Chapter 4 — The Friday Fellows (Part 2)

The banquet dissolved into a slovenly mess around us like a sugar cube that had fallen into a schooner of beer, as Benten made her escape through the window.

Pulling me by the hand she waltzed out onto the elevated canopy over the arcade. “Benten, come back!” implored the Friday Fellows back in the room, but paying them no heed Benten went forth, light as a feather, along the rooftop of Teramachi Street.

Our footsteps echoed softly as we trod over the narrow route of the arcade. Smoke wafted up from Benten’s tengu cigar and dispersed in the wind among the canyon of buildings.

The arcade continued south along the ravine. The deck below us intercepted the lights of Teramachi Street below, letting off a pale glow in the darkness of the night. We were walking along a service route, normally off-limits, and the glowing path was deserted as far as the eye could see all the way down to Shijō Street. Above us twinkled the lights of cafés and bars, the figures of people sitting at the tables enjoying their Friday night resembling mannequins. The hour was already late, and below our feet the clamor of Teramachi and Shinkyōgoku was dying down.

Before us in the night sky rose the great orb of the moon, so big it almost seemed an illusion. “Such an enormous moon tonight!” Benten murmured as if awe. “I do love things that are round.”

“Is that so?”

“I want the moon!” Benten suddenly cried out, looking straight at it. “Go fetch it for me, Yasaburō!”

“Don’t be absurd…that’s beyond me, even if it’s you doing the asking.”

“Useless, totally incapable…what a sorry tanuki you are.”

“If it pleases you to say so.”

“Seeing the moon so beautiful makes my heart ache, just a little.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I am not…it’d take more than that!”

Below us I could see Shinkyōgoku Rokkaku Park.

The arcade rooftop was a jumbled mess of electric cables. Benten leaned out over the side and gazed down at the park. On the other side was the Shinkyōgoku arcade. Pinched between the two streets, the park was nearly deserted, being late as it was, and the few lonely trees in the park were already bereft of leaves. The singing of a lone youth seated before the gates of Seiganji quavered in the air.

Farther on, we came to a dark building. A curt sign reading only “Café & Bar” faced the street, next to a small table and two round stools. Light seeped out from an open window on the fifth floor. A great golden gong-shaped bell hung from the window, and trailing from it was a long cord that reached all the way down to the table.

Benten sat on one of the stools and tugged the cord. The bell jangled, and a bald, mustachioed man poked his head out from the window. Benten held two fingers up, at which the man nodded and pulled his head back inside the window. After a moment, a tray was lowered down from the window on another string, carrying two glasses of Benten’s favorite drink, an akawari.

Seated at that hidden bar, we drank a toast to the moon. Between sips of her drink, Benten kept sighing, “How sad. How very sad.” At last she stood up and, still holding the glass of rose-tinted akawari, began to skate over the roof of the arcade.

“What do you have to be so sad about?”

“I feel sorry for you because I’m going to eat you.”

“Perhaps you could just not eat me?”

“No, I’m quite certain that one day I’m going to gobble you up.”

“Do you mind not saying ‘I’m going to gobble you up’ so casually?” I said. “This is life and death for me, here.”

“I like you so much I could just eat you up,” murmured Benten, returning to that favorite phrase. “But if I eat something that I like, that means it will disappear.”

“Obviously! You can’t have your tanuki and eat it, too!”

“Heeeey!” Just then a slow, stupid voice interrupted.

Tottering unsteadily across the narrow superstructure of the arcade came none other than the professor, fresh from browbeating the banquet with his overweening love of tanuki. He was drenched in sweat and gasping for breath as he labored to reach us, his hair disheveled and his belly wobbling, clutching his giant satchel to the breast of his smudged suit.

“Hello there, professor. So eager to join us again?” remarked Benten.

At last he caught up and added himself to our Friday Fellows’ afterparty, up in this world of rooftops.

　　　　　　　◯

Facing the professor, Benten extended an invitation to view the autumn leaves.

Settling the bill for the akawari, she made her way over a little iron bridge that spanned the top of the arcade to a spiral staircase attached to the side of a building. Coming up to the roof of the building, she floated over to the top of the adjacent building, and in this way she skillfully traversed the whole row of buildings. Seeing the professor and I standing petrified at the sheer height, she returned and took our hands, guiding us across the roofscape under the light of the moon.

“Benten!” wheezed the professor. “You really…do…get around!”

“You’re quite spry yourself, for your age.”

“I travel to the jungles of the tropics from time to time, for my research. The conditioning of the old men there, that’s something else!”

“Just hold tight for a little longer.”

“Bless me, if I didn’t know better I would have said you were a tengu!”

Tickled by the professor’s ignorance, Benten cackled gaily under the full moon.

At last we arrived at the roof of a particular building. It was hushed, nestled in a little ways from the main thoroughfare. Next to a vending machine, which I suspected hardly anyone would go this far out of their way to visit, was a tree vested in the colors of autumn. Utterly spent, the professor and I crumpled onto a blue bench by the vending machine. Benten stood at the base of the tree puffing on her tengu cigar, looking up into the branches. The crimson leaves soaked in the glaring illumination of the vending machine, looking almost like translucent glass. The smoke from the tengu cigar coiled up through the air, drifting over the rooftop into the night.

I reminisced about the day that I had brought the bottle of Akadama port wine up to Master Akadama and Benten at their rooftop cherry blossom viewing, back when I was still young. That had been the day that Benten first took to the sky, when she had only just taken her first steps on the path of the tengu with those elegant legs of hers. Tonight, witnessing her in mastery of all her powers, I no longer saw any trace of the girl who had beamed so happily at her master simply because she was floating through the air.

The night passed slowly as we admired the leaves. I took out a camera to capture the scene.

In a while the professor said, “You know, I was just thinking of the day we first met.”

“Please, you’d be better off forgetting that memory!”

“I would never. We were having our year-end party that day. I went to see the caged tanuki in the inner room. And when I did, I saw you, lying down sleeping peacefully beside the cage. You were curled up like a kid, using a pile of cushions for a pillow.”

“Was I really?” Benten placed a hand on the trunk of the tree and walked a circle around it.

“I didn’t know who you were, see, because I didn’t know that it was a young woman that had just joined the Friday Fellows. I thought you were one of the serving girls at Chitoseya who’d fallen asleep guarding the tanuki. Poor girl must be tired out, I thought to myself. The tanuki inside the cage was a fine specimen, dignified even, not the slightest hint of fear on his face. And while we were having our staring contest, you woke up, came beside me, and started talking to the tanuki!”

“I don’t remember at all, it was so long ago.”

“You were having a whole conversation with it. ‘I feel sorry for you because I’m going to eat you.’ And then, ‘But I’m still going to eat you.’” The professor was smiling, his eyes shut. “That was it. That was when I fell in love. I know exactly how you feel, I was thinking. You’re not alone.”

“You’re mistaken,” Benten scowled up at the leaves. “I don’t recall ever saying those words.”

“If you’re sure,” said the professor with a big yawn. “But I remember.” Still mumbling something under his breath, his head drooped and he dozed off to sleep.

Benten walked round and round the tree with a sorrowful look on her face. “Benten?” I called, but she did not reply. Flame flickered up from the end of her tengu cigar, and smoke shrouded the boughs above her. Benten’s slender form appeared and vanished within the smothering column, occasionally accompanied by a red glow of flame, like some fire-breathing beast.

I pushed through the swirling smoke and approached Benten. “What are you doing?” I asked. As I moved closer through the roiling fumes towards her bewitching silhouette, she nimbly skirted away even further into the depths of the smoke.

“No closer, please,” she said from within the swirling depths. “If you do I’ll eat you. I’m serious!”

I stopped in my tracks, choking on the smoke. “If I may be so bold as to ask, is something the matter?”

“The moon is just so lovely I can’t help but be sad. A bath would be marvelous right around now. I’m leaving.”

“You can’t be serious! Surely you’re not just going to leave us here on the roof?”

“Be sure to take the professor back with you, Yasaburō.”

The smoke became suffocating, rising up into a swirling vortex with incredible speed and power—

And then it stopped. The smoke dispersed in the night wind, and when it had all finally cleared away, Benten was nowhere to be seen. The stub of the tengu cigar lay smoldering among the roots of the tree.

　　　　　　　◯

The chilly night air pierced me through as the autumn moon wended its way through the sky.

I witnessed many things as I leaned on the rusty handrail, looking across the city: a woman reclining on a deck chair on the veranda of an apartment building, gazing at the moon; a group of men in business attire paying a visit to a tiny lantern-lit shrine on the roof of a building; a maiko dancing with a person in an eggplant costume at a bar on the top floor of another building. Surely this was a taste of what it was like to be a tengu, as I presided over the queer pageant in this silent, rooftop world.

With a loud snort the professor opened his eyes. “Where’s Benten?” he asked, shivering.

After a short time, he begged leave for his hunger and, opening his large, misshapen satchel, produced a great many rice balls wrapped in aluminum foil, lining them up between the two of us. At his urging I took a few of them. Some were filled with egg, others kombu. There was also a large bottle of sake in his satchel. In one of his large, hairy hands he held a rice ball, lapping up sake from the cup in the other.

“Not half bad, eh? I make ‘em myself,” chuckled the professor. “I’m rather fond of rice balls. They’re delicious hot or cold, and you can eat ‘em anywhere you please.”

We munched on rice balls together, sharing the sake.

“Benten doesn’t seem to be coming back.”

“She’s done a Benten on us. She’s always disappearing in the middle of things without any notice.”

“She really is difficult to figure out.”

“You’re a student, aren’t you? How do you know Benten anyhow?”

I couldn’t exactly say that I was a tanuki who happened to be old friends with a half-tengu, so I spun him a realistic tale about having made her acquaintance in town which even I half believed. The professor hmm-hmmed as he listened, nodding his head. “At any rate, she’s quite the eccentric beauty!” he burst out, unable to contain his emotions.

“You’re a little eccentric yourself, professor.”

“Me, eccentric?”

“It’s not every day you come across an appetite like yours.”

“It’s true, I am a glutton,” he admitted. “I’ve eaten all sorts of things over the years. But it was partly for research, too.”

“But you eat tanuki, too—”

“And many other things, besides! I’ve been all over the world, and there’s not a bug or a plant or an animal or a fish I wouldn’t eat.”

“And you enjoy it?”

“If I eat something, I’m going to enjoy it. That’s the duty of the eater. But let me tell you something. Whenever you eat anything that was once living, it’s delicious—that’s how you’ve got to look at it. That’s how I try to look at it, and that’s why I eat all sorts of things. Well, I make an exception for poisonous things…I’d prefer not to die, doncha know. But I’m like a frog in a well. Just look around the world, people eat everything you can imagine. It’s shocking how gluttonous we are. I think that’s just swell, whenever it comes to mind. To eat something is to love it. Humans eat all sorts of things, and that means humans love all sorts of things. Hooray for humans!”

“But think about it from the perspective of the eaten. They aren’t saying hooray.”

“Of course they don’t like it. I wouldn’t like it if a bear or a wolf was gnawing on my head. No one would. But if someone’s going to be eaten, I’d like to be the one doing the eating. Of course I feel sorry for them, but I like tanuki so much I just want to eat them up. Not only tanuki, of course. We eat all sorts of adorable things. It is a little sad, but they taste so good. This brings us to a paradox, doesn’t it? That’s love. I don’t entirely understand it, but it’s probably love. It must be love.”

“The only reasons humans can say that without thinking is because they don’t have to worry about being eaten.”

“You sure do feel for the critters being eaten. But that’s an important point. You’re right, we humans don’t need to worry about being eaten. We don’t have any natural predators. The closest we get is being cremated and turned into ashes and being eaten by microbes in the dirt. But the thought of that makes me awful sad, getting eaten by microbes. If I’ve got to die…as long as it didn’t hurt, I’d want to be eaten by tanuki. Better to be a tanuki’s supper than to shrivel away and die in a hospital. You can’t turn into anyone’s nourishment if you die in a hospital bed, and that’s just real sad. It’d be much better for me to fill a tanuki’s belly.”

“I think it’d be kind of a tall order for a tanuki to eat you.”

“Maybe so…that, and I’m sure I wouldn’t be tasty. Ah, that’s disappointing.” The professor downed another rice ball. “No tanuki would want to eat an unappetizing thing like me. What a sad thought for a human to have!”

“I’ve never heard of a human who would feel sad about something like that.”

“A tanuki told me that, a long time ago. I still think about it sometimes. Why, you think I’m lying! But of course you do. No one would believe that a tanuki could talk. That’s why I never talk about it.” The professor grinned. “But my word, he was such a grand tanuki.”

　　　　　　　◯

That had been the night that Benten had first joined the Friday Fellows.

The professor, wanting to look upon the captured tanuki, had gone into the inner parlor of Chitoseya. Only a single electric lamp in the shape of a traditional floor lantern cast its light onto the tatami, while outside the window the Kamo River flowed serenely by. In a corner of the room the floor was spread with newspaper, on top of which had been placed a cage. An unfamiliar woman lay by the cage with her head on a stack of cushions, curled up and dozing on the floor. Suddenly flustered by the sight of her exquisite features, the professor approached the cage trying not to wake her.

Inside the cage was a large tanuki rolled into a ball. Its fur was slick and glossy in the light, and its body was majestically plump. Noticing the professor’s approach, it turned to face him, but it made no sound and showed no trace of fear. Its eyes stared back at the professor calmly, and somehow it seemed that behind them lay a great intelligence. The professor was moved by its dignified demeanor.

“What a fine being you are,” he murmured. “No doubt you’re a distinguished figure in the world of tanuki.”

The tanuki slowly rose up as if attending to the professor’s words. The professor took out a rice ball from his bag and offered it to the tanuki, which approached and sniffed it, before munching it down. Watching it eat, the professor squatted in front of the cage and continued to ramble.

“We’re going to eat you tonight. You may not want to be eaten, but that’s our rule, to have tanuki stew at our year-end party. Being born as a tanuki sometimes means being eaten by a human. I’ll tell you though, and you may think me selfish, but I’m very happy to get to eat you, because it means I’ve encountered something new.”

The tanuki peered up silently at the professor as he spoke.

“How can you be this calm, eh? Aren’t you even the least bit worried?” said the professor.

Finally the tanuki opened its mouth.

“I have done all that I wanted to do, and now my children are grown. My youngest may still be small, but he has his brothers, and I have no doubt they will support each other and become fine tanuki. I have sown my seed, and helped them grow. I have fulfilled my duty as a tanuki. What days remain to me are the grace of heaven. A bonus, so to speak. So, now, it is of no concern to me if I am eaten here by you all. If you wish to eat me, then eat me.”

“How strange,” muttered the professor. “I could have sworn I just heard you talk. I must have been imagining things.”

“Indeed, I am speaking.”

“Well if that don’t take all. You shouldn’t scare people like that!”

“I felt that, perhaps, I could chance speaking to you. My last trick, you might say. My fool’s blood talking.”

The two chatted for a while. The tanuki was utterly calm, but there was one thing which he worried about. “I fear I may not be very tasty,” he admitted.

The professor thumped his chest. “Never you worry, you have my guarantee I’ll make you into a delicious stew.”

“I’d appreciate that greatly. I could never bear it if I were to ruin a perfectly good stew.”

“You’re a great tanuki, and that means that you are delicious. There’s nothing to fret about.”

Hearing that, the tanuki nodded with satisfaction. “May I ask your name? I would like to take it to the afterlife.”

“My name is Yodogawa Chōtarō.”

The tanuki sighed contentedly. “So it was you, then.”

“Well gosh, you know who I am?”

“You helped a member of my family, once.”

“Well, in return why don’t you tell me your name?”

The tanuki drew himself up as far as the cage would allow.

“I am the Trick Magister, Shimogamo Sōichirō.”

Just then the woman dozing on the cushions woke up.

“Who are you?” she asked the professor.

Without thinking the professor put his finger to his lips and hissed “Shh!”, but when he turned back to the cage , the tanuki had curled back into a ball and was snoring uproariously, his stomach bulging and full from the rice ball. The professor was taken aback.

“Are you Hotei?” the girl inquired, bowing her head. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

“Ah, you must be the person Jurōjin mentioned. Didn’t hear that you were a girl, though.”

The woman smiled. “I am Benten.”

Benten stood up and peered at the tanuki in the cage. “He’s sleeping so peacefully,” she murmured, watching the sleeping tanuki quietly. “‘I feel sorry for you because I’m going to eat you,” she said. “But I’m still going to eat you.”

That majestic tanuki, my father Shimogamo Sōichirō, never woke from his slumber, and until he slid down into the stomachs of the Friday Fellows he never said another word again.

　　　　　　　◯

The moon traced its arc through the sky as the autumn night wore on.

The professor chuckled out loud. “I don’t expect you to believe such a fanciful story.”

“I think I could,” I told him.

“I’m happy to hear that. I wouldn’t have talked about it but for our friendship.”

“But we only just met tonight.”

“I feel we two are bound by fate. There’s no such thing as coincidences. So here’s to our meeting tonight, cheers!”

“You’re sure it’s okay for a college professor to be drinking in a place like this in the middle of the night?”

“Nothing to worry about. It’s just my fool’s blood talking,” he smiled. “But would you look at that moon!”

Whenever one of us brothers stirred up trouble, Father would laugh it off, saying, “That’s just your fool’s blood talking.” When I heard the professor say that same phrase, for some reason I couldn’t help but notice the strange resemblance to Father. I should have hated him for eating my father, and yet somehow I only felt affection towards him. His large, hairy hands smelled just like Father.

The professor yawned over and over, rubbing his eyes. “Fighting sleep is a losing battle,” he said. “Benten probably won’t be coming back, so I say we get down from here. Gosh, how I miss my bed.”

Figuring out how to get down from up there was no simple task. Scratching our heads, we suddenly happened on a long ladder, which we were able to climb down to Gokomachi Street. It was rather suspicious to find a ladder sprouting up in the middle of town, and eerily convenient. I faced the darkness between the buildings and ventured, “Kaisei, is that you?”

“Hurry and go home and sleep, you blockhead!” Kaisei replied. “Next time I’m leaving you up there!”

“Thanks.”

While I squinted into the darkness at my invisible fiancée, the professor had gone on ahead. He turned and shouted back, “Hey! Teramachi Street is this way, isn’t it?”

We walked down the deserted avenue, and at Kawaramachi Street I parted ways with the professor. He invited me to visit his lab as he got into the taxi, fishing around in his bag for a business card, though there seemed none to be found. The card he finally dredged up was incredibly crumpled, but nevertheless he politely presented it to me with both hands. It read, “Yodogawa Chōtarō - Professor of Agriculture”.

“So long. I hope we meet again!”

I stood there and watched the professor’s taxi disappear into the night.

　　　　　　　◯

I crossed the Shijō Bridge and walked through the nocturnal streets towards Rokudō Chinnōji.

As I walked I thought of Professor Yodogawa, and of Father. What was going through Father’s head, when he learned that he was to be eaten by the person who had saved Mother’s life? Was I wrong to think that it might not have been so agonizing after all? Somehow I couldn’t help but feel warm inside when I imagined this conversation between Professor Yodogawa and Father.

The well at Rokudō Chinnōji was pitch black.

It had been a long time since I had been to see my Yajirō, my older brother who had left his tanuki trappings behind to dwell here in this well as a frog. After the tumultuous day I had just lived through, I missed him terribly. “Heeey,” I called, but there was no reply. Turning into a frog myself, I hopped down into the well, falling down into the water with a splash. In the darkness, Yajirō yelped, “Wah!”

I poked my head up from the water. “Yajirō, it’s me!”

“Oh, Yasaburō. You’re still alive. I was worried about you.”

“Fit as a frog, as you can see.”

My brother lit a little candle, casting a glow through the bottom of the well. In a recess was an island made by a small mound of dirt, and on that island was a tiny shrine-like building. Beside it perched a little frog, waving at me. I swam over and crawled out of the water.

“Are you planning to renounce your worldly trappings and become a frog, too?” sighed Yajirō. “Imagine the waterworks from Mother if she discovered that two of her sons had become frogs.”

“I just need to stay for the night.”

“Oh, well all right then.”

I sat next to Yajirō by the water. Watching it ripple we talked about what had transpired that day.

“Well, that’s one way to spend a day,” commented Yajirō. “Well done you!”

“Hey, Yajirō.”

“What’s up, Yasaburō?”

“I just don’t get it. Why don’t I hate them? I’ve gotten to like that professor a lot, and Benten, the person who made Father into stew and ate him…how could I fall in love with her?”

“Obviously that’s just your fool’s blood talking,” laughed Yajirō. “And besides, we’re tanuki. Sometimes we just get eaten. You can’t blame humans for eating tanuki.”

“That’s such a mature way to look at it. You’re so perceptive.“

“Nah, I’m really only pretending to understand. After all, I’m just a frog in a well.”

“Trying to dodge responsibility again?”

“No, I mean it. I don’t understand a thing.” Yajirō sank into the water and blew bubbles. “I still tear up whenever I think of Father.”

Unexpectedly we heard signs of someone approaching the well, so Yajirō hopped over and extinguished the candle. The person stared into the well, unmoving. I inched towards Yajirō. “Someone else seeking your wisdom?”

“Nope. That must be Benten,” he whispered. “She never says a word.”

We sat there in the darkness, listening to Benten’s breathing. After a while, briny teardrops started to fall, wetting my nose.

“She always does this, just cries by herself. The water in here’s getting pretty salty.”

Two frogs sat at the bottom of the well, looking up at the sky. Benten said nothing, but her salty tears continued to fall, drip drop, drip drop.

“Why is she crying? What has she got to be sad about?” I wondered. “Is it because the moon is so beautiful?”

Yajirō looked up at the falling tears and said simply, “Sometimes children cry for no reason at all.”