The Hell Screen (12 page)

“Oh, but he is. He must be. You said yourself that you were not convinced of his guilt.”

Akitada sighed. “Yes, my dear. But that is not the same as believing him innocent. I am not satisfied that he had a motive, and the fact that Nagaoka’s wife was strangled before being hacked about suggests that she was not murdered by a drunken maniac. It is not logical. That is all.”

“Anybody could have done it. What about the husband? He must have been angry with his brother, if he suspected him of being his wife’s lover. Perhaps it was he who killed her and made it look as if his brother had done it. It would be the perfect revenge, wouldn’t it?”

She had spoken fervently, leaning forward a little, her eyes pleading with him to agree, and he was amused. Of course, she was quite right about Nagaoka’s motive, and he told her so. “But,” he said, “my hands are tied. Kobe will not let me speak to his prisoner, and I must do so before I can get any idea of what happened at the temple and of the relationship between the two brothers and Nagaoka’s wife.” He paused, and gave Yoshiko a glance of concern. “Are you quite well? You look a little feverish. Perhaps we had better not talk about the matter anymore. Do you think I should go to see Mother?”

His sister looked down at her hands and took a moment to calm herself. “Perhaps tomorrow. I am afraid that she may excite herself too much and bring up more blood.”

Akitada nodded. No doubt Yoshiko thought the sight of him would be so abhorrent to his mother that it might hasten her death. “I think I shall read a little,” he said, and watched his sister rise and leave without another word.

He spent the rest of the day depressed by his inability to cope with the assorted miseries he had found on his return. His mother’s hatred for him, even in her present condition, was sufficiently demoralizing, but then there was the matter of Toshikage, potentially dangerous not only to Toshikage but also to Akiko and their unborn child. Yoshiko’s unhappiness and his own pending report to the great men who held his future and that of his people in their hands also weighed heavily on his mind.

He missed his wife and son. Tamako and Yori, short for Yorinaga, had been his whole life until now. He hoped they were safe. Yori was only three, and by no means safe from the many illnesses which could strike young children so quickly and often fatally. And they might encounter highwaymen. He reminded himself that Tora and Genba rode with them and were both strong and experienced fighters. Besides, there were the bearers and some hired horsemen. Seimei, Akitada’s secretary, was too old, of course, to be much use against robbers, but his wisdom would keep them well advised. Still...

Akitada eventually went to bed. He spent a restless night, tossing and turning as he revolved all his troubles in his mind. Outside, the monks’ droning chants continued their unabated hum. He wondered at the cost and knew he would soon have to ask Yoshiko how large a gift the temple expected. Once during the night, he heard someone running, and the monks began a more frantic burst of chanting. Akitada rose and flung on some clothes, waiting for the summons which would call him to his mother’s side.

But it did not come. The house fell quiet again, and Akitada returned to his bedding. Toward morning he finally dozed off.

He sought out his sister as soon as he was dressed the next morning. She met him, looking exhausted, at the door of her room.

“Is Mother all right?” Akitada asked. “I heard some excitement during the night.”

“Another hemorrhage. A bit worse than last time. She finally fell asleep.” Yoshiko passed a hand over her dark-ringed eyes. “At least I think so. It is hard to tell if she is asleep or simply too weak to bother.”

“You are tired. Shall I go sit with her today?”

Yoshiko gave him a grateful look. “If you would. For just a few hours. I have not had any sleep. Don’t wake her, though.”

In the corridor outside his mother’s room, some five or six monks sat in a line, their eyes closed and their lips moving continuously, while prayer beads passed between their fingers. Akitada stepped over them and opened the door. They neither looked up nor paused in their chant.

His mother’s room was in semidarkness, the air overheated and thick with the smell of blood and urine. Braziers glowed here and there. The sturdy maid looked up at him with startled eyes, but Lady Sugawara lay still. She was on her back, hands folded across her stomach, sunken eyes closed, nose and chin jutting up sharply from a face which already looked more like a skull than a living human being.

Akitada gestured for silence and took a seat near the maid, whispering, “I shall stay for a while. Please do not let me trouble you. How has she been?”

“ ‘Twas bad in the night,” the maid whispered back. “But she’s been asleep the last hour or so.”

“Good.” Akitada prepared himself for a long vigil, but suddenly his mother’s eyes opened and fixed on him. “Mother?” he asked tentatively. When she said nothing, he tried, “How are you feeling?”

“Where is my grandson?” Her voice was shockingly loud and harsh in that stillness. “Have you brought my grandson?”

“Not yet. They will be here shortly. In a...” He stopped, seeing her face contract into a mask of fury.

“Get out!” she gasped, choking. “Get out of my room! Leave me alone!” The gasping turned to convulsive coughing. “I can... not even die in... peace ... without you rushing me along.... Curse you ... for ...” She raised up suddenly, pointing a clawlike hand at him accusingly, her eyes filled with implacable hatred. But whatever she had meant to shout at him was never said. A gush of dark blood spilled from her mouth and over the bedding, and she fell back choking.

Akitada jumped up in horror and stood helplessly by as the maid busied herself, mopping blood and holding the gasping, coughing figure of his mother.

“A doctor,” said Akitada, “I’ll get the doctor. Where does he live?”

The maid glanced up impatiently. “No, sir. He can’t help. She’ll calm down in a moment. But you’d best go away. It upsets her to see you.”

Akitada almost ran from the room. In his haste he stumbled over one of the monks outside. The man grunted, and Akitada mumbled an apology as he fled.

In his room his breakfast waited. He stared at the bowl of rice gruel, then rushed out onto the veranda and vomited into the shrubbery.

Feeling slightly better, he returned to his room to put on his outdoor clothes. Then he left the house.

The weather was still overcast and chill. Now and then the frigid wind picked up and shifted some of the dead leaves. Most trees were bare already. A good time for death, Akitada thought morosely, hunching his shoulders against the cold.

He no longer hoped for a reconciliation with his mother. Her venomous hatred of himself had to be accepted. It seemed to him that it must always have existed, contained for all those years under a mantle of propriety. Now that she was dying and no longer cared what anyone, least of all himself, thought of her, she spat out the stored-up bitterness of a lifetime as if it had been her life’s blood. At least it absolved him from further attendance on her.

But the thought gave him no peace. His mother’s words had poisoned something in him, and for the first time in his life he wished her dead. In fact, he hoped fervently that she would die soon, before his family arrived, before she could poison also his beloved Tamako and the child she had given him! He hated the thought of those skeletal hands touching Yori, those wrinkled, hate-dripping lips kissing the soft, rosy cheek of his son. Bitter resentment twisted inside him like an awakening dragon. How dare his mother destroy the peace and happiness he had finally won after leaving his home? He clenched his fists in helpless misery and wished he had not returned. By heaven, now that he was here, he would not allow her to spoil his future and that of his family.

In his aimless walking, he had reached a quiet street in he knew not which quarter, but before him rose the tall gates to a shrine. It was one of the many Shinto shrines which occupied small tranquil spaces in the middle of the mercantile bustle around them. The
torii,
gateways of two tall upright wooden pillars topped with a gently up-curved top beam, marked the entrance to sacred space. A grove surrounded the modest thatched shrine building, but the trees were bare of leaves now, and the weather had driven worshipers away. The isolation of the place exerted a powerful pull on Akitada, and the shrine gate seemed to beckon. As if under a spell, he obeyed.

Once through the
torii
, he entered a world of silence. A thick carpet of leaves under his feet muffled his steps, and the human sounds of voices and wagon wheels dropped away behind. Somewhere a bird chirped. Turning a corner, Akitada found a stone basin. With a soft flutter of wings, a sparrow landed on its rim and drank. Akitada stood very still and waited until the bird had his fill and flew away. Then he approached and dipped some water with a bamboo ladle which lay on the basin. He rinsed his mouth with it, a familiar and comforting action, then spat the water on the ground. Next he rinsed his hands. The water tasted and felt cool and fresh, and it seemed to him that the symbolic cleansing had eased his mind and he approached the shrine with a calmer heart. Above the doorway, small paper twists tied to the sacred rice-straw ropes rustled softly in the wind, as if whispering the prayers inscribed on them by the troubled worshipers who had come here before him. He had brought no paper and, surprised at the impulse, regretted it.

At the door to the shrine he bowed. The sweet smell of fruit and rice wine, gifts presented to the god in small bowls on the plain wooden veranda, mixed pleasantly with a trace of incense. He looked into the dim interior, a space too sacred to enter. There were no images in this particular shrine, just a large carved box in the center of a table. It housed the spirit of the deity, an ancestral god associated with the neighborhood, perhaps. Akitada was about to turn away when his shoulder touched a thick straw rope suspended from the eaves of the roof. It was for ringing a bell which would announce a request. Akitada paused.

Then he turned back to the face the shrine, clapped his hands three times, concentrated his thoughts, and pulled the rope sharply. A muffled clanging sounded in the roof. He bowed again, stood a moment longer, and then left.

The ritual was as ancient as his people and familiar to him from his earliest childhood. He felt strangely calm and at peace, as if performing the simple act of worship had exorcised his demons and had helped him see his way. He was grateful to the god of the shrine.

At home, in the house filled with his dying mother’s curses, it had been impossible to think clearly, but now he knew that he must turn his back on a past which was dying with his mother and care for the future of the living. His sisters needed his help. His heart had gone out to Yoshiko, no longer the laughing young girl he remembered, but a sadly changed young woman who rarely smiled these days. He would find her a husband as soon as he had settled back into his work and met eligible men. Someone, he hoped, that she could laugh with.

But Akiko’s problem was her husband. There was nothing Akitada could do about her marriage, of which, in any case, Akiko herself seemed to approve. He wondered if she would if she knew the trouble Toshikage was in.

And so, because of Toshikage, Akitada went to see Nagaoka again. He still had Toshikage’s list of the treasures which had disappeared from the Imperial Treasury, but had never consulted the antiquarian about them.

When he knocked at Nagaoka’s gate, the same servant opened. To Akitada’s surprise, he was back in ordinary clothes, and the courtyard looked raked and tidy. Apparently Nagaoka had reestablished some order in his house and put aside mourning his wife.

Nagaoka was in his study, sitting behind his desk much as the day before, except that he was busy inspecting an object in a wooden box. When he saw Akitada, he rose and invited him to sit. There was something cool and formal about his manner which told Akitada that he was not really welcome.

“I apologize for another unannounced visit,” said Akitada, taking the offered seat, “but there is something I forgot to ask you. I hope I do not intrude?”

Nagaoka sat also and pushed the open box aside. “Not at all, my lord,” he murmured formally. “May I offer you some refreshments?”

Having left without his morning rice, Akitada became aware of feeling ravenously hungry, but in the present chill ambiance he decided against accepting hospitality. “Thank you, no.”