The third report came from Jiro of the fourth kumi in Upper Sugino, a well-known drunkard and layabout with a penchant for gambling, dangerous to his own household and to the other four households of the kumi, seeing that the kumi was responsible for the behaviour of all its members. He stumbled into the hinin hut in the early hours of the morning and slurred a confused account of being followed along the dyke. Gansuke swore at him and sent Rokubei to escort him home. They saw nothing on the way. The rest of the kumi members greeted Jiro with barely concealed fury, as one of the older members had died and they were conducting his vigil, a duty Jiro had ‘forgotten'.
The only positive outcome of this was the villagers’ reluctance to venture near the swamp or even along the boundary road after dark, which made the hinin patrols a lot easier. Until they found the calf.
* * * *
'This one wasn't dead!’ Kingo, head of the fourth kumi in Upper Sugino, waved his hand at the carcase. A small, stout man, he wore a perpetually worried expression accentuated by the tilt of his commoner's top-knot. It made Rokubei almost grateful that hinin had to keep their hair short in front.
'It's dead now,’ muttered Sanpachi.
The calf was indeed very dead, missing its skin and entrails, as well as one haunch. It lay in the scrub on the edge of the swamp, near Upper Sugino.
Rokubei wished Kingo hadn't come with them. Gansuke would have brusquely told him to wait, but Rokubei found it hard to stand up to commoners. He felt apologetic, somehow, for his newfound low status, as though he'd done something worse than merely fail to die.
'Well? What are you going to do about it?’ Kingo practically jumped up and down on the spot with indignation. ‘You're supposed to stop this kind of thing happening.'
'Trespassers, we're supposed to stop,’ Sanpachi said flatly. ‘And robbers. Not supernatural crap.'
Kingo flinched at the crude language. ‘How do you know it's sup...'
'See these furrows in the flesh?’ Sanpachi pointed with his pipe. ‘All ragged from the claws. And look, it's left a bit of ... what's this purple crust, d'you think, Rokubei? Liver?'
'Yes.'
Kingo breathed heavily through his mouth.
'Left some liver, in its hurry to be fed,’ continued Sanpachi happily. ‘And a haunch is missing.'
'It is?’ Kingo swallowed, his skin shiny and pale. Commoners didn't usually eat meat. At least, they seldom stared at large chunks of it fresh. Rokubei could well remember his first days assisting the chori. Now he didn't even notice the raw smell or the buzzing flies.
Sanpachi had a point. The other carcase hadn't had flesh ripped off the ribs, or meat missing. As for tracks, they were fainter here on the harder ground. The leaf litter had been scuffed all over—after the killing, because there was no blood on the ground thus revealed. Foxes or badgers, perhaps. Or wild boars? The disturbance seemed too large for a small animal. Any traces of shiny white powder would have been churned over. Disappointing, that. Rokubei still couldn't remember what the smell reminded him of.
'It's definitely the fourth kumi's animal, then?’ Rokubei asked Kingo politely.
'What? Oh, yes.’ Kingo was still staring at the bloody dark hollow where the calf's leg had been torn away. ‘I suppose so.’ He wiped sweat off his upper lip with his sleeve. ‘Nobody else is missing a calf.'
'When did you miss it?’ said Rokubei. The calf hadn't been dead for more than a few hours.
'This morning, when our fieldman went to feed it.'
'Was the tether broken?'
'I don't know,’ protested Kingo. ‘That's your job to find out. As kumi head, I'm going to make a formal complaint to Shigeimon. The kumi will demand compensation. We're paying you to protect us and look what happens.'
Not strictly true. The commoner farmers of Upper Sugino granted to the non-commoners of Lower Sugino begging rights at assorted festivals, hunting rights in the forest and woodgathering rights in the swamp. The hinin patrolmen's wages, though, came from Edo.
Having worked himself into enough of a rage to banish his pallor, Kingo stomped up the path back to the village.
'He's a tightarse,’ said Sanpachi, and spat accurately where Kingo had been standing. ‘Jiro hates the bastard, always preaching about the evils of gambling.'
'It is illegal,’ Rokubei pointed out.
'So? You don't wanna be polite to shits like him. They just take the piss outa you.'
Rokubei grimaced. ‘That's what we're here for, isn't it?'
'Doesn't mean you can't have pride.'
* * * *
Three nights later, Rokubei and Sanpachi shivered and grumbled their way along the little-used path on the hill side of the swamp. Autumn had arrived early and a chilly breeze rolled over the hills and down into the valley. The sliver of moon had set; they tripped often on roots and old stumps concealed in fallen leaves and grasses. An onlooker would have marked their progress by Sanpachi's swearing.
'Shut up,’ Rokubei scolded. ‘I can't hear anything.'
'What, like the mossies and those bloody frogs?'
'No, like ...’ Rokubei wasn't sure what he hoped to hear. He didn't believe in the bakemono, even if both village councils had agreed to a temporary curfew and a ban on firewood gathering in the swamp until the mystery was solved. Upper Sugino council had also decided to call on the priest at Genryaku-ji temple, in the hills to the east, to perform a generalised exorcism in case the culprit was an aggrieved spirit.
It wouldn't work. There was nothing to exorcise.
'I talked to the head of our third kumi yesterday,’ Rokubei said. ‘He agrees with you. The carcases were skinned by someone without much experience.'
How can you be sure, Rokubei had asked the chori in his workshop.
Would you know if someone sang the wrong verses to a song, or if someone wore the wrong face-white? was the reply. The chori head was one of the few people who knew Rokubei had been a performer.
'You mean skinned by the bakemono.’ Sanpachi hacked with a machete at the vines overgrowing the path. Swish-thunk.
'I don't think it's a bakemono. I think someone's faking it.’ It sounded stupid when he said it, the thin quaver of his voice swallowed by the night and the frogs and the insects.
Sanpachi guffawed. ‘Why?'
Good question. Why would anyone go to the trouble of building a fake? Yet it all fitted—the obvious footprints behind the carcase were a set-up: other people must have pulled the body along while the fake bakemono took care to leave tracks. And the badly removed skin seemed like a commoner's work. And ... he caught his toe in a root and nearly fell flat on his face as he realised. The shiny powder that smelled of the sea was face-white. Made of pulverised oyster shells. It would make a very convincing ‘eye like a floating moon'.
You might fake a monster if you wanted to keep people away from somewhere, either because you were hiding something in that place, or because you were doing something there.
'What could someone get up to in the swamp?’ he mused.
'In here?’ Sanpachi peered at him. The sky was lightening to dawn, but in the lee of the hill it was still dark. ‘You gotta be kidding. People get their firewood and rushes and then go home. Place is full of fever.'
Sanpachi was probably right. What did it matter? Nobody would thank him for stirring up suspicion. His place was to shut up and take whatever crap came his way. He was lucky Shigeimon had given him protection or he might be stuck in Edo, burying bodies or worse, shovelling shit at the prison.
He swung an unlit lantern moodily, heedless of goose bumps on his exposed arms and bamboo grass cuts across his shins. His bare feet hurt. They always hurt now.
He hit the wall of Sanpachi's broad back.
'Fuck,’ whispered Sanpachi.
A long, dark shape lay on a bed of stained and trampled rushes. Looked like a man. Funny place to go to sleep. Then the rich coppery miasma of blood hit his nostrils.
'Fuckfuckfuckfuck ...’ Sanpachi struck his flint once, twice
, fumbled the lantern from Rokubei's nerveless hands. The flame caught, and revealed the horrible thing.
It didn't look like a man now. More like the raw scraps after the chori had finished with a carcase. More like the soft pink shreds of flesh on the calf's ribs. More like...
Sanpachi tiptoed closer. ‘It's done the same thing to one of us.'
Rokubei looked only at the flame in the lantern. ‘How do you know it's one of us? Could be a vagrant...'
Sanpachi pointed at the thing on the ground with the machete, his knuckles white on the handle. ‘Didn't take the face. It's Jiro, poor bastard.’ He blew out a big breath, like a horse snorting, and crouched by the body. ‘Smashed the back of his head, then skinned him like a fucking rabbit.'
Rokubei still didn't look. ‘You'd better call Gansuke and the kumi head. I'll wait here.'
Sanpachi swung his head around, startled. ‘Yeah. We gotta tell them.’ He thrust the lantern at Rokubei, and plunged down the track, not swearing this time.
The new respect in Sanpachi's voice didn't make up for being left alone in the dark with a skinless, gutless human corpse. After a moment, Rokubei retreated to a point further up the path. What had been Jiro disturbed him with its resemblance to the dead cows. Or rabbit. This is what we all come to in the end—bone and meat and brownish, greenish slime.
After a bit he threw up, and felt better.
So much for his smartarse theories. There must be a bakemono.
The shapes of branches and reeds sharpened in the cool air. He could see his toes against the mud. Above, the sky lightened to pink and pale blue. Sanpachi would have reached the hinin hut. Gansuke would run around shouting, sending someone to fetch the kumi head, Kingo, someone to tell Shigeimon.
He retraced his steps to where Jiro lay. The reeds and ferns around the body were scuffed and sodden with blood. Ripped clothing lay scattered at the edges of the area. No clear tracks. Why had Jiro come by this back path? Maybe he knew the hinin had extra patrols out, and didn't want to be caught returning from gambling.
Jiro wore leather sandals like the other farmers. They were worn almost halfway along the bottom and Rokubei found no prints from them on the path in either direction, although the marks of his own and Sanpachi's bare feet were clear. Finally, at the far side of the trodden reeds, he found a gap in the reeds where someone or something had pushed through. In the soft ground a single footprint had almost been obliterated by brown water seeping into it. The footprint was large, with one toe. Other footprints were mushy and unrecognisable. Eventually the trail ended in water. They must have waded across from the nearest solid ground.
Whoever they were. One man wouldn't have made such a gap by himself. And Jiro's sandals were quite dry.
Jiro didn't make any gap by himself, because Jiro didn't walk here. And if he was carried here, he was probably dead before he arrived.
Rokubei forced himself to check Jiro's hands, which the bakemono had left intact. The knuckles were grazed and both fists were tightly clenched. Between two fingers of the right hand a scrap of paper gleamed. Rokubei tugged, but it was fixed firmly in the death grip.
Shouts echoed through the scrub. Rokubei stepped onto the path and held up the lantern, although it was now light enough not to need it.
'Over here!’ he called.
Sanpachi and Gansuke panted into view. Sanpachi carried a hurdle over one shoulder. From the other direction, Kingo and another teka appeared.
Gansuke, a heavily tattooed man with a missing ear, took one look at the corpse and began instructing the teka on how to collect all the scraps and place them together. Gansuke had worked at the execution grounds in Edo, as he never tired of telling them all. Human corpses held no terrors for him.
Unlike Kingo. His shriek made them all jump.
The kumi head, who had seemed composed enough when he arrived, stepped close enough to see Jiro's remains and immediately turned greenish yellow.
'But it wasn't ... how ...’ he gibbered, then vomited like a waterspout.
Gansuke swung him expertly so that the vomit avoided the path. ‘This is Jiro of your kumi?’ he asked.
Kingo nodded, between retches.
'Did you see him last night?’ Gansuke waited impatiently for Kingo to recover.
'I ... I don't think so.’ Kingo wiped his mouth and straightened up, but his voice quivered. ‘My daughter-in-law said Jiro went past about dinner time, headed east.'
Gansuke clapped his hands. ‘Right, get the buddha on the hurdle. When you've dropped him off, you two ...’ He pointed at Rokubei and Sanpachi. ‘Meet me at Shigeimon's place. I want a full report.'
Rokubei had kept an eye on Kingo as he picked up pieces of Jiro. As they manoeuvred the hurdle out of the clearing, the kumi head followed it with his eyes. Kingo hadn't seemed shocked by Jiro being dead, but by the state of the body. Now, he looked ... anxious. And, although his sandals were clean, there were streaks of dried mud on his shins.
* * * *
No cakes and tea today. Shigeimon was furious, both at the five houses of the kumi that allowed Jiro to break curfew, and at the hinin patrolmen who had seen nothing. Being the head of Lower Sugino, he had no authority over Kingo and the fourth kumi of Upper Sugino, except to file a complaint to their village head. He made up for it by his fury at the hinin.
In the front room of the big house, Gansuke, Rokubei and Sanpachi bowed their heads and endured the storm. It was a large, wooden-floored room, no scrolls or carvings, as per regulations, and it was always cold, even in summer. Sanpachi shifted on his knees, stiff in the formal pose. An almost visible aura of frustration and anger wafted off Gansuke. Rokubei kept still and hoped to be ignored.
Beside Shigeimon, Kingo smiled thinly and crossed his legs. He had been given tea, and his colour had returned to normal.
’ ... an absolute disgrace. They'll be within their rights if they call in outside help. You were patrolling that very area...'
It was no use pointing out that Rokubei and Sanpachi must have been on the opposite side of the swamp, where all the other attacks had occurred, at the time Jiro died.
Shigeimon's maid pushed the door gently open two fingers’ width and spoke from the other side. ‘A traveller here to see you, sir. From Iwashiro. He says he's looking for a debt absconder,’ she added softly.
Shigeimon groaned. ‘What now?’ He motioned Gansuke and the teka to the edge of the room and arranged his pudgy features into bland welcome. Kingo settled on his ample backside as if watching a puppet show.
The door slid open and a burly man in the leather and rough cotton clothes of a hinin kneeled on the jamb. He bowed a head of unkempt hair at Shigeimon then at Kingo, who was obviously a commoner and, with his neat, woven overshirt, a titled farmer.
A whiff of sweat and dirt drifted into the room with the traveller. It was two day's good march to the domain capital of Iwashiro and he smelled every step of it. His hands and feet were rough and grimy, and his clothes as unwashed as his skin, but he spoke respectfully enough to Shigeimon.
'My name is Kaizo.’ He pushed the wooden slat of his identification across the floor.
Shigeimon glanced at the seal and nodded.
'I seek a man named Heihachiro,’ continued Kaizo, ‘who owes much in unpaid debts in our town.'
'The only man by that name is close on fifty years of age and has not left the village since he was a boy,’ said Shigeimon. ‘I fear you have travelled this far in vain. Why do you believe your absconder comes from here?'
Rokubei, who was avoiding the bounty hunter's gaze, happened to look at Kingo. Kingo's face was paler than when he saw Jiro's corpse, and his hands trembled in his lap. Interesting.
'The rascal told a tale to one of the ... young ladies for whose favours he owes five ryo.'
Rokubei's chest felt tight at the words. For one ryo you could buy a good horse. He and Sanpachi earned less than a thousandth of that for a single job.
'He mentioned he came from a place with a temple ca
lled Genryaku-ji, which was flooded one hundred years ago and now has a long dyke,’ said Kaizo.
Pretty conclusive. And who had been absent from the village at that time?
'When did these indiscretions occur?’ Shigeimon asked cautiously.
'From the fourteenth to the twentieth days of the tenth month of last year.'
Gansuke coughed respectfully. ‘Absentees would be either Mon of our second kumi or Jiro of Upper's fourth kumi.’ Mon was a sedate, serious chori who specialised in drum skins. His skills were in demand even in Edo, and nobody could possibly suspect him of visiting prostitutes.
Kingo moaned and put his head in his hands. ‘Too late,’ he cried. ‘Too late!'
Too late to make Jiro pay his debts, which meant that the kumi would have to cough up. If the kumi couldn't pay, then the whole of Upper Sugino would have to.
'How much does he owe altogether?’ asked Shigeimon.
'Ten ryo, two bu.’ said Kaizo, with the relish of one who knows it is not his problem.
Kingo shuddered.
'Jiro is dead,’ said Gansuke bluntly. ‘You won't be able to take him back.'
'I'll get what I can from the rest of you, then.’ Kaizo thrust out his hairy chin belligerently.
'Wait, wait.’ Kingo waved his hands frantically. ‘You don't understand. The kumi was going to apply to banish Jiro. The paperwork's all ready to go. It might have been sent on to Iwashiro already,’ he tried pathetically.
They must have suspected Jiro was amassing debts he couldn't pay, and decided to get rid of the debts in the only way possible. Rokubei felt a stab of sympathy for Kingo and his four neighbours—Jiro would not have listened to pleas for temperance.
And what if the kumi members had gotten so fed up with Jiro that they decided to kill him? What if he did not visit the next village last night, or even leave his house? Rokubei had thought of two possible reasons for faking a bakemono—to conceal something or to scare people off. Now he thought of a third reason—to get people to believe a bakemono would kill. But killing Jiro wouldn't dispose of his debts. The kumi was responsible for the actions of its members, as was the village. Beyond death, if necessary.
Journeys of the Mind Page 3
