The Love of a Silver Fox: Folk Tales from Seki CIty

by Darvin Babiuk

Tomo's house had only two rooms, one floored and the other without, so she could easily hear the voices from the other room. There were a few cheap cups in the earthen cupboards in the unfloored room and almost before the sentence was finished she had them out for the tea. As she boiled the water and spooned out the green tea, she could catch bits and pieces of O-hana's grumbling to herself.

  "If Little Gen comes back I'll spank his bottom," she vowed. "I don't care if he is the great Inen, now. To me, he'll always be Little Gen. That was his name then and I don't care what he calls himself now."

  "O-hana," interrupted Sakubei. "How old do you think Little Gen is? Close to sixty! He's not a child anymore. He's the great Buddhist priest Hirosei Inen now. Just you try and spank the bottom of someone like that and see what kind of trouble you'll get." This was just the kind of thing Sakubei always worried about most.

  "Oh, you think so do you?" said the feisty, seventy year old, picking up her rag to vigorously clean again. "I'd break him into pieces with my hands just like that."

  Just then, Tomo stepped up into the floored part of the house with the tea and stood before the priest. "I'm one tea cup short," she said embarrassed.

  "Don't worry about it," he reassured her. "I'll send everything you need from my house tonight. It's been too long since Inen and the villagers were able to sit down and drink Seki's delicious sake together."

  Soon after, the priest went home and everyone was very busy cleaning and getting everything ready for the big celebration. They worked into the afternoon until, finally, everything was done and they left, leaving Tomo alone. Slowly, her thoughts began to quiet as she gazed out into the garden behind the house. It was a small garden, but it had a stone lantern and a big tree stretching up into the winter sky. Its red berries were covered with snow and as she watched, the afternoon sun slowly melted it and it dripped peacefully onto the ground. This time of year, Mt. Ibuki would be covered with snow, too, and looking out to the West, Tomo began to think of her father.

  Tomo's thoughts went back to what must have been five or six years ago when she'd unexpectedly run into him in Nagoya. It was the Fall Festival and everyone was bringing a friend to pray at the temple. The town was full, and you couldn't walk more than a few steps without bumping into someone you knew. She didn't know what possessed the Buddha to lead them both there, but suddenly there he was. He must have been there to read his poetry. You could tell he hadn't had a roof over his head to call his own for a long time. He was slovenly, his clothes torn and black with charcoal, his hat soiled from overuse, but she knew in a glance that the pitifully dressed beggar-priest was her father. Her heart filled with longing and she wanted to cry. But she knew she couldn't. Not because she was shy, but because she couldn't forgive her father's selfishness for leaving them alone. The face of her dead mother kept swimming before her eyes. Frantically, she searched her heart for the right words to say to this priest who was her father and had left them all alone.

  Just then, she saw him stretch out his hand and take one or two steps in her direction, and she burst out crying. How much time passed, she didn't know, but she could hear her father's voice muttering one of his haiku over her weeping head.

  "A pair of sleeves,

  Wet from the drizzling sky,

  I wonder, or tears?"

  "Huh," she said, looking up, the tears spilling out over her eyelids and obscuring her father's face. Even now, she could remember those tears clearly.

  "A pair of sleeves,

  Wet from the drizzling sky,

  I wonder, or tears?"

  muttered her father again and vanished back into the crowd, almost as if he were running from her.

  She wondered what kind of person would come back today. He had begun to study with the great Bassho when he was forty years old, if she remembered right. Now he was sixty. What had he been doing for those twenty years? As owner of the sake shop, he'd had a good life, but he'd thrown that all away for a life of wandering about without penny to his name.

  The afternoon grew late, and as the drops of melting snow from the straw-thatched roof grew into a torrent, Tomo's neighbors and relatives gathered in her small house again. There must have about twenty of them all together, relatives like Tokuichi, old haiku club friends, and of course Sakubei and O-hana. They sat there together talking and waiting for Inen to come home. A skinny man who had been in the haiku club with Inen began talking in a high voice.

  "This is a story about long ago, when Inen was staying at the house of one his haiku pupils in a neighboring village, but I doubt that anyone has heard it," he said.

  "Oh, not that old story again. Surely, everyone here's heard it," Tomo thought, looking around, but no one stopped him. The skinny man raised himself up onto one knee and proudly stroked his chin two or three times before continuing.

  "The apprentice had just got married and they hadn't even cleared away the wedding things from the living room yet. All of his wife's finery and kimono's were still hanging up waiting to be put away. The next morning, she got up and went to the dining room only to see that Inen had already slipped out of his futon and her kimono was gone. 'What a strange thing,' she said, opening up the back door to look for them."

  Here, the skinny man purposely took a breath to allow the listener's voices to leap into the pause.

  "What! You mean Inen was a thief?"

  "Don't be stupid. They were women's clothes!"

  "And so beautiful most people couldn't help stealing them."

  "A thief'll take anything. No one knows what they'll take."

  "That's right. No one knows."

  "Ahem," said the skinny man, loudly clearing his throat and standing up, filling Tomo's minds with worried thoughts about how he would finish the story. He gestured to them to quiet down and continued.

  "That's right. That's just what the husband and wife were thinking, that maybe Inen stole the kimono, so they went outside to look for him. They looked all over, until they found him beside a wooden bridge near the graveyard with the kimono hung around his neck for fun and looking up at the beauty of the first plum blossoms against the clear, blue sky. When Inen noticed them, he put his finger to his lips and shushed them quiet. 'Shh,' he said. 'It's quiet, isn't it?'

  He was quiet for a little while, then took out an inkhorn he was carrying in his sleeve and carried it over next to a gravestone.

  'The stillness on top of the calm is the plum blossom,' he wrote, but they weren't interested. All they could do was stare at the kimono. 'It was very cold this morning, wasn't it?' Inen said. Then he smiled, took the kimono off, and handed it back to them."

  Everyone listening to the story was thoroughly disgusted by Inen's actions, but no one was willing to say anything bad about him so Tomo let out a breath of relief. Next, the priest started to talk enthusiastically.

  "I know a good story about Inen, too," he said, twisting around to warm his back to the heat from the fireplace. "Will you do me the favour of listening to it?" Everyone, even the people crowded into the unfloored part of the house, turned to face him.

  "I hear this happened on one of his trips to Western Japan. There was a haiku meeting going on in a certain house there and Inen wanted to join in. But the people took one look at this dirty, slovenly priest and immediately sat him in the corner, as far away from the action as possible. Of course, he couldn't brag about who he was, so they treated him just like the beggar he looked like. But something strange happened. When it came time to read the haiku, the dirty priest's were head and shoulders above theirs. Everyone was surprised and begged to know his name, but Inen wouldn't answer. He finished his haiku, then got up and wandered off without saying a word. Later, when they found out it had been the famous Hirosei Inen, everyone broke out into a cold sweat and went looking for him to invite him there again, but he was long gone by then."

  "Eeee . . . Inen's really a great man, isn't he?" Tokuichi squealed happily, looking around at all the people waiting for his famous relative to arrive.
Tomo had a hard time keeping calm, too, knowing that such a great man would be arriving there any minute.

  "Just how far has Inen gone?" boomed out a loud voice into the floored room. It was a big, bearded man standing on tiptoe on the dirt floor, looking at the priest and waiting for an answer.

  "Kyoto, Osaka, Hokuriku; I hear he's even stretched his legs as far as Kyushu," Chikurinji-sama answered. "And all during that time, he was making haiku. Moreover, during that time, he was taught by the great Bassho."

  "Bassho!" someone uttered, impressed.

  "Bassho? Who's Bassho?" someone else wondered out loud. Tomo knew a little about him, but she also knew that Chikurinji-sama could explain him much better, so she waited for him to speak.

  "Bassho? Bassho is such a great man that no single word can do him justice. He was a wandering priest like Inen, but more than that he's like the living god of haiku. When it comes to haiku, no one can come close to him. Anyway, Inen was his disciple for a while when he was walking around Gifu writing haiku."

  Tomo wanted to tell them about all the haiku that Bassho had written when he had been staying at the foot of Mt. Kinkazan. There was one about a cormorant fishing boat, for example, but she was sure most of them sitting here knew it already. They were from the haiku club after all. As soon as the priest was finished, they talked amongst themselves noisily. She tried as hard as she could to listen to their talk.

  "The Great Bassho is the best haiku teacher Japan has ever had."

  "It must be ten years since he passed away."

  "That's right. Inen was called in to write his will at his bedside. It was such a great honour, I remember it clearly. That was just about ten years ago."

  "Inen was only one of his ten disciples, but he chose him."

  Tomo stopped and listened that far, then, when she was able to breathe again, started to work. But she couldn't calm her heart thinking about when her father would be home and what he would be like.

  In the living room, the gossip was continuing. Soon, signs that evening was coming began to cover the foot of Mt. Asakura. Small, delicate flakes of snow began falling again and it looked it would continue well into the night. Indoors, the light burned brightly, however, as they enjoyed the potluck dinner everyone had contribute to and waited for Inen to come home. Some of the people from the secret haiku club were there, too. The sliding, paper doors were partly open so it was cold, and sparks were crackling in the fireplace. About thirty more minutes must have passed when suddenly O-hana shouted out from the veranda in a screech.

  "Who's there? What's that? You there, standing in the garden. Get inside."

  A single person was standing out in the snow. Everyone watched as he brushed the snow off and slowly took off his straw coat. He took two or three steps in from the dark and approached the porch. His kimono was torn and ragged. There was a long, narrow gourd dangling from his neck. He had long, messy hair and a black, scraggly beard covered about half his face. Slowly, his eyes looked around the room, flashing for a moment when he saw the fire in the hearth and Tomo knew in a flash who it was.

  "Father!" she cried, pushing aside the people sitting on the dirt floor to cling to the cuff of his kimono. The sounds around her seemed completely cut off. They stood standing like that for a long time until the priest interrupted them.

  "It's Inen, isn't it?" he said, standing up near the fireplace and extending a big hand, his voice echoing out over the garden. "We were waiting for you. I'm Chikurinji,"

  "Inen-sama!" "That's Inen?" "Hunhh. Him?" exploded the voices of the waiting crowd in a single breath. The voices seemed to be coming from another world, as Tomo sat there clinging to him, her shoulders trembling. Her father was home! At long last, he'd come home! Trying to still the tears inside her heart, Tomo looked up at her father at last. He still hadn't said a word, but when she looked into her father's eyes, they were overflowing with tears. She couldn't take it anymore and joined the rest of the room in bursting into tears.

  "Inen, what are you standing there for? Sit down," the priest from Chikurinji said. Tomo couldn't stop crying, but she took her father by the hand and slowly led him to a place next to the priest. It was like she'd lost her legs completely. Someone brought out the tea and the shivering Inen wrapped his numbed hands gratefully around the hot cup, watching the steam rise up. He still hadn't said a single word.

  Suddenly, Tomo became uneasy, fearing he'd wander off and disappear just like in Nagoya. Soon, someone brought out the rice wine, though, and one by one Chikurinji filled their tea cups. Inen accepted a cup from Tomo and drank it down in a single gulp. Then he began to speak.

  "My hometown is good," was all he said, staring into his tea cup. Her father was like a huge mountain beyond imagination, an elusive cloud, Tomo thought, watching him dance and sing a prayer for the harvest that Bassho had made. He wasn't just her father, she knew. He was the famous Inen, disciple of Bassho and writer of haiku in his own right. Before she knew it, he'd be taking to the far roads on his travels again. She reached out and poured the sake until it overflowed from his empty cup.