by Marele Day
Yugen awoke to a sea tinged pink with morning. It was time.
He cradled the urn, whispered his goodbyes. He held it just under the surface of the water, loosening the lid so that the sea could seep in and gradually work the remains free.
Something was wedged in the neck of the urn. A piece of cloth, possibly put there to keep the lid secure. Yugen lifted it out, let it unfurl. It was not the sombre black the urn had been wrapped in but blue with white spots. Yugen had never seen such cloth at the monastery. Soshin must have brought it in with him, a personal belonging. His treasured possessions—a baseball bat, a prayer bag, and now this. It seemed so fresh and bright.
Yugen fingered the cottony texture of the cloth. It did not need to go back in the urn, it had served its purpose there. He would keep it with him, a farewell gift from Soshin. An inheritance.
The monk placed the urn in the water, cradling it in his hand. Then he let it drift away.
31
Something gained
It was quiet and airy. Light. The bedding smelled different. Lavender. There was no traffic, no van doors slamming or voices wafting up from the street. Lilli could hear seagulls, and someone padding around the room. She opened her eyes.
‘Morning,’ said Chicken.
‘Mmm,’ replied Lilli.
Chicken came over and knelt down beside the bed. ‘I have to go to work,’ she said softly. ‘Will . . . will you be here this afternoon when I get home?’
‘Yes,’ murmured Lilli.
‘Promise?’ asked Chicken.
‘I promise,’ replied Lilli. She held up her little finger, so did Chicken, both of them remembering the childhood ritual but shy of doing it now that they were grown up. They slowly put their hands down.
‘Mum’s working over in the pearl farm and Dad’s fishing, so you’ll have the place to yourself. If you want a cup of tea the kitchen is . . .’
‘It’s OK, Chicken, I know where everything is. And I’ll be here when you get back. Promise.’
Lilli sat up in bed, gazing at the magnificence of the family tree. It started on a large sheet of paper but spilled far beyond. Green leaves were painted on the wall, ornate frames around each of the photos, some in the form of vines with red and blue f lowers threaded through them, others were scalloped with shells.
Here was the whole of Lilli’s family—the Great Ones, Cedar and Pearlie, their husbands, Violet and Nori, Violet and Nori beaming over new baby Chicken. How carefully her sister had worked to keep the connections between them all. As Lilli gazed, they gazed back, every one of them smiling. Some even had a hand raised, waving. There was no reprimand, no blame, just happy smiling faces.
The images started to blur, as if underwater. Tears were running freely down Lilli’s cheeks. She found all of the photos she’d sent Chicken. Beneath the composition of herself in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge were miniature pouched animals. Surrounding the Statue of Liberty—toy guns. The Eiffel Tower had plastic croissants. She’d have to tell Chicken she’d never been to any of those places. Eventually.
On the branch where Lilli’s mother should have been Chicken had drawn the sea princess, hair f lowing over her shoulders, dressed in a golden gown shimmering with silvery fish scales. It was the way Lilli had always imagined Mitsi. She wondered when Chicken had given her a place on the tree, what she knew of the things that had happened before she was born.
Beside the drawing was a photo of Violet as a young girl. This pair of sisters. How hard it must have been for Violet, too, when Mitsi became a ghost. Her way of coping was to gloss over what she called ‘unpleasantness’, keep smiling and pretend it never happened. Perhaps now, after all this time, if Lilli asked carefully, Violet might be ready to talk; she and Lilli could share their memories.
Cedar and Pearlie, Mitsi and Violet. The only sisters missing from the tree were Lilli and Chicken. Lilli found the empty space surrounded by hearts. She took out the photo she’d carried back to the island, and placed it there. A perfect fit. The family tree was complete.
Lilli picked up the folded towel Chicken had thoughtfully placed at the foot of the bed, and went downstairs.
Against the bathroom wall were the shower nozzles, each with a basin and stool. In a corner the familiar tub, now with a cover over it, keeping the water hot.
Lilli turned on the shower, let the water slide over her hair, run down her body. The room did not gush with memories but let Lilli find them—Cedar washing Lilli’s hair, her eyes squeezed tightly shut so that shampoo didn’t get in; Lilli cupping water and trickling it over baby Chicken’s head. Back bottoms and front bottoms; Chicken and Lilli f licking each other with towels. A frog they discovered on the windowsill, its pale chest puffing in and out. A cricket perched on the ceiling above the bath which fell in when the rising steam loosened its grip. Lilli turned off the shower, patted herself dry.
Back upstairs she packed the bold designer T-shirt away, and put on a plain green one. Lilli looked out the window. Hardly anyone about. A couple of workmen down at the port but that was all. Lilli remembered that it was always quiet like this the day after the festival, as if the island had exhausted itself.
The service bell rang. Lilli hadn’t heard anyone come in. Should she go and see what they wanted? Would it be presumptuous? She waited till the bell faded into silence. Whoever it was would be gone now. She started down the stairs.
A man was standing at the counter, a monk. He seemed somehow familiar yet Lilli was sure they had never met. He looked at her with quiet loving-kindness, seeing everything, not just the one thing about Lilli that other men saw. In his eyes was ref lected the face she had before she was born, while she was still taking shape, before anything had ever happened to her. She walked slowly towards him.
He was not the preened pampered monks Lilli was used to in the city. Perhaps he was on some sort of pilgrimage. His hair was growing at odd angles, he was dishevelled, as if he’d been sleeping in the wild, under a bush. There were even a few twigs caught in the folds of his robes.
‘Good morning. Do you have a vacancy?’ He was holding a Welcome to Island House pamphlet in his hand.
Lilli and the monk were still metres away from each other yet she could feel his human warmth. It came to her like a wave gently rolling onto the shore.
‘Just for one night. I need to freshen up.’
She imagined bathing him, soaping his long limbs, patting him dry.
‘Yes.’ It sounded as if it had not come from her but the house itself. It echoed from room to room, up to the rafters and back down again. Yes.
‘That is, I don’t know. I am a guest. If you’d like to wait, I’m sure someone will be along soon to help you,’ she said in her travel agent voice. ‘Perhaps I’ll see you later.’
Lilli opened the door.
‘I’m Yugen,’ the monk called before she slipped away.
‘Lilli.’
He had given her his name. And she had given hers. She had smiled as she left; Lilli smiled at him.
The fragrance of apples and the high clear tuning-fork pitch of the bell. Although at the end of his journey, he found his mind wandering back to the beginning, to the intimacy of the lift at the city emporium. It was the same woman. When he saw the way she walked he was sure of it. Lilli. Yugen watched her all the way down the hill.
He wished he hadn’t said ‘freshen up’. On its way out of his mouth he was already regretting it. It was too personal, drew attention to his body. Even asking if she had a vacancy now felt like overstepping the boundaries of politeness. Standing in the same room as her.
There she was again, crossing the port. She turned and looked back up to the house. The words were dissolved into air; regret served no purpose. He wished he was more adept at conversation. Wishing also served no purpose.
The monk wanted more than to freshen up. He needed to shave, soak in a bath, prepare himself for the monastery. He should leave now, before she returned. Pick up his backpack and go. It was still earl
y. A ferry ride to Boat Harbour, train to the city, Blue House tonight then back to equanimity and choice-free routine.
Yugen knew that he would not go. ‘See you later,’ she’d said. He wanted to be here when she returned. He sat down on the black leather couch. It sighed like the bench at Oceanworld. Yugen felt the same tingling sense of anticipation he’d experienced while waiting for the reappearance of the sea woman, except this time there was no glass separating them. He and Lilli had exchanged names. They shared the same element, her fragrance was still here with him.
Welcome to Island House. He opened the pamphlet to find a sumptuous seafood platter, a mountain of prawns, shellfish, crab pieces and squid arranged with architectural precision. Carefully placed around the perimeter were fresh abalone, facing upwards, revealing the folded complexity of their f leshy parts. Pieces of ferny greenery completed the display. Special orders taken. Minimum of two persons.
Himself and Lilli. When he had freshened up, Yugen would invite her to dine with him. A cool drink before dinner, free-flowing conversation. Witty, entertaining, with no cause for regrets. She would feel so much at ease with him that she would say, ‘You seem familiar. Have we met before?’ and he would reply sagely, ‘Perhaps in another life.’
Yugen heard a scooter coming up the hill. He stood at the reception counter, but the scooter drove straight by.
He listened to the quiet breathing of the house. A family lived here. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind if he helped himself to a drink of water. Yugen walked along the downstairs corridor till he found the kitchen. There was a rice cooker on the bench, plates and glasses neatly arranged on shelves. He cupped his hand under the tap and drank a few mouthfuls of water.
His foot came into contact with something under the sink. A basket. What drew Yugen’s attention was not the basket itself but the cloth covering it. He returned to the reception area, took the cloth from the urn out of his backpack. The one in the kitchen was faded but it was the same material—blue with white spots.
A coincidence, nothing more. He might never have seen the cloth in the urn, or come to this house. Yugen could have disposed of Soshin’s remains back at the Married Rocks, returned straight away to the monastery. He had made the choices, it was his own decisions that had brought him all this way. Nevertheless, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that somehow he had been guided here, that this house was part of Soshin’s story. Yugen remembered the sea women’s talisman, the star drawn with one line to find the way back. Had Yugen retraced Soshin’s footsteps, brought him back?
Yugen held the blue-and-white-spotted cloth in his hands, contemplating the thousands of threads in the weave of it. Perhaps his story was part of its fabric too. He looked down the road for Lilli and saw an old lady dressed in shiny red pyjamas slowly making her way up the hill.
Yugen sat on the soft sighing couch, alert, hopeful, ready to begin.
32
A body of water
She had told him her name. It swam out of her mouth without hindrance, like fish in the f low of a current. At the bar she always gave a false one—Elvira or Miranda. But he was not like those men. He wasn’t even wearing a suit! Dishevelled, untidy, in need of a good scrub, and she didn’t mind. Lilli looked up towards the house. Yugen. She hoped he would be there when she returned.
Lilli traversed the port and walked along the road until she arrived at the inlet. She took off her shoes and stepped down, felt aeons of finely ground shells under her feet.
The sea came towards her, all of it at once, ripple upon ripple. It slid onto the sand, fizzing like champagne. It washed over her toes, made its way around her feet, hollowing out the sand beneath her when it retreated. She picked up some of the gritty sand. Was this the same handful she’d put in her pocket? Or this one, or that? Surely there must be traces left. She dug further. How could she tell which grains she and the sea princess had touched?
The day was bright blue, feathered by gulls and wisps of clouds. Lilli could only recall the jump into night when she closed her eyes. How much more deeply embedded in her mind it was than here, the place where it happened. So many tides had ebbed and f lowed over it since.
Lilli let her handful of sand trickle into the water and came back to the road, barefoot, carrying her shoes. The road rose up into the greenery, f lattened, then became a downward slope to the beach. She walked along the shoreline, felt the sea air moving around her face, the salty freshness of the breeze.
The dragon tree looked paler, more weathered, its limbs wind-pitted. But its grip on the rocks was still firm. The dead tree was Cedar’s marker, her point of reference.
Lilli climbed the pyramid of rock, sat on the peak, knees to her chest, feet poised. The reef was out there somewhere, in a straight line left of the dragon’s claw. Cedar could tell when the boat was near it, could smell the seaweed. Reef, seaweed, fish, tides, currents. This was the language Cedar had taught her. The sea’s distant humming, its bubbly shore chatter.
This was Lilli’s blood. It held the memories of her mother and her grandmother. Lilli imagined them sea-changed, travelling the world, waves reaching to the farthest shores and circling back again. Curving the bodies of dolphins, shooting up through the blowholes of whales, inundating coastlines, crashing against cliffs, changing colour—green, blue, grey. Black. Drifting westwards, eastwards, north and south, streaming into gulfs, going everywhere it was possible to go, then sleeping deep in the Marianas Trench.
Sleep your way down to the bottom, conserve your energy. Relax. Stay alert. Be respectful of the sea. Don’t turn your back on her.
The beach was deserted. Lilli shed her clothes and eased herself down to the edge of the water. Then she plunged in, the tangy chill rushing to meet her, licking, nibbling, f looding her body.
Bubbles filled her ears with sea whisperings; she felt her hair lifted, free, waving like seaweed. She became an aquatic creature, shaped by the water. Her movements became long and graceful, it was impossible to hurry. Though her eyes were blurred with sea she saw a school of fish turning in unison at her approach, their tiny bodies like specks of silver. She released some air, watched the bubbles rise, streams of sunlight catching them. All around her were tiny particles of life.
Lilli’s lungs were signalling. Time to go back. She burst through the surface into the air. Light, buoyant, washed.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to:
— Asialink and the Australia Council for a two-month residency in Japan, 2005
— sponsor Akiyoshidai International Arts Village and staff, especially Machiko Harada, program officer
— Leonie Boxtel for the phone call to Toba City Council
— Mr Saso, Ms Tanikawara and the mayor, Mr Inobi, for facilitating entry into the world of the diving women
— Kumi Kato, who told me about the festival
— Fumiko Sano for translation of research material
— Susie Burge, Jeni Caffin, Judith Lukin-Amundsen, Cybele Masterman for invaluable feedback on the manuscript
— Gary Worley for the photo
— the team at Allen and Unwin—Annette Barlow, Siobhán Cantrill, Catherine Milne, Ali Lavau and Emily O’Neill.
