There has been a fire. A building has been burnt down. Over a hundred people are dead. In fact, by the time all the corpses have been counted, which takes some time because the ruins are unsafe, the number of fatalities rises to a hundred and thirteen.
        From this, I naturally expect consequences to follow. I will be arrested. Or Molo will be arrested. Or Tanto. Or all of us, all us genetic Udamanas and anyone who has married into our ranks.
        But what happens is nothing. Life continues as usual. Which, rather than being reassuring, results in a buildup of intolerable tension. I keep expecting disaster to descend burning from the sky. But the routine of our days continues.
        Until, finally, the anomalous event occurs.
        It happens on Wednesday May 10th and involves (and this is an unpredicted surprise) my mother. My mother, Namie Udamana. Who was murdered when I was seven years old. Who was murdered, to be exact, on my seventh birthday.
        To think of my mother is to think of death, but Aunt Chariot's murder (the fact that she died as a consequence of arson forces the choice of that word) does not make me think of my mother's passing. My mother's death is a thing apart, something which does not connect with the rest of my life, despite the provocation of the present circumstances.
        I still believe that my mother was innocent of evil, and yet she ended up being accused of many deaths, twenty seven of them in fact, and the accusations which were levied against her led to her own death.
        In the summer, on the anniversary of her death, which falls on Towadafudaishi, the Day of Recollected Fishes, I burn incense in her memory. Otherwise, I do not think of her. Certainly not in the months of April and May, the spring months when the weather is cool or cold, and when hot weather foods are far from our thoughts.
        My mother's death, then, is recollected in the oppressively humid heat of summer and has become irrevocably associated with the smell of the smoked eels which we Udamanas, by family tradition, have always eaten at the clan banquet which we hold on Towadafudaishi. Apart from that, the recollection of her life and death is isolated, quarantined, a thing separate and set apart.
        Then the anomalous event occurs. On the morning of Wednesday May 10th, I happen to be standing at the window of my upstairs office when the mail carrier comes in view. And, for some inexplicable reason, the sight of him provokes my mother's name to life: Namie.
        Why? Why should the sight of the mail carrier awaken my mother's name? It's never happened before. And nothing in my mind associates the word "mother" with "junk mail" or "invoices" or "pizza parlor flyers". Usually, in any case, I wouldn't see the mail carrier unless I chanced to look out of the window as he was stopped at the gate. Usually he'd be motoring along the left side of the road, hidden from view by the clipper bush hedge, but just now he's skidded way over to the right, and seems to be on the point of coming off his machine.
        But he doesn't come off, and I watch him recover. He stops his machine and sits on it, maybe wondering if he should abandon his mail route for the day. Go home. Sign up for a different career. Start over again as a shoe shine boy indoors at the railway station, for example. If he did, I wouldn't blame him. It is a cold wet day in spring, and the view from my office upstairs in the Moss Mansion is one of mist and clinging cloud. Rain is falling on the front garden and there are rivulets of water running across the surface of Jalsinkoola Lane.
        Across the road, the gutters of Perturbations Lodge are flooding. Someone will have to get up on the roof and clean them out. Maybe me. I don't like heights, but the money from running Perturbations Lodge comes directly to me and my wife rather than going to Udamana Holdings, so it would look bad if I asked one of the company workers to do the job.
        Since all the monies of the family's holding company are under my control, and since the family's confidence in me is less than perfect, I have to be so careful to avoid the appearance of financial impropriety.
        It's painful to be under suspicion. Particularly when there's no prospect of being liberated from the burden of mistrust any time soon.
        I don't know when it was that certain members of our clan began to get the sneaky feeling that I was skimming and scamming, but that entirely unjustified belief seems to have taken hold, and I don't want to do anything to encourage such distrust, not even something as innocent as having young Natcho spend ten minutes up on the roof checking the gutters for dead leaves and errant tennis balls.
        Beyond Perturbations Lodge, the immensely tall windbreaking bamboo hedge is blurred by rain, and, beyond it, the structure of the Older House is a blurred fog. Yes, the roof needs to be checked out. And maybe someone should check the roof of the Older House, as well. Or at least go inside and have a look at the abandoned interior. We shouldn't sit back and let the house fall apart for want of basic repairs.
        Anyway, I'm standing there at the window, where I've been doing my morning flexibility exercises, the ones that Grandfather Hondo made a part of my daily routine all those years ago, and I watch the mail carrier get started again. He wobbles dangerously, having difficulty controlling his motorbike at low speed because there is such an unpardonable amount of water spilling across the road. And, again, as I watch him, the name "Namie" pops into my mind.
        My mother's name.
        With it there comes an inexplicable image of black eyebrows. Confusingly, these black eyebrows are disconcertingly blonde, which makes no sense at all. How can a woman's eyebrows be both black and blonde at one and the same time? My mother was never blonde, and would never have wished to be. Her coloration was true to the traditions of Nizon: lustrous black hair matching the dark of her eyes. And pale skin, the skin made paler by the darkness of her hair.
        My mother, pale, coiffed, immaculately polished. My father, swarthy, always a little unshaven, his teeth showing a little yellow when he laughed, which he did often. My father was the man who laughed, generously open to life. My mother the woman who smiled, the immaculate mistress of fashion, the keeper of the perfectly clean house. Not cold, I would not call her cold, but there was a definite orderliness to her, some of which has communicated itself to me.
        Namie and Ipamana. My mother and my father. Both dead, many years dead. And why should that man make me think of my mother? That man on his bright orange post office motorbike wearing his bright orange post office helmet.
        As I watch, the mail carrier veers left, pulls in by the gate and pushes a wad of mail into the letterbox. He drives off, and something white falls from the box, splodging down on the hardtop. To my surprise, the mail carrier does not pick it up. Ignoring the piece of mail he has dropped, he rides on.
        I'm irritated by the mail carrier's apparent delinquency but do my best to control the emotion, because irritation is the doorway to anger. Ever since childhood, anger has always scared me.
        Initially, my fear was of my father's anger: as a child, I was scared of what my father might do in the course of his infrequent but terrible rages. Later, as an adult, I began to worry about what I myself might do if my anger got out of hand. Being a parent has fine-tuned these fears. My children, Tanto and Helena, the terrible twins, have, at the age of fourteen, on more than one occasion made me convinced that my anger, if it got out of hand, could easily become homicidal.
        Suppressing irritation, I go downstairs, grab an umbrella and make a sortie out to the letterbox. Back inside, I dump the mail on the big dinner table and sort it out. Two flyers for home-delivered pizza, the monthly copy of the free giveaway newspaper called "Leaves and Voices", a letter in an envelope addressed to Iola and myself in pink ink in what is definitely Grandmother Sarka's handwriting (and why should she be writing to us all of a sudden?), and, lastly, the white thing which fell to the hardtop, which is an envelope (decidedly soggy by now) addressed in what looks like the crisp print of a laser printer. Addressed to:
        Ken Udamana
        Chief Bastard
        The Moss Mansion
        Jalsinkoola Lane
        Hessawatari Ward
        Yendo Central KPZL-99421
        Who in my life has ever referred to me as the "Chief Bastard?" Nobody that I can think of.
        "My reputation is evolving," I mutter, speaking to nobody in the privacy of the empty living room.
        Presumably whatever message is waiting inside this abusively addressed envelope is an anonymous poison pen letter. Rip it up unread? Maybe a good idea. But curiosity is already getting the better of me. The rain has already begun to undo the glue and the envelope's flap has started to peel open, inviting me to continue.
        I open the envelope and extract the contents, a single sheet of white paper which is of good quality and so holds together even though it is soaking wet. It sticks slightly on the enfolding wetness of the interior. I give it a sharp little tug and rip it free.
        I put the letter flat down on the dinner table and read the message.
        "Ken, don't mess with us. We've paid the four hundred million. So what are you playing at? Your role is very simple. Pack your bags and be gone by the deadline. Dancing with the Merlercians, that's not an option. Are you getting the picture? Or do we need to cartoon this? Do yourself a favor. Go and visit your mother."
        This missive is, presumably, from the same source which earlier originated the "Don't try to rejig the deal" message which arrived ballasted by a Wangabu Authigobibar.
        Whoever is writing is trying to be threatening. The "cartoon this" statement is a gangsterish idiom suggestive of splashed blood and broken bones. However, on balance, I feel more puzzled than threatened. Like the first message, this new one doesn't make any sense. It suggests that our land has been sold and that we have a deadline to leave, which is impossible since any selling would have to be done by me. And what am I supposed to make of "Go and visit your mother"? It doesn't make sense. My mother has been dead for years, and, if she hadn't been, she would have been living right here in the Moss Mansion.
        Maybe I'm looking at the wrong side of the sheet of paper. I turn it over, but the reverse side is blank. That's the message. Anomalous, unexplained, and presumably intended to be hostile. Is the hostility directed at me or is the target my mother?
        "Weird question, Ken," I say to myself.
        Why would anyone feel hostile about my mother after all these years? The communal fear and paranoia which resulted in my mother being stoned to death dissipated itself in the outrage itself, leaving the participants cathartically purged. Why should anyone's anger be targeting my mother now?
        "You, Ken," says an advisory voice, speaking to me from the deeper woodwork of my mind. "You, little Slow Step."
        My father's voice. In my adolescent years, which were not without problems, I used to hear him often, Ipamana Udamana, speaking to me out of my lost childhood. But those hallucinatory tones have been silent to me for years. I am an adult now, reluctantly fully grown. Fully grown? Yes, and middle aged, a married man with two children, the General Manager of Udamana Holdings. The scrupulous roadway of my life has no wilderness margins, no anarchic densities fit for hallucinations, premonitions, daytime delusions or any other such nonsense.
        "No time for a conversation," I say, replying to the advisory voice.
        And the hallucination, taking the hint, holds its silence.
        Once again, I'm tempted to rip up the offensive piece of incoming mail. But I don't. I take it upstairs to the office. My typewriter is out on the desk, having been used to address some envelopes, a trick which I haven't yet taught my own laser printer to do. For want of anywhere else convenient, I drape the sodden envelope and the damp letter over the typewriter to dry. I'll keep them around to encourage me to think this situation through.
        "Nobody can sell our land but me," I say.
        Therefore the land has not been sold. There has been no exchange of four hundred million zen. There is no reason for me to abort my negotiations with the Merlercians.
        At least, not in a sane and rational world.
        But Whiskey Breath, the unshaven guy in dirty denims who showed up in the stolen utility van -- was he necessarily sane? And, if he's the guy who's behind these messages, is he working on his own? Or does he have an evil twin?
        "Evil twin," I say, in disgust.
        Tanto's comic books, which I occasionally glance at, have evidently been contaminating my mind.
        Even so, the question is legitimate: is Whiskey Breath a lone nutter, acting on his own account for his own bizarre personal reasons? Or is he the instrument of someone saner, more powerful and more coherently organized?
        Someone who starts with a couple of anonymous letters is not necessarily going to stop there. This thing could escalate. If it escalates, will that interfere with my upcoming negotiations with the Merlercians? I hope not. The task is front of me is big enough without unwelcome distractions: negotiate a good sales price for the lands owned by Udamana Holdings. I will only get one shot at this. The real estate is the one substantial asset that our clan owns, and we need to cash up, now, to escape from the increasingly unremunerative bamboo horses business and refashion our lives elsewhere.
        "Go and visit your mother."
        Who would write something weird like that? Two possibilities occur to me. One, a complete stranger who has only the remotest knowledge of my nature, and who is projecting their own perceptions upon me. Someone who is (deludedly) convinced that the cryptic message will be transparent to me.
        The other possibility, someone who is very close to me, and who thinks, therefore, that my thoughts must run on parallel lines to theirs, and that I, therefore, must understand this suggestion. Or threat, or whatever it is.
        Given the manner in which my mother died, logically I must construe this message as a threat.