Mandarins (17 page)

Amidst all these mournful voices, J
ō
s
ō
, his bodhi prayer beads still dangling from his wrist, quietly resumed his place. Sitting directly across from Kikaku and Kyorai was Shik
ō
, who now took his turn. But T
ō
kab
ō
, known as a cynic, did not appear to suffer in the least from the sort of distraught nerves that would cause him, induced by the sentimentality all around him, to shed vain tears. As he unceremoniously moistened the lips of the master, there was on his swarthy face the same familiar expression: a m
é
lange of mockery and a strange haughtiness. Yet it is, of course, indisputable that even he was filled with a measure of emotion.

Cutting to the quick,
(“Here I leave my bones to bleach . . .”)
The harsh autumn wind.
⁵

Four or five days before, the master had said: “I had long thought that I would die stretched out on the grass, with earth for my headrest. I could not be happier than to see the hope for a peaceful end here fulfilled on this splendid bed.” This he had oft repeated as an expression of his gratitude, though whether he was now lying on a withered moor or in the rear annex of Hanaya Nizaemon's residence was of no significant difference.

In fact, up until three or four days before, the very person now moistening the lips of the dying man had worried that his master had not yet composed his last verse; just the day before he had contemplated how he might compile a posthumous book of his
hokku
. Now today, just a few minutes before, he had been intently observing the old man as he rapidly slipped into the arms of death, seeking anything in that process that might be of poetic interest. Indeed, to advance one step further in cynicism, one might even suppose that behind his watchful gaze was the hope of finding inspiration for at least one line in an account he would later write of these last days and hours. Even as he was ministering to him in these final moments, his mind was obsessed with the renown he would win among other schools of poetry, the consequences for the disciples, favorable or otherwise, and all that he might reasonably expect to gain himself.

None of this had the remotest bearing on the imminent death of his master, whose fate was now faithfully fulfilling what he had so often predicted in his verses, for truly he was now being left as a bleached corpse in a vast and desolate moor of humanity. His own disciples were not lamenting the death of their master but rather their own loss at his passing. They were not bewailing the piteous demise of their guide in the wilderness but rather their own abandonment here in the twilight.

Yet, as we humans are by nature coldhearted, of what use is it to
offer moral reprobation? Lost in such world-weary thoughts, even as he exalted in his capacity to indulge in them, Shik
ō
wetted the lips of his master and returned the plumed stick to the water bowl. Then glancing about at the weeping faces of his fellow disciples in apparent derision, he slowly and calmly returned to his place. For the good-natured Kyorai, Shik
ō
's cold demeanor had from the beginning only renewed his anxieties; for his part, Kikaku returned the look with an oddly awkward expression, apparently irritated by the air of brazen disdain that was T
ō
kab
ō
's wont.

Shik
ō
was followed by Inenb
ō
. As his diminutive figure crawled along the straw mats, trailing the hems of his black robe behind him, it was clear that the moment of Bash
ō
's passing was at hand. His face was all the more drained of blood, and, as though he had grown forgetful, there were long moments when no breath escaped his moistened lips. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered, his larynx would begin to move with renewed force, a feeble stream of air again emerging. Twice or thrice from deep within his throat came the rumbling sound of phlegm; his respiration meanwhile grew fainter.

Applying the white end of the plumed stick to those same lips, Inenb
ō
was suddenly seized by a fearful thought quite unrelated to the sadness of parting from his master:
Was he not destined to follow his master into death?
Though verging on the utterly irrational, the emotion, once felt, was therefore all the more impossible to subdue.

Inenb
ō
was by nature among those who respond to any mention of death with morbid panic. From long ago, he had only to think of his own mortality, even when on pleasurable sojourns, to find his entire body drenched in sweat from the dire terror of it all. Thus, hearing of the demise of anyone else provided him with the reassurance that it was indeed the passing of someone other than himself. Yet at the same time he had been assailed by the anxiety-inducing plausibility
of the opposite proposition: what if, after all, he were to be the one so summoned?

Bash
ō
was for him no exception. At the beginning, before it became apparent that already he lay at death's door, when in the late autumn sky the sun was shining brightly on the sliding paper doors and the pure scent of narcissus—brought by Sonojo—was wafting through the air, all of his disciples gathered there had composed verses to amuse him. And so Inenb
ō
's spirits had wandered from pole to pole, as though twixt day and night.

Yet the end inexorably grew nearer. There was the unforgettable day of early winter showers, when Bash
ō
appeared unable even to eat the pears of which he was so fond. Seeing this, Mokusetsu had worriedly tilted his head to one side. With this, Inenb
ō
's serenity steadily gave way to fear and then to the looming shadow of dark, cold terror, as he imagined that his own hour would soon be upon him.

So firmly was he in the grip of that fear that even as he sat at Bash
ō
's side and painstakingly wetted his lips, he seemed unable to bring himself to look directly into his face. When for an instant he appeared to make the effort, a death rattle emanated from the master's throat, blocked by phlegm, shattering what courage Inenb
ō
had managed to muster. “You may be the one to follow . . . ,” came a nagging, prescient voice in his ear, and as the small figure went crouching back to his place, an ever-darker frown grew on his face. Seeking to avoid the eyes of others, he lowered his head, though sometimes raising his eyes for a surreptitious glance.
⁶

Next from among those around Bash
ō
's bed came Otsush
Å«
, Seish
Å«
, Shid
ō
, and Mokusetsu, each in their turn. But now each breath was more constricted and less frequent than the last, his throat no longer moving. His entire appearance—the small, now waxlike, pock-marked face, his lusterless eyes gazing fixedly into distant space, and
the sparse, silver-white beard that covered his chin—was now frozen by the ice that is the human heart; already he appeared to be lost in dreamlike contemplation of that Realm of Eternal Tranquillity and Light to which he would presently be journeying.

Behind Kyorai sat J
ō
s
ō
, the faithful student of Zen, his head bowed in silence; even as his boundless sorrow deepened with each sign of weakening in Bash
ō
's breathing, his heart was gently filled by a boundless sense of peace. His sorrow required no explanation, but this feeling of serenity was strangely like the feeling of cheer that comes when the cold light of dawn slowly penetrates the shadows of night. Moment by moment it was purging his mind of idle thoughts, so that in the end his sadness was one purified of all tears and heartache.

Was he rejoicing in his master's transcendence of the illusory distinction between life and death, his attainment of Nirvana in the Realm of Treasures? No, that was not the reason that he could affirm even to himself. Then . . . Ah, who could have been so foolish as to vacillate in vain, to dare to deceive himself as to the truth? J
ō
s
ō
's serenity sprang from the joy of liberation, of being freed from the shackles with which the sheer force of Bash
ō
's personality had long bound him, of feeling his drearily oppressed soul allowed at last to exercise its own inherent strength.

As he rubbed his prayer beads, filled with joy both rapturous and sad, his eyes no longer seemed to see any of his companions, engulfed in tears. A faint smile on his lips, he reverently paid homage to the dying Bash
ō
.

Thus, it was that Matsuo T
ō
sei of the Banana Plant Hermitage, the great and incomparable master of
haikai
, then and now, suddenly expired, surrounded by disciples “lost to boundless grief.”

The garden belonged to an ancient family, Nakamura by name, whose inn had once served traveling lords in a post-station town along the Central Mountain Road. For the first decade after the Meiji Restoration, it remained much as it had been. In the gourd-shaped pond lay limpid water, and atop a miniature hill drooped the branches of pine trees. The two pavilions, the House of the Resting Crane and the Bower of the Purified Heart, had also endured. Into the pond, from a cliff at the far end of the garden, cascaded swirling white water. Among the golden kerias—their expanse growing year by year—stood a stone lantern to which Princess Kazu is said to have given a name on her journey through the region.

There was nonetheless the undeniable intimation of impending ruin. Particularly at the beginning of spring, when the upper branches of the trees within and beyond the garden suddenly sprouted new
buds, one could sense all the more intensely that lurking behind this picturesque artifact was a menacing and savage power.

The retired head of the family was a gruff old man who spent untroubled days in the main house, which looked out on the garden. With his elderly wife, who suffered from an ulcerated scalp, he would sit at the heated table, playing
go
or flower cards. Sometimes, however, after losing to her five or six times in succession, he would fly into a rage.

To his eldest he had relinquished his rights as householder. This son was married to a cousin and lived with her in a cramped annex connected by an elevated corridor. He had taken the nom de plume of Bunshitsu and was of so petulant a disposition that even his own father, to say nothing of his frail wife and younger brothers, was eager to avoid his displeasure.

One visitor to the inn in those days was the mendicant poet Seigetsu, who in his wanderings would turn up from time to time. Strangely enough, he was the only guest welcomed by the elder son, who served him drink and encouraged him to compose. Among the linked verses they have left for posterity is:

Of the two younger brothers, the first had been adopted into the family of a relative, a grain merchant; the other worked for a large sake brewer in a village four or five leagues away. As though by tacit agreement, they rarely returned to their parental home. The youngest was inconvenienced by the distance but was also disinclined by long-standing
ill feeling between himself and the current householder. The sibling between them was leading a dissolute life and was hardly seen even in the home of his adoptive parents.

Within two or three years, the garden had gone further to seed. Duckweed had begun to appear on the surface of the pond, and withered trees mingled with the shrubbery. During a terribly dry summer, the old man suddenly died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Four or five days before, he had been drinking
sh
ō
ch
Å«
when he saw on the other side of the pond the form of a court noble, dressed in white, going in and out of the bower. At least it should be said that he had seen such a phantom in the daylight.

At the end of the next spring, the second son absconded with money from his adoptive parents and ran off with a tavern maid. In the autumn, the wife of the eldest gave premature birth to a baby boy.

After the death of his father, this son had moved into the main house to live with his mother. The annex was rented to the local schoolmaster, who having embraced the utilitarianism of Fukuzawa Yukichi, succeeded over the course of time in persuading the owner to plant fruit trees in the garden. Now when the spring came, there were among the familiar pine and willow trees the richly colored blossoms of peach, apricot, and plum. As he strolled with the eldest son through the new orchard, he would remark: “One could host splendid blossom-viewing parties here, thereby killing two birds with one stone.” The artificial hill, the pond, and the pavilions merely looked the more forlorn, as though, so to speak, man had lent a hand to nature in the ruin of the garden.

Moreover, in the autumn, a fire, such as had not been seen in many a year, broke out on the hill in the back. Suddenly and completely, the waterfall was no more. Then, with the first snowfall, the householder fell ill. The diagnosis of the physician was consumption or, as it is
called today, tuberculosis. Whether lying in bed or up and about, he was more irascible than ever. At New Year's, when his second brother came to offer his best wishes, he concluded a heated argument with him by throwing a hand-warmer in his direction. The intended target took his leave and never saw the other again, not even on his deathbed over a year later. Lying under the mosquito net in the nocturnal care of his wife, the elder brother had said just before breathing his last: “The frogs are quacking. What's become of Seigetsu?” But the poet had long ago ceased coming round to beg, perhaps having wearied of what there was to see.