He incorporated his experience on Fuji into a retelling of a Japanese legend. In the story a seeker of knowledge ascends a steep mountain, guided by the bodhisattva. The climb is not easy. They rise above the cosmic Sea of Milk, pass hideous, ghostly outcroppings, very like the slopes of Fuji, and finally, near the summit, come to the realization that the mountain consists entirely of human skulls. Each one, the bodhisattva explains, belongs to the pilgrim himself, the accumulation of all his millions of past lives.
My father climbed Mount Fuji on August 6, 1916. He too left from Gotemba after a sleepless night and ascended part of the way on horseback, although he and his companion, a man named Green, dismounted sooner than Lafcadio and began walking. They had been issued at the inn the traditional Fuji accoutrements—the four pairs of sandals, the warm underwear, and the long staffs. For a while that day my father even wore the straw pilgrim mat but found it cumbersome and discarded it. Shortly before they dismounted, while they were still in the foothills, they came across a regiment of soldiers who had set up field artillery and were pointlessly lobbing shells into a distant green hillside. The war machine of Japan, which would come to an end at Hiroshima on that very date twenty-nine years in the future, was already in the process of being built. The irony of soldiers on the slopes of a sacred mountain was not lost on my father.
He and Green moved through deciduous woods, ascended into the pines, and finally broke out into the loose cinders of the open slopes. The climbing became more difficult as the grade increased; the weather turned cold, and the traditional clouds of Fuji enveloped them, although after another hour or so, the sky cleared for a spell. Periodically on the upper slopes they would pass small groups of pilgrims, straw mats tied to their backs. They overtook one such group shortly after they cleared the cloud cover. They were wearing bells, clad in the traditional white of Fuji pilgrims, and as my father and Green climbed onward, they could hear behind them the eerie clanging of the bells below the clouds, and strange, intertwining chanting floating up from the nothingness below them. Ahead they could see the great shining peak, the sun above it, each rock throwing a brilliantly clear shadow. They pushed on, fatigued but determined.
By the time they reached station number eight, where Lafcadio had spent the night, it was 6:30 P.M. They were nearly exhausted, but after a bowl of soup and eggs, they climbed higher. Below them, even in the pale light of dusk, they could see now the great billowing skyscape of clouds, a long snow field of white tinged here and there in the deeper crevices with a shadowed blue. The immense dark outline of Fuji itself fell across the clouds. They reached the summit just before nine o’clock, utterly exhausted.
At a station on the summit, they spent the night, lying on the hard floor, packed in with the other Fuji pilgrims, while an oil lamp swung above them and the charcoal braziers gave off a warm, smoky light. In spite of his fatigue my father could not sleep. The stone hut was crowded, and pilgrims were moving about all night. The high winds howled. The lamp smoked over his head, and he spent the night waiting for dawn. At some point he became aware that more pilgrims were stirring, and he realized that he and Green had not been called for the rising of the sun as they had requested, which must have meant that the clouds had rolled in again. He turned over, warm in his comforter, and as the gray light suffused the interior, he watched the little groups of returning pilgrims. Those who had been outside waiting for the sun came back in, their clothes drenched. They were shivering and soaked, but even though they had not witnessed the rising of their god above the blue sea, they were in good spirits. They undressed for bed, ate their steaming bowls of rice, and fell asleep around him.
Green and my father went down later that morning, slipping and glissading all the way. Behind them, the sky now clear, floated the great peak, silent and overbearing. Even after their descent it floated there above them, first in actuality, and then later in my father’s imagination. The ascent of Fuji was one of the most memorable experiences of his life; thirty years later he was still telling stories about it.
My father brought home from the East the staff he had used to climb Fujiyama. He carried it with him through his various moves, and took it north when he finally settled outside New York City, where I was born. I remember it well from my childhood; it has a certain smell or aura about it. When I moved into my cottage and began reading my father’s journals of China and Japan, I got the staff from my brother Hugh. It was splintered and rough, but the black Japanese characters were still clearly visible, and it still had the ability to summon in me images of my father’s experiences on Fuji. It is one of the many artifacts from the East that I either remember vividly or continue to live with: the statue of the man with the headlike bowl, the books of Lafcadio Hearn, a beautiful cloisonne opium pipe, and of course the stories—night after night of stories.
Sometimes in the cottage, just before I fell asleep, all these artifacts and events would become confused in my mind. The staff, the bowl, my father’s experiences in the East would coexist with the secret places of the ridge, the hemlock grove, the Pawtucket burial places, the mist-shrouded hollows, and the dark, interior spaces of the woods. Time and space would dissolve; the ridge would become the world.
My father left the Orient on July 11, 1918. The United States had entered the war, and he had decided to leave his teaching post and join the army. His last view of the East was of Yokohama harbor, where the ship had stopped to take on coal and passengers. He recorded the event in his journal:
As I write, the ship resounds with the activities which precede departure. All morning the loading of boxes and of coal has been hectic and now, with the time of leaving only three quarters of an hour away, the derrick is still feverishly working, and the air is filled with coal dust. We are so laden that the waterline has risen perceptibly. This should at least prevent rolling in heavy weather.
New passengers have been coming on board all morning, and tiffin was a gala event with many Japanese in their flowery gowns or in uniform and gold lace. And now final farewells are being said. My time in the East is short.
The excitement gradually increased as the scheduled time of leaving drew near. The last cargo to come aboard was a great pile of mail bags which were swung up the cranes in their bags of netting. Then the whistle sounded and the gongs beat. Those who had come on board to say goodbye began hurriedly to leave over the high gangplank, adding the gay colors of Japanese clothing and the white of the foreigners to the ugly gray of the wharf. A final whistle as the ship’s bell struck six, and the straining coolies pushed away the gangplank and began to cast off the hawsers.
There is an emotional thrill in all leave taking, and it is particularly keen when a big ship puts off. In our case too we were going home—most of us after years in the Orient. And when one goes home in wartime, it is to unknown conditions and an unknown future.
The crowd on the ship cracked jokes and made light of it, as people always do when they really feel a thrill. They broke jokingly into “Over There” as we warped away from the dock, but they really meant it: “The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming; and we won’t be back until its over over there.” There was cheering on the dock and the usual waving of hats and handkerchiefs.
A puffing tug pulled our bow around until we headed out between the red and white lighthouses which mark the breakwater of Yokohama harbor. And we steamed slowly out and into the blue-green water and whitecaps of the Pacific. It had been 96 degrees in the shade in Yokohama; out in the harbor there was a splendid cool breeze. The skyline was piled up with fleecy white clouds and so we could not see Fuji to say goodbye. We were sorry for that, for there is a superstition that unless one can say goodbye to Fuji as he leaves Yokohama harbor, he is not coming back to the East.
14
Living at the End of Time
ONCE, YEARS AGO, I spent some time hiking in the Cévennes Mountains in southern France. One day I came to a ravine with a stream running through it. I had been walking all day, and the brook a
nd the ferny cliff face beside it were wonderfully inviting, so I took off my shoes, cooled my feet in the waters, and then lay back on the mossy bank to rest. It was a dry, hot Provencal summer day, the type of day that brings out the resinous odors of the local herbs and sets the cicadas calling. I could hear their brittle whispers in the groves and dry hillsides beyond the ravine. By the stream the air was cooler and smelled of moisture and rank plants, and I lay there, listening to the ripple of the water over the riffles and the incessant dry rattle of the cicadas. I think I fell asleep for a minute or two, and in this half-state I sensed that something had come into the ravine. I opened my eyes and saw, or dreamed I saw, a hideous bearded face with loose lips, yellowed teeth, and a curving sweep of ringed horns curling beside its head. I leaped up. But there was only the tripping of the stream, the overpowering, shushing call of the insects. Then I heard a scrambling and the clatter of dry stones on the hill behind me. I was alone again.
The area I was hiking through was rich in ruins. Everywhere I went I would come across the remnants of various cultures that had existed in that part of the world for more than two thousand years—medieval Christian churches, Roman walls, towers, and aqueducts. In the dry valleys and hills there was an aura of the classic pastoral of goatherds and shepherds. In fact what I had probably seen—if indeed I was awake—was a goat. But I couldn’t shake the strong impression that Pan or some other deity, some resident spirit of the ravine, had been watching me. I went back into the brush on the hillside and looked for goat signs—droppings or tracks or nipped-off branches. There were none.
I thought about that event for years. It seemed to say something about the nature of a landscape, the nature or sense of a place. I used to walk around the woods in North America with a feeling that something was missing, that somehow the land was incomplete or lonely. The event in the Cévennes identified the thing that was missing from the American landscape—namely the human element, the feeling of a land that had been lived in and worshipped by a people. During the time that I lived on the ridge, I came to realize my mistake. I had been expecting the wrong thing.
If indeed the American land has a spirit, if there is, as cultures throughout history have believed, some god overseeing the forests and hills, then here in North America it must be one of the fifteen-thousand-year-old deities of the people who inhabited the continent for the better part of its human history. It must be the T’chi Manitou, the creative force of the Algonquian people. It is Hobomacho, Menobohzo, and all the other spirits, giants, wood dwarfs, and monsters of the American Indian pantheon. Time and technology have not yet managed to obliterate them.
I had further evidence of this that spring. With the onset of warmer weather, almost every day I would walk back to the hemlock grove, sometimes just to visit the place, sometimes to use it as a starting point for a longer walk on the ridge. For me the grove was like one of those little processional chapels where penitents would stop during festivals and ceremonial parades. Nothing ever happened there. The trees were generally empty of bird life, and there were no flowers or shrubs growing on the darkened forest floor; but the place drew me in nonetheless.
One morning toward the end of May, while I was sitting in the grove, I heard a mysterious bird singing in the high branches, a bright yellow form whose markings I could not see clearly. I do not like hearing songs I cannot recognize, and I spent a long time outside the grove with binoculars trying to get a better view. Finally the bird left the cover of the branches and flew down the west slope of the ridge, through the oak trees, still singing. I followed after it, lost it, followed it some more, and then lost it completely; but all across the hillside, from a thousand trees and shrubs, I could hear the great rolling dawn chorus of other birds.
This particular bird had led me to a small terrace of pines, an area I did not recognize, but since it was still early and the day was fine, I continued down the slope with no particular destination in mind. I crossed a stone wall and walked downhill, through a tangle of brush, thinking that I should come in due course to the old wagon road that led to the lake where Megan Lewis and Emil and Minna lived. The road wasn’t there. Neither was the oak tree that stood near it, towering above the other, lesser trees of the ridge. I was lost again.
I could not say how much of my habit of getting lost in the woods on the ridge was intentional. Elsewhere in the world I seem to have an unerring sense of direction, but here the landmarks moved. The sun changed course; the walls and old roads disappeared. On that day I simply wandered deeper into the maze, forced my way through a tangle of brush, and then broke out into a flat ground of white pine where the floor of the woods was clear of undergrowth and spread over with yellowish fallen needles. I lay down on the soft ground and stared up at the network of branches, listening to the birds sing. There were robins and buntings and thrushes, and I could hear close by the eerie descending song of the veery. Warblers were singing from the oaks behind me; a blue jay screamed. Somewhere to the south a flock of crows began to call, and then, suddenly, I heard the bird I had followed earlier. I did not move this time. I won’t say I had lost interest. But the effort of getting up from the soft bed of pine to follow its song through the snagging tangle of vegetation beyond the pines seemed too much work for so fine a spring morning. The bird passed overhead, calling incessantly, a repeated series of chips. It stopped singing for a minute. I closed my eyes, opened them, and there it was in front of me. It was a Canada warbler, a bird I had not seen or heard since I lived in southern Connecticut some twenty years earlier. The sight of it brought on a surge of memories of walks in spring woodlands. I got up to follow.
The warbler moved out of the pines into some undergrowth, and then, still singing, flew into the trees again. I tried to catch up but got tangled in brush and decided to quit. It was getting hot now, and the air was very still. Just beyond the undergrowth, somewhere high among the leaves, the Canada warbler continued to sing, as if daring me to find it, but I had a sense suddenly that I should not move. The warbler sounded out; a blue jay called, and far off the barking of crows continued. I waited. A vast stillness descended over the ridge like a blanket. I felt like a hunter on the verge of a kill, spear drawn back, muscles tightening for the cast. Someone or something was nearby.
In the midst of the silence the Canada warbler called out again, and then in front of me, not ten yards away, I saw a beautiful red fox looking at me, its tail curled around its forelegs. As soon as our eyes met, it disappeared without a sound. I hardly had time to realize it had been there; it simply spun and fled up the ridge. I stepped out of the tangle and unexpectedly found myself on the old wagon road, not far from the Pawtucket burial ground. The fox was standing in the road, looking back over its shoulder. But as soon as it saw me, it streaked up the hill toward the boulders where the Indians were supposedly buried. I could see the rocks in front of me, gray-green, rounded shapes among the trees, standing like the broken columns of a ruined temple, and there among them I counted five white-tailed deer, brown fur against the green moss, their ears turned toward me, their eyes large and curious and serene.
I waited. They waited. I stepped forward. They twitched their ears. I took another step, and they spun on their hooves and dashed full tilt up the hill, tails flashing white, hoofbeats thumping the ground. In midflight one of them stopped and turned to face me. It stood alone, head held high, ears pointed forward. Then slowly, as I watched unmoving, it lifted its right leg elegantly, and with all the grace of some proud flamenco dancer, stamped its hoof hard against the ground. It walked forward a few paces, head still high, and repeated the stamp, slower this time, and with more grace. We faced each other in this manner for a full two minutes, and in the space of that time a single name came into my head—T’chi Manitou. This was more than a thought; it seemed that the words actually rang out among the trees, and in fact had the deer not barked sharply, stamped again, and then followed the others up the hill, I would have said that it spoke the name. But then perhaps I h
ad been thinking too much about Doctor John’s story of the tiger in India. I went in among the boulders and sat down for a while, listening to the stillness and the periodic cries of the blue jays. There was a rustle of wind, and then a deeper quiet descended on the ridge. The sense of a haunted land was everywhere.
The fireflies hatched early in the meadow that June. I saw the first one just after dusk on the eighteenth, a bright spark against the black wall of the trees. It was at first a mere glow, a reflection of dew I thought, until I saw it rise above the grass, flashing, and spirit off to the east. Several others appeared that night, and after two or three days they were everywhere, filling the meadow with light. Henry saw fireflies on the sixteenth of June in 1852 on an evening walk. There was heat lightning that evening on the horizon, and somewhere in the village someone was playing a flute. Beyond on the river, a mile distant, he could hear the rolling chorus of the bullfrogs. The night was hot, the air close, and in the meadows around him the bright flashes of the fireflies were sparkling. They were like fallen stars, and in their light he envisioned a union of sky and earth, each showing its light “for love,” as he wrote.
In 1852 he had been gone from his cabin at Walden Pond for five years. He left, he said, for the same reason that he went there, because he had other lives to lead. Perhaps he realized that staying on would have dulled the experience. He continued to explore the natural world of Concord after he moved out, but he did not have that many years left.
Living at the End of Time Page 21
