Shinju (18 page)

“Turn left off the Great North-South Road at the big furniture store,” the proprietor had said. “Then keep going past the streets with the silversmiths and the basket makers, past some houses
where the women take in laundry and dry it on racks on the roofs. Turn right. Go past the noodle restaurant, the barber shop, and three teahouses. You'll find Raiden on the street in front of the storyteller's hall. That's his place. He's always there.”

Sano rode past the silversmiths and the basket makers. He found the laundries and the noodle restaurant, the barber shop and the teahouses. A noisy crowd had gathered in front of the storyteller's hall, but apparently not to hear the old man who was entertaining a group of mothers and children inside. Intent on some action taking place in their midst, they yelled encouragement to the unseen participants.

Dismounting, Sano tied his horse outside one of the teahouses and elbowed his way through the crowd until he could see what was happening.

In place of the straw rice bales that usually defined a wrestling ring, pebbles marked a lopsided circle that had already become trampled and disarranged. A ragged little boy beating on a block of wood with a stick substituted for the drummers who paraded through the city to announce the official matches. At one side of the ring paced a man who could only be Raiden.

The wrestler was about Sano's age and height, but there the similarity ended. He wore a bright yellow kimono printed on the back with one of the rebus designs currently popular: a cherry branch, sword, and oar, which, when named aloud, sounded like “I Love a Fight.” It hung open to reveal a huge flabby belly girdled with a fringed black loincloth. Putting his hands on his hips, Raiden bent at the waist, exposing massive naked buttocks. He canted sideways, raising one bent-kneed leg high, then lowering it so that his dirty bare foot struck the earth with a mighty stomp. Dust rose in puffs. He stomped again both to show his strength and to drive away evil spirits. His fierce scowl made a demon mask of his round, pudgy face.

The audience cheered. “Raiden!” The name, a colorful pseudonym like many assumed by professional wrestlers, meant “Thunder
and Lightning.” And Raiden's excited spectators certainly acted as though they expected from him all the power and drama of a violent storm. “Raiden! Raiden!” A few men set up the chant, tossing coins at their champion's feet.

“No contest,” the man beside Sano remarked.

Sano looked at Raiden's opponent and privately agreed. The man disrobing on the other side of the circle was as big and fat as Raiden, but clearly no professional wrestler. The good clothes and the absence of swords marked him as a merchant. When he took off his kimono, Sano caught a glimpse of its opulent lining: the wealthy commoner's secret protest against the government's laws forbidding him to wear silk. Shivering in the cold, the man clumsily imitated Raiden's stomps. His moonlike face wore an expression of confused glee, as if he didn't quite understand how he'd got himself into this but was tickled at his own daring. The men who held his clothes, presumably his friends, cheered him on.

Raiden took a pouch out of his kimono. He poured a white substance from it into his hand. Most of it he scattered into the makeshift ring; the rest he tongued. Salt—to purify himself and the ground according to ancient tradition. Then he shrugged off his kimono and threw it to the boy with the wooden drum.

The two competitors faced off, crouched at opposite sides of the circle. Fists to the ground, they stared into each other's eyes. The audience fell silent. Sano's heart began to pound as the tension mounted. Instinctively he took a step backward, away from the ring.

This was not the ancient Shinto fertility ritual of fourteen hundred years ago, in which wrestlers from neighboring villages competed for the blessings of the gods at rice-planting time. Neither was it the legendary match of some five hundred years later that had determined which of two imperial princes would succeed to the emperor's throne. And it bore no resemblance to today's great tournaments, where professionals retained by the daimyo performed in formal style before huge audiences on the
grounds of Edo's important temples. This was street-corner sumo at its worst: wild, dirty, and unpredictable. Anything could happen. Sano wondered if he should try to stop the match. Although the government issued periodic edicts against street-corner sumo, it wasn't currently illegal. He saw two
doshin
he recognized as his subordinates on the other side of the ring. The match even had tacit official sanction.

With loud roars, Raiden and his opponent charged simultaneously. Fat met fat with a tremendous smack. The impact sent both men staggering apart. The spectators jumped back and recovered their voices.

“Kill him! Kill him!” The shouts thundered in Sano's ears.

Raiden rushed the merchant with a speed amazing for such a large man. Using
tsuppari
—slapping technique—he delivered a series of rapid, open-handed blows to the merchant's chest, throat, and face. The merchant grunted, more out of confusion than from pain, Sano thought. He tried to slap back, but Raiden advanced, forcing him to the edge of the ring. Just when it seemed the match would end with Raiden's victory, the wrestler stepped back. He grinned and beckoned his panting opponent to attack him. Sano understood that Raiden didn't want an easy win. He was pulling his punches and giving the merchant another chance in order to bring in more spectators and more money.

Gamely the merchant threw himself at Raiden. The two grappled, Raiden standing his ground almost without effort as the merchant shoved and gasped. Raiden broke the merchant's hold. He fell back two paces, whether or not on purpose, Sano couldn't tell. Maybe he'd lost his balance; maybe he was still baiting the merchant.

“That's the way!” shouted the merchant's friends.

Buoyed by their support, the merchant launched a fresh charge. Sano winced, anticipating another crash. But Raiden sidestepped at the last minute. Seizing the sides of the merchant's loincloth in both hands, he used the man's own momentum to cast him out of
the ring: the outer-arm throw, one of sumo's classic forty-eight “hands.”

The merchant went hurtling into the crowd. His friends caught him as he fell. Raiden's supporters cheered; the merchant's cried out in disappointment. Then the cheers and cries turned to uneasy mutters.

Sano's heart lurched when he saw why. The wrestler's teasing grin had become a murderous grimace. His face purpled with a strange fury. Without warning, he lunged at his fallen opponent. He pummeled the helpless merchant with his fists, all the while bellowing like a mad bear.

“Stop!” the merchant screamed. Blood spurted from his nose. “You win! I surrender!”

The merchant's friends tried to fend off Raiden's assault, but the wrestler turned on them. Suddenly the crowd became a turbulent mass of flying fists, kicking legs, and thrashing bodies. Men yelled insults, uttered cries of pain.

“Stop!” Sano shouted. The crowd's noise drowned his voice. He tried to draw his sword, but bodies pressed against him, making movement impossible. If only he'd stopped the match when he'd had the chance!

This was the real danger of street-corner sumo. Not that a wrestler would get hurt in the unrefereed matches—although many did—but that violence would break out among the audience. A crowd could quickly become a mindless killing tool, a sword flying free of any controlling hand. Now the spectators ran for safety. Sano saw the drummer go down and get trampled under the pounding feet.

Fortunately the two
doshin
chose that moment to remember their duty. “Break it up!” they shouted. “Everybody go home. Fun's over!”

Poking and prodding with their
jitte
, they dispersed the crowd. One of them called his assistants to pick up the wounded men. Sano, standing in the shelter of a teahouse doorway to avoid being
driven off with the rest of the crowd, watched the other
doshin
stroll over to Raiden, who stood in the center of the ring.

The wrestler's mysterious rage seemed to have passed as quickly as it had come. Now his face wore a dazed frown. Blinking in apparent befuddlement at his departing audience, he called half-heartedly, “Any more challengers? Who among you is brave enough to face the mighty Raiden?”

No one was. The
doshin
extended his hand to Raiden, palm up. Raiden sighed, then bent to pick up the coins from the ring. He counted half the money into the
doshin
's hand. The
doshin
smirked and walked away, jingling the coins. He didn't notice Sano, but then he would hardly expect to see his superior in a place like this.

So Raiden paid the
doshin
to tolerate his matches and keep order at them. Sano shook his head, knowing he must reprimand his subordinates during the next report session. The outcome of the fight could have been much worse: Men had died during such matches and the riots they provoked. Cautiously he walked over to Raiden, who now stood alone in the ring, scratching his crotch with one hand as he examined the coins he held in the other. The wrestler looked harmless enough now, but would his rage resurface?

“Not even enough to eat on,” Raiden complained. “Why did those
doshin
have to go and break up my match?”

Had he forgotten that he'd attacked a helpless man and started a riot? Confused and wary, Sano nevertheless decided to take advantage of the situation.

“Let me buy you a meal,” he said. Raiden might be more amenable to answering questions—and less likely to erupt again—if plied with food and drink.

Raiden's pout dissolved into a sunny smile. “All right,” he agreed with an alacrity that told Sano he was used to accepting handouts from strangers. Probably he lived on them. That he performed on the street meant he had no daimyo sponsor or other source of steady income.

Sano waited while Raiden donned his kimono, along with the shoes, cloak, and swords that had been lying in a heap outside the ring. Then the two of them walked down the street to the noodle restaurant.

The place was little more than a roadside food stall. Its sliding doors stood wide open; only a short blue curtain hanging from the eaves protected it from the outdoors. Inside, along the left wall, a strip of earth floor led through the small dining room to the kitchen, where two women toiled amid steam and smoke over a charcoal stove. Their huge cauldrons sent forth the enticing odor of broth made with garlic, soy sauce, miso, and scallions. An old man dressed in a blue cotton kimono and headband stood behind the counter that partially divided the dining room from the kitchen. A few lucky diners knelt on the raised plank floor in front of the counter with their bowls and chopsticks, but the rest sat on the floor's edge, with their feet either in the kitchen corridor or the street. Sano and Raiden went inside and approached the counter.

“Two house specials.” Raiden, who, from the bows and nods he got from the proprietor and customers, seemed to be a regular, gave their order. “And plenty of sake.”

The special turned out to be
kitsune udon
, “fox noodles,” named for the mischievous fox spirit whom everyone blamed for their troubles. The thick white noodles bathed in rich brown broth and topped with a crusty golden square of fried tofu were the spirit's favorite food. Sano noticed that Raiden's bowl was twice as large as his own, and the bottle of sake enormous. He handed over his money, thinking that detective work was getting expensive. The Nius' funeral gift, the trips to Yoshiwara, the theater ticket, and now feeding a wrestler added up to as much as he'd formerly made in a week of tutoring.

With some difficulty, Sano and Raiden cleared a space for themselves on the edge of the floor. Sano found himself jammed between the counter and Raiden's massive bulk. But at least the
heat from the kitchen and from the sweaty wrestler kept him warm.

Raiden shoveled noodles and tofu from bowl to mouth with his chopsticks, pausing between bites to deliver bits of monologue.

“It's a shame that a great wrestler like me has to fight for
zeni
in the street, don't you think?”
Slurp, gulp
. “Living hand to mouth like a common beggar! Well, let me tell you, stranger, it wasn't always this way for Raiden.”

Sano couldn't help staring at Raiden's hands. They seemed oddly jointless, like the hands of people in wood-block prints. The fingertips, which ended in tiny, spatulate nails, bent almost all the way back with each movement. Sano wondered how such weak-looking hands could have the strength necessary for sumo. Or for killing two people and carrying their bodies to the river?

Raiden paused to fill his cup with sake and drain it with one swallow. “Two springs ago, I was the top wrestler in Lord Torii's stable. I had fine living quarters in his estate, ten apprentices to serve me, and all the women I wanted. The best food, and as much of it as I could eat. I fought the best men and defeated them all. The shogun himself praised my skill.”

Surely an exaggeration. If Raiden had been a top wrestler, Sano would have heard of him, but he hadn't. And Lord Torii was one of the lesser daimyo. His wealth amounted to a fraction of the Nius', hardly enough to maintain a luxurious sumo stable. Besides, the shogun's interests tended toward Confucianism and the arts, not popular sport.

“A great life, don't you think?” Raiden said, downing another cup of sake. A certain wistfulness in his voice told Sano that the wrestler was bragging just as much to bolster his ego as to impress. Sano could pity him, even as he remembered Raiden assaulting the merchant.

Raiden emptied his bowl and signaled the proprietor to bring him another. Sano reached in his cash pouch for more money. “But Lord Torii dismissed me because I picked up the master-of-arms
and threw him against the wall. Unfair, don't you think? After all, I didn't really hurt the man. He lived. And I didn't mean to do it. Ever since I hurt my head in a match a while back, there's been a demon living inside it, making me do awful things.” He touched his temple and added sadly, “That's how I got my name: ‘Thunder and Lightning.' I strike anywhere, anytime, and when I do, everybody had better get out of the way.”