The Hell Screen - [Sugawara Akitada 02]

by I. J. Parker

  Genba had outdone himself. There were platters of pickles, bowls of fragrant fish soup, mountains of soba noodles, and piles of stuffed dumplings. These delicacies were accompanied by rice and steamed vegetables from the cook’s own kitchen. Dinner was another pleasant interlude, but finally Yori became tired and fretful. The women rose together to put him to bed.

  On her way out Akiko had to pass Akitada and paused briefly. “By the way, Brother, it is the strangest thing, but that little figurine of the floating fairy you were so interested in? It has floated away again, and Toshikage swears he knows nothing about it. Have him tell you about it.”

  Akitada’s eyes flew to Toshikage and he saw the other man flush to the roots of his hair. He waited till the door had closed behind the women before he asked, “So you recognized the figurine?

  Toshikage raised his hands. “I never saw it. I remembered what you said about instructing Akiko about the history of the little treasures and went to visit her room the very next day. She told me about the figurine, but when we looked for it, it was gone.” He gulped down a cup of wine and sighed.

  “And?”

  Toshikage said miserably, “Akiko described it. Your sister has an excellent memory. It sounds like the floating fairy from the treasury. I don’t think there could be two of them. I swear to you, Akitada, I did not put it there!”

  “I believe you, but someone in your household must have done so.”

  “Impossible. Who would do such a thing? For what purpose?”

  “I wonder why it was left in Akiko’s room, and where it is now.”

  “Why leave it at all?”

  “Perhaps as a warning to you?”

  Toshikage looked absolutely confused. “A warning? About what? I don’t understand.”

  Akitada sighed and thought.

  After a moment Toshikage said, “It’s a miracle the director did not see it. Remember the unpleasant visit I had from my superior?”

  Akitada nodded.

  “I had meant to show him the screen in Akiko’s room and would have done so if you had not called to see your sister. Can you imagine what would have happened if the director had seen the thing?”

  “Yes. But I thought you said the director was there to reprimand you. Why would you show him around under the circumstances?”

  “Oh, it was not like that. I had mentioned the screen to him a few days earlier at the office and invited him over. In fact, at first I thought that was why he had come.” Toshikage subsided into a misery of sighs and head shakings. “What can it all mean?” he muttered.

  Akitada was beginning to have an idea. But it was hardly one he could share with Toshikage. If he was right, the truth would be a far bigger blow to his brother-in-law than a mere dismissal from office, no matter how embarrassing the circumstances.

  * * * *

  TEN

  The Dark Path

  Lady Sugawara died the next morning.

  It was Tamako who brought the news to Akitada. He was in his father’s room, remote from the women’s quarters, and thus unaware of the event. Rising early, he had slipped from under the covers gently so as not to disturb his sleeping wife and had walked softly to the kitchen to fetch a brazier and some hot water for tea, and then to his new study.

  The room still depressed him. He lit as many candles and oil lamps as he could find against the darkness of closed shutters, but still a clammy, unpleasant aura remained. For a while he walked around rearranging his things where once his father’s had stood. In the process he found the old flute he had bought from the curio dealer and decided to cheer himself up with some music.

  He was badly out of practice but found some old scores and soon became immersed in the intricacies of fingering and timing the notes.

  He was not aware of his wife until she walked up quickly and took the flute from his lips.

  “What is the matter?” he asked blankly. “It was not all that bad, was it?”

  Tamako looked down at him sadly. “No, Akitada. But you must not play anymore just now. It is your mother.”

  He rose abruptly. “Heavens! Am I not even permitted such a small pleasure in my own house? That is intolerable, and I shall not allow her to dictate my life any longer.”

  Tamako looked at him with tragic eyes and sighed. “Yes, I know. Your mother is dead.”

  He gaped at her. Dead? His first reaction was relief that it was finally over, the long dying, the dreadful pall which had lain over this house so long. The relief immediately made way for shame, and then depression. Perversely, the event, so long expected, now seemed sudden, badly timed, too soon. “When?” he asked, and felt his heart contracting.

  Tamako put a hand on his arm. He had not realized that his fists were clenched at his sides. His right hand hurt and when he raised it, he saw that it still held the antique flute, broken now; a splinter of bamboo had cut one of his fingers. Tamako gave a soft cry and took the pieces, laying them on his desk. Pulling the splinter from his hand, she said, “A short while ago. Another hemorrhage. Your sister was feeding her the morning gruel. I found Yoshiko covered with blood and incoherent with shock and took her away. The doctor has already seen your mother, and the maid and I have tended to her.” She hesitated. “Do you want to go to her now?”

  So Tamako had spared him the sight of his mother’s blood-covered corpse. With a shudder he recalled the terrible scene when his mother had cursed him, the gaunt, distorted face, the sunken eyes blazing with hate, heard again the hoarse voice spitting out her vilifications until the words had drowned in a flood of gore.

  Tamako gently stroked his arm. “Don’t look so. You knew it was going to happen. It was time.”

  Akitada turned away from her sympathy. How could she understand that he felt mostly hatred for his own mother? Anger, regret, hopelessness, pain, but above all hatred. “Yes. I knew,” he said harshly. “I even wished it. And, oh, yes, it was time! She poisoned everything she touched. My life, Yoshiko’s, Akiko’s also! She would have poisoned yours, too, and our son’s! I am glad it is over!” He laughed. “Finally it is over!” Looking around at his father’s room, he shouted, “They are both gone! Gone! The house is ours! Our lives are our own! We can finally find peace and happiness....” He collapsed on his cushion and covered his face with his hands.

  “Shh! Akitada!” Tamako came to kneel beside him and touched his arm. “Don’t! The servants will hear you! Please, you must not!” She saw that his face was wet with tears and, with a small moan of pity, took him into her arms.

  “My own mother hated me so much,” he sobbed into her hair, allowing her to hold him, rocking back and forth with the pain, “that she died without taking back her curses. What have I done to deserve that? Tell me, what have I done?”

  “Shh!” Tamako crooned, patting him as if he were little Yori, “Shh, she could not help it. Death came too quickly.”

  Eventually he calmed himself and straightened up. “I suppose,” he said, drying his face with his sleeve, “I had better go pay my respects.”

  Akitada had seen death often. It had never been a casual encounter, even when the dead person had been a stranger. But he had never hesitated or flinched as he did now at the door to his mother’s room. He had stood here many times in his life, never eagerly, always wishing himself elsewhere. But always he had faced up to the encounter, because it was expected of him. With a sigh, he opened the door.

  His mother’s room was brighter than it had been in her lifetime. Many candles shone on the thin figure of the old woman as she lay, surrounded by the figures of the chanting monks. She was wrapped in the voluminous folds of a heavy white silk gown. Someone (Tamako?) had cut her hair like a nun’s, suggesting a deathbed devotion which Lady Sugawara had never felt in life. It made her look younger, and her features seemed peaceful.

  Akitada forced himself to study the face which, when alive, had regarded him with irritation, dislike, cold fury, and indifference, but never with love. He thought it ironic that those who had led bla
meless lives and whom he had loved had often died with contorted features. There was great perversity in death.

  For the benefit of the chanting monks he knelt and bowed, staying in this reverent pose for an adequate time before rising and withdrawing. It was done!

  The next days were taken up with funeral preparations. He concentrated on his duties, putting aside his bitterness for a calmer time. Both the house and its inhabitants wore willow-wood tablets with the “taboo” character inscribed on them, to warn outsiders of the ritual contamination of death. The taboo did not, of course, discourage the Buddhist monks, who seemed to take over the house and the lives of its inhabitants and would until after the funeral. But theirs was a different faith from the old religion, which abhorred the very thought of death.

  No business of any type could be transacted during this period, and no visitors appeared, though Akitada received many messages of condolence from friends and from his mother’s and father’s acquaintances. It was all very proper and expected, except for one incident.

  The day after his mother’s death, Yoshiko came to see him. She was still very pale and looked frail in her rough white hemp gown. Kneeling in front of his desk, she looked with a sigh down at her folded hands. “There is something I have to tell you,” she said. “I have thought about it a long time, for it may be painful for you.” She looked up at him then, her eyes large and serious. “You know, I would not hurt you for the whole world, Akitada.”

  Akitada’s heart fell. He had been worried for a while now that she was in some sort of trouble, and Tamako had suspected the same. Hiding his fear behind a smile, he said warmly, “I know. And there is nothing you could tell me that would make any difference in the way I feel about you, Little Sister. Please speak!”

  She did not return his smile, saying bluntly, “I am afraid I caused Mother’s death.”

  Her tone was so flat that Akitada stared at her. This lack of emotion was quite unlike Yoshiko, who had always had a soft heart. For a moment he wondered whether her presence during the final paroxysms had perhaps deranged her mind. To reassure her, he said briskly, “Nonsense! She was dying. What could you have done that would have made any difference in that certainty?”

  Yoshiko shook her head stubbornly.

  He searched his memory for Tamako’s report, regretting for the first time that he had not seen his mother’s body immediately. A hemorrhage, Tamako had said. Probably just like the one he had witnessed himself. But Yoshiko had not been with him then. He tried again, “Mother died of a hemorrhage. How could that be your doing?”

  “Oh, Akitada. Can’t you guess what happened? I quarreled with her. I knew how she felt about you, knew that one more provocation could bring on a final attack, but I could not keep still any longer.”

  Half-afraid of the answer, he asked, “What did you say?”

  “I asked her why she would not see you, why she treated you so badly when you had rushed all that way to be at her side. She got very angry and said it was none of my business, but I would not leave it alone. I argued with her and accused her of lacking a mother’s feeling for her son. That was when she started screaming at me.”

  Akitada winced. So it had been his mother’s hatred for him that had finally killed her after all. Looking at Yoshiko’s white, strained face, he said, “Don’t blame yourself! It was kind of you to speak for me, but pointless. I have known for a long time that she did not love me. It is clear that I was foolish to think she would change on her deathbed. As for motherly feelings, I suppose she simply never cared for me. I have tried to account for it by the fact that she was as disappointed in me as was my father. I am so sorry that I should have been the cause for your distress.”

  Yoshiko cried, “Oh, no! That wasn’t it at all. Oh, Akitada, I didn’t come here because I needed you to console me. It is true, I blame myself for provoking her, but I know Mother was dying, and perhaps it was good that she spoke to me before she did.” She paused and looked at Akitada anxiously. “You see, I don’t think she was your mother at all.”

  After a moment’s stunned silence, Akitada said, “You must have misheard something. My father never had any secondary wives.”

  “He did! We just did not know. I think your mother died when you were born, and you were raised by our mother. And I think she never forgave you for being another woman’s son.”

  Akitada blinked. He felt as if he had walked into a dense fog. He wondered again if Yoshiko had gone mad under the recent strain. But she looked calm enough except for the nervous twisting of her hands. “What makes you think so?” he asked.

  She leaned forward a little, her face tense, her voice high with emotion as the words tumbled out. “Mother said so in so many words. Actually, she screamed it at me! It was horrible, but if you think about it, it explains so much! I have thought about it ever since. Imagine all that resentment, years and years of it, holding it in for fear of Father. And when Father was gone, she still would not speak because you were the heir and could have ordered her out of the house if you had known. Oh, she probably knew you would not abandon her totally, but she was afraid that you would find her another place to live, and she could not have borne that. Only now she was dying, and you had brought your wife and heir home, and she knew there was no point in keeping quiet any longer. All the hatred and jealousy of nearly forty years, of knowing that Father preferred your mother to her, that your mother gave him a son, when she had no children at all, until Akiko and I were born, all of it poured out. She ranted on until she choked on her own misery, and then the blood came up and she died. It was dreadful!” The stream of words halted abruptly on a little gasp, and Yoshiko looked at him tearfully.

  Akitada’s mind reeled. “What exactly did she say?” he demanded. “What were her words?”

  Closing her eyes, Yoshiko thought back. “She said, ‘He’s no son of mine!’ and then, ‘She was a person of no importance! What did he see in her?’ and then she said, ‘He insulted me and my family by bringing her child into my house, to raise him as his heir for all to see and pity me!’ “ She opened her eyes. “There were many hateful words about this other woman.”

  Akitada was silent, caught in the monstrous shock of the thing. He stood up and walked to the veranda door, opened it, and stepped outside. Standing on the edge of the veranda, he stared down at the fishpond, where a few dead leaves mimicked the golden and scarlet fish beneath the dark waters. Just so his father must have stood many times. What thoughts had been on his mind? The bond between himself and his father suddenly seemed strong and unbroken. It was as if he had always known deep inside of himself the truth he had just been told. The truth within! Somewhere he had read those words, but could not now recall where.

  His sister sat wringing her hands in her lap. After a long time of watching him anxiously, she whispered timidly, “I am so sorry, Akitada. I did not mean to hurt you.”

  Akitada had been thinking of his father loving another woman, who was his mother, and was startled. “You have not hurt me,” he said in a tone of wonder. “On the contrary, it is a great relief to me. Only, now my father’s dislike for me seems even more strange.”

  His sister said quickly, “I thought about that, too. I think he must have pretended to dislike you because of Mother.”

  Akitada turned to look at her uncertainly. That idea would take some getting used to. How do you divest yourself of almost forty years of resentment toward your father in one moment? There were too many bad memories to be explained away, one by one. It was not going to be easy. He sighed and said, “At least it should not be difficult to find out the truth.”

  “You are not angry with me, then?”

  “Of course not. And stop worrying about having caused... your mother’s death. The slightest aggravation would have done the same.” As he watched Yoshiko rise, her slender figure obscured by the stiff folds of the hemp gown, he forced a smile. “I suppose I shall have to wait until the forty-nine days are up before I see you in one of your pretty new
gowns.”

  “Forty-nine days? We mourn a parent for a full year.”

  “No, Yoshiko. As head of this family, I decree that after the funeral we shall wear dark colors until after the ceremony of the forty-ninth day. Then all mourning will be put aside. So get busy with your needle.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, then smiled. “Yes, Elder Brother. As you say.”

  After she left, Akitada examined his feelings. On the whole he felt enormous relief that he was the child of another woman, as yet a mythical figure. It was one thing to be hated by one’s own mother, but quite another if a stepmother had done so. A woman’s jealousy of a rival could well cause her to reject that woman’s child.

  He felt a mild curiosity about that long-dead young woman, so hated by her rival, and so beloved by his father. For if he had not loved her, surely the woman whom Akitada had thought of as his mother would not have hated her son so bitterly and long. He recalled, too, moments when his stepmother’s guard had slipped and she had revealed her bitterness toward her late husband, her many complaints about his political and financial failure, her bitter reminders that she had married someone unworthy of her own family. And gradually the stern, unforgiving image of his father softened in his memory until it became almost human.