69 - Tenth Tale of the Japanese Cemetery - The Watery Grave

Miu stood and stepped out to find a candle in the growing dark. The points of light were shrinking, and in the darkness, her white kimono and mask seemed to reflect more of the light. She sat, once again, at the foot of the shrine, and began simply:

"This is the tale of

THE WATERY GRAVE

Dagon's Hollow is dry country. There are no streams, no rivers or ponds or marshlands. A farmer might dig a cow-pond, and the old quarry might form a pool during the wet months, but most of the water is in the aquifer, accessed by wells. As the town grew, pipes were laid, water pumped in from further out. The Japanese people used to pray for rain.

Not anymore.

Long droughts and overfarming led to the dust storms in the 1930s. There were days the sun was a hazy circle high above. When a person could hardly see the street before them. Children hid inside. Men in the fields came home caked in thick, dry dust. The priestess at the temple would sweep the dust from the graves every day, but by evening it was back again.

As the wind howled, and the crops died, and the heat baked the earth, talk turned to a curse.

There were no bars for Japanese in Dagon's Hollow. Once, Japanese men had been able to go to the taverns on Main Street, but Jim Crow had put an end to that. They brewed their own beer and distilled their own liquor, and drank in their own homes. No liquor licenses, so no serving. But a man could throw a party, and invite friends, who paid a certain fee for the evening. It was the custom, and the police, if they knew of it, turned a blind eye despite the Prohibition. Perhaps some money went into their pockets as well.

One night, as the wind howled down the streets and dust seeped in through the cracks in the door, one of the men spoke of the curse. How in the fishing village his grandfather had come from, a beautiful young fisherwoman had come to town. All the men wanted her, but she would have none of them. When at last they gathered together and threatened to **** her, she had relented, and said she would marry the man who most perfectly memorized a Buddhist sutra.

In most versions of this tale, one fisherman memorized it perfectly, and realized that the woman was an avatar of a goddess, and his desire for her evaporated as he came to understand her true purpose was to spread knowledge of Buddhism. That is not what happened in this tale.

Instead, the man spoke of how the men seized the goddess and defiled her. They took turns sating their lust on her perfect body. Forty-nine men had her in a single night, until not an inch of her skin was not bruised with love-bites or hard carresses, and her stomach and ass were full of semen. Her virginity was taken by a billhook, and when at last they had each had their turn, one monster among them cut off her head and stuck a huge fish's head upon the stump, to violate that.

At last, when the goddess could bear no more of their insults, her fish head spoke and pronounced a curse upon them all, that they should die in watery graves. And a storm broke of such fury that it erased the village, and drowned all the men...but, the man's grandfather had been but a boy, and he and his mother had floated to safety, and eventually came here.

"And what is a curse," asked the man, "but a blessing upside down? Is a watery grave not better than to be entombed in dust? Look you, the priestess who sweeps the dust from the graves every day—is she not pretty enough? I say we chance it, for a storm of water and a storm of dust may cancel each other out."

Well, they were drunk. There were nine of them, farmers all who had never seen the sea. But one of them worked at the New Tokyo Hotel, and knew that a large catfish had been delivered that evening, and the head was still fresh enough. Another had an ice-knife, about fifteen inches long. Talked about using it to slice her slit open. So they braced themselves with one more bottle of bathtub sake and went out to commit such sacrilege as would earn them a watery grave.

They found the priestess here, on the step of the shrine. She was on her knees, face to the ground, bowing toward the enshrined kami. The drunken men staggered toward her. The one with the knife tore at the back of her kimono, to expose her neck. The man holding the fish head was on the other side.

"What are you waiting for?" she said.

The wind had died. Dust settled. The cemetery was silent.

The men were not suddenly sober. Their lust had not suddenly died. The air around the shrine grew close. As if they were being watched.

"You want the watery graves, don't you?" she asked, and undid the sash on her kimono. She shivered out of the garment, exposing pale, smooth shoulders, and a spine like a row of softly falling hills.

"Go on. Do what you came her to do. Try to earn my curse."

The knife flashed. It was not heavy enough to strike off the head in a single blow. Blood spurted all over his hands as he sawed through space between the vertebrae, through the stringy muscles and skin of the neck. Two of the men had to hold her still-warm corpse as he finished, her beautiful face struck the ground.

That, at last, unmanned them. The body, pure and undefiled, with that gruesome absence. The man holding the catfish head dropped it on the ground and pissed himself.

They drew back at their deed. Drunk, stupid, lusty, but depraved enough to defile the corpse of a woman, much less a goddess? No. They were only men. Not monsters.

So imagine their horror when they saw those pale fingers sweep the ground. The headless corpse searched blindly, and found the catfish head. Brought it up to sit on the stump of the neck, and the fish's dead eyes suddenly blinked, its whiskers twitched. She rose and turned, and naked woman whose body seemed to glow with phosphorescence beneath the stars. Daring anyone who wished for the watery grave.

None of them wished it. They ran, like the cowards they were.

The dust storms continued. The drought went on.

Miu's shoulders sagged a little, as she hugged the dying candle.

"Just imagine what they might have accomplished," she said. "If they were monsters, and not just playing at such."

With a pinch of her fingers, the candle went out.