Zen Attitude

by Sujata Massey

  One series of scrolls on loan from the Tokyo National Museum was undeniably wonderful. The Choju Giga, “frolicking animals,” was a wicked satire of Buddhist society showing monkeys, frogs, and rabbits playing games and conducting religious rites. If only the wildlife that had kept me up all night were that cute.

  The animal scroll gave me the idea of going to Horin-ji’s main temple to look at its own collection of Zen art, but first I had my appointment with Mrs. Kita. I was still wearing my jeans, presenting a more casual image than I’d liked. It was too bad I’d rushed in my packing, because I certainly couldn’t afford to buy any more clothes.

  Mrs. Kita, in fact, didn’t recognize me and strode on by as she exited Kamakura Station. I hurried after her, plowing through a group of elementary school students.

  “Kita-san, Kita-san,” I called until she turned and saw my face. Then, remembering my black eye, I began stammering out the story of my clumsy fall in the night.

  “Are you well enough to work? Perhaps you should return to the hospital.” She looked doubtfully at me.

  “Oh, I’m very able to work.” I was starving for it, in fact.

  Mrs. Kita must have sensed it, because she insisted on paying for our tea and lemon crêpes at the little crêpe shop on Komachi-dori. We looked at the book she’d brought with pictures of Zen scrolls, and I gently brought up the issue of price.

  “You made such a good purchase with my hibachi. If only . . . for a similar amount of money . . . like this one in my book . . .” Mrs. Kita paused, clearly uncomfortable being frank about money.

  “Not even the Tokyo National Museum could afford a thirteenth-century Kamakura scroll these days,” I said. “Even if we doubled what you spent on the hibachi, we would still have to go with something done in the early twentieth century. But,” I hurried to add, “that’s not all bad. There was some very beautiful painting done in color, which I think would stand out more beautifully in a contemporary home, and of course, the scroll would be in better condition.”

  “Of course.” She toyed with her crêpe, not looking hungry. I’d already finished mine and could have wolfed hers down, too.

  “Now is a wise time to buy. I was thinking about looking around here. I know there’s a shop you like very much in Hita, but unfortunately, the antiques department has closed.”

  “Heh? Where’s Hita?”

  “I’m talking about Hita Fine Arts in Hakone. Nana Mihori said you bought something there—a tansu, maybe?” That was what Nana Mihori had told me when I was sitting in traffic heading home. Because Mrs. Kita had recommended the store, I’d had to drive out of my way to see it.

  “I don’t own a tansu. You must mistake me for another client.” Mrs. Kita had a slightly hurt expression, not realizing that Nana Mihori had lied to me.

  “I apologize. Usually I don’t mix up people. I don’t have my files with me today.”

  “I see. And how are the Mihoris?”

  “What?” For a moment I thought she knew I was squatting on their property. Then I realized she was still trolling for gossip about Akemi’s collapse at my party. “Oh, Akemi is completely recovered, I hear.”

  “Excellent. I was worried, given the weak genes that run in that family.”

  “Do you mean Akemi’s cousin Kazuhito?”

  “That’s right. You know about his diabetes. It must be very embarrassing for Mrs. Mihori!”

  “Why?” I caught a whiff of her dislike and wanted to pursue it.

  “Well, he was her cousin’s child, or something like that. They adopted him just five years ago, and I’m sure they didn’t know he was damaged.”

  “I thought he grew up in the household,” I said. “Didn’t he and Akemi play together when they were little?”

  “Yes, but he did not change his surname to Mihori until five years ago. Nothing was final. And even if he does marry and have a son”—she drummed her perfect pink nails on the table—“if he dies early, the child would be too young to assume his priestly duties.”

  “What should the Mihoris have done? It looks like they had no choices.”

  “They should have given the temple to Akemi.” Mrs. Kita looked straight at me. “That girl has strength of spirit, and she loves Horin-ji very much. When her father dies, she and her mother could be tossed out to live in a small apartment somewhere. The new abbot will have no responsibility to keep them on.”

  Feminists came in the most unlikely packages, such as Mrs. Kita’s green and orange plaid suit. Not that she would ever dream of sitting in at a meeting of the Tokyo Women’s Collective or arguing for changes in the way Buddhist temples were run. I’d never thought much about whether Akemi would have wanted to manage the temple. I was beginning to realize that my personal problems were very small compared to the Mihoris’ worries.

  I sneaked into Horin-ji through the back and dropped my groceries in the teahouse. Munching on nashi—a delicious fruit with the texture of an apple crossed with a pear—I went outside again.

  I heard the crunching sound of feet falling on the track before I saw the runner. Akemi really was a fanatic to run twice in a single day. I moved aside so she’d have full access to the trail and waited.

  What I saw was a young, fit Japanese man moving at a pace somewhere between hers and mine; not pedantic, but not speedy. His shaved head shone with sweat, and he was dressed only in nylon shorts and a well-worn pair of running shoes.

  When he saw me he almost jumped out of his bare, shiny skin. I had the same reaction. He passed on, but I stood looking after him for a while. I didn’t think it was the athlete I’d seen sparring with Akemi the first day I’d come to the temple. The runner might have been a local person who had discovered the trail, or one of Akemi’s workout partners. Would the man run straight to the temple guards to complain about the interloper on the Mihoris’ private property? Or would he mention it to Abbot Mihori? As I retreated into the teahouse, I could not stop worrying.

  Chapter 16

  I’d been trying to reorganize my list of clients for what seemed like hours when the pocket phone bleated from its haphazard perch next to me. It was a telephone call for Hugh from his company chairman, Masuhiro Sendai. I suspected Hugh was still in Okinawa, but I took the message, hung up, and dialed the number at Roppongi Hills to leave a message.

  Once again my recorded greeting had been scrapped; this time for “#1 Crush” by Garbage.

  “Hugh, when you hear this, please call Mr. Sendai immediately regarding some problem in Thailand,” I recited. “He will be at home at zero-three-four-three—”

  “Where are you, Rei?” Hugh came on the line, and my heart did a funny kind of skip.

  “You’re supposed to be in Okinawa.” I deflected his question.

  “As if I could leave town after your theatrics! The street below the apartment was full of witnesses unwilling to believe you were safe, the police have been breathing down my neck . . . and what can I say, with no trace of you?”

  Static on the telephone line was making his voice fade. I spoke loudly. “I needed to leave the apartment quickly, and the police know I’m alive. I’ve spoken to Lieutenant Hata.”

  “Safe and active with my pocket phone,” he said nastily. “I’d get another, but I’d have to change the number on my business card.”

  “Mr. Sendai said there might be trouble with the company plant in Thailand.”

  “Oh, it’ll just mean a trip back to Phuket.” He sighed. “I can live with that.”

  “Yes, you can give Angus my unused ticket.” I disconnected and decided to get away from the telephone. I went outside, breathing in the incense wafting from the temple area. Evening prayers would be starting soon.

  Akemi appeared like a wisp of smoke. The woods had seemed empty, but suddenly she was there before me, in loose blue cotton trousers and a dark blouse. She was dressed like a peasant, but the effect of the traditional clothing on her slim figure was very attractive.

  “I brought your laundry and some extra clothes
I think you could use. Also dinner.” Seating herself cross-legged on the forest floor, she set out rice, braised spinach dressed with soy sauce, a vinegary eggplant salad, and assorted pickles. It was the most unexpected and delicious picnic I’d ever had; when she told me it was all leftovers straight out of the fridge, I was impressed.

  “Miss Tanaka cooks like this, even when your mother’s away?”

  “My father and Kazuhito are very demanding. And it’s my last dinner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to be away for two or three days. I was invited to give some demonstrations in Kansai. You’ll be okay, won’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said, not feeling that way.

  “I’ll leave the dojo unlocked so you can shower. But discreetly, neh?”

  That reminded me of the runner I’d seen. I told Akemi about him.

  “Since he had a shaved head, the man must be one of our monks. In the old days, they would not be allowed free time for jogging. It’s Kazuhito’s fault—he’s so lax with them. Progressive theology, he calls it!”

  “The runner looked pretty surprised when he saw me. I hope he doesn’t tell anyone.”

  “What time did you see him?”

  “Five o’clock or thereabouts.”

  “Hmmm. That used to be when evening prayers have commonly been held. Recently, though, the hour was changed to six to suit my cousin’s mood. Well, well, now I can mention the jogging monk as a complaint against Priest Perfect’s supervisory abilities. Domo arigato,” she thanked me wickedly.

  “You can’t do that! I mean, why bring up something that would reveal I’m staying here?” Her enthusiasm was making me nervous.

  “I’ll say I was the one who saw the guy,” Akemi suggested.

  “But what if the monk reported me already?”

  “Then I’ll say I heard it from a wandering tourist. I know how to handle it. Just keep up your end of the bargain, and we’ll be fine.”

  “My end of the bargain?” I was suddenly uneasy.

  “You’ll run every day, won’t you?”

  Leaving me the remains of the feast, she slipped off through the trees.

  I passed the rest of the evening swatting bugs and studying the catalog of Zen paintings I’d bought at the museum exhibit. The phone rang once. When I answered, there was a silence, and I hung up. When the phone began ringing a few minutes later, I picked up and found the call was for me. So Hugh had figured out a way to forward calls to me without communication; it was quite civil, but it broke my heart.

  The call was from Mrs. Kita. There was so much static it was difficult to understand her, but I gathered she wanted to hear a progress report on the Zen scroll.

  “Actually, I’ve just started to look—as I said, it might be tough going—”

  “What’s that sound in the background? I can barely hear you!” Mrs. Kita complained.

  I didn’t want her to know I was on a pocket phone in a teahouse—it just sounded too pathetic.

  “I think it’s a bad line,” I said, just as we were cut off.

  Obviously the phone’s battery needed to be recharged. According to the manual, a low battery could be recharged in any standard electric socket; too bad the teahouse was unwired. I would have to search for an electric outlet somewhere on the grounds of Horin-ji.

  It was completely dark as I made my way toward the Mihoris’ house and the main temple. I was glad for my rubber-soled sneakers, because snakes were common in Kamakura, along with toxin-shooting centipedes and the possibly rabid tanuki that I’d already seen.

  Among the temple’s closed outbuildings, I searched in vain for exterior electric outlets, worrying a little about whether the rain coming down might cause electrocution. The main temple had to have electricity. I surveyed the completely darkened, forbidding structure. It was nine-thirty, lights-out time for the monks, who had to rise at five in the morning.

  Golden light burned behind the wall closing the Mihori house off from the public grounds. I went close enough to look through the bamboo fence and into the front windows. Through the shoji, I saw the silhouettes of three figures in a front room and the bluish glow and sound of a television set. I should have expected the Mihoris, like every other family in Japan, to have a television set. Still, I’d never seen one during my visits to Mrs. Mihori.

  I remembered Akemi’s dojo. I could slip in and plug the telephone into the outlet on the counter where she kept her electric teakettle. And the judo gymnasium was on the far side of the house, away from the family watching television.

  I entered the garden, quietly closing the gate behind me. If I didn’t want them to catch sight of me, I’d have to crawl along the ground, touching earth and other possibilities. I tucked the pocket phone in the back of my jeans, the way people do with guns in the movies, and made a swift prayer to Buddha to protect me from danger. A few slick insects crunched under my fingers, and I had to keep from jerking myself up. They’re more scared of you than you are of them, I reminded myself. Fortunately, the garden was landscaped, and I made most of my travels on a relatively insect-free bed of moss.

  The door to the dojo was padlocked shut. Padlocked, when Akemi had promised she’d leave it open for me. I jiggled the lock uselessly a few times.

  I’d have to return to the house. All the windows in the back were dark, and I recognized the long wall of sliding glass windows that led into the quiet room where Mrs. Mihori practiced the tea ceremony.

  I removed my sneakers and stepped up on the wooden ledge running outside the window. Pressing on the window, I found that it slid open. I walked inside and, in the glow of moonlight, saw the room was empty except for a tea table, a pile of neatly stacked cushions, and a graceful andon lamp in the corner. I went to the corner where the lamp plugged in. Excellent, another socket. I plugged in my telephone.

  As I turned, I caught a glimpse of movement and froze before realizing it was a reflection of my own body against some large, glass-covered portraits. My eyes were drawn back to the pictures of Mrs. Mihori’s parents on the Buddhist altar.

  The woman had a downward cast to her gaze, and the man had a certain hardness around his mouth. Both wore plain black kimono. They were clearly of the old generation who had starved through the war but carried on into a more prosperous future. How would they feel knowing Nana was disliked by so many people in town and might be cast out one day along with her own child?

  The house was absolutely still and dark; it was easy to imagine their spirits present. I reminded myself that Nana’s parents had not lived on the premises. It was disturbing, this affinity I felt for them. It was as if I’d seen them elsewhere. This sensation came to me occasionally when I was antiques shopping; it usually meant I had seen the piece before, and one or both had to be reproductions. This time was different.

  I traveled backward in my memory until the pictures slipped into place. I had seen the two portraits in Denen-Chofu when I’d slowly paced through a room examining wood-block prints. Their expressions had seemed to reprimand me for snooping on Haru and Nomu Ideta, whom I now recognized for their true identity: Nana Mihori’s brother and sister.

  Chapter 17

  There was no time to think. The television had been turned off, and I heard quick footsteps in the hallway outside the room.

  I squeezed through the window and half fell into the garden. As I was pulling on my shoes a light snapped on, causing a herd of moths to rush inside. Someone made an irritated sound and headed for the window. I rolled under a bush and lay there listening to the person latch the window. A dark figure chased and swatted the moths, creating an eerie shadow dance of insect murder. At last the light was turned off, and I had the courage to gather myself together and leave. The cicadas’ chorus seemed to mock me as I plodded along the path to the teahouse, trying to make sense of what I’d learned.

  Nana Mihori had used me. She wanted to own Nomu Ideta’s tansu but was unwilling, for some reason, to buy it directly. She had sent me on a wild
-goose chase across Japan and made up the story about Mrs. Kita’s recommending Hita Fine Arts so that I wouldn’t suspect her.

  I’d stepped out of my programmed role when I didn’t deliver. Had I ignored the metalwork on the tansu, all would have gone off seamlessly. Nana Mihori had not wanted a top-quality, Edo-period tansu. She simply wanted something her brother owned.

  I tried to remember the specifics of my encounter with Mr. Sakai. When I’d first telephoned to ask what tansu he had in stock, he had mentioned a customer who had placed the tansu on hold. At the time I bought the tansu, I’d assumed the woman with the mole was that person. When she turned out to be his wife, I knew that couldn’t be true. It was more likely that the visitor who had placed a hold on the chest long enough for me to arrive at the store had come from the Mihori family.

  I pulled my small datebook out of my backpack, trying to remember what Akemi had said about tomobiki, the scheduled day when a priest and his family were free to leave the temple grounds. Counting six days back from my arrival at the temple, I found the kanji symbol marking the priestly holiday on Wednesday—the same day that Nao Sakai had been killed in Jun Kuroi’s car.

  Any one of the Mihoris could be involved. My spine prickled as I thought about how, during the wildest moments of Saturday night’s party, I had cleared everyone from the study except for mother and daughter. After the doctor had ultimately emerged from the room to answer the guests’ questions about Akemi’s health, Nana and Akemi had been alone in the room for at least ten minutes. Maybe Akemi’s stoned reaction had been as exaggerated as her weak performance in the Olympics.