I Parker - The Masuda Affair

Tora trudged through the quarter, from wine house to wine house, asking for Hanae or one of her friends. Nobody had seen his wife recently. He had expected that. But finding and speaking to the girls who might know something because she had worked with them brought him more trouble than he had bargained for.

It was afternoon, and the women were either still asleep or dressing for their nightly engagements. Tora was exhausted, dizzy from heat and hunger, and in pain. His appearance was no longer reassuring. His clothes looked dirty and wrinkled, his boots gaped, revealing dirty toes, he was unshaven, and his hair had come loose. Besides, he had developed a manner of glowering at people from bloodshot eyes. He was not welcome. Doors were slammed in his face. No longer able to draw on his stock of charm and flattery, he resorted to demands and threats. One woman cursed him and emptied a bucket of night soil on him when he turned away. Most of it missed, but enough soaked the back of his blue robe to add a fetid stench to his other unlovely attributes.

When he finally found a girl who knew Hanae, she looked at him askance and suggested that Hanae must have come to her senses and left him. To emphasize the point, she told him that Sadanori had shown a great interest in Hanae. And she said that he should ask Rikiju if he didn’t believe her.

Rikiju took pity on him. Tora found her in a rented room in the back of a disreputable restaurant. She was in her thirties, an example of what happened to women in the pleasure quarter if they did not find a lifelong patron before their youth faded. Her old robe hung open, revealing too much of a bony figure. From a hook hung her only good gown: the silk stained and torn, and the embroidered flowers faded. She wore no make-up, and her face was both haggard and puffy from late nights and too much cheap wine. But she commiserated with him and offered to share the modest meal she was eating.

‘You look terrible,’ she said. ‘Eat just a little.’

Tora thought the same of her and shook his head. He told her what had happened.

‘Well,’ she said dubiously, sucking the last bits of food from her bowl, and then wiping it with one of her fingers, ‘if it’s Sadanori who got her, she won’t be getting back today.’ She licked her finger and wiped it on the sleeve of her robe. ‘He goes to that much trouble only when he’s serious.’

‘He’s done it before?’

‘So they say.’

‘I know he took her, and I’m going to get her back if I have to fight him and a thousand armed guards.’ Tora trembled with rage at the thought of Sadanori raping his Hanae.

She eyed him with concern and shook her head. ‘You won’t find her. He’s probably taken her to a private house. He’s done it before. The best thing is to wait for her to come back. He gets tired after a while. They say he’s one of those men who want what they can’t have. It’s not getting a woman that heats his blood. Until she’s his, his fire burns hot; then he’ll lose interest quickly and send her home. Smart thing to do for Hanae is to let him have his way.’

‘Bite your tongue.’ Tora glared at her. ‘My Hanae will fight the bastard to the death.’

Rikiju looked away. ‘Hanae’s a sensible girl. She’ll be all right. Now I’ve got to get ready for work.’

‘What do you mean, she’s sensible?’

She sighed and got up. ‘Nothing. Don’t worry. Go home, Tora.’

After that, Tora was no longer quite rational. Back on the street, he pushed people out of his way and snarled when he asked for information. Most of those he accosted fled or slammed their doors. He had only one name left before he had to crawl to Master Ohiya.

The dancer Kohata was Hanae’s rival. The two women often appeared at the same parties and they competed for work. Tora tracked Kohata to the best restaurant in the quarter. To get this information, he threatened an old woman who had been hobbling out of Kohata’s home with bodily harm. She told him that the entertainer had left the previous evening for a party with important clients and had not returned yet.

At the entrance of the Fragrant Plum Blossom, Tora cornered a maid and demanded to speak to Kohata. The maid ran from him, and the restaurant’s owner arrived and threatened to call the constables. Tora pushed the man aside and went in. A young boy with the knowing face of an incipient pimp was sweeping the floor of the corridor. Otherwise the place seemed to be empty. The owner made the mistake of grabbing Tora’s arm. Tora whipped around, grasped the man’s jacket with both hands and slammed him against the nearest wall, which, being paper-thin, collapsed. Then he turned on the boy.

‘Where’s Kohata?’

The boy backed away. ‘She… she’s in the “Willow Pavilion”.’

Tora grabbed his shirt and twisted. ‘Where, you brainless oaf?’

The boy gasped, ‘In the back. Through the garden.’

Tora pushed him aside and stormed out of the restaurant’s back door and into the garden. Behind him, the owner and the boy were shouting at each other.

Tora ran to the small building under the willow tree and burst through its door without knocking. The room was empty except for a pile of silk robes and two naked lovers in an interesting configuration of entangled limbs. Under normal circumstances, Tora would have taken notice of their inventiveness, but in his mind’s eye he saw Sadanori embracing Hanae, and he went to seize the woman by the arm and pull her away from the man.

Kohata was furious. She shouted at Tora. Her frightened client, a fat old man, grabbed frantically for his clothing and stumbled into it.

Tora attempted to calm her down enough to ask her about Hanae, but his time had run out. Footsteps and shouts sounded outside. When he turned, he saw red-coated constables armed with chains and wooden clubs. Behind them came the restaurant’s owner, the boy, the maid, and assorted strangers.

Tora abandoned Kohata and dashed out through the back, vaulting over a balustrade and then scrambling over a fence. Outside, he ran for blocks until the sole of one of his boots came loose, caught, and tripped him. He fell headlong and hard, scraping his left cheek and both elbows on the gravel.

The pain cleared his head a little. He sat up, took off the ruined boot, and tossed it away. Then he got to his feet and limped to Master Ohiya’s house.

Ohiya’s young male servant answered, then tried to slam the door when he saw a disheveled, bleeding man outside. Tora snarled, ‘Out of my way,’ and pushed him aside. He found Ohiya by following drumbeats to a large room at the back of his house. Ohiya himself was beating the drum, seated cross-legged on the wooden floor while a young girl went through a dance routine and three others awaited their turn.

The girls were very young, under fifteen, and they squealed when Tora burst through the doorway.

Ohiya looked up, cried, ‘Oh!’ and stopped drumming. In a shaking voice, he asked, ‘What do you want?’

Tora cast a glance at the frightened girls huddling in a corner and said, ‘Sorry. I need a word.’

Ohiya’s eyes blinked, then narrowed in recognition. ‘Tora? What is this? How dare you burst in here like this!’

‘Hanae’s gone. Stolen. I know who has her, but I don’t know where she is. You’ve got to help me, Ohiya.’

Ohiya got to his feet. He was a slender man in his forties who whitened his face and touched his lips with red safflower juice. Today he wore his working clothes: a black silk robe under an embroidered jacket. The jacket was sufficiently feminine that, in spite of his tall figure and the male hairstyle, it and the make-up made his gender vaguely dubious. This was one of the reasons Tora despised him.

Now Ohiya curled his lip and said, ‘You look disgusting. What dog has dragged you out of the gutter?’