Chapter 27

“ ... And so she spends two weeks cleaning the dish every month, but it then gets tarnished again,” Sam concluded.

“Do you know any other Japanese stories?” Lily asked Sam several days later. She had listened to him telling the local children about the Dreamtime and relating all sorts of things to Bob and Marge.

“I know some. Largely from my grandmother, not my mother. Many of the stories are very different from those I tell in general.”

“Different?”

“Yes. It seems to me that most of the tales we deal with are ‘where did something come from?’ or ‘why is something the way it is?’ The phases of the moon. The bends in the Murray. Why birds fly in different directions in different seasons. But many of the Japanese stories are about retribution. About vengeance or revenge.”

“Oh.”

“For example, there’s the ‘Tongue-cut sparrow’:

A washerwoman cut off the tongue of a sparrow that was pecking at her rice starch. The sparrow had been fed regularly by her neighbors, so when the sparrow didn’t come, they went in the woods to search for it. They found it, and after a feast prepared by the sparrow and some dancing, the neighbors were given a choice between two boxes; one large and one small. The neighbors picked the small box, and it proved to be filled with riches. When the washer woman saw these riches and heard where they came from, she went to the sparrow. She too was entertained and given the choice between two boxes. The washer woman picked the larger box but rather than gaining riches, she was devoured by devils.

“I see. The neighbors had fed the sparrow, and were rewarded; but she had been greedy, not even letting the sparrow have some of the starch, yet choosing the larger ‘gift,’ and so her ‘gift’ was matched by death.”

“Right. There’s a moral. Here’s another:

A man killed a mandarin drake for food. That very night he had a dream that a woman accused him of murdering her husband, and instructed him to return to the lake. But when the man did this, a female mandarin waddled up to him and tore his chest open.

“That’s tougher. I see the retribution, but weren’t the ducks food?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps there was a rite omitted. Perhaps the man should have asked permission or thanked the fowl for its life. But here’s a third story,

A man caught a tanuki – that’s a raccoon-dog – and ordered his wife to make it into a stew. The tanuki begged the wife not to cook him and promised to help with the cooking if he is spared. The wife agrees and unties him. The tanuki then changes into her shape and kills her, cooking her into a stew. Thus, disguised as the man’s wife, the tanuki feeds her to him. Once he is done, the tanuki transforms back to his original form and taunts the man for eating his wife. A rabbit who was friends with the family was furious, so he made the tanuki carry sticks and set these sticks on fire. Then the rabbit treated the burn with hot pepper paste. Finally, the rabbit convinced the tanuki to build a boat of clay, and the rabbit followed in a sturdy boat. The clay boat began to sink, so the tanuki tried to escape, but then the rabbit hit him on the head with an oar, knocking him out and making him drown.

“Well, that’s certainly both evil and retributive. Why cook the wife?”

“I don’t know. But the Greeks had cannibalism, too. After Procne’s husband, Tereus, raped her sister, Philomela, Procne took revenge by killing their son, Itys, and feeding him to his father.”

“Oh.”

“Interestingly, Tereus cuts Philomela’s tongue so she cannot tell that he raped her.”

“Oh. Anyway, there are a lot of holes in the story.”

“True. But most folk tales are both violent and full of holes. Have you read any of the Grimm brothers?”

“Yes.”

“The witch gets baked in her own oven; Rumplestiltzkin goes right down to Hell; Cinderella’s sisters get their eyes pecked out; and the evil Queen in Snow White has to dance in red-hot shoes until she dies.”

“There’s a version of Cinderella with a happier ending for the sisters.”

“Yes. The Perrault, where Cinderella forgives them. I guess the French are more soft-hearted than the Japanese or the Germans. Anyway, that’s enough stories. I’m off to the lake, without a clay boat.”

After Lake Argyle drained it emerged as three connected pools, fed by the Ord and the Wilson Rivers from the south, the Belin from the south-east and Matilda Creek from the east. The outflow through Kununurra and on to the Cambridge Gulf was still the Ord. A variety of fish continued to thrive in the fresh water and about twice a week several men would angle for dinner.

Among the catch were Silver Cobbler (also called the Shovel Nosed Catfish), Bottle Nosed Catfish, Sooty Grunter, Archer Fish, Long Tom (Crocodile Gar), Eel Tail Catfish, and Bony Herring.

The cobblers and other catfish were prized eating; some folks liked the grunter, though Sam thought it ‘tasted funny’; the long tom was delicious, but had an incredible number of bones. The others were too small. But, on a good afternoon/evening, a single boat’s catch could easily feed the village.