Midnight and the snow went on piling. I walked. Snow smeared against the blood on my clothes. I walked. I had some notion of finding my way back to the ryokan, making a phone call to the Tokyo office, maybe even to Oakland. I could barely see where I was going.
No one in the streets. The wind whistled. Sushi pennants flapped against restaurant entrances. I breathed bitter liquid cold. At last I saw headlights ... a taxi.
By two in the morning I was outside the Mayuzumi estate. There were wrought-iron gates. The gates had been left open and the driveway had been recently shoveled. He let me off in front of the mansion.
A servant woman let me in, rubbing her eyes, showed me where to leave my shoes, and fetched clean slippers. She swabbed at my bloodstains with a hot towel. Then she handed me a clean yukata and watched while I tried to slip it on over my ruined gown.
It was clear that I—or someone—was expected. Perhaps there was a local geisha club that made house calls.
“Mayuzumi-san wa doko—?” I began.
“Ano . . . o-furo ni desu.”
She led me up to the steps to the tatami-covered foyer. She slid aside a shoji screen, then another and another. We walked down a succession of corridors—I walked, rather, and the maid shuffled, with tiny muffled steps, pausing here to fuss with a flower arrangement, there to incline her head toward a statue of the Amida Buddha. Beyond the Buddha image was a screen of lacquered wood on which were painted erotic designs. She yanked the screen aside and then I was face-to-face with Dr. Mayuzumi . . . naked, sitting in a giant bath, being methodically massaged by a young girl who sang as she kneaded.
He was a huge man. He was, I could see now, remarkably hirsute, like Aki Ishii; his eyes were beady and set closely together; he squinted when he looked at me, like a bear eyeing a beehive.
Behind Dr. Mayuzumi, the shoji screens had been drawn aside. The bathroom overlooked the rock garden where Molly’s body had been. Snow gusted behind him and clouds of steam tendriled between us.
“Ah,” he said, “Marie Wounded Bird, is it not? The reporter. I had thought we might meet in less . . . informal surroundings, but I am glad you are here. Tomichan! Food for our guest! You will join me for a light supper,” he said to me. It was an order.
“You have to help me, Dr. Mayuzumi,” I said. “I know who the killer is.” He raised an eyebrow. With a gesture, he indicated that I should join him in the bath. I knew that the Japanese do not find mixed bathing lewd, but I had never done it before; I balked. Two maids came and began to disrobe me. They were politely insistent, and the hot water seemed more and more enticing, and I found myself being scrubbed with pumice stone and led down the tiled steps . . . the water was so hot it hurt to move. I let it soak into my pores. I watched the snowflakes dance around the stone lantern in the cloister at the edge of the rock garden.
“No one will do anything,” I said. “But there’s a pattern. The victims are white and black . . . people who don’t belong to the Yamato race . . . maybe that’s why none of you people think it’s important. The victims are all subhuman . . . like me . . . and I think I’m next, don’t you see? The three goddesses ... the Judgement of Paris . . . and the killer is subhuman too ... an Ainu.”
“What are you trying to say?” Mayuzumi said. “You would not be attempting to pin the blame on Aki Ishii, the grand master of snow sculpting?”
I gasped. “You knew all along. And you knew that I would come here.”
Just as the heat was becoming unbearable, one of the serving maids fetched a basket of snow from outside. She knelt down at the edge of the bath and began to sprinkle it over my face, my neck. I shuddered with agony and delight. Another maid held out a lacquerware tray in front of me and began to feed me with chopsticks.
It was a lobster salad—that is, the lobster was still alive, its spine broken, the meat scooped out of its tail, diced with cucumbers and a delicate shoyu and vinegar dressing, and replaced in the splayed tail-shell with such artistry that the lobster continued to wriggle, it claws clattering feebly against the porcelain, its antennae writhing, its stalk-eyes glaring. I had already started to chew the first mouthful before I saw that my food was not quite dead. But it was too delicious to stop. And knowing I was draining the creature’s life force only heightened the frisson. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Ah,” Dr. Mayuzumi said, “you’re apologizing to the lobster for—”
“Taking its life,” I said. Wasn’t that what Aki had said about the shrimp? “How well you understand us.” I was conscious of a terrible sadness in him. There was more to him than just being a millionaire with a finger in every pie. “I, too, am sorry, Marie Wounded Bird.” He ordered the maid to remove the lacquer trays. “Yet you did not come to dine, but to accuse.”
“Yes.”
“You have proof, I hope; a man of Mr. Ishii’s standing is not indicted lightly. His reputation . . . indeed, the reputation of the Snow Festival itself. . . would be at stake. You can understand why I sought to discourage the press from . . . ah . . . untimely revelations.”
“But he’s killing people!” I said.
“Mr. Ishii is a great artist. He is very precious to us. His foibles—”
I recoiled. “How can you—”
“In the grand scheme, in the great circle of birth and rebirth, what can a few lives matter?” he said. “But Mr. Ishii’s art. . . does matter. And now you are here, blowing across our fragile world like kamikaze, the wind of the gods, irresistible and unstoppable. You would melt us down, just as the spring sun will soon melt the exquisite snow sculptures which 1.6 million tourists are about to see.”
I couldn’t believe this. It was the most familiar line of bullshit in the world. I was soaking in 110°, in the nude, eating live animals and listening to the Mayor of Amity shtick right out of Jaws I. My own life was on the line, for God’s sake!
