Laura Rowland - The Incense Game

“What about her?” That Mizutani didn’t want to talk about her was obvious from the dismay in his eyes. “She’s dead.”

“How do you know?”

“I haven’t seen her since before the earthquake. Her house fell into a crack in the ground.” The concern in Mizutani’s voice didn’t hide his glee. “I assumed she was buried and crushed inside.”

Maybe he knew because he’d poisoned her incense and spied on her while she and her pupils breathed the smoke and died, Sano thought.

Mizutani regarded Sano with sudden apprehension. “She is dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Sano said, “but it wasn’t the earthquake that killed her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let’s have this conversation indoors.” Sano wanted a look around Mizutani’s house.

Although leeriness molded his forehead into a frown, Mizutani ushered Sano inside the shop, which was empty but still smelled strongly of incense. “The looters took my stock and my equipment, you see,” Mizutani complained, leading Sano up the stairs. “Heaven knows what they thought they could do with it. Sell it, I guess. You can’t eat incense or mortars and pestles.” They entered the living quarters. “Please forgive me, it’s a little crowded. I’m storing the things I managed to save. Nobody wants incense lessons these days, but I’ve been lucky to sell incense for funerals.”

The room was jammed with iron trunks, ceramic urns and jars, and a workbench cluttered with tools, dishware, and scales. Small drawers in a cabinet overflowed with pellets and sticks of incense, barks, roots, and granules, pieces of deer antler and rhinoceros horn, and vials of liquid ingredients. The air was so saturated with their sweet, sour, bitter, and animal aromas that Sano could taste them. A crucible on a brazier contained black goo and emitted tarry smoke.

Mizutani cleared a space on the floor for him and Sano to sit. “May I offer you some refreshments?”

“No, thank you, I’ve already eaten.” Everything Mizutani had must be permeated with incense, and Sano thought it wise not to accept food from a suspect in a poisoning.

“How did Usugumo die?” Mizutani asked.

“She was murdered, with poisoned incense. She was playing an incense game with two ladies, her pupils. They died, too.”

Mizutani’s droopy mouth gaped. His teeth were yellow and the gums red, as if from an internal heat that had given his skin its melted-wax appearance. “Do you think I did it? Is that why you’re here?”

“Did you do it?” Sano asked.

“Me? No! Of course not!”

Sano counted too many denials. “Tell me about the arguments you had with Usugumo.”

“Who-” Mizutani pulled a face. “The neighborhood headman must have told you. That busybody.”

“What were the arguments about?”

Mizutani looked around, as if seeking an excuse for not answering. Failing to find one that he thought Sano would accept, he sighed. “She was stealing my pupils. The ungrateful wretch! Everything she had, I gave her!” Mizutani thumped his chest with his loose-fleshed hand. “Do you know what she was before she became an incense teacher?” He didn’t wait for Sano to say no. “She was a courtesan in Yoshiwara, that’s what!”

Yoshiwara was the pleasure quarter, the one place in Edo where prostitution was legal. The prostitutes, called courtesans, plied their trade in pleasure houses owned by merchants and regulated by the government. Samurai were officially banned from Yoshiwara but flocked there nonetheless. So did other men, from all classes, who could afford the high prices of the women, the drink, and the festivities. But the earthquake had wrecked the brothels and teahouses and put at least a temporary end to the glittering, glamorous world of Yoshiwara.

“I started going to Yoshiwara after my wife died. That was eight years ago,” Mizutani said. “I was lonely, I wanted female company, you see. It was fun for a while.” He smiled reminiscently, then sobered. “But it cost too much. Buying the right clothes to wear, the trips there and back in a boat. And the women are so expensive. Not just to sleep with-I had to throw parties for three nights in a row beforehand. Afterward, I had to buy presents for them if I wanted to have them again.”

Yoshiwara had many rituals that customers were required to observe, which added to the mystique of Yoshiwara and made money for the proprietors of brothels, teahouses, and other businesses associated with the trade.

“I had decided to give it up, when I met Usugumo.” Nostalgia softened Mizutani’s tone. “She was beautiful and charming and clever. And in bed-” He gave a lascivious shudder. “I got to thinking, why not buy her freedom? Take her home and have her all to myself, all the time? And never have to spend another copper in Yoshiwara.”

Some courtesans in Yoshiwara were sent to work there as punishment for petty crimes. They could leave when their sentences were finished. Others were sold into prostitution as children by their parents. They could leave after they’d repaid their purchase price to the brothel owner, but even the most popular, highest-priced courtesans could rarely afford to buy their own freedom. The brothels charged them for their clothes, room, and board. Every day they lived in Yoshiwara they went deeper into debt. They depended on patrons to set them free.

“So that’s what I did,” Mizutani said. “Usugumo was a bargain because she was thirty-five, you see. Way past her prime. I figured she would be grateful to me for rescuing her before the brothel threw her out on the street. I thought she would be faithful, not like those young girls, who’ll use a fellow just to get away from Yoshiwara and then run off as soon as they’re out the gate. At first, everything was fine. She looked after me and my house. I taught her about incense. She was good for business. The ladies admired her because she was fashionable and glamorous and could tell them stories about Yoshiwara. The men liked taking lessons from a beautiful woman. This went on until two years ago. Then-”

Mizutani’s face flushed with anger. He looked as if his wick had burned down through his head, glowing red-hot from within. “I went on a trip to buy new incense materials. I was away for three months. When I got back, Usugumo was gone. She didn’t even say good-bye! Just packed her things and moved. I had to ask the neighbors where she’d gone. It turned out she’d saved the allowance I’d been giving her and rented that house in Nihonbashi. She’d also taken my best incense with her. I went there and confronted her and said, ‘How could you treat me like this?’ She said she’d done her duty by staying with me for six years. She said I was an ugly, bossy old miser, and she was setting up her own business so she wouldn’t have to depend on any man ever again.”

Sano had to admire Usugumo’s initiative. “Did you report her to the police?”

“I was too embarrassed. She insulted me and robbed me. And later, took my pupils. They liked her better than me.” Mizutani’s expression went from shame and rancor to fear as he realized how bad he was making himself look. “But I didn’t poison her incense. How could I have? She wouldn’t have let me. I’m innocent.”

“If you’re innocent, then you won’t mind if I search your house.” Sano began opening drawers, digging through the contents.

“Hey!” Mizutani leaped to his feet. “Be careful with those! They’re valuable!”

“I’ll just take them with me, as evidence.” Sano found a cloth sack, dumped in incense sticks and raw ingredients.

“No! Please don’t! That’s my livelihood!”

Sano held up the sack. “Hand over the arsenic, and I’ll leave you this.”

“I don’t have any.”