Janwillem De Wetering - The Japanese Corpse

He grinned, for the feeling wasn't a bad feeling at all, and he wanted it to last. But then, as he began to walk away from the rock supporting the hamper, he suddenly stopped. So there was still some anxiety left in his mind. Maybe the pleasurable feeling wouldn't last. He could still suffer a little; he still had something to suffer with.

He stumbled and hurt his shin against a piece of driftwood. He felt the reaction of his nerves, but again there was no real contact. He observed the pain, a worm crinkling through the bones of his leg, a red-hot worm, an amusing worm which he could watch, but that had nothing to do with him. Yuiko was coming toward him and together they walked on the fine glittering sand. She pointed at the Buddha statue dominating a group of rocks and shrubs at the edge of the beach. The sun and clear air and the sound of the lake's water nibbling at the island had exhilarated the girl and she was running ahead of him, but he saw her stop abruptly in front of the statue and her body crumpled. She was on her knees when he got to her and her hands were clasped over her face. The Buddha was life-size, a body sitting erect, legs folded under the stone folds of a robe, hands outstretched, the left hand supporting the right. The large slanting calm eyes rested on what was lying on the hands. A cat, lazily asleep in the ultimate quietness of death, supporting its chin with its paws, and a bird, also dead, revolving slowly, suspended from an almost invisible nylon string, showing a closed and an open eye in turns, the open eye very much enlarged. The closed eye seemed peaceful, the open eye expressed an intense surprise, a lunatic fear inspired by the situation it found itself in. Whoever had arranged the two corpses had taken his time and managed to obtain the desired effect. Death showed its true face; the bird turning against the background of light gray stone embodied the end of everything to an extreme pitch of stark reality.

Yuiko had fallen forward, whimpering. The daimyo's effort had met with success, but he had injected fear into the wrong subject. De Gier opened his pocketknife and cut the string holding the bird. He picked up the cat and the bird and deposited them gently behind the statue, covering them up with small rocks and pebbles. He worked slowly, giving himself some time to think. So the daimyo had changed his plans. He had arranged the trip on the lake, setting up Yuiko to invite the sergeant. Maybe he had wanted to kill him after all, for Kono might be around. The daimyo had used Kono before, and the move was associated with violence, with a knife, with rough intimidation. But the staging of the dead cat and bird and the Buddha statue indicated the hand of the daimyo himself. De Gier tried to visualize the steps leading up to the confrontation he had taken part in just now. He had seen both cat and bird on his way to Lake Biwa. Now they were here. The daimyo had picked up the corpses and taken them here, so the daimyo's car had been behind his own sports car. The daimyo had been stopped by the flagmen too, had seen the corpses and had collected them. While de Gier and Yuiko lost their way to the harbor, the daimyo had gone ahead, boarded the fishing boat and sailed away. De Gier had lost more time tacking close to the shore while the fishing boat headed directly for the island. The daimyo had arranged his tableau, using the dead animals which coincidence had placed in his hands, and left again, or the boat had left, leaving the daimyo on the island because, presumably, he wanted to see how de Gier would react. But it had all been arranged on the spur of the moment, there had been no deliberate planning. So the daimyo had been in doubt, to destroy the opposition or allow it to continue in order to cooperate with it, to mutual benefit. But shake the opposition a little before proposing participation, paving the way so to speak. De Gier laughed as he pushed some sand over the pebbles. He was beginning to think like the commissaris, maybe he was finally learning.

He walked around the statue and knelt next to Yuiko's body. She had stopped whimpering and he turned her over and picked her up, nuzzling her cheek with his lips. He carried her to a spot where they couldn't see the statue and set her down.

"Yoroshii," he said. "It's all right. Your boss wanted to frighten me but there was nothing there but a dead cat and a dead bird. You saw the bird before, remember? the striped sparrow you told me about? Don't be upset, it had nothing to do with you. The daimyo is on your side, remember?"

She smiled and reached out to stroke his hair.

"I'll get the hamper," he said. "This is just the right time to eat."

When he came back to her she had managed to calm herself although her body was still rigid and she mechanically opened the hamper and took out its small square plastic containers, flipping off the lids and dishing out cold boiled rice and bits of thinly sliced meat. She gave him his chopsticks, wrapped in a narrow paper envelope and he tore off the paper and broke the sticks free, grimacing ferociously, muttering to himself.

"Pardon?" she asked in a flat little voice. "What did you say?"

"Damned sticks," he muttered. "Why do they have to join them?" He picked up a spare pair and showed her. "See? They are joined at the bottom; they expect you to snap them apart. Manufacturers are getting lazier and lazier. It's like selling you a shirt with two hundred and eighty four pins in it. Before you put it on you have to sit down for ten minutes and if you forget to pull one out you scratch youself."

She smiled tiredly. "Chopsticks always come like that, the cheap ones do. They are made in enormous machines, I saw one once, when I was still at school; we were taken to the factory. I don't mind breaking the sticks free, but I apologize if it is inconvenient for you. Perhaps they should pack them differently for foreigners."

"Never mind," he said gruffly. "You are not responsible for the way chopsticks are packed. Maybe that dead bird did upset me after all. Maybe your daimyo is getting on my nerves finally. I am sure he is wandering about here somewhere. Maybe he's behind that rock over there, or up in that tree. Do you see a daimyo in a tree?"

She looked at the trees obediently and shook her head. "No," she said. "I don't see a daimyo in a tree." She was crying and laughing simultaneously and he caught her in his arm as she fell over. "You are crazy," she sobbed. "I hope nothing will happen to you. They shouldn't have picked me to get you here. There are other girls in the Golden Dragon who speak English. I am too sentimental and you make me laugh sometimes. Do you see a daimyo in a tree! He is old, he can't climb trees and he has high blood pressure. He had a stroke last year, not very serious, but he was in the hospital for awhile."

They ate and he liked the food and asked her about the way she had prepared it. The thermos was filled with good coffee, and gradually they began to forget what had brought them to the island. De Gier rolled over on his back and she lit a cigarette for him and snuggled up in his arm. Her leg pressed against his and he felt a tremor go through her body and he pulled her a little closer. He kissed her and undid the buttons of her blouse and played with her breasts, overlooking the fact that their firmness and size were partly due to compressed air. She struggled out of his arm, got up and pulled him to his feet and took him by the hand and together they found a nearby cave. She undressed and helped him out of his clothes. The cave's floor was covered with fir needles and mosses, and as he made love to her, he could see the lake's surface through a transparent wall of waving ferns. He had been careful to keep his pistol within reach and there was a brief thought of the daimyo's presence and the possibility of death. The thought was very quick but it trailed another thought: If he were to get killed now it might just happen that the bullet would strike his neck at the very moment of having an orgasm.