by Naoya Shiga
He remembered her sad eyes and the way she cocked her head like a child when she said, “Are you sure your going away is not something I can blame myself for?” The memory filled him with compassion; at the same time, it made him uncomfortable. Naoko could not believe that she was completely forgiven; or, even if she could, she felt somehow that she must not allow herself to believe that she was. For what if she were to allow herself that luxury, and then were to find herself being subjected to some sudden act of vindictiveness on Kensaku’s part?
It pained Kensaku to know that such was her state of mind, to know that his own incapacity for generosity had justified it. He had wanted not to brood over her mistake for the reason that to do so would only lead to further unhappiness for both of them, and that therefore it would be senseless. He knew that there was something calculating in this attitude. So did Naoko, and this was why she could not allow herself to trust him. Yet, for all his understanding of Naoko’s dilemma, his response had been to think angrily: if this is the best I can do, if I can’t be more generous, then why can’t she try to make the most of what little I can offer? And so he had come away to Daisen, hoping to rid himself of that hardness in him, of his incapacity to be truly gentle.
As he sat down to write his letter to Naoko, he felt that the gentleness he sought in his own heart had come sooner than he had hoped. “Are you all well?” he wrote. “I trust that you are. I said I would not write, but all of a sudden I wanted to, so here’s my letter. I have settled down quite nicely, and I feel I have benefited enormously from the trip. Coming here was very good for me from all points of view. I read and write something every day. So long as it doesn’t rain, I take a walk in the nearby woods or go to the riverbed. Since coming to this mountain I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the little birds, the insects, the trees, the water, the rocks. As I observe closely all these things by myself, I find that they give rise to all kinds of feelings and thoughts that I never had before. That a world which had never existed for me before has opened itself up to me has given me a sense of joy. I don’t know that I ever expressed them to you, but all those vain, persistent thoughts which cluttered my mind for years have at last begun to leave me, easily and pleasantly. When I was in Onomichi alone, I was ceaselessly tormented by these thoughts. But it’s very different now. If my present condition were to become a true part of me, I would be confident that I would never be a threat to others or to myself. I have learned to take pleasure in that feeling that comes from humility. (By this I do not mean humility toward persons.) When I think about it, I realize that this happiness was what I desired, perhaps unconsciously, at the very start of the journey, and that it is not something that has come to me unexpectedly or whimsically. I am very happy that it has come to me sooner and more naturally than I would have hoped. The way I behaved toward you was inexcusable, but given what I was, I could not have behaved any better. But no amount of remorse now would help either you or me. What I want for us both is simply to find security in each other from now on. And please don’t feel apprehensive any more about us. As I sit here alone in the mountains and think of home, I find that what I want to do more than anything else is to tell you not to worry. I suppose there will always be times when I’ll get angry and make you unhappy, but please believe me when I say that there will be no ulterior reason for my outbursts. I like to think that I’m ready to come home, but I want to be absolutely sure that once home I’m not going to end up exactly as I was before. I want to remain here a while longer—not very long—and know that this state of mind I now enjoy has become a firm part of me before I come back to you. I want you to have no doubts about us at all, no doubts of any kind. I know that all the things that happened between us were utterly stupid. I have suffered from a certain sickness, you might say: and the sickness has to be allowed to run its course. As a matter of fact, I really believe that it has left me; so there’s nothing that you need worry about.
“I sometimes think of our baby. Please be very, very careful that she doesn’t catch anything. In this temple there’s a baby, half a year younger than ours. They’re remarkably casual in the way they take care of him. There is no doctor or pharmacist in these parts, and though it’s not my business, I worry about him occasionally.
“The rice they feed me here is incredibly bad, unfit for human consumption. It’s not the cooking that’s at fault, but the quality of the rice itself. It’s a totally new experience for me.
“If there are any letters for me, please forward them. Has Nobuyuki written? Tell Oei that this has been a very different kind of trip from the one I took to Onomichi, and that she has no need to worry. Take good care of your health. I myself am quite healthy, but because the food is so bad, I tend to eat less than I need, and I think I’ve lost some weight as a result. Don’t send me any provisions, however.”
He leaned on his desk, and gazed out of the wide-open bay window. Facing him, about twenty feet away, was a low, whitewashed mud wall. Then down the hill from it was an old stone wall covered with lichen, and beside it the path. Twenty feet down the path stood another temple, Kongōin. The mist of the morning had not yet cleared, and the large thatched roof of the temple, level with his eyes, was a mass of grey.
He felt he ought to write more; or rather, he feared that Naoko, on reading this unexpected piece of communication from him, would not quite know what to think of it. Would she not suspect that he had written it on an impulse, when perhaps he was feeling desperately lonely?
From his Western-style notebook he tore off a few pages, and writing on the margin of the first of these the note, “Here’s an example of the kind of thing I write sometimes,” enclosed them in the envelope with his letter. These pages contained a detailed description of a scene he had witnessed a couple of days before—a spider on the bay window trying to keep a small beetle that had got caught in the web. After a struggle the beetle had got away. It was his thought that this little exercise of his would give Naoko a glimpse of at least a fragment of his life in the mountains.
His supply of cigarettes had run out, so he decided he would go out immediately and walk to the inn beside the gateway of the shrine, on the other side of the valley. There he could also mail his letter. Having been sold too many cigarettes dampened by the mountain mist, he insisted this time at the inn that a new carton be opened. He took a pack, smoked one cigarette from it, and satisfied that it was dry enough, bought several more packs out of the carton. As he walked back to the temple, he found himself in a generally lighthearted mood. He tossed his packs of cigarettes into his room through the open bay window, then continued his walk up the path. A cedar stood just ahead of him. Its leaves, made heavy by the moisture, hung down in numerous large clusters. He walked to it and stood under it. The sun, filtering through the leaves above, made brilliant, differently shaped patches of light on the wet grass by his feet. The air around him smelled pleasantly of the mountain.
Beside the path a little way ahead stood a stone washbasin, filled with water drawn from a mountain spring. Near this was a clearing, and here Kensaku found Také busily working. The clearing was surrounded by large oak trees with widespread branches, and the sunlight that came through the leaves was gentle and beautiful. Také was cutting shingles out of a felled oak tree; those that were finished were piled up high beside him. He gave a quick bow when he saw Kensaku. “Do you need that many?” asked Kensaku.
“Certainly. I shall need three times this.”
“It’s a big job you’ve agreed to do. You’ve got to make all the shingles yourself before you can even begin on the roof.” Kensaku sat down on a tree trunk that lay near him. “It’s a pity to cut down so many of these lovely trees. I suppose some more of these around here will have to go?”
“Well, I try my best to get my wood from places where people don’t go much.”
“Maybe, but there aren’t that many trees on this mountain to begin with. It is a pity.”
“Don’t worry, it’s only a small roof that I’m
doing after all.”
The tool Také was using looked like the middle part of the blade of a samurai sword with a wooden handle put on each end. It was a tool Kensaku had seen coopers often use. Také put it down on the ground beside him, then produced from one of the pockets of his ancient, khaki-colored riding breeches a pack of cigarettes. Kensaku waited until he had lit his cigarette before asking, “Do you really cut down these huge trees yourself?”
“Oh, no. Only an experienced tree cutter could do that. He cuts them down, then brings them here.”
“Yes, I’d have thought so.”
“By the way, when are we going to the top of the mountain?”
“Whenever it’s convenient for you,” Kensaku answered. “Anytime is all right with me.”
“Well, I’ve been asked to act as guide tomorrow night for a small group of high school students. There are four or five of them, I think. Would you like to come?”
“Yes, that would be fine.”
“It might be fun going with young, carefree students, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I agree.”
The edge of the stone washbasin was covered with moss that had formed from the constant wetting. And along this edge were strange creatures crawling about. They were smaller than those caterpillars one saw on cherry trees, and from under their sparse hair the black skin showed through. There were thousands of them, perhaps tens of thousands, moving about in a pulsating mass. It was a terrible sight to behold. Some members of the insect world were indeed disillusioning, Kensaku thought. “Are these some kind of caterpillar?” he asked.
“There weren’t any yesterday, but they appeared all of a sudden today.”
“They seem somewhat unusual. Do they belong to the caterpillar family?”
“We’ll leave the temple at midnight, climb at a leisurely pace, and we should be able to reach the peak in time to pay our respects to the rising sun. It would be helpful if the moon stayed out, but lately it’s been disappearing rather early.”
“Is that so? I suppose we’ll use lanterns if there’s no moon.”
“If the sky is clear, the stars will give us enough light since there won’t be any trees most of the way. Of course we’ll take lanterns with us.”
“I’m sure I’ll get tired if I don’t have an afternoon nap, but the trouble is, I can’t sleep during the day.”
“Go to bed early, then. I’ll come and wake you up when we’re ready to go.”
“But I can’t go to sleep in the early evening. I never could.”
“That’s very unfortunate,” Také said, and began to laugh.
Také dropped the cigarette end on the ground, stepped on it, then went back to work. Kensaku walked around to Amida’s Chapel as usual, and from there returned to his apartment.
His letter to Naoko, he thought, would reach her the day after next at the earliest; and if the mailman who came to collect the mail only on alternate days were not coming that day, it would take yet another day to reach her. He sat down before his desk, and opening Lives of Eminent Priests, began reading Gansan’s life from where he had left it. He was interested to learn why so many country houses had pictures of Gansan, looking extremely fierce, stuck above their doors. He learned also that Gansan was one of the two priests commemorated at the Two Priests’ Chapel in Ueno.
He heard an unfamiliar voice calling from the entrance. Thinking that the visitor had mistaken the annex for the rectory—why would anyone be calling on him?—Kensaku remained at his desk. But when the visitor announced himself again, he got up and went out to the front hall. A priest was standing by the door. He looked to be about forty; his manner, Kensaku thought, exuded a curious mixture of exaggerated courtesy and expectant intimacy. “Might I come in for a minute?” he said. Kensaku, though certain that his visitor was under some misapprehension, invited him in and showed him into the small room between the living room and the front hall. The visitor looked about him uneasily and inquisitively as he walked through the front hall and into the small room; and when he saw the pile of books in the alcove he said, “Are you engaged in some kind of research?”
“No,” answered Kensaku, determined not to invite any further familiarity from this vulgar person. He was sure that if the visitor had indeed come to the right place, his errand was bound to be of a questionable nature.
“Let me state my business right away. I am the rector of a temple called Manshōji. It’s in Akazaki, at the foot of this mountain. Anyway, starting tomorrow, there’s going to be a ten-day course on Zen at Kongōin Temple, and I thought that if you had any interest in Zen, I might persuade you to attend.”
“Are you giving the lectures?”
“Oh, no, I’m involved only because the teachers at the local primary school asked me to organize such a program. No, the lecturer is someone who studied under the master Gazan of Tenryūji. I myself don’t belong to the Zen sect.”
Kensaku had heard about Gazan from Nobuyuki. Perhaps, he thought, if this lecturer were a bona fide disciple of the master, he might be worth listening to. “What text will he be discoursing on?” he asked.
“I believe it will be Sayings of Lin-chi.”
“I happen to have that with me,” Kensaku said. Then seeing the surprised look on the priest’s face, he quickly added, “I have a brother who goes to a temple in Kamakura, and he gave it to me.”
“In which case you, too, must know quite a lot about Zen.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know a thing about it.”
“I can hardly believe that. At any rate, if you’ve been reading Lin-chi, then surely you would like to come.”
“Will there be a catechism{3}?”
“Yes, indeed.”
Kensaku thought he remembered Nobuyuki telling him that a catechism in Zen was pointless unless the teacher really knew what he was doing. After a short silence he said, “I’ll think about it and let you know later.” But as he looked at the priest and imagined himself having to associate with him for ten days, what little interest he had had in the lectures quickly evaporated.
“Please don’t be so formal,” said the priest. “Do say you’ll come. It’ll be only for ten days. There’ll be no one who knows much about it, they’re all beginners, and all we ask is that you have some vague idea of what Zen is about. Please think of it as something not at all serious, and do come, please. I can’t help feeling that your having a copy of Sayings of Lin-chi is some kind of happy omen.”
“I’ll let you know later.”
“Please, do say yes.”
Kensaku did not deign to reply. The priest seemed for a moment to lose his composure, then suddenly put on a solemn expression and said, “I have a favor to ask of you, as a matter of fact.”
Kongōin, the temple below, had no annex, he said; which meant that only a screen door separated the master and the students, and when he gave the catechism to each student individually, the others would overhear him. If Kensaku would consent to become one of the students and lodge with the rest, the master could then use Kensaku’s place for his catechisms. How convenient it would be if Kensaku could grant this favor. How fortunate that he should be a connoisseur and know what a catechism in Zen was like; otherwise it would have been much more awkward to make such a request.
Kensaku lost his temper completely. He might not have been quite so angry if he had not been gulled into taking the priest’s invitation to the lectures so seriously. “If you had asked me that in the first place,” he said hotly, “I would have given some thought to your request. But you tried to flatter me first. You tried to manipulate me, didn’t you?” He continued to berate the priest thus for some time.
“You do me an injustice,” said the priest. “I did not come with that intention. I simply wanted to recruit as many people as possible for the course, people who might be interested in learning about Zen. It was only after I came here and saw how convenient this annex would be for the teacher that I decided I would ask you if you would let us use it. I knew it w
as forward of me to ask, but I thought I should anyway. I did not come here with the express purpose of making such a request. Please understand that. I do not relish being thought of as some kind of cheat.”
Kensaku was no longer able to contain himself. “You’re a liar!” he shouted.
The priest turned pale. There was more vehemence in his tone as he said, “Why do you say that?”
“You might at least try being a little less transparent!”
In silence the two glared at each other. Then to Kensaku’s amazement the priest spread out the sleeves of his robe and prostrated himself. Looking down at this spiderlike figure stretched out on the floor, Kensaku was hardly able to suppress a giggle. “I beg your forgiveness,” said the priest, successfully throwing Kensaku into a state of utter confusion.
In the end Kensaku agreed that he would vacate his quarters if another place, equally quiet, were found for him. After all, he said, it was not essential that he should remain at this temple. The priest said that he was most grateful, and departed. And so Kensaku’s mood of contentment of that afternoon was broken by this idiotic incident. But he was determined not to brood about it.
17
That evening Oyoshi had something extremely unpleasant to tell Kensaku. Také’s wife and a lover had been badly wounded by another of her lovers, and she was in a critical condition. Také was at this moment rushing down the mountain to get to her. “I feel so sorry for him,” Oyoshi said. “She’s such a dreadful woman, yet he doesn’t hate her at all. He cried when he heard the news, apparently, and kept on saying he knew something like this was bound to happen.”
“It’s not a nice story, is it?”
“The one that stabbed her is someone who knew her before Také’s time, and the one that got stabbed with her is an old friend of Také’s. He came up here with him once, I’m told.”
“This wife of his, is she likely to recover?”
“Someone was saying that she probably would be dead by the time Také got there.”
