CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

FROM THE VERANDA OF THE ROOM OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM, AT THE MAGISTRACY

The ninth day of the ninth month

GULLS WHEEL THROUGH SPOKES OF SUNLIGHT OVER GRACIOUS roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls, and triple-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas, and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule drivers, mules, and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bathhouse adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candlemakers rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and aging rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night soil; gatekeepers; beekeepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet nurses; perjurers; cutpurses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

KAWASEMI HOLDS UP a white under-robe for Shiroyama. She is wearing her kimono decorated with blue Korean morning glories. The wheel of seasons is broken, says the spring pattern this autumn day, and so am I.

Shiroyama inserts his fifty-year-old arms into the sleeves.

She ducks in front of him, tugging and smoothing the material.

Kawasemi now wraps the obi sash above his waist.

She chose a green-and-white design: Green for life, white for death?

The expensively trained courtesan ties it in a figure-of-ten cross.

“It always takes me ten times,” he used to say, “to get the knot to stay.”

Kawasemi lifts the thigh-length haori jacket; he takes it and puts it on. The fine black silk is crisp as snow and heavy as air. Its sleeves are embroidered with his family’s crest.

Two rooms away he hears Naozumi’s twenty-month-old footsteps.

Kawasemi passes him his inyo box: it contains nothing, but without it he would feel unprepared. Shiroyama threads its cord through the netsuke toggle; she has chosen him a Buddha carved in hornbill.

Kawasemi’s steady hands pass his tantô dagger in its scabbard.

Would that I could die in your house, he thinks, where I was happiest …

He slides its scabbard through his obi sash in the prescribed manner.

… but decorum must be seen to be observed.

“Shush!” says the maid in the next room. “Suss!” laughs Naozumi.

A chubby hand slides the door open and the boy, who looks like Kawasemi when he smiles and like Shiroyama when he frowns, darts into the room, ahead of the mortified maid.

“I beg Your Lordship’s pardon,” she says, kneeling at the threshold.

“Found you!” singsongs the toothy grinning toddler, and tips over.

“Finish packing,” Kawasemi tells her maid. “I’ll summon you when it’s time.”

The maid bows and withdraws. Her eyes are red from crying.

The small human whirlwind stands, rubs his knee, and totters to his father.

“Today is an important day,” says the magistrate of Nagasaki.

Naozumi half-sings, half-asks, “‘Ducky in the duck pond, ichi-nisan?’”

With a look, Shiroyama tells his concubine not to fret.

Better for him now, he thinks, to be too young to understand.

“Come here,” says Kawasemi, kneeling, “come here, Nao-kun …”

The boy sits on his mother’s lap and loses his hand in her hair.

Shiroyama sits a pace away and circles his hands in a conjuror’s flourish …

… and in his palm is an ivory castle sitting on an ivory mountain.

The man turns it around, inches from the boy’s captured eyes.

Tiny steps; cloud motifs; pine trees; masonry grown from rock …

“Your great-grandfather carved this,” says Shiroyama, “from a unicorn horn.”

… an arched gate; windows; arrow slits; and, at the top, a pagoda.

“You can’t see him,” says the magistrate, “but a prince lives in this castle.”

You will forget this story, he knows, but your mother will remember.

“The prince’s name is the same as ours: shiro for the castle, yama for the mountain. Prince Shiroyama is very special. You and I must one day go to our ancestors, but the prince in this tower never dies: not for so long as a Shiroyama outside—me, you, your son—is alive, and holds his castle, and looks inside.”

Naozumi takes the ivory carving and holds it against his eye.

Shiroyama does not gather his son into his arms and breathe in his sweet smell.

“Thank you, Father.” Kawasemi angles the boy’s head to imitate a bow.

Naozumi leaps away with his prize, from mat to mat to door.

He turns to look at his father, and Shiroyama thinks, Now.

Then the boy’s footfalls carry him away forever.

Lust tricks babies from their parents, thinks Shiroyama, mishap, duty …

Marigolds in the vase are the precise shade of summer, remembered.

… but perhaps the luckiest are those born from an unthought thought: that the intolerable gulf between lovers can be bridged only by the bones and cartilage of a new being.

The bell of Ryûgaji Temple intones the Hour of the Horse.

Now, he thinks, I have a murder to commit.

“It is best that you leave,” Shiroyama tells his concubine.

Kawasemi looks at the ground, determined not to cry.

“If the boy shows promise at go, engage a master of the Honinbo School.”

THE VESTIBULE OUTSIDE the Hall of Sixty Mats and the long gallery leading to the front courtyard is crammed with kneeling advisers, councillors, inspectors, headmen, guards, servants, exchequer officials, and the staff of his household. Shiroyama stops.

Crows smear rumors across the matted, sticky sky.

“All of you: raise your faces. I want to see your faces.”

Two or three hundred heads look up: eyes, eyes, eyes …

… dining on a ghost, Shiroyama thinks, not yet dead.

“Magistrate-sama!” Elder Wada has appointed himself spokesman.

Shiroyama looks at the irritating, loyal man. “Wada-sama.”

“Serving the magistrate has been the deepest honor of my life …”

Wada’s face is taut with emotion; his eyes are shining.

“We learn from the magistrate’s wisdom and example …”

All you learned from me, thinks Shiroyama, is to ensure that one thousand men man the coastal defenses at all times.

“Our memories of you shall dwell in our hearts and minds forever.”

As my body and my head, thinks Shiroyama, molder in the ground.

“Nagasaki shall never”—his tears stream—“ever recover!”

Oh, supposes Shiroyama, by next week things will be back to normal.

“On behalf of all who were—are—privileged to serve under you …”

Even the untouchable, thinks the magistrate, who empties the shit pot?

“… I, Wada, offer our undying gratitude for your patronage!”

Under the eaves, pigeons coo like grandmothers greeting babies.

“Thank you,” he says. “Serve my successor as you served me.”

So the stupidest speech I ever heard, he thinks, was the very last.

Chamberlain Tomine opens the door for his final appointment.

THE DOOR RUMBLES shut on the Hall of Sixty Mats. Nobody may enter now until Chamberlain Tomine emerges to announce Magistrate Shiroyama’s honorable death. The near-silent crowd in the gallery is returning to the bright realm of life. Out of respect for the magistrate, the entire wing shall remain vacant until nightfall but for the occasional guard.

One high screen is half open, but the hall is dim and cavernous.

Lord Abbot Enomoto is studying the state of play on the go board.

The abbot turns and bows. His acolyte bows low.

The magistrate begins the journey to the center of the room. His body pushes aside drapes of hushed air. His feet swish on the floor. Chamberlain Tomine follows in his master’s wake.

The Hall of Sixty Mats might be six hundred wide or six thousand long.

Shiroyama sits across the go table from his enemy. “It is unpardonably selfish to lay these last two impositions on such a busy man.”

“Your Honor’s requests,” replies Enomoto, “pay me a singular compliment.”

“I had heard of Enomoto-sama’s accomplishments as a swordsman, mentioned in low, awed tones, long before I met you in person.”

“People exaggerate such stories, but it is true that, down the years, five men have asked me to be a kaishaku second at their deaths. I discharged those duties competently.”

“Your name came to mind, Lord Abbot. Yours and no other.” Shiroyama glances down at Enomoto’s sash for his scabbard.

“My acolyte”—the abbot nods at the youth—“has brought it.”

The sword, wrapped in black, lies on a square of red velvet.

On a side table are a white tray, four black cups, and a red gourd.

A white linen sheet, large enough to enfold a corpse, lies at a tactful distance.

“Your wish is still”—Enomoto indicates the game—“to finish what we began?”

“One must do something before one dies.” The magistrate drapes his haori jacket over his knees and turns his attention to the game. “Have you decided your next move?”

Enomoto places a white stone to threaten black’s eastern outpost.

The cautious movement of the stone sounds like the click of a blind man’s cane.

Shiroyama makes a safe play that is both a bridge to and a bridgehead against white’s north.

To win, his father taught him, purify yourself of the desire to win.

Enomoto secures his northern army by opening an eye in its ranks.

The blind man moves fast: click goes his cane; click, a stone is placed.

A few moves later, Shiroyama’s black takes six white prisoners.

“They were living on borrowed time,” Enomoto remarks, “at crippling interest.” He plants a spy deep behind black’s western frontier.

Shiroyama ignores it and starts a road between his western and central armies.

Enomoto places another strange stone in the southwest of nowhere.

Two moves later, Shiroyama’s bold black bridge is only three stones from completion. Surely, thinks the magistrate, he can’t allow me to go unchallenged?

Enomoto places a stone within hailing distance of his western spy …

… and Shiroyama sees the way stations of a black cordon, curving in a crescent from southwest to northeast.

If white prevents black’s main armies conjoining at this late stage …

… my empire, Shiroyama sees, is split into three paltry fiefdoms.

The bridge is just two intersections away: Shiroyama claims one …

… and Enomoto places a white stone on the other: the battle turns.

I go there so he goes there; I go there so he goes there; I go there …

But by the fifth move and countermove, Shiroyama forgets the first.

Go is a duel between prophets, he thinks. Whoever sees furthest wins.

His divided armies are reduced to praying for a white blunder.

But Enomoto, knows the magistrate, does not make blunders.

“Do you ever suspect,” he asks, “we don’t play go; rather, go plays us?”

“Your Honor has a monastic mind,” Enomoto replies.

More moves follow, but the game has passed its perfect ripeness.

Discreetly, Shiroyama counts his territory and the prisoners taken.

Enomoto does the same for white, and waits for the magistrate.

The abbot makes it eight points in white’s favor; Shiroyama puts Enomoto’s margin of victory at eight and a half points.

“A duel,” remarks the loser, “between boldness and subtleties.”

“My subtleties very nearly undid me,” concedes Enomoto.

The players return the stones to the bowls.

“Ensure this go set goes to my son,” Shiroyama orders Tomine.

SHIROYAMA INDICATES the red gourd. “Thank you for providing the sake, Lord Abbot.”

“Thank you for respecting my precautions, even now, Magistrate.”

Shiroyama sifts Enomoto’s tone for glints of irony but finds none.

The acolyte fills the four black cups from the red gourd.

The Hall of Sixty Mats is now as quiet as a forgotten graveyard.

My final minutes, thinks the magistrate, watching the careful acolyte.

A black swallowtail butterfly blunders across the table.

The acolyte hands one cup of sake to the magistrate first, one to his master, one to the chamberlain, and returns to his cushion with the fourth.

So as not to glance at Tomine or Enomoto’s cup, Shiroyama imagines the wronged souls—how many tens, how many hundreds?—watching from the slants of darkness, thirsty for vengeance. He raises his cup. He says, “Life and death are indivisible.”

The other three repeat the well-worn phrase. The magistrate shuts his eyes.

The volcano-ash glaze of the Sakurajima cup is rough on his lips.

The astringent spirit sluices around the magistrate’s mouth …

… and its aftertaste is perfumed … untainted by the additive.

From inside the dark tent of his eyelids, he hears loyal Tomine drink …

… but neither Enomoto nor the acolyte follows. Seconds pass.

Despair possesses the magistrate. Enomoto knew about the poison.

When he opens his eyes, he will be greeted by wry mockery.

Our planning, ingenuity, and Tomine’s terrible sacrifice are in vain.

He has failed Orito, Ogawa, and De Zoet, and all the wronged souls.

Did Tomine’s procurer betray us? Or the Chinese druggist?

Should I try to kill the devil with my ceremonial sword?

He opens his eyes to gauge his chances, as Enomoto drains his cup …

… and the acolyte lowers his own, a moment after his master.

Shiroyama’s despair is gone, replaced in a heartbeat by a flat fact. They will know in two minutes, and we will be dead in four. “Would you spread the cloth, Chamberlain? Just over there …”

Enomoto raises his palm. “My acolyte can perform such work.”

They watch the young man unfold the large sheet of white hemp. Its purpose is to absorb blood from the decapitated body and to wrap the corpse afterward, but its role this morning is to distract Enomoto from the magistrate’s true endgame while the sake is absorbed by their bodies.

“Shall I recite,” the lord abbot offers, “a mantra of redemption?”

“What redemption can be won,” replies Shiroyama, “is mine now.”

Enomoto makes no comment but retrieves his sword. “Is your harakiri to be visceral, Magistrate, with a tantô dagger, or shall it be a symbolic touch with your fan, after the modern fashion?”

Numbness is encrusting the ends of Shiroyama’s fingers and toes. The poison is safe in our veins. “First, Lord Abbot, an explanation is owed.”

Enomoto lays his sword across his knees. “Regarding what matter?”

“Regarding why the four of us shall be dead within three minutes.”

Enomoto studies Shiroyama’s face for evidence that he misheard.

The well-trained acolyte rises, reading the silent hall for threat.

“Dark emotions,” Enomoto speaks with indulgence, “may cloud one’s heart at such a time, but for the sake of your posthumous name, Magistrate, you must—”

“Quiet before the magistrate’s verdict!” The crushed-nose chamberlain speaks with the full authority of his office.

Enomoto blinks at the older man. “Addressing me in that—”

“Lord Abbot Enomoto-no-kami”—Shiroyama knows how little time remains—“daimyo of Kyôga Domain, high priest of the shrine of Mount Shiranui, by the power vested in me by the august shogun, you are hereby found guilty of the murder of the sixty-three women buried behind the Harubayashi Inn on the Sea of Ariake Road, of orchestrating the captivity of the sisters of the Shrine of Mount Shiranui, and of the persistent and unnatural infanticide of the issue fathered upon those women by you and your monks. You shall atone for these crimes with your life.”

The muffled clatter of horses penetrates the closed-off hall.

Enomoto is impassive. “It grieves me to see a once-noble mind—”

“Do you deny these charges? Or suppose yourself immune?”

“Your questions are ignoble. Your charges are contemptible. Your assumption that you, a disgraced appointee, could punish me—me!—is a breathtaking vanity. Come, Acolyte, we must leave this pitiable scene and—”

“Why are your hands and feet so cold on such a warm day?”

Enomoto opens his scornful mouth and frowns at the red gourd.

“It never left my sight, Master,” states the acolyte. “Nothing was added.”

“First,” says Shiroyama, “I offer up my reasons. When, two or three years ago, rumors reached us about bodies being hidden in a bamboo grove behind the Harubayashi Inn, I paid little heed. Rumors are not proof, your friends in Edo are more powerful than mine, and a daimyo’s back garden is no one else’s concern—ordinarily. But when you spirited away the very midwife who saved the lives of my concubine and son, my interest in the Mount Shiranui Shrine grew. The lord of Hizen produced a spy who told some grotesque tales about your retired nuns. That he was soon killed only confirmed his tales, so when a certain testament in a dogwood scroll tube—”

“Apostate Jiritsu was a viper who turned against the order.”

“And Ogawa Uzaemon was, of course, killed by mountain bandits?”

“Ogawa was a spy and a dog who died like a spy and a dog.” Enomoto sways as he stands, staggers, falls, and snarls, “What have you—what have you—”

“The poison attacks the body’s musculature, beginning at the extremities and ending with the heart and diaphragm. It is extracted from the glands of a tree snake found only in a Siamese delta. This creature is known as the four-minute snake. A learned chemist can guess why. It is unsurpassingly lethal, and unsurpassingly difficult to procure, but Tomine is an unsurpassingly well-connected chamberlain. We tested it on a dog, which lasted … how long, Chamberlain?”

“Less than two minutes, Your Honor.”

“Whether the dog died of bloodlessness or suffocation, we shall soon discover. I am losing my elbows and knees as we speak.”

Enomoto is helped by his acolyte into a sitting position.

The acolyte tumbles and lies struggling, like a cut-string puppet.

“In air,” the magistrate continues, “the poison hardens into a thin, clear flake. But a liquid—especially a spirit, like sake—dissolves it instantaneously. Hence the coarse Sakurajima cups—to hide the painted-on poison. That you saw through my offensive on the go board, but overlooked this simple stratagem, amply justifies my death.”

Enomoto, his face distorted by fear and fury, reaches for his sword, but his arm is stiff and wooden and he cannot draw his weapon from its scabbard. He stares at his hand in disbelief and, with a guttural snarl, swings his fist at his sake cup.

It skips across the empty floor, like a pebble skimming dark water.

“If you knew, Shiroyama, you horsefly, what you’ve done …”

“What I know is that the souls of those unmourned women buried behind the Harubayashi Inn—”

“Those disfigured whores were fated from birth to die in gutters!”

“—those souls may rest now. Justice is served.”

“The order of Shiranui lengthens their lives, not shortens them!”

“So that ‘gifts’ can be bred to feed your derangement?”

“We sow and harvest our crop! Our crop is ours to use as we please!”

“Your order sows cruelty in the service of madness and—”

“The creeds work, you human termite! Oil of souls works! How could an order founded on insanity survive for so many centuries? How could an abbot earn the favor of the empire’s most cunning men with quackery?”

The purest believers, Shiroyama thinks, are the truest monsters. “Your order dies with you, Lord Abbot. Jiritsu’s testimony is gone to Edo and”—his breaths grow sparser as the poison numbs his diaphragm—“and without you to defend it, Mount Shiranui Shrine will be disestablished.”

The flung-away cup rolls in a wide arc, trundling and whispering.

Shiroyama, sitting cross-legged, tests his arms. They predecease him.

“Our order,” Enomoto gasps, “the Goddess, the ritual, harvested souls …”

A guppering noise escapes Chamberlain Tomine. His jaw vibrates.

Enomoto’s eyes fry and shine. “I cannot die.”

Tomine falls forward onto the go board. Bowls of stones scatter.

“Senescence undone”—Enomoto’s face locks—“skin unmottled, vigor unstolen.”

“Master, I’m cold.” The acolyte’s voice melts. “I’m cold, Master.”

“Across the River Sansho,” Shiroyama spends his last words, “your victims are waiting.” His tongue and lips no longer cooperate. Some say—Shiroyama’s body turns to stone—that there is no afterlife. Some say that human beings are no more eternal than mice or mayflies. But your eyes, Enomoto, prove that hell is no invention, for hell is reflected in them. The floor tilts and becomes the wall.

Above him, Enomoto’s curse is malformed and strangled.

Leave him behind, the magistrate thinks. Leave everything now …

Shiroyama’s heart stops. The earth’s pulse beats against his ear.

An inch away is a go clamshell stone, perfect and smooth …

… a black butterfly lands on the white stone, and unfolds its wings.