I Parker: The Masuda Affair

‘Come out,’ Akitada shouted. ‘The building may fall. Hurry!’

There was still no reply. What was wrong with the man? Maybe a tile had stunned him. Or perhaps he was so afraid of Akitada that he would risk his life to avoid him.

It was a desperate choice. Someone in his own home might be hurt. Akitada hesitated, then ducked under the pavilion. Tora had hidden here when he overheard Sadanori speaking to Ishikawa. Sadanori was probably not worth saving, but watching him being crushed would be worse. He would grab him and drag him out into the open. And later, if all went well, he’d get the truth out of him.

Akitada bent double as he made his way to the cowering figure in the blue silk robe. Sadanori had lost his tall hat – Akitada stumbled over it – and sat with his head between his knees and covered by his arms.

‘Sadanori,’ said Akitada, ‘stop this foolishness. There’s no time. The building is slipping. You may be crushed at any moment. Come out.’

‘No,’ sobbed the other man. ‘I’ll die. It’s my fate.’

Akitada cursed under his breath and took hold of Sadanori’s arm. Jerking him up, he half carried, half dragged him towards light and safety.

But there was not enough time. The earth shook again, and the structure above them moaned in protest. Thinking of Tamako and his people, Akitada dropped Sadanori and scrambled towards the open. If he could at least reach the veranda overhang, he might be protected when the heavier timbers collapsed.

He managed a few more steps, then the ground under him rolled and heaved as if alive, and he fell to his knees. The large beam slipped with a slow squeal. One by one the horizontal supports above cracked, popped, tore, and splintered, and then the whole structure collapsed on him. For a moment the sound was deafening and it turned dark. Something heavy fell down in front of Akitada and blocked his way. The dust was thick and made his eyes burn and filled his nostrils until he choked. He was on his belly without knowing how he’d got there. Coughing, he tried to slide around the obstruction, to find a way out, but something pinned him from behind. When he used his right arm to feel around, he found that the floor of the pavilion was now within inches of his back and shoulders and touched his thighs. He could not reach any farther, and he could not move his legs.

An initial fear that he was injured severely and possibly paralyzed passed when he became aware of pain in his legs.

At about the same time, he heard Sadanori. The sound curdled Akitada’s blood. The high keening noise was followed by a rattle and did not sound human.

Akitada guessed that Sadanori was less than five feet behind him, but debris separated them. He cleared his throat and called out, ‘Sadanori?’

The keening paused.

‘Are you hurt?’ Akitada was not sure how badly he himself was hurt – the pain was mostly in his right leg – but he thought on the whole he had been lucky. Much depended on what happened next. Even if the main tremors were past, aftershocks were common, and the slightest movement might bring down the debris, which merely pinned his legs now, and crush him.

Sadanori said something, but his words were unintelligible.

‘Somebody will come and get us out,’ Akitada told him. That opened up new and frightening possibilities. Sadanori’s servants scrambling about among the broken timbers could well cause a fatal collapse.

Sadanori suddenly raised his voice and said clearly, ‘I’m dying.’

Appalled, Akitada asked, ‘Where are you hurt?’

‘My arm hurts.’

That hardly sounded fatal, and Sadanori’s voice was quite strong. Trust the man to wail over a small injury, thought Akitada. He put Sadanori’s problems from his mind and concentrated on his own situation. His right leg still hurt. Worse, he had no feeling in the lower part of it any longer. For all he knew, part of the limb was gone. He gulped down fear and worked his right hand back to feel along his body. At his hip, he encountered the beam which seemed to rest on him. His left hand moved more freely, and his left leg seemed only pinned. He could move his foot. He began a cautious effort to free it, but something shifted as he moved and now pressed on his shoulder. It was becoming hard to breathe. Akitada tried to suppress a rising panic, but he still had nightmares of the weeks he had spent buried in a mine on Sado island. His heart started racing and he was gasping when Sadanori began his dreadful keening again.

Akitada forgot his own terror and got angry. ‘Shut up!’ he shouted.

Sadanori broke off.

‘What makes you think you’re worth saving?’ Akitada asked nastily.

Sadanori sobbed.

Feeling better, Akitada put him from his mind and used his hands to dig away the dirt underneath him. The ground was soft down here. He prayed that the beam, or whatever pinned him, was supported by something other than his body, and that he could get enough purchase to crawl out.

Sadanori suddenly said, ‘I would not have hurt Hanae. I just wanted her to see what I could do for her. If the chancellor had not summoned me and kept me all day, this would not have happened.’

Akitada snarled, ‘You lie. You had your servant drug her and tie her up. She escaped on her own a day later.’

‘It’s the stupid woman’s fault. She exceeded her orders.’

Akitada did not think that worth a response.

Sadanori tried again. ‘I did not intend any of it to happen. How can I be responsible for what Ishikawa did?’

Akitada stopped digging. What was he talking about? Still angry, he said, ‘You’re beyond the human law now, but the judge of the underworld will know exactly what you did.’

Sadanori wept noisily.

On an impulse, Akitada added, ‘Your only option is to make a clean breast of it so that the living will not suffer for your deeds.’

Sadanori wept harder.

Akitada went on digging. He was sweating from the exertion, but so far nothing else had shifted and he could now twist his body a little.

‘Am I really dying?’

Akitada almost laughed. ‘How should I know?’ he snapped. ‘I thought you said you were.’

After a moment, Sadanori said sadly, ‘Yes, I am. I hope it’s quick.’

Akitada paused to rest. ‘In that case you’d better confess now,’ he said hopefully.

‘We’ll both die, so what’s the point?’

‘I’m not,’ Akitada said with more conviction than he felt. ‘I’m digging myself out.’ And he started on his labors again.

And then the first of the aftershocks hit.

Akitada’s first thought was that a quick death would have been preferable. It was not the pain in his arm and back that seemed unbearable, or that his chest felt crushed, but rather it was not being able to breathe. Or at least not enough. Every fiber in his body wanted to gulp air, but could not.

Panic seized him. He would die here, in minutes that would feel like hours. He was trapped and would suffocate. A fitting punishment for his cruelty to Yori, to Tamako, to Tora and Genba, and even to the dog. The gods had given him back a measure of happiness, only to snatch it all away.

Whatever weighed down on his chest had probably broken ribs, though breathing was not so much painful as very difficult. Except for the tiniest breath of dust-laden air, which choked him and teased his body into futile spasms that brought nothing but pain, he could not fully inhale.

He could still move his right arm, the one that did not hurt, and felt around with it. As far as he could make out, the last shock had settled the weight of the building on his body. His frantic efforts to breathe made matters worse. He concentrated on regulating his breathing. By taking slow, shallow breaths, he made his panic subside a little. He thought of Tamako. It seemed a pity that his life should end before they had a chance for another life together.