The Japanese Corpse

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Dorin looked impeccable in a light summer suit complete with a white shirt and a narrow tie. The commissaris eyed him pensively. Since he had been tricked into finding the mask and losing his self-control, he felt a cold hatred against practically everything around him. The room with its long parallel lines of beams, slats and walls, the floor with the neat tatamis, each bordered by a cotton strip showing small neat repeating flower designs, the view of the green and silvery-gray moss garden frightened and nauseated him. The feeling would pass, but he kept on seeing the trickle of blood on his own chin and the glasses that had slipped off his nose and were dangling from one ear. His own ear, a wooden ear on a perfect wooden mask. The student and the monk, smiling kindly, had lured him into facing a fear he thought he didn't have. He was, he supposed, angry with himself. The anger of disappointment.

He sighed and forced himself to smile at Dorin, who was sitting on a cushion opposite de Gier. The commissaris had pulled his mattress out of the cupboard and was lying down, his head propped up on his arm. Dorin had tucked his legs into each other and each foot rested on the opposite thigh. The commissaris could see the naked soles, for Dorin had taken off his socks and put them in the sidepocket of his jacket. Strange habits, the commissaris thought. There had been an elderly man in the train who had calmly taken off his trousers, folded them and put them next to his small suitcase on the luggage rack. He had taken his socks off too and folded his legs. He had been wearing long underpants. In Holland such behavior might have caused an uproar, a quiet uproar, for they had been traveling first class.

He looked at Dorin again. The man's face was calm, withdrawn. The commissaris reminded himself that Dorin was collaborating with them. A friend. And Dorin had been very friendly. He had shown a continuous concern for their welfare and comfort. He wondered what Dorin would be like as an enemy. Was the man capable of thinking of the creation of a wooden mask? Would he stage the death of the sergeant? Perhaps he would. Perhaps such tricks were fair play in the game. It was a game after all, wasn't it? Hadn't he always agreed with the Chinese philosophers he had been reading in Holland for so many years? Nothing on this planet is real; a game played by shadows. So why was he upset? But he was, to the point of feeling bilious.

De Gier was polishing his flute. He seemed completely unperturbed, rubbing the metal tube with a cloth of clean flannel. Dorin had listened to their adventures, limiting his comments to mumbled remarks and half smiles, and occasionally looking concerned and sympathetic. Now he was thinking. Neither the commissaris nor de Gier felt it was right to disturb his concentration. The commissaris looked at the sheet of yellow paper that Dorin had placed on the table. The characters on the sheet meant nothing to him. There were three vertical lines, each line consisting of several hieroglyphs. He recognized some of the characters as Chinese and the others as Japanese.

Dorin's eyes, which had been half closed, suddenly opened wide.

"I got this note," he said in a low voice. "It was delivered by a small boy when I was visiting our priest this morning. Apparently it was meant for both of us. The boy ran off after he had given us the envelope."

"What does it say?" the commissaris asked.

"Oranda no Toyoo ni. Hae no tsuite kite," Dorin said, looking at the sheet in front of him.

"I see," the sergeant said.

"Oh, I am sorry. I'll translate. The translation is something like this-'When Dutchmen go to the Far East, flies follow.' I am sorry, it is rather an unpleasant message. A threat, I would say."

The commissaris repeated the sentence. "When Dutchmen go to the Far East, flies follow." He coughed and began to pat the pockets of his jacket. He found the flat tin and lit a cigar after Dorin and de Gier refused. "That sentence seems to direct its venom at you, Dorin," he said apologetically. "That is, if our friends think you are following us. That's what they should think, isn't it? We are supposed to have the initiative in this buying of stolen art; you are acting as an assistant, an agent."

Dorin smiled. "Not quite. Perhaps you are right, but I would interpret much more from the note. You see, in the old days the Japanese thought that the foreigners who came here had a funny smell. Foreigners ate a lot of meat and butter and cheese, and often the meat was putrid and the butter rancid. There was no refrigeration in those days, of course. The Japanese ate rice and vegetables and got their protein from the sea. We are an island race, never far from the water. The fish was either fresh or salted. So we didn't have the body odor the gaijin, the foreigners, carried around with them."

"You mean they thought we stank?" de Gier asked.

Dorin bowed.

"And flies followed those foreigners in the old days."

"Indeed," Dorin said, and the narrow muscular hands adjusted the position of the sheet of paper. "So this note says that you gentlemen stink, and that I, and the priest who is in contact with us now, are flies. Everybody knows what happens to flies. They are swatted, smashed. The life is squeezed out of them and the dead bodies are tossed on the tatami and swept away."

His hand crashed down on the tabletop and a dead fly was flicked on the floor.

The commissaris rolled off his mattress and pulled his suitcase toward him. He opened it and began to feel around. "Here," he said. "A book on Deshima. The Dutch ambassador sent it to me in Tokyo. I think I remember reading something about Dutchmen and flies. Let me see."

He flipped through the pages of the book, and Dorin looked over his shoulder. The book had a number of fullpage illustrations in color, photographs of Japanese scrolls showing the love life of the Dutch merchants, tall men with bags under their eyes, frolicking with young ladies with calm faces, not a hair out of place, dressed in many-layered kimonos. The bottom half of the paintings showed dainty white legs pushed aside by hairy hands and monstrous penises hard at work. The merchants hadn't bothered to take their hats off. The paintings, four in a row, were obviously done by the same artist, and each picture had the same composition, although the merchants and the prostitutes were different persons. The rooms were Japanese, the furniture Dutch, heavy claw-and-ball couches adorned with tassels, huge tables made out of solid oak and with lions sculptured at the corners, thick velvet draperies hiding most of the fusuma, the delicate Japanese sliding doors made out of slats and tightly stretched paper.

De Gier was looking at the pictures, too, and pointed out a merchant's face. "That fellow looks like me."

The commissaris and Dorin laughed. There was indeed a similarity, caused mainly by the merchant's enormous mustache and large brown eyes. The artist had been very good; he had even caught the twinkle in the man's eyes.

"They were having a good time," Dorin said, and the commissaris turned the page. He found what he was looking for.

"Here. Almost the same words. 'When Dutchmen go to the castle, flies follow.'"

"Castle?" Dorin asked. "No, no, 'the Far East'. 'Toyoo' also means castle', but that wasn't meant here. See, they have the Japanese text too. But for us the meaning is the same. You stink and I am a fly and will be swatted. We have had our warnings now. All four of us, the priest, you two gentlemen and myself. If we continue our efforts to buy Daidharmaji's treasures, we will come to harm. I have some knowledge of the ways of the yakusa. They really must do something violent now or they will lose face."

"Right," the sergeant said, slipping his flute back into its leather cover. "Well, they are welcome."

"What about you?" Dorin asked the commissaris.

"They are welcome," the commissaris said. "They succeeded in frightening me, unfortunately, and they must have enjoyed watching me running about in that temple garden. I would like to have a chance to show some courage for a change."

"Well, we are all set, it seems," Dorin said, freeing his legs and jumping to his feet. "They have certainly worked quickly. We only arrived yesterday, and they can't have known about our existence until last night when they must have followed the priest to this inn. I think I will have to alert the Service. We have no means of finding out who the so-called monk and student were who bothered the commissaris, but the actors in the theater which de Gier-san visited today could be picked up and questioned."

"Do you remember where the theater was?"

"Sure," de Gier said. "I can point it out on the map."

"We can also have the staff of this inn questioned. They must have informed the yakusa in some way or other. How else would they know that you two gentlemen are Dutch? They found out, for I have this note here. There's something else about this note which I haven't told you. The characters are drawn by a foreigner. They aren't badly done, but the style is different. A foreigner who can read and write Japanese, somewhat of a rarity. I don't think he is a scholar, but I may be mistaken. I would say the writer is an adventurer, some strange individual who has lived here for many years. His calligraphy is bold. He probably knew the quotation, for the average Japanese doesn't know much about Deshima. It is mentioned in our history books at high school, but that's about all. Perhaps this man is Dutch too, and he is connected with the yakusa. I think the note wants us to know that we are up against strong forces."

"No," the commissaris said.

Dorin looked up. "You don't think so?"

"Oh, yes," the commissaris said. "I am sure the enemy is powerful. But I was referring to your idea about alerting the Service. I don't think we should do that at this point. Let the yakusa show their faces first. Perhaps you can alert the Service to the fact that something is happening and that we are being threatened, so that they wUl be prepared when we need them, but if they start snooping around now, we may complicate the situation too much. I really want them to do something now."

"A fight," de Gier said.

The commissaris hesitated, but nodded in the end. "Yes," he said quietly. "A fight. Perhaps we should stay close to each other for the next few days. If there are three of us, they will have to throw in six, or more perhaps. Not because they are afraid of losing the fight, but because they have to make an impression. And if we run into a good number it will be easier to trace them. We are after the big boss, I understand. Maybe we can catch a lieutenant."

"All right," Dorin said. "A fight. But first we eat. There is a restaurant in the mountains nearby where the guests catch their own fish. There is a pond and you will be given a rod. Then we can eat our catch. They will prepare it any way we want them to. The restaurant is old and rather lovely and the location is good, on a hill with a view of Lake Biwa, the great inland lake. I have a car outside. The only drawback is that there are a lot of young ladies in the restaurant who will try to make us drink, and once we are drunk they will try to make us spend the night."

"I think I will be able to stay sober," the commissaris said, and looked at de Gier.

The sergeant smiled and scratched about in his thick and curly hair.

"Maybe I'll have a lemonade," he said.