The Tayu Nishikiyama[34] now knew the cause of the disturbance. To the frightened page (kamuro) who came running to her—"Be quiet child. This is no time to lose self-control. Aid me in preparation." She dressed herself with the greatest care; "all in white, as befitted a lady in attendance on a nobleman." Then she took down her koto and struck the opening bars of an old and famous song—the "Jinmujō" (Inexhaustible Happiness)—said to have been sung by the famous Shizuka Gōzen when she danced the Hōraku, or sacred dance, before the Shōgun Yoritomo at Kamakura Hachimangū. As Kibei turned into the corridor the voice of the Oiran caught his ear as she sang in accompaniment to the instrument. She was bending over the koto as the shōji were flung apart. Kibei, his hair hanging in disorder and framing a face ghastly white in contrast to the red streaks splashed over it and his garments, stood transfixed at the entrance. The Tayu looked up. With calm pose and courteous salute—"Kibei Dono, what manner of acting is this! Is not Kibei Dono the bushi? Truly madness has seized you, honoured Sir. This is Nishikiyama.... Deign to be seated. 'Tis Nishikiyama who serves Kibei Dono. What has been done cannot be undone. The last cup of wine in life is to be drained. Deign to accept it from these humble hands."
Kibei continued gazing on her. The unhappy man, his mind was opened to a flood of light. The hurricane of passion was passing. Slowly he advanced into the room. "Truly the Go Tayu is right. Kibei has gone mad; mad indeed!" He sank down on the cushion before her. At a sign the page placed the stand containing the bottle of cold saké before the lady. Skilfully the slender hands held it, gracefully poured it for the man doomed to death, taking this final cup served by her. Kibei raised it, drained it to the last drop. "The Kashiku: she is on this lower floor. Where lies she?" Nashikiyama noted the wild light returning to his eyes. She bowed her head before him—"The life of Nishikiyama is at the command of Kibei Dono. Her lips are sealed. Honoured Sir, how answer Kibei Dono's question?" For the moment he looked down. Then he rose—"Whose daughter can the Oiran be! Truly no lady in the land could show a higher courage, a finer courtesy. The final salute of this Kibei in life is to the Go Tayu." In grave ceremony it was performed. As he left the room the woman buried her face in her hands, weeping bitterly. In wonder and gratitude the frightened page extended her hands, her face hidden in the white robes of the Go Tayu.
Kibei trod this lower corridor with sombre tread. He would cut belly at the garden pond. With some surprise he noted an amado open at the end of the rōka. Voices were heard. Standing at the opening he saw lanterns. Some frenzied women had raised a ladder to the garden wall. They would thus escape, but the knife-like bamboo stakes prevented. Said a voice outside, and close to him—"The key to the gate: here it is." The Kashiku at a run passed by him. Kibei gave a shout. The frightened woman turned, recognized him, then sped on. In a few steps he was on her. The raised sword descended as she fell on her knees before him, in attempt to swerve its course. Through wrist and collar-bone, from neck to navel, the keen blade passed. Kibei threw the weapon aside. He leaned over her, his dagger drawn. Then he rose, holding by its tresses the head. For a moment he gazed on it. Slowly he walked to the pond in the centre of the garden. Carefully he washed the bloody trophy and placed it on the curbing. Confronting it he made reverential salutation. "Kibei keeps his promise to the Kashiku. With Tamagiku he treads the gloomy paths of Shideyama. Honoured lady—a moment and Kibei follows." Seated before the head reposing on the curb he opened his clothes. Thrusting the bloody dagger deep into his left side he slowly drew it across the belly; then made the upward cut. The body fell forward. Kibei indeed had kept his word.
CHAPTER XXI
MATTERS ECCLESIASTICAL
Inagaki Shōgen received the news at dawn, just as he was leaving the castle on completion of his night watch. The old knight smiled gravely, thanked the bearer of the message, and rewarded him with lavish hand. The kago bearers jolted on. The news had reached the train, and chūgen and spearman exchanged whispers. On arrival at the Inagaki yashiki his lordship made no motion to descend. The chamberlain raising the curtain gave a cry of horror. The old man lay stretched at the bottom of the little chamber. The dagger and the pool of blood told the tale. Shōgen had followed the example of his son. He, too, now trod the paths of Shideyama.
With laggard tottering step Akiyama Chōzaémon entered his house. Regardless of wife and the cushion she offered, of the hardly repressed tear in her salutation, he cast himself full length on the mats. He buried his face in his arms. The groans which issued from the prostrate body frightened the woman. "The honoured return; has other misfortune fallen on the House?" A shrug of the shoulders, a shiver; then the man half rose and faced her. She was startled at his expression. He was facing the most dreadful, not mere thought of ruin to him and his—"Suzuki San is liar and thief. Fifty ryō in hand the promise was for abstention. Now he demands twenty ryō more—the interest on the debt in full." His voice rose to a harsh scream. He laughed despairingly. "Seventy-five ryō interest, for the loan of a month; and that loan forced on this Chōzaémon by Itō Kwaiba! Kibei has squandered everything. The loan comes back on the bail. If Suzuki holds the interest in hand, he allows the principal, three hundred and fifty ryō, to stand for the month. Unless he has the lacking twenty-five ryō by the fourth hour (9 a.m.) to-morrow, complaint is laid at the office. As usual the interest is written into the face of the bond. The end is certain. This Chōzaémon must cut belly or suffer degradation (kaieki)." He looked her over critically. The light of hope died out of his eyes—"Ah! If this Tsuyu could but be sold, the money would be in hand. But she is old and ugly. Pfaugh!..." How he hated her at this moment. Some half a dozen years older than Chōzaémon the marriage had been arranged by the parents on truly financial principles. Mizoguchi Hampei was rich, and reputed stingy and saving. Just recently he had fallen into the Edogawa as he returned home late one night. Drunk and surfeited with the foul waters of the stream they had fished him out stone dead. Then it was learned that the old fellow of sixty odd years had several concubines, of the kind to eat into house and fortune. The reversion of the pension, of course, went to the House. In all these years Chōzaémon had never received the dower of O'Tsuyu; nor dared to press the rich man for it, too generous to his daughter to quarrel with. The funds eagerly looked for by Chōzaémon were found to be non est inventus. Probably, if alive, Mizoguchi would have argued that the dower had been paid in instalments. In his grave difficulties Akiyama could find no aid in his wife. She mourned her uselessness—"Willingly would Tsuyu come to the aid of House and husband, join her daughter in the bitter service. But past forty years.... 'Tis useless to think of it. Perhaps some expedient will come to mind." She brought out the arm rest and placed it near his side. Then she sat apart watching him. From time to time was heard the tap of her pipe as she knocked out the ashes. At last, overcome by sleep and seeing no sign of movement on the husband's part, she went off to bed, expecting that he would soon follow.
She woke with a start—"Father! Father!" The voice of O'Tsuru rang sharply in her ears. Dazed she half rose and looked around her. The daylight streamed through the closed amado. She had been dreaming. With surprise she noted her husband's absence. Had he gone forth? The cries of a bean curd seller were heard without—"Tōfu! Tōfu! The best of tōfu!" The palatable, cheap, and nutritious food was a standard meal in this house as in many others of Nippon. Akiyama was most generous in indulgence of his passions for gambling, wine, and the women of Shinjuku; and his household with equal generosity were indulged in an economical regimen of tōfu. The wife rose to answer the call of the street huckster. Her surprise increased as she found every means of exit bolted and barred, as during the night. The open sliding window in the kitchen roof caught her eye. Surely he had not departed that way! As she opened the back door a murmur of voices, as in the roadway or close by, struck her ear. The tōfu seller had his head turned away looking upward. At her call he turned quickly with apology—"Good day, honoured lady. A strange event! Ah! The honoured household still sleeps. All is silent.... Strange indeed! A man has hung himself on the big oak tree in the temple ground. Deign to look." He pointed to the big tree close by in the grounds of the Myōgyōji.[35] Sure enough: forty feet from the ground dangled the body of a man. It swayed gently to and fro in harmony with the movement of the branches. A hand seemed to grasp the heart of Tsuyu. The branches of the tree reached far over their roof. The open hikimado! With feeble voice she said—"My husband; he is strangely absent. Deign, somebody, to climb up and find out whether this man is—of the ward." The startled tōfu seller hastened to get aid. Several men entered the garden, quickly mounted to the roof, and thus reached the tree. Said the topmost fellow—"Ma! Ma! It is no pretty sight. He makes a hideous spectacle. The face is black as a rice boiler. The eyes stand out as if ready to burst. The tongue hangs out like a true guard (hyōtan). The grin on the distended mouth is not nice to see. Ah! The rascal has used the merest cord to cut himself off. And he has nearly done so. The head is almost severed." He gave a shout—"Naruhodo! Why, its...." One close by silenced him. The men above looked down. They made signs to those below. The women gathered around O'Tsuyu as if to keep her from the sight. She broke away from them as the body was gently lowered to the ground. Her shrieks rang loud. They strove to detach her from the dead body of Chōzaémon. The House ruined, daughter and husband taken out of her life in a single day; the blow was too crushing for a brain harassed by a life with this debauched worthless man. Her warders struggled with one gone clean daft. Years after men grown up from childhood in the ward looked with pity at the feeble ragged old mad beggar woman who crouched by the beautiful bronze dragon which ornaments the water basin of the Ten-ō Jinja. They would drop in her hand a copper "cash," and drive off with rebuke the children who taunted and annoyed her—as they had done years before. Thus were mother and daughter—the innocent—involved in the father's crime against the dread Lady of Tamiya.
All these events created a tremendous stir in Yotsuya. Men disliked to go abroad at night. Women, to their great inconvenience were confined to the house. Two figures approaching each other in the darkness would be seen to hesitate and stop. "What's that—standing, slinking yonder by the wall? Alas! This Kinsaburō, this Genzaémon has evil fortune led him into the clutches of the O'Baké? O'Iwa! O'Iwa!" With that and mad cries they would fall on each other; at times only to exercise restraint after some injury had been done. Hence quarrels arose; feuds, started in all innocence, came into being. Women, as suspects, were chief sufferers. The local atmosphere was overcharged, nerve racked. And so from Honjō to Nakachō (Shinjuku), from Nakanochō (Yoshiwara) to Shinagawa, even in the nearer post towns of Kawasaki, Tsurumi, and Kanagawa the talk was spreading of the strange happenings in Yotsuya of Edo town. Katada Tatéwaki, descendant of that Katada Samon who, as vassal of Gongen Samon (Iyeyasu) had had this Aoyama-Yotsuya district in fief, now first began his inquiries into the affair. The Katada had wide possessions elsewhere at the time of the grant. Samon had gifted much of his new fief as temple land, and on the old maps of the day this part of Edo is a blood red splash, indication of these many establishments. But the Katada influence still prevailed through the ward, indeed through the more than good will of the beneficiaries. Tatéwaki's yashiki was at the top of Ushigomézaka. His modest pension of a thousand koku by no means represented the extent of his power. Iémon became frightened at the storm gathering against him. He was open to all suggestions of remedy for the cataleptic state into which O'Hana had fallen. The neighbour gossips suggested calling in the Daihō-in of Shiomachi. A service kept part at least of the money in the ward. They had their share in provision and consumption; the fifty ryō necessary were much to them—and to Iémon in his present circumstances.