by H. K. Bush
Yes, I should. But, in fact, I feel almost nothing— except now and then when that shadow of horror awakens and claws at my gut—and so I refrain from looking back directly at those moments.
I’ve never spoken of the events of that day, but have known for years that I must someday write something down. I’ve often wondered if I’d suffered some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome, a common enough prognosis these days, something I usually associate with military vets and others who live in the line of fire. If I’m honest, I have to say I do not regret what happened. And I don’t, or perhaps, can’t, feel remorse. Why is that?
But when I close my eyes at night, the images often return. The massive beam pinning Sensei to the futon. A skyscraper bent over like a pipe cleaner. The sound of Miyamoto’s skull striking the hard wood at the base of a doorway. The futile cries of the dying: “Taskette! TASKETTEEEE!” Dragging Miyamoto’s body out to that peaceful garden, then hurrying to load my precious boxes in the car as he bled to death on the frozen ground.
And there are other misgivings as well. Of the cash that was in the safe, I sent most of it to Mika—but not all of it. I kept a large sum to complete the tasks assigned to me by my mentor. I packaged up the items Sensei wanted Mika to have—including the majority of the cash and jewelry— and shipped them to her Tokyo address from a post office outside of Kyoto. But that didn’t take all the money I’d set aside for the task. I kept the rest.
I don’t know if Mika or her father ever went to Kobe to check on Sensei’s house, to see the destruction with their own eyes. I never asked, and I didn’t have the courage to face her anyway. I could never have found the words to tell her about her uncle’s lonely, painful death. And I didn’t want to see her again knowing she was about to be married. Especially not after what Sensei, in his dying moments, had said about true romance. So, after I sent her the packages, I never saw or communicated with her again.
Portentous rumblings, indeed. When I read Jack’s words for the first time, I felt as if the ground beneath my own feet had shifted, revealing the flaws within the foundations of both of our worlds. It is difficult to express my sense of horror—in particular, the description of Jack’s final meeting with Miyamoto and his role in the man’s death. Death, I say—not murder.
Here we can see why the clinical signs of trauma were so neatly and mysteriously listed by our narrator, early on. How he must have suffered! But I still admit to a nauseating confusion that has made me wonder if I even knew this version of Jack. The former student with whom I had been corresponding all these many years. My very own intellectual progeny, in fact— my own precious offspring, as it were, which, to my mind, implicates me in some way. It caused me to speculate further: to what extent do parents share in the guilt of their children’s crimes? Or teachers, mentors, coaches, pastors, or priests? Those of us, in other words, called to provide not mere information, but formation, character, integrity, honor, the knitting together of a human soul? Sowing in hope, indeed. I recognize that some readers will find these to be mere abstractions that have grown rather stale in our postmodern age, alas. But some of us still hold onto them.
This nausea of which I speak comes in the wake of that conjecture—to what extent am I guilty as an absent participant in the senseless death of Jack’s nemesis? And knowing all this, how can I embrace the spoils of Jack’s adventures overseas?
And yet, dear reader, as you will soon discover, I did, and still do, share in those delightful spoils. And like Jack, I do embrace them with some queasiness, yes, but with little or no,remorse.
CHAPTER 12
The only person in all of Japan that I wanted to see after the quake, and after all that happened at Sensei’s house, was my old buddy Jim, the restless mystic, holed up on the top of a mountain with his Buddhist cohort, looking down on all of the human misery. His temple, Ryoan-ji, might provide a convenient landing spot, a temporary shelter for me, and (I hoped) a long-term storage unit for the treasures I was hauling in the back of my Nissan. For one thing, I wondered if someone else might come looking for those valuables, or for me—perhaps someone like Endo. So I headed, almost instinctively, for the hills.
I arrived at the temple, high in the crisp mountain air, late in the afternoon of January 18, a day after the tragedy. I had slept in the car along the way, and my now-wrinkled clothes smelled of smoke and sweat. I parked along the same road I had first used, a pull-off near the derelict bus-stop next to the pathway approaching the temple. Snow was not an issue, luckily. I locked the car and checked it twice—thinking again that there were bad people even in Japan—and began winding my way up the mountainside toward the hideout.
Again it was a long journey, and again, as I passed into the complex high on top of the mountain, there sat the old, broken-down monk on the massive boulder, like a statue, frozen in time. His eyes were closed, and he was facing directly into the weak sunshine. Ryoan-ji glistened in the background, its dusty reds and oranges charged with the grandeur of God.
On the first evening, I told the abbreviated (or, rather, heavily edited) story about my earthquake experience. I didn’t mention Sensei or what happened at his house. As far as the monks were concerned, I had just run out of my building, gotten in my car, and driven directly to Ryoan-ji. Initially, I neglected to mention the boxes in my back seat and trunk. Nobody asked questions, or seemed to find my story curious, though I did feel Jim’s hawk-eyed scrutiny burning into my eye-sockets. I couldn’t meet his gaze.
The next day, I shuttled back down the mountain, mainly to watch the news coverage of the quake on NHK, and to make some phone calls, preparing for my imminent departure ( Jim still had no phones up there). I got hold of my parents, who were frantic about the earthquake and had not heard anything from me. They had called the university repeatedly, as well as the US Embassy. My mother sounded very old on the phone that day, as if her palpitating heart was audible from seven thousand miles away.
I also managed to contact Professor Aoyama, and let him know I was OK. He was at the office just days after the event. “Springs-sensei! Thank you for calling! The U.S. Embassy has been searching for you!” He shouted into the receiver, his voice full of frantic exclamation marks.
“Yes, sensei. I know. My parents have been worried. I finally spoke with them.”
“And where are you?”
Pause. “I’m at a friend’s house. Out here in Nagano.”
“Nagano-city?”
Another hesitation. “Yes. That’s right. Nagano-city.” There was no need for me to be any more specific. I assured him I would be back in Kobe very soon, and asked him about what details I would need to take care of in order to leave Japan. I insisted that I wished to leave Japan as soon as possible. This seemed to surprise him a bit, since the contract did not end until March, but he said he understood my desire to fly home, and that, given the citywide damage, the schedule for the rest of the term was up in the air anyway. I wanted to know the details of departure: where I should drop my condo keys, where I should pick up any remaining salary. He was very kind, assuring me that he would arrange whatever final matters needed to be resolved at the university.
Aoyama’s helpful answers motivated me even more to get out of the country, so I called Northwest Airlines over and over, trying to move up my departure date. It turns out I wasn’t the only one trying to get out of Japan, and there were no seats available at the moment. Finally, I found an open flight: Feb. 1, a Wednesday, just over a week away. Then it hit me: I was finished with Japan. I would have to head back to Kobe, pack up whatever remained in my condo that was worth taking home, and say my sayonaras.
The next morning at Ryoan-ji, I headed down the mountain to my car with Jim and four of the other monks. I had finally told Jim about the items in my car—although I didn’t tell him the whole story, of course—and he had spoken with Watanabe-roshi about my request to store six medium-sized containers at the temple, in a side chamber along with the other treasures of the temple. The roshi met w
ith us both for about ten minutes, assuring me that they could handle my request “efficiently and silently,” as he put it. “We are Ryoan-ji—the silent dragon. Silence is a specialty here.”
I had no need to describe the contents of the boxes, if I chose not to, and they did not even want to know how long it would be until I returned for them all. We agreed upon a shibboleth, a secret item by which future inmates of the temple could know that I had sent an agent to recover the boxes. The only thing we omitted was a secret handshake. It was all rather mysterious, and actually kind of cool. I guess the less they knew, the better it would be for everyone. And I could not explain why, but I trusted them—about 95 percent or so, anyway.
Still, I carried that 5 percent of lingering suspicion back to the states with me. Especially considering that the contents were worth a huge amount of money, tempting to anyone, zen monks or not. Casually I asked, “So, what’s in it for you?”
Watanabe-roshi smiled serenely at what must have seemed to him to be a crude, American-style question. He leaned forward and took my hand, rather gently. He was in no rush to respond. Then he said, “Why must there be anything in anything? Such an American consideration! You are Jim’s friend, and that is good enough for the rest of us, ne?” He laughed at this last statement, as though it were a sudden discovery. I said nothing further.
So we hiked down and loaded ourselves up with everything from my car. Everything except Hemingway’s valise, which I locked in the trunk. I intended to keep that one with me. By noon, we had lugged the boxes silently up the mountain and stacked them outside the main temple. None of us spoke during the entire ascent. After removing the tatami, and then the floorboards underneath which the treasures were kept hidden, I asked Jim if I could hold, one last time, one of the sleek katana swords in my hand. He agreed, and pulled one out, removing it from its crafted box and then its fine silk bag. He ceremoniously handed it to me with both hands, and I received it with both of my own, bowing. We did not speak now. I stood with it, felt the balance of it in my hands. Its colors glistened in the pale sunlight. The steel was iridescent; the blade razor sharp. I stood and swung it here and there, trying to do what I believed a samurai might do. I imagined its mighty force being swung into an enemy’s shoulder blade, down and across. Its sheer weight and sharpened edge, if brought down in a precise manner, might have once been used to cut completely through a human body, from shoulder to the opposite ribcage, diagonally. The thought was scary and intoxicating. Finally I spoke to Jim, as I held out to him with both hands the lethal weapon. “I know they say the pen is mightier than the sword, but that is one spectacularly nasty piece,” I sighed.
He replaced it in the bag, then the box, slipping it back beneath the floorboards. “Words are still mightier, pal. Let’s get your stuff.”
Now it only took ten minutes to carry the containers the short distance into the temple. “Wait!” Jim said. He rushed away and returned with a box of black plastic trash bags. “It gets dusty in here.” It took a few more minutes to wrap each box in a bag, fit everything into the cramped space, and then replace everything and to lock it up just as it had been before.
When we were alone, he brushed his hands on his robes and asked, “So when do you plan to come get all this stuff?” Jim the zen monk could be cool and calm, but Jim the American could be just as blunt as I was.
“Soon. I don’t know, really. But probably within a year or so. It’s … pretty important to me. And valuable.” I looked him in the eye. “I need you to take care of it. If you do, I’ll make it worth your while.”
“No charge, pal. Just make sure we see you again, and soon, OK?”
I stayed on a few more days, putting off my inevitable return to battered Kobe as long as humanly possible. The serenity of the place, and the fun I had with Jim and the others, was intoxicating. We lounged around, playing cards or go or shogi, talking about old times, meditating, cleaning up, doing chores, or just staying quiet most of the day. It was true, as Watanabe had said: silence was one of their specialties. I read a few of the old paperbacks that Jim kept around the place. Each day I stayed “one more night,” until I knew I had to leave my remote Zen hideout. I would only have two full days to wrap everything up in Kobe, but that seemed enough. Maybe even too much. The thought of heading back down to Kobe—to the scene of the crime, so to speak—caused a knot to form in my gut, and the more I thought about it, the more that knot became like a fist with fingers reaching out to squeeze my entrails.
Finally, after a very early breakfast on Sunday the 29th, I made my way back down to the car, along with Jim. We stood quietly for a few moments, until I broke the silence. “Well, thanks for the hospitality. This is it, old buddy. I can’t say how long it will be before I come back for the items. But for now, thanks for helping out an old friend.”
“No problem.” He looked around. “Of course you realize I may not be here forever.”
“Just how long will you be around here, anyway?”
He had no idea, of course, but said, “Life’s hard to predict, buddy. Full of twists and turns. Remember the lines from the Odyssey? ‘Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.’ But you already know about that, don’t you?”
We peered into each other’s eyes, then looked off together into the mountains. He draped his huge arm over my shoulders. “Who knows? I doubt if I’m a lifer, but I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. It’s nice up here, isn’t it? Anyway, you told me before you’d be back in a year, right?”
And at that moment, I honestly felt I would manage to get back within a year or two, and repeated my hopeful estimate. He thought it all over. “Well, if I do leave, the guys will pass on the instructions, along with our shibboleth. Kind of fun, like being a spy. And I love the code. A battered copy of The Old Man and the Sea. I like that. Read it in high school. It always made me think of Ahab, to tell you the truth. Huntin’ down that big monster. I’m sure guys in your business have thought of that connection already, right?”
I smiled. “Yeah, I think that may have come up before.”
We stood beside my mud-splotched Nissan. “Well, I’m outta here.” I hugged him. “Keep looking for Oz, old buddy. I’ll do the same.”
I started to climb into the car as Jim remained watching me, his hands behind his back. He had an authoritative look in his eye, along with amusement. He had changed so much since the old days. I rolled down the window. “Don’t take no wooden nickels, Zen master.”
He smirked. “And don’t piss in a pothole. Some things never change, yeah?”
I thought of Sensei, wanting very much to say something profound to Jim, like what Sensei had told me about the words, but I had no words of wisdom to share. “Yeah. Thank God. Some things never change!” I raced the engine, let out the brake, and slowly began inching my way back down the steep grades of the mountainside. In my rear view mirror I could still see Jim, raising his hands and crying out, “Sayonara! Banzai!” Just as I had done for Mika.
Darkness was thickening on that Sunday evening as I came down the snowy foothills onto the expressway towards Kobe. I had no idea if I could sleep in the condo that night, or if it was even accessible. The quake had hit almost two weeks ago, so I assumed my building, and the city in general, were now open for business. Then it occurred to me that the highways might have limitations due to damage. So I decided to take a detour, more scenic but longer by a few hours at least—truthfully, just one more procrastination. I drove through Rokko National Park, then down the back way, the road finally dumping me directly into my neighborhood. I wondered what kinds of conditions awaited me.
Just before eight o’clock that night, I tooled the Nissan into the street where I kept it parked, a couple blocks above my building. Things were cleaned up, but the damage to the neighborhood was evident. It was quiet and there were few people out on the streets. In Japan, Sundays were always the quietest nights of the week anyway. Cars were in their normal places, though, and most buildings had lights
on, with people moving within. It was almost like normal— almost; damage was all around, if you took the time to notice. I was not interested in searching out further evidence of the quake, however, so I headed into my building.
The elevator was still not working, so I had to hoof it up fifteen stories. That’s a tough hike when your heart’s already racing from anxiety. I still had not seen anyone else in the building, but the key worked in my door, and I could hear music down the hall, so I went on in. It was a mess—I don’t know why this surprised me. But the disarray took my breath away. One of the big windows was cracked all the way across. Several cabinet doors were open and the contents had spilled out onto the floor. A plant had fallen over, much of the dirt spilling onto the tatami. But the electricity worked and so did the water, phone, and even the cable TV. But no gas for cooking or hot water. Turning on the TV in the midst of all that clutter was surreal.
I went to work getting my stuff ready for departure. I had already unloaded most of the big items to other gaijin through sayonara sales. Now I dragged out my large suitcases and started performing triage on everything else. I got out a few trash bags and decided to be ruthless. If it didn’t go in the suitcase, it went in the trash. Occasional pulls on an unbroken bottle of Jack Daniels helped. I did not stop until everything had been sorted out, and the suitcases were bulging. But my recall of that packing session is blurred, hazy. I vaguely remember tossing a few things out the window, perhaps even in anger. I do know it was past 3:00 a.m., or possibly even four, on Monday morning when I was finally able to settle down and get some sleep.
