Reiko considered the strain that had always existed between her and her mother-in-law, which she’d previously attributed to their different social backgrounds. But now Reiko knew that wasn’t the whole story. Perhaps she reminded the old woman of the young lady she herself had once been and the privileged life she’d lost. But it seemed just as likely that she’d been afraid Reiko would notice the discrepancies between her real and her supposed background and mention them to Sano.
Why conceal her background unless there was something in it that she wanted to hide?
“What’s going to happen to Grandma?” Masahiro asked.
“Nothing,” Reiko said. She was ashamed of her speculations about her mother-in-law. “Your father will prove she’s innocent. She’ll be all right.”
Reiko resolved to withhold judgment at least until she’d talked to the woman herself.
The search for the tutor took Hirata to the Ueno temple district. The buildings of the minor temple to which Egen had belonged forty-three years ago had burned down during the Great Fire. The government had relocated it, and scores of other religious orders, to Ueno, on the city’s outskirts. There, the fires in the temples’ crematoriums couldn’t threaten the town, and the smoke wouldn’t offend the citizens.
Hirata rode with a few detectives up Ueno’s Broad Little Road, one of many firebreaks created after the disaster. He recalled that their original purpose had been to provide bare space that would relieve overcrowding, prevent fires from spreading, and limit casualties. But land within such a big attraction as a temple district was valuable, and little empty space remained today.
Pilgrims and tourists flocked to the stalls of the marketplace that lined the road. Vendors did a thriving business in Buddhist rosaries and prayer scrolls, vegetables and fish grilled on skewers, china dolls and straw hats, sake and plum wine. Itinerant priests marched, beat drums, and juggled. Acrobats capered on a tightrope. Customers flowed to and from teahouses and brothels in the back streets.
Hirata found Egen’s temple inside a small compound enclosed by a bamboo fence. A few worshippers lit incense sticks and knelt before the altar decorated with gold lotus flowers and burning candles in the main hall where Hirata approached an old priest.
“I’m looking for a monk named Egen who belonged to your order before the Great Fire,” Hirata said. “He worked as a tutor to Tokugawa Tadatoshi, cousin of the shogun.”
“I haven’t been here that long,” the priest said, “and unfortunately, the fire destroyed all our records.”
“Is there anyone here who might remember Egen?”
The priest took Hirata to an elderly monk who was meditating in the sunny garden outside the dormitory. The monk was as lean and tough as a rope. He had no teeth, and his ears and nostrils were filled with tufts of gray hair, but he wore a serene, content expression. When Hirata asked him if he’d known Egen, he smiled and said, “Ah, yes. We were friends. We entered the monastery and took our vows at the same time.”
Hirata thought it too good to be true that the old man had remembered so promptly. “Are you sure?”
The monk smiled. “At my age it’s easier to remember what happened fifty years ago than what I had for breakfast this morning. When you get old, you’ll see.”
“My apologies for doubting you,” Hirata said. “Can you tell me where Egen is now?”
“I’m afraid not. He left the order.”
“Oh. When was that?”
“The same year as the Great Fire.”
Hirata felt his hopes deflate, but he said, “When was the last time you saw him?”
“It was some twenty days after the fire.” The monk’s eyes chased recollections through the past. “The temple had burned down. My brothers and I had run for our lives. We tried to stay together, but we got separated. When the fire finally went out, I walked through the ruins, looking for the others. That was the only way to find anyone.”
Hirata remembered his parents talking about the fire’s aftermath and the thousands of people roaming the city in search of lost loved ones. Many of his family’s relatives had died.
“I managed to find eight of my comrades. We were all that was left of the fifty monks and priests from our temple,” the monk said sadly. “By that time, the bakufu had begun putting up tents for everyone who’d lost their homes.”
A city of tents had grown up in the ashes of the great capital. They’d been hurriedly stitched together from any fabric available—quilts, kimonos, canopies. Hirata saw it in his imagination, a sea of patchwork.