Villa Incognito Villa Incognito Villa Incognito Read online

  The neighbors didn’t connect it to the drumming, but from a distance the temple seemed to glimmer and shine. Fluids, not all of them spilled sake by any means, glistened on Miho’s futon cover, on the tiles beside the bath, on the tatami mats in front of the shrine, on a couple of low tabletops and one cedar chest.

  He filled her tank. Then he topped it off. Enough was left over to glaze several rooms and their furnishings. When enriched by her own contributions, not to mention rays of silvery moonlight and splashes of the abbot’s best wine, the whole temple became lustrous and, though outsiders couldn’t detect it, slippery as well. Venturesome mice, drawn from their nests by the aromatic promise of unusual dining opportunities, skidded into one another like midget cars on an ice track. Twitching to free themselves, moths and mosquitoes stuck to the walls. On the floor a cricket rubbed its legs together—and couldn’t pull them apart.

  Miho spent the next two days sponging and mopping the place. By the time the monks returned, there were no visible signs of Tanuki’s outpouring, though she still sloshed a bit when she walked. As for the missing sake and broken cups, the young novices had to shoulder the blame.

  Nearly three months passed before Tanuki returned to the Kyoto temple.

  Knock! Knock!

  “Who’s there?”

  “Me. Himself.”

  “The Me Himself who made me crazy and then abandoned me?” There was no recrimination in Miho’s voice—she had expected nothing less—but there was a pith of sadness. There was sorrow in her face as well, and after she opened the narrow gate, he asked about it.

  “I must quit the temple,” she said. “I shall have to leave my wise monks.”

  “Because of the sake?”

  “Because of the child.” She patted her belly, which had not quite yet begun to distend.

  Tanuki grinned. One could hardly say he was taken unaware. After all, hadn’t he provided enough seed to repopulate Atlantis and half of Pompeii? (Repopulate with what sort of citizens, exactly, was another matter.) “Good,” he said matter-of-factly. “Mission accomplished. I’ve come to take you away to be my wife.”

  Miho seemed stunned. “But—but I can’t marry a—a badger.”

  “I’m not a badger. And who says you can’t?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well . . . nobody.” She thought some more. “But I can’t go live in the woods like a wild animal.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “I never considered it from that angle.”

  Within the hour, as soon as darkness fell, the strange couple set off for the hills.

  The road was lightly talcumed with snow. Occasionally, a gust raised a small billow of powder that was sometimes difficult to distinguish from the pale, papery rice-husk of moon overhead or from the couple’s own condensed exhalations. They held hands for the warmth that was in it, and the way uncoiled before them, narrow and stiff.

  They’d covered no more than three or four miles when they found their path blocked by a trio of ronin, or unemployed, freelance samurai; aging relics from a more feudal time. Initially, the seedy ronin thought that Miho had a child in tow, and though there was no mistaking the meaning of their leers, they were inclined, by what little remained of their honor, to allow the young mother to pass. Unfortunately, a cloud slipped away from the moon just then.

  “Ah so!” one of the ronin exclaimed. “Do you see what I see? This tasty strumpet is out walking her pet.” He didn’t say pet what. While he’d occasionally heard them drumming in the forest next to one battlefield or another, he’d never before seen a tanuki.

  “He’s not my pet,” Miho snippily corrected him. “He’s my—” She broke off. She couldn’t say the word, and it’s probably just as well that she couldn’t.

  The men closed in around her, which set Tanuki to growling. One of the men drew from its scabbard a sword, nicked, corroded, and more in need of an oil bath than gore. He swiped at the quasi-badger’s head, but he was half-drunk and long out of practice. Ducking easily, Tanuki then sank his fangs to the gum in the derelict samurai’s kneecap. His anterior cruciate shredded, his medial meniscus unfastened, his lateral collateral bitten completely in half, the attacker howled and grabbed his knee, dropping the sword in the process. As the savaged leg would no longer support his weight, he collapsed.

  Tanuki bared his teeth at a second ronin, but the third one came up behind him and kicked the animal so powerfully in the small of his little back that he flew completely off the road, landing facedown in the freezing muck of a rice paddy. Laughing and drooling, the two men grabbed at Miho. One of them was undoing his underdrawers, the other brandished his sword.

  Now, back on the farm, during playtime, the young Miho had fought many a wooden-sword duel with her brothers. Moreover, her muscles were working-girl hard. So it shouldn’t be totally surprising that she snatched up the fallen blade from the roadbed and with one dynamic, well-placed swing, separated the brandisher’s sword hand from his wrist. Actually, it wasn’t a clean separation: the severed hand dangled by a single bloody tendon, as if the hand were slurping an udon noodle and enjoying it too much to let go.

  In the nearby thicket from where he had been silently watching this confrontation, a fox said to himself, “It appears that that reckless Tanuki has paired up with a human female, which is not very smart—but at least he’s chosen a spunky one.”

  At that moment, Tanuki rose from the paddy, dripping mud, water, ice crystals, and manure. He commenced a ferocious snarling. He beat his belly. He jangled his great balls. Lines of blue electricity zigzagged from his eyes. Kitsune, for the fun of it, chimed in from the thicket with a barrage of wild fox barking. The three thoroughly spooked ronin, already maimed and dazed, staggered or crawled to the side of the road, clearing the way for woman and beast to proceed toward their future home in the hills.

  As they walked out of sight together, she wiping the silt and excrement off Tanuki with an obi sash from her sack of spare clothing, he uncharacteristically praising Miho for her skill and courage, the still-hidden kitsune clucked and shook his foxy orange head. “Ah so desu’ ka?” he muttered. “What do you suppose is going to come of this?” Then, he returned his attention to the plump pheasant that the gods had provided for his winter’s eve meal.

  Fit though Miho was, by the day they arrived at the wilderness north of Lake Biwa, the location of Tanuki’s favorite den, she felt quite exhausted. It was a spacious cave—Miho found she could stand upright in it—but being dirty, sore, cold, and weak, she didn’t remain standing for long. With a sigh, she dropped down onto the soft, sweet-smelling bed of pine boughs, dead leaves, and dried moss. Tanuki blanketed her with the futon cover she had carried all the way from the temple. Then he crawled in beside her and loved her so aerobically she was soon perspiring like a sumo wrestler on a treadmill. Afterward, she slept for twelve hours.

  When we sleep on someone else’s pillow, we sometimes find ourselves having that person’s dreams. If a married couple switches sides of the bed, for example, he will have her dreams for a while and she will have his. Nothing of the sort occurs in a hotel bed, naturally, for the simple reason that no one person has slept there long enough to leave a psychic imprint. Is the connection to the bedding place or to the space below it? Perhaps we draw up transneurological info-bits from the underworld to form dreams the way that exposed metal draws down oxygen molecules from the air to form rust. Dreams, then, may be a form of psychic oxidation. Each morning, the greasy rag of wakefulness wipes us clean. Sooner or later, however, we rust completely through, at which point we lose tensility, conductivity, and clear definition; turn senile or go bonkers; fade away. If we applied the rag more rigorously, this might not happen. Which is why the message of Miho’s Zen monks—the message of mystic masters everywhere—was and is, “Wake up! Wake up!”

  At any rate, during her first long snooze in the Biwa cavern, Miho dreamed dreams unlike any she’d ever dreamed before. Unbeknownst to her, they we
re Animal Ancestor dreams. Dreams from an age when the stars were like resin drops and could sometimes be licked by deer. When certain storm clouds were the product of lobster farts. When the gnawing and crunching of bones rivaled the music of the spheres. When an individual snowflake really was unique: its picture could have been posted on a police station wall. Miho dreamed dreams that made her blush. And tremble. And occasionally howl. In her sleep.

  Nevertheless, she woke refreshed. “Is it true, do you think,” she asked, stretching, wiping away a last smear of dream, “that honeybees invented arithmetic, which pissed off the gods?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tanuki said, scowling. Precariously balancing a bark platter of dried berries and fresh trout sashimi, he served her breakfast in bed. Then he trotted off on a forty-eight-hour foray to steal a sack of rice for her (and perhaps a drop or two of sake for himself) from the nearest farm, leaving Miho to set up housekeeping in the cave. Their new life had begun.

  For Miho, the cave was as different from the Zen temple in Kyoto as the temple was unlike the farmhouse in which she’d been reared. She adapted to it with relative ease, however, experiencing a sense of coziness, comfort, and even familiarity there. That’s entirely understandable, for quite aside from obvious uterine associations, there remains a fair amount of actual cave memory in every human’s DNA. Cave heritage, as well.

  After the monkeys came down from the trees and learned to hurl sharp objects, they had had to move into caves for protection—not only from the big predatory cats but, as they began to lose their monkey fur, from the elements. Eventually, they started transposing their hunting fantasies onto cave walls in the form of pictures, first as an attempt at practical magic and later for the strange, unexpected pleasure they discovered in artistic creation.

  Time passed. Art came off the walls and turned into ritual. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present mindless, voracious trajectory, could land those of us lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.

  Whether or not that synopsis of human history was encoded in Miho’s genes is a matter of conjecture, a topic perhaps best left to minds such as those at Villa Incognito. One thing was certain, though: Miho adjusted to habitation in a cave much more smoothly than she adjusted to cohabitation with Tanuki.

  Oh, she couldn’t fault him, really. No creature of his ilk ever made a more sincere effort, but domesticity was just not in his marrow. And as difficult as this is to believe, Tanuki, when it came to fathoming the needs and dispositions of women, was even more clueless than the average human male. For example, he had her hauling water from the spring and gathering firewood (he didn’t require fire for warmth, but he loved her fried food) long after she should have given up heavy lifting. He couldn’t comprehend why, as her pregnancy advanced, that she or he or both of them couldn’t take advantage of her swelling belly and employ it as a drum. It took her months to convince him not to urinate in their sleeping and dining areas. And on those full-moon nights when tanukis from miles around would gather outside the cave to dance and jam, well, she was never completely sure, once she tired and went to bed, whether it was her Tanuki or some visiting tanuki (or a whole succession of them) who was fucking her. Physically, it didn’t matter, her orgasms cascaded with the same frequency and intensity, but emotionally. . . .

  Emotions of that complexion were responsible for her pestering Tanuki to arrange some kind of marriage ceremony. After all, he referred to her as his wife. He didn’t particularly object to a wedding, he simply didn’t know how to go about it. Finally, he consulted the fox. Kitsune thought the idea of a tanuki marrying a human grotesque and preposterous, but for that very reason it appealed to him. If nothing else, it would outrage both men and gods, and Kitsune, who had been known to promote human improvement and who served as the gods’ principal messenger on earth, was well-acquainted with the far-reaching benefits and private joys to be derived from fracturing taboos.

  As it turned out, the nuptial rite that the fox suggested was the very Shinto ceremony that Miho remembered from her girlhood. Called san san ku do—“three three nine times”—it involved the wedding party sitting in a circle while the Shinto priest poured warm sake. A sake cup was then passed thrice around the circle, with each participant taking three sips on each revolution. After the last person had taken his or her ninth sip—banzai!—the priest would declare the couple to be husband and wife. Kitsune volunteered to serve as priest.

  Under those conditions, needless to say, Tanuki made an enthusiastic bridegroom. It may be equally superfluous to report that neither groom nor priest was satisfied with nine sips of sake. The cup kept going around and around. Around and around. In the end, Miho was positive she was married at least twelve times over, and as for the badger and the fox, they had probably married each other so profusely that every divorce court in the land would have had to work night and day for a year to put them asunder.

  The baby rode in on a sweet summer wind. Miho squatted, animal style, on a bamboo mat and gave birth with scarcely a pang. Describing it later, she made it sound as if, following an hour or two of pressure in her lower abdomen, a big quivering gob of plum jelly had suddenly shot out of her to slide down her thighs. Slick, wet, and tickling. Like a tadpole winnowing out of a cocktail straw.

  The baby girl was perfect. Well, she was virtually perfect. Like her mother’s, her nose was slightly lopsided. Ah, but the nose possessed not the remotest suggestion of snoutness. Nor did her ears point toward Polaris. She was beautifully bald from head to tiny toe, her gums were as devoid of teeth as a vegetarian’s bear trap, and scrotum size was hardly an issue. In fact, the single physical trait she had inherited from her father was a goofy yet galvanizing grin, that tantalizing tanuki smile that seemed to advertise both fun and ferocity, merriment and menace.

  Tanuki was sorely disappointed. His nearly yearlong mission, his experiment, his atonement, his sacrifices had resulted in this? Just another ordinary two-legged brat! Weren’t there more than enough of them already?

  True, very true. Yet, this one wasn’t quite ordinary. She did have his smile. And, when the light was right, a hint of something ancient and forgotten in her eyes. He was captivated by the bubbles that were always percolating at her lips. By the way she’d pee anywhere, anytime she chose, just as he did. And by the fearless innocence with which her miniature hand would close around one of his claws. “We’ll name her Kazu,” he abruptly informed Miho after nearly a fortnight of skeptical observation. Since kazu was the word for the sticky, sweetish residue that collected at the bottom of sake casks, Miho happily considered the naming a sign of paternal approval.

  Indeed, as the months passed, Tanuki seemed increasingly fond of his daughter. That fondness was strongly reciprocated. Kazu took endless delight in Tanuki—and why not? She was the only little girl in the world with a stuffed animal for a father. They played with each other like a pair of sentient toys.

  It would be nice to report that this true story is now poised to come to an imminent and happy conclusion. Alas, that is not the case.

  Once the naked monkeys got out of hand, the gods became fed up with life on earth. Disgusted, they moved their abode to loftier dimensions, and while they continued to exert considerable influence here, that influence, over the millennia, has become gradually more and more subtle and indirect. At the time of our story, and in the particular land where this story transpired, they remained moderately active in the affairs of mortals, especially active when those affairs concerned an interface between men and the natural world. Which is why, as Kitsune had predicted, the gods were incensed by the marriage of Tanuki and Miho. Only Kitsune’s persistent pleadings (the sly, shifty fox was invaluable to the Cloud Fortress as a go-between) had prevented divine retribution.

  For approximately two years, Kitsune succeeded in concealing from the gods the news that the forbidden union between an Anima
l Ancestor and a mortal female had produced an offspring. One morning, however, as the fox lapped water from a stream, he was singled out by a shaft of sunlight so solid it whacked him like a club, and an unseen hand grabbed him by the tail, yanking him, yelping, hundreds of feet in the air. Instantly, he knew that somebody had tipped off the gods. Most likely, it was a cuckoo. While all birds are tattletales, the cuckoo is a special case. Its name in Japanese is hototogisu, which means, depending upon the calligraphy, “bird of the other world,” or “bird of time.” As in the haiku Basho composed upon returning to Kyoto after a long absence:

  Here I am in Kyo again

  yet I am lonely for Kyo—

  O bird of time!

  Which is a more exquisite, penetrating, and poignant way of saying, “You can’t go home again.” But we digress.

  The point is, the cuckoo, with its eerie song, crosses zones where other birds don’t fly. But that doesn’t matter, either. What’s important is that someone had let the secret out of the jug, and the consequences weren’t likely to be salubrious.

  The gods, who, like our governmental and military leaders, have never much minded sacrificing innocent lives for “the greater good,” whipped up a mighty typhoon off Honshu’s west coast. By the time it reached the inland mountains, however, it had lost enough of its edge that it was a minimal threat to beings hunkered in a cave. Pounding rains kept little Kazu indoors, but, along with a modicum of seepage, that was the extent of its effect on Chez Tanuki. Barely had the clouds blown over than the gods, unaccustomed to being thwarted, sent a mighty earthquake. It rattled the occupants of the cave like aspirin in a bottle, yet the mountain stood its ground, and although mudslides destroyed a village and several farms near its foot, no creature who burrowed inside it was harmed.