The Masuda Affair
Authors: I. J. Parker
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Historical, #Historical Detective, #Ancient Japan
THE MASUDA AFFAIR
Recent Titles by I. J. Parker in the Sugawara Akitada Series
THE DRAGON SCROLL
RASHOMON GATE
BLACK ARROW
ISLAND OF EXILES
THE HELL SCREEN
THE CONVICT’S SWORD
THE MASUDA AFFAIR
THE MASUDA AFFAIR
A Sugawara Akitada Mystery
I. J. Parker
© 2011 by I.J. Parker. All rights reserved.
A version of the story of the lost boy appeared previously in short story form in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
under the title ‘The O-bon Cat’.
One: The Darkness of the Heart
Seven: The House on the Uji River
Twenty: Scent of Orange Blossom
Twenty-Two: The Deadly River Gorge
I am grateful to my readers, especially Jacqueline Falkenhan and John Rosenman, for their generous comments and suggestions. Amanda Stewart, publishing director at Severn House, deserves special thanks for her clear editorial eye. And, as always, the Akitada story would not have been told without my agents: Jean Naggar, Jennifer Weltz, and Jessica Regel of the Jean V. Naggar agency. Words cannot describe what their continued support has meant.
(Japanese family names precede first names)
MAIN CHARACTERS:
| Sugawara Akitada | senior secretary in the Ministry of Justice |
| Tamako | his wife |
| Seimei | an aged family retainer of the Sugawaras |
| Tora | another retainer – young and of a romantic disposition |
| Genba | a third retainer, middle-aged and with a love for food |
| Kobe | superintendent of police |
CHARACTERS INVOLVED IN THE CASES IN OTSU:
| Lord Masuda | an old and wealthy nobleman |
| Masuda Tadayori | his dead son |
| Lady Masuda | his daughter-in-law; first lady of his late son |
| Lady Kohime | his other daughter-in-law; second lady of his late son |
| two little girls | Kohime’s daughters |
| Mrs Ishikawa | their nurse |
| Ishikawa | her son, steward to Lord Sadanori |
| Peony | late courtesan kept by Masuda Tadayori |
| Little Abbess | her maid |
| Mrs Yozaemon | a poor widow in Otsu |
| Manjiro | her teenage son |
| Nakano | a judge |
| Takechi | a warden |
| the Mimuras | a fisherman and his wife |
| the deaf-mute boy Dr Inabe (also, a cat) | the Mimuras’ alleged son a physician |
CHARACTERS INVOLVED IN THE CASE IN THE CAPITAL:
| Fujiwara Sadanori | a powerful nobleman and relative of the chancellor |
| Lady Saisho | his mother |
| Seijiro | her servant |
| Hanae | a pretty dancer from the amusement quarter |
| Ohiya | her dancing master |
| Mrs Hamada | her nosy neighbor |
| an elusive monk and assorted prostitutes (also, a shaggy dog) |
H
e was on his homeward journey when he found the boy. At the time, caught in the depth of hopelessness and grief, he did not understand the significance of their meeting.
Sugawara Akitada, a member of the privileged class and moderately successful in the service of the emperor, was barely in the middle of his life and already sick of it. He used to counter hardship, humiliation, and even imminent death, with courage, and he had drawn fresh zest for new obstacles from his achievements, but when his young son had died during that spring’s smallpox epidemic, he found no solace. He went through the motions of daily life as if he were no part of them, as if the man he once was had departed with the smoke from his son’s funeral pyre, leaving behind an empty shell inhabited by a stranger.
The poets called it the ‘darkness of the heart’, this inconsolable grief a parent feels after the death of a child, a despair of life that clouds the mind and makes a torment of day-to-day existence.
Having completed an assignment in Hikone two days earlier, Akitada rode along the southern shore of Lake Biwa in a steady drizzle. The air was saturated with moisture, his clothes clung uncomfortably, and both rider and horse were sore from the wooden saddle. This was the fifteenth day of the watery month, in the rainy season. The road had long since become a muddy track where puddles hid deep pits in which a horse could break its leg. It became clear that he could not reach his home in the capital, but would have to spend the night in Otsu.
In Otsu, wives or parents would bid farewell, perhaps forever, to their husbands or sons when they left the capital
to begin their service in distant provinces. Akitada himself had felt the uncertainty of life on such occasions. But those days seemed in a distant past now. He cared little what lay ahead, and his wife cared little about him.
Near dusk he passed through a dense forest. Darkness closed in, falling with the misting rain from the branches above and creeping from the dank shadows of the woods. When he could no longer see the road clearly, he dismounted. Leading his tired horse, he trudged onward in squelching boots and sodden straw rain cape and thought of death.
He was still in the forest when a child’s whimpering roused him from his grief. He stopped and called out, but there was no answer, and all was still again except for the dripping rain. He was almost certain the sound had been human, but the eeriness of a child’s pitiful weeping in this lonely, dark place on his lonely, dark journey seemed too cruel a coincidence. This was the first night of the three day O-bon festival, the night when the spirits of the dead return to their homes for a visit before departing for another year.
If his own son’s soul was seeking its way home, Yori would not find his father there. Would he cry for him from the darkness? Akitada shivered and shook off his sick fancies. Such superstitions were for simpler, more trusting minds. How far was Otsu?
Then he heard it again.
‘Who is that? Come out where I can see you!’ he bellowed angrily into the darkness. His horse twitched its ears and shook its head.
Something pale detached itself from one of the tree trunks and crept closer. A small boy. He caught his breath and called out, ‘Yori?’
Foolishness! This was no ghost. It was a ragged child with huge frightened eyes in a pale face, a boy nothing at all like Yori. Yori had been handsome, well-nourished, and sturdy. This boy in his filthy, torn shirt had sticks for arms and legs. He looked permanently hungry, a living ghost.
‘Are you lost, child?’ asked Akitada, more gently, wishing he had food in his saddlebags. The boy remained silent and kept his distance.
‘What is your name?’
No answer.
‘Where do you live?’
Silence.
The child probably knew his way around these woods better than Akitada. With a farewell wave, Akitada resumed his journey. The rain stopped, and soon the trees thinned and the darkness receded slightly. Grey dusk filtered through the branches, and ahead lay a paler sliver which was the lake and – thank heaven – the many small golden points of light, like a gathering of fireflies, that were the dwellings of Otsu. He glanced back at the dark forest, and there, not ten feet behind, waited the child.
‘Do you want to come with me then?’ Akitada asked.
The boy said nothing, but he edged closer until he stood beside the horse. Akitada saw that his ragged shirt was soaked and clung to the ribs of his small chest.
A deaf-mute? Oh well, perhaps someone in Otsu would know the boy.
Bending down, Akitada lifted him into the saddle. He weighed so little, poor sprite, that he would hardly trouble the horse. He took the bridle again and trudged on. For the rest of their journey, Akitada looked back from time to time to make sure the boy had not fallen off. Now and then he asked him a question or made a comment, but the child did not respond in any way. He sat quietly, almost expectantly, in the saddle as they approached Otsu.
Ahead beckoned bonfires, quickly assembled after the rain to welcome the spirits of the dead. Most people believed that spirits got lost, like this child, and also that they felt hunger. In Otsu’s cemetery tiny lights blinked, marking a trail to town, and in the doorway of every home offerings of food and water awaited the returning souls, those hungry ghosts depicted in temple paintings, skeletal creatures with distended bellies, condemned to eat excrement or suffer unending hunger and thirst as punishment for their wasteful lives.
In the market, people were shopping for the three-day festival. The doors of houses stood wide open, and inside
Akitada could see spirit altars erected before the family shrines, heaped with more fine things to eat and drink. So much good food wasted on ghosts!
They passed a rice-cake vendor with trays of fragrant white cakes. Yori had loved rice cakes filled with sweet bean jam. Akitada dug two coppers from his sash and bought one for the boy. The child received it with solemn dignity and bowed his thanks before gobbling it down. As miserable and hungry as this urchin was, he had not forgotten his manners. Akitada was intrigued and decided to do his best for the child.
He stopped people to ask if they knew the boy or his family, but eventually grew weary of the disclaimers and headed for an inn. The boy had looked around curiously, but given no sign of recognition. In the inn yard, Akitada lifted him from the saddle and, with a sigh, took the small hand in his as they entered the ‘Inn of Happy Returns’.
‘A room,’ Akitada told the innkeeper, slipping off the sodden straw cape and his wet boots and dropping them on the stone flags of the entrance hall. And a bath. Then some hot food and wine.’
The host was a stocky man with a dandified mustache above fleshy lips. He was staring at the ragged child. ‘Is he with you, sir?’
‘Unless you know where he lives, he’s with me,’ Akitada snapped irritably. ‘Oh, I suppose you’d better send someone out for new clothes for him. He looks to be about five.’ He fished silver from his sash, ignoring the stunned look on the man’s face.
After inspecting the room, he took the child to the bath.
Helping a small boy with his bath again was unexpectedly painful, and tears filled Akitada’s eyes. He blinked them away, blaming such emotion on fatigue and pity for the child. The shirt had done little to conceal his thinness, but naked he was a far more shocking sight. Not only was every bone clearly visible under the sun-darkened skin, but the protruding belly spoke of malnutrition, and there were bruises from beatings.
Judging by the state of his long, matted hair and his filthy
feet and hands, the bath was a novel experience for him. Akitada borrowed scissors and a comb from the bath attendant and tended to his hair and nails, trying to be as gentle as he could. The boy submitted bravely to these ministrations and to a subsequent cleansing of his body with a bucket of warm water and a small bag filled with buckwheat hulls. Afterwards, while they were soaking in the large tub, as he had done so many times with Yori, Akitada fought tears again.