Black Lotus

by Laura Joh Rowland

  The monk gulped back sobs; he gritted his teeth to still his body’s tremors. “My religious name is Pious Truth. Before I joined the Black Lotus, I was Mori Gogen.” The two names marked him as a former samurai, as did his educated diction. “I saw you with the abbess and heard her say that your husband is the shogun’s ssakan-sama?” At Reiko’s nod, Pious Truth blurted, “I need his help.”

  “We’ll help you if we can,” Reiko said, “but first, you must tell me what’s wrong.” She spoke calmly, but his anxiety infected her. “What is it that you want?”

  “The Black Lotus sect is evil and cruel!” Passion raised Pious Truth’s voice to a shout. “I can’t bear it anymore. I want to leave!”

  Excitement flared in Reiko. “Tell me what happened,” she urged.

  “My family are retainers to the Kuroda clan,” Pious Truth said. He wiped his face on the frayed, soiled sleeve of his robe. “We’ve always been very religious. Last winter, my father befriended two Black Lotus priests. They came often to pray with our family, and invited us to the temple. When we went there and met High Priest Anraku, we became convinced that he alone knew the true way of the Buddha. I decided to enter the monastery, and my older sister Yasue became a nun. We hoped to achieve enlightenment, but life at the temple wasn’t what we’d expected.”

  Bitterness hardened Pious Truth’s voice. He rose, peered furtively around the lantern, then continued, “The priests forced us and the other novices to spend every moment chanting, meditating, and listening to them ring gongs and read prayers to High Priest Anraku. They gave us nothing to eat except seaweed soup. We were allowed to sleep for only two hours each night. There was so much incense smoke in the worship hall that we could hardly breathe. Our legs hurt from kneeling, and we all had stomach cramps and diarrhea from the seaweed. We weren’t allowed to bathe. Whoever complained or disobeyed was beaten. The priests told us we were weak, stupid, and worthless, and unless we passed our training, we were doomed to be reborn again and again into lives of meaningless suffering.”

  Although Reiko knew that strict rules, limited diet, and physical discipline were customary in Buddhist orders, this sounded more like torture than religious instruction. “If things were as bad as you say, why didn’t you leave?”

  “We couldn’t,” Pious Truth said. “The priests kept a close watch to make sure no one left the temple.”

  “Surely your families wouldn’t allow you to be mistreated,” Reiko said, “and the law doesn’t allow temples to hold people against their will.”

  Wringing his hands, Pious Truth shifted his weight from one foot to the other as if on the verge of flight. “No one knows what’s going on. We novices aren’t allowed to see or speak to anyone from outside the sect.”

  “The priests and nuns I saw at the temple looked healthy and contented and free to wander among the people.”

  Pious Truth gave a humorless laugh. “Those are the trusted initiates. They get better food and other privileges. They beg alms and recruit new followers. The authorities and the public are allowed to see them because they won’t tell anybody what goes on at the temple. Their spirits have been conquered by the Black Lotus.”

  The story was growing more and more astonishing. Reiko said, “How many novices are there like you?”

  “Hundreds. I don’t know the exact number, because we live in separate groups, and I see the others only in passing.”

  “But where are they? How can the Black Lotus hide them from everyone?”

  “Our quarters are in the buildings near the convent,” Pious Truth said. “The walls are lined with cotton padding to muffle the sound. Outsiders aren’t allowed there.”

  Reiko remembered the secluded buildings, Abbess Junketsu-in hurrying her past them, and the sound of muted chanting.

  “The temple is bigger than anyone realizes.” Pious Truth leaned toward Reiko, his eyes alight with the need to convince. “What you saw is just the part that’s visible on the surface. The Black Lotus has many places to hide things they don’t want anyone to see. There are underground rooms, and tunnels leading outside. It’s like a monstrous invisible growth, spreading everywhere!”

  Shaking her head in amazement, Reiko said, “How could that happen without anyone noticing?”

  “It is happening. I’ve seen it,” the monk insisted. “After six months of training, we novices are forced to dig new tunnels. We work at night. The tunnels run beneath the roads, so our neighbors won’t hear noises under their floors.”

  Pious Truth jittered with increasing agitation. “In the daytime, we work in a shop in the temple grounds, printing copies of High Priest Anraku’s teachings to sell to the public. That’s where I’m supposed to be now. I sneaked out, but before I got to the gate, they had patrols searching the grounds for me. By this time, they’ll know I’ve left the temple. They’ll look all over until they find me. They’ll never let me go.”

  “But if there are hundreds of you, all desperate to be free, why don’t you band together and walk out?” Reiko asked in confusion.

  “It’s not that easy. They have spies mixed in among us, to inform on people who are plotting to run away. We can’t trust anyone. And after a while, all the drumming and gongs and chanting and smoke and hard work and going without sleep does something to your mind. You obey and endure because you haven’t the wits to do otherwise. And they put something in the food—some kind of poison that confuses you even more. I found out by accident, when I got sick last month.

  “I vomited constantly; I couldn’t keep any food down. But my thoughts were completely clear for the first time since I came to the temple. I realized what had happened to me, and what I must do to free myself and my sister.”

  This extraordinary story about imprisonment and slavery wasn’t what Reiko had hoped to hear from the monk, but his words echoed with the timbre of truth. Might the fire be connected to the practices he was describing?

  “When I got well, I went back to work and behaved myself,” Pious Truth said, “but I stopped eating the food. I threw it away when the priests weren’t looking.” Belatedly, Reiko noticed the gauntness of his face, the sharp bones under his robe. “But my spirit grew stronger, and I was determined to escape. Three nights ago, I waited in my bed until everyone was asleep and the priests who patrol the novice monks’ dormitory were in another part of the building. Then I climbed out the window and sneaked into the convent.

  “I woke up Yasue and led her across the temple grounds. I’d never been out there at night, and I’d expected the place to be dark and deserted, but there were lights in the buildings, and priests and nuns coming and going. We heard strange noises. Yasue was frightened and begged to go back to the dormitory, but I pulled her along. Just as we reached the main precinct, I heard running footsteps. I looked back and saw lots of priests carrying lanterns, spreading out over the grounds. They were looking for us.”

  The monk’s breathing quickened; the memory of terror glazed his eyes. “We fled into the woods, but they were everywhere. Yasue was so confused from the mind poison that she ran away from me. Someone shouted, ‘There she is!’ I saw three priests grab her and drag her away. The other priests followed. I realized that they didn’t know there were two of us. I wanted to rush over and rescue Yasue, but there were too many priests. I might have escaped, but I couldn’t leave without her. So I sneaked back to the monks’ dormitory, hoping we could get away another night.

  “The next morning, I expected the priests to punish Yasue in front of everyone, the way they did other people who tried to run away, but Yasue wasn’t there. When I asked where she was, the priests said she’d been transferred to a different group. But I know better.”

  Pious Truth pressed his fist to his mouth to stifle the sobs that choked him. “They killed her!”

  Aghast, Reiko said, “How do you know?”

  “The next morning, there was the fire in the cottage, and the fire brigade found a woman’s body there,” the monk babbled through a spate of tears. �
��Yesterday I overheard the priests telling the detectives that no one was missing from the temple. Today Dr. Miwa told you that no one knows who the woman was. Well, they’re lying. My sister is missing. I’ve asked around, and I’ve looked all over for her, but she’s not with any of the other groups of novices. No one has seen her.”

  Reiko felt a thrill of excitement, mixed with pity for the young man before her.

  “What about the child who died in the fire?” she asked.

  “I don’t know who it was.”

  “Could it have been one of the temple orphans?”

  If Dr. Miwa and Abbess Junketsu-in had lied about knowing the woman, they could have lied about the child, too.

  “They’re not all orphans,” Pious Truth said. “Many of them are children of sect members—conceived and born at the temple.”

  Reiko was shocked. “The Black Lotus permits relations between the nuns and priests?” Buddhist orders usually required the clergy to observe vows of celibacy.

  “The sect breeds children as future followers. At the orphanage, they’re starved and beaten as part of their indoctrination. It’s a test of physical and spiritual strength. The strongest ones will become the Black Lotus’s leaders someday; the weaker will be their slaves. And the ones who don’t survive …”

  The monk’s voice trailed off in a thin stream of despair. “I’ve heard of children vanishing from the nursery. Supposedly, they were adopted by kind families, but I don’t believe it The child in the cottage probably died during the indoctrination, and the priests used the fire to get rid of the body.”

  Fresh shock warred with skepticism inside Reiko. The notion of people bred like animals defied credibility, as did such cruelty to children. Yet even as Reiko wondered if Pious Truth was inventing tales to enlist her aid, his statements supported her theory that Haru was a victim rather than a criminal. Haru was covered with bruises. She’d claimed to be happy at the temple, but her recollection of torture could have vanished along with her memory of the night before the fire. Perhaps she, like Pious Truth’s sister, had tried to run away and failed, then somehow escaped death in the fire meant to destroy her and other evidence of the sect’s crimes.

  “I’m just guessing about the child,” Pious Truth said, “but I’m sure about Yasue. The Black Lotus priests killed her.”

  “To keep her from running away and telling outsiders how the novices are treated, or about the underground tunnels?” Reiko wondered if Haru had also posed this threat to the sect.

  “No, not just for that.” Pious Truth’s words emerged between deepening gasps and sobs: “I overheard the priests talk ing. The Black Lotus is working on a secret project. Yasue must have seen something. They had to silence her.”

  Slavery, imprisonment, torture—and now, diabolical plots. Reiko shook her head as her mind reeled from the torrent of allegations. “What is this project?”

  “Last night, I went there. I saw. I heard. I know everything.” Hysteria reduced Pious Truth to incoherence; his eyes were black pools of fear. “If they find out, they’ll kill me, too!”

  “I can’t help you unless you tell me what—”

  Weeping, Pious Truth grabbed Reiko by the shoulders. “The whole country is in terrible danger. You must warn everyone. Convince your husband to save us!”

  The pain of his hands on her, the violence of his plea, alarmed Reiko. Afraid for her safety, she ordered, “Let go!”

  She pulled away and backed toward the gate, but Pious Truth hurried after her. Falling to his knees, he grabbed the skirt of her kimono, clutching her legs, oblivious to her dismay at his effrontery. “Please don’t leave! Help me!”

  Then Reiko heard hurrying footsteps outside the shrine. A shadow darkened the precinct. Turning, Reiko saw two priests standing under the torii gate, blocking the sunlight from the street. One was old, with a long, gentle face; the younger was thickly muscled, his rough-hewn features blank. At the sight of them, Pious Truth inhaled a deep hiss of breath. He let go of Reiko and stumbled backward against the shrine building. Terror sharpened the bone structure of his gaunt face. His voice rose in a thin wail.

  “Go away. Leave me alone!”

  While the muscular priest advanced on him, the gentle-faced one addressed Reiko in a voice that exuded concern: “Did he hurt you, Honorable Lady?”

  Daunted by the pair’s sudden arrival and Pious Truth’s reaction, Reiko faltered, “No. I’m fine.”

  “On behalf of the Black Lotus Temple, I apologize for any trouble caused you by Brother Pious Truth,” the priest said with a kind smile. “He suffers from madness. He sneaked out of our hospital when his nurses weren’t looking.”

  The heavyset priest grabbed Pious Truth, who struggled, crying, “Let me go! Help! They’re going to kill me!”

  Reiko didn’t know what to think. Pious Truth seemed genuinely terrified, but the old priest sounded so reasonable. “He says he’s in danger. He asked me to rescue him.”

  The priest shook his head sadly. “Delusions. Symptoms of his spiritual malady. It is he who is dangerous. We must restrain him to prevent him from hurting himself or others.” As his comrade wrestled Pious Truth to the ground, the old priest removed thin cords from beneath his robe. He bound Pious Truth’s wrists and ankles while his comrade held the shrieking, thrashing monk. “He has a habit of assaulting women. You’re fortunate that we came along in time.”

  “Don’t believe him!” Pious Truth shouted at Reiko. “Don’t let them take me! The Black Lotus is evil. The mountains will erupt. Flames will consume the city. The waters will flow with death, and the air will breathe poison. The sky will burn and the earth explode. You must prevent the conflagration!”

  The priest gagged him. He retched and moaned, straining against his bonds, but his captors lifted him and carried him out the gate.

  “Wait!” Reiko ran after them. Pious Truth’s words sounded like the ranting of a madman, but she distrusted the priests as associates of Abbess Junketsu-in and Dr. Miwa, potential murder suspects who had thwarted her investigation. She needed Pious Truth because his story would help her defense of Haru. “I want to see for myself that he’ll be all right.”

  In the street, the priests bundled the novice into a black palanquin and shut the door. “We’ll take Brother Pious Truth back to our hospital, where he’ll get the care he needs,” the old priest told Reiko. “For your own safety, do not attempt further contact with him.”

  The priests lifted the handles of the palanquin and trotted down the crowded street toward the Black Lotus Temple. Reiko helplessly watched them go. As she walked back to join her entourage, she wondered whether her inquiries would ultimately benefit or hurt Haru. Of all the conflicting statements she’d heard today, which should she believe?

  8

  The truth is elusive,

  The door to wisdom difficult to enter.

  —FROM THE BLACK LOTUS SUTRA

  Dusk spread a canopy of vibrant rose and aquamarine sky over Edo. Lights glowed behind windows, at neighborhood gates, in temple grounds, and in boats along the river’s gleaming dark ribbon. The moon, like a huge silver coin worn thin at its edge, shone above Edo Castle. In the torch-lit courtyard of Sano’s estate, hooves clattered against the paving stones as mounted guards escorted Reiko’s palanquin to the mansion.

  When Reiko alighted, the nursemaid O-hana threw open the front door, crying, “Thank the gods you’re back!”

  Anxiety struck Reiko; she hurried into the mansion. “Is something wrong with Masahiro?”

  “The young master has missed you so much that he’s been crying and fussing all day. He wouldn’t drink milk from O-aki.” This was Masahiro’s wet nurse. “He refused to eat, and he wouldn’t take a nap.”

  In the entryway, Reiko hastily kicked off her shoes, then ran down the corridor. While she’d been out, her beloved son had gone hungry and endured great misery. Now she heard him wailing in a continuous, mournful drone. She rushed into the nursery and found her own childhood nurse O-
sugi jiggling Masahiro on her lap.

  “There, there,” O-sugi cooed. Masahiro squirmed, his face unhappy. Then O-sugi spied Reiko. “Look, Masahiro-chan,” she said with obvious relief. “Mama is home.”

  The sight of Reiko abruptly silenced Masahiro. His eyes became round. Laughing with the joy of seeing him again, Reiko knelt and gathered his plump, warm body in her arms. She pressed her cheek to his soft hair.

  “My baby,” she whispered. “Oh, how I’ve missed you!”

  A loud howl issued from Masahiro.

  “What’s wrong?” Puzzled, Reiko looked at her son and saw his face contorted with distress. She tried to comfort him, but more howls gave way to wild screams. His little hands pushed at her chest; his feet kicked her stomach.

  “The young master is just tired and cross,” O-sugi said. “He’s been working himself up to a tantrum.”

  “No, he’s angry at me for abandoning him!” Her son’s rejection of her was too much for Reiko to bear, and tears sprang to her eyes. While Masahiro screamed and thrashed, she held him tighter. “I’m here now, it’s all right,” she murmured.

  She and O-sugi and the maids cajoled and soothed. His face bright red, Masahiro beat his fists at them. Between his earsplitting screams, Reiko heard the front door open, and men’s voices in the entryway.

  Sano was home.

  Alarmed by the screams that had greeted his arrival, Sano sped down the corridor, fearful that harm had befallen Masahiro. He burst into the nursery. Discovering his son safe in Reiko’s arms, Sano experienced relief, but Masahiro continued shrieking. Sano saw tears in Reiko’s eyes.

  “What happened?” Sano knelt at his wife’s side. “Is he hurt?”

  Struggling to hold the squirming child, Reiko gave him a forced smile and pitched her voice above the screams: “No, he’s just being difficult.”

  Now Sano noticed that Reiko wore an outdoor cloak. Concern about her replaced his fear for their son. “Did you just get home?”

  “Yes.”