Dendera (8 page)

“I’ve decided that we will postpone our plans for attacking the Village. Killing this bear has to come first.” The chief’s voice sounded reluctant, as if she were admitting defeat. “As such, we will need a new expeditionary force.”

There was no response. The old women were, to put it simply, exhausted, and they had nothing more to give. It was all they could do to pick away at the sprouts on the cold potatoes and shove the rest into their mouths. It was no time for thinking, let alone making difficult decisions.

“Next, food,” Mei Mitsuya continued, visibly irritated at the lack of response. “The storehouse was raided and we lost almost all of our potatoes, corn, beans, dried meat, and fish.”

“Is there nothing left?” This question that emerged from the gathering was enough to cause the hitherto lethargic women to perk up. Starvation, after all, was their biggest fear. Even the new threat of the bear paled in comparison with the all-pervading reality of dying through a lack of food.

“The other storehouse is fine. But the reality is we’ve lost half of our supplies. So, as from today, there will be no more daily potato ration. There’ll be less to go around from the communal pot too. And it’s all the bear’s fault—don’t forget that! Until we do something about this creature, there will be no attack on the Village and no hope for Dendera’s future.”

The potatoes in the women’s hands now felt scarce, valuable, and where many of the women used to wolf them down, now they started nibbling at them gingerly, savoring the taste, not knowing when they would have the chance to experience it again. Their sense of unease about the bear started to crystallize into something stronger.

“You should all know that there will be no peace here until we kill the bear. No one will be able to sleep safely at night until the creature is dead.” Mei was making sure that righteous indignation, fueled by a healthy dose of terror, was now the dominant feeling. “There is only one priority for us now.
Kill the bear.
The expeditionary squad will be on hunting detail every day! The other able-bodied women, gather food! And there will now be six guards posted to the storehouse at all times. The invalids will all be sheltered in the house at the west end of the village. That’s far away from the storehouse, so they should be safe there. Be sure to move the invalids and their belongings promptly. Now. What else?”

Kyu Hoshina, who had recovered somewhat, stood up quietly. “When do we give Sasaka and the others their funerals?”

“This evening. We’ll be busy hunting the bear from tomorrow, and we should do it sooner rather than later in any case. Kyu Hoshina, Hatsu Fukuzawa, Hikari Asami, Soh Kiriyama, Ume Itano. We’ll use your house. Kyu Hoshina, you lead the ceremony. Anybody who wants to help with the funeral, speak to her directly. That’s all for now. Now, nobody else get themselves killed!”

Having said what she wanted to say, Mei Mitsuya turned on her heels and retired to the second floor of her house.

What Kayu Saitoh really wanted to do now was eat her fill and then get some sleep, but she knew full well that the thin broth she had just finished eating was nowhere near enough to assuage her hunger pangs, and that in any case even if she were to try to close her eyes she would just be tormented by visions of her recent encounter with the bear. So she decided to lend Kyu Hoshina a hand with preparations for the funeral. Hatsu Fukuzawa, Somo Izumi, Itsuru Obuchi, Ate Amami, Tsugu Ohi, and Tamishi Minamide also offered to help. In truth, there wasn’t much work actually involved. Suppressing the urge to retch at the odor, they separated the piles of flesh into four mounds, removed the roundish specks of fly-eggs that had accumulated on top of the tissue, and placed the pieces of the women into makeshift baskets. That was all there was to do. None in Dendera knew the sutras, and they had no white rice or ceremonial sake in any case.

“Kayu, come along with us, why don’t you?” Hatsu Fukuzawa and Ate Amami called for her to join them as she tried to leave after the work was done. Then, for the first time since her arrival, Kayu Saitoh was given a proper tour of Dendera. Dendera ran lengthwise along the base of the Mountain. Mei Mitsuya’s manor occupied the center, with the clearing directly in front. To the east stood the two storehouses, behind which continued five huts, each with some space separating it from the others. To the west, another four huts dotted the settlement. The women led Kayu Saitoh to the west, with the Mountain on their right-hand side. Passing the huts, they continued farther, into virgin snow. Just as Kayu Saitoh began to wonder whether she was still in Dendera or on the Mountain, she saw them.

A row of large stones jutted out of the snow. Next to them were wooden planks with names crudely etched into them.

Gravestones and stupa,
Kayu Saitoh realized.

“This is where the people who died in Dendera rest,” Hatsu Fukuzawa said, coming up beside her.

“Thirty years is a long time, after all. People die. Especially old people,” Ate Amami continued. “Twenty-seven rest here in all. Well, it’ll be thirty-one from tonight, I suppose.”

“That many …” Kayu Saitoh was genuinely surprised.

“That’s right, Kayu. All those people, people you knew, lived and worked here in Dendera. They gave their blood, sweat, and tears to help build this place up to what it is today. Dendera has history.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Can you really not tell? I’m simply trying to get you to see Dendera in a more favorable light.” Ate Amami brushed snow off one of the gravestones. “You see, I always hated the idea of the Climb. It always seemed strange to me. You work hard all your life, you give your body and soul to growing food, bringing up your family, working for the Village, and then at the end of it all, just when you should be able to sit back and finally enjoy the fruits of all your labors, they take you to the top of the Mountain and dump you there. Does that really seem right to you?”

To Kayu Saitoh, though, the woman’s words were little more than tiresome grumblings. “But you’ve always known!” she said. “You’ve always known you would Climb the Mountain once you turned seventy! How can you talk about it like it was somehow unexpected? Do you think you’re fooling anyone?”

“You can think what you like,” Ate Amami replied. “I’m just saying that the structure of the Village—and the Climb—seems strange.”

“If the old people don’t Climb the Mountain, the Village will run out of food. Our families would all suffer. Isn’t that right?”

“I suppose so, but …”

“And while we’re at it,” Kayu Saitoh continued, “there’s something I wanted to ask you Hawks.”

“What is it?” Ate Amami asked.

Kayu Saitoh wanted to find the extent of their resolve. “Are you planning on killing your own children? And their families? That’s what’s going to end up happening if you attack the Village, right?”

“We—that is, the Hawks … have discussed this in some detail, of course. And we came to a decision.” Ate Amami lowered her voice. “None of us will touch our own families or friends.”

“So you’ll have your family killed by someone else and return the favor, that’s the idea?”

“Are you mocking us?” Ate Amami asked, her face serious.

“No,” Kayu Saitoh said, equally serious. “It makes perfect sense. Who would want to kill their own children or their friends, after all?”

“When my son brought me up the Mountain, he was crying. He was a good boy.” Ate Amami’s expression was one of pure anguish. “That was eleven years ago. He’ll be sixty-seven, now. He’ll Climb the Mountain in three years.”

Unrelenting, Kayu Saitoh said, “And because he’s a man he won’t be welcome in Dendera. Rejected by the Village
and
Dendera. In the end, everyone just becomes a burden. Why couldn’t we have just died properly on the Mountain?”

“My son … is he well?” Ate Amami asked.

“Yes, he’s fine.” Kayu Saitoh nodded. “He’s a hard worker, always looking out for the Village.”

“That’s good,” Ate Amami said with a genuine smile. “And Kayu, how about your son? How old will he be now?”

“Fifty-five. And I suppose you lot want to murder him too? I won’t allow it, you know!”

She was seething with anger now, but there was also something else—all the memories of her son and her family, all flooding back to her. It was overwhelming.

“As you say, Kayu. The more you think about it the more complicated it gets.” Ate Amami looked up at the sky and then gradually back down to earth, gazing at the gravestones. “When I think of Dendera, what has happened here, and the thirty-one people who have died, it fills me with hatred, and I want to destroy everything, kill everyone. But then I think of the Village, and the children who live there, and I wonder whether perhaps I’m the villain.”

“Then
don’t
kill anyone. Just die yourself.” Kayu Saitoh felt a reaction to that phrase—
villain—
but she covered it up. Why she reacted, and why she covered it up, she didn’t know.

“The problem, Kayu, is that we are no longer the same people that we once were. Our world is no longer limited to just the Village and the Mountain. We are in Dendera now. Things are different. We can think in new ways.”

“Oh, is
that
what it is? A
new way
? And here’s me thinking you just want to attack the Village that brought you into this world and looked after you all these years. Disgraceful! You should be ashamed of yourself,” Kayu said.

“Come on, Kayu.” Hatsu Fukuzawa broke her silence. “Look at where you are. Standing before these graves. Can you really still say that, here of all places?”

“I’ll say it wherever I am,” Kayu Saitoh said.

“These people, they all wanted to
live.
They didn’t want to die. They survived, best they could. Who are you to deny them that?” Hatsu Fukuzawa squatted down in front of one of the graves and brushed away some of the snow that had settled on it. “Look, it’s so cold here that even the stone is cracking.”

It’s not like I killed her,
Kayu Saitoh thought, but she couldn’t find the right words to say it out loud. She felt as if her throat were jammed with jagged little pebbles, and she realized it was becoming harder for her to proclaim her thoughts and beliefs with confidence. She still wanted to Climb the Mountain, she would try to tell herself in her heart of hearts, but there was something about the words that rang false now. She didn’t want it to be false, of course, not for one moment, and she was still disgusted by the cowardliness of the women who chose to live in Dendera, but she found that when she put those thoughts into words they seemed too simplistic, almost glib. She realized that she herself was now tarnished with the same brush, and she thought again about Ate Amami’s
villains
and realized that even though she herself was hardly in the same category as the others, perhaps the label could be applied to her too.

“If we attack the Village, I may have to end up killing Ate’s or Somo’s sons and friends,” Hatsu Fukuzawa said, standing up. “In truth, it’ll probably be hard.”

“Then
don’t
kill anyone. Just die yourself.” Kayu Saitoh found herself using the same words again.

“You can say that, but I’m
going
to kill them. And I’m
not
going to die.” Hatsu Fukuzawa met her stare. “Do you know why? Because I’m a part of Dendera. I don’t belong to the Village anymore.”

“Well look at you, with your new life and new creed, all full of yourself.”

“I’d say the same to you. You’re even more dishonest than we are. You’re even more conceited than us. You don’t take a stance on anything and just complain about everything.
You
should be ashamed. You’re the villain. Why don’t you try making a decision and acting on it?”

Hatsu Fukuzawa’s words hit the mark, but Kayu Saitoh didn’t intend to change the way she thought, so she left the two old women and the twenty-seven gravestones. She thought about life and death and allowing people to live or killing them instead. In the end, she wanted to hear from people who lived as if they were dead, and so she walked to the westernmost hut. An emotion whirled about in the back of her mind, neither elation nor anxiety.

Six women were in the hut. Two were Mitsugi Kaneda and Shima Iijima, three she couldn’t quite place, and the last was Kura Kuroi.

Kura Kuroi was nearly skin and bones. She had become even more gaunt than when Kayu Saitoh last saw her. Her head, its cranium bulbous, seemed oddly large, and her body paper-thin. The white robe truly suited her.

“Oh, Kayu,” Kura Kuroi said from where she lay on the hard floor. She turned her head with apparent weight. “I thought you’d come visit me sooner. It took you so long. Well? What’s wrong? Why are you so quiet? It’s me. Look, I’m alive, aren’t I? I’m no corpse yet. I’m still all here. You have nothing to fear. You have no reason to be sad. You have no reason to be so quiet.”

Finally, with considerable effort, Kayu Saitoh forced herself to say, “You can talk, that’s for sure. You’re in good spirits.”

Spreading out straw on the floor, Mitsugi Kaneda said, “You, give me a hand. We have to prepare their bedding.”

Kayu Saitoh nodded, and as she helped pull apart the piles of straw left near the dirt-floor entrance, she looked around at the women. One of them she hadn’t recognized at first, due to the woman’s advancing age and the grime that caked her hair and skin, she now saw was Seto Matsuura. The woman’s Climb had taken place twenty-one years earlier. Back in the Village, the younger women had sought her advice. Now, she appeared to have gone completely senile, huddled over like a monkey, her mouth hanging open for no reason. Thinking her unsightly, Kayu Saitoh focused on pulling apart the straw. A cluster of straw slid off the top of the pile and hit the back of one of the sitting women, who flailed and fell over more than was strictly necessary. This too was unsightly, so Kayu Saitoh told her to get out of the way.

“Ah, she can’t,” Shima Iijima said. “She’s blind.”

That meant the woman was Sayore Nosaka. Then Kayu Saitoh remembered the last one. She was Noi Komatsu, who hadn’t the mind to count beans, let alone remember anyone’s face, but she could draw beautiful pictures in sand, and paint with crushed-flower watercolors. People like Sayore Nosaka and Noi Komatsu, if without husbands or children, were allowed to live together in a house outside the Village, but no matter their mental faculties or any other personal circumstances, all had to go to the Mountain once they turned seventy.