24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai [Illustrated]

by Roger Joseph Zelazny

  “I didn’t know you watched arrivals here.”

  “Right now we do.”

  “You’ve lost me. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  There is another roll of thunder. A few more drops spatter about us.

  “I would like to believe that you are really retired,” he says. “I’m getting near that point myself, you know.”

  “I have no reason to be back in business. I inherited a decent amount, enough to take care of me and my daughter.”

  He nods.

  “If I had such an inducement I would not be in the field,” he says. “I would rather sit home and read, play chess, eat and drink regularly. But you must admit it is quite a coincidence your being here when the future success of several nations is being decided.”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ve been out of touch with a lot of things.”

  “The Osaka Oil Conference. It begins two weeks from Wednesday. You were planning perhaps to visit Osaka at about that time?”

  “I will not be going to Osaka.”

  “A courier then. Someone from there will meet you, a simple tourist, at some point in your travels, to convey—”

  “My God! Do you think everything’s a conspiracy, Boris? I am just taking care of some personal problems and visiting some places that mean something to me. The conference doesn’t.”

  “All right.” He finishes his tea and puts the cup aside. “You know that we know you are here. A word to the Japanese authorities that you are traveling under false papers and they will kick you out. That would be simplest. No real harm done and one agent nullified. Only it would be a shame to spoil your trip if you are indeed only a tourist. . . .”

  A rotten thought passes through my mind as I see where this is leading, and I know that my thought is far rottener than his. It is something I learned from a strange old woman I once worked with who did not look like an old woman.

  I finish my tea and raise my eyes. He is smiling.

  “I will make us some more tea,” I say.

  I see that the top button of my shirt comes undone while I am bent partly away from him. Then I lean forward with his cup and take a deep breath.

  “You would consider not reporting me to the authorities?”

  “I might,” he says. “I think your story is probably true. And even if it is not, you would not take the risk of transporting anything now that I know about you.”

  “I really want to finish this trip,” I say, blinking a few extra times. “I would do anything not to be sent back now.”

  He takes hold of my hand.

  “I am glad you said that, Maryushka,” he replies. “I am lonely, and you are still a fine-looking woman.”

  “You think so?”

  “I always thought so, even that day you bashed in my teeth.”

  “Sorry about that. It was strictly business, you know.”

  His hand moves to my shoulder.

  “Of course. They looked better when they were fixed than they had before, anyway.”

  He moves over and sits beside me.

  “I have dreamed of doing this many times,” he tells me, as he unfastens the rest of the buttons on my shirt and unbuckles my belt.

  He rubs my belly softly. It is not an unpleasant feeling. It has been a long time.

  Soon we are fully undressed. He takes his time, and when he is ready I welcome him between my legs. All right, Boris. I give the ride, you take the fall. I could almost feel a little guilty about it. You are gentler than I’d thought you would be. I commence the proper breathing pattern, deep and slow. I focus my attention on my hara and his, only inches away. I feel our energies, dreamlike and warm, moving. Soon, I direct their flow. He feels it only as pleasure, perhaps more draining than usual. When he has done, though . . .

  “You said you had some problem?” he inquires in that masculine coital magnanimity generally forgotten a few minutes afterward. “If it is something I could help you with, I have a few days off, here and there. I like you, Maryushka.”

  “It’s something I have to do myself. Thanks anyway.”

  I continue the process.

  Later, as I dress myself, he lies there looking up at me.

  “I must be getting old, Maryushka,” he reflects. “You have tired me. I feel I could sleep for a week.”

  “That sounds about right,” I say. “A week and you should be feeling fine again.”

  “I do not understand . . .”

  “You’ve been working too hard, I’m sure. That conference . . .”

  He nods.

  “You are probably right. You are not really involved . . . ?”

  “I am really not involved.”

  “Good.”

  I clean the pot and my cups. I restore them to my pack.

  “Would you be so kind as to move, Boris dear? I’ll be needing the poncho very soon, I think.”

  “Of course.”

  He rises slowly and passes it to me. He begins dressing. His breathing is heavy.

  “Where are you going from here?”

  “Mishima-goe,” I say, “for another view of my mountain.”

  He shakes his head. He finishes dressing and seats himself on the ground, his back against a treetrunk. He finds his flask and takes a swallow. He extends it then.

  “Would you care for some?”

  “Thank you, no. I must be on my way.”

  I retrieve my staff. When I look at him again, he smiles faintly, ruefully.

  “You take a lot out of a man, Maryushka.”

  “I had to,” I say.

  I move off. I will hike twenty miles today, I am certain. The rain begins to descend before I am out of the grove; leaves rustle like the wings of bats.

  11. Mt. Fujifrom Mishima-goe

  Sunlight. Clean air. The print shows a big cryptameria tree, Fuji looming behind it, crowned with smoke. There is no smoke today, but I have located a big cryptameria and positioned myself so that it cuts Fuji’s shoulder to the left of the cone. There are a few clouds, not so popcorny as Hokusai’s smoke (he shrugs at this), and they will have to do.

  My stolen ki still sustains me, though the medication is working now beneath it. Like a transplanted organ, my body will soon reject the borrowed energy. By then, though, the drugs should be covering for me.

  In the meantime, the scene and the print are close to each other. It is a lovely spring day. Birds are singing, butterflies stitch the air in zigzag patterns; I can almost hear the growth of plants beneath the soil. The world smells fresh and new. I am no longer being followed. Hello to life again.

  I regard the huge old tree and listen for its echoes down the ages: Yggdrasil, the Golden Bough, the Yule tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Bo beneath which Lord Gautama found his soul and lost it. . . .

  I move forward to run my hand along its rough bark.

  From that position I am suddenly given a new view of the valley below. The fields look like raked sand, the hills like rocks, Fuji a boulder. It is a garden, perfectly laid out. . . .

  Later I notice that the sun has moved. I have been standing here for hours. My small illumination beneath a great tree. Older than my humanity, I do not know what I can do for it in return.

  Stooping suddenly, I pick up one of its cones. A tiny thing, for such a giant. It is barely the size of my little fingernail. Delicately incised, as if sculpted by fairies.

  I put it in my pocket. I will plant it somewhere along my way.

  I retreat then, for I hear the sound of approaching bells and I am not yet ready for humanity to break my mood. But there was a small inn down the road which does not look to be part of a chain. I will bathe and eat there and sleep in a bed tonight.

  I will still be strong tomorrow.

  12. Mt. Fuji from Lake Kawaguchi

  Reflections.

  This is one of my favorite prints in the series: Fuji as seen from across the lake and reflected within it. There are green hills at either hand, a small village upon th
e far shore, a single small boat in sight upon the water. The most fascinating feature of the print is that the reflection of Fuji is not the same as the original; its position is wrong, its slope is wrong, it is snow-capped and the surface view of Fuji itself is not.

  I sit in the small boat I have rented, looking back. The sky is slightly hazy, which is good. No glare to spoil the reflection. The town is no longer as quaint as in the print, and it has grown. But I am not concerned with details of this sort. Fuji is reflected more perfectly in my viewing, but the doubling is still a fascinating phenomenon for me.

  Interesting, too . . . In the print the village is not reflected, nor is there an image of the boat in the water. The only reflection is Fuji’s. There is no sign of humanity.

  I see the reflected buildings near the water’s edge. And my mind is stirred by other images than those Hokusai would have known. Of course drowned R’lyeh occurs to me, but the place and the day are too idyllic. It fades from mind almost immediately, to be replaced by sunken Ys, whose bells still toll the hours beneath the sea. And Selma Lagerloffs Nils Holgersson, the tale of the shipwrecked sailor who finds himself in a sunken city at the bottom of the sea—a place drowned to punish its greedy, arrogant inhabitants, who still go about their business of cheating each other, though they are all of them dead. They wear rich, old-fashioned clothes and conduct their business as they once did above in this strange land beneath the waves. The sailor is drawn to them, but he knows that he must not be discovered or he will be turned into one of them, never to return to the earth, to see the sun. I suppose I think of this old children’s story because I understand now how the sailor must have felt. My discovery, too, could result in a transformation I do not desire.

  And of course, as I lean forward and view my own features mirrored in the water, there is the world of Lewis Carroll beneath its looking-glass surface. To be an Ama diving girl and descend . . . To spin downward, and for a few minutes to know the inhabitants of a land of paradox and great charm . . .

  Mirror, mirror, why does the real world so seldom cooperate with our aesthetic enthusiasms?

  Halfway finished. I reach the midpoint of my pilgrimage to confront myself in a lake. It is a good time and place to look upon my own countenance, to reflect upon all of the things which have brought me here, to consider what the rest of the journey may hold. Though images may sometimes lie. The woman who looks back at me seems composed, strong, and better-looking than I had thought she would. I like you, Kawaguchi, lake with a human personality. I flatter you with literary compliments and you return the favor.

  Meeting Boris lifted a burden of fear from my mind. No human agents of my nemesis have risen to trouble my passage. So the odds have not yet tipped so enormously against me as they might.

  Fuji and image. Mountain and soul. Would an evil thing cast no reflection down here—some dark mountain where terrible deeds were performed throughout history? I am reminded that Kit no longer casts a shadow, has no reflection.

  Is he truly evil, though? By my lights he is. Especially if he is doing the things I think he is doing.

  He said that he loved me, and I did love him, once. What will he say to me when we meet again, as meet we must?

  It will not matter. Say what he will, I am going to try to kill him. He believes that he is invincible, indestructible. I do not, though I do believe that I am the only person on earth capable of destroying him. It took a long time for me to figure the means, an even longer time before the decision to try it was made for me. I must do it for Kendra as well as for myself. The rest of the world’s population comes third.

  I let my fingers trail in the water. Softly, I begin to sing an old song, a love song. I am loath to leave this place. Will the second half of my journey be a mirror-image of the first? Or will I move beyond the looking-glass, to pass into that strange realm where he makes his home?

  I planted the cryptameria’s seed in a lonesome valley yesterday afternoon. Such a tree will look elegant there one day, outliving nations and armies, madmen and sages.

  I wonder where R’lyeh is? She ran off in the morning after breakfast, perhaps to pursue a butterfly. Not that I could have brought her with me.

  I hope that Kendra is well. I have written her a long letter explaining many things. I left it in the care of an attorney friend, who will be sending it to her one day in the not too distant future.

  The prints of Hokusai . . . They could outlast the cryptameria. I will not be remembered for any works.

  Drifting between the worlds I formulate our encounter for the thousandth time. He will have to be able to duplicate an old trick to get what he wants. I will have to perform an even older one to see that he doesn’t get it. We are both out of practice.

  It has been long since I read The Anatomy of Melancholy. It is not the sort of thing I’ve sought to divert me in recent years. But I recall a line or two as I see fish dart by: “Polycrates Samius, that flung his ring into the sea, because he would participate in the discontent of others, and had it miraculously restored to him again shortly after, by a fish taken as he angled, was not free from melancholy dispositions. No man can cure himself . . .” Kit threw away his life and gained it. I kept mine and lost it. Are rings ever really returned to the proper people? And what about a woman curing herself? The cure I seek is a very special one.

  Hokusai, you have shown me many things. Can you show me an answer?

  Slowly, the old man raises his arm and points to his mountain. Then he lowers it and points to the mountain’s image.

  I shake my head. It is an answer that is no answer. He shakes his head back at me and points again.

  The clouds are massing high above Fuji, but that is no answer. I study them for a long while but can trace no interesting images within.

  Then I drop my eyes. Below me, inverted, they take a different form. It is as if they depict the clash of two armed hosts. I watch in fascination as they flow together, the forces from my right gradually rolling over and submerging those to my left. Yet in so doing, those from my right are diminished.

  Conflict? That is the message? And both sides lose things they do not wish to lose? Tell me something I do not already know, old man.

  He continues to stare. I follow his gaze again, upward. Now I see a dragon, diving into Fuji’s cone.

  I look below once again. No armies remain, only carnage; and here the dragon’s tail becomes a dying warrior’s arm holding a sword.

  I close my eyes and reach for it. A sword of smoke for a man of fire.

  13. Mt. Fuji from Koishikawa in Edo

  Snow, on the roofs of houses, on evergreens, on Fuji—just beginning to melt in places, it seems. A windowful of women—geishas, I would say—looking out at it, one of them pointing at three dark birds high in the pale sky. My closest view of Fuji to that in the print is unfortunately snowless, geishaless, and sunny.

  Details . . .

  Both are interesting, and superimposition is one of the major forces of aesthetics. I cannot help but think of the hot-spring geisha Komako in Snow Country–Yasunari Kawabata’s novel of loneliness and wasted, fading beauty—which I have always felt to be the great anti-love story of Japan. This print brings the entire tale to mind for me. The denial of love. Kit was no Shimamura, for he did want me, but only on his own highly specialized terms, terms that must remain unacceptable to me. Selfishness or selflessness? It is not important . . .

  And the birds at which the geisha points. . . ? “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird?” To the point. We could never agree on values.

  The Two Corbies? And throw in Ted Hughes’s pugnacious Crow? Perhaps so, but I won’t draw straws. An illusion for every allusion, and where’s yesterday’s snow?

  I lean upon my staff and study my mountain. I wish to make it to as many of my stations as possible before ordering the confrontation. Is that not fair? Twenty-four ways of looking at Mt. Fuji. It struck me that it would be good to take one thing in life and regard it from many viewpoints, as a f
ocus for my being, and perhaps as a penance for alternatives missed.

  Kit, I am coming, as you once asked of me, but by my own route and for my own reasons. I wish that I did not have to, but you have deprived me of a real choice in this matter. Therefore, my action is not truly my own, but yours. I am become then your own hand turned against you, representative of a kind of cosmic aikido.

  I make my way through town after dark, choosing only dark streets where the businesses are shut down. That way I am safe. When I must enter town I always find a protected spot for the day and do my traveling on these streets at night.

  I find a small restaurant on the corner of such a one and I take my dinner there. It is a noisy place but the food is good. I also take my medicine, and a little sake.

  Afterward, I indulge in the luxury of walking rather than take a taxi. I’ve a long way to go, but the night is clear and star-filled and the air is pleasant.

  I walk for the better part of ten minutes, listening to the sounds of traffic, music from some distant radio or tape deck, a cry from another street, the wind passing high above me and rubbing its rough fur upon the sides of buildings.

  Then I feel a sudden ionization in the air.

  Nothing ahead. I turn, spinning my staff into a guard position.

  An epigon with a six-legged canine body and a head like a giant fiery flower emerges from a doorway and sidles along the building’s front in my direction.

  I follow its progress with my staff, feinting as soon as it is near enough. I strike, unfortunately with the wrong tip, as it comes on. My hair begins to rise as I spin out of its way, cutting, retreating, turning, then striking again. This time the metal tip passes into that floral head.

  I had turned on the batteries before I commenced my attack. The charge creates an imbalance. The epigon retreats, head ballooning. I follow and strike again, this time mid-body. It swells even larger, then collapses in a shower of sparks. But I am already turning away and striking again, for I had become aware of the approach of another even as I was dealing with the first.