Several times they came across cows – wearing colourful aprons with pictures of dragons on them and straw shoes over their hoofs. The villagers used these imposingly attired cud-chewers as pack and draught animals. The titular counsellor asked Kamata about this, and he confirmed his suspicion that the stupid peasants did not eat meat or drink milk, because they were still completely savage here, but never mind, democracy would come to them soon.
They stopped for the night in a rather large village at the very end of the valley, just before the mountains began. The village elder accommodated the ‘construction brigade’ in the communal house – ‘workers’ in the yard, ‘masters’ and ‘engineers’ inside. A straw-mat floor, no furniture, paper walls with holes in them. So this was the ‘hoteru’ Kamatu had mentioned that morning. The only other guest was an itinerant monk with a staff and a shoulder bag for alms, but he remained apart from their group and kept turning away – he didn’t want to defile his gaze with the sight of the ‘hairy barbarian’.
Fandorin got the idea of taking a stroll round the village, but the villagers behaved no better than the bonze – the children shouted and ran away, the women squealed, the dogs barked hysterically – and so he had to go back. The embarrassed elder came, bowed many times in apology and asked the gaijin-san not to go anywhere.
‘Furu pazanto nevah see uait man,’ Kamata translated. ‘Yu sakasu manki, sinku.’
He dangled his long arms and swayed as he hobbled round the room, laughing at the top of his voice. It took Erast Petrovich some time to understand what was wrong. It turned out that they had never seen any white people in the village before, but one of the locals had been in the city many years ago and seen an ugly trained monkey that was also dressed in a curious manner. Fandorin’s eyes were so big and blue that the ignoramuses had taken fright.
Kamata took pleasure in telling Fandorin at length what fools the peasants were. The Japanese had a saying: ‘A family never remains rich or poor for longer than three generations’, and it was true that in the city life was arranged so that in three generations rich men declined into poverty and poor men fought their way up – such was the law of God’s justice. But the boneheads living in the villages had not been able to break out of their poverty for a thousand years. When parents got decrepit and were unable to work, their own children took the old folk into the mountains and left them there to die – in order not to waste food on them. The peasants didn’t wish to learn anything new, they didn’t want to serve in the army. He couldn’t understand how it was possible to build a great Japan with this rabble, but if Tsurumaki-dono took the contract, they’d build it, they’d have to.
Eventually, weary of deciphering his companion’s chatter, the titular counsellor went off to sleep. He cleaned his teeth with ‘Brilliant’ powder and washed himself in his travelling bath, which was most convenient, except that the water smelled strongly of rubber. Meanwhile Masa set out his camp bed, hung the green net over it and inflated the pillow, working furiously with his cheeks.
‘Tomorrow,’ Fandorin said to himself and fell asleep.
The last five ri were a match for the previous day’s eleven. The road immediately started rising steeply and looping between the hills, which reached up higher and higher towards the sky. Fandorin had to dismount from his tricycle and push it by the handlebars, and the young man regretted not having left it in the village.
Well after midday Kamata pointed to a mountain with a snowy peak.
‘Oyama. Now right-right.’
Four thousand feet, thought Fandorin, throwing his head back and gauging it by eye. Not Kazbek, of course, and not Mont Blanc, but a serious elevation, no doubt about it.
The place we are going to is a little off to one side, explained the commander, who was thoughtful and taciturn today. We stretch the line out into single file and keep quiet.
They walked on for about another two hours. Before they entered a narrow but short ravine, Kamata dismounted and divided the brigade into two parts. He ordered the larger group to cover their heads with leaves and crawl through the bottleneck on their stomachs. About ten men remained behind with the pack animals and baggage.
‘Tower. Look,’ he explained curtly to Erast Petrovich, jabbing one finger upwards.
Obviously the enemy had an observation point somewhere close by.
The titular counsellor travelled the two hundred sazhens of the ravine in the same manner as the others. His outfit did not suffer at all, though: specially designed for outings in the mountains, it was equipped with magnificent knee-pads and elbow-pads of black leather. Masa panted along behind him, having refused point blank to stay behind with the mule and the tricycle.
Having passed this dangerous place they moved on, standing erect now, but sticking to the undergrowth and avoiding open areas. Kamata clearly knew the road – either he had been given precise instructions, or he had been here before.
They scrambled up the wooded slope and along a stony stream for at least an hour.
At the top the commander waved his hand and the Black Jackets slumped to the ground, worn out. Kamata gestured for Fandor in to come over to him.
The two of them moved away about a hundred paces to a naked boulder overgrown with moss, from which there was a panoramic view of the mountain peaks around them and the valley stretching out below.
‘The village of the shinobi is there,’ said Kamata, pointing to the next mountain.
It was about the same height, and also overgrown with forest, but it had one intriguing and distinctive feature. A section of the summit had split away from the massif (probably as a result of an earthquake) and twisted down, separated from the rest of the mountain by a deep crack. On the side facing them, the separated block ended in a precipice, where the slope had crumbled away, unable to retain the layer of earth on its inclined surface. It was a quite fantastic site: a crooked slice of mountain suspended over an abyss.
Erast Petrovich pressed his binoculars to his eyes. He could not make out any signs of human habitation at first, only the pine trees crowding close together and flocks of birds flying in zigzags. The only structure was clinging to the very edge of the precipice. Adjusting the focus with the little wheel, Fandorin saw a wooden house that was certainly of considerable size. It had something like a little bridge or jetty protruding from the wall that ran down into nowhere. But who could moor at that berth, at a height of two hundred sazhens?
‘Momochi Tamba,’ said Kamata in his distinctive English. ‘His house. The other houses can’t be seen from below.’
The titular counsellor felt his heart leap. O-Yumi was near! But how could he reach her?
He ran the binoculars over the entire mountain again, slowly.
‘I don’t understand how they g-get up there…’
‘That’s the wrong question,’ said the commander of the Black Jackets, looking at Erast Petrovich, not the mountain. His gaze was at once searching and mistrustful. ‘The right question is how do we get up there? I don’t know. Tsurumaki-dono said the gaijin will think of something. Think. I’ll wait.’