He looked briefly at Kyuzo and Ichiro, feeling sure from his walk around the inn with them that they would understand, and then, though he did open the door, he did not get out of the way.
“Good evening, sir,” he said. “How many will be joining Lord Okubo’s representatives in our banquet room tonight?”
“Joining them?” barked Ueno. “I don’t intend to join anyone. I want to make this exchange and go. Why would anyone want to continue this pathetic charade?”
That Ueno had wanted to continue it, had been unable to quit his mad scheme, even after Lord Abe’s censure, was what Lord Okubo had relied on in his note.
As much as it blocked Manjiro’s view of his sworn enemy, the innkeeper’s body blocked Ueno’s view, also, so he didn’t know anyone else had heard his rude comments until Manjiro said, “A charade is not pathetic, sir, if it achieves its end. Was that not the central lesson of those paragraphs your disgraced Lord Abe liked so much?”
The innkeeper tried to move then, since his goal had been to in-hibit violence, not communication, but in his irritation with Manjiro’s words—“disgraced” and Lord Abe’s name in the same sentence!—Ueno took his short sword out of its scabbard and prodded the innkeeper with it. He hadn’t meant to do it, he’d intended, in fact, to pull the entire scabbard from his belt, only giving the innkeeper a humiliating nudge, but his sword’s proper scabbard had been ruined in the trout stream that morning and the one he’d borrowed from his aide was too large. As a result he pulled out the sword itself and poked a three-inch hole in the innkeeper’s side. It was as wide and deep a cut as a short sword could make. So much for the omen of the trout.
The innkeeper didn’t yell. At first, in fact, he only looked around behind him in surprise. But then he sat down on the top step of his entryway and said very quietly, “There is likely to be a mess here soon. Someone get my wife.”
It was a restrained and dignified response, very much in keeping with that innkeeper’s code but punctuated, as he’d predicted, by drops of blood that plopped upon the floor around him like outraged periods and exclamation points.
“My poor sir,” said Keiki, quickly coming forward, and then to Ueno he said, “Stand back away from him, fool, look what you have done! Can’t you even knock on someone’s door without causing grievous insult?!”
“You again!” Ueno hissed. “The impudent and untried heir! Don’t you know when to shut up?”
A fight between Ueno and Keiki, of all people, was most unacceptable to Manjiro. He would do the cutting if cutting was to be done. But when the innkeeper slumped against the nearest wall and Ichiro came over with his wife, the idea of anyone fighting just then had to be put off, unacceptable or not. Tsune ran from the secret women’s room with towels, and O-bata came too, and grabbed a big bottle of saké, bringing it over as a cleansing agent.
Manjiro was at a loss, staring first at the innkeeper’s wound, then at the tip of Ueno’s short sword, while the wounded man’s wife held her husband’s head against her breasts. “There really is a lot of blood here,” she said. “Someone better get the doctor, he’s just a couple of doors down the street.”
Most of the others had come forward by then, too, to see what they might do to help. “It don’t look like he’s in pain,” Ned said, “just like me with my nose,” but when Tsune pulled her pen knife from her obi and slit open the innkeeper’s kimono, everyone was shocked by what she revealed. The wound was far worse than they’d expected, a deep and yawning thing that opened and shut like the blood-filled mouth of a landed fish, each time the innkeeper took a breath.
When his wife saw the extent of her husband’s injury she turned to Ueno and said, “Do me a favor, sir, and leave our inn right now.” Her husband’s inherent dignity, it seemed, had been somehow transferred to her.
There was, after all, only one man standing behind Ueno, not the three Manjiro had expected, so though he still touched his sword he couldn’t bring himself to use it yet, not with the innkeeper sorely wounded and without first finding all of Einosuke’s murderers, plus his missing head. It would have been easy to kill Ueno, though, for when he bent to examine the wound he had inflicted, his neck and chest were exposed.
It was an impossible moment for Manjiro, everyone in motion now and all his sense of drama depleted, but when Tsune got the innkeeper to his feet again there was really nothing he could do but forget his own agenda for a while and help carry the poor man back inside, however unwieldy his heart was in his chest.
“Let’s lay him on the banquet table,” said his wife. “Someone clear it off.”
Fumiko pushed the food out of the way, while Keiki got a cushion and placed it under the innkeeper’s head. Keiko had come out by then, too, and tried to help by keeping the blood in check with towels. But it leaked out to cover her hands, and flowed down her forearms to drip onto the tatami from her elbows.
“What about the doctor,” the innkeeper’s wife said again, “has anyone gone for him yet?”
Ichiro had left a moment earlier, but not for the doctor. Rather, he had gone to fetch the innkeeper’s father’s ancient samurai sword, pulling it from that crossbeam down the hall. He brought it back and laid it next to the wounded man’s face, thinking it might remind him of his family’s long tradition and give him strength. He told the innkeeper’s wife, “I will get the doctor now,” then he pushed his way past Ueno, utterly unrecognized as one of the men he had hired by number, and nearly knocking him down.
When he righted himself again Ueno looked at Manjiro and fairly yelled, “This was an accidental stabbing, you know that! It was nothing more than a problem with a borrowed and overlarge scabbard! Damn it anyway, I didn’t come here to stab your stupid innkeeper. I’ve got your brother’s killers at the river and I’ve kept my men there, too, as a sign of good faith. I see you have the barbarians here, so we could effect our exchange right now. Two killers for two musicians, what do you say?”
It was another mistake, but he saw it too late.
“Our laborers said there were three murderers,” Manjiro said, “and the only barbarian in the room just now is your own unworthy self.”
Ueno opened his mouth to answer but the innkeeper surprised everyone just then by suddenly sitting back up. “I’ve got a good mind to report you to the authorities!” he said.
Unfortunately, however, he had lost his sense of direction and was facing Keiki instead of Ueno. He took hold of Keiki’s sleeve and, with a great deal of effort, pulled himself to his feet again.
“Stop this now, sir, and rest,” said Keiki. “Until the doctor gets here to plug up that wound you must not exert yourself.”
But the innkeeper had looked back down at the table and let his eyes linger on that which Ichiro had brought him, his father’s old samurai sword. And with the second surprise of unusual quickness, he picked it up and wheeled around again to charge, with unerring accuracy this time, on a true death trip toward Ueno. There was no scabbard on the sword, and its blade was honed.
“Stop!” screamed Manjiro, and Fumiko pulled her daughters out of the way, but it was Kyuzo who successfully intervened. He jumped onto the top of the banquet table, slid across the spilt blood and saké, and knocked the innkeeper far enough off course that his sword not only missed its target, but pierced that long middle stem of the flower arrangement. And when he swung the sword a second time the flower came with it, lightly slapping Ueno’s face.
Ueno pulled his other sword out then, and thrust it into the innkeeper’s throat, neatly severing his jugular vein and flipping him back onto the table at the same time. The innkeeper’s body flopped like a fish and his eyes darted everywhere, then settled on the ceiling, where he could detect a bit of dust that he wished he could tell his wife about. He couldn’t speak, however, for blood pulsed out of his mouth with quickly diminishing power, to the last few beats of his heart.
“Ohhh!” wailed his wife, and while the others locked their eyes on this newest recent horror, Ueno escaped from the
inn.
Two men gave chase, Ichiro, who had just then come back with the doctor, and Kyuzo. But when they got outside both Ueno and the man who had accompanied him were gone.
50.
It’s a Poor Life Anyway
THE BARS OVER BY THE RIVER had initially been chosen only as a convenient waiting place for those few of Ueno’s troops who had stuck with him, but an error in timing had caused them to arrive too early and by the time the trouble started at the inn’s front door, most of them were drunk, and procrastinating about carrying out the horrid orders Ueno had given them before he had approached the inn—to slit the two prisoners’ throats!
These troops were old and young, fat and thin, tall and short. One or two were like Ichiro, still true samurai, though they’d lived at the edges of poverty for decades, and one or two others were petty thieves, finding trouble wherever they went and occasionally spending time in various jails. They all had swords, for that had been the single precondition of Ueno’s lottery, and all of those who accompanied him tonight had been at the waterfront that morning, to take part in the capture of the villains. There were no actual geisha with them as they waited, but there were women, sifted down through the hierarchy of Japanese nightlife to its lowest level, some of them drunk, others still oddly dignified, as if their lives had been decided by lottery as well.
Each of the river bars had a burning torch in front of it, and tied to stakes between two of them, rain-soaked and stinking and awaiting their fate, stood Numbers 75 and 111. They had been left alone for nearly an hour when three of their guards burst from a nearby bar with three drunk women in their wake. Their intention was to taunt the captives, to strut in front of them and jeer before finally following Ueno’s instructions and putting their swords to their throats, but one of the women had a jar of cheap liquor with her and when the older captive saw it he opened his mouth, begging like a baby bird. She danced up to him, poured his mouth full, then danced back again to pull her filthy kimono apart, exposing herself.
“You won’t see the likes of this again,” she cackled, and the younger captive said, “Thank God for that, at least.”
That made the three guards laugh and share their drinks with both the prisoners, telling the women to go back inside for more.
“It’s a poor life anyway,” one of the guards said, “and you’re well out of it. I wouldn’t trade places with you, don’t get me wrong, but that’s what I’ll think when my time comes.”
The younger captive had remained stealthy throughout the long day, looking for ways to escape, but the older one pleaded, “How about just forgetting it then, brother, how about letting us go?”—a remark that doubly infuriated his colleague because the identifying placards still hung on the wrong necks. He wore 75, while the old fool beside him wore 111. It irked him that people might think it was he who had spoken such pitiful words, mocking him for them after his death.
“Change these awful placards,” he demanded. “Give me back my name!”
He strained against his ropes, jumping up and down along his stake. While some of the guards laughed at him, however, the irony of his words began to filter through the drunkenness of others, and when the women came back with stools as well as liquor, they all sat down around the prisoners, their swords across their laps, to think about their lives.
Until, that is, they began to hear a voice coming out of the dark.
“I am Momo of Shimoda. Do not worry, I am not selling chestnuts. I have come in order to return something you have lost…”
That is all it took for these guards to stand up from their stools again, to glance at each other and smile. Introspection, it seemed, unlike cheap liquor, was a commodity most easily spent.
“There’s a man with a name you can have,” one of the guards told the younger captive, ‘“Momo of Shimoda’! How would you like to die with that name tied around your neck?”
The guards took the prisoners from their stakes, told them to be silent if they wanted to stay alive for another half hour, then stepped into the darkness on tiptoe, not to injure anyone yet, but to take pleasure where they could find it, striking terror into the hearts of peasants, just as they used to do in the old days, when things were so much better.
It was a small pleasure, to be sure, but a real one, and so very un-Japanese. It wasn’t in the code of samurai or in the code of innkeepers either.
51.
Alas, We Are Defeated
MANJIRO UNDERSTOOD the weaknesses of their position—that they would have been better off, if they hadn’t had the women to worry about, by simply chasing Ueno into the dark to fight—but he gave his orders as if their position were strong. He told Ned to stay near Kyuzo, so he might not be injured a second time, kept Ace securely by his side, and asked Keiki to stand over nearest the inn’s main door with Ichiro.
They waited that way for only a minute, each man seeking order in his mind, when, quite like Ueno’s men a few seconds before them, they began to hear a voice from the dark.
“I am Momo of Shimoda! Not selling chestnuts!!!!”
This time, though, the voice was harried and coming toward them fast, another shouting voice by its side. “Oh, help us, please good sirs! The ghosts of those drowned in the river are trying to strike us down!”
When the two brothers appeared out of the fog they at first seemed to do so slowly, and at odds with their harrowing sound. In the next instant, however, they were upon the inn’s defenders so quickly that it seemed like ordinary time had sped up. Momo came first, high-stepping along barefooted, as he had that morning at the shore. He flew straight into Ned, knocking his prosthesis in the air and himself into the mud, while Manzo, who was right behind his brother, easily cleaved the space between Ichiro and Keiki, shot up through the inn’s open door and sped down the once immaculate hall. Their father’s best wagon came next, only an instant behind them and still bearing those Buddhist flags and various country flowers. It turned sideways briefly, as if it were going to capsize, righted itself and flew among the scattering defenders like that American train gone off its track. It skidded through the mud on wildly spinning wheels, slammed against the inn’s front step, then turned into a mad catapult from previous centuries and sent its ghastly cargo down the hallway after Manzo.
“Oh, ghosts of those drowned in the river!”
Manzo was still screaming when he dove onto the floor just a half a second before that shameful rocket screeched over them, its own mouth wide again, skimmed around the corner and was gone.
There was no culminating explosion, though a rumbling noise did seem to follow it, like low and timid thunder from an appalled and terrified audience of gods.
UENO’S EXHAUSTED SOLDIERS came out of the darkness to sway in front of the inn in shocked surprise, their laughs purged from their bellies by the unexpected success of the trick they had played. To push a wagon after the terrified peasants who owned it had seemed the height of comic relief to them, and even now they had trouble suppressing slight smiles. Their soberer colleagues, following behind them with the prisoners, had met Ueno and his aide on the path, so all were gathered in the rainy clearing by the time the inn’s defenders regained themselves.
There were seven defenders, counting Ace and Ned, and counting Momo, who had climbed from the mud in a fury and got his samurai bow and his single old arrow from the wagon just as his brother staggered back up the hall. And there were twelve recendy sobered soldiers with Ueno. The women had come outside, too, but pressed themselves against the building, and the two bereft prisoners were on their knees in the middle of everything, hands still tied behind them with hemp rope.
This is how the stage was set for Lord Okubo’s reappearance at the inn’s front door. Maybe Einosuke’s ghost had visited him, coaxing him from slumber, or maybe it had truly been the ghosts of those drowned in the river, or perhaps it had only been a dream he had had, but something had awakened him a few minutes earlier and he’d risen and dressed and wondered what was going on wit
h everyone below. It had been dark in his room and dark in the corridors that surrounded it and dark on the narrow back stairway which he descended with caution, but with a calm and rested heart.
“Manjiro? Fumiko?” he called. “Why was I allowed to sleep for so long?”
He asked his question without reproach, even though on the inn’s first floor, too, no one was waiting to greet him, to tell him what had happened thus far. He knew he should have taken less of Kyuzo’s sleeping powders—he had known it in the garden before he took them—but the idea of seceding from the world had so appealed to him that, in a certain way, he had hoped not to awaken at all.
When he first saw Einosuke’s head in the hallway Lord Okubo believed it was an animal, some wounded forest creature come in through the side door, and he feared it might bite him if he tried to pass it by. He spoke to it once, saying, “Get away!” but when it neither ran nor prepared to attack him, he took an unlit torch from its place by the bath and shook it as if it were his sword. And then he had a memory he hadn’t had in years, of his first son, Toshiro, and Einosuke, too, stomping through the woods behind his castle, in search of mushrooms one late autumn day. Einosuke, only about six at the time, had come across a tanuki, a badger, who would also neither run nor get off the path. He had said “Get away!” then, too, much as his father did now, until the badger grew tired of him and departed.
“I will emulate you now, Einosuke” muttered his father, “so if you are watching from the grave you will be proud.”
But the instant he stepped forward with his unlit torch he knew it wasn’t a badger in the hallway. And as gently as he’d once taught all of his sons to brush twigs aside when searching for mushrooms, he knelt to sweep the hair away from Einosuke’s missing yet bottomless eyes. There were scratches on Einosuke’s cheeks and a bloodless rift in his forehead, and the straight white line of his teeth with his tongue sticking out.
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