Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02 (20 page)

 
          
“Somehow,”
said Manco, half to
himself
.

 
          
“When
I speak in a little while, I will make them a challenge,” said Shimada. “I will
name names. I will say what they have in mind as I see it. I would like to talk
to young Oishi Kyoki, but he wanted to spend the morning in meditation.”

 
          
“Second
sight?” asked
Sharon
.

           
“Second sight, if you will. He would
try to see and hear at a distance.”

 
          
“You’ll
say all those things when you speak today,” said Thunstone to Shimada.

 
          
“And
after me, you speak tonight,” said Shimada. “You will follow
up,
you will close in on them. Bring them to what will be the end of this
struggle.”

 
          
Thunstone
gazed at him for a moment, wondering how he would manage to do that. Finally he
said, “All right. I’m with you. I said I’d be with you, and I meant it.”

 
          
Shimada
looked at the watch on his wrist. It was square and brilliantly jeweled, on a
broad gold band figured in green.

 
          
“It
comes to the time when I must go and say what I will say,” he said. “I would be
glad if all of you came to hear.”

 
          
“That’s
exactly what we intend to do,” Father Bundren assured him. “We’ll follow you
over to that auditorium.”

 
          
They
walked out together, crossed the street, and headed for the auditorium. Shimada
moved nimbly at the head of their group. Next
came
Thunstone and Sharon, her hand holding his arm confidently while his other hand
carried his cane. At the rear were Father Bundren and Manco, talking as though
to some good purpose. Thunstone glanced from one to another of his comrades,
and to the third. These were three wise men, each strong and confident in his
special conviction, the best allies he could hope for.

 
          
Inside the auditorium, again a great, jabbering throng of people.
The speeches were drawing interested crowds. Lee Pitt met Shimada and they
headed for the stage entrance. The others sat in a row together, Thunstone,
then Sharon, then Father Bundren, then Manco. Thunstone gazed around him at the
audience. Well back in it sat Grizel Fian, in her bright red dress.

 
          
“She’s
here,” he reported, “but not Rowley Thome.”

 
          
“Who
can tell that?” asked Manco from beyond Father Bundren. “Maybe he’s here. Maybe
he can be unseen.”

 
          
“I
somehow think I’d know,” said Thunstone.

 
          
Up
on the stage, Pitt was introducing Shimada. Shimada came to the lectern. His
teeth and his spectacles shone. He made a slight, swift bow.

 
          
“How
gratifying to me that so many have come to hear what I may say,” he began.
“Gratifying and flattering.
I can’t truly promise that all
of you will like what I am going to tell you, but I think that all of you will
find things of interest in it.”

           
Again a bow.

 
          
“In
Japan
these days, especially in our cities, you
might feel that we Japanese are like you Westerners,” he went on. “Especially
our young people, our modem opposite numbers of your students here at
Buford
State
University
. Those young people over there like to wear
jeans and T-shirts with figures and slogans. They listen to rock and roll
music, and they rock and roll with it. They play video games, play them well.
They eat hamburgers and hot dogs—lots of those. Eat them gladly. In
Japan
, we busily manufacture computers and
automobiles and sell them here in
America
. Yes, and television sets—I would
conjecture that, among you who have television, your sets are made in
Japan
for the most part. Here and there in our
cities, you might feel that you were in
San Francisco
or
Chicago
.”

 
          
Again a pause, a study of the audience.

 
          
“Yes,”
said Shimada, “we Japanese are good at learning new things, new truths. We
prosper in industry and commerce as we do in arts. But we do not forget the old
truths,
we do not leave them behind.”

 
          
Now
Shimada was in dead earnest. His spectacled eyes roamed here and there over the
listeners.

 
          
“I
promised you that I would say something about Japanese beliefs, I promised you
that when I spoke briefly at the first session of this meeting. Mankind is very
old on this planet, was struggling hard to be mankind millions of years ago. In
Japan
, mankind was present and doing quite well
indeed, about two hundred thousand years back, or earlier. Those first Japanese
could make fire, had fine flint tools, had community life, and must have had a
sense of the unseen world that was, though unseen, manifest. Somewhere far
back—before written language, before surviving reports—the Japanese had a
special religion
of their own
. What is called Shinto
today.
”

           
He gazed around the auditorium
again. “Do some of you know about Shinto?” he asked.

 
          
Here
and there, hands went up. Not many.

 
          
“Then
some of you have information,” said Shimada. “Let me speak briefly and simply
to the others, something about Shinto. For one thing, as I have said, it is so
old a religious philosophy that there can be no tracing of its beginnings.
There are books of guidance—the
Kojiki
and the
Nihongi
—but those were
recent, written no longer ago than the eighth century. Buddhism came to
Japan
as a comparatively new faith and grew
strong, yet Shinto remained the official state religion until it was formally
disestablished on
December 15, 1945
, at the end of that tragic war. Our emperor
Hirohito renounced his traditional claim to descent from the sun goddess
Amaterasu. But Shinto has survived. It helps its believers. It helps them here
in Buford.”

 
          
Again
he let his words sink in.

 
          
“For,
yes, we have Shinto here in Buford,” he went on. “
Shinto,
that
was bom in
Japan
, and was greatly significant in
Japan
before Buddhism came, hat in hand, to ask
admittance. Shinto—
Kaminomioomichi,
it is described.
Kami
is sometimes
translated in the West as the name of God. It may be better translated as power
of good against
evil,
right against wrong, if we can
be wise enough to tell the difference between right and wrong,”

 
          
He
spread his slim, tea-colored hands, as though in appeal. “I am well aware that
I am no true authority on Shinto. I am not a holy man, only an educator, to
some extent a scholar and an educator. You have had holy men on this platform
before me. Reuben Manco is a medicine man of his impressive Cherokee faith.
Father Mark Bundren is a Catholic priest, of the scholarly Jesuitical order. I
say again that my Shintoism is nowhere complete, but there is a scholar here in
Buford, profound in its teachings and a partaker in its powers, whose help is
great. Never mind his name. As things are here, he’s better unknown than
known.”

 
          
All
these things Shimada had said with the utmost calm and clarity, as though he
were lecturing a class. But the whole audience listened attentively. Thunstone
spared a glance toward where Grizel Fian sat. She leaned forward in her seat,
raptly intent on what Shimada had said. He went on:

 
          
“Here,
then, is the fundamental belief of Shinto, and it proves the ancient basis of
Shinto: There is life in all things, and not only life, but sense, awareness. I
know the fashionable arguments that plants live and feel, and why did we need
to be told that? We see that trees and flowers and grasses are living things.
There are those who say that we should talk to plants—but Shintoists have
talked to plants for many thousands of years.
And not only to
plants, but to stones, rivers, ponds, houses, all things.
Shinto says
that this auditorium has life and sense, not only the whole structure but each
separate stone and brick in it. If one is strong enough, schooled enough, in
Shinto, he can speak to this whole world and every living thing in it—whether
animal, vegetable or mineral—and hear every living thing as it replies.”

 
          
Again
he gestured his appeal. “Is that not good to have, such a voice to speak to all
things and such an ear to hear the answers? I say that it can be achieved, that
it is here in your city and on your campus, and you can believe or disbelieve.
I say that this ear, this voice, operate here, and just now, in the service of
Shinto which is good, it reveals things which are evil.”

 
          
A murmur at that.
Thunstone, glancing around, saw the huge,
bearded man who had played Hume at the Playmakers Theater, had been at the
ceremony in Grizel Fian’s basement,
had
pursued him in
the cemetery. He leaned powerfully forward, his heavy muscles bunching inside
his denim jacket. He seemed almost ready to rise, to say something. Shimada saw
his motion, recognized him, and smiled as though in recognition.

 
          
“I
want to tell some diverting stories,” he said. He told the stories. They dealt
with various men and women, whose Japanese names were hard to understand, and
their supernatural difficulties. Into one story came a malignant fox, into
another a friendly badger. Evil forces lurked in the stories, and were detected
and defeated by experts in Shinto.

 
          
“You
think these things are fables?” asked Shimada. “I venture to assure you of the
contrary. They are matter-of- fact records, well authenticated and known to
students. But what is all this to the point, ladies and gentlemen? My duty is
to speak of conditions here and now. Here and now in Buford. The apostles of
hate and destruction are here among us. Shinto reveals them. Shall I name
names? Then suppose I begin with a name well known in this community, the name
of—”

 
          
He
paused. Then: “The name of Grizel Fian!” he fairly shouted into the microphone.

 
          
A stir, a bustle among the listeners.
“No!” cried someone.

 
          
“Yes,”
insisted Shimada, more quietly but forcefully for all that. “Grizel Fian, whose
selections from Shakespeare we witnessed on the campus last night. Who leads a
following of deluded disciples to do whatever perverted evil comes into their
heads. Who means to use this university to promote her gospel of anarchic
evil.
”

 
          
“That’s
a he!” roared out the big man,

 
          
“A
truth,” came back Shimada, “John Keats once said that beauty is truth, truth
beauty. But truth can be ugly things, and I am telling you one of them, I am
afflicted to have to accuse a woman, but with Grizel Fian this is necessary.
She represents a night side of infamies that has afflicted you since this
school’s beginning, and I mean to make my charge clear.”

           
Somebody sprang up in a section of
the audience away from where Thunstone and the others sat. It was red-clad
Grizel Fian. Her dress fluttered as she fairly ran up the aisle and toward the
door and out. She was like a scarlet bird in flight.

 
          
“Sayonara
,
”
called Shimada after her.
“Goodbye.”

 
          
The
giant man was up and out of his seat and into the aisle. He loomed there. “Look
here, you,” he blustered at the top of his voice. “You’re no gentleman to talk
like that to Grizel. You’D be sorry about this.”

 
          
“I
am already sorry that I had to speak to her so,” Shimada said back. “But you
Occidentals have a proverb— Needs must when the Devil drives—and the DevD is
out here in Buford, whip in hand.”

 
          
“I’D
make you shut up!”

 
          
“Wifl you indeed?”
Shimada said silkfly. “How wifl you go
about that? Would you like to come up on the platform with me, or shaU I come
down there to you? Remember how you tried it last night, and how it turned out.
These people might be amused to watch you and me fight for, say, thirty
seconds. It should not take me longer than that.”

 
          
“My
name is—”

 
          
“I
don’t care to hear your name,” said Shimada.

 
          
The
big man turned and fled up the aisle, as hurriedly as had Grizel Fian. Shimada
watched him go, took off* his spectacles and wiped them carefully on his
handkerchief, and put them on again. He returned to the microphone.

 
          
“My
apologies,” he said, his voice gentler than ever.
“My
apologies for this interruption.
I am deeply hurt that those two wanted
to leave, but the rest of you are still here. Unless others want to go also,
want to be where they will not hear the rest of what I have come to say to
you.”