50.
It’s a Poor Life Anyway

THE BARS OVER BY THE RIVER had initially been chosen only as a convenient waiting place for those few of Ueno’s troops who had stuck with him, but an error in timing had caused them to arrive too early and by the time the trouble started at the inn’s front door, most of them were drunk, and procrastinating about carrying out the horrid orders Ueno had given them before he had approached the inn—to slit the two prisoners’ throats!

These troops were old and young, fat and thin, tall and short. One or two were like Ichiro, still true samurai, though they’d lived at the edges of poverty for decades, and one or two others were petty thieves, finding trouble wherever they went and occasionally spending time in various jails. They all had swords, for that had been the single precondition of Ueno’s lottery, and all of those who accompanied him tonight had been at the waterfront that morning, to take part in the capture of the villains. There were no actual geisha with them as they waited, but there were women, sifted down through the hierarchy of Japanese nightlife to its lowest level, some of them drunk, others still oddly dignified, as if their lives had been decided by lottery as well.

Each of the river bars had a burning torch in front of it, and tied to stakes between two of them, rain-soaked and stinking and awaiting their fate, stood Numbers 75 and 111. They had been left alone for nearly an hour when three of their guards burst from a nearby bar with three drunk women in their wake. Their intention was to taunt the captives, to strut in front of them and jeer before finally following Ueno’s instructions and putting their swords to their throats, but one of the women had a jar of cheap liquor with her and when the older captive saw it he opened his mouth, begging like a baby bird. She danced up to him, poured his mouth full, then danced back again to pull her filthy kimono apart, exposing herself.

“You won’t see the likes of this again,” she cackled, and the younger captive said, “Thank God for that, at least.”

That made the three guards laugh and share their drinks with both the prisoners, telling the women to go back inside for more.

“It’s a poor life anyway,” one of the guards said, “and you’re well out of it. I wouldn’t trade places with you, don’t get me wrong, but that’s what I’ll think when my time comes.”

The younger captive had remained stealthy throughout the long day, looking for ways to escape, but the older one pleaded, “How about just forgetting it then, brother, how about letting us go?”—a remark that doubly infuriated his colleague because the identifying placards still hung on the wrong necks. He wore 75, while the old fool beside him wore 111. It irked him that people might think it was he who had spoken such pitiful words, mocking him for them after his death.

“Change these awful placards,” he demanded. “Give me back my name!”

He strained against his ropes, jumping up and down along his stake. While some of the guards laughed at him, however, the irony of his words began to filter through the drunkenness of others, and when the women came back with stools as well as liquor, they all sat down around the prisoners, their swords across their laps, to think about their lives.

Until, that is, they began to hear a voice coming out of the dark.

“I am Momo of Shimoda. Do not worry, I am not selling chestnuts. I have come in order to return something you have lost…”

That is all it took for these guards to stand up from their stools again, to glance at each other and smile. Introspection, it seemed, unlike cheap liquor, was a commodity most easily spent.

“There’s a man with a name you can have,” one of the guards told the younger captive, ‘“Momo of Shimoda’! How would you like to die with that name tied around your neck?”

The guards took the prisoners from their stakes, told them to be silent if they wanted to stay alive for another half hour, then stepped into the darkness on tiptoe, not to injure anyone yet, but to take pleasure where they could find it, striking terror into the hearts of peasants, just as they used to do in the old days, when things were so much better.

It was a small pleasure, to be sure, but a real one, and so very un-Japanese. It wasn’t in the code of samurai or in the code of innkeepers either.