Cursing, Tora ran this way and that before giving up and returning to the gate. He decided to see how large the area was. A narrow path followed the wall toward the back. He had only taken a few steps along this track when it happened. A moment before the excruciating blow struck the back of his head, he had a dim impression of running steps. Then he pitched forward and passed out.
TWENTY
A Hell of Ice
Yori disappeared the day of Tora’s adventures.
Because Harada’s condition had worsened, everyone in the Sugawara household was preoccupied with his care, and the boy was left to amuse himself. Yori’s absence was not noticed until the hour of the midday rice. At first it caused only mild concern, because Yori had wandered off before. But when time passed without his return and it grew colder outside, a search was organized, first of the house, gardens, and stable, then of the immediate neighborhood.
By midafternoon both Tamako and Akitada were pacing the floor. Unable to wait any longer, Akitada threw on an extra robe, put on his warm boots, and rushed out into the street. He knocked on every gate and personally questioned every resident of the surrounding streets, every passerby, every vendor, every beggar, and every passing servant, asking if they had seen the child. Nobody had.
Toward dusk, Akitada, now frantic with fear, picked up the first news at one of the mansions in the next quarter. A house-boy had passed the Sugawara mansion on an errand during the morning and noticed a small man with short bushy gray hair hovering by the open gate. The man had been gesturing to someone inside.
Then Saburo came rushing up with more news. In the next block, a cook’s children were playing in the alley when a hooded monk passed them, leading a small boy by the hand. They had stared because the boy had worn a very pretty red silk robe. It had to be Yori. And the hooded monk?
Akitada was seized with a sudden, gut-wrenching, irrational fear, but he told Saburo calmly, “I believe I know where he is. Tell your mistress that I have gone to bring him back and not to worry.”
Noami! It must have been Noami. The bushy hair, barely grown out; the children thinking of a monk, because Noami, dressed in monk’s robes, had probably covered his head against the cold. It did not explain why he had taken Akitada’s son.
Akitada set out for the painter’s home at a loping run, telling himself that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened.
What was more likely than that Yori, bored and left out of his elders’ activities, had spied Noami passing the house? The boy, remembering the interrupted painting lesson, would have begged the artist for another one, and Noami, unwelcome in Akitada’s house, would have offered to teach Yori at his home.
The distance between Akitada’s house and Noami’s Bamboo Hermitage was nearly two miles, and Akitada kept to the most direct route. Rushing along, he attracted stares and soon began to perspire in spite of the freezing cold.
He was no longer accustomed to exercise and soon tired, but he kept up his pace until he reached the artist’s place. It was getting dark, and the narrow street was as deserted as it had been the last time. When he pounded on the gate, the dry leaves of the bamboo rustled mysteriously and he half expected to hear the raucous cry of the crow again. Instead there was the sound of someone shuffling through the fallen leaves inside. A wooden bar was pulled back and the gate swung slowly open.
Noami stood before him. A slow smile stretched the wide mouth, his large yellow teeth making him look more than ever like a grinning monkey.
Like the monkey that ate the plum, Akitada thought, and snapped, “Do you have my son here?”
“But certainly, my lord.” Noami bowed and threw the gate wide. “The youngster has enjoyed himself enormously. Please come in.”
Relief washed over Akitada and left him wordless. He followed Noami down the path to his studio. At the entrance they both removed their boots. Akitada said peevishly, “May I ask why you brought him here?”
“To paint.” Noami raised his brows in surprise. “I came by to see if he might like a lesson. The boy told me that you and your lady were busy, but that he might visit my studio. I was about to bring him back.”
It sounded plausible. Yori was very likely to have said such a thing if he wished to go. Still, Noami’s high-handed invitation had put them all to immense trouble and worry. Akitada said brusquely, “We did not know and have been searching for him since he left.”
“Oh, dear,” said the painter blandly. “I am so sorry. It is amazing what youngsters can get up to. Please come in.”
Yori sat on the floor, surrounded by pieces of paper and small containers of paints. Noami had removed his quilted red robe and given him a short cotton shirt which covered his full trousers and jacket. It was liberally stained with paint. Yori turned a smiling face to his father.
“Look at my paintings,” he cried.
The studio looked much like the last time, except that all the sliding doors were closed against the winter chill. Noami had lit a lamp near some cushions. A large brazier warmed the room.
“May I offer refreshments?” Noami asked.
“Please do not bother,” Akitada said quickly. He disliked the man intensely, but felt it would be boorish to express his feelings, when the painter had done no more than entertain Yori for an afternoon. “We must return immediately. His mother is anxious.”
“Yes, of course. I forgot. But let me get something to clean him up a little. Please do have some wine. You look chilled. Surely on such a cold night… ?”
Akitada saw a wine flask on the brazier. His fingers and ears felt nearly frozen, and the sweat was like ice against his skin. “Very well.” He seated himself. Noami poured and offered the wine with a bow, then hurried away.
Akitada warmed his frozen hands by holding them over the brazier. Yori was dipping his fingers into some yellow paint and making hand prints on the paper.
“Stop that!” his father snapped. “Why did you run away without permission?”
Yori turned round eyes to his father. “But I asked permission. You were reading some papers and nodded your head.”
Akitada did not remember. Seimei had been busy with the sick Harada, and Akitada had worked over the accounts himself. An unpleasant draft passed through the studio, chilling him to the bone but doing little to disperse the strong smell of paints and pigments which hung about the studio. He sipped a little of the spiced wine and found it strange but not unpleasant. Papers lay scattered about the floor, Yori’s handiwork. He remembered the last painting lesson and became angry again. “Wipe your hands and come here.”
Yori obeyed, using Noami’s shirt for the purpose. Picking up some of the papers, he brought them to his father. “Look!”
The boy had tried to draw people this time, strange creatures with large heads, open mouths, huge eyes, and missing hands or feet. Childish distortions because he had found them too difficult to draw? Akitada took another sip, letting the wine warm and settle his stomach, and rose to look at the other sheets. As he did so, he came across a drawing by Noami. This, too, was of a human being, a small boy, whose eyes were wide with fear and his mouth open in a scream. Akitada dropped the paper in sudden revulsion. This drawing also had only stumps where the hands and feet should have been. How dare the man show such things to a child!
Then two memories coalesced in Akitada’s mind: the bleeding wounds of the tortured souls on the hell screen and the maimed son of the poor woman in the market nearby. At first his mind refused a connection too horrible to contemplate, but he sifted through the rest of the papers with frantic haste, turning up two more sketches of children with missing limbs. Remembering the rolls of drawings Noami had so angrily prevented him from seeing, Akitada took up the lamp, found the pile in the corner of the studio, and unrolled sketch after sketch, letting each fall from his trembling hands. Most were of women and children, though there were two frail old men. All of them poor weak creatures, and all of them horribly wounded or burned. Several sketches showed Yukiyo, her face slashed and her naked body bleeding from the breasts and abdomen. Akitada’s stomach turned, and the sour taste of wine rose to his mouth.