Akitada’s foolish hope that Noami might be satisfied with a few sketches collapsed. Noami would not let him go. There was nothing left now but the feeble hope that Yori somehow would make people understand where his father was.
“Hmm,” said Noami, looking at his sketch critically and nodding. “This will have to do. More extreme suffering will have to wait till later.” He held up the sketch for Akitada to see.
Akitada did not recognize himself in the pitiful, twisted creature suspended from a bare branch. Was his face really so contorted? He attempted to straighten up.
Noami grinned. “My compliments on your self-control, by the way. Your position must be quite painful by now.” He rose and came to check Akitada’s bonds again. “Tsk, tsk. You’ve been pulling on the rope. All you accomplished was to tighten the knots on your wrists. Your hands are already blue and quite swollen. I doubt if you have any feeling left in them. You should be safe enough.” He suddenly cocked his head and listened, then turned abruptly and padded off into the garden.
Akitada immediately returned to jerking on the rope. He discovered that he could manage ten sharp pulls before the pain on his wrists and arms became too great and he had to rest. At least he had some leverage by now. Sweat was running down his face despite the cold. He thought at first it was blood, that somehow the cold had thinned his skin until the slightest exertion cracked it wide open. Relieved that it was not, he began his routine again. There was a little more slack than before. Blood started trickling from his wrists again, but he did not care and gave more and harder pulls on the rope. By now his whole torso was a mass of fiery pain, and he was almost certain he had dislocated both of his shoulders, but he finally had some hope that he might have enough purchase to loosen his bonds or break the rope.
He had hardly thought this when the painter reappeared, muttering to himself. He was carrying two heavy pails and some rags. The pails he set down next to Akitada and, dropping the rags into the first pail, he began to wash Akitada’s body down.
Although he was thoroughly chilled already, the shock of the icy water was so great that Akitada groaned and flinched back violently. He could not fathom the purpose of this bath. If Noami wanted to get rid of the blood, he had no need to wet his head, chest, and abdomen.
When Akitada was completely wet, Noami moved the second pail next to Akitada’s feet, then bent to lift them into the pail.
Having his legs knocked out from under him pushed Akitada forward, his whole weight suddenly suspended again from his raw wrists and damaged shoulders. He screamed in agony, a muffled groan because of the gag, and closed his eyes against the excruciating pain which ran down his arms to the rest of his body like hot lightning. When his feet touched ground again and took the weight from his arms, the relief was so enormous that he did not realize right away that Noami had inserted his bound feet into a pail of freezing water halfway up his shins. He shrank into himself, then flinched violently as Noami draped the icy cloths about his bare body, covering him from his head to his hips.
When the wet cloth slapped against his nose and cheeks, robbing him of sight and air simultaneously, his terror was so great that he reared up, and the back of his head somehow struck Noami. He heard a sharp cry, and then felt a vicious blow to his head, which made him sag abruptly. He almost wished for unconsciousness at that moment, but Noami had been careful. He still needed him, needed him conscious and in agony.
Akitada could not see, but when Noami had struck him he had loosened the wet cloth on his face enough that he could breathe. He heard Noami muttering as he moved about.
“There,” he said suddenly quite close to Akitada’s ear as he adjusted one of the wet rags, “that should freeze nicely to your skin in the next hour. Not quite as natural as chaining you in a frozen pond, but I expect to see much the same expressions of pain and fear. It is very difficult to arouse certain emotions through art, but people will see my hell screen and be terrified. Nothing moves one’s heart like utmost terror and pain in the faces of other creatures. Terror has many faces, you know. Its variety would surprise you. I am quite curious how you will look when I return. If the effect is as fine as I hope, you will occupy the foreground, a lesson to all sinners. Through my art, the terror of one person, you, becomes the terror of all who see you, and terror is the only emotion which moves men’s hearts from sin. Thus a small sacrifice produces a great good. Now do you under… ?”
The rest was drowned out by the gush of icy water from the other pail. It hit Akitada squarely across head and shoulders and soaked his whole body.
Without another word, Noami left.
The cold was unbelievable and produced a totally new kind of pain, perversely almost akin to burning. Not in all those years in the snow country had Akitada felt such deadly cold. He tried to think back to the stories of people who had barely escaped freezing to death. They had become sleepy and felt nothing after a while. So Noami would be disappointed after all. Akitada thought that he was beginning to lose sensation in most parts of his body already. Then the memory of amputated limbs came to him. Those who had not died in the frozen north had lost hands and feet, ears and noses to the cold. Ice was as effective as a sharp knife.
Movement and physical exertion had warmed him earlier, and he tried to move again, to pull against the rope, but his muscles were stiffening, cramping, refusing his commands. For the first time he considered seriously the fact that he was about to die. To die slowly, forgotten in this overgrown bamboo grove, while a demented artist sketched his final moments. To die without a single act of courage or affirmation. The thought of being mocked in death, and again mocked after death by the thousands who would pass by Noami’s masterpiece, revolted his very soul.
He began his struggle again, straining, his teeth grinding against the rags in his mouth, his own groans filling his ears till they drowned out the rustling of the bamboo and the distant sound of temple bells marking the hours. He gained enough purchase that his arms and shoulders could move a little and he celebrated that moment with a brief period of rest during which he attempted to move his fingers and wrists. Without them he could not work the knot loose. But his exertions were in vain. He had no idea if his fingers were capable of movement, and his wrists hurt too badly. But the physical effort had counteracted the freezing water against his skin, and one of the rags had actually come loose and fallen.
He considered his situation. Once or twice during some of his more violent efforts of pulling against the rope, he had brushed the bark of the tree trunk behind him. Perhaps he could get close enough to rub the rope against it.
Belatedly he remembered the bucket he stood in. He had lost contact with his feet when he stopped feeling them. With a convulsive kick forward, and a resulting new tear to his shoulder muscles, he overturned the bucket. He barely felt the ground under his feet, but the bucket touched his ankle. If he could get his feet on top …
It took another vicious pull on his arms and shoulders to raise his legs. He missed, sliding off the wooden surface of the bucket with the soles of his feet. Clamping his teeth into the gag, he tried again, clung precariously for a moment; then somehow the bucket must have rolled slightly and settled into the mud under him. He stood on it, supported totally by his feet, but swaying weakly, perilously, on its curved surface.
The resulting slack had brought his tied wrists close enough to see that the rope was knotted too tightly to undo, even if he could have moved his hands, which no longer resembled human hands at all. He blocked the thought of losing both hands from his mind.