Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (49 page)

The other priests at the temple—Yanagi and others—were Ry
shin’s followers, which accounted for their feeling of brotherhood and for the fierce way in which they at once protected him and were suspicious of newcomers. They kept Kuri away and welcomed Ry
shin home when he was able to take a break from his other responsibilities. For ten years, the men had kept this delicate equation in balance. Later, when I indignantly told Ry
nosuke about this situation, he nodded indulgently as I carried on and on. “Marie,” he said, “in Japan, such an important thing like bloodlines can never be decided in court. It is a matter between the different temples to sort out on their own.”

A little voice in my head reminded me about the purification ceremony and how we had been advised to avoid gossip. I was now not avoiding gossip. I was very actively seeking out gossip and taking sides in a dispute that had nothing to do with me.

A
FTER DINNER
, F
URUIE
intercepted me in the hallway. “Wait right here!” While I waited, I watched young men slide open the doors to the kitchen with one hand, while balancing little dish-covered
tables stacked one on top of the other. They moved like acrobats. A moment later, Ry
shin came out to meet me. He had changed into a set of mustard-colored robes. “Hello,” he said cheerfully, then glided off toward the
hond
.
I quickened my pace to keep up.

“I’m forty-five years old, and I’ve been here since I was eighteen. That means I’ve been in this place for twenty-seven years. Can you imagine?” He laughed, as if to say he understood how the very idea that a forty-five-year-old man spending twenty-seven years in a monastery in this modern world was an absurd thing. He said he’d come to Sh
j
shinin as a result of connections between his family’s temple in Nagasaki and the temple here. He was the second son—his older brother got the family temple.

Ry
shin’s eyes were large and round. In this, he was like my mother, whose own mother was from Nagasaki. “I have family in Nagasaki,” I said. “I went there often as a child.”

“I understand your family owns a temple in T
hoku too.” He paused and smiled at me. “
En desu ne
?
” It’s fate then, isn’t it?

I apologized that it had taken me so long to understand his circumstances.

Ry
shin kept smiling. “Everything around us is here to teach us something. I wasn’t tough enough when I was younger, and now I have to be. Please don’t worry. I’m all right. And I am
very
happy you are here.”

He ducked his head and went into the
hond
—the real
hond
. I was going to meditate like a true pilgrim. Everything had been prepared. There were two pillows catty-corner to each other on the floor. The overhead light had been extinguished. Warm candlelight and sparkling gold dishes gave the small room a powerful luminescence. Here in this little space, with its hidden Buddha and its link to K
kai and history, I felt a presence that comes only from a
powerful and carefully managed intimacy. I did not feel like a guest visiting a beautiful space kept out of reach; I had been allowed on the inside.