The Hell Screen (27 page)

“Hmm,” said Tora.

They reached the Willow Quarter, but as Genba had predicted there were only a few customers hurrying to assignations, and no women at all. Tora walked along the street, peering into each grated window, disappointed to find it closed by paper screens or curtains. .

He proposed stopping in the quarter for a cup of wine, but Genba had more substantial things in mind. “The master wants to know about the actors. Let’s go where the actors eat!” he said.

They had to leave the protective streets and alleys of the city to reach the windy riverfront. A cold blast of air from the mountains in the north blew up the skirts of their robes and sent icy needles of air through their leggings and down their collars. Heavy black clouds were gathering above Mount Hiei, and the Kamo River moved choppily.

“Whew! Bad weather coming!” Tora peered down the street which followed the river. Fishermen’s huts and warehouses gave way to long rows of eateries overlooking the broad gray waters of the river. Like the icy wind, the river came from the mountains in the north and flowed in a southerly direction past the capital, forming its eastern boundary. It was here, along the riverfront, that Tora and Genba hoped to find news about Uemon’s Players.

Tora was for putting his head into every wineshop and eatery they passed to ask for them, but Genba made for a large building with a nondescript exterior about halfway along the block. Over its low door hung a badly written sign which read “Abode of the River Fairies,” and it seemed to be doing an excellent business. A low hum of voices emanated from the door and the screened windows. A rich smell of cooking fish emanated also and started Genba’s nostrils quivering and his lips smacking in anticipation.

Their arrival in the dim, lamp-lit room went unnoticed. Most of the space was taken up by rough tables and wooden benches, the kind one usually finds outside for the convenience of travelers or people in a hurry. Their practicality here was due to the fact that the establishment had a dirt floor. The tables and benches were arranged around a cooking pit in the middle of the room. Several huge black iron cauldrons simmered over a charcoal fire, watched over by a bare-chested, muscular fellow with a bandanna tied around his hair and sweat glistening on his face and chest. From time to time he paused his stirring to use a huge ladle to fill a bowl held out by one of the waiters. A lively exchange of jokes passed back and forth between this cook and some of the guests.

Tora paused to study the women, but Genba had no eyes for them. Smiling happily, he seized Tora’s elbow and made for a table close to the steaming cauldrons, where he slid onto a bench already occupied by an elderly man who was staring morosely into his wine cup.

“May two thirsty fellows join you, brother?” Genba asked, using the local dialect. The man was in his fifties and wore a stained brown cotton robe. His thinning gray hair was stringy and unkempt, and a heavy stubble on his chin showed that he had not bothered to shave for several days. Tora took him for the neighborhood drunk.

The man looked up at them with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Why not?” he asked, his voice cracked and the sounds slurring. “Drinking alone causes depression, and depression is unhealthy, as the ancients tell us.”

Tora and Genba looked at each other. The man’s speech was educated, incongruous in these surroundings and in someone of his appearance. The drunk seemed to read their thoughts, because he suddenly gave them a crooked grin and lifted his cup. Emptying it, he waved it toward the muscular cook and cried, “More of your elixir of happiness, Yashi! I feel the blue demons coming on again.”

Blue demons? It crossed Tora’s mind that the man might be one of those soothsayers who sell their spells in the marketplace. Some of them claimed to be wizards who could call up demons whenever it pleased them. He eyed the drunk warily.

The cook glanced over, took in the two newcomers, and shouted back, “You’ve had enough! I’m not putting you up again. And your master’ll have your hide if you spend another night in the gutter and get killed.”

This ridiculous threat reassured Tora. The man was only a servant after all.

The elderly man, however, glared at the cook and rose, swaying a little. “My good man,” he said with enormous dignity, “I resent your inference as much as your tone. I’ll have you know I am no servant. Indeed, my education makes me the equal of the gentleman lucky enough to enjoy my services at the moment.” He then spoiled the gesture by belching and tipping backward so suddenly that Genba had to jump up to catch him.

“Thank you, my humble friend,” the man muttered, feeling about in his sleeves. “A touch of dizziness. It is a warning I recognize.”

“A warning of what?” asked Tora.

“Ah,” said the man, glancing across at him from watery eyes, while still feeling about in his robe. “You and your friend here are both too young to understand the sorrows of an academician come down in the world. You have not lived long and painfully in a country inimical to intellectual pursuits. What I meant was this: I always get dizzy when the blue demons are imminent. And now I seem to have misplaced my money, too.”

Tora cast a glance around the room for the blue demons, but saw only ordinary people who were more interested in their food than the odd man at their table. “Where are these devils? I don’t see them.”

Genba chuckled. “He means his sad thoughts for which he drinks. Perhaps you would care to join us, sir,” he said to the elderly man, pulling out a string of coppers. The elderly man bowed his acceptance and Genba waved down a waiter. “Here, bring enough wine and food for the three of us!”

“Most kind of you to help a stranger in distress, sir,” said the man. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Harada, doctor of mathematics, but at present estate manager for my colleague, Professor Yasaburo, in Kohata. May I know your honorable name and dwelling so that I may repay the debt?”

“I’m Genba and my friend is Tora. But what are a few coppers between fellow visitors to the capital? We hate to eat and drink alone.”

Harada bowed, expressed himself charmed to make their acquaintance, and offered himself as a guide to the local attractions, which he had just begun to describe when the waiter returned with a jug of wine, two more cups, and a large platter of pickled radish. Mr. Harada poured, spilling only a little, and Genba sampled the radish.

“So you’re really just an overseer of a farm?” Tora asked, still thinking about the blue devils. “I mean, you don’t tell fortunes and call up spirits on the side?”

The cook shouted across, “The only spirits he calls up are in his cup. He’s a hard drinker.”

Harada, far from taking offense, said, “On the contrary, my friend of the steaming pots. Drinking is the easiest thing I do. The world rests heavily on my shoulders and the worries of my days fray at my nerves.”

“And the wine makes the world go round till you’re too dizzy to see straight,” grunted the cook, ladling out a large platterful of steamed chunks of fish and vegetables. “See,” he said to Tora and Genba, passing the bowl to the waiter with a jerk of the head toward their table, “it’s like this: When he’s out of sorts, he drinks. After the first cup he feels more like himself. So he has another and now feels like a new man. But the new man wants to drink, too, and so he goes on drinking till, pretty soon, he feels like a babe ... bawling and crawling all the way home!”

Laughter greeted these witticisms. When Harada protested, “I drink only to calm myself,” one of the guests shouted, “Yeah! Last night he got so calm he couldn’t move! Ho ho ho!”

“Fools!” muttered Harada. He pushed away disdainfully the bowl of fish and rice the waiter placed before him and instead refilled his cup from the pitcher. “The Chinese poets understood about wine!” he said, holding up the cup and squinting at it. “It frees a man’s genius from the shackles of physical existence.” He emptied the cup. “ ‘I will fill my cup and never let it go dry,’ said Po Chü-i. And Li Po said, ‘I can love wine without shame before the gods.’ Li Po knew there’s no point in explaining this to a sober man. Poets must nourish their souls, not their bellies.” He glanced around the table and saw that both Tora and Genba had their noses deep in their bowls of fish stew. His nose twitched, and he eyed his own bowl thoughtfully for a moment, then reached for it.

Genba was emptying and refilling his own bowl with such speed and complete enjoyment that his lip-smacking and belching attracted the pleased attention of the cook, who promptly sent along a heaping platter of steamed eel, compliments of the house.

“So you’re a poet?” Tora asked their companion. “I thought you just said that you manage a farm.”

“Not a farm. An estate.” Harada looked at him blearily. “You may not be aware of it, young man,” he said with a fruity belch, “but poets have never enjoyed a regular income without a generous p-patron. P-professor Yasaburo, my old friend and classmate, is the closest I could find to a p-p ... magnanimous p-erson, and he makes use of my many other skills as he has need of them.” Taking another gulp from his cup, he belched again, and added, “At the present time, you behold in me an ambassador of good will, a bearer of happy tidings, a p-purveyor of the substance which makes even the dull p-pragmatists happy. In short, I have completed an errand of mercy.” With a great sigh, he folded his arms on the table, laid his head on them, and went to sleep.

Tora, who had listened with only half an ear, now turned to Genba. To his surprise, Genba had stopped eating. He sat, slack-jawed, staring past Tora’s shoulder, an expression of stunned amazement on his face. The platter of eels in front of him was barely touched, and he still held his chopsticks with a juicy morsel suspended halfway to his open mouth.

Tora looked to see what had shocked Genba into immobility. The restaurant was full of people. Behind them six men, of the ordinary riverfront variety, were exchanging stories over their wine. Near a pillar, several women were eating fish stew and chattering among themselves. Against the back wall, an old man presided over a table filled with members of his family. And near them a husband and wife were engaged in an argument. Tora could not see anything likely to cause that look in Genba’s eyes. He reached across to take the chopsticks from Genba’s rigid fingers. “What are you staring at?”

Genba jerked. “Huh? Oh!” He blushed scarlet. “See the young lady over there? She’s the most stunning creature I’ve ever seen.”

Tora scanned the women. Pretty girls, he thought, surprised and pleased that Genba finally seemed to take an interest in the opposite sex. He must mean the pert one with the look of a playful kitten. But the others weren’t bad, either. An older woman presided over them, their chaperone or perhaps an auntie. Tora took in her size and blinked. She was enormous, towering over the girls and taking up the space of two men. Big shoulders, a huge jutting bosom, and bulging arms, all covered in shiny black silk, and a round, red-cheeked face topped with coils of hair which were decorated with red silk ribbons dangling coyly down on either side. Tora almost laughed out loud at the sight of her. No wonder she was fat; she was eating with a speed which astonished even him, and he was familiar with Genba’s appetite. Her large fat hand holding the chopsticks darted quickly among the many bowls in front of her, picking up a tidbit here and a pickle there, the small finger extended daintily, the red lips closing with little smacking sounds around each morsel or dipping quickly toward the rim of a soup bowl to suck up broth and fish alike. He turned to Genba. “Pretty girls, but look at that madam! I’ve never seen a woman eat like that. No wonder she’s as fat as Hotei!”

Genba stared at him. “What do you mean?” he asked, frowning. “She’s the most handsome female I ever laid eyes on. Look at that rosy skin, the pretty mouth, and that fine body! And she eats most elegantly. Daintily, like a lady! Which is more than you can say about her companions. I never could understand what you see in those bony little bits you seem to prefer.”

Tora gaped. “Have you lost your mind?” he asked. “That’s some whore grown too fat to get customers, so now she runs the house, taking out her girls for their evening rice. Leave her alone! She’d make short work of an innocent like you and take you for every copper, having a good laugh with her girls afterward.”

Genba got up, his face like thunder. “Good night!” he growled.

“Where are you going?” Tora cried, pointing to the uneaten food. “We aren’t finished, and we haven’t even started asking questions.”

“You can do your own investigating,” Genba said over his shoulder, and headed for the table of the women. Tora looked after him in stunned surprise. This was not like Genba, who was normally shy around women. But there he was, bowing to the fat woman, and then to the girls around the table. The girls wore the heavy white makeup of street women and clearly were not averse to male company, for Genba took a seat next to a slender girl whose eyebrows had been plucked and painted high on her forehead, in the manner of certain court ladies or actors playing women’s roles. Tora shook his head. Genba would be sorry. He made a move to follow, feeling it his duty to protect his companion from the wiles of the professional women of the quarter. But when he took a step toward them, Genba looked up and scowled so ferociously that Tora quickly sat back down. Very well! Let him learn his lesson, then, he thought, and turned his attention to the food.