by Ben Stevens
‘Indeed?’ returned my master noncommittally; his standard reply, whenever someone sought to flatter or otherwise praise him. With Tamura leading, we ventured up a long, narrow flight of wooden stairs, at the top of which was a room constructed mainly of light-colored wood, brightly lit by the sun which spilled in through the two open windows.
A young woman smiled delicately at us, so that I was instantly enchanted. She was not especially attractive, far less beautiful, yet her face radiated a good and gentle nature, and her eyes displayed her kindness as clearly as words.
‘Welcome,’ she said quietly, and her voice was like a gentle stream in the middle of an ancient forest. ‘You honor me, by coming here.’
‘The honor is all mine,’ returned my master, with a slight bow. ‘I see now that your reputation, as one of Osaka’s – indeed Japan’s – finest female artists, is one well-deserved…’
‘Indeed?’ she returned, and I could not help but smile, as she used the very same word my master employed to bat aside pointless praise.
Then I became absorbed in the machine – for that was almost what it was – which Shige was sat in front of. It was essentially a large wooden frame, at a forty-five degree angle running up from the area by Shige’s waist, but with a large wooden beam above and below it, both beams suspended by ropes and with numerous cords attached to the actual frame. Through these beams, I gathered, the actual angle of the frame could be altered in any direction.
The large frame itself had any number of vertical white threads running from the bottom to the top bars, and across these, one by one, various threads of multiple hues were minutely pulled into place by incredibly skilful fingers, thus slowly building up pictures and designs of astonishing vibrancy and brilliance.
Some of Shige’s finished designs were hanging on one wall, possibly waiting for whoever had commissioned them to come and collect. A kimono in stunning purples and greens, a dragon with glittering gold scales and claws stretching itself out across the front… What appeared to be some sort of flag, depicting a castle upon a mountain, below a forest of vibrant, truly living greens – an array of color which fully showed off the skill of Tamura the dyer, as well as the artist…
As she sat and talked to us, telling us a little of her work, and how she’d come to practice this craft, Shige continued to work. Her fingers selected one of the many dyed threads above her frame and expertly pulled it down into place, her keen eyes knowing exactly what subtle variation of color was needed, from the many colors on offer…
On occasion she employed a curious tool, almost like a small wooden spoon except at its ‘tip’ – as it were – there were three triangular-shaped protrusions, used every so often to draw a stubborn thread down into place on the frame. Otherwise Shige’s fingers served perfectly (I noticed she favored using both her middle-fingers), playing upon the wooden frame with its many horizontal and vertical threads.
I glanced at my master, so to gauge his interest in what was happening… I almost started, his eyes having that ‘fixed’ look I knew so well, as he gazed down at the artist obliviously working away, talking in that soft voice about a craft which was so obviously her primary passion…
Then, quite suddenly, I realized that Suzuki was informing her about what had happened just a short time before. About her partner’s triumph – and also Kato’s opponent’s death.
At once Shige’s skillful, delicate hands left the frame, and flew to cover her mouth.
‘Oh no, please…’ she breathed, in a voice which made me almost want to take her in my arms. My master says I am far too susceptible to the charms of certain women (he often cites the case entitled The Beauty as an example), and yet Shige-san truly was exquisite, for all that she lacked in what I might clumsily describe as being ‘surface’ beauty.
‘I am afraid it is true,’ returned Suzuki gravely. ‘Kato-san’s opponent collapsed and died, apparently right at the end of the match – so Kato-san has been declared yokozuna.’
‘What do I care about that?’ returned Shige. ‘A man is dead – oh now, finally, will Kato leave that sport, and so live a quieter, if far safer life…?’
I realized that Shige did truly love this boorish young rikishi – or yokozuna, as he was now. She did not care for his fame, or his toughness, but for who he truly was just as a man. Kato should count himself lucky, I thought (I confess almost jealously), to have such a woman as his lover. Because – from all that I had seen and heard of him – he really seemed nothing more than a glorified thug.
‘You will not return with us, to the sumo arena, Shige-san?’ inquired Suzuki hesitantly. ‘Kato-san will still be there, in his dressing-room with his entourage.’
‘No,’ she said, and at once that face and delicate voice were firm. ‘Let him have his precious moments of glory – so hard-earned at the expense of another life, poor man! – and then I will see him.
‘He mentioned something about going into farming. I just hope…’ and her voice fell into almost troubled silence
I raised my eyebrows in surprise at these last words. The thought of a firebrand like Kato becoming yokozuna, and then throwing it all over to go and live in obscurity and near-poverty ‘on the land’, was not really one I could entertain.
But then, for the love of this particular woman, even the strongest-willed man might do something wholly surprising…
‘Thank you, then, for allowing us to visit,’ said Suzuki, as my master also murmured his praise.
‘Thank you for having come here,’ returned the artist, as she returned her full attention upon her work. ‘I hope to see you again sometime…’
With this, Tamura escorted us downstairs, and showed us back into the street with a bow.
4
We had walked only a few paces, the door of the modest wooden building closed behind us, when my master said at once –
‘We must act immediately, Suzuki-san! There is not a moment to lose…’
‘Ennin-sensei?’ the city official almost gasped in reply.
‘Contact the head magistrate of this region, or the daimyo himself – and so get several highly-trained samurai dispatched to the address we have just visited, to arrest Shige and that assistant of hers.’
‘Arrest them? What on earth for?’
‘Upon the charge of multiple murders,’ returned my master grimly.
‘But…’
‘There is no time to spare. I will provide a full explanation later. All I can say at the present is – and this is essential – do not allow Shige to touch anyone on any pretext whatsoever. As for now, I must return to that building where several thousand people – including me – observed Kato murder his opponent, and yet completely failed to realize that such a crime had just taken place…’
‘I… I…’ gasped Suzuki, his face turning quite white. Indeed, such was his obvious state of shock that I feared he might be the next one to simply ‘keel over’ and die.
‘Go, now!’ urged my master, and such was his reputation that the high-ranking city official instantly obeyed.
My master and I entered back inside the tournament building, and hurried through the empty hall, past the dohyo ring to where we could hear the sounds of carousing coming from the backrooms. It seemed as though Kato and his entourage were continuing to have a lively time.
‘It is essential he has not been left on his own at any time, lest he do the one thing he must do at the earliest opportunity, so to complete ‘the perfect crime’.’
‘What is that, master?’ I asked.
‘Cut his nails – or should I say, one nail in particular…’
With this bewildering declaration, my master strode into a large room with tatami mats, full of people, food and drink. In the centre of this room Kato was holding court, now dressed in a clean white kimono, and with a geisha either side of him attending to his every need.
‘You do not weave yourself, as does your girlfriend?’ demanded my master, in a loud, firm voice which instantly silenced the rest of the room.<
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‘What? Who are you?’ returned the rikishi, his face turning almost purple with anger.
He rose to his feet, declaring –
‘I’ll throw you out of here myself, you cheeky, cocksure little – ’
I have spoken before of my master’s martial abilities. As Kato stomped towards him, those massive hands reaching out in their desire to tear my master apart, my master grabbed one hand and performed some sort of complicated wrist-lock, instantly bringing the rikishi down to his knees, tears sprouting in Kato’s eyes as he bellowed that his wrist was being broken.
‘I said – you do not weave yourself?’ repeated my master, and again I glanced at him in utter bewilderment at this question.
‘No, no, of course I don’t,’ returned the sumo wrestler.
‘And yet looking at the middle finger of your right hand – the one I hold in my grasp – I see that its nail is cut in exactly the same manner as Shige’s. That is, with three minute but still razor-sharp points. So why do you have this, eh?’
Those people gathered around stared closer – and it was true. When you looked closely (you would never have noticed it on such a fat finger otherwise), you could see the nail cut in three points. Doubtless my master had also observed such a feature while watching the artist Shige work; a true indication of his close-eyed genius.
‘You… you…’ rumbled Kato, still on his knees, helpless with the wristlock my master was continuing to apply. But his eyes now showed piggish guilt, and he then closed his mouth and simply glowered, my master continuing –
‘Shige’s nails – of the middle-fingers of both hands – assist her in pulling down the threads, as she creates her truly fantastic works of art. But coated with poison (expertly mixed by her assistant Tamura, depending on how quickly she wished for her target to die), they could provide a small, seemingly ‘accidental’ cut on a person’s hand – the sort you might make if you accidently ‘nick’ someone’s skin with your own nail, while handing something over, for example – thus introducing the poison into that person’s body.
‘Such was how those seven moneylenders, here in Osaka, met their demise over the past twelve months, after they’d been persuaded by the apparently demure and utterly reliable Shige, in turn, to provide her with a large loan – in secret. Doubtless, she promised an extremely favorable return of interest, based upon some expected increase in her business.
‘She again met with each merchant, so perhaps obliged to at least provide the first repayment – one moneylender was found slumped over a sum of money – and in handing it over, she ‘accidentally nicked’ the moneylender’s hand with her fingernail. She apologized and effected gentle concern, he assured her that it was nothing – wiping away the slightest trace of blood, as the skin has been broken – and they parted company.
‘And then later, suspecting absolutely nothing, he simply died…’
‘But Kato, Ennin-sensei?’ demanded one man listening. ‘What of him?’
‘A blubbery blabbermouth, with scarcely more intellect than a small dog,’ said my master contemptuously. Still, despite such verbal provocation, the rikishi did nothing expect glare up at my master.
‘The money obtained from the murdered moneylenders has doubtless been placed in various, backstreet ‘bets’ on the outcome of this match,’ continued my master. ‘Thus entirely in the ‘sway’, as it were, of Shige – who allowed her simple-minded partner to indulge his appetites for sake and geisha, thereby humoring his base desires – he was persuaded to cut one nail in a similar fashion, coat it with poison just before the match (a poison mixed especially by the assistant Tamura, so that it would take almost instant effect), and avoiding placing his hands in the bucket of salt that is located at either side of the dohyo, which would have removed the poison, then managed to ‘cut’ his opponent as he delivered his trademark volley of hard, slapping blows to the upper-body.
‘The smallest abrasion somewhere upon the skin of a fallen man-mountain… Who would notice such a thing? Or even upon the much smaller bodies of seven deceased moneylenders…
‘In any case,’ said my master then, ‘once the prize money was paid, I have no doubt that the extremely-wealthy Shige would have considered the previous object of her affections to now be a liability, possibly prone to blabbering all these sordid little secrets in some drunken fit of remorse – for although an insufferable bully, Kato is not truly evil – and so would have ‘dispatched’ the yokozuna to meet Buddha forthwith…’
5
My master’s tale was fantastic, and at the trial which followed – of Kato, Shige and the ‘master-mixer’ Tamura – there were many who did not quite believe it, despite the ‘evidence’ of Kato’s fingernail, which some thirty people had seen after my master had entered the tatami room.
Shige, in particular, impressed the magistrate with her seemingly gentle nature. She could only quietly weep, and shake her head, and say she’d no idea what could have possibly prompted my master to say such a thing…
‘Always there is this tendency, among the ignorant, to portray ninja as being these black-clad wraiths of the night,’ said my master to me at one point. ‘Yet we see two real examples of ninja in Shige and her assistant – both of them utterly skilled in a deadly art, and yet disguising this perfectly through the small business they ran, which was widely praised for the quality of its products…’
But an assistant at the sumo building came forward to say that he’d delivered a small, wrapped package to Kato just before the start of the match, and that the rikishi had insisted on then being alone – which was not at all usual.
The body of Kato’s opponent had been examined, after my master had spoken there in the crowded tatami room, but there had been so many marks and abrasions upon it – as might be expected – that this examination hadn’t really served any purpose.
A thorough examination of the building which served as Shige’s studio was conducted, but nothing suspicious was found.
‘Hardly surprising,’ noted my master. ‘The ingredients used to make the poisons will be kept in some place no one will ever find; they would hardly store them alongside those powdered dyes!’
In the end, it came down almost to my master’s word and considerable reputation against the indignant denials from Kato, Shige and Tamura. Many in Osaka now said that my master had lost his wits; that this theory of his – of poison-covered, jagged fingernails, a delicate female artist who was actually a highly-skilled ninja assassin, and all the rest of it – was just too ridiculous…
I must confess, even I had my private doubts, for all the cases my master and I have shared together…
But as Kato could hardly explain why he’d fashioned his nail in such a way (in fact, one could hardly imagine that he’d created this nail himself, using his other hand), he was found guilty. Such was the influence my master’s word had here in Osaka. Tamura was also convicted, of having mixed the poison, with the blame also being put upon him for the deaths of the moneylenders. The pair was thus quickly put to death.
Almost inexplicably, however, Shige was found not guilty – the aging magistrate was by now clearly quite infatuated with her – and she left Osaka shortly after her erstwhile boyfriend, and Tamura, were executed. (It was curious – and, it seemed at the time, a little ominous – that neither man sought to throw any blame upon her, even when they knew they were going to die. My master suggested that she wielded some malign influence upon their souls, which caused them to stay loyal to her right to the end.)
Greatly irritated by the magistrate’s judgment – ‘Why did that fool choose to believe some parts of my theory and not others?’ he indignantly demanded – my master also left the city. This had not been a case that had ended well, or cleanly, despite the convictions of Kato and Tamura. We both knew this. And still a sense of doubt remained, deep down in my insides….
Had my master been correct? The rikishi and the dyer had been convicted on such little evidence… Neither man had confessed their
sin even right at the end…
And then, just a few months later, we were sitting in an inn – my master having recently solved the case of the Empress’s missing cousin, which had been talked about all over Japan – when a package was delivered.
Curious, my master opened it. Something rolled up in paper… My master quickly revealed a large facial portrait of himself, expertly created in a dazzling array of dyed threads. Yet still I felt a chill cross my heart. For my master’s eyes were closed, and there was such a whitish hue to the skin that there was no doubt that this was a depiction of him in death…
Rolling this grotesque portrait of himself back up, my master gave me a small smile in the lamp-light.
‘I think we can assume that this has been sent to inform me that Shige (see how well she now dyes, as well as weaves!) has not forgotten about me, Kukai, and that we can safely add her name to our already-not inconsiderable list of enemies…’
‘Yes master,’ I said softly.
So many enemies, indeed, I thought then – and only one of these needed to be successful just once.
And I – I had secretly doubted my master’s judgment, just a few months before…
I would not make that mistake again.
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