Segaki (14 page)

It was when they returned, walking slowly through the silent plain, that they discovered that the maid had fled. Even to this height the smoke mounted, and the air was acrid and flat.

The dog, who had bounded forward, stopped in its tracks and peered at the house. With a worried glance Yasumaro went into the outer garden.

It did not take them long to discover that the house was empty. Even before they entered, they could tell that something that had been there was not there any longer. One can tell such things. Various objects seemed to have been put down hastily for the last time. They were not quite where they belonged.

The two men hurried along the veranda and into those quarters which had so far been closed to Muchaku. He found Yasumaro’s sleeping-room as austere as the rest of the house, yet subtly it did have the smell of women about it, not the professional smell of a courtesan, but the sunnier, healthier one of a young girl. Garments were scattered about the open chests.

Yasumaro stopped to pick up a comb. He held it in his hand for a moment, and then methodically put everything back in its place in the chests. He had to do something, he did not seem to have anything to say, and besides, he
liked order. But he held the silken things an instant, meditatively, in his fingers, before he closed the lid of each chest.

“No doubt you are hungry,” he said at last.

In the kitchen they found, that though she had left in great haste, no doubt on the advice of her brother, still she had left them a meal simmering on the kitchen stove, as though she would be back, or wanted to leave
something
of herself behind, not so much as an apology, but as both to go and yet to stay at the same time.

Perhaps she had been cooking when she made up her mind, though that did not seem likely. No, frightened as she was, she must have taken the time to get things ready, for though no doubt she had fled to save her life, still it must have been hard for her to give up the only contented security she had ever known.

Yasumaro lifted a lid and smelled what was inside. There was even a small pot of stew for the dog. When he put the lid back, it was with some finality. He went in search of a ladle.

“Well, we are alone then, you and I,” he said, took the lid off again, and began placidly to stir. “But then she was not really a very good cook. It was only that she enjoyed doing it so much.”

Muchaku thought it wiser to go away and leave him alone for a while. He went to his own room. The dog stayed with Yasumaro. It was, after all, a gentle dog.

The cooking food was forgotten. Clearly Yasumaro did not want any food. He went to the studio and stayed there all afternoon. For a while it was quiet in there. Then Muchaku heard the tearing up of paper and one
sigh after another. That sound of tearing paper was dreadful to him. He did not quite know why.

There was a distant yelp and the dog came scuttling down the veranda, its tail between its legs, a startled look on its face. It hid behind Muchaku and lay there, panting.

There was no sound from the painting-room for some time. Then Yasumaro appeared in the doorway, his face kept in shadow.

“I’m sorry about the dog,” he said. It was an apology more to himself than to either Muchaku or the dog. You cannot apologize to a dog. You can only make it feel better.

Muchaku raised his hand, as though to say something, though he did not know what. But Yasumaro went away before he could speak.

Grief and anger were not things that Muchaku found it easy to bear. They made him ill at his stomach. He preferred life always to be equable, and assumed that if people were even tempered and bland, it was because, like himself, they refused to feel, not because they carried their feelings safely hidden.

His own feelings were those of a watcher. He did not know how to behave when cast upon the stage himself. His was that remotely amused impersonality with which one watched a Noh play, and with which the actors acted it, realizing, with a shock, when the singing began, that this stylized passion was something people had once actually felt, back in the distant past, before men had received the benefit of manners.

He had thought such things about himself, and now, after last night, seeing that they were not true, he did not
wish to be alone with the discovery. Yet his brother seemed unapproachable.

He was surprised. He had not known that an
indulgence
in women or its absence could make that much difference. He had always regarded the less guarded feelings as no more than a sweetmeat one was occasionally given for good behaviour, self-indulgence being a candy one gave a child as a reward until good conduct became automatic, in which case the candy would no longer be required, the taste for it having disappeared.

It made him uneasy, this woe. He glanced out into the garden from time to time. Late in the afternoon he looked again. His brother sat on the veranda, with his legs crossed, making no gestures, gazing at the snails, and yet trembling slightly.

Since there was nothing Muchaku could do to help, he decided to evade the responsibility for doing nothing by not being there, though he was aware that his getting up, changing into his priest’s robe, and leaving the house had some purpose he had not become aware of yet. He left almost stealthily, leaving the dog behind.

The evening was cool and spacious. But though it was July, the air had that last hour in the old house feeling of autumn. One had never thought, when one lived in them, that the rooms were so big.

Before he realized where he was going, he found himself on the scorched battlefield, where the black spars stood up like the skeleton of a drowned boat. He hurried on, and came to a rise above the village, or rather, what had once been the village, but was now a dusty road, lined with the detritus of a paper town.

There seemed no one left of whom to ask inquiries. He
knew the girl came from there, so it seemed to him best to poke about the ruined outbuildings of the inn.

There had been some chance for the violence that had ripped up the town to settle, but it was still there. It was merely motionless, as a terrier worrying a rat pauses for a moment before cocking up its ears and shaking away again. Coals were smouldering under the surface, which made the ground here and there unexpectedly warm. And though the village was deserted, that did not mean that the peasants had fled for good. They were probably in the woods and hidden in the fields, watching everything he did, quite willing to tear one man apart, as the only way they could revenge themselves for having been torn apart by a hundred. There would be nothing personal about it. They were kind people, and well disciplined as a rule. They would destroy him solely because he was weaker than they, in order to make themselves feel less helpless.

In these circumstances there was only one way to
behave
, to keep firm, move with assurance, and retreat as soon as possible. You cannot break a terrified mob unless you can at least see it. But he was glad instinct had made him put on his tattered priests’ robes. If he had been better dressed, he would not have survived for half an hour.

The evening was advanced and cast shadows that no longer had any human shape. He had only to follow this long late sundial to come to a cluster of wretched wattle huts, somewhere behind the inn. Here the impression of being watched was very strong, and he was sufficiently upset by it to turn away, as a bundle of grey rags shot out of a door and began to beseech him. He could not
understand
a word. But neither could he shake off the hand
that held him. She must be one of the inn servants, that emerged as she jabbered, and she was mad.

He forced himself to bear her touch. He got the story out of her. No the girl was not here, anywhere, she had already fled with her brother, who had said the army was on its way back, and would be here in three or four days at the most. Everybody knew that. He had wanted to save his sister. She thought that poetic. On the other hand it might have been incest. Did he think it was incest? Even in terror, she had the beady mouse eyes of a hungry gossip. Food meant nothing to her. She was too old to eat. But gossip was everything. She flapped and swayed, her body under those rags no more than a rusted
armature
. It was the old woman who had stopped him before, but he did not recognize her. Probably she did not recognize herself.

“Or maybe it wasn’t her brother. Maybe she had that fine Hojo keeper of hers fooled.” The woman cackled. There would be no more Hojo and she wasn’t sorry. She thought the girl very clever.

Yes, the region was surrounded. The new Ashikaga clan meant to wipe out everything. Kamakura had fallen. Now it was the turn of the others.

She began to giggle and slobber. He turned away. But she would not let him. She wanted to strike a bargain. She was an old woman. He could see that. She had always reverenced the priesthood. He could see that, too, couldn’t he? He was a priest. She could see that. Even though the region was closed, she knew a way through. She went off into gales of laughter. But she patted his arm with her rattly black-nailed claw. “Don’t worry. By the time those soldiers are through with her, she’ll look
like me. Let them kill your brother. You don’t want them to kill you, do you?”

It was a bribe. She wanted his help, because though she knew the way, she was weak. She could not make it alone. Together they could. She denounced the Ashikaga. She denounced the Hojo. She denounced, though she had never met him, Yasumaro.

“But you can live,” she said, and her cracked voice was full of wonder. Life was so precious, or if not life, at least the will to live was so.

It did not even occur to him to accept. That was not courage. It takes courage to make an unpleasant decision, but this was a decision taken long before the matter had come up. To act on a decision takes only resignation and self-discipline, not courage. His place was with Yasumaro.

Besides, if what she said was true, which he did not doubt, it filled him with an incredible serenity. For if he was to die in three days, then he had already made all his moral decisions, and therefore could give himself up to the unconcerned appreciation of beauty with a free conscience. He was touched. Somehow the world was a ravishing place again.

He now knew why his brother had said nothing about the purpose of the soldier’s visit. Since there is nothing we can do about the inevitable, then there is no point in mentioning it. And neither, with a like consideration, would he mention what he had learned. Since they now knew their fates for sure, they need no longer concern themselves with their own lives at all, but could give themselves up to the placid contemplation of each other as much as they wished.

The old woman began to whine. He shook his head,
eager to be away, before she attracted attention to them. He managed to pry himself loose. But that eager glitter in her eyes evoked by the thought of escape and security died hard. She began to curse him for the filthy priest he was. “There is no Buddha. You are no Buddha. There is only rice and a warm quilt, and they have taken away both,” she shouted. She clawed the robe off his back, it gave, and he let her have it.

It was not what she wanted. “Have you no money? No rice?” she begged, and hurled herself forward. A cunning look came into her eyes. She shouted at the top of her lungs. If she could get nothing out of him, then the others could destroy him. Her voice was terrible. Shivering, naked again in his loin cloth, he made off as quickly as he could, and did not even notice that, when no one came, she followed him herself, certain she would be able to find some means to mark him down, so that she need not die alone. Hatred gave her strength.

It was dusk when he once more reached the upland battlefield and paused, panting, within sound of the waterfall. His feet were torn and cut.

Something fluttered in the dusk, among the amputated trees. He could not make it out, and was too exhausted to be frightened. He peered into the gloom.

It was a chubby little girl in some kind of smock, skipping to and fro with a long muslin butterfly net, with the butterfly, if there was a butterfly, always a little ahead of her. She was unconcerned among the corpses, and seemed content, but when she saw him, instead of
running
up to him, she paused, stopped humming, and then moved farther off, glancing his way nervously from time to time.

He went on to the house.

Yasumaro was pacing up and down the garden anxiously. He peered at him, looked relieved, but said nothing about his nakedness.

“You have been to the village.”

“Yes.”

They exchanged a glance, which seemed to tell each of them what he wanted to know. Yasumaro smiled wryly.

“I have heated bath-water,” he said, and slipped away.

Muchaku went to take a bath, changed, looked for a moment at that Fujiwara robe in its chest, and then found his brother in the kitchen.

Yasumaro seemed calm again, except that he was too stolid, as though he moved with difficulty through an air grown thicker. In that air everything must look familiar but also harder to reach, as he moved among the cooking pots.

“How is it down there?” Yasumaro asked carefully, lifting the lid on a pot, lost for a second in the fumes.

Muchaku hesitated, and then told him. The woman’s viciousness he attributed to the war. He did not mention that they were ringed off.

“Ah, the evils of war.” Yasumaro sounded almost bitter. “Evil is only a form of vulgarity. It is only a kind of incompleteness that imagines it can grow full on another man’s goods, as self-destructive as taking drugs not for their own sake, but as a substitute for something else. Of course it destroys us in the process. I suppose that is why we give it an importance it neither deserves nor possesses. Actions are neither good nor evil. They merely happen. It is only we who think them so. Now evil thoughts are another matter. They are to be pitied.

“It is the same as politics. It is a pity the Regents should have been of our own family. There is always some fool who believes his own world is the real one, so other people believe it too, and want to take it away from him.”