The Pure Land

by Spence, Alan

  ‘Tsuyoi!’ he said.

  ‘Strong!’ said Glover.

  ‘Hai!’

  He spat on his hands, rubbed them together, set off at a trot, dragging the rickshaw laden with Glover’s bulk.

  They crossed Motokago-machi, a busy road lined with shops and market stalls, cut down quieter side streets, rutted lanes, eventually came to a stop outside a compact wooden house on two floors.

  ‘This is it?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘You wait?’ Glover took out his pocket watch, traced the passage of the hands, time passing. The man nodded, hunkered down on the ground beside his rickshaw.

  Glover approached the house, called out.

  ‘Yumi-san! Gomen kudasai!’

  There was no reply. The wind ruffled a pine tree behind the house. He tried the shoji screen door and it slid open easily. He called in.

  ‘Hello! Yumi! Are you there?’

  There was a rustling inside the house, the sliding of another screen, and Yumi was shuffling towards the door, the look on her face wary, apprehensive.

  ‘Yumi!’ he said again, and her eyes widened in startled recognition.

  ‘Guraba-san!’

  She fluttered, seemed to be trying, at the same time, to bow, to step forward to welcome him and to turn and step back inside, no doubt anxious to tidy some imagined clutter before receiving a guest.

  ‘It’s all right!’ he said.

  She bowed and bowed, ushered him inside. ‘Dozo!’

  He took off his boots, left them in the entranceway, followed her in. She flustered round him, plumped up cushions for him to sit on, went through to the kitchen area and filled a small iron kettle, set it to heat on the stove.

  She came back through, tidying her hair, smoothing her blue kimono. He noticed for the first time she was pregnant.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you!’ she said, delighted, embarrassed, then as if remembering herself, put her hand to her mouth. ‘You want Maki. So sorry, she not here today. She come tomorrow, no, yesterday.’

  ‘I need to find her,’ he said.

  ‘Hai,’ she said. ‘I show you where.’

  She fetched the kettle, brought it through, made tea for him as a matter of course, without giving it a moment’s thought. She whisked it in the bowl, frothed the bright green bitter mix, turned the bowl and handed it to him.

  ‘Dozo.’

  ‘Arigato, Yumi-san.’ He took a sip. ‘Itadakimasu.’

  She nodded, pleased. Normally they would make ritual, formalised small talk about the weather, the quality of the tea, the glaze of the bowl. Instead he said again he had to find Maki.

  ‘I met her. I know about the boy.’

  ‘She tell me,’ said Yumi.

  ‘She said she would come next day, to talk.’

  ‘She not want. Too sad.’

  ‘I understand. But …’

  ‘Your son,’ she said.

  ‘Hai.’

  She explained where Maki lived, further out this same road.

  ‘Far?’ he asked.

  ‘Past temple,’ she said. ‘Long way.’

  She offered him more tea and he was about to refuse, then remembered the formalities, thanked her, accepted another cup, drank it.

  ‘Your husband is a very lucky man,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I lucky one. Now, you go find Maki.’

  Outside the driver was dozing beside his rickshaw. He woke and jumped up as they approached. Yumi brought him a cup of water, explained where he should go next. He caught Glover’s eye, flexed his muscles again, gave a wee half-smile, conspiratorial.

  *

  They passed the Suwa Shinto shrine with its red torii gate, the Buddhist temple at Teramachi; the road grew narrower, more rutted; space opened up between houses. Glover began to wonder if they had missed a turning, come too far, then they reached the settlement, not much more than a village, a cluster of shacks and godowns. At the last of them the driver stopped, his back running sweat.

  ‘Are wa,’ he said, breathless.

  That one.

  Glover thanked him, walked towards the house. It looked fragile, temporary, as if the first storm, a strong wind, might blow it away. The shoji screen door was not completely closed, and as he approached, the door slid open and she was kneeling there, looking out at him.

  Maki.

  She showed no emotion, stayed calm, bowed low, almost as if she had been expecting him, that it was inevitable. There was a movement behind her and the boy, Shinsaburo, was peering over her shoulder. She stood up and reassured the boy, put a hand on his shoulder. Then she invited Glover to come in, stepped back into the room.

  The interior was dim, a little smoky from the stove against the far wall, the bittersweet reek of woodsmoke mixed with cooking smells, a faint trace of incense, not quite overriding the dull stink of a dry privy in the corner behind a screen. In the other corner a wooden bathtub was propped against the wall. In the centre of the floor was a low table, and beside it, rolled up, were two futon mattresses. So they did all their living in this one room. But for all it was cramped, Maki had made space for a little shrine with a hanging scroll, a little clay Buddha, a single spray of flowers in a plain unglazed vase. Beside it lay her samisen, draped with a silk cloth.

  ‘How you find me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yumi.’

  She nodded, gave a tired smile. ‘I knew you come one day.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come to see me?’ he asked. ‘After we met that last time. Next day I waited.’

  She took in a long deep breath, let out a slow weary sigh. ‘Is not simple. You have wife, daughter, other life.’

  ‘But the boy is my son. I’m responsible for him.’

  ‘No’, she said. ‘I the one responsible. I decide to have him, not offer to Jizo, kill him before born. I give him life. Is my karma.’

  He felt a familiar discomfort, a kind of mounting panic, the way he did when Ito settled an argument with reference to bushido, his ferocious unbending code, or asked one of his unanswerable questions, his koan. No answer, except in action. But what action? It didn’t matter, as long as it was right action! And how to know what was right? Only by acting.

  He found himself telling Maki about his last visit to Ito, his story about the master cutting the cat in half.

  ‘It made me feel uncomfortable,’ he said. ‘Not understanding.’

  ‘Is difficult,’ she said. ‘Take whole life to understand. This one about the cat very hard.’

  ‘Brutal.’

  ‘Hai.’

  ‘Ito used to shout these things at the Sakura, these questions, in between songs!’

  She smiled. ‘I think maybe he not understand.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  She spoke to the boy, sent him outside to play.

  ‘You used to tell me stories,’ said Glover.

  ‘Maybe I not understand,’ she said.

  ‘I remember the one about the man running from the tiger, and hanging from the vine with the other tiger waiting.’

  ‘And tasting the strawberries.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was quiet a moment. ‘I have favourite story, for now. In small village, young girl become pregnant, young man the father, she not want to tell. Family ask, she blame Zen monk who live alone outside village. They go to him very angry, say he is the father. He say, Is that so? Then baby born, they go to him, say, This is your child, you have to look after. He say, Is that so? And he take child into his home. Some time pass, and girl feel very bad. She tell truth. Family feel terrible. They go to monk, say, We are so sorry, is not your child, we take him back. Monk say, Is that so?’

  In the silence they could hear the bark of a dog, the boy running and playing, chanting something to himself.

  ‘This is no place for the boy,’ he said. ‘You can’t bring him up here.’

  Maki had grown up here, in this place, been sold into Maruyama when she wasn’t much more that a ch
ild herself. But the floating world would have seemed an escape, into freedom.

  She looked straight at him. Her hair was tied back, her face bare of make-up, but still her beauty roused him, those eyes, the line of her neck. She wore a simple cotton robe and she pulled it closer around her.

  She smiled at him from far away inside herself; there was a sadness in it and something like compassion.

  ‘Is that so?’

  He said there was room for them at Ipponmatsu, they could move in.

  She laughed, said Tsuru-san would not be happy.

  He said it was his house, he could do what he liked.

  ‘House may be big,’ she said. ‘But not big enough for two women!’

  He knew she was right, had known all along.

  He gave her an envelope he had brought, with money to help her look after the boy. It would help a little, in the meantime.

  She took the envelope graciously, thanked him, put it, unopened, in front of her shrine.

  *

  His creditors held a meeting in his office. He had employed a young Scottish accountant, Simpson, to go over everything meticulously, set it down in black and white, and he read out the figures sonorously, unemotionally, like a judge pronouncing sentence.

  ‘You should have donned a black cap,’ said Glover.

  His debts in total were $500,000. His assets, apart from the mine, were $200,000.

  There was no other recourse but to cease trading on his own account and put himself in the hands of the Netherlands Trading Society, whose offer was still on the table. Their representative, a man named Baudian who had been in Nagasaki for years and knew Glover well, had already drawn up the paperwork.

  The company would clear his existing debts in exchange for his share in the mine, in which he had invested heavily. They would employ him to continue running the mine, at a salary of $200 a month.

  Glover read over the document, took up a pen.

  ‘Where’s the clause that mentions the devil coming to collect my soul?’

  He signed with a flourish, shook hands with Baudian and everyone else in the room, went to supervise the removal of the sign that read Glover & Co., its replacement with one reading NTS.

  *

  He threw himself into the work, even more eagerly than when the mine was his own. Working on the company’s behalf seemed to liberate him. He invested in better machinery, sunk another shaft; a steam engine was brought in to pump out the tunnels; the existing galleries were widened so the coal could be brought out in trucks which were raised in cages to the surface, unloaded directly onto barges waiting at the pier.

  The company praised his energy and perseverance. The Japanese Government expressed regret that Japan had not embraced this technology, developed its own mining industry years ago. Nevertheless, Mister Glover had shown the way, and as always others would follow.

  He even set up a telegraph link – the first – between the pithead on Takashima and his office in the Bund. The Nagasaki Advertiser called this a remarkable innovation, and also an act of bravado reminiscent of Mister Glover’s opening of the country’s first railway line some years before. He was firing, the article read, on all cylinders and showing once more his indomitable spirit.

  The work served, for hours at a stretch, to take his mind off Maki and the boy.

  Months had passed. He had sent more money, by messenger, to Yumi, who passed it on. He hadn’t been back to visit Maki. He had been too busy with the mine, with his other commitments. But in his heart he knew it was more than that. The situation was impossible. Cutting the cat in half. A decision had to be made.

  He sat down to discuss it with Tsuru. She kneeled, silent, her face a mask, as he talked about adopting the boy.

  ‘You know I want a son,’ he said. ‘Every man does.’

  She bowed her head, looked crestfallen. ‘So sorry, I not give you son.’

  ‘No!’ He held his head. ‘Christ, this is difficult enough! That’s not what I’m saying.’

  It had been the same with Sono, the sense that she’d failed, was to blame.

  ‘No blame,’ he said. ‘We both want a son, and we can’t have one.’

  She nodded. ‘Hai.’

  ‘Then it turns out I do have a son, and he doesn’t have a real home, and Maki can’t look after him. We have all this space, and we’re not poor. All right, the Dutch are paying me a pittance, but the debts are being cleared and things will pick up again.’

  The offer from Ito’s friend Iwasaki still stood, to help with his new company, this Mitsu-bishi. It would mean spending time in Tokyo, perhaps eventually moving there. The Jho Sho Maru was on its way, he would be payed something for that, if not its full worth.

  ‘We’ll be all right when my ship comes in!’ he said.

  She didn’t understand the joke, nodded and smiled anyway, and he felt a sudden tenderness towards her.

  ‘Och, Tsuru! What I’m saying is that we can manage. We can bring the boy here, take him in, adopt him.’

  She bowed her head again, meek. ‘Hai, so desu.’

  ‘He’ll be a brother for Hana.’

  ‘Hai.’

  She was silent again, let the silence sit there a while.

  ‘What about woman?’ she asked at last. This was painful for her. ‘She not come here?’

  ‘No,’ he said, quiet but definite. ‘That wouldn’t work.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘It would be impossible.’

  Another silence.

  ‘So what she do?’

  Unerring as one of Ito’s unanswerable questions. A punch to the stomach.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe she’ll move on, find work.’

  ‘Maybe go back to work at Sakura.’

  ‘No!’

  His own vehemence took him by surprise.

  ‘So what else she do?’

  He really didn’t know, had no idea. It wasn’t his problem, but it was.

  *

  This time he decided against the jinrikisha, hired a horse from an Englishman who kept stables near Dejima, rode out past the Suwa shrine, the temple at Teramachi. Maki had told him once that the priests at the shrine kept a pure white horse that was only to be ridden by one of the gods. He had no idea what that might mean. The horse he’d hired lolloped and trotted along, iron-shod. He minded Ken Mackenzie telling him with such enthusiasm about the Japanese seeing iron horseshoes for the first time, copying them, changing things overnight. He missed Ken, his straightforwardness, his dour wisdom. And he missed Walsh with his cynicism, his ironic wit. Ten years Glover had been here. A long time.

  He nudged his horse forward along the narrowing roads, the dirt tracks. Above the village a blue kite tugged and scudded in the wind. It fell beside Maki’s house and Shinsaburo was chasing it down; he saw Glover on the horse, gathered up the kite and ran pellmell inside, calling out to his mother.

  She came out to meet him, trying to tidy her hair, fasten it back with a clasp. She looked up at him, bowed and smiled, unsure, and Glover was undone again, felt that surge, that salmon-leap of the heart.

  The boy stared and stared at the horse, scurried away when it flared its nostrils, snorted. Glover dismounted, tied the horse to a post.

  Inside, Maki had lit an incense stick to bless the place, fumigate it. She thanked him for the money he had sent, said it made a difference.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Not nothing,’ she said. ‘Is a lot.’

  ‘Ach!’

  The room smelled the same, with maybe a hint of damp, mildew, added to the pungent mix. She twirled the incense stick in her fingers, wafted its fragrance.

  ‘You still play?’ he asked, indicating the samisen under its silk cloth. He could almost hear the sound of it, remembered nights at the Sakura.

  ‘Not so much,’ she said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘No.’

  The sadness, the emptiness hung there.

  ‘Chotto monoganashii,’ he said.

  �
��Not chotto,’ she said. ‘Not little. Motto. Is much.’

  ‘Motto monoganashii.’

  ‘Hai.’ She stood up. ‘I make tea.’

  She busied herself, boiled water, rinsed and wiped the bowls, mixed the tea and let it stand, poured and frothed it with the bamboo whisk, all the time losing herself, escaping into the formality, the studied repetition of the actions, absolved from having to talk or think.

  For his part, he sat still and watched, smiled and nodded once or twice at the boy, who had positioned himself close to the door, ready for flight.

  In her own time, Maki poured the tea.

  ‘Dozo.’

  And he sipped it, expressed his appreciation.

  ‘Itadakimasu.’

  She poured a second cup, he drank it, put down the empty bowl.

  ‘Maki,’ he said, ‘we have to talk about the boy.’

  She put the teapot on its tray, turned the bamboo strainer upside down to drain. He continued.

  ‘I can give him a better life.’

  She looked right at him, that way, right into him.

  ‘Is that so?’

  And he felt a moment the emptiness open up, deepen.

  She made no argument, listened, then said, simply, ‘Not today.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You say when.’

  ‘Two weeks,’ she said.

  ‘Two weeks it is.’

  She came with him to the door and he turned and held her, pressed her to him. The boy tugged at her sleeve, started to cry, and she disengaged, picked him up.

  Outside, Glover mounted the horse. The boy looked up, again awed by it. Glover held his arms out, offering to take the boy, let him try sitting in the saddle. Maki looked hesitant, nodded, uncertain, her brow furrowed. She said something softly to the boy, reassuring, held him up. Glover reached down, took the boy by the arms to lift him, and for a moment he hung there, dangling, between them. Then he started to squirm, wriggle, let out a cry, and Glover handed him back to Maki, who held him, shooshed and calmed him. Glover gave them a wave, turned the horse and nudged it forward along the track. He looked back and they were still standing there, mother and son, watching him go.

  *

  The moment, distorted, came back to him in a dream. Maki was handing the boy to him and the boy was reluctant, struggled, kicked his legs. Glover had climbed down from the horse and had the boy by the left arm, Maki holding the right, not handing him over but pulling him back towards her. They tugged him, one way, the other. Then there was a figure standing between them, dressed in black robes, a monk or a priest, and Glover knew he was the master from Ito’s story, was asking his question, insisting they respond.