A Wild Sheep Chase (25 page)

“It was a breed of sheep I’d never set eyes on before. Because of my work I was acquainted with every breed of sheep in the world, but this one was unique. The horns were bent at a strange angle, the legs squat and stocky, eyes clear as spring water. The fleece was pure white, except for a brownish star on its back. There is no such sheep anywhere in the world. That’s why I told the sheep it was all right to enter my body. As a sheep specialist, I was not about to let go of such a find.”

“And what did it feel like to have this sheep inside your body?”

“Nothing special, really. It just felt like there was this sheep inside me. I felt it in the morning. I woke up and there was this sheep inside. A perfectly natural feeling.”

“Do you experience headaches?”

“Never once since the day I was born.”

The Sheep Professor went at his meatballs, glazing them in sauce before shoveling them into his mouth with gusto. “In parts of Northern China and Mongol territory, it’s not uncommon to hear of sheep entering people’s bodies. Among the locals, it’s believed that a sheep entering the body is a blessing from the gods.
For instance, in one book published in the Yuan dynasty it’s written that a ‘star-bearing white sheep’ entered the body of Genghis Khan. Interesting, don’t you think?”

“Quite.”

“The sheep that enters a body is thought to be immortal. And so too the person who hosts the sheep is thought to become immortal. However, should the sheep escape, the immortality goes. It’s all up to the sheep. If the sheep likes its host, it’ll stay for decades. If not—zip!—it’s gone. People abandoned by sheep are called the ‘sheepless.’ In other words, people like me.”

Chomp, chomp.

“Ever since that sheep entered my body, I began reading on ethnological studies and folklore related to sheep. I went around interviewing locals and checking old writings. Pretty soon talk went around that I’d been entered by a sheep, and word got back to my commanding officer. My commanding officer didn’t take kindly to it. I was labeled ‘mentally unfit’ and promptly shipped home to Japan. Your typical ‘colony case.’”

Having polished off three meatballs, the Sheep Professor moved on to the roll.

“The basic stupidity of modern Japan is that we’ve learned absolutely nothing from our contact with other Asian peoples. The same goes for our dealings with sheep. Sheep raising in Japan has failed precisely because we’ve viewed sheep merely as a source of wool and meat. The daily-life level is missing from our thinking. We minimize the time factor to maximize the results. It’s like that with everything. In other words, we don’t have our feet on solid ground. It’s not without reason that we lost the war.”

“That sheep came with you to Japan, I take it,” I said, returning to the subject.

“Yes,” said the Sheep Professor. “I returned by ship from Pusan. The sheep came with me.”

“And what on earth do you suppose the sheep’s purpose was?”

“I don’t know,” the Sheep Professor spat out. “The sheep didn’t tell me anything. But the beast did have one major purpose. That much I do know. A monumental plan to transform humanity and the human world.”

“One sheep planned to do all that?”

The Sheep Professor nodded as he popped the last morsel of his roll into his mouth and brushed the crumbs from his hands. “Nothing so alarming. Consider Genghis Khan.”

“You have a point,” I said. “But why now? Why Japan?”

“My guess is that I woke the sheep up. It probably would’ve gone on sleeping in that cave for hundreds of years. And stupid me, I had to go and wake it up.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said.

“No,” said the Professor, “it is my fault. I should have caught on a long time ago. I would have had a hand to play. But it took me a long time to catch on. And by the time I did, the sheep had already run off.”

The Sheep Professor grew silent. He rubbed his icicled white brow with his fingers. It was as if the weight of forty-two years had infiltrated the furthest reaches of his body.

“One morning I awoke and the sheep was gone. It was then that I understood what it meant to be ‘sheepless.’ Sheer hell. The sheep goes away leaving only an idea. But without the sheep there is no expelling that idea. That is what it is to be ‘sheepless.’”

Again the Sheep Professor blew his nose on a wad of paper. “Now it’s your turn to talk.”

I began with the route the sheep took after it left the Sheep Professor. How the sheep had entered the body of a rightist youth in prison. How as soon as this youth got out of prison he became a major right-wing figure. How he then crossed over to the Chinese continent and built up an intelligence network and a fortune in the process. How he’d been marked a Class A war criminal, but how he was released in exchange for his intelligence network on the continent. And how, utilizing the fortune he brought back from China, he’d laid claim to the whole underside of postwar politics, economics, information, etc., etc.

“I’ve heard of this man,” the Sheep Professor said bitterly. “Somehow the sheep has an uncanny sense of the most competent targets.”

“Only this spring, the sheep left his body. The man himself is in a coma, on the verge of death. Up until now, it seems that a brain dysfunction covered for the sheep.”

“Such bliss. Better that the ‘sheepless’ be without this shell of half-consciousness.”

“Why do you suppose the sheep left his body—after all this time building up a huge organization?”

The Sheep Professor let out a deep sigh. “You still don’t understand? It’s the same with that man as it was with me. He outlived his usefulness. People have their limits, and the sheep has no use for people who’ve reached their limit. My guess is that he did not fully comprehend all that the sheep had cut out for him. His role was to build a huge organization, and once that was complete, he was tossed. Just as the sheep used me as a means of transport.”

“So what has the sheep been up to since?”

The Sheep Professor picked up the photograph from the desk and gave it a flick of his fingers. “It has roamed all over Japan to search out a new host. To the sheep, that would probably mean a
new person to put on top of the organization by one scheme or another.”

“And what is the sheep seeking?”

“As I said before, I can’t express that in words with any precision. What the sheep seeks is the embodiment of sheep thought.”

“Is that good?”

“To the sheep’s thinking, of course it’s good.”

“And to yours?”

“I don’t know,” said the old man. “I really don’t know. Ever since the sheep departed, I can’t tell how much is really me and how much the shadow of the sheep.”

“A while ago, you said something about having a hand to play. What would that be?”

“I have no intention of telling you that.” The Sheep Professor shook his head.

Once again, silence shrouded the room. Outside, a hard rain began to fall. The first rain since we’d arrived in Sapporo.

“One last thing: could you tell us where the place in the photograph is?” I asked.

“The homestead where I lived for nine years. I raised sheep there. Appropriated right after the war by the American Forces, and when they repatriated the place to me I sold it to some rich man as a vacation home with pasture. Ought to still be the same owner.”

“And would he still be raising sheep?”

“I don’t know. But from the photograph it sure looks as if he’s raising sheep. Whatever, it’s a good remove from any settlements. Not another house in sight. The roads are blocked in the winter. I’m sure the owner uses the place only two, maybe three months a year. It’s nice and quiet there.”

“Does anyone look after the place when the owner’s not there?”

“I doubt if anyone stays there over the winter. Other than myself, I can’t imagine any other human staying there the winter through. You can pay the municipal shepherds in the town at the foot of the hills to look after the sheep. The roof of the house is sloped so that the snow naturally slides off onto the ground, and no worry about burglars. Even if somebody did steal something up there, it’d be a pain to get it to town. It’s staggering, the amount of snow that falls there.”

“So is anyone there now?”

“Hmm. Maybe not now. The snow’s going to start soon and bears’ll be roaming around for food before they go into hibernation. You’re not planning to head up there?”

“Probably will have to. We have no other real lead.”

The Sheep Professor sat for a while with his mouth shut. Tomato sauce from the meatballs at the corner of his mouth.

“You should probably know that prior to you one other person came here asking about the homestead. Around February it was. Age and appearance, well, kind of like you. He said he was interested in the photograph in the hotel lobby. I was pretty bored at the time, so I told him this and that. He said he was looking for material for a novel he was writing.”

Out of my pocket I pulled a snapshot of the Rat and me together. It was taken in the summer eight years before, in J’s Bar. I was in profile, smoking a cigarette, the Rat was looking at the camera, signaling thumbs up. Both of us were young and tan.

“This one’s you, eh?” said the Sheep Professor, holding the snapshot under the lamp. “Younger than now.”

“You’re right—taken eight years ago.”

“The other one’s that man. He looked older than in this photo and had a moustache, but it was him.”

“A moustache?”

“A neat little moustache and the rest stubble.”

I tried to picture the Rat with a moustache, but couldn’t quite see it.

The Sheep Professor drew us a detailed map to the homestead. You had to change trains near Asahikawa to a branch line and travel three hours to get to the town at the foot of the hills. From there it was three hours by car to the homestead.

“Thank you kindly for everything,” I said.

“If you really want to know the truth, I think the fewer people that get involved with that sheep the better. I’m a prime example. There’s not a soul the happier for having tangled with it. The values of one lone individual cannot bear up before the presence of that sheep. But well, I guess you’ve got your reasons.”

“That I do.”

“Be careful now,” said the Sheep Professor. “And place the dishes by the door if you would.”

We took one day to ready for our departure.

We got mountaineering supplies and portable rations at a sporting-goods store, and bought heavy fishermen’s knit sweaters and woolen socks at a department store. At a bookstore, we bought a 1:50,000-scale map of the area we were headed for and a tome on the local history. We also settled on some rugged spiked boots and padded thermal underwear.

“All these layers do absolutely nothing for my line of work,” she said.

“When you’re out in the snow, you won’t have time to think about that,” I said.

“You planning to stay until the heavy snows?”

“Can’t tell. But I do know it’ll already be starting by the end of October. Better to be prepared. No telling what to expect.”

We hauled our purchases back to the hotel and stuffed them into a large backpack, then we gathered together all the extra items we’d brought from Tokyo and left them with the Dolphin Hotel man. As a matter of fact, almost everything she’d brought in
her bag was extra. A cosmetics set, five books and six cassettes, one paper bag full of stockings and underwear, T-shirts and shorts, a travel alarm clock, a sketchbook and set of twenty-four colored pencils, stationery and envelopes, bath towel, mini first-aid kit, hair dryer, cotton swabs.

“But why are you bringing your dress and high-heels with us?”

“What am I supposed to do if we go to a party?” she pleaded.

“What makes you think there’s going to be a party?”

There was no reasoning with her. She managed to fit her dress, neatly folded, and high heels into our backpack along with our pared-down effects. For cosmetics, she switched to a travel compact she picked up at a nearby shop.

The hotel owner accepted the luggage graciously. I settled the bill up through the following day and told him we’d be back in a week or two.

“Was my father of any help?” he asked worriedly.