10
So now I was the ghost of Rainy Mountain, the only one. But I preferred not to be alone, since that made me so very, very disappointed! You might call me a hateful spirit, but nothing I was or felt could have been prevented. No doubt this latest bitterness of mine was already smoking down to nothing inside my soul’s crematorium. But where were all the other urns, whose contents must have been as lovely as certain scrolls of the Lotus Sutra, each a particular hue and decorated with its own calligraphy and stamped crests? When my Rainy Mountain ghost remembered achieving her wish to be ever more feminine, she had improved her destiny; and I thought to do the same. So I set off in the direction that my mate had gone. But I was merely a ghost now—worse yet, an abandoned ghost, with less ichor inside me than any windblown dragonfly. So I fluttered along quite haltingly, much as an old woman clings to every wall, branch or railing that she can, since a fall will be disastrous. That was why it took me quite an eon to fly all the way to the peak of Rainy Mountain. By the time I got there, I would have been tired, if a ghost could ever get that way; perhaps when I am old enough I will indeed feel such a sensation; anyhow, I cannot say that I even remember what the summit looked like; but it must have been very, very grey. Behind a lichened torus, there might have been a vast stone ring filled with greenish water. Perhaps I cannot recollect it because I could not find my reflection in that pool. But I believe there was moss on a stone lamp; it must have been soft like pubic hair. Over this I drifted. Then I passed on through the clouds. No pine dripped on me; I heard no crow.
Emerging on the far side of Rainy Mountain, where it was windy, I heard before I saw it the rattling against the metal railing of those long narrow sticks with black characters on them. Cherry blossoms hung sickly in the streetlight behind a giant spreading tree. Here stood the narrow stele of a family tomb and there another, each stele upon its nested pedestals, each pedestal bearing a pair of silver cups for flowers and often an oval mouth for incense; sometimes a family crest had been etched into the stone. All this reminded me of something I could scarcely name. Between two silver cups lay a groove for incense, at which I finally remembered the breasts of my sweet Rainy Mountain ghost!
More clammy gusts played in this pallid forest of sticks which reached up toward the greyish night sky of Tokyo. Seeking to decode that long sad rattling, I reminded myself: Could they talk, this would be the only way they could do it, since nothing else moves.— Ever more desperately hopeful waxed my longing to see something, even something gruesome, for instance a ghoul or vampire shambling toward me up one of the long narrow alleys of gravestones. For to exist is to be alone.
Stopping at a very dark-shadowed tomb (streetlight glinting silver on its nearest flower-cup and on one granite corner-groove), I discovered the stone to be already engraved with nine names, in each case first the postmortem name and then the secular one. If only I knew what my Rainy Mountain ghost had been called! (I should have known; why didn’t I?) Then I could have drifted from tomb to tomb with some pretense of purpose. But didn’t I have all the time in the world?
Glumly I regarded the tomb, which seemed to stare back at me, for its two glowing cups resembled eyes in a black square stone face.
Falling back on hope, I bowed twice, clapped twice and bowed yet again. Here at once came my Rainy Mountain ghost with a horde of her bygone friends, some of them bearing twin lanterns and fresh white chrysanthemums, most of them skeletal, a few with the heads of foxes or horses, but all of them with their long black tresses perfectly combed. Spying me, they halted as if in confusion. Then, in that universally known gesture of threatening rejection which the dead make to scare away the living (but wasn’t I one of them?), they signified in the air: What cures you harms us, and vice versa. So stay away; stay away!
Ignoring this—what harm could they do me?—I sped toward them almost as rapidly as a cherry petal whirls down an April brook. They wavered, but disdained to sink back underground. So I peered between my sweetheart’s legs, but she was incubating nothing of mine. I won’t pretend I was surprised.
But as I hovered disconcerted, she reached into my bone cradle, pulled out an urn and shattered it against the tomb while her companions tittered. I oozed down upon the blue-black ashes to taste them. Thus was I apprised of her final disappointment—her sojourn with me. After that, nothing remained to me but the words of Lord Tokugawa Ieyasu: Blame yourself, not others.
THE CAMERA GHOST
1
In Kabukicho a certain crow caws and memory sticks protrude from behind the concrete wall. Unless you know somebody here, you will not think much of this spot—just another cemetery from the Meiji period! White apartment towers stand behind it; plastic pallets sometimes lie before it, mingled with cardboard boxes which once held frozen fish. Seeking the past without expectations, I entered through the open gate. A pine tree was slowly lifting the flagstones of the Naito family tomb. A woman was walking, with her eyes nearly closed, and two incense sticks smoking in her left hand; she was striding down the path of concrete flagstones to her family’s place. Whatever she would meet there would be hers alone, no matter whether she thought of herself as belonging to others. Charmed by her beautiful accomplishment of grief, I dreamed of photographing her. But she disappeared.
Approaching a vermilion-headed shrine high above whose bell was painted a golden swastika, I bowed and clapped my hands twice, hoping to see what was gone. The incense-bearing woman had expressed no such prayer, I guessed; she would have felt she’d done enough. Let the dead bury the dead, said Christ; while the cremated Buddha, smiling, blew smoke-rings as he rose away from his pyre. I for my part thought: Everything ought to be remembered forever.
Bending over a nearby tomb whose inscribed characters were moss-greened, I now descried the representation of a camera, which in my situation I considered lucky. Bowing, clapping and praying for old things, I remained there for the duration of two joss-sticks, then departed the cemetery.
An old man came walking slowly, dressed in tan, with a rust-pocked little Leica dangling from his shoulder. To speak more correctly of his outfit, it consisted of a tan-green coat, dark tan pants, pale beige hat and white gloves. At his shoulder hung a cracked briefcase. He came to me, leaning slowly on his black cane. I was prepared for him; I was the watcher on the side.
I assured him that since he must be the lonelier of us two, I would help him however I could.
He replied: You didn’t call me on my account, so no misstatements! What do you want? Speak quickly; my bones hurt!
Well, sensei, I remember film, paper, chemicals and cameras, real cameras—
I might know a little about those, he allowed, and we both grew happy.
And afterward, with your permission, I’ll buy a bottle of snow-white sake and pour it over your grave.
At this he graciously bowed. Perhaps his other followers had died or forgotten him.
Walking side by side, we passed another young lady; soon she would be smoke and ashes. I said: How sad!— The girl did not hear; she was already gone.
He asked me: How long can you remember her?
Photography remembers, I insisted.
So does imagination.
It only thinks so. You’re testing me, sensei.
Yes. Now answer at once: Would you rather have her before you all the days of her life, or make a picture of her which would be safe forever in some place you could never see?
The second, of course. It would be for her, not for me.
Good. Now tell me what she looked like. Be accurate.
I can’t remember. How long has it been? She was beautiful. Did you see her face? She—
Coughing smoke and dust, my companion remarked: I’ve managed not to regret my death. Anyhow, it’s time to make your wishes clear. My dead bones, you see . . .
Perceiving how frail he was, I bowed to him and clapped two times, at which he wearily nodded. A
funeral shop stood in that block, with open double doors. I escorted him inside, and he inhaled three breaths of incense. That was all he needed. As soon as the clerk approached me, I apologized, and then the old man and I went out.
He said to me: Describe your own regrets. Please get to the point.
I told him that I reckoned my life from before and after the day when film went away. Of course I grieved for the sake of all cameras, but particularly for one of mine which was constructed entirely of metal, silk and glass; this machine had always been heavy around my neck, and even when it was new, other photographers had laughed at me, disdaining what they called its obsolescence. What knowledge it ever brought me I cannot say; whether it made me more or less fitted for life I can answer only too well (my dreams fading secretly in albums, so that I need not see); nonetheless, my camera was everything to me. Needing no battery, nearly impervious to humidity or shock, it could resist a century as easily as a speck of lint. Its round eye was brightly tireless. I told the old man that my camera saw ever so differently from me, and yet it never lied. If it never wept, sometimes what it saw touched the eyes of others. Well, now it had starved to death. Defying reality, I saved a few rolls of film in my freezer; the cosmic rays must have fogged them by now.
The old man nodded patiently, swaying.
Actually, I said, it may be a capability of the silver halides in the film to record mood itself.
You see, imagination does remember!
No, sensei. Only photography can be trusted.
Is that so? he inquired, patting my shoulder.
That was how we spoke, strolling together down Tokyo’s narrow wobbly streets of cyclists. It was Golden Week, and so the vacationers streamed through Shinjuku, where photo store barkers and presenters of priceless facial tissues were chanting.
We recalled cameras and film, he and I, calling them up to praise them. We were proudly, loyally bound by former ties. Smiling and tapping his cane, he described to me a certain elegant wooden pinhole camera with brass fittings: a tiny, topheavy toy from 1899 it was, with nested tapering lens-snouts, the viewfinder like a clotted bubble on the side; not long ago I had seen one much like it for sale in an Argentinean fleamarket; when I raised it to my eye, it showed me nothing but cracks and glowing dust. Hearing this, the old man grew melancholy and shook his head. I told him that when I declined to buy that camera, the vendor had tried to sell me an old rotary telephone. Smiling, the old man said: How sad.
We stood there before the five-storey photo store which no longer sold film, while faces orbited closer and closer, passing on to be replaced by others. (As for the old man, perhaps he disliked noise and movement.) Lord Kiso and Kanehira, Komachi and Yokihi, I saw them all there. Across the street rose an immense department store whose façade had been silkscreened in the likeness of a young girl with emerald-green sunglasses and short brown hair. As I think about it, this must have occurred a long time ago; certainly it was before the great tsunami of 2012.
I confided to the old man that my camera used to see anything, be it wild grass or breezy leaf-shadows on a wall of galvanized zinc in an alley in the middle of a spring afternoon. It had saved from death the four schoolgirls of the black skirts and shiny black loafers and glossy black hair, not to mention the old bicycle with the sad handlebars.
I bought my camera in that shop over there, remarked the old man. In those days, cameras were all of metal.
There must have been some wooden ones, I said, and he laughed in delight, saying: Yes, yes, you remember; you too are old!
2
In the department store’s seventeenth-floor restaurant I ordered two cups of steaming sake, the kind which was flavored with something like incense, and the old man bowed over his, smiling as if he could enjoy the fragrance.
From his briefcase he withdrew a tiny portrait, printed without error, of a geisha kneeling with her white hands folded. Strange to tell, I nearly seemed to remember her. Her skirts spread out wide around her in a pool of embroidered light. Fearing to touch, I bent over the picture as he held it in his hand. Rescued forever was the bright white parting of her ink-black hair and the long drop of her kimono sleeves. I seemed to hear the sound of snow. The neutral white of the photographic paper distinguished itself from the white, white, living white of her face powder. She was a shadow like a ghost on the paper wall, hair perfectly separating down each side of the head in a series of infinitely thin parallel ink-lines. In a moment, when she rose, her wide sleeves would cause her to resemble a flying bird.
I said: How beautiful!—to which my companion remarked: She has died.— Then he put the picture away.
Well, sensei, you saved her! What about the negative?
Don’t worry. It’s in a dark cool place.
The waitress brought two more cups of sake. She was old, plain and tired; I wished I could have photographed her. My companion inclined his head to her and she bowed.
Now I know you’re worthy, he said. The others only cared about beautiful dead women.
Ordering more sake, which warmed me until I felt immortal, I proclaimed (the waitress clapping her hand over her giggling mouth) that anything dead is especially beautiful, because everything that is never stops deserving to be, and since the living can take care of itself, the bygone calls for chivalry. Meaning to compliment him, I said: Sensei, you and I are both tender toward those departed beings—
So. You know death, said the old man very pleasantly, and at the last moment I perceived his irony, which resembled the reflection of white thunderclouds in a wind-rippled pool of the darkest indigo. I managed not to fear him—after all, if he’d wished, he could have preyed on me in the cemetery—but perhaps I lost a certain confidence. His eyes were unwinkingly bright. Insisting that I presumed comprehension of no mystery, and that my intentions were but to honor, safeguard and facilitate, I drank my sake very quickly, in order to calm myself, while he for his part held his cup just below his nostrils. Before I could have clapped my hands once, the cup was empty, the liquor vapor, and the vapor gone within his skull.
3
From his briefcase he now took out (as we enthusiasts like to do) more photographs he had made. He even had a loupe with him, in case I wished to inspect the grain. So I ceased to doubt his friendship. And first he showed me a photograph of the place called Hanging Blossom: rocks as complex as vulvas, and curves of glossy-leaved shade on that one fantastical rock which was too complex to be retained in the mind. Yes, this was memory, the thing nearest of all to perfect love. How patiently I had reprinted this negative! But no matter how many hours the darkroom robbed me of, I (who have small aptitude for anything) had never been able to bring out every tone which dwelled in its grain. In our craft we remember a proverb: In each picture, three thousand secrets revealed! Well, how many of us can elucidate them? Not I, not yet; I was sincere but lacked right understanding. But the old man had made so fine a print that I now remembered the shapes of summer water-lilies just beyond the viewing frame, and past them the reflection of Rainy Mountain; I even began to perceive the blurred brightnesses of large fishes, which reminded me of the shiny eyes of a woman who had been crying; her name was Dolores and she said she loved me; there might be other clues of her among the trees which resembled dreamy roots and vipers in that ginsenglike forest. She had died a year ago. The perfection of the old man’s photograph made me feel as joyful as if a new bride had moved into my house.
Smiling, he now remarked (although I cannot claim we spoke in words): I was once your camera. How sad; how sad!
I remembered that I knew that, after which I remembered photographing the geisha kneeling with her white hands folded, who had afterwards sat on my left, with her young hands gently, relaxedly resting on the sake pitcher, ready to serve, and when I asked her to explain the dance she had just performed, the one about Rainy Mountain, she said: I think it implies a love affair, and some woman has come to see her lover.
When I danced I was dancing for you, and so you were the lover I came for.— Now her dance was ended; it would never be danced that way again. When I photographed her bowing, that was already something different; my memories turned to dreams, darkening down, darkening down.
Slowly raising and lowering his hand, the old man said: I used to be your friend. I saw and remembered for you! Are you blind now, and have you forgotten all the beautiful things?
But, sensei, how can it matter what I forget? I never saw like you! Anyway, once the photograph is made, the subject will be safe!
He kept saying: So sad, so sad!— Then I remembered that his bones hurt.— Pressing more sake upon him until he grew drunk, I asked how he felt about that geisha portrait, and he said: Every picture tortures me.
I wished to photograph him, in order to hide and cherish him like the ashes of someone loved. Was he two or were we one?
4
Again he asked why I had disturbed him, and I answered: To save everything.— He said: That’s why you’re expected tonight.
5
It was the time when people begin to go away, and the cemetery crows stop cawing, the hour when the crickets sing: How sad, how sad! Thinking that what had been might be again, and thirsting for those beautiful things—which is merely to say all the things I had seen, ever brighter by contrast with my greying life, not as if they were any better than whatever the moon would reveal tonight, or the sun tomorrow, although it did appear (but why should this be so?) that these things were truest of all, truer still because once photographed, printed and toned they could be held in my hand, moved closer and farther from my gaze or studied at various angles, without changing—or if they did alter it would be slowly, over the progression of several lifetimes, so that their degradation could be ignored or denied—I opened the gate, which someone had closed at dusk, and strolled past the pine tree whose roots kept stealthily parting the flagstones of the Naito family tomb just as I once parted my bride’s skirts. Whether something was spying on me I could not tell. The moon was as white as a geisha’s neck. The memory sticks were black. In a newer briefcase than the old man’s I carried a bottle of snow-white sake. I felt afraid, but hoped to cross the Bridge of Light. My heartbeats resembled the many holes within the dark skeleton of a dead lotus. Bending over my camera’s tomb, I bowed and clapped my hands twice. Oh, I was no uninvited guest! There came an odor of smoke and stale incense, a warm nauseous dizziness as of fever, and so I felt allured.
Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) Page 54
