It was twilight in Yori’s room even though the sun had not set yet. Reed curtains had been lowered across the openings to the veranda and garden, and Yori was surrounded by low screens and blanket stands. Inside this cocoon the little patient lay under piles of silken quilts, ministered to by his mother and Seimei. The air was stagnant, warm, and heavy with the smell of pungent herbs.
Akitada pushed aside one of the blanket stands so roughly that it toppled and spilled the quilts and robes across the floor. Tamako jerked around and stared up at him with red-rimmed eyes.
“How is he?” Akitada asked harshly.
She shook her head and turned back to the child.
Akitada knelt beside his son. Yori was so smothered by bedding that only his eyes peered out at his father. The eyes were dull and feverish. Akitada pushed aside the quilt to touch the boy’s forehead. The child was burning with fever, yet his skin was dry as paper.
“Father, I’m so hot,” Yori whispered hoarsely. “I’m on fire.”
Akitada flung back the bedding. The little body looked small and forlorn among all the quilts. Someone had wrapped a thick layer of floss silk around the hips and lower abdomen. Yori started to shiver violently.
“Don’t uncover him.” Tamako’s voice was sharp. “The doctor said he must be kept warm at all times.” She tucked the blankets back around Yori.
“He is uncomfortable,” protested Akitada. “He needs air. And something cool to drink.” Yori whimpered and nodded.
“No. He mustn’t,” Tamako cried. “We must do as the doctor said. Nothing to drink. It’s our only hope.” And she pushed her husband aside and leaned protectively over the child.
Akitada felt helpless and frightened. Instinct made him shift the burden of responsibility. “Why was I not told?” he demanded.
“I tried to tell you twice, both yesterday and today. You were too busy.” Tamako’s voice was matter-of-fact, but he knew from her averted face and stiffly held back how deep her anger against him was.
“You certainly did not make yourself very plain in that case,” Akitada snapped. “You should have known that I expect to be informed of the illness of my only son.”
Tamako rose. She was white-faced and looked exhausted. It occurred to Akitada that she had probably sat up day and night with Yori. He recalled now that he had heard her reading to him earlier and was ashamed that he had blamed her for pampering the boy. Rising also, he extended a conciliatory hand, but she pushed it away. “You care nothing for your son or me,” she cried fiercely. “You only care for your work, and for solving your cursed crimes, and for other men’s women. Time and again I’ve begged you to protect us from the illness, and each time you’ve mocked my fears and reproved me. Now see what you have done!” She burst into tears and ran from the enclosure.
“Tamako!” Akitada started after her, but Yori began to cry and he went back to his son, knelt, and took him into his arms. “It isn’t true, Yori,” he murmured. “I do care very much for you. Are you feeling very bad?”
“Yes,” whispered Yori, putting his arms around his neck. “I love you.”
Akitada could not speak for a moment. Then he said, “Thank you. I love you, too. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy lately, but I’m here now. What do you want me to do?”
“Take the covers off again.”
“But the doctor said…”
“I don’t like the doctor,” wailed Yori. “I’m hot. And thirsty.”
So Akitada laid him back down and peeled back the quilts and the boy’s robe, and the silk floss wrapping until he lay quite naked. Yori closed his eyes then, but he held on to his father’s hand. Akitada gazed fearfully at the small body, so beautifully made, so sturdy and smooth, as yet unmarked by the red spots and pustules of the disease. He allowed himself to hope.
Seimei touched his shoulder and whispered, “Sir? He must be covered up. The doctor was quite specific about that.”
Akitada whispered back, “Oh, Seimei, he’s terribly hot. What’s wrong with giving him a little relief? And how about some cool tea or water? He’s thirsty.”
“The idea is to make him hot to raise a sweat and break the fever. And he must not have any liquids. They will cause dysentery.”
Yori started to shiver and cry again.
“But he’ll burn up or die from thirst,” Akitada protested. Yori’s crying turned into a wail.
“Sir, you’re not being very helpful,” said Seimei sharply. “He must be kept quiet. Perhaps you had better come back a little later.”
Tamako reappeared and fell to her knees beside the sobbing child. She covered him and held him, rocking him in her arms like an infant until he stopped crying.
Akitada left quietly.
For the next ten days life stood still for Akitada. Very little intruded on his self-absorption, or rather, his total absorption in events over which he had no control. He sent a note to Nakatoshi to tell him that smallpox had struck his family and that he would not be able to come in. He did not contact Kobe and abandoned all thought of Haseo’s past and the murder of the blind woman. He stayed at home but did not exchange more than the barest civilities with those around him.
There was nothing for him to say or do. Decisions about Yori’s care were in the hands of others. Tamako was white-faced and determined, her comments to Akitada brief and cold. Seimei worked silently. Neither seemed to need any sleep. They remained with Yori day and night, while Akitada roamed the house and the garden, periodically passing through the sick-room to gaze helplessly at his writhing child. He kept hoping for a private moment when he might touch and hold Yori, perhaps to make him more comfortable, or to ease his misery by telling him stories, but Tamako’s hostile back seemed forever to interpose itself between him and his son.
Later, much later, he would blame himself for not ordering everyone out of the room, for not easing the boy’s fever and his agonizing thirst, but at the time he was so torn with guilt and uncertainty that his will had become paralyzed. Mostly he kept fear at bay with restless and pointless activities. He rearranged his books. He inspected the storehouse. He got out some tools and trimmed overgrown shrubs in the garden.
The telltale spots appeared and spread. Akitada reminded himself that many people survived, and that Yori had always been a strong and healthy boy, but the ice-cold lump in his stomach did not melt. That day he did an extraordinary thing and knelt in front of the household altar to pray to the small Buddha figurine. Since he did not believe, this effort came particularly hard, but by then his fear had grown too great, and he prostrated himself before the Buddha with the fervor of an ascetic. He offered his own for Yori’s life. The next morning Yori seemed better. The fever subsided and he rested more quietly for the first time in many days. But the rash festered and spread, from his face to his arms and chest, and then over his whole body. The child was in agony, unable to speak or swallow because the blisters and sores had invaded his mouth and throat. Akitada’s beautiful son became a swollen, suppurating monstrosity, and Akitada took the small Buddha statue from the altar and smashed it.
During this period, Akitada felt a great need to be with his son, yet could not bear to look at him. And so he would come, cast furtive glances in hopes of improvement, then sit miserably by for a few minutes as Seimei and Tamako, and sometimes the doctor, tended to the moaning child, only to leave again when his stomach twisted at the suffering. He was afraid now to touch his son, for even the small hands were grotesquely swollen and disfigured. The slightest contact caused him pain. He looked at Tamako and was ashamed. Her face was a weary mask, her lower lip swollen and bloodied from biting it whenever she had to handle the screaming Yori, yet she persisted. He marveled at her strength and his own weakness.
His inadequacy made him very humble. He asked Tamako if he might read to Yori. She nodded without looking at him. They had exchanged so few words since Yori’s illness began that they were like ill-met strangers. Akitada read to Yori without comprehending the stories and without response from the child. When Yori was awake, he stared with glazed eyes at the ceiling and whimpered a little now and then, but most of the time he seemed asleep or semicomatose. Akitada would pause and gaze at him, wondering if he was seeing death, and drop the book to rush from the room. Later it occurred to him that music might be more soothing. He brought his flute and sat, playing tune after tune, always ending with a lullaby Yori used to love as an infant, convincing himself that the sound eased the pain and put him to sleep.
The moments of hope were particularly dreadful: If the child had a more restful night, or took a few sips of rice gruel, or if the doctor did not express any unease, Akitada was filled with irrational joy. In fact, the doctor was a ceaselessly optimistic fellow whose many visits Akitada gladly paid for because they made him think-however briefly-that Yori was improving. But each hope was crushed, and each time death was closer and more certain, until even the most credulous father must abandon false expectations-and Akitada was not a credulous man.
Yori died quietly. He stopped crying, moaning, even whimpering, and became very still. Akitada and Tamako were in the room but did not know when he stopped breathing, having convinced themselves that he was only asleep. When Seimei told them, Akitada felt the pain slice through him so sharply that he gasped. He looked at Tamako and extended his hand-to comfort her or to be comforted, he did not know which. But Tamako flung herself across the small corpse and burst into a long wail. “Oh, oh, oh…”-just that, without cease-“oh, oh, oh. ..” Akitada lifted her from the dead child. He held her tightly, hoping that by holding on to each other they might find relief, but she fought free and ran from the room, still wailing in her grief.
Akitada neither wailed nor wept. He knew what must be done. He had arranged funerals before. Because of the epidemic, he could get only two elderly monks for the sutra readings and chants. The temple was apologetic: They had too many funerals to attend, and a number of their younger members had succumbed to the disease themselves. The yin-yang master designated the proper day, and casket, bearers, and materials for the pyre were purchased at enormous expense.
The family accompanied the small casket to Toribeno. The cremation ground lay on a wide plain southeast of the capital at the foot of the eastern mountains. They left the Sugawara residence at dawn and walked into the rising sun. Only Tamako rode in a sedan chair, borne by two villainous-looking men who had demanded a ransom in silver for the service. When they reached the outskirts of the city, the sun dimmed behind a heavy haze of grayish-white smoke which rose above Mount Toribe and spread like a blanket over the plain.
They crossed the river, and turned southward along its banks. The riverbed was partially exposed by the long drought; abandoned corpses lay there, and the remnants of small funeral pyres, some with only half-consumed corpses amongst the ashes. Most people could not afford funerals like Yori’s, especially not if they had lost several family members to the disease. Unpleasantly well-nourished dogs roamed about, baring their teeth at them as they passed, and a sickly smell drifted on the morning breeze.
Theirs was a very small cortege: just Yori’s parents, Seimei, and Tora. The others had stayed behind to guard the house in these uncertain times. The cook had taken to her heels days before, the moment she realized that the young master had smallpox.
They soon joined other funeral processions, some more elaborate, some even smaller than theirs. They passed several temples, all crowded and conducting services. Ahead stretched the thousands of stone grave markers of the capital’s cemetery.
Akitada saw all this with mindless detachment. Someone directed them to their site; someone else relieved them of their precious burden. It was placed on the pyre-a generous one, since Akitada had paid a huge bribe to the superintendent of the cemetery. The same two aged monks quavered their chants, while a heavily veiled Tamako placed Yori’s small possessions on the pyre: the lacquered sword Akitada had bought him for his New Year’s birthday, the book from which Tamako had read his favorite stories of legendary heroes, Seimei’s copy book full of strange Chinese characters, and some filled rice cakes Tora had searched the city for.
And then Akitada lit the wood with a burning pine torch.
They watched the flames catch, rise into the morning sky, watched the new white smoke ascend to join the drifting haze above-the smoke many believed to be the soul of the dead bound for the Western Paradise.
But Yori was too young to know what road to take. The heaviest burden for a parent is to know his small child is alone and helpless. His failure as a father gnawed at Akitada and he felt as hollow as a dead tree.
The wood crackled and hissed. The monks chanted. And gradually the smoky air assumed another, more choking smell.
Akitada thought of the fire, the heat of it, grieved that the small body which had suffered the burning fever should now be given to the flames. He closed his eyes and took shallow breaths.
That night Tamako came to Akitada’s room. He was awake when his door slid open, staring into a darkness so heavy that it burned his eyes as if it were the sun or a raging fire.
Her footsteps told him that she was barefoot, and he wondered what she wanted. He knew soon enough. She lifted his cover and slipped in beside him. Without uttering a word, she reached for him with hot, eager hands, peeling back his robe and pressing her body against him. She wore only a thin silk robe that parted in front.
He did not know what to do. A great pity for her seized him, and then he was disgusted with himself for responding to her lovemaking on this night of all nights. Tamako had never been this demanding, had never behaved with the wild abandonment of a public courtesan before. In all the years of their marriage, she had been a gentle and modest woman who took quiet pleasure in their physical encounters but never initiated them. Now she was clutching at him, seeking his mouth with hungry lips, and when he was ready, she pulled him onto her, grasping him with arms and thighs as if he might get away, meeting him almost violently, until she cried out her own fulfillment and slackened into abrupt lethargy.
Akitada finished, and rolled aside. He felt sick and was afraid because she lay so very still. “Tamako?” he asked, touching her temple through sweat-drenched hair.
She gave a single hoarse sob and was gone.
The sound of the door closing lingered in the darkness. The sharp scent of their lovemaking mingled with the smoky stench of Toribeno, which still clung to the funeral robe he had draped over a stand.
After weeks of coldness, his wife had come to him on the night of their son’s funeral. Why? Because she wished to replace the dead child with another as quickly as possible?
Akitada’s stomach heaved. He gagged on hot vomit and staggered into the garden.
The next morning, before sunrise and with most of the household still asleep, Akitada saddled his horse and left. Only Genba knew where he was headed, but he would pass the information on to the others.
Akitada wore traveling clothes and had Haseo’s sword slung over his shoulder. It seemed appropriate that he should take up Haseo’s battle with it. His own sword was lost, probably forever, but family tradition paled when you had just lost your only son. Of course, there might be other sons some day. Tamako’s frenzied use of him during the night could result in pregnancy, but Akitada’s flight-and he knew that was what it was-told him that he feared the prospect. He did not want another child to take Yori’s place. He never wanted to lose another child so horribly.
He passed through the capital quickly, riding straight down Suzaku Avenue toward Rashomon. The streets were almost deserted, though red-coated constables were in evidence near the markets. Another distribution of grain? As long as the markets remained closed, the threat of famine was added to the grim specter of smallpox.
The official scavengers were busy at the Great Gate, a customary place to leave your unburied dead. Beyond stretched the Saikaido, highway to the western ocean, toward a green and mountainous countryside. In the far distance, hidden in a blue haze, was Haseo’s home and the sacred Hachiman Shrine. Akitada left death behind, hoping to find a way back to life.
Along the highway was more evidence of the epidemic. He passed two rotting corpses. In their haste to flee the city, a man and a woman had succumbed to the disease, proving, like Soga, the foolishness of trying to escape fate.
Akitada considered fear and found he had none. It seemed to him that this was so because he no longer valued his life. Only those who found happiness and contentment in their existence feared losing it. It was a cruel twist of fate that death had snatched Yori, so young and full of joy and laughter, and left behind his father.
But dwelling on Yori’s death caused unbearable pain, and so Akitada fled-leaving behind an empty house, agonizing memories, and constant reminders of guilt. He followed the trail of an old murder and betrayal, hoping to drive his demons back into the shadows of his mind.
By the time he reached Toba, he had reviewed the facts of Haseo’s case and felt hungry. He could not recall his last meal, or any meal he had felt an appetite for. Now that he had left the nauseating smoke of Toribeno behind and the air was sweeter, his body clamored for sustenance even when life seemed unbearable. Unfortunately, all the doors of the small town were closed to him. People feared travelers from the capital.
He rode on with a painfully empty belly. The highway soon crossed the Kamo River. There was boat traffic here, and a few miles farther he found a temple and stopped.
The monk who greeted him at the gate said they were low on provisions, having fed so many fugitives from the capital that they had only beans and millet left. The beans and millet had been boiled into a thick, pasty stew, but Akitada ate hungrily. He had taken only a few bites, when a small family arrived, a man with two women and two children. One of the children was a boy Yori’s age, and Akitada choked on his food. Leaving most of it behind, along with a donation, he fled back to the road.
Soon the Katsura River joined the Kamo, and more boats plied their trade on the water. He passed the vast Ogura swamp, through which the Uji River flowed to join the Kamo and the Katsura, and within another mile the Kii joined also, forming a wide river delta of swamps and sandbanks before becoming the fast and treacherous Yodo, which carried all the heavy shipping to the Inland Sea and Korea and China beyond. At the river confluence, the highway crossed a long timber bridge and turned west. All around Akitada was a flat landscape of watery rice paddies, with occasional farms shaded by trees rising like islands from a green and billowing sea. Here the peasants worked their land as they always had.
The mountains rose to the south, blue against a paler sky. Some inner need drove Akitada to visit the shrine first. To reach Mount Otoko he passed the barrier into Settsu Province and then crossed the river by ferry.
Before ascending the sacred mountain, Akitada bathed in the river and changed his clothes to cleanse himself of the pollution of the past days. It was getting dark before he reached the shrine on top of the sacred mountain and stabled his horse.
Perhaps he was foolish to come here, but something drew him to this place, a spiritual bond with the ancient gods of heaven and earth. As soon as he had passed under the red-lacquered torii and entered the forest path, he felt that he was in the presence of the gods. Large trees-camphor trees, he thought, but it was too dark here to be certain-enclosed him like sheltering wings. He felt calmer than he had in many months. His grief did not entirely disappear-he was convinced it never would-but it felt more natural, not like some foreign object which had been thrust deep into his belly and lay there festering. He felt a part of the mountain, the trees, the night, and when the tears finally spilled from his eyes, he let them fall unchecked.
Near the shrine was a small Buddhist temple where he asked for and received a place to sleep. And here he found his first rest after many sleepless nights.
He awoke well after sunrise to the cooing of hundreds of doves, and rose to pay his respects to the gods. There was no one about as he walked to the shrine building in the cool mountain air, rinsed his mouth and his hands with the clear water in a stone trough, and then prayed humbly to the gods of the mountain, and to Hachiman, protector of warriors and immanent spirit of this sacred place. He found no answering enlightenment for his troubles or Haseo’s, but he felt a sense of peace, and when he stepped from the shrine, the morning air seemed purer, the scent of camphor and pine fresher, and flocks of doves rose to circle the shrine hall.
He could see for miles from this mountaintop, across a green and fertile land, across the web of rivers, rice paddies, lakes, and villages, all the way to the distant hazy shimmer that was the capital. This land of the rising sun would endure. All else was immaterial, transitory, and of no importance. Men, like the doves of this sacred mountain, were individually short-lived and insignificant, but they too would endure like the mountain itself. And during their fleeting lives, they could soar.
The priest was a member of the Ki family, hereditary head priests of the Hachiman Shrine. He was past middle age, very dignified in his white garments and black court hat, and he received Akitada with smiling courtesy in his private apartments. Another priest, perhaps Ki’s secretary, was bent over some paperwork.
Shinto priests could marry and, apart from their training in ritual and their devotion to the gods, were not much different from ordinary men of rank and education. But this was the shrine of the guardian deity of the Imperial Family, and Ki was accustomed to receiving emperors, chancellors, and nobles of the highest rank. After a few polite preliminaries and fielding a question or two about conditions in the capital, Akitada asked him about Haseo.
The priest’s smile did not fade. He nodded. “I knew him and his family well. They were faithful supporters of this shrine. A dreadful affair. What is it that you wish to know?”
“Did you think him capable of the crime?”
Ki hesitated. “All men are capable of extraordinary acts-both good and evil-if it is fated and their nature demands it. Let me explain. Haseo wanted to take up the life of a warrior, but his father refused his permission. The elder Tomonari wished his only son to manage the family estate and provide him with heirs. Haseo married and fathered two sons, but he held on to his dream of becoming an officer in the Imperial Guard. On the day of the murder, he came to me to take his leave. He was about to tell his father of his decision.” The priest sighed deeply. “They say there was a violent quarrel.”
Akitada found Ki’s continued smile irritating. He could accept Haseo’s anger with his father, but not what the priest suggested. He asked, “What became of his family?”
Ki hedged. “Surely it cannot matter, since they were not witnesses to the murders?”
Akitada said harshly, “When Haseo died in my arms in Sadoshima, his last thoughts were for his family.”
Ki, still smiling, shook his head. “It does you great credit to be concerned on your friend’s behalf, but I assure you that they are well. Consider please that great harm might come to them if the past were stirred up again.”
There it was again: the warning to leave matters alone. Akitada persisted. “There was a nurse who witnessed the crime. Can you at least tell me where she lives?”
“She is dead. Of the people who were in the house that day, no one is left now. They have all died or gone away.”
As if they had never existed, thought Akitada. Had they fled because of shame or due to coercion? “Who lives on the Tomonari Estate now?”
“No one. The manor and the land belong to the emperor. Lord Yasugi is the administrator and sees to the cultivation of the fields.”
Strange the way the lines crossed and recrossed: Yasugi held Haseo’s lands; Yasugi’s unhappy wife was Hiroko, who knew Tomoe, the blind singer of ancient warrior ballads, who was also known to Matsue, who had had Haseo’s sword.
Akitada found neither answers nor encouragement here. Perhaps he should not have expected it. As head priest of the emperor’s tutelary deity, Ki would certainly do nothing to interfere with present arrangements. Before leaving, Akitada asked one more question.
“Did Haseo have any close male relatives his own age? Perhaps a first cousin?”
Ki raised his brows. “None at all. That is what caused the quarrel between father and son in the first place. There was no one else to carry on the family name.”
The priest’s secretary rose and left the room on silent feet, and Ki cleared his throat impatiently. Akitada asked, “May I take it that you know of no one else who might have done the killings?”
“Believe me, if I did, I would have said so at the time,” Ki said in a slightly reproving tone.
Akitada had no reason to doubt him and made his farewells to the still smiling Ki.
Outside the elderly secretary awaited him. “I beg your pardon,” he said urgently, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your question.”
“Yes?”
“I grew up in Tsuzuki District. People gossip among themselves about things they don’t mention to outsiders.”
“I understand. What is it that you know?”
The old man fidgeted. “Know is perhaps too strong a word. As I said, it’s mere gossip. The old lord was said to have fathered a child with a servant. People saw a resemblance when the boy grew up. When Lord Tomonari gave a farmstead to the mother of this boy, it confirmed people’s suspicions. Mind you, there may be nothing to it. Except for an outward resemblance, Sangoro had nothing at all in common with the young master.”
“Where does this Sangoro live?”
“His farm is just over the hill from the Tomonari place. His mother used to walk to work every day.”
Akitada thanked the priest and walked down the mountain, trying to recall where he had heard the name Sangoro before.
The Tomonari Estate was substantial, and peasants worked its fields, treading waterwheels, pulling weeds, and building dams between paddies. They did not raise their heads to stare at the lone horseman, and Akitada soon saw why. An overseer stood on a small hill, a whip tucked under his arm.
The gate to the manor stood open, and Akitada rode in to look around and perhaps to ask directions to Sangoro’s farm, but there was no one about except a scattering of chickens. He dismounted and led his horse to the water trough. The manor resembled many such across the land, a cluster of simple halls with thickly thatched roofs, their wooden walls blackened by age and the elements. The main residence lacked the amenities of noble houses in the capital, but this was a rural household; the men who had built it had maintained a simple lifestyle close to the land around them. Now it looked neglected. The doors were shuttered, grass grew on the roof, and swallows nested under the deep eaves.
The silence and emptiness reminded him of houses in the capital where everyone had died. It opened again the door to memory, shattering the peace so fleetingly won on the mountain. Overcome by his loss, he sank down on the rim of the trough and put his head in his hands.
After a time, he became aware of an odd sound among the clucking of chickens, chirping of birds, and occasional snorting from his horse. Someone was thrumming a zither. Abruptly his memory leapt backward and he was standing again outside the wall of the Yasugi mansion.
His heart beating faster, he tied up his horse.