Segaki (17 page)

It was time to be going, and he looked round him reluctantly. Then, with an apologetic glance at Muchaku, he went to make sure that the stone which hid the paintings was securely in place.

“In a war people lose their heads,” he said, patting the stone. “They want to survive so much that they first destroy those few things that make human survival worth while. To me a Sung painting is worth more than a pimply youth with the brains of a flea. The argument is that people are irreplaceable, as though a work of art were not. But if you notice they never ask if the people concerned are worth replacing. I think these will be safe here.”

He led the way back to the house, and they picked up their bundles. Apart from the painting materials and the Fa Ch’ang, they took only some fish cakes, rice, the tea set, tea, and two decorous parasols. Each of them moved through the house stealthily, as though it didn’t belong to them any more. An empty house is as furtive and as sad as an empty museum or a treasure house.

Yasumaro led the way out to the kitchen garden, where he puttered up and down the rows, pulling up random leeks with an expert hand. These he struck into his bundle, so that the long green leaves wobbled up and down behind him like the tail of a blue-green parrot. Then he led the way into the garden proper, without apparent hurry, yet moving anxiously, peering this way and that, and blinking tensely, as he picked the most nearly perfect flowers.

They had each, without consulting the other, dressed with great formality, and the rich silk stuff hung a little heavy upon them. Yasumaro was always so when he was preparing to paint, for he sat down to a blank sheet of paper as another man would dress for an interview with the Emperor, simply, for in comparison to the Emperor everyone is poor, but also with great richness, out of respect. So except for the bundles, they might have been two gentlemen of high rank and great dignity, resting in a garden from the demands of great affairs or perhaps no less demanding pleasures.

Yasumaro moved quietly and gravely, as a man who had once owned it would move through the grounds of a villa he had been forced to sell to tenants he did not quite approve of, patiently, yet with that sadness that is the wiser side of contempt.

At the gate he paused and could not help but look back. Beside the gate was a large tree, so spread out on either side, that it looked like a cleaved melon. Beneath it an elaborate parasol of open shade lay on the gravel.

Yasumaro laughed and became more animated. “Ah, we cannot go on repeating each moment indefinitely,” he said, and walked out the gate into the wood. It was a
phrase he had used so often, that it must mean something other than it said.

The last thing Muchaku saw in the quiet garden was not the snails, but a small white mouse who darted out from under the lowered jalousies of the veranda, sat on its haunches on the edge of the steps, and rubbed its eyes round and around with rolling pink paws, as though it had just waked up. It looked at the deserted veranda with inexpressible satisfaction, like a host too polite to say anything, but relieved that the guests were gone.

Muchaku turned and followed Yasumaro, who was jogging briskly down the trail, carrying his fresh bouquet as though it were a fan. Neither of them realized that they were being watched.

It was not until he saw where they were going, that Muchaku knew with what decision they had really left. They began to climb, following a weed grown trail around the boulders in the wood, and came out at last on a platform surrounded by ancient trees and enclosed by a stone balustrade splotched with moss, as though green hair had taken root. The place was not exactly in
disrepair
, but it had been left to its own devices. It was peaceful, quiet, and yet full of presences. A tablet, an urn, a stone table or two, and several inscriptions stood about among the trees. It was the burial ground of their branch of the family. Yasumaro had come to tell his ancestors that they were leaving.

However he did not do so in words. He laid his flowers on a stone table, with a bowl of rice, and Muchaku did the same with his. Then Yasumaro fussed about for a water-jar, found it, and filled it at a small stream nearby.
The stream was only a trickle. It took some time to fill the stone jar.

Then, for a while, they stood in prayer.

“The dead have such patience. They will wait for us,” said Yasumaro. “It will be nice to come here and be with the rest of them, alone and complete. It is a pretty spot.” He looked at Muchaku shyly. “We are almost over you and I. Of course one could have adopted a child, as artists do. But it seemed better not to do that. Families like to be complete. To have to go on would only have annoyed them, and in the last two hundred years they have had to put up with enough. They must be tired of watching out for us. They deserve their rest.”

“But you are a Buddhist,” said Muchaku irrelevantly.

Yasumaro shrugged and smiled. “Perhaps. It is such a pity everything must have a name. It makes the realization of its nature completely impossible, and communication futile. Who knows what samsara may or may not be? It is not a concept we have ever taken to, Buddhist or not, we Japanese. Yet if we have three shells, and pick one truly at random, in the moment our finger points it out, we realize it was the one we had meant to pick out all along. Have you never felt that, that every free choice is inevitable? Free choice is nothing but the discovery of the inevitable. Yet were we not free to choose, we would never find it. We could have stayed there, but we chose to go. We will find out the reason later, I suppose.”

There was a soft patter high above them, and then as it found its way among the overhead boughs, they found themselves caught in a swift light shower. Bowing to the offering table, Yasumaro backed away and clicked up
his parasol. His hieratic face broke into a shy smile of pleasure.

“It is friendly, the rain,” he said, like a child sharing an unexpected sweetmeat. “We had better go. Have you ever been to the Pearl Cloud Temple?”

Muchaku shook his head and opened his mouth. He had forgotten the taste of summer rain. It was very sweet.

“It is a good place to be. You will see,” said Yasumaro contentedly. He was delighted with the rain, and with the glowing translucence of his oiled umbrella, as the rain bounced merrily over its parchment.

Just before they left the enclosure, he turned towards the balustrade and waved gaily.

They spent the afternoon climbing upward through increasingly dense woods. The rain came and went, now stopping, and now inconsequently starting up again, but Muchaku was aware of a restlessness in the woods, as though unseen presences were gathering barefoot to converge on the plain below. It was not something he either wanted to acknowledge or to understand.
Yasumaro
ignored it. The dog, too, was quiet, but plodded deliberately ahead of them, as though eager to get above that series of stealthy sounds.

Yasumaro frowned, watching the tensile hind quarters of the dog, as it poised to scramble up a steeper slope. “We had better hurry,” he said, and when the dog began to bark, told it to be still.

It was at this point that the old woman turned back. She knew now where they were going, and had not the energy to follow them any more.

Late in the afternoon they reached a higher zone where
they were level with the top of the waterfall, for its sound now echoed as though from the bottom of a well. Here the ground was more level, and they stopped to rest before going on.

At the other end of this shelf they began to climb again. The trees here were older and dustier, but also more protective around them. There was less soil and more outcropped rock. The flowers, such as there were, were pallid and belonged to the foliage of two months ago. They were in the midst of a delayed sub-alpine spring. The air was crisp, and made breathing rapid and sour.

They reached an open space from which Muchaku looked back. So did Yasumaro, sadly. The plain which contained the house was visible below them, and the bigger devastated plain beyond, with the village and the battlefield. Muchaku wondered vaguely if the girl with the butterfly net was still there, or if she appeared only at dusk.

In the far distance he caught a glimpse of movement and metallic glitter. Soldiers perhaps.

Yasumaro was leaving his world. But Muchaku was leaving nothing, for the world had already left him, once, at Noto, and now again, at Lady Furikake’s house. From down there they could hear no sound and see no fire. And yet there had been that evasive metallic glitter.

Drawing back out of sight, they went on, and came at last to a tori gate, dull red, standing in the middle of
nowhere
. Though there was nothing to be seen, clearly the area in front of it was not the same as the area behind it. It was the entrance to a Shinto shrine.

Yasumaro and the dog went through it, but Muchaku
followed hesitantly. He felt the difference in the other side at once. Abandoned it might be, but the site was also powerful, waiting, and holy.

They began to follow an artfully neglected path, with here and there a few broken stone stairs, half fallen under pine needles and dead leaves.

It was almost evening. The light, leaning at a long and longer angle, seemed to lose its balance, and swiftly slipped down towards the horizon. It had already the warm orange colour of an afterglow. The air was filled with an abrupt gust of cedar.

Yasumaro hurried forward as though late for an appointment. They came out suddenly upon a long
peak-roofed
building, buried in trees, obviously monks’ living quarters, and obviously unoccupied for some time. A sliding screen had sprung its grooves, and bulged out into the cold air. From the building a covered gallery led steeply up the hill. The steps were littered with debris and broken roof tiles.

Above this soared an elaborate scaffolding of wooden timbers, thirty feet into the air, above which Muchaku could see pillars and roofs, all deserted and abandoned, and overgrown by untrimmed branches.

Yasumaro climbed this arcade, and the dog and Muchaku followed. The climb was long and steep. The place was utterly deserted. Somewhere in the woods near them a deer barked. The dog scuttled sideways and then leaped on ahead of them. They came to the end of the stair and plunged into a series of pillared corridors and halls. The pillars were split with age, and bits and pieces of broken spider-webs drifted back and forth, connected only at their invisible upper end. The floors were of
powdery wood, scratched up here and there by animals, and scattered with droppings.

Muchaku entered warily. As a priest, it had never occurred to him that secular awe was even more moving than the quiet watchful attitude of the professional. It occurred to him now. For the first time he realized how deeply an outsider might feel.

The place smelled not only of age, but of the deep woods. It did not seem to have been used for a hundred years. From time to time the flooring trembled under their feet, and Muchaku remembered the weary scaffolding below them.

They came out into a small courtyard with an
overturned
rock garden, the few plants in riot. The dog had bounded ahead of them. They could hear it pattering up and down on the resonant wooden flooring of the farther building. Yasumaro crossed the court, went around a spirit baffle, and they found themselves beside a shrine, in a high open hall, with the late sunlight streaming towards them. There was dust everywhere. The hall was flanked by two completely open pavilions, but in the centre was a terrace. It was to this that Yasumaro eagerly made his way.

They were on a level with the tops of the trees. Through the open pillars it was almost possible to reach out and touch the quivering crowns. The rain had stopped hours ago and the air was clear.

“Ah,” said Yasumaro, standing motionless. “This is what one came to see.”

They were on top of the thirty-foot scaffolding, which in turn was rooted on a steep sheet of granite. The airy hall seemed to rise and fall with the breathing of the rock.

The air was cold. Muchaku was discomforted and taken
out of himself. He seemed to hear a peculiar, scarcely-audible, perhaps not physically audible, perhaps not even existent hissing all around him. The sun was for a moment behind a cloud, so that there spread out from no point of visible origin, a depthless vast shimmering light, with no moment of arrival or departure, a light without fire, immense and unforgettable, as the sunlight hung suspended in the last water vapour.

Far in the distance, beyond the perceptible sea, lay the sacred imperturbable mountain, Fuji. It rose calm and serene, still with some snow on it from last year, or perhaps the first early snow of this, and as the cloud dissolved, the soft downy light glowed more brightly upon the peak.

Then, having shown them what it was to be immutable, the mountain slowly began to fade, as the light around it faded, but yet it was still there.

Muchaku knew now why they had come here, and at this hour.

Then, as though nature had been holding its breath, a cool wind exhaled around them, and the leaves tinkled and swayed and danced.

Yasumaro stayed on the terrace for a long time, and then cooked their evening meal. He did very little talking, and Muchaku did not feel the need to
speak. He had much to think about, and accepted the thoughts calmly, for in this place it was as though they thought him.

There were some things, at last, he was beginning to understand.

They retired early for the night, in order to get up the earlier in the morning, for what was to be, though neither of them had expected it quite so soon, their last day.

At some time in the night Muchaku woke up. On
impulse
he went to take a look at the imperturbable
mountain
. It was still there, but all the same it filled him with the utter astonishment we sometimes feel when we look at something familiar. On his way back to his quilt, he noticed that a light burned in the small side room to which his brother had retired. He was too tired to think about it and lying down again, went contentedly to sleep. The ghostly presence of the mountain against the stars in that humming, luminous sky had reassured him.