The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) Read Online Free PDF Page B

chins to his bulbous calves. He looked like a straw stack with feet. Cat recognized him.
    Thank you, Kannon-sama, she thought. The thousand-armed goddess of mercy had sent the perfect man for Cat’s needs.
    During the mornings and afternoons the Yoshiwara was empty of guests. A languorous tranquillity settled over it then, the more precious because it was transitory. The young apprentices swept up, and servants cleared away the night’s debris or watered down the dust in the streets. Trusted go-betweens delivered “next-morning-letters.” Maids gossiped at the district’s new well.
    In the mornings men emptied the contents of the privies into long buckets and carried away the precious cargo to fertilize the outlying fields. Paperers came with their rolls of heavy rice paper, glue, and laths to repair panels mangled in the night’s revelry. Farmers carried on their backs towering wooden frames piled with lotus roots and cabbages and huge white radishes. On the corner of Yedo-cho and Ni-cho-me streets, greengrocers and fishmongers hawked their wares.
    The courtesans gathered then for dance or calligraphy or samisen lessons in the large, uncluttered tatami rooms behind the closed shutters. They discussed the latest permutations of the hairdo fashions while the blind shampooers plied their trade. They talked endlessly of love and the possibility of some rich patron freeing them from the Yoshiwara. They bathed together in cedar bathtubs big enough to soap down a horse. They joked about the guests.
    Their laughter found its way through the cracks in the wooden shutters and rippled throughout the Yoshiwara. When this one’s name was mentioned, the jokes turned bitter.
    This one’s juices flowed only when he inflicted pain. But Cat hated the man for more than his casual cruelty. He was a distant cousin of Lord Kira.
    Aim for his weak point, Musashi advised. And with your body rather floatingly, join in with his movement as he draws near.
    As he approached her, Cat put her small pipe in her mouth as though she were going to take a few puffs. She separated one of her paper handkerchiefs from the folded stack of them in her wallet and twisted it. She lifted the oiled paper shade of a square street lantern and lit the end of the twisted napkin. She shielded the guttering flame with her sleeve as she swiveled smoothly. She bent and, hidden by the bulk of the servants’ backs, held it to the bottom of the straw-thatch raincoat as the metsuke passed.
    The flame spread noisily outward and upward, toward the peak of the official’s rented, conical straw hat. The layers of straw in the raincape curled and blackened behind the fire, exposing hairy calves and the folds of an expensive silk brocade kimono tucked up into the man’s sash.
    The metsuke sniffed in alarm. A strong smell of smoke always made people nervous. Fiery holocausts swept the city so often, they were called the Flowers of Edo.
    The servants flailed at the blaze with their cloaks but only succeeded in fanning it. The metsuke clawed at the cape’s ties, knotted at his neck and waist, while the flames reached up around him, embracing him. He began to scream. Cat could smell burning hair and burning flesh at about the same time.
    The watcher in the fire platform atop the tea house nearest the gate began tolling the big bronze bell. Men and women, in dishabille and carrying whatever they could grab, spilled into the streets. The metsuke decided that if he couldn’t get the cape off, he would run away from it. As he raced, shrieking, back into the Yoshiwara, people scattered in front of him. The wind of his passing only made the blaze hotter. Sparks billowed and pranced upward.
    “Shire mono! Idiots!” Centipede elbowed through the crowd, trying to clear a path for the fire brigade.
    When Cat ducked through the low door, no one followed her. The government had devised a variety of inventive public executions, but seeing a man immolated alive was a rare form of