The Cloud Pavilion

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Too bad for us.” Yanagisawa added, “I didn’t put Yoritomo up to telling the shogun about the connection between your investigation and Lady Nobuko’s disappearance. It was his idea again. I’m even sorrier than I was last time.”

  “Do you believe him?” Hirata asked Sano.

  They and Marume and Fukida sat in the private chambers at Sano’s estate, where Sano had stopped for a quick meal. Hirata had heard about what had happened and was eager for news.

  “Yes and no,” Sano said. Reiko poured tea for him and the detectives, then served rice gruel with pickles and fish. Marume and Fukida, who’d been working alongside Sano all night, gobbled the food. Too hungry and in too much of a hurry to mind his manners, Sano ate while he talked. “I believe Yanagisawa is sorry for what Yoritomo said. After all, it got him in trouble, too.”

  “But?” Reiko said as Sano paused to swallow.

  “But Yanagisawa has been behind so many plots against me that I’m not convinced he’s innocent this time.”

  “Neither am I,” Reiko said. She looked through the open partition that divided the room from the adjacent one and called, “Masahiro, don’t you have a lesson now? Go!”

  Sano saw their son in the other room, fiddling with his toy soldiers, and pretending not to listen to their conversation. Masahiro said, “Yes, Mother,” and obediently left.

  “Do you trust Yanagisawa to help you look for Lady Nobuko?” Reiko asked.

  “Yes and no,” Sano said. “It’s in his own interests to find her, but I still think he’s up to something. That’s why I have to take other action besides our searching the city together.”

  “What kind of action?” Hirata asked.

  Sano could see how much Hirata wanted to participate in it, but they both knew he shouldn’t. Reiko poured Hirata a bowl of tea, all she could offer in the way of sympathy that wouldn’t hurt his pride.

  “Action against three people who thought they were safe from me,” Sano said.

  Ogita lived in a modest neighborhood in Kuramae, near his rice brokerage. The two-story houses were respectable rather than elegant, uniformly constructed with brown tile roofs, balconies shaded by bamboo screens, and weathered plank fences. When Sano and his entourage arrived at Ogita’s house, Ogita and his samurai bodyguards planted themselves in front of the gate.

  “Hello, Honorable Chamberlain,” Ogita said. “How may I be of service to you?”

  Sano had met Ogita at audiences with the shogun’s officials, but they’d never exchanged more than formal greetings. Today he noticed that Ogita wore expressions like layers of clothing. The pleasure on Ogita’s fleshy face overlaid apprehension.

  “I want to search your house,” Sano said. “Stand aside.”

  The apprehension rose to the surface of Ogita’s features like silt in a stream stirred by undercurrents. “May I ask why?”

  “I’m looking for the shogun’s wife,” Sano said. “She’s missing, as you may have heard.”

  “Indeed I have.” Now offense hid whatever else Ogita may have felt. “First you think I kidnapped and raped your cousin. Now you think I have the shogun’s wife locked up in my house.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’d have to be insane to do such a thing.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I see for myself,” Sano said.

  Ogita stood his ground. “With all due respect, I do mind. I like my privacy.” His features took on a neutral cast, his eyes alert but carefully devoid of emotion. Sano imagined this was the guise he wore when negotiating business deals.

  “The sooner I’m finished, the sooner you can have your privacy again,” Sano said.

  “Didn’t your chief retainer tell you what I said when he came to visit me? Before he murdered my servant boy?”

  “He said you threatened to call in my friends’ debts unless I left you alone.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a threat,” Ogita said with a false, congenial smile. He knew, as everyone did, that threatening a top official could mean death. “Just a bit of friendly advice.”

  “Here’s a bit of friendly advice for you,” Sano said. “If you call in those debts, I’ll seize everything you own.”

  Ogita kept smiling, but his bulging double chin jerked as he gulped, and Sano could see droplets of sweat on his shiny forehead. Ogita knew the Tokugawa regime had seized property from merchants in the past, for various reasons.

  “If I go out of business, the sales of rice will be held up. My customers, including the Tokugawa clan, will be short on cash for quite a while until other brokers can take over for me.” Ogita’s smile broadened. “Do you want thousands of armed samurai blaming you? How about a famine in the city? You’ll be hounded out of the government.”

  Merchants had gained considerable power because the ruling samurai class had put its financial affairs into their hands, Sano knew. The traditional samurai belief that money was dirty had given the merchants a big advantage. Ogita was right; if Sano shut down a rice brokerage as big as Ogita’s, the economy would suffer, and Sano would pay. But Sano’s first concern was finding the shogun’s wife.

  “My men and I are going inside your house whether you like it or not,” he said. “We’ll kill anyone who tries to stop us.”

  Ogita’s bodyguards looked at each other, shrugged, and moved away from the gate. Ogita dropped his smile just long enough to glare at them. Then he said, “How about if we strike a deal? I convert your rice stipend to cash for half my usual commission, and you leave me out of your investigation.”

  That discount would save Sano a small fortune, but he said, “Move, or I’ll arrest you.”

  Ogita complied with bad humor. As Sano and his men marched through the gate, Ogita followed with his guards. Sano discovered that Ogita’s home consisted of four houses, each at a corner of a square that made up an entire block, built around a central garden and connected by covered corridors. As Sano walked through them, people he took to be Ogita’s family and servants scrambled out of his way. Ogita vanished into a maze of rooms crammed with expensively crafted lacquer tables and screens, shelves of valuable porcelain and jade vases and figurines, and cabinets filled with silk clothing that the merchant class wasn’t supposed to wear.

  “Maybe this is what Ogita didn’t want us to see,” Fukida said. “He’s broken the sumptuary laws.”

  “Not only the sumptuary laws,” Marume said, holding up swords he’d found in a trunk. Martial law said that only samurai were allowed to own swords.

  “Never mind about that. All I care about is the shogun’s wife.” Sano called to his troops, “Turn this whole place upside down.”

  In a corridor, Sano met Ogita, who said, “Even if I had kidnapped the shogun’s wife, surely you can’t think I would be keeping her here.”

  “This is the one place you wouldn’t expect anyone to look.”

  “Look to your heart’s content. You’re wasting your time.”

  “We’ll see about that. Show me your private quarters.”

  Ogita led Sano to a bedchamber that adjoined an office and a balcony that gave him a view of his ware house and the river. The bedchamber was bare and austere compared to the rest of the house, furnished with a few tables pushed into its corners and silk cushions neatly stacked. Sano eyed the cupboards built into one wall.

  “There’s no room for a person in there,” Ogita said. “I don’t know what you expect to find.”

  Sano didn’t, either. Gazing around the room, he saw a section of tatami that was slightly crooked where the bed would be laid at night. He crouched, lifted a corner of the mat, and touched the floor underneath. One of the boards was shorter than the others, and it was loose. Sano pried it up with his finger and found a square, empty compartment that was about as long as his forearm. He looked up at Ogita.

  Ogita smiled. “I sometimes keep money there.”

  But instinct told Sano the compartment was used for other, secret things that Ogita had just dashed up here to hide. Sano noticed Ogita hovering b
y the partition that separated the bedchamber from his office. When Sano slid open the partition and stepped into the office, Ogita didn’t object or move, but Sano pictured him hurrying to remove contents from the compartment and find somewhere else to secret them moments ago. This was the nearest place, and it offered many possibilities, because the space around the desk was crowded with fireproof iron cabinets and trunks.

  “I work at home at night,” Ogita said. “I don’t need much sleep. That’s the secret of my success.”

  While he spoke, Sano moved around the office. He listened for tension in Ogita’s voice and heard it when he drew close to one cabinet.

  “That’s full of old sales records,” Ogita said.

  Sano opened the cabinet and saw rows of ledgers. Stuck into one row was a thinner volume with polished teak covers, just the size to fit in the hidden compartment. Sano pulled it out, opened it, showed it to Ogita, and said, “What kind of record is this?”

  The book was a “spring book,” a collection of erotic art. On the first page was a picture of a woman undressing. A man stood outside her room, peering through the window at her, masturbating his huge erection.

  “It’s nothing,” Ogita said.

  Sano turned the page. “If it’s nothing, why did you hide it?” The next picture showed the man inside the room. He held the woman and fondled her while she struggled to free herself. His erection pressed against her. Her head was flung back, her mouth open in a scream.

  “Every man in Edo has books like that,” Ogita said.

  “Every man in Edo isn’t a suspect in three rapes and possibly four.” Sano turned to the next picture. Here, the man straddled the woman. Her legs were spread, his erection thrust into her. She lay limp, her eyes closed, as if unconscious. “Maybe you do more than just look at these pictures.”

  Obstinacy veiled fear in Ogita’s expression. “So what if I do?” He waved his hand at the book. “That doesn’t prove I have the shogun’s wife.”

  Marume and Fukida stood in the doorway, craning their necks to get a look at the pictures. “We’ve finished searching,” Fukida said. “She’s not here.”

  “See? I told you,” Ogita said triumphantly.

  Sano was disappointed, but not ready to consider Ogita exonerated. “What other properties do you own?”

  “I have a villa across the river in Honjo and a summer house in the hills outside town,” Ogita said. “But you won’t find the shogun’s wife there, either.”

  “Excuse me, Lady Reiko, this message just came for you,” said Lieutenant Tanuma.

  Reiko sat on the veranda, arranging flowers in a vase and worrying about Sano. “Is it from my husband?” Hoping the message said he’d found Lady Nobuko, she accepted the bamboo scroll case from her bodyguard. When she unfurled the scroll, she saw the red signature stamped beneath the characters written in black.

  “It’s from Chiyo.” Reading the message, she raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Chiyo says Fumiko has left the Kumazawa estate. Her father came and took her. I can’t believe it! He was so adamant about not wanting her back.”

  Reiko continued reading, and her surprise turned to concern. “Chiyo says there’s trouble. She begs me to come at once. She’ll explain when I arrive.” Beset by anxiety, Reiko said, “What can be wrong? What should I do?”

  “Your husband doesn’t want you going back to the Kumazawa house,” Tanuma said.

  Reiko knew how displeased Sano would be if she went. “But Chiyo needs me. I can’t refuse to help.”

  “Major Kumazawa would probably not let you in the door even though Chiyo invited you,” Tanuma said.

  “I’ll take the chance.” Reiko stood. “Are you coming?”

  “If you say so.” Tanuma had worked for her long enough to understand that arguing with her when she’d made up her mind was a lost cause.

  As they hurried off, Reiko hoped she wouldn’t be too late to help Chiyo.

  Sano and his entourage gathered in the street outside Ogita’s house. He assigned a few troops to follow Ogita, in case the rice broker could lead them to the shogun’s wife. Fukida said, “Should we go search Ogita’s other properties?”

  “No,” Sano said. “If the shogun’s wife were there, he wouldn’t have told us about them. I suspect those aren’t his only other properties.”

  “Shall I find out what others he owns?” Fukida asked.

  Sano envisioned a long, tedious search through Edo’s mountains of property records. “No. We don’t have time.”

  What they did have was two other suspects to investigate.

  As they rode down the street, Marume said, “I heard what Ogita said about spring books. He’s right—a lot of men have them. You should see the ones in the barracks at home.”

  Edo had an overabundance of men without women. They were samurai retainers who were single or had left their wives in their lords’ provinces, as well as merchants, artisans, and laborers who’d come to seek their fortune in the city and couldn’t afford to marry. Under these conditions, prostitution and erotic art flourished. And even rich men, who could have all the women they wanted, enjoyed spring books. But that didn’t clear Ogita, not in Sano’s opinion.

  “I skimmed through the rest of Ogita’s book,” Sano said. “All the other pictures showed men raping women. Even if Ogita didn’t kidnap the shogun’s wife, I think he’s responsible for one or more of the other crimes.”

  But so could the other suspects be guilty.

  “Where are we going now?” Fukida asked.

  “We’re going back to the exorcist,” Sano said.

  A group of beggars in ragged clothes loitered in the street outside the exorcist’s temple. When they saw Sano’s party coming, they held out their hands for alms, but without much hope. Sano and his men proceeded to the hall where he’d seen Joju the day before yesterday. Again, the monks at the door tried to prevent them from entering.

  “His Holiness doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Try to keep us out, and he’ll be worse than just disturbed,” Marume said.

  Sano and his detectives went inside the hall while his troops swarmed the grounds and other buildings. He found the hall drastically altered since his last visit. Daylight poured through open skylights. The black drapes, suspended from rods, were drawn back to expose windows cut high in the walls. From one window protruded a wooden bracket that held the painting of bloody fetuses. Through another Sano saw a drum, lute, and samisen in a room where musicians evidently played during rituals. Some windows opened onto platforms. There, monks crouched, setting up flares, rockets, and smoke bombs. More monks leaned out of a hole in the ceiling and lowered a dummy, dressed in white veils, on thin cords. Like puppeteers, they manipulated the dummy; it flew and dived. The scene reminded Sano of a theater undergoing preparations for a new play.

  Spying Sano and the detectives, the monks hauled up the dummy, scrambled to close the drapes, and fled through the windows. Marume called, “It’s too late.” He and Fukida laughed. “We’ve seen everything.”

  Joju strode into the room so fast that his saffron robe whipped around his ankles like flames. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, his handsome face dark with anger. “Your troops are invading my temple. They say I’m hiding the shogun’s wife. That’s ridiculous!”

  “You’ve been hiding plenty of other things.” Sano gestured around the room.

  Joju stopped short, but quickly recovered. “Those are just tools for my rituals.”

  “ ‘Tools’? Is that what you call it?” Sano said. “I call it ‘fraud.’ ”

  The priest put on a dazzling, condescending smile. “The spirits are real. My exorcisms are real. But they work best if people believe in them. The props help people believe.”

  “I wonder if the shogun will continue to believe in you when he finds out about this,” Sano said.

  “You wouldn’t tell His Excellency.” Joju’s intonation made the words a blend of question, statement, and threat.

&
nbsp; “He deserves to know when someone is taking his money and playing him for a fool.”

  “Before you do, you should understand that people want to believe in what I do,” Joju said. “His Excellency would rather think that I can communicate with evil spirits and solve problems by driving them out, than hear that my exorcisms are fakery and there’s no help for people who are ill and troubled.”

  “You have a good point,” Sano said, “but I have influence with the shogun.”

  “Then let us present our cases to him and see whose side he takes.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Sano said, although he knew the superstitious shogun might well come down on Joju’s side. “Are you ready to gamble that His Excellency will continue his patronage of you when he finds out that you kidnapped his wife?”

  “I didn’t.” Joju spoke with obstinate defiance, but Sano sensed his fear that he would be framed.

  “Then you should be able to prove you’re innocent,” Sano said. From outside came the sounds of his troops overrunning the temple grounds, calling to one another, tramping in and out of buildings. “Where were you early yesterday?”

  “Here at the temple.”

  “Have you seen or heard from Jinshichi and Gombei?”

  “The oxcart drivers? No.”

  Sano glanced at Marume and Fukida. He read on their faces the same concern that had arisen in his mind: If Joju did have the shogun’s wife, she was hidden somewhere else. All Joju had to do was keep quiet, and Sano wouldn’t find her until he let her go. By then, the damage would have been done to an innocent woman, and the shogun would never forgive Sano.

  As much as Sano hated to admit it, this was a time for him to compromise. “Listen,” he said to Joju. “Give me the shogun’s wife, and I won’t tell the shogun that you’re a fraud. I won’t tell him how I found her, either.”

  Marume and Fukida frowned: They could tell that Sano wasn’t trying to trick Joju; this was a genuine offer. Sano knew they didn’t want him to let a supposed criminal go free or compromise his principles. Then they nodded in resignation because they knew that what mattered was returning the shogun’s wife safe and sound, and Sano had to do what he must.