Death at the Crossroads (18 page)

Kaze stepped over to the body and pulled the dagger out. He wiped the blade on the kimono of the Magistrate. For a second, Ichiro thought Kaze was going to administer justice on the spot, killing both him and his daughter for his crime. In a way, he almost welcomed this, because it would mean their deaths would be simple and quick. It would also mean that Ichiro would not be kept alive under torture so he could watch his wife and children and neighbors all killed before he, himself, also paid the ultimate price for his crime.

To Ichiro’s surprise, Kaze extended the butt of the weapon to him. Taking one hand from his daughter, the village headman took the knife. He was confused about what Kaze was doing.

“It’s terrible how these bandits have gotten out of hand in this District, isn’t it? I guess one of Boss Kuemon’s men took revenge on the Magistrate, mistakenly thinking he was responsible for Kuemon’s death.”

Ichiro heard the ronin’s words but could not understand their meaning. He knew the samurai was strange, but now he thought that perhaps he was insane.

“What?” the headman said.

“I said it’s terrible what the bandits have done. They’re now so bold that they’ve killed the local Magistrate.”

Ichiro still didn’t understand. He looked up at the ronin in total confusion.

“I think you should say that the Magistrate was off for a walk, then later you saw a few of Boss Kuemon’s men in the forest. You went to investigate and found the body. Keep the child in your hut for a few days and tell your neighbors that your wife slipped and hit her face on a rock. Don’t mention you saw me. Now do you understand?”

“But why … ?” Ichiro gasped.

Kaze stared down at the shocked peasant, who was still holding his young daughter in one arm and holding the murder weapon with his hand. In a way, Kaze felt like a traitor to his class. His natural sympathies should be with the Magistrate, Nagato, because he was a fellow samurai. Kaze knew that there had often been peasant revolts in Japan and that the savagery and ruthlessness of armed peasants were exceeded only by the samurai who had been sent to suppress such revolts.

Yet, in the two years of his wandering, he had gotten to know the people of the land in a way no regular samurai could. They could be petty and venal and selfish. They could also be warm and generous and full of bawdy humor. More important, in two years of looking for the daughter of his former Lord, he had also seen the treatment of countless young girls and it was starting to disgust him.

In Japan they didn’t indulge in the practice of exposing newborn girl infants as the Koreans and Chinese did, except in times of dire famine. Yet the life of a peasant girl was hard and often brutal, and Kaze sometimes wondered if life was such a precious gift when it was lived in these conditions. He wondered what the Lady’s daughter had experienced in the two years she had been missing and what she would be like when he found her.

“Why?” Ichiro asked again.

Kaze looked at the body of the Magistrate. Kaze was now sure the Magistrate hadn’t killed the samurai at the crossroads. The arrow he had shot at Kaze during the ambush was not like the ones that had
killed the unknown samurai and Hachiro. Although the Magistrate could grab any arrow when startled at night, as when Kaze played the trick on the village, Kaze decided that the Magistrate would most likely use his best-quality arrow when he knew he would be killing men.

Still, the Magistrate might as well die for trying to rape the peasant girl as for some other crime, such as taking a bribe from a bandit. In fact, if Kaze had come upon the scene a few moments earlier, he might have killed the Magistrate himself. He had caught sight of Ichiro’s wife rushing into the village, then of Ichiro running into the forest. Kaze had gone to investigate. The peasant wanted an answer for Kaze’s actions, which turned his perception of class and the whole world upside down, but Kaze couldn’t articulate one.

“Because it pleases me,” Kaze finally answered. Kaze walked away, leaving the astonished peasant and the sobbing girl.

W
hen he was a boy, Kaze climbed trees and flew kites from the treetops. He started by flying kites from fields, like other boys, but found he preferred the intense sensation of flying a kite in a swaying treetop. The leaves fluttered with gusts, and if the wind was strong enough, the branches and trunk vibrated. Kaze felt like a part of the kite, weaving with the wind and shaking high above the earth. In his mind, the treetop was like another kite, tied to the real kite by the thin twine in Kaze’s hand, both kites dancing together in the wind.

The wind was a mystery and constant fascination to him. You couldn’t see it, but you saw its results in the bending grass, the fluttering leaves, and the ripples skimming the surface of a pond. If the wind was strong enough, you saw grown men bending into it, fighting their way across a castle courtyard or down a country road. After a particularly violent storm, you even saw trees uprooted or frame and paper houses, held together with pegs and cunning joints, standing with tattered shoji screens and a forlorn, harshly scrubbed look.

Through the strings of a kite, you could interact with this unseen force, playing the gusts and eddies to coax the kite higher and higher into the sky. The force was invisible, but you learned to deal with
this force, conforming to the imperatives of the wind while using it to hold up your kite until you ran out of string or patience.

Kaze reflected that honor was like the wind. It was invisible, yet you felt it tugging at your conscience and impelling you in a direction that you might not want to go. You were buffeted by honor until you bent to its will, moving in the direction that it blew you.

As he grew older, Kaze stopped playing with kites but more keenly felt the effects of honor. If his karma was to grow old, he looked with anxious anticipation toward a time when he would again be near one end of his life span, this time the old end. Then he could have the luxury of playing with kites again.

Now the wind, insistent but not strong, forced him to hold his kimono a little tighter as it pushed against his chest and face. He sat in the dark outside Lord Manase’s manor and waited until it was time to again visit the old blind Sensei, Nagahara. Since adding a nightly visit to the Sensei to his schedule, Kaze had devised a plan for entering Manase Manor that didn’t require a snoozing guard.

The manor, as with almost all buildings of its kind, was built on a foundation of pilings resting on large rocks. This left a large crawl space under the floor, and this crawl space, plus the fact that the floorboards were not fastened down, made it rather easy for him to enter the manor anytime he wanted to. He knew the Sensei stayed up late reciting the books he was so desperate to retain, so he always appeared late at night, when the rest of the household was asleep.

Nagahara Sensei’s energy appeared to be fading, but Kaze’s visits seemed to revitalize him as he taught classes for pupils long since past. For his part, Kaze was learning about a Japan also long since past, a Japan where meat, not fish, was eaten in large quantities; where Buddhism was not a major religion; where people didn’t bath for pleasure and ritual purification; and where beliefs were totally different from the beliefs Kaze held.

When the time was right, Kaze rapidly crawled under the manor, making his way under the hallway in front of Nagahara Sensei’s
room. When he was sure it was safe, Kaze displaced several floorboards and climbed into the hall. Replacing the floorboards so there was no evidence of his entry, Kaze slid back the shoji and called out softly, “Sensei?”

“Hai.” Nagahara’s voice seemed weak. Kaze entered the room and found the old man reclining on a futon. The room was dark, because there was no need for a light with a blind man, but from the tiny amount of light that spilled in from the open door, Kaze could see that the old man looked tired.

“Perhaps it’s a bad night, Sensei,” Kaze said.

“Nonsense,” the old man replied. “You’re just trying to get out of your lessons so you can play with the other boys. Come in here immediately.”

“Sensei,” Kaze said gently, “Don’t you remember? I am Matsuyama Kaze, the samurai, not one of your youthful charges.”

“Matsuyama? Matsuyama? Are you one of my pupils?”

“In a way. Remember? We have been talking about the age of Genji for the last few nights.”

“The
Genji
? Shall I recite it for you?”

“No, Sensei, I’m just here to talk to you some more about it.”

“What about the age of Genji?”

“Last night you were telling me about the time Genji went to see his paramour. Remember?”

“Genji? Oh yes. As you recall, it was the fourteenth of the month, so naturally Genji couldn’t go to see his newest love directly. So instead he went to his good friend To-no-Chujo’s and visited for awhile. After this visit, he then went to the Lady’s house.”

“But how did he know he had to do that?”

“Well, of course he looked it up. In a book. It’s like today when we have feast days and extra months and other things on our calendar. In those days such things were on their calendar, in special books.”

“And what about the things you told me about obakes in the road, Sensei? Did they learn that from books, too?”

“You learn everything from books,” the old man said sternly. “In a sense, a book is like an obake, because it allows a person to speak to us long after death. But a young boy like you shouldn’t concern yourself with things like obakes. Instead, I want you to recite the poems I gave you to memorize.”

“Remember, Sensei? This is Matsuyama. I was not the one you gave the poems to memorize to.”

“But if you’re not the one …” The old man looked confused, then he gave a great groan.

“Sensei?” Kaze said, alarmed. He reached out in the darkness and touched the arm of the old man. It felt as skinny as a twig and as fragile as an old, dried leaf. “Are you all right?”

“It’s …” The old man seemed to weaken suddenly, and his breathing became labored.

“Perhaps I should leave, Sensei.”

“No. Don’t. I feel so peculiar, it’s like I was …”

“What is it, Sensei?”

The old man sighed. In the dark, it seemed like a sigh of contentment, not distress. “The sight of Fuji-san at dawn is the most wonderful thing I can imagine.”

Kaze thought the old man was drifting again, but he was glad to hear a renewed strength in the old teacher’s voice.

“Look there! See how the snow turns red with the rising of the sun? See how the entire mountaintop is capped in crimson!” The old man was pointing into the darkness, and Kaze realized that the old man was hallucinating in his blindness, seeing with his mind’s eye and memory what his real eyes could no longer discern. “It’s such a glorious sight, don’t you think?”

“Yes, Sensei,” Kaze replied.

“It’s good that we can see such beauty, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Sensei.”

The old teacher gave another sigh. His arm dropped to the futon.

“Sensei?” Kaze asked, concern creeping into his voice.

“It’s wonderful to see such marvelous beauty,” the old man said
softly. “Now I can die truly happy.” A slow, prolonged hiss escaped from the old man. Kaze sat in the darkness for several minutes, listening for the old man’s breathing. Finally, he dared to put his hand near the face of the blind teacher, but he felt no breath on his palm. Kaze sat in the dark silence for many more minutes, then he put his palms together and started reciting a sutra for the dead.

H
e sat in a thicket, just as he had been sitting for several days. The last days of summer were gone, and it was starting to chill. He lived off the land, cooking rabbits caught in snare traps and roots and edible plants he gathered. At night he would sneak to Jiro’s hut, stopping to get a pinch of salt or some miso to flavor his food. He still had the senbei he had received at the inn but decided to save it for a special occasion.

Kaze, by temperament and training, had more than his share of patience in a world filled with patient men. So he was not disappointed as the days passed and he didn’t see what he expected to see. His long talks with the Sensei had convinced him that he had finally placed the mountain in the right spot. He was determined to be that mountain and not to budge from the spot until he saw what he expected to see.

Finally, after eight days, his patience was rewarded.

Instead of coming with his usual paraphernalia, he showed up dressed as a warrior. He jumped off his horse and unloaded his gear. He went to the trees and hung
marumono
, round targets, from low hanging branches spaced many paces apart. The targets were round
coils of braided straw, whitewashed with a large black dot in the center. They hung from pieces of hemp twine.

After he finished hanging the targets, he shrugged both his outer kimono and white inner kimono off his left shoulder. He walked over to a quiver sitting on the ground and took out three arrows: brown arrows with goose-feather fletching, all of them of unusual quality.

He walked back to the targets and set them swinging back and forth in a smooth arc. Then he returned to his horse and swung easily up to the saddle. One arrow was fitted to the bowstring and the other two were held in the middle by his teeth. He swung around the meadow and urged his horse into a gallop, swinging by the first target at a distance of ten paces. He drew back the bow and let the arrow fly at the swinging target, hitting it near the edge. In a flash, he had a second arrow removed from his mouth and in the bowstring. He let fly at the second target, missing it, but not by much. Before he galloped past the second target, the third arrow was already fitted to the bow. As he approached the last target you could see the intense concentration in his face. Coolly drawing back his bow, he released his third arrow.

It flew in a path that intersected the swinging target, hitting it squarely in the black dot. The heavy straw target shuddered under the impact of the arrow. Kaze decided it was time for the mountain to move.

Lord Manase slowed his horse and briskly trotted back to his gear. He jumped off the horse and picked up a bottle of water. He was bringing the bottle to his lips when Kaze made his mistake.

“The last arrow was an excellent example of
kyujutsu
,” Kaze said.

Manase dropped the water bottle and bent down to pick up his bow and a fresh arrow from his quiver, all in one smooth motion. Kaze anticipated that Lord Manase would have an interest in kyujutsu, the art of archery, but he didn’t anticipate Manase reacting like a warrior. Kaze stopped his advance as Manase swung the bow around.

“The ronin!” Manase said, giving his irritating, tittering laugh. Kaze expected Manase to drop his guard, but instead the bow remained at the ready. Kaze had spoken too quickly. With Lord Manase at the alert, one, and perhaps two, arrows could be let loose before Kaze could cross the distance between him and the District Lord. Kaze put a smile on his face and took a step forward to shorten that distance. Manase raised his bow and drew back the string.

“No,” he said. Manase’s powdered face was as stiff and expressionless as a Noh mask.

“Is something wrong?” Kaze said, taking another half step before he stopped.

“You came back for a reason,” Manase said. “I want to know what that reason is.”

Kaze thought for a moment about the various answers he could give, and he decided that the simplest and best answer was the truth. “I actually never left. I’ve been spending most of my time here in the district.”

Manase’s mask-like face now showed a flicker of surprise. “You’ve been here ever since the day you disappeared?”

“Hai, yes,” Kaze said. “In fact I’ve been by the edge of this meadow during most of the days. I saw you come several times to practice your Noh dancing. You really are a superb dancer, perhaps the best I’ve ever seen.”

“Why have you been spending the entire time here spying on me?” Manase said.

“I haven’t spent the entire time here,” Kaze answered. “In the evenings I would sneak into your home.”

Now Manase was very surprised. “Did you feel the need to spy on me at home, too?” he demanded.

“I wasn’t spying on you. I was there to talk to Nagahara Sensei.”

“That crazy old man? Why did you waste your time with him? He finally became totally useless. It was almost a blessing he died.”

“He did slip in and out of reality,” Kaze agreed. “But even when he was not aware of where he was, he wanted to talk about Heian
Japan. He was a great teacher, and all great teachers deserve our respect. Even when he imagined he was in past days, he still said many interesting things.”

“Such as?” Manase said.

Kaze shifted his weight to a more comfortable posture. As he did so, he advanced another half step. “Such as the customs that our ancestors followed six hundred years ago. These are the kinds of customs that you try to follow, although I’m sure it’s difficult to do so in the current times.”

“I’ve told you I want to restore the customs of our ancestors,” Manase said, “but that doesn’t explain why you’re still here and spying on me.”

Kaze knew that he couldn’t completely close the distance between them without Manase releasing the arrow, but he also knew that Manase’s right arm must be tiring and that soon he would either have to release the arrow or relax the tension on the bowstring. If he could get him to relax the tension on the bowstring, that would buy more time to cross a few more feet, perhaps just the distance Kaze would need to get Manase to within a sword blade’s length. Kaze assumed that he was going to die in that effort. Ever since he was a youth, bushido had taught him that death is a natural part of life. Through reincarnation, he would live again, so the thought of dying did not scare him. He was more disturbed by the thought of failure, of not killing Manase as part of his dying and failing to find the Lady’s daughter.

“So what did that crazy old man say?” Manase demanded.

“I said he was a great Sensei and he still deserves our respect,” Kaze said sharply.

Manase gave his high tittering laugh. “You come up with the strangest ideas,” he said. “Did that old man say something that would cause you to engage in spying on me?”

“Actually it’s something you said.”

Once again Manase seemed surprised. “What did I say?”

Kaze smiled, shifting his weight and advancing another half pace. He could see Manase’s bow arm had relaxed the tension on the string by a noticeable degree. “You said that when the Ise Shrine is dismantled every twenty years, they break up the hinoki wood and hand out pieces to the pilgrims who have gathered to see the ceremony.”

Manase relaxed the bowstring even more, cocking his head in a questioning manner. While watching Manase acutely, Kaze was also thinking about the target practice he had witnessed a few minutes before. From the practice, he knew Manase was an excellent shot with the bow. Hitting a moving target from a moving horse was an extremely difficult task, requiring frequent practice and great concentration. There was something about that task, something important, that gnawed at Kaze’s thoughts. It was something that his old Sensei could have told him immediately, and Kaze felt frustrated that such an important thing didn’t pop into his head instantly.

“Why would that information about the Ise Shrine cause you to spy on me?” Manase demanded.

“It’s very simple,” Kaze said nonchalantly. “That first murdered man, the samurai, had a piece of wood on his money pouch instead of a proper netsuke. He was certainly prosperous enough to have a netsuke, so that piece of wood must have meant something to him. I think it was a piece of the Ise Shrine and it not only reminded him of home, but it was supposed to bring him good luck.”

“Even if the man was from Ise, why would he have any connection to me?”

Kaze reached up and scratched his head, smiling. He saw Manase tracking the movements of his arm with the bow, and he knew what it was about Manase’s archery that he was trying to remember. “That was harder,” Kaze said, “but once I thought the man might be somehow connected to you and Ise, then I looked at things in a slightly different manner. For instance, those arrows you use are extremely high quality, much better quality than most people would typically use for hunting or even war. It’s like many of the things you have:
only the best. The arrows are much too good for some bandit to have, and I suppose Boss Kuemon got some of them by robbing a shipment that was meant for you.”

“He did rob a shipment,” Manase acknowledged, “and I’m sure he used those arrows to kill that unknown samurai.”

“But he couldn’t have killed that young boy,” Kaze said. “You see, I found the boy’s body at the crossroads, too, and sticking from his body was the same kind of arrow that killed that samurai.”

“That boy is of no consequence,” Manase said. “He was not of the samurai class and therefore his death should have no meaning for you.”

Kaze shrugged. “Perhaps you’re right. But you see, I gave that boy his life back twice and it’s very annoying that you took it.”

Manase looked at him, puzzled, trying to fathom why the death of a peasant would concern Kaze. Kaze shifted his weight from one foot to the other and watched closely as Manase’s bow followed his body movements. Manase’s target practice was done while sitting on a moving horse and shooting at a swinging target. He was aiming at where the target would be, not where the target was. He had to anticipate the movements of the horse and the target and had to shoot the arrow to the position where the target would be when the arrow arrived. Kaze would use that knowledge.

“Of course, the most difficult part,” Kaze said, “was trying to understand why you dumped the bodies at the crossroads. I was especially curious about why you took such a roundabout route to drop the first body off. I imagine the samurai was killed someplace near your manor, yet instead of going directly from your manor to the crossroads, you loaded him onto your horse, rode southwest to Higashi village and then northwest to the crossroads. To hide your identity, you put on a Noh mask of a demon and wore a demon’s costume to frighten the peasants in Higashi village. The peasants didn’t describe it fully, but I imagine it was the
hannya
demon’s mask used in
Dojoji
. I know that’s one Noh play you practice.”

Manase made no response, but Kaze could see his lips tightening.
Kaze knew that he would soon have to attack or die where he stood. “That’s where my conversations with Nagahara Sensei proved interesting. Even though he slipped in and out of reality, he still loved to talk about the Heian era. I’m sure you know that in ancient days a gentleman was proud of his skill at archery but would often hide the fact that he had skill with a sword. Very different from today, where the sword is the soul of a warrior.

“In those days they had many interesting customs that we don’t follow today,” Kaze continued. “For instance, I’m sure you know that in many tales there are times when a noble wants to visit a friend or lover, but instead of going there directly, he first goes to another friend’s, stops there briefly, then goes to the person he really wanted to visit. That’s because people then believed that on certain days, certain directions were unlucky. If the noble was trying to visit someone to the west on a day when traveling west was unlucky, he first traveled southwest to another person, stopped, then traveled northwest to his eventual destination. He never went directly west, so he was able to get where he wanted to go without breaking the prohibition against traveling west. That’s exactly what you did.

“Nagahara Sensei said there are ancient texts that tell which directions are unlucky on which day, and I’m sure you have one of these books in your collection. On the day you killed the samurai, it was unlucky for you to travel directly west, so you went southwest to Higashi village and then northwest to the crossroads. On the day you killed the boy, it wasn’t unlucky to travel west so you skirted Suzaka village and went directly to the crossroads.

“Why you wanted to leave the bodies at the crossroads puzzled me until Nagahara Sensei told me that in ancient days, people believed that obakes would get confused by roads. I know from personal experience that obakes inhabit roads. A crossroads would be confusing to an obake, because the roads branch off in all directions. To confuse the ghosts of the samurai and the boy, you left their bodies at a crossroads where many paths converge. Their ghosts couldn’t find their way back to you, their killer.”

Kaze decided that now was the time to act. Without warning, he quickly lunged to the left, pulling out his sword. Manase reacted immediately, pulling back his bow and letting loose his arrow. But before Manase did that, Kaze had already shifted direction. His move to the left was a feint designed to get Manase to shoot where he thought Kaze would be when the arrow reached its target. Instead of continuing left, Kaze simply leaned in that direction and then immediately shifted his weight to the right. Kaze’s sword was out of its scabbard by the time the arrow neatly grazed the left sleeve of his kimono.

He closed the distance between him and Manase, expecting Manase to bend down to the quiver to grab another arrow or at least to pull out his sword. Instead, Manase, seeing his arrow had missed, dropped his bow and put up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. Kaze’s sword was already moving in a deadly arc, and it took effort on Kaze’s part to stop the swing of his sword so it didn’t cut down the helpless Manase.