Ascendancies (32 page)

“Don't laugh,” said Encho, nodding in drunken profundity. “You should hear what they say about me. I mean the modern writer fellows, down from the University. They come in with their French novels under their arms, and their spectacles and slicked-down hair, and all sit in the front row together. So I tell them a vaudeville tale or two. Am I ‘spinning a good yarn'? Not anymore. They tell me I'm ‘creating naturalistic prose in a vigorous popular vernacular.' They want to publish me in a book.” He sighed and had another drink. “This stuff's poison, Taiso. My head's spinning.”

“Mine, too,” Onogawa said. An autumn wind had sprung up outside. They sat in doped silence for a moment. They were all much drunker than they had realized. The foreign liquor seemed to bubble in their stomachs like tofu fermenting in a tub.

The foreign spirits had crept up on them. The very room itself seemed drunk. Wind sang through the telegraph wires outside Yoshitoshi's shuttered window. A low eerie moan.

The moan built in intensity. It seemed to creep into the room with them. The walls hummed with it. Hair rose on their arms.

“Stop that!” Yoshitoshi said suddenly. Encho stopped his ventriloquial moaning, and giggled. “He's trying to scare us,” Yoshitoshi said. “He loves ghost stories.”

Onogawa lurched to his feet. “Demon in the wires,” he said thickly. “I heard it moaning at us.” He blinked, red-faced, and staggered to the shuttered window. He fumbled loudly at the lock, ignoring Yoshitoshi's protests, and flung it open.

Moonlit wire clustered at the top of a wooden pole, in plain sight a few feet away. It was a junction of cables, and leftover coils of wire dangled from the pole's crossarm like thin black guts. Onogawa flung up the casement with a bang. A chilling gust of fresh air entered the stale room, and the prints danced on the walls. “Hey, you foreign demon!” Onogawa shouted. “Leave honest men in peace!”

The artist and entertainer exchanged unhappy glances. “We drank too much,” Encho said. He lurched to his knees and onto one unsteady foot. “Leave off, big fellow. What we need now…” He belched. “Women, that's what.”

But the air outside the window seemed to have roused Onogawa. “We didn't ask for you!” he shouted. “We don't need you! Things were fine before you came, demon! You and your foreign servants…” He turned half-round, looking red-eyed into the room. “Where's my pipe? I've a mind to give these wires a good thrashing.”

He spotted the pipe again, stumbled into the room and picked it up. He lost his balance for a moment, then brandished the pipe threateningly. “Don't do it,” Encho said, getting to his feet. “Be reasonable. I know some girls in Asakusa, they have a piano…” He reached out.

Onogawa shoved him aside. “I've had enough!” he announced. “When my blood's up, I'm a different man! Cut them down before they attack first, that's my motto! Sonno joi!”

He lurched across the room toward the open window. Before he could reach it there was a sudden hiss of steam, like the breath of a locomotive. The demon, its patience exhausted by Onogawa's taunts, gushed from its wire. It puffed through the window, a gray gaseous thing, its lumpy misshapen head glaring furiously. It gave a steam-whistle roar, and its great lantern eyes glowed.

All three men screeched aloud. The armless, legless monster, like a gray cloud on a tether, rolled its glassy eyes at all of them. Its steel teeth gnashed, and sparks showed down its throat. It whistled again and made a sudden gnashing lurch at Onogawa.

But Onogawa's old sword-training had soaked deep into his bones. He leapt aside reflexively, with only a trace of stagger, and gave the thing a smart overhead riposte with his pipe. The demon's head bonged like an iron kettle. It began chattering angrily, and hot steam curled from its nose. Onogawa hit it again. Its head dented. It winced, then glared at the other men.

The townsmen quickly scrambled into line behind their champion. “Get him!” Encho shrieked. Onogawa dodged a halfhearted snap of teeth and bashed the monster across the eye. Glass cracked and the bowl flew from Onogawa's pipe.

But the demon had had enough. With a grumble and crunch like dying gearworks, it retreated back toward its wires, sucking itself back within them, like an octopus into its hole. It vanished, but hissing sparks continued to drip from the wire.

“You humiliated it!” Encho said, his voice filled with awe and admiration. “That was amazing!”

“Had enough, eh!” shouted Onogawa furiously, leaning on the sill. “Easy enough mumbling your dirty spells behind our backs! But try an Imperial warrior face to face, and it's a different story! Hah!”

“What a feat of arms!” said Yoshitoshi, his pudgy face glowing. “I'll do a picture.
Onogawa Humiliates a Ghoul
. Wonderful!”

The sparks began to travel down the wire, away from the window. “It's getting away!” Onogawa shouted. “Follow me!”

He shoved himself from the window and ran headlong from the studio. He tripped at the top of the stairs, but did an inspired shoulder-roll and landed on his feet at the door. He yanked it open.

Encho followed him headlong. They had no time to lace on their leather shoes, so they kicked on the wooden clogs of Yoshitoshi and his apprentice and dashed out. Soon they stood under the wires, where the little nest of sparks still clung. “Come down here, you rascal,” Onogawa demanded. “Show some fighting honor, you skulking, wretch!”

The thing moved back and forth, hissing, on the wire. More sparks dripped. It dodged back and forth, like a cornered rat in an alley. Then it made a sudden run for it.

“It's heading south!” said Onogawa. “Follow me!”

They ran in hot pursuit, Encho bringing up the rear, for he had slipped his feet into the apprentice's clogs and the shoes were too big for him.

They pursued the thing across the Ginza. It had settled down to headlong running now, and dropped fewer sparks.

“I wonder what message it carries,” panted Encho.

“Nothing good, I'll warrant,” said Onogawa grimly. They had to struggle to match the thing's pace. They burst from the southern edge of the Ginza Bricktown and into the darkness of unpaved streets. This was Shiba District, home of the thieves' market and the great Zojoji Temple. They followed the wires. “Aha!” cried Onogawa. “It's heading for Shinbashi Railway Station and its friends the locomotives!”

With a determined burst of speed, Onogawa outdistanced the thing and stood beneath the path of the wire, waving his broken pipe frantically. “Whoa! Go back!”

The thing slowed briefly, well over his head. Stinking flakes of ash and sparks poured from it, raining down harmlessly on the ex-samurai. Onogawa leapt aside in disgust, brushing the filth from his derby and frock coat. “Phew!”

The thing rolled on. Encho caught up with the larger man. “Not the locomotives,” the comedian gasped. “We can't face those.”

Onogawa drew himself up. He tried to dust more streaks of filthy ash from his soiled coat. “Well, I think we taught the nasty thing a lesson, anyway.”

“No doubt,” said Encho, breathing hard. He went green suddenly, then leaned against a nearby wooden fence, clustered with tall autumn grass. He was loudly sick.

They looked about themselves. Autumn. Darkness. And the moon. A pair of cats squabbled loudly in an adjacent alley.

Onogawa suddenly realized that he was brandishing, not a sword, but a splintered stick of ironbound bamboo. He began to tremble. Then he flung the thing away with a cry of disgust. “They took our swords away,” he said. “Let them give us honest soldiers our swords back. We'd make short work of such foreign foulness. Look what it did to my coat, the filthy creature. It defiled me.”

“No, no,” Encho said, wiping his mouth. “You were incredible! A regular Shoki the Demon Queller.”

“Shoki,” Onogawa said. He dusted his hat against his knee. “I've seen drawings of Shoki. He's the warrior demigod, with a red face and a big sword. Always hunting demons, isn't he? But he doesn't know there's a little demon hiding on the top of his own head.”

“Well, a regular Yoshitsune, then,” said Encho, hastily grasping for a better compliment. Yoshitsune was a legendary master of swordsmanship. A national hero without parallel.

Unfortunately, the valorous Yoshitsune had ended up riddled with arrows by the agents of his treacherous half-brother, who had gone on to rule Japan. While Yoshitsune and his high ideals had to put up with a shadow existence in folklore. Neither Encho nor Onogawa had to mention this aloud, but the melancholy associated with the old tale seeped into their moods. Their world became heroic and fatal. Naturally all the bourbon helped.

“We'd better go back to Bricktown for our shoes,” Onogawa said.

“All right,” Encho said. Their feet had blistered in the commandeered clogs, and they walked back slowly and carefully.

Yoshitoshi met them in his downstairs landing. “Did you catch it?”

“It made a run for the railroads,” Encho said. “We couldn't stop it; it was way above our heads.” He hesitated. “Say. You don't suppose it will come back here, do you?”

“Probably,” Yoshitoshi said. “It lives in that knot of cables outside the window. That's why I put the shutters there.”

“You mean you've seen it before?”

“Sure, I've seen it,” Yoshitoshi muttered. “In fact I've seen lots of things. It's my business to see things. No matter what people say about me.”

The others looked at him, stricken. Yoshitoshi shrugged irritably. “The place has atmosphere. It's quiet and no one bothers me here. Besides, it's cheap.”

“Aren't you afraid of the demon's vengeance?” Onogawa said.

“I get along fine with that demon,” Yoshitoshi said. “We have an understanding. Like neighbors anywhere.”

“Oh,” Encho said. He cleared his throat. “Well, ah, we'll be moving on, Taiso. It was good of you to give us the borubona.” He and Onogawa stuffed their feet hastily into their squeaking shoes. “You keep up the good work, pal, and don't let those political fellows put anything over on you. Their ideas are weird, frankly. I don't think the government's going to put up with that kind of talk.”

“Someday they'll have to,” Yoshitoshi said.

“Let's go,” Onogawa said, with a sidelong glance at Yoshitoshi. The two men left.

Onogawa waited until they were well out of earshot. He kept a wary eye on the wires overhead. “Your friend certainly is a weird one,” he told the comedian. “What a night!”

Encho frowned. “He's gonna get in trouble with that visionary stuff. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, you know.” They walked into the blaze of artificial gaslight. The Ginza crowd had thinned out considerably.

“Didn't you say you knew some girls with a piano?” Onogawa said.

“Oh, right!” Encho said. He whistled shrilly and waved at a distant two-man rickshaw. “A piano. You won't believe the thing; it makes amazing sounds. And what a great change after those dreary geisha samisen routines. So whiny and thin and wailing and sad! It's always, ‘Oh, How Piteous Is A Courtesan's Lot,' and ‘Let's Stab Each Other To Prove You Really Love Me.' Who needs that old-fashioned stuff? Wait till you hear these gals pound out some ‘opera' and ‘waltzes' on their new machine.”

The rickshaw pulled up with a rattle and a chime of bells. “Where to, gentlemen?”

“Asakusa,” said Encho, climbing in.

“It's getting late,” Onogawa said reluctantly. “I really ought to be getting back to the wife.”

“Come on,” said Encho, rolling his eyes. “Live a little. It's not like you're just cheating on the little woman. These are high-class modern girls. It's a cultural experience.”

“Well, all right,” said Onogawa. “If it's cultural.”

“You'll learn a lot,” Encho promised.

But they had barely covered a block when they heard the sudden frantic ringing of alarm bells, far to the south.

“A fire!” Encho yelled in glee. “Hey, runners, stop! Fifty sen if you get us there while it's still spreading!”

The runners wheeled in place and set out with a will. The rickshaw rocked on its axle and jangled wildly. “This is great!” Onogawa said, clutching his hat. “You're a good fellow to know, Encho. It's nothing but excitement with you!”

“That's the modern life!” Encho shouted. “One wild thing after another.”

They bounced and slammed their way through the darkened streets until the sky was lit with fire. A massive crowd had gathered beside the Shinagawa Railroad Line. They were mostly low-class townsmen, many half-dressed. It was a working-class neighborhood in Shiba District, east of Atago Hill. The fire was leaping merrily from one thatched roof to another.

The two men jumped from their rickshaw. Encho shouldered his way immediately through the crowd. Onogawa carefully counted out the fare. “But he said fifty sen,” the older rickshawman complained. Onogawa clenched his fist, and the men fell silent.

The firemen had reacted with their usual quick skill. Three companies of them had surrounded the neighborhood. They swarmed like ants over the roofs of the undamaged houses nearest the flames. As usual, they did not attempt to fight the flames directly. That was a hopeless task in any case, for the weathered graying wood, paper shutters, and reed blinds flared up like tinder, in great blossoming gouts.

Instead, they sensibly relied on firebreaks. Their hammers, axes, and crowbars flew as they destroyed every house in the path of the flames. Their skill came naturally to them, for, like all Edo firemen, they were also carpenters. Special bannermen stood on the naked ridgepoles of the disintegrating houses, holding their company's ensigns as close as possible to the flames. This was more than bravado; it was good business. Their reputations, and their rewards from a grateful neighborhood, depended on this show of spirit and nerve.