Part 11 (1/2)

”It's often easier to claim from a dead man than a live one,” Gosaburo added apologetically.

I did not know this easygoing, pleasure-loving, irresponsible man, and I did not want to kill him. But I did. A few days later I went at night to his house on the outskirts of town, silenced the dogs, went invisible, and slipped past the guards. The house was well barred but I waited for him outside the privy. I had been watching the house and I knew he always rose in the early hours to relieve himself. He was a large, fleshy man who'd long since given up any training and who had handed over the heavy work on the land to his sons. He'd grown soft. He died with hardly a sound.

When I untwisted the garrote, rain had started to fall. The tiles of the walls were slippery. The night was at its darkest. The rain could almost be sleet. I returned to the Kikuta house silenced by the darkness and the cold as if they had crept inside me and left a shadow on my soul.

Furoda's sons paid his debts, and Gosaburo was pleased with me. I let no one see how much the murder had disturbed me, but the next one was worse. It was on the orders of the Yos.h.i.+da family. Determined to put a stop to the unrest among the villagers before winter, they put in a request for the leader to be eradicated. I knew the man, knew his secret fields, though I had not yet revealed them to anyone. Now I told Gosaburo and Akio where he could be found alone every evening, and they sent me to meet him there.

He had rice and sweet potatoes concealed in a small cave, cut into the side of the mountain and covered with stones and brushwood. He was working on the banks of the field when I came silently up the slope. I'd misjudged him: He was stronger than I thought, and he fought back with his hoe. As we struggled together, my hood slipped back and he saw my face. Recognition came into his eyes, mixed with a sort of horror. In that moment I used my second self, came behind him, and cut his throat, but I'd heard him call out to my image.

”Lord s.h.i.+geru!”

I was covered with blood, his and mine, and dizzy from the blow I'd not quite avoided. The hoe had glanced against my scalp and the sc.r.a.pe was bleeding freely. His words disturbed me deeply. Had he been calling to s.h.i.+geru's spirit for help, or had he seen my likeness and mistaken me for him? I wanted to question him, but his eyes stared blankly up at the twilight sky. He was beyond speech forever.

I went invisible and stayed so until I was nearly back at the Kikuta house, the longest period I had ever used it for. I would have stayed like that forever if I could. I could not forget the man's last words, and then I remembered what s.h.i.+geru had said, so long ago, in Hagi: I have never kilkd an unarmed man, nor killed for pleasure. I have never kilkd an unarmed man, nor killed for pleasure.

The clan lords were highly satisfied. The man's death had taken the heart out of the unrest. The villagers promptly became docile and obedient. Many of them would die of starvation before the end of winter. It was an excellent result, Gosaburo said.

But I began to dream of s.h.i.+geru every night. He entered the room and stood before me as if he had just come out of the river, blood and water streaming from him, saying nothing, his eyes fixed on me as if he were waiting for me-the same way he had waited with the patience of the heron for me to speak again.

Slowly it began to dawn on me that I could not bear the life I was living, but I did not know how to escape it. I had made a bargain with the Kikuta that I was now finding impossible to keep. I'd made the bargain in the heat of pa.s.sion, not expecting to live beyond that night, and with no understanding of my own self. I'd thought the Kikuta master, who seemed to know me, would help me resolve the deep divisions and contradictions of my nature, but he had sent me away to Matsue with Akio, where my life with the Tribe might be teaching me how to hide these contradictions but was doing nothing to solve them; they were merely being driven deeper inside me.

My black mood worsened when Yuki went away. She said nothing to me about it, just vanished one day. In the morning I heard her voice and her tread while we were at training. I heard her go to the front door and leave without bidding anyone farewell. I listened all day for her return, but she did not come back. I tried asking casually where she was; the replies were evasive and I did not want to question Akio or Gosaburo directly. I missed her deeply but was also relieved that I no longer had to face the question of whether to sleep with her or not. Every day since she had told me about Kaede I'd resolved I would not, and every night I did.

Two days later, while I was thinking about her during the meditation period at the end of the morning exercises, I heard one of the servants come to the door and call softly to Akio. He opened his eyes slowly and, with the air of calm composure that he always a.s.sumed after meditating (and which I was convinced was only a.s.sumed), he rose and went to the door.

”The master is here,” the girl said. ”He is waiting for you.”

”Hey, Dog,” Akio called to me. The others sat without moving a muscle, without looking up, as I stood. Akio jerked his head and I followed him to the main room of the house, where Kikuta Kotaro was drinking tea with Gosaburo.

We entered the room and bowed to the floor before him.

”Sit up,” he said, and studied me for a few moments. Then he addressed Akio. ”Have there been any problems?”

”Not really” Akio said, implying there had been quite a few.

”What about att.i.tude? You have no complaints?”

Akio shook his head slowly.

”Yet, before you left Yamagata... ?”

I felt that Kotaro was letting me know he knew everything about me.

”It was dealt with,” Akio replied briefly.

”He's been quite useful to me,” Gosaburo put in.

”I'm glad to hear it,” Kotaro said dryly.

His brother got to his feet and excused himself-the pressures of business, the need to be in the shop. When he had left the master said, ”I spoke to Yuki last night.”

”Where is she?”

”That doesn't matter. But she told me something that disturbs me a little. We did not know that s.h.i.+geru went to Mino expressly to find you. He let Muto Kenji believe the encounter happened by chance.”

He paused but I said nothing. I remembered the day Yuki had found this out, while she was cutting my hair. She had thought it important information, important enough to pa.s.s on to the master. No doubt she had told him everything else about me.

”It makes me suspect s.h.i.+geru had a greater knowledge of the Tribe than we realized,” Kotaro said. ”Is that true?”

”It's true that he knew who I was,” I replied. ”He had been friends with the Muto master for many years. That's all I know of his relations.h.i.+p with the Tribe.”

”He never spoke to you of anything more?”

”No.” I was lying. In fact s.h.i.+geru had told me more, the night we had talked in Tsuwano-that he had made it his business to find out about the Tribe and that he probably knew more about them than any other outsider. I had never shared this information with Kenji and I saw no reason to pa.s.s it on to Kotaro. s.h.i.+geru was dead, I was now bound to the Tribe, but I was not going to betray his secrets.

I tried to make my voice and face guileless and said, ”Yuki asked me the same thing. What does it matter now?”

”We thought we knew s.h.i.+geru, knew his life,” Kotaro answered. ”He keeps surprising us, even after his death. He kept things hidden even from Kenji-the affair with Maruyama Naomi, for example. What else was he hiding?”

I shrugged slightly. I thought of s.h.i.+geru, nicknamed the Farmer, with his openhearted smile, his seeming frankness and simplicity. Everyone had misjudged him, especially the Tribe. He had been so much more than any of them had suspected.

”Is it possible that he kept records of what he knew about the Tribe?”

”He kept many records of all sorts of things,” I said, sounding puzzled. ”The seasons, his farming experiments, the land and crops, his retainers. Ichiro, his former teacher, helped him with them, but he often wrote himself.”

I could see him, writing late into the night, the lamp flickering, the cold penetrating, his face alert and intelligent, quite different from its usual bland expression.

”The journeys he made-did you go with him?”

”No, apart from our flight from Mino.”

”How often did he travel?”

”I'm not sure; while I was in Hagi he did not leave the city.”

Kotaro grunted. Silence crept into the room. I could barely hear the others' breathing. From beyond came the noon sounds of shop and house, the click of the abacus, the voices of customers, peddlers crying in the street outside. The wind was rising, whistling under the eaves, shaking the screens. Already its breath held the hint of snow.

The master spoke finally. ”It seems most likely that he did keep records, in which case they must be recovered. If they should fall into Arai's hands at this moment, it would be a disaster. You will have to go to Hagi. Find out if the records exist and bring them back here.”

I could hardly believe it. I had thought I would never go there again. Now I was to be sent back to the house I loved so much.

”It's a matter of the nightingale floor,” Kotaro said. ”I believe s.h.i.+geru had one built around his house and you mastered it.”

It seemed I was back there: I felt the heavy night air of the sixth month, saw myself run as silently as a ghost, heard s.h.i.+geru's voice: Can you do it again? Can you do it again?

I tried to keep my face under control, but I felt a flicker in the smile muscles.

”You must leave at once,” Kotaro went on. ”You have to get there and back before the snows begin. It's nearly the end of the year. By the middle of the first month both Hagi and Matsue will be closed by snow.”

He had not sounded angry before, but now I realized he was- profoundly. Perhaps he had sensed my smile.