The Masuda Affair (3 page)

For the next hour, he wandered despairingly about town, trying to think of a way to rescue the boy, knowing he should return to the inn, saddle his horse, and go home to be with his wife.

And then he saw the cat again.

H
e recognized it immediately: the brown and white fur arranged in irregular patches; the scarred face with one eye half closed so that it seemed to be winking; the tear in the right ear. It sat on an upturned basket behind a vegetable stall, looking at him and twitching its tail.

Perhaps it was the festival’s peculiar atmosphere, or his own confused emotions, but Akitada was suddenly convinced that the cat was his link to the boy. This time he knew better than to rush the animal. He approached slowly, making soft clicking noises with his tongue as he had heard his sisters do when they called their kitten. The cat winked, slipped down from the basket in one fluid motion, and strolled away.

Akitada followed, keeping his distance, waiting as the animal stopped to examine garbage in gutters and alleyways for bits of food. He had no idea what he would do if he caught the cat, and he did not worry about the peculiar figure he made, following a mangy cat up and down dark alleys in his heavy silk hunting robe and stiff hat. At one point the cat paused to consume a large fish head someone had tossed out of a restaurant. Akitada hurriedly purchased a lantern from the shopkeeper next door, overpaying the man in his haste not to lose the cat. Eventually, the animal stopped scavenging and moved on more purposefully.

They left the business district behind. The streets grew darker, there were fewer people about, and the sounds of the market receded until they were alone on a residential street, the cat a pale shadow in the distance. A pearly moon cast its uncertain light as remnants of clouds moved slowly across it. Akitada picked up his pace. Occasionally, the light of lanterns or torches inside a walled compound threw weird
shadows through the intervening trees. Puddles still glinted here and there in the potholes and cart tracks of the road, and Akitada hoped it would not start to rain again. He had the strangest sense that he and the cat moved towards some unearthly place, that the cat was leading him among the ghosts. He was being foolish, but in his misery, he relinquished his common sense willingly. It was a faculty that had never been particularly useful when it came to human emotions.

The cat appeared to have a definite destination. It kept up a steady and direct route towards the lake. The streets became darker, the lights from dwellings fewer. When they reached the road along the lake, Akitada saw that the wealthy people of Otsu and summer visitors from the capital had built their villas here to catch the cool breezes and have a view of the distant mountains. Their gardens were large, and the walls and gates in good repair. The sweet scent of flowers came over the walls, made sweeter by the moisture which still lingered from the rain. Somewhere a reed warbler called and was answered. Charming rustic roofs peeked from the trees, or elegantly tiled ones, and occasionally, where a wall was low and the trees not dense, he caught a gleam of the moon-silvered lake.

Imperceptibly he relaxed and smiled to find himself on this adventure with a cat. Then, abruptly, the moon disappeared behind clouds, the street was plunged into sudden darkness, and he could no longer see the cat. When the moon came out again, he strained his eyes and started to run. The street lay before him, long, straight, and empty. The cat was gone. With a ghostlike suddenness it had disappeared into the darkness as if it had never been.

Akitada stopped and looked everywhere. Nothing. Panic rose for a moment, then abated into defeat. In the distance sounded a temple bell. He turned to go back to the inn.

When the ringing of the bell stopped, he heard the slow clacking of wooden sandals. An old man approached, paused, and produced a pair of wooden clappers which he beat together vigorously, calling out in a reedy voice, ‘The Rat … The hour of the rat … The Rat.’

A night watchman. And it was the middle of the night already. Most decent people were in their beds.

Akitada called out, ‘Do you happen to know who owns a brown-and-white cat hereabout?’

The watchman raised his lantern to look at him. ‘You mean Patch, sir? Nobody owns him. He lives in the dead courtesan’s house.’ The watchman pointed to the gate of one of the lakeside villas. ‘A visitor in town, sir?’ he asked.

‘Yes, a visitor.’ Akitada looked at the wall and gate and saw that it did not match the neat appearance of the rest of the street. Plaster had fallen, exposing the wood and mud construction, and in one place a large section had collapsed, mocking the heavily barred wooden gate by allowing easy access to cats and humans alike.

Patch? The cat was spotted. Surely, the boy had recognized the cat and tried to call its name. ‘The dead courtesan’s house?’ he asked the watchman, who seemed amused by the odd encounter on the moonlit street.

‘Nobody lives there anymore,’ the watchman said. ‘It’s a sad ruin. The cat belonged to her.’

‘Really? Who owns the property? I might want to buy it.’

‘Ah.’ The watchman’s curiosity was satisfied. The rich, not having regular work, kept peculiar hours, but that was not his concern. He shook his head. ‘Dear me, not that place, sir. She killed herself because her lover left her to starve. They say her angry ghost roams the garden to catch unwary men to have her revenge on. I never go near it myself’ He produced a wheezing laugh. ‘Not that she’ll have much use for an old stick like me, but you’d better keep your distance, sir.’

Akitada looked at the watchman. It was the middle of the O-bon festival, and the old man was clearly superstitious, but somehow the tale of a haunted house fitted his own mood. ‘How did she die?’

‘Drowned herself in the lake. Pity. They say she was a rare beauty.’

‘Were there any children?’

‘If so, they’re long gone. The house belongs to the Masudas now.’

Akitada thanked him, and the man resumed his rounds, making a wide detour around the broken wall and barred gate.

Akitada walked to the collapsed wall and peered into the overgrown garden. Trees and shrubs hid all but the corner of an elegantly curved roof. Up ahead the night watchman looked back and shook his head at such foolhardiness. Akitada waved and waited for him to disappear before scrambling over the rubble into the garden. He was trespassing and felt foolish, but was more determined to find the cat than ever.

A humid, stagnant atmosphere received him. Dripping vines, brambles, and creepers covered shrubs and trees. His feeble lantern gilded wet leaves and picked out a stone Buddha, half-hidden beneath a blanket of ivy. Strange rustlings, squeaks, and creaks sounded everywhere, and clouds of small gnats hovered in the beam of his light. The air was oppressive and vaguely threatening. The cat’s coming and going had left a narrow track which soon disappeared under dense vegetation. Akitada followed it, but had to take detours and lost the way. His progress was noisy with snapping twigs, and he wondered vaguely about the neighbors. Surely no one else was out at this time. When he felt a tug at his sleeve, he swung around, his heart beating, but he had only brushed the branch of a gaunt cedar.

He would have turned back, if he had not heard the sound of a door or shutter slamming. Perhaps it had been the cat, or some beggar finding refuge in the deserted house, or even the wind from the lake beyond, but it was enough to make Akitada press on.

When he reached the house, he was covered with scratches, itching from insect bites, and his topknot was askew. But there, on the veranda, sat the cat, waiting.

The villa looked small, dark, and empty, its shutters broken, the paper covering its windows hanging in shreds, and many of its roof tiles had shattered on the ground. The balustrade of the veranda leaned at a crazy angle, and where there had been doors, black cavernous spaces gaped in the walls. It must have been charming once, poised just above the lake
in its lush gardens, a nobleman’s retreat from official affairs in the capital, or – as the watchman had implied – his secret love nest.

The lake stretched, dull silver, towards a distant shore that wore a necklace of tiny lights. People were still welcoming the return of their dead. Here, in this dark and deserted villa, no one had lit candles or set up an altar to welcome the spirit of the unhappy woman who used to live in it. Only the water lapped gently among the reeds along the bank, but Akitada suddenly felt a ghostlike presence and shivered. He looked about, then walked up to the ruined house. The cat watched him with unblinking eyes, motionless until he was close enough to touch it. But when he stretched out a tentative hand, it slipped away and disappeared inside. He called its name softly, but the animal did not reappear.

The veranda steps were missing, as was most of the floor. The house, which had been vandalized for useful building materials, had become inaccessible to all but cats. He was turning away, when he heard an eerie sound from inside, a soft wail definitely not made by a cat. He swung around and caught a movement inside.

He thought a tall pale shape – a woman trailing some diaphanous garment? – had moved past the opening to one of the corner rooms. Akitada felt the hair bristle on his neck and called out, ‘Who’s there?’ He got no answer.

Walking quickly around the corner of the house, he climbed one of the supports of the veranda and held up his lantern. He directed its beam into the room where he had seen the woman. It was empty. Dead leaves lay in the corners, and rainwater had gathered in puddles on the remaining floor. In spite of the warm and humid night, Akitada felt a sudden chill.

When he jumped down from his perch, his foot landed on something that broke with a sharp crack. The lantern revealed a shimmer of black lacquer and mother-of-pearl: a wooden toy sword, proof that a small boy had once lived here. He picked up the hilt and choked with pain; the sword was identical to the one he had bought Yori during the last
winter of his life. A costly toy, it had been lacquered and ornamented to resemble the weapon of an adult. Yori’s delight in it, and the times they had spent practicing swordplay in the courtyard at home, had been more than worth the expense. When the memory faded into the familiar bitterness, an irrational fear gripped Akitada. He stumbled away from the haunted villa, plunging back into the wilderness. He scrambled through as fast as he could, and when he reached the broken wall again, his heart was pounding and he was out of breath.

The street lay empty, the watchman long gone. Dejected, Akitada returned to the inn. He was no closer to helping the boy or making sense of what was troubling him. A courtesan’s ghost, a feral cat, and an expensive toy? What did they mean? He was too weary to think.

In spite of his exhaustion, he slept poorly. The encounter with the child had brought back all the old grief and added new fears. He lay awake for a long time, thinking that he had abandoned the boy to his fate without lifting a finger to help him and remembering the guilt of having neglected his own son during the time of the pestilence. When he finally fell asleep, his dreams were filled with snarling cats and hungry ghosts. The ghosts had the face of the boy and followed him about, their thin arms stretched out in entreaty.

Towards dawn he woke, drenched in sweat, certain that he had heard Yori cry out for him from the next room. For a single moment of joy he thought his son’s death part of the dream, but then he felt the tears on his face and knew he was gone. The dark and lonely room of the inn closed in around him, and he plunged back into despair.

Waking was always the hardest.

The final day of the O-Bon festival dawned clear and dry. If the weather held, Akitada could reach the capital in a few hours’ ride, but he decided to chance it and spend the morning trying to find out more about the boy, the cat, and the dead courtesan. He thought, half guiltily and half resentfully, of his waiting wife, but women seemed to draw on inner strengths when it came to losing a child. In the
months since Yori’s death, Tamako had quietly resumed her daily routines, while he had sunk into despair.

The sun sparkled off the waters of the lake, and behind him rose the green mountains, Hieizan towering above the rest. The surface of the lake was dotted with slender fishing boats and the large white sails of ships making their way both north and south, carrying goods and people. Otsu was a harbor for the capital and bustled with business. Today was the day of parting from the dead for another year.

Akitada set his mind on the needs of the living, on a small deaf-mute boy who might have a connection with an abandoned villa belonging to the Masudas. He left the business streets of the town behind and climbed the road to the green hillside overlooking it.

The curving roofs of the Masuda mansion rose behind a high wall. Its large gate was closed, in spite of the festival. Perhaps the Masudas feared their ghosts. Akitada rapped sharply. A window in the porter’s lodge slid open, and a very old man peered out. Akitada gave his name, adding, ‘I’m calling on Lord Masuda.’

‘The master’s not well. He sees no one,’ wheezed the ancient one.

‘Then perhaps one of the ladies will receive me?’

The window grate slid shut and there was the sound of steps shuffling off. After a moment, the gate creaked open, and Akitada was admitted to a large courtyard covered with gravel and shaded by trees. The splendor of the mansion amazed him. Blue tiles gleamed on the roofs, red and black lacquer covered doors and pillars, and everywhere he saw carvings, gilded ornaments, and glazed terracotta figures.

The old man led the way. They climbed the wide stairs of the main building and passed through it. Akitada caught glimpses of a painted ceiling supported by ornamented pillars, of thick grass mats and silk cushions, and of large, dim scroll paintings. Then they descended into a private garden. A covered gallery led to a second, slightly smaller hall. Here the old servant asked him to wait.

Akitada stood in the gallery and looked about him. This world was beautiful and remote from the bustle of the streets
of Otsu and from the ragged boy. Great wealth had raised these many tiled roofs with their carved eaves and lacquered columns. Great wealth and exquisite taste had laid out the gardens that surrounded the halls and pavilions. But where were the maids, gardeners, stable boys, sweepers, cooks, carpenters, and pages who tended all this? The grounds were too quiet, almost deserted, though the buildings and the garden seemed in good repair.