Shinju (5 page)

“Yes, I am Ito Genboku, and no, I never did go to Enoshima,” Dr. Ito said, echoing Sano's thoughts. He had a dry but pleasant voice. Humor and irony colored it as he added, “Although some would consider my position as custodian of Edo Morgue much worse than exile. No doubt the Tokugawas thought so when they changed the terms of my sentence. However, it has its compensations.” He held up his book. “I can pursue my studies in peace here. No one cares, as long as the morgue operates smoothly.” Then, abruptly: “Who are you, and what do you want?”

As Sano introduced himself and explained why he'd come, he realized that he had not offered the proper greetings to Dr. Ito. Something about Ito made formality seem unnecessary. Perhaps it was Ito's unusually direct manner, or the fact that his status as a physician placed him outside the rigid class system that defined relations between other men.

“The
eta
couldn't tell me anything, so this one brought me to you,” he finished. “Did you see anything to indicate that the deaths were anything but suicide?”

“I've not seen the bodies. Regrettably I have been occupied with those who perished in last night's fire.” Dr. Ito bent a challenging gaze upon Sano. “Perhaps the best way for you to gain
knowledge about the deaths would be to exercise your own powers of observation instead of relying on mine. However, Niu Yukiko has already been returned to her family for burial.”

So Magistrate Ogyu hadn't trusted him entirely after all, Sano thought. He'd issued the return order himself, leaving no room for mistakes or negligence.

“But we still have Noriyoshi's body,” Ito continued. “Would you like to examine it with me?”

Sano felt trapped. The Shinto tradition in which he'd been raised taught that any contact with death conferred a spiritual pollution. But to admit his fear of defilement to this man would be shameful. His small independent quest for truth and knowledge seemed insignificant beside Ito's sacrifice.

“Yes, Ito-
san
,” he answered.

Dr. Ito turned to the
eta
. “Mura-
san
,” he said, using the respectful form of address as he would to any other man, “fetch Noriyoshi's body.”

Mura left the room. When he returned, the two other
eta
that Sano had met were with him. Mura held a bundle of cloth, which he gave to Dr. Ito. The others carried a long form shrouded in white cotton; they placed it on one of the tables and began to unwrap it.

“Noriyoshi's effects,” Ito said, offering the cloth bundle to Sano.

Sano spread the contents on the other table, delaying his first look at the body emerging from the shroud. Wrapped inside the blue trousers and kimono he found one straw sandal.

“A poor man,” Sano remarked, fingering the coarse, cheap material of the clothes. The sandal, heavily worn on the inner heel, could have belonged to any commoner. He sighed. “The Nius would have opposed a marriage between him and Yukiko for that reason alone.” Had he risked Ogyu's wrath and braved the jail's horrors for nothing? “Maybe it was a love suicide after all.”

“Perhaps Noriyoshi himself will tell us.” Dr. Ito laid aside his
book and walked toward the now-exposed body. Although his posture was upright and authoritative, he moved gingerly. A spasm of pain crossed his face. “You may go now,” he said to the
eta
who had brought the body. “Mura-
san
, I'd like you to stay.”

Unable to postpone seeing the body any longer, Sano looked toward the table.

His first sensation was relief. The rigidity that held Noriyoshi's limbs stiff, his toes pointed straight at the ceiling, and his mouth agape made him resemble a somewhat grotesque doll instead of a man who had once lived and breathed. He bore no resemblance to the mutilated corpses Sano had seen at the public execution grounds, or to the bloated carcasses pulled from the canals after a flood. Dirt and shreds of seaweed clung to his bare skin and his loincloth, but there was no blood and no sign of decay. Curious now, Sano approached the table for a closer look. The deep red bruises circling Noriyoshi's wrists and ankles caught his attention.

“Burns from the ropes that bound him to Yukiko,” Dr. Ito explained.

Otherwise, Noriyoshi was unmarked. His stomach was paunchy and his face puffy, but his arms and legs were wiry and he had most of his teeth. Before his death, he'd apparently enjoyed at least fair health for a man of forty-odd years. If he had died by any means other than drowning himself, it didn't show.

“I've seen enough,” Sano said. “Thank you for—”

But Dr. Ito didn't seem to hear. Frowning at Noriyoshi, he said, “Mura-
san
. Turn him.”

The
eta
obligingly rolled the body onto its side. Dr. Ito bent over it, scrutinizing the head and neck.

Sano moved closer. Then he caught the body's odor: a sweet, sickly butcher-shop scent, mixed with the fishy taint of the river. He moved back toward the open window. Ito gestured for the
eta
to turn Noriyoshi facedown.

“What caused this?” Sano asked, pointing to what looked like
a large reddish bruise discoloring Noriyoshi's back, buttocks, arms, and legs.

“The blood settling after death.” Taking a cloth from inside his coat, Ito covered his hand with it. Then he began to probe Noriyoshi's head. Despite being a doctor of progressive outlook, he apparently hadn't overcome his own aversion to the dead.

“Mura-
san
, a knife and razor,” Ito ordered. Then, to Sano: “There is a flattened spot here at the base of the skull. We shall have a better look at it.”

Sano looked, but saw nothing. He didn't want to touch the head himself. He waited while Mura cut away a patch of hair and shaved the scalp bare where Ito had pointed. Then he saw the livid purple indentation. He shifted his gaze to Ito's face and kept it there.

“What caused it? A blow that killed him before he was thrown into the river?”

“Or perhaps a rock or piling that struck him—when he jumped into the river.” Dr. Ito emphasized the last words. “Or during the first hour after death, when a blow could still produce a bruise. It is impossible for me to say. But there is a way to tell if he did drown.”

Sano's pulse quickened. Instinct told him that a murderer had inflicted Noriyoshi's wound. He must know for certain. “How?” he asked eagerly.

“If he drowned, he will have water inside him,” Ito answered. “But in order to know that, we must cut him open.”

Sano stared at Ito, appalled. Dissection of a human body, as well as any other procedure even remotely associated with foreign science, was just as illegal as it had been at the time of Ito's arrest. Perhaps the authorities no longer cared if Ito broke the law, but what about him? If the wrong people found out, he would not only lose his position, he would be banished, never to see his home or family again. He started to protest. But Dr. Ito's gaze locked with his, freezing him into silence.
I risked everything to seek forbidden
truths
, the shrewd eyes seemed to say.
How far are you willing to go?
Sano's mind recoiled from the unspoken challenge. He tried to conjure up images of his father, of Magistrate Ogyu. He reminded himself of his obligation to them. But instead he saw the
doshin
's assistants beating a helpless beggar. He felt again the elation of the moment when he'd corrected an injustice and set an investigation back on the road to truth.

“All right,” he said.

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized that he had committed himself to this when he'd agreed to view the body. He'd taken the first step, and there had never been any choice about the second.

At a nod from Ito, Mura went to the cabinet. From it he took a wooden tray of tools—steel saws, long razors, and a collection of knives and instruments such as Sano had never seen before. They must have been Dutch in origin. Mura set the tray on the table beside the body, then went to the cabinet again and brought out a white cloth. This he tied over the lower half of his face.

His practiced movements told Sano that this was not the first dissection ever performed here. As did a bamboo pipe running from a hole in the table down to a drain in the floor. The room had been prepared for Dr. Ito's experiments.

Mura turned Noriyoshi's body onto its back. He picked up a slender knife and held it over Noriyoshi's chest. Apparently he, not Ito, would do the actual cutting. Despite his unconventional views, Ito followed the tradition of letting the
eta
handle the dead.

Sano watched with horrified fascination as the blade sliced cleanly into Noriyoshi's skin and moved down the center from the base of the collarbone to the navel.

“No blood?” he asked, relieved to be spared the sight of it. The raw, pink edges of the cut looked bad enough. His heart was racing; his hands went cold and clammy.

“The dead do not bleed,” Dr. Ito replied.

Now Mura made several cuts perpendicular to the first. He inserted a flat-bladed instrument into one of them.

Sano looked at the glistening red tissue that appeared as Mura folded the skin back from Noriyoshi's rib cage, and at Mura's slimy hands wielding the instrument to slice it away. He swallowed hard. Nausea spread through his stomach. Sweat trickled down his face despite the cold air coming through the window. His skin crawled. He fought the sickness by trying to concentrate on something else. He couldn't have Noriyoshi's corpse exposed to the public; signs of the dissection would show. When he returned to his office, he must issue a cremation order. But the distraction failed. Not wanting to see, yet unable to look away, he watched as Noriyoshi's innards were revealed. The pale, gleaming ribs with twin pinkish-gray spongy lobes and a red, meaty object beneath. The coiled tubes of viscera showing at the lower edge of the cut. Like a flayed animal, he thought dizzily. And the smell rising from the open cavity was the same, too: sweet, strong, and rotten.

Like other men his age, he'd never gone to war. He knew about its atrocities, of course: men decapitated with a single sword slash, or shot with guns bought from foreign barbarians. Limbs severed. Bodies hacked to bits. He'd read accounts in the history texts and heard the stories handed down from generation to generation. Somehow he'd always imagined the carnage of battle as noble, necessary, and part of a samurai's domain. This—this cold, deliberate mutilation of a human body—seemed obscene. It was defilement in its worst form. He could feel the pollution staining his skin, seeping into his nostrils, coating his eyeballs. His stomach lurched. Even his sweat seemed contaminated; he couldn't bring himself to touch it. He pressed his lips together to keep it from running into his mouth.

“Mura-
san
, the lower two ribs on the right side,” Ito said.

Sano watched as Mura took one rib between the jaws of a sturdy pair of grips. He closed his eyes at the sickening crack of bone—
once, twice. When he opened them again, he saw why Mura had covered his face. Bits of red tissue flecked the white cloth just over the
eta
's mouth.

“Good.” Ito nodded. “Now cut … there.” He sketched a line in the air above the place where the ribs had been, over the section of spongy lobe now exposed. To Sano he said, “If there is water, it will be in the breathing sacs.”

Sano nodded quickly, afraid that he would vomit if he tried to speak. He watched the thin knife slice the breathing sac and braced himself for the gush of fluid.

It never came. Instead the sac merely shrank a little, like the punctured swim bladder of a fish.

“No water.” A grim satisfaction suffused Dr. Ito's face. “This man did not drown. He died before he entered the water. He was murdered, then thrown into the river.”

Sano's vision darkened, and his legs wobbled beneath him. Then he retched.

“
Yoriki
Sano-
san
. Are you ill?”

Sano tried to answer, but bile seared his throat. Without making a proper farewell, he stumbled from the room. He had to get out. Fast.

The jail corridors seemed endless; the prisoners' cries were the sounds of demons in hell. Somehow Sano made it to the door. He managed to climb onto his horse and get halfway across the bridge. Then his stomach heaved again. Dismounting, he vomited into the canal. But the end to his sickness brought little relief. He felt horribly soiled by his experience. Conscious only of a desire to put as much distance between himself and Edo Jail as possible, he rode blindly through the twilight at a furious gallop.

Then, looming before him like a blessing from the gods, there appeared a building with a dark blue curtain hanging out front. The curtain displayed the character
yu:
hot water. A bathhouse. Sano jerked on the reins and fell off his horse. Dashing inside, he threw some coins on the counter.

“Sir, the price is only eight
zeni
!” the attendant cried, holding out Sano's change.

Sano ignored him. He snatched a bag of rice-bran soap from the counter and shoved his swords at the attendant for safekeeping. Then he stumbled into the bathing area. In the dim, steamy room, men in loincloths and women in thin under-kimonos scrubbed and rinsed themselves, or soaked in the deep tub. Oblivious to their curious glances, he ripped off his clothes, throwing them on the floor in an untidy heap. He scoured his skin with the soap until it hurt. He sloshed a bucket of water over himself. Then he plunged into the tub, completely immersing himself again and again. The water was scalding hot and scummy with soap residue, but he forced himself to keep his eyes and mouth open so that it could cleanse him inside as well as out.

Finally a sense of peace came over him. He no longer felt contaminated. Gasping, he dragged himself out of the tub and went to sit on a bench in the steam room. Then he closed his eyes and groaned as realization struck him.