Dendera (11 page)

Her head spinning, Kayu Saitoh muttered, “You’re going to use her as a decoy? She’s still alive. We can fix her.”

“She’s been shredded apart from her stomach down. It’s hopeless.”

“Shit!”

Kayu Saitoh pushed away the chief’s hands and looked over her shoulder to Hono Ishizuka, whose expression remained unchanged.

“I have no objections to the idea,” Hono Ishizuka said.

“What kind of Dove are you?” Kayu Saitoh snapped. “You’re a hypocrite.”

“I am no such thing. The Doves are called Doves because our utmost priority is to make Dendera a better place to live, and so—”

“Shut up!” Kayu Saitoh interrupted, leaping for the woman. She couldn’t tell if Hono Ishizuka tried to resist her or not, but with the force with which she threw herself at the woman, it didn’t matter. She toppled the woman and pinned her to the floor with ease. Just as she got the idea to split open the woman’s stomach so she’d know how Kura Kuroi felt, Kayu Saitoh was peeled off and got pinned to the ground herself. As the other woman held her down, Hono Ishizuka quietly arose, looked down at her, and told her that she mustn’t use violence.

“What you all are trying to do,” Kayu Saitoh shouted, “
that’s
violence.” But her words didn’t resound within any of the women, nor did it impel them to reflect upon their thinking.

Instead, Hono Ishizuka continued, saying, “Kayu, I already explained to you that Dendera has several rules, one of which is that violence is forbidden. Violence threatens destruction upon Dendera’s fragile order.”

“
Violence? Destruction?
Last time I looked, Dendera is about to be destroyed by the
bear’s
violence!”

“Please don’t change the subject. We’re talking about you, not the bear.”

“I don’t want another word from you murderers!”

“Kayu, enough,” Kura Kuroi said, her voice a shadow of a whisper. “We can catch the bear by surprise. With my body, we can do that. That’s something to be happy for. I never thought this inferior body could be of such use.”

Still in shock, Kayu Saitoh muttered, “Happy? Are you stupid? Has life among all the fools of Dendera turned you stupid? How could you talk like that?”

“Kayu Saitoh!” Mei Mitsuya barked, thrusting her torch in front of the pinned woman’s eyes. The heat felt searingly hot against Kayu Saitoh’s eyeballs, but she didn’t close them. “You broke the rules,” the chief said.

“How can you talk about rules at a time like this?” Kayu Saitoh said.

“A time like this? Yes, we are in a state of emergency. And you’ll ruin us by butting in with your tiresome feelings. You’re deplorable. Take her away.”

Kayu Saitoh was to be forcibly removed from the hut before she was finished. But she had resisted all she could, and it had been for nothing. She decided to hold her tongue.

Then she heard Kura Kuroi feebly say, “I’m not stupid. I’ve found honor, far more than I’d ever known in the Village.”

Kayu Saitoh was taken to the manor.

Kaga Kasugai held her right arm, and Hotori Oze restrained her left, while Nokobi Hidaka and Tahi Kitajima blocked her escape to the front and behind respectively. Kayu Saitoh had no choice but to obey. The first time she’d been inside the manor, she hadn’t noticed the hole in the ground toward the rear of the earthen-floor entryway. Dirt had been dug and packed into ten steps leading belowground, and as the five women descended them, Kayu Saitoh felt a cool, moist breeze. At the bottom of the steps was a tiny room barred by six wooden poles. It was a jail. Kaga Kasugai wiggled the rightmost pole forward and back, releasing it, and tossed Kayu Saitoh inside. Then Kaga Kasugai and Tahi Kitajima went back up the stairs.

“Kayu, stay in there a little while,” Nokobi Hidaka said from the other side of the bars. “I understand how you must feel, but you mustn’t use violence.”

Choosing agreement over sarcasm, Kayu Saitoh said, “Apparently not.” She knew she needed to use her head now. “How long will I be in here?”

“Usually it’s for ten days, but I think you’ll only have two or three days this time, circumstances being what they are.”

“But the bear might come back today.”

“Not with how much it ate,” Nokobi Hidaka said. “We’ll be safe for today.” She scrunched her eyebrows, seeming to be picturing the bloody leavings of the brute’s feast and unable to decide if she should feel sickened or saddened.

“Tell me, why is violence so taboo here?” Kayu Saitoh asked. “I hardly did anything, and now I’m stuck in this cage.”

“Hono told you. The day we allow violence to happen here, everything will be destroyed.”

“The Village had violence.”

“It did.” Nokobi Hidaka sighed heavily, her breath white. “It was awful.”

Violence occurred often in the Village, though not between individuals. As the Mountain-Barring demonstrated, such incidents had been cleverly replaced by violence between individuals and the Village as a whole. For example, if a man had his romantic advances spurned by a woman, and he tried to vent his pent-up frustrations by spreading false claims against her, a violent act called the “Slack-Mouth” was permitted. The man was made to stand in public, while the woman and the members of her family could each place one stone in his mouth and punch him one time. For the next few weeks, the people of the Village made much merriment in exaggerating tales of the broken, sorry state of his teeth. Similarly, if a married person committed adultery, the “Slack-Groin” was sanctioned, and the guilty party and his or her partner were made to stand in public, where they were forcibly stripped, whether it was summer or winter, then ordered to have intercourse, while the people of the Village could cheer and applaud as they threw rocks at the couple.

When violence came, it was blind to the age and sex and social standing of its subjects. The judgments were as coldhearted as they were absolute, as if the Village itself was committing the act. Violence served to wipe away the people’s weariness and frustrations and made the Village function as one entity. It served both this purpose and to educate as well. The children were not only shown these many violences, such as Mountain Barring, the Slack-Mouth, and the Slack-Groin, but they were taught to enjoy them. Because they wanted to see something fun, children would report infractions, and because they didn’t want to become targeted, they behaved themselves. The Village was managed through violence, and Climbing the Mountain was the foremost example.

Nokobi Hidaka said, “Mei has no intention of running Dendera through violence like the Village does. I’ve lived here for eighteen years now. I’m an old-timer. So I know how Mei does things. She forbade all forms of violence. She didn’t even make an outlet for it.”

“And yet everything has worked out?”

“We’re so busy scrounging for food each day that we don’t have time for violence in the first place.”

“Nokobi Hidaka, I think you’re hiding something,” Kayu Saitoh said, pointing a finger at her. “You know the real reason violence is forbidden in Dendera, don’t you?”

“That’s enough,” Hotori Oze said, stepping forward.

Nokobi Hidaka placed her hand on her stooping back and climbed the stairs.

Hotori Oze watched the woman go, then wedged her face between the wooden bars, locked eyes with Kayu Saitoh, and said, “No more prying. That’s an order, Kayu Saitoh.”

Kayu Saitoh was always quick to accept any challenge or provocation, but this time she averted her eyes and sat down on the bare floor. Even in the Village, she hadn’t wanted anything to do with this woman.

Sixty years ago, Hotori Oze had married into the Village from her home in another land. Kayu Saitoh didn’t know from where she had come, not then and not now. The woman had appeared suddenly, showing her unfamiliar clothes and talking about unfamiliar things. Her disdain for the Village, apparent in her attitude, galled Kayu Saitoh, and when she advised the woman to correct her manners, Hotori Oze coldly replied that she didn’t have any desire to listen to Kayu Saitoh’s childish envies. Kayu Saitoh’s dislike for the woman may not have been the direct result of that incident, but it didn’t help. When Hotori Oze Climbed the Mountain seventeen years ago, Kayu Saitoh had been glad to be rid of her, though she certainly didn’t speak such thoughts aloud.

She shook off the recollection and tried to think of seventy and eighty-seven as not that far apart. Then she said, “I’m not prying. I’m just worried about the bear.”

“This is a time for self-reflection,” Hotori Oze said. “When you’re sorry for what you’ve done, you can get out of there and kill the bear. My life is not to be wasted on some animal.”

Despite her efforts, Kayu Saitoh’s tone turned belligerent. “What did you say? Are you some coward?”

“My life exists to attack the Village,” Hotori Oze replied. “To destroy the Village. To destroy the Village. To
destroy
the Village. The place where I was born was nothing like it. It was a good place.”

Saying no more, Hotori Oze disappeared up the stairs.

Kayu Saitoh was alone. With the torchlight gone, she was beset by darkness. The light of the hearth upstairs reached her so faintly that it might as well have not, and she could only barely perceive her own outline against the shadow. But even worse was the lack of heat. The cell was nearly as cold as the outside, and her nose ran, and her teeth chattered. Soon she could bear it no longer and tried to force herself to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come, and she remained awake until Nokobi Hidaka returned and provided her some straw. Normally, the prickly roughness of the stuff bothered her, but not today. She burrowed into the straw like a spoiled puppy, and gave herself over to sleep. When she awoke, neither the cold nor the dark had changed, and she hadn’t the slightest notion of how long she had slept. She sank back into the straw, deciding that even fitful sleep was preferable to thoughts of the bear and of Kura Kuroi as she suffered her continued imprisonment. She wished for a dream. She wanted to wear a kimono with beautiful colors. She wanted to have a smile on her face, a face without a wrinkle or even a single blemish. She wished for a dream of the time when she could dance and leap about in youthful exuberance. Perhaps because she wanted it too strongly, she didn’t dream at all.

Suddenly, she felt warm, and the pleasant feeling awoke her. Torch in hand, Nokobi Hidaka and Makura Katsuragawa were looking down on her.

Her voice listless, Makura Katsuragawa said, “Hey, Kayu. Looks like you’re awake.”

“Can I finally get out of here?”

“It’s only the first night,” Nokobi Hidaka said, moving her torch to direct more heat onto Kayu Saitoh.

“Then why are you two here?”

“Your dinner.” Nokobi Hidaka handed her a single potato through the prison bars.

“That’s all there is? You shouldn’t have bothered waking me.”

“Why, were you eating something nice in your dream?”

“My dream,” Kayu Saitoh said, the word carrying a sweetness. A part of her responded to the thought, trying to grab at it but failing, and in its place reality came crashing down on her. “Wait, what’s happened to Kura Kuroi?”

“She’s alive,” Nokobi Hidaka said.

“She is?”

“We were able to use snow to cover, you know, below her stomach,” Makura Katsuragawa explained. “But the blood keeps coming and coming, so the snow turned red. And the warmth of her blood keeps melting it, and—”

Growing irritated at the woman’s endless, graphic description, Kayu Saitoh cut in, asking, “And she’s fine like that?”

“I wouldn’t say she’s fine. We’ve slowed her blood loss, but we can’t save her life.”

“You all want to use her for bear bait, so you don’t
need
to save her life. If that’s all she is to you people, then end her misery. Why needlessly prolong her life? She must be suffering. She must want to die.”

Kayu Saitoh punched the bars that separated herself from the two women, but all it did was make her hand hurt.

“We have a message from Mei Mitsuya,” Nokobi Hidaka said, ignoring the display. “ ‘You will be released early next morning. I want you to join the ambush with haste.’ ”

“I’d do that without being told. What I want to know is, is Kura Kuroi—”

“Let me finish,” Nokobi Hidaka interrupted. Her voice carried the cool composure only possessed by those who had learned to let go of what they couldn’t change. “ ‘There is but one plan. Kura Kuroi’s body will be the decoy. The ambush party will hide in the hut with her and wait for the bear. When the beast comes for Kura Kuroi, we will charge the bear and stab it with our spears. Kura Kuroi consents to the plan with enthusiasm.’ ”

Kayu Saitoh waited, but when the woman didn’t continue, she said, “Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“I don’t understand. Why would Kura Kuroi be enthusiastic?”

“Do you really not get it?” Nokobi Hidaka asked.

“Huh?”

“Then I pity both of you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kayu Saitoh asked, but Nokobi Hidaka didn’t respond, instead departing with Makura Katsuragawa.

Kayu Saitoh thought about going back to sleep, but she wasn’t tired. On the other hand, she recognized that twisting in her thoughts inside the jail would be pointless. And so, without eating her potato, she sank back into the straw and closed her eyes.

Things not wished for will come; Kayu Saitoh dreamed. Wearing a kimono of vivid reds and yellows, her younger self frolicked, her wanderings eventually leading her to the monthly hut that stood at the boundary between the Village and the Mountain. During menses, the women would be moved to the monthly hut, which stood a distance from the Village. When they moved in, they brought rice with them, and each day they worked the fields, returning at night to eat their cold rice as blood smeared their nether regions. Kayu Saitoh was of the age where her first menstruation could come at any moment. She hadn’t intended to walk here, and she regretted finding herself nearby the shack. But she felt that to leave would be like running away, so this time she purposefully approached the structure. The smell of blood grew heavy, and she could hear women talking. Their conversations were typical gossip: this man in that house was kind; this woman in that house was miserly; those sorts of topics. Kayu Saitoh found it distasteful that these women, who did nothing in particular to relieve their affliction, cheerfully chatted as if nothing were out of the ordinary, while they sullied their thighs and their plain kimono. She thought of how in the not too distant future, she would be inside there, chatting casually and shoveling down cold rice as her unclean blood flowed freely, and she reviled that future self. But back then, she hadn’t been able to think of what would come later. She couldn’t imagine what she would be like when her menses stopped coming and her teeth fell out from old age. All of the problems that came with dotage were tidily resolved in a turn of phrase: Climb the Mountain. Even as she gained in years, this remained unchanged. The only thing that changed this outlook—the thing that had forced her to change it—was her failed Climb and the beginning of her new life in Dendera.