Thus Was Inari Murdered

    I had decided to spend June in Ann Arbor -- my workon the translation of Miss Piggy required me to study various works inVulgar Latin in the Graduate Library. And Seattle in June has little inparticular to recommend it, unlike other months.

    I had at first been uncertain where I should stay.For the occasional night or two, I am certain of a welcome at Kiyoshi-dono'sapartment in University Towers. I feared, however, that my presence fora whole month might put an excessive strain on his roommate's hospitality.Fortune came to my aid: a former colleague of mine, now the owner of ahouse and two cats in Burns Park, had arranged to spend the month in Japanand had realized, at a late date, the difficulty of taking the cats withher to that country -- she wrote in piteous terms, begging me to come andcare for them. Happy to be of assistance to a fellow scholar, I instantlyconsented.

    On my first day back in Ann Arbor I made an earlystart. Reaching the Grad not much after ten, I soon secured the books neededfor my research and settled in my place. I became, as is the way of thescholar, so deeply absorbed as to lose all consciousness of my surroundingsor of the passage of time. When at last I came to myself, it was almosteleven and I was quite exhausted: I knew I could not prudently continuewithout refreshment. (I would have been willing to defy the Grad's no-foodpolicy in the privacy of my own cubicle, but I had unaccountably forgotto bring any small provisions with me.)
 
    If at eleven on a weekday morning one leaves theHarlan Hatcher Graduate library by its front entrance, follows the Diagin a northwesterly direction to State Street, crosses that, turns right,and continues past Nickels Arcade to the nearest coffee house and delicatessen,one will generally find gathered there (professional obligations and theirClerk permitting) the junior members of the respected law firm of Eluza,Ashura, Yomi, and Sakurazukamori. (There have been no Yomis or relationsthereof for a century, but Dr. Fortin [the senior partner] would reactwith horror to any suggestion of a change in name.) They are a decorativelittle group -- it would be a difficult taste that was pleased by noneof them. Between Hotohori and Karasu there are certain points of resemblance:they appear to be about the same age; are of similar height and hair length;both thin; both very pale. But it is for those whose pleasure lies in theconquest of virtue that Hotohori's delicate profile and demure autumnalcoloring have a most particular charm. Karasu, on the other hand, has violeteyes to die for and hair of a witchlike blackness, more pleasing to thosewhose preference is for a sense of danger akin to riding a hurricane. Akuma-chan-- I can think of no especially striking feature by which you might distinguishAkuma-chan from any other pretty demoness in her (apparent) middle twenties,average in height and roundness of figure, with hair an inconstant shadeof auburn and large feathery wings; I mean, until she speaks: for her voiceis unmistakable, smooth and persuasive, the envy of rival advocates. Butuntil then -- well, if you can imagine an Abyssinian cat which has justcompleted a successful cross-examination, that will give you some ideaof her. Kiyoshi-dono, my protege, being by some two or three years youngerin call to the Bar, is detained more often than not by the gofer dutiesof his internship and was absent on the morning of which I write -- thereis little point, therefore, in my describing him.
 
    They will be debating one of those diverse questionswhich interest the minds of the Michigan Bar Association -- when to filean injunction as opposed to proceeding with the case, how believable thePresident's denial of involvement in the latest scandal may be, or whoseturn it is to pay for the drinks.
 
    'Perfectly scandalous,' Hotohori was saying as Ientered the dim, crowded, and noisy coffee-deli. The object of his disapprovalmight have been almost anything -- Hotohori has such high principles. Itturned out on this occasion to be the high price of coffee and other hotdrinks. But he is a young man of graceful manners -- on seeing me he ordereda half-pot of Goddess tea, almost without hesitation.
 
    I had feared, in the middle of the summer break,to find the offices on the third floor of the Michigan Building deserted.I expressed my surprise and pleasure at finding them.
 
    'My dear Ysabeth,' Akuma-chan said from her perchon the back of the small rickety chair, 'you surely know by now that inthe period ironically called the summer "break," Tamahome allows us tobe away from the office no longer than a fortnight. Karasu and I have alreadytaken our fortnights -- Hotohori is saving his for the end of the month.'
 
    Tamahome is the clerk at Eluza, Ashura, Yomi, andSakurazukamori. From references which will from time to time be made tohim some of my readers, unfamiliar with the system, may infer that Akuma-chanand the rest are employed by Tamahome under a contract more or less equivalentto one of personal servitude. I should explain that this is not the case:they employ Tamahome. It is Tamahome's function, in exchange for ten percent of their earnings, to deal on their behalf with the outside world:to administer, manage, and negotiate; to extol their merits, gloss overtheir failings, justify their fees and earn their delays; to flatter thoseclients whose patronage is most lucrative; to write reproachfully to thosewhose delay payment for more than two years or so; to promise with equalconviction in the same morning that  six separate sets of papers willbe the first to receive attention.
 
    I asked if Kiyoshi-dono's absence, at least, wasattributable to pleasure. Akuma-chan and Hotohori shook their heads.
 
    'Got snatched,' said Karasu, hooking an extra chairover to the table with his foot.
 
    'Snatched?' I repeated as I gingerly settled intothe chair, a little perplexed by the expression. Karasu went to Ohio State-- it is not always easy to understand what he says. 'Snatched? By whom,Karasu? Or, to adopt the Ohio State idiom, who by?'
 
    'Tamahome, of course, ' said Karasu dryly. 'He spottedKiyo-chan trying to make a break for it and sent out the guards to headhim off. Had him hauled back to the salt mines.'
 
    'Karasu means,' said Akuma-chan, ' that as we wereleaving for coffee Tamahome sent a message by the temporary typist thatKiyoshi's presence was required in the office. It appears that a groupof University students need the advice of an attorney in some urgency,and Ashura-ohsama wants an intern to attend to the paperwork.'
 
    'That's right,' said Karasu. 'So while we sit arounddowning coffee, poor Kiyo-chan is listening to the demented ravings ofsome East Quad residents.'
 
    As an alumna of East Quadrangle myself, I felt somedisturbance at Karasu's ready stereotyping, but forbore to argue. It isbeneath the dignity of a Scholar, in any case, to enter into an altercationwith a counselor whose advocacy resides solely on his ready access to largeamounts of high-quality explosives.
 
    'So you see, Ysabeth,' said Akuma-chan, 'that noone's on holiday. Except Giullia, of course. She should be in Venice bynow.'
 
    'Juri-chan?' I said, much astonished. 'You haven'tlet Juri-chan go off by herself to Venice, surely?'
 
    'Am I,' asked Akuma-chan, 'Giullia's keeper?'
 
    'Yes,' I said, rather severely, for her attitudeseemed to me to be irresponsible. She likes, I know, to pretend that Giulliais a normal grown-up woman, who can be safely sent round the corner tobuy a loaf of bread; but this, of course, is absurd.*
 
*This and the following are wild exaggerations for thepurpose of hilarity. Juri-chan is far more fit to cope with life than thispassage would suggest.
 
Poor Giullia's inability to understand what is happening, or why, inthe world about her, her incompetence to learn even the simplest of thepractical skills required for survival -- these must have made it evident,even in childhood, that she would never be able to cope unaided with thefull responsibilities of adult like. She must have been, no doubt, a docile,good-natured child, with a certain facility for Latin verbs, intelligencetests, and kendo -- it is a constant amazement to me how she seems to acquireclumsiness in a vast wave every time she puts the sword down -- but whatuse is that to anyone these days? Seeking some suitable refuge where herinadequacies would pass unnoticed, her relatives, very sensibly, sent herto Ann Arbor (in the State of Michigan, in America). She is now a memberof the small set of tax attorneys who have offices across from Eluza etal. There she sits all day, advising quite happily on the constructionof the US Tax Laws, and doing no harm to anyone. But to let her go to Venice-- I imagined her, wandering alone through those devious alleyways, looking-- as, indeed, she does at the best of time -- like one of the more disheveledheroines of Greek tragedy; and I could not forbear to chide.
 
    'Furthermore,' I added, 'it is no use your implying,Akuma-chan, that your part in the enterprise was merely a negative one.If you tell me that Juri-chan could have managed to buy tickets, find herpassport, pack her suitcase and catch an airplane, all without the aidof some competent adult, I shall be obliged to disbelieve you.'
 
    Akuma-chan admitted to having provided such assistance.She had accompanied Giullia to the travel agents and had represented, onher behalf, the necessity of a vacation in Venice being arranged at fivedays' notice. (I did not ask why Giullia had made no earlier arrangements-- to plan five days in advance is, for her, a remarkable achievement.)The travel agent had found a vacant place on something called an Art Lover'sHoliday. Asked in what manner this differed from other holidays, the agenthad explained that it included guided tours of various places of historicaland artistic interest: additional tours were available on an optional basis.
 
    'This made,' Akuma-chan said, 'a great impressionon Giullia. If some of the tours are optional, the rest, she reasons, mustbe compulsory. For most of the time, therefore, she will not be on herown, but traveling about the Veneto in a group of respectable Art Loversunder the supervision of a qualified guide. So you see, Ysabeth, that allthis alarm and despondency is quite unjustified.'
 
    'You naturally prefer,' I said, 'to look on thebright side. So far as I am aware, though, the qualifications for a guideare not those of a nursemaid or a guardian of the differently challenged.The poor fellow will take his eye off her for a moment and she will wanderoff. What then?'
 
    'She'll ask the way back to her hotel.'
 
    'She will have forgotten the name of her hotel.'
 
    'We made her write it down on a piece of paper.'
 
    'She will have lost the piece of paper. She willfind herself alone in a strange city. She will not know where she is orwhat she ought to do.'
 
    'The same thing,' said Akuma-chan, 'happens in AnnArbor at least once a fortnight.'
 
    There was some truth in this. In her adopted cityGiullia is still unable to find her way with confidence from Angell Hallto Kerrytown. Even so --
 
    'Giullia,' said Hotohori firmly, 'will not get lostin Venice. I have lent her my guide books, both to Venice itself and tothose cities of the Veneto which she is likely to visit.  I wasn'talways able to get the English version, so one or two of them are in Italian.Still, I doubt that it matters -- the main thing is that they all havemaps in them. Perfectly clear, sensible maps. Giullia will be able to seeat a glance where she is, where she should be, and how to get to one fromthe other.'
 
    This was a kindness beyond mere courtesy. On visitingVenice the previous autumn, Hotohori had formed a passionate attachmentto the city and all connected with it -- the guide books were as dear tohim as the last mementos of a love affair. To hand them over to Giullia,particularly when one remembers her tendency to spill things --
 
    'I have told her,' said Hotohori, 'that she is totake great care of them and not to read them while drinking gin. Or coffee.Or while eating pizza with her fingers. And I have put brown paper coverson them to protect them on the outside. So it really should be all right.'
 
    'Of course it will,' Akuma-chan said. 'And it doesn'tmatter about some of them being in Italian. Giullia speaks very good Italian.'*
 
*She actually does, but for purposes of this story, shedoesn't. Wakaru deshou?
 

    This opinion of Akuma-chan's is erroneous but incorrigible.Akuma-chan herself declines to learn any foreign language. If people wishto deal with demons, they can learn a language comprehensible to HER. Giullia,on the other hand, makes her way along the shores of the Mediterraneanin the happy belief that everyone still speaks some version of  Latin,with the endings of the nouns slurred, a slightly lilting accent, and assortedwords borrowed from Portuguese: she achieves in this way a sufficient fluencyto be regarded by Akuma-chan, when they travel together, as the one whospeaks the language.
 
    I raised another question that was perplexing me.'It all sounds,' I said, 'very expensive. How can Juri-chan afford it?I thought that the IRS had reduced her to penury.'
 
    Giullia's unhappy relationship with the IRS wasdue to her omission, during four years of modestly successful law practice,to pay any income tax. The truth is, I think, that she did not, in herheart of hearts, really believe in income tax. It was a subject which shehad studied for examinations and on which she had thereafter advised anumber of clients: she naturally did not suppose, in these circumstances,that it had anything to do with real life.
 
    The day had come on which the IRS discovered herexistence and reminded her of theirs. They had not initially asked herfor money: they had first insisted, unreasonably but implacably, that sheshould submit accounts. They had shown by this that they were not motivatedby a just and lawful desire to fill the public purse for the public benefit:their true purpose was to make Giullia spend every evening for severalmonths copying out the last four years' entries in her Clerk's Fee Bookon an old typewriter that did not work properly. (They have not yet beenable to afford a computer there.) I myself am not sure that the age anddefectiveness of the typewriter were an essential feature of the Revenue'splanning. But Giullia was: every time it stuck, her bitterness towardsthem deepened. The IRS, on receiving the result of her labors, had utteredno word of gratitude or commendation. They had demanded a large sum ofmoney. More than she had. More, according to her -- though I think thatshe cannot be quite right about this -- than she had ever had. More thanshe could hope to have.
 
    In this extremity, she had appealed to her Clerk.Giullia's Clerk is called Tetsuya, an older man than Tamahome, and perhapsmore indulgent. It took a mere two hours of sycophantic pleading, freelylaced with promises of perpetual industry, to secure his assistance. Hesent out fee notes, as a matter of urgency, requesting immediate paymentfrom those clients who were indebted to Giullia for her services.
 
    His efforts raised a sufficient sum to pay the IRS,but left Giullia with nothing to live on. Or at any rate with only so muchas might support the bare necessities of life. I did not see how she couldafford to go to Venice.
 
    'The unhappy events to which you refer,' said Akuma-chan,'occurred some months ago. That is to say, in the financial year which endedon the fifteenth of April. On or about that date, the IRS wrote to Giullia,reminding her that they were now entitled to another year's accounts.'
 
    'And Giullia was pretty ticked off,' said Karasu.'Because the way she saw it, she'd done her bit as far as accounts wereconcerned.'
 
    'But she consoled herself,' Akuma-chan said, 'withthe thought that it was only one year's accounts and couldn't be as badas last time. So she returned to her typewriter and in less than nine weeksprepared her accounts for this year.'
 
    'But since,' Hotohori put in, ' her income for theprevious year included the rather substantial sum raised by Tetsuya topay her previous liabilities to the IRS -- '
 
    'She now owes them even more than she did last year.And she's really rather despondent about it. Because it seems to her thatevery effort she makes to reduce her liability will in fact simply serveto increase it. And it is difficult to point to any fallacy in her reasoning.'Akuma-chan gazed sadly into her coffee cup.
 
    'It is still not clear to me,' I said, 'why shenow feels able to afford a vacation.'
 
    'It is true,' said Akuma-chan, ' that if she takesa vacation, she will not be able to pay the IRS. But if she does not takea vacation, she will still not be able to pay the IRS. On the sheep andlamb principle, she has decided to go to Venice. I think it's very sensible.She will return to London spiritually refreshed and able to cope with life.'
 
    'Spiritually?' said Hotohori. 'Akuma-chan, we allknow exactly what Giullia is hoping to find in Venice, and there is, Iregret to say, nothing spiritual about it.' Hotohori's rather beautifulmouth closed in a severe straight line, as if denying utterance to moreexplicit improprieties.
 
    'Chasing tail,' said Karasu. It is an Ohio Stateexpression, signifying, as I understand it, the pursuit of erotic satisfaction.
 
    'Giullia has been working very hard all winter andspring,' said Akuma-chan, 'and has had few opportunities for pleasure.No one, I hope, would grudge her a little innocent diversion. My only fearis that she may be over-precipitate. I have reminded her that young menlike to think one is interested in them as people: if one discloses tooearly the true nature of one's interest, they are apt to be offended andget all hoity-toity. But we must hope someone takes her fancy in the firstday or two, or she may feel she hasn’t got time for the subtle approach.'
 
    'How long does she have?' I asked.
 
    'Ten days. But effectively only eight, because twoare spent traveling. She gets back to Ann Arbor on Saturday week.'
 
    After a moment's reflection, Akuma-chan thoughtit prudent to qualify her last statement with the words 'Deo volente.'The phrase was intended, no doubt, to allow for some lesser catastrophethan Giullia's arrest on a charge of murder.