The Last Tea Bowl Thief

by Jonelle Patrick

  Anzai is shaking his head.

  “If you’re concerned about security, don’t be,” she argues. “At any given time, we have art treasures worth over a hundred million yen in our care, and we’d be out of business if we didn’t protect them from both thieves and damage. Does your storage facility have padded floors, in case it’s dropped? Is it environmentally controlled, to minimize atmospheric degradation?”

  Anzai considers her questions, has no answers.

  “If we did agree,” he says, “would it be guarded around the clock?”

  “Yes, and not by human beings alone. After the Acheson heist five years ago,” Hashimoto says, referring to an inside job that netted the thieves over a hundred million in antique jewelry, “we decided to shift our trust to technology instead of personnel. Guards can be bribed; CCTV cameras, electronic tags, and a state-of-the-art safe can’t. Our new system is probably more secure than what you’ve got at police headquarters.”

  When the inspector doesn’t contradict her, she adds, “Our security chief can outfit both the bowl and the box with tracking devices that will set off our security gates if they’re taken off the premises, and I’d be happy to invite you back to the office with me to supervise.”

  Anzai relents. “All right. But I’ll have to discuss this with my superior before any decisions can be made. Excuse me while I make that call.”

  29.

  Feudal Japan

  APRIL, 1743

  Kyoto

  “I’m working,” Saburo growls at the graying disciple who inexplicably remains with him, after so many years. Lord Inaba’s court poet scowls at the characters he has just brushed across the page.

  Still not right. The sheet crumples in his fist, ink still wet.

  “Tell him to go away.”

  “I did,” his number one follower says, in a tone that tells Saburo he’s not going to give in so easily this time. “But his servant is waiting for a reply, and he sent this.”

  Coins clink softly inside the doeskin bag he lowers onto the poet’s writing desk.

  “And this.”

  He hands the poet a letter, sealed with the family crest of Lord Inaba’s chamberlain.

  “I really think you ought to reconsider,” insists the disciple, a little less deferentially. “These pleasant rooms are ours at his behest, after all.”

  Saburo picks off the seal and scans the contents, casts it aside.

  “Does the son have any talent?”

  “I think he might,” says the disciple diplomatically. “Given time. And a little teaching.”

  Which his loyal follower would provide, since Saburo takes little notice of the would-be students who continue to pound at his door despite his refusal to take them on. In fact, the more he refuses, the louder they pound.

  All he cares about is finishing his masterwork, and it’s not going well. Which makes no sense—in the years since he became court poet, a day hasn’t passed when he hasn’t pondered the Eight Attachments.

  In his first years as court poet, he’d enthusiastically turned his hand to the work demanded of him—“coaching” the daimyō in the niceties of composition, while actually ghostwriting poems he could pass off as his own when court society required. But when he sat down to his own work, he’d been utterly unable to compose the poignant—yet uplifting—verses that had originally garnered him so much acclaim.

  Try as he might to marshal words into sentiments that were insightful and inspiring, they always veered off in dark directions. If he wet his brush to convey an undiscovered facet of self-confidence, or the joy that comes from hard work yielding mastery, he would rise from his desk hours later to find the paper filled with bitter musings on pride, rigid thinking, ambition.

  It took him years to realize the true nature of the deal he had made with his demons, on that long-ago day when he’d tied Hikitoru into his traveling bundle, leaving behind the potter’s deathbed wish. Yakibō’s spirit now hovers at his elbow day and night, twisting his words. He fears that it will haunt him, not only until he dies, but into the next life and the next, that it will dog him throughout eternity until he finds some way to appease it.

  The poet frowns at the pale leather bag still sitting on his desk. His disciple has disappeared, which means he has probably interpreted Saburo’s silence as a tacit “yes.” Another unknown face will join the small circle that surrounds him on the rare occasions when he agrees to hear them recite their meaningless efforts. He’s far kinder to them than his own master had been, mostly because he spares them only a sliver of his attention. The rest of his mind is occupied with whatever Attachment is sitting on his desk, as he examines each link of the chain, trying to understand it well enough to break it.

  30.

  Present-Day Japan

  FRIDAY, APRIL 4

  Tokyo

  Robin perches on the edge of a visitors’ chair in the Senkō-ji temple administration offices, waiting for the clerk to fetch the archivist. She shifts uncomfortably. Japanese chairs are too low for her, and she feels slightly ridiculous in them, like a fifth grader assigned to a desk for six-year-olds.

  After the awkward meeting at Nori Okuda’s shop, Inspector Anzai had accompanied Hashimoto-san back to the Fujimori Fine Art offices to supervise the security tagging and sign the paperwork for storing Hikitoru in their safe, but Robin had been dispatched to Senkō-ji, to confirm that their records did, in fact, list Hikitoru among the temple’s possessions prior to its theft in 1945.

  It’s a task she’s more than happy to perform, because she can use her auction house credentials to start nailing down the tea bowl’s ownership in an unbroken chain, tracing it back to the hands of the potter himself. Hikitoru’s provenance will have to be airtight before she can use it to bolster her claim that Yakibō’s tea bowls are tied to Saburo’s Eight Attachments. Senkō-ji’s records are the logical place to start.

  But her knee is jiggling as she waits, because even though the tea bowl is now safe from disappearing into the clutches of a rival auction house, the window for proving her theory has narrowed dramatically. Inspector Anzai has allowed them a week to do the testing, with the understanding that Hikitoru will be handed back to Senkō-ji on the following Monday and its recovery announced to the media. The moment the existence of a previously unknown Yakibō tea bowl becomes public, a flock of ravenous scholars will converge on it like seagulls on a sandwich. Unless she can get an unbeatable head start and—

  “Excuse me, are you the honorable Swann-san?”

  A young shaven-headed priest is bowing to her and smiling with crooked teeth, holding her business card.

  “Yes,” she says, rising and bowing, trying not to tower over him too much. “The most-humble Robin Swann, of Fujimori Fine Art.”

  “Your servant, Haneda,” he replies. “I understand you’d like to search for some information in our archives?”

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  “No trouble, no trouble at all,” he says, sounding quite cheered to have a visitor interested in his dusty sphere of influence.

  She follows him as he trots down a corridor, right, left, right again, to a small office deep in the building. A large metal desk that’s home to a sleek laptop anchors the room, and the walls are lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves. But much to Robin’s dismay, they’re nearly bare. Only two shelves are filled with toppling ledgers.

  The earliest year brushed on the spines is 1948. She stifles a groan. Why had she assumed the records survived the firebombing, when the temple hadn’t?

  The priest points her to his visitor chair, seating himself behind the desk and folding his hands across his belly.

  “So, what brings a Japanese art authenticator here today?”

  “Something I doubt you can help me with, since I see you lost all your records in the war.”

  “What do you mean?” He seems genuinely puzzled.

  “I’m interested in an object that I believe the temple acquired in the Edo Period,
but it looks like your records don’t go back before 1948.”

  “1948? Oh,” he says, following her gaze to the bookshelf. He laughs. “Those are just the ones I haven’t gotten around to scanning yet. Our records go back to 1607, the year the temple was founded. When I took over from the old archivist four years ago, I pointed out that the basement where they’d been stored has done a great job of saving them from fire, but not from water. They were slowly being consumed by mold, and the oldest scrolls were already nearly illegible. I was given permission to scan them and construct a database while we renovate the storage area.” He smiles at Robin’s obvious relief. “So, what are we looking for?”

  She opens her handbag and hands him the copy of the 1945 police report.

  “I was hoping you could tell me something about the fifth item on this list.”

  His eyes dart over the document.

  “What is this?”

  “A police report, filed by the head priest of this temple in 1945.”

  He skips down to the descriptions.

  “These things were all stolen from us?”

  “That’s what I’m here to confirm.”

  He studies the list.

  “Which item are you’re interested in, again?”

  “The tea bowl named Hikitoru.”

  “Is there some reason you’re asking about it now?” His interest sharpens. “Has it been recovered?”

  Shit. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that, because it’s . . . it’s a police matter.”

  She should have asked about everything on the list. Now he knows this is about Hikitoru. What if he tells someone and word gets out?

  In her most authoritative Art Expert voice, she says, “On behalf of Fujimori Fine Art and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, I’m afraid I must ask you to keep this confidential for the time being. At least until a positive identification has been made.”

  He considers her request.

  “Will our records help you do that?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Well, then.” He taps in a password. “What would you like to know?”

  “I’d like to know when Senkō-ji acquired Hikitoru. And how. If possible, from whom.”

  “Of course.”

  He purses his lips thoughtfully, fingers flying over the keyboard.

  “My guess would be that an object like that was a gift. Senkō-ji used to be home to the Kinkokoro Jizo, a wooden figure that was famous for healing.” He scans the screen, types some more. “Sadly, it was destroyed in the firebombing during the war, but for four hundred years it was much visited, especially when there were outbreaks of infectious disease. Valuable objects like tea bowls were frequently given as offerings.”

  “If it was a gift, would your records show who the donor was?”

  “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.”

  He scrolls, stops. His face lights up.

  “Here it is. ‘Hikitoru. Tea bowl.’ Given to the temple in the year Tenmei 8.”

  He opens a utility to convert the ancient Japanese calendar system—which restarts at Year One every time a new reign begins—to modern reckoning.

  “1788,” he announces.

  “Is there a record of the donor?” Robin asks, hardly daring to hope. He clicks back to the database. “Yes. A Lord Inaba.”

  Inaba? It’s a name she knows well, but she associates it with the poet, not the potter. Saburo had served as court poet to a Lord Inaba from 1724 until his death in 1753. If Hikitoru was given to Senkō-ji in 1788 . . . no, it couldn’t be the same one. Maybe this Lord Inaba was his son. Or his grandson. If it was even the same family—Tokyo is a long way from Kyoto.

  “How famous was this Kinkokoro Jizo?” she asks. “Would a daimyō from Kyoto come all the way to Tokyo to ask for its help?”

  “I doubt it,” says the archivist. “Kyoto’s got plenty of healing Jizos of its own. But of course, the shogun insisted that his warlords spend every other year living in the capital, so they wouldn’t have the time or the money to stir up rebellion in the provinces. At any one time, half the daimyōs from as far away as Kyūshū were—”

  “Excuse me, but why wasn’t I informed that we had a visitor here without an appointment?”

  The archivist jumps, his eyes saucering. Robin twists in her chair to find a man wearing the gold-embroidered vestments of a head priest glowering at them from the doorway. He’s older and rounder than the archivist, but there’s definitely a family resemblance.

  “I . . . forgive me,” stammers the junior priest, on his feet, bowing. “You were in the middle of the Yanos’ funeral service, and I thought—” He gestures toward Robin. “This is Swann-san, from the Fujimori Fine Art auction house.”

  The man in the doorway gives her a curt bow before laying into Brother Haneda.

  “Who gave you permission to bring this foreign female into our innermost archives, asking questions I haven’t approved?”

  Robin winces. It obviously hasn’t occurred to him that she might speak Japanese.

  “Somebody found a tea bowl that was stolen from us during the war,” babbles the archivist. “And Swann-san was asking—”

  “Tea bowl? What tea bowl?” the head priest demands.

  Before Brother Haneda can dig himself any deeper, Robin steps forward, formally extending her business card with two hands and a stiff bow.

  “It may be a piece named Hikitoru, Your Reverence.”

  Shock slaps across the head priest’s face, hearing her address him in perfect Japanese. He gives her a tight-lipped smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

  “Your Japanese is so good.”

  Robin has lived in Japan long enough to know what that means: It can speak.

  Without anything in the way of an apology, the head priest swings his attention back to the archivist.

  “This stolen tea bowl. Does it belong to Senkō-ji?”

  “Yes, it was given to us in 1788,” Haneda replies eagerly. “A gift from a Lord Inaba. And the fact that it’s named means it must be a significant cultural property, don’t you think? If it’s been recovered, perhaps we could put it on display with the—”

  “Is our property in this person’s possession?” interrupts the head priest.

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  He turns to Robin for help.

  “Someone brought it to the auction house where I work, for authentication,” she says stiffly.

  “Who?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Was it the thief?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “When you discovered it was stolen, did you turn this person over to the police?”

  Robin doesn’t answer.

  The head priest regards her with ill-disguised irritation.

  “I can see that it would be more fruitful to speak with your superior.” Turning to the archivist, he says, “Find out his name. I’ll be contacting him without delay to discuss the return of our property.”

  31.

  Feudal Japan

  DECEMBER, 1753

  Kyoto

  借り逃げを

  やっと止められる

  ひきとるの

  Kari nige wo

  Yatto yamerareru

  Hikitoru no.

  Finally, I can stop

  Running from my debt

  The one named Hikitoru.

  Saburo reads over the lines of his death poem. Sighs. It will have to do. He stamps it with his seal and sets it aside for his number one disciple to find when he’s gone. Before laying down his brush for the last time, he pulls another piece of paper to him, and with a trembling hand, sets down his final wishes. There must be no mistake. He’ll only be able to move on to the next life unencumbered if he pays his debt in this one.

  Saburo has sinned more than he ought, had more success than he deserved, and his reputation is greater than he ever dreamed possible. But now it’s time to follow the old Pottery Priest into the next life, hoping that if thei
r paths cross again, he’ll be forgiven for the wrongs he’s done him in this one.

  As the ink dries, his mind wanders back to the long-ago winter that changed his life. The fierceness of the kiln fire, sparks blasting through the tiny stoking windows as he and Hattsan fed the dragon within. A rabbit bounding ahead of him down a mountain path, as snow drifted down in feathery clumps. A sudden guffaw erupting from the man who’d never been able to see, but who saw farther than most.

  He folds the note and wraps it around the scroll onto which he has copied the eight verses it has taken him nearly forty years to write. Not bothering to rinse his brush, he leaves it on the writing table and calls his servant to help him rise from his desk and ease him onto his bed.

  He asks the man to put some more wood on the fire, thanks him, and closes his eyes. His work is nearly done. It won’t be long now. Both he and the scroll resting between his dry old hands will soon be smoke, rising toward heaven.

  He is ready.

  32.

  Present-Day Japan

  FRIDAY, APRIL 4

  Tokyo

  Still fuming over her treatment at the temple, Robin stops herself before slamming the door to her apartment, easing it shut with a polite click instead. She doesn’t want to give her neighbors any reason to label her a Bad Foreigner. It only takes one instance of making too much noise or failing to put out the recycling properly to undo years of tiptoeing around and washing every bottle and can before sorting them into the proper bags.

  Instead, she’ll channel her anger into squeezing every last drop of information from Hikitoru before handing it over to Senkō-ji’s narrow-minded head priest. Eight years of living with the polite, subtle discrimination directed toward outsiders has taught her to recognize a bulletproof glass ceiling when she sees it. Once that old fossil gets his hands on Hikitoru, a foreign woman won’t get near it, no matter how many degrees she has.

  So. Ten days to nail down the provenance and connect Hikitoru to Saburo.