Kusamakura (10 page)

“No, no, the man.”

“You mean the priest.”

“Sure, the priest.”

“So why was the priest surprised?”

“Why? Well, he’s in the hall saying sutras with the abbot when suddenly in she rushes.” The barber snickers. “She’s a loony right enough.”

“Did she do something?”

“‘If you love me so much, let’s make love right here in front of the Buddha,’ says she, just like that, and she throws herself around Taian’s neck.”

“Good heavens.”

“Really shook ’im up, it did. Goes and sends a letter to a loony, and now just look at the shame she’s caused him. So that night away he creeps, and puts an end to ’imself.”

“He died?”

“Must’ve. How could he live after a thing like that?”

“How bizarre.”

“Darn right. Still, if the other party’s a loony, you’d be pretty depressed if you’d put an end to yerself, so maybe he’s still alive, who knows?”

“It’s a fascinating story.”

“Fascinating? Why, the whole village was laughin’ fit to bust. But as for her, she’s crazy of course, so she just went about calm as you please, didn’t turn a hair. Well, a fine sensible gentleman like yerself, sir, there’d be no trouble of that sort, but bein’ who she is, you’d only have to tease her a bit, say, and who knows what mightn’t happen.”

“Perhaps I’ll tread a bit carefully, then,” I say with a laugh.

A salty spring breeze wafts up from the warm shore, and the barbershop curtain over the door flaps drowsily. The reflection of a swallow flashes across the mirror as the slanting shape comes diving in beneath the curtain to its nest under the eaves. An old man of sixty or so is squatting under the eaves of the house across the road, quietly shucking shellfish. Each click of his knife against a shell sends another red sliver of flesh tumbling into the depths of the bamboo basket, followed by a sudden glitter as another empty shell flies across a shimmering band of light to land two feet or so away. Is it oysters, or surf clams, or perhaps razor clams, lying there in that high mound of empty shells? Here and there the midden has collapsed, and some of its shells have slipped down to lie on the floor of the sandy stream behind, carried out of the transient world to a burial in the realm of darkness. No sooner is a shell’s burial completed than a fresh one is added to the pile beneath the willow. The old man works on, tossing shell after shell through the shimmering sunlight, never pausing to ponder their fate. His basket seems bottomless, his spring day an endless tranquil expanse of time.

The sandy stream runs beneath a little bridge a bare twelve feet or so long and bears its waters on toward the shore. Out there where its spring flow joins the shining spring sea, fathoms of fishing nets are looped up to dry in an uneven jumble of lengths. Perhaps it is these that impart to the soft breeze, blowing in through the nets to the village, a warm, pungent smell of fish. That sluggish silver visible beyond the nets, like a dull sword melted to a shimmering swim of molten metal, is the sea.

This scene is utterly at odds with the barber beside me. If his character were more forceful, able to hold its own in my mind against the brilliance of the scene that lies all about him, I would be overwhelmed by the wild incongruity between the two. Fortunately, however, the barber is not so strikingly impressive. However overflowing he is with the old Tokyoite’s bravado, no matter how he might bluster and swagger, the man is no match for the vast and harmonious serenity of the circumambient air. This barber, who does his best to shatter the prevailing atmosphere with his display of self-satisfied garrulousness, has swiftly become no more than a tiny particle floating deep in the far reaches of the felicitous spring sunlight. A contradiction, after all, cannot arise where the relative strength, substance, or indeed spirit and body of the two elements are irreconcilable; it can be felt only when two things or people are on a similar level. If the discrepancy between them is too vast, all contradictory relationship may well finally evaporate and vanish, and the two instead come to play a single part in the great life force. For this reason the man of talent can act in the service of the great, the fool can be an assistant to the man of talent, and the ox and horse can support the fool. My barber is simply enacting a farce against the backdrop of the spring scene’s infinity. Far from destroying the tranquillity of spring, he is in fact achingly augmenting the sensation of it. I find myself savoring my chance encounter with such a happy-go-lucky pantomime buffoon on this vernal day. This ebullient braggart, all puff and no substance, provides in fact the perfect touch to set off the day’s deep serenity.

In this state of mind, it strikes me that my barber is a fine subject for a picture or a poem, so I remain squatting there companionably, chatting about this and that, long past the time I should have left. Then suddenly a little priest’s shaved head slips in between the shop curtains.

“Excuse me, could you do me a shave?” he says, and in he comes. He’s a very jolly-looking little priest, in a white cotton gown with a padded rope belt and a black priest’s robe of coarse gauze draped over it.

“Ryōnen! How’s it going? I’ll bet the abbot told you off the other day for dawdling, huh?”

“Not a bit of it. He gave me a pat on the back.”

“Pat on the back because you went off on an errand and managed to pull out a fish while you were at it, huh?”

“He said he was pleased I’d given myself such a good time; it goes to show I’m wiser than my years.”

“No wonder yer head’s all swelled up like that. Just look at those lumps. Dreadful business to shave such a badly behaved noggin. Well, I’ll let you off this time. But you just mold it into better shape before you bring it here again.”

“If I have to remold it to suit you, it’s easier to take it to a better barber.”

The barber laughs. “Head’s shaped funny, but you sure got a quick tongue.”

“As for you, your hands are hopeless at shaving, but they sure know how to lift a sake cup.”

“Whaddya mean ‘hopeless at shaving,’ goddamn you!”

“I didn’t say it, the abbot did. No need to lose your cool. Come on now, act your age.”

“Hrrmph. No joke—isn’t that right, mister?”

“What?”

“These priest types, they all live the easy life perched up there in their temples. No wonder their tongues get so quick off the mark. Even this young feller, he’s forever shootin’ his mouth off—oops, head to the side a bit—to the side, I said, dammit—I’ll give ya a cut if ya don’t do as yer told, got that? There’ll be blood, I’m warnin’ ya.”

“Hey, that hurts! Don’t be so rough!”

“This is nothin’. How ya goin’ to be a priest if ya can’t put up with a bit of pain, huh?”

“I’m already a priest.”

“Yer not the real thing yet. Speakin’ of which, why did that Taian die? Tell me.”

“But Taian’s not dead.”

“Not dead? Fancy that. I was sure he died.”

“He turned over a new leaf after all that happened, and he went off to Daibaiji temple up in Rikuzen, to throw himself into his practice. He’ll have reached enlightenment by now, I should think. It’s a fine thing.”

“What’s fine about it? Never heard of no Buddhist teaching that says it’s fine to do a flit like he did. You just look out, ya hear me? Don’t you go makin’ a fool of yerself with a woman. Speakin’ of women, that loony goes visiting the abbot, does she?”

“I haven’t heard of any loony woman.”

“Get it through that thick bald skull, come on. Does she go or doesn’t she?”

“No loony goes to visit, but Shioda’s daughter certainly does.”

“The abbot can pray all he likes, there’s no curin’ that one. That ex-husband of hers has cursed her.”

“She’s a fine woman. The abbot has a lot of praise for her.”

“Well, it beats me. Everything’s topsy-turvy once you’re up in that temple of yours. Whatever he says, a loony’s a loony—right, that’s yer head done. Off you go quick smart, and get yerself a scolding from the abbot.”

“No, I’d rather take my time about it and get a pat on the back instead.”

“Do as you like, you impudent twerp.”

“Pah! You’re a shit-ass!”

“What did you say?”

But the freshly shaved head has already ducked through the shop curtains and is out in the spring breeze.

It is evening. I settle at the desk, all the doors opened wide.

Not only are there few people in this inn, but the building itself is relatively spacious, so that here in my room, separated as it is by winding corridors from the realm of human intercourse where those few dwell, not a sound comes to disturb my contemplations. And today all is quieter still. The master of the house, his daughter, and the male and female servants seem to have all departed and left me here alone—departed not to some ordinary place but to the land of mists perhaps, or to the realm of clouds. Or perhaps cloud and water have moved closer, so that their little boat drifts unawares upon a sea so calm that the hand is too languid to reach for the tiller, then floats off and away until the white sail seems to become one with water and cloud, until at last even the sail itself must scarcely know how it might differ from them—perhaps it is to this distant realm that they have all departed. Or perhaps they have suddenly disappeared into the depths of the spring, their mortal bodies now transformed to spirit mists there in the vast reaches between heaven and earth, too insubstantial to be visible any longer even to the microscope’s powerful eye. Or they have become skylarks, singing all day the delights of the mustard blossom’s gold, and now, as the light fades, soaring to where the evening’s deep violet trails its hues. Or perhaps as gadflies they have lengthened the long day with their labors, failing at the last to sip from the last flower’s center its sweet accumulated dew, and now they sleep a scented sleep, pillowed beneath some tumbled camellia blossom. Whatever may be the case, it certainly is quiet.

The spring breeze that wafts emptily through the vacant house comes neither to gratify those who welcome it nor to spite those who would bar it. No, it is the spirit of the impartial universe, which comes of its own whim, and of its own whim departs again. Were my heart, as I sit here, chin cupped in propped palm, as empty as the room around me, the spring breeze would surely blow unbidden clean through it as well.

Knowing that it is the earth that we tread, we learn to tread carefully, lest it be rent open. Realizing that it is the heavens that hang above us, we come to fear the echoing thunderbolt. The world demands that we battle with others for the sake of our own reputation, and so we undergo the sufferings bred of illusion. While we live in this world with its daily business, forced to walk the tightrope of profit and loss, true love is an empty thing, and the wealth before our eyes mere dust. The reputation we grasp at, the glory that we seize, is surely like the honey that the cunning bee will seem sweetly to brew only to leave his sting within it as he flies. What we call pleasure in fact contains all suffering, since it arises from attachment. Only thanks to the existence of the poet and the painter are we able to imbibe the essence of this dualistic world, to taste the purity of its very bones and marrow. The artist feasts on mists, he sips the dew, appraising this hue and assessing that, and he does not lament the moment of death. The delight of artists lies not in attachment to objects but in taking the object into the self, becoming one with it. Once he has become the object, no space can be found on this vast earth of ours where he might stand firmly as himself. He has cast off the dust of the sullied self and become a traveler clad in tattered robes, drinking down the infinities of pure mountain winds.

It’s not because I wish to put on superior airs to browbeat those who are tainted with the marketplace that I thus strive to imagine this realm. My only intention is to tell the happy news of the salvation that lies there and to beckon those who have ears to hear. The fact of the matter is that the realms of poetry and art are already amply present in each one of us. Our years may pass unheeded until we find ourselves in groaning decrepitude, but when we turn to recollect our life and enumerate the vicissitudes of our history and experience, then surely we will be able to call up with delight some moment when we have forgotten our sullied selves, a moment that lingers still, just as even a rotting corpse will yet emit a faint glow. Anyone who cannot do so cannot call his life worth living.

Yet the joys of the poet do not lie simply in immersing oneself in some moment, and becoming one with some particular object. At times one may become the petal of a flower or a pair of butterflies, or again like Wordsworth one may let one’s heart be tossed in the blessed breeze as a crowd of daffodils. But there are also times when the ineffable beauty around one, some presence one can scarcely grasp, mysteriously masters the heart. One person will speak of being brushed by the shimmering winds of heaven and earth. Another will say he hears in his soul the harmonies of nature’s ethereal harp. Yet another may describe lingering in some incomprehensible and inexplicable realm without boundary or limit, or wandering in the misty far reaches of the world. People may describe it as they will. Into just such a state of mind have I fallen as I sit here at my desk, spellbound and with a vacant gaze.

Clearly I am thinking about nothing. I am most certainly looking at nothing. Since nothing is present to my consciousness to beguile me with its color and movement, I have not become one with anything. Yet I am in motion: motion neither within the world nor outside it—simply motion. Neither motion as flower, nor as bird, nor motion in relation to another human, just ecstatic motion.

If I were pressed to explain, I would want to say that my heart is moving with the spring. Or that some spirit—compounded of all the colors of spring, its breezes, its various elements, and its many voices, condensed, kneaded together into a magic potion that is then dissolved into an elixir in the realm of the immortals and condensed to a vapor in the warmth of Shangri-la’s sunlight—such a spirit has slipped in, unbeknownst to me, through my pores and has saturated my heart. Normally some stimulant provokes a sense of oneness, and this is why the experience is enjoyable. But in this experience of mine I can’t say what I’ve merged with, so it entirely lacks a specific stimulant. For this very reason, however, it produces a fathomless and inexpressible pleasure. I’m not speaking of some superficial and boisterous elation, waves tossed in the abstracted mind by a pummeling wind. No, rather my state is like a vast ocean that moves between one far continent and another above invisible depths of ocean floor. It lacks the vigor that this image suggests—but that is all to the good, for where great energy arises, a hidden fear of the time when that energy consumes itself and comes to an end is always present. In normal circumstances there is no such fear. And in my present, even more tenuous state, I am not only far removed from all such sorrow at the thought of a dwindling of sustaining energy, I am indeed quite freed from the everyday condition of man, in which the heart knows judgment of good and bad, right and wrong. I say that my state is “tenuous” only in the sense that it is ungraspable, not to suggest that it is unduly feeble. Poetic expressions such as “sated with tranquillity” or “sunk in a halcyon calm” perhaps most fully and finely express such a state of mind.