Death on an Autumn River (2 page)

Akitada’s clerk, Sadenari, was with them.  The boy was nineteen and made him nervous with his awkward efforts to impress his superior.  The young man was the son of a low-ranking official and had proved neither very capable nor useful.  Being the newest member of the ministry, he was assigned to Akitada because he could be spared most easily.

As senior secretary in the Ministry of Justice, Akitada traveled on official business to the city of Naniwa on the Inland Sea.  More elegant travel arrangements could have been made — he was entitled to them by rank and position — but he wanted to arrive with as little fanfare as possible.  His true assignment, the delicate matter of finding out the truth about recent pirate attacks, must remain a secret.  Ostensibly, he carried legal documents and instructions to the Naniwa office that handled matters of shipping goods from foreign countries and the western provinces to the capital.

Like most of the passengers, he was in a pleasant and soporific mood.  Now and then a fish jumped in the distance, egrets made brilliant splashes of white against the dark green shoreline, and for a while seagulls had been circling overhead.  Their boat would soon reach the coast.  Soon enough he would have to deal with matters he knew little about. Anyone on this boat probably knew more about shipping and piracy than he did.  The problem was that he could not ask questions and must learn from observation.

Pushing up a sleeve, he dipped his hand into the river.  The water was cool on his wrist, and he instantly felt refreshed.  They were turning into a bend of the river and the shore was coming closer. The curved roof of an elegant pavilion appeared among the trees.

There was a good deal of river traffic, coming and going between Naniwa and the inland towns and temples, but Akitada had not seen any villages or farms for a while.  The pavilion had slender red-lacquered columns and a blue-tiled roof, and its veranda was suspended above the water.  It was beautiful, almost other-worldly in its perfection.  He watched it slowly gliding past, a dwelling fit for the heavenly beings in the western paradise.

Perhaps someday, he would build himself a small house on a river: a simple building of plain wood with a roof of pine bark so that squirrels and monkeys could play on it without sliding off.  He would take his family there during the hottest weeks of summer.  His little daughter Yasuko would like watching the animals.  He would teach her how to fish, and they would sit side-by-side in their watery pavilion, letting their lines drift with the current until one of the bamboo rods would suddenly bend sharply, and Yasuko would cry, “I’ve caught one, father!  I’ve caught one!” 

And much later, when he was an old man and Yasuko had long since gone to be with her own family, he and his wife Tamako would live there and be at peace.

A shout from the front of the boat shattered the dream.  The boatmen jumped about trying to stop the boat and turn it against the current.  Some of the passengers asked questions but got no answers.  Most got to their feet and craned their necks to see what was happening.

Akitada was as curious but restrained himself.  Not so the young men in front. All five peered into the water over the shoulders of the boatmen.  When the passengers went to join them, the boat began to list dangerously.  The boat’s master cursed them back to their places.  Order restored, he and his men leaned over the side and dragged something sodden and heavy into the boat.  A gasp went around, and excited babble broke out.

A drowned woman.

One of the passengers near him, a fat shopkeeper returning from a pilgrimage to Iwashimizu’s Hachiman shrine,
tsked
and shook his head. “Happens all the time here,” he announced.  “The girls from the brothels are always killing themselves in the river.”

A suicide?

“What brothels?” Akitada asked.  “How did she get here?”

The boat’s master explained, “We’re almost in Eguchi.”

Eguchi, along with Kamusaki and Kaya, adjoined the ancient capital Naniwa and the port city Kawajiri.  The three smaller towns specialized in providing sailors and merchants with prostitutes.

Akitada protested, “But that’s downriver.” 

“The currents and the river traffic can move bodies about quite a lot, sir,” said the boat’s master.

Perhaps.  But still. 

Akitada rose and went forward.  He saw now that the river up ahead widened and another joined it.  At their confluence, on the very tip of what appeared like a large island in a wide stream, lay a town.

He looked down at the body in the bottom of the boat.  Curled on her side, she looked slight.  Long black hair covered her face and much of her back.  Her body was almost obscenely exposed under the wet silk of an undergown. 

It was a beautiful body, not yet bloated from being in the river but shapely and flawless.  Perhaps the river had washed away the trappings of her trade. 

Someone was breathing heavily beside him. Sadenari was goggling at the dead woman, his face flushed and his mouth agape.  When he caught Akitada’s eyes, he swallowed hard.

Akitada snapped, “Sit down!” and then bent to examine the body more closely.  The silk was very good quality, and the long hair, now tangled and full of small bits of vegetation and algae, had been cared for.  He glanced at her small hands and feet and found them soft and the nails carefully trimmed.

“Let’s turn her over to see if she has any wounds,” he said to the boat’s master.

They handled her with great gentleness for such rough men. 

The body showed no wounds, but it astonished Akitada nevertheless.  When he saw more of her face, she seemed far younger than he had assumed from her well-developed figure.  Her face was slightly puffy on one side, perhaps from being in the water, and the eyes stared sightlessly, but even so she still had an extraordinary and childlike beauty.  Some traces of make-up remained on the lips and around her eyes, but she had not needed it to improve her looks.

Given the innocence that her youth suggested, the other revelation shocked him more.  The thin silk clinging to her pale skin left nothing to the imagination, and her body was perfectly hairless except for her head.  She had shaved her pubic hair, a practice common among some prostitutes.

Akitada rose.  “Cover her with something,” he said to the boat’s master, feeling some shame on behalf of the dead girl, though the boatmen were old enough to be fathers.  “What is your normal procedure when you find drowning victims?”

“We take them to the warden in Eguchi.”

Akitada nodded and returned to his seat.  He was joined there by Sadenari, who was eager to make his apologies.

“It’s just,” he explained, blushing (the very young could still blush at such things), “that I’d never seen a dead woman.  I know you must think it very unseemly of me, but we’ve been given eyes to look at the world, haven’t we?”

He was an earnest youth, and Akitada relented.  “True, but even the dead have some right to privacy.”

Sadenari flushed more deeply.  “Surely they don’t care.  And if the girl was a prostitute, many men must have seen her like that when she was alive.”  Akitada looked at him, and Sadenari positively flamed.  He gulped.  “At least . . . I think that must be what happens.”

“Have you never visited a pleasure house?” Akitada asked, surprised.

Sadenari shook his head.  “The others were talking about Eguchi.  They’ve been there many times and say those places are full of beautiful women.  A man may have several in one night.”  He blurted, “Oh, how I wish I might do so just once!”

Akitada snorted.  “Nonsense.  Your father wouldn’t like it.  Wait till you have a wife.”  Sadenari came from a very proper family.  That probably accounted for the fact that at nineteen he was still a virgin.

“Yes, sir,” Sadenari murmured, looking dejected.

Akitada felt a twinge of pity.  The very young had their own worries, but having along a youth in the throes of lust could become a nuisance, perhaps even a danger, when one is tracking corrupt officials.  The fact that their work would be so near the brothel towns was likely to keep Sadenari in a state of painful mental arousal and might lead him into mischief.  Akitada toyed with the idea of letting him loose in Eguchi, but the youth probably did not have the money to purchase a woman.  His father kept him very short.  And advancing him the funds for a night of debauchery went against Akitada’s grain.

He turned away to watch the approach to the Eguchi wharf, where other boats like theirs were moored.  Already several small pleasure boats were coming toward them, their occupants holding large, brightly colored parasols.  Prostitutes eager to snatch the first customers.  He sighed and glanced at Sadenari.  The boy watched the women hungrily.  When the women in the first boat struck up a song, his face broke into a smile of delight. 

“Oh,” he breathed.  “I had no idea they could be such artists.”

Akitada snorted.  Sadenari had a nice face, and he was young and a gentleman.  Even the most mercenary female in the water trade might relent in such a case.  Perhaps it was best to leave him to his own resources.

A lively exchange between passengers and boats sprang up as they maneuvered to the landing stage.  One of the young men climbed into the boat with the rose-colored parasol and embraced its occupant. 

When they had tied up, Akitada and Sadenari left the boat, but stopped to watch the unloading of the dead woman.  Sadenari fidgeted. 

The news of the drowned girl spread quickly, and a small crowd gathered to peer down at the reed mat covering the body.  Most were women, young and older, anxious or merely curious.  

After a short, tense wait, the local warden, a burly man with a paunch and a bristling mustache, pushed his way past them.  He lifted the mat, looked, and shook his head.  He singled out two middle-aged women and waved them over.“Take a look.  Was she working here?”  They peered and shook their heads.  One said, “That one was a beauty, wasn’t she?”  The warden nodded and dropped the mat again.  “Not one of ours,” he called out to the onlookers, who dispersed. 

Akitada, followed by Sadenari, approached the man and said,  “I was on the boat.  The boatmen found her upriver,  near that bend.”  He pointed.  “It seems too far for her to have come from Eguchi.  It may not be a simple suicide of another prostitute.  Besides, as the woman said, she was remarkably beautiful.”

The warden eyed him, taking in the silk robe, and became deferential. “Very kind of you to take an interest, sir, but I assure you that our ladies are very superior.  Our houses employ only the most talented and beautiful girls.  There are many better looking than this one.”  He gave the body on the ground a dismissive shove with a booted foot.  With a grin at Sadenari, he added, “I’m sure the gentlemen will enjoy checking out the truth of that while they’re here.”

Akitada was irritated.  “Thank you, but we travel on official business.  I noticed something tied around the girl’s neck.  Perhaps that will help you trace her.”  He bent to lift the mat again and pointed to a thin string of white silk braid that hid behind the long wet hair.  It looped around the slender neck and disappeared under the folds of the robe.

 The warden grasped it and pulled out a small brocade pouch.  “Just an amulet,” he said dismissively.  “Most of the girls have them.  We’ll send word to Kamusaki and Kaya.  She may have jumped into the water from one of the boats.  Still, the best thing is to let the monks have her for cremation.  She’s been in the water, and those bodies don’t keep long.”

“That’s all you’re going to do?  Aren’t you even going to look at the amulet?” asked Sadenari angrily.  “Lord Sugawara and I serve in the Ministry of Justice.  It strikes me that you’re very lax in your duties.”

The warden flushed.  He bent again and opened the little pouch, extracting a small gilded coin.  “How about that? A piece of silver.”  He weighed the metal in his hand.

“Let me see that,” Akitada demanded in a voice that allowed no argument.

The warden handed the coin over reluctantly.  It was curiously made and appeared to be mostly silver, but with some decorative gold overlay.  It had a square hole in the center, just like copper coinage.  The holes in coppers were for a string so they could be carried more conveniently.  But this was no copper coin.  Both silver and gold coins were oblong and had no holes.  Besides, this had an intricate design, so finely made that Akitada had to lift it closer to his eyes to make out the tiny Buddha figures and clouds.  Most likely, this was meant as an amulet, the hole serving to tie it around the wearer’s neck.  Why then had the girl hidden it in a separate pouch?

“It’s not a coin,” said Akitada.  “It’s a Buddhist amulet, but not made in this country, I think. See.”  He showed the ornamentation to the warden. 

“Doesn’t matter,” said the man said.  “It’s worth something.  She got it from a customer, I expect. We get travelers from Korea and China.  Even their monks have stopped in Eguchi.”  He chortled and gave Akitada a sly look.  “You’d be surprised what monks can get up to, sir.”

Akitada would not, but he tried to look disapproving.  “I suppose it will go toward  the young woman’s funeral?”

“Right, sir.”  The warden held out his hand.

 Akitada gazed at the medal.  “Look here,” he said, “it’s a curious piece.  I’ve a friend who would like it.  What if I made a suitable donation, enough to cover the young woman’s funeral, in exchange for this.”