With loud roars, Raiden and his opponent charged simultaneously. Fat met fat with a tremendous smack. The impact sent both men staggering apart. The spectators jumped back and recovered their voices.
“Kill him! Kill him!” The shouts thundered in Sano’s ears.
Raiden rushed the merchant with a speed amazing for such a large man. Using tsuppari-slapping technique-he delivered a series of rapid, open-handed blows to the merchant’s chest, throat, and face. The merchant grunted, more out of confusion than from pain, Sano thought. He tried to slap back, but Raiden advanced, forcing him to the edge of the ring. Just when it seemed the match would end with Raiden’s victory, the wrestler stepped back. He grinned and beckoned his panting opponent to attack him. Sano understood that Raiden didn’t want an easy win. He was pulling his punches and giving the merchant another chance in order to bring in more spectators and more money.
Gamely the merchant threw himself at Raiden. The two grappled, Raiden standing his ground almost without effort as the merchant shoved and gasped. Raiden broke the merchant’s hold. He fell back two paces, whether or not on purpose, Sano couldn’t tell. Maybe he’d lost his balance; maybe he was still baiting the merchant.
“That’s the way!” shouted the merchant’s friends.
Buoyed by their support, the merchant launched a fresh charge. Sano winced, anticipating another crash. But Raiden sidestepped at the last minute. Seizing the sides of the merchant’s loincloth in both hands, he used the man’s own momentum to cast him out of the ring: the outer-arm throw, one of sumo’s classic forty-eight “hands.”
The merchant went hurtling into the crowd. His friends caught him as he fell. Raiden’s supporters cheered; the merchant’s cried out in disappointment. Then the cheers and cries turned to uneasy mutters.
Sano’s heart lurched when he saw why. The wrestler’s teasing grin had become a murderous grimace. His face purpled with a strange fury. Without warning, he lunged at his fallen opponent. He pummeled the helpless merchant with his fists, all the while bellowing like a mad bear.
“Stop!” the merchant screamed. Blood spurted from his nose. “You win! I surrender!”
The merchant’s friends tried to fend off Raiden’s assault, but the wrestler turned on them. Suddenly the crowd became a turbulent mass of flying fists, kicking legs, and thrashing bodies. Men yelled insults, uttered cries of pain.
“Stop!” Sano shouted. The crowd’s noise drowned his voice. He tried to draw his sword, but bodies pressed against him, making movement impossible. If only he’d stopped the match when he’d had the chance!
This was the real danger of street-corner sumo. Not that a wrestler would get hurt in the unrefereed matches-although many did-but that violence would break out among the audience. A crowd could quickly become a mindless killing tool, a sword flying free of any controlling hand. Now the spectators ran for safety. Sano saw the drummer go down and get trampled under the pounding feet.
Fortunately the two doshin chose that moment to remember their duty. “Break it up!” they shouted. “Everybody go home. Fun’s over!”
Poking and prodding with their jitte, they dispersed the crowd. One of them called his assistants to pick up the wounded men. Sano, standing in the shelter of a teahouse doorway to avoid being driven off with the rest of the crowd, watched the other doshin stroll over to Raiden, who stood in the center of the ring.
The wrestler’s mysterious rage seemed to have passed as quickly as it had come. Now his face wore a dazed frown. Blinking in apparent befuddlement at his departing audience, he called halfheartedly, “Any more challengers? Who among you is brave enough to face the mighty Raiden?”
No one was. The doshin extended his hand to Raiden, palm up. Raiden sighed, then bent to pick up the coins from the ring. He counted half the money into the doshin’s hand. The doshin smirked and walked away, jingling the coins. He didn’t notice Sano, but then he would hardly expect to see his superior in a place like this.
So Raiden paid the doshin to tolerate his matches and keep order at them. Sano shook his head, knowing he must reprimand his subordinates during the next report session. The outcome of the fight could have been much worse: Men had died during such matches and the riots they provoked. Cautiously he walked over to Raiden, who now stood alone in the ring, scratching his crotch with one hand as he examined the coins he held in the other. The wrestler looked harmless enough now, but would his rage resurface?
“Not even enough to eat on,” Raiden complained. “Why did those doshin have to go and break up my match?”
Had he forgotten that he’d attacked a helpless man and started a riot? Confused and wary, Sano nevertheless decided to take advantage of the situation.
“Let me buy you a meal,” he said. Raiden might be more amenable to answering questions-and less likely to erupt again- if plied with food and drink.
Raiden’s pout dissolved into a sunny smile. “All right,” he agreed with an alacrity that told Sano he was used to accepting handouts from strangers. Probably he lived on them. That he performed on the street meant he had no daimyo sponsor or other source of steady income.
Sano waited while Raiden donned his kimono, along with the shoes, cloak, and swords that had been lying in a heap outside the ring. Then the two of them walked down the street to the noodle restaurant.
The place was little more than a roadside food stall. Its sliding doors stood wide open; only a short blue curtain hanging from the eaves protected it from the outdoors. Inside, along the left wall, a strip of earth floor led through the small dining room to the kitchen, where two women toiled amid steam and smoke over a charcoal stove. Their huge cauldrons sent forth the enticing odor of broth made with garlic, soy sauce, miso, and scallions. An old man dressed in a blue cotton kimono and headband stood behind the counter that partially divided the dining room from the kitchen. A few lucky diners knelt on the raised plank floor in front of the counter with their bowls and chopsticks, but the rest sat on the floor’s edge, with their feet either in the kitchen corridor or the street. Sano and Raiden went inside and approached the counter.
“Two house specials.” Raiden, who, from the bows and nods he got from the proprietor and customers, seemed to be a regular, gave their order. “And plenty of sake.”
The special turned out to be kitsune udon, “fox noodles,” named for the mischievous fox spirit whom everyone blamed for their troubles. The thick white noodles bathed in rich brown broth and topped with a crusty golden square of fried tofu were the spirit’s favorite food. Sano noticed that Raiden’s bowl was twice as large as his own, and the bottle of sake enormous. He handed over his money, thinking that detective work was getting expensive. The Nius’ funeral gift, the trips to Yoshiwara, the theater ticket, and now feeding a wrestler added up to as much as he’d formerly made in a week of tutoring.
With some difficulty, Sano and Raiden cleared a space for themselves on the edge of the floor. Sano found himself jammed between the counter and Raiden’s massive bulk. But at least the heat from the kitchen and from the sweaty wrestler kept him warm.
Raiden shoveled noodles and tofu from bowl to mouth with his chopsticks, pausing between bites to deliver bits of monologue.
“It’s a shame that a great wrestler like me has to fight for zeni in the street, don’t you think?” Slurp, gulp. “Living hand to mouth like a common beggar! Well, let me tell you, stranger, it wasn’t always this way for Raiden.”
Sano couldn’t help staring at Raiden’s hands. They seemed oddly jointless, like the hands of people in wood-block prints. The fingertips, which ended in tiny, spatulate nails, bent almost all the way back with each movement. Sano wondered how such weak-looking hands could have the strength necessary for sumo. Or for killing two people and carrying their bodies to the river?