Segaki (16 page)

It is curious how fastidious nature can at times be. Sometimes it seems to landscape its own woods.
Everything
around them was in quietly joyous growth, fed by the drifting water spray. Yet reaching round beside him, Yasumaro picked up an autumn leaf from the shingle, like a dried out tiny hand. He looked at it seriously.

“Have you ever thought about sbumi,” he asked, “which we achieve with such trouble, leaving an
untrimmed
shrub or a dead leaf in a perfect garden, when nature does the same thing so easily? Perhaps there is a moral sbumi too. Perhaps in every good life there must be some isolated badness, like a dead leaf, to remind us how impermanent a thing goodness is. And in every bad life, even if accidentally, some deliberately good act, to reassure us.”

He looked up, with a serious smile, and then giggled, stretching his arms. But before they left he stood looking at the waterfall for a long long good-bye.

Yasumaro spent the cool low slanting evening alone in the garden, diligently loosening the soil around the plants, happily bemused in the midst of the parable of nature.

He seemed to reach some decision, which kept him lingering there for a long time. Even when it was dark, he sat alone on the veranda, listening to the small garden sounds.

Muchaku understood he wished to be alone. Vaguely troubled, he went to bed.

There was a high rustling wind that night, and the darkness was full of a continual many footed scurrying, hard to place, but always there. Perhaps the kami were out again, watching to do mischief. Those primitive creatures were always waiting to dart in whenever one’s self control was overstrained. Perhaps he heard the yapping of ghost foxes.

He had grown so accustomed to the rustling, that when it stopped, he did not at first realize that it had done so. He had the impression of a presence. Whatever it was that wanted him, it wanted him out there.

The dog got up stiff legged and stared out into the garden.

Whether Muchaku was awake or asleep, he could not
be quite sure, but he did know that he was somewhere unfamiliar to him. He stood up and went uncertainly to the door.

It was moonlight in the garden, the area was full of a seething smoke-coloured flood of it, and in moonlight we always feel that someone is there watching us, whether they or we are there or not.

The dog refused to budge from the doorway. Muchaku ventured out on to the veranda and then became
motionless
.

Something was swaying out there, staring longingly towards the house. It was Lady Furikake. Tall, indolent, she straightened up from moving around among the flowers, touching now one and now another wistfully. They were drained of colour, and she had wanted to see colour so much. He wanted to flee before she turned towards him, but he could not move.

She looked right at him, her right hand still on the head of a flower, playing with it absent-mindedly,
unseeing
, and then aware of him. At first she looked startled and hurt. She smiled to herself from very far away, but she was too well bred to show what she must be feeling. She gave him a bemused, disdainful, almost affectionate smile and then faded out. The garden was dark, as though all the moonlight had been sucked out of it, but the blackness was saturated with her perfume. Looking up, he saw that after all there had been no moon.

He was filled with an unbearable melancholy. He felt he had been inadequate with her, not sufficiently refined in movement, and that haunted him.

There is a poem by the Chinese Emperor Wu-Ti, the sixth of the Han dynasty, who lamented the loss of a
court lady. He said the sound of her silk skirt had stopped. Her empty room was cold and still. Fallen leaves had piled against her door. He tried to still grief, but could not. Instead he sent for magicians. These at last managed to project her shape upon a curtain. He had asked then:

For of course, though she might come, she would never arrive. That was how Muchaku felt. It was
unbearable
to withdraw from the world and fail, only to fail the world and have it withdrawn from you.

When he woke he found Yasumaro staring at him, sitting cross legged and content.

“Was it a ghost?” asked Muchaku. He did not stop to explain. He knew that his brother knew what he had seen.

“A ghost? Who knows. What a thing seems to be perhaps goes on living when what it was dies. So only our appearances are immortal. For everyone is three people, himself, what he thinks he is, and what others think him. We can never know what he is, any more than he can. But we never forget what we think he is.”

Muchaku did not listen. “She seemed so hungry.”

Yasumaro became less bland. “Oh we shall be hungry ghosts ourselves, whether we survive or not, for a war does not only kill men. It also kills the world they live in. So even living, we yet move in the ghost of a world, and it is better to be a ghost than to live in a ghost world.”

“I can’t believe it was she.”

“Why try? There are some things the mind cannot
conceive of. We can only believe in something we cannot understand, for otherwise we would know it, and
knowledge
is not belief. Everything we remember is a ghost. It comes and goes. She will always be here until you really want to forget her.” He looked down at Muchaku anxiously. “Are you well enough to get up?”

Muchaku nodded.

“Good. I’ve decided we’ll go to the Pearl Cloud temple. I go there every year to paint. Besides, it is pleasant up there.”

Muchaku sensed that there was another reason for this journey, but thought it wiser not to ask what. He rather liked being protected by his brother, even if it did involve him in a plan the purpose of which he did not understand.

“There is no hurry,” said Yasumaro, and seemed relieved. “Stay here, and I’ll bring you breakfast. There is a lot to be done first, so you may as well rest.”

Muchaku did as he was told. But as he sat there, bathed in the fumes from his tea, he was aware of a new sad restlessness in that ordinarily peaceful house. It was as though everything well loved was going away. It was so unwonted that at first he did not recognize it, and when he did recognize it, he found he was reluctant to find out its cause. Yet he could not lie there in hiding. He went in search of his brother.

He found him in the back quarters of the house,
carefull
y packing the valuable rocks in the sand garden. He must have been prepared for such an event. There was a low opening in the basement wall of the corridor, ready to receive them, with its cover leaning to one side.

It might seem odd to take care of rocks. Desperate soldiers would not notice them. But these were famous,
valuable, and old as men date things old from that time ago that they first discovered them. Besides, perhaps the soldiers would disrupt their arrangement, and Yasumaro wanted no one to do that but himself, for each one was not only venerable in itself, but had come from a famous collection, and the arrangement of them in the sand had been done by a master, whether that master was himself or no. One must have the courage to recognize ability, even in one’s self.

Yasumaro looked up startled, but when Muchaku said nothing, seemed reassured.

Muchaku did not care to watch the disassembly of a world. The far wall of the court was oiled, but that on the left was plain plaster. Against it, from the garden beyond, was cast the shadow of a dancing bough of tiny maple leaves. He watched it for a while. The shadows were only sometimes precise, but no matter how often they were vague, they always came back to precision again.

They were a little like Yasumaro himself. He was so completely fraudulent that that made him thoroughly genuine, and when people realized that, they could trust him. But very few people ever did realize that, least of all Muchaku. They were so much more content not so much to be amused, as to be found amusing.

However Yasumaro was not bashful about his rocks. Them he loved in a matter of fact way, since clearly,
unlike
the snails, they could not seem to have any affection for him.

Rocks, he said, like all art, formalized the horror of life without concealing it, and removed it by staring it in the face. To formalize anything was to understand it. Rocks
are ethical, not moral. The ethical necessity is the higher, for morals are an illusion. They are an effort to control how people behave by pretending that they behave otherwise. Whereas ethics are designed to ameliorate conduct simply by recognizing behaviour for what it really is and then pointing out how these pieces may fit most efficiently together. Tuberculosis may have an ethic. There are various ways to make the progress of that disease as comfortable as possible. But the venereal has only morals, an example of the carelessness of being so careful as to pretend that things are as they are not.

True, as for rocks, if we knew more about them, and after all we know little but that they breathe and sweat and to a certain extent are capable of feeling, we might find that they had pretences too, but as it is they seem ethical and realistic. They are subject only to a natural senility. It is therefore inaesthetic to tamper with a rock. They make themselves, and so one can only find them, though life, it is true, wears them away into the most beautiful of shapes.

And of course, for proper conduct, which is ethics, one must be realistic, and this is not possible without a sense of humour. Rocks are very humorous. One can detect that in their immobility. Like all humorous people, they are content merely to watch. This is called irony. God has it, we may be sure, and a few, a very few, men, those usually humorous enough to perceive the Tao’s
indifference
. For of course there is no God. There is only Tao.

Yet it would be a mistake to think that indifference is passive. It is passive only as water is passive. Just by passing by and doing nothing, we alter the shape of everything.

Yasumaro had reached the last rock. He looked at it regretfully.

“Millionaires and Zen priests like to own rocks they fancy resemble ships, mountains, and waterfalls, to put in their gardens. Shinto priests would persuade you they had only picked up a few things a Kami dropped, and are keeping them for safe keeping. But this is vain. Except for a mountain. A mountain may come in any size, large as Fuji, or small as a pebble. But a ship and a waterfall no. A rock is the most abstract thing we can ever see, because, you see, it is the most immanent. Even that shadow of the maple leaves you cannot read the meaning of, because first you cannot forget it is a maple leaf, and second, that it is the shadow of a maple leaf, and so as a result you imagine it is more than either. But an individual rock is never so individual that you are not first of all aware, not of its personal identity or beauty, but that it is a rock. And genera are more transparent than specimens of them. It is easier to see the immanent through them. For the immanent is not really the immanent, any more than the transcendent is the transcendent. It is merely whether one looks at the surface of the water from above itself or below, from without or within. In this world we live below.”

He put away the last rock and restored the plaster wall. Then he dusted off his hands and gave a crooked smile.

“Besides, there is another reason for loving them. They outlive us, which is what ideas do. No man ever outlives his ideas or his art. That is the fascination of such things. They are as immortal and as guileful as children. And so rocks can tell us when it is time to go. I like that. They
are so courteous, so bland, and yet so firm. And like us, if we were as we should want to be, they have no regrets.”

He shrugged, and neither of them asked why he was packing. “You could help me with the pictures if you like. It was only that I wanted to be alone with these for a while.”

Obediently Muchaku went to help with the pictures.

The dog did not like the packing. Though men might ignore the fact, an animal always knows when its masters are preparing to depart. It pattered up and down anxiously, and was altogether too ready to be petted and reassured. It would flop on the floor with a sigh. But it never ceased watching them. Every time they made for a door it got up. And then, ashamed it was not even noticed, it slumped discouragedly down again. Its tail gave a despondent thump.

One never realizes, until it is time to pack the treasures, how priceless are the useless things in a house. And there was no time now to pack everything.

The jade cups had to go. It might be a moral
impossibility
to smash them, but soldiers after loot have no morals. Anything they don’t know the value of makes them feel cheated, so they smash it. The oil spot tea service naturally went with them. There were also a few Chinese paintings and a scroll by Takayoshi, and these were not only invaluable, but also the most trouble. They had to be rolled up to be put in their tubes. Across the
Takayoshi
, an artist of the Fujiwara period, Lady Furikake stalked amiably through rooms she might have inhabited, had life been otherwise. It was she who illustrated the life of Genji. She was unmistakable. As she disappeared around the right handle of the scroll Muchaku almost
cried out. He sensed they would not be back. They had seen her for the last time. Yet the scroll had been flung out carelessly on a table. Yasumaro seemed more
saddened
by the Chinese landscapes, and by a little thing of immediate persimmons by Fa Ch’ang. At those he looked for a long time.

But then they, too, vanished into their carrying cases, and were stowed out of harm’s way, in a stone cabinet under one of the flagstones in the garden, so firmly fitted that the rain would not get at them. Except that he held the Fa Ch’ang back, and took it with him when at last they left. That he could not bear to part with.

To his own works he paid no attention whatsoever, though they were valuable and fine. But then no artist is ever much concerned with what he has done. It is no longer a part of him, and he knows, if he is any good, that whether he can or not, he must try to do better. He went to the studio only to gather up paper and brushes and an inkstone. These, with the Fa Ch’ang, he left on a dais, ready for their departure. Then he disappeared.

Muchaku found him some time later in the garden. It was by now noon.

Yasumaro was feeding the snails, and also saying
good-bye
to them, indifferent to their indifference, if it was indifference. It did seem as though they turned their plump bodies towards him, and waved their antennae intelligently. He was amiably sad with them.

Muchaku had forgotten about the snails. He went down into the garden. Yasumaro, who had parted two large branches of ficus in order to peer down between them, ruefully let the shrubs move back together.

“I think they’ve enjoyed themselves here,” he said.
“Then again you might say that I liked leaves with round holes in them. When the Buddha was too warm, we are told, 280 pious snails protected him by sitting on his shaved head, as we can see in the statues. It’s a pretty legend, and like most legends, true so long as it is not taken literally.” He peered down under the leaves again. “Besides, they are instructive. They have nothing to teach, but still, by being around them one may learn much. That either makes them artists or wise men, which is the same thing, for wisdom is selective too. It wisely rejects all experience that it cannot use. Have you ever watched a snail? So does he.”