Death by Water Read online

  As I continued at my usual leisurely pace, I spotted the girl up ahead doing stretches or calisthenics in a small landscaped area equipped with benches, iron bars, and other fitness equipment. She would gently extend one leg in front of her, lower her hips, and hold that stance for several seconds. Then she would change legs and repeat. When the girl had overtaken me earlier I’d caught a glimpse of an attractively round face, but seen now in profile as I passed the little plaza she looked more like a lovely, ivory-skinned demoness—in Japanese mythological terms, a hannya. (I once read a theory that Japanese beauties can be divided into two categories: moonfaced, plump-cheeked Otafuku types, named after the bawdy goddess of the underworld, and foxy-looking, angular-featured female demons.)

  Meanwhile, the sound of rushing water in the canal had grown louder. This was because the current was stronger along here; also, the framework supporting the steel train bridge—the Odakyu Line passed directly overhead—formed a canopy over the canal and magnified the sound. My eyes were drawn to the surface of the water, where something rather interesting was going on. As I trundled along in a distracted state, staring into the canal, I suddenly collided with a lamppost that had loomed up unnoticed in front of me and I hit my head—hard! (How hard? Well, the resulting hematoma stretched from the right side of my head to the corner of my eye and was still plainly visible four or five days after the accident.)

  Just as the world went dark and I was on the verge of toppling over, I was caught from behind in someone’s solid yet supple embrace. Two strong arms encircled me, and the next thing I knew I was perched on what seemed to be a sort of spindle-shaped platform. My perch felt strangely warm and alive, though, and I soon deduced that it was a human thigh. I also became aware that my back was resting against a soft female chest. I somehow managed to struggle to my feet, and clinging to the lamppost I had crashed into a moment earlier, I tried to catch my breath. All the while, I could hear myself groaning out loud.

  “Sensei, please sit down on my lap again,” the girl in the chino pants said in a calm, measured tone and obediently, just like that, this vertiginous old man resumed his previous position. Nevertheless, after a few minutes had passed—it was about the same amount of time it took for Akari to recover from a medium-severe seizure—I once again hoisted my body off the girl’s thigh, which had grown noticeably warmer and was now soaked with perspiration.

  As I was trying to express my gratitude the girl said politely, “Excuse me for asking, but does this kind of thing happen often?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “That’s good, because if it were a frequent occurrence it would be cause for worry.”

  The girl had the sort of relaxed, easygoing attitude you would expect from someone in her thirties, and she was smiling as she spoke. (I suppose she was a young woman, technically, but she seemed like a girl to me.) Even while I was grimacing with pain, I felt the need to explain the confluence of circumstances that I thought, on brief reflection, had caused my bizarre accident.

  “It’s rather dark in this particular spot because the Odakyu Line passes overhead,” I began, “and also this lamppost has a device in the base to turn it on automatically, so the lower part is quite wide while the upper section is oddly attenuated, and I simply didn’t see it. On top of that, my attention was distracted by a sloshing sound in the canal and I was trying to see what was going on. I think the fish have moved to the other shore now—you can still see them splashing around over there—but anyway, four or five splendid-looking male carp were tussling with each other, vying for the favor of one lone female. It must be spawning season for koi. Where I come from you never see such big carp swimming together in a group, and I was momentarily mesmerized by the unusual sight. The next thing I knew, I was about to crash into the pole. In my youth, when my reflexes were sharper, I probably could have made a quick course correction and avoided the collision, but …”

  “I see,” said the girl, barely suppressing a giggle. “Thank you for the explanation. I guess that kind of precision and attention to detail must come in handy in your line of work.”

  “The most outlandish thing is that the whole time I was trying to piece it all together, I was sitting on the knee of a young woman I’ve never even met! By the way, please excuse me for not being able to stay on my feet,” I added, “but the pain was simply too much to bear. I really can’t thank you enough for your assistance.”

  “It’s a good thing the pole didn’t smack you in the temple,” the girl said. “But it looks as though the blood is still spreading under the skin at the edge of your forehead. You should hurry home and put some ice on it right away.”

  As I headed toward the bridge over the canal, which was my customary turnaround point, the girl began walking with me, slowing her pace to match mine. That was when it finally dawned on me that this was not some fortuitous chance encounter at all. After the girl had first passed me without a backward glance, she had probably managed to confirm my identity when I passed the small fitness plaza and had followed me from there with the intention of talking to me about something; that’s how she happened to be nearby when I collided with the lamppost. She was planning to use the serendipitous rescue as an excuse for continuing our conversation.

  “I’m sorry,” she was saying now. “I should have introduced myself earlier.” Watching my expression, which clearly conveyed, Well, there were extenuating circumstances—I mean, I banged my head on a pole and had to sit on your lap! the girl went on: “I’m from Masao Anai’s group, the Caveman Group, and I’ve heard that Masao has been acquainted with you, at least in passing, for many years. Incidentally, our group was given its name by your late brother-in-law, Goro Hanawa. Anyway, when Masao first started the theater company I gather he wrote you a letter, asking for permission to dramatize your early works, and you kindly agreed. After that, his stage version of The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away had a successful run and won an award, which was a huge career boost for our troupe. So we decided to move the Caveman Group’s headquarters to Matsuyama, and now we’re busy with a plan to dramatize more of your work. Your sister, Asa, has been unbelievably helpful, and we’ll be indebted to her forever. I was lucky enough to appear in the production of The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, and on the program where it credits ‘Unaiko’? That’s me!”

  “In that case,” I said, “I did hear something about this from Asa, by way of my wife.”

  “Actually, Sensei, I’ve been thinking for the longest time that I would like to meet you someday, if I ever had the chance. I needed to come to Tokyo this week on other business, so I decided to seize the moment. When I asked Asa how I should handle it, she said rather than setting up a formal appointment—she explained that you always found that sort of thing bothersome and added that your advancing age was a factor as well—anyway, she suggested that I should try to engineer an ‘accidental’ encounter, as if by coincidence. She said you often go walking on a nearby cycling path, and she suggested simply lying in wait and ambushing you, as she put it. (She’s so funny.) She even called your wife to find out what time you were likely to be here. But then the very first time I ventured out here—and I don’t know whether this was good luck, or …” Again, she choked back a little burst of laughter before continuing: “I mean, it was rotten luck for you, but even so, to be honest, it was really very fortunate for me that you happened to bump into the pole.”

  My usual exercise course followed a road (paved with a soft, resilient mixture of red and black sand) along the opposite shore, then brought me back to my starting point. The girl followed along, chattering as we walked. There was one rapidly swelling knot between my ear and my eyebrow, and another on my forehead. Both lumps were throbbing and my entire body seemed to be engulfed in a rapidly rising fever, so I assumed the role of passive listener and hardly said a word.

  “The truth is,” Unaiko began, “I heard from Asa that you’re planning to go home this summer after a long absence. I gather you’l
l be staying in the Forest House, so Asa wanted to give the place a thorough cleaning well in advance. She asked whether the younger members of our troupe—the Caveman Group—might be willing to lend a hand, and of course we happily agreed. But anyway, while we were all working together, we got to hear about the reason for your return. Apparently Asa has been holding on to a certain red leather trunk your mother left in her custody before she passed away, and since this year is the tenth anniversary of your mother’s death, that trunk can now be given to you. Also, Asa said you would most likely pick up where you left off on a book you started many years ago, and that you’d be making use of the stuff in that trunk. She spoke of the book as the ‘drowning novel,’ and I gathered that it begins with an account of what happened one night when the river near your village overflowed its banks.

  “Since you’ll be coming home in any case, Asa said she thought you would also do some research for your book around the area—location scouting, as the filmmakers say. She also mentioned that since Masao Anai knows all your work by heart and is in the process of writing a play based on some of your books, he could lend a hand with your research, and vice versa. And she suggested that the other members of our troupe might be able to help out, too, not just with cleaning and other chores but with brain-powered tasks as well. Masao is a different story, of course—he’s supersmart—but I have to wonder whether the rest of us would be very useful with brainwork.” (Even while she was issuing this faux-modest disclaimer, the girl looked as though she had absolute confidence in her own abilities.) “In any case, we were overjoyed at the prospect of getting to work with you and hopefully being able to help. But you’ve probably heard about this already, from Asa?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I have spoken with Asa about spending some time in the Forest House, to sort through some things she’s been hanging on to for all these years—a prologue I drafted, and some notes, plus some odds and ends having to do with my father. We did discuss the possibility of ‘location scouting’ for the drowning novel on and around the river. And yes, I have heard her mention the Caveman Group.”

  The girl looked thoughtful. “Before I left, Masao kept saying things like ‘Listen, Unaiko, on the chance you manage to meet up with Mr. Choko in Tokyo, make sure you don’t come on too strong. If you do, he may just dig in his heels and refuse to budge.’ Masao knows me pretty well, and I guess he was worried I might mess things up by being overly aggressive. But I was only thinking I’d like to have a chance to tell you in person that all of us in the Caveman Group are wishing and hoping your visit will come to pass.” And then she added in a burst of candor, “Please forgive me for saying this again, but I can’t help feeling what happened at the lamppost was a wonderful stroke of luck, at least for me, because it gave us a chance to talk like this, face-to-face.”

  We had come to a halt in front of a horizontal steel pipe that served as a barrier to keep vehicles out, at the juncture where the cycling path intersects a busy city street. This was where I would normally start trudging homeward, up the slope. The bumps beside my ear and on my forehead had continued to swell, and as I was pressing on them gingerly with the fingers of one hand, I ventured another explanation.

  “This walking course goes along both banks of the canal, and the two sides are joined by a bridge. Needless to say, depending on the person, it could also be used as a running or jogging course. But if you’re going to have an accidental encounter, the options are limited: you can bump into another person who’s approaching from the front, or you can pass someone, or you can be overtaken from behind. If you had come toward me from the opposite direction and it had been obvious you were targeting me, I would probably have passed by without a word even if you had called out a greeting. On the other hand, when someone creeps up from behind there’s even more of a feeling of pressure, and I wouldn’t have been likely to respond in a friendly way in that case, either. I agree that my collision with the lamppost must have had some deeper significance because I, too, am glad we’ve had this chance to talk. Well then, this is where I take my leave. Please tell Asa to give me a call.”

  At that, I started to walk toward the uphill road that led to my house. But instead of taking the social cue and saying good-bye, the girl asked me a question. She seemed suddenly preoccupied, and a subtle change in her facial expression appeared to reflect some interior reverie.

  “This is about something completely different,” she said, “but I heard that your old French literature professor at Tokyo University translated an epic novel from the sixteenth century—is that right? And apparently the book contains an episode about a man who uses a crazed bunch of dogs to create some kind of riot in Paris?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “The book you’re referring to is The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Rabelais. The first volume of what is, indeed, a monumental novel, is called simply Pantagruel. The title character is one of a race of giants, and in one chapter his favorite retainer, Panurge, plays a prank on an aristocratic lady who rejected his attempts to court her. According to the story, Panurge found a female dog in heat and fed her all sorts of delicacies, presumably to enhance her sexual energy. Then he killed the dog and took a certain, um, something out of her insides. He mashed it up, stuffed the resulting pulp into the pocket of his greatcoat, and off he went. He tracked down the snooty Parisian lady and furtively smeared the substance on her dress: on the sleeves, in the folds of the skirt, and so on. Of course, the aroma attracted a huge crowd of male dogs. They all came running and leaped on the lady, and the result was a very unseemly sort of mayhem. I mean, you can imagine what would happen if ‘more than 600,014’ male dogs—the story gives the exact number—were whipped into a frenzy.”

  “If the first dog, the one that was killed, was a female, what on earth did the retainer take out of her, um, insides?”

  “Well … this is a bit awkward. I mean, it isn’t the sort of word I feel comfortable introducing into a conversation with a young woman I’ve only just met.” I was truly flustered by the question, but at the same time I was also pleasantly reminded of Professor Musumi’s transported expression and exuberant manner of speaking whenever he was illuminating some arcane point for his students. Trying to emulate my late mentor’s happily didactic spirit, I did my best to explain, as delicately as possible, one of the footnotes from my late mentor’s translation of the famous medieval novel.

  “It was the uterus of the female dog,” I said. “That organ has been known to scholars since Greek times for its medicinal properties, and I’ve read that medieval sorcerers also used it as an ingredient in magical love potions.”

  Without saying another word the girl gave a slight bow, then turned and walked away. I felt curiously refreshed and amused, and I also realized that the request from Unaiko and her colleagues in the Caveman Group had made me much more inclined to act on Asa’s invitation to return to Shikoku, after all these years, and explore the contents of the red leather trunk.

  Chapter 1

  Enter the Caveman Group

  1

  Asa picked me up at Matsuyama Airport in her car, and as we drove she shared some local news.

  “The young folks from the Caveman Group were delighted to hear you’ll be staying at the Forest House for a while,” she began. “The head of the theater group, Masao Anai, was especially happy and relieved. Apparently when he found out that Unaiko—who, of course, is a very important part of the group—had made an arbitrary decision to go to Tokyo to talk to you directly, he was worried the whole thing might fall apart.

  “On another topic, our local officials have been asking what should be done about the commemorative stone that was erected when you won that prize, since in its current location it would interfere with the building of a new road. I discussed the matter with Chikashi, and then relayed her thoughts to the powers that be. As she said, there’s really no need to move the whole thing, and once the stone has been relocated they could go ahead and tear down the pedestal. First, though, w
e’ll need to salvage the part of the monument that has the words you chose from Mother’s writing, along with your own little poem. While I was planning this it occurred to me that you’ve never even seen the monument in its finished state, so I thought we could go take a look right now—it’s down around Okawara, and we should be there in about an hour or so. Do you want to try to catch a few winks on the way?”

  Asa then lapsed into silence and concentrated on piloting the car while I dozed fitfully in the passenger seat. Just as she’d said, it was about an hour later when we stopped the car at a place where the riverbank had been made into a park. Asa mentioned that my mother had planted pomegranates and camellias around the monument but they were gone, having been “tidied up” as part of the construction process. Jutting out of the bare ground was a large round stone that appeared to be a fragment of a meteorite. When I gazed up at the stone—it was a pale, vegetal shade of green, like early-spring onions—I saw that it was inscribed with five spare, calligraphic lines of Japanese characters. Some years earlier I had written those lines with a fountain pen, and the words had been enlarged and then expertly engraved on the stone.

  You didn’t get Kogii ready to go up into the forest

  And like the river current, you won’t return home.

  In Tokyo during the dry season

  I’m remembering everything backward,

  From old age to earliest childhood.

  “It reads better than I’d expected, considering all the fuss it provoked,” I said.

  “For some reason the beginning—that is, Mother’s two-line poem—just didn’t sit well with people from the start,” Asa said. “They were complaining it wasn’t a proper haiku, yet it wasn’t a tanka, either. That couldn’t be helped, but the professor who was the adviser for the commemorative-stone committee summoned me to Matsuyama and made no secret of his displeasure. ‘What is this supposed to be, anyhow?’ he asked. ‘A parody of a Misora Hibari song?’