The Japanese Corpse

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I should be driving a jeep, De Gler thought, as he tried to avoid a particularly nasty pothole, or preferably a tracked vehicle. The car was bouncing along, rattling a little. He had opened and closed the right door a few times, but the rattle didn't go away. Yet it was undoubtedly in the right door. It hadn't rattled when he hired the car a week before. If they can build cars, he thought irritably, why can't they build roads? Roads are easier to build than cars, aren't they? The car hit another pothole, jumped free and slipped on a patch of mud. He screwed the wheel to the left. A truck was coming toward him and it wasn't keeping to its side of the road. Yuiko hissed sharply; there couldn't have been more than an inch between the sports car and the truck. He apologized and she put her hand on his arm.

"You are driving very well," she said. "Isn't it difficult for you to drive on the left side?"

He muttered something in reply. He was getting used to accepting compliments. That morning he had been praised by the inn's two maids. Apparently he had good taste in shirts. They had felt the material and had admired the style of the collar. The innkeeper's wife had congratulated him because of his neatness and the artful way in which he had arranged his shaving gear on the bathroom shelf. It seemed to be compulsory for Japanese women to flatter males and to stress their own silliness and incapacity to deal with life. But it was obvious that they were perfectly able to take care of themselves and that the giggly surface of their little smiles and respectful and exaggerated bows and the shuffling gait designed to make them unobtrusive were no more than a veneer to cover a steel kernel. He glanced at the small shape next to him, the delicate little elf with the full breasts and soft smile and the long flowing hair tinted with a drop of red dye to give it a slight shine, and almost shuddered. A yakusa girl loyal to her gang of ruthless mates, a member of an organization that controlled hundreds of bars, brothels and other places of pleasure, that was probably the main supplier of hard drugs in an area which comprised at least three large cities of over a million inhabitants each, that fully or partly owned a string of legal businesses and ran several art galleries as a sideline. And the ambassador thought he could break this tight cluster of bats which had their fangs in the blood veins of a helpless and unaware society. He shrugged. Perhaps it could be done.

Dorin was part of another cluster of bats and he could make helicopters fly and drop loads of warriors. He wondered how legal Dorin's operation was. If he was prepared to act on the little evidence the commissaris had been able to produce so far… but he seemed to be, and there was no reason to doubt Dorin's ability.

He knew why the commissaris had approved of the Lake Biwa outing. They still didn't know the face and shape of the daimyo, the brain and commander of the troops on the other side of the fence. De Gier knew the commissaris well enough to follow some of his thoughts. The daimyo liked his little jokes and he liked to see for himself how they worked out. He had probably been around when the commissaris was trapped in the temple garden and when de Gier saw his own death on the stage of the little theater. If the daimyo had planned another joke he might be around again. And if he was around he could be seen, and if the daimyo was seen he could be described and eventually caught. Apprehended and taken to court. All he had to do now was spot the daimyo.

The road became a little better, and Yuiko began to tell him a story about her aunt who was a go-between for marriages. He wasn't paying much attention to her detailed account of how her aunt took care of other people's needs. But he grunted at the right times and she prattled on merrily. A flagman waved the car to a stop, and de Gier looked out of the window, preparing himself for a wait of several minutes at least. A convoy of trucks was coming from the other side and he could see more flagmen and laborers and bulldozers down the road. He was parked on the top of a low hill and had a good view. Several three-wheel trucks appeared, jogging along close to each other, driven by elderly stocky men with caps pulled over their eyes to protect them from the sun. The trucks were loaded with small wooden casks.

"Seaweed," Yuiko said. "They are bringing it in from the coast. Seaweed is very nutritious and also very tasty. Would you like me to make you some kelp soup some evening? I think I have all the ingredients, and if I haven't I can always borrow some from the lady upstairs. She is a famous cook and I often go to help her on my off days. Seafood is her specialty, and she sends out meals."

"Yes," de Gier said. "Please. I like soup."

He was looking at a dead cat, lying in a ditch close to the flagman's feet. Yuiko couldn't see the cat. The oncoming traffic missed the dead animal, although some of the trucks' wheels came close. The cat couldn't have been dead long, and the corpse wasn't mangled. It looked asleep but the mouth was slightly open and its small bright red tongue protruded slightly. The fur was still glossy and the thick tail, fluffy and showing faint dark gray stripes, curled across its legs.

The flagman waved and de Gier released the clutch, but the flagman corrected his command. Evidently he had mistaken the next flagman's movement for the O.K., but the man had only been scratching his neck. The sports car stopped again. De Gier couldn't see the cat anymore, but there was another corpse on the road now, a sparrow that was resting on its beak. Yuiko saw the bird too, and smiled.

"Pretty little thing, isn't he?" she said. "It's a male, because he has got stripes on his head; the female is plain. The striped sparrows have an interesting song. They don't chirrup but they make a striking sound, a few short notes and then a long one. You must have heard it, there are lots of them in Kyoto." She whistled the bird's song.

"Yes," de Gier said. "And they drop the last note an octave when they repeat themselves. But why would he be resting on his beak? His legs are well apart, he is in perfect balance. But he is dead."

"I don't know," she said. "Perhaps he flew against a car and was thrown back and the posture happened that way. Oooh."

The sports car had driven off at the flagman's order, and they had passed the dead bird. She had seen its other eye, and so had de Gier. The bird's head was smashed on one side, and the eye had come free from its socket and stared at them, for the split second it took in passing it, with a mixed expression of intense fear and surprise. The eye had, in some strange way, become very large and covered the entire side of the sparrow's head.

"A bad omen," Yuiko said nervously. "Perhaps we shouldn't go sailing today. I wouldn't mind turning back. We can go to a theater and have dinner later on in my room."

"No, thanks," de Gier said. "I have been to a theater and they killed me on the stage. That wasn't a good omen either. It's a good day for sailing. Look at the tree-tops; there will be a stiff breeze on the lake."

But there was more than a stiff breeze. The lake's surface was an endless play of whitecaps, up to the horizon. The other shore was invisible.

Yuiko gasped. "A gale," she said. "I should have listened to the weather report. We must go back now. Lake Biwa is very big, you know. It's like an inland sea. It's easy to lose sight of the shore."

De Gier stretched out his arm so that he could stroke her hair. "It isn't that rough, it just looks bad, but once we're on the water you'll see that there's nothing to worry about. Maybe we can charter a proper yacht, but I've been out in worse weather in my little sloop, and I was only fourteen years old at the time, and since then I have sailed all sorts of boats."

"All right," she said. "I have never sailed before, you see. I have only been in a rowboat and in a canoe."

They took a wrong turn and got lost, and it was over an hour before they had found the harbor. An old man came to the gate, shaking his head.

"Too rough," Yuiko translated. "He advises us not to go. There is hardly anybody on the water today."

De Gier pointed at a small fishing boat tacking away from the harbor. Another boat was visible near the horizon, a small low stripe. "That must be a motor launch," de Gier said. "Tell him I'll pay any deposit he likes. I am an experienced sailor; he won't lose his boat."

The man finally agreed and asked for the equivalent of a hundred dollars, and de Gier gave him the money, shoving the thick wad of notes across the table in the owner's small cramped office and refusing a receipt. "Tell him that I consider it to be an honor to visit this great country and that I trust him completely," he said. The man smiled and bowed.

There were several boats available. The man recommended a sturdy jib-headed sloop with a large cabin and a built-in engine, but de Gier preferred a twenty-foot cutter. The man didn't agree. "He says the boat has an almost flat hull and too many sails. Three sails, one big one and two little ones in front. It will capsize easily."

"Fine," de Gier said, jumping aboard. "I'll teach you and you can take care of the jibs."

"He says there is no engine," the girl said, hesitating on the jetty.

"There is wind, isn't there? Who needs an engine? Come aboard, Yuiko-san."

The wind was blowing away from the harbor, and the man shuffled around anxiously while de Gier found the halyards. The man suggested that he should reef the mainsail, but de Gier shrugged. "Tell him it's all right," he said again to the girl. "He'll get his boat back, and if there's any damage he can take it out of the deposit, can't he?"

He got the hamper with their picnic out of the car while he checked the sheets, the anchor and the center-board. He thought that it would be better not to irritate the man and only raised the mainsail and one jib. When Yuiko came back he was waiting on the small foredeck and pushed off, running back to grab the tiller. Yuiko had zipped herself into a yellow life jacket and had brought one for him too, but it looked clumsy and he propped it between his back and the coaming. The wind caught the sails, but he was prepared for the sudden pull on sheet and tiller and braced himself. The cutter shot away, heeling sharply, and Yuiko shrieked, holding on to the coaming with both hands.

"Put your feet against the centerboard," de Gier yelled, and eased the sheet of the mainsail a little, steering into the wind to relieve the pressure on the sails. When she seemed a little more comfortable he pulled the tiller again so that the wind caught the boat on the beam and it regained its speed. The lake's water made a tinkling sound as it splashed past the bow; a white frothy line had formed behind the rudder. They could see the man wave on the jetty and de Gier waved back.

The hamper had slid toward him and he reached down quickly and opened the lid. Yuiko was smiling nervously and he grinned at her.

"Where have you got your gun?" he asked. "It won't be any good to you now, and I'd like to have it for a moment. Is it in the hamper or do you keep it on your body?"

She didn't reply and he rummaged about. The hamper contained six plastic boxes, all neatly closed, and a thermos flask in its own compartment. The pistol was stuck between the boxes, hidden under a folded tea-cloth. He took it out and pressed the spring that held its clip. He could only use his left hand but he managed, taking his time. He transferred the clip to his right hand and released the six cartridges, making them jump over the side. Holding the tiller in his armpit and securing the jib-and-mainsail sheets to a large cleat attached to the centerboard case, he opened the gun's breach, but there was no cartridge in the chamber. He pushed the empty clip back and offered her the gun. She was looking away.

"Take it, Yuiko-san," he said gently. "It's a good pistol and you don't want to lose it. A Browning is worth three hundred dollars these days and this is a special model. I don't want to throw it overboard, I just don't want to get shot today."

She was crying and he put the pistol back into the hamper, flipping the lid down. They were traveling at such speed that the harbor behind them had changed into a few dots on the shoreline, and the masts of the moored yachts into a row of bristling hairs. Soon there would be nothing but water around them and he realized that he might have difficulty in finding his way back. He looked at the sun and checked the time. He had seen a chart in the storage space aft and he pulled it out. The buoys were indicated clearly and he compared their numbers and colors with the buoy he had just passed and the buoy which was coming close.

"Yuiko-san," he said softly, touching her shoulder. She turned around and faced him. Her cheeks were wet but she had stopped crying. "Don't be silly," he said. "You know what I am and I know what you are. We are on different sides of the line. I am a yakusa too, but I have another daimyo. Your boss and mine are at odds, so we are enemies. So what? We are sailing a fast boat on a beautiful lake. Why don't you cheer up? That's a good lunch in the hamper, and the daimyo or the man in the bar will give you new cartridges for your gun. Nobody is going to be angry with you. You have done your duty, you lured me out on Lake Biwa. And I came. I am stupid, but my stupidity is my own concern, not yours."

She laughed, rubbing her eyes. "You are not stupid. I knew it when I met you first in the bar. You are playing your own game and so far you haven't lost. It's just that I am frightened of water. I have never liked boats. It was the daimyo's idea and I couldn't refuse, but I feel as if I were in hell. The water is threatening me."

"The water is carrying us," de Gier said. "Can't you feel it? It is protecting us, the way a cradle protects a baby."

He pushed the tiller a little and shortened the sheet. The cutter behaved well as she turned to windward, and he sat on the side, motioning Yuiko to do the same. The boat heeled again, but Yuiko seemed to trust him now, and she was beginning to look about her. Within an hour she was ready to learn and he instructed her about the handling of the jib sheet.

He made the cutter come about, pushing Yuiko's head down to keep it free from the boom, and she caught on and responded to his shouted warning when he repeated the maneuver a few minutes later. They were close to the land again, a few miles north of the harbor, and the wind had lost some of its strength, being hampered by hills and forests on its way down to the lake.

"What's up?" he asked, giving her a cigarette and his lighter. "Are we going to be attacked on the lake somewhere? Is Kono around?"

"I don't know. I was told to go sailing with you. They never tell me exactly what will happen, I am not important."

She had trouble with the lighter and he took it back. He lit a cigarette between his shirt and his jacket and gave it to her.

"Do you think the daimyo is up to his tricks again?"

"Could be," she said, sucking the smoke hungrily. "The manager of the Golden Dragon gave me the message. He was upset. We have lost face. I heard them talk about you in the bar. Somebody came to tell us that you were around, buying art. They were sure they could frighten you away easily; they have done it so often to others. The daimyo happened to be in Kyoto and he came to the Golden Dragon and he thought of the game with the mask. A sculptor, he comes to the bar often- he drinks a lot but he is very good-was asked to make the mask. I think the sculptor was taken to your inn and he saw your friend, the old gentleman. He made the mask immediately, working from a sketch."

"Yes," de Gier said. "It was very effective apparently."

"But it didn't stop you. We heard about you playing your flute. They thought you were invincible after that, so Kono was asked to take care of you. Kono likes firearms. Sometimes he kills people, but not very often, the daimyo doesn't like it."

De Gier turned to look into her face. "I don't like Kono. If he had made my boss wound himself, I would have gone after him."

She shrugged. "Kono wouldn't have minded that. He loves fights and guns and racing cars. He is old-fashioned; he has pictures of the famous samurai in his house and he reads stories about them. The daimyo calls him his little boy, but they are of the same age. They say that Kono cried when he came home."

"Because of his hand?"

"No. He had lost face, but maybe he is a good loser. He said your boss was a great man."

"Pity," de Gier said, "so maybe we shouldn't have a fight, just to annoy him. And now he is somewhere around, I suppose, but what does he plan to do this time? Make me cut off my own ears and eat them?"

She laughed. "No. But he may want to kill you now. If he does he will make it look like an accident, I think."

"Thanks for telling me."

"You should be a little careful today," Yuiko said, avoiding his eyes and pretending she was interested in the jib sheet which was pulling at her hands.

"Make it fast," de Gier said. "There's a cleat over there. Just wind the sheet round it once; if there's a lot of wind you can pull it free. I hope Kono comes. I'm not alone anyway. Dorin is on the lake too, and I don't think he is alone. We are not as silly as we look. I wouldn't be surprised if Dorin has a machine gun on his boat, or a grenade thrower. We could have a proper battle. Dorin is like Kono; he likes to fight and he likes to do things in a big way."

"Dorin," she said. "That isn't a Japanese name. I saw a photograph of your friend; one of our boys took it near the inn you are staying at. He is Japanese. We have been trying to find out something about him, but I don't think we have had results. They say he speaks with a Tokyo accent and that he behaves like a nisei, a Japanese born abroad. Who is he?"

De Gier made a vague gesture. "Don't know. My boss found him through his Hong Kong contacts. I think he had his own operation, but something went wrong and now he works for others. Maybe he'll join us. He is very good, I think. I'd like to work with him. He can be our permanent agent here as far as I'm concerned, but I don't know what my boss thinks. He hasn't told me yet."

She nodded. "He must be good. He certainly got you the right contacts here. You've bought a lot of merchandise."

De Gier was comparing a buoy number with a point on his chart and hadn't been listening. She repeated her remark.

"Sure," he said. "The stuff should be easy to sell when we get home, or so the boss says. I don't know about art, it's not my job. I'm supposed to look after the old man."

"So you leave him all alone in the inn," she said reproachfully.

De Gier grinned. "He'll be fine, I think. He is probably soaking his skin in the bathhouse right now." He looked at his watch. "Time to eat, Yuiko-san, where are we going to do it?"

"I was told to take you to the island with the orange torii. It's north of the harbor. Maybe it is the island over there, can I see the chart please?"

She mumbled to herself as she read the names. "Here, this must be the island; there is a note about it in the margin. Famous torii. Do you know what a torii is?"

"No."

"It's a gate, set in the water. Many lakes have them. The island is a national treasure. I have read some poems which describe it. It's supposed to be like heaven."

He bent over to look at the chart. "Yes, that's the island we're heading for now. So the daimyo wants us to have lunch there, does he? Better loosen that jib sheet again. We are going out into the lake now and the wind will be strengthening. What else does the daimyo want us to do?"

"See the famous Buddha," she said. "He told me there is a statue sitting on a pedestal of stone and with a hill as a background. On the hill there is another manifestation of Buddha, another statue I suppose. We can climb the hill if you want to."

"The daimyo," de Gier said. "I'm sure he is clever, but I don't understand his game today. Surely he must realize that I am not just walking into a trap. Doesn't he know that I got to know you quite well and that we get on very well and so on?"

"So on what?"

"Well, we are having a bit of an affair, aren't we?"

"We aren't having an affair," she said quietly. "The first time we were together I became ill, and the second time you didn't want to. The other meeting was in the hospital with nurses coming in every five minutes to see for themselves what you look like."

"Did they?" he asked. "But the daimyo surely knows by now that I am familiar with the fact that you are ya-kusa and that he is using you to manipulate me."

She was trying to light another cigarette, but the spark wouldn't become a flame."Chigau," she said sharply. "You are wrong. What do you know about the daimyo's mind? He probably knows you came into the bar deliberately, but he is following a line of reasoning of his own. He is a great Go player. Go is Japanese chess, much more difficult than your game, the chess of the West. He makes his moves and you make yours. I don't know what you will find on the island. You didn't have to take the cartridges out of my pistol. I always carry a gun but I am not a killer. And the daimyo doesn't like us to use guns, I've told you that already. Guns are too heavy, he thinks. He wants us to use lighter and more interesting arms."

He was taken aback by her sudden violence and felt a spurt of anger, tickling around in his stomach, wanting to rise to his brain. He tried to control it, but some of it came up all the same. "Let go of your sheet," he shouted. "You are supposed to watch the jib, it's much too tight. Look at the mainsail, it's standing right out, and the jib is glued to the mast."

She bowed her head in submission and let the thin rope slip through her hands.

"Like this?"

"Yes," he shouted, and she bowed again. He felt silly and dropped his voice. "There is the fishing boat," he said, pointing ahead. "The boat we saw before when we left the harbor. It must have gone straight to the island while we were fiddling about near the shore. It's already been to the island and is coming back now, I think."

"How good are your eyes?" she asked.

"All right, why?"

"I need glasses, but they are in my bag. I only wear them when I am alone. Can you see who is in the boat?"

"I can see a man at the tiller."

"Can you see his eyebrows?"

"No," de Gier said. "Of course not. I am not an eagle. The boat is too far. Does the daimyo have special eyebrows?"

"Tufted," she said, "and very black. He has little hair on his head, just a gray fringe but his eyebrows are jet black. I think he dips them in ink." She giggled.

De Gier screened his eyes and looked again. "Can't see, and the boat has come about and is tacking away from us now. I would say that the man at the tiller is young. Did the daimyo say he was going to use a fishing boat?"

She shook her head.

"I see the torii now," he said. "Why is it there? Two big beams and a sloping roof. Why are the beams orange? I thought Japanese didn't like to use paint but preferred natural colors?"

"A decoration to please the water gods," she said, and pulled at the sheet. The jib had begun to flap, for the cutter was sailing much closer to the wind as de Gier steered toward a small bay. They passed close to the torii, a solid structure; the beams were at least a foot thick.

It had been built half a mile from the island's shore and the waves were chopping against the gleaming orange paint, lapping the gate with their green tongues and rubbing it with white frothy heads. Two large wooden posts rose from the water; its roof was tiled, sloped like the temples in Kyoto. A capricious structure built in honor of the water gods, de Gier thought. Maybe I should try and sail straight through it. A small show of bravery. The lake isn't friendly, neither is the island. The daimyo knows the lake and is using it against me. He tried to recall his plan. He only had one goal, to meet the daimyo in order to identify him, and to provoke him if possible so that he could be arrested and taken to court. He also tried to recall his guesses that would explain the daimyo's plan. The daimyo, he thought, and he imagined the commissaris thinking along the same line, was no longer interested in frightening them out of Japan. He might still like to chase them off, but he was probably thinking that he wouldn't be able to. The daimyo didn't intend to have them killed. Two dead foreigners would embarrass the country and might lead to the daimyo's fall. But the daimyo wasn't giving in either. The game was still on or he wouldn't be here, sailing a cutter around a Watergate. The daimyo obviously thought them to be what they were pretending to be, two Dutchmen, representatives of an unlawful organization prepared to buy stolen art and drugs. The daimyo had no way to check their background in Holland, for his men in Amsterdam were in jail. The daimyo was now moving toward a union of the Dutch organization and his own, and this boating trip with the charming and seductive Yuiko was his attempt to make contact. The daimyo had surmised that de Gier wanted to make contact too, for why would he have visited the Golden Dragon otherwise? So all he, de Gier, had to do now, was to go ahead and see what the daimyo had planned for him to get into that day. He checked his thoughts again as he sailed the cutter around the torii once more. Yes, it all seemed quite logical. And Dorin was around in case he was wrong. It might be that the daimyo meant to kill him, after all, and would try to kill the commissaris in Kyoto at the same time. But the commissaris was protected. Two of Dorin's men would be with him now, sitting in the public bathhouse most probably, and others would be around the building. Dorin's commandos, the Snow Monkeys, out of uniform, eager young men, well trained. If something went wrong, he, de Gier, would be the victim. Dorin's boat wasn't visible; it would take time for Dorin to catch up with him. He had been given a small radio transmitter, small enough to fit in the pocket of his Windbreaker. If he pressed a button Dorin would appear. He thought he had seen Dorin's boat a little earlier, a dot on the far side of the lake. It would probably be a fast motorboat, but it would still need half an hour or an hour to catch up with him.

The fishing boat had become invisible again as it was swallowed by a line of rocks, jutting out from the island's beach, and he told Yuiko to throw out the anchor. The cutter was close to the island now and he could see the lake's sandy bottom. By paying out the anchor's rope and raising the centerboard they managed to get the cutter close enough to the shore so that they could walk through the shallow water and he took off his shoes and rolled up his jeans. Yuiko had helped him to lower the flapping sails and stood next to him on the small after-deck staring at the water and a shoal of small fish darting about nervously, occasionally turning over and flashing their minute silver bellies. He carried her to the beach, and she kissed him as he waded through the low waves chasing each other to the strip of sand where they broke. She was pressing her breasts against his chest and caressing the thick hair on his neck, and he kissed her cheek and lost his footing and nearly fell.

"Abunai yo," she whispered. "It's dangerous here."

He smiled. There didn't seem to be much danger around. If he fell he would wet his clothes; they would dry again in the sun and wind. He returned to the boat to pick up the hamper. He still had the feeling he had found in himself as he had waked up in the commissaris' house after the accident in Amsterdam, breaking gently out of his fogged drugged sleep and contemplating the patchwork blanket which the commissaris' wife had tucked in neatly only a few minutes before. He had defined the feeling as consisting of two words: nothing matters. A very strong feeling blotting out all other sensations. Nothing matters, he told himself now as he put the hamper down on a rock. Nothing at all. "I was a balloon," he said aloud, and turned toward the lake. A balloon, a small round bloated toy, floating about thinking it had a life and an identity of its own, until something made it pop. I popped, he thought, and grinned vaguely. He remembered the hippies who would wander into the police stations of Amsterdam to tell the police that they had flipped and that everything had become different. But I didn't flip, he thought, gazing at the lake stretching away endlessly, I popped. Flipping is just a change of direction, popping is final. There had been nothing tangible as he looked at the patchwork blanket. A shape, a form, lying in a clean bed, and now putting down a hamper on a rock. A hamper made out of dry bleached stalks on a gray dead rock, spotted with yellow lichen. His thoughts kept on forming themselves, clear and crisp, like teletype messages coming out of a transmitter. I move, he thought, and I talk and I listen and dress and undress and shave and I drive a sports car and sail a boat and maybe I'll sleep with this girl before the day is over and if the daimyo's way of playing chess differs from what I am anticipating, I may get killed today too. I dream and the daimyo dreams and our dreams touch today, but nothing is happening. I am not taking part, I have nothing to take part with.

He grinned, for the feeling wasn't a bad feeling at all, and he wanted it to last. But then, as he began to walk away from the rock supporting the hamper, he suddenly stopped. So there was still some anxiety left in his mind. Maybe the pleasurable feeling wouldn't last. He could still suffer a little; he still had something to suffer with.

He stumbled and hurt his shin against a piece of driftwood. He felt the reaction of his nerves, but again there was no real contact. He observed the pain, a worm crinkling through the bones of his leg, a red-hot worm, an amusing worm which he could watch, but that had nothing to do with him. Yuiko was coming toward him and together they walked on the fine glittering sand. She pointed at the Buddha statue dominating a group of rocks and shrubs at the edge of the beach. The sun and clear air and the sound of the lake's water nibbling at the island had exhilarated the girl and she was running ahead of him, but he saw her stop abruptly in front of the statue and her body crumpled. She was on her knees when he got to her and her hands were clasped over her face. The Buddha was life-size, a body sitting erect, legs folded under the stone folds of a robe, hands outstretched, the left hand supporting the right. The large slanting calm eyes rested on what was lying on the hands. A cat, lazily asleep in the ultimate quietness of death, supporting its chin with its paws, and a bird, also dead, revolving slowly, suspended from an almost invisible nylon string, showing a closed and an open eye in turns, the open eye very much enlarged. The closed eye seemed peaceful, the open eye expressed an intense surprise, a lunatic fear inspired by the situation it found itself in. Whoever had arranged the two corpses had taken his time and managed to obtain the desired effect. Death showed its true face; the bird turning against the background of light gray stone embodied the end of everything to an extreme pitch of stark reality.

Yuiko had fallen forward, whimpering. The daimyo's effort had met with success, but he had injected fear into the wrong subject. De Gier opened his pocketknife and cut the string holding the bird. He picked up the cat and the bird and deposited them gently behind the statue, covering them up with small rocks and pebbles. He worked slowly, giving himself some time to think. So the daimyo had changed his plans. He had arranged the trip on the lake, setting up Yuiko to invite the sergeant. Maybe he had wanted to kill him after all, for Kono might be around. The daimyo had used Kono before, and the move was associated with violence, with a knife, with rough intimidation. But the staging of the dead cat and bird and the Buddha statue indicated the hand of the daimyo himself. De Gier tried to visualize the steps leading up to the confrontation he had taken part in just now. He had seen both cat and bird on his way to Lake Biwa. Now they were here. The daimyo had picked up the corpses and taken them here, so the daimyo's car had been behind his own sports car. The daimyo had been stopped by the flagmen too, had seen the corpses and had collected them. While de Gier and Yuiko lost their way to the harbor, the daimyo had gone ahead, boarded the fishing boat and sailed away. De Gier had lost more time tacking close to the shore while the fishing boat headed directly for the island. The daimyo had arranged his tableau, using the dead animals which coincidence had placed in his hands, and left again, or the boat had left, leaving the daimyo on the island because, presumably, he wanted to see how de Gier would react. But it had all been arranged on the spur of the moment, there had been no deliberate planning. So the daimyo had been in doubt, to destroy the opposition or allow it to continue in order to cooperate with it, to mutual benefit. But shake the opposition a little before proposing participation, paving the way so to speak. De Gier laughed as he pushed some sand over the pebbles. He was beginning to think like the commissaris, maybe he was finally learning.

He walked around the statue and knelt next to Yuiko's body. She had stopped whimpering and he turned her over and picked her up, nuzzling her cheek with his lips. He carried her to a spot where they couldn't see the statue and set her down.

"Yoroshii," he said. "It's all right. Your boss wanted to frighten me but there was nothing there but a dead cat and a dead bird. You saw the bird before, remember? the striped sparrow you told me about? Don't be upset, it had nothing to do with you. The daimyo is on your side, remember?"

She smiled and reached out to stroke his hair.

"I'll get the hamper," he said. "This is just the right time to eat."

When he came back to her she had managed to calm herself although her body was still rigid and she mechanically opened the hamper and took out its small square plastic containers, flipping off the lids and dishing out cold boiled rice and bits of thinly sliced meat. She gave him his chopsticks, wrapped in a narrow paper envelope and he tore off the paper and broke the sticks free, grimacing ferociously, muttering to himself.

"Pardon?" she asked in a flat little voice. "What did you say?"

"Damned sticks," he muttered. "Why do they have to join them?" He picked up a spare pair and showed her. "See? They are joined at the bottom; they expect you to snap them apart. Manufacturers are getting lazier and lazier. It's like selling you a shirt with two hundred and eighty four pins in it. Before you put it on you have to sit down for ten minutes and if you forget to pull one out you scratch youself."

She smiled tiredly. "Chopsticks always come like that, the cheap ones do. They are made in enormous machines, I saw one once, when I was still at school; we were taken to the factory. I don't mind breaking the sticks free, but I apologize if it is inconvenient for you. Perhaps they should pack them differently for foreigners."

"Never mind," he said gruffly. "You are not responsible for the way chopsticks are packed. Maybe that dead bird did upset me after all. Maybe your daimyo is getting on my nerves finally. I am sure he is wandering about here somewhere. Maybe he's behind that rock over there, or up in that tree. Do you see a daimyo in a tree?"

She looked at the trees obediently and shook her head. "No," she said. "I don't see a daimyo in a tree." She was crying and laughing simultaneously and he caught her in his arm as she fell over. "You are crazy," she sobbed. "I hope nothing will happen to you. They shouldn't have picked me to get you here. There are other girls in the Golden Dragon who speak English. I am too sentimental and you make me laugh sometimes. Do you see a daimyo in a tree! He is old, he can't climb trees and he has high blood pressure. He had a stroke last year, not very serious, but he was in the hospital for awhile."

They ate and he liked the food and asked her about the way she had prepared it. The thermos was filled with good coffee, and gradually they began to forget what had brought them to the island. De Gier rolled over on his back and she lit a cigarette for him and snuggled up in his arm. Her leg pressed against his and he felt a tremor go through her body and he pulled her a little closer. He kissed her and undid the buttons of her blouse and played with her breasts, overlooking the fact that their firmness and size were partly due to compressed air. She struggled out of his arm, got up and pulled him to his feet and took him by the hand and together they found a nearby cave. She undressed and helped him out of his clothes. The cave's floor was covered with fir needles and mosses, and as he made love to her, he could see the lake's surface through a transparent wall of waving ferns. He had been careful to keep his pistol within reach and there was a brief thought of the daimyo's presence and the possibility of death. The thought was very quick but it trailed another thought: If he were to get killed now it might just happen that the bullet would strike his neck at the very moment of having an orgasm.

He had studied the cave as they entered it. There was really no way for an attacker to make his move, except perhaps through a slit in its roof, but the slit was overgrown with bushes and the lower branches of cedar trees. Perhaps the daimyo could find a way of pushing himself through the branches and he might be able to fire a bullet or drop a hand grenade. He grinned as he imagined an old man with a red face and tufted pitch-black eyebrows sitting uncomfortably on his haunches on a branch, peering down and pulling the pin out of a grenade. He would be waiting for the right moment, for the daimyo would also think of combining death and orgasm. It would be another clever practical joke. He felt Yuiko's arms around his back. The arms would be torn off. Various images of horror flitted through his mind, but he could watch them calmly as his body went through the movements set off by their love play. Yet the pleasure wasn't altogether automatic. The green haze of the fern leaves sitting high on their thin stalks, and gracefully bending their fanlike forms, the fragrance of moss and fir needles, the deep gray streaked with the glistening blue of the stone walls of the cave and the white-capped waves of the enormous lake, visible in between the naked fern stalks, all fused with Yuiko's body and he felt as if everything, with nothing excepted, not even the corpses of the bird and the cat on the hands of the Buddha statue and the tufted eyebrows of the old man who seemed so bent on intimidating and manipulating him, had met when Yuiko sobbed and he groaned and the moment was reached.