Bundori: A Novel Of Japan

“Have you always lived at the castle?” he asked.

“Not always, master.” In the candlelight, Aoi’s skin glowed; he had an urge to feel its smoothness. The smoke from the incense, sweet and musky, veiled her in its thin tendrils.

Sano tried again. “How long have you tended the shrine?”

“Six years, master. Before that, I was a palace servant.”

Was she trying to discourage his interest by reminding him of her low status? “Where are you from?” Sano persisted, guessing from the slow tempo of her speech that she was not an Edo native.

Having finished preparing the altar, Aoi folded her hands in her lap. “ Iga Province, master.” An unyielding quality in her polite manner brooked no further questions. “If you would please place the relics there.”

Sano removed the pouch, the paper-wrapped hair, and the label from under his sash and laid them in the center of the circle as she’d indicated. The murder investigation was first priority now. Breaking through her reserve was a challenge he looked forward to meeting later.

Gazing down at the relics, Aoi sat motionless except for the deep breaths that expanded and contracted her chest. Her eyes focused inward, and her respiration gradually slowed until it seemed to cease altogether. She was apparently entering a trance state, similar to one of deep meditation. Time passed. Sano waited, himself entranced by the flickering candles, smoking incense, and Aoi’s deathlike immobility. On the edge of his awareness, he heard the wind whistling outside the shrine, and the barking of a dog somewhere down the hill. The cold permeated his bones. A current of apprehension shot through him, and he felt an almost irresistible impulse to touch Aoi and make sure she was still alive.

Then her mouth opened, emitting a moan that wandered the range from high notes to low, and back again. Sano stared, transfixed by the ritual’s powerful erotic quality. Aoi’s moist lips, her moans, the quickening rise and fall of her bosom, and the sheen of sweat on her face all made him think of a woman succumbing to sexual pleasure. He could even see her nipples, large and erect, pressing through her kimono. Warm blood pooled in his loins. His overwhelming desire to touch her increased. Then she spoke.

“… my son. Promise… ”

The voice was that of an old man, weak and cracked with mortal sickness. Aoi’s features took on a startlingly familiar cast. Sano sat forward so quickly that he almost lost his balance and fell onto the altar. Shock banished arousal as he recognized his father’s voice and visage.

“Be the living embodiment of Bushido… ”

Even as Sano reeled with the blow of hearing his father speak through Aoi, his mind cast about for a rational explanation. At his house, she must have noticed his father’s memorial altar and known of his recent bereavement. But how could she evoke the essence of someone she’d never met, and speak words that he alone had heard? All doubts about her mystical abilities vanished in a flood of pure joy.

“Father,” he whispered, eagerly reaching out to grasp his sire’s elusive, longed-for presence.

To his intense disappointment, Aoi’s face became her own again, and she lapsed back into the wordless moaning. She unclasped her hands and picked up Kaibara’s pouch. Her eyelids lowered. Pressing the pouch between her palms, she rubbed the fabric against her nose and mouth and put her tongue to the dangling netsuke, as if physically extracting Kaibara’s spirit from his belongings. She lowered the pouch to her lap and spoke in a high, querulous whine.

“In the last year of my life, I was plagued by great sorrow. Death came as a welcome release. Why must you now disturb my well-earned sleep?”

“I-I want to know who killed you,” Sano faltered, startled by the fresh shock of having the spirit address him directly. And in a voice he could easily attribute to the frail, elderly Kaibara, whose remains he’d viewed in the morgue.

A long, tremulous sigh. “Why does it matter? What is done is done.”

“Your murderer must be prevented from killing again,” Sano said. “Please, Kaibara- san, tell me what happened last night. Did you see your killer?”

A long pause. Sano noticed with amazement that Aoi had assumed Kaibara’s characteristics. Her body shrank into itself, her jaw slackened, her eyes dimmed. And were those new wrinkles creasing her face and neck? The candles sputtered. The incense smoke now filled the hollow with a thick, pungent haze that made Sano dizzy and his eyes water. The sound of more dogs barking echoed up and down the hill. Then Kaibara’s voice issued again from Aoi’s mouth:

“It was dark. Foggy. I could not see his face. But he was very tall. And he walked with a limp… ”

“Which leg?” Sano demanded.

“… the right… ” As Kaibara’s voice faded, the old-man cast fell away from Aoi, leaving her face blank of all personality.

“Kaibara!” Sano resisted his impulse to clutch at the departing spirit. “Come back!”

With the slow, deliberate movements of a priest during a sacred ceremony, Aoi replaced the pouch on the altar. She unfolded the paper from around the dead eta’s lock of hair, which she rubbed between her finger and thumb, then cupped in both palms and sniffed. Recovering from the disappointment of losing contact with Kaibara, Sano waited tensely for the eta’s spirit to appear.

Aoi’s facial muscles tightened; her eyes darted from side to side with a feral wariness. Her shoulders hunched, and she held her arms close to her sides, hands clasped to her bosom. Sano gasped as he recognized the characteristic cringing posture of the eta.

A sudden gust of wind stirred the pine boughs overhead. The candles flickered; one of them went out in a hiss of singed wax. Aoi’s lips moved.

“… sorry… please, master, I don’t mean to offend you. Forgive me!” This time the voice was hoarse, guttural, and laced with fear. Aoi bobbed a series of rapid bows, while her gaze flitted from Sano’s face to the swords at his waist.

“I won’t hurt you,” Sano hastened to assure the spirit. “I just want you to tell me who killed you.”

“Samurai. Don’t know his name.”

“What did he look like? Describe him.”

Aoi’s eyes blurred in fearful remembrance. “Big. Strong. Bad leg. And he was scarred.”

“A scar? Where?” That the Bundori Killer had a visible identifying mark seemed too good to be true.

She shook her head impatiently. “Not just one. All over. Face. Hands.” Her mouth worked as the inarticulate spirit struggled to say what he meant.

Sano hazarded a guess: “He was scarred from the pox?”

A vigorous nod; a look of relief in the fearful eyes.

“What else? Tell me more.”

But the spirit lapsed into an incoherent muttering that soon faded. Aoi shed the eta’s feral guise and subservient posture. Sano watched with mounting excitement as she replaced the hair on the altar and picked up the label. Would he now learn the tall, lame, pockmarked samurai’s identity?

Aoi fingered the label, and a deep shudder convulsed her body. Fixing her stricken gaze on some distant scene visible only to her, she whispered, “The soldiers are on the march again. Soon they will arrive at the destined battle site. He will draw his sword. And then-”

With a shriek, she hurled the label away from her. The paper swirled in brief flight, then drifted downward. Sano thrust his hand out to snatch it away from the candle flames.

“Look out!” he shouted as concern for the evidence overcame his fear of disrupting the ritual.

In a fumbling movement devoid of her customary grace, Aoi stood. Her knees upset the altar, scattering candles and incense burners across the clearing. Her groping hands knocked Sano’s away before he could rescue the label or other relics.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, angry as well as confused.

“Fire, fire!” she cried. Her trance had dissolved; her voice was clear and sharp, her face alert and filled with dismay.

Sano looked down and saw the fallen candles smoldering in the dried pine needles that covered the earth. He jumped up and started to stamp out the fires. In her haste to help, Aoi darted into his path. They collided full tilt, face to face, with a stunning crash. Instinctively Sano threw his arms around her to keep them both from falling.

He felt his insides turn to molten heat. Her body was warm, firm, and pliant, her breasts soft against his chest.