Death in Midsummer & Other Stories (9 page)

He had expected to see unconcealed pleasure come into her eyes at his persistent accusations. All his troublesome pride seemed to hang on it. If he could but see the pleasure, he would forgive her everything.

It was not long before Kawase had said all he had to say and they both fell silent, avoiding each other's eyes. It was a cloudy autumn afternoon. The streets below were crowded. The dust-, 62

covered neon tubes of the cabaret across the way could be studied in great detail.

Asaka looked stubbornly out of the window. Without the slightest change of expression, she began to weep. She scarcely moved her lips as she said: 'I think I'm going to have a baby.

Your baby.'

That single remark made Kawase, who had not thought of leaving her, decide to do just that. What a cheap trick! All memory of the brisk, clean affair seemed to vanish, fallen into the dirty world of bargaining and haggling. He did not even feel like saying what most men would have said, that there was no way of knowing whose child it was. He said it all the same, very clearly, with an eye on what was to come later. If she wanted a bout of mud-slinging, he would give her what she asked for.

For the first time Kawase found himself disliking those dance-like gestures, the thick, white, professional make-up. They had Seemed like the essence of the elegant and the stylish, but now they were only symbols of vulgarity and lack of sensitivity.

He was glad that her insincerity had made up his mind for him.

'As a matter of fact, my own boy ...' Although Asaka perhaps did not guess the content of the remarks he was on the verge of making, she may have sensed that he was in danger of saying something better left unsaid. She stopped him in the Western manner, with a light, somewhat intoxicated wink.

It was nicely timed. The fact that he was stopped not by himself but by her brought a strange, sweet, melting emotion.

'And did you enjoy the cherries jubilee?' asked the waiter.

Kawase had intended to leave a 15-per-cent tip, but he left a 20-per-cent tip instead.

5. During the twelve-hour jet flight back to Japan, Kawase went time after time to the lounge for a smoke and thought of the bright morning light in his hotel, where Asaka had stayed the night.

63

With a shortage of help to look after the hundreds of rooms, the rule that a guest could not have a woman in his room, current in all good hotels, had become an empty form. Outside the elevator the hotel corridor was empty late at night. There was not even a danger of being overheard, walking along the thick carpeting under rows of old-fashioned brackets. Somewhat befuddled, Asaka and Kawase bet five dollars on whether or not they could get in a dozen kisses between the elevator and the room, a considerable distance away. Kawase won.

In the morning they awoke from a brief sleep, drew back the curtains, and looked far down at San Francisco Bay, shimmer*

ing between buildings in the morning sunlight.

The day before, having breakfast alone, Kawase had scattered crumbs to the pigeons on the ledge. They flew up again this morning when he opened the window. There were no crumbs today, however, for the two of them could scarcely call for room service. Disappointed, the pigeons withdrew to a hollow below the ledge, craned their necks inquiringly for a time, and flew away. Their necks were an intricate combination of blue, brown, and green.

Below, the cable car was already clanging its way up the street. Asaka was in a black slip, her rich shoulders bare. It was flesh with which he had long been familiar, and yet, here abroad, it seemed to give off a strong, simple scent as of the meadows, quite the opposite of the artificial scent it had in kimono and powder. That the earthiness in her skin, like the effect of the sun sinking into the skins of her ancestors over the ages, should give such pleasure to a person whose skin was the same colour was one of those strange reversals possible only in a foreign country.

It was a fine, free morning, and all the bonds and restraints that had tied Kawase's heart from the morning before were miraculously swept away.

Bringing the neck of his pyjamas together against the morning chill, he said brightly: 'And what will you do this time if you have a baby?'

Asaka was seated like a foreign prostitute at the mirror, dazzling in the sunlight. She was looking at her reflection. The 64

gentle slope of the shoulders seemed to send out its own radiance.

'If I have a baby it will be Sonoda's,' she answered, briskly mentioning the name of her patron.

But as he approached Japan, that memory faded and the image of his wife and child in their loneliness grew stronger.

Kawase did not himself know why he seemed so intent upon painting them in sad, sentimental colours. Was there some force that drove him to look upon them so? His wife had written faithfully once a week in his absence, and her letters indicated that all was well.

The jet flew low over the sea. The lights were turned out to show the lights of Tokyo, and soft music played. The plane would apparently go directly into Haneda Airport from the bay off Yokohama. Clusters of lights came slowly up at them. All the strained sadness of the city - the more people crowded into it the more sadness - seemed to be in those clusters of lights.

In the heady disquiet of returning home from a long trip abroad, Kawase listened to the deep breathing of the engines and gave himself up to the precise and yet somehow frustrating flow of time and space as rows of lights at the runways emerged from the disorder.

The confusion of customs, the irritation of waiting for his luggage - performing the last duties required of the traveller at the end of the road, he climbed the red-carpeted stairs and immediately saw his wife, child in arms, among the welcomers.

She had on a lawn-green sweater and she had gained weight in his absence. The outline of her face was somehow blurred, making her if anything more attractive.

'See? There's papa,' she said to the child, who hung impass-ively on her neck, worn out by the crowd and the excitement.

At length, as if he could think of no alternative, he wrinkled his nose and smiled.

There was nothing lonely or unhappy about them. The signs were that they had been quite content in Kawase's absence. He was disappointed that his wife should be so bright and cheerful.

65

Several of his subordinates went with them to his house for a home-coming party. Kawase had no chance to talk to his wife.

The child was nodding at his knee.

'Maybe he should go to bed,' said one of the men from the office.

Amid the appurtenances of Japan - straw mats, sliding paper doors, alcove, round window,, countless little dishes and decanters on the table - Kawase had become the classical Japanese gentleman once more. He had to assert his authority.

'If you show him a thermos flask, he'll be wide awake again.'

'A thermos flask?'

'Kimiko,' Kawase called to his wife, 'bring a thermos flask.'

She was slow to answer. No doubt she agreed that it was time the boy was in bed. It was after eleven. Her evasiveness greatly irritated Kawase. It came to seem that he had returned to Japan solely for the pleasure of accosting the child with a thermos flask. It was as if only that feeling of pleasure or fear, he scarcely knew which, could clear away the disquiet deep inside him since the jet flight.

Five minutes later he called to his wife again. Intoxication did not spread pleasantly as it should, but seemed to form a cold lump at the back of his head.

'What about the thermos flask?'

'Yes.'

'But see how sleepy he is,' said Komiya, the same young man.

'I think we can do without the thermos flask.'

Emboldened by sake, Komiya was being somewhat forward.

Kawase glanced at him. He was a very intelligent young man, one of the best in Kawase's section, and he had a distinctive face, thick eyebrows that came faintly together over the bridge of the nose. Catching the man's eye, Kawase felt something stab at the icy lump in his head: He knows. He knows the boy's afraid of thermos flasks.

Instead of asking why, Kawase shoved the child at Komiya, who caught it as if it were a football and looked at Kawase in frank amazement.

66

'You put him to bed, then,'said Kawase.

Sensing that it was a dangerous moment, the others became even noisier. Kawase's wife slipped in, took the child from Komiya, and went off to put it to bed, almost asleep despite the clamour. The smoothness of the operation did not please Kawase.

It was one o'clock by the time the guests left.

Kawase helped his wife clear the table. Though exhausted, he felt more awake than ever and not in the least intoxicated. His displeasure seemed to have made itself known to his wife. They exchanged as few words as possible while they were engaged in this small cooperative task.

'Thank you very much. Why don't you go to bed? You must be tired.' Splashing at the dish-washer, she did not look round.

Kawase did not answer. The dishes of left-overs by the sink were starkly white in the fluorescent light.

After a time he said: 'What about the thermos flask? I knew he was sleepy, but you could have brought it on my first night home.'

'It's broken.' Over the sound of the water his wife answered in a bright, unnaturally high voice.

It was odd that Kawase did not find the news surprising.

'Who broke it? Shigeru?'

She shook her head. The stiff, heaped-up waves of hair, reset for his home-coming, shook softly.

'Who did break it, then?'

She had been washing dishes, but suddenly her arms were motionless, and he sensed that she had them braced against the stainless steel of the sink as if pushing at it. The lawn-green sweater was shaking.

'But what is there to cry about? I just asked you who broke it.' 'I broke it,' she said in little gasps.

Kawase did not have the courage to lay his hand on her shoulder. He was afraid of thermos flasks.

Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
The Priest of Shiga Temple

According to Eshin's "Essentials of Salvation', the Ten Pleasures are but a drop in the ocean when compared to the joys of the Pure Land. In the Land the earth is made of emerald and the roads that lead across it are lined by cordons of gold rope. The surface is endlessly level and there are no boundaries. Within each of the sacred Precincts are fifty thousand million halls and towers wrought of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, coral, agate, and pearls; and wondrous garments are spread out on all the jewelled daisies. Within the halls and above the towers a multitude of angels are for ever playing sacred music and singing paeans of praise to the Tathagata Buddha. In the gardens that surround the halls and the towers and the cloisters are great gold and emerald ponds where the faithful may perform their ablutions; and the gold ponds are lined with silver sand, and the emerald ponds are lined with crystal sand. The ponds are covered with lotus plants which sparkle in variegated colours and, as the breeze wafts over the surface of the water, magnificent lights crisscross in all directions. Both day and night the air is filled with the songs of cranes, geese, mandarin ducks, peacocks, parrots, and sweet-voiced Kalavinkas, who have the faces of beautiful women. All these and the myriad other hundred-jewelled birds are raising their melodious voices in praise of the Buddha. (However sweet their voices may sound, so immense a collection of birds must be extremely noisy.) The borders of the ponds and the banks of the rivers are lined with groves of sacred treasure trees. These trees have golden stems and silver branches and coral blossoms, and their beauty is mirrored in the waters. The air is full of jewelled cords, and from these cords hang the myriad treasure bells which for ever ring out the Supreme Law of Buddha; and strange musical in-68

struments, which play by themselves without ever being touched, also stretch far into the pellucid sky.

If one feels like having something to eat, there automatically appear before one's eyes a seven-jewelled table on whose shining surface rest seven-jewelled bowls heaped high with the choi-cest delicacies. But there is no need to pick up these viands and put them in one's mouth. All that is necessary is to look at their inviting colours and to enjoy the aroma: thereby the stomach is filled and the body nourished, while one remains oneself spiritually and physically pure. When one has thus finished one's meal without any eating, the bowls and the table are instantly wafted off.

Likewise, one's body is automatically arrayed in clothes, without any need for sewing, laundering, dyeing, or repairing.

Lamps, too, are unnecessary, for the sky is illumined by an omnipresent light. Furthermore, the Pure Land enjoys a mod-erate temperature all year round, so that neither heating nor cooling is required. A hundred thousand subtle scents perfume the air and lotus petals rain down constantly.

In the chapter of the Inspection Gate we are told that, since uninitiated sightseers cannot hope to penetrate deep into the Pure Land, they must concentrate, first, on awakening their powers of 'external imagination' and, thereafter, on steadily expanding these powers. Imaginative power can provide a short cut for escaping from the trammels of our mundane life and for seeing the Buddha. If we are endowed with a rich, turbulent imagination, we can focus our attention on a single lotus flower and from there can spread out to infinite horizons.

By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive the Truth. And first we must know that each of the petals has eighty-four thousand veins and that each vein gives off eighty-four thousand lights. Furthermore, the smallest of these flowers has a diameter of two hundred and fifty yojana. Thus, assuming that the yojana of which we read in the Holy Writings cor-respond to seventy-five miles each, we may conclude that a 69

lotus flower with a diameter of nineteen thousand miles is on the small side.

Now such a flower has eighty-four thousand petals and between each of the petals there are one million jewels, each emit-ting one thousand lights. Above the beautifully adorned calyx Of the flower rise four bejewelled pillars and each of these pillars is one hundred billion times as great as Mount Sumeru, which towers in the centre of the Buddhist universe. From the pillars hang great draperies and each drapery is adorned with fifty thousand million jewels, and each jewel emits eighty-four thousand lights, and each light is composed of eighty-four thousand different golden colours, and each of these golden colours in its turn is variously transmogrified.