At this time Gengobei was twenty-five. For many years he had bestowed his favors upon a young boy, Nakamura Hachijuro, with whom he had fallen desperately in love at first sight and to whom he had pledged himself forever. Hachijuro was incomparably beautiful, resembling, one might say, the first bud of the cherry blossom with its petals half-open—a delicate flower of love.
One night it was raining drearily and the two men closed themselves up, all alone, in a small room where Gengobei used to stay. As they played the flute together and listened to the noises outside, the wistful beauty of the night captivated them. Through the window came stormy gusts of wind, bearing with them the fragrance of plum trees, which lingered on in the lovers’ long, low-hanging sleeves. It was most touching of all to hear the sudden rustling of the bamboos, a sound which startled the nestling birds and set them aflutter.
Gradually the lamplight grew faint; the notes of the flute died away. Hachijuro, more appealing than ever, became more affectionate as they talked together happily. Every word spoken was charged with a love that sought expression in every possible way. Gengobei was overcome with the delightfulness of it and wished that Hachijuro might remain forever unchanged, always a boy with his forelock uncropped, which was an impossible desire, too foolish even for the world of folly.
Dawn approached as they lay together amidst the disorder of their bed, and Gengobei dozed off to sleep. Hachijuro pinched himself to keep awake.
“How can you waste the precious night in dreams!” he exclaimed to the sleeper, who only half-heard the words and found them hard to comprehend. “This may be the last night for you to talk to me. Can’t you think of something to say, some last words of farewell?”
Gengobei was startled and hurt. “You wound me with your playful talk. If someday we are kept apart, your face will haunt my dreams forever. What need is there to talk so foolishly, to say that tonight may be the end—just to get me stirred up!”
They took each other’s hands and Hachijuro smiled weakly. “There is nothing sure about this Floating World. Who then can tell when life may come to an end?”
No sooner had he said this than his pulse failed. The parting he feared had become a reality.
“What’s this!” Gengobei cried, and as the first shock gave way to uncontrolled grief, he wept and carried on in a terrible way until everyone came in to see what was the matter.
They gave Hachijuro medicines of all sorts, but to no avail. It was all over.
When Hachijuro’s parents were told about this, their grief knew no bounds. But they had known Gengobei well for many years and had no suspicions concerning Hachijuro’s death.
. . . and the two men closed themselves up, all alone, in a small room. . . . As they played the flute together and listened to the noises outside, the wistful beauty of the night captivated them. . . .
All the boy’s belongings—whatever they could find—were gotten together and sent to the graveyard. They stuffed his body just as it was into a large jar, which was buried in the shade of tall grasses growing by the roadside.
Gengobei prostrated himself on the mound, mourning his lost lover and wishing only that he himself could leave the world. “Alas, you were a frail one, were you not? I shall mourn for you just three years. Then, on this same day three years from now, I shall come here and join you among the ghosts.”
So saying, he left the graveyard and quickly cut off his hair. He told his whole story from beginning to end to the superior of a temple known as Saien-ji, after which he devoted himself wholeheartedly to the priesthood.
In summertime he picked flowers each day and kept incense burning at the boy’s grave. By and by, as the days passed with Gengobei deep in prayer for the salvation of Hachijuro, autumn arrived. Morning-glories soon were blooming on the hedges, their blossoms still another reminder of the awesome, unstable beauty of life.
“Even the dew outlasts men’s lives,” Gengobei thought, reflecting on the past, now lost forever. It was the eve of the Bon Festival, when a welcome was to be prepared for the returning souls of the dead. Gengobei cut some lavender and spread it on the floor, adding cucumbers and eggplant to his quaint display, with green soybeans scattered here and there. In the dim light of a hanging lantern he busily recited sutras before the altar of the dead, while hemp-sticks burned away in the fire of welcome for the ghosts.
But the evening of the fourteenth was not to be a quiet one even at the temple. Creditors stood outside clamoring for the money which monks owed to them,1 and at the front gate a dancing drummer filled the air with his pounding.
“Here, too, life is becoming unpleasant,” Gengobei thought, and so he decided to make a trip to Mt. Koya.2
In the morning, on the fifteenth day of the Poem Month,3 he set out from his native place with his black robes stained by tears and his sleeves worn thin from rubbing swollen eyes.
2. A birdcatcher’s life is as short as the bird’s
The village was getting ready for winter. Firewood was being cut and stacked, snow fences were being put up to hold back the first snowfall, and people were boarding up their northern windows, while all about there was a noisy beating of clothes. Gengobei went through the open fields and was watching some little birds fight for a nesting place in the red-leaved trees, when he noticed a boy of fourteen or fifteen—certainly not yet sixteen—dressed in a hempen gown with pale-blue lining and a violet sash of medium width. At his side he carried a sword with a gilded guard. His hair was swept up in tufts like little tea-brushes, and he had all the charm of a girl. Holding a bamboo pole at the middle, the boy aimed at one bird after another and threw his pole at least a hundred times without catching a single bird, much to his disappointment.
“I would never have believed that such a beautiful boy could be found in this world,” said Gengobei, watching him. “At most he is no older than Hachijuro was, and for good looks he surpasses him by far.”
All thought of death and the hereafter were quickly driven from his mind, and he stood and gazed till dusk. Finally he went up to the boy.
“I am a priest, but I still know how to catch birds. Let me have your pole,” he said, baring his right arm for action.
“Ho, all you birds up there! What is so bad about dying in his lovely hands? Have you no appreciation for the company of young boys, you rascals?” In no time at all he brought down countless birds and the young fellow was overjoyed.
“How in the world did you happen to become a priest?” he inquired.
Gengobei told the whole story from beginning to end, losing himself in sad memories so that it brought tears to the eyes of the boy.
“How admirable of you,” he exclaimed in sympathy and awe, “to take up the religious life for such a reason! You must by all means come home with me and spend the night under our roof.”
The two of them were already fast friends as they walked together to his home, a charming place in the middle of the woods, built in the style of an imperial pavilion. Whinnying horses and armor which hung decoratively on the walls told Gengobei that this was the home of a samurai. He crossed a spacious hall and from the veranda could see steps leading away over a little bridge. There in a grove of striped bamboo was a garden bird-cage. He could hear wild geese, Chinese pigeons, golden cocks, and other birds singing. Up a little on the left was a balcony from which one could see in all directions. It was lined with bookshelves, which gave the place a certain studied charm.
. . the boy . . . threw his pole at least a hundred times without catching a single bird. . . . “I would never have believed that such a beautiful boy could be found in the world,” said Gengobei, watching him. . . .
“This is our study,” the boy told Gengobei, inviting him to sit down. Then he called all the servants. “My guest, the priest, is to be my reading tutor. Please treat him well.”
With many things to talk about, they spent the night conversing intimately together. It was so delightful that they felt inspired to make promises of undying friendship. With all th
eir hearts they wished to crowd a thousand nights of love into that one, and next morning the parting was sad.
“Now you are bound for Koya,” the boy said in farewell. “On your return do not fail to come and see me again.”
When he had quietly stolen away from the house, Gengobei went around to make some inquiries of a man in the village. Among other things he learned that the boy’s father was deputy of that region, which made Gengobei still more pleased with his new romance.
The going was slow on his journey toward the capital, so hard was it to pull himself ever farther away from his love, and on the way he thought of nothing but Hachijuro and the new boy. The way to Buddhahood was gone completely from his mind.
At last, reaching the mountain of Kobo, he spent a day in the dormitory for priests, but did not bother to visit even the patriarch’s tomb. In no time at all he headed home again, going straight to see the boy as he had promised he would.
The young fellow who greeted him seemed not to have changed a bit since they first met, that day when the boy was birdcatching. Together they went into a small room, where Gengobei began to tell everything that had happened to him. But he was so weary from traveling that he soon dozed off to sleep, unaware that the boy had disappeared.
In the morning the boy’s father, surprised to find a stranger there, came in to give him a piece of his mind. Gengobei awoke with a start and hastened to explain everything—how he had come to take up holy orders and what had happened when he came here before. When he had finished, the master gestured with his hands as if at a sudden revelation.
“That is strange indeed! I could not help feeling that he was a singularly beautiful boy, even if he was my own son. But life is never to be counted upon, and twenty days ago the frail creature passed away. Up until the end he kept calling—deliriously, I thought—for a certain priest. Now I see that it was you he meant.”
Together they grieved and grieved over the sad loss, and Gengobei wanted to end his life there and then, so little did he value it. But men are not born with a will to die. Having seen two lovers meet death in so short a time, Gengobei found it hard to live on after them. Still, he reckoned it as some extraordinary retribution from the past that he should be required to learn from these two boys what great sadness is. And sad indeed it was.
3. A Lover of men with his hands full of love
People themselves are the most despicable and heartless of all creatures. If we stop to think and look about us in the world, we find that everyone—ourselves as well as others—talks of giving up his life on the spot when some great misfortune occurs, when a young man dies in the prime of his youthful beauty, or when a wife to whom one has pledged undying love passes away early in life. But even in the midst of tears unseemly desires are ever with us. Our hearts slip off to seek treasure of all kinds or give way to sudden impulses.
Thus it is with the woman whose husband has hardly breathed his last before she is thinking of another man to marry—watching, listening, scheming for one. She may have the dead man’s younger brother take his place when he is gone. She may look for a pleasing match among close relatives or, in the dizzy chase, discard completely those with whom she has long been most intimate. She will say one short prayer to Amida—so much for her obligations. She will bring flowers and incense, just so that others may see her do it.
But one can hardly notice when she paints a little powder on her face, impatient to be done with mourning before thirty-five days have passed. Her hair soon regains its luster, glistening with oil, and is all the more attractive because the wanton locks fall free of any hairdress. Then too, her underclothes run riot with color beneath a simple, unadorned garment—so unobtrusive, yet so seductive.
And there is the woman who, feeling the emptiness of life because of some sad episode, shaves her head in order to spend the rest of her days in a secluded temple, where she will have only the morning dew to offer in memory of her husband, asleep beneath the grass. Among the things she must leave behind is a gown with fawn-spot designs and beautiful embroidery. “I shall not need this anymore. It should be made into a canopy or an altarcloth or a temple pennant.” But in her heart the lady is thinking: “Too bad these sleeves are just a little too small. I might still wear them.”
Nothing is more dreadful than a woman. No one can keep her from doing what her heart is set upon, and he who tries will be frightened off by a great demonstration of tears. So it is that widows vanish from the earth like ghosts, for none will long be true to a dead man’s ghost. And so it is with certain men, except that a man who has killed off three or five wives will not be censured for taking another.
But it was not so with Gengobei. Having seen two lovers die, he was led by true devotion to sequester himself in a grass hut on the mountainside, there to seek earnestly the way to salvation in the afterlife, and to seek naught else, for he had admirably determined to quit the way of the flesh.
At that time in Hama-no-Machi, on the Bay of Satsuma, lived a man from the Ryukyus who had a daughter named Oman. She was fifteen, graced with such beauty that even the moon envied her, and of a gentle, loving disposition. Every man who looked upon her, so ripe for love, wanted her for himself. But in spring of the past year Oman had fallen in love with that flower of manhood, Gengobei. She pined away for him and wrote him many letters, which a messenger delivered in secret. Still there was no answer from Gengobei, who had never in his life given a thought to girls.
It was heartbreaking for Oman. Night and day, day after day, she thought only of him and would consider offers of marriage from no other quarter. She went so far as to feign sudden illness, which puzzled everyone, and she said many wild things to offend people, so that they thought her quite mad. Oman still did not know that Gengobei had become a priest, until one day she heard someone mention the fact. It was a cruel blow, but she tried to console herself, saying that a day would come for her to fulfill her desires, a vain hope indeed, which soon turned to bitter resentment.
“Those black robes of his—how I hate them! I must go to see him just once and let him know how I feel.”
With this in mind, Oman bade farewell to her friends as if to leave the world for a nunnery. In secret she clipped her own hair to make it look like a boy’s. She had already taken care to get suitable clothing and was able to transform herself completely into a mannish young lover. Then, quietly, stealthily, she set out, bound for the Mountain of Love.
As Oman stepped along she brushed the frost off the bamboo grass, for it was October, the Godless Month,4 yet here was a girl true to her love. A long way she went, far from the village into a grove of cedars which someone had described to her. At the end of it could be seen the wild crags of a cliff and off to the west a deep cavern, in the depths of which one’s mind would get lost thinking about it. Across a stream lay some rotten logs—two, three, four of them, which were barely enough to support her. A treacherous bridge, Oman thought, as she looked down at the rapids below and saw crashing waves which would dash her to pieces. Beyond, on a little piece of flat land, was a lean-to sloping down from the cliff, its eaves all covered with vines from which water dripped, as if it were a “private rain.”
On the south side of the hut a window was open. Oman peeped in to find that it was the poorest sort of abode. There was one rickety stove, in which lay a piece of green wood, only half burnt up. There were two big teacups, but no other utensils, not even a dipper or ladle.
“How dismal!” she sighed as she looked around from outside. “Surely the Buddha must be pleased with one who lives in such miserable quarters.”
She was disappointed to find the priest gone. “I wonder where to?” she asked, but there was no one there to tell her, nothing at all but the lonely pines, and nothing for her to do but wait, pining among the pines.
Then she tried the door. Luckily it was open. Inside she found a book on his reading table. The Waiting Bed it was called, a book which described the origins of manly love.
“Well,” s
he observed, “I see he still has not given up this kind of love.”
She thought she would read while waiting for him to return, but soon it grew dark and she could hardly see the words. There was no lamp for her to use and she felt more and more lonely, waiting by herself in the darkness. True love is such that one will endure almost anything for it.
It must have been about midnight when the bonze Gengobei came home, finding his way by the faint light of a torch. He had almost reached the hut, where Oman waited eagerly for him, when it seemed to her as if two handsome young men came toward him out of the withered underbrush. Each was as beautiful as the other. Either one could have been justly called a “flower of spring” or a “maple leaf in fall.” And they seemed to be rivals in love, for one looked resentful and the other deeply hurt. They both made ardent advances toward Gengobei, but he was just one and they were two, and he was helpless to choose between them.
Seeing the agitated, tortured expression on Gengobei’s face, Oman could not help feeling a tender sympathy for him. Nevertheless, it was a discouraging sight for her.
“So he has love enough for many men,” she said bitterly. “Still, I am committed to this affair and cannot leave it as it stands. I shall simply have to open my heart to him.”
Oman went toward him, looking so determined that the two young men took fright and vanished into the night. She, in turn, was startled at their disappearance, and Gengobei at seeing her.
Five Women Who Loved Love Page 11
