, he can't climb trees and he has high blood pressure. He had a stroke last year, not very serious, but he was in the hospital for awhile."

  They ate and he liked the food and asked her about the way she had prepared it. The thermos was filled with good coffee, and gradually they began to forget what had brought them to the island. De Gier rolled over on his back and she lit a cigarette for him and snuggled up in his arm. Her leg pressed against his and he felt a tremor go through her body and he pulled her a little closer. He kissed her and undid the buttons of her blouse and played with her breasts, overlooking the fact that their firmness and size were partly due to compressed air. She struggled out of his arm, got up and pulled him to his feet and took him by the hand and together they found a nearby cave. She undressed and helped him out of his clothes. The cave's floor was covered with fir needles and mosses, and as he made love to her, he could see the lake's surface through a transparent wall of waving ferns. He had been careful to keep his pistol within reach and there was a brief thought of the daimyo's presence and the possibility of death. The thought was very quick but it trailed another thought: If he were to get killed now it might just happen that the bullet would strike his neck at the very moment of having an orgasm.

  He had studied the cave as they entered it. There was really no way for an attacker to make his move, except perhaps through a slit in its roof, but the slit was overgrown with bushes and the lower branches of cedar trees. Perhaps the daimyo could find a way of pushing himself through the branches and he might be able to fire a bullet or drop a hand grenade. He grinned as he imagined an old man with a red face and tufted pitch-black eyebrows sitting uncomfortably on his haunches on a branch, peering down and pulling the pin out of a grenade. He would be waiting for the right moment, for the daimyo would also thi
nk of combining death and orgasm. It would be another clever practical joke. He felt Yuiko's arms around his back. The arms would be torn off. Various images of horror flitted through his mind, but he could watch them calmly as his body went through the movements set off by their love play. Yet the pleasure wasn't altogether automatic. The green haze of the fern leaves sitting high on their thin stalks, and gracefully bending their fanlike forms, the fragrance of moss and fir needles, the deep gray streaked with the glistening blue of the stone walls of the cave and the white-capped waves of the enormous lake, visible in between the naked fern stalks, all fused with Yuiko's body and he felt as if everything, with nothing excepted, not even the corpses of the bird and the cat on the hands of the Buddha statue and the tufted eyebrows of the old man who seemed so bent on intimidating and manipulating him, had met when Yuiko sobbed and he groaned and the moment was reached.

  \\ 24 /////

  She noticed the slight bulge in the right pocket of his jacket as they dressed again. "Another gun?" she asked. "You have one under your armpit, isn't one enough?"

  "A radio transmitter," he said, and showed the small gadget to her. "It has a button, see? If I press it Dorin should come, but he'll need time, I'll be on my own for a while. The daimyo has picked a good location."

  She shrugged. "Not so good," she said. "If the daimyo is on that fishing boat or on the island here, he is either protected by one other man or not at all. You should be able to kill him, and if he calls Kono's boat you will see it approach and Dorin can come and help you out."

  He nodded. "Yes. So?"

  "So I don't know what the daimyo is planning either," she said, "and I don't care so much now. I think it will be all right, maybe he wants to make friends."

  "By showing me a dead bird with a large yellow eye, turning on a plastic string? Watched by a dead cat?"

  She shrugged again. "They were on the Buddha's hands. The Buddha is not an evil figure. I think the daimyo wants to make friends. He is a very strange man, his behavior often seems erratic, but when his plans come to some sort of fulfillment you can see that there has been a firm line of thought all along. The manager of the Golden Dragon said that once, and he had been with the daimyo for many years. They were in the air force together during the war. The daimyo was a kamikaze pilot."

  They had left the cave and were wandering about on the small island, following a narrow path made out of flattopped rocks, set at intervals of about a yard. He stopped and she walked into him. "Sorry," he said, "but I didn't understand you. Kamikaze pilots died as they made their attack, didn't they? They just flew their airplanes straight into their target and blew themselves to little pieces. Isn't that right? But the daimyo is still around."

  She laughed and sat down on a low bench. They had a perfect view of the lake again and de Gier sighed with pleasure and sat down next to her. "Beautiful," he said. "Very peaceful. We are even protected from the wind here."

  She held his hand as she explained that the island had once been an imperial possession and that the state still looked after it, paying the gardeners who cleaned it at least once a week, pulling out the small weeds, watering the mosses and lichens, cutting dead treebranches and leaves and even washing down some of the rocks. There had never been building on the island and the emperors had used the beaches and the hill as they were using them now; they had strolled about and made love perhaps and had eaten their meals from hampers. The two Buddha statues had been placed to enhance the island's quietness and detachment.

  "Two?" de Gier asked. "You'll see the other one soon," she said. "According to the note on the map it sits on the top of this hill. You still want to know about the daimyo?"

  "Please."

  She giggled. "It's a funny story really. You see, the kamikaze pilots died for the emperor, it was considered to be an honor to be selected to kill the enemy and commit suicide simultaneously, so they would receive a letter signed by the emperor himself and there was a big ceremony before they went to their planes. The daimyo was a young man then, not yet thirty I think, and he marched up to the platform where his commanding officer was waiting for him. He was dressed in his best uniform and he had a white strip around his forehead, white cotton with some special design, maybe the character for death, glorious death. The commanding officer said a few words and bowed and he bowed back and then he marched back to his colleagues, all standing to attention. The commanding officer poured sake, special holy sake, sent by the emperor from Tokyo, and the label was stamped by his seal, a red seal. Each pilot was given a big cup but most of them wouldn't drink for they considered themselves to be unworthy to swallow the sacred alcohol. They left their glasses untouched and the daimyo drank them all. He likes to drink; even now he sometimes gets very drunk although the doctor doesn't want him to drink. He goes to the best heart specialist in Kobe and every time the doctor asks if he has been drinking but the daimyo says no, never. To us he says that sake saved his life once and he hasn't forgotten it. Now it can kill him, if it wants, but it doesn't want to apparently for he is very alive."

  "He got drunk on the holy liquor, eh?" de Gier asked, and grinned.

  "He did. He staggered to his plane and got it into the sky but he couldn't find the sea, he just flew around for a long time and when he ran out of petrol he came back. Everybody was very annoyed with him for all his colleagues died as they attacked the American fleet but the daimyo had to be carried to bed. I think he would have been punished, but a few days later Japan surrendered and everything changed. Nobody cared anymore and the emperor became an ordinary man, a nice man with spectacles who looks at marine growths through a very expensive and accurate microscope. Even I have seen the emperor, very close, I could have touched him, I cried but I knew he was an ordinary man, not a god. The daimyo always knew the emperor wasn't a god and he refused to die when he was ordered to die. He says he prefers to pick his own time and place."

  De Gier was looking at the sea when she finished her story. "Yes," he said. "That's a good tale, even if it isn't true, but maybe it is true. It seems your boss is both original and courageous. I hope he really wants to make friends with us, I'd like to work with him."

  "What do you do in your own country?" she asked. "Do you sell drugs too, and stolen goods, and do you own restaurants and bars and so on?"

  "Yes," he said. "Our business isn't as big as what the daimyo has here. But it boils down to the same thing, I think."

  "I don't like the drug business," she said, and moved closer to him. "It isn't so bad here but I saw some of its effects in Tokyo. Tokyo is outside our territory. There are a lot of junkies over there, very sad people. I know the daimyo sometimes sells heroin and cocaine. Hard drugs are for sale in the Golden Dragon too, but the clients have to ask, we don't push."

  "Yes," de Gier said, "but the trade is profitable. If you don't sell the stuff somebody else will. Let's go and have a look at that statue."

  They climbed the path and she showed him how even the smallest twigs had been removed from the fir needle carpet, how mosses were encouraged everywhere, how the perfect rock formations had been carefully planned, each rock being carried uphill on a specially made wooden frame. But in spite of all the meddling the island looked natural, a gem of great beauty, undisturbed and serene.

  They found the statue or, rather, they found an empty shrine, a sloping stone roof resting on thin pillars.

  "Didn't you say there was a Buddha statue here?" de Gier asked, stepping back to get a better view of the small structure. "Did somebody take the Buddha away?"

  "This is Buddha,' she said. "He has many shapes. This is one of them." He turned and looked down the hill; below them sat the other Buddha.

  "So what is this then," he asked, pointing at the pagoda; "the Buddha's mind?"

  "I took a class in religion when I studied to become an interpreter," she said. "Our teacher explained that the Buddha trascended mind."

  "What does that mean?"

  "No idea," she said.

  He
took her by the arm and they walked back to the beach. "An interpreter makes a lot of money," he said. "Why didn't you stick to your profession? Japan has a big export trade; surely you could have found a job."

  "I have a job," she said, "and it pays well. My family is under some obligation to the yakusa and they couldn't refuse when the daimyo dropped a hint. Maybe I could have refused, times have changes a little. If I had been very tactful I might have talked my mother out of accepting the contract. I don't think I wanted to. I don't spend all my time in the Golden Dragon. The daimyo has given me some interesting assignments."

  "You like this particular one?" he asked.

  "Maybe it is the best one so far," she said. They had come to the beach and she picked up the hamper. "We have to clean up," she said. "I have got the empty plates and the paper cups and the chopsticks but perhaps we left some cigarette butts."

  He helped her. They found them all and de Gier found one extra, a filter. He showed it to her.

  "Yes," she said, "the daimyo was here, but we knew that already." She pointed at the Buddha.

  "Yes," he said, "and he has left again. There's the fishing boat. There are two men in it now. He must have boarded the boat at the other side of the island, the side we couldn't see from the hilltop. He probably sat on thesame bench we sat on just now and then went down another path. Why didn't he wait for us?" he asked.